85. Go Your Own Way &...

Lyrics

Loving you
Isn`t the right thing to do
How can I ever change things
That I feel

If I could
Maybe I`d give you my world
How can I
When you won`t take it from me

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

Tell me why
Everything turned around
Packing up,
Shacking up's all you wanna do

If I could
Baby I`d give you my world
Open up
Everything`s waiting for you

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

I have never given much thought to Fleetwood Mac. This should probably change. Despite the fact that I like a Fleetwood Mac song any time I happen to hear one, I've somehow have never felt compelled to learn more about this group, or to start seriously listening to their music. This, despite the fact that Haim, basically a modern, bit of a poor man's version of Fleetwood Mac (something they would probably admit themselves), is one of my favorite groups of this moment. Go Your Own Way is a great song that finally gave me the chance to discuss a proper Woody Allen movie. It's right away the most awkward possible one.

The Movie: Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992)

If you needed more proof that Woody Allen is a despicable human being, but a really great artist, than this is it. Husbands and Wives is a movie that should not have existed. But it does and it's brilliant. It is, aside from Juliette Lewis' unfortunate role, a perfect movie. It is one of the tightest screenplays Allen has ever written. You get the feeling that every sentence is simply perfectly calibrated to be at the right place in the movie, that there is not a word here that's superfluous, or wrongly chosen. It's why, aside from other obvious facts I''ll discuss later this is not my favorite Woody Allen. I love his (sometimes silly) digressions into philosophical discussions and absurd humor. Apart from the framing device (which I'll also discuss later) there is hardly any of that here, and what there is, is in the service of the story. The acting is also rather perfect. It seems like every gesture and every inflection by any actor but Lewis is perfectly chosen and exactly right for that moment in the movie. Judy Davis especially gives a great performance. While I am a fan of Marisa Tomei and My Cousin Vinny, I can see why people were a bit perplexed she won the Oscar that year. It should have been Davis' award. Now I've criticized Juliette Lewis twice already I must note that I've never cared much about her as an actress, but that she has no easy job here. She has the most thankless role here and when making this movie she was still a young, relatively inexperienced actress, who had to hold her own against some major actors at the absolute top of their game. 

These are also the most realistic characters Woody Allen has ever conceived of (at least out of the movies I've yet seen by him). These people have more ordinary conversations and problems than other characters in Woody Allen movies. Which makes Mia Farrow's 'We both know it's over' line perhaps the saddest line in all of Allen's filmography. I am fairly sure I would feel the same way about this had Allen and Farrow not had the same problems in real life that they had in this movie. But they did have them. I am not a fan of judging art by the personal lives of the artists (Unfortunately I would have to discard a lot of art if I did that) or of relating their work to their personal life, but in this case it is inescapable. 

First of all, it would have been completely understandable if Mia Farrow would have utterly despised Allen just for the fact that he slept with her adopted daughter and than proceeded to live with her after all was said and done. But the fact that he made this movie makes it, if possible, even worse. Farrow found out about the affair while this movie was in production. Which means that Allen was writing and filming a movie about how he (could have) hurt Farrow's feelings, while at the same time he was busy cheating on her in real life in the most horrible possible way. He was basically lying to her while hiding the lie in plain view and shoving it her face, and then showing the world how he did it. It's nearly impossible to humiliate a person more, than Allen humiliates Farrow here. 

And all of this, doesn't take into account the fact that Allen might have sexually harassed Dylan Farrow, one of Farrow's other daughters who was at that time underage. I don't know whether Allen did this or not, though I have read Dylan's now famous letter from a couple of months ago and it's hard not to believe her. Beside if even half of what she wrote is true, it is bad enough. But the public speculation about what could have happened only makes the situation worse, and won't change my opinion of Allen, which in the end doesn't matter really in this case. I already think that Woody Allen is a despicable person. But it won't change my opinion that he is a major director who has made some of the greatest films ever. Aside from that you can't ignore his films even if you would have wanted to. They are very influential and are rightly taught in media and film schools. Allen's place in history was absolutely secured when he pulled Marshall McLuhan to the screen in Annie Hall. What I want to say is that the Farrows are in a situation that is horrible for them, and will remain horrible. It may be utterly unfair, but it is the truth that Allen's movies will live on and his misdeeds will eventually be forgotten/ignored. That has always been the case with historically important people and will always be. When I eventually get to discuss Annie Hall on this blog I won't focus any more on Allen's personal, but on the awesomeness of that movie. And I will also go see Magic in the Moonlight and Allen's subsequent movies.           

As I said I don't like the public speculation about what happened between Allen and Dylan Farrow very much. But in the context of Husbands and Wives it can't be ignored. That whole movie only becomes weirder and eerier because of it. For some reason Allen has chosen to film the movie as a sort of home-movie documentary with a shaking camera. On top of this the movie is basically told in flashback by a narrator, who pieces the story together from sometimes conflicting interviews with the main characters in the movie. We sometimes are shown the characters talk to the narrator, about their experiences. It is like watching a reconstructed documentary of the disintegrated marriage of Allen and Farrow's characters, and the nearly disintegrated marriage of  the characters of Judy Davis and Sydney Pollack. But we are made aware that the characters lie, especially Woody Allen's character. Which means that what we are being shown are not necessarily the facts of what happened, but what the narrator who would be the director of this imagined documentary thinks happened based on his conversations with the characters. This is basically how a documentary about the disintegration of Allen and Farrow's real affair would probably look like. And even more awkward in retrospect is Woody Allen's choice to use jump cuts in, or between, scenes. This can be read as a signifier that time has passed between, but that we do not know what happened in that time. Something awful could have been said or done. Thus you cannot watch this movie and not be reminded that there is still much that is not known about what happened in the final days of Allen and Farrow's marriage. 

If that's not enough the roles Woody Allen wrote for himself, and for other men in this film, make Husbands and Wives even weirder. He makes clear that his character here lies to the interviewer about his desire for a (sexual) fling with his young student played by Juliette Lewis. It's visible in his acting. There is a scene in the classroom in which Woody Allen plays his character as totally consumed by lust for this young woman. And basically all the men in the movie are presented as horrible sexual predators, who would take any chance to bed a much younger woman. What makes this movie so fascinating is that Woody Allen is unapologetic in making his character utterly despicable. In the end his character tells the interviewer that he was wise enough not to have an affair with Juliette Lewis. This may be a lie, but the interviewer believes him. Thus the movie works as wish-fulfillment fantasy on three levels. First of all there is the fantasy that a young woman can fall in love with an older man, secondly the fantasy that you will be believed when you say that you did not have sex with a younger woman, and thirdly Allen's own fantasy that he is rational enough to not sleep with a younger woman, which in real life did not turn out to be true. 

84. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For &...

Lyrics

I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you

I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well yes I'm still running

You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I am starting to like U2's music more and more. Which is a bit of a shame, because I also am starting to become more and more irritated by Bono's world savior act, which besides being more than a bit hypocritical (and to some extent dishonest) is also quite problematic in other ways. The fact that he felt that he needed to make some sort of statement about Mandela with Ordinary Love and that he kind of  presents himself as a spokesman for Mandela's ideas is exemplary of that. On the other hand, I think Ordinary Love is one of the best popular pop songs I've heard in recent years. I really like it a lot. I also think it's the best U2 song after One and With or Without You. I also quite like this song, and I like it more than when I first heard it. I once saw a tweet being retweeteed about a movie that stated that the particular movie could have better been called like this song. Considering it is a movie made by a director associated with existentialist questions I believed the tweet and chose to link this song to that movie, my first of that director.

The Movie: L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)

I don't know what it says about me, but I did not have much trouble connecting to this movie.  I thought it was a movie that was very realistic about human nature. I liked it a lot and I look forward to seeing more films by Antonioni.  I don't think the characters here are exceptionally shallow, or exceptionally annoying, or exceptionally despairing, or other similar traits. They maybe are compared to heroic, passionate, moral characters in other movies, who would be desperate to solve a mystery, such as Rex was in Spoorloos, which I previously discussed on this blog. There we saw Rex unable to commit to a new relationship until he knew exactly what happened to his mysteriously disappeared wife. But I don't think it's all that cynical to say that most people in Rex' situation would behave similarly to Sandro and Claudia here. When Anna (Sandro's fiancee and Claudia's best friend) disappears during a cruise trip to the Aeolian islands, Sandro, Claudia and their co-travelers are at first distressed and are seriously searching the island, trying to find a clue about what might have happened to Anna. Sandro and Claudia even remain for a couple of days on the island, but in the end the search is fruitless and eventually all Sandro can do is report Anna missing at the nearest police station.

In the second half of the film considerable amount of time has passed since then. Sandro and Claudia travel Southern Italy, ostensibly to look for clues for Anna, but mostly to spend time with each other and frolic around in different hotels. The people complaining that not much happens in the second half of the movie are to some extent right. Not much happens indeed, but what should happen? Anna is not found and will not be found. Sandro and Claudia are no heroes, but ordinary people who cannot do much about that. They have to accept that and they do.

Life goes on, the world will keep on turning on without any regard for individual troubles, so you might as well try to make the best of every situation. And that's what Sandro and Claudia do. Antonioni also visualizes this philosophy very well. He very often, especially during the search on the island, films an actor in the foreground doing something, while in the background we see some other actor(s) doing something unrelated to the actor in the foreground. Everybody goes its own way and has his own troubles to cope with and does so in a very individual way. (One could also connect this to Antonioni's existentialist reputation and claim that this signifies that everybody is alone in the world). Antonioni also does this in what is for me the best scene of the movie. In the second part of the movie Sandro meets a couple of drawing artists and semi-accidentally drops ink over their drawings. One artist goes up to him, trying to beat him up, only to be restrained by the other artists. Angry but realizing that a fight would be fruitless they let Sandro go, trying to restore the drawings as best as they can. The camera pans away from them, while we see them doing this, while we see Sandro leaving and accidentally joining a group of monks (or something similar) walking somewhere. At the same time we see in the background a bunch of kids joyfully playing soccer, completely oblivious to Sandro, the monks, or the artists. Life goes on for everybody. 

      

   

83. Good Vibrations &...

Lyrics

I, I love the colorful clothes she wears
And the way the sunlight plays upon her hair
I hear the sound of a gentle word
On the wind that lifts her perfume through the air

I'm pickin' up good vibrations
She's giving me excitations
I'm pickin' up good vibrations (Oom bop, bop, good vibrations)
She's giving me excitations(Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop)
She's giving me excitations(Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop)
She's giving me excitations (Oom bop, bop, excitations)

Close my eyes
She's somehow closer now
Softly smile, I know she must be kind
When I look in her eyes
She goes with me to a blossom world

I'm pickin' up good vibrations
She's giving me excitations
I'm pickin' up good vibrations (Oom bop, bop, good vibrations)
She's giving me excitations (Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop)
She's giving me excitations (Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop)
She's giving me excitations (Oom bop, bop, excitations)

(Ah)
(Ah my my what elation)
I don't know where but she sends me there
(Ah my, my, what a sensation)
(Ah my, my, what elations)
(Ah my, my, what)

Gotta keep those lovin' good vibrations
A happenin' with her
Gotta keep those lovin' good vibrations
A happenin' with her
Gotta keep those lovin' good vibrations
A happenin'

Ah
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop, I'm pickin' up good vibrations)
She's giving me excitations (Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop)
She's na, na 

Na, na, na, na, na
Na, na, na
Na, na, na, na, na
Na, na, na
Do, do, do, do, do,
Do, do, do
Do, do, do, do, do,
Do, do, do

I understand that this was a very important and influential pop song, I just don't get it. I have this problem with other Beach Boys songs too, but I find most of them to be at least slightly enjoyable. I don't like this song at all. It's also very hard to link a movie to it, so I chose one about the invention of the vibrator.

The Movie: Hysteria (Tanya Wexler, 2011)

In a previous post I wrote about Amelia. I was one of the few people to like that movie. It was not very surprising though. I do enjoy these middlebrow biographical movies about pioneering inventors and explorers. So I also enjoyed Hysteria which is. by all accounts, a better movie than Amelia. Having said that, it is just about the least subversive movie possible about a subversive invention. For a movie about the invention of the vibrator it is also unbelievably prudish, only talking about sexual activities in euphemisms, complete with the giggling we usually associate with 12-year old kids when they hear something they shouldn't. To some extent the movie should be lauded for this. Considering it takes place in the 19th century, it could be argued that the movie at times successfully adopts, and adapts to, the mindset of that time and its people. If a progressive 19th century artist could make a movie about the invention of the vibrator, it would probably resemble this quite strongly. But a progressive person in the 19th century is a conservative one in the 21st, and the movie does at times play like it wants to appeal too much to everybody, even to those 'modern' conservatives who do not all think highly of all the changes brought on by the sexual revolutions of the 19th and 20th century. 

As such, while the movie very compellingly and entertainingly depicts how progressive doctor Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) comes to invent the vibrator together with the eccentric Edmund St. John Smythe (Rupert Everett, who is having a shitload of fun in the role) it focuses a bit too much on that. The movie is more interested in how Smythe and Granville might profit from their invention, and be helped by it, than in the societal changes brought about by their invention. It's certainly not like they are not discussed, but the movie could have done much more with it. Especially because the movie, at least, at the beginning pretends to be interested in the importance science can have for society, especially for those who are not very well of. The movie begins after all with  a scene in which Mortimer quits a hospital because his boss there, not believing in germs, does not wash his hands, nor does he disinfect the wounds of a poor old woman. Furthermore as the proud British movie it is, it constantly name drops revolutionary British scientist and thinkers, without ever returning to their ideas again. The movie wants desperately to be nothing more than light entertainment, and it works very well as such. But this material could have been even more interesting, if the movie had a bit more guts, and was a bit more critical, or subversive, or tried to link these ideas to the modern world. 

The movie also could have given the women in the movie more agency. After all, the fact that it gave women more agency over their lives is the reason the vibrator is such an important invention. At times the movie plays as if someone only wanted to make a movie about the vibrator, because it allowed to make one of those 'delightfully' prudish movies full of shamefully giggling ladies, not because anyone really cared about the vibrator. The movie would also be better if it gave the women more agency, that would mean that Maggie Gyllenhaal would have a bigger role and that's always a good thing. Her character is also the best realized one. She is a feminist who fights for women's rights to vote, but understands that those rights are meaningless until the majority of  the Britsh people (both men and women) have food, clothes, a home and education.So she runs a settlement home and needs a doctor. The movie quite predictably leads to a romance between Gyllenhaal and Dancy, which still works, because both the actors and their characters are charming and kind. It's a pleasure to watch both of them. Dancy especially is quite surprisingly good. I had heard of him before, and after searching IMDB found out I had seen several movies in which he had a substantial role, but I had never actually noticed him. I probably won't in the future either, but this role seems perfect for him.    
    

  

82. Love of my Life &...

Lyrics

Love of my life, you've hurt me
You've broken my heart
And now you leave me
Love of my life, can't you see?

Bring it back, bring it back
Don't take it away from me
Because you don't know
What it means to me

Love of my life, don't leave me
You've taken my love
And now desert me
Love of my life, can't you see?

Bring it back, bring it back
Don't take it away from me
Because you don't know
What it means to me

You will remember
When this is blown over
And everything's all by the way
When I grow older
I will be there at your side
To remind you how I still love you
I still love you

Hurry back, hurry back
Please, bring it back home to me
Because you don't know
What it means to me
Love of my life
Love of my life
Yeah

Queen proves here that they do not need to write epic rock operas to make great songs. This is a very sober, even simple song, that's nonetheless a really great romantic song. It is also interesting to note that even though Freddy Mercury is often considered a homosexual, he wrote this song about a woman. It is not hard to link this song to a movie. There have probably been even more movies about a man losing the love of his life, than there have been songs about it. The movie I chose may just be the most popular romantic movie of all time. 

The Movie: Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

Casablanca is indeed a great romance. But to only call it a romance, is to sell it short. This is also a great war drama; one of the best World War 2 movies I have seen. It could also be argued, I believe, that this is the greatest propaganda movie of all time. I do not mean that as a slight at all. The elements that turn this into propaganda only heighten the movie's strengths for me. I have been fascinated by propaganda objects since I first really studied them in history classes. Take, for example, the war propaganda of the First and Second World War. Much of it is revolting, especially of course the Nazi propaganda, Still, it is easy to understand why it was effective. While the content of these propagandist objects was deeply retrograde, their form was quite intelligent. National caricatures (as I've often written I love analyzing the representation of nations and nationalism) are a great example of this. The way these caricatures are used in propaganda objects reveals, in the 'best' propaganda, that the creators of these objects have a great understanding of how textual and visual signfiers can be used effectively to create meaning. And it is fascinating to see how easily one can reassign meaning to familiar symbol. The same American eagle for example can mean different things when put in a different context. In some propagandist objects, this re-contextualizing is done in such revolutionary and interesting ways, that many of these objects, no matter how horrible they are, can in some way be seen as experimental, progressive art. And much of the techniques used in propaganda, are now being used in television news, narrative films and advertising. The influence of propaganda on movies is probably most visible in the editing of movies. One of the most influential editing techniques of the twentieth century was used by Soviet filmmakers in the 1920's when they made propaganda movies about the very new, communist, Soviet Union. It is not surprising that this technique is now called Soviet-montage. 

This was a rather long digression, but I found it necessary. I have read some reviews lauding this movie, but criticizing it, because it has some propagandist elements. I think that these propagandist elements are exactly what makes this movie great (besides that I do not have much of a problem anyway with anti-Nazi propaganda such as it is here). Moreover the propagandist elements are not very understated here. The movie's main aim is not to make you swoon over the romance between Rick and Ilsa. I mean, it is a great romance, and Bogart and  Bergman, act it out so great that the flashback to their Paris days isn't even all that necessary to make understand that they really love each other. It is so well written though that it doesn't matter and, like anything else in the movie, it is a joy to watch. But the romance here serves a higher purpose. It wants to sell the idea that the war effort of the (French) resistance is more important than anything else. Serving the resistance is worth losing the love of your life over. This is basically liberalized by Rick's famous speech at the end when he claims that the problems of three little people don't amount to much in this crazy world. That the movie is more interested in making a point about the war, than in Rick and Ilsa's romance is perhaps also exemplified by the change Rick, the hero of the story undergoes. If this was the usual romance he would be at first a man who does not love Ilsa, and then turn into a man who does love her. Here it is immediately clear he loves Ilsa. Rick is presented as a hero here because he turns from a cynical realist who is willing to do business with anyone, even Nazi's, if it befits him, into an (sort of) idealist who realizes that there are some things greater than himself, and who is willing to resist the Nazi's. The same can perhaps be said about Captain Louis Renault. He is played by Claude Rains, who is as great as Bergman and Bogart. In fact every actor in the movie is perfectly cast and gives a wonderful performance. They are all, of course helped by great dialogue that seems explicitly written for the actor saying it. One of the reasons the movie is such a joy to watch is the fact that all the actors are seemingly enjoying themselves so much. That's even more remarkable, because it is probably not true. There were apparently many tensions during filming, especially between Bogart and Bergman.

Now, this and Inglourious Basterds are my favorite World War 2 movies. But the first 30-40 minutes of the movie are even greater. I loved the way Rick's cafe was portrayed, full of scheming realists and characters who are seamlessly introduced and than just as seamlessly forgotten. The cafe is sort of a micro cosmos of European society in world war 2. It's filled with people who try to get a transit visa to America in order to escape the war, and they sit at tables next to Nazi officials who are there ostensibly to keep an eye out for potential 'dangers', but mostly to gamble, drink, and have fun. Nowhere in Casablanca is the war more alive than at Rick's, but there is also no place in Casablanca where it is easier to forget and escape the war for a while. And at the center of all this is Rick himself, who is a friend to all. He may hate himself for this, but it is an arrangement with which he is perfectly content. The characters we meet at Rick's are all perfectly written, but these scenes are even more interesting for the way the portray World War 2 in a way that's quite unusual to us modern audiences. Now we are aware of the true horrors of Nazi Germany. We know about the Holocaust and the concentration camps. The concentration camps are mentioned in Casablanca too, but their scope and their horrors were still relatively unknown in 1942. This means that while most modern movies focus (rightfully) on the immorality of the war and focus heavily on the memory of the (Jewish) victims and the effects the war had on their descendants, Casablanca  focuses much more on the geopolitical conflict in the Second World War. The war is a very bureaucratic affair here, whose battles can be won by thinking logically and being smarter than your enemy. Thus Casablanca is filled with wonderful scenes of characters thinking and inventing strategic schemes. And the audience is invited to think with them, and to see how and why the characters reach their decisions, and what consequences these decisions may have. The greatest example of this may be the final night that Rick and Ilsa have together. The scene has so much subtext it is astonishing. Still my favorite scene in the movie is not surprising considering, I spent so much time lauding the propagandist elements of the movie. It is of course the singing of La Marsellaise over the German folk song. And my favorite shot in the movie comes near the end when the bottle of wine from the Vichy region breaks. As for my favorite line? Well, that I cannot choose. There are few movies whose dialogue is as sharp as Casablanca. Also, it is often ridiculously funny. I will watch this film many more times. 

81. Mr. Blue Sky &...

Lyrics

Sun is shinin' in the sky
There ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped rainin', everybody's in the lane
And don't you know, it's a beautiful new day, hey

Runnin' down the Avenue
See how the sun shines brightly
In the city on the streets where once was pity
Mr. Blue Sky is living here today, hey

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

Hey, you with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration Mr. Blue Sky's up there waitin'
And today is the day we've waited for

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

Hey there Mr. Blue, we're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you

Hey there Mr. Blue, we're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everyone is positive

Mr. Blue you did it right
But soon comes Mr. Night
Creepin' over, now his hand is on your shoulder
Never mind, I'll remember you this, I'll remember you this way

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

Hey there Mr. Blue, we're so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you

I am not very familiar with Electric Light Orchestra, but I am not much of a fan of them based on what I've heard. I don't like this song much either, but I can see why it is so popular. It is a song made to cheer you up. It reminded me of that great scene in Hannah and her Sisters where Woody Allen, contemplating death goes into a movie theater and watches such an enthralling movie that he realizes life is worth living. I linked this song, not to Hannah and Her Sisters, but to the movie Allen was watching there.

The Movie: Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

Duck Soup is a Marx Brothers comedy. Together with Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, The Marx Brothers, headlined by Groucho Marx, are often considered among the most important influential comedians from the early days of film. I still haven't seen anything of Lloyd, but based on Duck Soup I prefer Keaton and Chaplin over The Marx Brothers. Their movies (or those I've seen of them) are both funnier and slightly more substantial than Duck Soup. That doesn't mean I did not enjoy Duck Soup, but I did wish it did a bit more with its premise. Duck Soup tells the 'story' of Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx), who is by circumstance appointed as dictator of Freedonia. At the same time Trentino, the ambassador of Sylvania tries to create a revolution in Freedonia, so Sylvania can take it over. He sends two goofing spies to Freedonia, who mostly create chaos, while at the same time Rufus and Trentino develop a personal grudge against one another, because of Mrs. Teasdale. This leads to all kinds of funny scenes. 

Although the film is anarchic and irreverent of authority figures, its (political) backdrop is a bit random. The movie could have much of the same jokes and even much of the same plot if it was set in, say, a supermarket. That is not much of a problem, but as I've discussed on this blog earlier, I am a fan of (political) satire. It is not that the movie does not contain that at all, but I wished it would have been a bit more satirical, and that the best gags in the movie were more connected to the main premise. Still, the movie does show how vapid the ideas of the politicians are, by showing that personal gains are all that Rufus and Trentino care about. Having said that, I've read critics trying to present this movie as some sort of commentary/reflection of Hitler's rise to power. That has more to do with the fact that Hitler became Germany's leader in the same year the movie came out, than with the actual content of the movie. Duck Soup does not offer any insights into that, and is also totally uninterested in offering them. It just wants to be an entertaining comedy, and to present it as some sort of social commentary is to do it an enormous disservice. Movies do not need to be social commentaries, and they certainly need not have a special message. Sometimes just being an entertaining comedy is enough, especially if it is as entertaining as Duck Soup.

Watching Duck Soup, it struck me how much this can be seen as something of a 'transitional' comedy. It combines rather old-fashioned comedy perfectly with more modern humor. And it combines the strengths of silent cinema really well with those of sound film. While most of the actors around Groucho Marx act rather theatrically, and in a way that is now very much out of fashion, Groucho basically acts as a sort of stand-up comedian. It is very easy to see why, and how, Woody Allen was influenced by him. When Groucho speaks we often see him in a close-up, or a (medium) shot in which he is the only one of interest. The jokes and one-liners he says are very much structured in a way that is familiar to us, modern audiences. Still, the best jokes in the movie are visual jokes, which rely very much on the movement and placement of both the actors in the frame, and the camera itself. The influence of silent cinema is very much visible during these scenes (if only because spy Pinky (Harpo Marx) is a mute). In many scenes not only do the actors not say anything, but we also do not hear any music on the soundtrack. One example is a scene in which the two spies Chicolini (Chico Marx) and Pinki irritate a street vendor by passing around his hat. But the best scene in the movie comes when Chicolini and Pinki break into Mrs. Tisdale's house. Pinki pretends to be Rufus, only Rufus himself is there too. While nervously trying to hide Pinki breaks a mirror. Rufus hears something and now goes to the mirror which he does not now is broken. What follows is a wonderful scene before the broken mirror in which Pinki has to imitate Rufus perfectly, so he doesn't realize that the mirror is broken and that thus there is an intruder. It's a long and incredibly funny scene, timed perfectly by both actors.What's most exceptional about it though, is how intelligently it is timed. They realized that Pinki must react to Rufus' behavior, but he that obviously cannot anticipate his behavior and cannot react at the same time. So we see that Harpo Marx manages to react just a fraction of a second later than his brother. I have seen quite some other scenes in the same vein, but they completely forget this, and have the two subjects of the scene behave in perfect unison. Thus the scene is quite extraordinary not only for its timing, but also for its great attention to detail. 

      

80. Paranoid &...

Lyrics

Finished with my woman 'cause she couldn't help me with my mind
People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy
Think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to pacify
Can you help me, occupy my brain?

Oh yeah
I need someone to show me the things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal

And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it's too late

For a long time I only knew Ozzy Osbourne as the idiotic pater familias on his on reality show. I thought he was something of a C-star who was at one time semi-successful with some long-forgotten. Basically I thought he was nothing more than a typical reality 'star'. I was thus quite surprised to learn he actually was a pretty respected musician who has a relatively important place in rock history. I should have known better, but as I've written in my entries on Metallica metal, and similar music like it, never interested me much. Still, I like this song, even though the title doesn't seem to match the lyrics. The protagonist doesn't seem to be paranoid, he seems to be more of a maladjusted manic-depressive (and the movie I linked the song to is probably the best movie about such a protagonist). But of course the lyrics aren't all that important here. The song's main goal is to rock our socks off. It does so.

The Movie: Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)

Like Rebel Without A Cause, Taxi Driver is one of those cultural touchstones I was familiar with before ever being really interested in movies. It was one of those movies that was regularly referenced around me as an important work of art even by people who are not necessarily great movie lovers. I knew about "Are you talking to me" before I knew anything else about Scorsese. I have now seen it two or three times and I can confirm it is indeed a great work of art that has been rightfully discussed a lot. The first time I saw Taxi Driver I was quite young and did not know really get why Scorsese was considered so great. I had seen Goodfellas once on an Ipod and didn't like it much, I saw half of Raging Bull and was bored to death, and I didn't like The Departed. The only Scorsese movie I liked (quite a lot) was Gangs  of New York. After seeing Taxi Driver I not only loved the movie, but I also realized that Scorsese could indeed be a director capable of really great stuff. It made me interested in his other movies. Though I still haven't seen all of them, I consider him now a truly great director. Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, After Hours, and The Wolf of Wall Street are the ones I consider to be his best. And though I now understand why Raging Bull is lauded I still don't care much about that movie, nor about The Departed. I haven't yet re-watched Goodfellas, though I suspect I will love it now. 

What also helps in understanding Scorsese's movies is the fact that Roger Ebert's best writing is on Scorsese's movies, especially those he wrote a Great Movie essay on, such as Taxi Driver. Among the many great insights in that review is "that we have all felt alone as Travis. Most of us are better at dealing with it." And "the film can be seen as a series of his failed attempts to connect, every one of them hopelessly wrong". It's indeed Travis' loneliness that's indeed at the core of the movie. And the reason for that loneliness is Travis' mental instability which makes him unable to connect to people. But what's really tragic and great about the movie is that Travis is fully aware of his insanity, he knows that to have a better life he has to connect somehow with people, otherwise he'll be doomed to live his life in utter misery. And I think the movie shows that if Travis could have been able to get a little help from anybody, or if he had just a little bit more luck, he could have fixed his problems, at least to some extent. Because the ways in which Travis tries to deal with his problems aren't all that irrational. 

Why does Travis become a taxi driver for example? He is a traumatized Vietnam veteran who can't sleep and is, I believe, aware that if he just sits around doing nothing at night he will start abusing himself. Taxi driving is a good distraction that at the same time can earn him some money. The problem of course is that Travis sees New York as a hellhole filled with scum, especially at night. As he drives around New York we see the city from his point of view, and in these scenes Scorsese paints a rather dark picture of New York. Here New York is a city in which the depravity and violence isn't even beneath the surface. It's right there for everyone to see. This does not mean that Scorsese really sees New York as a horrible place with horrible people. The movie is completely shot from Travis' point of view. It's his view of New York that we see and whether that's true or not doesn't matter for Travis' psyche. Scorsese only sometimes backs away from Travis' point of view to show us that it's not all as bad as it seems. There is of course the scene in which Harvey Keitel gently dances with Jodie Foster, one of the few that's not seen from Travis' point of view. It's clear in that scene that Foster and Keitet have a much gentler relationship than Travis thinks. Which does not mean that it is a very healthy relationship.

An even more interesting scene is I think the one in which Travis goes to the place where his colleagues hang out. The scene starts with a medium shot in which we see a bunch of people chatting at a table, and then Travis comes in. First he is in the same shot with his colleagues, but gradually we see only him in a medium shot, while we only hear his colleagues on the same table talking. That's first of all a very effective way to convey Travis' loneliness, even when he is in company. It may even be a more effective shot than the famous one in which the camera pans away to an empty hall when he has the unfortunate phone conversation with Betsy. But the reason I am discussing this scene is because of the following shots. At one point Travis starts completely zoning out of his colleague's conversation and looks somewhere toward the back of the restaurant. In the next shot we then see a couple of threateningly looking (black) men. Scorsese makes clear that this is a shot from Travis point of view. In any case we then return to table, Travis has managed to focus on the conversation with his colleagues again. They talk some more, exchange some pleasantries and stuff, and as they leave Travis asks Wizard (Peter Boyle) if he could talk to him. We now see the group in a wider shot from the back of the restaurant, which means we also see the backs of the other guests in that restaurant. We see that none of them look like the men Travis saw from his point of view. They all seem to be pretty civilized people, minding their own business. It's a smart way to show Travis is mentally unstable. When asks to talk to Wizard about his problems though we again realize that Travis is fully aware he has problems and that he also has to some extent the right idea about how to fix them. He should talk to people who might help him. Unfortunately for Travis, Wizard is a good guy, but he is no psychologist. He tries to comfort Travis, but his words are completely meaningless and both men know it.


 



   

79. Year of the Cat &...

Lyrics

On a morning from a Bogart movie 
In a country where they turn back time 
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre 
Contemplating a crime 

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running 
Like a watercolor in the rain 
Don't bother asking for explanations 
She'll just tell you that she came 

In the year of the cat 

She doesn't give you time for questions 
As she locks up your arm in hers 
And you follow till your sense of which direction 
Completely disappears 

By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls 
There's a hidden door she leads you to 
These days, she says, "I feel my life 
Just like a river running through" 

The year of the cat 

Why she looks at you so coolly? 
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea 
She comes in incense and patchouli 
So you take her, to find what's waiting inside 

The year of the cat 

Well morning comes and you're still with her 
And the bus and the tourists are gone 
And you've thrown away your choice and lost your ticket 
So you have to stay on 

But the drumbeat strains of the night remain 
In the rhythm of the new-born day 
You know sometime you're bound to leave her 
But for now you're going to stay 

In the year of the cat 
Year of the cat


I hardly know anything about Al Stewart. Yet he has made two pretty good songs. This is one of them. Vincent is another. His voice and lyrics create a very evocative, melancholic mood. The movie I linked this song to has its main protagonist imagining himself being in a Bogart movie and talking to Bogart, like Stewart does in first verse of this song.

The Movie: Play it Again, Sam (Herbert Ross, 1972)

This blog could just as easily have been called Allen and the Doors. I didn't choose that, because it sounds awful, but Woody Allen's movies have been equally important to me as Tarantino's. Annie Hall was one of those movies that changed the way I view the medium. It was one of the first movies that showed that you could use comedy to explore pretty serious ideas and that comedy could be great art. Apart from that it was (and still is) one of the most inventive movies I had ever seen. I saw the movie before I studied media and culture and knew only vaguely who Marshall McLuhan was. But what Allen did with him in the famous scene still blew my mind, simply because he did what he did. Annie Hall probably had an even bigger effect because I think I saw the movie the same day I saw The Big Lebowski for the first time (and because Annie Hall reminded me of a girl I liked in high school). In any case since then I saw many more Woody Allen movies, and as I grew older I also realized how affecting they can be, and how they are very humanist and compassionate. I think Scoop is the only Woody Allen movie I dislike. Most of them I think are great or at least enjoyable.

Play it Again, Sam is one of the decently enjoyable ones. It shows how great a director Woody Allen was, because here he is 'just'' the leading actor and the screenwriter. Herbert Ross directs this film in the most banal way possible. I haven't seen any other movie by Ross yet, but he doesn't have a really great reputation. To be fair though, Woody Allen's screenplay isn't all that great either. It mostly works as a series of individually enjoyable series of scenes with some fun dialogue, than as a coherent story. Allen plays Allan, a film critic fascinated by Bogart movies, and especially Casablanca. He gets dumped by his wife at the beginning of the movie, and with the help of a friendly couple played by Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts tries to get a new girlfriend. He also imagines he is getting love advice from Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy), which makes for some nice, slightly absurd scenes. A large part of the movie just consists of Allan failing to make an impression on his dates and making a complete idiot out of himself. These scenes show how really great Woody Allen was/is at physical comedy. There is one scene in his appartment wherein, because of his anxiety he keeps bumping into stuff while his date (and Keaton and Roberts) are seating there, only to get more nervous because of that, and thus even clumsier. It's probably the funniest scene in the movie. What this movie also shows is that even though Allen's jokes (not always rightfully, or intelligently) scorn other people, it is always Allen himself who is the butt of the joke. The problem here is that his character is a bit over the top, even for the standards of Woody Allen. He is a bit clumsier than usual, a little bit more of an idiot, so it is not an easily identifiable character for whom we have much sympathy. Also I hoped the movie would do a bit more with Allen's profession as a film critic and have some funny/serious observations about movies. 

Still, this is a very funny movie, and the best (running) joke doesn't actually even involve Allen directly. It's also a joke that would not be possible today. In fact I didn't even get the joke the first time it was made in the movie. (Tony Roberts) calls up someone and tells him the following:  I'll be at 362-9296 for a while; then I'll be at 648-0024 for about fifteen minutes; then I'll be at 752-0420; and then I'll be home, at 621-4598. Yeah, right George, bye-bye. I only realized the second time this joke was made that Dick is talking about at what phone numbers he should be called. The movie plays with the cliche of the busy businessman, who has to always be on touch. The joke is being repeated several times in the movie and it becomes gradually funnier and more preposterous. At one point Dick calls George from a night club. Obviously Dick is a busy man, who neglects his wife Linda (Diane Keaton), who naturally starts falling in love with Allan and vice versa. These are probably the best scenes in the movie, and the ones that remind most how good Allen is at mixing comedy, romance and drama. This is the first movie Allen and Keaton did together and it is immediately clear their partnership works. And that's because Keaton is Allen's equal at all times. She is just as much a genius of comic timing as he, and is just as much a master of Allen's rapid-fire dialogue. In every single one of their movies together Keaton completely holds her own against Allen. I think Allen's movies with Mia Farrow are overall better than his movies with Keaton, but Keaton is a better actress. Proof of that is also the fact that in 1972 she also played Kay Corleone in The Godfather. 

Soon I will discuss a film with Mia Farrow and Woody Allen on this blog. In that post I'll also talk more about the fact that Allen himself is not a very good person, to say the least. If he were, this movie would probably immediately get remade with the protagonist getting advice from Woody Allen, instead of from Humphrey Bogart. And Woody Allen could have even played himself. It would not even be a very unnecessary remake. The 'gettting advice from a fictional Bogart' part of this movie isn't explored in a really interesting way here, until the ending. Linda and Allan both realize that Linda should be with Dick, and Dick himself realizes that he has been neglecting Linda too much. This all leads to an ending which explicitly references (or basically copies) the ending of Casablanca, which Allan makes explicit. Allan tells Linda the famous final words Bogart told Ingrid Bergman in that movie, and is the happiest we've seen them. The fact that he lost the girl doesn't matter to him. The fact that he could finally emulate a real movie star is what matters to him. It's a bit too little too late. It's the only time the movie really explores how movies and fictional romantic narratives have an effect on our real life, on the way we see ourselves and on the way we think about our love life. And how it works the other way around too. The way we think about love in real life affects the romantic narratives that are being told. Allen has of course explored these ideas in other movies. I think he wanted to that here too (the Bogart conceit doesn't add much else to the movie), but he didn't yet really know how to combine it with his romantic comedy, and thus mostly failed at that level. Though he wasn't probably helped much by director Herbert Ross.