Forbidden Fruit

Film: Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun (Spring in a Small Town)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on far less kick-ass portable DVD player.

There’s been a fairly consistent effort on my part for more than a year to watch the earliest films on The List regularly. This actually has nothing to do with wanting to get past these films. It has everything to do with context. While I certainly haven’t shied away from the more recent films, I think I have a much better sense of these films having watched more from the earlier years. Today, I close out the 1940s (for now) with Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun (Spring in a Small Town).

This film was originally banned in its native China, although it is available now. I guess I can’t really be surprised that the film was banned during the political reign of Mao Zedong. This is the guy who, after all, attempted to destroy the past and erase the history of Chinese culture as being meaningless. Since its rediscovery, Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun is widely regarded as one of the great films of Chinese history. But it’s also sort of decadent in a Western/bourgeoisie sense, and I imagine that didn’t sit well with Chairman Mao.

For Me, that Something is Pain

Film: There’s Something About Mary
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

I was worried when, in the opening five minutes of There’s Something About Mary that it appeared that a person with some form of mental disability was going to be made into a stooge for some unpleasant humor. I mean, there’s bad taste and then there’s really bad taste. I don’t mind some humor that edges past the boundaries of good taste, but getting the mentally disabled guy beaten up in the first few minutes of your film? There are places you just don’t go.

Fortunately, we don’t go there. That’s the only place the Farrelly Brothers don’t go in There’s Something About Mary. Anything else is on the table. My guess is that almost everyone reading this has seen this film, so I won’t go too much into detail here. I will say that I have a history with this film. My history is that the first (and only, prior to today) time I tried to watch it, I walked out less than an hour in. That doesn’t bode well.

All That Glitters

Film: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

The first 20 minutes of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a master’s class on how to set up characters and plot. We meet Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), a down on his luck American stuck in Tampico begging for money from other Americans. When he finally finds a job with fellow down-and-outer Curtin (Tim Holt) from a man named McCormick (Barton MacLane), they discover that McCormick is a known cheat who always finds a way to avoid paying his workers. They learn about the fever of gold prospecting from an old timer named Howard (Walter Huston). And they confront McCormick and beat him senseless, taking only what they are owed. In this 20 minutes, we learn that our two men are desperate, still honest, tough, and that the idea of finding gold has been firmly planted in their heads.

Our trio heads off into the wilds of Mexico to see if they can locate some of the magical metal that changes hearts and lives. Dobbs and Curtin are initially of the opinion that they’ll be carrying Howard on their back, but Howard proves to be more than able to carry his own weight. In fact, he appears to be in the best shape. After a run-in with fool’s gold and other problems of the Mexican wilderness, they find what they’re looking for—gold dust mixed in with the dirt. They set up camp, build a sluice and a mine, and start digging.

Enjoy the Sauce

Film: Do Ma Daan (Peking Opera Blues)
Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive on laptop.

Okay, I’ve seen some weird shit in my lifetime, but few things as completely nonsensical as Do Ma Daan (Peking Opera Blues). I mean, I’ve seen Eraserhead and Liquid Sky, and both of those films made way more sense than this one did. I’m not even sure where to begin. I typically spend some time rehashing the plot to help make sense of the film and to highlight particular aspects of it, but with this film, I have nowhere to begin. Here’s a quick synopsis: stuff happens.

Because of this, what you are reading may well be the shortest review I’ve ever written, because without a plot that makes any sense, I have only the performances (such as I can make sense of them), the action sequences, and what evidently passes for comedy in mid-‘80s China. There are some pretty funny moments, I’ll admit. But there’s also an incredible amount of unintended humor created by the single worst subtitle track I have ever seen in my life.

All Singing, All Dancing

Film: On the Town; An American in Paris
Format: VHS (On the Town) and DVD (An American in Paris) from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on big ol’ television.

Sing the refrain with me, folks: I don’t like musicals that much. I have, however, been very good about crossing them off my list. In fact, I think I’ve crossed off all but a few after today. I try very hard to take each one for what it is and I always want to like whatever I watch. Sadly, I have a feeling I’m going to catch some hell for disliking On the Town (I’m looking at you, Siobhan). This is a musical that hits every main point a musical needs to please the fans of the genre. What I mean by that is that it’s more than just the people singing and dancing that make this a most musical of musicals. Its attitude, situation, and wacky hijinks throughout place this firmly into its genre.

Ready for the plot rehash? Three sailors get a 24-hour leave in New York. Two of them find girls to spend the day with immediately while the third creates a fantasy girl for himself, then finds her, then loses her, and spends most of the day trying to get her back. That and a shit-ton of singing and dancing are the whole film.

Did He or Didn't He?

Film: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.

Think just for a moment about John Wayne. You can see him, right? You can hear him talking, right? I’d guess there’s a 50/50 chance that you’re imagining him calling somebody “Pilgrim.” If that’s the John Wayne mental stereotype you’ve pictured (it certainly is for me), you have The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to thank for that mental picture. He says that word probably more than any other in this film.

I’ve mentioned my relationship with Westerns in the past, but I’ll sum it up here for reference. Few genres of film are so likely to fall into cliché as the Western, which means that for a lot of them, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen a ton. This also means that Westerns that manage to get away from cliché or do something more than show us six-guns and horses have the potential to be extremely interesting. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is such a film, because it plays with those Western conventions and gives us something different from good guy-bad guy to think about.

One After Another

Film: Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer; Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen (Aileen); streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Henry).

I’ve known for a couple of years that when I got to either of today’s films I’d watch them on the same day; they’re a natural double feature based on the titles if nothing else. I’ve put them off until now mostly because I was nervous about one of them and didn’t have a great deal of interest in the other. Still, I’m running out of films, and with February being a down month for me in general, it was time to knock them out. While both films (obviously) deal with serial killers, they couldn’t be more different.

Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer is a documentary about the title character, the first convicted female serial killer in American jurisprudence history. It is one of the oddest documentaries I’ve ever seen in that it would seem to be tailor-made to be a lurid story, but it’s not. Rather than focusing on the seven murders Wuornos was accused of (she was ultimately convicted of six), it instead focuses on the people around her, many of whom decided to associate with her specifically to make money from her crimes.