Screwball comedy in 1980s New York (Books - Missing Reels by Farran Smith Nehme)

Last weekend, thanks to my friend Sheila, I attended a screening of a The Awful Truth, a 1937 screwball comedy about a married couple who argue, plan to divorce, but just can't seem to leave each other alone because they can't stand seeing the other with anybody else. With Cary Grant,Irene Dunne, (and Asta, the dog from the Thin Man films), it was shown at The Museum of the Moving Image, a spot well worth visiting if you are in NYC.  This is the film that some critics say, made Cary Grant a superstar, and it's not hard to see why.  It is dead clever and full of good belly laughs.

It was introduced by film writer Farran Smith Nehme on the release of her novel Missing Reels (Overlook Press, 2014), thank you, Overlook, for my copy.  One could almost call the event reverse product placement.  Rather than the film including the book, the book mentions The Awful Truth (and sooooo many other vintage films) in its pages, and occasioned this screening.  But really, the film could not be better advertisement for Smith Nehme's entertaining novel which is part mystery, part romance, part love letter to vintage films, and a genuinely good time.  The time? 1980s. The place? New York City, but this is a NYC without cell phones, without Disney in Times Square, a NYC that had payphones and vintage movie houses.  I used to go to them all - The Regency, Carnegie Hall Cinema, St. Mark's Cinema, The Thalia - and see not just one classic film, but usually a double feature!  Aaah, those were the days.

A delayed account of bookeywookey's New York cultural wanderings (Books - The View from the Tower, Robert Oppenheimer, Night in Shanghai) (Film - Les Petits Mouchoirs) (Art - Gaugin, Sonnabend, and Jasper Johns)

I have gotten hopelessly behind with a regular accounting of my reading this year, never mind the theatre, films, operas, and exhibits that make up my New York life.  Take this week.  I finished the new Charles Lambert thriller The View from the Tower which I heartily enjoyed (I'll link the post when I write it).  I dipped again into Ray Monk's Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center, a biography of the influential physicist which I have had going since late last year.  While Monk makes the case for an interesting life full of internal conflict, his rendering is too comprehensive.  You lose the forest for the trees, the forest in this case, being the narrative throughline.  I'm disappointed by biographies that seem to be nothing more than repositories for the totality of an author's research plopped on the page in chronological order, rather than the crafting of a narrative which has an opinion about that life.  To be fair, Monk has a strong point of view about Oppenheimer's judaism which, he asserts was repressed and the source of tremendous interior conflict,however, that opinion fails to cull his narrative.

I started and gave up on Night in Shanghai (thank you Henry Holt for this copy) which was promising for its setting in 1930s Shanghai and the way the author Nicole Mones created atmosphere, but I couldn't for the life of me keep track of the characters.  The unfamiliar language impeded my remembering who was who and my lack of historical knowledge added to my difficulty remembering which side of the nationalist versus communist struggle they were on, so I couldn't follow what motivated the plot and, unfortunately, I lost the thread.  The sense of place was successfully pervasive and the writing entertaining, so don't let my faulty memory discourage you.

I went to the Antiquarian Book Fair yesterday, which, given the average price of the items displayed there was more of an antique book museum for me.  I came across a novel by Tennessee Williams I had never heard of called Moise and the World of Reason and would have bought the beautiful first edition if I had had $295 to spare.

I then wandered down to MOMA where I saw a very interesting exhibit of Gauguin's prints, how they interacted with his painting, a show whose theme was the gallerist Ileana Sonnabend and the works she brought to public attention at her Paris and New York galleries.  I have to say I found this more interesting for its history than likeable for the work in it.  I also saw a small exhibit of Jasper John's latest works: Regrets, based on a photograph of Lucien Freud.  Small, tightly curated shows are always my preference.  I didn't merely enjoy the work for itself, I appreciated how the prints and paintings on grew from the original photograph, which is also on display. This is a show that's about creative process more than anything, and how the act of an artist doing something as a result of their experience of some source, becomes the seed of new work. Wonderful show.

Finally, I made my chilly, rainy way home, poured a glass of red wine, got under a blanket and watched Guillaume Canet's 2010 Les Petits Mouchoirs; the English title is Little Whie Lies. This is a French Big Chill, complete with a tight ensemble cast of solid actors, great music choices, and a somewhat sentimental story of a group of middle aged friends minus one.  The love and pathos of old friendships is beautifully captured by the cast in that undemonstrative way that French films are so good at, where people seem like people because they are free to feel but not getting off on showing you that they can.  Be prepared to use at least one mouchoir if you're at all moved during films.

I won't tell your story any more! (Films - The Mirror (1997) dir. Jafar Panahi)

Jafar Panahi is an Iranian director who has been sentenced to 6 years in jail and banned for making films for 20 years because of the opinions expressed in his films.  He has defied his country's authority by continuing to make the films - This is Not a Film (2011) a fascinating cinematic diary of his arrest and Closed Curtain (2013), which I have not seen.  I was introduced to his work when my friend Sheila hosted her fantastic Iranian Film Blogathon in 2011.  The Mirror (1997, available through Netflix) is Panahi's second feature film.  It features Mina Mohammadkhani, a 7-year-old willful powerhouse of talent, playing a girl her own age (Baharan) who, when her mother does not pick her up at school, is determined to find her own way home through the traffic clogged streets of Tehran.  In some ways this film reminds me of Woody Allen's films about the cities he loves - Manhattan and Midnight in Paris - but the film's esthetic is rougher, with a feeling of capturing real moments.  Its point of view is more subversive, as I'll explain in a minute.

Film - Hannah Arendt (2012)

Director, Margarethe von Trotta and actress Barbara Sukowa made Rosa Luxemburg, a film about the life and politics of the provocative socialist.  Though it came out in 1986, I still remember it.  So when I heard they had teemed up again to make a film about philosopher Hannah Arendt, I didn't want to miss it.  Arendt's coverage of the Adolph Eichmann trials in Jerusalem in 1961 in The New Yorker was, to say the least, controversial and provoked incendiary reactions.  Her goal, though, according to this film, was to use thought to understand the man rather than to judge him.  This appears, too, to be von Trotta's mantra.  She makes intimate films about the interior lives of women who profoundly influenced the politics of their era to explore their motives and the consequences of living as they did for a cause.  It is a relief to see a film about the value of thought in the context of politics - especially politics that provokes strong feelings.  We could do with a little of that.  And if that weren't reason enough to see it, Janet McTeer plays writer Mary McCarthy in it.

Film - The Great Gatsby (2013)

There have been three film adaptations of The Great Gatsby that I know about: The 1949 film starring Alan Ladd, The 1974 film with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, and the most recent incarnation with Leonardo DiCaprio directed by Baz Luhrmann.  None of them have worked.  I can't remember why that was my impression of the earlier versions, but the new 3-D blockbuster is mostly a disaster. There are some nice touches melding 1920s and contemporary choreography and music into an interesting hybrid.  And I loved the billboard advertisement for spectacles that gazed down on the fictional wasteland between glitzy Long Island and New York City, but it seems as though Baz Luhrmann has forgotten he's no longer making Moulin Rouge.  The film is all surface with no insides.  It's as though Luhrmann were Nick at the film's beginning - completely dazzled.  It's a shame considering that the whole story is that Nick grows up and becomes disillusioned by superficiality.  Luhrmann used the text of the novel as narration rather than having Nick inhabit the action of the film. That may have worked had he chosen someone other than Tobey Maguire.  Unfortunately Maguire can't play text and has no gravitas. Nick grows old beyond his years and tries to teach Gatsby not to live in the past, Maguire still seems to be trying to act the ingenue, even though he's almost 40.  Had he felt his age, it might have been interesting.  Luhrmann's idea of justifying the narration by having Nick talk to a psychiatrist was a misguided anachronism and having lines of type fly across the screen had no point other than to telegraph how self-conscious Luhrmann was about adapting a great novel.  I loved Luhrmann's work when he had no money to waste.  Strictly Ballroom and his wonderful La Boheme were all heart. I hope he finds some creative moxie again instead of hiding behind production values that communicate nothing but sheer hysteria.

Film - Oslo, August 31st (2011)

On Sheila's recommendation I saw Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31st recently, starring Anders Danielsen Lie a triple-threat: musician, actor, and doctor.  It's a beautiful interior portrait of a day in the life of an addict who, after time in rehab, is about to move back into society.  He gets a pass for a job interview and visits people and places from his former life, aware only of the gulf between where he was when he exited that life and the present.  Lie is one of those actors knows that the work is in preparing yourself to be inside the experience of the character and then to perform simple actions of living and let that work reveal itself.  You never watch the effort to communicate a thought or feeling, the wish to be something other than he is, you only see him where he is.  This film feels so private - a man trapped by his decisions, a man for whom disaster seems inevitable. What a beautiful film.

Film - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)

I was surprised by Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  Though predictably sentimental, the persistence of a young boy who is probably on the autism spectrum (Thomas Horn) in trying to make sense of what happened to his father on 9/11, made for a touching story with a sense of adventure and imaginative characters.  I would have liked more time spent developing the people he meets on his journey instead of collapsing them into montage, but there are two good scenes with Viola Davis one with Jeffrey Wright, and a lovely relationship developed with Max von Sydow, who never speaks a word.  Zoe Caldwell really disappears into her performance as the boy's grandmother, I must admit that I didn't even recognize her.  As Sheila pointed out to me, the fact that a 12-year-old carries this feature length film is pretty impressive.

Film - The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

The 1970s was the heyday of a certain kind of American movie which stressed gritty, real performances, scene writing that jumped into the middle of things in-progress, captured accident and unease, told stories with human behavior as the medium, and sported the message - break out and be free.  It was a great time for American movie making that doesn't have a mainstream equivalent now. The King of Marvin Gardens: Bruce Dern as a bullshit artist who believes his own hype, an unusually quiet and vulnerable Jack Nicholson, and a brilliantly unhinged Ellen Burstyn (dir. Bob Rafelson).

Film - Out of The Past (1947)

Out of the Past (1947, dir Jacques Tourneur).  A man (Robert Mitchum) tries to escape his past (Kirk Douglas) but a femme fatale (Jane Greer) won't let him.  This film is classic noir and noir is not about second chances. 

Film - Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

A guy places an ad because he wants a companion for time travel.  A magazine picks up on it and sends a team to write a story on him.  Safety Not Guaranteed (dir Colin Trevorrow) is an indie, totally-play-it-straight, completely un-jaded little surprise of a movie.  Dee-lightful, and it will keep you guessing.

Film - My Week With Marilyn (2011)

Simon Curtis's My Week With Marilyn (2011) starring Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh is a failed exercise based on the memoir of the third assistant director on the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl.  It is a shame that the historical legacy of this film's characters burden rather than inspire the creative team.  The actors and particularly the writer are as starstruck as the poor assistant director. The screenplay is only capable of tying the end of one cliche to the beginning of the next. Why is it that British films based on history (this was also the case with Iron Lady) are obliged to tell their stories via a parade of montages?  Isn't anyone capable of writing a scenes that lasts more than 30 seconds?  The point of telling this story, it would seem to me, is revealing the distance between the image of the star of legend and the person we now know they were.  This superficial approach they took hamstrung even actors of the caliber of Simon Russell Beale and Judy Dench because they didn't have the time to behave as real people.  God, what a bore. 

Film - Mary Queen of Scots (1971)

Mary Queen of Scots (1971) suffers from a turgid, 1970s script, some wooden acting from Patrick McGoohan and Daniel Massey, however the young Glenda Jackson manages to combine being commanding and vulnerable.  It is a pleasure to watch the young Vanessa Redgrave, Ian Holm, and Timothy Dalton before they grew into themselves, and history has provided a cracking good story.

Film - Songcatcher (2000)

A university-educated musicologist (the passionate Janet McTeer) goes 'up the mountain' to collect the authentic folk music of Appalachia.  Songcatcher (2000) is not the strongest script in the world, but it has Janet McTeer and Pat Carroll in it and it tells a good story about having the strength to go one's own way.

Film - The Iron Lady (2011)

Meryl Streep and Jim Broadbent are wasted on The Iron Lady (2011) dir. Phyllida Lloyd. The film tries desperately, if not to portray Margaret Thatcher sympathetically, at least to trace the origin of her rabid fiscal conservatism and inhumane governing choices.  It doesn't succeed.  Being a shopkeeper's daughter or being laughed at by school chums needn't make one unempathic. In fact, it could easily do the opposite.  Meryl Streep has so much age makeup on that she looks like a lizard, and the film chooses to tell its story of fairly recent history via so many cliched montages, with such a baldly commercial soundtrack, that I wondered why they didn't make a 10 minute music video and have done with it.  The endless montages - Maggie at home, Maggie losing the election, Maggie winning the election, Maggie ruining the British economy, the masses mad at Maggie and rioting in Brixton, Maggie fighting in the Falklands, in addition to being banal, seemed to wish to skirt actual scene writing so that the film wouldn't have to have an opinion on her politics.  Want a lesson in what austerity does to an economy, America?  Look at Thatcherism.  Anyway, her austerity was a lie.  She was glad to spend millions of pounds when it came to a war in the Falklands.  Given the way she decimated funding for the arts in Britain, as a director I certainly wouldn't have wanted the job of directing her biopic.

Film - L'Illusioniste (2010)

L'Illusioniste, a melancholy and beautifully detailed animated film from the makers of The Triplets of Belleville. 

Being private in public - Film: Amour (2012)

It really is as good as everyone says it is.  Amour directed by Michael Haneke with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, and Isabelle Hupert depicts an elderly couple as the circle that encompasses their active lives shrinks to a point when one of them becomes ill.  The camera takes it's time, watching them as they eat their dinner, read, listen to music, wash the dishes.  The action is what takes place inside them.  These are actors who know that their job isn't posting billboards with their thoughts and feelings written all over them. Their job is to fill themselves.  Then they can do something or they can do nothing, any behavior will reveal them.  If only that were simple.  Among the many remarkable qualities of this film is the sense that these characters seem so private.  It is not just that they become isolated in their lives, they do, but when the camera is close up on the face of Jean-Louis Trintignant as he walks down the hallway of his apartment, I had the feeling he really was completely alone.  No camera.  He was in some private space in his head, subsumed by the events of his life, and the camera was an invisible witness.

Film - Looper (2012)

Rian Johnson's Looper with Joseph-Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis is a really well-done time-travel/dystopian thriller, but the real star of the flick is a performance by 8-year-old Pierce Gagnon - wonderful actor. 

Film - Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (2010)

Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child directed by Tamra Davis captures the feel of the early 1980s NYC downtown arts scene and the vibrant painter Jean Michel Basquiat.  He went from living on the streets of the Village to being a millionaire in a couple of years.  He was called some sort of savage innocent, but Basquiat thought that they wouldn't have used such language if he had been a white painter. 

Film - The Horse's Mouth (1958)

Alec Guinness did his own adaptation of Joyce Cary's novel The Horse's Mouth directed by Ronald Neame in 1958.  Painter Gully Jimson (played by Guinness) is a single-minded bastard who lives only to transfer what is in his head to paint - and to drink occasionally. The story is hilarious and excruciating.  It let's one imagine what the world would look like if everyone were pure, unregulated id.  

Film - Almost Peaceful (2002)

Because of my dissertation writing schedule, I'm feeling a little restricted in the additional writing I can do.  One book post per week seems to be the limit right now, but that shouldn't keep me, I'm now thinking to myself, from posting a picture or a few words on the other cultural or scientific encounters of my NY existence.  So I'll start with the film I saw last night.  No review, just an image or two from Almost Peaceful, a French film released in 2002 about a group of Jews who work for a tailor in Paris after World War II and how they try to get back on their feet.  The film really focused on the meaning of people being with people.  You know how you can sometime know you are going to like a film because of the way people are arranged in the frame?  Well, I feel I can, at any rate.