No. 1: Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch)

Remember that this is my personal ballot and not the final compiled ballot that will be published in this space on 2/29/12.


Random notes on Trouble in Paradise: (With quotes from the film interspersed, as well.)

"Marriage is a beautiful mistake which two people make together."

... I love how we keep seeing a lovely antique bed throughout the entire picture but that in this very sophisticatedly sexy film we never see anyone actually in this bed.  And near the end of the picture, we finally see something on the bed, a stack of money, one-hundred thousand francs ... I love the Trotsky-ite (played by Leonid Kinskey, who also appeared as Sasha, the Russian bartender in Casablanca) scolding Kay Francis for buying such an expensive handbag during the Depression ... The shot of Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins vanishing before our eyes on a love seat is heavenly and I am swept off my feet every time I see it ... And then there is the shot of Kay Francis reclining luxuriously, practically swooning on to her chair at The Major's party.  You can tell, you just know that she has just made love with Herbert Marshall ...

"Darling, remember, you are Gaston Monescu.  You are a crook.  I want you as a crook.  I love you as a crook.  I worship you as a crook.  Steal, swindle, rob.  Oh,  but don't become one of those useless, good for nothing gigolos."

... Many have tried to make a film as naughty, amoral, and sexy as Trouble in Paradise, but all have failed.  The most famous film to try is the execrable, backlash mega-hit, Pretty Woman, directed by Garry Marshall.  And Marshall is no Lubitsch.  No one is.  Or ever will be again ... One of the most sacred Cardinal rules of Hollywood is:  Never give your best lines of dialogue to anyone but the Star.  Lubitsch totally ignored this rule to brilliant effect, giving his bit players in all his films some of the juiciest and richest comic bits.  I think it was all part of his generous, family-style atmosphere on the set.  Lubitsch made the set seem like a party, Champagne constantly flowing, everyone in great spirits.  And I have never read or heard of any Star bitching about working with Lubitsch as a director ... 

"Yes, that's the trouble with mothers.  First, you get to like them, and then they die."

... At one of the lowest points of my life whilst living in Oakland I happened to notice in the SFChron that Trouble in Paradise was playing at the Balboa in the City.  I did not even have time to take a shower.  I took BART to the City, a cab to the Balboa and settled in to my chair just as the film began.  It was magnificent and magical to see this glorious, glossy Masterpiece on the big screen with an audience.  The packed house applauded when the film was over.  The run was extended a couple of weeks and I went back to see it three more times, once with a friend ... And the ending of this film is the greatest ending in cinema history, as far as I am concerned.  Every time I watch it at home when it gets to the last scene I crank the volume up and attempt to soak up every last sexy, romantic, funny drop ...

Herbert Marshall:  I know all your tricks.

Kay Francis:  And you're going to fall for them.

Marshall:  So you think you can get me?

Francis:  Any minute I want.

Marshall:  You're conceited.

Francis:  But attractive.

Marshall:  Now let me tell you ...

Francis:  Shut up -- kiss me! Wasting all this precious time with arguments.

... Ms Francis' widiculous lisp might annoy some but I think it just adds to the charm of her character ... Travis Banton's sleek and stunning gowns for Ms Francis and Ms Hopkins are runway worthy and jaw-droppingly beautiful.  Banton was Edith Head's mentor at Paramount ... Francis and Hopkins kept trying to upstage each other in the "I'm going to be a bit of a tyrant scene".  Finally, Lubitsch nailed Ms Hopkins' chair to the floor so she could not move it ... Herbert Marshall lost a leg, fighting for Britain in WWI.  His entire English and Hollywood career he had a prosthetic leg.  Despite this, Marshall, married, had affairs with both Hopkins and Francis while working on the film ... And Lubitsch, himself, was always madly in love with Miriam Hopkins.  But nothing romantic ever happened between them ... 

Miriam Hopkins:  Well, did you ever take a good look at her, um, ...

Marshall:  Certainly.

Hopkins:  They're alright, aren't they?

Marshall:  Beautiful.  What of it? Let me tell you something, as far as I'm concerned her whole sex appeal is in that safe.

Hopkins:  Look, Gaston, let's open it right now.  Let's get away from here.  I don't like this place.

Marshall:  No, no, sweetheart.  There's more sex appeal coming on the first of the month.  It's only ten days.  Eight-hundred and fifty-thousand francs!

... The whole spanking speech and the "Maybe, Monsieur Leval" and the "Like this, Monsieur Leval?" stuff just cracks me up to no end.  It is raunchy yet still urbane.  Witty yet still naughty. So brilliant.  Only Lubitsch, it seems (and maybe Preston Sturges) could pull stuff like that off ... I do not want to spoil the ending.  I am sure many of you have not seen the picture, but it is so fucking adult.  I do not mean adult in terms of a sexual nature.  I mean adult as in, Trouble in Paradise is a sexy, romantic 1932 comedy meant for smart grown-ups.  Kids would love the picture now, too, but Hollywood quit making serious, smart comedies for adults decades ago.  And that is a terrible shame ... Trouble in Paradise is available on Criterion dvd (no blu-ray yet, but I am sure that will arrive soon) and is an absolute must own for any and all sophisticated aesthetes out there.  It is like having Moet with Brillat-Savarin.  Trouble in Paradise almost makes this atheist believe in God.  Rent it, own it, whatever, just see it.  It will change your life, I swear.  

************

So, here, again is my personal Top Ten:

1.  Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch)

2.  Citizen Kane (Welles)

3.  Sunrise (Murnau)

4.  All That Jazz (Fosse)

5.  Gold Diggers of 1933 (LeRoy)

6.  Annie Hall (Allen)

7.  Casablanca (Curtiz)

8.  All About Eve (Mankiewicz)

9.  The Lady Eve (Sturges)

10.  Double Indemnity (Wilder)

************

Thanks to all of you that voted.  The compiled ballot will be published on Leap Day, February 29, 2012, two days from now.

My goodness, I love you all!

Ciao!

No. 2: Citizen Kane (Welles)

Remember that this is my personal ballot and not the final compiled ballot that will be published in this space on 2/29/12.  


Gosh, where do I begin?

This little blast from the past seems as good a place to start, I suppose.  (But also, perhaps after I have read this post, just as good a place as I should have finished.  We will see.) And then, I figure, I will attack the subject in multiple sections, each speaking towards a different theme, style, or reason why Citizen Kane is so special.

To wit,

The absolute worst thing Citizen Kane (and Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz) did, and the thing that both of them always regretted the most, was the way they portrayed the delectable, sweet, loyal Marion Davies as a drunken floozy.  It was such awful timing, too.  Citizen Kane was released just as the American public had finally forgotten about Ms Davies, forgotten how during the silent-era William Randolph Hearst had literally shoved Ms Davies and her career down the public's throat in his newspapers.  And how Hearst had blindly sabotaged her career by insisting she only do films that he would approve of, films and characters that were the complete opposite of her charming, naturally mischievous, comic style of performing, or acting.

But if Mankiewicz' famous San Simeon-insider story about the nickname Hearst had for Ms Davies' private parts is true, "rosebud", then that is worser, still.  To hang the entire film on such a rude private joke is beyond small or mean.

Mank and Ms Davies were great friends.  He was a notorious drunk and bon vivant, someone Davies could sneak off and drink with at the legendary Hollywood San Simeon parties.  (Hearst was a teetotaller and hated the idea of Marion drinking.)  In order to relieve himself of his awful guilt towards his friend, in an absolute master-stroke of self-destruction, Mank gave a copy of the Citizen Kane script to his friend and Ms Davies' nephew, Charlie Lederer.  Welles would only express regret in interviews late in his life re their treatment of Ms Davies.  And at one point in his life Welles borrowed a great sum of money from Lederer, which he never returned.

Perhaps I am the only person who thinks like this:  If Citizen Kane had strictly, solely laid to bare the life of William Randolph Hearst and had not included Marion Davies in it, then perhaps Hearst might not have reacted as he did, or with such Biblical vengeance.  I could be completely wrong.

************

Welles said there were so many curtain calls that eventually they just raised the curtain and let the audience congratulate the cast and crew on stage.  

One of the best arguments for why I could be wrong in the paragraph above is that Hearst and Welles had already come in to conflict before Citizen Kane was made.  One of the greatest triumphs of Welles' career and of that of the American Theatre was Welles' production of Macbeth in Harlem in 1936.  The production was part of the Federal Theatre Project, which was part of FDR's Works Project Administration (WPA), which was a massive economic stimulus project. (Gosh, where have we heard about projects like these recently?) Of course, some one like Hearst was opposed to the WPA and the Federal Theatre Project, and FDR and the twenty-year old director, Welles, and the fact that the cast was entirely African-American amateurs.  Welles and FDR were routinely savaged in Hearst newspapers as  traitors and Communists.  (Gosh, who likes to bandy that word about these days -- though, now they prefer the, to them, tamer friendlier word, Socialist?)

Welles and Hearst were headed for an absolute comet-like collision course no matter what.  It was inevitable.

Look, I am sure that even back in Roman times there were reactionary right-wing assholes that controlled a portion or all of the media of its' times.  Before Hearst it was someone else in this country and today it is Rupert Murdoch.  But go back to that link above, Jimmy Breslin's quote. Hearst set out to destroy Citizen Kane before it was released, offered $800,000 to the (Jewish) major studio heads to purchase the negative and have it destroyed. Hearst threatened to expose the studio heads as Jewish, Commie-symp Libertines if he did not get his way.  And as for Welles, well, "You always suggest sodomy.  Always."

Even William Alland, the reporter in Citizen Kane and the fantastic voice-over for the famous News on the March sequence, was called before the FBI to discuss if Welles and he were lovers. And if they were Communists.

That is why I forgive them, reluctantly, for their treatment of Ms Davies (sometimes great art has to be small and mean) and absolutely why I have no compunction for the way the film and Welles and Mank exposed Hearst and his media empire for the wretched reactionary creeps that they were.

What is the quote from Greil Marcus' superb book, Lipstick Traces? He is quoting Eisenhower, "Things are more like they are now than they ever were before."

************

But when the heck is Michael David Spitler gonna talk about the film, the movie, Citizen Kane?

Well, right now, as a matter of fact.

One of the only directors that I consider even in the same league as Welles (for completely different reasons, mind you), Ernst Lubitsch, was famous for his method of beginning his films. He would always work with his scriptwriter and demand that it had to be fresh, new, and different. That the first few minutes of his films had to be special.

For Citizen Kane, Welles and his crack DP (one of the greatest ever), Gregg Toland, that is how they attacked not just the beginning of the picture, but every single shot.

Every single shot in Citizen Kane is fresh and different.  Every single shot adds depth to the story or the characters.  Every single shot has the power to move or astonish or infuriate the viewer. And Welles and Toland used every trick in their respective bags.  Toland finally got to perfect the deep focus that Jean Renoir had come to love, directing La Règle du jeu.  Toland and Welles dug out the studio floors to create the dramatic low-angle shots that Hitchcock would exploit again and again.  Welles brought every theatre trick he could, including insane false perspective sets, featuring giant fireplaces or over-sized window frames that reinforced story or character.  Welles included cut-outs of people at the political rally (reinforcing the inherent fascistic nature of all politics or political movements).  Welles (and his production design team) told the whole story of the life and death of a marriage through simple editing and by enlarging the dinner table in increments, scene by scene.

What an amazing joy that must have been to arrive on the set each day.  All the geniuses were finally allowed to do whatever they pleased, try anything they had always secretly wanted to try, but were never allowed to before.

Just the News on the March sequence is decades ahead of its' time, blending stock footage, real footage, double and triple exposures, etc, ...

The camera went anywhere and everywhere.  Audiences had not seen anything like this since Murnau's Sunrise, fourteen years earlier, and pretty much forgotten by 1941, Citizen Kane's release.

But it is not just the technical side that makes Citizen Kane so special.  It is also its thrilling larger than life acting and characters.  The fact that the finest acting performance comes from Agnes Moorehead and she is in only one scene.  The amazing Bernard Herrmann score which magically and surreptitiously obeys no rules for scene changes, yet, numerous times comments wittily on the action at hand.  The elegant way that the script and the performers and the production so slyly satirise American Pop Culture and the media.  And on, and on, and on, ...

************

Honestly, Citizen Kane is the greatest motion picture in history.  But for idiosyncratic, special romantic, personal reasons, here it will have to reside as No. 2.

Believe me, Citizen Kane (like the Beatles) is not over-rated as many would suggest.  It is still under-rated.  It is an absolute diamond mine of riches, seemingly infinite, with still, yet more treasures to unearth the more we explore.

************

Favorite two moments from Citizen Kane:

1.  The ferry girl speech because I have had the exact same experience.  I was on a flight home from Germany in 1994.  The flight was delayed due to mechanical problems.  They ushered us back to the terminal and plied us with free cocktails and crappy German snacks.  It was there I spied one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life, waiting with me.  I never spoke to her.  I doubt we could have, anyway.  I remember her beautiful auburn hair and her Romanian passport.  At the oddest of times, every now and then, I remember the way she stood, clutching that passport.  I am quite sure she never thinks of me, at all, ever.

2.  The whole "in sixty years I'll have to close this newspaper" sequence.

All my love,

Ardent Henry

Just Plain Honorable Mention, Period

This is my personal Honorable Mention list, and is not part of the final compiled Top Ten that will be published in this space on 2/29/12.


(In no particular order:)

1.  This is Spinal Tap
2.  In the Loop
3.  Withnail and I

(Those first three are my Holy Trinity of Cult Films, I mos def know every single word backwards and forwards from those three amazing films.)

4.  Slacker (depends on how you feel but I am either great fun to watch Slacker w/ or a terrible bore.  I know every frickin' single person in it.  Still the greatest representation of Austin ever.)
5.  Dazed and Confused (maybe the finest French New Wave film ever made in the US.  It is not just a genre picture.)
6.  Me & Orson Welles (not really a cult film, I suppose, but I wanted to get some more Richard Linklater in here.)
7.  School of Rock

8.  An Education (not really a cult film, again, but part of my Nick Hornby selections.)
9.  Fever Pitch (UK edition! About Arsenal! Not the one w/ Drew frickin Barrymore in it.)
10.  High Fidelity
11. Dirty Pretty Things (you see, now I have slipped in to Stephen Frears' category.)
12.  Dangerous Liaisons (I think this would be a great rep house cult movie.  It is prob just me, though.)
12 1/2.  The Snapper

13.  Sexy Beast (this received a vote in someone's Top Ten! Matthew L's.)

14.  Bottle Rocket
15.  Rushmore (also made Matthew L's Top Ten!)
16.  The Life Aquatic
17.  The Royal Tennenbaums

18.  The Big Lebowski

19.  Serial Mom
20.  Polyester
21.  Female Trouble

22.  A Hard Day's Night
23.  Yellow Submarine

24.  Shaun of the Dead
25.  Hot Fuzz (also made Matthew L's Top Ten!)
26.  Spaced (the two season fourteen episode English teevee show that Wright and Pegg did before Shaun of the Dead.)
27.  Scott Pilgrim vs the World

28.  Welcome to the Dollhouse
29.  Storytelling
30.  Happiness
31.  Life During Wartime
32.  Palindromes

33.  Poison
34.  Safe
35.  Velvet Goldmine

36.  Evil Dead 2
37.  The Shining
38.  Don't Look Now

39.  Bad Timing
40.  The Man who Fell to Earth

41.  The 39 Steps
42.  The Lady Vanishes
43.  Young and Innocent (yeah, so I am being a little 'loose' w/ this cult definition! So sue me.)
44.  Rebecca
45.  Notorious
46.  Strangers on a Train
47.  North by Northwest
48.  The Man who Knew too Much (the orig UK edition w/ Nova Pilbeam in it -- what a name, hunh?)
49.  Rear Window
50.  Under Capricorn
51.  Rope

52.  The Commitments
53.  Angel Heart

54.  Lolita (the Kubrick version, thank you very much!)
55.  Dr Strangelove
56.  2001

57.  The Maltese Falcon
58.  The Big Sleep
59.  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

60.  The Third Man
61.  The Magnificent Ambersons
62.  The Lady from Shanghai

63.  Passport to Pimlico
64.  It Always Rains on Sunday
65.  Pink String and Sealing Wax  (they better mention Googie Withers in the Memoriam  Tribute at the Oscars.)
66.  Dead of Night
67.  Whisky Galore!

68.  Day For Night
69.  Claire's Knee
70.  Pauline at the Beach
71.  Les Bonnes Femmes

72.  Repulsion
73.  Chinatown




And I am going to stop there.  But I will be probably keep adding to this list, so if you are interested, just check back every now and then.



Mwah, ... 



UPDATE! (2/9/12):


74.  Darling
75.  Cold Comfort Farm

76.  Two for the Road
77.  Bedazzled (orig Cook/Moore version w/ Eleanor Bron.)
78.  Singing in the Rain
79.  An American in Paris

80.  Footlight Parade
81.  Night Nurse
82.  Baby Face
83.  The Blue Angel
84.  Bringing Up Baby
85.  Shanghai Express
86.  Twentieth Century

87.  Shop Around the Corner
88.  Design for Living
89.  Ninotchka
90.  To Be or Not to Be
91.  The Merry Widow

92.  The Thin Man
93.  My Man Godfrey
94.  Make Way for Tomorrow

95.  Some Like it Hot



AH

(more soon, ... )

UPDATED! (2/11/12):






96.  Tabloid
97.  Man on Wire
98.  Inside Job
99.  The Thin Blue Line
100.  The Most Dangerous Man in America
101.  Roger and Me
102.  Bowling for Columbine
103.  Fahrenheit 9/11
104.  Casino Jack
105.  Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
106.  The Fog of War
107.  Standard Operating Procedure
108.  Manufacturing Consent
109.  Roman Polanski:  Wanted and Desired
110.  The Life and Times of Harvey Milk
111.  We Were Here
111 1/2.  The Corporation

112.  The Deal
113.  The Queen
114.  The Damned United
115.  Longford
116.  The Special Relationship

117.  The Wire (tv series)
118.  Treme (tv series)
119.  Generation Kill (tv miniseries)
119 1/2.  Mildred Pierce (tv miniseries)

120.  Lone Star
121.  Matewan
122.  City of Hope
123.  Return of the Secaucus Seven
124.  Brother from Another Planet
125.  Sunshine State
126.  Passion Fish

127.  Swimming to Cambodia
128.  Monster in a Box
129.  Terrors of Pleasure
130.  Stop Making Sense
131.  Silence of the Lambs
132.  Something Wild

133.  Mildred Pierce (Curtiz/Crawford film)

134.  Eight Men Out
135.  Bull Durham
136.  Damn Yankees
137.  Moneyball

UPDATE! (2/15/12) :  


138.  The Art of the Steal
139.  Theremin
140.  Helvetica


141.  Sideways
142.  Election (It has been all downhill for Reese Witherspoon since Election)
143.  Junebug
144.  Little Miss Sunshine


145.  4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
146.  Loves of a Blonde
147.  California Dreamin'
148.  Tales of the Golden Age

No. 3: Sunrise (Murnau)

Remember that this is my personal ballot and not the final compiled ballot that will be published in this space on 2/29/12.


Well, I had to include at least one artsy-fartsy pick, right? And I do not know if I can get more esoteric than Sunrise, a silent film made in 1927, directed by F.W. Murnau.

Sunrise absolutely deserves its place here.  It is a breathtaking, complete marvel of a film that was decades ahead of its time.  And seeing Sunrise has become a magical treat for me that makes me feel a child again every time I watch it.  I am completely under the spell of this film, helpless as it plays.

It is not the melodramatic story that transports me.  It is the intoxicating reverie of the country and the city that Murnau and his smashing team created on the back lots of Hollywood.  Charles Rosher and Karl Struss shot the film (and won Oscars for their work), while Rochus Gliese handled the superb art direction, and Frank Williams assisted with special effects.  Sunrise is a phenomenal technical achievement that would not be matched until Welles got his own paintbox fourteen years later for Citizen Kane.

In fact, Sunrise was the Terminator or Avatar of its time.  It was so groundbreaking and astonishing to the Academy that they awarded Sunrise a special Oscar for being the most unique and artistic production that year, an award that has never been given to any other film in all the history of the Oscars.

Murnau was a German director who had already made a significant name for himself at Ufa, making other masterpieces such as:  Nosferatu, Faust, and the most highly regarded, The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann).  Murnau had been a trailblazer his entire career and could work in any genre.  His films could be expressionistic in style, realistic, supernatural, surrealistic, or often times a blend of all or some of these styles in a single film.  He would do anything and everything to create the film's milieu, including forced perspective, models, cut-outs, midgets, mattes, opticals, what have you.  But his biggest breakthrough was the way he moved the camera.  In the The Last Laugh Murnau made the camera a subjective observer in the film, an actor.  And the camera now went everywhere:  through walls and glass, up and down, so free and expressive. Murnau's imagination seemed to know no bounds.  And he changed the American cinema because of it, perhaps more than any other filmmaker ever.

William Fox hired Murnau to make a 'prestige' film, like The Last Laugh had been, in Hollywood, one that would win a lot of trophies.  Fox gave Murnau and his team carte blanche to make the picture.  And two big-time movie stars were in it, Janet Gaynor (she also won an Oscar for her performance in Sunrise and two other films) and George O'Brien.

Sunrise was a flop, of course, like so many masterpieces.  The critics loved it to pieces and sang its praises but audiences were not impressed.

Despite the critical approbation and the Oscars for Sunrise, Fox eventually lost patience with Murnau and eventually forced him out.  One of Murnau's Fox films, Four Devils, has been lost forever.  We only have still photographs of the film.

Just as Murnau was to announce signing a new deal with Paramount he was killed in an car accident.  He was forty-three.  The most famous and poignant 'story' related to his death is that Murnau, who was gay, never picked his chauffeurs for their driving abilities.  He always picked them for their looks.

Top 3 sequences, moments in Sunrise:

1.  The long tracking shot with George O'Brien going to meet Margaret Livingstone.
2.  The train ride in to the City, an absolute heart-rending, tearful journey about forgiveness and true unconditional love.
3.  The sequence right after Janet Gaynor and O'Brien walk out of the church, in to the street, and then a magical, bucolic, idyllic meadow, so in love again.



The clips below are not very good quality.  I encourage you to watch them but mostly to get a taste of what Sunrise is.  There is a fantastic Blu-ray edition of Sunrise that contains maybe the greatest and most illuminating commentary I have heard for a film.  It is also available on regular dvd.  For the folks that are willing to make this dreamlike journey, from the country, to the City, and back again, I most heartily recommend you purchasing Sunrise.

All my love, my angels,



Ardent

No. 4: All That Jazz (Fosse)

Remember that this is my personal ballot and not the final compiled ballot that will be posted in this space on 2/29/12.

I knew that my ballot would have to contain either Cabaret or All That Jazz.  And in some sense you can consider Cabaret to be section B of this ballot choice.  In order to make the decision I naturally watched both films again recently.  (Not back to back! That might be too intense a double feature.)  And in the end, I am going with All That Jazz.  Despite Joel Grey's stunning, Oscar-winning performance; the absolutely ravishing Marisa Berenson; Bob Fosse's typically sexy perfect choreography and his stellar direction (Fosse beat Coppola for Best Director at the Oscars that year!) and editing genius; and the legendary Kander and Ebb songs; there are still very shaky moments with some of the acting performances and the script in Cabaret.  It is a tough call, though.  (The story goes that Stanley Kubrick saw an advance screening of Cabaret in London and was heard to mutter on his way out the cinema, "I have just seen the perfect film.")

I have a deeply intimate and passionate relationship with both of these motion pictures.  One of my earliest childhood memories is waking up in a theater, next to my Mum, after the credits had rolled on Cabaret and the house lights had come back on.  I was probably around four years old.  And I loved the Cabaret movie soundtrack.  I would play it over and over again.  My favorite songs were Two Ladies, Willkommen, and The Money Song.  And there has never been a time in my life where I have re-watched Cabaret and not thought it absolute genius.

I saw All That Jazz upon its release in a theater, as well.  With my parents.  And even for a ten-year old All That Jazz fit so snugly in to my wheelhouse that its stock has not dropped even a mite in all these years.  Let us face it, I was on track at that age to be a great theatre actor.  I was even acting in a Broadway-styled musical at the Dallas Theater Center at the time.  (The musical was called The Illusion, and was a World Premiere.  It was a flop.  The review headline for the Dallas Times-Herald 11/30/79:  "Few wonders are worked in Theater Center's 'Illusion'".  The Dallas Morning News was kinder:  "'Illusion' shows a bit of magic".  I did receive my first 'notice' ever in the Times-Herald review, though, " ... an adoring Newsboy, Michael Tankersley.")  And considering that nearly all child actors have to dance and sing as well as act (I was a decent to good singer --still am! -- but never got very good at dancing despite lots of lessons and classes) All That Jazz seemed to me a spot-on reflection of what my life already was like.  And what my adult life would be like, too.  

And, Wow, what a life! Full of rejection, politics, back-stabbing peers, infidelity, partying, promiscuity, chain-smoking, lots of casual sex, recreational drugs, applause, awards, heart disease, fame, first growth bordeaux, champagne, intense massively rewarding friendships, vile hateful directors and producers, heartbreak, flops, failure, fan mail, wretched notices, media scorn, a fickle public, the complete loss of personal privacy, First Class, Michelin-starred restaurants, my personal table at Elaine's or The Russian Tea Room, loneliness, a "star on my door", etc, ... Yeah, give me that! Give me all of that and more, please! 

Look, theatre and show business folks see this movie completely differently than other folks do.  (Yet, the film is so rich and moving and amazing that you can still be touched without a theatre background.)  If you have seen the film, you know the scene where Roy Scheider humiliates  the dancer, Victoria, making her do the dance routine repeatedly, embarrassing her in front of her cast mates? I was not even out of Junior High yet, and could already identify with what that kind of experience was like.  (My director was not a dick, like Fosse, but, once, I simply could not get a line right from a scene of a television program I was working on and I had a complete meltdown and stormed off the set.  My wonderful director talked to me as I sobbed in the bathroom.  I returned, nailed it in one take, and the cast and crew burst in to applause.)  

The immensely moving ballet rehearsal scene between Scheider and Erzsebet Foldi (her performance has been criminally under-rated all these years)? I know what that is like.  The perhaps even more touching "Movie Premiere Dance Present" sequence with Ms Foldi and the beautiful Ann Reinking? Been there, done that.  The brilliant Cattle Call scenes? I've lived that numerous times. 

Even though "An Actor's Life for Me" was ultimately not in the cards (I was not nearly dedicated enough in school or in my life) all that theatre and show biz are absolute part and parcel of my essential self.  They can not be separated.  That theatre life influences, on some level, no matter how minute sometimes, every single thing I do.

There is a game Renee, who has seen much more of the world than I have, likes to play with me sometimes.  Whenever a place, spot, famous work of art or architecture shows up on our teevee screen or at the movies, Renee nudges me and says, "I've been there," knowing full well that I have not.  Well, my answer to that is All That Jazz.  Scene by scene I can go through All That Jazz and proclaim, "I've been there."  And there are a lot more people who have seen the Statue of David than can lay claim to what I have done here.  That is very special.

Still, even if you watch the film without any background or interest in the theatre, like I said, it still works.  Those who panned it and still pan it speak of its self-indulgence; Fosse putting his fucked-up, womanizing, pill-popping, workaholic life on screen for all too see, yet, still somehow portraying himself as a lovable person.  I have no problem with that.  He is lovable.  And that is not something that is exclusive to show biz lifestyles.  We are so many of us deeply flawed, insensitive, wretched human beings, who are yet also capable of expressing and sharing love, and are worthy of receiving love.  I do not see that as a fault of the film.  I see it as exquisitely tapping in to one of the most important themes of our wonderful human experience.  (And for what it is worth, All That Jazz is a much much much better film than Fellini's 8 1/2 -- which All That Jazz was loosely based on.)  

Top 4 quotes, moments from All That Jazz:

1.  "You're lying to me."  "Yes."

2.  "Fuck him! He never picks me."  "Honey, I did fuck him and he never picks me, either!"

3.  Cattle Call scene.  Like the late Roy Scheider said in his commentary for the previous dvd edition of All That Jazz, "Bob Fosse put the entire Broadway Musical, A Chorus Line, in to this one sequence."

4.  The "Movie Premiere Present" dance sequence.

Like Gold Diggers before it, I can not pick just one clip.  There will be a few.  Enjoy!

Mwah, ...

AH

No. 5: Gold Diggers of 1933 (LeRoy)

Remember that this is my own personal ballot and not the final compiled ballot that will be posted in this space on 2/29/12.


(And, by the way, we are now eight days from the deadline and I have still not received ballots from many of you.  The deadline is the 31st.  Please get a ballot in to me if you have not already.  You do not have to do it on facebook if you do not want to.  Send your ballot to me at my email, mavis.mike@gmail.com.  Thanks.)

Some years back, Renee and I wanted to see some films from the Pacific Film Archive's Pre-Code Festival, notably, Baby Face.  But on that day we had trouble finding parking (Trouble finding parking on the Cal campus? Go figure, right?) and arrived too late to get tickets. No big deal.  We got a bite to eat and saw Night Nurse, which played later, instead.  But whilst there I picked up a festival program and noticed that they were showing Gold Diggers of 1933 later in the week.

So we went back to Berkeley a few days later to see it.  I do not know how many of you folks have seen movies at the Pacific Film Archive (PFA) but it is not at all like going to a Movieplex.  The screens are smallish, there is no popcorn or soda, and the chairs are hard with swinging writing desks attached.  It is a scholastic environment.  Not the ideal setting for watching a lavish musical-comedy.

But that is how good Gold Diggers of 1933 is, it plays brilliantly in any theater space.  I can not tell you how many musical-comedies I have seen where all the emphasis and talent ends up on the musical side and the comedy  part is an afterthought, or just not funny.  Not here.  Director, Mervyn LeRoy, the screenwriters, and the fabulous cast (notably Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Guy Kibbee, and Ginger Rogers) all do a masterful job at making this an extremely funny movie.

But this movie hits on all cylinders.  Gold Diggers came out during the height of the Depression, so not only was the aim to entertain audiences with stunning intricate dance sequences, great songs, naughty sexuality, and laughs, it was also to remind folks out there that times are hard and that we all need to pitch in together, look out for our fellow man, and get our country back on track.  (Warner Brothers, who produced the picture, were massive FDR boosters, even including a giant plug for him and the New Deal in another Busby Berkeley musical, Footlight Parade.)

Still, the absolute genius masterstroke of this "musical-comedy" is the ending.  After the traditional Double Wedding resolution has been achieved they show one last musical number, "My Forgotten Man".  All the musical numbers were directed and choreographed by the cinematic legend, Busby Berkeley.  The "My Forgotten Man" sequence starts with Joan Blondell giving a homeless veteran a smoke.  Then lamenting the plight of all the soldiers returning from the Great War, who are mostly homeless, jobless, of ill health and/or debilitated, with no hope for the future.  The superb Etta Moten takes over the song from here in an heart-rending bluesy style (Ms Moten sang "My Forgotten Man" at the White House in 1934, at FDR's personal request) before Berkeley hauls his soldier "dancers" out.  The soldiers leave for war on one treadmill, confetti everywhere, and people cheering.  But soon we see soldiers coming from the other direction on another treadmill.  The confetti and crowds are all gone and the soldiers are all bloodied, bandaged, and wrecked from the War. The number wraps up with Blondell and the soldier's chorus reprising the song.  Then a dolly to a close-up of Blondell as she finishes the song and then the title card, The End.  That is it.  No return to the Double Wedding characters.  The End.  It is like a giant, heavy door being slammed shut.

I have seen a lot of Depression-era Pre-Code movies.  It is prob my fave period for films.  There is nothing that even comes close, in my eyes, to Gold Diggers of 1933 for being the absolute perfect, entertaining, yet thoughtful and serious, motion picture entertainment for those times.  (Make Way For Tomorrow comes closest, I would say.)

And hell! The way things are in this country right now, I contend that Gold Diggers of 1933 plays just as good today as it did seventy-nine years ago.

Top 5 quotes, moments from Gold Diggers of 1933:

1.  "My Forgotten Man" number
2.  Aline MacMahon, Guy Kibbee, and Ginger Rogers' hilarious night club scene
3.  "Petting in the Park" number
4.  Ginger Rogers singing "We're in the Money" in pig latin
5.  "Shadow Waltz" number



(Honestly, I do not know what clip to show here.  Should I go with My Forgotten Man? The naughty, sexy Petting in the Park? The lovely Shadow Waltz? We're in the Money? I have posted so many sexy things lately I will skip Petting in the Park.  You can watch it on You Tube yourself.  But I am going to include the other three.  A movie clip bonanza!)

Kisses,
xxxoooxxx.

Ardent

No. 6: Annie Hall (Allen)

Remember that this is my personal ballot and not the final compiled ballot that will be published in this space on 2/29/12.

(Before I get started:  The rain rain rain finally came came came and I am sitting here on our red sofa, writing out this post in longhand.  Mavis, old oldest cat, is sleeping on my lap and Annie Hall is playing as I write this.  Carol Kane just said, "No, that's wonderful.  I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype."  This is the only way I can enjoy Bay Area rain:  when I am inside, windows slightly opened, and I am absorbing the crackling electrical atmosphere in peaceful quiet.)

I have already discussed Annie Hall a fair bit in this post, so I will not talk too much about the film here right now.  I will say that Allen and Marshall Brickman's "kitchen sink" approach, i.e.  breaking the fourth wall numerous times, the use of animation, subtitles, jerking us around in time repeatedly, certain documentary-style flourishes, etc, ... was absolutely magical to behold as a nine year old in 1977.  And still holds up enormously well today.  As a child I was quite convinced that the film was a documentary, the life story of comedian Alvy Singer, I suppose.  My mother had to explain to me that Woody Allen was not a comedian, he was a writer and a director.

April 3, 1978 was a big night in our little household, a town house on Abrams Ave, in Dallas, Texas.  It was Oscars Night and Oscars Night has always been a big deal to our family.  (David Mamet has an excellent essay in his book, Writing in Restaurants, that proposes that the two biggest American Holidays now are Super Bowl Sunday and Oscar Night.  And as much as our family loves sports, we are def an Oscar Night family more than a Super Bowl Sunday one.)

The three of us were huddled, downstairs, sitting at our dining room table (our cat, Layla, was prob sulking somewhere, acting aloof), watching the show unfold on our modest black and white television.  I do not remember this but I did some research, natch, and Bob Hope was the host that night.  It was the eighteenth time he had hosted the Oscars, and his last.  Also, the next day was a school day for me, so I did not see the entire show.  I trudged upstairs, prob throwing a fit the whole while, went to bed, and missed (I think) the Best Director and Best Picture presentations.  And this was an especially big Oscar Night for the three of us because we had v serious rooting interests:  Star Wars had the most nominations and the conventional wisdom was that it would be the big big winner that night.

Do not get me wrong.  We all saw Star Wars together in the theater upon its release.  Andy (my Da) and I even liked it a good deal.  Donna (my Mum) could take Star Wars or leave it, as best as I can remember.  Still, I also remember telling my friend, Ricky Minor (at our lockers), that Star Wars was good but Close Encounters of the Third Kind was even better after I had seen that, too.  I had seen Annie Hall before both of those blockbusters, and even at that age, I was nearly ten years old, it was Woody Allen's masterpiece that I enjoyed far more than Star Wars or Close Encounters.

Plus, my mother had another big rooting interest, in addition to Annie Hall, a film she still adores:  Julia.  I do not remember it at all but apparently Vanessa Redgrave gave a v controversial, political acceptance speech when she claimed her Best Supporting Actress Award.

The night went v well for the Spitlers in the end.  Star Wars won a bushel full of Oscars but only for technical categories.  Julia and Annie Hall swept both the Screenwriting Awards, and nearly swept all four of the Acting categories, Richard Dreyfuss won for The Goodbye Girl.  And, of course, Woody Allen won for Best Director and Annie Hall won Best Picture.  Allen was not there to accept his Oscar.  He always plays with his jazz band on Monday nights in Manhattan.  It was the closest ever, and likely always will be, that the Academy's taste matched with ours.  Yeah, forget likely, I will never see such a triumphant Oscar Night like that again, which is what makes this memory so special.

Top Six quotes, moments from Annie Hall:

1.  "Don't worry.  We can walk to the curb from here."
2.  "Yeah, grass, right? The illusion that it will make a white woman more like Billie Holiday."
3.  "Hey, don't knock masturbation.  It's sex with someone I love."
4.  " 'The food here is terrible.' 'I know, and such small portions.' "
5.  The spider in the bathroom sequence is one of the most touching and realistic things I have ever seen in a cinema, so poignant and lovely.
6.  The brilliant New Wave pastiche:  the subtitled sequence on Annie's patio.

Mwah, 


Ardent

No. 8: All About Eve (Mankiewicz)

Remember, that this is my personal ballot, not the final compiled ballot from all of you -- the deadline is January 31, 2012 -- that will be published in this space on 2/29/12.

At first, my list, my ballot, was composed of a number of, shall I say, for lack of a better term, artsy-fartsy selections.  The Wife would call them show off picks.  And I will list them as an Honorable Mention category down below.  But I thought better of it.  I decided my list should be emblematic of those types of films that mean the most to me on a v personal level, as opposed to films that may stand out as better films but do not resonate with me as much.  Sure, Le Règle du jeu is probably a better film than the seedy, cynical Double Indemnity, but, when push comes to shove, as much as I admire, adore, and respect The Rules of the Game, it just does not mean as much to me as the moment when Missy is sitting in the front seat of her car as Fred MacMurray is murdering her husband.  I guess it is just me, right?

And what my personal ballot reveals (minus the Bunuel films, or Melville picks, etc, ... ) is something that I have known about myself all my life! Something v important about me and my relationship with art in general, but movie art, in particular:  That I love the written word; that I love smart, snappy dialogue; that I am much more comfortable around something like His Girl Friday than I ever would be with something like The Tree of Life.  The incredibly profane and rude script of In the Loop is a much better friend to me than say, the screenplay for The Seventh Seal.  Not to say that I do not appreciate visual beauty on the silver screen (I love The Red Shoes, for instance, and Peter Greenaway's work, and Wes Anderson's meticulously framed paintings and inserts) or bravura tracking shots or cunning camera tricks and angles (Welles and Hitchcock come to mind here) but what stays with me the longest after all the English Technicolor has faded, and the bells and whistles are forgotten, is the script and the actors' performances.  So, in retrospect, I have come to notice that my list is chock full of stellar, marvelous script writing, and I have a number of comedies, as well.  And even the "dramas" on my list all have many many v funny moments in them.

Take, All About Eve, for instance:  This is considered a "drama", yes? Well, if so, it is perhaps the wittiest and most side-splitting "drama" out there, then.  I could not even begin to put in to words what a smashing, perfect, pithy, eminently quotable, erudite script Mankiewicz has crafted here.  And I am sure there a million term papers and books, already, that do better justice to him.

The scene that plays above is also supremely crucial to my personal aesthetic, and I am grateful that Mankiewicz got this sentiment in to his splendid film about "the theatre"  The moment I am speaking of is not at the beginning of this clip but the end.  It is Bill Sampson's tour de force monologue to Eve Harrington re What the Theatre Really Is.  This has been my philosophy on art for decades; that the walls between popular culture and art culture must be obliterated.  Art is art, plain and simple:  Mozart and The Beatles, Evil Dead 2 and Citizen Kane, Warhol and Van Gogh, Sin City graphic novels and Ulysses, it is all art to "somebody, somewhere".

Top Eight quotes, moments from All About Eve

1.  "You're too short for that gesture."
2.  "The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!"
3.  "That's all television is, my dear, nothing but auditions."
4.  The stunning Ms Marilyn Monroe's entrance at the party.  (I like her better in black and white, I think.)
5.  The aforementioned Bill Sampson speech (see above)
6.  "Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body.  Where has it been laid out?"
7.  The whole Margo Channing/furious playwright exchange, speaking of stars and authors, and Beaumont and Fletcher.

and of course,
8.  "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."

************

Honorable Mention, show off-y, artsy fartsy division:  The Rules of the Games, Bob le Flambeur, L'Age D'Or, L'Atalante, Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Army of Shadows.














Mwah, 
love you all, ... 


Ardent

No. 10, Double Indemnity (Wilder)

Remember that this is my own personal ballot - it is my blog, after all- and not the ultimate, official ballot that will be released on Feb 29, 2012.


I was tempted by my Da's ballot, which simply included eighteen unranked greatest films, to do something of the same sort.  But that is insane.  I set the rules, dang it, and I must abide by them, regardless.  


(Hey, Andy, I just gave three points each to every film you provided, and an extra point to the one on top, making the fifty-five points available to every ballot.  And what a great ballot! I did not know you liked Matewan so much, and my love for Salesman is prob v different from your love for it.  Plus, it is always great to see votes for Bye Bye Brazil and Brazil.)


The top five of my personal ballot have been set in stone for the past few years.  The toughest part for me were the last five.  


Over the dozen or so months that I have been considering doing this poll, those last five have been changing constantly, at times, daily.  


The most heart-breaking decision I had to make, in the end, was to leave Kind Hearts and Coronets out of my Top Ten.  


I really should not get too in depth to it, but Kind Hearts is not just a cute, Sir Alec Guinness, Ealing comedy.  It is a serious, erotic British Masterpiece disguised as the type of entertainment that dozens of writers and studio heads would drool o'er.  The type that they eventually did drool over, and the type that won them box office rentals and, finally, cult success.  Yet, the film is much better than that, deeper, more rewarding.  Folks have tried, I tells ya, but they have still nowt made a better black comedy, period.   

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a v solid No.  11.


Finally, 


No. 10, Double Indemnity (Wilder)


Top Ten moments/things/feelings re Double Indemnity



1.  Stanwyck's (Missy's) performance in the driver's seat as her husband is being murdered.
2.  Missy's performance when the car just will not start.
3.  Missy's gorgeous legs, showing off that anklet, as they come down the stairs.
4.  The brill casting of Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff.  (It was eventually my Mum, Donna who made me see the light here.  Mom was right -- what else is new?)
5.  The sublime yet seedy dark photography, including metal shavings playing dust in the first Neff/Dietrichson scene
6.  The fact that, ultimately, Double Indemnity is not a love story between Neff and Dietrichson but one between Neff and Barton Keyes!
7.  The spot-on, low rent, filthy production design by Hans Drier, espec the supermarket sets.  Drier came over from Germany w/ Lubitsch and did all his films, incl Trouble in Paradise.
8.  Everyone is terrible.  Everyone is awful in this film.  Even Lola is a liar.  And the most likeable guy in the film is someone who hires a P.I. to check up on his prospective fiancee at the very last minute.
9.  The sublime speeding ticket dialogue.
10.  That a Jerry Springer episode could be brought to life so artfully and entertainingly.  And yet predict fifty years later the type of television entertainment that some would foolishly call art, or a pastime of ours.

But that was Billy Wilder.  No one at that time was more clued in to the trashy, cynical ugly art that we call Reality Television today.

Wilder was a protege of the master stylist Lubitsch.  Where Lubitsch saw glitter, Wilder saw grime and dirt.

Wilder had many great films after Double Indemnity.  But this was his best, and I suspect he knew it.  He had to, it was the most "out on the limb" thing he did.  Though he always tried to top it, he never did.

-AH