{"id":167213,"date":"2021-05-02T21:06:03","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T01:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=167213"},"modified":"2025-01-13T09:46:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T14:46:03","slug":"april-2021-viewing-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=167213","title":{"rendered":"April 2021 Viewing Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jewel Robbery<\/strong><\/em> (1932; d. William Dieterle)
\nThis glittering pre-Code, starring William Powell as a jewel thief, and Kay Francis as a married woman in love with her jewels, is such a subversive delight. Powell is devastatingly charming and Francis is wonderful and amoral and adorable. The two fall in love at first sight, while Powell is in the process of robbing a jewelry store, and the hijinx continue from there. She’s married the whole time. In final moment of the movie, her husband tells her that she needs to go away for rest and relaxation, and she says she’d love to go to Nice (the place where William Powell, now on the lam, is headed). As the music swells, she strolls right towards the camera saying, “Nice! Nice!” and then “sh”es us to keep her secret. So naughty! <\/p>\n

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Kept Husbands<\/strong><\/em> (1931; d. Lloyd Bacon)
\nI suddenly hungered for Joel McCrea, and so went searching around for things I hadn’t seen. Kept Husbands<\/i> – a racy pre-Code (is there any other kind?) is streaming on YouTube. Actually it’s not just racy. It’s a mixture of racy and judgey: this makes an uneasy combo. Like … pick a lane? Are you titillating or are you condemning? Which is it? So this young hard-working guy marries a rich silly woman who doesn’t understand he still needs to make his own money and be his own man – so she tears him away from his work, taking him on trips around the world – and he is haunted by the spectre of similar men in his position, basically beholden to their wives, useless in society except for carrying her bags around. <\/p>\n

Despite all of this, there is some insightful stuff going on here about the stifling confines of monogamy and marriage – for men, not just for women – and how you have to let a person BE, even though you’ve nabbed them. You don’t OWN them. It may not be popular to say but I’ve seen plenty of women completely infantilize their men – and then act TOTES jealous when he has ANY interest other than HER, or totes shocked when he has an affair. Like, maybe don’t dominate him so much that you remove his spinal cord? How would YOU like to be dominated like that? You wouldn’t like it at all. <\/p>\n

But alongside this helpful message about what makes a happy marriage – BOTH parties need to be free and happy – there’s also a moralistic “Beware the emasculating succubae!” thing going on. Lol. It’s all over the place. <\/p>\n

This is a real quickie – barely over an hour long – and the acting is very good and naturalistic. Dorothy Mackaill plays the aforementioned breezy and silly wife who throws a shit-fit when her husband says he really enjoys having a job and making his own money. Mackaill was very very busy in the 30s- and then kind of fell away from an acting career. She doesn’t have movie-star qualities but she gives a fine performance. <\/p>\n

McCrea is the reason to see it. He’s so natural, so laconic, he couldn’t overplay if you paid him. He never pushes. It’s not in him. <\/p>\n

Because of that he is so relaxing to watch. You know: he’s got this.<\/p>\n

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Come and Get It<\/strong><\/em> (1936; d. Howard Hawks, William Wyler)
\nAlways fun re-visiting this one, just to see Frances Farmer in action.<\/p>\n

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Foreign Correspondent<\/strong><\/em> (1940; d. Alfred Hitchcock)
\nJoel McCrea again! I do love this one. That plane crash at the end is super scary. You don’t even need to “forgive” the special effects at the time. It’s horrifying. I love the sequence where he keeps sending her love notes as she tries to make a super serious speech. <\/p>\n

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Love & Friendship<\/strong><\/em> (2016; d. Whit Stillman)
\nGod, I love this movie. My Whit Stillman box set from Criterion is in storage and I have to go dig it out. I was in the mood this month to watch Metropolitan<\/i> and that’s WHY I buy physical media still. I want to be in control! In lieu of Metropolitan<\/i>, I settled in to watch Love & Friendship<\/i>. It’s fantastic. <\/p>\n

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Parallax View<\/strong><\/em> (1974; d. Alan J. Pakula)
\nEvery shot is a work of art. Thank you, Gordon Willis.<\/p>\n

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Bringing Out the Dead<\/strong><\/em> (1999; d. Martin Scorsese)
\nI just don’t understand people who dismiss this or call it “lesser” Scorsese or whatever the hell else dumb critics say. Roger Ebert’s review is fantastic<\/a>. This is an amazing film, dark and deep and gritty. A great New York movie, with a rich and hallucinogenic insomniac-like mood. I love it. And that sequence on the balcony near the end … the editing, the sequence of shots, the fireworks … the sheer emotionality of that sequence, in how it was conceived and put together … well, that’s why he’s “Marty”. <\/p>\n

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Thunder Force<\/strong><\/em> (2021; d. Ben Falcone)
\nI felt pretty lukewarm about this and it makes me feel bad. I love everyone involved. I reviewed for Ebert.<\/a><\/p>\n

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State Funeral <\/strong><\/em> (2021; d. Sergei Loznitsa)
\nAn extraordinary movie put together entirely of footage from Stalin’s week-long funeral ceremony across Russia and all its republics. More on this later. <\/p>\n

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Z<\/strong><\/em> (1969; d. Costa-Gavras)
\nA fave. Thank you, Todd. It’s so thrilling. Banned in Greece. Not hard to see why. Brilliant political film.<\/p>\n

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Inland Empire<\/strong><\/em> (2006; d. David Lynch)
\nI’ve seen comments like this is his most incomprehensible film, it’s annoyingly opaque, oblique, whatever. I don’t know. I think it’s pretty clear. I’m not confused by it. Of course it’s filled with mysteries and dream-like symbolism – rabbits putting on a play! – but – like Mulholland Drive<\/i>, it’s about a woman’s identity dissolving, in this case an actress merging with the film role she’s playing. It’s brilliant. <\/p>\n

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J’Accuse<\/strong><\/em> (2021; d. Roman Polanski)
\nThis probably will not be released, at least not here in the States. It’s the story of L’affaire Dreyfus, and it is a great film. I point you to my friend Glenn’s piece on it<\/a>, when he saw it in Venice in 2019. It’s not streaming anywhere. I had to call in a favor. It was worth it. Oh, and the original title is “J’Accuse” (the famous headline from Emile Zola, in defense of Dreyfus), but was then changed to “An Officer and a Spy” – which is ALL wrong. The title, I believe, doesn’t refer to Dreyfus (who WASN’T a spy, even though he was accused of it), but to the lead character, Georges Picquart, who takes it upon himself to investigate the charges, in essence acting as a “spy” in his own department. Okay, fine. Still. “J’Accuse” is much better, since it’s such a famous moment in not only the 20th century but 20th century journalism and activism, and will forever be associated with the Dreyfus Affair. And if you didn’t know all that, then you do now!<\/p>\n

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The Souvenir<\/strong><\/em> (2019; d. Joanna Hogg)
\nI wrote the cover story for Film Comment<\/i> on this gorgeous autobiographical narrative feature<\/a> from Joanna Hogg. I hadn’t watched it since. It was wonderful sinking into it again. See it if you haven’t!<\/p>\n

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Jakob’s Wife<\/strong><\/em> (2021; d. Travis Stevens)
\nI really loved this. I reviewed for Ebert.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Walk Your Way Out<\/strong><\/em> (2017; d. Jay Karas)
\nI love Bill Burr but this one felt less funny to me than his others. A little thin and\/or slight. <\/p>\n

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In Name Only<\/strong><\/em> (1939; d. John Cromwell)
\nThe film really works hard to show that Cary Grant – a man cheating on his wife (Kay Francis) – has every reason to cheat. He’s been tricked. His wife is POISON. He is trapped. Not only is he trapped, but he sleeps in front of an open window and develops pneumonia. He lies in his death bed being tended to by the woman he loves (Carole Lombard). It’s very manipulative! It’s not exactly attractive to see Cary Grant play a man who feels sorry for himself. It’s not a good fit. What IS a good fit is allowing Cary Grant to be always in touch, somewhere, with his anger. Anger plays a part in his movie-star persona, giving it that EDGE. He’s always charming, always dazzling … but his best roles – His Girl Friday, Only Angels Have Wings, Notorious, Bringing Up Baby … all have a level of free-floating anger in them. It makes him exciting. This one, though, is a weird mix. I am on a bit of a Kay Francis kick, so it’s interesting to watch her career develop. From Jewel Robbery<\/i> to this, in less than 10 years.<\/p>\n

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Stolen Moments on the 8th Flo’<\/strong><\/em> (2020; d. Aisha Raison)
\nAs part of being a juror for Indie Memphis’ Women’s Short Film Grant<\/a>, I watched so many short films this month, part of the application process. Applicants would provide links to their previous work. Some of them are password-protected, and therefore can’t be shared. But I thought I’d share some of the short films I watched, the ones out there on YouTube or Vimeo or elsewhere. It was SO FUN to see people’s projects, people basically picking up a camera and making a film. Here is Aisha Raison, someone I’m rooting for. I thought her short film was romantic and whimsical, and a fun way of responding to the unprecedented event of the pandemic. <\/p>\n

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