Status Report

So I've gone through January watching at least one movie every day, and while it's been fun, it's also been tiring. It's not a pace I am capable of maintaining, so I'm not going to maintain it. From this point on, I'll be updating less frequently, and with shorter updates. Life has its demands, and I must bow to them.

Something to Watch, Movie-wise

Film: The Apartment
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on itty bitty television.


It’s easy to think in this day and age with the scarcity of jobs in the world, it’s easy to think that employers can take advantage of their employees because the employees are scared to leave. That may or may not be the case, depending on both the employer and the employee. The Apartment would like viewers to believe that such has been the case for a long, long time.

C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon) works on the 19th floor of a large building for a larger insurance company. For his bosses, the biggest benefit that Baxter has is that his apartment is near the office. What this means is that Baxter frequently loans his place to the executives of his company for their trysts with willing young women, since those men can’t run off to a hotel, and certainly can’t bring a floozy home to their wives. So Baxter’s apartment substitutes as the motel of choice for the company executives and their mistresses. In fact, he keeps a desk calendar to schedule when he can’t go home.

Those executives have made a lot of promises to Baxter, and they finally appear to pay off. He’s called to the head of personnel, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who accuses Baxter of something underhanded—essentially that he’s using his apartment as a bordello for the upper management. Sheldrake comes on strong, but ultimately just wants the apartment for himself and his date.

The one good thing in Baxter's life is Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the perky elevator operator with a moderately skewed way of looking at the world. The day that Sheldrake trades Baxter a pair of tickets for a Broadway show for the apartment key, Baxter invites Fran to the show. Unfortunately for Baxter, Sheldrake’s date is Fran Kubelik. For Sheldrake this is a chance to get her back, because Fran has dumped him. She agrees to the tryst, then, on Christmas Eve, attempts suicide in Baxter’s apartment.

Now Baxter has a real problem—the girl of his dreams is the mistress of his boss, and here she is, recovering in his apartment. Worse for him, he knows Fran’s connection with Sheldrake. He also knows that he’s going to have to choose between his upwardly mobile career and his girl.

The Apartment is a tough film to figure. It’s certainly a comedy in many places, but the comedy runs from charcoal gray to the deepest ebony. The comedy comes from comes from the presence of Lemmon, who plays his typical dopey schlub with his typical brilliance. Shirley MacLaine alternates between despair and bubbly. It’s easy, these days, to look at MacLaine and remember the heights of crazy she got up to in later years. In this film, the woman shows she had some serious acting chops.

If MacLaine is the emotional heart of the film, Jack Lemmon is its frantic nerve center. All he wants is his life back, his apartment, and to be left alone at first. Eventually, all he really wants is Fran Kubelik. On the way there, he tries his best to keep himself together, going so far as to lie to Fran about Jeff Sheldrake’s feelings for her to keep her spirits up, pretending that Sheldrake cares for her more than he does.

For me, the most interesting thing is Fred MacMurray, who is a complete sleeze. MacMurray made a career of being a nice guy, and only played a total creep in two films: this one and Double Indemnity, another classic from Billy Wilder. He’s a dirtbag out only for his own pleasure and completely without scruples or morals. Jeff Sheldrake cares for no one and nothing but himself, and possibly his children.

While certainly not the raciest film ever made, or likely even the raciest film of the 1960s, but it deals very frankly with the idea that lots and lots of married men had affairs. The film doesn’t take any moral position on this, other than making the quartet of executives who use his apartment a collection of nitwits and bumblers and to make Sheldrake a heel. Beyond that, there’s not anything that suggests the film has an opinion on these men or their actions. In fact, virtually no one takes the blame for anything but Baxter, who takes a punch on Sheldrake’s behalf. He is the karmic victim of the crimes of his bosses.

The question here is what price a man is worth—his pride, his soul, and everything he stands for. It takes Baxter the entire movie to answer that question, but answer it he does, and with authority.

Billy Wilder, who managed to make films in any variety of genres, managed to put all of them in this one, and did it perfectly. The Apartment won a Best Picture Oscar, one for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and two others, and it deserved every bit of all five.

Why to watch The Apartment: Magic.
Why not to watch: Your world requires Shirley MacLaine to be crazy and Fred MacMurray to be pleasant.

Everyone Watches Rick's

Film: Casablanca
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on big ol’ television.


Years ago, I worked with a guy who had a Casablanca poster on the wall of his office. I commented on it one day, and he replied with something about how the director (Michael Curtiz) made one of the greatest films in history and never did anything else noteworthy. I never asked if he was joking, so to this day I don’t know if the guy was seriously that unaware of the career of Curtiz or if he thought he was yanking my chain.

Curtiz, of course, is one of the great film stylists of the 30s and 40s, and still one of the greatest film directors to ever stand next to or behind a camera. While plenty of his films are worth watching over and over, Casablanca is the masterpiece. No other film has such a wealth of incredible memorable lines—it feels like half of the great lines in American cinema are from this film. Even toss aways like “Round up the usual suspects,” if they didn’t come from here, were made famous and immortal here. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest, for instance, that “Here’s looking at you, kid” was around long before this film, but it’s a rare person who doesn’t associate that line with this movie.

An American named Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) runs a bar in Casablanca, in what is still Free French territory, at the end of 1941. The Nazis have taken over most of Europe, and the only route to America is through Lisbon. The only safe route to Lisbon is through Casablanca. So, in addition to the usual residents, the Vichy French, and some Germans, Casablanca has become a city of refugees looking for a way out.

Also in Casablanca is Captain Renault (Claude Rains) of the police. He is an amiable but thoroughly corrupt official, willing to let people leave the city for enough money or, in the case of attractive women, other favors. He allows Rick to keep his club open because Rick lets him win at roulette and because, to his knowledge, Rick has never helped anyone secure the papers necessary to leave the city.

Ugarte (Peter Lorre) does arrange such trips, and he has recently killed two German couriers who carried papers that are usable by anyone and cannot be questioned—a prize worth a huge fortune in the city. He gives these to Rick to safeguard, and is immediately captured by Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) of the SS. As Ugarte exits, a refugee couple arrives: Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). Lund is an agitator wanted by the Germans. Renault is told to never let him leave Casablanca alive, but Rick has a way to get him out of the city. Unfortunately for Laszlo, Ilsa had a torrid affair with Rick in Paris when she thought her husband was dead. Now, Rick has to decide if he wants to let Laszlo go, to flee with Ilsa himself, or keep Ilsa with him in the doomed city.

It is a nearly perfect love triangle. Ilsa truly does love both of the men completely, and is torn between them. Laszlo, in many ways, is the true ideal. He fights for what he believes in, is daring and courageous, strong and true. He has survived concentration camps and weeks on the run to stay with her, and as they ran from Europe, he never left her at his own peril. Rick, on the other hand, is gruff on the exterior, but frequently shows throughout the film that he is completely sentimental and frequently acts in ways that go against his best interests. Ingrid Bergman was never more beautiful than in this film, making the decisions that the two men make both heartwrenching and believable. Any man would make tough choices for her.

A running (and famous) theme through the movie is the song “As Time Goes By,” mimicked on the piano by Rick’s pet musician, Sam (Dooley Wilson). In reality, Wilson was a percussionist and watched someone off-screen to copy the movements. The song was evidently Rick’s and Ilsa’s in Paris, and when Sam plays it, it immediately returns the pair of them to their affair in Paris and the invasion of the city by the German Army.

The story is a great one, and there are memorable scenes throughout the film. Peter Lorre is great in his role as always, and incredibly memorable despite the fact that he’s only in the movie for a few minutes. The most moving scene in the film involves the singing of the French National Anthem in Rick’s club as the expatriates drown out the singing of a group of German soldiers. It is this scene that causes the third act of the film, and ultimately one of the most unforgettable climaxes filmed.

If you are the type of person who refuses to watch a black and white film because it is black and white, shame on you. Casablanca would not be improved by being in color in any way. Casablanca will still be worth watching and still be studied 100 years from now, 200 years from now, and 300 years from now.

Why to watch Casablanca: There has never been a greater romance filmed, and the rest of the film is pretty damn good, too.
Why not to watch: Because you are a stupid, stupid person.

A Hidebound Hero

Films: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Format: DVD from Mokena Public Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television.


Change is difficult, but in today’s world, it’s something that comes faster and faster all the time. We learn to adapt to change because we live in a world where we have to. This hasn’t always been the case, of course. There was a time in the past when the world changed slowly, and it became easy to become comfortable, particularly for those of the wealthy class.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp concerns itself with Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey), a British officer of the old model. While the first few minutes of the film take place in the mid-1940s at the height of World War II, most of the film takes place in flashback. However, those first few moments are important. We learn that the British Home Guard is planning a training exercise. “War starts at midnight” is the phrase, but a contingent of troops believes it would be more instructive to start the war immediately, acting more in the manner of the current modes of war.

This causes a stern, arguably extreme reaction from the man leading the Home Guard, General Wynne-Candy. To help us understand how Candy, frequently called “Shuggie” or “Sugar” Candy, became the tubby old general he did, we flash back a good 40 years to the Boer War, when Candy has returned from service in South Africa.

The story here is too long to go into details—the restored version of the film clocks in at just under three hours. What is important is the personage of Candy, the important women in his life, and the man who begins the film as his enemy and ends as his greatest friend. The first woman and the friend he meets almost immediately. Returning from the Boer War a decorated hero, Candy learns that a man in Germany has been casting slurs against Her Majesty’s troops. Candy travels to Berlin, meets up with Edith Hunter (Deborah Kerr), and fights a duel with Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook). Both men are wounded—Candy takes a slash to the face that causes him to grow a mustache—and wind up fast friends. Both men also fall in love with Edith, but Candy doesn’t realize he loves her until much later, after she has married Theo.

Candy marries Barbara Wynne (also Deborah Kerr), a nurse he met on the last day of World War I in France. The two have a quick courtship and an evidently happy marriage, in part because Barbara is the absolute image of Edith. In the 30s, Barbara dies in Jamaica.

During World War II, Theo is a refugee from Germany, Edith having died in 1933. Candy has been forcibly retired from the service, but signs up with the Home Guard to make himself useful and to use the years of military expertise he has gained fighting in a number of wars. It is here he meets the final woman in his life, Angela “Johnny” Cannon (Deborah Kerr for the hat trick). He had selected her as his driver out of 700 girls, again because she is the image of Edith, and in this case, his late wife.

What happens with Wynne-Candy is less important than his reaction to various events in his life. His reaction is, essentially, nothing unless it is to lash out against the changes that he cannot fathom and a world he no longer understands. He represents a sort of old-school guard of soldier who not only believed that war was an honorable profession, but lived the truth of it. Once a battle was over, once a fight was done, it was possible, even likely, to become good friends with your former enemies. At the end of World War I, he says to his aide Murdoch (the underappreciated John Laurie), “Right makes might.” His meaning is the England won, despite the treachery of the German Army—in the face of poison gas, the bombing of free cities, and tricks that an honorable foe would not attempt, Britannia still came out on top. Essentially, the Allied victory did nothing but reinforce his world view—that a man could still be an honorable soldier of the old school.

Time passes in interesting ways in the film. Since the bulk of the movie is concerned with Candy’s military service, the times between the wars are passed in montage. It is evident, for instance, that between the Boer War and World War I, Candy spent his time traveling and big game hunting. The years pass not with a flipping calendar but with the sudden appearance of a series of animal heads on the wall of his den. Additionally, even significant events like the deaths of Barbara and Murdoch occur not in front of us, but merely as clippings from a newspaper, as if to say these events were not important enough to show.

Most interesting of all is the fact that the biggest moment of the film occurs when Candy is not present. Attempting to enter England during World War II, Theo gives an impassioned speech about why he left Germany, one of the most moving few minutes of film created in the 1940s or since. However, Candy misses the speech, in a way preventing him from understanding that his way of looking at the world no longer works.

Candy is an anachronism, a dinosaur, a horse and buggy in a world of cars, and everyone but Theo tries to insulate him from that reality. When Johnny becomes aware of her boyfriend Spud’s (James McKechnie) plan to circumvent the war game, she tells him he can’t because Candy is such a dear old man and it wouldn’t be fair. While possibly true, Spud’s entire point is that the time for playing fair has long since passed.

It’s worth commenting on the name of the film, since it does not appear to refer to anyone in the movie, and since the film ends with Candy standing tall and offering a salute. “Colonel Blimp” was a cartoon character in the U.K. from the 1930s to about the 1960s. Colonel Blimp was the personification of the ultra reactionary military leadership, unable to change, see reason, or even make sense. His statements were filled fire and brimstone nonsense along the lines of “By Gad, sir! Mr. Smith-Smythe is right! The only way to preserve a free press is to shut down the newspapers and prevent them from talking against us!” The film is not so much about the life and death of Clive Candy, but the life and death of this type of thinking.

It’s also worth noting that this film was created in 1943, at the height of World War II. Censors in England and Churchill himself tried to get the film banned, and prevented Laurence Oliver from playing the role of Candy. What’s most shocking in the film is Theo, who is, sympathetic, the voice of reason throughout, and German. The film was written and directed by the dynamic team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; Pressburger, it should be noted, was a native Austrian who emigrated to England.

I did not know what to expect with this film, but I’m very glad I chose to watch it early in this countdown.

Why to watch The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp: A great, gutsy story and incredible performances by Livesey, Kerr, and especially Walbrook.
Why not to watch: You fear change.

Reality and Unreality in the Frozen North

Film: Nanook of the North
Format: DVD from Moline Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.


Any documentary filmmaker, amateur or professional, will deal with certain questions and concerns about his or her film. Predominant of these questions is how closely the film tracks with reality. It’s a question still being asked of documentarians today, just as it was asked about the very first people who tried to depict real life on a big screen. Certainly this is the case with Robert Flaherty, the man behind what is considered in many ways to be the first ever documentary, Nanook of the North.

Flaherty had been sent into the Canadian northlands to scout for the possibility of rail lines and for minerals. Through these trips, he came into contact with many of the native people who lived in this region of the Canadian wilderness, the Inuit, more commonly referred to as Eskimo. Realizing that the way of live for these people was changing and changing rapidly—and that he was a major part of the reason for that change, Flaherty took it upon himself to document the lifestyle of these people.

When Flaherty started, there were no conventions for how to properly create a documentary, thus he did what he thought was right. He was, and in fact still is in many cases, criticized for the more romantic elements of his film that have little to do with the reality of the lives of his subjects. While the film tells the story of Nanook, an Inuit hunter, and his family, the reality is that his “family” as depicted on the screen are not really his. Nyla, his wife, is merely another Inuit who looked good on camera.

Other changes brought in by Flaherty include such aspects as the way Nanook and others dress and hunt. By the time Flaherty worked in the sub-Arctic, guns had become a much more common way of hunting than harpooning; building materials more traditional for the southern climates were used in place of snow and ice igloos. Even Western clothing had made inroads into the north, and the costumes worn by Nanook and his “family” were more idealized views of a primitive time. For these changes, Flaherty can be forgiven—his goal was to document a lifestyle before it disappeared completely, and to do so, he needed to Inuit to act, look, and dress in more traditional ways.

As this is a documentary, there is no actual plot. Instead, the film attempts to show the day-to-day struggle of the people who live in one of the most unforgiving and terrible environments on the planet. Nanook, as the man the film is named for, is obviously the main focus of virtually every inch of film. The film, with at least some level of accuracy, shows what he must go through simply to survive, from hunting walrus and spearing salmon to building a traditional igloo out of the raw materials on the ground.

Nanook of the North is, admittedly, far less than it would be if such an ethnography were to be created with modern standards by modern filmmakers. But working from essentially nothing, with no one to guide his hand or his direction, Robert Flaherty created an entire style and genre of film that continues to be used, developed, and built upon today. Flaherty created a new way to look at the world around us, and a new way to view the reality of our world.

Is Nanook of the North worth your time? That’s a valid question. It may be that you have absolutely no interest in the way other people live or lived, in which case you will find nothing here to engage you. On the other hand, what are movies but the depictions of the lives of others? The influence of this film is still being felt, and will continue to be for as long as a filmmaker decides to show reality rather than a piece of fiction.

Why to watch Nanook of the North: It’s where documentaries came from.
Why not to watch: You don’t care.

Japan vs. America

Film: Ringu (Ring)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.


For one reason or another, certain cultures seem to be prone to a particular genre of film, and a specific film can often be pegged as being from a specific culture without too much trouble. It would be difficult, for instance, to watch any film connected in any way to Michael Bay and not know the film came from the U.S. There’s a particularly American feel to films of his style.

Horror films, at least good ones, have lately frequently had the stamp of Japan on them, even when they are almost immediately remade by American filmmakers. Movies like The Eye, The Grudge, and The Ring have all had American makeovers that have been pretty well received by audiences in general, but are substantially less than their original Japanese incarnations. While much of the horror translates from one culture to another easily, the cultural elements that truly make the film work do not translate from the Japanese well at all.

For instance, many of these films have a strong connection with horrific elements of water. Americans in general don’t have the same relationship with water that the Japanese do. Japan is all coastline, and everywhere is pretty close to the sea. That’s not the case for many places in the U.S. I live 1,000 miles from the closest salt water, so my particular relationship with the ocean is distant at best. In Japan, life comes from the ocean in the form of food. Death comes from the ocean as well in the guise of tsunamis. Thus, Japan’s relationship with water is far different than that of much of America’s.

Similarly, many Japanese horror films deal with themes of isolation and technology. These are again very Japanese themes. Japan is an overcrowded island, and solitude can be difficult to find, but since people are often in the company of others, solitude can just as easily be terrifying, and frequently, technology is used to isolate us from other people.

Ringu is arguably the best of the new breed of Japanese horror film (although others would opt for the more disturbing and psychological Audition). Ringu works because of its technology, since the film centers around a cursed videotape. Essentially, a bizarre little film has been left on a videotape at a resort hotel. Everyone who sees the tape lives for a week and then dies mysteriously, for no apparent reason, and with the most terrifying expression on his or her face.

The niece of a journalist named Reiko (Nanako Matsushima) sees the tape and dies mysteriously at home. Reiko, looking into the death, and the deaths of three other young people on the same day, discovers that the quartet spent a night at a resort hotel on Izu. There, she discovers an unmarked tape and watches it. The tape makes little sense—a woman brushes her hair, words move on a page, people roll on the ground, a man with a towel over his head points to the left. An eye appears with the word “Sada” reflected in it, then there is a long shot of a well. Immediately afterward, the phone rings, and Reiko now believes that she too has only one week to live.

Reiko shows the tape to her ex-husband Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada), a university professor. She makes him a copy of the tape, and the two begin going through it frame by frame on the university’s editing equipment. The pair begins investigating the meaning of the tape, trying to parse together words they hear in the tape and the meanings of the images. The week deadline takes on a significant meaning when their son, Yoichi (Takashi Yamamura) views the tape as well, and now has only a week to live himself. This creates an even more serious race to discover the hidden meanings on the video and discover a way to survive the curse.

Ringu works for a number of different reasons. The characters in the film are, perhaps because of their desperation, very smart, and it helps that they are both excellent researchers. They discover answers to the various hints in the obscure videotape because they are clever and dedicated as well as desperate, but in many cases, this cleverness does little to help them. This is what is truly disturbing about the film. In horror movies, we as the audience expect people who act stupidly to die just as we expect those who are smarter than the rest to be successful. Here, intelligence helps, but is by no means proof against a horrifying death at the hands of the cursed tape.

The most indelible image in the film is the girl from the video, hunched over with her hair hanging across her face. Dead or haunted kids are always terrifying, and here we have one of the most tragic and disturbing. However, the fact that the girl is tragic does nothing to change the fact that she is also one of the most evil spirits to appear in a film in ages. In fact, much of the horror in the film comes from the way the girl was treated and the reason for her cursing any who see her tape.

Ringu was remade in American as The Ring almost immediately, a trend that has become more and more common when it comes to Japanese horror films. The American remake is actually fairly decent, but not great. The reason the American film works, however, is because it follows the source material almost precisely, to the point where the two are essentially the exact same film.

In many ways, Ringu translates well to an American audience because of the theme of technology and its potentially terrible effects on all of us, which certainly helped the American remake. Additionally, the videotape itself is in many ways far more interesting than the one in Ringu. It’s clearer, at the very least, and has a number of additional elements in it that make it harder to follow and far more disturbing. It is also far clearer in the American version why the movie is named what it is.

Additionally, The Ring is in many ways more terrifying than the original Ringu because it has more throughout it that is disturbing. However, the final 10 minutes of Ringu are among the scariest moments of film I have ever seen. The implications of the ending are equally terrifying.

Which is better? I’d stick with the original if only because it’s the original.

Why to watch Ringu: Because the last 10 minutes will stick with you for a year.
Why not to watch: You’ve seen the American remake, which is essentially the same movie.

Comedy at 100 Miles Per Hour

Film: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.





















In the 1980s, there was no more powerful comedy team than that of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker. The team entered the 80s with Airplane! and wrapped up the decade with The Naked Gun, making the Police Squad television show and the cult comedy Top Secret! in between. While it’s difficult to argue with the success on all levels of Airplane!, there’s a lot to be said for the trio’s first cop comedy.

The Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker style of comedy is to throw every conceivable idea possible that might possibly cause one single person in the world to laugh and add it to the film somewhere. A minute of film that doesn’t include at least four one-liners, a couple of sight gags, some slapstick and a bad pun or two is, in their world, a minute wasted. Any possible miscommunication is exploited for every possibility, anything that could call for a stupid joke is included.

That’s really the joy of this model of film is that even though some of the jokes might not work, and in fact many of them will not work for everyone, there are so many jokes throughout the film that plenty of the jokes will work, and often work more than once, even when you can see it coming a mile away.

The plot follows a bumbling police lieutenant named Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) as he tries to clear the name of his partner, Nordberg (O.J. Simpson before he got all weird and murdery) and prevent a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth. Along the way, he is assisted by his friend Ed Hocken (George Kennedy), has a torrid affair with Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley), the secretary of the film’s bad guy, Vincent Ludwig (Ricardo Montalban).

But with a movie like this, there’s no real concern about plot. Plot is secondary to throwing as much potential comedy on the screen as possible. For instance, in a montage of Frank’s and Jane’s first day together , the following happens. They run on the beach, Frank gets clobbered with a giant beach ball, Frank swirls a giant mass of cotton candy on his hand, the pair get matching tattoos, they squirt each other with condiments at a hot dog stand, ride bucking broncos, run on the beach again, sail a pirate schooner, come laughing out of a screening of Platoon, and run on the beach again, clotheslining another couple. Following this rapid montage, Jane says, “I had a wonderful day.” This loses a lot in the telling, because it’s a ridiculous scene, and it works completely.

The real selling point here is that it never stops. It’s not a film that translates well to being described, because so much of the comedy here is visual. Even the great lines like “sexual assault with a concrete dildo” don’t work nearly as well written down as they do in the film. This is a film that cannot be described but must be seen to be understood and believed. Films like this one have been copied plenty of times since, often by Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker themselves, but never again equaled. In fact, only their previous Airplane! can even come close to this level of insanity.

Aside from the comedy, the big selling point here is the exquisite cast. Leslie Nielsen has made a career for years playing essentially a sighted Mr. Magoo, completely oblivious to anything going on around him and always deadpan, a skill never better demonstrated than here. George Kennedy, an Oscar-winning actor, is equally braindead and goofy throughout. The real joy here, though, is Ricardo Montalban, who is far funnier in the role by playing it straight than he would be by playing it for comedy.

Only other Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker films come anywhere close to this. In the film’s 84-minute running time, there are at least 1,000 attempts to make you laugh. If you don’t laugh or at least smile at a quarter of them, have someone check you for a pulse.

Why to watch The Naked Gun: Few other films approach this level of constant funny.
Why not to watch: You’ve passed out from laughing too hard.