High Society is not a good movie. It’s a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, transplanted to Newport, Rhode Island, in the middle of the Newport Jazz Festival. Because of course. Hollywood is so weird.
This was Grace Kelly’s final movie before retiring.
Why I chose to write about it for Film Comment is because it’s part of TCM’s July programming: “50 movies in 50 states” and High Society is the entry for Rhode Island, the state where I grew up. Having this movie be representative of Rhode Island is so hilarious to me, and so this was very fun to write.
Go check it out!
When I was a teen/adolescent I remember this movie came on tv several times for some reason and, being me, I watched it every time. I actually think I used to quote dumbass lines from it, but I’ve totally forgotten it now! I just rewatched the trailer and some things are coming back, but it’s so funny that you wrote about this. I’m gonna read it this evening, can’t wait!
It’d be interesting to hear if the movie held up for you! Ever since I wrote it, so many people have said it was one of their favorites growing up – which is kind of beautiful!
They skipped over all the Farrelly Brothers movies and went to High Society? They’re the pride of Providence for chrissake!
Ha – I know!! But this is TCM after all. It was a huge controversy when they started playing movies from the 70s, for God’s sake. (so silly.)
I’d also put Dan in Real Life on any list of good RI movies.
And then of course there’s Moonrise Kingdom, much of which was filmed in my home town, strangely enough!
But yes: the Farrelly Brothers are OURS and we are proud of them.
Don’t you think the best way to “see” that movie is to record it ahead of time and just skip to the songs? As you say, the movie isn’t all that great, but some of the songs are good and I particularly love the Crosby/Armstrong number at the end. It’s interesting to see Bing Crosby as a swinging jazz artist.
Carolyn – thanks for weighing in! for sure, skip through to the songs! Crosby and Armstrong together at the end is worth the wait. I also like how Armstrong starts off the whole movie, en route to the Jazz Festival, and he basically sings the entire plot, surrounded by his band. It’s fun.
I also love Bing Crosby’s “True Love” – although they kinda sorta had Grace Kelly sing harmony which kinda sorta doesn’t work since she’s not a singer. But boy, is it a beautiful song.
I suppose it is a bad movie, but I love it for Louis Armstrong. There’s not enough of Mr. Armstrong on film, because there could never be
Bill – I so agree – I don’t think it’s a bad movie just kind of herky-jerky weird – and Louis Armstrong is wonderful (no surprise). He also gets to be in it a lot – AND opens the whole film, so that is an absolutely good thing.
(I don’t know why I ended up writing all this, but it’s written…)
I can’t imagine watching the documentary about the Paris attack.
The Paris attack. Writing it, in english, I’m wondering about the name I could give in french to what happened—and I have no idea, I don’t have a name. It happened. It was November.
I’m living it with it, constantly. The same way we live with everything, but I guess that’s where the T from Traumatic enters. I live in the suburbs and I don’t go out often. But when I go out, I go to Paris. It’s twenty minutes away. Everything is there and nothing is here. But I never felt Parisian. Tourists probably know Paris better than me. I’ve never been at the top of the Eiffel Tower but when I walk back to home at night, sometimes, a flash of light passes in the sky—it lasts a second, it turns. Yes. That’s the Eiffel Tower, all right. Even this week, dreading an overdue visit at the Apple Store, I was puzzled by the fact that I was walking in the streets of Paris, near l’Opéra. But in November, three years ago, I could sense that I was there, like them, the dead. My streets. My people. Embodied. Bloodied. Butchered.
A year ago, I was at a concert. I was thinking about the Bataclan. I’ve never been there. I can’t imagine going there—I remember, at 14, going in a school trip, visiting les tranchées, the graves of soldiers and then crying in the bus, hard, not knowing why. Walking where they walked, where they died, the fact that the horror had been hidden by the grass growing back, the weather being nice, the youth being the youth..I was not in the Bataclan, but I was thinking about the Bataclan. It had happened and now I could not just imagine it, but I could taste it, too. Men. Shooting. The waves of people, crushing each other, the bodies of the dead, of the not dead—yet, of the living…(Watching Shoah a few months ago, the images of fathers crushing the skulls of their babies not only broke my heart but also made me think of the Bataclan, the horrors bounded to the weight of bodies.) In a movie theater I checked the fasted escape and then I didn’t, maybe after that concert, because I realized that there was no way to escape that kind of thing; I could see it happening, so fast…
My friend was thinking about the same thing; in my ear, he said: “That’s exactly like this room. Le Bataclan.”
I go to concerts. I watch football games. I walk in the streets. But it’s always in my mind—and I can’t, I just can’t, imagine watching this documentary, I’m absolutely sure, but I don’t know exactly why…I know I can’t and at the same time I’m surprised. I know the effect it had on me and yet I’m surprised that it affects me to the point that I can’t imagine watching it…
The pictures of the documentary are strange: the firewoman looks like a movie star. The trucks look like oversized playmobils. And in a way, that’s how I used to see some events of history; they were being a screen, bodies were not bodies and things were not really things. But we all live in the same world, don’t we.