There are certain parties at large who may try to convince you that the new comedy Due Date is actually kind of good. They are wrong, and you take their word at the risk of your precious time, and of between seven and twelve bucks of your hard-earned cash. Due Date is not really any good, and probably would be complete dogshit without Robert Downey, Jr.‘s presence in it. I elaborate on this irrefutable truth here, in my review for MSN Movies.
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Man, I know SO many people – intelligent people – who thought that THE HANGOVER was not just a real movie but a good real movie, and not just a good real movie but a WELL-DIRECTED good real movie. I suffered through every SECOND of it, and the suffering became acute whenever Zach Whateverakis was onscreen. So the idea that there’s even more of him in this one and that it’s directed (sort of) by the same guy is not exactly an incentive. Now your review has come along and tamped out whatever meager desire I had to see this one. It was the plot summary that really got me.
Congratulations on the MSN title. Well-deserved.
The combination of the star and the director of my two least favorite movies of 2009 (I love Robert Downey Jr, but he’s still got a long way to go to make up for “Sherlock Holmes”) are enough to keep me from seeing this. The comparisons to “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” only add to my lack of interest. (When exactly did John Hughes start to get taken seriously?)
Well, The Jerry O’Connell epic Tomcats had not only a losing testicle scene, but said testicle bounced- yes, bounced- into someone’s food and the person eating wasn’t looking at his plate and…
The six words that would keep me from a Downey movie: “From the Director of THE HANGOVER.”
And what is the deal with Galifianakis? How does such an utterly untalented, supremely annoying lout keep working so constantly?
Glenn, what’s this business about Downey’s character punching a young boy “in the stomach so hard that the child doubles over,” that Manohla Dargis cites in her Times review? Her description of this – even given the strangely elaborate context she gives it – is enough to put me off this thing forever.
But Griff, that was one of Jeff Wells’ favorite parts! Yes, that’s in there, and the justification for it is that the kid was kind of “asking” for it…and he is after all the child of DRUG DEALERS…and he does seem to learn a lesson from it…blah, blah, blah. Yes, it’s pretty hateful, and entirely emblematic of the “we are going to GO THERE but then we’re going to TAKE IT BACK” “humor” of the entire enterprise. I didn’t put it in my review for space reasons; I figured the stuff I did describe was sufficient to buttress my thesis. But…yeah. And Dargis is spot-on about the film’s fucked-up double standard, which flew straight over the heads of some of the dumber reviewers (and I’m biting my tongue hard so as not to name at least one of them).
Galifinakis is actually quite a good stand-up (and a great physical performer in an art where posture and movement is paramount). Hasn’t really been in a good movie, alas.
THE HANGOVER is, indeed, not a great movie. It’s an amiably demented farce that plays like a neutered version of VERY BAD THINGS. I got a few good laughs out of it, and I do think Phillips at least tried to give it some cinematic interest with visual homages to notable Vegas-set films. If it hadn’t made a gazillion dollars, this is perhaps what most people would be saying about it. Except of course that far fewer people would have actually seen it. The extreme success of a film begets more success, drawing all those who have to see what the fuss is about, regardless of whether it’s the type of film they normally enjoy. Shockingly, people who loathe this style of comedy weren’t swayed by its success. No biggie. The comedy, she is subjective, no?
All that said: Dan, TOMCATS is maybe the worst movie I ever paid money to see.
Wow, cranky-fest in here. Will I be banished if I say that not only did I laugh at many parts of The Hangover, but also that I enjoy Galifianakis as a performer, I didn’t hate Sherlock Holmes, and I think Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a near-masterpiece?
Wells has possibly the worst taste of any critic who thinks he has taste. This looks like another version of OW MY BALLS! And PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES is a comedy classic compared to a lot of today’s fare. Plus, John Candy. Come on.
Jbryant, I have no objection to the “style of comedy” on display in THE HANGOVER. I don’t care how much or how little money a movie has made. I loved every minute of YEAR ONE and would happily watch it again, and I loved watching Steve Carrell and Tina Fey in DATE NIGHT. I just thought that THE HANGOVER was a bad movie, for a very simple reason: timing, or the lack thereof.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles IS a damn comedy classic. Yeesh. Also the Galifianakis hate is fucking baffling. Have any of the Galifianakis detractors seen his stand up?
I haven’t seen PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES, but I have great affection for SHE’S HAVING A BABY, which I saw for the first time this summer. John Hughes certainly had some talent, and he also had something very personal to express in SHE’S HAVING A BABY. I don’t know about this guy Todd Phillips, and I’m not sure I want to know…
jbryant: Indeed, Tomcats is a frighteningly awful piece of shit that in a just world would have killed the careers of everyone involved, despite the fact that with the right material, Jerry O’Connell can be a very engaging, reliable performer.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, as mawkish and cliché as it can be at times, is bouyed by the terrific performances Hughes gets out of Candy and Martin (I find Martin more realistic here as a harried dad than in either of the overpraised Father of the Bride movies). And the ending is still probably my favorite Hughes moment out of the entire oveure.
Don’t know if I wanna see Due Date, but I have liked Galfanakis on Bored to Death (One of the funniest shows on TV) and hey, when I met the guy on the BTD set doing extra work, he was a pretty cool dude.
I’ve never seen Zach Galfianakis’ stand-up. I should take a look. I have no memory of him in anything else, even in stuff I’ve seen. But I thought that the problem with THE HANGOVER started behind the camera.
What’s not to love about Zach G., his film choices notwithstanding? Aside from his brilliant (if, by now, somewhat played) “Between Two Ferns” interviews, I think his best work may have been done with his fellow traveling subversives, Tim and Eric. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Tairy Greene teaches acting to children: http://video.adultswim.com/tim-and-eric-awesome-show-great-job/tairy-greenes-acting-seminar-for-children.html
Since when have either of Martin’s ‘Father of the Bride’ remakes – or indeed most any of Martin’s 90s/00s vehicles – been praised, let alone “overpraised”?
“When exactly did John Hughes start to get taken seriously?”
By people who recognize that he made some superb films, PT&A among ’em? Or by some other folk, slower on the uptake, later? But I’m guessing this is a rhetorical question.
I really didn’t want to like ‘The Hangover’. It obviously has huge problems. It isn’t much of a film. But Zach G is funny in it. The ‘blood brothers’ scene – funny.
Kent: I didn’t mean for my highly unscientific “theory” to preclude the notion that someone (in fact, a lot of someones) could loathe THE HANGOVER for any number of well-considered reasons. I’m just always kind of fascinated by the split we often see between those who “discover” a blockbuster film early on and those who come to it later, drawn by curiosity about its mega-success. I know it’s a banal observation, and it’s impossible to quantify, really. But I can’t help but wonder if THE HANGOVER, which I found fairly amusing on its opening weekend, would have fallen flat if I’d seen it late in the run or on DVD or cable, thinking “Okay, most successful comedy in recent memory – make me laugh!” A reverse example for me would be BEVERLY HILLS COP, which underwhelmed me in a near-empty screening its last week in theaters but played beautifully a few years later on video in a dorm room full of appreciative guys, most of whom had probably already enjoyed it numerous times.
The much-maligned YEAR ONE may also be a reverse example. I’ve been meaning to see it (thanks for the reminder), partly because it’s astonishing how good a supposed failure can look after all the first-release brouhaha is gone and forgotten.
Not saying any of this applies to you, or your experience with THE HANGOVER, of course.
You know what that still put me in mind of – Giamatti and Wilkinson fighting on the tarmac in slo-mo in DUPLICITY. Any still of two men (other than trained fighters) wrestling about inevitably makes them look kinda silly.
jbryant, maybe I love Jack Black too much, but we’ve seen YEAR ONE more than once, has me gasping with laughter every time.
As someone who lived through the John Hughes phenomenon, I would flip the question and wonder: when was he NOT taken seriously? As I remember it, absolutely everyone loved SIXTEEN CANDLES, and even those who felt a little out of step with the subsequent movies still recognized that he had struck a generational chord. I think SHE’S HAVING A BABY was sort held back for a while – I don’t remember why – and was received decently when it finally came out. I liked PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES. Most people did, I think. A deathless classic? Compared to THE HANGOVER, I suppose.
“When was [John Hughes] NOT taken seriously?”
The day ‘Curly Sue’ opened.
Kent:
My memory of the 80s (admittedly I only began paying attention to movies nearer the end of the decade) was that Hughes was only taken semi-seriously, largely because he worked in a genre perceived as inferior and made commercial successes within that genre. In this sense only, he resembles Hitchcock – whom the Anglo-American world largely dismissed on similar terms until the early 60s. While Hughes’ teen films were seen (and self-evidently so) as considerably better than the general run of Horny Teen and Dead Teen films of the early 80s, they were not terribly critically admired in an Oscars / Siskel and Ebert 10 Best / NYFCC / Village Voice poll sense.
“In this sense only, he resembles Hitchcock…” Yeah – in that sense only.
Victor, Pauline Kael gave a highly favorable review to 16 CANDLES, and Ebert praised THE BREAKFAST CLUB and FERRIS BUELLER. Plus, Molly Ringwald ended up on the cover of TIME, so Hughes, while not oscar-bait, had some media supporters. And watch Alec Valdwin’s debut in SHE’S HAVING A BABY – he’s great, and almost in a different, darker film.
Whoa whoa whoa.
Back up a second.
Pauline Kael actually LIKED a movie?
Andew Sarris was also a big fan of SIXTEEN CANDLES, PRETTY IN PINK and, I seem to remember, SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL.
Dan, are you familiar with her work? She liked a lot of movies, and just recently re-read her 80’s output, with raves for such films as ROXANNE and BLUE VELVET among others. She LOVES movies. Maybe you’re thinking of John Simon?
I’m not saying Hughes didn’t get some good reviews or his films weren’t acknowledged as a cut above other teen flicks, but that he got few rapturous reviews and never received the great-auteur treatment or win many awards (the latter fact is virtually incontestible – http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000455/awards).
For example, Ebert’s reviews of BREAKFAST CLUB and FERRIS BUELLER were 3‑star reviews (same for 16 CANDLES and PRETTY IN PINK). And even though he wrote a “Great Movies” column about it later, he only gave PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES 3.5 stars at the time – far as I know, he never gave a Hughes film 4 stars.
I think it’s more the fact of the generational wheel turning. People raised on John Hughes, who saw his films as teens or kids, are now likely to be in positions of critical prominence.
I had mixed feelings about Hughes back in the day, but is there really any quantifiable differences between 3.5 stars and 4 stars? That still sounds like an Ebert thumbs-up;]
Christian:
“I had mixed feelings about Hughes back in the day”
Well, who among us who saw CURLY SUE or UNCLE BUCK did not?
More seriously … yes 3.5 stars is a thumbs-up, sure. (Though I’ll never forgive Gene Siskel his one-star IIRC review of FERRIS BUELLER – show segment here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WxJ8GN29qA) And obviously people have different grading systems (I use 0–10) and use them in different ways, so differences between 3.5 and 4 stars starts to approaching angels-boogeying-on-sewing-implements territory.
All that acknowledged, I think I’m on solid ground in saying that when a critic NEVER gave an auteur a 4‑star review and only ONCE a 3.5 (or whatever the top grades are) and NEVER put him in his Top 10, and when said critic is among the friendlier and more-appreciative toward Hughes’s work – that Hughes was critically undervalued.
Hey, UNCLE BUCK’s a good movie. I hate THE BREAKFAST CLUB, never even saw PRETTY IN PINK, didn’t think FERRIS BUELLER held up at all on a recent viewing, but PLANES, TRANES… and UNCLE BUCK are darn good. The latter may not be great, exactly, but it shows off John Candy to great effect.
Hey, here’s another reason to admire the ostensible “greatest generation:” you never heard any of them bitching and moaning about Norman Rockwell not getting enough critical respect. Jeez, you Gen-Xers really DO want everything; it’s not enough that Hughes defined the cinematic iconography of a generation and made a mint doing it, no, NOW he needs rehabilitation for being critically undervalued. Oooh, boo Gene Siskel for not liking “Ferris Bueller.” Big deal. I HATED “Ferris Bueller,” and I was neither close to 30 nor a critic when I saw it. Yeah, you can sit around and say, wow, you know. “The Breakfast Club” is a pretty ballsy film; it’s essentially just a bunch of kids sitting around talking, which makes it practically EUROPEAN, and then that stupid dance montage happens and it’s another conspicuous error down the drain.
Hughes was prodigiously talented and he continues to exert an influence to this day. A lot of his stuff, or a certain amount of his stuff, still gets a laugh out of me, just as some of his pandering still gets a rise out of me, when I’m reminded of it. But that’s it. There is no there there beyond the assertion that there is, but that can be convenient for the younger critics Victor speaks of. Not least because in short-format reviews, you can cite an affinity between “Due Date” and Wenders without having to back it up (sorry, J.R.…)
“There is no there there …”
John Hughes never shot a film in Oakland.
More seriously … the “there” in Hughes, most prominently in THE BREAKFAST CLUB and PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES, is mismatched people overcoming difference (or not or only temporarily) and even forging a group/team identity without either of those pretentious-twaddle terms becoming an explicitly foregrounded Subject or Great Theme. The growth of love, in other words (just shoot me now).
As for THE BREAKFAST CLUB specifically, yes, the Semi-Obligatory Music Videos are a concession to the 80s teen-film genre Hughes was in the midst of elevating. But they’re no more irrelevant than, say, having Ricky Nelson sing a song in the middle of a Western, or Aishwarya dance during a gangster film. And they actually do serve a dramatic purpose (besides seeing, for the first and only time, that nerdy Hall is actually bigger than either Estevez or Nelson) – a fueled reverie unifying the kids themselves, first by being chased through the halls and second by being stoned. In those moments, dramatic logic isn’t really the subjective feeling.
As you may have inferred, VIctor, my comment was at least partially meant to goad you—and you passed. It’s an interesting argument you should pursue into a longer piece, I think. By the way, my old and dear friend Susannah Gora wrote a fairly interesting book on Hughes’ work and the teen flicks on its periphery called “You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried.” It is not of a Cahiers-ish bent, and it contains a few howlers that dearly make me wish she would have let her cranky ex-Première colleague have a look at the manuscript prior to publication, but it’s got some good stuff in it.
THE BREAKFAST CLUB is practically Chekhov given that it was a major studio teen release at 2 1/2 hours with no tits, cum/shit gags, or extra crunchy bland irony that is the hallmark of today’s teen outings.
I never liked Hughes pandering (“It’s our PARENTS fault!!!”) but the guy knew how to use cool music, and had a clean, compositional rhythmic style.
Glenn:
It’s probably a bit Gen‑X narcissistic for your taste you Big Boomer you, but I kinda have (and I even name-drop Chekhov for Christian) –
http://vjmorton.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/films-of-my-life‑1/
I called it PLANES, TRANES… earlier, instead of PLANES, TRAINS… Anybody notice that? That’s pretty wild.
@Christian: you’re off by about an hour there. BREAKFAST CLUB was a lean 93 minutes.
OK … I’ll pre-empt the obvious joke …
“but it FELT like 2 1/2 hours …” ba-da-DUM
Thank you folks. I’ll be here all week. And tip the waitress. Take my wife, please.
In full agreement with Victor—if you’re maddened by the obligatory dance number in BREAKFAST CLUB, you’ve gotta throw out a whole lot of Westerns with equally obligatory, equally mood-shattering songs. All of which seems sort of anti-pleasure.
You’re right – It just felt long. But I’m thinking of the original three hour cut…for reals.
Victor wrote, “they’re no more irrelevant than, say, having RIcky Nelson sing a song in the middle of a Western.” This may have been an attempt to goad me back, but I’m not taking the bait: I’ll allow that the aforementioned dread scene from “The Breakfast Club” serves a very similar function to the ostensibly sacrosanct “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” number in “Rio Bravo” (in which a performer name of Dean Martin also sings). (And I hope this Guru Guru fan isn’t deemed a “square” for his considered opinion that the Tiomkin-composed “Rifle” rates way higher as a song, pace Fuzzy, than Karla DeVito’s “You Are Not A Dork” or whatever the hell the “Club” number is called.) That function being to pull the characters together, or rather to demonstrate how the characters themselves are pulling closer to each other personally. The problem isn’t the intent, it’s the execution. (Or, you could say, it isn’t the music, it’s the montage.) In “Rio Bravo” it’s simple, unobtrusive, while the cutting and the moves in the “Breakfast Club” sequence are tacky, jokey, knowingly vulgar, and actually at odds with the tone of much of the rest of the film. A compromise/sop that feels like one while the Hawks scene (which we all know actually was a sop, as he had two still very popular singers top-billed in his cast) doesn’t feel quite that obvious. So. There.
I’m maybe defending TBC more than I really want to—I think it’s a fine movie, but not great—but I’d say that by classic-movie standards, the dance scene does very well.
Yes, it uses on the somewhat abstract cutting/staging that was standard in movies at the time, just like Hawks uses the nailed-to-the-floor camera that was standard for musical numbers in his era. But I can’t see one as inherently superior—the loping-around of the Hawks seems weirdly stiff if you aren’t used to the period—just the taste of different eras. Ditto the song quality, which is pretty low in both cases, though the Hawks has nostalgia on its side. But setting aside highly subjective questions of “I hate them drum machines!” “I hate them acoustic guitars!”, how does TBC stack up cinematically—that is, does it both further the plot and express the themes? Yes, and far better than the Rio Bravo number!
RB is showing/making the characters bond, which it does reasonably well, in the unobtrusive way Hawks favored. It’s hard to buy Ricky Nelson as a cowboy, but whatev’s. It starts as a series of one shots, then concludes with a group shot, signifying that they’ve gone from being apart to being together. Simple, but effective enough.
TBC is much wittier and richer cinematically (in part because it has access to post-Nouvelle Vague techniques which allow it to break out of strictly realistic staging). First, it shows the kids transforming the oppressive space into a zone of play, which is what the whole movie is about—Judd Nelson headbanging against that hideous abstract sculpture captures the whole film in a single image. It then reiterates the movie’s progression in under a minute of screen time: We begin with different dance moves expressing each characters’ personal style (Sheedy is eyes closed and internal, Estevez is tightly wound and beating himself, Ringwald is displayed on a pedestal). After these solo displays (mirroring the beginning of the movie, when each character is still defining themselves), the kids do identical moves, which shows how different they are when they’re placed in an identical situation (the bit of Sheedy and Ringwald side-by-side, in a full-body shot, is a wonderfully succinct expression of how teens use fashion as tribal identity markers). And then they end the number alone again (with Judd Nelson, the character who would never fit in, ending the series of group numbers).
Yes, it’s more abstract than Hawks, but are you really going to object to a filmmaker using post-Godard techniques? I wish more directors and writers were willing to engage in these sorts of expressive flights of fancy in the midst of otherwise naturalistic staging!
“The dBs:Repercussion [Albion, 1982]
A man of simple tastes, I’m thrown into a tizzy when I find myself uninterested in playing an album comprising twelve tunes I can hum after a dozen plays. I think it’s because they’re so prepossessing they short-circuit my simple aesthetic sense. I was thrown off for weeks, to take one example, by the soul horns that open the lead cut. They sounded fussy. Soul horns. On a pop record. Overreaching. B+”—Robert Christgau
Nahhhh, overreaching would be saying that Hughes is a better director—or at least a more visually expressive director—than Hawks. Which I’m sorta tempted to assert now, just for laughs…
Go ahead, I dare you. I’m on my way to the gym, so if you get me good and pissed off, I may finally make that 8‑minute mile!
Okay, okay, I won’t bait just for the sake of your exercise regimen!
That said, there’s actually an interesting point about canons somewhere in here. The Cahiers crowd formulated a canon around a lot of values that had been marginalized (though certainly not eliminated) in sound cinema, particularly an emphasis on visual expressiveness over expressive dialogue, and an interest in cinematic space and time over naturalistic space and time. And they roped in a number of directors who didn’t quite fit the standards, but who they enjoyed anyway, like Hawks, and that became “the canon according to Cahiers”.
But of course, a lot of directors—arguably just about every director—ended up a product of the Cahiers aesthetic ideology, and many of them carried out its precepts far more devotedly than directors who had no idea who these lefty frogs were. So in updating the canon, one’s left with the choice of evaluating directors based on their fidelity to the Cahiers standards, in which case post-1968 directors are likely to eclipse their predecessors, or maintain the canon as originally formulated, because those who formulated the canon must know best.
Hawks is clearly less interested in creating specifically cinematic space than Hughes, and he’s much too beholden to a theatrical presentation of events to do anything as expressionistic as the dance numbers in BREAKFAST CLUB or SHE’S HAVING A BABY (which is practically Eisensteinian in its devotion to cinematizing everything within an inch of its life). But Hawks was adored by the Cahiers crowd, and has a much more “classical” style (though that’s arguably the style that the Nouvelle Vague demolished).
So do you put Hawks above Hughes as a director (without necessarily arguing that Hughes’ movies are better), because he’s the classicist and you like old movies better than new ones? Or do you evaluate directors based on how fully they find cinematic expression for their themes, with points taken off for theatrical staging, in which case Hughes runs away with the prize on the strength of the lawnmower ballet alone?
Mr. Bastard (BTW … loved the breakdown of that dance, the only thing which I’d explicitly noted myself was how weird the pairing of the two women is):
Glenn WANTS to run an eight-minute mile. So being baited gets him good and pissed off, like how in the old days fighters would be kept away from their wives or girlfriends for months and DeNiro had to pour ice down his pants. So in that spirit –
VIVA GREG GUTFELD!!!!
My biggest problem with the dance scene is that it significantly alters the “reality” of the film – it’s a problem (or trait) of Hughes work throughout. Anything approaching real will be sidelined by a total fantasy construct. It’s only the window shattering that makes the scene some kind of stupid. And the song.
“The Cahiers crowd formulated a canon around a lot of values that had been marginalized (though certainly not eliminated) in sound cinema, particularly an emphasis on visual expressiveness over expressive dialogue, and an interest in cinematic space and time over naturalistic space and time. And they roped in a number of directors who didn’t quite fit the standards, but who they enjoyed anyway, like Hawks…”
Do you really believe that? It’s like the sorry end product of a game of cinephile telephone.
The “Cahiers crowd” was a group of individuals, not a lock-step collective. A brief look at Godard’s writing about Mankiewicz or Truffaut’s thoughts about Guitry, to name just a couple of examples, is enough to dismantle the “visual expressiveness/expressive dialogue” opposition. If you were to ask a young Rivette or Rohmer to explain the differences between “cinematic” and “naturalistic” space and time, they’d either hang their heads and weep or walk away chuckling. And if you were to read Rohmer on Hawks, you’d find a lot more than a justification of a “favorite” who didn’t otherwise conform to group “standards.” And the Nouvelle Vague (same as the “Cahiers crowd,” right?) didn’t demolish “ ‘classical’ style” – what many of them really tried to demolish was the lazy equation between the “cinematic” and the “expressionistic.” Evidently, they weren’t successful.
Fair enough—Godard and Roehmer are very different filmmakers and critics, as are, well, any of ’em. I suppose I’m conflating them somewhat with the very different Russian thinkers (Vertov, for example) who they idolized, but didn’t necessarily ape. Though wasn’t Godard’s beef with Mankiewicz (quoted in this blog earlier this month) precisely that there was too much dialogue, not enough cinema?
And further, Eric Rohmer once wrote, and note that he is not speaking in strictly his own voice:
“Thus, you should not be too astonished to see me take the opposite view of an opinion, expressed here by me some while ago apropos of ‘Les Girls.’ No film in Cahiers has made as much ink flow as ‘The Barefoot Contessa’ and nevertheless, the cinema which we ordinarily defend in this magazine – a cinema of spatial construction and corporeal expression as our old friend André Martin would say – has barely any relation with what Mankiewicz proposes to us.”
Obviously, the context is Rohmer introducing an exceptional case. But he nevertheless thereby confirms that it IS an exceptional case.
Six miles in 52:22. Thanks and keep up the good work, Fuzzy, Victor.
“Yes, it uses on the somewhat abstract cutting/staging that was standard in movies at the time, just like Hawks uses the nailed-to-the-floor camera that was standard for musical numbers in his era. But I can’t see one as inherently superior—the loping-around of the Hawks seems weirdly stiff if you aren’t used to the period—just the taste of different eras. Ditto the song quality, which is pretty low in both cases, though the Hawks has nostalgia on its side.”
Just wanted to say for the record that when our heroes sing “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me,” and “Cindy” in the middle of Rio BRAVO, it just thrills me to death every time. Sometimes, when I’m in the right mood, it leaves me wiping away tears of joy. For me, it’s the highest point in a film full of high points, and it’s one of the greatest of all musical moments (or just plain moments) in movies, right up there with, well, you name it- Dean Stockwell singing “In Dreams,” or the Mozart coming in during the final moments of A MAN ESCAPED, or…
Which is why I can’t understand the idea that it’s a weak point, or that RIO BRAVO would be better off without it.
Look, to simplify matters, let’s just say that the idea of what is or is not “cinematic” expressed above, and the idea of what is or is not cinematic generally held by “the Cahiers group,” are worlds apart. As I said and as FB reiterated, they were all very different – Godard, to my knowledge, was the only one with a deep admiration of Vertov (although I think it was Gorin who actually named the collective) – but they shared a certain idea of cinema embodied in Rossellini, Renoir, Hitchcock and Hawks.
In his writing Godard grappled with Mankiewicz, admired him AND found his staging and visualization a little on the pedantic side. But the idea of dense dialogue exchanges certainly stayed with him when he made his own films. More to the point, it’s been rumored that Rohmer had a certain fondness for dialogue. Even if he didn’t like THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA.
I thought complaining about ‘My Rifle, My Pony, and Me’ was just a straw man that Robin Wood invented. Now people really believe that somewhere out there there are critics that fault the film for containing that song because Wood said that there were.
I really can’t stand THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA. I can’t quite articulate why other than to say that I find widescreen Technicolor (though CONTESSA isn’t in Scope) dreadfully leaden in the wrong hands, and Mankiewicz certainly falls into the wrong hands category. (McCarey’s another director who was completely lost in widescreen color.) Moreover, I don’t much like the script.
Asher, I’m with you. I love some of Mankiewicz’ movies, but Bogart aside, I really can’t take THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA. Every time there’s a new scene, I feel like I’m sinking in a quicksand of epigrammatic bitching and undifferentiated “décor.” Absolute murder.
For the record, I *like* “Mein Mauser, Mein Gelding, y Moi”. I just think it’s off-base to complain that the dance number in THE BREAKFAST CLUB is out of place while celebrating a similar moment in RIO BRAVO. Or in BAND OF OUTSIDERS, or SURVIVING DESIRE. They’re all sort of frame-breakers, but I don’t mind a little crumbling around the edges.
“I find widescreen Technicolor (though CONTESSA isn’t in Scope) dreadfully leaden in the wrong hands”
Is there something about that format that encourages that? I agree with you that it can feel that way – I’m just wondering aloud if there’s a “why.”
Is it a reaction-formation on our part against its sumptuous appearance, which can easily shade into a resentful feeling against mere extravagance if the drama isn’t working? Or is it that the extra space meant weak directors/DPs/set-dressers felt a need to fill it up, come what may, even with superfluities or distractions? Or that the extra size, if it fails, objectively feels oppressive in a way that failure in a smaller package doesn’t?
I’ve never read Wood on RIO BRAVO, and I’ve never read any other critic’s dismissal – just responding to FB’s faint praise with praise.
So is BAREFOOT CONTESSA Mankiewicz’ worst?
First of all, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA is not in Scope, as Asher said. There are some movies from the era that seem to be commonly remembered as being in Scope but aren’t (GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES comes to mind), and maybe that’s one of them. There is something to be said for the frame-stuffing idea, and I don’t think it’s exclusive to Technicolor. But in this case, i think it’s instructive to remember that THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA was shot by Jack Cardiff, the man who put Technicolor on the map. I think the color in the film is beautiful, pretty close to what he got in PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. But it really doesn’t matter. Somehow, Mankiewicz just let his sense of balance go astray with color – and found it again in THE QUIET AMERICAN, which was in black and white. Something about color really confounded him, and during that period you needed to be as fluid with color as Minnelli or Cukor or Ray to keep your movie from congealing.
This will teach me to skip a thread at Glenn’s place just because it’s attached to a review of a movie I don’t want to see. Even after reading through I’m not sure what The Barefoot Contessa is doing here, but I do love it. And right now I feel so alone.
Well, I really liked Uncle Buck.
The Siren brought up a fascinating movie over at her own blog, SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR by George Stevens, which has just turned up on YouTube and is, for some reason, not just otherwise unavailable in this country but sort of banished from discussions of Stevens’ body of work.
Well, Kent, what’s between CONTESSA and QUIET AMERICAN? Just one film, GUYS AND DOLLS – which I think is a little bit unwieldy but otherwise really lovely, especially the scenes set in Cuba, which have a dreamlike quality.
Jaime, see, I do not like Guys and Dolls (although the score is a joy as are Stubby Kaye and Jean Simmons) and I DO like Barefoot Contessa.
Kent, I got a gentle rebuke from an email correspondent for posting that Something to LIve For link on my blog; the person was concerned that i was dooming the movie to be pulled down, pronto. And I admit that finding a Youtube rarity puts a blogger in the position of a restaurant reviewer who’s giving a rave to a quiet bistro, knowing he’s about to ruin it for himself and everybody else. But I figure the Google gods pull things down eventually whether I point them out or not; that’s usually been the case.
Still, I add here that anyone interested in the Stevens should not delay watching. Letty Lynton survived about a week after I posted about it, although that one is a special case since its tangled rights situation means it’s never shown and I guess the lawyers look out to make sure it isn’t circulating.
I suppose there’s some really obvious reason there hasn’t been an obituary for Jill Clayburgh. Maybe Glenn is too busy. And while “An Unmarried Woman” isn’t my favorite movie of 1978, and I think Alan Bates is better in “The Shout” that year, maybe the reputation of Paul Mazursky’s most honored movie has moved from “overrated” to “unworthy of even systematic contempt” and I didn’t notice.
I’m not even sure that some of Minnelli’s later color films don’t congeal. It’s hard for me to believe that FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, to say nothing of ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER or THE SANDPIPER, come from the director who made SOME CAME RUNNING.
I remember liking THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE the last time I saw it. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen ON A CLEAR DAY. THE SANDPIPER is a really and truly terrible movie.
Partisan, I had just seen STARTING OVER again when I heard the news of Jill Clayburgh’s death. That moment – the moment of AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, STARTING OVER, IT’S MY TURN and LUNA – seems like minutes ago. I haven’t seen the Mazursky film in years, but I’m sure it’s good, and that she’s great. And she’s great in the Pakula, and absolutely fearless in the Bertolucci. And then after that, the walls started closing in. But she was always an exceptional artist. Interesting to remember that Tarkovsky was keen to work with her.
I think the real problem with that Minnelli film is the casting of Glenn Ford and Ingrid Thulin as the romantic leads, instead of the actors whom Minnelli supposedly wanted: ALAIN DELON and ROMY SCHNEIDER. Ford is impossibly square. He just can’t pull off the Parisian playboy that Julio Desnoyers is supposed to be. Not only that he was in middle-age by that point. The character is in his twenties.
For visual style, that film is as breathtaking and complex as anything Minnelli did.
Ford’s a colossal miscasting. Lee J. Cobb, while admittedly one of the few actors in Hollywood who could pull off a conversation with four hallucinated horsemen of the apocalypse galloping through an Argentinean sky, mostly points up why you don’t want to open the film with such a ridiculous scene in the first place (put otherwise, if a role cries out for Lee J. Cobb, that’s probably not a good thing, unless the film in question is PARTY GIRL), and Boyer, who’s about the only capable actor in the film, is given nothing to do but fritter over his daughter. Then there’s the script, full of lines like, “so… whaddaya think about that Austrian painter taking over Germany?” It’s the sort of film where people call their grandfather ‘The Old One,’ as if they themselves are aware that they’re participating in a pompous Cinemascope historic epic. So yeah, there’s plenty of nonvisual elements to fault. But aside from a few scenes, like the opening dance, the very pretty autumnal park scene between Ford and Thulin, I find it visually rather stilted and dull. The sets, unusually for Minnelli, are drab; it’s as if everyone is entombed in chintz and colorless drapes. The camera moves very little, cutting is infrequent, color when it is deployed is often florid and sickly, exteriors are almost nonexistent, relegating us to this chintz-encrusted world, tensions are telegraphed and highlighted rather than left laying dormant in the frame for the viewer to find, hardly anything ever seems to be going on on the periphery or the background (whereas SOME CAME RUNNING thrives on bits of business on the periphery of his compositions), and everything’s so stylized and patently unreal that the film feels less like a film about Nazi-occupied France than one of his musicals in which people happen to be wearing period Nazi costumes. Which I’ve been told is the point, but it seems like a rather peculiar point. I suppose I kept waiting for the movie to turn into ARMY OF SHADOWS, but what I got was THE ADVENTURES OF EDDIE’S FATHER IN NAZI EUROPE.