The Learning Tree (1969) dir. Gordon Parks

 

The Learning Tree is an undeniably important film, yet I am somewhat cynically surprised that it made the registry in the first year that they took entries. Then again, by 1969 (although racial prejudice was not gone, nor is it today) the political messages and depictions of sexuality and violence weren't unheard of in film anymore, especially with films like Midnight Cowboy and The Wild Bunch coming out the same year and receiving acclaim. So for that alone, it isn't a breakthrough. It's just that up until now I've been reviewing nothing but whitewashed Hollywood films because they have dominated the year of 1989 on the list. Despite all the films so far mostly being significant and amazing for cinema, I haven't encountered a film that is so significant to minority groups until now. So while there is an initial bias towards white, male centered golden era cinema in the 1989 group of inductees, there is still one major minority voice.

The Learning Tree is often distinguished as being the first Hollywood studio film made by a black man. It's high production design, original song and film score, and vibrant use of Cinemascope places it among the ranks of all those outrageously expensive and stylish films from the golden era, giving it the mark of a bonafide Hollywood film like Gone With the Wind. But it's the complexity in the racial themes, not their mere presence, that makes this film so moving and still relevant today . Although, its status as the first black studio film is pretty cool and enough to spark interest in people.

When I mentioned this film's complexity in portraying racism, I specifically meant to outline here how the message is not simply "right or wrong" and does not profess an ultimate method of dealing with prejudice. It merely shows two ways that black people chose to cope, and ultimately I don't find a compelling argument for one being better than the other. The two methods, hostility towards whites and compliance with whites, both lead to drastically different outcomes for our characters, but neither method goes unchallenged. The back of the DVD claims that Parks shows with this film that "hate is a waste of valuable energy", implying that loving thy racist neighbor will result in a better outcome. I don't know if that was the filmmaker's intention. If anything, Parks shows that sticking to one's principles will internally dignify them, but it won't protect them from the world. Early on, and often in a beautifully visual fashion, Parks presents a world of contrasts and puzzlement.

The film opens with several pretty, flowery landscapes full of pastel colors and Ford-like compositions. We see Newt running innocently through a meadow. Knowing what the movie is about, I know that this will have to be contrasted with the darker themes in the narrative, but Gordon does me better by having a tornado come ripping through this opening. Not only is this a visual juxtaposition to express hatred and violence in a time of innocence, but it houses within it several images of black hardships. While worrying about Newt, we see his sister taking his invalid father to bed. His father remains a passive and silent character throughout, illustrating the powerlessness of the black male and the lack of quality health and stability in black families. A scene where Newt's foil, Marcus, runs out into the storm and away from his angry father simultaneously depicts black poverty and abuse and alcoholism within their own society. It's also an explicit Wizard of Oz reference. We have already been told the setting is Kansas, we see Newt's family looking for him in a panic, and he is later knocked out and revived only to find a surreal (and, this time, erotic) scene before him. 

The strangest thing about this scene is the slow-motion, foggy and erotic scene where Newt wakes up to that girl. As far as I know, we never learn her name. She shows up a lot in the movie though, often just lingering around in scenes. Aside from her function in Newt's brief sexual awakening (this is a coming-of-age film, after all), she doesn't seem to do much as other than act as a vessel of black experience, as she is present in both positive and negative situations that our main characters experience. It's almost like a Greek chorus, but not really, since if I remember correctly, she has one line in the entire film.


Earlier on in that clip, an image of ranchers wrangling a herd of black cattle in the distance evokes an image of slavery, and these images occur throughout to stand as a reminder of the white oppression that still lingers in post-abolition society. Soon after, just before the storm, a dead tree with a rope hanging from it stands outside Newt's house. When Newt and his friends are caught stealing apples from Old Man Kiner's orchard, he chases them with a whip and brutally assaults Marcus.

As the story progresses, more explicit echoes of slavery still surround the lives of the characters. As punishment for stealing apples, Newt's grandmother makes him work as a farmhand for Old Man Kiner over the summer with no pay.

Later, when the boys go skinny dipping, they are confronted by the vicious Sheriff Kirky. A group of men who were gambling also hides in the woods, one of them the black man named Tuck. Newt calls to warn him, as both he and the audience know Tuck has much more to fear than his white peers. This leads to a brief chase, and finally, Kirky murders Tuck for simply running away, instilling in Newt a fear of death and disorder. In Marcus, this instills a deep hatred for white brutality.

One scene has particular relevance to today. Newt's mother implores the local judge to go lightly on Marcus for retaliating against Kiner. The judge says "it was a brutal act by a brutal boy", completely disregarding the context of a situation. While Kiner was justified in being angry about his apples, it took just as much brutality to respond to petty theft with such excessive violence.

While the first act sets up the touchstones of black lives and oppression, and the different reactions to it, the second act takes each extreme and tests it. Newt becomes subservient and compliant with whites, while Marcus lashes out against them at every turn. At first, it seemed that the movie was trying to preach the power of turning the other cheek, something I was worried by. A lighthearted montage where Newt courts a girl from church started to make me think the movie was sugarcoating the struggle of the 1920s black experience. One shot in particular shows Newt and his girlfriend walking happily out of an unsegregated theater. However, Newt's period of self-discovery are frequently punctuated by Marcus' period of confinement.

The film has a lot of match cuts, and one of the things this accomplishes is to show the ubiquity of religion in the characters lives, as one match cuts depicts hands clasped together in prayer at the dinner table, and then the same hands clasped at a church prayer service. The institution of religion is later maturely dismantled when Marcus denounces the local pastor who visits him in prison, expressing a widely felt disillusionment with religion in the face of constant unfair and cruel treatment. This topic is touched on again when Newt asks his mother about her personal religious beliefs, and both of them seem to arrive at the conclusion of being hopeful agnostics.

While Marcus' hatred of white men doesn't seem to serve him well, Newt's pacifistic convictions are also shown faltering and leaving him powerless. An interesting tension is introduced when his girlfriend is easily courted and taken away by a white peer. Even though they walk out of an unsegregated theater, they are soon after kicked out of a restaurant. When Newt's guidance counselor refuses to put him in a college level course or entertain his dreams of reaching higher education, he venomously insults her.

Even non-racial elements, such as the abusive father of Marcus, are shown from different perspectives. A scene in which he cannot sign a prison release reveals him to be illiterate, which humanizes him. He also shows concern and affection for his son when not under the influence of alcohol.

The tension of the third act revolves around Marcus' dad's murder of Kiner. When caught stealing his booze, he shoots Kiner to avoid being convicted, and a white farmhand who had been fighting with Kiner earlier is accused. Newt was unknowingly witness to all of this, and must decide if he should keep the truth to himself to protect the black community or tell the truth to ensure that justice is truly served.

Here comes a point where, as a viewer, I want the character to do the "wrong" thing. At first, it frustrated me that I knew that Newt's coming forward was inevitable. Not only does he owe nothing to white society, but the safety of the community as a whole outweighs the life of one farmhand. This is one of the few times I take a utilitarian stance.

However, the movie handles it so compellingly and realistically, it made me remember something about characters. Characters need not and often should not make the right decisions. They shouldn't do what the audience wants them to do. I believe this is what makes some of the most compelling protagonists. When their actions are in line with audience expectations, we pat ourselves on the back. When they aren't, we ask questions. The movie has made us think.

Newt ultimately does come forward, and it creates a very violent outcome. The judge I mentioned before makes a very great speech at the end, similar to Father Barry's "Crucifixion" speech in On the Waterfront. However, it is met with visible expressions of apathy by the white onlookers. We end up getting a rather bleak ending because of this. Newt doesn't take on the aggression of Marcus, but he is no longer subservient to white men. It is, rather, fear of destruction that governs his actions. It is the knowledge of impending doom that has made him come of age.

The next film on the Registry is Intolerance (1916)

The Maltese Falcon (1941) dir. John Huston

I recently had a marvelous experience at St. Louis's oldest theater, the Hi-Pointe, where I went to see The Martian (2015) by myself in an afternoon. I've passed the place a thousand times and nearly all my friends have been there, but I had never gotten up and gone myself. Not ten minutes went by inside that building before it became my favorite theater in Saint Louis. A classic marquis outside advertises the two films it plays a week. A ticket booth juts out of the building. You walk in to a tiny, tiny lobby with one or two table and chair setups in front of a minuscule concession stand with one lone, mustachioed employee ready to tell newcomers where the bathrooms are. They are up a rickety flight of carpeted stairs that begins in a far corner of the lobby. You take a tour of old Hollywood posters and photographs to get there. At the top of the stairs sits a pedestal with a bowl of hard candies. The men's room is at the end of the narrow hallway. The urinals are of the ancient, long design, like this:

A huge window spans the north wall of the restroom, allowing you to see the downtown STL skyline in the distance and the world's largest AMOCO sign next door. Back in the lobby, there's a small alcove tucked away, adjacent to the theater entrance. A neon green sign saying "It's cool inside" illuminates the space in an eerie, Lynchian glow.

The theater is a simple, three-sectioned auditorium that smells vaguely of old chemical cleaner and is dimly lit by classic theater lamps. The screen is hidden by a rumpled turquoise curtain that parts when the trailers begin.

Basically, I feel like a depression-era youngster catching a two reeler at the nickelodeon as an escape from my troubles when I'm in there. Not only that, but the theater is a skip away from forest park, hosts films for SLIFF, and is named for the Hi-Pointe neighborhood which is the highest altitude in Saint Louis. So it makes me feel absolutely at home, too.

These feelings lent themselves to my experience watching The Martian. One of the initial things that I admired about it, something the film has in common with The Maltese Falcon, was that it wastes no time on exposition. You might get two minutes at the most of set-up, which is mostly just a visual introduction to the Mars setting, before the storm hits and leaves Matt Damon completely stranded. The movie just gets going right away. All the back story, relationships, and contextual details are dropped in subtly as the plot progresses. It's rather elegant. That's something I admire about many older films, especially film noir. They really don't waste any time. The inciting case that drops into the lap of Spade, played by Bogart, gets the story going before you even know the main characters' names. You don't stop learning things until the very end of the movie.

At the same time, film noir movies have always been a little difficult for me. The plot points zip by, new characters are constantly being introduced, the dialogue is light speed fast.  The first viewing of a film noir film, as visually stunning as they often are, is usually a slightly stressful experience for me. The first time I saw The Third Man, I couldn't quite keep up with the plot. I could appreciate the score, the visuals, the brief but excellent performance by Orson Welles, but I was left a little flabbergasted and underwhelmed. I then went to see a 4k digital restoration of the film in a theater. Having the basic plot in mind and knowing all the characters, I was able to look at the details, analyse the writing and the themes, and let myself get caught up in the atmosphere, aesthetic, and ideas progressing in the narrative because I wasn't so focused just trying to keep up with the basic story line. Now it's probably in my top 10. I suspect my second viewing of The Maltese Falcon will produce similar results. My experience watching it for this blog was a bit laborious, because it is one of the most stylistically noir films of its time in all the good ways and all the challenging ways.  

A beautiful and mysterious woman in a tight skirt and an omen of a black hat, the ultimate vision of a femme fatale, walks into a chain smoking PI's office. She asks him to tail a man who has her sister, and those of us in the 21st century know her story is totally phony. She wants to keep track of the man. There is no sister. 

Our characters constantly smoke, sometimes in each other's faces, bringing to mind Out of the Past, another film noir of which Roger Ebert said, "There were guns in Out of the Past, but the real hostility came when Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoked at each other." At one point, Spade blows smoke right in the face of Wilmer, who was tailing him. 

Lots of shit goes down in the first ten minutes. Spade and his partner, Archer, get a request by the mysterious woman to follow someone. Archer gets killed while investigating, all signs pointing to the man he was supposed to be following being the murderer. But later, Spade finds out that very man, Floyd Thursby, has been killed as well. Archer's wife, who Spade is having an affair with, wasn't home during the shooting. The mysterious woman is not who she said she was.

Spade is following all these leads and getting followed himself. He meets with a bunch of contacts, has run-ins with the cops and learns new information. Yet this doesn't clarify as much as it should. because the film has set up a world that can turn upside down at any moment.

The tables incessantly turn in a classic film noir, and there are several scenes, here, where the tables turn frequently within one scene. Most memorably, a gun shifts hands multiple times between Spade and the mysterious Joe Cairo, played by Peter Lorre.

Most interestingly, the movie offers us a protagonist that is rarely seen in films of the time. I'd contend that in most film noir (excluding neo-noir and other derivatives), we can always side with the protagonist. In a film like The Third Man, the main character is almost totally innocent and compassionate. In Out of the Past, there's a lot of pathos in Robert Mitchum's performance and the film is constructed on a technical level so that we are always close to him. He makes a lot of questionable decisions, but he always keeps his audience's faith. In The Maltese Falcon, Spade is self-assured, reckless, and a bit of a backstabber. Early on, we begin to question if we can trust our own protagonist, is he's reliable, and if he's the kind of person you want to root for.

We already know he's seeing his partner's wife, showing a complete lack of respect for him as a person. This flows into a disregard for the partner's well-being, too. The scene where he learns of his partner's death is indicative of this among other less than positive things about Spade. 

I didn't understand, at first, the choice to point the camera away to the nightstand when he receives the news. But watching the rest of the movie reveals how this visual helps characterize Spade quite a bit early on. He sleeps with his window open. No man so close to the edge of the dark urban underbelly of society would be so careless. Soon after, he reveals he doesn't carry a gun (despite knowing all about them and how to use them). Unless you're Mike Ehrmantraut, you gotta be packing if you're gonna be a hardcore PI.

What this shot also does is reveal a seeming apathy in Spade's reaction to Archer's death. It doesn't even show him get the news. You only hear it, and his voice makes no indication of grief of surprise. It's an emotionally sterile moment for what is tragic news. When he does move into frame, his face conveys more annoyance and pensiveness than shock or sadness.

That's a subjective reading. It's a face. 

Despite being good at shaking a tail, getting information, and getting out of a sticky situation, Spade still shows a vulnerability and lack of control under too much pressure. When he's trying to negotiate with the mastermind Gutman in the tense final scene, Gutman's static sitting position and Spade's frantic moving on his feet suggest a total ease of control on Gutman's part and a lack of control on Spade's.

To compensate for this, the film gives you no other characters to side with. Spade is the lesser of all the evils. It's a tumultuous relationship the film gives us to Spade, though, because aside from his unreliability, Spade really starts to seem crooked after a while.  

First of all, the plot is so fast paced and complex that it's hard to remember why Spade got roped into all this in the first place. His partner was killed by one of these people or someone associated with them, but the fact that they drew the partner in to get killed in the first place raises some questions. It's all over this Maltese falcon figurine, and it should have been between this mysterious woman named Brigid, Joe Cairo (Lorre), Gutman and his bodyguard Wilmer. Bringing in an outside party only serves to complicate things. Ultimately, there are small but definite reasons and events that incite Spade's involvement in the first place, but it's so remote in the story-line that we often forget, and this entire journey starts to become existential. 

This isn't a bad thing. While we're trying to remember why Spade's involvement in this Maltese falcon heist scheme is necessary and why he's really in this situation, Spade, himself, begins to lose sight. Without us really noticing it at first, Spade's investigation into his partner's death turns into a pursuit to outwit Gutman, Brigid, Cairo and Wilmer. They are now his competitors for this statue. He starts taking money offers, forging deals, and strategizing to get the upper hand in the game. By the end, he's so obsessed with keeping the falcon hidden and getting paid a proper amount to put it in the hands of Gutman that it dawns on us that he no longer has any interest in justice--only money. Greed has overcome him. 

SPOILER

I don't normally include spoiler tags, but this is a last minute turn around so I thought it necessary. Spade is overcome by greed...until the very, very last minute. We see that the falcon he has given them is fake, probably swapped out by the one of the crew members on the boat transporting it. Spade initially insists to keep his money, but gives it back up with little persuasion, keeping only 1,000 of the 10 grand he was supposed to get. He then turns in Wilmer, Gutman, and Cairo and uses the 1000 he kept to implicate them in bribery. Despite having romantic feelings for Brigid, he turns her in as well when he figures out she killed Archer to frame Thursby and cut him out of the deal. So all along, this lack of control, greed, and recklessness was a beautiful, intricate, masterful facade that Spade used to get to the truth and make sure justice was served. The movie turns everything upside down one last time. 

What's more interesting is it doesn't have to be read that he did it to avenge Archer. No, his actions still show an absolute disrespect for the man. He does it just because he can. He needs to know the truth, he thrives on it. Brigid and Cairo and Gutman's secrecy and treachery is a mere challenge to Spade. Spade's purpose in life is to find the truth. He's a private investigator not by mere profession but by passion. Even in those emotional crossroads of human experience, he goes with the truth, never comfort or happiness. 

It's one of the more interesting and surprising character arcs I've seen. That's, like, meta-unreliable narrator or something. I mean, Spade isn't a narrator but the movie is centered around him, and he's a bit of a weasel. For the film to have this character that is already unique in his questionable morals and then turn it around on us and show us that he is actually the anti-thesis of unreliable is pretty impressive and clever. 

Film noir is a deep and complicated chapter of American cinema. I haven't seen them all (has anyone?) but not only does The Maltese Falcon embody almost all of its classic traits, it's also one of a kind. 

Modern Times (1936) dir. Charlie Chaplin

I have to say that watching Modern Times again was a little bittersweet for me. The first time I saw it, I don't think I really knew a lot about silent films or the early decades of Hollywood. There's still a lot for me to learn, even now. But knowing a bit more, now, than I did, and having all the foresight from my first viewing, it became very clear how much of an emotional journey this film represents for Charlie Chaplin. It's very much about his struggle with the advent of sound, of course, but it's also about having to rediscover his creativity, and about moving on.

In Hollywood, a documentary series from the 1980's, famed silent film star Lillian Gish said, "I don't think film should have married words. It separates the world. Film and music brings the world together again and they all understand it." This was a common understanding of cinema. Aside from music (and, really, instrumentals at that) the world didn't have a mass medium. It couldn't be translated or misinterpreted. It let us use simply our eyes to receive stories, to feel connected to each other with feelings and excitement. With sound, we could no longer understand the story if it came from another country. Along with that, it over-spectalized it, if that's a word I didn't just make up. It was seen, in some way, as reducing the refined art of telling stories through actions, purely through pictures.

King Vidor said, "When sound started, that's when popcorn began, because you could turn away and look and talk to your girlfriend and unwrap candy bars and all that and you wouldn't miss anything. You could hear it at the same time. In silent pictures, you couldn't eat popcorn and do drinks because you had to watch the screen all the time and you had to interpret what was going on."

Now even though I think King Vidor is totally insensitive and impolite because he just assumes that I have a girlfriend and didn't see The End of the Tour alone on a Friday, he makes a valid point.

It's the reason why subtlety is important in cinema. There just no point in being talked down to by entertainment. If you're not discovering anything yourself, making inferences, being moved because the images on screen stimulate thoughtful responses in your brain, why did you even pay to go into the theater?

Silent era Hollywood had achieved a high art of doing all of those things. Sound was a distraction and a gimmick, made for spectacle and to draw in a crowd. Of course, it now does amazing things and it's often as integral to the experience as the images. Directors and actors of the silent era didn't know it yet. It was a threat.

Great filmmakers like Chaplin weren't going to just quit because of this, though.

That isn't to say they didn't make bad talkies.

Modern Times was made when silent films were already completely out the door. In fact, it's not totally silent in and of itself. It's structured as a hybrid of sound and silent, not only for transitional purposes for Chaplin, but as a thematic device to express Chaplin's ambivalence towards this new cinematic world.

Sometimes people are on top, they've found their place. Time never stops going on, though, as we can see with the ticking of the clock and the excitedly menacing music that plays with the opening credits.

The reaction to sound starts off rather hostile and angst-y, as sheep are match cut with a crowd of people as they head to work.

As I said, Chaplin includes sound elements in the film. All voices are heard only through screens and machines, and at that, the voices are often commanding and totalitarian. They are orders given sternly by rich businessmen imposing harsher and harsher standards on their workers.

In a scene where an inventor wants to try his automated dinner machine on a worker, he sells it by saying it requires less effort and energy, something promised by the invention of sound as described by King Vidor. The machine is impressive at first, but soon goes on the fritz and batters Charlie mercilessly. It's impractical, frivolous, and ultimately comes with too many flaws.

The scene is also hilarious.

Not that much time is spent, however, criticizing this new advancement for it's danger to the art of film. More so, sound elements showcase Chaplin's ambivalence over the technology and uses comedy to come forward about his insecurities and mounting pressure in the new film landscape.

The sound imbalance is established right at the beginning, where no characters speak in reality unless it is through a machine, making a distinction between words in the reality of the film and words in the meta-reality. Even when Chaplin eventually uses his voice at the end, it is nonsense words, defying the usurpation of witty dialogue and instead presenting his voice as a comedic sound effect. Yet the world everyone lives in is populated by noises such as closing doors, pulled levers, and footsteps. They live in a sound world, now, but have yet to speak. At once, Chaplin is acknowledging the value of sound to create a more rich and vivid world for cinema, and also abstaining from the less expressive form of communication that dialogue represents.

Later on, he starts opening up to sound in more creative ways, playing and experimenting with its comedic potential. In the scene where Charlie is about to be let out of prison, he sits next to a snooty woman and they both drink tea which gives them gas. The gurgling stomach sounds provide the necessary context, humor, and suspense and also allow for more subtle facial reactions. In a totally silent film, this scene may have been done with a gaudy stomach rubbing pantomime and perhaps an intertitle. With sound it was able to be constructed smoothly and given a deadpan nuance.

The YouTube version stretched it out beyond its original aspect ratio. Poo.

Furthermore, the film contains one of the most beautiful scores composed by Chaplin himself. The instrumental later provided the basis for the wistful and sweet pop standard, "Smile", sung by Nat King Cole and many others.

This experimentation culminates in the famous nonsense song scene. Chaplin's character finally gets a steady job at the restaurant his young and beautiful tramp girlfriend now works at (played by his then real life girlfriend Paulette Godard). At this point, both Chaplin and his character know that they have never used their voice, but because of the circumstances it is now necessary for success. The question on the audience's mind is how will he sing and remain Charlie?

His girlfriend writes his lyrics on his cuff because he cannot remember the words, but he comically loses them while dancing. He improvises by singing the tune of the song in a French-Italian gibberish, which I mentioned before. He's encouraged by his girlfriend who says, "Sing! Nevermind the words," in intertitle, of course. Remarkably, the audience roars at the indecipherable language as if they understand.

Aside from playing with sound, Charlie includes a variety of clever visual gags that were a staple of his time throughout the film. The aesthetic and the story line expands upon the Tramp character as well, fleshing out his world and providing a sort of closure to that entire paradigm.

Some simple gags, such as Charlie uncontrollably putting his wrenches on everything during a nervous breakdown and generally just frolicking and goofing about with no excuse in the story, brings us back to what he does best.

Another little thing I appreciated was Charlie's large and intimidating cell mate in prison, which is a classic silent film dynamic that any silent actor in a jail scenario has done.

He also utilizes a number of impressive set pieces, most famously in the scene where he is fed through a series of gears after falling on top of a conveyor belt.

Not only does the image have thematic aspects, but it's done in that flat, fantastical, Georges Méliès-esque style.

When it comes to the bittersweet, it's the realization that greater emphasis is being placed on the Tramp character and his world that gives the film its wistful quality.

Several times in the beginning, Charlie's usual antics, even his trademark walk, are self referential and speak to a very real desperation to please. His penguin-like strut is now jittery and compulsive from working too hard. When he takes a smoke break, the boss on the screen interjects and tells him to get back to work. Much of the laughs come from his inability to keep up with the conveyor belts (famously inspired by René Clair's A Nous la Liberté). So, there's a sense of weariness layered upon his well-known bits, and that's also intertwined with the feeling of exasperation from the sound thing.

After his nervous breakdown, he emerges from the institution in his classic Tramp outfit, and the rest of the movie is filled with the Tramp's beloved hijinks and shortcomings.

However, being among the poor (such as Paulette Godard and her family) protesters (he accidentally leads a communist rally, resulting in his first jail stay) and laborers (nearly every job he gets is a labor job, and the one job that isn't is set upon by thieves who turn out to be his former co-workers who are starving) places the Tramp more explicitly in his world, that of the outcasts. This is the last film really featuring the Tramp character (although a variation would appear in The Great Dictator (1940)) and Chaplin takes the opportunity to finally flesh out that world, completing it so that he may ultimately move on from it.

At the end, the Tramp is back on the run, now accompanied by his tramp wife. The sun setting, he struts his trademark strut toward the mountains. Both he and Chaplin are heading for bigger horizons, though the Tramp will eternally remain in his special world, having found love and purpose at last.

The next film on the Registry is The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) dir. Frank Capra

I'll jump ahead and say that Mr. Smith is recognized as culturally and historically significant because the cinematic medium hadn't been used to portray political corruption like this before. It caused a lot of controversy and scorn for being sort of a whistle-blowing type movie, putting senators and congressmen in a negative light and pointing out the degradation of the common man and individual voices of the American people. It showed how the political system had become mob like and run with undeserved power and oppression instead of preserving individual freedom, liberty and democracy and shit. So critics said things like Anti-American and Communist in response.

It really goes to show that political conservatives of the time (and often today) literally have no idea what the definition of communism is and they seemed to have not read the constitution. They forget about the liberty part and think we all ought to adhere to some type of overarching "values", often religious ones.

Go back home to King Henry, then, you redcoat shit.

Sorry I'm sounding so aggressive. I just wanted to throw out what I usually put at or near the end of my blogs: why is it significant? I'm getting it out of the way because I think it's unimportant considering how I truly felt about the film.

It's considered significant for those reasons—for the messages it had and for the reaction it provoked. Some people might try to say it's also a fine example of Capra's work. Don't listen to them. This movie blows.

I don't know where to begin. This movie didn't give me a good place to start.

A rather important thing I'd like to put out there first is that this movie has pretty much the same set up as Capra's earlier film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. It starts off extremely fast, just throwing exposition at you. Someone dies and their legacy (fortune in Mr. Deeds and Senate seat in Mr. Smith) goes to a soft spoken, simple man. They have trouble fitting into a new, fast-paced environment, but they go onto achieve great victories in the face of great opposition. They also  grow on the initially jaded career woman played both times by Jean Arthur and come out on top against the elite trying to sabotage them (slimy businessmen in Deeds and corrupt politicians in Smith). First of all, Mr. Deeds is purely a romantic comedy. It picked a genre and stuck with it. I'll get to that later. Secondly, Capra cast Gary Cooper, who does a perfectly fine job playing a country bumpkin with a kind heart and a few eccentricities.

For some reason, they hired Jimmy Stewart to play the same roll, essentially. Only this time, he's less boyish and interesting. We're supposed to see Jefferson Smith as a scout leader, outdoors-man, and salt of the Earth kind of guy. But the role was miscast and badly performed.

See, when Jimmy Stewart is cast properly, he makes the movie (Vertigo, It's a Wonderful Life). When he's miscast, he ruins it (Spirit of Saint Louis. He's in his 50s and is playing a 27 year old Charles Lindbergh). Not only is this lanky, long haired pre-war Stewart the absolute wrong choice for this role, but he's catatonic during the entire film. He sleepwalks through each scene until the filibuster sequence at the end where he shouts a lot. Too little, too late, Jimmy. We're supposed to get soft-spoken and naive. Instead, we get bland and stoic. It's the worst performance I've seen Stewart give. So there, we don't have a protagonist to get behind. We'll at least get a good, solid tone to stand behind, right? Some satire to make us giggle, some scathing political sequences to take our breath away?

See, one of the big things that separates stage and screen is the variety of perspectives and locations you can use. Most of the first part of Mr. Smith could have happened on a stage, so in order to make it cinematic, Capra shoves bits and pieces of expository scenarios and dialogue into a variety of locations. This rapid-fire chain of events gives the impression that we're in for a screw-ball comedy, and a couple of little moments affirm this prediction. The Governor's coin inexplicably lands on it side when he flips it to choose a new Senator. His children (all the children, in fact) are his advisers and constituents. They convince him to appoint Mr. Smith with the persuasiveness of a politician that knows all the ins and outs of D.C. McGann, a political aid, struggles to get out of a phone booth after making an important call. The scene lingers to the point of absurdity. Sadly, this throwaway moment of comic relief is the highlight of the entire movie. After only a few wacky moments, the film changes its mind about what it wants to be, and it won't be the first time it does so.

It then goes into an unnecessarily long, eye-rollingly patriotic montage of Smith sight-seeing Washington D.C. and being inspired by all the monuments. There were so many lap dissolves and patriotic music medleys that I started to get a mild headache. All this scene inspired me to do was remember the "Freedom isn't Free" song from Team America: World Police.

After this sequence ends, Smith makes several "inspiring" speeches to his secretary, Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur), whose love plot is mind-bogglingly haphazard, and her friend (?) played by Thomas Mitchell, who was in every movie made before 1945, apparently.

For a while, it looks as thought we are going to be forced to suffer through this masturbation over monuments and symbols for the rest of the film until it becomes a courtroom drama, kind of. Well, it's more just the constant tearing down of this innocent man who the movie has failed to make us even truly care for.

There are so many sequences in the Congress of corrupt politicians fucking over Jeff Smith that I just gave up taking notes and watched, utterly resigned. I unashamedly didn't pause when I went to take a piss at one point.

The only appealing character in this film is Saunders, but her relationship with this mannequin main character  of Jeff Smith is just a head scratcher.

Smith starts off attracted to his corrupt (unbeknownst to him) colleague's daughter. He goes to visit her and is so struck that he keeps dropping his hat! Ha ha ha! Except this "comedy sequence" is shot in all closeups so we can't see the two speaking. We just keep seeing his hands dropping the hat. It's practically radioactive, as if whoever conceived of the scene was someone born without the ability to understand humor and was trying to recreate it based off an exercise in a book. Jimmy Stewart mumbling all his lines in monotone gives the sequence a creepy, voyeuristic vibe as well.

Then, Saunders, for some reason, gets drunk and asks to marry her friend played by Thomas Mitchell in this bizarre and drawn out scene in a bar. But then she goes back to the office to tell Smith that he's just a pawn in the political game and should get out. Thomas Mitchell takes her home after he realizes there will be no marriage. He seems pretty chill with this.

I've never seen such a convoluted and needlessly strenuous buildup of a romantic relationship in a Hollywood film.

So basically, the movie sets up this classic character dynamic of a corrupt or jaded group of people (socialites, politicians, etc.) being affected by a man with a mind that is impenetrably simple and actions that are highly misinterpreted, often leading to comedy. This makes it a (not the) progenitor of movies like The Great Dictator or Being There or Dave. The problem here is, this classic premise is underdone and, furthermore, the filmmakers think it belongs in a political drama, except when it decides to be a comedy. The movie fails in both attempts anyway, being sluggish and unnecessarily grim in its dramatic parts and being just a general failure as a comedy.

Despite all this unevenness, however, the movie stinks mostly because it's boring. Stewart's shockingly wooden performance is in the limelight, yet he's pretty passive. The driving of the plot passes from person to person. Not only that, but the plot is just about a guy trying to get funding for a scout's field and people are assholes about it. Then one of them admits that they are all assholes. That's it, you guys. Nothing to see here. The only things I can say I enjoyed were the telephone booth sequence from before and a moment where vehicular homicide is attempted against children in a spontaneous and comical fashion.

It's too bad we didn't just get a satire here. Smith is so boring and dull and oblivious, he's the butt of a political joke. Instead, the filmmakers made him the face of a nation. And because of that, this movie has a butt for a face.

The next film on the Registry is Modern Times (1936)

Nanook of the North (1922) dir. Robert J. Flaherty

A lot has happened since my last blog post and, as always, none of those things hindered my ability to to watch the next film on the list and write up a piece on it. I just didn't do it. Until now!

This time we have arrived on an ever-so-slightly different piece for the blog, for we have arrived at our first documentary, or our first non-fiction piece. We haven't gotten into any of the experimental films or home movies, but at least we're getting something different. As far as documentaries go, Nanook of the North isn't especially unusual. It tells a story about real life with real people (although its notorious for its fabrications). But it is a beautiful piece of cinema and its not without it's share of interesting trivia. That, and it offers some things to think about as well.

I have notes about this from my film history class. The professor, Pete, had a lot of info on this film, as I recall. I have gone through periods where I have his notes and I have used them for this blog. I've also gone through periods where I haven't due to not knowing where they are. Sadly, though his knowledge and insights were in full force behind this film as we went over it in his class, due to my family's massive summer cleaning event, I've lost them again--possibly for good. I will not let this information fall into oblivion. I've initiated an emergency retrieval plan to get another set of copies of the notes as I have many contacts who took the class as well.

The reason I say this is because I am going to have to provide all of my background information from Wikipedia. I don't often provide a whole lot of background in my reviews, but obviously I would if it came from a good source. 

Technically, the film is what you might call a "docudrama". The story of a great Inuit (referred to as Eskimo) hunter named Nanook actually features a man who is not actually named Nanook and people who are not really his family (the wives, in fact, were with Flaherty, the director). And so the film is often criticized for it's fabrication. Some of it's most celebrated scenes are not only staged but thoroughly faked. The interior shots from the most recognized scene of the film, the igloo sequence, were recreated with an igloo missing a wall to fit the film equipment. The hunting sequences where Nanook and his huntsmen use spears and knives to get food were embellishments.  Nanook was already using a gun to hunt at the time. And yet, a simple change of perspective and a reconsideration of Flaherty's real intention not only reveal even greater filmmaker discrepancies, but authenticity that we didn't see before.  

The film opens with a series of intertitles that set-up the context of what we're about to see. I would argue that here, before the film really starts, we see a documentary mode that is ahead of its time. Reflexivity is a staple of Cinéma vérité, particularly French vérité. In it's true form, reflexive documentary filmmaking is much more complex than anything divulged to us in the intertitles of Nanook. Filmmaker philosophy and introspection play a greater part in true French vérité films like Chronicle of a Summer or the American experimental documentary, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. The Maysles' Grey Gardens or Gimme Shelter represents this method as well. However, what's interesting to see is in Nanook is similar traits to the reflexivity of a modern movement in its more primal cinematic ancestor. 

The filmmakers of Chronicle of a Summer discuss the plan of the documentary with one of the main subjects.

 As it was 1922, formula was still being developed for narratives in general. Documentary, certainly, had not been able to  evolve into the expository and, for lack of a better word, square educational tool that the direct cinema and French vérité movements were rebelling against. And so in a purely honest and straightforward gesture, Flaherty opens the film by detailing the creative process that went into choosing his subject, the pitfalls he went through in this process, and his ultimate artistic goal, to typify the Eskimos through one "character". The film is less about being truthful in portraying this Nanook character, but in painting a picture of an Inuit lifestyle from an anthropological and geographic perspective. In a way, the criticism that has always surrounded this film is addressed by Flaherty before one can even witness the contents of it. And it is rationalized, although not necessarily justified.

(I want to note that the intertitles during the actual events of the film are not like this. They're the lofty, overly descriptive silent movie intertitles you'd expect.)

Keeping the fact that a lot of the events were made up and that the premise was almost entirely fabricated, the authenticity of the landscape, the clothing, and the way of life of the Inuit (at least a few decades before the film was made) is still there. The glacial plains shadowed by the last glows of dawn begin the events of the film. Without sync sound, the film, in theory, relies on visuals to teach the audience about Nanook's way of life. So does the film achieve cinema truth? In a way. In many other ways, it doesn't. So there.

 In particular, the focus on Nanook as a man comes from the notion of artisan craftsmanship. The thing to be watched and observed is to see how Nanook's "occupation" directly provides his living, something industrialized societies very seldom provide. Take me for instance. I get up at 7:30, go to work at 9, and come home at 5. I get paid currency to perform a task, a task which very, very indirectly provides my living. Nanook and his clan are nomads, more or less. They work as a way of life, hunting for food, creating a new shelter every few days, and training their young to do what they do. They live a life where they don't need money, which is practically incomprehensible, if not impossible, to people like me and you.

And then, in contrast to the more objective and intriguing motion picture visuals, the intertitles contain quaint illustrations and speak to the viewer like the warm, paternal speaker of a children's book. They over-explain, oversimplify, and provide unnecessary breaks in the action. Sometimes, they were written by Yoda. 

Because this is a silent (and not just in a non-dialogue way), it really makes me question the importance of sound in documentaries. Innovation in sound both held back and later improved the genre. The sugarcoated, bland educational style documentaries were mainly so bad because of the stentorian narrator introducing a fake family and speaking to us like children. Direct cinema and vérité movements would break down this technique with their own improved use of sync sound to capture the noises of an environment in real time. To let the beauty stand out in the film, it needs to stand alone. To truly marvel at Nanook's activities, they should go one without explanation. Perhaps, without the necessity of intertitles, the film would have had less over-explaining by telling a story through visuals and sounds. Then again, it's likely that sound would have only invited that same narrator to use his voice instead of intertitles to talk down to us.

The are several forces at odds with each other in this film. I mean, I'm writing a review about it. It's on the registry. Yet it constantly gets called out as a major piece of pre-journalistic ethics bullshit. And that's what it is in a lot of ways. But there's something authentic about it. There's something majestic and dignified about it. And yet, sometimes I wonder how Flaherty regards Nanook (his real name was Allakariallak, by the way). Is this story framed around man vs. nature? Or does Flaherty really consider Nanook a man like himself? The distance can sometimes be felt between the filmmaker and the subject in such a way that it feels like you're watching a nature documentary about a totally different species. In no way are Nanook and his "family" disrespected of dehumanized, per se. But the story is framed by a man who clearly views society from an industrial/technological perspective and his relationship to Nanook is that of an academic to his field of study.

You couldn't force me to say that this was an early example of documentary. Really, if we're going off a pure and simple definition of the word, then the Lumiere brothers were making documentaries when they captured the first moving pictures on their cinematograph.

However, non-fiction events had never really been arranged into a feature-length narrative like this before. That alone earns it its early spot on the registry. I think it's more interesting, however, to see how this films contains techniques that would both inspire and deter the great documentarians of the late 20th century. What cinematic seeds lay germinating under the snow?

On the Waterfront (1954) dir. Elia Kazan

To be honest, I find it rare to watch a movie a second time and like it more than I did the first time. Often when revisiting a movie, the magical, emotional feeling is either maintained (which is still nice) or slightly diminished for me. This was the second time that I have seen On the Waterfront and it was an unexpected surprise to find that it is one of those films that is ten times better when you re-watch it. The psychological makeup of the characters becomes clearer, the suspense becomes intensified, and the appreciation for the overall filmmaking from Kazan and his amazing crew is amplified. I find there are many films that I consider great, but with each reviewing it becomes harder and harder to love. Wilder's films are like this. I remember loving Sunset Boulevard when I first saw it. Then re-watching it for my review, while still enjoyable, seemed half like a chore. What makes this film great for me, in particular, is that it takes just the right amount of aesthetic and thematic risks to tell a really unique story. And it's these peculiarities and unique moments that heighten the re-watch value I am speaking of.

The story concerns the tensions between working class dockworkers and the mob that runs their waterfront, headed by gangster Johnny Friendly. Terry Malloy (Brando) works both on the waterfront and as the lowest peon of the mob, mostly due to his brother's high standing in the organization. When the operation is put under scrutiny due to a dockworker being knocked off for whistle blowing, Terry's loyalties are tested as he and the other workers become torn between morality and the mob intimidation/aversion to "ratting". The sister of the slain dockworker, Edie (Saint), becomes involved with Johnny, complicating his situation further.

On the whole, I found this movie hard to take notes on because it was too much fun to watch. Aside from the many technical and thematic elements of note in the film, there are a few small and interesting stray bits of information that make the film rather engaging. One would be the scattering of recognizable faces in the cast. Of course, the great Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint lead the film. But a significant supporting role is performed by Rod Steiger, who plays the brother of Brando's character. Martin Balsam, better known as Arbogast in Psycho (1960), shows up as a police detective. Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster) has a non-speaking role as one of Johnny Friendly's goons.

One of the major things the film is distinguished by is its sexy Leonard Bernstein score. Right off the bat, the music helps bring the film to life without ever being too saccharine or calling too much attention to itself. It's beautiful on its own but also runs concurrently with scenes, completing them but not distracting from them. The music during the opening scene makes a lot of use of percussion and fast paced drumming to intensify the rapid working atmosphere of the docks. The style of the music and its role in telling the story undoubtedly inspired Paul Thomas Anderson and his musical collaborators, especially on films like Punch Drunk Love (2002) and There Will Be Blood (2007).

Of course, there's a great deal more that is often repeated as to why this movie is so great. The famous "contender" scene where Brando's acting is uncompromisingly heart wrenching and intense is the most revered moments in American cinema. The atmosphere is claustrophobic and inescapable, taking place in a moving car, depriving the characters of an exit. The famous crucifixion speech given by Father Barry (Karl Malden) is persuasive and rousing, even for a non-religious viewer like myself. And we know that regardless of his religious background, Barry's sermons have an undeniable, stark, secular truth. The final sequence of the film is the result of impromptu direction and yet it brings the emotions and actions of the story to a hypnotic and frenzied end that seems invaluable to the overall narrative of the film. It contains several iconic and striking sequences that have always been maintained as cinematic staples. And I have deep admiration for them. But since this was my second viewing, I thought it would be interesting to talk about things I responded to that I haven't seen mentioned so often. Or maybe they have and I just don't read enough.

There was something I started to think about in regards to film stories in general while watching this and that was the choice of protagonist. I think when it comes to the themes of the movie, Terry Malloy is the most fitting choice as the protagonist. He represents the victims of McCarthyism. He's a symbol for ambivalence being turned into strong conviction. Because this change is present in the character, he's the inevitable protagonist. He has the arc. But in the context of the story within the film, Edie is the "main character". She's is the quintessential crusader. The turbulent conditions of her surroundings have forced her to leave her life of passivity and seek out justice and principle. She incites a change in the community with Father Barry and she incites a change in Terry, in large part due to her being the object of his affection. And so I started to see the film from Edie's point of view, similar to the way that The Great Gatsby is told. Because the focus of that story is Gatsby. But he's not the protagonist. The path of the narrative follows Terry, but the events of the film in total, what we see and don't see, don't necessarily follow Terry. If you ask me, the events of the film follow Edie. So ultimately, the story we're being told is a very contextual one, following the person who is arguably one of the least likely people to be followed given the situation.

Among the many facets of filmmaking that get talked about with classic films, cinematography, editing, and writing are often hailed the most. And while those are passing with flying colors here, there's also great work being done in other department. Costumes, particularly fabric and textures, play a huge part of in the look and feel of the film. To start, the titles play over this woven sort of texture.

And that was something that I noticed even as a budding cinephile when I watched it for the first time. And like many things in film, it's difficult to describe what kind of impact it has. But it does achieve a very distinct, visceral effect. And if I were to put my finger on it, I would have to say it creates a certain notion for the viewer and slants the film. What I mean is, I think the immediate presence of fabrics in the aesthetic puts us on on the side of the dockers. The visual concept involving fabrics helps differentiate the working class from the mob, the proletariat from the bourgeoise. So we're seeing this stitching behind the titles and it reminds us of making clothes from scratch because we can see the work behind it. And the melancholy opening to Bernstein's score accompanies it. Now it doesn't take too long to notice how the dockers dress and how the mob dresses, or even law enforcement.

The Dockers

The Mob

Law Enforcement

What's interesting is to see the clothes that Terry, who works for the mob, is wearing. They're the same as the shoremen. So without any words or any action, we are shown what side Terry is on, or at least what side he is destined to be on.

The film is very distinguished in its production design as well, and if not the design, then the use of location. In my essay a few months ago about Eraserhead, I talked about how David Lynch derived a lot of inspiration for that film from his experiences in Philadelphia. In addition to that, a lot of scenes were shot based on the already existing aesthetic. I also mentioned Kazan in my last review for The Searchers. John Ford gave him the advice to not look at a script and to shoot the film based on what sort of set or location you have. These two approaches to film come together in On the Waterfront to create not only a story that lives and breathes in its location but also in its sounds.

Here you can see that most shots have the bay in the background and most of them have boats as well. Things are carrying on at all times behind all of this drama. We can also see from this shot the countless rows of spikes on the fences. And trust me, the fences are everywhere. They give us a sense of constriction and possibly incarceration because all of these working class people people really are trapped in their situation, sometimes from external influences, sometimes internal.

In the same scene we get this shot:

Terry and Edie are down below Father Barry and he has instructed Terry to tell Edie what he knows about her brother's death. They've used the differences in elevation in this particular area to compose a shot that conveys Father Barry's influence as he is above them and looking down. Then there's this dead tree in the background. All the trees are dead, so we know its cold and we know its desolate. Then, of course, there's the spiked fence which places the Father on the viewing side and Terry and Edie on the viewed side. Now I mentioned sound before, too. This scene constantly has the changing of tides, the wind blowing, and mechanical sounds from the boats and the docks. When Terry tells Edie the truth, a boat horn blows obscuring the speech. As the audience, we already know what he's saying, so we don't need to hear the words. But what needs to be set up is Terry's inner turmoil and Edie's sense of betrayal. So the blaring of the steam valve is there to represent Edie's anguish and the mechanical chugging of some sort to represent the way that Terry is wrestling with his conscience. It also is remnant of a pounding heart.

Unfortunately, I can't embed the video, so here's a link.

In regards to cinematography there was one thing I really picked up on and it's also a result editing. It's a visual motif and it looks like this.

Looks like a pretty normal shot out of context. But it's important to know that the rest of the film isn't really shot like this. This is a medium shot of a person's face looking into the camera. This kind of shot happens only four times in the film. Now because of the symmetry of this kind of shot and because the subject is looking into camera, somewhat breaking the fourth wall, the image calls attention to itself. It's such that when the image appears in the scene it significantly interrupts the sequential flow. A normal scene, often inconspicuous or bustling with energy, suddenly comes to a brief standstill to include these shots. Here are the others:

Terry is being subpoenaed be detectives. Notice "Arbogast" smoking a pipe in the back 

We then cut to this perfectly symmetrical medium shot. He's not quite looking into the camera, but still

SPOILER: Terry's young friend feels betrayed when Terry testifies against Johnny Friendly. So he kills his pigeons in retribution. The same shot. also, this kid is a damn sociopath. 

And this is one of the very last shots when (spoiler) Terry fights Johnny and walks away to work, his dignity in tact. This man speaks the last line of dialogue, "Alright, let's go to work!"

My reaction to these moments is that they often bring a feeling of judgement or scrutiny. The first occurs after the first docker has been killed and the foreman is somewhat taunting the men by asking who wants to work. The shot this time is of a cohort of the foreman/gangster looking intently at the men, seeing if any of them speak out of turn. The next is when Terry insists he knows knows nothing about the murder and the detective played by Arbogast isn't buying it. The one of the child contains anger and malice directed towards Terry. Finally, and a bit unexpectedly, the shot of the foreman portrays acceptance, and yet it is still a judgement. A shot of Terry stopping in a daze to look at the man as well as his point of view precede this. It's like he stops to see if he's passed some sort of test.

Now this isn't a little discussed aspect of the film but I'll say it anyway because it's one of the major reasons it stands out in history. The "art imitating life" thing is strong with this one. Elia Kazan, besides having a name that sounds like a dark wizard, is also one of the most unique and creative directors from the golden era. He seriously made masterpieces for a living. At the same time he's also the target of a lot of contention because of his involvement with HUAC. Now, I wouldn't call him a straight-up McCarthyist. He was more of a...chicken? I don't know. I actually don't know the whole situation very well. But basically, instead of staying in solidarity like other filmmakers, actors, writers, etc. in the film industry, he rolled over and gave a bunch of names to the House of Un-American Activities. That was the commission that tried to reveal communists. It is now the name of my house, where we are all transliberal athiest vegan babykillers on welfare. 

And Terry's struggle is often thought to be Kazan's struggle and the reason Kazan was drawn to this story. On one hand, the deep personal connection that he had to the content yields a fantastic film in terms of sound, images, symbolism, you name it. But at the same time, it's kind of morally backwards. We simply can't equate a power-hungry mob to "hollywood communists". We can't say that writers and directors just didn't want to snitch like the dockworkers. They actually didn't want to lie and destroy the lives of their peers. Difference. 

I think it's forgivable because Kazan directed this film very emotionally because he identified with the subject matter. And it leads to a very expressive film. Multiple re-watchings are a must. Not only will you notice things you didn't before, but the meaning of the things you did noticed before may have evolved or become clarified. 



The next film on the Registry is Nanook of the North (1922)