Way, Way, Way Down

Film: Way Down East
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.


I took a gander at another film by D.W. Griffith, and his fourth in the first eight films on The List. The film in question is Way Down East, a domestic drama that I think is fairly safe from ever being remade based on the characters and the situation. It’s not one that works well in today’s world. We start with young Anna (Lillian Gish), a poor country girl sent to the city to visit her wealthier relations.

It is here that Anna meets Lennox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman). Sanderson is a rake, and a user of women. Interested only in his own pleasure, Sanderson woos the young woman, perhaps not really knowing that she’s merely a poor relative and not someone who comes from money herself. Regardless, Sanderson convinces Anna to marry him in secret, allowing him to continue using women as he wishes, but also giving him the pleasure and company of Anna’s bed. Naturally, Anna gets pregnant, which is the cue for Sanderson to admit the marriage was a sham and abandon her and her infant, Trust. When Trust dies (and yes, you should read that as “trust” dying as well), the now abandoned and alone Anna is forced to fend for herself. She does so by making her way to the Bartlett estate and begging for a job.

Here she meets David Bartlett (Richard Barthelmess), the son of the squire (Burr McIntosh). David quickly becomes enamored of the pretty Anna, but she keeps her distance thanks to her unusual past. Things come to a head when Lennox shows up in the area sniffing around the squire’s niece Kate and discovers his abandoned “wife” in the area.

And it’s here that I will confer with fellow 1001 blogger Squish Lessard. In his review of this film, he decries the melodrama, which is ample. I’m not personally adverse to melodrama when it works (Night of the Hunter), but when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work. Way Down East suffers from many of the same problems that comedies have had since comedies began. If someone—anyone—would just say something, all of the problems get resolved instantly. A movie that trades on the idea that everyone has to act like a complete idiot is a movie that has failed in the plot department. One person making a single comment cuts this plot off at the knees and cuts the last act completely.

See, our poor little Anna is branded as a harlot and a loose woman because she’s a) unmarried and b) has had a child. Except that she got married, and sex and having kids are a part of being married. She’s married, f’cryin’ out loud! The fact that she isn’t really married is because Lennox is a bastard, not because she’s wanton—he lied to her. All she has to do is tell someone and produce the damned certificate of marriage, or find a witness, and her good name is restored and Lennox Sanderson is viewed for the abandoning woman-user that he is. But no, it’s all to the plot that Anna must remain silently suffering this agony and these terrible accusations about her person and character. If she had a single ounce of backbone, our movie ends at the ninety minute-or-so mark. But instead of suing the bastard for breach of contract and a host of other legal niceties, she instead runs out on an ice floe in an effort to destroy herself (and it’s worth noting that Lillian Gish suffered for the rest of her life from complications involving the ice floe garbage).

No movie should depend on the plot device of everyone involved being a damned idiot, but that’s what we get from Griffith here. People are either mean-stupid or noble-stupid. Enjoying this movie means enjoying the company of really stupid people. More than that, they are a people with a very strange morality. It’s such a complete throwback to dark, dark days when the woman who is lied to and abused is held responsible. Essentially, Anna is a pariah not because she had a child out of marriage, but because she allowed herself to be lied to, and when she finally does reveal the complete truth behind her terrible secret, it's too little, too late. Moreover, the moral stance of the bulk of the cast is coming from a collection of people who would like to see David and Kate get married…and they’re cousins.

Compounding on this particular frustration is Griffith’s penchant for playing morality boss in a good number of his title cards. While I’m certain his intent was to be moral, the reality is that he comes off as pedantic.

The real shame here, though, is that Way Down East has all of the makings of a great screwball comedy. Instead, Griffith goes for doom, gloom, and message, message, message. Film was still in its infancy in 1920, and Griffith shows it here because he delivers the message of the film with his usual subtlety—that of a cricket bat applied to the temple. I felt beaten down by this film rather than what I assume was the intended uplift of the ending.

The other problem with making this into a comedy is that Griffith really isn’t funny. He has several comic relief characters here, and none of them are the least bit comic, or offer any relief. Furthermore, a great deal of the trouble in this film is caused by town busybody Martha (an uncredited Vivia Ogden), who ends up married to the man who has pursued her for a couple decades. Why the hell would anyone want such a nasty, evil-faced, self-important bint to get anything like a happy ending? Only in Griffith-land.

One more Griffith film to go. Thank God.

Why to watch Way Down East: Classic silent drama and the lovely Lillian Gish.
Why not to watch: The plot could be solved half way through with a single sentence.

Month 14 Status Report

Well, not too much in the way of musicals in February (I did one, I think), but I certainly made a dent in the silent films. I've decided that for as long as I can, I'm going to attempt a silent film every week from this point forward until I get through them all. When possible, I'll watch the earliest remaining film on the list, and will sometimes do more than one. I have a sudden urge to complete them all and leave them behind. I don't know if that's because I'm becoming attuned to them or because I'm becoming tired of them.

February was a good month in other ways, too. I got through the second-longest film still remaining (Satantango), which feels like a real accomplishment.

Look for a tapering off of posts for the next three weeks, followed by a massive surge of activity at the end of March.

Oh, and for the record, I'm officially 30% done with the entire list.

Tragi-comedy

Film: The Heartbreak Kid
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

I believe I have said before that I have difficulty with most movies in which I sincerely dislike the main character. If I don’t feel some sense of connection, some level of sympathy for the person who spends the most time on the screen, there’s a large part of me that wants to turn the film off and walk away. This was my essential problem with The Heartbreak Kid, a dark-as-night black comedy about a syndrome common to many people.

Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin) has just gotten married to Lila (Jeannie Berlin), and the two have set off on their honeymoon in Miami Beach. We discover a number of things about the couple during the first act of the film. We learn, for instance, that Lila is a slob, can’t sing, and tends to be immature—even infantile on a number of things. She’s a sweet enough kid, but she’s essentially someone who acts about 10 years younger than her real age. What we learn about Lenny is that during the drive from New York to Miami, he’s wondering if he made the right decision in marrying Lila.

In Miami, Lenny encounters Kelly Corcoran (Cybill Shepherd), a young and pretty rich girl from Minnesota. She is cold and aloof, but also devastatingly gorgeous, and treats Lenny much like Princess Buttercup treats Wesley at the start of The Princess Bride (and if you don’t get that reference, shame on you). Lila manages to get a ferocious sunburn on the first day in Miami, forcing her to stay in the hotel room, and giving Lenny the freedom to pursue his blonde shiksa (essentially a tempting non-Jewish woman).

The obstacle in Lenny’s path, aside from the fact that he is on his honeymoon, is Kelly’s father (Eddie Albert). He takes an instant dislike to Lenny, and hides this inexpertly on purpose. Lenny, it would seem, is everything Mr. Corcoran hates.

And so we have our four major players—a guy who wants what he can’t have and doesn’t want what he has; an infantile, immature girl; an ice queen who expects that she’ll get what she wants; and a glowering old man who, because of the situation, is the most understandable and sympathetic. The comedy comes initially from Lenny’s elaborate and frequent lies to Lila about exactly what is going on outside their hotel room. She recovers from her sunburn while Lenny does everything but hump Kelly’s leg. Much of the middle part of the film concerns Lenny’s failing and flailing around Kelly’s father and his unfortunate attempts to impress the man.

I can’t fault the story, really. It’s just on the edge of what I’d call believable behavior. I can’t fault the acting, either. I tend to like Charles Grodin quite a bit, and both Eddie Albert and Jeannie Berlin earned deserved Oscar nominations (especially Eddie Albert), and both won film critics’ awards. But there’s a part of this film that’s like biting down on metal for me. I had serious problems getting past it, and found the middle 20 minutes or so to be excruciating. I knew I had to bull my way through, but didn’t want to. It was almost like painful elective surgery. I knew it would be good for me to get it behind me, but I didn’t want to have to go through it.

I have no idea why I had this reaction to the film. There is some real brilliance here. When Lenny makes the admission to Kelly’s father that he’s not only already married, but a newlywed, the expression on Eddie Albert’s face changes slightly, almost imperceptibly, but the change is one of the nicest jobs of acting I’ve seen in awhile. Just as entertaining in this scene is Kelly’s mother (Audra Lindley), who goes from a pleased expression to one of aghast shock over the course of several minutes. The film works (evidently for many people but me) because it understands that underneath a comedy lurks tragedy, and this has that in spades. It's a layer of comedy-flavored frosting on top of tragedy cake.

What’s interesting about this film is the length of the scenes. Some, which consist of little more than a few people sitting at a table discussing essentially Lenny’s lack of fulfillment with his current life, go for 10 minutes or more. There’s a sense of intimacy here that is unmistakable for anything else, and since the intimacy exists for the revealing of painful and depressing truths, the feeling is as if these truths are being revealed to us personally, which in a way, they are.

In a nutshell, this film is about a man who always sees the grass as greener somewhere else. It’s about people who will stop at nothing, including destroying the lives of others, to get what they want. Lenny is a man who doesn’t want anything he gets. It’s the pursuit, the not having something, that drives him, and once he achieves something, it’s no longer desirable. If you think that’s a spoiler, you might be right.

The big question is how this film ended up on this list. When I think of the other films that could have been added here…Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), Last House on the Left, and Silent Running are all more deserving in my opinion, and these are just more deserving films from 1972, the year of The Heartbreak Kid’s release. Ask me to decide, and I’d leave this one off, even with its surprising ending.

Why to watch The Heartbreak Kid: Bad things happening to bad people.
Why not to watch: Every character needs to be punched in the face.

Outsiders Looking In

Films: Broken Blossoms, The Elephant Man
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Race—differences between races, the similarities, problems of, dealing with, etc.—is almost certainly one of the most filmed major themes since film began. It’s impossible at times to separate race from character, or race from plot. This is as true of films being made today as it was of films made during the silent era. The attitudes of the rank and file have changed with regard to race in the main, and generally for the positive, but that doesn’t mean that race problems have vanished, or that there is nothing more to be said.

D.W. Griffith seemed to return to concepts of race again and again, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Films like Birth of a Nation deal with ideas of racial superiority and stereotype while others, like Intolerance touch less on race specifically but deal more with a general, well, intolerance. Broken Blossoms falls somewhere in between these two extremes of favoring ideas of racial superiority and supporting ideas of tolerance and equality.

What this means is that I think it is evident that Griffith’s sympathies in this film are with our Chinese leading man, Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess). Cheng is depicted initially as an idealist and a pacifist who becomes dissolute due to opium addiction, but Griffith gives him a chance to redeem himself throughout the film, and Cheng jumps at the chance he is offered. In other words, Cheng Huan is shown as a human with failings, but who is at his core a good man willing and ready to do the right thing.

To really understand the depth of Griffith’s sympathy for Cheng, it’s important to bring in the character of Lucy Burrows (Lillian Gish). Lucy is a poor little teenager who is regularly beaten by her father, prizefighter Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp). He beats her to the edge of death before she passes out in Cheng’s store. Cheng cares for her, dressing her in silk and treating her well for the first time in her life. It’s evident here, and in fact before this point that Cheng loves the girl. However, even now, with her life in his hands, he refuses to take advantage of his position, treating her instead with concern, compassion, and kindness. Griffith wants us to like Cheng. He wants us to root for Cheng. He wants us to want Lucy to fall for Cheng despite his foreignness (less of a deal now, but a huge deal in 1919). That this is his goal could not be more evident had it been written on a title card.

Perhaps to help our sympathies, or to create his own, Lucy’s life is depicted as being so terrible that she is forced to physically move her mouth with her fingers to bring a smile to her face when her brutish father demands it. It’s melodrama of the highest order at this point, but again, it’s important to look at this through the eyes of its intended post-World War I audience rather than today’s. Lillian Gish is a cutie (which is to be expected—she has to engage our sympathies, after all), and seeing her physical, emotional, and spiritual degradation at the hand of this thug is affecting, no matter how contrived. “Certainly,” thinks the 1919 audience, “Anything is better than this—even the Chinese man.”

And this is where the racism seems to really rear its ugly head. Throughout the film, Cheng is referred to in title cards as the “Yellow Man,” a phrase that would cause mass protests today. In fact, at one point, once his descent into opium addiction begins, Cheng is referred to as another “Chink shopkeeper,” a racial slur that may have once been common parlance but in today’s world is one of the most unacceptable.

It’s true that most of the racial bashing here comes not from the title cards, but from the characters we are supposed to dislike. As Lucy recovers from her beating from accidentally spilling food on Battling Burrows, he reacts not because Lucy has taken up with a man, but because she is being cared for by a Chinese man. What is perhaps more shocking is Lucy calling him “Chinky” as a term of affection, and recoiling from him when he dares get physically close to her.

It’s almost as if this film is the public beginning of White Guilt. Griffith wants us to want Cheng to come out victorious, but Griffith himself can’t see Cheng as a man, but only as a subset of men. He’s not quite the worth of a white man—he’s always something different and to a great extent lesser. Cheng’s greatest fault is not so much his opium addiction, but that he’s Chinese rather than white.

Ultimately, Broken Blossoms is a soap opera, a sensation only enhanced by the soundtrack that runs through much of the version I watched. That it tells a bittersweet story and features a hero who is not white is noteworthy in 1919. That the inherent racism of the time still bleeds through is perhaps inevitable. Maybe…maybe it’s enough that at least Griffith was trying to overcome what had been pounded into him in a lifetime of living in society that viewed anyone not of European stock as lesser, inferior, or sub-human. Is it his fault he didn’t get all the way there? But could there be better proof of this truth than the fact that a Chinese man is played by a Caucasian actor?

As a last note, this contains some of the funniest boxing I have ever seen. I realize it’s not meant to be comic, but it really, really is.

The idea of racial equality has undergone a number of changes in this country and much of the world since Broken Blossoms was filmed. In other ways, society has perhaps changed less. David Lynch’s The Elephant Man is a biopic of the life of John Merrick, whose celebrated skeleton Michael Jackson once wanted to purchase. Much of the story comes from the journal of Frederick Treves, played here by Anthony Hopkins.

On its surface, this is the story of a badly deformed man suffering from a combination of medical conditions that combined to create such deformities that had never been seen before. Merrick, whose real first name was Joseph, has been diagnosed in the years after his death as having a combination of neurofibromatosis and proteus syndrome (you can look these up on your own). His body was covered in huge benign tumors of such size that he was forced to sleep sitting up lest he risk suffocating. In practical terms for this film, it meant that the great John Hurt had to spend seven hours per day in the makeup chair and could only work on alternate days.

What this truly is, of course, is a story of human dignity. Merrick’s extensive deformities do not change the fact that underneath it all he is a man. We don’t start there, though. Initially, Merrick is a sideshow attraction, a freak of nature, and there is no indication that there is anything at all beneath that massive head of his. His “owner,” Mr. Bytes (Freddie Jones) takes care of him, but not very well, and Merrick is evidently subject to a series of regular beatings administered by Bytes’s walking stick. Treves takes a special interest in Merrick, showing his deformities to the medical community, and then coming to his rescue after a particularly severe beating from Bytes. He brings him into the hospital and attempts to communicate with him.

It’s not until Merrick is introduced to hospital official Carr Gomm (John Gielgud) that we discover that he has a mind underneath his deformed skull. Merrick is actually a gentle creature, a man of fine sensibilities and refinement. This is contrasted in the evenings when a riotous porter (Michael Elphick) brings his drunken cronies around to gawk at the man.

What’s actually quite lovely here is the progression of the people at the hospital, where Merrick is eventually allowed to stay permanently. Initially, he is a figure of terror due to his massive disfigurements. Eventually, the people come to accept him, and eventually like him, particularly Carr Gomm and the nurse Mothershead (Wendy Hiller). A visit from a famous stage actress named Mrs. Kendal (Anne Bancroft) provides John with a source of dreams, a sense of himself, and a desire to be seen as a man.

The Elephant Man works frequently as melodrama. Merrick is so terrible in appearance and so gentle in nature that it’s almost too much. Those who are despicable—Bytes, the porter—are so nasty as to be missing only the pencil-thin curly mustache and Snidely Whiplash sneer. And yet it is effective here. Hurt’s performance is one of the great ones of his career. He plays Merrick with a real sensitivity and pathos.

The film is shot in a crisp black-and-white, and this does a great deal for the film. It has been reported that Lynch decided against color because the makeup effects looked appalling in color, and that may or may not be true. What is true is that the film is beautiful in black-and-white, and I can’t imagine it in color.

It’s worth noting that The Elephant Man lost every Oscar it was nominated for. The one award it was not nominated for was for makeup effects. There were many who believed that the film deserved a special award, because there was no regular category at that time for makeup. The film went unrewarded—a huge oversight in my opinion—but the next year, a category for makeup effects was added.

What’s the final analysis here? Bluntly, it should have won something. Despite the obvious melodrama and the overhyped emotional content, this is a beautiful film and a touching one. Merrick is a tragic figure, and beautiful despite his deformities, perhaps because of them. John Hurt has never been better, and considering the roles he’s had and the films he’s been in, that’s saying quite a lot. You’re doing yourself a disservice not seeing this film. I wish I had seen it before tonight.

Why to watch Broken Blossoms: A sad little story, more touching and intimate than might be expected from Griffith’s earlier bombast.
Why not to watch: The racism still bleeds through.

Why to watch The Elephant Man: Probably David Lynch’s most coherent and understandable film.
Why not to watch: Excessive sentimentality.

It's a Jazz Thing...You Wouldn't Understand

Film: Shadows
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.


It’s not that original to make a movie about racism, and it wasn’t really terribly original back in 1959 when John Cassavetes finally released his revamped version of Shadows. It probably wasn’t too unusual to make a film about jazz musicians and hipsters, either. What was unusual was making a real film about real issues on a tiny budget.

Shadows is the story of three siblings: Hugh (Hugh Hurd), Ben (Ben Carruthers), and Lelia (Lelia Goldoni). All three of them are involved in beatnik culture to some extent. Hugh is a singer very much in the style of Nat King Cole, which is less hipster than traditional. Ben is a jazz trumpeter. Lelia writes, although she doesn’t really want to that much. The three are, from eldest to youngest, less and less black, at least in appearance. Hugh has traditional African features and dark skin. Ben could pass for Middle Eastern, or perhaps Italian. Lelia looks Caucasian and has very light skin. This becomes an important plot point very quickly.

It happens when Lelia meets Tony (Anthony Ray) at a party. The two are quickly interested in each other and leave together. He takes her up to his place and the two have sex—it’s the first time for her, and it’s unpleasant for her. She reacts badly to it and wants to go home, so he takes her there.

And it’s here that the problem begins. When Tony meets Hugh, he realizes Lelia’s ancestry and he leaves. This is an awakening of a sort for Lelia, and she quickly latches on to Davey (David Jones). Meanwhile Ben and Hugh fight—Hugh can’t understand Ben and Ben is filled with a sort of unfocused anger that sometimes lashes out.

Let’s be frank here; Shadows is hardly the best acted film ever created. It was done essentially without a script with mostly amateur actors improvising their lines in each situation. It’s also Cassavetes’s first film, which means that he hadn’t really discovered his voice as a director yet, making the film feel unfinished and rough.

In short, it feels a like a real amateur film. A lot of the camera work is stilted and stiff. A lot of the dialogue is equally stiff and weird in places. Hugh is excellent, and of the three siblings, is the nice one and the responsible one. Ben is also good as the young tough, the punk who carries a chip on his shoulder the size of New York. Lelia’s performance is more unusual. It’s broad in places, whiney in others, and very natural in other spots. It’s the most uneven of the three actors, certainly.

Shadows is in many ways the true birthplace of independent film. It’s more a character study of these three siblings and their relationship than it is about anything else. It’s a film about jazz hipsters only because the characters are jazz hipsters, and a film about racism only because the Tony character proves himself to be a racist.

While not a particularly difficult film to watch, there’s a strange ennui connected t this film for me. I expected it to go somewhere much more than it did, and in that respect I was disappointed with it. I’m not sure if I expected Cassavetes to blow the proverbial lid off the racism problem, but I certainly expected more than a relatively short confrontation between Tony and Hugh followed by Tony virtually disappearing for the rest of the film.

Cassavetes went on to make a number of great films, and much of what he started in Shadows is evident in his repertoire of movies that followed this one. It’s an interesting beginning for his career, if not as particularly strong as I had been led to believe. This one is all about the style—all about how it was filmed rather than what specifically was filmed. Watch this one, because without it, the entire independent cinema movement would have taken much longer to get off the ground. And when watching it, try to see it for what it is—essentially a film about the characters, and in many ways a film about acting and filmmaking instead of being a film about a particular story.

Why to watch Shadows: The birth of independent film.
Why not to watch: It's amateurish.

She Take My Money...

Film: Gold Diggers of 1933
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Musicals of the early era of talkies are their own thing. They have a particular pattern to them and a particular method of getting from start to finish. Much of the time, there are multiple road blocks thrown up in the path of, well, putting on a big show. In the end, everything comes together at essentially the exact same time, the show goes off, and everyone who should go home happy does. Most of these musicals were created as a sort of antidote for the Great Depression, and feature upbeat numbers, happy endings, and people who start out down on their luck and end up either in a hit show or happily married, or wealthy, or some combination of the above.

So it comes as no surprise that Gold Diggers of 1933 follows essentially this exact formula with a cast of characters that have become stock and a cast of actors that did this same basic show over and over (as a matter of fact, about half the cast also appeared in 42nd Street from the same year).

So let’s get to the nuts and bolts of this one. Four showgirls have their show closed a day before it opens, putting them back on the skids with rent due and with their stomachs empty. These four are Polly (the actually quite adorable Ruby Keeler), the juvenile ingénue; Trixie (Aline MacMahon), the funny one; Faye (Ginger Rogers), the pretty one; and Carol (the lovely Joan Blondell), the singer. They get word of a new show being produced by Barney Hopkins (Ned Sparks), and he’s game to use all of them in the show. The problem is, as usual, no cash.

The cash, as well as the music for the show, comes in the form of Brad Roberts (Dick Powell), a songwriter who lives across the alley from the girls and who is in a mutual sighing-at-each-other conspiracy with Polly. Barney hires Brad to write the music for the show and Brad promises $15,000, a promise he delivers on the next day. However, Brad flat-out refuses to take part in the show itself. He just wants to write the music.

On opening night, the male juvenile, who is actually approaching middle age, suffers an attack of lumbago, forcing Brad into the stage role. It is here that he is discovered. Brad Roberts is actually Robert Treat Bradford, the scion of a wealthy Boston family. His brother Lawrence (Warren William) and Lawrence’s assistant Fanuel H. Peabody (Guy Kibbee) arrive to talk Brad/Robert out of his career and especially out of his desire to marry Polly. He won’t listen, which forces the two interlopers into a confrontation with the girls.

In a twist that would no longer work in a film today, Lawrence and Fanuel show up at the girls’ apartment and confront not Polly, but Carol, assuming that she is Polly, and not letting her get a word out despite the fact that she tries multiple times to tell them that they’ve got the wrong girl. She and Trixie decide to take the two for suckers. The men believe that all show girls are really gold diggers (hence the name), so they’ll play the parts. And hilarity, allegedly, ensues.

This, in a nutshell, is why many musicals don’t work for me. All Carol has to do at a critical juncture is say, “I’m not Polly!” and the entire second half of the film unravels. All those whacky hijinks are certainly there for the show tune crowd who appear to survive on a diet of such things, but I need a greater dose of realism in my story. Everyone we’re supposed to root for is just a little too clever and everyone who we’re supposed to dislike is just a little too foolish or a little too stupid to work for me. The girls especially are a little too wisecracky (especially Trixie) and a little too streetwise for me do much but roll my eyes.

Okay, the numbers are pretty good, and “Petting in the Park” is a show-stopper that comes at the end of the first act, and the “Forgotten Man” number is great as well. But with “Petting,” they’ve staged a number that is supposed to be taking place on a stage, but features a segment in a park with grass, a terrifying “baby” played by Billy Barty, and a freakin’ rainstorm. In a theater. In the 1930s. Yes for a movie, no for a stage, and yet when the number ends, we see an audience clapping away. These numbers are pure Busby Berkeley, and they look it, and for the musical spectacle of the era, they’re top of the line, but they miss on the “actually in a theater” part.

Since this is a feel-good musical from the Depression, there shouldn’t be a lot of surprises on how it turns out. If you can’t see at least a third of the ending coming at you an hour before we get there, it’s only because you haven’t seen many movies of this era, or many movies that feature either “romantic” or “comedy” or “musical” in the genre description. Since Gold Diggers of 1933’s description includes all three, there’s not a single reason in the world to be surprised at the ending the minute we get past the 20-minute mark and most of the characters have been introduced.

Does it have anything going for it? Well, fans of the genre will find a great deal to enjoy here. I’m not a fan of the genre, so I have to dig a little harder. Twist my arm, and I’ll say that Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell are, despite the black-and-white footage and the whole 80-year-old movie thing, are sweet, sweet balm for long-suffering eyes. They’re absolute dolls, and they make the film worth seeing, at least in parts.

Ultimately, though, this one is silly and fluffy without much in the way of substance. I can take it or leave it, and nine times out of ten, I’d choose to leave it.

Why to watch Gold Diggers of 1933: Elaborate Busby Berkeley dance numbers and a lot of wisecracks.
Why not to watch: If you can’t see through it, you’re a moron.

The Best Month Ever: June, 1982 Part 2

Films: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner
Format: DVDs from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player (E.T.) and on big ol’ television (Blade Runner).

[These reviews have been included as a part of Pussy Goes Grrr's Juxtaposition Blogathon!]

The biggest film event of 1982 was not Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan no matter what the Trekkies have to say about it. The movie of the year was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Like any great kid movie, this one enamored both adults and kids and became a huge sensation, solidifying Steven Spielberg’s reputation as a director who could capture magic on film and could do no wrong, an amazing feat from a guy just a few years removed from 1941.

There’s not much reason to go into the plot here—if you haven’t seen E.T. it’s because you’ve seen fewer than a dozen movies in your life, are less than 20 years old, or live under a rock (which makes me question how you have Internet access). There are other options, but it’s still no excuse for not having seen this film, which even now, 30 years later, is remarkable for how well it captures a particular mystery and sense of youthful adventure. Suffice to say that a squat little alien gets left behind by his compatriots, is discovered by a boy who helps protect him, and the two attempt to get the critter back to its people while the big bad government attempts to kidnap the alien for research purposes.

Starring in the film is Henry Thomas as Elliott, the boy who finds the alien in the woods behind his house. He’s a good child actor, although at times he’s difficult to notice simply because he spends so much of his time next to the creation that is the focus of the movie: the alien. Also featured as his siblings are Robert MacNaughton as Elliott’s older brother/tormentor Michael and, of course, Drew Barrymore as little sister Gertie. This film was the break-out role for Barrymore, who has gone on to a tremendous Hollywood career. MacNaughton, on the other hand, has vanished from acting and at last account works in a post office. In many ways, though, he is the most natural of the kids on the screen. I had a brother much like Michael. He tormented me the way Michael torments Elliott. At the same time, once Michael discovers what is going on, he’s Elliott’s protector and confidant. This is a great screen relationship, and speaks to smart and believable characters.

E.T. is filled with early Spielberg tropes—a missing father, evil government, and magical childhood adventures, things it holds in common with Spielberg-written films like The Goonies. There’s also a sense of high adventure--Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind all bear this stamp.

What’s fascinating to me, and it’s a connection I didn’t see until today, is that for Spielberg, at least at this point in his career, dangers came from planet Earth while salvation came from the stars. Early Spielberg films have terrestrial, or at least formerly terrestrial dangers. The bad things in Duel, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even Jurassic Park and Poltergeist have Earth origins. In outer space-related, science fiction films, the aliens are misunderstood at worst and actively beneficent at best.

And get this—I’ve also only realized on this watching (it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this film) that E.T. the character is essentially space Jesus. Much of the symbolism is there. This is an odd realization, and an odd position for the Jewish Spielberg to add into American film mythology, but there it is. It would not surprise me if a cut scene involved E.T. walking on water and then turning around and transmuting that water into kid-friendly root beer. Quick spoiler:

*** E.T. PHONE HOME ***

Think about it—E.T. has magical abilities. He can levitate objects and move them, and has a special connection with Elliott in the sense that what one feels, the other feels as well. He can also heal the injured and afflicted. E.T. is persecuted and hunted by those who don’t understand what he is. Eventually, E.T. dies, but comes back to life and ascends into the heavens, but not before he tells Elliott that he will continue to live on in his heart…just like Jesus does. Both are misunderstood by all but those who believe (although the argument could be made that Jesus is misunderstood in particular by the most devout). Still, there are enough points of similarity that the two occupy the same general sphere of altruistic, beneficent, otherworldly beings with miraculous powers. The one can be seen as a version of the other.

*** PLEASE CHECK THE NUMBER AND DIAL AGAIN ***

It’s without a doubt true that E.T. has entered the American mythology and lexicon. There are several iconic moments—“E.T. phone home” and the bicycle across the face of the moon being the most obvious ones, not to mention the huge upsurge in sales of Reese’s Pieces in the years to follow this film’s release. But the real reason the film has had such staying power, and will continue to charm children and adults is that it is a recognizable and great story. This is a true boy’s-own adventure, immediately accessible to kids of virtually any age, and still entertaining for the parents.

I like E.T. just fine. My tastes tend to run to the more violent, weird, thoughtful, and/or disturbing, but it’s a difficult film not to like. Of the great and noteworthy films released in this greatest month of American movies ever, this one is my least favorite—but it’s my least favorite in a hell of a good group. It’s sweet and endearing—perhaps too much so—but as a movie conceived and written for kids, it hits almost every mark. As a jaded high schooler, I wasn’t a big fan of this film. As an adult with kids, I appreciate it for what it is, and what it is is special.

And this brings us to the final movie on The List from this marvelous month: Blade Runner. For a long time, I think I liked this movie because I was supposed to like it. Everyone told me how great it was, and how much I should appreciate it, so I went along with that idea without really understanding what the movie was or what it was about.

And then I finally got around to reading Phillip K. Dick’s book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Suddenly, Blade Runner made sense to me, because I suddenly had context for it. Certain aspects of the film are not really explained in the film and exist almost as artifacts from the book. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Blade Runner exists in a world where nearly-human androids have been created for use in off-world colonies. Because of some problems that existed in the past, these androids, called “replicants,” are not permitted on Earth, despite the fact that many of them attempt to come to Earth. Because of this, special agents of the police, blade runners, exist to “retire” the replicants, “retire” being an obvious euphemism for “terminate with extreme prejudice using a high caliber pistol. Our blade runner in question, Deckard (Harrison Ford), has just been given a contract on a series of replicants that are of a new model, and have not only been spotted on Earth, but have killed at least one agent.

That’s enough of the plot, really. What exists around this plot, though, are artifacts of Dick’s world that don’t really make it into the film. For instance, there’s really no reason given why so many of the questions on the test to determine if someone is a replicant deal with the death or torture of animals. There’s no indication of exactly why people are still living on Earth despite the massive advertising blitz to send people to the colony worlds. These aspects of the story are explained fully in the book. They add to the experience, though, but are not necessary for the Blade Runner experience.

We get an interesting cast taking us through the story. In addition to Harrison Ford, the film features Edward James Olmos as Gaff, who acts both as Deckard’s foil and as his partner. Deckard’s nominal boss in this situation is Bryant, played by the always-excellent M. Emmet Walsh (an actor so good Roger Ebert once said that any movie that featured him can’t be all bad). As the replicants, we get the terrifying Brion James as Leon, Joanna Cassidy as Zhora, Sean Young as Rachael, Daryl Hannah as Pris, and the great Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. Batty is a terrifying presence in the film, in no small part thanks to Hauer’s talents. Also worth noting is the underrated and entertaining William Sanderson as J.F. Sebastian, an afflicted toy maker and geneticist.

The cast is great, and so is the story, but it’s the mise-en-scene that is the true star of this film. Blade Runner looks real to such a degree that it becomes real. Costuming, makeup, set design—it all works perfectly to create a real, believable world of the future. Ridley Scott was smart enough to make this future multi-cultural, giving it a pan-linguistic patois and a decidedly Asian flavor that functions perfectly as a backdrop for the action on screen.

I don’t normally like Sean Young, but she’s good here. It’s also worth noting that in general, Daryl Hannah is great when she plays non-humans. The minute a script asks her to be something that isn’t 100% human, she excels. Go figure.

There are multiple versions of this film out there. One version contains the much-maligned voice over explaining the film. There’s a definitive edition, a director’s cut (the first real director’s cut ever made), and it can be difficult to tell which one to watch. I’ll say it here—watch the director’s cut. When you have someone as good as Ridley Scott making the film, go with his vision. That being said, there are a couple of spoilers to handle:

*** LOOK! A REPLICANT! ***

The big question in the director’s cut is whether or not Deckard is himself a replicant. There’s evidence on both sides of the issue. For years, I believed he was for two reasons. First, he dreams of a unicorn, and Gaff places an origami unicorn in his apartment, almost as if he knows the implanted memories in Deckard’s head. Second, replicants have a particular eye gleam in certain angles of light, a gleam that appears in Deckard’s eyes at one point. I’m not so sure these days. I can tell you that in the book, this is never even considered as a question. There’s no indication that Deckard is a replicant. There’s also no love story between him and Rachael—Deckard is married in the book.

Second, why does Roy Batty save Deckard at the end? Because he does. Maybe it’s to prove that he has free will. Maybe he wanted his last conscious act to be something positive. Maybe he wanted someone to know that he was more than a killer. Again, this doesn’t happen in the book and is entirely a creation of this script.

*** TIME TO DIE ***

Like all good science fiction, Blade Runner explores the essential question of what it means to be human, and in this case, what humanity means in a world that is increasingly becoming dehumanized. That’s a central theme of author Ray Bradbury, which is one reason I can think of that there’s a building named after him in the film. Blade Runner may not answer this question fully, but should it? It offers the question as food for thought, and that should be good enough.

And so we close on this greatest month of American films in history, at least before the December deck stacking for the Oscars. I miss that prior age in the sense that there’s no mystery of when a truly great film will be released now. Summer blockbusters are just that—expensive and bombastic, and the great films don’t show up until Christmas. There’s little chance of a magical June ever happening again, and that makes me sad.

Why to watch E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The greatest kid adventure ever made.
Why not to watch: Too cute by a half.

Why to watch Blade Runner: The birth of cyberpunk, plus kick-ass humanoid robots.
Why not to watch: A vague, possibly unsatisfying ending.