1950s Movie Reviews

The Asphalt Jungle Review

November 17, 2016 by JD Hansel

(SPOILER ALERT)

It’s surprising to me just how much better this film is on my second viewing – how much easier it is to follow and enjoy watching it after having already seen it before. That’s not to say I really liked it the second time I watched it – in fact I never finished watching it a second time – but it is easier to appreciate. The film has a structure that’s hard to work out on the onset, and the first few minutes of the film give the impression that the story will follow the perspective of the police officers more than the criminals. Without any clear protagonist, and with an ensemble cast with intricate relationships, it’s easy to get lost in the story, as I did when I first started watching it. There’s also the fact that I generally have little interest in crime and heist films, which made me hope for better motivations behind the characters’ actions so I could have an easier time getting invested. On the second viewing, however, it has become clear to me that this film is very careful and detailed, making it rather fascinating. I’m particularly fascinated by the role of women in the film.

I think it is quite safe to say that the filmmakers planned on having a mostly male audience, seeing as how the main characters in the film (or at least the ones who push the plot along) are men, so the film looks at women from a few male perspectives. There seems to be a dichotomy presented between the “good life,” represented by adhering to domestic norms, and the wrong way of living, represented by inappropriate lust (or, to a lesser extent, greed). The professor seems to have no interest in settling down with a wife – his ideal retirement is chasing the pretty Mexican girls around in the sunshine. The film seems adamant about making the point that greed, lust, and criminality are all in the same family of things that ought to be avoided, and it is no surprise that Doc’s lust becomes his undoing. Similarly, Emmerich’s affair seems to be at the very least related to his unhappy ending. When Bob Brannom suggests that Emmerich went broke because of Angela (Marilyn), Emmerich denies it, saying it was his extravagant way of living, but I argue Emmerich would have no need for his many properties if he didn’t need places to have his affair. “Doll” tries to pull Dix into the conventional, domestic, married life, but he inexplicably resists, instead pining after the horses of his home.

Interestingly, the film only touches on the subject of how crime can hurt one’s family. The brief memorial service scene seems to mostly serve the function of reminding the audience of the consequences of criminal behavior, which is a message the film probably needed to drive home quite severely in order to get approved. If a big proponent of Sobchack were to try to figure out why a family would be brought into this film, it seems that the reasons would be purely functional: to raise the stakes so the drama of the heist is more interesting, and to help the film get its approval. I can’t help but wonder how entirely different the film would be if one woman had been involved in the heist itself and how the perspective on women the film presents might completely change.

Unfortunately, a film that’s fascinating in hindsight is not the same as one that’s entertaining from the start, which is really what I was hoping to see. Some of the characters are really good and leave a strong impression, and I think that’s largely due to the great performances from Sam Jaffe, Jean Hagen, and of course Marilyn, but somehow this isn’t enough to keep the film interesting. I recognize that it’s a well-made film in many respects, but it’s not my kind of thing. I think I’ll have to finish my second viewing sometime, or maybe even watch it a third time, because as of right now, I’m wondering if I’ll ever decide if the film’s ending is an unsatisfying bummer or a work of poetic genius.

Singin’ in the Rain Review: Upon Further Consideration…

October 30, 2016 by JD Hansel

SPOILER ALERT

Anyone familiar with my “Upon Further Consideration…” series knows from the categorization of this article that I have already seen Singin’ in the Rain in the past. I think this most recent viewing was my third or fourth one, and I enjoyed each and every previous viewing. I’ve considered the film to be not only a must-see classic, but also one of my favorite films for many years, although in recent years I started to wonder how much of that might me my memory’s exaggeration based on my fondness for the classic musicals I watched with my family as a child. I remembered that some parts of the movie felt slow or irrelevant, like the scene that presents all of the models in bizarre dresses – which has nothing to do with the story and does not get a laugh. During this viewing, however, I was not only pleasantly surprised to see that my memories had not done the film justice, but also that this film is actually an outstanding work of absolute genius, with stunning talent and unbelievable near-perfection that frequently left me literally gaping.

Technically, this is not a perfect movie, but like most of the greats, its strength is in making the audience not care about its imperfections. The film is loaded with musical numbers that contribute little or nothing to the plot and could have been replaced by just about any other song. Fortunately, these musical numbers are, overall, so impressive and fun and entertaining as spectacles that no one could possibly complain that they interrupt the plot. I don’t even mind the needless number about the fashion too much. Even still, the plot doesn’t hold together perfectly. Towards the end, Lena essentially takes over the studio simply by lying to the press, making the studio head too concerned that their movie will bomb if one of its stars is found to be a phony. At the film’s closing, however, the studio head randomly decides that it’ll be perfectly okay to reveal Lena to be an untalented sham, which he obviously could have done sooner in a more professional manner. The trick that the film pulls here is simply a bit of misdirection – they pull the viewer’s attention to the romantic sub-plot, which has by and large taken over the movie and become the A-plot at this point, so that we do not care what the motives are for giving us the happy ending. I heard from a professor of mine that Terry Gilliam once said filmmakers could cut anything they wanted to from the last fifteen minutes of a film and not even the biggest fans of the movie would care so long as they got their happy ending, and while I’m not sure if the attribution is accurate, the principle is exemplified in Singin’ in the Rain.

There’s also a lot more cleverness to this film than I remembered. Heck, the opening shot of the film is a way of doing the credits that I haven’t seen done in any other film, and it’s one of the best beginnings a movie’s ever had. They also take great care in the film’s first act to save the reveal of Lena’s voice for just the right moment, which is all handled very “stealthily” in a way, in that they make sure the audience doesn’t suspect the whopper of a gag that the movie has planned with her. Cosmo’s dialogue is superb, and clearly set the tone for all the “comedic sidekick” characters to come. There are a few elements of the film that seem to borrow from, or perhaps pay homage to, Babes in Arms – particularly the scene showing the industry’s sudden transition from silent films to sound films. Parts of the movie are significantly more over-the-top and theatrical than I remembered, but the theatricality is at its peak during the “Broadway Melody” number, which just might be the most gorgeous scene in all of cinema – it’s sort of like expressionism on steroids. It all comes together to make for a delightful experience that no one should miss.

Paths of Glory Review

October 13, 2016 by JD Hansel

I don’t like war movies.

I have no interest in wars. It is an embarrassment to the species that we still have them. I generally have no interest in stories that attempt to glorify wars, even if they do balance it out to a degree by showing much bloodshed to display how horrible war can be. At the end of the day, war movies (and arguably anti-war movies) make their money by appealing to the disgusting, aggressive, barbaric element of the human soul that just wants to watch people beat the crap out of other people – an element of the soul that our culture has particularly nurtured and groomed in men.

I also don’t like Stanley Kubrick.

2001: A Space Odyssey was the first (and I think only) movie to literally bore me to tears. Kubrick’s obnoxious art style is frankly too “up in your face” for his work to feel mature enough for my tastes. His intense focus on what I consider “mindless mindfulness” for hours on end with his hypnotic visuals is about as pseudo-intellectual as it gets. I have given him a hard time before for being too boring, and even though I liked Dr. Strangelove, it too felt rather slow and boring at times (as did Killer’s Kiss). I think this is because Kubrick has a particular gift – and I do mean this sincerely – for making human characters as distant and inhuman as possible, which is honestly a challenge. Personally, however, I get bored too easily when a film doesn’t have any real “human” characters in it, and when I’m not being drawn in to a specific emotional experience because of the characters.

Enter Paths of Glory.

Here is a film that is extremely intense and intensely extreme, pulling the viewer into the deepest trenches of emotion and outrage. The hero (whom Kirk Douglas plays beautifully) is largely likable because he is the character who stands for that which is moral, but I would argue that the protagonist is not what makes the film so engaging. The emotional pull comes not from how much we like the protagonist, but how much we hate the people above him. He is surrounded by devils, and any notion the viewer may have had beforehand of the first World War being about “good guys vs. bad guys” is shattered – there are bad guys and worse guys. War is revealed to be a matter of politics, killing people to make a point and artificially form a narrative, making for an absolutely excellent anti-war movie.

Interestingly, I happened to follow my viewing of this film with the 1918 Charlie Chaplin comedy Shoulder Arms, which also takes place during World War I. It’s amazing to see how both a film that reduces the war to petty political games and a film that completely makes light of the war (both taking place in the French trenches specifically) could be very thoughtful, insightful, and entertaining films. It almost feels like practicing two separate religions, or supporting two opposing political candidates. What’s odd, however, is this: with how much of a comedy buff I am, I feel as though I ought to like the Chaplin comedy more – it is very, very clever, after all – but I am more drawn to Kubrick’s film.

What Kubrick captures here is not so much humanity as it is a different kind of inhumanity than I’m used to seeing from him: he offers us the chance to see the twisted monsters that lie in our souls, thus exposing how much of our humanity is actually made up of inhumanity. While Paths may have started off a little bit on the tedious side as I’d expected, I soon found myself on the edge of my seat as the cynic in me felt overwhelmed with orgasmic outrage and rapturous rage. I was far more invested in the political drama of this film than I get invested in most films in general, let alone dramas about war. I was sort of let down by the ending, but I eventually found that the ending was purposely underwhelming, giving the audience one final sting with the realization that no progress has been made, and everything will go on the same corrupt way until the war is over. It may not be a perfect film, but finally I see in Kubrick the cinematic master I’ve always heard he should be.

Rashômon Review

April 5, 2016 by JD Hansel

I like stories. I especially like stories when they are delivered with the standard Hollywood three-act narrative. It’s a good structure for movies, and I think that’s because of the logical form at play in the medium. Nearly every film that’s ever been screened – or perhaps every fiction ever invented – has built its story, whether or not the writer(s) realized it, on the following idea: given this fascinating set of circumstances, these fascinating events are what would/could follow (or, to express it in propositional logic, “C → E“). It makes sense that the first act would establish the circumstances and the main character that will be used to express their consequences, followed by a second act in which several chaotic events take place as a result of the established circumstances, a climax with the culmination of all of the chaos thus far, and finally a conclusion that sorts everything out into some sort of inevitable, orderly result. Naturally, I always get nervous when a director decides to break this form in favor of his/her own idea of whatever would be interesting to present on film. For this film, however, Kurosawa somehow managed to use the same logical principles, but with a different form than Hollywood’s, that strangely works beautifully for this story.

From the beginning, the tone of the film puts the audience in a mood to hear a story, as we see what almost seems like an equivalent to a man walking into a bar our of the rain to tell a story to the bartender. We know right away that we’re about to hear a dreadful tale, and the flashbacks are no surprise. Flashbacks had been long-established by this point, so everyone knew what they were and how to “read” them. We also understand the cinematic grammar of a court hearing, so the way that the flashbacks are organized and presented makes sense. Ultimately, the form of this film still retains the basic concept of presenting circumstances and the events that would follow from them, but if Hollywood’s form is a bowling ball hitting the pins, Kurosawa’s form is a cue stick hitting the triangle of object balls – the point isn’t to push everything in one direction, but to scatter in every direction. In other words, Kurosawa uses a structure that shoots various mutations of a story in different directions, and we are meant to make sense of the general ideas running throughout all of them in order to make sense of the conclusion.

What is perhaps most impressive about this movie is that it offers satisfaction without answering the film’s main question. While I do not wish to give too much away, I will say that the ending is a hopeful response to the events of the film . . . in a way. Rather than having a conclusion that is set up directly by the events that take place in the story, this film ends with more of an Our Town ending by ending on an answer to the film’s theme, and even the film’s form. The form of the film is inseparable from the plot, so both the form and plot keep the audience curious about what’s to come. We can still play “the movie game” of trying to guess where the plot will go because the grammar of the film is intuitive enough, but the ending makes one realize that the game is not the point. The point, like with most stories, is the moral we learn from the fable, which makes Rashomon a very fascinating sort of fairy tale.

The Ten Commandments (1956) Review

August 19, 2015 by JD Hansel

It’s hard to keep a long movie interesting. After all, some movies that are only 90 minutes long struggle to hold my attention, so when a movie goes over two and a half hours, that’s risky. (It is, however, understandable in many cases, because the length must be determined by what the story requires.) While I’ve never been able to make it all the way through any of the Lord of the Rings movies, I did enjoy the 1996 Hamlet, which has a running time of 242 minutes – about four hours. Little did I know when I picked up The Ten Commandments that it was almost as long, or that the experience I had yet to face would take days to complete.

Was it worth sitting through the whole thing? Yes. Unlike some movies I know, this film actually filled its long running time with many interesting characters expressing very intriguing drama, so it’s easy to get through a lot of the film in one sitting. Based on what I knew of DeMille’s work before I watched the film, I was already expecting the gorgeous visuals to keep my eyes glued to the screen, but I had no idea that my ears would be enticed as well by the absolutely excellent dialogue throughout. This is the kind of writing that inspires me. (I should mention that my ears were also listening for the epic score by Elmer Bernstein.)

So, in the end, while I’m not sure the story itself is my kind of story, and the film may suffer a little from a lack of focus, it is an excellent masterpiece that I cannot help but respect. While I think of Egypt and the dessert to be visually bland settings for a movie (since I like colorful, theatrical visuals, rather than tan, brown, or sandy visuals) this movie has some of the best and most cinematic shots I have ever seen. It finds a way to make a nearly-four-hour biography into a dramatic experience that I could never forget.

Harvey Review

April 23, 2015 by JD Hansel

It’s been weeks since I watched Harvey. I thought it was fitting to watch it on Easter, but then I never got around to reviewing it until now. So I’ll just review it now, and hopefully I’ll remember most of it.

Harvey, the third film in my unexplained series of reviews of movies that start with “Ha,” is a pleasant film. The plot concerns a man who repels most people he meets because he has a large invisible rabbit for a friend. It is based on a play, and it feels like watching a play the whole time. It is clever and funny, but since the main character (played by James Stewart) isn’t very real or relatable to me, the film didn’t totally hold my attention the whole time.

The plot was structured well in my opinion, and sort of reminded me of Shakespeare’s style. The ending was a little weak, but it was still nice. There were a few shots in the movie that looked pretty good, and some shots that were somewhat of impressive from a technical standpoint, but it’s a rather ordinary-looking film on the whole. Some of the lines are good, but the humor is by no means brilliant since it’s nearly all relying on the same joke: no one knows how to handle this crazy guy’s invisible friend Harvey. Still, it’s certainly a decent comedy film that will get a few laughs from its viewers.

So, in the end, it’s probably worth seeing. It’s not necessarily a must-see, but it’s a cute movie that is nice to watch every once in a while.