Review: Holy Frit (2023)

Posted on October 27, 2023 by sheila

I was a little surprised at how moved I was by Holy Frit, a documentary about stained glass makers, one studio in particular, and a commission they get to build the largest stained glass window in the world. I got so into it – it’s a cliffhanger (will they meet their deadline?), it’s emotional (everyone working so hard and collaborating together), and it’s also awe-inspiring – all these artisans and construction workers and glass painters – these people who have devoted themselves to an artform 1,000 years old. I highly recommend it! I reviewed for Ebert.

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“I’m going to break that marriage up!” Teresa Wright in The Best Years of Our Lives

Posted on October 27, 2023 by sheila

Today is the wonderful Teresa Wright’s birthday.

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The Best Years of Our Lives was the magnificent William Wyler film that swept the Oscars for 1946. It won 7! Best Picture. Best Actor (Fredric March). Best Director. Best Screenplay (Robert Sherwood). Best Editing (Daniel Mandell). Best Music (Hugo Friedhofer). Honorary Oscar to actor real-life WWII vet and amputee (he lost both of his hands when some TNT exploded while he was holding it), and eventually the guy who helped form AMVETS, Harold Russell (“For bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives.”)

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Teresa Wright plays Peggy, daughter of Fredric March and Myrna Loy. March has been away at war. The scene where he returns home, quietly entering the home unannounced, is one of the most moving scenes in all of cinema.

Peggy is a sweet ingenue, played with sincerity and intelligence by Wright. She falls in love with returning vet Fred Derry (played by Andrews). There’s one hitch. Derry is already married. He returns from the war to find his marriage on the rocks. He tries to rebuild it, without much success. He is lost. Haunted by the war. No one to turn to. Abandoned. Peggy looks on, devastated, realizing that how trapped the man is.

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One night, Peggy and her parents have a long discussion about the situation. She confesses to them she is in love with Fred, a married man. She tells them of her sadness. They are very concerned, but they don’t judge. They are worried for her. They listen.

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During the course of that discussion, the three have the following exchange:

Peggy: I’ve made up my mind.
Al: Good girl.
Milly: To do what?
Peggy: I’m going to break that marriage up!

This exchange between a mother, father, and their daughter, has always struck me as so radical that I can’t even believe it happened. AND that it’s said by Peggy, the ingenue of the film. AND that she’s saying it to her PARENTS.

All of that together is amazing enough, but what is most amazing is that somehow she does not come across as manipulating-homewrecker – and this is entirely due to Wright’s performance. She’s going to do something GREAT, and she is going to RESCUE a man who is trapped with the wrong woman. She and he NEED to be together, and now she has a PLAN to save him. In the context of the film, she does not seem delusional or cruel. She seems loving and damn near patriotic. He must be saved. And she will do it.

It’s a crazy hat-trick of tone/mood/casting.

Today is Teresa Wright’s birthday, and I’ve always loved her work, but it’s that determined lit-up “I’m going to break that marriage up!!”, said to her PARENTS, that I think of when she comes into my head.

One of my favorite line-readings ever.

Radical.
 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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On This Day: October 25, 1415: “We Few, We Happy Few.”

Posted on October 25, 2023 by sheila

Happy Anniversary of The Battle of Agincourt

Today is the feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, cobblers by trade (and patron saints thereof, although Vatican II nixed them from the calendar), fierce warriors of their faith, martyred in 286.

The Battle of Agincourt in 1415, an improbable victory over the French, happened on the Feast Day, and today is the 604th anniversary. Coincidentally (?) there are many other important and now-mythic battles that happened to occur on that particular day.

The day has great meaning and resonance in English history. Other battles on October 25th:: Battle of Balaklava (i.e. the Charge of the Light Brigade – memorialized by Alfred Lord Tennyson), and the WWII battle of Leyte Gulf.

The Battle of Agincourt was commemorated, unforgettably, by Shakespeare, in Henry V, “Crispinian” here becomes “Crispian”, to honor the demands of iambic pentameter.

Henry V, Act IV, scene iii

If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the Feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a-tiptoe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day and live t’old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian”:
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

— Henry V (Act IV, scene iii)

I think it’s pretty funny that this rousing magnificent speech is made in service to what is essentially an egotistic land-grab. It’s not like they’re defending their shores from a dangerous foe, or fighting for their freedom. No. It’s petty, it’s petulant, it’s in service of nothing ideologically fine or elevated. And yet …

Six film versions of the speech below:

1. Henry V, Kenneth Branagh, 1989
2. Henry V, Laurence Olivier, 1944
3. Renaissance Man, Lillo Brancato, 1994
4. Mark Rylance at The Globe, 2013
5. A ridiculous version by Billy Zane in Tombstone, 1993
6. A 5-year-old’s version

The music in the Kenneth Branagh version is a huge part of the scene. The speech itself is so rousing, as is delivery, but it all works together with the music. Watch how he builds it. It’s symphonic.

The Olivier version: I remember my acting teacher in college talking about how Olivier did this speech, especially his last vocal choice, when he says the word ‘day’ and catapults his voice up and up and up the scale. The choice is inherently artificial, but it works. In the play, the King is also an “actor”, performing for his men, and he needs to make a speech to inspire them. Nobody could pull off a vocal stunt like that except Olivier. And when I say “nobody”, I actually mean nobody.

Then we have the speech done in a Bronx accent in the 1994 film Renaissance Man. The monologue speaks to something universal – it doesn’t only work in the context of a petty land grab in the Middle Ages – it’s about togetherness and belief and loyalty. It also expresses the perhaps doomed hope that even if you do fail, what you do will be remembered by future generations. We are greater than ourselves.

Then there’s a live theatrical version by the great Mark Rylance and Billy Zane’s version (or part of it) from Tombstone, where he tries to perform the speech for a crowd of raucous gun-slinging outlaws.

And finally: a 5-year-old, dressed in chainmail, does the whole speech. Shakespeare wrote the play 4 centuries ago. And here’s a 5-year-old in the 21st century screaming out those words.

There are more. Tom Hiddleston’s takes a quiet intimate friendly approach but I couldn’t find the clip on YouTube.

The speech is eternal. Actors will continue to find their way through it.
 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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Review: Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls (2023)

Posted on October 19, 2023 by sheila

If we’re going to continue to have a cinema that is in any way meaningful and personally driven in this country, it’s going to have to happen on the level of Andrew Bowser’s project. You gotta give the flowers when flowers are due. I reviewed Andrew Bowser’s Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls for Ebert.

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R.I.P. Dariush Mehrjui

Posted on October 18, 2023 by sheila

In the sweepstakes for the title the Most Interesting and Accomplished Filmmaker the United States Has Never Heard Of, Dariush Mehrjui has certain obvious advantages. While still in his twenties, the Iranian director made ‘The Cow’ (1969), a film so powerful that it was not only credited with launching Iran’s modern cinema but also, a decade later, made a fan of the Ayatollah Khomeini and thus helped assure that country’s cinema would have a post-revolutionary phase. Cosmopolitan and ever-controversial, Mehrjui has had films banned by the Shah’s regime and the Islamic Republic, and almost surely is the only filmmaker reared a devout Muslim who counts the novelists J.D. Salinger and Saul Bellow as major influences on his work. He’s even made a film of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, called ‘Pari,’ set in contemporary Iran.
— Godfrey Cheshire, in his beautiful pained tribute to Iranian filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui

In a week of horrifying news, here’s one more. Legendary pioneering director Dariush Mehrjui and his wife, Vahideh Mohammadifar, were stabbed to death in their own home outside of Tehran on Oct. 14. Their daughter Mona found the bodies. So far, there are no suspects. Although, how hard is anyone looking? You know there’s a social media trail. Recently, Vahideh posted on her social media that the couple had been receiving death threats. My thoughts go out to all of their colleagues, family, friends, to Mona. This is tragic and infuriating.

Dariush Merhjui was born in 1939. His 1969 film The Cow put Iranian cinema on the world map (and it’s never had a fallow period ever since, even with a regime in power who does what it can to crush/silence its own artists). As Godfrey mentioned, the Ayotollah Khomeinei liked The Cow and so Mehrjui survived the Revolution, and was “allowed” to keep making films within the nation of Iran (many of his colleagues fled). The Cow was only his second film, I believe, and it struck a chord. For the first time, a film from Iran hit the international film festival circuit, announcing in no uncertain terms that Iran had arrived.

Here is Mehrjui speaking about The Cow, and what it represented in terms of a change in Iranian cinema, and how it opened up new possibilities:

When people talk about various “new waves” in international cinema – there’s a Romanian New Wave going on right now, for example – Iran’s new wave started in 1969 with The Cow.

Mehrjui’s 1975 film The Cycle demonstrates many of the themes interesting Mehrjui. His films incorporate class of course – all Iranian cinema does – and his point of view was bourgeois, middle-class: this, too, was a revelation. His characters move between modernity and tradition, often caught between the two. The great Asghar Farhadi is one of his many heirs.

I came to Mehrjui through his 1996 film Leila, starring Leila Hatami and Ali Mossafa, about a middle class couple struggling with infertility. They are happily married (I love the scene where they watch Lawrence of Arabia, the film reflected in the glass coffee table). They begin fertility treatments but the husband’s mother – like a witch from a fairy tale in the full black chador – puts the pressure on her son to take a second wife. The second wife will bear the children. He won’t divorce Leila, but Leila is now “useless” since her womb doesn’t work. The film is brutal and painful, particularly because Mossara and Hatami, two superb actors, give such a sense of the couple’s happiness and contentment, with or without a child. There are so many unforgettable scenes and moments (the movie in the coffee table, the second wife’s beaded skirt click-clicking as she walks up the stairs, the mother-in-law talking right to the camera – an immovable force).

Mehrjui did many adaptations of Western literature, including his film Sara, a daring adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, starring award-winning actress/director Niki Karimi.

Another film to seek out is The Pear Tree, Golshifteh Farahani’s debut, who has gone on to huge international success (after being banned from appearing in films in Iran). She was a child in The Pear Tree, and a haunting beautiful figure in this Proustian tale, where a young man visits relatives in the country, drawn into the different country rhythms.

Mehrjui was known for bringing Iranian cinema into the modern age. He was often compared to important national figures like Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, and Satyajit Ray, directors who brought their countries to the world, who allowed the world to glimpse reality (as seen through their eyes, of course) in ways that were often revelatory. You don’t get to “know” people from reading the headlines. Mehrjui incorporated realism, weaving it together with poetry of image and mood, and was also frank about the everyday lives of Iranian people. He was frank enough his work often ran into trouble with the censors. His example inspired generations of Iranian filmmakers.

This loss is shocking. The way it happened is even more shocking. I’m so furious it’s hard to even pay tribute but I had to mark the passing of one of cinema’s great filmmakers. He was born in 1939. He made it through the revolution, he survived multiple crackdowns, reprisals, repressions, only to be stabbed in his own home. The horror he and his wife must have gone through is unimaginable.

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“Quite frankly. I was all talent and no looks.” — Angela Lansbury

Posted on October 16, 2023 by sheila

It’s her birthday today. She died just days before she would have turned 97. My tribute here, but you really need to read my friend Dan’s tribute.

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R.I.P. Louise Glück

Posted on October 13, 2023 by sheila

It’s shockingly easy for life to become rote. It’s easy to allow awareness to drop beneath the surface – or, to be more accurate – it’s dismayingly easy to just exist on the surface of things. This happens mostly when I am stressed out. I don’t have TIME to go deep. And so … I look to art for permission to go deep, when I need it. I look to artists who can shock me into awareness: of the here, the now. Like my friend Allison always says: “Be here now.” Art, books, movies, painting, poetry, helps me step out of the raging river for a moment, and be here now. The BE-ing may not be a pleasant sensation, by the way. A lot of poetry hurts, and this type of hurt is also something only art can provide. Louise Glück’s poetry provided in this way.

Glück’s sister died before she was born, an event which haunted her. She was the 12th U.S. Poet Laureate. Glück won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and every other poetry prize, including the Nobel Prize.

Glück is personal in her work, but not really “confessional”, at least not in the sense many of her contemporaries were. Her poems have a chill psychological clarity which is often rather frightening. Distance is required for a voice like hers, but not JUST distance: if you just had the distance, you wouldn’t sense how personal it all is. She’s backed away, because she NEEDS the distance. Her language is not distant or formal. Her poems have lines like “Now let me tell you”, so you feel like she’s coming directly at you with some truth.

Earthly Love

Conventions of the time
held them together.
It was a period
(very long) in which
the heart once given freely
was required, as a formal gesture,
to forfeit liberty: a consecration
at once moving and hopelessly doomed.

As to ourselves:
fortunately we diverged
from these requirements,
as I reminded myself
when my life shattered.
So that what we had for so long
was, more or less,
voluntary, alive.
And only long afterward
did I begin to think otherwise.

We are all human-
we protect ourselves
as well as we can
even to the point of denying
clarity, the point
of self-deception. As in
the consecration to which I alluded.

And yet, within this deception,
true happiness occured.
So that I believe I would
repeat these errors exactly.
Nor does it seem to me
crucial to know
whether or not such happiness
is built on illusion:
it has its own reality.
And in either case, it will end.

In Lives of the Poets, Michael Schmidt said of Glück: “The austerely beautiful voice that has become her keynote speaks of a life lived in unflinching awareness.” William Logan, in The New York Times made a similar observation: Glück’s work is “the logical outcome of a certain strain of confessional verse—starved of adjectives, thinned to a nervous set of verbs, intense almost past bearing, her poems have been dark, damaged and difficult to avert your gaze from.” Wendy Lesser, in Washington Post Book World, wrote: “‘Direct’ is the operative word here: Glück’s language is staunchly straightforward, remarkably close to the diction of ordinary speech. Yet her careful selection for rhythm and repetition, and the specificity of even her idiomatically vague phrases, give her poems a weight that is far from colloquial.”

Her “Hawk’s Shadow” is a masterpiece.

Hawk’s Shadow

Embracing in the road
for some reason I no longer remember
and then drawing apart, seeing
a shape ahead–-how close was it?
We looked up to where the hawk
hovered with its kill; I watched them
veering toward West Hill, casting
their one shadow in the dirt, the all-inclusive
shape of the predator–
Then they disappeared. And I thought,
one shadow. Like the one we made,
you holding me.

Michael Schmidt wrote that “[Glück’s] firm reticence and her mercilessness with herself and her own experience, in prose and verse, make her an unusually powerful witness.”

Farewell to this powerful witness.

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Review: Once Within a Time (2023)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by sheila

I reviewed Godfrey Reggio’s experimental film Once Within a Time. Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi may be one of the most well-known and widely-seen experimental films of all time – I saw it strictly because of Roger Ebert’s review way back in the day.

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Review: Cat Person (2023)

Posted on October 6, 2023 by sheila

This is a weird one. I don’t want to assume everyone on the planet has read the short story on which this film is based but … let’s just say the short story was a PHENOMENON. In December 2017, you could not escape “discourse” about it. Which is why some of the “inventions” in the film adaptation are so baffling. But it was certainly fun to write about the film! And the sex scene is a KEEPER. (And when do you get to say THAT nowadays?)

I reviewed Cat Person for Ebert.

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“Personally, I resent being tagged ‘glamour girl’. It’s such an absurd, extravagant label. It implies so much that I’m not.” — Carole Lombard

Posted on October 6, 2023 by sheila

It’s her birthday today!

Carole Lombard played ditzy and impulsive, but she didn’t play dumb. One of her greatest gifts as a comedienne is her craftiness, how well she creates cunning and sometimes selfish women, women who are heedless, sometimes manipulative, who do not know their own minds (or, to put it more accurately, lead from the mind, and ignore the heart). It’s most fun to watch her do battle with herself, as expressions of annoyance and panic and “A-ha!” flutter across her beautiful face. She was un-tameable, as a person, as an actress.

Lombard hit her stride in her short career, finding her place in the world of screwball (after some years in the trenches of melodrama and drama). She is stunningly beautiful, with a perfect face, really, porcelain skin and huge eyes … But when she was cast as “the beautiful girl”(TM), as she inevitably was early on, her performances are often un-distinguished. Not sloppy or bad, just … generalized, cliched. She’s not given enough to do, she’s not allowed to just go OFF. And Lombard, more than anyone else I can think of in that era, needed to be given space to just GO OFF.

She doesn’t know who she is in conventional material. Conventional material put a lid on her. She suffered more under unimaginative direction than other actresses. Howard Hawks (and others) helped take that lid off and release the zany girl. Hawks had seen her in full tilt at a party, tipsy, hilarious, profane, nobody’s fool, a girl’s girl and a trash-talking sailor, simultaneously. Nobody had captured that. Hawks perceived that her talent could express itself when she was on the verge of either a panic attack, a temper tantrum, or some horribly crafty scheme to get what she wants. Traditional female roles were not for her.

Lombard was incapable of phoniness and incapable of being shy and/or ingratiating. If the project wasn’t right for her, she went down with the ship. She couldn’t stoop down to bad material. Either she was totally natural as her crazy self, or she was almost invisible, unsure of where to put her energy. More than other actresses, Lombard needed a vehicle, a vehicle very specifically designed for her, and her alone. Every actor needs a break, a visibility-heightening project, but that’s not really what I’m talking about here. Screwball arrived, and Carole Lombard took to the slopes like she was born on skis. Unleashed. She could express her talent to the fullest in that context.

It could have gone one of two ways with Lombard: She could have been pigeonholed as a pretty young starlet, and she would have had a short career, and nobody would have remembered her as anything other than a footnote. Perfectly plausible way it could go. Or, it could have gone the way it actually went. There was no in-between with Lombard. She could have been in the biggest picture in the world, but if the movie didn’t “get” her, it wouldn’t have been a “vehicle”. It’s quite precarious! It might not have happened!

Side note, related: Julia Roberts is a similar type of actress. She needed a vehicle. She needed a vehicle where her sense of humor and her self-pleasure and self-confidence could freely express it. She needed to be set FREE, which Garry Marshall did for her in the highly improvisational Pretty Woman. Think about it: Before Pretty Woman came out, she was making Sleeping With the Enemy, pretty conventional where she had to fit into a genre-context – and before that, she had been in ensemble dramas, where she was fine, often good, but no doubt about it: her natural milieu was to be a GIGANTIC STAR. She just doesn’t fit in otherwise.

That’s the difference between Julia Roberts and other stars of her (my) generation. And trust me: you had to be there. Julia wasn’t there and then she was and she took over the WORLD. Pre-social media. She was huge. FAN-chosen, too – not industry-chosen. Nobody was prepared for Pretty Woman and the reaction to HER. The world went nuts. The status given to her from that lingers to this day. There were other big actors, but nobody became a star on the level she did. It was an explosion. That has to do with HER, not some industry-generated “buzz”. But if you compare Roberts to her contemporary Gwyneth Paltrow (pre-Goop Gwyneth): Paltrow seemed to have had stardom thrust upon her, by the Weinsteins, basically, and in her Oscar speech she seemed almost cowed by all the industry power behind her. Up until that point, she had done small independent films and stage productions – she could have had a very satisfying career as a character actress, or even a stage actress (following in her mother’s footsteps). I think Paltrow is more suited to that kind of career, less pressure, less attention, and she would be more comfortable in her own skin than she seems now.

All of this being said: Lombard was not limited in any way, it’s just that comedy allowed her to express EVERYthing, whereas straight dramas or melodramas forced her to leave stuff OUT. You feel me? She was a fantastic dramatic actress – and you saw it in silly stuff, in rom-coms, in dramas (I wrote a whole piece about how female comedians are often better dramatic actors than “straight” dramatic actors.) Everything is real. Her swoon of love in My Man Godfrey is HILARIOUS but she doesn’t seem to play it explicitly for laughs. It’s funny because it’s REAL to her.

I love watching her. You never know what’s going to happen. She thinks fast. Lightning quick. She doesn’t “act on” her impulses so much as she feels the impulse firing up and her body/spirit/intelligence is already up to speed. She’s FAST. It’s like improv. You don’t have time to THINK about what you’re going to do, you have to just trust yourself and DO it. Lombard does. This is true with her slapstick business AND with her emotions. A rare blend!

So many movies to mention but let’s talk about 1936’s Love Before Breakfast. First of all, there’s the famous poster, which not only graces my wall but is also my Twitter avatar:

Walker Evans captured this poster in one of his photographs:

In Love Before Breakfast, Preston Foster and Cesar Romero are rivals for Lombard’s affections. Lombard was so feisty and strong that she needed to be man-handled a bit, that was the fun of it, watching a strong confident man (like Godfrey) take this bucking pony in hand. However, Foster and Romero are not up to the task. At all.

Foster plays Scott Miller, a successful businessman (so successful he can buy his rival’s oil company in order to send the rival off to Japan). Scott hangs out with a snooty Countess in his spare time, but has the hots for Kay Colby (Carole Lombard). Kay, though, is already engaged to Bill Wadsworth (Cesar Romero, better than Foster here). Scott sends Bill off to Japan, leaving Kay unprotected, so Scott moves in for the kill, following her around town, buying her drinks, popping up everywhere. Lombard does her best with these actors (although you watch her with William Powell and you can see the difference). Kay is torn between two loves, and Lombard is very VERY funny in how much WORK she puts in to her own denial. She is sure, SURE, that she loves BILL, not Scott. She finds Bill amusing, but she is only interested in his money, or so she says, and she jumps through fiery hoops to keep up her attitude of scorn and condescension. Foster is a bit stuffy, he doesn’t have the right arrogant attitude. Clark Gable – Lombard’s future husband – would have been maddeningly good in the role. You would have wanted to wring his neck, and he would have turned everything sizzlingly hot. You should be dying for the two to leap into the sack.

There are a couple of great scenes where Lombard gets to show her stuff. One is a costume ball. She does the entire scene in this get-up …

… and it gets funnier and funnier the longer the scene goes on. She sets up Scott to dance with a visiting Southern belle, and she tells both of them (secretly) that the other one is deaf and “you have to shout” at them to be heard. So poor Scott and the visiting Southern woman needlessly shout banalities at one another on the dance floor, as Lombard, in that crazy costume, laughs until she almost falls down on the sidelines. She is irresistible. Especially in that totally outrageous outfit.

There’s also a very well-written scene where Scott proposes to Kay. He presents her with three enormous engagement rings. Kay, beleaguered by now, beaten down, she accepts the proposal, but listen to this dialogue!

Scott: You’ll be sorry to hear my feelings haven’t changed. I’m still going to marry you.
Kay: You’d better be careful. One of these days I might take you up on that.
Scott: Couldn’t make it today, could you?
Kay: If I did it would only be for your money.
Scott: I never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Kay: You want me anyway?
Scott: Definitely.
Kay: All right. But this isn’t going to be any Taming of the Shrew, you know. I’m not going to come crawling after you’ve broken my spirit.
Scott: I’ll take my chance.
Kay: It’s a long one.
Scott: I like ’em that way.
Kay: I guess that settles it.
Scott: Oh, no, there should be a kiss to seal the bargain.
Kay: Is that necessary?
Scott: It’s pretty standard.
Kay: All right.
Scott: Can you spare it?
Kay: I think so.
They kiss.
Kay: Well, goodbye.
Scott: Oh, no, there’s one more detail.
Kay: What happens now?
Scott: Come on, I’ll show you.
Kay: I warn you, I won’t sign anything without a lawyer.
Scott: You won’t have to sign a thing. Just one minute.
He takes out a small box.
Kay: What’s this?
Scott: The customary engagement ring.
Kay: Oh, you were all prepared.
Scott: Oh, yes, yes, indeed. Well prepared.
He takes out two more boxes.
Kay: When did you get these?
Scott: The day after you turned me down.
Kay: Sure of yourself, weren’t you.
Scott: Just a gambler.
Kay: A gambler who knew he’d win. The fact that I don’t love you doesn’t spoil your victory. Well, I’m glad we understand each other. Which one of these little knick-knacks would you like me to wear?
Scott: Oh, they’re all for you. I thought you might like to change off.
Kay: How romantic.
Scott: Now that we’re engaged, I hope we’ll see each other occasionally.
Kay: Whatever is customary, Mr. Miller.

This plays out with no pauses except for the business of taking out the rings. It’s rat-a-tat-tat, machine-gun style.

Lombard plays that great dialogue with the perfect amount of exhaustion and annoyance (but again, imagining Scott’s dialogue in the mouth of Clark Gable makes me ache to see THAT scene.) Lombard doesn’t have much to buck up against here.

But her talent is always in operation. She’s so clever, so inventive, and so RESPONSIVE to what is generally called in acting circles “the given circumstances”. If all you have is your emotional state, and you have no sense of the given circumstances, then it doesn’t matter how beautifully you are crying. You are doing bad acting. The given circumstances is ALL, whether you’re in a surrealist play or Ibsen. What is happening right now. Here’s a good example of that from Love Before Breakfast:

She’s on a sailboat with Bill, her ex-fiance, who has returned from Japan. She is annoyed because Scott is on a boat across the bay, and naturally, things are not going as she wants them to go. Lombard is perpetually cranky throughout Love Before Breakfast. She feels dominated, and afraid of more domination. She senses (correctly?) that Scott would demand something more of her than she would have to give (like her heart, like love), and she wriggles out of those chains the second they are on her. Bill is not a bad guy, but he’s had it with being used as a pawn in the love-game between the other two. At one point, during the argument on the sailboat, Lombard lies on a couch below-deck, annoyed, exasperated. Bill takes out a champagne bottle and pops the cork. The sound startles her. She jumps.

It’s one of those subtle sometimes unnoticed pieces of behavior that Lombard did like nobody else. She doesn’t make into a “bit” – she doesn’t scream, there is no dialogue referencing it, she doesn’t “act” it, even – it’s just Lombard’s comedic sensibility tuned in, ALWAYS, to the potential in every moment. The slight jump she gives, startling her out of her depression, is hysterical: it is these moments that I treasure most from Lombard, and it never stops with her. She is a runaway freight train, hurtling into the reality of every moment, into the given circumstances, all pistons churning, and she vibrates with life and feeling and responsiveness.

Other actresses would have missed the cork-pop. They would be too taken up with their emotional state to jump at the cork-pop. It wouldn’t have even occurred to them to include a little scared jump at the sound. That’s not what the scene is “about” after all. But Lombard’s startled jump – so funny, so real – is what separates the men from the boys in an acting career. The women from the girls, more like. And Lombard from everyone else.

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