L'shana To-Gab!

Werth: Happy New Year, Wise!

Wise: Is it January already?

Werth: It's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and that means one thing—

Wise: Fasting and atoning?

Werth: Our favorite Jewish movies!

Wise: I'll break out the gefilte fish and my dancing shoes!

Werth: I may just be a poor white goy from the Midwest, but no Jewish holiday is complete without a viewing of Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

Wise: Or Bubby's challa.

Werth: Fresh from its record-breaking, Tony-winning run on Broadway, Jerome Robbins' Fiddler was left mostly intact by film director Norman Jewison (irony of ironies, he's not Jewish). 

It tells the story of Tevye (Topol) a poor milkman in the village of Anatevka in turn of the century Russia. He is a gruff, but loving family patriarch who turns to God to deal with everything from a lame horse to marriage proposals for his daughters.

Wise: Better to turn to a crippled nag than to Patti Stanger.

Werth: What Fiddler does with such grace and beauty is align the changes that are happening in this man's family to changes happening in the bigger world where antisemitism in Tsarist Russia threatens to uproot their lives. Fiddler's success comes from how it universalizes the questions of faith in the face of change while at the same time celebrating this unique group of people. It also doesn't hurt that the score is full of eminently hummable songs like "Tradition," "If I Were A Rich Man," "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" and that wedding staple, "Sunrise, Sunset."

Wise: A score so good it makes you want to convert. 

Werth: Oswald Morris' Oscar-winning cinematography turns the expansive Yugoslavian countryside into a work of art, making its bleakness beautiful. And the actors (many cast for their believability over their marquee status) are shot in muted tones and minimal makeup, eschewing the typical glamor shots that had defined the Hollywood musical for a simpler aesthetic. 

At the 1972 Academy Awards, Fiddler lost the Best Picture prize to William Friedkin's The French Connection (tough competition that year with both A Clockwork Orange and The Last Picture Show in contention), but it remains a stunning example of the joy and the power of the American musical. What film flips your yarmulke, Wise?

Wise: Adapted by Alfred Uhry from his Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name, Driving Miss Daisy (1989) stars Jessica Tandy as an aging Jewish widow whose son hires a chauffeur named Hoke (Morgan Freeman) after a series of traffic mishaps causes her to lose her license.  Despite her original reluctance, Miss Daisy gradually begins to appreciate Hoke's talents and to recognize the limitations he has had to endure in the pre-Civil Rights era Atlanta.  

Werth: The Help doesn't sound so original anymore.  

Wise: Driving Miss Daisy is a little different, I think, because she remains a cantankerous character and never positions herself as a savior to oppressed people.  Plus, this is a movie about two individuals recognizing their equality rather than a group of powerless servants getting a boost from a spunky gal with other goals on her mind.

Werth: Who knew driving to the Piggly Wiggly could be so trans-formative?

Wise: But it's certainly not all uplifting race drama.  The movie is actually quite funny, especially in scenes with Dan Aykroyd playing Miss Daisy's son Boolie and Patti LuPone as his social climbing wife Florine.  Determined to assimilate into Atlanta's Protestant bourgeoisie, Boolie and Florine throw an ostentatious Christmas party tricked out in the most garish display of red and green lights south of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  



Werth: Nothing gets you into the Protestant bourgeoisie like a color-themed holiday party.

Wise: Of course the main reason to see this film is the heartbreaking performances by Tandy and Freeman as they move from mutual distrust to grudging respect to deep affection.  Tandy won an Oscar for her nuanced performance, and it's a shame that Freeman didn't also win a statuette for his equally fine depiction of a man battered by circumstance finally achieving his dignity.  

Werth: Speaking of battered, is fried food kosher?

Wise: Let's find a rabbi and ask. Tune in next week for more religious experiences on Film Gab!

Happy Birthday Bette Joan Perske!

Wise: Howdy, Werth!

Werth: Greetings, Wise!

Wise: What's with the flamethrower?

Werth: I made a cake for Lauren Bacall's birthday and I figured it would be the easiest way to light 87 candles.

Wise: Wow. At her age, she'll need a wind machine to blow them out.

Werth: She'll just pucker up her lips and blow. Bacall is one of the great figures of classic film, and I think we should give her a Film Gab birthday present, and dedicate this week's entry to her.

Wise: Sounds good to me. Beats having to buy her something.

Werth: Bacall first came on the scene with a bang in 1944  in Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not. She was paired with her future husband Humphrey Bogart and the cinematic sparks flew. The legendary duo made four movies together and their last one is a perfect Sunday afternoon, curl up on your couch classic.

Wise: As opposed to the typical hangover-induced, Domino's binge Sunday couch surfing? 

Werth: Key Largo (1948) is a veritable time capsule of some of the greats of the Hollywood studio system. Bogart is Frank McCloud, a war hero who comes to the Florida Keys to visit the young wife and father of one of his men who was killed in action. Nora (Bacall) and James Temple (the wheeled Lionel Barrymore) are happy to meet the man they've heard so much about and ask him to stay on in their hotel. 

But this bittersweet meeting is made even more bitter when a gang of mobsters led by Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) decides to take up residence in the hotel. All hell breaks loose when a hurricane hits and traps them all for the duration, pitting Bogart against Robinson in a silver screen titan throwdown.

Wise: I wish Bogart and Robinson had stopped by my place during Hurricane Irene.

Werth: Directed by Bogart friend and collaborator John Huston, Key Largo lacks some of the film noir edge of Huston's Maltese Falcon (1941) and Asphalt Jungle (1950). But in several scenes Huston uses bright light to give the film a grainy, almost verite feel, and some of his closeups eschew Hollywood's typical beauty shots and instead go for craggy realism. But oh what faces! Bacall is beautiful and dumps her typical sly vamp routine for one of a fresh-faced, tender woman whose looks at Bogey are more schoolgirl crush than 40's seductress. Bogey gives the reluctant man of action performance that audiences had come to expect of him, but never tired of. 

Edward G. Robinson is dapper and indomitable playing exiled mobster Johnny Rocco as if he was Napoleon, slapping women, taunting old men and chomping lustily on a cigar. Lionel Barrymore is the most boisterous invalid to ever roll across the screen and he lets loose at Rocco with both barrels, making you wonder if he could get out of that wheelchair what he would do. 

Wise: If he were alive today, probably a second career at Dancing with the Stars.  

Werth: But the real stunner in this already crowded talent pool is Claire Trevor. As the washed-up, drunken gun moll Gaye Dawn, Trevor is a heart-wrenching sensation. Desperately clinging to the bar, Trevor gives a full-bodied, Oscar-winning performance that culminates in a humiliating singing routine for a drink. She leaves us wanting to either throw her a gimlet or rush her to a twelve step program.  

Key Largo is a fun assemblage of performers at the top of their games portraying people who "ain't what they used to be"—as worn-out as the threadbare lobby of the Largo Hotel.

Wise: Or, as worn-out as the 1981 Bertie Higgins song.  At the other end of the spectrum is Bacall's late career supporting role in My Fellow Americans (1996).  A comedy about former rivals and current ex-Presidents Russell P. Kramer (Jack Lemmon) and Matt Douglas (James Garner) as they thwart assassination attempts, unravel Washington skullduggery, and meet the most cheerful, oddball Americans this side of a sit-com's backyard fence.  

Bacall, as former first lady Margaret Kramer, has little to do but gaze adoringly at Lemmon and occasionally crack wise, but she uses all her star power to communicate the brittle dignity forced upon Presidents' wives.  

Werth: Speaking of brittle dignity, I wonder if Nancy Reagan reads Film Gab...

Wise: Also along for the ride are Dan Aykroyd, Wilford Brimley, Sela Ward, Bradley Whitford, and Ester Rolle.  

Werth: It sounds like the cast for a very special episode of Murder, She Wrote.  

Wise: The credits are definitely chock-full of the usual Hollywood suspects, and the script provides each of them with a spicy morsel of scenery to chew.  And while it's not exactly Chekhov—  

Werth: Is Chekov from Star Trek in it too? 

Wise:  —the film is one of the few attempts at imagining life after the White House and the kinds of humiliations ex-Presidents face as they attempt to both keep their dignity and find purpose in the dénouement of their careers.  Of course, those small tragedies are each played for laughs—and often, the broadest, most inane yuks possible—but the film does question the afterlife of public service and the possibility of redemption after a lifetime of political compromises.  

Werth: Speaking of lifetimes—thank you, Lauren Bacall, for a lifetime of movie memories!

Wise: - and bring Nancy Reagan next week for leftover cake and more Film Gab.