Looking for something different to watch with the kids?

This is a time of year when parents and children are watching TV together.  If you're feeling fed up with the same animation (especially Disney), and would like to share a very quirky original with your (hopefully) quirky children, here's a 1949 British adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with stop-motion animation by the Louis Bunin studio.  There is a live-action prologue, but it's not all that long, and it sets up a number of characters who re-appear in the story as in the MGM version of The Wizard of Oz. It is probably the most faithful version I've seen, both in incident, spirit and visual approach of the Lewis Carroll classic. It's the perfect family movie for weird families.  And the baby does make a very handsome pig.

"Somebody get Aristotle in here for a rewrite"

As it happens, I am teaching bits of Aristotle's Poetics to my AP Literature class. A lot of it seems so elementary and self-evident, and yet apparently it isn't. For instance, Aristotle writes that a play is an imitation of an action. Not a person, not an idea, an action. Yet major expensive films omit that on a regular basis.

Take The Conspirator (2011), about the sham military trial and summary hanging of Mary Surratt, accused of being part of the Lincoln assassination conspiracy by virtue of being Southern, being related to one of the conspirators and of living among angry wounded people (Americans) desperately in need of scapegoats. Ignoring the prologue, which shows the various parts of the conspiracy in motion, at the outset of the story, Mary Surratt is going to be tried before a kangaroo court and be hanged. Not only do those facts never change, but the purported protagonist, Surratt's appointed lawyer never manages to change them. The second hour of the film runs out of narrative gas so badly that it repeats the same scene three or four times. Stanton tells Aiken nothing can be done. Seward tells Aiken nothing can be done. The other lawyers tell Aiken nothing can be done. Round and round the wheels spin, throwing up mud and going nowhere.

And then there is Dean Spanley (2008), which I will, exercising the utmost self-restraint, not describe as a shaggy-dog story, but which also would earn Aristotle's scorn. It also happens that I am teaching a creative writing course (yes, my teaching life is quite wonderful at the moment), and I am trying to hammer into the students the importance of making a timely promise to the reader (or audience) as to where the story is going to go. The classic rule in film is that by ten minutes in, you have to clue the audience in as to what the film is going to be about, what the objective is, what the conflict will be.

Dean Spanley lets an hour go by before it settles down and decides what story it wants to tell. It does have quite a touching and remarkable payoff, but not one worth that arid first hour. At least 45 minutes of the movie are engaged in pure misdirection, whether or not intentional it is hard to say. But it makes it hard to invest in the emotional stakes the film is really interested in. Once again, filmmakers have attempted to cram one hour's worth of story into two slam-bang hours of middle-aged men sipping liqueurs.

People, these are not just rules for their own sakes. Breaking the rules of screenplay structure has consequences! You're playing with fire! Or in the case of Dean Spanley, some rather tepid and dingy bathwater.
On more purely cinematic territory, why was everything in the past blurry, grainy and distorted in color? Was the air that different back when? This penchant, as displayed in The Conspirator for arty visual treatment to suggest earlier eras (it's even worse with future noir films) started, to my recollection, with The Godfather, which stood for the proposition that everything in the past used to be more yellow. That was bad, but it at least had to be planned in advance so that filters could be put on lenses. Now directors can decide in post-production that the whole world is topsy-turvy colorwise, which raises the question as to whether future cinematographers will need any competence at all, given that images can be reframed, objects added or removed and color timing completely reconfigured at will.

And are there no American actors other than Paul Giamatti (who seems particularly contemporary to me) who can portray people who lived long ago? Look at the picture at the top of this blog, and there is an Englishman facing off with a Scot, pretending to be 1865 Americans. I think SAG needs to step in here. (At least they got John Cullum, as authentic a Virginian as you can find anywhere, to play a Southerner.)

I think the English can share their objection, given that in Dean Spanley, English people are portrayed by Ozzies and Kiwis in a quite indiscriminate way. What next? Carmen sung by a soprano? Or a bass?

Side by side by 'Scope

Here it is September, and I'm still catching up with the last few Academy nominees for last year; specifically Mike Leigh's Another Year (2010), which was nominated for screenplay, which is ironic given Mr. Leigh's modus. Reportedly, he works with a group of actors around some characters and themes he is interested in. After a few months of improvisation, he goes away and writes a complete script based on that work. So in a way, Mr. Leigh partakes of a committee-type writing procedure, even within an Art tradition.

A few disjointed observations. The critical consensus was that this film was about class. Perhaps that is a British perspective, because I don't see a disparity in income as synonymous with membership in a different class. One can be part of the managerial-professional class without being particularly well-heeled. Class is substantially, if not primarily, a matter of self-identification. And the major characters in this film are all middle-class in outlook, even if some of them are skint. There are no laborers and no aristocrats to be found.

The film is not so much about the unequal distribution of money so much as it is about the unequal distribution of happiness and how people choose to deal with it. Some writers have found the central couple played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen to be smug and self-satisfied, whereas I think they are simply comfortable with themselves, a trait many people are not familiar with, and therefore find strange.

But to my mind, the film is structurally flawed at its heart, perhaps due to the quality of those afore-mentioned improvisations. It seems as though the film was meant to be an ensemble piece, not perhaps full-on Altmanesque, but a widely distributed set of storylines revolving around a theme, rather than the usual toolbox of suspense and melodrama. But Leslie Manville's Mary (seen in the clip) above and her desperation to belong and to be loved hijacks the film, sucking the energy out of every other corner of the film. This includes the sequence that should have been the highlight, wherein Broadbent goes to help his older brother bury the brother's wife, a procedure interrupted by a bitter, estranged son. But the incident feels isolated and without resonance, and Broadbent's brother becomes significant to the film only because of his brief awkward scene with Manville. Even Broadbent struggles to remain at the center of what was supposed to be his own vehicle.

I love Cinemascope ratio, described variously as 2.35, 2.39 and 2.40. Doesn't matter much. It seems to me to be made to show two or even three people sitting side by side. Academy ratio is for isolated stars, or perhaps two stars in tight embrace. But 'Scope lets you see the space between people (or the lack thereof) and seems to me to be far more useful in storytelling. Throughout this film, Mary wants to be close to people who don't want to be close to her, and vice versa and 'Scope is the perfect vehicle for this trope.

One odd thing about Leigh's technique -- given that it is actor-based, one would expect long, uninterrupted takes. But I was not aware of long takes or gaps between cuts. Everything proceeds along relatively conventional lines. And thankfully Leigh does not indulge in the usual practice of American character-based filmmakers -- the long static shot of a character doing nothing. I never know what to do during those. They seem embarrassing. Leigh keeps his comedy of embarrassment on screen, among the characters, rather than between the characters and the audience. It's all part of being British, I suppose.

Crumpets and bullets

Seeing such a rare thing as a "Brit noir" like They Made Me A Fugitive (1948) brings into relief what an American phenomenon classical film noir is. Perhaps it is because of its implicit denial of the American Dream. True, the British believe in "muddling through" and that "there'll always be an England." But there's no promise that you will be there to participate, or that you will come out all right. It's implied that in order for England to go on, you may have to take one for the team.

But the American Dream is an individual promise. Work hard, play by the rules, you will be taken care of. But that idea is on a collision course with the notion that Fate can always reach out, grab you, beat you to the pavement, and leave you there to face whatever comes. Non-Americans have always known this. The good thing about bad luck is that could always be worse. Maybe, perversely, that's why the happy ending of They Made Me A Fugitive is acceptable. Because in that culture, it's understood that all the endings are arbitrary.

Night and the City (1952) proves that it was possible to make an American film noir in Britain, simply substituting British actors, but maintaining the American outlook, style and pace. But They Made Me A Fugitive is thoroughly British, as demonstrated in both the black humor of the clip posted above and the class distinctions that riddle the story. Trevor Howard's character, Clem, is a "toff", a "swell." He is of better birth and background than his criminal pals, just slumming, in it for the money and likely to get out. That is intolerable to Narcy, the leader of the gang. The ironic thing is that Narcy is far more effete and fashionable than the rather gruff Clem. Trevor Howard was rather good at playing a man who, cultivated though he may be, is not to be trifled with. When people get hit in this movie, unlike those clean American fistfights--a swift "biff" to the chin and the fellow obligingly falls down--it's messy and people get hurt. There is a pervasive feel of danger, too--one senses that anything could happen, and that no character, even the comic relief, is safe.

The black humor mentioned above is also evidenced by a scene in which a woman harboring the fugitive Clem tries to entice him into doing her a favor by killing her husband. The humor and the rather good tough banter is attributable to screenwriter Noel Langley, best known for the basic script for The Wizard of Oz and the final scripts for the 1951 Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol and Pickwick Papers, directed, like Fugitive, by Alberto Cavalcanti. Perhaps that's what leavens this surprisingly tough film, given the way we Americans think of the Brits.

Afternoon tea in this movie would have to be laced with whisky. Or poison.

The Hit keeps coming

The Hit (1984) is better than neo-noir. It is neo-proto-noir. Rather than going back to Double Indemnity and Out of the Past for its stylistic references, it has gone straight back to the origin of hard-boiled fiction, all the way to Hemingway. Pretty good for a bunch of lime eaters. It's not unprecedented. Harold Pinter's first full-length play The Birthday Party is like a theatrical variation on Hemingway's The Killers. The film might be said to belong to the non-existent genre of art-house gangster movies (Sexy Beast, Mona Lisa and The Long Good Friday might be other candidates.) Director Stephen Frears would go on to make The Grifters, which is the hardest boiled hard-boiled movie ever made, a movie with pure ice in its veins. Then he would make The Queen. Go figure.

The plot: Terence Stamp was an informer. John Hurt is sent to go get him. Tim Roth (in his movie debut) is the driver. They pick him up in Spain to take him to Paris. The only thing missing is for Roth to keep calling Stamp "bright boy." Most of the film is a long drive across the Spanish desert, which makes it feel like one of those American pictures where they're driving across Mexico. The mood is aided by some Eric Clapton and a whole bunch of excellent flamenco.

Why should the Brits be so good at gangster flicks? This is a society that doesn't even have much truck with firearms. (Maybe that's one reason--it's easier in Britain to just hit someone in the face rather than shoot them.) And while The Hit may seem like Tarantino-lite, what separates these mugs from Quentin's fun cartoons is that they do not posture, quote or obsess on pop culture. These are more life-and-death kind of guys, mostly death.

The thing that separates it from ordinary neo-noir is the talk. Or the lack of it. It's not attempting to comment on itself, as Chinatown and L.A. Confidential. Nobody waxes philosophical at great length. The movie just is. It's so confident it has Fernando Rey in a major role and he doesn't have one audible line in English. Swagger, that's what it is. Not sloppy, loudmouth swagger like John Gotti, but the confidence to just get on with business.

As Stamp says when he knows he is about to die: "It's just a moment. We're here. Then we're not here. We're somewhere else... maybe. And it's as natural as breathing. Why should we be scared?"

Downer

Saving Grace (1999) demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the eccentric British comedy genre as exemplified by The Full Monty, Calendar Girls, Brassed Off, On A Clear Day and the original Death at a Funeral. It is usually about someone who is in need--perhaps of a change, perhaps money. In order to make that change, they must step outside the bounds of British propriety. They usually do so in secret, or part secret. Often this is done with the knowledge and complicity of their odd little village. (These films rarely take place in a city--the ancestor film is Whisky Galore! [a.k.a. Tight Little Island] set in remote Scotland. The only city film I can think of is Passport to Pimlico, but in that case a London neighborhood broke away to become its own little village.)

The important thing is that, although people grow and develop, order is also restored. This is true of comedy in general. Walter Kerr pointed out in his great book Tragedy and Comedy that tragedy has a definitive ending--usually death--but comedy does not. We often end comedies on the marriage altar because it is a convenient stopping point, but comedy belies an ending. Therefore, we have the satisfying that convention that, after a great period of turmoil and disorientation, order is restored. Perhaps things are changed for the better (for example, people are no longer engaged to the wrong person in a classic farce), but the entire order is not seriously disturbed.

The other part of the form is that The Scheme Works. The lads in Full Monty do indeed strip off and make a lot of money, as do the gals in Calendar Girls. The hero does swim the channel and the brass band wins the competition. If there is change, it is the inevitable change of history--the mines close, the money runs out, but life goes on.

In Saving Grace, not only does the scheme to save the heroine's house by selling 20 kilos of pot which she has raised using her excellent gardening skills fail, but the heroine's problems are resolved by marrying an international drug dealer and gangster. What??? Our adorable Brenda Blethyn married to a French-Turkish gangster? That's how she pays off the bank. And, yes, the idea of the entire town, especially the garden-party ladies, getting a contact high when the marijuana is burned is cute in theory, but it's ghastly to see in actuality. (This might have been obviated by hiring actresses instead of the obviously amateurish local extras prancing about demonstrating their ideas of a marijuana high.)

Similarly, the scene in which Brenda tries out her own product is such a hopeless cliche that the film begins to sink there and then.

A pity, because Craig Ferguson wrote some decent scenes for his fellow actors for the first hour, and he is a reasonably effective screen presence. But it is hard to figure out why anyone thought the last third of this film would work.

Maybe they were high.

It's only funny when it's a real old lady

Is Anybody There? (2008) is the latest entry in the eccentric-but-innocent-kid-befriends-crusty-but-loveable-old-codger genre which I remember beginning with The Two of Us (1968) but which has its roots back at least as far as Silas Marner (that's a book, boys and girls).

Michael Caine, who plays a demented and dying low-rent magician has even been around this track before, most notably with Secondhand Lions. But one should never pass up the opportunity to see Michael Caine, who, in a single regretful glance, offers an entire seminar in motion picture acting. It's possible that he is the best that ever's been. Maybe it just helps to have tired, puffy eyes.

In the early days of Technicolor, cinematographers marveled at the quality of color in British films--so much less stark and obvious, more diffused and subtle. Turns out it wasn't the cameramen, it was the fog. Mist is so pervasive in England that the cameras pick it up everywhere. It doesn't look like they had one good day when they shot this film, and it suits the picture straight down to the ground.

The novel element in this piece is that, whereas death hovers in the wings throughout this genre, Is Anybody There? puts it front and center, not because of the old man but because of the boy, who has grown up in a private nursing home and is death-obsessed. Probably no American film could look death so squarely in the eye and without sentiment, but for the quick appearance of a badger toward the end. (This will be clear to anyone who has seen the film.) No weepy Mitch Albom moments here. This is a film for those who would go down giving the Reaper the finger.

As Groucho said, "An amateur thinks it's funny to dress up a guy as an old lady, put him in a wheelchair and push it down a hill. A professional knows it's only funny when it's a real old lady."