Hitch-Hitch Hooray!

Werth: Good, Eefning.

Wise: Nice Hitchcock impersonation, Werth.

Werth: Thank you.

Wise: Especially the double-chin.

Werth: I'm not wearing a double—yes, thank you. I'm wearing this clearly fake double-chin in honor of BAM's The Hitchcock 9, starting tomorrow.


Wise. They will be showing nine restored Hitchcock silent films giving Hitch aficionados the chance to see some of the master's earliest work.

Werth: We've covered many Hitchcock films over the last couple of years, but one Hitchcock film I've always wanted to gab about is his 1963 feather-fest, The Birds.

Wise: I hope you weren't too chicken to do it before. 

Werth: The Birds is a genuinely terrifying film that shows what would happen if Nature turned against her human oppressors and pecked out mankind's eyes. 

But I don't think that's what The Birds is really about. The more I watch the film, the more I notice how the environmental angle comes up quite late in the film, and that a good part of the film is focusing on something else—sex.

Wise: Sounds like we need a double feature of The Birds and Killer Bees.

Werth: The entire first part of the film has nothing to do with crazed seagulls. Melanie Daniels (introducing Tippi Hedren) is a blonde, debutante phony. After pretending to be a salesgirl in a bird shop to flirt with g-gorgeous Mitch Brenner (60's heartthrob Rod Taylor), Daniels decides to pursue this virtual stranger to his seaside country home to give his daughter a couple of lovebirds. 

As Daniels drives her expensive sportscar into the rustic town of Bodega Bay the townspeople gaze at her with distrust. This stranger isn't just a fur-clad city-girl in the country. She is a woman doing the unthinkable: she is chasing the man. Daniels' sexual aggressiveness is as garish as the two lovebirds in her car and Hitchcock slyly shoots the first part of the film to accentuate how unwelcome Daniels is. After sneaking into his house and dropping off the birds, causing Brenner to chase her, Daniels grins like a cat, sensing she has snagged her romantic prey. 

It is at this moment that the first bird dives at her head, drawing blood. From this moment on Daniels is not only being attacked by Bodega Bay's birdlife, but also Brenner's stuffy mother (Jessica Tandy) and the citizenry who tell her she is "evil."

Wise:It doesn't pay to cross Miss Daisy. 

Werth: But film analysis aside, Hitchcock is in top thriller form in The Birds. He uses his signature camera tricks of characters in the foreground, hallways that create a forced perspective, and an ingenious bird's eye view of the destruction of Bodega Bay care of Oscar-nommed special effects director Ub Iwerks. 

He takes great delight in making the audience aware of the dangers that the film's characters are not aware of. You just want to shout at Tippi, "Get off that bench and run before those crows mess up your impeccable hair!!!" 

And the sound design by Remmi Gassmann is eerie, achieving all its impact without a single note of orchestration. While it's never mentioned with the same gravitas as Vertigo or Psycho, The Birds is memorable because Hitchcock was exploring so much more than screaming kids being attacked by some peck-happy fowl.

Wise: Rope (1948) is another Hitchcock project where sex is the subtext.  Inspired by thrill killers Leopold and Loeb, the film begins with the murder of golden boy David Kentley (Dick Hogan) by his former classmates Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) who are out to prove that their intellectual superiority allows them to commit the perfect crime.  Before disposing of the body—and to add a grisly embellishment—they plan a party with the dead man's parents and fiancée as well as with their former prep school housemaster Rupert Cadell (Jimmy Stewart).  

Brandon has always idolized Rupert who taught the boys about Nietzsche's theories, and by committing the murder, Brandon hopes to intellectually surpass his mentor.  The scheme only falls apart as Phillip gradually loses his nerve.  

Werth: It's hard to sit on a trunk containing a corpse and not sweat a little.

Wise: The action unspools in real time, and Hitchcock used long takes carefully edited together to simulate a single continuous take, the camera moving among the actors and the set in a complicated ballet that allows the tension to build to an almost unbearable extreme.  These extended shots also allow the actors space to explore their character's body language, moving in and out of the frame while still being present in the scene.   

Rope was also Hitchcock's first color film, and he uses his palette carefully, confining himself mostly to muted grays in the beginning as Brandon and Phillip attempt to convince each other of their rationality, but descends into lurid neon flashes as the horror of their act comes to light.

Werth: I love how Stewart toys with his old students. It's almost as if he knows from the moment he walks into the room that there's something in that hope chest...



Wise: Although the focus of the film is on a single murder, it films much closer to a movie about a lovers' quarrel.  

Brandon and Phillip stand uncomfortably close to one another and speak in a post-coital whisper, particularly in the moments just after they have committed the murder and dissect their feelings (Brandon is exhilarated while Phillip suffers from regret).  Even the practicalities of their daily lives are peculiarly intertwined; Brandon treats Phillip as a sensitive genius, managing his career as a pianist and carefully tending to his emotional outbursts.  

The thorn in their relationship comes with the arrival of Rupert who not only teases out the crime but also inspired it with his lofty talk of philosophy.  Brandon has obviously harbored a long-standing fascination with his former housemaster that festered into the kind of one-upmanship usually reserved for past lovers.  But it's this fascination twisted into obsession that finally unravels the crime. 

Werth: So, Wise, with all this gabbing about color Hitchcock films, I hope our devoted readers check out some of his black and white fare.

Wise: And neither killer birds nor murderous aesthetes will keep them away from next week's Film Gab.

Get Your Friedkin On!

BAM is hosting a great William Friedkin Festival this weekend with some of his best movies from the '70's. So whether you go Cruising with Al Pacino, take a spin with Gene Hackman, or have your head turned by Linda Blair, it's a guaranteed twisted time.

American Gabsters

Wise: Hi there, Werth!

Werth: Hi there, Wise!  I see you're chipper today.

Wise: Because BAM's American Gagster Festival is running now through September 17th.  It's a series of fifty classic comedies from the Golden Age of Hollywood to the 1980's and celebrates some of the most hilarious actor/director partnerships in cinema history. 

Werth: I'm assuming that Adam Sandler is not represented.

Wise: Unfortunately not, but the festival kicks off with the detective comedy classic The Thin Man (1934).  Adapted from the novel by Dashiell Hammett, the film adds a madcap gloss to the book's gumshoe aesthetic.  William Powell and Myran Loy play Nick and Nora Charles—he a retired, tippling detective and she a glamorous heiress—who get pulled into the case of missing inventor Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis) whose mistress turns up dead.  

Werth: Because nothing is funnier than a dimestore blonde with a bullet in her back.

Wise: The film is a strange—but delightful—hybrid of film noir and screwball comedy, filled with street toughs lurking in shadows, loud-mouthed dames, but leavened by the amazing chemistry between Powell and Loy.  Powell's performance as cocktail guzzling Nick is loaded with charm as he nimbly displays a sparkling verbal acuity as well as a liver that just won't quit.

Werth: How he shoots balloons off a Christmas tree after five martinis I'll never know. 

Wise: But just as spectacular is Loy's effervescent performance as Nora.  Taking what could have been yet another dithering society girl, Loy gives Nora beauty and brains and shows she knows how to use both.  

Her devotion to Nick makes him sexy, and just as Ginger Rogers brought out Fred Astaire's carnality, Loy makes a funny-looking man with an odd talent into an object of desire.

Werth: She should have been paired up with Peter Lorre.

Wise: Of course, I have to mention the other great performance in the film: Skippy as the Charles' wire-haired fox terrier Asta.  Instead of remaining a canine accessory, Asta ferrets out both clues and comic relief, plus sparked a nationwide frenzy for the breed.  Director W.S. Van Dyke gives Asta some of the best screen moments, which actually seems to point to Van Dyke's strength as a director.  

Known around the MGM lot as "one take Woody," he shot The Thin Man in about fourteen days, and while he dispenses with some of the visual flourishes that might have marked him an auteur, his strategy seems to have been laying a solid groundwork, then getting out of the way while his on-screen talent made fireworks of their own.

 Werth: I think I'll go to BAM to take in one of my favorite laugh-fests, Preston Sturges' classic, Sullivan's Travels (1941).

Wise: You mentioned that flick once before in our posting about silver screen racism.


Werth: I did, because one particular scene does smack of racist stereotypes, but interestingly enough as the movie progresses, Sturges seems to comment on these sterotypes as he explores the difference and interdependence between comedy and drama.

John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) is a successful director of frothy comedies like Ants in Your Plants and Hey, Hey in the Hayloft. But he has tired of making the world laugh and wants to instead address the serious issues of poverty and homelessness in America in a new film called O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Wise: Talk about being stuck in development until George Clooney and the Coen brothers took it on. 

Werth: But after an argument with his producers, Sullivan realizes that he doesn't have any idea what it means to be poor or in trouble. So he decides to dress in the era's hobo-chic and ride the rails to connect with the common man. Sullivan's producers balk at the idea of their big money-making vehicle driving off the road, so they have him followed by a crew of keepers, doctors and reporters in a "land-yacht."

In the midst of trying to shake this stellar group of character actors (including Sturges favorite William Demarest), Sullivan meets a failed starlet (ethereal and pregnant at the time Veronica Lake) who joins in on his adventure to help him experience life on the wrong side of the tracks. The film has all the Sturges comedy hallmarks of pratfalls, bullet-fast dialogue and complex physical comedy scenes—like when the inside of the land-yacht turns into a funhouse as the bus drives off-road chasing Sullivan in a nitrus-powered kiddie car.

Wise: I guess Lucy's pratfalls in The Long, Long Trailer (1953) weren't so original.

Werth: But mid-way, the film takes a fascinating turn. As Sullivan and his partner walk into trainyards, shanty-towns, and soup kitchens, Sturges shows an assemblage of disturbingly real faces—worn, grizzled, forgotten, White, Black, and Brown. As Sullivan is shanghaied, mistaken for dead and put on a Southern chaingang, the movie leaves the realm of comedy entirely, making us realize that maybe the tumbles into swimming pools, wisecracks and flying cake batter aren't so important. But to Sturges, they are.

The legendary scene of the prisoners watching a Mickey and Pluto cartoon in a Black church is a touching (albeit obvious) depiction of the power of comedy to elevate our spirits, if only for a moment. The film asserts that comedy lifts humanity out of the troubles of life and that it's better to go to a movie to laugh than to cry. But it's not that simple.

Sturges uses drama in Sullivan's Travels to help us arrive at his theme of comedy conquers all, making drama and comedy an inseparable yin and yang of the Hollywood movie and our lives.

Wise: Which reminds me of another inseparable pairing: Film Gab and Next Week.  

Werth: Hilarious! And don't forget to catch a little comedy genius at BAM.   

BAM Graces Grace

As if today's launch of Film Forum's tribute to Universal Studios wasn't enough, BAM is celebrating one of cinema's coolest blondes with a Grace Kelly Film Festival. With such great classics as High Noon (1952), Rear Window(1954), To Catch a Thief (1955) and her oscar-winning turn in The Country Girl (1954) on the bill, Grace is sure to give you a cool escape from the summer heat. 

Some Like it Gab!

Wise: Welcome home, Werth!

Werth: Why, thank you, Wise. It was so nice to come home from my European vacation to find out that BAM is throwing me a special Welcome Home party.

Wise: BAM is throwing you a Welcome Home party?

Werth: What else could a festival of Marilyn Monroe movies mean?

Wise: Right, Lance. And the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade is for your birthday. 

Werth: The festival starts today, July 1st, and runs through July 17th, and includes all of Marilyn's best work. Marilyn was my gateway drug to the world of classic film so I can't wait to catch a couple of these flicks on the big screen. If only I could move into BAM for a couple weeks...

Wise: I know this must be difficult for you, but if you had to choose your favorite Marilyn movie—which would it be?

Werth: I can't. It would be like picking out your favorite child if all of your children were beautiful, talented and never sassed you back. 

Wise: Your children will be genetically full of sass.

Werth: —but for today's Film Gab, I'd like to talk about what many feel is her most well-rounded and fully realized role—the nightclub chanteuse, Cherie in Joshua Logan's Bus Stop (1956). After her uber-successful turn in The Seven Year Itch (1955), Marilyn high-tailed it to New York City to study with Lee Strasberg at the prestigious Actors' Studio, made 20th Century Fox re-negotiate her contract in her favor, started her own production company, and began dating famed playwright Arthur Miller.

Wise: None of that seems to be the work of a dumb blond.

Werth: Exactly. Marilyn was fighting desperately to be taken seriously by the studio and the public, so Bus Stop, the movie version of the highly acclaimed William Inge Broadway play, was critical to her re-creating her persona. Bus Stop tells the story of Beau Decker, a naive, never-off-the-ranch cowboy (played with annoying fervor by handsome Don Murray) who goes to Phoenix to compete in a rodeo and find the gal he's gonna marry. When he hears Cherie singing "That Old Black Magic" in a cheap honky-tonk, he's convinced he's found his "angel." 

Wise: Because nothing puts a man more in the mood for love than bronco busting. 

Werth: But Cherie has no intention of being thrown off her unlikely Hollywood stardom "direction" by being diverted to matrimony on a cattle ranch. So what is Beau to do but lasso Cherie and drag her onto a bus bound for Montana. 

Wise: Who wouldn't fall for a man with a bus ticket and a plan for abduction?  

Werth: While many of the typical Marilyn touches are here (beautiful pale skin and blond hair, singing and humor that relies on her not being the sharpest pin in the cushion) she elevates these elements beyond mere comedy to develop her character—much as a dramatic actress would craft a role. Cherie is so much more than a "dumb hillbilly." She is soft and tender, lost, willful, and earth-shatteringly beautiful without glamor. Her show costume is ripped, her hair mussy and in one scene Logan even catches Marilyn drooling languidly on her arm.

Wise: Drooling usually makes me worry that I've had an aneurysm. 

Werth: Unfortunately Marilyn's desire to re-craft her movie career was not successful, but with Bus Stop, Monroe proved she could act—and it's sad that we never got to see her fully realize her potential as a more mature actress. 

Wise: I think there are a few clues about what that might have looked like in one of her final performances, and while it's a little bit difficult to come by, Something's Got to Give, a reconstruction of her final, uncompleted film, is definitely worth watching.  

Werth: The reconstruction was included as part of the documentary Marilyn: The Final Days. 

Wise: The film, a remake of Cary Grant-starring farce My Favorite Wife, began filming in 1962 under the direction of George Cukor and co-starred Dean Martin as Nick Arden, an attorney who has his wife declared dead seven years after her boat was lost at sea.  Ellen (Marilyn) reappears just before Nick and his new wife Bianca (Cyd Charisse) return from their honeymoon, and the revelation that Nick is an inadvertent bigamist drives all the screwball comedy that follows.  

Werth: Bigamy—Mormonism's greatest gift to comedy.

Wise: The Marilyn that appears in the footage is very different from the comedienne who had been charming audiences for over a decade.  Plagued by an acute sinus infection she had caught on a trip to New York to study with  Strasburg, and still recovering from gall bladder surgery left her twenty-five pounds lighter than her typical adult weight, Marilyn was thinner and more mournful than the giggly buxom blond she normally played. 

Werth: The documentary also points out she was heavy into her affair with one or both of the Kennedy boys—not to mention her addiction to sleeping pills that plagued her last several films. 
 

Wise: There are some great comedic bits that survive (including Wally Cox playing a milquetoast Ellen recruits as an alibi), but an undercurrent of sadness runs through the competed scenes.  Of course, Marilyn's illness was partly to blame, but she's also playing a woman who has lost everything—her husband, her children, her home—and she's not sure whether there's still a place for her among them or even if she wants to be there.  

It makes me wonder how much Marilyn connected this role with the events in her own life; the hardships in both her personal and professional lives must have made returning to a film set into a bit like haunting a world where you no longer exist.  

Werth:  Pretty spooky, Wise.  But Marilyn wouldn't have wanted to creep us out. Let's pep up this Welcome Home party with some blond fireworks.  

Wise: Happy Fourth of July to all our Film Gab readers! 

 

Joan, Joan on the Range

As if they were reading Werth's thoughts again, the Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting the bitchiest western ever made, Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar, on Sunday 2/20. Guns! Fashion! Latent Lesbian Crushes! Joan Crawford puts on her boots and spurs and goes toe to toe with Mercedes McCambridge in one of the strangest oaters you'll ever see. Look for scenes where Joan's stand-in fills in for her because Joan loathed working with co-star Sterling Hayden.