November 05, 2009
Swing Time
Astaire and Rogers, poetry in motion.
Swing Time, 1936 might be the best of the nine RKO Astaire-Rogers musicals. The plot is paper thin—Astaire plays a gambler and dancer who must earn $25,000 in order to win a bride—but the dance numbers, choreographed by Astaire and Hermes Pan, are luminous.
“Waltz in Swing Time” is an incredibly complicated routine a “syncopated waltz with tap overlays.” So difficult is this dance that director George Stevens—in order to get it in one shot as Astaire insisted—had to shoot numerous takes in order to get it right.
By the end of the day Ginger Rogers shoes were filled with blood.
The reliable Counter Terrorism blog concludes that the Fort Hood massacre is the largest terror act since 9-11.
And hey, let's stop digging into the life of the Ft. Hood terrorist. He's evil. A jihadist. It's not complicated. Worthy of our attention and gratitude is the woman who stopped the mass murderer, Sgt. Kimberly Munley.
Karen and I wish all our grieving friends in the military, a peaceful and spiritual Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 05:28 PM | Comments (5)
October 23, 2009
Friday Flickers: Swing Time
This clip from Swing Time 1936, in which Fred saves Ginger's job, is a perfect illustration of why Astaire and Rogers revolutionized dance in movies. Elegant, explosive—watch the amazing shifts in tempo—and deeply romantic, their dance numbers are, Astaire insisted on this, seamlessly integrated into the plot line of their films.
Astaire also wisely demanded that the dance sequences be filmed in one take, or as close to one take as was technically feasible. He did not care for the Busby Berkeley style of extravagant dance numbers photographed from extreme angles emphasizing a fearful geometry and then edited down to rapid fire shots.
Astaire favored a coherent movie geography in which time and space adhere to the rules of gravity and human beings are flesh and blood rather than mechanical props.
Astaire boldly stated: “Either the camera will dance, or I will.”
So, you think you can dance, watch this:
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a joyous and restful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:43 AM | Comments (21)
September 18, 2009
Friday Flickers: Sadie McKee
Earlier this week we published a profile of Hollywood star Esther Ralston. So beautiful was Esther, she was dubbed The American Venus, after the film of the same name in which she starred.
Sadly, Esther had a weakness for bad men and her career was seriously derailed by three failed marriages to: an emotionally unstable gambler, an emotionally unstable drunk, and an emotionally unstable ladies man.
In 1933, Esther was placed under contract to MGM. Unfortunately, Louis B. Mayer had a school boy crush on Esther and expected her to reciprocate, um, favors.
Now, Esther may have had bad taste in husbands, but she was a faithful wife and a deeply moral woman, hence she spurned Mayer's advance.
Furious, Mayer vowed that Esther's career would languish at MGM, and so he loaned her out to other studios for a series of mediocre projects.
But MGM director Clarence Brown—Garbo's frequent helmer—insisted on casting Esther in Sadie McKee, 1934, a fine Joan Crawford vehicle.
Here's a brief clip of Esther Ralston singing I Looked In Your Eyes with Gene Raymond. As you can see, she is lovely with a pearl-toned voice. As Dolly Merrick, Esther plays a vaudeville femme fatale who steals Barry from good girl Crawford. Sadie McKee is not one of Crawford's best known vehicles, but it happens to be one of my favorites. And Esther's presence is one of the reasons this film has such appeal for yours truly.
As we move into Shabbat and Rosh HaShanah, Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a sweet and lovely new year.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:05 AM | Comments (7)
July 17, 2009
Friday Flickers: Bombshell
Bombshell, (1933) starring Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, Una Merkel and Franchot Tone.
Harlow plays Harlow. That's what this film is all about.
Jean Harlow, spitting world-weary wisecracks and fed-up with Hollywood's merry-go-round insanity, is Lola Burns, a Hollywood sexpot. Her father and brother are always looking for handouts, and the studio publicity flack cooks up outrageous publicity stunts to add heat to an overheated reputation as a smoldering blond bombshell.
Harlow, a hugely appealing and gifted comedienne, delivers the best, most energized performance of her short career. She died tragically of renal failure at age 26. And though her career was brief, she was, from 1931 to 1937, an enormous star. Depression era audiences sparked to her blond bombshell image, sensing a down to earth girl next door who just happened to be draped in clinging silk gowns—it was obvious she wasn't wearing underwear—ermine robes, and diamond necklaces.
In truth, like Lola, Harlow yearned for a normal life of domesticity: a comfortable home, a loving husband and happy children. Sadly, she was thwarted by wretched judgment in men, and a monstrously overbearing mother who controlled every aspect of her daughter's life and career.
The great director Victor Fleming with ace screenwriters John Lee Mahin and Jules Furthman cooked up this Hollywood tale as a thinly disguised look at Fleming's former lover, silent film star Clara Bow. Fleming observed that Bow's life was, on the surface, a glamorous Hollywood dream, but when Bow went home at night, her mansion was filled with dog droppings and her deeply unstable family soaked her for every penny she earned. Bombshell is a screwball comedy before Hollywood invented that most entertaining genre.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a miracle in Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 06:40 AM | Comments (7)
July 02, 2009
Friday Flickers: Gun Crazy
By 1950, the Hollywood studio system was in steep decline. Television was flattening the landscape, and because stars were no longer under contract to the studios, the star system—invented by L.B. Mayer—was all but dead.
It was a bad time for American movies.
The last great film genre was also quickly fading.
Film noir, black or dark films, a post WWII phenomenon, was characterized by dark, urban landscapes where dangerous dames seduced cynical men into crime, betrayal, and death.
Gun Crazy, 1950, is one of the last, great noir movies.
But it doesn't fit neatly into the noir category because much of the story takes place in wide open rural spaces—which, to me, gives the film so much power. We don't expect noir in the mid-west.
John Dall plays Bart Tare, a young man who has always liked guns. He gets into a world of trouble when, as a kid, he breaks into a store to steal a six-shooter. Bart's friends explain to the judge that Bart likes gun, but he would never kill anything. He won't even kill an animal.
File away that last piece of information as the major set-up of the film.
For every movie set-up, you have to provide a payoff.
And the payoff in Gun Crazy is perfect.
No spoilers here, you must watch this film.
After getting out of the army, Bart attends a carnival where he meets sharpshooter, Annie Laurie Starr—“So beautiful, so dangerous...”— played by Welsh born Peggy Cummins—her voice is mesmerizing, like a finely-tuned musical instrument.
Annie and Bart engage in a sharp shooting contest. It's one of the most erotic sequences in movie history for the man and woman—gunslingers in heat—are doing a mating dance as they blast away.
Later, Bart sums up their relationship:
“We go together, Annie. I don't know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together.”
Annie and Bart end up on the road, broke, and Annie talks the reluctant Bart into committing a robbery:
"I told you I'm a bad girl, didn't ?"
Soon, Bart and Peggy are on a full throttle crime spree and the cops are closing in on the doomed couple.
The clip I've chosen is, to my mind, the greatest bank heist in movie history.
It's done in one take. Dall and Cummings, dressed in their carnival outfits, improvise dialog as they drive down the highway, enter a town—the scene was shot in Montrose, CA—and cruise to a stop outside the bank. Because the scene is shot in one take, in real time, the suspense is nearly unbearable.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a miraculous Shabbat.
Have a wonderful July 4th weekend and keep in mind that freedom is never free.
And hey, Jewish Democrats have been hit, en masse, with a deadly ailment: Cognitive Dissonance.
Meanwhile, Barack Hussein Obama, has finally chosen sides in Iran. Want to to take a guess where The Dear Leader stands?
Pop Quiz: What's the difference between The Washington Post and a prostitute?
Answer: Nothing.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:31 PM | Comments (9)
June 12, 2009
Friday Flickers: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
It's perfect material for the movies: The struggle between good and evil. Man's dual nature. The conflict between earthly desires and heavenly aspirations. There's a good girl and, naturally, a bad girl; all neatly folded into a narrative that wrestles with questions of free will and man's place in G-d's universe.
There's also kinky Victorian sex, a secret lab with bubbling beakers, and banks of rolling fog over slick cobblestones. Delicious stuff for the silver screen.
Previous to the 1941 Spencer Tracy/Ingrid Bergman version of the R. L. Stevenson classic “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” there were several well regarded Hollywood productions.
The silent film, (1920) starring John Barrymore is an effective split personality morality tale, but Barrymore's Mr. Hyde make-up is over-the-top, grotesque, and makes too overt man's dual nature.
This film, however, offers one of the few opportunities to view the tragic, sadly forgotten Martha Mansfield, real name Martha Ehrlich. A former Ziegfeld girl, Mansfield was a lovely and promising actress who died in 1923 when, on location for The Warrens of Virginia, a carelessly thrown cigarette match ignited her voluminous Civil War period costume. Mansfield died in agony of third degree burns the next day. She was 24-years old.
Also in a co-starring role as Poole, Jekyll's butler, is the young George Stevens who went on to become one of Hollywood's great directors.
In 1931, Rouben Mamoulian directed a fine production starring Frederic March. Miriam Hopkins is sensational as bad girl “Champagne” Ivy. She blows March off the screen for he comes across as a taciturn and dispassionate Jekyll. There's little evidence of the pulsating fire that should be corrupting Jekyll's soul. This version was produced before the The Production Code was enforced, thus Hopkins is clearly identified as a prostitute and she brings just the right heat as a cheerily manipulative tramp.
As in the Barrymore production, March's Hyde is a hunched, scampering, ape-like human—sort of a missing link—making it hard to believe that Ivy could fall under the spell of this degrading and degraded creature.
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde publicity photo: Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, and Ingrid Bergman.
Director Victor Fleming and master screenwriter John Lee Mahin—who collaborated with Fleming on numerous productions—were determined to make their film more realistic, aiming for emotional truth.
Tracy's transformation make-up is limited and the evil in his nature come across overwhelmingly as the yetzer ha-ra, the evil inclination, which, according to Jewish thought, is present in every man.
Ingrid Bergman, brimming with luminous sensuality, plays temptress Ivy, a barmaid—wink, nudge—in MGM's ravishing vision of a squalid London dance hall. Bergman writes in her autobiography that she loved the Ivy character and implored Fleming to cast her in the role. Fleming couldn't see it. Like producer David O Selznick, Fleming saw Bergman as a “peaches and cream girl,” the opposite of Ivy. But Bergman persisted and Fleming made a screen test that convinced both director and producer.
The up and coming starlet Lana Turner is solid and absolutely convincing as Jekyll's very proper and innocent fiance. Turner had little technique at her disposal, but was capable of finely nuanced work when paired with the right director, and Fleming was one of the greatest.
The following clip is brief, but conveys everything that is best about this film. Tracy and Bergman warily circle one another with stunning precision. Tracy did noble perhaps better than any other player in Hollywood, but it could get tedious. Here, under Fleming's careful eye, Tracy's nobility is flawed, and self destructive fractures are all too apparent. Being a good man is hard work, and Tracy, in every reaction shot and line reading, skillfully weaves Dr. Jekyll's inward struggle.
Bergman, carrying on a love affair with Fleming—both were married—during the production, gives a fascinating, multi-layered performance as a born-to-the-streets pro who comes across like a high school virgin bewildered by her powerful desires. The attraction between Jekyll and Ivy is palpable, beautifully modulated, and the emotional realism that Fleming and Mahin sought is lovingly fulfilled.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a restful and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:02 AM | Comments (6)
May 22, 2009
Friday Flickers: The Lady Eve
Preston Sturges (1898 - 1959) was probably the greatest writer, director, producer—emphasis on writer—Hollywood ever produced. Sturges, in a series of brilliant comedies, refined the screwball comedy to an almost perfect sheen.
As the great critic and painter Manny Farber suggested, Sturges is the Mark Twain of Hollywood. His characters are pragmatic Americans who, at the drop of a hat, will deliver a finely tuned monologue worthy of a Greek philosopher.
My very favorite Sturges film is The Lady Eve, 1941, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda and the great character actor Charles Coburn. Stanwyck and Coburn play father and daughter con artists who target Henry Fonda, the heir to an ale—not beer!—fortune. Stanwyck's job is to ensnare Fonda in a honey trap, then fleece him for all he's worth.
Naturally, Stanwyck, the hard boiled dame, falls for Fonda's woman-shy, snake expert, who's returning from a year-long expedition up the Amazon.
Pondering her relationship with Fonda, Stanwyck observes: “I need him like the axe needs the turkey.”
There is no better line about the battle between the sexes in all of film history.
As you can imagine, delicious complications ensue.
Barbara Stanwyck, (1907 - 1990) real name Ruby Stevens, was probably the greatest actress of Hollywood's golden age. She convincingly played melodrama in Stella Dallas, (1937). Her Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944) is the paradigm of the coolly seductive blond with murder and betrayal in her heart. Her comedic roles—Ball of Fire (1941) is a brilliant take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs—are assured and laugh out loud funny. Stanwyck never made the mistake of playing cute—a plague among current Hollywood leading ladies. And of course, Meet John Doe (1941) is unthinkable without Stanwyck, the mortar that holds together that populist moral fable.
Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve.
Unlike the other screen legends of her time—the neurotic and humorless duo Joan Crawford and Bette Davis—Stanwyck had enormous range. It was understood by directors and writers that “Stany” could do everything and do it well. Furthermore, Stanwyck was a thorough professional who never failed to know her lines, was always on time, did not throw hissy fits, and was beloved by every crew member with whom she ever worked.
In the following clip, Stanwyck, on board a luxury liner, contrives to get Fonda alone, but then flees his stateroom when one of his snakes gets loose, leading to what is, for yours truly, the most sensual, seductive sequence ever filmed.
Sturges instinctively understood that injecting gentle humor into highly charged sexual situations did not, as some would imagine, dilute the emotions, but rather enhanced the passion to an almost unbearable pitch.
The Criterion edition of The Lady Eve is the one to purchase.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:31 AM | Comments (8)
May 08, 2009
Friday Flickers: The Awful Truth
Seraphic Secret is introducing a new feature: Friday Flickers, in which we present clips from some of our favorite movies along with personal commentary. We hope that you will run out and rent or purchase our Friday Flicker recommendations. We guarantee that your life will be enriched beyond measure.
Do not despair, Friday Footwear is still in play, but we like to keep things lively and unexpected.
We're kicking off our series with a few choice moments from The Awful Truth, 1937, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.
This film is a sublime example of the screwball comedy, a Hollywood genre that reached its apotheosis during the thirties, when the American economy was crippled by the Great Depression.
The sets of the screwball comedy are art deco white furniture, floor to ceiling silken drapes and miles of marble floors. Men dress for dinner in tuxedos, and ladies dash about in bias-cut gowns, trailing thick capes of mink and ermine. Every household boasts a know-it-all British butler and perfectly uniformed maids who curtsy as they serve caviar from silver trays. Best of all, no one seems to work for a living. The pursuit of love, while sipping endless cocktails in vast nightclubs, is a full time occupation.
Indeed, the fantasy world of depression era screwball comedies provided a psychic safe haven for millions of down-at-the heels, entertainment hungry Americans.
Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth
The storyline for The Awful Truth is simple—a couple impulsively decide to divorce though obviously made for one other—yet comedic complications pile one on top of the other with exquisite precision.
The plot thus far: Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are separated, involved with other partners, but the tug of love keeps them coming back to one another as if drawn by a powerful magnet.
In this scene, Cary Grant meets with his new socialite fiance and her stuffy, upper class family. Irene Dunne shows up disguised as Grant's sister, presumably to rescue Grant from a lie, but in truth, to undermine his new love interest.
Great film acting is reacting so keep an eye on Grant as he expresses: surprise, bafflement, frustration, humiliation and then, finally, delight as he realizes that the woman he's divorcing is his perfect match.
Grant and Dunne co-starred in two spectacular screwball comedies: The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife, 1940. Both are delightful films, profoundly wise about human nature. Leo McCarey directed both movies. It's a shame that this great director's output wasn't greater, but he was a serious alcoholic who, sadly, retreated to corners of darkness for long periods between pictures.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a lovely and miraculous Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:45 AM | Comments (14)
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