Netflix Update No. 47: “City Island”
March 7, 2011
ANDY GARCIA
We watched the 2009 movie, “City Island,” starring Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies with an Alan Akin-esque supporting role for Alan Arkin.
This is an edgy and often humorous story, written and directed by Raymond DeFelitta, about a dysfunctional family living on an island in The Bronx. Vince Rizzo (Garcia) is a corrections officer who doesn’t like to be called a “prison guard” and who really wants to be an actor. He steals off to Manhattan to attend an acting class led by the grizzled but insightful Michael Malakov (Arkin). Vince assumes that his wife, Joyce (Margulies) would ridicule his ambition, so he explains his weekly absences by saying he is playing poker. She thinks he’s having an affair.
The Rizzos have a son and a daughter together. Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller) secretly has a feeding fetish, and Vivian – played by Garcia’s daughter, Dominik (sic) – is a college student who secretly has lost her scholarship and is stripping to earn tuition money.
Vivian reluctantly comes home on a break at about the same time that Vince realizes that a new prison inmate is his son, Tony (Steven Strait), the product of a liaison Vince had while he was still in his late teens. In keeping with the family practice, Vince has not told Joyce about this.
JULIANNA MARGULIES
Not one to complicate matters by thinking them through, Vince tells Tony only that Tony’s dissolute mother was a “friend,” and he arranges to have Tony released in his custody. He takes Tony home, giving Joyce only the explanation he had given Tony, and the result is even more dissent in the Rizzo household.
Meanwhile, Vince has developed a close, but not romantic, relationship with Molly (Emily Mortimer), a fellow student in Malakov’s class. Molly – who has secrets of her own – pushes Vince to have more confidence in his prospects as an actor. He inadvertently jars her into reconsidering some of the lies she has been living.
The quirky characters, odd-ball story, and strong performances by all the actors make this movie unpredictable and compelling. The environment adds to the interest. The film was shot on location at City Island which looks as if it’s a piece of New England that wandered away and couldn’t find its way back. The characteristics of the place – at least as Vince describes them in the movie – provide a credible context for his self-image and his behavior.
ALAN ARKIN
It’s almost always a treat to find Alan Arkin in a movie. He is in his element in this one, playing a crusty drama teacher who is up to here with actors who want to emulate Marlon Brando. Malakov is especially impatient with students who inexplicably pause instead of speaking their dialogue – a Brando trade mark. Presumably, Malakov wouldn’t have had much time for William Shatner. Vince, as it happens, is a Brando devotee.
This movie makes a point about the consequences of deceit among people whose relationship implies intimacy. It may be an obvious point, but the empirical evidence is that it can’t be made too often.
Vince Rizzo studies up on Marlon Brando in "City Island"
Netflix Update No. 43: “Love in the Afternoon”
January 10, 2011
Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in "Love in the Afternoon"
“Love in the Afternoon,” a 1957 movie directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, is entertaining in several ways, but it is also seriously flawed. The principal flaw was in the casting, no matter how good the names Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, and Maurice Chevalier, may sound when listed in the same credits.
Audrey Hepburn
The film, which is said to have been Wilder’s paean to director Ernst Lubitsch, is a subtle, witty, lightly slapstick romantic comedy concerning a Parisian private detective, his cellist daughter, and an international playboy with whom they both become involved. Detective Claude Chavasse (Chevalier) is engaged by Monsieur X, a cuckolded husband played by John McGiver — later the accommodating jewelry salesman in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” — who wants to know who his wife has been seeing. Chavasse determines that the guilty party is millionaire Frank Flannagan (Cooper) a globe-hopping businessman with at least a girl in every port. Chavasse’s daughter, Ariane (Hepburn), who studies cello at a Paris conservatory, is fascinated by her father’s profession and questions him incessantly about his clients and, in the face of his reticence, snoops in his files. After she overhears Chavasse’s client declare that he will go to the Hotel Ritz and shoot Flannagan, she feels compelled to warn the target — whose photos in the files have beguiled her.
John McGiver
Ariane, after getting no satisfaction from the police, goes to the hotel herself and makes her way into Flannagan’s room just in time to allow the paramour to escape so that the husband discovers Flannagan with Ariane instead. This encounter, of course, is the beginning of a series of meetings between Flannagan and Ariane, but she refuses to give him any information about her identity, and he takes to calling her “thin girl.” As is his habit, Flannagan eventually leaves Paris for other resorts, and it appears that the “affair” — to all appearances a chaste one — is over. But about a year later, he is back in Paris and the two accidentally meet at an opera house and the liaison, such as it is, continues, with Ariane filling Flannagan with fibs about the many men in her life — many of them based on things she has read in her father’s case files. Flannagan doesn’t know whether to believe these stories or not; that, plus the lack of any information about the girl, increasingly agitates him.
Maurice Chevalier and Audrey Hepburn
This being a movie, Flannagan and Monsieur X happen to meet in a Turkish bath and Monsieur X — still clueless about his wife’s dalliance — discerns the broad outlines of what is troubling Flannagan and recommends that he engage Chavasse to find out the truth about the “thin girl.” Flannagan does so, and Chavasse quickly figures out that the girl Flannagan is talking about is Ariane. Since Chavasse, through his investigations, is intimately acquainted with Flannagan’s track record with women — kiss them and run — he reveals the truth to Flannagan and urges the tycoon to leave Ariane in peace. Flannagan sets out to do that, but at the last moment, as his train is already beginning to roll out of the Paris station, he lifts the tearful Ariane on board and the two ride off in each other’s arms.
There are a couple of leaps in logic in this plot. One is that Chavasse had reported that Monsieur X’s wife was having an affair with Flannagan, but Ariane’s intervention made it appear that Chavasse had been wrong. That raises the question of why Monsieur X would recommend Chavasse as an outstanding detective. Another is that at the end of the film, after Chavasse has tried so hard to convince Flannagan to leave Ariane alone, the old man stands on the train platform with a satisfied smile on his face as his daughter rides off with the playboy.
Billy Wilder
Hepburn, Chevalier, and McGiver are delightful in this film. The big flaw — which was pointed out by critics at the time — was that Gary Cooper, who was 55, was much too old to be a credible partner for Hepburn, who was 28. Cary Grant, 53 at the time, had turned down the role because of the age difference. To complicate matters, Cooper — a friend of Wilder’s — was not in good health. He looked older than he was, and he looked drawn and tired, and that was exacerbated by the fact that the film was in black and white.
Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper in the closing scene.
An interesting sidelight is that this film had two endings — one for American theaters and one for European. In the European version, which was released under the title “Ariane,” the audience was left to use its imagination about what took place between Flannagan and Ariane after the train left the station and closing titles started rolling.
In the American version, however, because extramarital sex was at least publicly frowned upon in the mid-1950s, the film closed with a voice-over in which Chevalier explains that Flannagan and Ariane got married and were “serving a life sentence in Manhattan.” The film was a failure in the U.S., but it was a hit in Europe.
Netflix Update No. 42: “Sixty Six”
January 2, 2011
PAUL WEILAND
Many months ago, I heard film director Paul Weiland interviewed on National Public Radio, describing what sounded like an interesting film that had been inspired by the catastrophes that befell Weiland’s bar mitzvah. The title of the film was “Sixty Six,” and I immediately put it on my Netflix queue, but it was flagged as unavailable until very recently. It was worth the wait.
The 2006 British film concerns Bernie Rubens (Gregg Sulkin), a nebish of a kid — Weiland’s alter ego — who is a misfit even within his own family. As Bernie sees it, the year 1966 will give him the opportunity to improve his image. He is preparing to become bar mitzvah, and besides believing the rhetoric about becoming a “man,” he envisions a reception that will be so grand as to eclipse the expansive party that was thrown for his abusive older brother Alvie (played by Ben Newton.)
GREGG SULKIN
Bernie’s inability to fit in either at home or out among his peers seems to escape the notice of his pretty mother, Esther (Helena Bonham Carter), and his eccentric father, Manny (Eddie Marsan). Manny co-owns a successful grocery store with his brother Jimmy(Peter Serafinowicz). When a new supermarket opens next to their store, Manny refuses to entertain an offer to buy the Ruben store, and this is indicative of a rigidity that affects everything he does and his personal relationships.
As Bernie continues with his grandiose plans for his bar mitzvah party, the family’s financial fortunes continue to decline until the boy has to swallow the reality that his reception is going to be modest event indeed. As though that weren’t disappointment enough, he is terrified that Britain’s soccer team will qualify for the World Cup Final, which is scheduled to be played in London on the same date.
EDDIE MARSAN
The conventional wisdom is that Britain’s footballers are unlikely to survive the competition long enough to play for the championship, but the conventional wisdom is wrong and Brits everywhere are transfixed as their team faces Germany on the day on which Bernie had imagined himself as the axis on which the whole universe would be turning.
In one British review I read, the critic wrote that this film was reminiscent of Neil Simon at his best. I think that’s an apt comparison. Although there is a great deal of comedy in “Sixty Six,” the truth in the story, which Weiland wrote, is sometimes almost painful to watch — and I find that in some of Simon’s work. And yet, also as in Simon’s best work, the truth includes self discovery and redemption, and not only for Bernie.
RICHARD KATZ
This movie has a talented ensemble. Marsan’s performance in what for the most part is a very quiet role is at times disturbing as he portrays the humorless Manny’s odd behavior — driving dangerously below the speed limit, checking the car door a half dozen times to make sure it’s locked, hoarding his money in the attic and, most important, closing his mind to the painful period his younger son is living through. Gregg Sulkin is both funny and moving as the heartbroken and increasingly frantic Bernie, and Richard Katz is warm and humorous as the blind rabbi who prepares Bernie and other boys for bar mitzvah.
There were some comments when this film was released that it depended on stereotypes of Jewish people, although opinions seemed to vary as to whether those stereotypes were offensive. We didn’t detect any intent to ridicule or offend Jewish people, but it’s something to be aware of.
Netflix Update No. 40: “Local Hero”
October 26, 2010
- BURT LANCASTER
We watched the 1983 Scottish film Local Hero, a charming send-up of corporate insensitivity that borders on fantasy. The story concerns a fictional American company, Knox Oil and Gas, which has plans to build a refinery on the coast of Scotland. The head of the company, Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster), blithely dispatches Knox hotshot “Mac” MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) to buy an entire seaside village to be leveled for the project.
PETER RIEGERT
Mac conducts his negotiations through canny local hotel owner/accountant Gordon Urquhart (Dennis Lawson), and at first business moves along smoothly as the villagers look forward to exchanging their obscure existence for unexpected wealth. But the company needs the beach as well as the town, and it develops that the beach is the property and the home of an old man coincidentally named Ben Knox (Fulton Mackay), whose family has held it for so long that the deed is displayed in a museum.
FULTON MACKAY
Happer is an eccentric who is more interested in astronomy than in oil and gas, and he instructs MacIntyre to file regular reports on what’s going on in the heavens over Scotland. MacIntyre regards himself as an inside man who could have negotiated the purchase over the phone, but Happer isn’t one to be contradicted, so the young man humors his boss by traveling to Ferness, a fictional place, and by reporting celestial phenomena including the aurora borealis, which excites even the blase MacIntyre.
While Mac and Gordon are trying to decide what to do about Ben Knox, Happer abruptly decides to fly from Texas to visit the village himself, attracted as much by what’s in the sky as by what’s on the ground. Thereupon hangs the climax and resolution of the story, so — to quote Cosmo Casterini — “I’ll say no more.”
This is an entertaining film, due in no small way to the charm of the residents of Ferness. The plot, of course, is improbable, but this is just a good yarn, maybe all the better for being unlikely.
Lancaster’s role in this movie is limited, but I really grew to like him all over again when he reached a certain age and his on-screen persona changed to what we saw in “Moonlight” Graham in Field of Dreams.
Local Hero has an outstanding score — so much so that it has outsold the movie itself. It was written by Mark Knopfler of “Dire Straits.”
Netflix Update No. 39: “The Legend of 1900”
October 25, 2010
We watched The Legend of 1900, a 1998 fantasy produced byItalian filmmakers, shot in Italy and Ukraine, but performed in English.
The premise of this movie, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso) is that at the turn of the 20th century someone traveling in steerage aboard a transatlantic steamer bears a male child and abandons it in the ship’s dining room. Danny, played by Bill Nunn, who works in the ship’s boiler room, finds the child and decides to secretly raise it himself.
BILL NUNN
Danny names the baby Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon 1900, combining his own name, an advertisement on the box the child was left in, and the year. When the boy is still young, Danny dies in a shipboard accident. The youngster stays on the ship and becomes a familiar figure. He is universally known simply as 1900.
TIM ROTH
In a development that is not explained, 1900 is attracted to the piano to the extent that he becomes a player of almost unparalleled skill. He joins the ship’s orchestra and his dazzling keyboard technique builds an international reputation for him. On one occasion, the famous jazz pianist “Jelly Roll” Morton – played by Clarence Williams III (late of “The Mod Squad”) arrives on the ship. Piqued by the implications of 1900’s reputation, Morton challenges the mysterious man to a piano duel.
PRUITT TAYLOR VINCE
This story is narrated by a mournful character named Max Toomey – played by Pruitt Taylor Vince – a trumpeter who gets a job with the ship’s orchestra and becomes 1900’s closest friend, although why the introverted musician is so comfortable with Toomey is unclear.
Max tries unsuccessfully to convince 1900 to leave the ship, establish a more normal life ashore, and capitalize further on his talent and fame.
MELANIE THIERRY
Thanks in part to 1900’s understandable infatuation with an unnamed passenger played by Melanie Thierry, Max’s campaign almost succeeds. In the end, however, 1900 finds the seemingly limitless expanse of the world beyond the gangplank to be far too uncertain a prospect, and he never leaves the ship.
The concept of a man who spends his entire life on board a passenger ship makes for compelling fantasy, and we found this film engrossing on that account. I have read some criticism of Roth’s performance to the effect that he used too narrow a range of emotions, but I disagree. One can assume that a man whose physical movement was restricted to the confines of the ship would be confined in other ways as well – and emotions seems like an aspect of personality very likely to be affected. I also thought the reticence of the character made 1900 suitably eerie even while he was sympathetic and even endearing. In all, it’s an unusual and worthwhile film experience.
PRUITT TAYLOR VINCE
The worst of the year?
September 11, 2010
I always read those warnings that accompany films — the ones designed to steer you, or prompt you to steer your children, away from what you consider offensive. The Joaquin Phoenix film “I’m Still Here” may not be unique in this regard, but it is for me — the first film I have seen in which the content warnings include “defecation.”
I generally don’t care about foul language, and nudity and sexuality aren’t show stoppers for me if they’re important to the context of the film, but defecation? Check, please!
I wouldn’t have seen this film even without the crap, as it were, because I’m not sufficiently interested in Joaquin Phoenix whether he’s drawing Oscar nominations or coming apart at the seams. What I do find amusing, though, is the coverage of this film — and particularly the speculation about whether it’s a true documentary, as billed, or whether it’s a put-on or a little of each.
Critics don’t often find themselves having to wonder aloud whether they’re watching fact or fiction, but they do in this case. Sheila Marikar of ABC News, for example, writes: “Joaquin Phoenix could be the most narcissistic, sniveling, drugged-up mess of a man ever to appear on a screen. Or he could be the greatest actor of all time. After watching ‘I’m Still Here,’ the just-released documentary that chronicles his 2008 departure from Hollywood and attempt to launch a rap career, the former seems more believable.”
Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer writes: “Joaquin Phoenix is either one of the greatest actors ever to walk the red carpet on his way to that Entertainment Tonight sound bite, or he’s an insufferably neurotic, narcissistic, doped-up jerk.
“Whichever turns out to be the case (I’m betting on the latter), ‘I’m Still Here’ — the documentary-like chronicle of a year in the life of the twice-Oscar-nominated thespian, as he announces his retirement from movies to pursue a career as a hip-hop artist – stands as a fascinating look at the cloistered, coddled world of a movie star who’s not quite up there in the A-list tier of, say, Leo or Tobey.”
“And Manohla Dargis of the New York Times describes the film as “a deadpan satire or a deeply sincere folly (my money is on the first option) about Mr. Phoenix’s recent roles as an acting dropout and would-be hip-hop artist.”
CASEY AFFLECK
I don’t want to go into detail about the contents of this film — the verbal abuse, the coke snorting, the prostitution, the revolting manners and, indeed the defecation — but it is spelled out in Laremy Legel’s review in the Seattle Post-Dispatch.
In 1958, a critic discussing the Broadway play “Make a Million” said he had spent the previous evening “laughing at a very bad play.” Legel acknowledges that he laughed at some parts of this film, which was directed by Casey Affleck, who is married to Phoenix’s sister.
Legel gets to the heart of the matter when he addresses the pretense that this is a documentary account of a man who has rejected both the work and the milieu of Hollywood and set out to build himself a new career:
“We don’t see him working on his craft, we don’t see him in the clubs trying to get better, we don’t see him reaching out to rappers or starting a writing notebook. What we do see is his him leveraging his celebrity to cause a spectacle. What we do see is him not taking it seriously. What we do see is him not caring, which would be fine, if only he didn’t ask us to instead.”
From what I can discern, Phoenix is a jerk and this movie is garbage, and yet Phoenix also seems to have gotten what he was probably after all along. Everyone is writing about him — including me.
Netflix Update No. 38: “The Dresser”
September 6, 2010
We watched the 1983 film “The Dresser,” which was based on Ronald Harwood’s play of the same name, a critical success in both London and New York. Alfred Finney and Tom Courtenay star in the movie, and Courtenay played the same part — to applause each time — on the London and New York stages.
The story focuses on the relationship between an aging and rapidly unraveling Shakespearean actor referred to only by the name “Sir” (Finney), and an effeminate man named Norman (Courtenay), who is responsible for the most minute and intimate needs of the overbearing performer. Sir leads a troupe of
ALBERT FINNEY
actors who persevere in performing Shakespeare’s plays — “Macbeth” one night, “Richard III” the next — in England during the blitz.
As the company copes with the grueling schedule, the pressure of the bombing raids, and their intramural tensions, Sir is coming apart at the seams. The film catches up to him as he arrives at a London theater for a week of performances beginning with “King Lear.”
TOM COURTENAY
Sir snaps in public. Norman, fortified by the pint he keeps in his back pocket, and by a loyalty that by now only he can understand, works feverishly to coax Sir back from the border of madness while staving off the theater manager’s instinct that the performance should be cancelled.
This film has a good deal of dark comedy on the parts of Finney and Courtenay as well as some of the supporting cast. The roles of Sir and Norman are the type that invite the actors to jump in head first, and neither actor is reluctant to do so. Both of their performances are convincing and disturbing.
“The Dresser” is not an upper, but it’s one to put on your list.
Netflix Update No. 37: “Summertime”
August 28, 2010
KATHARINE HEPBURN
We watched “Summertime,” a 1955 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossanno Brazzi, inspired — if I remember right — by the fact that it was shot entirely on location in Venice. In that respect, it was no disappointment. The photography took full advantage of the city.
The premise of the movie is that Jane Hudson (Hepburn), an executive secretary from Akron, Ohio, is vacationing in Venice. It is clear from the beginning that Jane leads a life devoid of excitement and that she came to Venice with the vague hope — accompanied by a vague fear — that something extraordinary will happen to her. The “something,” which anyone would have deduced from the opening credits, is Renato de Rossi (Brazzi), a Venetian shopkeeper with a complicated domestic life.
ROSSANO BRAZZI
After what seems like an interminable buildup, during which Jane’s discomfort as a solo act in Venice is excruciatingly developed, she and Renato have a couple of chance meetings in which Jane’s skittish reaction to him is difficult to understand. At last their acquaintance flourishes until it is consummated in something that couldn’t be shown on the screen in 1955 but was ably represented by fireworks exploding over Venice while one of Jane’s new red shoes lies forsaken on the balcony of Renato’s apartment.
I won’t be a spoiler, but let’s just say there won’t be an opening for a secretary in Akron.
One of many panoramic views of Venice in "Summertime."
We found this film worth watching, but it’s got its flaws. One is that the transitions in Jane’s moods from one scene to the next are rather abrupt in a couple of cases. That might be a function of a larger problem, which is that this movie is largely about Jane’s interior life, but we don’t get much of a look at that. We don’t know why this woman, whom Renato finds irresistible, was incapable of finding romance without coming to Venice.
This film was based on “The Time of the Cuckoo,” which is a play by Arthur Laurents, who — among other things — wrote the books for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy.” I haven’t seen that play, but it ran on Broadway in 1952-53 and won a best-actress Tony award for Shirley Booth, who played the character originally named Leona Samish.
ARTHUR LAURENTS
I do know Arthur, though, and I have seen several plays he has written more recently. His work displays a great deal of insight into the human psyche — maybe I should say the human soul — particularly where love is concerned. I suspect Jane is more understandable in the play.
I have read that the makers of this film didn’t like Arthur’s screenplay and hired another writer to monkey with it. If so, I don’t think they did the audience any favors.
"Arrivederci!"
Netflix Update No. 36: “The Last Tycoon”
August 16, 2010
HAROLD PINTER
A friend told me last night that on Saturday he saw a play by Harold Pinter, “No Man’s Land.” My friend posed a question: “Did Pinter always write like that?” I am not an expert on Pinter, and I have never seen “No Man’s Land,” so I could have escaped this conversation save for the fact that while my friend was watching “No Man’s Land” on a stage, my wife and I were watching “The Last Tycoon” on a Netflix DVD. The 1979 film, directed by Elia Kazan, had a screenplay written by Pinter based on an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I asked my friend what he meant by his allusion to Pinter’s writing, and he said that while the play was literate and funny, and the performances were engaging, the experience left him with a feeling of ambiguity. I have since learned that while “No Man’s Land” was well received when it first appeared in 1975, it left critic Michael Coveney, writing, “Yes, but what does it all mean?”
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
I was in no position to sort that out, but I did tell my friend that while “The Last Tycoon” is a worthwhile diversion for some reasons — including excellent performances by an impressive cast — the movie, too, raises questions that it doesn’t answer. It has been said that Pinter liked to lead his audiences somewhere between reality and dream, and that is the effect of this film.
“The Last Tycoon” is Monroe Stahr, a Hollywood producer whose demanding personality, at least, Fitzgerald ostensibly based on MGM’s “boy genius,” Irving Thalberg. The premise of the film is that Stahr’s wife, who was a major star at the same studio, died suddenly and at an early age, and that Stahr has not gotten over it. In the meantime, he is engaged in a power struggle with studio executive Pat Brady, whose young daughter is in love with Stahr. In the aftermath of a minor earthquake, Stahr notices a young woman — Kathleen Moore — who strongly resembles his late wife. He becomes obsessed with Kathleen, pursues her, seduces her, loses her. As he unravels emotionally, he also runs afoul of his employer, allowing Brady to push him aside.
Robert De Niro as Monroe Stahr
Stahr is played by a 36-year-old Robert De Niro in a performance so devoid of emotion that the audience gets no help in determining what this character’s reactions to people and situations really mean. Kathleen is played by Ingrid Boulting, a South African-born actress who is now an artist and yoga instructor in California. Her performance is much more interesting, but — thanks to the writing and direction — her character is inscrutable. Does she resent the fact that Stahr was attracted to her because of her resemblance to his lost love? Does she love him? Is she a woman easily used by men, is she a tease, or is she an opportunist — even a prostitute? What becomes of her? What becomes of Stahr?
INGRID BOULTING
It’s not the worst experience in the world — this not knowing; in fact, maybe it’s more like life than the movies usually are. At any rate, flawed or not, the story is well told by a cast that includes Robert Mitchum as Pat Brady; Jack Nicholson as a Communist who is trying to organize the studio’s writers; Dana Andrews as a director who incurs Stahr’s dissatisfaction; Ray Milland as a studio attorney; Tony Curtis as a top leading man; Donald Pleasance as a writer, and John Carradine in a brief but charming turn as a studio tour guide.
TONY CURTIS
A scene between De Niro and Curtis provides one of the best examples of Pinter’s approach. The leading man, Rodriguez confides in Stahr: the actor is in love with his wife but has become impotent, and not only with her. Stahr’s reaction to the inexplicable fact that the actor has come to him with this problem is, like the rest of De Niro’s performance, difficult to plumb. More than that, the scene ends abruptly — with no resolution– but when Rodriguez and his wife encounter Stahr later in the film, they appear deliriously happy with each other, and the change is never explained.
Ray Milland and Donald Pleasence
To give credit where it is deserved, I should mention that De Niro has one scene in this film that I could watch again and again. Stahr is having a confrontation with a British writer, Boxley, played by the great character actor Donald Pleasence. Boxley is complaining about the “hack” writers he’s working with, and he’s complaining about the story line on the film he has been assigned. In an attempt — fruitless, as it turns out — to get Boxley off the schneid, Stahr fabricates the fragment of a story line that has no beginning or end — a mysterious vignette about a girl who comes into a room, unaware that she’s being observed, with two dimes and a nickel and a box of matches, and a pair of black gloves that she burns in a wood stove. De Niro tells this story with such skill, with such a teasing air of mystery, that he make the story irresistible and the desire to know the rest of it palpable.
If you don’t mind scrolling through the whole script, you can read that story at THIS LINK. It begins with Monroe Stahr’s words: “Listen … has your office got a stove in it that lights with a match?” See if you can read that without thirsting for the rest of the story.
Robert De Niro as Monroe Stahr
Netflix Update No. 34: “Some Like it Hot”
July 22, 2010
MARILYN MONROE
We stumbled across an old TV interview with Tony Curtis recently, and that prompted us to watch “Some Like it Hot,” the 1959 Billy Wilder film, which neither of us had seen. The premise of this movie is that dance band musicians Jerry and Joe, played by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, inadvertently witness the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” in a Chicago garage in 1929 and have to leave town to avoid being killed themselves. They do that by dressing in drag and joining an all-girl band that is on its way to an engagement in Florida. (The Florida scenes, curiously, were filmed at the instantly recognizable Hotel Del Coronado in California.) Both of the fugitives are immediately attracted to the zaftig singing ukulele player, Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, played by Marilyn Monroe. Joe (aka Josephine) seizes the advantage with Sugar Kane by posing as the millionaire scion of an oil magnate, and that leads to a steamy encounter aboard a yacht. In that role, Curtis does a hilarious imitation of Cary Grant’s voice. Meanwhile, Jerry (aka Daphne) gets drawn into a relationship with an older sugar daddy, played by Joe E. Brown, in which the gender issue gets a little hazy.
JOE E. BROWN and JACK LEMMON
This film combines violence and overt sexuality with implausible farce. It wouldn’t stir up the pond today, but it was controversial in its own time. Marilyn Monroe’s make-out scene with Tony Curtis – and a couple of very revealing dresses she wore – contributed to the negative reactions the film got in what was clearly a different era than our own. The cast, which also included George Raft and Pat O’Brien deliberately type-cast as fictional mob boss “Spats” Colombo and Chicago police Detective Mulligan, was a talented aggregation and made the odd mix of dark and light themes work very well. The film was shot in black-and-white, which somehow seems appropriate to the ’20s setting, but I read that the decision was driven by the fact that the makeup Lemmon and Curtis wore did not reproduce well in color.
As much as I liked this movie, I was surprised to learn that it has been described in laudatory terms ranging from one of the best comedies ever made to the best comedy ever made, to one of the best pictures ever made. I always look askance at statements like that because of the volume of work – done by a wide variety of artists in a wide variety of times and circumstances – that has to be dismissed to make such an evaluation true. It’s enough to say that “Some Like it Hot” was a very good movie. It won an Oscar and was nominated for seven others, and it won Golden Globe awards for Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon and as best picture of the year.
JOE E. BROWN
A lot has been written about the making of this movie, including accounts of how much trouble Marilyn Monroe caused during the production — which must have particularly irked Wilder, who originally planned to use Mitzi Gaynor in that part. Monroe was chronically late and often couldn’t remember her lines and had to read them from cues concealed on the set. She was also pregnant, and appears overweight – even for her – in several scenes.
On the other hand, it was a rare pleasure to watch a performance by Joe E. Brown, who is largely forgotten now but had a keen sense of comedy and was one of the gentlemen of the film industry.
JOE E. BROWN
Although Bob Hope got a lot of attention for the amount of time he devoted to American servicemen and women, Joe E. Brown did his share, too, particularly during World War II. He was a regular figure at the Hollywood Canteen, where he personally interacted with the visiting troops, and he paid his own way to travel more than 200,000 miles into war zones to entertain, often under difficult conditions. He was often known to repeat his whole show for hospitalized soldiers who had been unable to attend the regular performance. He also carried sacks of mail from servicemen and women back to the United States so that it would be delivered through the regular postal service and reach their families more quickly. Brown and Ernie Pyle were the only two civilians awarded the Bronze Star during World War II.
Joe E. Brown was also one of the few public figures who spoke out in favor of admitting refugee Jewish children into the United States while Adolf Hitler was consolidating his power in Europe. In 1939 – flying in the face of both anti-Semitism and isolationism – Brown appealed to a Congressional committee to pass a bill that would have allowed 20,000 German Jewish children into the U.S. “We shouldn’t be smug about this,” Brown told the committee, “and say that we are getting along all right so let the rest of the world take care of itself.”
Joe E. Brown testifies before the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee, 1939
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