It's true. They really don't make them like they used to. After seeing some pretty lame fare (and to be honest, I can't even recall what it was that set me off) I decided that it was high time to go back and either rediscover some old classic movies that I'd seen as a young man (and probably didn't fully appreciate), or have my mind blown by one that I'd never managed to see.
I've devoted a shelf of late to these classics, as they've begun to monopolise my movie watching interests. Why sit down to something pedestrian and disappointing (as, lets be honest, is pretty much 90% of formulaic A to B to C modern movie making these days) when you can put on a movie starring Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant or Audrey Hepburn, and be pretty much 100% assured of a thumping good hour and a half?
I'm not going to review them in any great detail, as movies like these have pages and pages devoted to their charms in film theory books and websites already. So a list of the delights we've savoured over the past few weeks...
North By Northwest
There's a rapidly expanding place for Hitchcock movies on my shelf. I've already got the classic Hollywood era films - Rear Window, The Birds, the utterly sublime (and my personal favourite) Vertigo, Notorious (which is in the to-watch pile for the next week) and Psycho (which I just got hold of, and I simply could watch every day). But North by Northwest is one of Hitch's films that I never could get on with for some reason.
But having obtained it for a couple of quid this week off Amazon, and re-watching it, I realised two things: One: It's bloody awesome. Two: Cary Grant - they just don't make movie stars as luminous as him these days do they? and Three: I realised that whenver I'd seen it previously, I'd missed the first part of the movie and was always subsequently confused as to what the hell was going on. With this realisation out of the way, I sat back, enjoyed it and discovered it was easily up there with Hitch's greatest movies. It just glows with genius and Hollywood magic.
Doctor Zhivago
A confession: until last week I'd never seen a David Lean movie all the way through. I'd seen bits and pieces of Bridge On The River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Zhivago as a child, but never really had the patience for them. I was young and to be fair, they are all at least three days long. The Director's Cut of Lawrence of Arabia that I picked up last week will take you a fortnight to get through, and I'm only just joking. They're long.
But I set three hours aside last week and sat back with Doctor Zhivago, which of course, is sumptuous, sprawling and self indulgent. But those three hours simply fly by. Lean was a master craftsman. Even with a rather diluted view of Russian history in service to an epic love story, it's a quite staggering piece of cinema for its detail and period set-pieces. Julie Christie, Omar Shariff, Rod Steiger, Alec Guiness and Tom Courtney: five perfect reasons to watch this movie alone. Amazing. I felt richer for having seen it. And I bet you don't get that with Transformers: Rise of the Fallen...
Funny Face
Put an Audrey Hepburn film on and I'll be entertained for 90 minutes. I've had this one knocking around for a while, but hadn't quite had the enthusiasm for it as I'd had for Breakfast at Tiffany's or Roman Holiday (probably my favourite film of all time at this present moment) or Sabrina.
It's a musical for one thing. I'm not a huge fan of musicals but I'm warming to them slowly. And I'd never seen Fred Astaire in the proper sense. I'd seen bit and pieces of him with Ginger Rogers as a child, but never really seen his work.
But after seeing Funny Face, I'm getting closer to liking musicals. This is filled with exquisite Gershwin songs and quite simly stunning choreography. I knew Astaire could dance, but my god, I didn't realise just how good he was. Literally jaw-droppingly good. He makes Strictly Come Dancing pro's look like me dancing. Although he knocking on for 60, while Hepburn was in her 20's, they still manage to make this majestic musical comedy romance work, and work beautifully. An absolute feast for the senses.
The Third Man
Another movie that I knew all about but had never seen. I watched this last night, and the imagery is still swarming around my head. The greatest British movie ever made? Quite possibly. There are few films quite so noir as this one. Orson Welles has less than half of the movie in screentime, but his prescence fills the movie. His entrance is sublime movie magic. He's charm and reptile all rolled into one. The cinematography casts post-war Vienna in a nightmarishly angled light (or darkness) and the soundtrack of Anton Karas's zither is one of the absolute great soundtracks. Filled with tension and some sublime set pieces, this is absolutely the classic everyone says it is. Shame about the 90 minute documentary on the second disc though. It drags with a pretentious and ponderous weight. Everything that was said could have been said in 30 minutes.
Sunset Boulevard
Any student of cinema, amateur or otherwise, should point to Billy Wilder as one of the greatest (and subtly subversive) movie directors of all time.
Sunset Boulevard is generally regarded as the best film ever made about Hollywood. This story of a faded movie star and a struggling screenwriter is, like most of Wilder's work, absolutely timeless. He was a writer and director who was years ahead of his time. Consider a career that covers Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Sabrina, Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard (to name but a few). This man was a genius. Everything I've seen of his stuns me, and he's beginning to woo me away from Hitchcock as the auteur to collect. Gloria Swanson ("I'm ready for my close-up") is a washed up actress, playing a washed up actress. Her servant is a washed up director playing a washed up director. And William Holden is a washed up actor, playing a washed up screenwriter (after being spurned by Audrey Hepburn, he turned to drink and barely recovered, save for this career defining performance). This Special Edition has some excellent docs and features on it too. Well worth a couple of quid off Amazon.
I haven't been keeping up with the blog of late as I'm still ploughing through the short novel I'm writing (150 pages and counting so far!), but I'll try to cover the next batch of movies I have waiting in the wings: Paris When It Sizzles, Notorious, Lawrence of Arabia, Eyes Without A Face, Brief Encounter, Charade and The Barefoot Contessa.
4 comments:
Well, you know I love old films too. I was so happy I got to see Psycho at the cinema, in the late 90's, during a *cinema week* of old classics. Remarkable how much power it has after all these years.
Never seen Doctor Zhivago all the way through, although I've seen quite a bit of it - catching odd scenes when it's been on TV. But, I love Lawrence of Arabi and Bridge On The River Kwai. I remember having a daft conversation with Lucasfilm fanboy once, where he suggested that Star Wars was the pinnacle of Alec Guiness' career... If Guiness had been there, I'm sure he'd have swung for him - I almost did. What about the Ealing comedies - The Ladykillers, The Man in the White Suit , etc - or his roll as George Smiley in 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' or the Lean movies - Kwai winning him a best actor Oscar in '58 - I asked. The person in question just stared back at me blank faced...
Suzanne Vega was on Radio 2 a few weeks back, as part of a celebrity film feature, and she reviewed Funny Face - saying it's her favourite film. Bit of a weird thing, having a half hour film feature on the radio, as they talk endlessly about how stunning this or that looks, but - of course - you can't see anything. Vega did mention the massive age gap between the leads too, but no one seems to bothered by it.
Third Man - utterly awesome film. Not seen it for a while, but I've got it on VHS somewhere. Not seen Sunset Boulevard. Billy Wilder is one of those directors I keep meaning to catch up with, as I think I've only seen Some Like it Hot.
Re, your aside to Transformers: Rise of the Fallen - not seen it, and have no intention of seeing it. It has the beef man in it, who I cannot stomach - especially since Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which I felt cinematically violated after watching.
Only thing I've watched recently was Let the Right One In again, as I picked it up on Blu-Ray from Asda. It looks fantastic and, while there's not much in the way of extras, the audio commentary with director and writer is very illuminating. They yak about the film in quite a bit of detail, but also about the writing of the book.
On the subject of books - keep at it! A *short* novel and you're still writing at page 150... face it, it's going to be Tolstoy length by the time you finish!
... and on a saddo, web dev note: I think you need to add some line breaks between the paragraphs to space them out, to stop the pictures colliding with each other.
Sorry, spent most of this week dealing with web page content.
I agree with Charlie Brooker's comments on Transformers:
The second Transformers movie came out this year. I didn't fight for a ticket. I'd caught the first one by accident. It was like being pinned to the ground while an angry dishwasher shat in your face for two hours. Any human dumb enough to voluntarily sit through a second helping of that unremitting fecal spew really ought to just get up and leave the planet via the nearest window before their continued presence does lasting damage to the gene pool.
The great thing about the Lean films are that they've really gone to town with the DVDs - beautifully restored and filled with long illuminating docs. They look incredible. And yeah, Guiness was incredible. There's a world of depth just in his eyes; one oof our greatest acting talents. Kwai is on my list of movies to pick up, as it's pretty cheap now.
Funny Face is excellent - I noticed that thing about Suzanne Vega on Radio 2 but didn't catch it. The old movies didn't seem overly bothered by casting older leads with young actresses; Cary Grant got cast alongside much youner actresses for most of his career from what I gather.
I'll have to pick up Let The Right One In when it drops in price a bit. One of the rare new films worth bothering with!
And yeah, 150 pages - it was supposed to be 60 pages long! Hopefully I'll still be able to place it with a small press despite the extended length...
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