skygiants | (no subject)

I have not been to a movie theater since May, so if you are looking for Contemporary Hits you have come to the wrong place, but I have recently seen several movies from at least fifty years ago ....?

Best Years Of Our Lives

After reading Five Came Back, which culminates in the triumphant inspiring tale of how Best Years Of Our Lives is the best returning-home-from-war film ever made,

sovay and I decided that it was time to investigate these claims!

...OK, I have not seen every returning-home-from-war film ever made, so I cannot make a decisive judgment or anything, but Best Years Of Our Lives is REALLY good. It follows three ex-soldiers after WWII -- Al, a middle-aged banker with a mostly-grown family who served as a sergeant; Fred, a former soda jerk who achieved a dashing prominence as an air force captain; and Homer, the boy-next-door who lost both of his hands in the navy (played by a disabled veteran who lost both his hands in a similar fashion) -- and does a really astounding job of avoiding cliche while telling their stories of struggling to readjust. It is also not incredibly depressing! Like, it's rough for all of them, it's quite rough, but the film is composed of really genuine moments of low-key realism and humor and eventual connection.

Though really, knowing about Wyler from Five Came Back, I was expecting it to be very good about the men. I was sooort of expecting the women to be more two-dimensional supporting background? This however is not the case, especially for the banker's family. Myrna Loy (Nora from The Thin Man!) is an INSPIRED casting choice for Al's wife Marie -- she's supportive and smart and funny, and has so many edges! -- and their strong but complicated marriage is possibly the most important and compelling love story in the film. There's also Al's daughter Peggy, a young nurse who gets a crush on unhappily married Fred:

AL AND MARIE: Honey, I know it's hard, but you know what you have to do, right?
PEGGY: Yes! I'm going to BREAK THAT MARRIAGE UP. :D
AL AND MARIE: Uhhhhh young lady that is NOT what we meant --

Sorry, Al and Marie; we cracked up. HERE IS A WOMAN WHO KNOWS WHAT SHE WANTS.

Meanwhile, Homer keeps trying to self-sacrificingly push away his fiancee, and he is having none of it, and Fred's wife is not demonized either; the trouble with that marriage is just, as someone in the film says, that they don't like each other.

sovay has written up a much more comprehensive review here which you ought to read. Anyway, it's a very good movie! Extremely worth watching.

Gaslight

I knew a great deal about Gaslight from lo these many film courses in college, but I'd never actually seen it.

Man, that is a rough film to watch! For those who are not familiar, Gaslight -- the origin of the term gaslighting -- is about how sweet orphan Ingrid Bergman marries an apparently sweet fellow who slowly, steadily takes complete control of her life and then steadily starts to convince her that she is insane. "Why are you always losing things, Paula? You're so absent-minded, it concerns me!" "Why did you do this thing that you don't remember doing ~~because you didn't do it~~? Are you just doing it to SPITE me? I don't understand these irrational acts!" As the film went on

setsthingsright and I were just making increasingly vehement 'STAB HIM!!!!' gesticulations towards the screen, while

wickedtrue muttered 'Save her, random American! SAVE HER!' (There is a random American ... detective at Scotland Yard ...? and he is helpful. Well done, random American.)

Ingrid Bergman does not stab her husband, but her final scene is SO SATISFYING it makes everything worth it anyway. She's just so DONE. If you do not feel up to watching the whole movie for the triggering contet I recommend just googling 'Gaslight final scene' on YouTube; it is three minutes well spent.

As a sidenote, baby Angela Lansbury also co-stars in her very first role as a judgy maid (Ingrid Bergman: 'it doesn't HELP my situation that I just feel like my maid is JUDGING ME ALL THE TIME.') Look at her judgy baby face!

His Girl Friday

I have actually seen His Girl Friday before! But I dragged

setsthingsright with me to see it again.

In His Girl Friday, Rosalind Russell, ACE REPORTER!!!, is trying her damnedest to get out of the newspaper business and marry her sweet but bland new fiancee. Cary Grant, her smooth snake of an ex-husband and ex-boss, is trying his damnedest to drag her back in. Politics are terrible. Everything is terrible. But Rosalind Russell just can't help feeling compelled to report about it, god damn it!

The thing about His Girl Friday is that everybody in it is just flat-out a terrible person, including and perhaps especially including our two leads, but like ... at least they all know they're terrible .... and they're VERY WITTY about it so you can't help but enjoying yourself anyways, at least until someone jumps out of a window because the news/political/corruption cycle is SO GODAWFUL and you're like '.....welp.' (Not to mention the full-body cringe that both

setsthingsright and I did when they were expositing about the plot thread we had both forgotten about that was 'it's terrible how this white guy is condemned to death row for accidentally shooting a black police officer!' Like, I also do not approve of the death penalty, BUT UM. Fortunately(?) that thread is soon completely absorbed by the overwhelming sleazy opportunism of everything else.)

So I feel kind of bad about loving this movie. But I love this movie all the same. IT'S JUST SO CLEVER.

The Birds

Again, I've seen The Birds before -- it's not my favorite Hitchcock by a long shot, but it was playing for free in the park, so, you know. The thing I forget about The Birds is how much it tries to play for the first forty minutes like it's a rom-com. But, like, a VERY STRANGE rom-com.

TIPPI HEDREN: I got in a weird flirty fight with this dude in a bird shop while pretending to be an employee for no good reason! CLEARLY, my only choice is to buy his sister some pet birds and leave them at his address, which I have found out by doing the 1940s version of Google-stalking.
THE DUDE'S NEIGHBOR: Sorry, lady, you can't leave the birds at his address, he's away for the weekend!
TIPPI HEDREN: ... CLEARLY, my only choice is to go to his tiny town, motorboat across the lake in a fur coat and high heels, BREAK INTO HIS HOUSE, and leave the birds there with a personal note for his sister! Whom I have never met! THIS ISN'T WEIRD.
THE DUDE: Aww, you stalked me home? Well, aren't you charming!
THE ATTACKING BIRDS, DIVE-BOMBING PEOPLE LEFT, RIGHT AND SUNDRY: ...OK, but does anyone else think that these people are kind of weird? Maybe it's just us, but we think they're kind of weird.

I also forgot that the end of the film is their attempt at escaping from the attacking birds situation in a tiny convertible. Guys! MAYBE TAKE A TRUCK.

(The other thing is that several of the angry bird sound effects sound a lot like

attractivegeekery's cat in a Mood. If Grace ever rises up against us, WE ARE READY. ... we're probably not ready.)

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/421108.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

misbegotten

I love Gaslight a lot. It's so creepy and works really well.

I have, not however, seen The Birds. I don't think I'll be remedying that situation, based on your hilarious review.

From:

skygiants

It's so good! I'm really glad to have finally seen it.

I mean, The Birds is ... an interestingly weird film, I guess ...? I've never actually known what it's trying to say, there's about three equally surreal plot threads going on that eventually all dissolve into BIRDS!!!!!!!

From:

the_rck

I remember seeing parts of The Birds, as a child, while I was home, sick, with a fever. I kept falling asleep, and at one point, I woke up and Salome was on instead, so now my subconscious insists that the bits of The Birds I saw and the bits of Salome I saw are the same movie. Because I was small and feverish and quite unable to think.

Although I have to wonder what on earth my mother was thinking to leave me alone with the TV when that sort of thing was on. Usually, she had us watch Sesame Street and a lot of game shows when we were sick.

From:

skygiants

That does sound quite confusing! But possibly not more confusing than The Birds actually is? (I've never actually seen Salome but I bet it makes more sense than The Birds.)

My parents never left me alone with Hitchcock on, but they did keep accidentally giving me wildly inappropriate books as a child so it probably balances out!

From:

alias_sqbr

That is a satisfying scene, thank you!

From:

skygiants

"Oh, gosh, did you need a knife to escape? Oh, wow, I must have lost it, TOO BAD I'M ALWAYS LOSING THINGS, HUH?" So great!

From:

lycomingst

I enjoyed reading that very much. I'd rewatch all those movies except The Birds.

From:

skygiants

Me too! I mean, in the right company I would probably also rewatch The Birds, it wasn't painful or anything, I just would also need to be able to make fun of it. >.>

From:

ghost_lingering

I have actually watched all of these films! Though I have only the foggiest memories...

If you're curious to watch the version of Gaslight that is before the Ingrid Bergman version, you should be able to download it on archive.org. I don't think it's as good though; at the very least I don't remember it as well, which probably amounts to the same thing, especially since I watched them relatively close together?

Also: the first time I watched the film His Girl Friday it was after I'd seen the play version at the Guthrie that had an African American cast (Angela Bassett as Hildy!) and I remember being so shocked that suddenly everyone was white in the film. But in the intervening years I've forgotten specifics, so now I'm both curious and in the dark about how the play handled the racial politics of the police officer shooting. I do remember Angela Bassett being fantastic though. She's going to be my version of Hildy forever.

From:

skygiants

I did not even know there was a version of Gaslight before the Ingrid Bergman! I saw that there was one up on archive.org, and figured that the Ingrid Bergman version must just have a copyright loophole that put it in the public domain that I had forgotten about. :O I will have to investigate! (That's good news for

thuvia_ptarth's potential vid, though, right? Twice as much footage!)

-- wow, I also had no idea there was a play version of His Girl Friday that starred Angela Bassett as Hildy and now I am INCREDIBLY SAD that I never got to see this thing I never heard about before. That sounds amazing! I mean, the entire police officer shooting plot would make a hell of a lot more sense (and make everyone more sympathetic) if it was race-swapped, although I guess making everyone sympathetic is kind of not the point. BUT STILL.

From:

aquamirage

That ending Gaslight scene was indeed SUPER SATISFYING. Also, Best Years Of Our Lives sounds great.

From:

skygiants

Oh gosh, IT'S SO GOOD. I might actually ask for Gaslight fic for Yuletide this year, I would really love a story about her learning to trust herself again after the end of the movie.

Best Years Of Our Lives is astonishingly good! Like, I was prepped for it to be good, but not as good as it was.

From:

vintagewitch

Ok, definitely finding a copy of Gaslight soon. That sounds really interesting.

I also always forget about the beginning of "The Birds!" Maybe I should rewatch that ... Apparently, "The Birds" is based on a Daphne Du Maurier short story, and there's also a stage play. I've seen a production of the play - it is a much better dramatization, in my opinion. It's more about the "after the apocalypse" bit, people adjusting to the birds.

Aaaaand ... I do admit, I love His Girl Friday. But it's so clever, and I really like comedy where the characters are all horrible people (It's Always Sunny, anyone?), so I guess it's right up my alley?

From:

skygiants

Gaslight is incredibly interesting! (Apparently there are actually two Gaslights, as I learned upthread, but the Ingrid Bergman is the really famous one.)

Yeah, I've been meaning to read the Du Maurier story for years. I've been meaning to read more Du Maurier in general, really, I've only read Rebecca and the one where the US conquers the UK and everyone's really mad about it? (I mean, as they would be.)

I don't usually like comedy where everyone is terrible, eeeexcept in the forties where all the dialogue is really fast and everyone is so good and smart at being terrible it basically turns into competence porn. I think that's the thing with His Girl Friday really, like, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are AWFUL but they're just so GOOD at it.

From:

vintagewitch

"Competence Porn" = :3

TOTALLY get that. That is a great way of describing my attraction to Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday.

From:

metaphortunate

I love His Girl Friday so much! I mean, I hate that it is one of the many fine movies in the fine genre of Women Don't Know What's Good For Them, Let Me Explain What You Need (It Includes My Penis.) But other than that. Love.

From:

skygiants

Right?? Like, it would be a much better movie if Hildy got to get him his comeuppance at the end instead of the other way around, AND YET. She's just so good at what she does.

From:

applegnat

Oh my god, I missed the racist plot line in His Girl Friday when I last watched it. It is my favourite Hollywood movie of all time and now I can never watch it again.