Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three films that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
Lights, camera.... FASHION!
Yes, darlings, this week on Thursday Movie Picks we are going to that place where everyone is beautiful on the outside and usually ugly on the inside: The World of Fashion.
Fashion has always played a part in the movies - in the early days, there would often be a fashion show just inserted into the middle of the film for no reason at all other than to offer the audience something beautiful to look at. Since then, there have been many films that have taken place in the world of clothing designers, models, and photographers (and their long-suffering assistants). These are three of my favorites.
Funny Face (Stanley Donen, 1957) Think Pink! Say what you will, but Kay Thompson is the REAL star of the show here, despite my love for headliners Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. Thompson is the publisher and editor of a fashion magazine, and Astaire a famous photographer. Wanting new models who can "think as well as they look", they go downtown to Greenwich Village and coerce intellectual Hepburn to model for them, with a trip to Paris as bait. Well, I mean, who WOULDN'T take them up on that offer?!? Audrey's go-go dance in the club is maybe my favorite thing she's ever done, and really all the musical numbers here are superb.
The First Monday in May (Andrew Rossi, 2016) Every year, on the first Monday in May, there is a Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for the new Costume Institute exhibition. The Met Ball, as it has become known, is one of the biggest events of the fashion world, and this is your insider's view into what goes into making it all happen. I'll admit: I had flashes of PTSD watching this, because a large part of my job for five years was planning the Gala for the theater company where I worked. That was stressful enough. THIS is on a WHOLE other level. That the film also sparks conversations on what is "art" and what is controversial, and what is beautiful, is just icing on the cake.
The Dressmaker (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 2016) The Fashion World Meets The Backwoods. Myrtle "Tilly" Dunnage was ran out of her backwoods Australian town years ago for something unspeakable. Somehow, she ended up becoming one of the world's foremost designers, and she has finally returned home, ready to win over the townsfolk who drove her out and cast her mother aside... WITH FASHION! So much of The Dressmaker is ridiculous, but it is one of my favorite movies of the year for how purely enjoyable it is. Kate Winslet is just fabulous beyond words as Tilly, Judy Davis is a hoot as her aging crone of a mother, and Liam Hemsworth has never been more swoon-worthy as the town hunk. And, of course, the fashions are just BEYOND.
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And, just in case you wondering, my picks for last week's Legal Thrillers theme would have been: The tense, forgotten Fracture, starring Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins; and the Laura Linney double feature Primal Fear (with a never-better Richard Gere and tremendous debut from Ed Norton) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (which is FAR smarter and better than it has any right to be).
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. We're always here, every Thursday, picking three movies that fit the week's theme - join us! The water's fine!
People talk a lot about the need to "open up" plays when they transfer to the big screen, their thinking being that because a film does not have to be confined to one set and can go anywhere, audiences do not want to sit for a couple of hours and watch something that takes place in only one location, unlike in the theatre, where you are somewhat bound by the constraints of the stage.
The following films, my picks for this week, are just three examples of films that put the lie to this idea. All that matters is that the film is made well, no matter where it takes place.
Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) I could just as easily have made these picks only Alfred Hitchcock movies, but I decided against it. I've talked about him a lot recently. Rope isn't one of his best movies, but it's an interesting experiment that works more often than it doesn't. Famously ironing almost all the gay out of the stage play based on the Leopold & Loeb murder case (memorably brought to the screen several times, by lesser filmmakers than Hitchcock, but both Compulsion and Swoon have things to recommend them) and filming the whole thing so that it looks like it was done in one take, Hitchcock succeeds at the very least in putting us in the middle of the action of a stage play that also happens to be a locked-room murder mystery. In it's best moments, it's thrilling, but there's too much philosophizing from Jimmy Stewart, playing a character whose darker side he can't ably portray yet, and thus it drags for long stretches. But don't get me wrong: Mediocre Hitchcock is still better than the best films of many other directors!
Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967) Now THIS is how you do a single-room thriller. Audrey Hepburn, Oscar-nominated for one of her best performances, is Suzy, a blind woman living in a basement apartment. Her husband has just returned from a trip, bringing with him a doll, taken as a favor to a woman he met at the airport. Unbeknownst to them, the doll is full of drugs, and some very bad men soon come to the apartment looking for them. What follows is one of the most tense, edge-of-your-seat, dig-your-nails-into-your-armrest-or-companion movies ever made, as Suzy must match wits against Alan Arkin's evil head baddie.
Carnage (Roman Polanski, 2011) Oh, dear lord, this one. Look, Polanski is very damn close to the top of his game here, but I will never for the life of me understand why they didn't just go with the original Broadway cast (Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, and Hope Davis) instead of the cast they did, nearly all of whom are miscast and most of whom don't really pull it off. Don't get me wrong, for the most part Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet are good, but.... when they're not, they're AWFUL. The story couldn't be any more basic: Two sets of parents meet to have a civil discussion about an incident where one of their kids attacked the other at school, and slowly things start to devolve until the adults end up acting just as much like children as their kids. But Polanski finds every possible angle from which to shoot in this cramped apartment, maximizing the set like no other.
Gregory Peck is one of my favorite actors. I think it's the eyebrow - you know the one. The one that's always cocked upward in amusement or befuddlement orjust winking in an old-school "how YOU doin'?" kinda way. I'm not sure how it nearly always stays up there, but it does, and it's amazing.
The other reason I love him, of course, is Atticus Finch. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my favorite books, and Robert Mulligan's film version is the gold standard of page-to-screen adaptations as far as I'm concerned. Horton Foote's lyrical screenplay is a lovely distillation, of course, but there's also Mary Badham's precocious performance as Scout, and Peck's note-perfect portrayal of Atticus, the greatest father in the world. Tough but fair, friendly but fearsomely fierce when called for, and most importantly wise beyond anything.
The film doesn't put a foot wrong, starting right at the opening credits sequence, using a child's box of treasures and drawings - and Elmer Bernstein's perfect score - to immediately put you in the headspace of a six year-old girl. I don't think any film has ever put you so efficiently into the mood of the film - just watching the opening credits of Robert Mulligan's masterpiece makes you nostalgic for Maycomb, Alabama of the mid-1930s, even if you've never been there.
I love To Kill A Mockingbird so much that it's difficult to pick one shot as "Best". A large part of me wanted to highlight one of the unsung members of the supporting cast and pick one of the shots that they just knock out of the park (Mulligan hardly ever cuts in the middle of conversations or big speeches here, bless him) - like Rosemary Murphy as Maudie ("Some men in this world are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us."), or Frank Overton as Sheriff Heck Tate ("It's a sin. And I'm not about to have it on my head."). Or hell, even two of the meatier roles that somehow STILL manage to be unsung:
Brock Peters as Tom Robinson and Collin Wilcox Paxton as Mayella Ewell.
The greatest push-in in movie history?
But the one I toyed with the most is the introduction to Robert Duvall's Arthur "Boo" Radley:
...because his face is so fucking gorgeous so ably portrays so many emotions while seemingly hardly doing anything at all.
And don't even get me started on any shot from the justifiably famous, perfect, tear-jerking "your father's passing" scene.
But there were two shots of Atticus that really captured me this time around, watching with this project in mind. The first is perhaps more notable for what's playing on the soundtrack while it happens:
Best Shot Runner-Up
This happens while Scout is sleepily asking Jem about their mother, and it's our first real insight into Atticus as something more than just a perfect father - he's kind of alone in this world. Peck's performance, combined with the dialogue, makes you wonder about what his life was like before his wife passed away, and how it affected him, without ever going so far as to suggest he is how he is now because she's no longer around. A tricky line to walk. Like the rest of the film, it's perfectly judged.
But it was this one that struck me most, in a way I wasn't quite prepared for.
BEST SHOT
We're never this far away from anyone at any point in the film. It reinforces the idea that Atticus is very much alone in his plight, possibly completely alone in his principles and how he sees the world. He's talking to Tom, his black client accused of rape, in jail, after an angry white mob attempted to take justice into their own hands (only to be saved by Atticus's own daughter). He's telling Tom that he will be alright, that they won't come after him again. That's not exactly true - Bob Ewell will come for Tom at the trial, as will the jury. Throughout all of it, Atticus stands tall, but he also stands alone, guided by the shining light of justice. He may be right, but it's still a lonely place to be.
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I'd also like to talk about Roman Holiday a little, since Nathaniel wanted us to choose one and I missed the last two episodes of Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Plus, I really like Roman Holiday. It's not great, but it is charming beyond measure and pretty much a joy to watch. I mean, it's not every day you get to watch a STAR just blossom before you as fully as Audrey Hepburn does here. She's maybe not entirely deserving of the Oscar she won - she's VERY green and it often shows quite badly - but it's impossible to deny her presence, and when she lets loose one of those gorgeous smiles it's as if the sun is shining right on you; she makes you feel as though this smile is something special, that you have earned it somehow, and that she's smiling at you, only you. Which is perfect, since she's playing a princess.
But when I think of Roman Holiday, there's only one shot that I stands out for me as "best". It's true that the film gets lots of mileage out of its location shooting in Rome, but despite all the lovely architecture there simply aren't many shots that capture my imagination - and choosing one of Audrey smiling is just cheating; anyone could shoot that and make it look great.
No, the best shot of Roman Holiday is by far its very last one:
I have mentioned before that I am a hopeless romantic, and professed my love for a very specific type of romantic film - one about love that burns bright for a very short amount of time but cannot, must not, last. Roman Holiday is one of the ones that ends without the leads ending up together, and director William Wyler knows exactly how to make that ending work. After all the rest of the journalists leave, let Gregory Peck stay behind. Give one shot of him dwarfed by the palatial room, one shot/reverse shot of him watching where the Princess has just exited, and then, tracking shot of him walking out. All the way. Don't cut away, don't look anywhere else, just watch him leave. It's suspenseful even though we know she's not coming. It's impossible to look away from. It's the best possible way to end the film - in the sure, steady hands of Gregory Peck.
