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.  

The Greatest Story Ever Gabbed

Werth: Hey there, Wise.  What are you doing?  

Wise: Oh, just filling my basket with jelly beans, candy eggs, Marshmallow Peeps, chocolate bunnies, and popcorn for my Springtime Holiday Film Festival.  

Werth: Um, isn’t that a laundry basket?  

Wise: Maybe.  But there are a lot of movies on my list, films that the big three television networks used to broadcast every year that celebrated rebirth, second chances, the importance of family—

Werth: All sponsored by the Cadbury bunny.  

Wise: Long before any joker could watch Saw III on his smart phone while riding the subway, most Americans had to wait for the annual broadcast of great films like The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Sound of Music, Ben Hur, and Easter Parade.  But the one I looked forward to most was Cecil B. DeMille’s  The Ten Commandments.  

Werth: The movie that made the book of Exodus fun.

Wise: Commandments accomplishes what so few of these giant Biblical epics ever achieve: the perfect balance between corny bombast and heartfelt sentiment.  After the Pharaoh issues an edict condemning all first-born Hebrew males, the older sister of baby Moses places him in a basket and sets him adrift in the Nile.  Found by the Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses is raised in the palace as a favorite of the royal family until his heritage is discovered and he is banished from Egypt.  After wandering in the desert, he marries and settles into the life of a shepherd until one day he encounters a burning bush that speaks the words of God commanding Moses to return to Egypt and free the Israelites from their bondage. 

Werth: I was in bondage once when I saw a burning bush.

Wise: Of course, since Moses is played by Charlton Heston, he succeeds, although not without Heston’s signature blend of orotundity and virility.  He did tend to play this sort of character repeatedly during his career, but Commandments allows him to reveal a more tender side by expressing both reluctance and the residual terrors of having been chosen by God.  Part of this greater depth comes from the casting of Yul Brynner as a rival prince who inherits the throne. 

Both these actors were almost absurdly masculine, and the chemistry from  their testosterone-laden one-up-manship imbues the rest of the picture with a vitality it might not otherwise have had.  

Werth: I missed some of that because I had to cover my eyes during the “staff turned into a snake” scene.

Wise: Of course the rest of the cast is great too.  DeMille manages to coax both comedy and pathos  in equal measure without allowing everything to fall into a round of cornball line readings.  Yvonne De Carlo is particularly tender and effective as Moses’ wife Sephora, while Anne Baxter vamps it up as a vain princess who wants Moses all the more now that he’s been touched by God.  Vincent Price gives a delightfully oily turn as Baka, an Egyptian functionary who delights in his evil ways.  And, Film Gab favorite Judith Anderson plays a venomous maid hellbent on exposing Moses’ past.  

Werth: And don’t forget grumpy old Edward G. Robinson as everyone’s favorite fickle follower, Dathan. “Where’s your Moses now?” indeed.

Wise: I’m not sure that I could watch The Ten Commandments more than once a year, but its mixture of reverence and campiness makes it a delight worth returning to.  

Werth: I’m glad you’ve covered the Old Testament, because my favorite Easter flick is from the New one. It’s not just Good Friday, it’s a Super Friday with 1973’s Jesus Christ Superstar.

 

Wise: I don’t think this was covered in my catechism class.

Werth: After their initial successful recordings of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, budding Brit musical titan Andrew Lloyd Weber and his writing partner Tim Rice returned to the Good Book to see if they could put some guitar licks into the life of Jesus.

Wise: Because a messiah is only as good as his amp. 

Werth: But before producing an actual musical, in 1970 Lloyd Weber and Rice created what was known back in the day as a concept album. It was basically a way to throw your music out in front of the public to see if it stuck—and it did. It spawned the hit single “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” for Yvonne Elliman and later for Helen Reddy. So Superstar was Broadway and inevitably, Hollywood-bound.

Wise: It’s almost like the Last Supper took place at the Chateau Marmont. 

Werth: Director Norman Jewison (no, the irony is not lost on me) shot the entire film on location in Israel. It’s an amazing choice, because the stark, beautiful, ancient setting gives the film a real sense of gravitas. Superstar starts off with a small bus arriving in the desert and a rag-tag group of performers exit and put on their costumes, like a hippy bus and truck tour performing a passion play. It’s an interesting concept that eases the audience into seeing Jesus, Judas and Mary Magdalene sing rock songs. The production design is a blended assortment of period robes and fabrics, bell bottoms and scarves, and strange, S&M-like pharisee hats and harnesses, updating the story of the last days of Jesus without abandoning its roots.

Wise: Which prompted a certain segment of the audience to call the project a desecration, I’m sure.  

Werth: Of course it did, but I don’t understand the hullabalo. For me, Superstar does an amazing job of making Jesus and his followers human. Several of Lloyd Weber’s songs give us a unique insight into these characters obscured by history and dogma. Magdalene’s “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and “Could We Start Again, Please” are plaintive pleas to reach and understand the man she loves. Judas’ “Damned for All Time” is a wonderfully well-rounded look at one the world’s greatest villains. And “The Crucifixion” and “John Nineteen: Forty-One” mix music and scriptural elements powerfully.

Wise: I’m surprised that Sunday schools everywhere don’t have matinee showings.

Werth: Well... there is “King Herod’s Song” performed by the delightfully fey Josh “Son of Zero” Mostel which might confuse the kiddies, but all in all, I think Superstar raises some excellent questions about faith and religion. And I challenge anyone not to get up and jive to the title track “Superstar.” If nothing else, Superstar is much more fun to watch than the other 1973 Jesus-ical, Godspell.

Wise: I’d need a truckload of peanut butter eggs to make it through that double feature.

Werth: Hand me some of those jelly beans. Tune in next week for more religious film experiences with Film Gab!