Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us, leave your field to flower - just pick three movies that fit the week's theme and write a bit about them! All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts
-William Shakespeare, As You Like It, II.vii
It's true, and in my time I have played many parts. Ever since I was an infant, I loved putting on a show for people. I would climb up on top of chairs or stools and perform, even before I could speak intelligibly, if my mother is to be believed. I didn't REALLY get into theater until middle school, right around the time I first saw Singin' in the Rain and told my Mom that I wanted to be Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor, prompting her to sign me up for tap dancing lessons. Suddenly, I was a triple threat - good singer, good dancer, good actor - and got cast in shows I auditioned for outside of school plays. My love affair with the stage continues to this day, even though my last stage performance (playing Professor Bhaer in the musical version of Little Women, and making my mother cry) was in February of 2014. Living in NYC means an abundance of professional theater but a scarcity of truly amateur opportunities - everyone's trying to make it here - so I haven't tried. But once you're bitten by the bug, the itch to perform on stage in front of an audience never really goes away, and I'll be back performing soon. Just you wait.
These are three of my favorite movies about life on the stage (minus Shakespeare in Love, which I've picked for these things WAY too many times, and Birdman, which I expect will be picked a lot today).
To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942/Alan Johnson, 1983) Pick your flavor, the elegant Lubitsch touch or the Brooks-ian Borscht Belt. To my mind, they're both great. The story in both versions is the same: A husband and wife team are stars of the Warsaw theater scene of 1939 (Jack Benny/Mel Brooks and Carole Lombard/Anne Bancroft). Every night while the husband is performing Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be..." speech, a young Lieutenant pilot (Robert Stack/Tim Matheson) leaves the audience... to go backstage to romance the wife! She keeps seeing him because she likes the attention, but has no intention of actually leaving her husband. Eventually, the Nazis invade and our intrepid young Lieutenant becomes aware of a spy in the ranks. Mistaken identities, cross purposes, and lots and LOTS of hilarious scenes ensue as the theater troupe works together to fight the Nazis in whatever way they can. The plot is WAY too complicated to attempt to explain here, but in both versions it provides for ample comedy of all kinds, and tremendous performances from the stars. Since each version is essentially the same story tailored to the talents of its stars, they're just different enough to be good in their own way. I honestly can't choose which one I prefer. All I can say is they're both hilarious and worth a watch, especially in the current moment.
The Last Metro (Francois Truffaut, 1980) During the Nazi occupation of Paris, a Gentile actress (Catherine Deneuve) struggles to keep her Jewish husband (Heinz Bennent) hidden in the theater's basement, while both acting and directing (for him) a new play. Gerard Depardieu plays the leading actor in the play, who is also a member of the resistance. The title refers to the last train of the evening, which all Parisians had to catch because of a Nazi curfew. Like many of Truffaut's films, there's a lot here that's a bit dull, but the moments when it comes alive are truly thrilling, and the combined star power of French Cinema Gods Deneuve and Depardieu is just amazing to watch. As with all of Truffaut's best films, this feels personal, and it was: Both his father and uncle were members of the French resistance, and were once caught passing messages (a scene he recreated in this film - one of its best sequences).
Being Julia (Istvan Szabo, 2004) Julia Lambert is the greatest stage actress of her day. But being a woman of a certain age, she is starting to be pushed out for younger, prettier actresses. An affair with a young American reinvigorates her lust for life, but when she realizes he is using her to advance his career and social standing AND ALSO sleeping with a rival ingenue, Julia begins to plot her revenge. Annette Bening is delicious as Julia, tearing into the juicy part with the energy of a hungry lioness, and she receives great support from Jeremy Irons, Michael Gambon, Juliet Stevenson, and especially Lucy Punch as her rival. I could watch the scene where Julia hijacks the play to get revenge on Avice on a loop forever and be perfectly satisfied.
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 telling us about them!
Ready, steady, GO: Con Artists
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Sorry, I'm still in a turkey coma from last week. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I had two celebrations, one on Thursday and one on Friday. This was my first year traveling to celebrate the holiday since college. And I was also cooking. So I missed last week's Thursday movie picks. :-(
So I wanted to be back this week with a vengeance.
Except that I forgot today was Thursday.
DAMMIT.
Oh well. I shall soldier on anyway! I've got one modern classic, and two Classic classics.
Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001) Effortlessly cool and with enough movie star charisma and swagger for eleven films, Soderbergh's update of the classic Rat Pack film is pure, endlessly rewatchable movie fun.
The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) Barbara Stanwyck's seduction of Henry Fonda's dim-witted mark is one for the ages.
Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933) Only Lubitsch could make a con film this sophisticated, sexy, and funny. Indelible performances from conwoman Miriam Hopkins and single socialite Kay Francis, as well as suave Hubert Marshall, the man caught between them.
Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three films that fit the chosen theme and telling us about them!
This week's theme is... a bit weird. Work Place Movies. I mean, it's not really weird, but when I think of "Work place" as a main descriptor, I usually think of TV sitcoms like Fawlty Towers, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, NewsRadio, etc. But that's just me.
ANYWAY...
I think I picked three good ones this week. They all have something in common. Can you guess what it is?
The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940) This delightful adaptation of a play by Miklos Laszlo is one of Lubitsch's best - and that's saying something! Margaret Sullivan and James Stewart play co-workers at a gift shop in Budapest who kind of can't stand each other on the job... at the same time as they're falling for each other as "lonely hearts" pen pals! Of course, eventually they figure out who each other is, but the journey is really what makes this such a treat. The famed "Lubitsch touch" is in full display in this witty, perfectly-paced film. The cast is pure enjoyment (Frank Morgan as the shop proprietor and Joseph Schildkraut and Inez Courtney as other shopworkers), and it's perfectly staged - for proof, just watch my other picks, which steal scenes wholesale from this original, the ultimate workplace romance.
In The Good Old Summertime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1949) There's very little to improve upon in Shop Around the Corner, so MGM decided to add songs, Technicolor, and Judy Garland. And you know what? It almost works! Nearly as perfectly cast as the original (Buster Keaton, Spring Byington, and S.Z. Sakall fill out the shop staff, now a music shop in turn-of-the-century America), the only slight misstep is Van Johnson, who in some places comes off a bit too creepily cruel as opposed to lovably antagonistic. But nevertheless, the source material is so foolproof that he can't ruin it. Not one of MGM's best musicals, but this is still a very enjoyable film.
You've Got Mail (Nora Ephron, 1998) Leave it to Nora Ephron to update this story to the digital age, substituting chat rooms and email for lonely hearts letters and post office boxes (is this the original catfishing story?). Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks have the best chemistry of any central couple in these three films, but sadly the great supporting cast (which includes Dave Chappelle and Jean Stapleton) is pushed to the sidelines. But that's also a product of the biggest change to the source material: Instead of working in the same shop, our central couple work for competing businesses - she for a lovely independent bookstore, he for a corporate conglomerate - and they're both in relationships with slightly awful people. Of course, the fact that large corporate bookstores like Barnes & Noble are now going out of business as well as small independent shops dates this film even more than the dial-up tones and AOL screens, but Ryan and Hanks make it plenty worth watching.
BONUS PICKS
...okay, fine, those are all really one choice. So here's another just for kicks and giggles.
Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov, 2008) I know a lot of people don't like this movie, but I love it's energy and inventiveness and twisted sense of humor and Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman (and Chris Pratt in a supporting role). We get to follow poor, maladjusted office drone Wesley through two workplaces: his cubicle-filled corporate shithole and his newfound calling as part of a cadre of deadly assassins led by Freeman which includes Jolie's dead-sexy (and just plain deadly) Fox
What Women Want (Nancy Meyers, 2000) This may be underrated because of Mel Gibson's descent into madness/irrelevancy, but its actually a lot of fun. Mel is the king of male-directed T&A advertising, who gets looked over for a promotion in favor of - SHOCKER - a woman (Helen Hunt at her typical intelligent best). And then, he gets shocked by electricity and can hear women's inner thoughts. Hilarity and killer cameos from Marissa Tomei, Loretta Devine, Bette Midler, Sarah Paulson, and Delta Burke & Valerie Perrine (as the only two women to have absolutely no thoughts in their heads) ensue.
