Directed by Howard Hawks, starring Garry Cooper. I knew this was a very highly regarded film, and despite a little patriotic hokum, I enjoyed it a lot. It’s the true story of Alvin C. York, the Tennessee farmer and sharp shooter who applied for conscientious objector status during WWI, was denied, and then went on to become one of the most highly decorated heroes of the conflict.
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Filed under Isolation Picks, Movies
More cheerful fare for your isolating days. These three comedies are currently showing on the Criterion Channel but you should be able to find them elsewhere.
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Filed under Isolation Picks, Movies
Here’s a little self-isolation game for you. It’s like ‘Where’s Waldo’ but way more intellectual…
(* and yes, I know I’m conflating Surrealism here with Dada and general Avant-gardeism, but I liked it as a title! Enough with the quibbling!)
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Filed under Isolation Picks, Miscellaneous Fun-ness, Movies
(Yes, another blog post about the pandemic, or at least about watching movies during the pandemic. It does, however, apply to non-isolation movie viewing as well.)
So why is now a good time to watch old movies? As everyone is shut up at home waiting out the high tide of covid-19, I know many are looking to Netflix and other streaming services for distraction and solace. If you do, consider this: old movies may be more consoling than newer flicks.
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I just put together a few titles for a friend and thought I’d put some of my suggestions here too. You can probably find these elsewhere, but they are all available on the Criterion Channel right now.
And, I might add, the Criterion Channel offers a 2-week trial period for free…
You Were Never Lovelier (1942)
Director: William A. Seiter
Starring: Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth
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From “The Best Motion Picture Interview Ever Written”, by Theodore Dreiser, Photoplay Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 3, August, 1928, pp. 32-35, 124-129.
[Novelist Theodore Dreiser interviews the Master of Comedy Mack Sennett]
… One of the things I was moved to ask at this point was, slapstick being what it is, was there any limit to the forms or manifestations of this humor? And to my surprise, yes there was, and is.
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This was going to be a post about my latest writing projects, but after watching a seriously silly movie last night I decided to write instead about silent movies. I’ve loved old movies since I discovered the Late Show on the two TV channels we had in the 1970s, so I’ve always been a fan of the obvious stars – Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton et al – but recently I’ve been doing research for a new book (more on that in another post to come) and have been digging deeper for lesser known gems. I compiled a list of silents that I wanted to watch (yes, I created a spreadsheet for this. I love lists) and was happily proceeding in chronological order.
The very early shorts (1895-1905) are dominated by the Lumière brothers and Georges Méliès, then the Americans respond with some energetic though rather crude efforts like The Great Train Robbery. I spent many months watching the Biograph shorts directed by D.W. Griffith between 1909 and 1914, which are at the heart of the new book I’m writing, so I will definitely have more to say about them in future posts. During this period Griffith was churning out lively little potboilers at a rate of 2-3 per week, so even though many seem to be lost, there is still a lot to see!
After that I became interested in early films from other countries, beyond the obvious ones like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Battleship Potemkin. Thanks to the almighty internet, I have found some really fascinating Danish, German, Swedish, Italian, French, British, Russian and Japanese films.
And then, yesterday, I happened to come across this Silent Era List of the 100 Top Silent Films. Not only the top 100, mind you: this site also lists the next 200 films that didn’t make the top 100! Oy! So much for my progress; I now have over 400 titles on my list!
Last night I picked out one I’d never heard of: The Oyster Princess (1919), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. This is one of Lubitsch’s early films, made in Germany before he went Hollywood. What a weird little delight this is. It’s kind of a fairy tale, kind of a parody of capitalism, but mostly just wacky. Apart from the creepy tendency of the heroine’s father to peek through keyholes, this one even ages relatively well.
It’s one hour in length and quite fun. I will continue to share my early movie finds here, if there’s enough interest!
Postscript
Interested? Want to see some of these for yourself? As most silent movies were made between 1900 and the late 1920s, they are in the public domain and most are readily available online to stream for free. There are a lot of titles available on Youtube, as well as the two sites I go to most frequently, Internet Archive* and OpenCulture.
Want a list to guide you? This Top 10 Guardian list is a great starting point, listing the most critically acclaimed films. You can pick out a director you like and then hunt down their titles. Or you can go right to the mega list I mentioned earlier, at Silent Era.
*I really love this site, but I am saddened to hear that there is a copyright brouhaha brewing between them and authors over printed material they post on their site for free. I need to find out more before I decide whether to continue using this resource – if you know more about this please let me know.
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Filed under Miscellaneous Weirdness, Movies, My Projects
I don’t just love Wes Anderson’s imaginary world, I want to live in it. I want to live among his characters and, even better, work with them. I once had a conversation with a movie-loving Catalan couple, over a lingering late supper in a Barcelona restaurant, in which they expressed their utter bewilderment over The Royal Tenenbaums. I mimed swooning with love for that film; they shook their heads. “The characters… the way they talk… it’s not real,” they said. They were flummoxed by the deadpan expressions and laboured dialogue. I had to reassure them that the Tenenbaums did, in caricature, represent a certain, distinctive North American type: intellectually serious but emotionally immature WASPs. “They’re my people!” I enthused, only at that moment realizing it to be true.
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Let’s get our week started with a little writing fun, shall we?
After the Thin Man (1936), with Myrna Loy and William Powell
First: what are their names? occupations? favourite cocktails?
Next: write some dialogue that matches their expressions perfectly.
Another option: write dialogue that runs counter to their expressions.
And another: what’s the dog thinking?
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Filed under Get Writing!
the Trunchbull by illustrator Quentin Blake
My weekly pick of something creepy/scary to share with you all… Anyone who has read Roald Dahl’s Matilda will know exactly whom I am speaking about. If you haven’t, Agatha Trunchbull is the headmistress at the school Matilda attends. Continue reading
