A Star Is Born revisited, Jennifer Lawrence and how to start an argument - Reviews #148

Hello, and welcome to a special Oscars-themed update, as the Oscars happened yesterday and it would be negligent of me not to piggy-back pointlessly on that kind of publicity. To celebrate, I've reviewed a film starring Jennifer Lawrence, who won Best Actress last night, and another starring the first winner of that award and featuring an Oscars ceremony of its own. That this was all just a coincidence shouldn't stop you reading on. JOIN ME.



A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937) - The initial incarnation of this Tinseltown tragedy is right up there with Judy's, and holds up superbly on second viewing, revealing - most rewardingly - additional layers to the stunning central characterisations. We first meet Norman Maine (Fredric March) as he's toppling off his mantle - and his chair - and it's largely downhill from there, via a sanitarium, a night court and three of the saddest and most uncomfortable scenes I've ever had the good fortune to dread coming round again. Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) is introduced as a feisty fighter of a farm girl - not unlike Gaynor's character in Lucky Star - if one with a sensitive soul, but once she gets to Hollywood, with stars in her eyes, we see her as the naive, innocent dreamer she really is. What the film does next is magnificent, but so seamlessly, subtly done, that it's only when the credits roll that you appreciate the shifting, sliding, dynamic: Esther growing in confidence, authority and compassion - growing up, if you will - and Norman sinking, faster than you keep up, his chilling forecast that he has lived too much to have anything left being proved tragically true.

Evelyn Waugh said of Brideshead Revisited that he wanted to write a book about people brought low by nothing more than love and drink. Add a bit of masculine pride into the mix and you have A Star Is Born. The film is perhaps a test of empathy (as I feel something like The Kid with a Bike may be), as its success - or otherwise - is based on how much compassion you feel for a good-looking millionaire whose greatest problem, at least that he will acknowledge, is that his star is slipping. Really, though, he's a man being consumed - from the inside - by demons and disease, slipping into dissolution even as he appears to have it all, as would his contemporary John Barrymore, and their spiritual successor, Errol Flynn. March makes Maine - and his problems - seem utterly, desperately real, in a gutting characterisation that may well be the best thing he ever did. It's only in the final third that the human cost really becomes apparent, though, and up until then it's a lighter proposition, a revealing snapshot - in early Technicolor - of Hollywood in the '30s, and just as fun as that sounds (I'm aware that some people may not think that sounds very fun). I still think Adolphe Menjou's benevolent producer is too good to be true, and Edgar Kennedy's comic sequences seem incongruous, but Lionel Stander brings just the right mix of amusing irascibility and sadistic insensitivity as a kind of hybrid press agent/fixer, perhaps patterned after MGM's Howard Strickling and Eddie Mannix, and Andy Devine is just lovely as Gaynor's first friend in Hollywood. It's a superlative film, wonderfully conceived and scripted - with some of the best barbs coming unmistakably from Dorothy Parker's poisonous pen - and with an emotional clout like little else in '30s cinema. (4)

***



Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Herbert Brenon, 1928) - A gifted clown (Lon Chaney) finds a little girl in the rushes, makes her laugh with his cockerel-based shadow puppetry and takes her under his wing (pun intended), naming her Simonella. When she grows to adulthood, and reveals a bit of shoulder, he realises he loves her in a different way - but then so does the count and reformed cad with whom he shares a psychiatrist. This intensely moving melodrama sticks to the familiar Chaney formula, strikes a few questionable notes (having the count's deep unhappiness manifest itself in bursts of manic laughter seems an unnecessarily gothic touch), could do with a scene showing the children's connection to the comic that would give its final line even greater resonance, and fails to explain its characters' motivations at some key junctures. But who cares? Chaney is sensational, the 15-year-old Atilla the Nun, Loretta Young, is at her ethereal best as Simonella, and the film is stuffed to bursting with unforgettable images of love, longing and desolate desperation, many focusing on Chaney's matchlessly expressive face - painted or otherwise - and all showcasing legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe's unique eye for contrast and composition.

Some viewers may feel queasy about Chaney's sad clown trying to "do a Woody Allen" and cop off with his adopted daughter (legal disclaimer: in Woody's case, it was his long-term partner's adopted, of-age daughter), but these were different times, Young isn't playing a 15-year-old. and the film is so persuasively acted that you can't help but feel for the sad-eyed Chaney, and wish for him some modicum of happiness. It's a gutting, wonderful film and an important one too: in telling the story of a gifted mime who wins every heart except the one he wants, it must surely have influenced the ultimately incomparable Les enfants du paradis. It was Chaney's favourite of his pictures, and with good reason. The TCM release features a wonderful addition in H. Scott Salinan's beautiful new score, which recalls Howard Shore's classic work on The Lord of the Rings. (4)

See also: The other two films in TCM's Lon Chaney Collection are reviewed here.

***



Hard to Handle (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933) - An anarchic Cagney comedy, with Jimmy cast (once again) as an inveterate go-getter for whom the Depression is little more than a mild inconvenience. Having lost the takings from an epic dance marathon to an unscrupulous partner, his versatile promoter spents the rest of this fast-paced, sex-fuelled jolt of Pre-Code hilarity putting his quick wits and absent morals to good use by hoodwinking the ordinary folks of America into taking part in a phony treasure hunt, smearing meritricious gloop over their wobbly bodies or buying up acres of grapefruit groves (a nod to that notorious scene in The Public Enemy). Like Groundhog Day's Phil Connors, he subscribes to the somewhat damning notion that people are morons.

There's little of Warner Bros' famed social conscience at work here, but it's delightfully unpredictable and extremely funny with it - its laughs, unusually for the studio, coming more from the performances and the situations than the repartee - while providing a fascinating glimpse of how my favourite comedy of all-time might have panned out, reuniting sassy Mary Brian and sardonic Ruth Donnelly from the previous year's Blessed Event, originally set to star Cagney. His chemistry with Bryan is both appealing and electric, Donnelly proves a perfect(ly unscrupulous) foil and sometime ally. and Cagney is, of course, magnificent: a whirlwind of energy, playing every comic scenario to the absolute hilt. (3.5)

***



The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012) - It's Winter's Bone meets Battle Royale meets The X-Factor in this tense futuristic thriller, as Jennifer Lawrence takes the place of her terrified little sister in a televised fight-to-the-death against 23 other kids and teens. The only other contestant from her district is dishy, slightly wood-prone Josh Hutcherson, whose character has so many contrasting facets that I stopped thinking he might be realistically complex and decided he wasn't particularly well-drawn. The plotting, which inserts breathless action sequences at regimented intervals, seems a bit too clinical, the lead-in goes on too long (check out The Wages of Fear for how to properly execute an hour-long prologue to your suspenser), and the gaudy world fashioned around the game is tacky and heavy-handed. But the film has a wild card like few others, allowing you to spend two hours in the exultant company of Jennifer Lawrence. The whole thing hinges on her performance, and she's simply mesmerising. I've seen her in four movies so far (including Winter's Bone - the best of the decade so far - and Silver Linings Playbook, my favourite film released last year), and she hasn't struck a false note in any of them. Here, the story takes the toughest decisions away from her character, Catnip Evergreen, but she's wondrous nonetheless, creating an affecting, kind-hearted, ass-kicking protagonist with an innate emotional intensity who keeps the film grounded and real, even when being interviewed by a man with a blue ponytail in front of the crowd from Take Me Out.

It isn't exactly original - it riffs on the superior Battle Royale, there are shards of Logan's Run in there, and it occupies a similar world to the hugely silly Equilibrium - but it is very entertaining, and has one particularly fine, powerful scene, rather dubiously utilising Holocaust imagery, in which Lawrence volunteers for those there Hunger Games. It's also a well-directed film, in a showy sort of way, employing warped images and aggressive jump cuts while Lawrence is tripping on wasp bites, and fantastic use of sound throughout. It's clearly aimed at a teenage audience rather than an adult one, and perhaps a film like this should do more with its subtext of anti-establishment rebellion and social degradation, but when it tries to it feels forced and shallow, and Ross doesn't really know how to handle crowd scenes (he seems to be taking pointers from tea-time dramas on ITV), so it may be for the best. For all its imperfections, I enjoyed it a great deal, and Lawrence's performance confirms her status as one of the three most exciting actresses around, along with Carey Mulligan and the mighty Michelle Williams (Emily Watson doubtless remains the finest, but can't seem to land too many strong roles nowadays). This has really whetted my appetite for a sequel. Though apparently the "book" is better, whatever "books" are. (3)

***



Undefeated (Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin, 2011) is like Hoop Dreams remade by Disney. It's an Oscar-winning doc about a volunteer high school football coach (Martin Clunes) who whips his troubled African-American charges into a formidable team, as they cope with injury, anger issues and everything else that comes with growing up in black, inner city ghettos (see The Interrupters and The House I Live In for yet more chilling detail). Compared with the benchmark for all documentaries of its type, Steve James' unforgettable Hoop Dreams, it's too much a surface look at the issues it raises - and a calculating, sometimes staged one at that - to be a real contender, but it is slickly done, emotionally stirring when not opting for easy sentiment (Chavis's speech is a wonderful moment), and in entertainment value alone deserves its place in the play-offs. Also, "Why you gotta sit by me for bro? You gay" is my favourite ever way to start an argument. I've spotted a goof, though, they're not undefeated - they lost their first match. What's that you say? A metaphor? (3)

Thanks for reading.

A Star Is Born, John Barrymore and zingers - Reviews #122

In this latest reviews round-up: Canadian dogs, Argentinean dogs, tiresomely dotty grandmothers and Jennifer Aniston's answer to Pulp Fiction.



*MINOR SPOILERS*
A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937) - The original version of this Hollywood heartbreaker, a romance between two stars heading in opposite directions, is often overshadowed by its 1954 remake, which brought an epic sweep and much musical magnificence to the story – but this earlier film is a masterpiece in its own right, with an immediacy and an insider feel that's absent from the later film. Janet Gaynor is Esther Blodgett, an ambitious farm girl who arrives in Hollywood with stars in her eyes and, after getting her big break from alcoholic matinee idol Fredric March, proceeds to hit the heights, as he hits the skids. Shot in three-strip Technicolor and offering a vivid, sometimes cynical and always exhilarating portrait of Hollywood in the ‘30s, the film is tighter, less flowery and more naturalistic than Cukor’s version, typified by March’s performance: devastatingly effective but straightforward and understated in comparison with Mason’s dynamic, grandstanding exercise in self-loathing. Gaynor, who made her name in dramas – winning the first Best Actress Oscar in 1928 – spent most of the ‘30s making musical comedies, but got a last crack at a meaty emotive part here, and was never better.

The script is one of the best of the decade, stuffed with truly timeless dialogue – the closing line just has me in floods – along with a few killer barbs that you imagine flew from the poisonous pen of Dorothy Parker (“His acting’s getting in the way of his drinking”). And really – if you buy into its ideas about sacrifice and art, and I’m largely able to – the film comes close to perfection, with the minor caveats that a couple of incongruous bits of broad physical comedy drop into the story near the close of the first half courtesy of Edgar Kennedy, and Adolphe Menjou’s endlessly benevolent producer is a touch hard to swallow (the film’s dirty work is done instead by a nasty press agent, played by the legendary frog-voiced leftie Lionel Stander). For silent film nerds, there’s the chance to see Gaynor re-teamed with the villain from her 1929 film Lucky Star: that’s Guinn “Big Boy” Williams (cool nickname) teaching her how to walk with a book on her head; an important skill for any young woman. This may lack the legendary status of Judy’s effort, and the big hair of that Streisand monstrosity (Barbra, that's her name), but this first version – well, second, if you include What Price Hollywood? – still takes some beating. (4)

***



Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks, 1934) - Stage and screen legend John Barrymore was a great many things - not least a lush - but above all he was a ham. Who better, then, to portray Oscar Jaffe, the egomaniacal theatrical impresario who manipulates the lives of all around him as he tries to get back on top, and reclaim the affections of the monster he created: actress Lily Garland (Carole Lombard), the diva to end all divas and the only person who can rival him for histrionics. The film was adapted from a New York hit by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, two writers with an unmatched ability for evoking the world of American theatre at its height ("I'll slit my throat," threatens Jaffe; "If you did, greasepoint would run out," retorts Garland). It crams the standard Broadway-on-film narrative of a shopgirl attaining fame on the boards - and winning the heart of her producer - into a conventional but devastatingly deft opening 20 that makes chalk lines seem like the funniest thing you've ever seen. And for their next trick, the writers show you what happens after the happy ending. Because, fast forward three years, and Jaffe is consumed by jealousy, Garland has transmogrified from a sweet, muddled ingenue into a rampaging ball of fur-lined fury with a frankly ridiculous boat-bed, and their romance lies in ruins. As does the face of the private detective he sent to spy on her. The next 65 minutes, all set aboard the Twentieth Century train between Chicago and New York, is a screwball comedy par excellence, as Jaffe - now a nobody, following three years of flops - endlessly plots, schemes and connives in a bid to reclaim his theatrical mantle, while drunk press agent Roscoe Karns cracks wise, Walter Connelly gets repeatedly bawled out, and periodically repentant asylum escapee Etienne Girardot passes out phony cheques, while putting biblically-themed stickers on anything that moves - and many things that don't.

Barrymore is sensational in the part he was born to play: every line steeped in hyperbole and every gesture playing to the gallery. The ways he says: "What was that? That... squeak" always has me in hysterics, and his Hechtian joke about Jews changing their names ("... who is now Max Jacobs, for some mysterious reason") is an absolute beaut. Meanwhile, legendary comedienne Lombard is in peerlessly noisy form - and contributes an inspired sight gag that essentially consists of her trying to kick Barrymore repeatedly with both feet - while Karns peddles a near-endless stream of sardonic retorts. Girardot's preposterous performance only amounts to a handful of screen minutes, but it's truly memorable - one of my favourite bit-parts in '30s film. Happily, while the film deals with a couple of tough topics for comedy - mental illness and suicide - it's reasonably progressive on both counts: the train guards are sympathetic to Girardot's "condition" (fat lot of good it does them and their uniforms), while Barrymore's threats to off himself are the rantings of an inveigling cad, doing nothing to belittle the issue. Hecht and MacArthur wrote many of the cleverest, wittiest and most lyrical scripts of the period, from established classics like The Front Page to neglected masterpieces such as Angels Over Broadway, and Twentieth Century is stuffed to bursting with comedy, greasepaint-smeared patter and even romance, while handled in the characteristically zippy style of Howard Hawks, among the greatest of all classic American directors. Hawks was adaptable, but specialised in two types of pictures: rugged action-adventures and daffy comedies. This one, saturated with the spirit of Broadway, and with an unforgettable performance at its centre, is among his very best. (4)

***



Bombon: El Perro (Carlos Sorin, 2004) – A travelling salesman (Juan Villegas), let go by a petrol station and now flogging hand-crafted knife handles – finds that his luck starts to look up after he inherits a very special dog. It's a Dogo: exhibition-quality. This kind-natured Argentinean film, anchored by Villegas’s wonderful turn as the sad-eyed but optimistic hero, tells a simple feelgood story – with some unfamiliar trappings – made all the more affecting because it’s set against a realistic backdrop of economic depression and social desolation, as if Capra had made the Bicycle Thieves. But not quite as good. (3.5)

***


I've opted here to share a photo of the villains with you. Because they look ridiculous.

Dragons Forever (Sammo Hung, 1988) – The Three Dragons play against type in this action-comedy, with womanising lawyer Jackie Chan, philosophising thief Yuen Biao and greedy arms dealer Sammo Hung teaming up to bust a drugs factory – and save a fish farm. Yes, the plot is a touch hard to follow in the first third and there’s an unpleasant bit where a judge says gay people are “abnormal”, but this is still one of their best: a slick mix of lengthy fight scenes, above-par comedy and unexpectedly affecting romance, including a really nice sequence where Sammo woos a woman using a megaphone. If that isn’t enough to convince you: our heroes also face off against Benny Urqiduez, who is wearing lots of blue eyeliner for absolutely no reason. (3)

***



Never Say Goodbye (James V. Kern, 1946) – Errol Flynn and Eleanor Parker are charming as a divorced couple who would love to rekindle their romance – and find a permanent home for seven-year-old daughter Patti Brady – if it weren’t for his caddishness and carousing. For the most part this is fairly standard fare, and fairly derivative at that, but every so often the quality of the Kern/I. A. L. Diamond writing team shines through with some brilliant comic epithet flying right out of the blue, like Parker’s line about Flynn’s singing, or that cracker about wondering where he is at night. The leads’ first scene together has just one great line after another, though the subsequent date swaps badinage for farce, calling to mind an inferior My Favourite Wife, and not for the last time: Fenwick the Marine bears more than a passing resemblance to Randolph Scott’s he-man from that earlier film. The movie’s main comic set-piece, utilising no fewer than three Santas, isn’t subtle – and borrows liberally from Duck Soup’s legendary mirror routine – but it's certainly memorable, and has wit to go with its thievery and slapstick. The film is a little pedestrian and predictable in spots, but if you like classic comedies it’s well worth seeing, with a few neat in-jokes for buffs – trading on Flynn’s image as a matinee idol and ex-Robin Hood, and exhibiting his best Bogart impression – along with some nice romantic bits and a fair few fine lines. (3)

***



The Kidnappers (Philip Leacock, 1953) - Well, this is an odd film: a British movie set in a Scottish community in Nova Scotia that nominally tells the story of two young brothers who want a dog but instead find a "babby" and decide to keep it – only that doesn't happen until the second half of the film, and even then isn't really the focus. Instead, there's lots of simplistic nonsense about their strict, protestant grandfather and his a) fury at the "Boer" who wants to get off with his daughter; and b) obsession with a big hill owned by another Dutchman. The kids got special Oscars: the elder, Jon Whiteley, is good, while Vincent Winter - as Davy - is so cute that I'm unable to offer any objective or scholarly guarantees about his quality, though I think he is too. Their scenes have a real lyricism to them – especially once the babby enters the story – but exist within a narrative that frequently tips over into self-parody, not helped by Duncan Macrae's silly performance and a Muir Mathieson score that falls just the wrong side of "Ow, my ears". It's worth seeing for some nice passages about childhood and the shedding of innocence, but ultimately overbalanced by a clumsy subplot that turns out to be the actual plot. (2.5)

***



Bagdad Cafe (Percy Adlon, 1987) – None-more-indie film about a “big German woman” (Marianne Sägebrecht) who, after a violent row with her husband, walks out of the desert and into the lives of a black American family running a dusty café and motel. It’s a poor man’s Paris, Texas, really, with barely any story (and what there is moving far too fast), all to the strains of a plaintive theme song that’s done to death. It’s interestingly directed, though, with adventurous camera angles and filtered vistas loading emotion and atmosphere onto a slender script. Sägebrecht is quite good, though Monica Calhoun is am-dram standard, G Smokey Campbell has nothing to do except look through binoculars and say "Oh, Brenda" like some sort of lazy, alienated Frank Spencer, and CCH Pounder seems to have wandered in from a Tennessee Williams play. Jack Palance always did turn up in the strangest places – here he is an ex-Hollywood set painter who falls for Sägebrecht. There was a spin-off TV series starring Whoopi Goldberg, which made me laugh. The concept, not the programme. (2.5)

***



He’s Just Not That into You (Ken Kwapis, 2009) – An apparently hideous book becomes a fairly successful ensemble romantic comedy drama, with a half-dozen characters walking into and out of each other’s lives. You know, like in Pulp Fiction. Or Friends. The best story strand by far Ginnifer (who? Surely you’re joking) Goodwin getting relationship advice from bar manager Justin Long (in an atypically harsh characterisation), though none of the threads or characters are uninteresting, even if we're hardly dealing with Woody Allen at his zenith. Terrible title, risible real-life chapter introductions, but actually not half bad. Or indeed all bad, as you might have feared. (2.5)

***



The Proposal (Anne Fletcher, 2009) – This Sandra Bullock romcom is formulaic stuff, right down to the tiresomely dotty grandmother, but Bullock and leading man Ryan Reynolds are both very good and have an effortless chemistry together, while there’s an enjoyable supporting performance from Denis O’Hare. There aren’t many laughs, but the scene in which Bullock announces their impending nuptials is very funny, and the post-credits sequence works well. (2.5)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
The Little Giant (Roy Del Ruth, 1933) – After the repeal of Prohibition, bootlegger Bugsy Ahearne (Edward G. Robinson) crashes high society, only to be hoodwinked by a bunch of amateurs. This Pre-Code comedy is enjoyable but something of a missed opportunity, surprisingly light on jokes for the most part beyond its amusing premise – at least until the big guy calls the boys in – though buoyed by Robinson’s typically charismatic star turn and with a simply lovely performance by Mary Astor as the society woman who really loves him. While a touch broad, the final scene has a madcap spirit rather missing from the rest. (2.5)

***



*SPOILERS*
Taxi! (Roy Del Ruth, 1932) – Cagney cries, tap dances and speaks Yiddish in this messy melodrama about warring taxi drivers, which has far more to offer in incidental pleasures than from its tedious, unconvincing narrative. The highlight is a lovely little vignette set at a cinema, with the stars talking about their favourite actors, and watching a fake, specially-filmed Donald Cook romance. But the film – which starts poorly, picks up considerably, and then falls away again – ultimately leaves a sour taste, due to Cagney’s constant threats to punch his wife (Loretta Young) in the face. (2.5)

***



TV: Terriers (2010) – Private detectives Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James trade zingers and fight their personal demons whilst investigating corruption, murder and high-level scumbaggery amidst the vivid locales of San Diego. The series starts with a bang, toddles off for a few fun, self-contained episodes, then brings everything back together for a final four that are nothing short of phenomenal. The second of those, Sins of the Past, which takes place in two time-frames and strays into perilously dark territory, feels like the best James Ellroy story he never wrote, and packs a devastating emotional punch. I’d heard this was the only series that came close to possessing the singular feel of Veronica Mars – and so it did. Witty, subtly sentimental and possessing a distinct fondness for the twisty-turny, it boasts gripping storylines, fine performances across the board, and terrific chemistry between the leads. It’s nothing short of a national disgrace that it was cancelled after this single, scintillating season. (4)