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Hold thy tongue

I wrote this more than a year ago for my Film Review as a Genre class. My feelings about this movie, turning 20 years old this year, have not changed. Fans of Johnny and Tim Burton, prepare to hate me:

Edward Scissorhands; directed by Tim Burton, 1990

Edward Scissorhands’s cinematic creator Tim Burton has constructed at once a lushly visual and drably emblematic piece that is supposed to emblazon the plight of the outcasts. It’s too bad the outcast in this film has no point of view. Burton’s Edward (Johnny Depp) is surrounded by quite a flock of pick-a-little-talk-a-little housewives who have nothing better to do than wallow in gossip and their own societal superiority. Their snide and petty attitudes are so ubiquitous and Avon lady Peg (Diane Wiest), his saving grace, so sickeningly sweet, it’s as if we’re playing Battle of the Character Types. But then, nothing about Burton’s work is subtle, and understandably so. If these women (and their husbands, mere side notes) weren’t so obnoxious in their bright J. Crew catalog outfits and Edward so bleak and diluted in his muted tones, how else would we be able to understand how society likes to single out and alienate those who differ from the majority?

The heightened and fantastical sense of reality in the world Burton has created is beautifully depicted—the streets and houses are all lined in typical cookie-cutter suburban fashion in bright pastel yellows, pinks and blues to match the polo shirts of the people who inhabit them. It just so happens that at the end of their street lies a haunted mansion, which even in sunlight screams gargoyles, bats and vampires. No one even seems to pay any attention to the place until Peg’s attempt to integrate Edward into their world, and yet it seems like this mansion has loomed in the back of their minds for quite some time. It’s like Edward’s the scary black family moving into a community of WASPs—except what Edward’s got is called a “handicap.” His hands of scissors are initially strange and intriguing, and for almost everyone, they are not a threat. The men think he’s just some kind of running gag and the women, who presumably haven’t had sex in at least eight years, are perturbingly turned on by his shearers (grooming dogs turns into grooming the housewives in an aphrodisiacal moment); how quickly they find any reason to crucify this handicapped man without blinking twice even when he’s just a victim of circumstances. They may not burn crosses outside his desolate mansion, but they certainly chase him back to where he came from—a sort of reverse white flight. Perhaps this is why Officer Allen (Dick Anthony Williams), the only black person in the whole town, seems to identify with and defend Edward so immediately; he sees a part of himself in this “freak.”

The polar opposites effect that Burton is going for would work wonderfully if there were any sense that Edward is anything more than a tortured soul. There are glimmers of personality—a humorous moment of discovery occurs when Edward explores his new bedroom and awkwardly pokes a hole in the waterbed with his razor-edged digits and it throws him into a short frenzy. Yet, Edward does not have a voice. Depp, a normally fascinating actor to watch, doesn’t do much out of the realm of blank face or faint smile. More often than not, everyone else is speaking for him, just as this story is being told from the view of would-be love interest and daughter of Peg, Kim (Winona Ryder), who saves his life by telling the mob he’s dead inside the mansion, but still leaves him up there, not even bothering to visit him ever again. Even nurturing Peg decides that integrating Edward into normal life is impossible: “He should go back, at least there he’s safe.” I guess their worlds are just too different. Integration and acceptance will only stir up unnecessary trouble.

Poor, sweet Edward Scissorhands. I am curious to know—how did you really feel when that Avon lady plucked you from your solitude and thrust you upon the pastel Pillsbury Dough-house suburbia that is conveniently right outside your door? Why do you fall so instantly for wanna-be rebel Kim? Is it terrifying when that mob of rabid, howling neighbors curse you? Considering your deafening silence and seeming incapability of uttering more than one word at a time, one would think your scissors weren’t the real “handicap”—rather, your tongue seems to be what is truly binding you to helplessness. Or did you, perhaps, accidentally snip your tongue with your massive scissors, thus leaving you unable to speak more than one colorless word at a time?

The demise of romantic comedies, the rapid rise of 3-D

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http://www.examiner.com/american-film-institute-in-national/the-state-of-film-is-always-bleak-while-we-re-the-midst-of-it

New piece on Black Hollywood and it's women

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Babs, the quirky one

Funny Girl; directed by William Wyler, 1968

There's something about the movie musicals of the 1960s that just doesn't seem right. Visually, the colors tend to be more watered down, faded like that once bright pink dress you've put through the washing machine thrice too many times. The lens focus tends to be softer, with the edges of an image melting off gradually. The sets for most of these films look just as blatantly fake as the ones from the 1930s-1950s, but because the times had changed and the colors were so drab, it just doesn't seem acceptable anymore. And the music and story content itself tend to lack the spark and catchiness that inhabited musicals from Hollywood's Golden Age.

There are some exceptions, West Side Story being the biggest one since it came at the beginning of the decade, and Natalie Wood's terrible accent aside, it took bold risks visually and supported the choreography immensely. But after viewing Funny Girl for the first time yesterday, I was reminded just how much I really don't enjoy most of the Hollywood movie musicals of the 1960s.

Once the 1960s hit, musicals were on the decline, and the only way to get one made was to make a bloated, big budget picture so that they could trek it around the country road-house style. A movie like The Sound of Music, which was 3+ hours, could be shown for limited engagements at the nicer movie houses and charged audiences premium ticket prices. And so we went from Astaire and Rogers flicks being 110 minutes, to musicals running nearly as long as Gone With the Wind. For one of the best chronicles on how the 1960s began the transformation of Old Hollywood into the New, you should check out one of my favorite books, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood.

I've always been a fan of Jule Styne, who has written the music for such great shows as Bells Are Ringing and Peter Pan, but I don't find the music for Funny Girl to be particularly exciting. Yes, I am immune to the appeal of "Don't Rain on My Parade"--I've always found it to be a rather grating tune that is too easily ruined by amateur performers. This was also my first Babs film in full (I've only been able to willingly sit through about 20 minutes of The Way We Were, even with Robert Redford's ridiculously good-looking self), and I must say, as an actress, I really like her in the role of Fanny Brice. She is very much a female Woody Allen without all the sex included--since the script is pretty tame--and she is goofy, self-deprecating, and gamine all at the same time. Still, I'm convinced that her voice is an acquired taste, much like Judy Garland's seems to be--although as anyone who knows me could tell you, the latter is most certainly my cup of tea. I can appreciate Streisand's vocal stylings, but I just don't like them.

Speaking of Joots, after viewing the entire film, I've come to the conclusion that it is essentially A Star is Born without the memorable music and the tragic ending. Despite all of the warning signs that crop up immediately--a drunk Norman Maine crashes Esther Blodgett's performance in front of a crowd of hundreds; Nicky Arnstein tells Fanny Brice that his career of choice is...gambling--the female protagonists fall in love with their respective men anyway, all the while climbing to the top of their careers as their insecure husbands watch desolately from below and spin into madness because their egos have been crushed and minced to pieces. And for a film made in 1968, compared to A Star is Born, Funny Girl is quite tame. A Star is Born may be longer, but it definitely doesn't feel as long; once Funny Girl loses all sight of Fanny's career and focuses on the relationship between her and Nicky, it just has absolutely nowhere to go. There's nothing new to say about what goes on between the two of them, and it drags and lugs along for another hour. Their amicable decision to separate at the film's conclusion is so devoid of tension and drama that I almost wished the writers had just decided to have Nicky drown himself in the ocean, especially since the entire story takes liberties with the facts of Fanny's life anyway.

Meditations on Pocahontas (the Disney Princess, not the real one)

Pocahontas, directed by Mike Gabriel & Eric Goldberg; 1995

It has been 15 years since Disney released its very first animated film surrounded around a central character who wasn't of ambiguous European descent, and technically and musically, it holds up quite well. The animation, bursting with lush pastel blues, pinks, purples and greens looks very different from the previous year's vibrant reds and oranges that dominated much of The Lion King and before that, Aladdin. Nowhere is the film more visually stunning than during the equally beautiful song, "Colors of the Wind," written by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, where the images of wolves and moons and bears morph into one another seamlessly, leaves flow on a distinct path, and you can jump from a cliff thousands of feet high head-first without fear of death. And the songs--from "Steady as a Beating Drum" to "Just Around the Riverbend," all make the case for why Pocahontas would have been a much more logical choice for the Broadway stage than the so-so Tarzan.

What doesn't hold up, or rather what probably never made much sense to begin with even 15 years ago, is how even-handedly Disney treats the conflict between the pompous English settlers looking to "kill [them]selves an Injun, or maybe two or three" and the Indians themselves. Clearly, if you're looking for historical accuracy, you should never look to Hollywood, much less a Disney movie. Heck, for years and even now in some cases, you were hard-pressed to find the real truth behind history's greatest moments in your own school textbooks (let us not forget where most of our American schoolbooks have been published: Texas). It's expected that Disney's going to make Pocahontas look like the modern-day equivalent of a Playboy Playmate (big boobs, long luscious locks, a waist the size of the Olsen twins' legs--put together) and John Smith like an Aryan dream (blonde hair, blue eyes, chiseled features). It's also no surprise that the conflict devolves more into a Romeo and Juliet scenario--Daddy doesn't approve of the love of my life; my men think I'm crazy for wanting to be with her--rather than a deep, thought-provoking study on race relations in America's beginnings. Let's face it: how utterly depressing would it be to view this film as a child and watch the Indians die of yellow fever and small pox brought upon by their uninvited European guests? Because that's eventually what really happened.

But I digress...as an entertainment vehicle, it works splendidly. The biggest problem with it is that while the film may start off with rightfully casting the Virginia Company in a bad light as they call the Indians savages and speak flippantly about knocking them off one by one, it soon turns into a share-the-blame game. Look at the song and sequence of "Savages," where both sides prepare for a showdown after Kokoum, the man Pocahontas is supposed to marry, is killed by meek white man Thomas, and John Smith is being prepared for execution. Both sides trade gross generalizations and stereotypes about one another through song, with one Indian wondering "if they even bleed!" But in doing so, the writers ignore the real historical issue: the Indians had every right to protect their land and resort to violence because the English brought violence (and disease) to them. Should Indians have been victimized in this portrayal? Not necessarily. But attempting to lessen the offenses of the Virginia Company, they show the Indians as equally menacing and hateful, and in the end, the white men leave peacefully and even having made friends with their tan counterparts.

Pocahontas is definitely a film worth revisiting, especially if you haven't seen it since you were a kid. But it should be advised that, as with any movie loosely based on historical events, children should read up on the true story of the Indian princess and have the ability to distinguish between family entertainment and fact.

Torn Curtain

Torn Curtain; directed by Alfred Hitchcock; 1966

Well, it's finally happened. About three quarters into Hitch's 1966 Cold War espionage thriller, I wondered, what's the point? And that's the first time I've felt that way about a film from the Master of Suspense (although I've only made it about half-way through his filmography and still haven't gotten to his last couple pictures or most of his early British ones), and I was just left cold.

Even the films that I haven't been crazy about, like The 39 Steps and To Catch a Thief, have at least warranted from me the opinion that because of how deeply and meticulously he worked, they would be worthy of revisiting and analysis. But, every great and/or controversial director has that one Achille's heel, that one (perhaps two) picture that is just so dreadfully devoid of any reason for being made, that it does not warrant any intricate probing into its inner workings because the director clearly wasn't delving all that much to begin with. For Spike Lee, it's Summer of Sam (did we REALLY have to see the "devil" speaking through the dog with those horrendous special effects?); for Gus van Sant, it was the completely unnecessary pestilent assault on our senses with the shot for shot remake of Hitch's own Psycho.

I think it's safe to say that Torn Curtain is Hitchcock's Summer of Sam. With a convoluted plot and odd casting that does the story no justice, I just can't get excited about it. I have always loved Julie Andrews, and like most people, she will forever be Maria/Mary Poppins to me. She is the epitome of class, talent, and charm. But when it comes to va-va-voom...well, I'm sure she'd be the first to admit that she was never meant to be cast as a smoldering leading lady. And normally, Newman (playing some sort of nuclear physicist who gets himself tangled up in affairs behind the Iron Curtain) has enough sex appeal for both himself and his leading lady. And yet, all the fire that oozes from those steely blue eyes could not be enough to ignite even the slightest spark of chemistry between him and Andrews. Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, they ain't.

But forget the complete wall that's divided between the two stars; the romance and sex are usually secondary in a Hitchcock film anyway, the icing on the cake, shall we say. The suspense is virtually nonexistent. Michael (Newman) poses as a traitor to the U.S. by flying to East Berlin and claiming that he will work with the scientists there to help counteract the threat of nuclear weapons. In reality, he is looking to work with esteemed Professor Lindt to deceive him into revealing how much information the Germans have on the nuclear bomb. Of course, this being a spy movie, the Germans are suspicious of him from the beginning and several misadventures and one death occurs before Michael gets what he's after. No sooner does Lindt mistakenly reveal his secrets than Michael and Sarah (Andrews) have to high tail it out of there and get across the border and out of harm's way, which makes up for the last 40 minutes or so of the film. The problem is, once Michael gets that information, the story devolves into a typical "will they or won't they make it" chase (there was never any question in my mind that they wouldn't make it), with no element of thrill or excitement; it falls far below Hitchcock's technical and storytelling prowess.

I will say that the single murder scene, in which a German security officer who is in charge of following Michael around, is killed inside a farmhouse with the help of the farmer's wife, is the one interesting moment in a dull, otherwise lifeless film. If there is one thing that the director could do right, it was murder. I've read in a few sources that his relationship with long-time musical collaborator Bernard Hermann was virtually over by the time this picture was made. As he had rightfully insisted for the shower scene in Psycho, Hermann insisted on underscoring the 10 minute struggle and subsequent death. This time, the director didn't relent, and I think he was correct on this one. With the musical silence that accompanies the scene, and only the distinct sound of choking, physical struggle, and beating, it provided the one moment that made the film fleetingly interesting. The quick editing as the violence ensues are meticulously planned. The aerial shot of Michael's face as the officer dies slowly beneath him from the fumes in the gas stove is a clever last shot of the impassioned battle between the three characters.

If only Hitchcock had spent as much time developing the rest of the film as he did with that sequence; perhaps Torn Curtain would not be so banal.

The Trouble With Harry

The Trouble With Harry; directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1955

There was a time when most Americans found death to be one of three things: tragic, terrifying, or both. Until the last 20+ years, the ending of a life could hardly be considered fodder for comedic situations, at least for US audiences. Hitchcock, as a filmmaker, was always ahead of the times, using the cinematic technique to horrify audiences in new and distinct ways that Universal's movie monsters couldn't. Hitchcock had a fascination with death that he knew audiences shared (hence his indulgence in voyeurism that allowed the viewer to be somewhat of a willing participant in the fateful ends of characters onscreen), although he could also find the humor in situations involving passings on--a trait that is apparently very British.

So it's understandable that when Hitch decided to make his second (and last) comedy, The Trouble With Harry, American audiences were just not that into it. One of the stars of the film, John Forsythe, said years later that it failed at the box office here in the U.S. because they just didn't see why a story centered around how troublesome a dead body can be to the people of a small town could be humorous. The film did fine in the UK and the rest of Europe. But, after leaving people on the edge of their seats with flicks like Strangers on a Train and Rope, it just didn't sit well with audiences expecting the same gut-wrenching morbidity.

Well, I am not a direct product of the 1950s, and now that we have recent American comedies like Little Miss Sunshine that can cull the most ridiculous moments out of even the most macabre situations, I can say that I find nothing offensive about The Trouble With Harry, which marks the film debut of Shirley Maclaine. A dead man named Harry turns up dead in the woods of a beautiful, quaint New England town, but he serves merely as Hitchcock's "Macguffin." In the end, how he died and who killed him does not matter. The fact is--and literally, the trouble is--that he's dead, and now everyone who encounters his dead body is inextricably linked to one another.

What is wildly fun about this incredibly dark humor, is how innocent and lighthearted the entire cast of characters are. The bumbling British Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn), his lady friend Miss Gravely (Mildred Natwick), Harry's wife Jennifer (Maclaine), and Sam (Forsythe) all stumble upon the dead man one by one, and none of them are appalled, shocked, distraught, or any of the other feelings any normal human being would expect to feel upon encountering such a sight. Nope, they are all completely unphased, but for the fact that now they have to decide what to do with the body without involving the police. The body is buried and dug up again countless times, Sam draws a portrait of Harry's face (I couldn't help but think how paparazzi-like this was), and love is sprung through both pairs as they bond together to solve this "complication."

If this movie was made today, it would probably look something like an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The humor would be 100 times darker, and the characters as crude and unlikable as humanly possible. The difference is, whereas the characters in Always Sunny are unfailingly narcissistic and revel in schadenfreude, the characters in Hitchcock's romp are genuinely good people, just a bit cooky and charmingly self-involved. Harry's body is a mere inconvenience to them, one that makes it difficult for Jennifer and Harry to get married now that she's discovered she's a widow and they've fallen in love. How can we explain the death without it looking like we deliberately murdered him? they wonder. For the Captain, who thinks he accidentally shot him while hunting rabbits, Harry presents a bothersome nuisance, what with "all that digging and work" that is required of him throughout the story.

The absurdist nature of all of their interactions set upon the lush, beautiful Rockwellian-landscape of this quiet town are clever; while it deviates starkly from the work which made him the Master of Suspense, it still feels like a Hitchcock film, and a film that only he could have made. Obviously, the most avid Hitchcock fan would want to check this out, but I would also suggest it to anyone who enjoys twisted, and seemingly inappropriate humor--which really, is what today's comedy tends to be anyway.

My Brother's Wedding

My Brother's Wedding, 1983, directed by Charles Burnett

I did not realize it until after I finished watching My Brother's Wedding the other day and looked up the director's filmography, but the first Burnett film I ever was the made-for-tv drama Selma, Lord, Selma, which I remember watching as a child back when the Wonderful World of Disney still aired every Sunday evening. While a good movie, it was pretty standard and straightforward in its storytelling, which is what one would expect for a movie that would be premiered on ABC.

So I guess I won't count that as my "first" introduction to Burnett because from what I've now seen and read about his work, it's not a true indicator of Burnett's way of storytelling. My Brother's Wedding moves at a deliberately slow pace, oftentimes without any sense of where the story is going. The film centers around a thirty year old named Pierce, who still lives with his parents and works in their dry cleaning business, with no particular passion or desire in life. He's not a particularly lovable character--he uses lame excuses for why he still hasn't made it on his own yet and his judge of character when it comes to his in and out of jail best friend Soldier is highly questionable--but neither is he a character we can't grow to like, or at least attempt to understand. He visits Soldier's mother often while he's in jail, and after his death, goes from house to house in his neighborhood to find old friends to be the pallbearers at his funeral.

Two days later, and I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the film. I can definitely understand the comparisons to Italian neorealism; the storytelling structure, urban focus, and the sense of isolation remind me a lot of The Bicycle Thief. I can also attempt to understand how Burnett was trying to put a lens up to what he had seen and lived, something that is so polar opposite in tone compared to the blaxploitation films of the 70s. But I just don't feel I enjoyed it all that much. The acting leaves much to be desired, especially the actresses who played Pierce's future sister-in-law and the mother, who seemed to me to be just another Bible-thumping black matriarch. And I don't mind films that want me to just go along for the ride, without really explaining how that ride is going to conclude--but in the end, I did not feel fully invested in the characters or the outcome.

I am going to make Killer of Sheep the next Burnett film I watch, since that is the film that seems to define him as a director to the academic and critical world. Something tells me that I just might like that film a lot more. It is strange how he is pretty much an unknown unless you're a cinephile; I had never heard of him until I saw his name in an article I was reading about black filmmakers--his name stuck out to me because I'd never heard of him before. I would definitely recommend My Brother's Wedding and I do plan on watching it again, and even checking out the new version he released a few years back with the edits he originally intended to make. But I don't think I can champion him as a great filmmaker in my opinion--yet.