Please, Mr. Postman

Film: A Letter to Three Wives
Format: Movies! Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.

Since I’ve watched The Great Dictator, the biggest whole in my classic movie knowledge/viewing history is probably A Letter to Three Wives. Naturally, when I saw it on the schedule of one of the several movie channels I have available to me, I recorded it to knock it out. I literally knew nothing about this going in. I didn’t know who was in it, who directed it, or what the basic plot was about. Based on the title, I assumed it was a letter from a man to three former wives about something. Well, I was pretty wrong about that.

Instead, the letter in A Letter to Three Wives actually comes from another woman. In this case, the woman in question is named Addie Ross (an uncredited Celeste Holm), who never appears on camera but narrates the film. Addie, we learn, has just run off with the husband of one of three women in town. All of the women know Addie, who is more or less perfect in the eyes of everyone who knows her. Even more, all of the husbands know Addie as well, and all three revere her greatly. Finally, all three marriages have a particular tension, so the end result is very much in doubt.

Two Shakespeare Plays in One

Film: Cleopatra (1963)
Format: DVDs from NetFlix on laptop.

I’m on a short vacation, and am spending the next few days doing a lot of cleaning around my house. Fun, right? It makes sense to me, though, that as I get these breaks between quarters, that I should attempt to knock out some of the longest films I have left on my Oscar lists. The biggest of those Kahunas is Cleopatra from 1963, the only remaining film I had that crossed the four-hour mark. So, while I degrease my kitchen, I’ve spent far too long watching the only movie to both top its year’s box office receipts and still lose money.

It’s a stretch to say that this is really two complete plays of Shakespeare, but it touches on Julius Caesar in the first half of the film and then pretty much runs through the entire plot of Antony and Cleopatra. As such, Cleopatra is very much a film of two halves. The first half deals with Julius Caesar’s (Rex Harrison) battles with Pompey and his encounter with Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor). It follows through to the death of Caesar at the hands of the Roman Senate. It touches on a bit of the chaos afterwards, but essentially puts the last couple of acts of Shakespeare’s play into a 60-second voiceover. The second half of the film, which starts with that speed through of the revenge for Caesar’s death, concerns the romance between Cleopatra and Mark Antony (Richard Burton). This section, slightly longer than the first (although the film is pretty neatly divided in halves), follows Shakespeare’s play pretty closely.

Gamesmanship

Film: Sleuth
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Years ago, when I was a relatively young lad, I was watching television with my father when a movie came on. My dad has always been a fan of the intricate, especially when it comes to puzzles and mysteries. He’s brilliant with crossword puzzles, for instance. I could tell right away that Dad really enjoyed this movie, and I think he’d seen it before. The film in question was Sleuth, which I just watched again for the first time in about 30 years.

I can’t explain why this film has been so difficult for me to find, considering the both stars, Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, and the director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, were nominated for Oscars. But NetFlix doesn’t have it (they have the remake with Caine and Jude Law) and my library system doesn’t have it. Sleuth, for all its greatness, is nearly impossible to find, which is a damn shame.

This is a film that I’ve wanted to rewatch for some time, and I’m happy to say that it did not disappoint. Here’s the thing about Sleuth: I remembered this movie almost perfectly. I didn’t remember all of the details, but I did remember many of them, and I also remembered al of the major plot points, the double crosses, and the twists. I hadn’t seen this movie in at least three decades (possibly more), but I still remembered the details.

This is a devious little tale that starts simply and builds through its two plus hours. We start with a pair of gentlemen meeting in a beautiful English garden. The older man is Andrew Wyke (Olivier), a member of the gentry and a writer of detective novels of the sort made popular by Agatha Christie. In Wyke’s books, his detective Merrydew always has all of the answers while the police are bumbling simpletons constantly in awe of the great man’s brilliance. The younger man is Milo Tindle (Caine), who runs a couple of hairdressers’ shops. It would seem they have little in common, but there is one important point between them. That single fact is that Milo is having an affair with Andrew’s wife.

And now we take a turn for the surreal and strange. Andrew has decided that he doesn’t much love his wife anyway. Besides, he’s got a mistress already. The problem as he sees it is Marguerite, his wife. Poor Milo doesn’t have a great deal of money, and Marguerite is used to being kept in something much more than simple style. His worry is that after a few weeks with Milo and living in poverty, she’ll come crawling back, and he can’t have that. Instead, he proposes something of a game. The idea is that Milo will break into the house in disguise, “steal” Marguerite’s jewelry, and fence it through a fence that Andrew has arranged. This will give them enough money to live decently and keep Marguerite away for good.

Of course, that really isn’t what Andrew is after. Instead, this becomes a double cross. Andrew, once he has Milo completely in an unexplainable position, he shoots him.

I’m not going to spoil this, because this is a film that deserves to be watched cold. Knowing the set-up (slightly less than the first half of the film) is enough to get you going without ruining the wildly entertaining second act or the vicious, revenge-served-cold third act in which both Caine and Olivier earn every bit of their Oscar nominations.

Sleuth is fascinating and entertaining, a film that never slows up or gets dull. Our two main characters are well drawn and fully three-dimensional. Olivier is a man too sold on his own talent and breeding and very much on his own intelligence and skill as a gamesman. Caine is ruthless and low, but charming, the sort of man with a hint of danger about him, but in a way that is almost impossible to put a name to. The joy here is in part with the intricate and detailed plot. What’s more of a joy, though, is the fact that the two men woul are battling each other through the entirety of the film are both smart and devious.

I like this film a lot, and I’m happy to have had the chance to watch it again. I cannot fathom why it is so difficult to find (again, the remake is ubiquitous at every place that sells movies of which I am a sometime patron). If I ever found this film on a shelf, I’d buy it because it’s a film that deserves to be watched more than once. Admittedly, the plot twists don’t hold up to multiple viewings—the film is less effective when you know what happens next. The rewatching is more for the joy of seeing Olivier and Caine work with such a great script and in such a magnificent setting.

It’s worth noting that this was Mankiewicz’s final film. It’s a hell of a last film and shows that even toward the end of his career, he lost none of his ability to surprise an audience, shock them, or simply wow them with the tale unfolding on screen.

If you can find Sleuth at a rental store or your library, get it and watch it, and bask in two of the finest performances of the 1970s. If you can’t find it, set aside some time, pour yourself a glass of something posh, and click here.

Why to watch Sleuth: It’s a great damn story.
Why not to watch: The middle part is more obvious to the audience than it should be.

No Shoes, Full Service

Film: The Barefoot Contessa
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

When people talk about movies about the movies, one that rarely gets mentioned, at least within earshot of me, is The Barefoot Contessa. Having watched the film, I think this may be simply because people haven’t seen it, not because it doesn’t rank with films like 8 ½ or The Player. It’s one hell of a film, and it’s one hell of a meta-film. There’s quite a bit more here than just a story.

Movies about movies require a particular level of self-awareness, and this film has that in spades. We start at the end, at the funeral of the eponymous Contessa. The bulk of the film is told from the point of view of Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart), a screenwriter and director hitting difficult and desperate times. At the start of the story he tells, Dawes is starting to claw his way back in Hollywood as much as he can. To get there, he’s hooked up with Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens), a man far too wealthy for his own good with a yen to stroke his own ego by making a movie. To do this, he wants a new face, and has gone to Madrid with Harry, his publicist Oscar Muldoon (Edmond O’Brien), and a fading drunk actress named Myrna (Mari Aldon).

They meet a dancer named Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner), and despite her immediate dislike of Kirk Edwards, she agrees to a screen test. In part, this is because she trusts Harry. In part, this is because her terrible, hateful mother wishes her not to. And then, well, then the film becomes something very different than one might expect. It goes in directions different and unusual for a film that is at least in part a skewering of the Hollywood system and the movie industry. Fortunately, this makes it a better film, because it makes it a less predictable film.

In truth, the plot here isn’t particularly difficult to explain or understand, but it is staggering, and worth discovering on one’s own without having it much spoiled. There’s a lot here I’d much rather talk about than a plot summary, anyway, because this is a film with a number of levels, and it clicks on all of them.

Bogart plays his role with a degree of world weariness that seems to suit him. He looks world weary. His face was made for black-and-white photography, and in color, as in this film, he looks old and worn, but has lost none of his power as an actor. Bogart plays this role as it should be played—a man who has been beaten down and defeated by life, but who has emerged on the other side of it with a measure of happiness and self-respect. Having given up the bottle and (one imagines) any number of other vices, he is content with his scripts, the films he directs, and the love of Jerry (Elizabeth Sellars), a script girl who loves him back just as intensely. O’Brien’s Oscar Muldoon is the quintessential Hollywood press agent; he’s sleazy and dirty, and would feel right at home in a film like Sweet Smell of Success, but like Bogart, has a certain world-weariness to him that suits both his own hangdog expression and the role. Oscar has seen everything, covered everything up, and made amends on someone else’s behalf for anything imaginable, and he’s acquired the 1000-yard stare to go with it. And he still does it, but he’s also wised up to exactly what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.

There are three men in the film who vie for Maria’s romantic attention, and all three have some particular similarities. The trio is made up of fabulously wealthy men who all have a particular vulnerability. Kirk Edwards is the first, although he truly never has a shot with Maria. He’s far too controlling, a little boy in a man’s body, demanding his own way and using both his money and threats to force others into compliance. When, halfway through the film he is essentially rendered impotent, he reacts in the only way he knows how. Second is Alberto Bravano (Marius Goring) has all of the foibles of Edwards without the self-righteousness but with a disturbing shamelessness that makes him particularly unappealing. Third is Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini (Rossano Brazzi), who eventually wins her and marries her, but is physically impotent, which for Maria may be the biggest crime.

And then there is Maria, around whom the entire film revolves. It is, after all, her funeral that we start at and her funeral that we return to at the end of the film. I’ve never been a big fan of Ava Gardner, but that may only be because I didn’t like the first several of her films that I saw. Had this been my first exposure to her, I’d have been a fan from the start. She inhabits this role perfectly, as if born to play it. Maria Vargas is a poor girl made good, and a poor girl unable to live in that world. I don't know if that's true of Ava Gardner, but she makes it work here.

I watched this one on a whim tonight, just scrolling through what was available streaming and what still needed to be seen from the list. It was one hell of a good choice, because this one is one hell of a great film. This one I will watch again.

Why to watch The Barefoot Contessa: It’s a better film than you think for a film you probably haven’t heard of.
Why not to watch: Looking for this film is likely to turn up a bunch of cookbooks and cooking shows. Bite me, Ina Garten!

Strange Romance

Films: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Wedding Banquet
Format: VHS from DeKalb Public Library (Ghost), DVD from NetFlix (Wedding), both on big ol’ television.

First, apologies. The Internet crapped out on us last night, and I was unable to upload this post. Suffice to say that you can expect a second update late tonight. I hope.

What is the appeal of a romance picture? It’s hardly a sexist comment to suggest that romances are, in general, made for women. Yes, that’s a generalization, but I think it’s an accurate one. Many romances, both good and bad, involve presenting women with something completely unachievable in real life. Why else would the damn Twilight books and movies be so popular? Unachievable romance.

Perhaps no film accomplished this sort of romance as fully and completely as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. We start with a young widow named Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney), who has decided to get on with her life, something that widowed women in 1900 didn’t do. Her mother-in-law (Isobel Elsom) and spinster sister-in-law Eva (Victoria Horne) are desperately against her leaving, of course. The mother-in-law seems to disagree with the notion mostly so she won’t be alone; Eva because it would mean losing control of Lucy. Regardless, using her husband’s willed shares of a gold mine, Lucy and her daughter Anna (Natalie Wood, at least at this point in the film) move to a small seaside community.

Once there, Lucy rents a little cottage off by itself despite the fact that it’s been mainly empty for four years and appears to be haunted by the ghost of the sea captain who lived there until he allegedly killed himself. She rents the house anyway, and the captain, a youngish man named Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison), manifests himself and tries to scare her off, but fails. She loves the house, and will keep it. They come to an arrangement of sorts—she’ll eventually will the house to become a home for old seamen, and he’ll not manifest to Anna and he’ll stay in his old room.

Almost immediately, Lucy loses her stipend—the gold mine has played out, but even without an income, she refuses to leave the house she has loved so much. As a way out of the financial pickle, Captain Gregg proposes to narrate his life story to her for her to turn into a book. He does, and the book is published and sells, in no small part because of the salty language. So at least the money thing is handled. It’s also at this time that he tells her to call him Daniel, and he decides to call her Lucia. With the book completed, Captain Gregg tells Lucy that she should spend time with living people, particularly with men, even though she doesn’t really want to. It’s evident at this point that the two of them are deeply in love with each other despite the small problem of him being, y’know, dead.

It’s at the publisher’s office that Lucy meets Miles Fairley (George Sanders), an author of children’s books and a man far more forward than most would dare to be. Seriously, when he talks to her, he looms over her. At one point, they share a cab ride, and he just about sits in her lap. Anyway, romance of a sort blossoms, and it’s evident that Captain Gregg disapproves. Despite this, he decides that Lucy must be allowed to attempt to find happiness on her own, and so he tells her in a fairly poignant scene that he will leave her in peace, and that she will remember him only as a dream, and that the dream will eventually fade. This happens, of course, and of course Fairley is a bastard who’s already married and has made a habit of pulling this trick on women in the past. I’ll stop here so as not to spoil the last 20 minutes or so of the film.

The film is, of course, insanely romantic in the truest sense, and not just in the smoochy-kissy way. It’s romantic in the doomed love, Romeo and Juliet, “I want the thing that I just can’t have” sense. That’s really the whole point of the film; she wants the ghost, the ghost wants her, and thus she becomes attracted to another man she can’t have. It’s not the eventual culmination of the relationship that’s important here. It’s not the time when they are together that’s important. The real romance is the ache when they are apart and the longing to be reunited.

That, friends and neighbors, is the romance part, and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is chock filled to burstin’ with that.

So how is it? As romances go, it’s a shade too predictable, but many romance films are predictable, because the audience for these films wants that ache, that longing, and that desperate reach for a third hanky. The cast is quite good: Gene Tierney is lovely, which is exactly what she is supposed to be, and independent—ditto that. Rex Harrison was generally good in anything he touched, and he’s gruff, and salty, and a shade tender here, which works for the film more than it does for the character. My favorite character, and I suspect the favorite of most people who watch the film, is Martha (Edna Best), Lucy’s maid. She’s no-nonsense, funny, and gruff, and doesn’t hide her emotions or the fact that she spies a bit on her employer.

This is a tenderhearted film, one that’s nice for a snuggle on the couch with someone special. I won’t say that all women will like it, but fans of chick flicks undoubtedly will. As for the guys, sometimes you have to take one for the team. It might as well be one that’s easier going down than the romantic comedy pablum (or, God forbid, Twilight) currently being served up.

The Wedding Banquet (known in Taiwan as Hsi Yen or Xi Yan), rather than being about a love that can’t be, is about a love that isn’t. Actually, there’s a love that is here as well as a non-existent love. The Wedding Banquet is Ang Lee’s second film. In an interview, he described this film as a classic 1940s screwball comedy, except Chinese and gay. It’s a tremendous description. If the “gay” thing bothers you, you should stop reading now, because this film is gayer than Paul Lynde’s underpants.

We are introduced initially to Wai-Tung Gao (Winston Chao) while he is working out. He is listening to a tape of his mother, who evidently sends tapes rather than letters (this was filmed in those dark days before the Internet and email became common) because of her arthritis. She wonders when her son will get married and help carry on the family name. We soon discover the reason why this hope is in vain—Wai-Tung has a lover named Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein), and the two have shared a nice building for a number of years. Wai-Tung is a landlord, running a low-rent building in a much cheaper part of New York. Here we meet one of his tenants—Wei Wei (May Chin), an almost literally starving artist. She lives in a non-residential space in the building because it is all she can afford, and she can’t really afford it.

Wai-Tung goes to collect the rent from her, and we learn that she almost got caught by immigration, and her best friend was deported. Now, she has no work, no visa, no green card, and no way to stay. Wai-Tung is continually signed up for singles’ clubs by his parents, who want him to marry and produce grandchildren to carry on the family name. The solution, thought of by Simon, is obvious. If Wai-Tung and Wei Wei get married, everyone benefits. Wai-Tung gets his parents off his back (and a substantial married tax break) and Wei Wei gets a legitimate reason (kind of) to stay in the country. All seems fine until the announcement of the “wedding” brings Wai-Tung’s parents from Taiwan, for a two-week stay. They want to be there for the wedding ceremony. All of this is compounded by the recent stroke of Wai-Tung’s father and his survival, according to a woman he meets through the singles’ agency, because of his desire to hold a grandchild. And thus, we have the rest of the movie.

And yes, it is a comedy of errors. It’s funny and sweet, and a bit tender. Much of the film, really, isn’t so much about the comedic situation of the plot set up, but the relationship between Wai-Tung and his parents (Ya-lei Kuei as the very sweet Mrs. Gao and Sihung Lung as the traditional and cagey Mr. Gao). Of course, it can’t ever be even this simple, and when Wei Wei manages to seduce a drunken Wai-Tung and becomes pregnant, the situation becomes, well, serious.

I don’t want to be coy here, though. The situation here is very funny and the film moves on the gay/straight/fake marriage story arc completely and there would be no film without it. However, even at this early stage in his career, Lee was smart enough to realize that the movie is much more than the situation. In fact, while it is the situation that makes the plot, the reason the audience watches and the reason the audience cares about anything on the screen is the characters, not the story. There are movies with little plot but interesting characters that are worth watching. There are very few movies (at least in my opinion) with a great plot but lousy characters that are worth much of anything.

And so, the movie really does depend on the quality and depth of the characters, and what we have are real people. More importantly, we have real relationships between them. Wai-Tung has a genuine and believable relationship with his parents, one that many people have with their own. He loves and respects them and wants nothing more than to please them, but he also wants to be free to live his own life. He is desperate not for their love, attention, or affection. He has all three. He wants them to bless his life and his choices and to understand him for who he is. Essentially, he wants acceptance for himself, not for their idea of who they want him to be.

This is what makes the film worth watching, and what makes it accessible to anyone—even those of us in traditional marriages. We relate not to the situation, which is extreme, but to the struggles and the personalities of the people going through it. As with many of the most highly touted directors, Lee started strong, and only got stronger.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that much of the film is really funny, and that just as much is equally serious. The actual marriage ceremony is ridiculously silly, as is much of what follows, and the film is much more watchable because of it. When it does turn into a domestic drama, the change is both sudden and natural, but even here, the film doesn’t completely lose its light touch

Why to watch The Ghost and Mrs. Muir: A sweet romance that happily stretches the boundaries of reality.
Why not to watch: The risk of losing your girlfriend to a ghost.

Why to watch The Wedding Banquet: Real characters and real pathos, even if the situation is extraordinary.
Why not to watch: Homophobia.