Dear Diary

It’s not that I’ve forgotten you, but how did I go two weeks without seeing a movie? Work and travel had something to do with it, but there were other distractions as well. Though I am now officially into “wait till next year” mode with my beloved Cleveland Indians, up till now I have been spending tube time with the Tribe that might otherwise have been devoted to films. I’ve also been reading recent novels by Marilynne Robinson, Alice McDermott, and now E.L. Doctorow.

And then there’s HBO. After the season’s end of The Sopranos and Big Love, I caught up with the second season of Deadwood, to prepare for the third, which is now underway and likely to finish as a best-ever nominee for me, unless it is supplanted by The Wire, whose third season I am stockpiling on TiVo for an orgy of viewing in advance of the upcoming fourth. I am baffled by the critics who say HBO original series are losing momentum -- they just can’t be paying attention. Of course, not everything HBO does is up to the high standard they set. Despite the presence of Helen Mirren, their Elizabeth I was sub-Masterpiece Theater in the sophistication of its storytelling, but sumptuous in its settings and costumes.

I did catch my own double feature at the Clark, to kick off the “Brother to Brother” film series. Of the two Elia Kazan films, On the Waterfront gets me every time, it's indelibly great. The only thing that bothered me, as it seems to do these days, was some of the music in the more intimate scenes. Out-and-out melodrama is one thing, but if you have some pretense to realism, in those tight two-shots let the actors do the work with their faces and voices, stifle the soaring strings. The jazzy dockside music is great though, and one of the audience reminded me the composer was Leonard Bernstein. Still, Brando and Saint were more than capable of carrying those scenes on their own. East of Eden was good to see in Cinemascope, even if projected digitally. The Monterey peninsula in WWI days vies with James Dean as the star of the picture. Raymond Massey is effective as his father, and so is Julie Harris as his brother’s girlfriend, but it all seems weighted with literary significance rather than blazing with the immediacy of Waterfront.

Next up is “Brothers Under Care” on Sunday, July 9th: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? at 1:30 and Rain Man at 4:00. In the former, the brothers are Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Lasse Halstrom; in the latter, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, from Barry Levinson.

Looking to appeal to a mixed group of family, I got around to watching Cinderella Man (2005, dvd, n.) and it certainly filled the bill, would have been a more plausible Best Picture than Crash. Though Ron Howard’s direction is practiced to a fault, with heart-tugging made to order from the true-life fairy tale of the amazing comeback of Depression-era boxer, Jim Braddock, it is smoothly done and the ever-surprising Russell Crowe invests his character with almost more reality than the film can bear. Paul Giamatti contributes a reliably engaging turn as the boxer’s manager and trainer. Renee Zellweger looks the part of the stalwart wife, but isn’t given much to do except stir the same ashes as Angela. It’s tasteful and inspiring, and easy to let yourself be manipulated by the movie. My responses are as mixed as the critics, which Metacritic averaged out to to MC-69, and I would rate as *6+* or *7-*.

Working on an intermittent retrospective of Ingmar Bergman, I took a look at the impeccable Criterion Collection dvd of Smiles of a Summer Night (1955, dvd, r.), an uncharacteristic French bedroom farce with a Swedish accent, or Oscar Wilde under the midnight sun. It’s really very well done in every respect, and gave Bergman the popular and international success that allowed him to go on to The Seventh Seal and the rest of the work with his dour signature. As sparkling as it is, and inspirational to Woody Allen and Stephen Sondheim, it took me three evenings to get through it this time, so my *7+* rating is somewhat provisional.

Finally, I just watched Separate Lies (2005, dvd, n.) Julian Fellowes won an Oscar for the screenplay of Gosford Park, and here makes his directorial debut. Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson are reliably excellent as the well-off couple with a London townhouse and country home in High Wickham. He’s a successful but stuffy solicitor, and she’s a not-quite-right housewife and hostess. There’s an accident, moral quandaries, revelation of deceit, and slippage of personality. It’s quite watchable but doesn’t add up, though it doesn’t overstay its welcome by very much, at less than 90 minutes. If you’re a real Anglophile who loves to see a stiff upper lip quiver, you might like this, but for me it clocks in at a *6-* (MC-71.)

Bread and Chocolate

I’m not sure why I resurrected this once-popular Italian comedy. I must have put it in my Netflix queue before I went to Italy last summer, though it retains some topicality as the story of a “guest worker” from Southern Italy in Switzerland. Franco Brusati is a nondescript director, and while star Nino Manfredi has his moments, he’s more like Roberto Benigni than Marcello Mastrioanni. There is some amusing byplay between Italian and Swiss viewpoints, and Anna Karina provides a charming cameo, but the dvd is of poor quality and the film is not particularly deserving of revival. (1973, dvd, r.) *6-*

The Verdict

Some talented people collaborate on a better-than-average courtroom drama: Paul Newman offers an un-showy performance as an alcoholic Irish ambulance chaser in Boston, who grabs his one last chance for redemption; David Mamet writes a snappy script and Sidney Lumet directs with assurance; James Mason and Jack Warden lead a solid supporting cast. They lend some credibility to what might have been a medical malpractice potboiler, but there is some final dimension of realism that this film lacks. My verdict -- not bad, but not special. (1982, dvd, r.) *6*

Heaven Can Wait

I don’t know much about the “Lubitsch touch” -- I have only a scattered acquaintance with his work -- but if this is it, I like it: a very adult comedy of marriage and morals, tightly stylized to avoid the censor, nothing slapstick about it. His first use of color, apparently, but most effective in setting off the decor of the Fifth Avenue mansion where most of the action takes place, changing over the course of fifty years, and the high Deco-style entryway to hell, where Don Ameche tells the tale of the life that he assumes will send him below. Gene Tierney is the wife he woos and wins repeatedly, despite his stagedoor-Johnny antics. A large cast of familiar faces fills out the cast, and the story is very sturdily constructed, with familial vignettes succeeding every ten years or so with endless parallels and cross-references. The dialogue and situations are humorous but subtle, light and dark at the same time, taking a clear look at sex and vanity, aging and death. This is a worthy resurrection by the Criterion Collection. (1943, dvd, n.) *8-*

The Playboys

Rarely have I taken note of music more deleterious to a film’s success, more like soap opera schmaltz than Celtic liveliness. Robin Wright (pre-Penn) does imbue the film with more liveliness than it otherwise demonstrates. Albert Finney and Aidan Quinn are more than adequate in stereotyped roles. There is a definite feel of authenticity to the portrayal of a village in 1957 Ireland, less cuteness than there might be in Gillies MacKinnon’s direction of a Shane Connaughton script, but it ultimately seems formulaic and inconclusive. Robin is the wild girl, pregnant by an unknown man, who upsets the balance of the staid little village. Finney is the imposing Garda sergeant, who is trying to reform his drinking to win her hand. Quinn blows into town with a travelling troupe of vaudeville players led by faux-Shakespearian Milo O’Shea, in a last gasp before the “wireless with pictures” takes over village entertainment. You can fill in the rest. (1992, dvd, r.) *5+*

Elia Kazan double feature at the Clark 6/18

In conjunction with the Clark’s special summer exhibition culminating its 50th anniversary year, The Clark Brothers Collect, the museum will offer a free film series called Brother to Brother: Sunday Afternoon Double Features at the Clark.

This series will explore the tangled fraternal relationship in films that range from the comic to the tragic, from classic to contemporary, from fiction to fact. Presented in pairs, what each film has in common, beyond skilled direction and strong performances, is riveting attention to this powerful sibling bond.

On June 18, the first program will present two films by Elia Kazan: On the Waterfront (1954) at 1:30 p.m. and East of Eden (1955) at 4:00 p.m. In addition to the fraternal theme, this pairing is a doubly appropriate start to the series, because Kazan is a Williams College alumnus and because these films were being made at precisely the time the Clark was originally being built.

Elia Kazan, born in Constantinople to Greek parents, came to this country when he was four and graduated from Williams in 1930. After dropping out of Yale Drama School, he became involved with the Group Theater in New York. Though he began as an actor, his goal was always to direct films. He began directing for the theater while also working on documentary films. By the end of World War II, he had made his first film, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and continued to work on Hollywood projects, even while returning to New York to become one of the leaders of the Actors Studio and eventually the most prominent director on Broadway, instrumental in adapting Stanislavsky’s acting precepts into the “Method” and developing a new breed of star such as Marlon Brando. He’d already won an Academy Award for best director, for Gentleman’s Agreement, but was still working toward his signature style, incorporating aspects of Italian Neo-realism into films like Boomerang! and Panic in the Streets, shot on location and using non-actors as well as the intense naturalism of Method actors.

In 1951, Kazan transferred Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire from stage to screen, and then made Viva Zapata!, again with Brando, a sympathetic but knowing look at a peasant revolution. Kazan considered himself a lifelong liberal, but turned against the Communists in the Thirties. When Congress started its Red Menace witch hunt into Hollywood, Kazan was caught in the middle and found his accommodation in naming names that were already known to the House Un-American Activities Committee, thereby saving his career but forever alienating certain critics.

Some took On the Waterfront to be his defense of informing, but that implication makes a small part of a towering work, a popular success that earned eight Academy Awards, for Kazan and Brando, as well as writer Budd Schulberg, cinematographer Boris Kaufman, and supporting actress Eva Marie Saint. Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb, and Karl Malden were all nominated for best supporting actor, but split the vote.

Kazan followed the black & white grit of Waterfront with the Cinemascope color of East of Eden, John Steinbeck’s retelling of the Cain and Abel story set in California farm country, which introduced another iconic male star in James Dean. Kazan exploited the natural antipathy between Dean and Raymond Massey to highlight the conflict between son and father.

Kazan continued his strong run through the ’50s and into the ’60s, directing A Face in the Crowd, Wild River, Splendor in the Grass, and America, America (the story of his family’s immigration), before he fell into disfavor barely remedied by a special lifetime achievement Oscar he received in 1999 (or an honorary doctorate from Williams.) In the interim he had become a bestselling novelist and memoir writer. Now that he has died, it would be well to reconsider his career as a whole, and On the Waterfront and East of Eden, at the Clark on June 18, would be a good place to start.

Subsequent Brother to Brother programs will include:

July 9: “Brothers Under Care”: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993) at 1:30 p.m. and Rain Man (1988) at 4:00 p.m.

July 23: “Brothers in Fury”: Raging Bull (1980) at 1:30 p.m. and American History X (1999) at 4:00 p.m.

August 13: “Brothers at Work”: Big Night (1995) at 1:30 p.m. and Adaptation (2002) at 4:00 p.m.

August 27: “Brothers Documented”: Brother’s Keeper (1992) at 1:30 p.m. and Capturing the Friedmans (2003) at 4:00 p.m.

In September, watch for a "Brother to Brother Encore", a special two-day screening at the Clark of The Best of Youth, the six-hour Italian family epic hailed as the best film of 2005 by the New York Times and others, including me.

The Ice Harvest

John Cusack is something like a friend -- it’s always a pleasure to spend time in his company. The same is not true for Billy Bob Thornton, but here his comic sleaze is put to good effect. There is effective supporting work from Connie Neilson, Oliver Platt, and Randy Quaid. Harold Ramis directed the imperishable Groundhog Day and other estimable films; Robert Benton and Richard Russo have written some notable scripts (and the latter some favorite novels of mine); this contemporary noir clocks in efficiently at an hour and a half. So why did the movie sink like a stone last year? And why can’t I recommend it as an undiscovered gem. Maybe the humor gets in the way of its darkness or the darkness gets in the way of its humor. It’s setting in Wichita is not far from Fargo, but it’s tone is less certain. On a cold and rainy Christmas Eve, mob lawyer Cusack and pornography czar Thornton look to embezzle $2 mil from mob boss Quaid, with femme fatale Nielson also hanging in the balance. They’re well out of their depth, and complications ensue as Cusack goes from one titty bar to the next, getting drunker amidst the tinsel and carols of the season. If your expectations are low, you may well enjoy this genre exercise. (2005, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-62.)

Platform

You’re on your own with this one. Some reviews of The World (see 3-13-06) suggested this was a better film by Jia Zhangke, so I dutifully sat through it. The long-shot, long-take aesthetic is common in Asian cinema, and can sometimes be thrilling -- in Ozu, for example -- but films like this have me calling “Cut!” or “Close-up, please!” And this is the “streamlined” version, 158 instead of 193 minutes. The lack of a cultural (or even geographical) frame of reference makes such films a mixture of interest and frustration. This is obviously an autobiographical film about the changes in China in the 80s, from the perspective of a provincial performing troupe that goes from pageants celebrating Mao to head-banging, booty-shaking pop music. There are two desultory romantic involvements, but indicative of my troubles in watching this film, I mistook the couple in the final scene, and there was a baby whose parentage I got completely wrong (or most reviewers did.) (2001, dvd, n.) *NR*

Absence of Malice

The problem here is not an absence of justice but an absence of juice. Sydney Pollack’s film might have been a serious exploration of journalistic ethics, but in fact is redeemed only by the presence of Paul Newman. Now there’s a star -- he commands the screen even while hiding from view. Though there are wobbles in the script, and there’s less feel for the Miami locale than you would hope for, the real letdown is the female lead. Sally Field is just too perky to play quick, smart girl slowly and sadly learning wisdom. As the ambitious reporter, a Holly Hunter or Emily Watson or Samantha Morton would have been intense and conflicted enough to set off sparks with Newman and bring off the story. Sally’s too shallow to play callow. And the music is just awful, goosing nonexistent emotions. There are two highlights, however. The opening montage of putting out the newspaper, from newsroom to composing room to pressroom is a vintage look at a vanished world to which I’ve always been connected, in one way or another. And in the end, when Sally has messed her nest, she indicates she may go back to the paper where she started, The Berkshire Eagle. (1981, dvd, r.) *6-*