Never Judge a Film by its Title

Film: Ragtime
Format: DVD from Kankakee Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

Every now and then I get reminded of something that I should remember more often. You should never judge what a movie is going to be about before you actually watch the movie. I figured that a movie called Ragtime would be a drama that centered on people playing ragtime music. I expected something akin to a Scott Joplin soundtrack and a movie that took place in dance halls and the like. That’s not what this is about, although there is a character who plays a little ragtime piano. This is far more about race and class than it is about anything else.

It’s also one of those films that has a bunch of characters who all interact with each other on different levels and in different ways. Very oddly, some of the main characters are never named and are referred to in the credits only has Father (James Olson), Mother (Mary Steenburgen), and Younger Brother (Brad Dourif). As is often the case with a film like this, it’s easier to talk about each story individually than to go with a chronological blow-by-blow.

The Original American Hustle(r)

Film: The People vs. Larry Flynt
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Once upon a time, I worked in the computer and video game industry. One of the magazines that was a competitor of mine was called Video Games and Computer Entertainment. That magazine was printed by LFP, short for Larry Flynt Publications. What this means is that for about five years, I was a direct competitor of one of Larry Flynt’s magazines. One of the editors at VG&CE was a guy named David Moskowitz. At trade shows, a lot of the magazine guys hung out together. Moskowitz and I traded stories about our bosses to see who worked for the crazier guy. He won most of those competitions, although not all of them. So at some level, I have a personal connection to The People vs. Larry Flynt.

As the title implies, this is the story of pornographer Larry Flynt, best known for publishing Hustler magazine. While there’s a lot here about the early years of Flynt’s career and the building of his empire, the bulk of the film is about his legal troubles and the case that eventually carried him to the Supreme Court. We start with Flynt as a child and immediately jump forward to his strip club in Ohio. Flynt (Woody Harrelson) and his brother Jimmy (Brett Harrelso) aren’t doing well financially. Looking for a new way to publicize their club, they create a newsletter/magazine which eventually becomes Hustler magazine. On the brink of financial ruin, Flynt purchases nude photos of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and suddenly his fortune is made.

Asylum Seeker

Film: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

When you spend enough time with a list like the 1001 Movies, you start to notice that certain people show up again and again. This isn’t coincidence. When you look at the great actors of any generation, they are considered great actors for a reason, whether it’s from being a great actor (likely) or simply choosing well over and over (also likely), certain actors simply have careers of legend. John Cazale, who went five-for-five with films nominated for Best Picture is the winner in this particular rodeo, but there are others who come to mind. Olivia de Havilland shows up a lot, as do Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, and many others. One of those others is Jack Nicholson, who is rightly the most celebrated actor of his generation. Even the greatest actor of his generation has a greatest role and a greatest film. For Nicholson, my vote will always be One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

This is a film that certainly summarizes well, but I’m not going to summarize it beyond the very basics. Randle P. McMurphy (Nicholson) is sent to the state mental institution from prison because it is believed that he might be mentally ill. This comes in part from the series of brawls he’s been in, his current charge of statutory rape, and his shirking of the work detail. Once there, McMurphy battles with Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) and bonds with the collection of variously insane men, slowly losing his sanity in the process, this in no small part because of the cold, sadistic nature of Ratched.

Antonio Salieri

Film: Amadeus
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

I had forgotten just how good Amadeus really is.

I mean that just as it sits. I remembered it as great in a way that few films are, of course. It’s great and grand in that “really earned Best Picture” way that even fewer films are. It’s the sort of film that, even if you had another horse in the race, you couldn’t really object to its winning. It’s a piece of Hollywood legend that Laurence Olivier announced the winner without even opening the envelope, but there really wasn’t any doubt which film deserved to win. I remembered all of this. I remembered Tom Hulce’s insane giggle and F. Murray Abraham’s combination of adoration and hatred. But I forgot just how damn good this film is, how entertaining it is, and how much I enjoy watching it all unfold.

And the music. Oh, the music. The glorious, unreal music that runs through this entire film from start to finish. The music is so sublime that even without the rest of the things that make this film so watchable and so both good and great, it would still be worth nearly three hours of your time simply to listen to it. Throughout we are graced with compositions from Salieri and Mozart, and are given key pieces of Mozart’s great works including The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, and his epic requiem mass. How the hell did I forget all of this?

Who You Gonna Call? Not These Guys.

Film: Hori, Ma Panenko (The Fireman’s Ball)
Format: VHS from Northern Illinois University Library on big ol’ television.


Comedy sometimes translates from one culture to another and sometimes it doesn’t. There are some things that seem to be funny regardless of who’s doing it while other things are culture specific or time specific. Milos Forman’s Hori, Ma Panenko (The Fireman’s Ball) falls somewhere in the middle. Some of the events of this strange little comedy are riotously funny. Others are funny only in the context of the film being made in Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s. If you don’t know that this was filmed in a Communist country, much of what makes it funny will go straight over your head.

Hori, Ma Panenko is a comedy of errors. It concerns a volunteer fire brigade in a small town in Czechoslovakia. Wanting to do something nice for their former chairman who has cancer (but doesn’t know it—the doctors refuse to tell him), the brigade wishes to present him with a ceremonial fire axe for his 86th birthday. They’d have done it for his 85th if they’d known about the cancer.

Regardless, they decide to have a ball, a fundraising lottery, and a beauty pageant. The bulk of the story takes place at this ball and concerns the series of idiocies, problems, and outright fraud that occurs there. First is the table of items for the lottery. Even before the ball begins, they start to disappear, the food and booze items going first. As the ball goes on, more and more items slip away from the table despite the fact that one of the fireman is attempting to keep an eye on it, and the fact that his wife seems to be joining in on the thievery.

While this is going on, a few of the firemen attempt to put together a collection of women to compete for the beauty pageant. Many of the firemen want their own daughters in the competition regardless of how tubby or homely they are. None of the girls appear to really want to be in the pageant. One mother wants to watch the judging process and won’t leave the room with the firemen. Another girl strips down to her bathing suit. And naturally, while this is happening, the prizes on the lottery table continue to vanish.

Eventually, it’s time for the beauty contest, but the girls who were selected refuse to participate and instead lock themselves in a bathroom. Other women are commandeered to the stage—dragged in some cases—but it’s all for naught, since at that moment, the fire alarm goes off. There’s a fire in town. The house burns to the ground since the fire brigade has no real equipment and is forced to resort to shoveling snow onto the burning building.

Everyone returns to the ball, and many of the partygoers respond to the fire by donating their lottery tickets to the old man whose house burned down. Of course, since at this point virtually all of the lottery prizes are gone, it means nothing. The lights are turned off so that the guilty can return the stolen items, and when the lights come back on, everything is missing. From here, things continue to go downhill for the hapless brigade.

Milos Forman made this film without professional actors, and he didn’t need them. He used an actual fire brigade in a small town, and was based on a real experience of a real nightmarish fireman’s ball. The film, which humorously depicts corruption, incompetence, and outright criminal behavior from virtually everyone involved, caused a huge uproar and was eventually “banned forever” by the Czech state. In fact, Forman was rescued from a 10-year prison term for causing damage to Czechoslovakia by virtue of his French distributors, and emigrated shortly afterward.

All of that is interesting, of course, but the real question is whether or not the film is funny. It is, after all, a comedy. The answer to that isn’t that easy. Hori, Ma Panenko has not aged particularly gracefully. Parts of it are still funny, of course, but much of it requires the context of when and in what country it was shot simply to understand why something might be funny. This is true of both the comedy and the political satire here.

Why to watch Hori, Ma Panenko : A slice of Czech life turned on its side.
Why not to watch: Not all the comedy translates.