Cinema Talk

While this is pretty far from my ideal set up (it is a “fantasy” film after all) I found it to be, by a very wide margin, the most impressive feature I’ve seen from Frank Capra yet. It’s a fantastical science fiction and theological mess on paper, but Capra’s earnest and genuine expression shines through his rather stilted material. Even though it is an adaptation, it seems like the sort of film that is so achingly personal that to recognize it as anything less than a near sacrifice to express something would be the greatest of insults to not only Capra, but the rest of the cast as well.

Now I get a very personal sentiment from the Capra films I’ve seen as well – they are Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and of course, It’s a Wonderful Life, but for some reason I never was able to accept the romanticism and sentimental nature of Capra’s images. I’m not sure why; Ford and Borzage provide a similar tone in their best work and I never had trouble connecting with their work. Truth be told, I guess Capra is more of a magical realist than a melodramatic romantic. In all of his other films I’ve seen, the magical tone comes from miracles, improbable events, physical and mental sacrifices. There’s signs of those elements here, but they seem dominated by the biggest fantasy element in the entire film – the town of Shangri-La itself.

My half-developed logic is flawed, I admit, but the story itself is purely fantasy with real, believable characters injected into the drama. This is, at least in my opinion, the inverse of Capra’s other films. Realistic situations with unlikely occurrences – both emotional and physical carrying a majority of the narrative’s development. On the other hand, though, maybe Capra’s general “fantasy-esque” realm of cinema just needed the aid of some poetic cinematography. This is the first of his films that I can say is visually stunning. Another 180 degree turn from the Capra I know, the visuals in his other films are so dry and simplistic, almost on purpose it seems.

Surprisingly, I found Capra’s romantic longings (or at least the cinematic manifestation of them) to be more genuine and perhaps even more pronounced than the average Borzage film. I’d say Capra comes much closer to reaching the spirit of Borzage’s silent films with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farnell than Borzage’s output afterward did. In other words, he’s kind of out-Borzage Borzage here. The reason behind this, though, seems very obvious to me. Capra had this one personal project to unleash everything he was holding within himself, while Borzage had a seemingly unending stream of opportunities for personal expression.

If I’ve seemed to slow down in the past couple months that because I did. My last semester of high school has been pretty hectic, leaving me with little to no time to write my usual “capsules” or “reviews” or whatever else you want to call them. But now, I’m done! I still have all the celebratory stuff to go through, but my workload? Completely empty. It be pretty difficult, if not impossible, to go through every single film I’ve seen in 2009 but didn’t write about. Instead, I’m just going to mention a few films that I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks that were special.

Battleground (William A. Wellman, 1948)

Unfortunately, I sent the disc back to Netflix before I could get any decent screen captures from this postwar Wellman masterpiece. It’s a shame, too, because it is one of Wellman’s most visually impressive films. Easily, my favorite Classic Hollywood war film, but I definitely need to see more. This isn’t quite as impressive as Wellman’s Yellow Sky, which would come a year later, but it’s pretty close.

Stage Door (Gregory La Cava, 1937)

It seems I forgot to take screenshots for this film, too. It isn’t as great of a crime, as La Cava’s film isn’t a wonder to look at like Wellman’s is, but I was still very impressed. This is definitely one of the best movies I’ve seen about show business. Great cast, too – Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rodgers, Lucille Ball, and Adolphe Menjou, among many others. I can’t explain why I was so taken by it, but I’d like to think that La Cava had a very close relationship with all of his actors, as they all seem comfortable. Even when the story takes a turn for the melodramatic (at the end, especially) Hepburn manages to come off as genuine, not to mention extremely lovable. It be oversimplifying things to call this merely a screwball comedy.

Three Comrades (Frank Borzage, 1938)

More great stuff from Borzage, this time Margaret Sullavan steals the show. As one would expect from Borzage, the film looks great. No notable complaints that I can think of – highly recommended!

Nadare / Avalanche (Mikio Naruse, 1937)

This early-ish Naruse is best remembered for having two giants of 50s Japanese cinema in its crew – Akira Kurosawa and Ishiro Honda. Somewhat ironically, very little has been written about the film itself. It’s a fascinating nonlinear study of a marriage, only one year old, beginning to crumble. Kusaku is married to Fukiko but is in love with Yayoi. A nice little film (runs under an hour) that features some flashes of the future Naruse. Some thriller elements, as well, which (to my knowledge) Naruse wouldn’t return to until The Stranger Within a Woman. It’s a bit more pronounced in that film, though. This is more like a warm up for Repast, less complicated and less complete.

Maria no Oyuki / Oyuki the Virgin (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1935)

Like Avalanche, there are some writings on this film and they seem to exclusively focus on its relationship with other filmmakers or films. The story is famously based on Kawaguchi Matsutaro’s adaptation of Guy de Mauspassant’s “Boule de Suit” (or Lump of Fat) which provided the inspiration for John Ford’s Stagecoach. I suppose some comparisons with Ford’s film are inevitable but not exactly overwhelmingly. Personally, I think Hiroshi Shimizu’s Arigato-san, made two years later, has more in common with Ford’s film. Mizoguchi’s film seems a little incomprehensible at times, but it might just be a side effect of the print.

The first fifteen minutes or so of this are probably the best fifteen minutes I’ve seen in any Borzage film. Unfortunately, that tone doesn’t hold its own for much longer. The opening sequences involving Spencer Tracy and Luise Rainer are mindblowingly brilliant. There relationship, at least initially, is one of the most pleasant and “advanced” I’ve seen from a film in a long time. This could read as a criticism, but personally, I feel that Borzage is much more successful in portraying the blissful existence of successful romantics rather than the struggles of problematic and dysfunctional ones. From there, though, conventional narrative “incidents” occur pushing the film into the territory of a slightly over the top genre picture, which just happens to have a love story inside of it. When Borzage indulges in his impulses, the film is almost a revelation, but he doesn’t do that enough.

Like his much more remembered film from nine years earlier, Seventh Heaven, this film (not so gracefully) switches it original, more impressive tone involving a romantic relationship to something a bit more generic. In his earlier film, it’s a war movie, but here the gears are changed to resemble something close to the gangster films that Warner Brothers had churned out at a rapid rate during the earlier part of the 1930s. It doesn’t help that I’ve been on something of a “WB gangster” kick lately, but Borzage’s idea of a gangster film pales in comparison to the ideas of William A. Wellman.

As I’ve already mentioned, the best parts of the film are when Frank Borzage shows his true interests, in other words, when the film is a love story that has little to no care for regular plot developments. Tracy is definitely picking up where his character in Man’s Castle left off, but simply stated, he’s not as much of an asshole here. He’s still got a mean edge to him, but this only manifests in teasing his spouse rather than criticizing her as he did to Loretta Young in the aforementioned film.

Tracy, as he almost always was when working with Borzage, is brilliant here. Unfortunately, the great charactor actor Charley Grapewin is wasted here. He plays a classy mayor here, the antithesis of the characters depicted in his very best performances. On the other hand, Luise Rainer impressed me a great deal here. I wouldn’t mind seeing her a few more times, but it looks like his career wasn’t all that extensive.

Based on the three films of his I’ve seen, I think I have developed something of a “crush” for Jules Dassin. None of his films, this one included, can be considered masterpieces, at least not by my standards. They aren’t exactly “great” films, either, but all of his films are very entertaining and all of them look absolutely amazing. Perhaps the latter element is what makes me see his work as something more than just “escapist” entertainment, but I truly believe there is something personal going on in his films, even if he was working under the extremely general standards of 1940s Hollywood.

Like De Toth’s Crime Wave, I can’t help but describe the tone as cold and brutal. Both are pretty much stock phrases for describing noir so I suppose it is also interesting to point out that Dassin’s visuals are driven by gritty, sensory detailed close-ups. The dirt of every man’s face is palpable. The exception to this description is the guards of the prison, specifically Hume Cronyn’s Captain Munsey. He and his guards are (wisely) photographed with some distance, as though the prisoners and the viewers are being observed through a plate-glass window. Oddly enough, Munsey is the type of man willing to open this window, if only to spit in the faces of the inmates.

Perhaps this is where Dassin’s storytelling techniques begin to lose me. I like how he can vividly develop an atmosphere, and how he makes those that inhabit it very interesting. In this particular case, however, the film’s power is somewhat tainted by the simple characterization of Munsey as a villain. He plays by the same rule book, so to speak, as all of the prisoners, but it does seem pretty clear that we shouldn’t like him. This isn’t something new to genre cinema, but in my favorite westerns and even a few noirs, the “bad guy” is always handled gracefully. Dassin’s villain isn’t exactly over the top, but he certainly isn’t subtle, either. It’s little things like this that prevent me from loving Dassin outright, and turn his very good films into fairly decent ones.