J.D. Hansel

Approved

Carousel Review

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The backlash to La La Land shouldn’t be nearly as surprising to me as it is – rejecting that which everyone else seems to uncritically adore is one of the ways that our species keeps itself from becoming too gullible, thoughtless, or monogamous.  While it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between the critics who just want to seem/feel smarter than everyone else, whether they’re the posh elitists from the background of a Woody Allen movie or the hipsters in the nearby coffee shop, and the critics who genuinely wanted to appreciate the film for what it is rather than what it isn’t, but left the theater feeling unsatisfied.  For me, one of the key criticisms I keep hearing that I actually do find to be a valid one is the issue of the lack of a strong sense of focus and plot during many large portions of the film.  When I put the first third of the movie under a microscope, I find that there’s really not a lot of story here – or arguably not a lot of “movie” here – just spectacle and emotion.  There’s a time and place for spectacle and pure emotion in cinema, however, and this place generally is indeed found in the musical number, but my preferred explanation for why La La Land has this problem is that it becomes one of the ways the film address the problems that the musicals from the 1950s have.  In other words, there are times when La La Land seems like it offers nothing more than its genre as its entertainment, but this is justifiable in my view.  The film for which it is not so justifiable is 1956’s Carousel, which is purely a display of its genre and nothing more – purely flavors without substance.

All of the songs feel like usual Rogers and Hammerstein songs, but few of them are memorable.  All of the story beats feel just right for a standard stage musical, but none of them are interesting.  All of the performances are impressive and spot-on, but I couldn’t care less about the characters.  Perhaps it’s just because of the generation gap, but the way that the characters think, speak, and behave strikes me as being so different from my experience with being a human being and interacting with other human beings that I find it hard to believe these characters are even meant to represent our species.  Their expectations of how life works are so far away from contemporary progressive values that I was more bewildered by the characters’ emotions than I was invested in them.  The film almost made me care, however, simply by being so stylistically emotional, with music that, at the very least, saturates the conflict appropriately.  The visual style alone is enough to make the film worth watching in spite of all of its flaws, because this is the way that a movie is supposed to look and feel – this is the kind of thing I want to see when I look at a movie screen.

All put together, the different elements work in tandem to make it abundantly clear that the viewer is watching a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, and in a sense, this film can be used as a benchmark to see how close a film comes to feeling like a mid-century musical – to capturing the genre.  There’s a good bit of Oklahoma in here, a piece of South Pacific, a touch of the yet-to-be-produced Sound of Music, and resemblance to Singin’ in the Rain or Bye Bye Birdie at times.  In this sense, the movie is like a “Greatest Hits: Volume 3” for its genre: it’s the same style we expect and all the same stuff we’ve heard before, but more boring now.  I think it works better as a stencil than a movie, allowing other films to use its tricks and tropes to properly stylize other films in the genre, hopefully helping the next director who tries to do something like La La Land perfect all of the little things that make a musical truly feel musical.

City Lights Review

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It’s often said that “film is a visual medium,” and I’m starting to think that, if cinema were a religion, this would be its most holy of dogmas.  One of the marks of someone who’s trying to create the sense that he/she is an expert on film is an insistence that the most impressive and most pure filmmaking is that which focuses on visual storytelling.  The trailer for STAR WARS: The Old Republic was immediately hailed as an excellent short film upon its release both on the web and at my college because it told a story using hardly any dialogue.  Surely the success of films from companies like PIXAR that like to show off their ability to tell stories this way (think of the first twenty minutes of UP) tells us that film is indeed a visual medium and that its storytelling must be primarily visual, right?

No.  This idea is a load of elitist bull-crap that should have died with Epstein.  My evidence for this is obvious: no one today wants to watch silent films.  No one.  I know because I spent my autumn semester at the University of Maryland sitting in a classroom filled with film students taking a course on silent cinema, and they skipped whichever films they could, trying to watch as few as possible.  These are the film majors – the next generation of movie critics, movie-makers, and movie-lovers – and they did not have the patience for any silent films longer than fifteen minutes.  On the other hand, the film that does get a positive reaction – and is even shown to non-film students in classes in other departments from what I hear – is Modern Times.

Modern Times works well because, in spite of the fact that it has hardly any spoken dialogue, Chaplin had complete control over the soundtrack, and the same is true for City Lights.  While storytelling without dialogue is often very impressive, it’s not the same as visual storytelling so long as it incorporates a soundtrack that’s controlled by the filmmakers.  Ever since Eisenstein first wrote about vertical montage, filmmakers and film critics should have accepted that sight and sound work together in film to create the cinematic experience, playing off of each other even in the presence of dialogue, constantly changing each other’s meaning, value, and power.  I think Chaplin understood this, and this understanding makes City Lights far better than any silent film I’ve ever seen.  Actually, I think some of the film’s strongest jokes are the ones built around audio, such as the part when the Tramp swallows the whistle or the opening scene that casts kazoos as the voices of the churlish officials and aristocrats – each of which I have seen imitated in one form or another in later comedy productions (The Three Stooges and the Charlie Brown specials, respectively).

I think this film is just barely better than Modern Times, although I think I should have given that film I higher rating than I did now that I’ve seen it twice and appreciate it more, if only because City Lights has a stronger plot.  Modern Times has a very loose narrative structure, as if Chaplin wrote the screenplay saying, “And now we’re going over here to do this gag, and now we’re going over there to do that routine.”  With City Lights, there’s a bit more focus on two main storylines, and the film’s primary weakness is the separation of these two plotlines, almost making me wonder why this is one feature-length film instead of two different short films.  Still, they’re tied together just enough that the story is engaging and entertaining, even if it is a little bit too dramatic and depressing at times given how much suffering our beloved Tramp endures.  It’s worth noting that each of these two storylines is based on a brilliant idea, the first being a man who’s the Tramp’s best friend when drunk but a stranger to him when sober, and the second – the one that’s so intelligently stupid it seems like it must have come from the Monty Python troupe – a blind girl falls in love with a silent comic.  In the end, with its heartwarming charm, captivating romance, clever comedy, unique potpourri of cities, smart use of sound effects, and enthralling musical score, City Lights is one of the greatest displays of Chaplin’s genius as a cinematic craftsman.

The Apartment Review

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It’s amazing to me just how different someone’s conception of a film can be from what it actually turns out to be, especially because of marketing.  Consider the above image.  Fortunately, I don’t think I saw this front cover image before seeing the film, but if I had, I certainly would’ve gotten the wrong idea entirely.  This gives one the impression that it’s a simple, brainless, lighthearted comedy about two men (seemingly equal in status) rivaling for the heart of the same woman.  As a matter of fact, the movie is not brainless – I don’t think any Billy Wilder films are – and it’s not very light – it’s actually so adult as to challenge everything I thought I understood about the Production Code (which is also usual for Wilder films).  Without giving too much plot away, here’s the premise: a man works his way up through his company by offering his apartment to his bosses as a secret place for them to have extra-marital affairs.  Obviously, it’s also a romantic comedy.

I first became interested in this movie simply because it was a high-ranking Wilder comedy, but then I became more interested when I saw in on Rob Walker’s list of “alternative” Christmas movies to watch during the 2016 holiday season.  I’m not sure if a movie counts as a “Christmas movie” simply by taking place around Christmas and New Year’s, but if so, this isn’t a bad film to watch during the holidays.  That being said, I don’t think it’s particularly heartwarming, and I’m not even sure of what moral lesson I’ve learned from it.  I know that I got caught up in the drama more than the comedy, although I couldn’t understand why Jack Lemmon’s character handled the situations he found himself in so unwisely when he could have done a better job of explaining himself and keeping his good name.  Still, I like Lemmon’s performance, Fred MacMurray’s character is perfect, and I care for Shirley MacLaine’s character in all the ways I’m supposed to.  It may be a very slow and tedious film at times, but it’s clever and it works, making for a very cynical, yet beautiful romance.

The Seven Year Itch Review

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This film is absolutely mad – or at the very least its protagonist is.  It had been a long time since it had last seen a Billy Wilder comedy, but after seeing Double Indemnity this past Autumn, I was naturally interested in seeing if his comedies could be as intelligent as his dramas.  I was not disappointed, but I was surprised by just how far this story dives into madness, creating a crazy comedy about romance instead of a romantic comedy.  I think this is where the film’s intelligence is found: it recognizes with brilliant observation just how absurd the human imagination is when fueled by fear, lust, and images from fictions, almost making it a criticism of its own medium.  Admittedly, the screenplay is clever, but not quite as funny as it could be, and Marilyn is sexy, but not quite at her best as a performer, so I watched it in parts over time to prevent boredom.  In spite of this, it’s definitely the must-see comedy movie of its era because it taps into the anxieties of the adult, straight, American male on a level few films have apart from The Graduate (and because I cannot believe it was approved by the code).  This makes it a perfect introduction to the inner-workings of the male mind, and it has the benefits of stylistic charms and hearty laughs to make it a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Gun Crazy Review

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SPOILER WARNING

In my last review, I wrote a bit about how I’m currently fascinated with génial–nanar blends – films that are very impressive and enjoyable in some scenes, yet are so stupid, bizarre, or unimpressive that they become enjoyable in other scenes.  One of the best examples of this type of film is unsurprisingly found in the film noir genre: Gun Crazy, also known as Deadly Is the Female.  While I don’t think it’s meant to be a comedy, many scenes are so strange or absurd that they seem laughable, giving me a feeling that’s no so different from what I get when I watch Duck Soup in that it feels almost like a child’s idea of how to make a movie rather than a rational adult’s.  What I think Gun Crazy demonstrates is that this group of films, in which I would include Gun Crazy, often achieves this state by trying to be completely interesting, surprising, or unique.

First, consider the strange aspects of this film.  The protagonist is obviously a very odd choice for a romantic lead in a crime drama because of his tall, lanky, silly appearance, which is only made sillier by his awkward smile and his unexplained obsession with guns.  Towards the beginning of the film, two characters are presented as children – Clyde Boston and Dave Alastair – who are dressed as adults and look exactly the same when they grow up.  Towards the end, Annie is randomly crazy enough to steal the baby from Ruby’s house to keep herself (and Bart) from getting shot by police.  The foggy, swampy environment of the ending looks nothing like the rest of the film, and wouldn’t naturally occur in that location, breaking what little sense of realism the film had maintained.  Best of all is the line that was nominated for inclusion in AFI’s 100 Movie Quotes: “We go together, Laurie. I don’t know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together.”

Now consider just how much of Gun Crazy is clever and creative.  The opening titles are presented over the background that becomes the first scene, meaning the cast and crew held on that shot for a few minutes before they started moving – nothing novel, but certainly something rare and interesting.  As far as the storytelling goes, there is great irony in the fact that the protagonist first encounters his lover when she shoots him and their relationship ends when he shoots her.  The bank robbery scene that was shot all in one take is highly impressive from a technical standpoint, not to mention how difficult it must have been for the performers to time everything properly and improvise any needed dialogue.  Even some of the weirdest things can be viewed from a perspective that makes them seem clever.  For example, one might see the representation of young Clyde and Dave as miniature adults as an indication that much of the film (or at least the opening scene that takes place in the past) is being presented from Bart’s perspective according to his memory.

Ultimately, all of these positive elements and bizarre elements seem to come from the same directorial approach: making the film as interesting as possible – striving to make things unique at all costs.  Trying things that people have never done before in cinema can lead to the greatness of Citizen Kane or the ridiculousness of a Joel Schumacher film.  In spite of its resemblance to other film noir, it clearly strives to be very much its own film, refusing to let anyone say that it is not unique.  This isn’t the greatest answer to my question of how we get génial–nanar blends, and it is not my final answer – in fact one professor of mine found it very inadequate, arguing instead that it has something more to do with affect.  Still, the desire to make something very different from what everyone’s seen before, something that’s very captivating and memorable at all costs, does seem to be at least a preliminary requirement for the génial–nanar.  I don’t think anyone else would have thought to make a film noir with a tiny touch of the western and a big load of goofiness, but the fact that this mixture was somehow able to get produced in the height of the studio system’s panicked identity crisis is enough to make it the unique novelty that audiences never knew they wanted.

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Raw Deal Review

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SPOILER ALERT

Unlike many of my fellow millennials, I have no reservations or concerns about watching films from Classical Hollywood, because I do not share in their fears that old movies are “too boring.”  My issue with classic cinema is that it can be uncomfortable recommending or showing older films to friends of mine without explaining to them beforehand that I don’t condone the sexism or racism that sometimes appears in these classic films.  When I heard that Raw Deal brings a female perspective to film noir by having a woman narrate, I was hoping that it would be a film noir I could show to friends with no such concerns.  Better yet, the professor of the class that was screening Raw Deal said it was his favorite film noir, which sounded like a good sign (as he was also a big fan of Double Indemnity, which I find excellent).  Regrettably, I not only greatly disliked the film, but was very disappointed to find no trace of feminism or anything of the sort.  While I do think the recurring theme throughout the film is the theme of the choice(s) of its women, I do not think that the film presents the women’s freedom to choose in a positive light.

Most scenes in Raw Deal are part of a set up for the main female choices in the film: Pat’s choice to lie to Joe about Rick’s goon’s phone call concerning Ann, and then her choice tell him the truth.  Pat is the character who is most clearly being silenced throughout the film, never getting the chance to take part in the decision-making in her and Joe’s relationship during the first two acts.  She’s actually being told what to do by men even before Joe starts – at the prison, she’s told she’ll have to wait to see Joe, which is just the first of many moments in the film that focus on how she’s forced to wait, and then she and Joe are commanded by the security guard to keep their voices up.  When Joe starts, if Pat’s narration is to be trusted, the commanding gets alarmingly strict.  She hardly gets to finish one sentence once he gets in the car before he tells her to focus on the wheel, and then when she tells him he doesn’t like his plan to use her and Ann to get through the dragnet, he dismisses her concerns immediately and tells her to get dressed.  She is similarly told what to do and/or silenced when speaking her mind – either on screen or according to her voiceover – in their car ride to the border, just after they pass the dragnet, at the campfire, when they make their way to Walt’s bar by the beach, and repeatedly throughout their whole discussion when he decides to leave her behind and go to Rick’s.  Pat’s narration makes it seem almost as though it’s the story of a woman who’s trapped in a film that’s about her lover’s love story, not hers.

From the perspective of screenwriting theory, it seems like this would be the obvious set-up for a story about a woman who finally learns to make her own choice.  While Joe may be the protagonist and dominate the film’s climax, Pat has her own semi-climactic moment when she decides to lie about the phone call.  However, the liberation that seems to be displayed in this scene is undercut by her more climactic scene, when she realizes her one big decision in the film was a mistake.  If she learns any moral lesson – although that’s debatable – it’s that she should have done as Joe told her in the first place and told him what the man said on the phone call.

Rick goes further in his mistreatment of women, as I suppose one would expect of the villain, and he shows this by keeping his cool after he’s lost his poker game and found out that Joe successfully escaped, but losing it when his lady friend accidentally spills a little bit of her drink on him.  (That’s rather small in comparison, even if it is supposed to be the last straw.)  Still, it’s ultimately Pat’s narrative that reveals time and time again that she lives in a world in which women’s views aren’t as important as men’s, and I don’t see how her decision to withhold information from Joe changes that.  Ann’s choice to shoot a man, which is also set up earlier in the film (with her mentioning in her apartment that she’d be able to stop Joe if she had a gun), but this choice leads to her overwhelming guilt, and ultimately Joe ends up dying hours later anyway.  Add this to the number of times they use the word dame and the way the whistle blows when Ann walks out of the prison and it’s clear that the film does not play as well as one would hope to younger audiences who find anti-feminism in film morally unsatisfactory.  While I’ve heard some make the case today that the way women are presented and/or treated in film today seems worse that it was back in the days of Classical Hollywood, this is clearly the kind of movie that people are afraid to find when they watch classic films because it perpetuates the view that it is the woman’s place to shut up and obey.  At the end of the day, as much as I really appreciate the film’s charmingly “Noir-Expressionist” visual style, I have found nothing else about the film which is particularly noteworthy or memorable, which presents me in the Song of the South conundrum – if all that’s really memorable about the film are the few parts that seem particularly politically inappropriate, should those alone be the memorable part of its reception and ratings?

In this case, I vote yes.

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