Romancefest 2011: Reds

Goddamn, Warren Beatty is good looking. And he wrote and directed REDS. It hardly seems fair.

REDS tells the true story of American radical journalist John Reed, who found himself right in the middle of the Bolshevik Revolution and wrote a book about it. Inspired and idealistic, he returned to the States and attempted to make it in extreme leftist politics, only to end up imprisoned in Finland and abandoned in Russia.

But, this is Romancefest, so there has to be a romance, right? Yep. Diane Keaton plays Louise Bryant, also a (struggling) journalist, who leaves her husband to join Reed in his adventures. At first Beatty and Keaton try to out-cool one another with their free love and open relationship, but of course they both turn out to be lying to themselves and can't help but hurt each other's feelings, get jealous, fight, separate, and get back together. By the time they really realize how much they need each other, the entire world has gotten between them and Keaton must stow away on a ship and cross deserted snowy plains just to find Beatty again.

One problem with Romancefest is that romances tend to be long. At least, longer than other movies. REDS, for instance, is about 3 hours and 15 minutes long. WAY DOWN EAST, which I watched the other day, was 2 and a half hours. This is a stark contrast to Horrorfest, because a lot of the horror flicks tend to be roughly 90 minutes, which, in case you're wondering, is the perfect length for a movie. I'm kidding, a little -- obviously, a movie should be as long as it needs to be -- but still. I'm getting old.

For a lot of the running time, I was wondering how much a love story this really is. Sure, there's a relationship at the core of the movie, and it's more compelling than all the politics. But, as I neared the end of the film, everything started to snap into focus. I guess the problem was, the characters themselves weren't willing to admit they really loved each other until the last minute, so the movie didn't really become a love story until the last minute. Of course, as soon as it does become a love story, it retroactively colors everything that came before it and kind of reaches a level of sublimity that it hadn't reached yet.

The movie has an interesting supporting cast, specifically Jack Nicholson as playwright Eugene O'Neill, who has a brief affair with Keaton. Nicholson is more understated here than in most performances, and is all the better for it. Yes, you still get the crazy vibe from him -- you should, he's Eugene O'Neill. But, it smolders beneath the surface, and, despite the clear influence of booze and depression, Nicholson seems to see the other characters perhaps more clearly than the other characters are willing to see themselves. Maureen Stapleton is also on hand as the anarchist Emma Goldman who, upon being shipped off to Russia and seeing the struggling state of the revolution, throws up her hands in defeat. Even the great Gene Hackman pops up in a couple scenes.

This disillusionment in the wake of idealism, along with the less than perfect portrait of a supposed hero, reminded me a little of one of my favorite movies, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. As far as epics go, I'd say LAWRENCE is clearly the stronger film, including both more spectacle and more depth. But, both feature a strong leader who seeks change, gets it, and then watches it start to fall apart, all the while questioning who he is, what his purpose is, and where he fits. At one point, Beatty asks Stapleton, and I'm paraphrasing, "If you give up at the first sign of trouble, then what was the purpose of your whole life?" The message, I guess, is that some people become so identified with a cause or situation bigger than themselves that they don't know what to do or who they are when the world proceeds without them.

That's one reason personal relationships are important, and this is something Beatty and Keaton learn during the course of REDS. At a certain fundamental point, love becomes more important than ego or politics or the state of the world or even identity.

So, REDS is well acted and beautifully shot, even if it drags a little in the middle.

And, Warren Beatty is really, really, incredibly good looking.

Romancefest 2011: Way Down East

Time to take another silent flick with a grain of salt. This time it's WAY DOWN EAST, directed by DW Griffith, infamous for BIRTH OF A NATION. His favorite actress, Lillian Gish, stars in this romantic melodrama from 1920.

I say "take it with a grain of salt" because I always have to get myself in the right frame of mind when it comes time to sit down and watch a silent flick, especially one that's not horror or sci-fi or some other clearly defined genre. I have to try to view it as if I hadn't already seen movies from a several decades later, after the language of film had been figured out and recycled a bunch of times.

Gish stars as a poor New England country girl who travels to Boston to visit her rich relatives in the hopes of getting some financial help from them. While there, she's dazzled by upper class society and romanced by a rich womanizer (Lowell Sherman) who takes advantage of her innocence by tricking her into a sham marriage, just to get her in bed. Convinced she's found the husband of her dreams, Gish returns home to the country only to be unceremoniously dumped. In delicate 1920s terms, she tells her faux husband she's pregnant. In delicate 1920s terms, he tells her to go get an abortion.

Instead, Gish goes into exile to have the baby, finds herself persecuted for having a baby out of wedlock, and flees even further into the country to seek refuge. She is taken in by a Bible fearing (and well off) farm family and catches the eye of their good hearted son (Richard Barthelmess). We're introduced to the colorful characters of this small farming village (the town drunk, the town gossip, the ineffectual sheriff, his lazy horse, etc) and then find out the man who took advantage of Gish happens to keep a country house right next door.

There's a strange balance here between the tragedy of Gish's character's situation and the cheap humor Griffith attempts to wring out of the colorful country locals. Like other silent films I've seen from the era, this one could have done away with a bunch of these extraneous characters and just focused on the plight of the main character. It would have made for a more even tone and shaved some of the running time off of the overly long and drawn out two-and-a-half hours.

Aside from life constantly shitting on Gish, the main romantic drama comes from the simple farm boy falling in love with her, thinking she's totally innocent, and Gish's struggle to avoid giving in to his affections, knowing her own sordid past. Of course, none of the tragedy that befalls Gish throughout the course of the film is really her fault, unless you want to get on her case for trusting people, and if you do, you're a jerk. Gish is so pretty and lovable that only the hardest heart would take the bad guys' side against her.

Like the other Griffith flicks I've seen, this one is pretty heavy handed when it comes to moralizing. Right from the beginning we're told by the inter-titles that this is a story of woman's plight -- how God intended for the union of one man and one woman in a monogamous relationship and how woman suffers because she already believes this is the way things should be, but how man causes the suffering by still attempting to sow his wild oats. The inter-titles claim this story could be the story of any woman, and the authors of the film hope detailing this suffering might change man's reckless ways.

It's an interesting premise, although it's a little patronizing and insulting. You can tell the movie thinks it's a little more forward thinking than it actually is. Then again, it is interesting to see a movie from the 1920s that deals with scandals related to premarital sex and abortion.

The movie transcends its antiquated story line here and there thanks to the way it is put together. The most emotionally moving scenes are one where Gish baptizes her sick baby herself, afraid it will go to hell if it dies, and one where Barthelmess and Gish sit by a lakeside and Barthelmess confesses his love for her. The first of these scenes is so moving just because of the circumstances, and Gish's performance. Despite the tendency for silent film acting to kind of be all over the place, this is a tougher scene than most, and the whole set up effectively gets across the idea of Gish's desperation, loneliness and persecution. The second is moving because of the way it is shot -- much of the film is shot on location with real scenery, using nature as a back drop, and the way this scene is framed perfectly echoes the declaration of love that comes from Barthelmess.

The final sequence is probably the most famous and you've probably seen clips from it before even if you've never watched a silent film. This is the sequence in which Gish is lost in a snow storm and finds herself adrift on a sheet of ice, floating down a river towards a waterfall. The young hero comes along to the rescue, and it's kind of amazing Griffith was able to pull these kind of stuff off all the way back in 1920. Here you've got a real river, a real waterfall, real platforms floating down the river, and real people hopping from platform to platform.

It's a great sequence, but it's just too bad it takes so long for the movie to get there.

Romancefest 2011: Last Tango in Paris

My viewing of LAST TANGO IN PARIS the other day was a long time coming. Back in high school, when I used to browse the aisles of the video store for art flicks and foreign films, I must have picked this one up and considered it several times. For whatever reason, I never got around to it. I don't know if that's in spite of the controversy surrounding the film or because of it -- on one hand, it is well known as a sexually explicit film, one of the few serious flicks branded with the X rating before the X rating disappeared. On the other, it's not renowned as a particularly pleasant film going experience.

LAST TANGO is one of the flicks often cited as an example of the revolutionary nature of filmmaking in the 70s, when art suddenly went mainstream before almost disappearing in the face of big blockbusters. Of course, that's a false dichotomy -- plenty of art films are still hits and plenty of hits count as art. But, most historians agree, there was a brief moment in the 70s when it looked like mainstream Hollywood was about to permanently move out of adolescence and into adulthood, only to regress big time.

The story involves a recently widowed, middle-aged American living in Paris (Marlon Brando) whose wife (Veronica Lazar) has committed suicide. From the first shot of the film to the last, Brando's violent, confused, raw anguish is front and center. He encounters a woman in her early 20s (the late Maria Schneider) when they both show up to check out the same apartment. Within seconds of meeting each other, they're on the floor engaged in particularly vicious sex, bordering on rape. Soon, the unlikely couple has made plans to meet in the apartment, and only in the apartment, to have anonymous sex. Brando's rules -- they can't share names or any other personal information with each other. Schneider agrees to the sex easily enough, but pushes against the no-names, no info rules.

In their personal lives outside the apartment, Brando continues to struggle with the meaning of his past relationship with his deceased wife, in light of her suicide, visiting with her oblivious mother (Maria Michi) and the man she was having an affair with (Massimo Girotti). Schneider is dating a pretentious fool of a filmmaker (Jean-Pierre Leaud) who is consumed with making a documentary about his relationship with her. Neither character's emotional lives are particularly fulfilling, which I guess is why they meet up for the anonymous sex.

Now that I've seen it, I can say I'm glad I didn't watch it as a teenager. I wouldn't have understood it. I'm not sure I understand it now. This is a truly adult film -- meaning, for adults -- from an era when adults existed. I feel like these days, everyone's basically a big kid. I was raised in the post-TANGO era, so I don't know if I'll ever really be able to "get" this kind of stuff the way a guy my age in 1972 could probably get it.

For most of the running time I was a little annoyed by the artsy aspects of the film, and a little annoyed Maria Schneider's character seemed to buy into Brando's bullshit. I mean, meeting someone for anonymous sex is meeting someone for anonymous sex, it's not exactly the deepest philosophical thing in the world. However, the film redeemed itself a little bit in the end when Schneider started to wake up to the boorish lout Brando actually is, and I began to see the point of the story.

You can make up rules, and lie to yourself, and tell yourself you're being honest with others, and draw boundaries, but in the end you feel the way you feel, and that changes based on circumstances. You can run from confusion, or embrace it -- run from emotions, or embrace them. Still, you can't avoid who you are, where you are, what you're doing. Ultimately, you're trapped inside yourself, no matter how much you try to lose yourself. What's better -- make peace with that and transcend that way, or keep searching for transcendence somewhere else?

Romancefest 2011: Bringing Up Baby

This is another flick I've always meant to see but never got around to for some reason. Now that I've seen it, it's kind of a revelation -- it contains a couple of one of a kind performances from stars whose personas I thought I had pretty much figured out.

Cary Grant plays against type as a bumbling, nerdy scientist and Katharine Hepburn sheds her super serious image to play a cute, bubbly, absent-minded heiress. Hepburn enters Grant's ordered, risk-free life like a hurricane, which leads to disaster after disaster. In the end, this proves to be good for Grant, but it's a hellish journey for him getting there. Hepburn has fun all along, because she's in love with Grant almost at first sight.

BRINGING UP BABY is probably the craziest and most manic of the screwball comedies. The wacky Grant flick I watched last year around this time, THE AWFUL TRUTH, looks like a serious documentary by comparison. I recommend watching this flick with plenty of rest and when you're in a really good mood -- otherwise, I could see the non-stop energy potentially hen-pecking the viewer to death and leaving you exhausted. Most scenes feature characters talking over each other and about half of them involve an animal making noises, too.

The "Baby" of the title is none other than a leopard gifted to Hepburn's character that she and Grant end up having to take care of and ultimately lose in the Connecticut woods and have to track down. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself -- I haven't mentioned the missing intercostal clavicle that Grant needs to complete the Brontosaurus skeleton he's been working on at the museum, or George the dog who buries the bone somewhere on Hepburn's estate. But I'm still kind of ahead of myself. The fact of the matter is, the plot kind of defies description and falls under the category "one damned thing after another."

Listening to an interview with director Howard Hawks, I learned that after production he realized every single character in this film is crazy and he wished he had kept at least one or two sane characters to help balance things out. I can understand where he's coming from, but I'm not sure if BRINGING UP BABY would be remembered as the perfect example of the screwball genre that it is if it did take a little break from the craziness. As it is, it's almost like a parody of a parody, though of course almost everyone plays it straight.

One thing I noticed early on is that a lot of the comic set pieces between Grant and Hepburn are played out in long takes. Take the early scene in a fancy restaurant, for example -- Hepburn tears Grant's coat on accident, then Grant tears Hepburn's dress on accident. Hepburn walks around oblivious that her ass is showing, and Grant desperately tries to keep her covered with his top hat. All the while, the two characters are bickering a mile a minute. This whole sequence plays without many cuts, so you actually see Grant and Hepburn literally going through all of the staging. There's no cheating from the director or editor for comedic effect -- it's all squarely on Grant and Hepburn's shoulders, unfolding on screen as it actually happened on stage. That's pretty amazing.

Grant and Hepburn are pretty much remembered as serious leading actors and were never as insane before or after this film. It's really something to watch them cut loose here. There are several pratfalls that the actors clearly take themselves, Grant falling square on his ass, Hepburn flopping face down on the floor. Despite the fact that this movie probably has more dialogue per minute than most, it is still a very physical affair.

In the end, what's it say about romance? Hepburn's character is crazy and Grant's is straight laced, but at least Hepburn seems to be living her life, making her own decisions, the master of her own destiny. Grant starts out the film pretty much doing whatever he's told, and eventually thanks to Hepburn's example, rises to the occasion himself and starts to live life. The characters change each other, ever so slightly, just by entering into each other's spheres by complete coincidence. It's a testament to how your life is before you meet someone, compared to how it is after you meet them, and how no one can ever predict when, or how that's going to happen.

Romancefest 2011: Destry Rides Again

Here's a nice treat -- a Western during Romancefest. This one wasn't on the AFI list, I got it off my backup list, and to be honest, for most of the running time it's not clear that this movie is much of a romance. But, there is one key moment at the end of the film between stars James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich that settles the matter.

Stewart's Destry is called to town when the previous sheriff disappears under mysterious circumstances and the town drunk (lovable Charles Winninger) is cynically appointed his replacement by the dirty mayor (tobacco chewing Samuel S. Hinds) and the local crime boss (slimy Brian Donlevy). Winninger's drunk served under Destry's father in his glory days and expects Stewart to ride into down and blow the bad guys' heads off.

DESTRY RIDES AGAIN is a pretty standard Western, mostly great for the efficient and simple way it tells its story. The film also gets a lot of mileage out of Stewart as the hero, Destry, who is not your usual Western protagonist. Destry's the son of a gun-blazing sherriff hero, but he doesn't believe in guns and prefers to solve problems by sticking strictly to the law, using parables and his own diplomatic actions to set an example for the corrupt town of Bottle Neck.

The heart of the story lies with Marelen Dietrich, who plays a show girl in the local saloon. At first she's happy to help the local criminals rip off the (very few) honest citizens of Bottle Neck, but eventually Destry starts to get under her skin and she has a little bit of a change of ways. The movie doesn't hit you over the head with Dietrich's characters' motivations, which is probably what makes her final act in the film so powerful. Her change is subtle and not blatantly telegraphed -- there are no redundant scenes or useless dialogue here. Dietrich is tough enough to be believable as a bitter, cynical, street-wise floozy, and this only makes her change of heart that much more interesting. But, she's glamorous enough to still look good, even when she's all tarted up like a tacky saloon girl -- especially when, after a vicious cat fight with another woman in town, Stewart dumps a bucket of water on her to calm her down. Dripping and furious, Dietrich never looked better.

Not only does the movie have a great ensemble of main characters, mentioned above and rounded out by Billy Gilbert as a Russian immigrant struggling to fit in with the Western town and impress his strict wife (Mischa Auer) -- it also makes great use of extras and crowd scenes. The hedonistic, corrupt element of the town is portrayed in wide shots of the cavernous town saloon, where hundreds of cowboys and cowgirls drink, dance, sing and break stuff. It's such heedless abandon, it almost reaches satirical heights. When Dietrich points a gun at Destry, 100 extras hit the deck in unison. When the mayor appoints the drunk as the new sheriff, 100 extras crack up and slap their knees. Even the final battle is more than a man-t0-man showdown -- half the men in town hole up in the saloon, the other half attacks from outside. Then, inspired by Dietrich, all the womenfolk march into the middle of the war brandishing rolling pins and rakes. It's like the movie has two audiences -- the one in the theater, and the one on the screen.

So, leading by example, Stewart's Destry inspires Dietrich's "bad girl" to turn good. He does so not with big, important speeches but with quiet, humble and even funny examples. It's not so much that he saves her or that she saves herself -- it's more that she embraces the realization that there's more than one way to do a thing, and realizes she's stronger than most and has the power to choose.

Romancefest 2011: Moonstruck

MOONSTRUCK is one of those movies I'm sure I've seen, but I must have been 7 years old, or something, because it seemed brand new to me as I watched it today.

Cher stars as a 30-something widow from an Italian-American family. As the movie opens, she gets a lackluster proposal from her bumbling but well-meaning suitor (Danny Aiello). She says yes. Why, we wonder? Later she explains, "The right man never came along." So, better to end up with someone than no one, I guess.

Cher lives at home in Brooklyn with her mom, dad and grandfather, and her mother (Olympia Dukakis) asks if she's in love with Aiello's character. Cher says no. I'm paraphrasing, but Dukakis replies, "Good. The ones you love drive you crazy." But Cher does admit she likes the guy.

Soon Aeillo returns to Sicily to be at the bedside of his dying mother, and asks Cher to make amends with his estranged brother while he's gone by inviting him to the wedding. Aeillo's brother is a passionate, bitter, wild-eyed, opera loving baker played by Nicolas Cage. One second Cher and Cage are screaming at each other. The next minute, they're in bed together.

This is a movie full of extremes but the movie itself is not extreme -- on one hand, the characters are loud and passionate. On the other, they're no-nonsense. The movie allows the characters to be crazy, but never gets crazy itself. The plot involves several affairs, betrayals, reconciliations, grudges and various pairings of all of the main characters, but never relies on contrived misunderstandings and never gets too convoluted. When the plot pays off in the final scenes, it's not a desperate attempt to jockey all of the characters into the right place at the right time. It just unfolds organically to its logical conclusion, and even the characters who don't really get what they want have to admit it all kinda makes sense.

Above all, the characters are fundamentally good people. There are no villains to fulfill any plot requirements, and even though these characters may hurt each other in one way or another, they never stay mad. They're in a constant state of exasperation and agitation, sure. But they're never really seriously pissed off or full of hate.

The performances are all great -- despite her mega-star status, Cher is totally convincing as a somewhat cynical, graying widow. Cage is so eccentric and unhinged that it's impossible not to admire him, here playing a character who is so in love with the drama and tragedy of operas that he lives his life like he's starring in one -- his enthusiasm, for better or worse, is infectious, and you can understand why Cher would fall for him. Aiello, as the jilted fiance, plays what could have been the total douche bag role in a lesser movie, but he's miraculously still likable and is even afforded some words of wisdom. The two older couples -- the afore mentioned Dukakis and Vincent Gardenia as Cher's parents and Julie Bovasso and Louis Guss as Cher's aunt and uncle -- get some great screen time and are not relegated to stereotype status. Dukakis, in particular, has some great moments and is able to project a calm and somewhat tired form of wisdom as she struggles to make sense of her husband's ways. This is a movie so full of three dimensional characters that even the waiters and customers at the Italian restaurant seem like they have their own lives.

The movie is so busy with notions of romance and passion that a more subtle theme quietly slips by almost unnoticed until the last few scenes, when Cher says, "I need my family around me." This is a great romantic comedy, but it's also about the power and understanding of family that allows you to be yourself, speak your mind, argue bitterly, and no matter how crazy things get, you never use up all that love.

Romancefest 2011: The African Queen

It's February so that means it's time for the second annual Romancefest. I've dubbed it. . . Romancefest 2011. I'll be watching 28 romantic flicks in 28 days this month and posting about each one. I'm going to stick mostly to movies I haven't seen, though a couple might be ones I technically saw at one point but can't remember all that well, or saw part of and never finished for whatever reason. Once again I'll be working off of the American Film Institutes "100 Years, 100 Passions" list. If you'd like a reminder of what I watched last year, just check February 2010 in this blog. This year I took a few suggestions off of another "classic romance" list that included some foreign flicks, because there weren't enough movies left from the AFI list that I hadn't seen already to fill up the whole month.

So, here we go:

The African Queen

Being a fan of classic flicks, and Humphrey Bogart in particular, it's kind of crazy that I never watched all of THE AFRICAN QUEEN until yesterday. This is the one he won the Academy Award for, and pairs him with fellow screen legend Katharine Hepburn. I did sit down to watch it once several years back but never got around to finishing it, and its unavailability on DVD or Blu-ray until recently didn't make seeing it super easy as VCRs began to disappear.

THE AFRICAN QUEEN takes place in the part of Africa controlled by Germany in 1914 as the first World War is breaking out. Hepburn plays a missionary from England who must escape Africa before the Germans close in, and she's aided in her escape by Bogart, who plays a riverboat captain from Canada. Like a couple of his other famous characters, Bogart is once again happily apolitical and would rather sit out the war in relative comfort, roughing it on his own and laying low. Hepburn, however, is more headstrong and morally driven, and sees an opportunity to help weaken the Germans. Together, they strike out, traveling the rivers of Africa in the clunky little boat called The African Queen.

I can sympathize with Bogart's point of view. He looks at a tough situation, throws up his hands, and says, "Oh well, too bad we can't do anything." Hepburn shakes her head and logically points out the ways they can at least try. No torpedo? Let's make one. Rapids too rough? Let's ride them anyway and see what happens. Boat crippled? Let's fix it from scratch.

Aside from these attitude differences, you've also got Hepburn's prim and proper religious character butting up against Bogart's rough around the edges professional bachelor, happy to spend his spare time getting drunk. If there's one thing a century's worth of movies has taught us, it's that opposites attract, and in a story like this, of course Bogart and Hepburn are going to bicker, and then find themselves drawn to each other.

Of course that's what happens, but there's a pleasant surprise after that. It's so subtle that you almost miss it, but I was pleasantly surprised to notice that once Bogart and Hepburn decided to let go and fall for each other, they never went back. They just kind of allowed themselves to ease into a more loving and intimate relationship, continued on their mission down the river, and didn't experience any of the contrived relationship ups and downs that more plot driven movies have become slaves to. It was refreshing and nice to see a couple grow close without having to sit through them growing apart again, then getting back together, then fighting again, then getting back together, over and over again as the plot requires. You really get the feeling these two genuinely like each other.

Aside from all that, the other nice thing about this movie is the beautiful Technicolor photography taking full advantage of the exotic African locations. The Blu-ray restoration that I saw was beautiful and made the movie look like it was shot yesterday. The color, combined with the impeccable image transfer, made me feel like I was really seeing Bogart and Hepburn as real people for the first time, not just as untouchable screen legends separated from me by decades of time. Every now and then there are some special effects shots that stick out as a little awkward by today's standards, but other than that, this flick from 1951 looks like it was shot yesterday.

So, some adventure, some romance -- Romancefest 2011 is off to a good start.