Immigrant sagas & other classics

Over the past year I’ve continued to watch way too many new films (and my mammoth year-in-review should be posted here sometime after the Oscars), but I’ve been making an alternative effort to re-watch classics from all-time lists, my own or others.  Here are some brief reactions.

This seems a good moment to celebrate family sagas about the vitality and heartbreak of the immigrant experience in America.  I’ve been waiting decades for a decent video release of Jan Troell’s magnificent diptych from the early 70s – The Emigrants and The New Land – and when the Criterion Collection finally delivered, with a pair of beautifully-restored Blu-Ray disks, which Netflix does not deign to carry, I had no choice but to purchase it.

It’s odd for such an acclaimed classic to be lost to general memory, and to be treated so shabbily by its American distributor, who began by cutting forty minutes from the three-hour running time.  The Emigrants was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 1972 Oscars, and the next year, after the release of an execrable and nonsensical version dubbed into English, it was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.  So why is this film, and its equally superlative second half, so difficult to see?

But so worth the effort to see.  Except for one extended sequence in the second film, nothing in the appropriately slow-paced six-hours-plus is less than enthralling.  The Emigrants follows the 1850 journey of a group of Swedish farmers from the land to the sea, across the sea, and across half of the American continent to Minnesota.  The New Land shows them carving a homestead and a community out of the wilderness over the next decade.

Troell adapts the celebrated Swedish tetralogy by Vilhelm Moberg, and also directs, photographs, and edits the film, a truly commanding accomplishment.  He must be the least-known of great filmmakers, though for me his Everlasting Moments (NFX) was the best film of 2009, so he has had a long and productive career.  As Terrence Rafferty writes of his do-it-all approach, “The documentary-like freedom of Troell’s shooting style gives his historical epics an unusual sense of intimacy; they’re alert, unstudied, dense with small revelations.”

This is the film that made Liv Ullmann an international star.  Max von Sydow had already crossed over to major Hollywood epics, from all the films they’d made with Ingmar Bergman.  But they’ve never been better together, than as Kristina and Karl-Oskar Nilsson, on their long, hard, but exquisitely beautiful journey from stony times in Sweden to the harsh struggles of settling the American heartland.  They’re supported by a large cast that rings true in every particular.

While I can no longer proselytize for my favorite films by showing them at the Clark, in this case I can make this rare gem available to locals who own a Blu-Ray player, by donating my disks to the Milne Public Library in Williamstown (along with the dazzling Criterion disks used to show the “Colors of Japan” film series at the Clark).  If you can, take advantage of this rare opportunity to see one of the least-known great films of all time.

Hard to say that The Emigrants got robbed of Best Picture, when that award went to The Godfather, another magnificent family saga of American immigration, which is equally appropriate to re-watch and remember, at this vexed historical moment.  I recently had occasion to confirm the high esteem in which the first two Godfather films are held, after which I was primed to find The Godfather Part III  better than it’s reputed to be.  Alas, the third installment does represent a major falling off, but not in a way that casts shade on Francis Ford Coppola’s monumental achievement in the first two parts.

[Click through for my brief comments on a number of classics worth seeing again, or must-see for a first time]

Though it’s been more than decade since Dustin Hoffman has been involved in a film of much interest, it remains worthwhile to revisit the era when he was one of the signature talents of the era, starting with The Graduate, which is perhaps too familiar to one of my generation, but worth catching in adequate reproduction, for Mike Nichol’s canny use of the widescreen.  I also confirmed the quality of Hoffman’s work in Kramer vs. Kramer, though perhaps more striking is Meryl Streep in one of her first major film roles.

It was a long time since I’d seen Jaws, during which I had developed highly ambivalent feelings about Steven Spielberg, and come to blame this film’s success for setting off the “blockbuster complex.”  But whatever else he may or may not be, Spielberg is a canny filmmaker and showman, and his breakthrough film remains exciting and entertaining, even when you know exactly what’s about to happen.  “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” indeed.

I’m less ambivalent about the Coen brothers, despite the eclectic variety of their output, but Fargo was never among my favorites, though it is among their most referenced.  The wonderful second season of the Fargo tv series drove me back to the source.  It certainly belongs in the Coens’ canon, if not with their very best.  And of course the film’s mixture of humor and gore has been quite influential, but it’s the characters and their dialogue that carry us along.

I forget what set me off on an Audrey Hepburn kick, but among others, I watched The Nun’s Story for the first time, and found it more authentic and substantial than I expected.  On the other hand, Breakfast at Tiffany’s did not hold up for me – it seemed awfully dark and mean-spirited for a madcap comedy.

Checking in on one of my very favorite comedies, I confirmed that Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty remain both hilarious and poignant as the wandering couple Lost in America, trying to be cross-continental easy riders in their oversized RV.

Even after decades, one sometimes duplicates the impression derived on first viewing.  I could sort of see why Ordinary People received ample acclaim, but I had the exact same reaction as in 1980.  It’s one thing for America’s sweetheart Mary Tyler Moore (recently and dearly departed) to confound her stereotype by playing an icy bitch, but another for the film to be complicit in portraying her wholly as a villain and not a victim herself, too close to the paradigmatic “refrigerator mother.”

I’m not sure exactly how many films are crammed into my “top ten all-time,” but re-viewings of Ozu’s Tokyo Story (NFX) and Bergman’s Persona (NFX) certainly confirmed their inclusion.

One long-awaited film that did not live up to my hallowed memories was Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight (NFX).  I remembered this compilation of Falstaff scenes out of Shakespeare’s history plays from its original release in 1966, and through repeated citations as a lost classic of Welles’ broken career.  There are certainly great things in it, but the financial strain of its production shows through, most damagingly in the post-dubbing.

Ever since Yi-Yi, I’ve been looking for more Edward Yang films, and the indispensable Criterion Collection finally came through with A Brighter Summer Day (NFX).  But with subject matter less interesting to me (Taiwanese youth gangs, rather than a middle-class family), the director’s slow, understated, and elliptical style did not hold my attention as much.  So stick with Yi-Yi if you want to give Yang a chance.

Also indispensable, if not as easy for me to access, is Turner Classic Movies.  When I make the effort to look at their schedule in advance, I’m able to fill gaps in my knowledge of film history.  Giving Jean Harlow more of a look than I ever had in the past, I quite enjoyed her with Clark Gable in Red Dust, a steamy melodrama set on a rubber plantation in IndoChina, and with Spencer Tracy in Libeled Lady, along with William Powell and Myrna Loy, in a wisecracking newspaper comedy.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith was one of the few Hitchcocks I’d never seen, and now I know why.  Screwball comedy does not really fit his style, despite the appeal of Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery.

It does fit Mitchell Leisen’s style, however, with script by Preston Sturges, and lead performances from Jean Arthur and Ray Milland, in Easy Living.  I’ve never much associated Milland with comedy, but he is also very arch with an estimable Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor, Billy Wilder’s first film as director.

One film that struck me as a real discovery, successful in its time but forgotten afterwards, was the 1954 adaptation of Clifford Odets’ play The Country Girl, with Grace Kelly trying to look as unattractive as possible but showing some surprising acting chops, alongside Fred Astaire and William Holden, in a backstage Broadway drama.

One film I would just as soon not have rediscovered is Carol Reed’s adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Outcast of the Islands.  Trevor Howard is indeed memorable in the lead, but the whole civilization vs. exotic savages theme plays uncomfortably today.

I should apologize to anyone who has read this far, since this post is a bit of a throwback to the origins of Cinema Salon, when I started to keep a filmlog of what I was watching, just so I could keep track of movies I’d seen or not seen.  I started that in 2000 with just a number grade and a one-line comment, gradually became more discursive, and went online in 2005. 

Now I’m up to thousands of “nights at the movies,” with all my comments searchable and retrievable, which is not always the case with my aging brain.  Over the years, I’ve added a “customer service” component in providing links to more detailed information on each film and its critical reception, and to its availability from Netflix or other sources.

In the future, I expect to be spending more time on career retrospectives of directors and performers, than on new films or random dips into the past.  Those retrospectives will accumulate in the “Pages” menu in the right column of this blog, all in the interests of making this site a more useful reference, and portal to distinctive and distinguished viewing.