Persona (1966)

The Gang's All Here (1943)

Wait, Why Did He Lie to Her?

In 1943, it was basically impossible to have the hero of a contemporary movie not be in uniform. You could make period pieces, or you could have the male lead be older or in some other way ineligible for service, or you could have him be in some necessary field. And if he wasn't any of those, he was in the military. Heck, even a lot of the period pieces were about other militaries in other eras. Propaganda can be an amazing thing, after all, and the important thing for the studios was to seem patriotic. It also gives a fine excuse for a forced separation between the lovers, if you needed one. It heightens the drama. In fact, it's become one of the easiest ways to tell if the movie you're watching was made during World War II. Colour won't do it; this movie was in colour, but B&W was still commonplace. Look to see how many men are in uniform. Heck, in one of the [i]Thin Man[/i] movies, Little Nicky is in a uniform, because that was fashionable.

Andy Mason (James Ellison) is the son of a Wall Street bigshot, Andrew Mason, Sr. (Eugene Pallette). He and his father are at a swanky New York nightclub along with his father's associate, Peyton Potter (Edward Everett Horton). While they are there, singing sensation Dorita (Carmen Miranda) and various other showgirls get the men up and teach them how to dance "the Uncle Samba." Potter makes a fool of himself with Dorita, and Andy, who isn't dancing, spots Edie Allen (Alice Faye). He makes a bet that he can hook up with her and follows her to the Stagedoor Canteen. Which he can do, because he's a sergeant in the Army. He is persistent to the point of creepy, and she finally falls for him. Though of course it doesn't matter, because he leaves for the South Pacific the next day. She is about to hit it big, going from a mere chorus girl to a featured performer. But she still spends her time missing Andy.

Oh, who has lied to her and is calling himself Casey. (As in "at the Bat"; the man he made the bet with pointed out that even Mighty Casey struck out.) And the families have long assumed that he and Potter's daughter, Vivian (Sheila Ryan), will be getting married someday. Vivian still assumes it, though they don't seem to have really talked about it. That's how he can be picking up chorus girls while she still assumes that they're engaged. He doesn't exactly go out of his way to dissuade her of the notion, either, from what I can tell. I think he likes stringing her along, to be honest. I think he likes knowing that he's always got a rich, pretty woman wiling to let him take her places. And okay, I'm sure he eventually would have let her know that he was involved with Edie, but why did it take as long as it did? Why didn't he ever mention to Edie that there was a girl that his family expected him to marry? He didn't tell either girl about the other, and he expected it to just work out somehow.

Honestly, the film is riddled with unnecessary secrets so far as I'm concerned. I don't know why Andy didn't tell Edie who he was, either that first night or later. I mean, was he trying to prove that she wasn't a gold digger? Great! But eventually, wouldn't he have been sure enough to tell her? And what did he tell her about his family? It must have been something, right? And then there's Mrs. Potter (Charlotte Greenwood), who used to be a chorus girl herself. But she doesn't want anyone to know, because it would destroy her social standing. Vivian knows, but her father doesn't want anyone else to. Probably isn't happy with Vivian knowing. I don't even know about Andy's mother, because I don't think she puts in an appearance. For all I know, she's dead. And then when Dorita figures out that Andy and "Casey" are the same person, her instinct is to cover it up, because Gods forbid anyone in this movie tell someone else the truth about something important.

Yeah, and then there's the whole plot about how Mason and Potter are hosting a charity show with the performers at Edie and Dorita's nightclub (which, by the way, is Busby Berkeley Big onstage and doesn't look even a little like a real nightclub during the production numbers, especially the bizarre one with the bananas). At the Potters' country home, of course. Which probably has something to do with anything, but it does make the whole thing feel a bit like two movies grafted together, a persistent problem I've noticed over the years. It's as though a certain percentage of screenwriters get halfway through a script and can't figure out where their story is, so they start a new one. They don't throw out the old one, though; they stick the two together and some likely point and hope no one will notice. Of course, it might be argued that plot isn't really the point here, and that's not a bad argument. It's just a vehicle to string a bunch of musical numbers together, and they aren't even great musical numbers.

Parting Glances (1986)

A Day in the Life of Gay New York, Mid '80s

It's worth noting that Steve Buscemi, who plays Nick in today's film, was not as funny-looking in 1986 as he has become. He wasn't conventionally good-looking. His facial structure is wrong for that. However, the oddities of his face weren't as prominent then. It's an interesting choice of casting, given that Nick is specifically referenced as a twinkie at one point. This is and was gay slang for a young, pretty man. I don't think Steve Buscemi was ever pretty. The potential attraction to him is that he is interesting. This is true of the character, though we can't be sure how different he had become since his diagnosis, and it seems, from what I've read, to be true of the real person. Not that I know very much about Steve Buscemi the person. But I think, if it weren't for that one exchange in the film between Nick and pretty-boy-whose-name-I-don't-remember, I never would have thought about it.

Robert (John Bolger) has a job that's going to send him to Africa. This means leaving behind his lover, Michael (Richard Ganoung). This might or might not be a break-up; neither of them seem quite sure. Rather than let them have their last day together, everyone they know seems to expect a bit of time with Robert as well. They have dinner at the home of Cecil (Patrick Tull) and Betty (Yolande Bavan), who are married even though it seems to me that Cecil is gay. From there, they go to a party at the apartment of Joan (Kathy Kinney, who went on to play Mimi on [i]Drew Carey[/i], so that's where you've seen her before), which is full of friends and people that Joan has picked up somewhere. Adding to all this strain is the fact that, while he may be together with Robert, Michael is in love with Nick. But Nick has AIDS and is obsessed with the thought that he's dying, which is not an unreasonable reaction to being diagnosed with the disease in the mid '80s.

Several of the characters express their level of discomfort with seeing Nick, and that's understandable, too. Nick is a symbol of what could happen to them, as they all know. He stopped risky behaviour as soon as he found out it was risky, but it was too late. A disease with an incredibly long incubation period will catch some people out no matter how they change, because it's always possible they haven't changed the right way soon enough. Nick didn't. It isn't much discussed, but it wouldn't surprise me if he were incredibly angry about the whole thing. It must not seem fair, because he did what he thought was going to save his life. He also resents the idea that people are working to develop drugs for the disease too late for it to do him any good, which is also fair. I know a couple of people with the disease who have lived longer with it than Nick could be expected to, simply because these people were diagnosed considerably later. Even ten years made a huge difference; remember, Magic Johnson is still alive.

I understand that Michael doesn't want to get involved with Nick because he doesn't want to face the fact that Nick is dying, and that's fair. That's completely understandable. However, what I don't understand is why he and Nick didn't get together before Nick found out that he was sick. Heck, I don't understand why they didn't get together pretty much right away. I'm not going to say it would have saved Nick's life; it's possible that he got infected before he ever met Michael. And arguably, if he had been, it probably would have killed Michael, a grim truth that both have probably considered. However, leaving illness out of it, it strikes me that the pair could have had a great relationship. Certainly better than Michael and Robert. I think Nick knows it now, and regrets what could have been and isn't, but I really wish I understood it a little better. It's one of the places the film fails--it never makes me understand.

One of the things I'm catching up with as I go is the history of gay cinema. This isn't just catching subtext in mainstream films, which is its own kind of game. (Check out [i]The Maltese Falcon[/i] some time!) This is seeing movies that are made by, for, and about gay people, portraying them on their own terms. The media of subcultures would make its own interesting study, I think. There are a lot of American subcultures that have produced a large body of film worth investigating, and I'm not sure most people know that. Too many people think American film begins and ends with big-name Hollywood studio pictures, and there's a wealth of independent film to explore. Independent film became a huge thing in the '90s, but it existed for decades before then. Yes, all right, probably the best-known independent filmmaker from before that era is Ed Wood, but there's also Roger Corman--and a lot of actually good filmmakers. Heck, the history of independent black films goes back to the silent era!

28 Up (1984)

As They Continue to Grow

What's most irritating is that, for some reason, the streaming version of this felt the need to include the entire first segment. I don't know if that was part of the original television airing. I don't know if that would be true if I had watched it on DVD. (A couple of the later installments are about to stop being available on Instant Play, so I'm rushing my way through the rest of the series.) As established, the original "7 Up" is only a half-hour long, so it's not as bad as it could be, but I'm still less than pleased about it. In 1984, airing them together made a sort of sense, if they did. We had our first VCR by then, I know; Dad had died the year before, and we got a VCR when he was alive. But not all families had one, and airing the pair together would ensure that everyone could remember the histories without having to spend too much of the new edition in recap. We don't need that anymore.

Another seven years had passed, and the fourteen children selected from several classes in the UK have lived more of their lives. It is not unreasonable to believe that those who will have careers have settled into them. Indeed, most of them do. Most of them are married, too, and most have children. Not all live in England anymore. Paul had long since moved to Australia. Suzy moved to Paris. Nick discovered that he could get a better job in the US in his career in nuclear physics. Some spouses are happier than others about inadvertently marrying into probably the most famous documentary series in history. And, for the first time, two of the participants have dropped out. Charles and John, two of the boys presented as upper class, decided that they did not want to be involved with the project anymore. (In one case, it seems to have stemmed from that upper-class identification, which he thought was exaggerated.) Their absence is noted but not dwelt upon.

I think some of the people are deluding themselves about how much or how little influence class had to do with what happened to them. At very least, you can do a lot more with money than you can without it, and they don't want to acknowledge that. Mind, I understand why. After all, every child who grew up as part of this group grew up knowing they had been chosen because of the impression of class. Where they were born was believed to be perhaps the most important thing about them. That has to be frustrating. The three women chosen for being lower class knew exactly what people expected of them, and doubtless the men who grew up in the East End did as well. And it is certainly true that none of them have lived that expected life. However, it is still true that, of the four girls, Suzy was the one with the most choices about where her life would lead whether the other girls liked it or not. That isn't entirely about class, unless you consider money and class to be inextricable from one another.

Though of course there are still options. Bruce, who went to a ritzy boarding school and then Oxford, chose to teach in the East End, while Nick grew up with one other child in his entire village--his own brother. He went to a not-as-ritzy boarding school and ended up in a high-level field that takes a lot of education. And after all, none of the poorest children ended up in the kind of poverty that some might expect of them. The one who was the worst off at this point in the series, Neil, was from the suburbs of Liverpool, hardly the East End. (I find myself wanting to use the terms "characters" and "story" even though I know that this is all nonfiction. This is probably because of how involved and long-running the whole thing is.) I suppose that it's kind of what they were aiming to show one way or another when they made the choices they did, in which case the documentary had begun to achieve success well before this installment, though that didn't mean there was any reason to stop it here.

I will be going almost all the way to the end, or anyway the farthest we've gotten, in the next few days. This is rather faster than I'd intended to watch it, and rather faster than I really think it should be watched. I don't think you have to watch the series with seven years before installations, goodness knows, and if I did, the only reason I would probably get through the whole thing is that I'm considerably younger than the people in it. Even then, only probably. However, I think that watching it all in a great rush is not the best way. The only advantage I see is that I'm less likely to forget the details of the people in it. As I've already admitted, I have a hard enough time keeping all the people in these straight, though it is getting easier as they get older. There are two groups that blend together most for me, and at least in this installment, I can remember "the one who actually appeared" and "the one who's a librarian" to tell them apart from the others of their groups.

21 Up (1977)

For the First Time, Adults

The interesting change in this documentary is that they are now old enough to be angry. At seven, they were open. At fourteen, they were embarrassed. At twenty-one, they are aware of the expectations that people have of who and what they are, just because of where they were born. It isn't just that they were being recognized, though I am given to understand that this has been a consistent problem over the decades. It's that they know about the class structure that was the original point of the film series. The lower-class girls know that they are expected to end a certain way, and they resent it. They don't think the upper-class girl is guaranteed to have things better than they--and they don't think that, even if she fulfills the expectations on her and they fulfill the expectations on them, that either actually is better than the other. I can't help wondering if this is part of why some of them are willing to continue being filmed every seven years.

It was 1977. The children first shown at age seven were now, as the title indicates, twenty-one. For some of them, this was as far as their self-consideration had led them in the first documentary; twenty-one seems awfully old when you're seven. A couple have gotten married. Some are at university. Some are working in one way or another. One moved to Australia. While the argument can be made that most of them are on target for where their class expectations would send them, it's also true that they have changed from their quiet confidence that it's where they ought to be. Boys who could at seven cite exactly which college at which university they would attend are no longer so sure; Charles didn't even make the Oxbridge cut. Tony, who at seven wanted to be a jockey, did ride in three races and was quite proud of it. He was now working toward a career as a cabbie and an actor. For the most part, they are no longer embarrassed by their seven-year-old selves, having realized that everyone is like that at that age.

I confess that it is still hard for me to keep track of most of the people. The only two I'm any good at distinguishing without checking the Wikipedia page to be sure are Suzy and Symon, though I confess that I can't reliably remember their names. They are the most distinct in a lot of ways; Suzy is the only upper-class girl of the original group, and Symon is the only one with even a single non-white parent. Symon's mixed-race heritage is visually quite clear, and he is facing issues that none of the others are. Suzy is not so visually distinct, but the other three girls are generally shown in a group and were all chosen from the same school. So in my head, I've got the three upper-class boys, the three lower-class girls, the lump of the others, Symon, and Suzy. As time goes by, I'm sure they'll be more distinct, but so far, they rather blend into one based on which class they were chosen from.

A thing I wonder about, as we jump by seven-year intervals, is whether filming styles will change. Yes, all but one of the films were made by the same director, but preferred styles do change over time, even with a single director calling all the shots. The first film seems to have been fond of extremely tight close-ups, so tight that you don't even always see the child's whole head. Though of course that's a bad idea with most children, as most children are so mobile. If you zoom that close on a kid's face, odds are pretty good that the kid will whip its head and pull out of frame before you can follow them with the camera. Admittedly, it's also the only one of the series that wasn't made by Michael Apted, but the two of his that I've seen thus far have also been strongly influenced by the filming styles of the time. The choice of children isn't the only thing that was shaped by its day, after all, and there's no reason to assume it would be.

There is always the issue here of whether to review these films as works of cinema or sociology. (Cinema is technically a misnomer; the series is made-for-TV.) They have their failings no matter which way you're looking at them, but I think possibly they are the best works to combine the two. It's certainly an interesting concept, though I can also understand why the actual people being interviewed might be tired of the attention. I can't say for sure that I would recognize even Suzy or Symon if I saw them walking down the street, but there are people who do and who feel justified in demanding between-film updates. This was, possibly in part because of that, the last one to feature all fourteen children. The series continues, and I suspect it will until we have no one left to follow. I don't know for sure, because no one can really say, but I will say that I would be surprised if the audience isn't there every seven years, hoping to find out if seeing the child at seven really did show us the adults in any way.

The Noose Hangs High (1948)

Ask Me a Simple One

These days, when we need to shoehorn someone's schtick into popular media, we mostly give them a TV show. This means that no plot has to last longer than twenty-two minutes, and most of that time can be filled with gags and one-liners. What's more, we're completely used to the formulaic nature of sitcoms; there are some plots that have been used over and over since, I don't know, the invention of the medium? However, before there were sitcoms, there were movies starring vaudeville comics and so forth. It was one thing with Bob Hope, who could also at least somewhat act. Certainly he could carry a plot from beginning to end. However, it was not unheard of for people who could not, in fact, carry a full plot to get movies anyway. This is a gap later filled by things like Eddie Murphy's [i]Raw[/i] and all those interminable HBO stand-up specials. But there was no place for any of those in the 1940s.

Ted Higgins (Bud Abbott) and Tommy Hinchcliffe (Lou Costello) are window washers who, for reasons that don't matter, get mistaken for couriers by Nick Craig (Joseph Calleia), a bookie and probably low-level mobster. They are to pick up fifty thousand dollars and bring it back. For reasons that don't matter, Tommy ends up slipping the money into an envelope and, he thinks, mails it to Craig. Through a mix-up that further doesn't matter, it instead gets sent to Miss Van Buren (Isabel Randolph). She tells her secretary to get rid of it, because she thinks it's just an advertisement. However, the secretary, Carol Blair (Cathy Downs), opens it, sees the money, takes it, and quits. Ted and Tommy find her, but she's already spent pretty much all of it. They need to get the money back, because Craig owes it to J. C. McBride (Leon Errol), and if he doesn't pay McBride, it's all over. They try placing a bet, but their horse loses. And the whole time, some guy calling himself Julius Caesar keeps hanging about.

The film is seventy-seven minutes long and feels padded. There's the whole lengthy scene with a wacky dentist (Murray Leonard) that may serve a purpose, but I don't know what it is. Actually, I don't know what any of about the first fifteen minutes or so has to do with anything, and I doubt anyone involved with the film could tell you, either. I mean, obviously, it was there to pad the film. However, given how short films could be in those days, it's not reason enough. I don't mind the prolonged silliness about the man we know to be the man with all the solutions but who Ted, Tommy, and Carol know only as a random loon. That's fine; that, done right, could be a fun story. However, it seems that they didn't trust the story enough to let it go on its own merits. They felt it needed more wackiness. And there are a couple of Abbott-and-Costello-y bits that work, but it almost seems as though they wanted to just do a comedy film of the Eddie Murphy variety and didn't know how.

Let us also take a minute to discuss how very dumb Carol is with the money. She gets a random fifty thousand dollars in the mail. She must know that it isn't on purpose, but she just seems to assume that someone was sending a random fifty thousand dollars to Miss Van Buren. This is not a thing that happens. But okay, she spends it. That's fine. That's not all that surprising; I'm sure plenty of people would do the same. But the way she spends it is also foolish. She has had the money for less than a day, and she has something like a thousand dollars left. She rented a two thousand-dollar apartment--in 1948, mind--bought a mink coat, bought a whole new wardrobe and a diamond brooch. And, of course, quit her job. So the question is, what's she going to do next month? I can absolutely see wanting to quit that job. Miss Van Buren seems like a terrible person, and I wouldn't want anything more to do with her. But you know, keep the money as a nest egg, right?

In some ways, it's just not enough to be funny. It does take genuine acting, and mostly, they acted like Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. I've no problem with that, but they made a ton of movies together, and in general, they weren't very good. They were funny enough to get by on, I think, but I've never watched one and thought it was worth watching again. I will, if I'm particularly bored and don't have much better to do, and it's also true that I've watched a half-dozen or so of them over the years. I keep coming back, because I find Abbott and Costello funny enough that I have hopes. I hope that, eventually, there will be an Abbott and Costello movie that I want to watch a second time. Especially because Graham likes them so much. It would be nice if we could add one to our regular movie rotation--the movies we're likely to sit and watch together as a couple. The more so because they're movies we could sit and watch together as a family--nothing objectionable but the quality of some of the jokes, you see.

The Experiment (2010)

As If the Original Wasn't Sensational Enough

I think I first read about the Stanford Prison Experiment in high school, which was when I took my first psychology class. I also read some, though far from all, of a book on the subject, I don't know, some time in the last five years. Dr. Philip Zimbardo finally wrote a book just five years ago detailing his end of things, and it was too difficult for me to get through. It's a really uncomfortable story, and I can't quite absolve Zimbardo of the blame as I'm sure he'd like me to. After all, he saw what was happening, and it took him six days to call the experiment to a halt. I've read some other criticisms of it as well, though this does appear to be the most salient criticism of Zimbardo himself. However, among its many other failings, this film essentially implies that no one was actually watching the experiment take place, which was never true of the real thing.

A group of men are being offered a thousand dollars a day for a two-week experiment. They will be completely out of contact with everyone, and they will not be able to leave for the duration without forfeiting their money. They are also not allowed to have their own prison record or bring anything from the outside world with them. When they arrive at the building in the middle of nowhere, they discover a fake prison has been set up. Some of them, including Barris (Forest Whitaker), will be guards. The rest, including Travis (Adrien Brody), will be prisoners. In the movie, the purpose of the experiment is never really defined; Archaleta (Fisher Stevens) is essentially a phantom and only seems to appear at the beginning and in flashback. It quickly becomes apparent that being in charge has put the "guards" on a power trip. At first, the prisoners take the whole thing as a joke, but it rapidly becomes serious. The biggest conflict is between Barris and Travis, despite the fact that they'd hit it off before the experiment began.

I found quite a lot of the movie unnecessary and detracting from the real point. When Barris first exercises power over the "prisoners," we get a closeup on the bulging front of his pants. I mean, I ask you. I'm not saying it's impossible that the men would get off on power. Shocking but true; it's a thing that happens. Indeed, one of the criticisms I've read is that Zimbardo didn't do a good enough job at weeding out people already predisposed toward sadism when selecting his guards. However, we have no reason to believe that of Barris. He seems at first like a nice guy, someone who would be on Travis's side even if he is assigned as a guard. However, it seems to take him less than a day to turn from a guy who is just trying to make rent while his mother is in the hospital to a man getting off on non-sexual sadism. And even if we had the need to see that, there are better ways of making it clear.

Part of the problem is that they didn't make it a period piece. It's quite clearly modern. Ties to the government or not, no one in the US would be able to recreate the experiment today. They'd never get it past the ethics board of whatever agency was trying. Ethics committees on human experimentation are fairly strict, after all. What's more, I've always believed that certain aspects of the experiment were worsened by when and where it was conducted. Stanford in 1971 wasn't exactly Berkeley in 1969, but it was awfully close. Remember, in the original experiment, the prisoners staged a full-on revolt on the second day. 1971 was a time of great conflict, and the original experiment was made up of nothing but college students. I don't even think any of them were "returning students"--meaning people who had left college for a while for whatever reason or simply not gone right out of high school. These were young men in a specific time, and I'm not sure how universal the experiment can be deemed to be. And adjusted for inflation, they only got about $85 a day!

A very good movie could be made about what actually happened in the basement of the Stanford psychology building from 14 to 20 August of 1971. This, despite the presence of two Oscar-winning actors, isn't it. Every moment that started to add some depth to the film was lightened almost immediately. In some places, it seemed that the director, Paul Scheuring, was more interested in experimenting with cameras than people. I mean, are we supposed to believe that the experiment wouldn't be stopped when Benjy (Ethan Cohn) was going into insulin shock? In the real experiment, a man showing signs of severe emotional disturbance was removed. And when Nix (Clifton Collins, Jr.) is revealed to have lied about his prison record? And when the "no violence" rule on the part of the guards is broken? I almost expected the reveal to be that no one was monitoring those cameras. It would make more sense than any other explanation, and it still doesn't make sense.

Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)

A Strange Way of Visualizing It

Gwen has this philosophy about war. She believes that you should never go into a war you can't explain to a seven-year-old. Graham asked me to give him the short version of what World War I was about when I was explaining today's feature to him, and I couldn't. I told him that it was impossible. No one can give a short version of what World War I is about. There are, I think, fewer movies about it than any war the US has been involved in after 1812 and before Korea. There may even be more movies about Korea, for all I know. I'd have to look it up. But the point is, I think this is an attempt to render a confusing situation a little more understandable. It's an interesting experiment, certainly, and I really do approve of the attempt. Even if, I must confess, it didn't always work for me. You also have to admit that it's got a great cast, if nothing else.

It's a bit hard to explain the plot, obviously. It is a collage of sorts, pieced together from authentic dialogue and musical numbers. However, instead of showing the real horrors of the war, it for the most part puts it into a fantasized, stylized milieu, presenting the war as yet another amusement at Brighton Pier, among other views. Dame Maggie Smith performs a rousing musical number to get boys to enlist. John Mills (Hayley's father) plays Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, selling tickets to the show. Vanessa Redgrave as Sylvia Pankhurst campaigns for an end to the war and votes for women. We get to see the Christmas Truce of 1914, and we see the regret the men feel when they have to go back to war. Dirk Bogarde expresses distaste at those who would deign to serve cider, even in a time of national emergency. And so forth. It's Jane Seymour's first film; she is one of the chorus girls. And one by one, they muddle their way through the war. And one by one, starting with Franz Ferdinand (Wensley Pithey) and his wife (Ruth Kettlewell), they get poppies . . . .

It is, of course, impossible to really express the entire war in a single picture. This is true of any war, even something like the Six Days War. It may have been short, but it was the story of many people in many places interacting. World War I was longer and took place over more territory. It would, I think, be hard to tell the story of even a single person over the course of the war in any kind of detail, and telling the story of the war itself, even using a family to do so, is probably impossible as well. After all, how do you cover every front? I guess you could have that one family be the ancestors of Queen Victoria, which would admittedly involve both sides and a half-dozen countries. However, that wouldn't give you much view of the actual fighting, just what happened in the halls of power. Since this story is trying to show both, it of necessity dabbles--some at the top, and some in the trenches.

Okay, and it's mostly the British story. We learn a little bit about what's happening to the Russians, but if Gallipoli is mentioned, I missed it. We do get the sudden appearance of the Americans, but I don't think we got the Lusitania. (I confess that it wasn't the easiest for me to keep track of when certain moments were, but the Lusitania is pretty distinctive; I didn't see anything naval through the whole movie.) Mostly what we get is the conflict between the foolish old men at the top, who still dream of cavalry charges, and the poor sods in the trenches, who actually do the fighting and dying. Gas does put in its appearance, but the idea that perhaps war is different here and now than decades ago in Africa or India is not something that occurs to these men. I've often thought that the real reason the Americans were able to clear everything up as quickly, aside from being fresh troops when the Germans and Austro-Hungarians were exhausted, was that we'd had the Civil War and learned lessons from it that Europe had not.

This was an ambitious film. Apparently, some people felt it de-emphasized the actual deaths in the war that the source material--a radio play and a stage play--did not, and I think that's a fair enough criticism as far as it goes. I did not come away from it any more aware of the ridiculous waste than I had been before I went in, but I think I'm still more aware than average of the ridiculous waste that was World War I. People don't much remember it, and I think that's in part because it is so awfully difficult to explain what the fighting was about. Several people have also mentioned that the giant lighted sign declaring it to be World War I is an anachronism; it is, however, worth noting that the first reference to it as "the first world war" dates to 1914. What's more, I think there is a cruel irony that we can do without in labeling it "the Great War," even in a historical context. And we all know how well "the War to End All Wars" worked out long term.

Personal Best (1982)

No, but I'm Gonna!

There are probably people who think it is hypocritical to simultaneously condemn the mass media for pretending that bisexuality doesn't exist and for ending every story about a lesbian relationship (or as near to every story as to make no difference!) with one of the women arm-in-arm with a man. (Yes, this is a spoiler, but it's a spoiler that I saw coming before I turned on the movie and certainly before we got to the end.) The issue is that these movies play lesbianism as a phase that some girls go through, not the way they are and the kind of life they're always going to lead. I don't dispute that I've known women--or, more accurately, teenaged girls--who did the "bi because it's fashionable" thing for a couple of years in high school or college. However, I have known a lot more who are still not attracted to men, ten or twenty years later. This gets into the whole weird straight-men-watching-lesbian-porn thing, which most women don't understand, either.

Chris Cahill (Mariel Hemingway) is a hurdler. She catches the eye of Tory Skinner (Patrice Donnelly), who is pretty sure that, with the right coaching, Chris could make the 1980 Olympic track team. Oh, also, she starts sleeping with Chris. But she and Chris convince the Cahill family, including her father (Larry Pennell) and coach, but Tory's coach, Terry Tingloff (Scott Glenn), is a harder sell. However, when he finally deigns to give Chris a chance, he discovers that she really is that good. He sees her dedication to Tory as being a bad thing--not because Tory is a woman but because Tory is a distraction. Both women put their focus and drive into the sport and each other. Then, Terry decides that Chris needs to be a pentathlete, like Tory, and things get even more complicated. They are already in the process of breaking up when Chris takes some training advice from Tory--and dislocates her knee. And while she's recovering, she meets Denny Stites (Kenny Moore).

Almost all the actors in this movie were actually athletes. Jodi Anderson, who played Nadia "Pooch" Anderson in the film, actually won the event in the real world that is the climax of this film. (And, of course, had to deal with the disappointment that the characters experienced; the film had to be rewritten when the US boycotted the 1980 Olympics!) The only three I'm sure were professional actors were Hemingway, Glenn, and Jim Moody, who played assistant coach Roscoe Travis and who was also in [i]Fame![/i] as the drama teacher. It was actually kind of surprising, because I thought they were better actors than athletes usually are. Then again, all a lot of them really had to do was what they did anyway--run, jump, and so forth. It's a lot easier to get away with using athletes in a sports film than in any other kind of film, I guess. After all, they don't even really have to act, for the most part. Anderson gets maybe a dozen lines.

I was disturbed, however, by a lot of the casual prejudice in the film. It isn't just that a coach tells an athlete whom he knows was in a long-term homosexual relationship a crude joke about a gay stereotype, though that's certainly part of it. There's also a fairly awful dirty joke that is also extremely racist. I don't feel I know enough to specify exactly where all this comes from, though. Is it the fact that the film was released in 1982? I don't have a lot of memories of prejudices in that era (I turned six that year), but I've consumed a lot of culture from that era and believe that it was considerably more prejudiced that would be acceptable now. It is possible, too, that it's the hazard of being in a small, insular group. I don't want to claim that "all jocks" believe any one thing any more than I want to claim that, well, all Chinese people have "slant eyes and buck teeth," but it is well established that the more you connect with your friends, the easier it is to look down on people outside the group.

I understand why this movie is a Classic of Gay Cinema (TM). Literally no one in the movie judges Chris for having been in a relationship with Tory. Terry does judge her for how she's letting it control the rest of her life--he believes that it's detrimental to her athletics, which he considers more important. However, I get the impression that he'd act the same way if Denny were the one causing problems. What's pleasing is that Denny doesn't seem to care, either. It's hard to keep track of time in this movie, but it starts with the trials for the 1976 Olympic team and ends with trials for what is, let's face it, an honourary position on an Olympic team four years later that wasn't going anywhere. Chris and Tory were together for most of the time between those two. Denny doesn't care, because what matters to him is that Chris is faithful to him now. I like that attitude, even if I dislike the fact that she ends up with Denny in the first place.

Pépé le Moko (1937)

Everyone Wishing for Somewhere Else

I saw the American remake first, I'm afraid. Generally, I disapprove of this practice. Most of the time, it's because, for one reason or another, I didn't realize I was getting a remake--or else didn't realize it was a remake. In this case, it was of course because the original starts with "A" and the remake starts with "P." It's one of the hazards of this project, I admit, and I could have just elected to hold off on the remake until I got through "P," but I'm not sure I realized that [i]Algiers[/i] was a remake in the first place until I got it from Netflix. They all kind of blended into the great mass of film I've heard of but don't really know much about, I suppose. The more so because this is an old French movie, and my knowledge of French cinema is erratic at best. I know of the early silent classics and the highlights of the French New Wave, but there are no guarantees about anything else.

In this original version, Pépé le Moko is Jean Gabin. He still lives in the winding streets of the Casbah, and he still dreams of Paris instead. However, if he ever sets foot even just into the city beyond the Casbah, the police will capture him, and at best, he will spend the rest of his life in prison. One day, he is involved in a gun battle with the police--I'm not entirely sure why--and trapped with him is a group of slumming Parisians. One is the beautiful Gaby Gould (Mireille Balin), a kept woman who travels because her keeper wants to but dreams only of returning to Paris. She and Pépé le Moko fall in love, of course. This to the despair of Inès (Line Noro), who has been his lover for years and for whom he does not care, if he ever did. Meanwhile, of course, the criminals of the Casbah go about their lives, and some of that includes attempting to gain advantage over Pépé while he is distracted by Gaby. This eventually leads to the death of Pierrot (Gilbert-Gil), because he is someone whose death will matter to Pépé.

As with quite a lot of other movies, I keep coming back to the thought that he is, when you get right down to it, still a criminal. It's the problem that I had with [i]Papillon[/i], as you may recall. We are supposed to sympathize with how much Pépé wishes to return to Paris, but the reason he can't is that he is a criminal who will go to jail if he returns to France. (Based on his nickname, he is apparently not Parisian by birth but instead is from the town of Toulon. However, far be it from me to say no one should identify more with an adopted home than the home of one's birth.) I have considerably more sympathy for I believe it is Tania (Fréhel), a former music hall singer grown old and fat and obscure. Even if she returned to Paris, she would not be able to return to her old life. She listens to the records of herself and looks at old photographs instead of looking into mirrors.

The problem most of the characters in movies like this have is that none of them are particularly interested in anyone but themselves. For some reason, Pépé sees no problem with saying horribly cruel things to Inès without consideration of how she might feel about it. He does not worry that there will be consequences, much less what those consequences might turn out to be. Gaby plans to leave her protector without worrying about whether the life she's going to in the Casbah will be any good for her. She believes that her love and Pépé's will be enough to keep them. I don't even know what Pierrot is thinking. He seems to be hoping for something to do with his mother, who is apparently visiting for some reason. I really wasn't able to keep track of why half the people were doing what they were doing, but I suppose that's almost to be expected. After all, these people would be keeping things quiet, because they wouldn't want their plans revealed until they had actually acted on them. Unfortunately for each other, there's no place for empathy in a system like that.