Prosecution on Defense

Film: Boomerang!
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Every now and then, you get a movie that you almost can’t explain. We tend to expect certain things from movies and from certain genres, but there are a few out there that are just out there in terms of genre expectations. Boomerang! is that sort of a movie. This is clearly film noir at least in tone, but it’s so strange and so off from the typical. It feels like a documentary in parts, especially with the voiceover, and while it is noir-ish, it ends with a long courtroom scene that is just a revealing of evidence.

We start with a murder, which is really how a good film noir ought to start. In this case, the victim is Father Lambert, a kind, mild-mannered man of the cloth in Bridgeport, CT. The killing happens at night, but on an occupied street directly under a streetlight. Despite this, the witnesses see only a man in a dark coat and a light-colored fedora fleeing the scene. Father Lambert is dead on the scene with a bullet in his head. We get a little bit of flashback, showing us the kind of man that Father Lambert was. This includes a confrontation with a local man (Philip Coolidge) who he thinks should have himself committed for some reason. Yes, this is going to be relevant, because we as the audience are going to be led to believe that this man is the killer.

Rebel with a Cause

Film: Viva Zapata!
Format: Movies! Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.

Whitewashing has been a problem with Hollywood movies for a very long time. It still goes on, of course. You don’t need to look further than the casting of British Tilda Swinton as an ancient Tibetan in Doctor Strange to see it. It somehow seems more egregious in older cases, though, where entire collections of people were replaced by white actors in various cosmetics. And it wasn’t just whitewashing. Ricardo Montalban was cast as Japanese at least once. With Viva Zapata!, the crime seems to reach a new height. The title Mexican folk hero is played by Marlon Brando, while the elder brother was played by Anthony Quinn, who was Mexican. Revenge may be sweet, though; Quinn won a Supporting Actor Oscar for the role.

Emiliano Zapata (Brando) begins the film as a simple farmer, who goes with a group of fellow farmers to see long-time Mexican president Porfirio Diaz (Fay Roope) about a land claim. He and his fellow farmers have been kicked off their traditional land by wealthy farmers who have planted sugar cane in their cornfields. Diaz, notoriously corrupt, passes off the farmers’ claims, saying that fixing the problem will take time. The farmers, however, don’t have time—without corn, they won’t be able to eat. Diaz even tries to bribe Zapata with a decent tract of land, but Zapata rejects the offer. Soon enough, Zapata and his brother Eufemio (Quinn) are openly rebelling against the Mexican government.

Through Concrete, Like a Damn Dandelion

Film: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

When I was in eighth grade, I had to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I don’t really remember anything about it. I suppose that isn’t surprising, since that was well more than three decades ago. In fact, I really only remember a couple of details here and there and nothing about what the actual story was about. So, admittedly, I’ve been a bit curious about revisiting it this long after when I first encountered it. What I expected wasn’t what I got. Sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes that’s upsetting. In the case of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, getting something different than I expected was a good thing.

What makes this film work is that unlike a lot of films from the Depression era and the years after, this is the story of people who are very poor and struggling to survive. In a sense, it’s an American answer to the early Italian neo-realism films like Ladri di Biciclette. This is a family where the only luck is bad luck and the only way out is dreaming of the stars while lying in the gutter. While on the surface this is the story of the hard-luck Nolan family, it’s really the story of Francie Nolan (Peggy Ann Garner) growing up and her relationship with her father Johnny (James Dunn, who won a supporting Oscar for the role).

Everybody Loves a Baby, that's Why I'm in Love with You

Film: Baby Doll
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Someone needs to tell me how it was possible that Eli Wallach was never even nominated for a competitive Oscar. Baby Doll was his first screen credit, although he’d done some television work before this. From this first film, Wallach established himself as a force to be reckoned with. While the film isn’t named after him, there’s no question that Baby Doll belongs as much to Wallach as it does to Carroll Baker, who was nominated for her role as the title character. It’s yet another mystery and another reason why I do those posts on Friday. Someone has to give the great Eli Wallach the credit he deserved.

Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden) has been married for well over a year to Baby Doll (Carroll Baker) but the marriage has gone unconsummated. The reason for this is that Archie married Baby Doll when her father was on his death bed; the marriage happened because he wanted his daughter to be looked after when he was gone. However, since she was just 18 at the time and not ready for marriage, he made Archie promise that he would not consummate the marriage until she was “ready,” which they have agreed will be her 20th birthday.

It's Greek to Me

Film: America, America
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

It’s not often that a director breaks the fourth wall him- or herself, but America America opens with director Elia Kazan speaking to the audience. He tells us that this is the film of his family and how his ancestor came to the United States. While it’s not stated overtly, with any story like this, there is certainly a mixture of fact and fancy, of unvarnished truth and unrepentant elaboration and truth stretching. None of that makes the film any more or less compelling, but for Kazan, this story was evidently family legend.

It’s worth noting that America America is about the journey that took Kazan’s ancestor to the United States, which means that the bulk of the film takes place elsewhere, the bulk in Turkey. We start in Anatolia, spend a great deal of time in Constantinople (now it’s Istanbul), and eventually get to a ship that heads off to America.

Abstinence Makes the Mind Grow Weaker

Film: Splendor in the Grass
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I’m not precisely sure why I waited as long as I have to watch Splendor in the Grass. There was a part of me that thought this was going to be some sort of goofy teen romance film, I guess. It really, really isn’t. For a film that takes place in 1928/29 and was made in the very early 1960s, Splendor in the Grass is sex, anger, madness, rape, and a whole bunch of stuff that I was not expecting. Seriously, I wasn’t braced for this one. It goes places I didn’t expect it to go. I almost wish I’d seen it sooner, but that would’ve prevented me from savoring it now.

In 1928 Kansas, Wilma Dean “Deanie” Loomis (Natalie Wood) and Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) are as much an item as any two kids from high school can be. Bud is starting to discover that he has some natural urges that he’s having difficulty controlling around Deanie, but Deanie has always paid attention to her folks, who have told her to keep herself chaste. After all, that’s what good girls do. The best example in town of a bad girl is Bud’s sister Ginny (Barbara Loden). Ginny, despite coming from one of the wealthiest families in town, has become a party girl, a flapper, and a woman obsessed with smoking, drinking, and sex. She’s got an annulled marriage under her belt as well as an abortion to help put the annulment through.

Watching Oscar: East of Eden

Film: East of Eden
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

I will admit that it almost feels like a cheat that I have a DVR again. I can pull things off broadcast and come at them later when I have time for them. I don’t know why it seems like a cheat, but it does. Of course, when I started this, I didn’t even have a NetFlix account, so adding a service like Turner Classic is really nothing more than the equivalent of adding a Hulu account, which didn’t feel like a cheat at all. What I’m finding is that TCM is great for some of the little-known and hard-to-find Oscar films, as well as some much more common ones. I’ve been recording a film or two every week, which means that despite having had TCM for about a month, I already have a backlog.

So, watching East of Eden was in part an effort to start getting through some of those films that I have waiting for me. This is a film I knew little about; beyond knowing it was based on a work of John Steinbeck (and there’s a whole family history involved in that), I came into it with almost nothing. Oh, I knew that it starred James Dean, which is what really makes it noteworthy. Beyond everything else, East of Eden features Dean’s first major film role.

Watching Oscar: Gentlemen's Agreement

Film: Gentlemen’s Agreement
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

The latest batch of Oscar nominations were announced a few days ago. It’s at times like this that phrases like “Oscar bait” are bandied about. A nicer way to put this is “message film.” When the discussion comes to this topic, 1947’s Best Picture winner, Gentlemen’s Agreement is one that should come to the forefront. This is a message film in the original sense of the phrase, a film that exists not to tell a story but to hammer a particular message home into its audience.

Widowed magazine author Philip Schuyler Green (Gregory Peck) has moved from California to New York with his son Tommy (Dean Stockwell) and his mother (Anne Revere) to work at a national weekly magazine. His boss, John Minify (Albert Dekker), wants him to do an exposé, a multi-part story taking a serious, in-depth look at anti-Semitism. Phil struggles with the story. He realizes that in the past when he had a story like this to write, he tried to live the life he was looking at. He did a story on coal miners, so he became a miner. So he decides that to truly understand anti-Semitism, he’ll tell everyone he’s Jewish and really experience it.

Watching Oscar: Pinky

Film: Pinky
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

Everyone knows that Hollywood loves a good cause, and Pinky is the sort of film that embodies a cause that makes Hollywood get all wiggly. It also contains some of the most egregious whitewashing in movie history, a case of putting a white actor in a non-white role that actually defies belief. And it was even an Oscar nominated performance, which actually makes a disturbing sort of sense. If all of this sounds like I didn’t like Pinky, well, that’s unfortunate. I did like it well enough; I just see it has some real issues.

Patricia “Pinky” Johnson (snowy-white Jeanne Crain) returns home after spending time in Boston training as a nurse. She returns as a fully trained nurse who, thanks to her lily-white complexion, has passed as white in the north. Her grandmother, Aunt Dicey (Ethel Waters), is a washerwoman with no doubts as to her racial heritage. Immediately upon returning home, Pinky remembers one of the main reasons she left. Those who remember her treat her as a black woman as only a black woman was treated in the South in the 1940s. Those who don’t treat her well until they find out the truth. What Pinky doesn’t tell anyone is that Dr. Tom Adams (William Lundigan) has asked her to marry him, which is what prompted to return home.

Contender Once More

Film: On the Waterfront
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player

There are movies that sit in places of honor for a variety of reasons. When you look at particular lists like the AFI Top 100 and compare it with other, similar lists, you tend to see a lot of the same movies near the same spots. Citizen Kane, for instance, tends to hover pretty close to the top on these lists. Another film that tends to rank pretty high on most lists of this sort is On the Waterfront. This is a film that could have easily taken the big five had Eva Marie Saint been nominated for Best Actress instead of Best Supporting Actress.

Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is an ex-prizefighter who now works on the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey. Every day, he and a group of other men walk down to the docks and wait to be hired to help load and unload the ships. Terry tends to get work because his brother Charley (Rod Steiger) is the right-hand man of union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). Johnny is insanely corrupt, taking a daily kickback from everyone who is hired as well as a kickback on every crate that is moved on the dock.

The Kindness of Strangers

Films: Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother ), A Streetcar Named Desire
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player (My Mother); Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Streetcar).

There are “chick flicks” and then there are “chick flicks.” On the one hand, you have the kind of film my wife tends to favor—bland romantic comedies where it’s obvious in the first 15 minutes that the guy will end up with the girl no matter how many hoops they have to jump through. There’s not much at stake in these movies, and while some are better than others, they are, in general, fluffy feel-goods.

And then you have films like Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother), which is a prime example of a three-hankie film. Oh, you could go through a box of tissue on this one, folks. It’s nothing but gut punches from about 15-minutes in, and even the uplift at the end is sure to drag a tear out of many a stern heart.

Manuela (Cecilia Roth) is our main character. She works as the coordinator of organ transplants at a hospital and lives with her 17-year-old son. Her son Esteban (Eloy Azorin) wants to be a writer, and wants to learn more about his father, who he has never met. On his birthday, the two go to the theater to see “A Streetcar Named Desire,” starring actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes) as Blanche. Esteban tries to get an autograph after the show, but fails, and while he stands in the rain watching Huma’s car drive off, he is struck by another car and killed. And thus, we are one hanky in. Manuela goes to Barcelona to find Esteban’s father.

As it turns out, the father has vanished, taking everything of his roommate’s. His roommate is Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a transvestite prostitute. Manuela arrives just in time to save Agrado from a beating administered by a John (a Juan, perhaps?), and the two return to Agrado’s place. The next morning, Agrado introduces Manuela to Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz), a local nun who works with the local hookers and junkies, finding them honest work.

As it turns out, though, Sister Rosa is ill. In fact, she’s pregnant, which would seem to be something of a violation of her vows as a nun. As it turns out, the father is none other than the father of Manuela’s late son, and we also discover that he has given Sister Rosa AIDS. And here comes the second hanky, and there it goes.

In the midst of all of this, Manuela tracks down Huma to speak with her, but it seems that Huma has problems of her own. One of her co-stars is Nina (Candela Pena), who is also a junkie and evidently her lover. Manuela helps Huma track Nina down during a buy, and, essentially, this causes Huma to trust Manuela implicitly, and she hires her to act as the personal assistant for both her and Nina. Manuela, needing a job since she left Madrid, accepts, and soon begins doing things for Huma, and taking care of Sister Rosa when not at work.

Nina, constantly looking for a fix, causes no end of problems, including being too bombed one night to perform, so Manuela steps in, causing a great deal of friction, and forcing her to leave the job. She explains everything to Huma, as well as her own past with “A Streetcar Named Desire.” As it turns out, she used to perform in an amateur company, and met her husband (and Esteban’s father) during a production of the show, and of course, lost her son immediately following a performance of the same show. Huma accepts her resignation but stays friendly with her, and hires Agrado has a replacement.

Of course, eventually Rosa has the baby, dies in childbirth (third hanky!) and we also learn that Rosa’s father is suffering from Alzheimer’s (hope that first hanky is dry by now). Yes, there’s an uplifting ending, but not before at least one more pile of tragedy gets dumped on us in the person of Manuela’s former husband, now-AIDS-ridden transvestite prostitute, Lola (Toni Canto).

It would be a lie to say that I was unmoved by all of this, because, well, it would be impossible not to be moved by some of it. But the movie seems to exist as a platform for continual bad things to happen to everybody at a near-constant clip. Misery gets piled on sadness gets piled on the worst luck possible throughout the film, and every step forward has a corresponding three steps backwards in terms of how much the characters are dealing with at any time.

Of all of them, my favorite is Agrado. Manuela is certainly a tower of strength throughout, and Huma—just one letter off from “Human,” shows that her strength as an actress comes from the tragedy of her life no less than anyone else’s. Agrado just exists, though. She’s a whore and fairly content with that as her occupation, and when she retires from that life to become the assistant to Huma, she’s content with that as well. Perhaps everything rolls off Agrado because Agrado doesn’t get involved in any of it. Good for her.

This is not a film to watch lightly, or to watch just because it’s sitting around. It requires the right mood. As for me, I get enough kicks to the groinular region without signing up for watching someone else get dumped on by the problems of the world.

Originally, I was prepared to watch another of Almodovar’s films today, but there’s such a strong thread of A Streetcar Named Desire running through Todo Sobre Mi Madre that it seemed natural to head in this direction. Fortunately, the film was streaming, and so here we are. There are a number of connections between the two, but more the stage play than the film. In the stage play, for instance, there are a number of hints toward homosexuality—Blanche’s husband killed himself after being caught in a homosexual affair. Shades of Manuela’s husband, condemned to a death by AIDS from the same source.

The film version stars Vivian Leigh as Blanche DuBois, a faded and fading Southern belle fallen on hard times. The family fortune, what little there was to begin with is gone, and she arrives in New Orleans at the apartment of her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter). Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), is a brute and a thug, and takes both an immediate dislike to Blanche as well as having an immediate attraction to her.

This attraction is mutual, in no small part because the two are near opposites. Blanche, for all of her lost fortune, is the epitome of a Southern belle. She puts on constant airs, flirts shamelessly with whomever is around her, and attempts to look every inch the damsel in distress. Stanley, on the other hand, is a primitive. He demands what is his from the sale of the family property, even if he has to beat it out of Blanche, who he treats roughly. There’s a part of her that likes this rough treatment, though. It’s evident in her eyes.

The complication here, or at least the main one, is Blanche herself. It becomes evident that she is not so much taking a sabbatical from teaching as she has been released from her position by virtue of an affair with one of her 17-year-old students. This, combined with that suicidal, gay husband of hers has caused her to retreat into a world where the fantasy of her Southern belle-hood is just as powerful (if not more) than her reality.

The fact that Stanley is such a brute doesn’t help matters here. He’s abusive to Stella, both physically and emotionally, but like any good sub-dom couple, Stella is into it. After the poker game, during which Blanche encounters “Mitch” Mitchell (Karl Malden) for the first time, Stanley loses a big hand, and goes berserk, punching the pregnant Stella. She and Blanche retreat to the apartment upstairs. Stanley goes out on the street and yells for her—that classic moment of Brando in the torn t-shirt screaming “Stella!” at the top of his lungs. And Stella comes to his call, pure sex walking down those stairs despite her plainness. And the next morning, she revels in the night she had, talking of how Stanley’s brutishness thrills her.

Blanche sets her sights on Mitch as her way of getting out of the apartment of her sister and of the both hateful and irrepressibly sexy Stanley Kowalski. Her alcoholism doesn’t help her any, of course, although she does try to hide it. And in her own way, Blanche needs Stanley as much as she thinks she needs Mitch—a guy collecting for the paper becomes just another man in her life who needs to prove to her that she is still desirable. Ultimately, of course, it ends badly with Stanley giving in to the urges that have been evident from the moment he first set eyes on Blanche and the conclusion that suggests that Stella might forgive him even this.

A Streetcar Named Desire won a quartet of Oscars, including three for acting. Vivian Leigh, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden all walked away with gold statues. Brando was nominated but lost out to Bogart. While it’s hard to object to Bogart winning anything, this film has become the one that made Brando who he was. Ultimately, although he didn’t win anything for the role, it’s become impossible to imagine anyone else playing the part of Stanley Kowalski, and every version of this play since has referenced him. This film is Brando at both the beginning and the height of his power and raw sexuality. When you see him in later films, it can be difficult to remember what he once looked like.

As a final note, I know several people who are a sort of modern day Blanche DuBois—the feminine posturing, the feigned helplessness. I understand the sort of mindset that makes this an attractive characteristic. It’s not one I favor—helplessness doesn’t attract me in the least—but Vivian Leigh plays it for every ounce of what it’s worth.

Why to watch Todo Sobre Mi Madre: Powerful drama.
Why not to watch: You’ll run out of tissue and revert to your shirt sleeves.

Why to watch A Streetcar Named Desire: Brando’s coming out party.
Why not to watch: It’s arguably less happy than Todo Sobre Mi Madre.