110. Eloise &...

Lyrics

Ev'ry night I'm there 
I'm always there she knows I'm there 
And heaven knows I hope she goes 
I find it hard to realize that love was in her eyes 
It's dying now, she knows I'm crying now 
And ev'ry night I'm there I break my heart to please 
Eloise, Eloise 
You know I'm on my knees - yeah 
I said please 
You're all I want so haer my prayer 

My Eloise is like the stars that please the night 
The sun that makes the day, that lights the way 
And when that star goes by 
I'll hold it in my hands and cry 
Her love is mine, my sun will shine 
And ev'ry night I'm there I break my heart to please 
Eloise, Eloise 
You know I'm on my knees - yeah 
I said please 
You're all I want so haer my prayer 

My Eloise, I'd love to please her 
I'd love to care but she's not there 
And when I find you, I'd be so kind 
You'd want to stay, I know you'd stay 

And as the days grow old, the nights crow cold 
I wanna hold her near to me, I know she's dear to me 
And only time can tell and take away this lonely hell 
I'm on my knees to Eloise 
And ev'ry night I'm there I break my heart to please 
Eloise, Eloise 
You know I'm on my knees - yeah 
I said please 
You're all I want so haer my prayer 
You know I'm on my knees 
I said please 
You're all I want so hear my prayer

I linked this song to a melodramatic raunchy sex comedy, about a teen who is hopelessly and slightly pathetically obsessed with a girl much out of his league. So, yeah, guess what I think of the song. 

The Movie: Lemon Popsicle (Eskimo Limon) (Boaz Davidson, 1978)

Once a month Dutch director Martin Koolhoven organizes Cinema Egzotik, an event at which he shows a double feature of somehow related (cult)films. I have been there a couple of times and saw among other things Jacob's Ladder, the 1985 Fright Night (which turned out to be one of the most purely entertaining movies of the 1980's), and Lemon Popsicle. I saw that film about three years ago and remembered liking it. I now have to attribute that to the cinema setting. It's fun to see this film with an audience giggling at silly jokes. Perhaps my judgement is clouded by the fact that Lemon Popsicle was followed by its sequel Going Steady, which I remember being much more fun. In any case, watching the film now, at home, I found it kind of awful. There are some fun bits, but not much, and at times it is insufferable. 

Lemon Popsicle is a vulgar film. This is not an opinion, just a statement of fact. Superbad is also a vulgar movie, and that is one of the funniest comedies of recent times. My main problem with Lemon Popsicle, beside it not being funny enough, is that it is a vulgar movie, while somehow pretending it is a wholesome and innocent one, and pretending it is ashamed of vulgarity (not its own vulgarity, just vulgarity in general). I understand very much that the movie is a product of its time and place. You cannot make Superbad in 1978 Israel, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. And to be fair, the Israeli audiences in 1978 certainly weren't annoyed. Apparently 40% of Israel went to see this film, and it eventually got 9 sequels. In 1982 Davidson also made an American remake, The Last American Virgin. That pretty much summarizes what this movie is about. It follows three 17-year olds, Benji, Momo, and Johnny in their quest for sex, although at the beginning of the film it seems as if only Momo is a virgin. While that's on the mind of every 17-year old boy, the situations these boys find themselves in are sometimes very unusual. That, again, would not be a problem if the film didn't pretend it was presenting the ordinary behavior of 17-year olds around the world. Scenes involving a prostitute and a sex-obsessed spinster are shot in a very monotonous way and take way too much time. Although the payoff of the spinster scene is quite funny, because of its unabashed embrace of old-fashioned cliches. A sailor man with a tattoo of an anchor cannot be wanting in a raunchy sex comedy. But the adventures of the boys in these scenes is unironically presented as 'boys will be boys'. I am sorry, but that's just not true, nor do most 17-year olds get crabs.

The crabs are symptomatic of another annoying thing about the film. The film is actually more obsessed with sex than real 17 year old boys are, but it uses the behavior of the kids as a strawman argument to adopt a deeply conservative and annoyingly moralistic attitude towards sex. In other words besides being a hypocritical film, it is also patronizing and pedantic. Sex always has (bad) consequences here. Sex risks their friendship, gets them nearly beat up, crabs, or pregnant. The pregnancy mostly serves to set up the final scene of the film, which is probably the reason for the film's fame and success. The pregnant girl is Nikky, with whom Momo is obsessed. But Nikky is his best friend Johnny's girlfriend, and he is the one who has made her pregnant. Only, Johnny now doesn't want anything do with her. So Momo pays for her abortion and takes great care for her afterwards. Nikky seems to fall in love with him, and invites Momo to her birthday party next week. The following week Momo buys a ring, and all dressed up confidently arrives at the party. Looking for Nikky he, eventually finds her in the kitchen making out passionately with, you guessed it, Johnny. It's clearly an asshole move by director Davidson, but he orchestrates it with such palpable, enthusiastic glee that you cannot help but admire it. I mean he basically literally drops the mic in the scene. When Momo arrives at the party we hear a joyous 50's rock song. Once he gets to the kitchen, before we see what he sees, we almost literally hear on the soundtrack a needle being dropped, followed by a sad love song by some 50's crooner. It's genuinely quite wonderful how much Davidson seems to enjoy being evil to his characters. 

   

        

109. When The Lady Smiles &...

Lyrics

When the lady smiles, you know it drives me wild
Her lips are warm and resourceful
When her fingertips, go drawing circles in the night
Then the mood is soft and sensual, hu-u
And I love it, yeah I love it
It's the answer to all my dreams
Every time it feels like the earth is shakin'
It doesn't matter, a glass is fallin',
I hear it shatter, maybe it's raining,
faster and faster, shadow dancin',
together oh I, I'm a bettin' on the game of love
oh oh oh I, I'm bettin' that love is gonna come out
When the walls no longer shout, back at me
and I'm feelin' proud

When the lady smiles, she holds me in her hand
As a matter of fact, she could always let me down
But when the lady smiles, I can't resist her call
As a matter of fact, I don't resist at all
‘cos I'm walking on clouds and she is leadin' the way

My friends tell me, she's the beast inside your paradise
I guess you've heard it all before
A fallen angel, that has got you hypnotized
and that always needs some more, hu-u
and I love it, yeah I love it
She's done nothin' to mislead me
‘cos every time we meet, the earth is shakin'
It doesn't matter, a glass is fallin'
I hear it shatter , maybe it's rainin'
faster and faster, shadow dancin'
together oh I, I'm bettin' on the game of love
Oh oh oh I, I'm bettin' that love is gonna come out
When the walls no longer shout, back at me
and I'm feeling proud

When the lady smiles, she holds me in her hand
As a matter of fact, she could always let me down
But when the lady smiles, I can't resist her call
As a matter of fact, I don't resist at all
‘cos we're walkin' on clouds and she is leadin' the way

Oh no, oh no, oh nooooo......

Founded in 1961, Golden Earring is the oldest Dutch rock group still in existence. Songs such as When The Lady Smiles show why they have such longevity. They may not be groundbreaking, but they know very well how to make simply good, entertaining songs. They have many more like this one. The same can be said about the movie I linked it too, although that is much better, and much more entertaining, than the song.

The Movie: The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)

The Lady Eve is among Roger Ebert's Great Movies. I would not go quite that far, but it is certainly wonderful. It's the first film of Preston Sturges, one of the most lauded 'screwball' directors of classic Hollywood, I've seen, and I now certainly hope to see more of his work. Especially because after seeing this film many film folks on Twitter started suddenly discussing Sturges' Hail The Conquering Hero, mostly in the context of an apparently great static long take in that film. That did not surprise me. From The Lady Eve it is apparent that Sturges loves static long takes, and knows how to use them well. The best one discussed by Ebert in his review. It occurs when the confident Jean (Barbara Stanwyck) playfully caresses the perplexed Charles' (Henry Fonda) hair (Henry Fonda). 

The best scene in the movie occurs a bit before that though, and I was quite surprised I have never seen it be referenced by modern movies. In the scene I am talking about we see Jean looking in her mirror at how Charles, sitting in a bar, reading a newspaper, is constantly being approached by women. There is a good reason for that, apart from Charles being Henry Fonda. Namely, Charles is a bachelor billionaire heir; his father has a famous ale company. It's just quite unfortunate that Charles is not very interested in ale. He is interested in snakes, and is just returning from a year-long expedition in the Amazon, He is a naive scientist, who doesn't feel very secure around women, especially if he hasn't met a woman for a year. Jean and her father are professional con men who want to exploit his naivete, and know very well how to do that. While looking in her mirror Jean anticipates the moves of every woman approaching Charles, and of Charles himself, while at the same time predicting exactly how she will earn Charles' attention. 

It's a brilliantly conceived and shot scene, in which we learn everything we need to know about Charles simply by looking at him from Jean's point of view. Sturges hardly ever cuts to a close-up/medium shot of him and the women, shot from Charles' point of view. We don't hear their conversations. Most of what we see, we see through Jean's mirror. Besides being an original and interesting way to present a character, it is also an efficient one, After all, because of this approach we learn everything we need to know about Jean too. Of course Jean eventually falls in love with Charles, and Charles falls in love with Jean. That too is not very surprising. Barbara Stanwyck, whom I haven't seen before in a movie, gives one of the most sexy performances I've seen, and she certainly knows it. Fonda gives a great performance too, but both actors are helped enormously by the script which doesn't present their characters in a lazily stereotypical way. Once Jean falls in love with Charles she doesn't suddenly soften up and regret her criminal ways. Yes, she stops conning Charles, but that's simply because she loves the guy, not because she suddenly believes conning is inherently evil. As for Charles, he may be naive and insecure around women, but he is not oblivious to it. He knows what he should do around Jean, and knows when he is doing what he should not be doing. He is not an idiot.  

I also love how the movie is constructed. The movie basically exists of two big set pieces, one on the boat on its way to New York, and another in Charles' mansion. In between there is one scene that connects the two, before the first set piece there is a prologue, and after the second one there is basically an extended epilogue. During the the first set piece, the plot hardly moves forward. All the movie does then is set up the characters, and the problems they will face later on in the movie. The second set-piece than is the payoff. I preferred the first part, because it was very sharply written and a bit more grounded in some sort of reality than the second part, which was a bit too much screwball-y for my taste. But in any case I loved the movie's patience and its insistence that its characters are more interesting than the plot. I also love large set-pieces which do not necessarily move the plot forward and I find it quite unfortunate that too many modern movies do not even try to emulate a movie such as this one. I am not someone who believes that modern movies are in a bad shape, and I don't believe that movies used to be better. But it is to some extent unfortunate and bad for movies that these modes of film making are now all but extinct.

108. Feel &...

Lyrics

Come and hold my hand
I wanna contact the living
Not sure I understand
This role I've been given
I sit and talk to God
And he just laughs at my plans
My head speaks a language
I don't understand

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
'Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste
I don't wanna die
But I ain't keen on living either
Before I fall in love
I'm preparing to leave her

Scare myself to death
That's why I keep on running
Before I've arrived
I can see myself coming

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
'Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste
And I need to feel
Real love and the love ever after
I cannot get enough

I just wanna feel
Real love feel the home that I live in
I got too much love
Running through my veins
To go to waste

I just wanna feel
Real love and the love ever after
There's a hole in my soul
You can see it in my face
It's a real big place

Come and hold my hand
I wanna contact the living
Not sure I understand
This role I've been given
Not sure I understand
Not sure I understand
Not sure I understand
Not sure I understand

Before I linked Robbie Williams' Angels to Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire. Feel could just as easily be linked to it. In the context of that movie, these two songs compliment each other perfectly. One coud argue that Angels is about how the humans are affected by the angels' presence, while Feel, is about how the angels feel about the the humans and their own place in the universe. Luckily Wim Wenders has made a sequel to Wings of Desire. The connections between these two songs and Wenders' work are probably coincidental, but I'd be curious to know if Williams is a fan of Wenders.

The Movie: Faraway, So Close (In weiter Ferne, so nah!) (Wim Wenders, 1993)

Faraway, So Close is a mess, but I am very happy it exists. Directors should more often be given this kind of freedom to play with ideas, genres and styles. Not everything coheres, but this is clearly a personal movie by a director who had a lot to say, and wanted to say it in an original, and playful way. If nothing else Wenders should be lauded for getting Bruno Ganz, Nastassja Kinski, Willem Defoe, Peter Falk, Mikhail Gorbachev (!) and Lou Reed all in the same movie. He does waste Kinski a bit, and Reed a lot more than a bit. Kinski plays angel Raphaela, but doesn't get to philosophize much. She mostly has to angelically console Cassiel (Otto Sander) who decides to become human like his friend Damiel (Ganz) did in Wings of Desire. Reed gets to play himself and sing a song seemingly consisting only of the lyrics 'Why can't I be good/Why can't I act like a man/Why can't I act like other men can'. After that he pretty much dissapears.

Wenders has more on his mind than merely what it means to be human. Gorbachev's cameo is a stunt, but it is not here without reason. As he quotes a Russian philosopher we hear Gorbachev thinking about war, peace and morality. It's clear that we should consider these ideas in the context of the fall of the Soviet-Union, and the unification of Germany. This could partly serve as a justification for the sequel, Wings of Desire was made in 1987, and took place in a divided Berlin. Faraway, So Close of course takes place in 1993 when there was no more East and West Berlin, just Berlin, the capital of the 'new' Germany. This is constantly emphasized by Wenders, who wants to see/show how the unification of Berlin has affected its citizens. As such this is a film much more concerned with politics (and political philosophy), history and national culture than with existential philosophy, which is probably why I actually liked this a bit more than Wings of Desire.