All Done for 2008. Happy New Year.

Wow. My last batch of films for 2008 certainly had a queer slant to them.

342. Gilda (1946, directed by Charles Vidor). The first hydrogen bomb was named "Gilda. " This movie is why. Rita Hayworth is the bombshell of all bombshells in this movie. The movie poster for this movie paints the dress she wears in "Put the Blame on Mame" as green, but in black and white, it becomes whatever color you like, so long as it's the color of sex. Incredibly, the two men in the story, Glenn Ford and George MacReady, seem to have eyes only for each other. This is just about the queerest movie the golden age of Hollywood ever produced.

343. Excalibur (1981, directed by John Boorman) is full of such obvious symbolism that it sometimes surprises me with how subtle it is. I mean, the interesting twinning effect that goes on at the marriage of Arthur and Guinevere never dawned on me before, as the camera follows Merlin and Morgana rather than the ceremony itself. Or maybe John Boorman realized that Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren were the two most interesting members of his cast, and decided that this was one of the best opportunities to take advantage. Nigel Terry and Nicholas Clay are pretty stiff as Arthur and Launcelot, though I took more notice of Cheri Lunghi this time round. Still, Boorman occasionally lets his half-assed mysticism get the better of him, even though the movie always looks fabulous.

344. All About My Mother (1999, directed by Pedro Almodovar) is the director's most heartfelt hymn to her, whether they be Madonnas or whores or both (Penelope Cruz play's a pregnant nun--you do the math). This is my favorite of Almodovar's movies, in part because it manages the not-inconsiderable feat of taking a character who starts as a cliche--Antonia San Juan's transsexual prostitute (sheesh, again?)--and gives her her dignity as just another woman. Oh, and Cecilia Roth is my favorite of Pedro's leading ladies.

345. Milk (2008, directed by Gus Van Sant) is a film that packs so much shock of recognition into its moral arc that it's hard not to see it through the lens of contemporary GLBT politics. The events of Harvey Milk's life seem to have replayed themselves writ large in 2008. One could very well mistake this as a VERY IMPORTANT MOVIE, but for the fact that it's too damned much fun as a movie. It would have been easy for Gus Van Sant, the commercial filmmaker, to phone this in. Instead, we get Gus Van Sant the eccentric filmmaker instead. Parts of this are playful. Parts of it are lovely. All of it is acted to the hilt. Sean Penn gets a new lease on relevence with this film. It's his most approachable role in years--if you don't mind watching guys kissing, that is. Pity that element alone will keep some audiences away. Alas. In any event, it strikes me that Milk's revolution is similar to the one kinda sorta going today, in which GLBT youth aren't satisfied with the status quo of either their place in the world or their place in the GLBT establishment and are taking to the streets to take what they want. More power too 'em. The change is coming.

346. A Christmas Story (1983, directed by Bob Clark). Y'know, this perennial chestnut isn't that great for great whacks of its running time, but when it clicks, it really clicks. My favorite episode? Ralphie's relationship with the "ef" word, and its consequences. I sometimes wonder about the deal with the devil Bob Clark made. It came partly due shortly after this movie hit theaters--Clark never made anything even remotely worth a damn afterwards.

347. "The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello" (2005, directed by Anthony Lucas) (via YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vORsKyopHyM) uses the same animation technique that Lotte Reiniger used in The Adventures of Prince Achmed, but it mixes in nearly a century of other animation techniques, too. It's a steampunk bitches brew of Jules Verne and H. P. Lovecraft that shouldn't work, but does. It's kind of wonderful. But see for yourself:



348. The Magnificent Ambersons (1941, directed by Orson Welles) remains the cinema's most interesting murdered movie. It's been a while since I saw it last and in the interim, I've read Booth Tarkington's novel. Welles knew Tarkington as a boy, and always thought that George Amberson Minifer was based on himself. Of course, he has his revenge, given that Tarkington is today remembered mainly because Welles made this movie. Such are the vaguaries of literary reputations. In any event, it strikes me that the studio may have had a point in appending a "happy" ending. Their ending more closely resembles the book. Mind you, I'd LOVE to see Welles's cut (come on South America! Yield up Welles's print!), but I can live with the current film. It really is lovely. And brisk! It rampages through the story without a pause. It's obviously a movie that's a masterpiece in some form or other--but maybe not at it's current 88 minute form. Or even maybe in that form at that.

349. Quills (2000, directed by Philip Kaufman) is remarkably sympathetic to the Marquis De Sade. He's the voice of freedom in addition to being the raging id of the Enlightenment. This is, make no mistake, a literary horror movie, in which the subject is not de Sade, but books: what it takes to make them, what books work upon the world, and who, ultimately, profits by them. Oh, it's about a lot of other things, too--particularly the notion that one can enjoy erotica without actually wanting to wallow in what it depicts, which brings me to...

350. Crash (1996, directed by David Cronenberg), which is the director's most misunderstood movie. Who in their right minds gets off on car crashes? The smart-ass in me wants to direct anyone who asks that question to a demolition derby, but it's really a moot point. The movie isn't about this particular (fictional) fetish, so much as it's about fetish in general. Car crashes are a stand in for whatever perverse thing turns your crank. It could be high heeled shoes or tightlaced corsets or furry animal suits. It doesn't matter. The characters in this movie are ensnared by their sexual pecadilloes to the point where they cannot function, cannot feel pleasure, without them. The ending of this movie--in which James Spader and Deborah Unger search for the next crash/orgasm--is the best instance I know where a movie shows the sexual impulse and the death impulse side by side with a clear eye. I think this movie is a masterpiece.

Finally, finishing up with The Chronological Donald Duck:

351. "Working for Peanuts" (1953, directed by Jack Hannah)
352. "Canvas Back Duck" (1953, directed by Jack Hannah)
353. "Donald's Diary" (1954, directed by Jack Kinney)
354. "Dragon Around" (1954, directed by Jack Hannah)
355. "Grin and Bear It" (1954, directed by Jack Hannah)
356. "The Flying Squirrel" (1954, directed by Jack Hannah)
357. "Grand Canyonscope" (1954, directed by Charles Nichols)
358. "Spare the Rod" (1954, directed by Jack Hannah)
359. "Bearly Asleep" (1955, directed by Jack Hannah)
360. "Beezy Bear" (1955, directed by Jack Hannah)
361. "Up a Tree" (1955, directed by Jack Hannah)
362. "No Hunting" (1955, directed by Jack Hannah)
363. "Chips Ahoy" (1956, directed by Jack Kinney)
364. "How to Have An Accident in The Home" (1956, directed by Charles Nichols)
364. "How to Have An Accident At Work" (1959, directed by Charles Nichols)
365. "Donald and the Wheel" (1961, directed by Hamilton Luske)
366. "The Litterbug" (1961, directed by Hamilton Luske)

The interesting thing to me about this bunch of ducks isn't the way they interchange Donald and the Park Ranger from cartoon to cartoon, or the fact that these take such a dim view of romance ("Donald's Diary" and "How To Have An Accident in the Home"), nor even the sometimes over-looked fact that Donald appears to have actually married Daisy at some point and had a kid with her, but rather, the way that Disney, like every other American animation studio in the 1950s, moved away from lush, full animation to a flatter, more abstract style. They mostly did it with their backgrounds, and they mostly did it in a very intelectual way. I mean, consider this landscape from "How To Have An Accident in the Home":



It reads as a landscape, but it's no more "realistic" than a painting by Cezanne (with which it shares some characteristics). Or take this shot from "How To Have An Accident at Work":



This still-frame has no acquaintance with mathematical perspective. It's completely abstract. Almost cubist. And yet, it works. Even at this late date, Disney's animators were master-designers.

The last batch of these cartoons have an educational bent to them, before Donald bowed out as a movie star in 1961's "The Litterbug." He would return, eventually, in such later features as Fantasia 2000 and Mickey's Christmas Carol, but they weren't HIS movies. Alas.

Closing in On Year's End

Catching up. Only two weeks to go on my little experiment.

John Adams (2008):
324. Join or Die
325. Independence
326. Don't Tread On Me
327. Reunion
328. Unite or Die

Interesting portrait of the crankiest of America's founders. Terrific production values and the kind of grittiness HBO likes to add to its historical mini-series give value to what could be a dry recitation of facts. Hell, this is downright exciting. But for one small thing: Paul Giamatti seems the wrong actor for Adams. Oh, he's probably historically accurate, but Williams Daniels pretty much owns the role for all time in the musical, 1776 (I saw Daniels in a traveling version of the stage show with my mother sometime in the mid-seventies, so there's a double-reinforcement). Unfair to Giamatti? Probably. He's a capable actor and his performance grows on you as the miniseries unfolds. And fortunately, Laura Linney is amazing as Abigail Adams. She's been knocking them out of the park for a while now, and this is the best I've ever seen her. Did anyone else ever have to read the letters between John and Abigail Adams for school? It's one of my favorite love stories. Other performances are equally good, particularly Danny Huston as Samuel Adams and Tom Wilkinson as a surprisingly unscrupulous Ben Franklin.

I'm listing the episodes as individual films because, for the most part, they feel like individuals--especially the long second episode--with individual dramatic arcs. Two more to go.

The Chronological Donald Duck:
329. "Let's Stick Together" (1952, Directed by Jack Hannah)
330. "Donald's Apple Core" (1952, Directed by Jack Hannah)
331. "Trick or Treat" (1952, Directed by Jack Hannah)
332. "Don's Fountain of Youth" (1953, Directed by Jack Hannah)
333. "The New Neighbor" (1953, Directed by Jack Hannah)
334. "Donald in Mathmagic Land" (1959, Directed by Hamilton Luske)

More Ducks. There are some standouts here. "Trick or Treat" features Disney's take on a benevolent cartoon witch (voiced by the great June Foray), while "The New Neighbor" is practically the same film as Norman McLaren's "Neighbors" from the previous year. I remember seeing "Donald in Mathmagic Land" in a math class when I was in grade school. I was delighted to see it again here. It's deliriously abstract, and is a primer for anyone who wants to excel at billiards. They don't make educational films like this one anymore.

335. An Actor's Revenge (1963, directed by Kon Ichikawa) has been retitled for video as "The Revenge of a Kabuki Actor" by Animeigo, the current distributor. Apart from this, I have no quibbles with the edition. It's not as good a print as the old Criterion laserdisc, but Animeigo's anal-retentive subtitling and cultural notes more than make up for it. And it's not a bad print, either way. The movie itself, about the revenge of an onigatta, and the web of thieves that surround the kabuki theater, is strikingly theatrical to the point where the viewer might not notice how playful it is as cinema. For example, having the same actor play two different characters who appear on screen at the same time is a feat beyond the theater. Mind you, the story is fascinating, but the film that surrounds the story is a tour de force in meta-cinematic legerdemain.

336. M (1931, directed by Fritz Lang). By all accounts, Fritz Lang was a complete bastard to work with, a man who epitomized the sadistic director. By contrast, his wife, Thea Von Harbou, was said to be one of the nicest of people. Lang, of course, fled the Nazis shortly after M was made. Von Harbou remained and joined the Nazi Party. You can never tell about people, I guess, which is part of the point of this film, one of the greatest of all films. This presents a world turned upside down, in which the criminals enforce the law and justice, in which a harmless little man murders children. It's a film in which Lang abandons the grandiosity of his previous productions (Metropolis, Siegfried, The Woman on the Moon) in favor of a stark, reportorial style that prefigures film noir. And it features one of Peter Lorre's greatest performances. Lorre completely steals the film, even though he's really only center stage for the last fifteen minutes. Even so, the movie is subtle. The tune Lorre whistles is "The Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt, which suggests he's spiritually a troll. He can't help himself. His crimes are what trolls do. It's in his nature. He throws this back at his accusers--and by proxy at the audience--who aren't trolls. What's THEIR excuse? They have a choice to be criminals or not.

It's not a surprise that the Nazis didn't much like this film.

As an aside, this was the last film at our local arthouse's Wild Weimar film series. I LOVED seeing these films with an audience. Watching them on video just doesn't do them justice.

The Godfather (1972, directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

337. The Godfather Part II (1974, directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

338. The Godfather Part III (1990, directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

So, this time through the entire Godfather Trilogy, I was struck by both the absolute necessity of the third movie, and by it's relative failure. It's necessary from a structural point of view. If, as Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola clearly intend, the Godfather saga is collectively "The Tragedy of Michael Corleone," then leaving things as they stood at the end of the second film with Michael sitting on a bench completely alienated from his family doesn't work. By this time, Michael is such a cold fish that one might wonder what a shark feels for the fish that it eats. At this point, "The Tragedy of Michael Corleone" is that he once had a conscience and he loses it. His lack of a conscience is his tragic flaw. And while that's interesting, it's not very engaging on a gut level.

The major influence on The Godfather films is Luchino Visconti (want an example? Take a hard look at Rocco and his Brothers or The Leopard and see what I mean). From Visconti, Coppola developed a taste for the operatic. This is most evident in the Baptism montage in the first film, which is orchestrated like grand opera. And opera is an idiom of emotion. The end of The Godfather Part II has a dark chill to it, but it's as stoic as the expression on Al Pacino's face.

So the third film is necessary. Why? Because for the kind of tragedy Coppola and Puzo want, it is necessary for an innocent to die. This is the Shakespearean model--which is a model from the first film onward, too, given that Coppola initially viewed the saga as a variant of King Lear. And in order for the full force of the tragedy to take place, Michael Corleone has to thaw. So, in the third film, we find Michael wracked by guilt for the murder of Fredo, desperately trying to enter the legitimate business world, giving huge amounts of money to the Catholic Church as some kind of atonement. But, of course, his previous life won't let him escape. This is a sympathetic Michael. We see the Michael Corleone who volunteered for the Army here, the one who told Kay that he wasn't like his family. It's not completely without precedent in the series, and if one accepts it, the accidental death of Mary Corleone at the end of the movie IS the fulcrum of the collective "Tragedy of Michael Corelone."

I don't have much of an issue with the casting of Sofia Coppola as Mary Corleone, really. I don't believe that Sonny's bastard son, Vinnie would find her irresistible, but there's a level of suspension of disbelief in all movies. She's not on stage all that much. Where The Godfather Part III goes wrong is in thawing Michael Corleone too much. This is not recognizable as the same character who was so cold-blooded that he ordered the murder of his brother with a single glance. And that's the structural flaw in the third film. The first time I saw this movie, I bought it completely. These days, I have an uneasy relationship with it.

I think about these things too much.


339. Hero (2002, directed by Zhang Yimou) can be seen as a propaganda film. I suspect that Zhang had to slant the film just so to get it made. If one views it as such, one can still groove on the spectacle. Christopher Doyle's cinematography is still so beautiful that it bids fair to make one's eyes water. But I noticed something strange about it this time: All of the variants on the story told by the film's assassin are color coded, indicating that none of them is true, that all of them are stories. But then, so is the framing sequence! I never noticed it before because the code color for this sequence is black rather than the bright colors of the rest of the film, which is a clever way to hide it. What does this mean? Is the film to be trusted in any measure? Or is the film entirely about storytelling rather than about politics? It might be.

340. No Regrets for Our Youth (1946, directed by Akira Kurosawa). Relieved of the restrictions of wartime censorship, this early film by the great director turns its gaze on censorship itself. This is not the fully formed, robust director of the next decade, but he was already pretty good. The opening sequence, in which lead character Setsuko Hara is chased by her suitors reminds me of Bergman for some reason. Later Kurosawa seems to have no interest in women, so it's a surprise to see that he's fairly deft with a female lead. It doesn't hurt that Setsuko Hara is one of the great actresses in Japanese film, but details.

341. Voice (2005, directed by Ik-hwan Choe) is the fourth in the Korean "Haunted Girls School" series. This one eschews the horror show of the third entry (Wishing Stairs) and goes back to the second (Memento Mori) for its themes, though it approaches them from a fresh perspective. The point of view of the movie is that of the ghost. This might seem an awkward conceit, but it works well enough here, and it enables the filmmakers to examine what death really is in their minds. Mostly, it's loneliness. Oh, there's a big reveal of the plot mechanism at the end of the film, and it's not entirely awful, but the film doesn't really need it. The director, Ik-hwan Choe, was an assistant on Whispering Corridors, the first film in the series, so this brings things full circle, in a way.

The Two Faces of The Scarecrow

316. I don't believe I ever saw the full version of Walt Disney's The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1964, directed by James Neilson) when I was a kid, but I remember its shorter theatrical version very well. That film was titled Dr. Syn Alias the Scarecrow. In truth, there's not a whole lot of difference between the two versions. Admittedly, the theatrical version is a bit brisker of pace, but at the expense of some characterization. In any event, this is variant of the Zorro myth, set in the England of George III. Patrick McGoohan plays saintly Dr. Syn, the vicar of Dymchurch, who, by night, leads a gang of smugglers as the terrifying Scarecrow to help the locals endure the burden of excess taxation. Of course, the king's men come to town to try to catch him and he outwits them in three separate episodes (or acts). It's rollicking adventure that works because Patrick McGoohan is terrific in the lead. As the Scarecrow, he adopts a terrifying, guttural voice that sounds like a bearing about to go bad. This voice is abetted by a striking character design by the costume department, with its twisted smile. As Dr. Syn, McGoohan is saintly, but with a sly twinkle behind his eyes. And he looks like a man who has and keeps secrets. And, oh, my! He was a looker in his youth (note to self: track down Danger Man). His supporting cast of British stalwarts lends the whole enterprise a gravitas that grounds some of the pulpier aspects of the story. This one was a favorite of mine as a kid. I'm glad to see that it holds up.

317. Hammer's competing version of the Scarecrow story changes a few key details for legal reasons--Disney having sewn up the rights to certain aspects of the story--and is a darker film over-all. Captain Clegg (1962, directed by Peter Graham Scott) was re-titled Night Creatures in the US and finally saw the light of day on Universal's Hammer box a few years ago. It, too, is carried on the strength of its lead performance. Peter Cushing's Dr. Syn (renamed "Dr. Blyss" in this version) has a good deal more menace in him as the vicar, and the movie retains the character's piratical past. The movie is a good deal more violent, too, and shows its hand right from the get-go with a memorable marooning sequence in which a man has his ears slit and tongue cut out before being imprisoned on an island. But the overall arc of the film is the same. Its one of Hammer's more handsome films from the period and the filmmakers have given some of Hammer's stock character actors their heads in this one, notably Michael Ripper as Mr. Mipps, who positively beams at the chance to show an impish sense of humor.

The new Disney Treasures tins include volume four of The Chronological Donald Duck. I love me some Donald Duck (you can blame Carl Barks for this). The current volume features cartoons that were a constant staple of Disney's television empire, so I'm very familiar with all of these:

318. "Dude Duck" (1951, directed by Jack Hannah)
319. "Corn Chips" (1951, directed by Jack Hannah)
320. "Test Pilot" Donald (1951, directed by Jack Hannah)
321. "Lucky Number" (1951, directed by Jack Hannah)
322. "Out of Scale" (1951, directed by Jack Hannah)
323. "Bee on Guard" (1951, directed by Jack Hannah)

In most of these, Donald contends with Chip and Dale, who always seem to cross his path. I always used to think that Chip and Dale were male and female, especially with the way Chip is sometimes drawn as the more effeminate of the two. Lately, I'm convinced that they're gay. But that has nothing to do with what's on screen. It's just my impression. That's all. We also get a Hewey, Dewey, and Louie appearance in a rare depiction of the trio as teenagers. And a bee. Donald has no luck with any of them. The weirdest of these cartoons is "Dude Duck", in which Donald hops off the bus after a gaggle of human women. I've always been able to accept the anthropomorphism in Disney's cartoon so long as it follows Barks's Duckberg model, in which everyone is an anthropomorphized character. Putting human characters in the frame is just weird.

324. There are a lot of things to dislike about the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace (2008, directed by Marc Forster). It's cut too fast. It has no sense of geography in the action scenes. It is fairly lacking in the series' signature humor. It lacks a baroque, comic-opera villain. This is all true. But I came out of the film liking it none the less. I really like the theme song by Jack White and Alicia Keys, which has a distinction that the last several theme songs have lacked: it actually sounds like a Bond theme. The credit sequence is much improved over Casino Royale--again, it seems like the credit sequence of a Bond film. And it has a pretty good story. An acquaintance of mine thought that the McGuffin--our villain is cornering the market on water--was pretty lame; but I grew up in Colorado where there's a saying that "Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting." So it made perfect sense to me. I LOVE that the filmmakers are re-inventing SPECTRE and SMERSH for the 21st Century (and in a way that seems all too plausible). Oh, and Daniel Craig is inhabiting the role of Bond quite nicely. Oh, my, yes. James Bond will return, the credits tell us. I'm looking forward to it.

My Movie week for January 22-29

Well, here's what I saw last week. Busy week. I've got some non-review work to do on my web site this week, so don't expect any new material.

Viy (1967, directed by Georgi Kropachyov and Konstantin Yershov): Visually inventive fairy-tale horror movie from Russia, concerning a seminary student tasked with praying over the body of a witch for three nights. Every night at midnight, she gets up from her coffin to play. Think of what a movie directed by the love child of Tsui Hark and Mario Bava would look like and you have the gist of it. Great fun, though it goes overboard near the end.

The Queen of Spades (fragment) (1916, directed by Yakov Protazanov)
The Portrait (fragment) (1916, )
Satan Exhultant (fragment) (1917)

These are exerpts from the roots of Russian horror movies, included on Russico’s disc for Viy. Each of them is a fascinating artifact. The Queen of Spades is in the worst shape, but seems the most engaging of the three, telling the story of a gambler’s descent into madness. The Portrait provides a powerful shock of recognition as an early manifestation of the ghost that comes out of a picture (think a version of The Ring, ninety years early). There’s a reason I put tape on my full length mirrors, lest I accidentally walk into a parallel universe. Satan Exhultant seems like it would be the most interesting of these films, telling the story of how Satan invades the lives of a parson and his family. A cross, if you will, between Dreyer and Benjamin Christiansen.

Trouble Every Day (2001, directed by Claire Denis). I suppose I could accept a sallow-faced Vincent Gallo as a sort of vampire--though not as a scientist of any stripe--and Beatrice Dalle sure looks the part, but director Claire Denis has stripped the film of the thrills of a horror movie in the mistaken assumption that they do not serve the subtext. I suspect she doesn’t recognize the subtext, either, or the fact that the central “gimmick” of her cannibals is the same as the one found in Cat People or Shivers, though without either Cat People’s poetry of image or Shivers’s intellectual inquiry. The photography is nice, but the movie on the whole is a disagreeable and largely meaningless drone.

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Where is the Friend’s Home? (1987, directed by Abbas Kairostami). I am beginning to suspect that Kairostami is not for me. While this film ends on a nice note of grace, it’s too goddamn long by half, and it’s only an hour and seventeen minutes. There is a nice short film to be seen in this story of a boy who has mistakenly taken his friends notebook and who must return it lest that friend be expelled from school. The execution bungles everything, though. Here’s an example: early in the film, our young protagonist is trying to tell his mother why he needs to go out:

Ahmed: I have to take Mohamed his notebook.
His mother: Nonsense. Do your homework then do your chores.
Long pause.
Ahmed: I have to take Mohamed his notebook.
His mother: Nonsense. Do your homework, then do your chores. Are you lazy?
Repeat.

In two minutes, this scene could have established that Ahmed’s mother is protective and will punish Ahmed if he does the right thing. At NINE minutes, this scene plays like what it is: padding; and Ahmed’s mother is revealed as what she is: a contrived and deliberate obstruction. Most of Ahmed’s encounters with adults are similarly contrived as obstructions. Given the monotony of these encounters, this begins to suffer the time-dilation effect I usually associate with bad movies. Not for me, thanks.

My Beautiful Girl Mari (2002 , directed by Seong-kang Lee). A lovely, lovely animated film. Very much influenced by the Ghibli studios, though without the painstaking animation. The animation style here is interesting to me though, because it was done with relatively low-tech means in Adobe Illustrator and Flash, two programs with which I am intimately familiar. There is an artistic (and possibly practical) choice in this movie to omit the pen-and-ink outlines we normally associate with animation, which results in a “look” that is pure color.



Galaxy Quest (1999, directed by Dean Parisot). Watched in a party atmosphere. Amazing what an audience will do for a comedy. Fun, and none too gentle with the satire of Star Trek and its cultural influence. Sam Rockwell has the funniest part. Heh.

Rich and Strange (1931, directed by Alfred Hitchcock). The movies were talking by the time this film was made, but apparently, Hitchcock didn’t get the memo. A silent movie in almost every respect, except for the fact that there’s sound. A bold experiment that suggests the wonders that exist in an alternate universe where Hitchcock didn’t get locked into his signature thrillers. The opening of this movie is a tour de force that might make King Vidor green with envy given that it neatly encapsulates all that was great in The Crowd into a two-minute montage. If only this were pure cinema, then it would be a masterpiece. But it’s not. It has the burden of telling the story of two wayward suburbanites who learn some hard lessons while on a round-the-world trip. The talking parts of the film just don’t work. The relationships just don’t ring true, and the performances are stiff in the way that only early-talkie performances are stiff. Every so often, though, the film shuts up long enough to come alive. Strange, strange film.

Ducks:
The Eyes Have It (1945, directed by Jack Hannah)
Donald’s Crime (1945, directed by Jack King)
Trombone Trouble (1944, directed by Jack King)
Duck Pimples (1945, directed by Jack Kinney)
Old Sequoia (1945, directed by Jack King)

It never occured to me before watching the latest Disney Treasures Donald Duck collection that the so-called “Good Duck Artist,” (aka: the great Carl Barks) was a force in the Donald Duck animated cartoons, but lo and behold, you can sense him. Just as he was as a cartoonist later on, he was largely anonymous in these shorts, but the jump in quality when he was behind a cartoon is visible. Among this group, the one that sticks out for me is Trombone Trouble, which seems like classic Barks. Mind you, the others here aren’t bad, but The Eyes Have It, a hypnotism gag, was done better at Warners, and Old Sequoia seems like a test reel for Chip and Dale. Donald’s Crime is a gem, though, as it casts Donald in one of his few sympathetic roles and reveals the influence of film noir even at Disney. Same goes for Duck Pimples, which introduces the world to Jessica Rabbit (I had always thought she came from Tex Avery, but here she is, big as life). Duck Pimples is as deranged a short as any Chuck Jones short, warping reality seemingly at a whim.

Speaking of Jones....

Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century (1953, directed by Chuck Jones) is grand retro-futurism, and Daffy Duck seems like he’s an ego just the right size for man’s conquest of space. But this isn’t the only game in town for retro-futurism, there’s also....

Our Friend the Atom (1958, directed by Hamilton Luske), which is unintentionally chilling as it details the uses to which radioactive isotopes can be put in agriculture. That’s not all it’s about, of course, but that sequence sent a chill through my spine. Personally, I like atomic science. I think it holds the promise to wean us from our petroleum habit (I love France’s approach to atomic power: “France has no coal, no oil, and no choice.”). But I’m not nearly so naive as to think the dangers aren’t profound. But then, I drive by a nuclear reactor on my way to work every day, so I’ve been living with it for a while. To its credit, this short isn’t so blind to the perils of atomic power either, and rightly compares it to a malign djinni. But it IS naive when it comes to radiation. Watching Heinz Haber repeatedly handle a chunk of uranium (possibly a prop, but still . . .) reminded me that the Curies died of cancer. In any event, a fascinating film.

Eyes in Outer Space (1959, directed by Ward Kimble) is less problematic in retrospect, given that much of the world of the future it projected is our everyday present. The subject is weather, and how man’s technology adapts to it. While we don’t have the weather control promised by this movie, we do have most everything else. Satellites have changed everything. Imagine, if you will, the horror that might have been wrought by Hurricane Katrina had remote sensing not predicted its likely path days ahead of schedule. In any event, the weather control stuff is fun, and the set they built for it is one of the coolest fifties sci-fi sets I can think of. This goes well with Bell Labs’ and Frank Capra’s Unchained Goddess, which as far back as the 1950s asked probing questions about how polution was changing our climate.

In any event, that’s enough pioneer spirit for one week...

Enjoy.