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Gsc films e-m the Eagle

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Gosford Park
Le goût des autres
Gran Torino
The Grave of the Fireflies
The Great Caruso
Great Expectations
The Great McGinty
The Great Santini
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Gosford Park 2001 Robert Altman (Britain) 3.0 Michael Gambon as old fart aristocrat Sir William – “a hard-hearted, randy old sod” – who owns the magnificent mansion where the weekend party takes place and who is murdered about halfway through the film; Maggie Smith as crusty old Countess who complains throughout the film and condescends to everyone; Kristin Scott Thomas as cold wife of Gambon – she has great contempt for him and his lapdog; Ryan Philippe is Thomas’ lover who (for some reason) poses as a servant through most of the film; Emily Watson as the likable Scottish servant girl, one of the few honest, innocent persons – she unravels the mystery for the viewer; Jeremy Northam in underwritten role as English movie star that sings; Bob Balaban as a Hollywood producer often on the phone arranging for a ‘Charlie Chan’ movie; Helen Mirren as the house’s major domo – she becomes extremely important only at the end of the film; Clive Owen and jowly Alan Bates as servants. Longish film set in magnificent country house. By genre it is a murder mystery, but it focuses mostly on social and cultural observations on English and Hollywood society in the 1930s: the memory of World War I, the relations between an extremely snobbish set of idle upper class characters and the small army of servants who support them (much discussion downstairs about which valet is going to dress which gentlemen) and whose lives are intertwined with them; the varying fortunes of the upper class characters, some of whom are bankrupt and desperate for money, etc. The film recalls TV program ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ but without the good will that reigned between the floors in the TV show; there is much hard feeling, vicious gossip, contempt on the part of the servants toward their employers. The film is extremely entertaining for its punctilious attention to baronial detail (what elegant dresses, costumes, furniture, bric-a-brac, family portraits on the wall, silver and china on the table, etc.) and for its often intriguing characters and piquant dialogue. The plot lines are however extremely difficult to follow: Altman’s classic overlapping dialogue and weaving together of a dozen subplots in dizzying profusion (we are rarely given more than a snippet of a conversation at one time before the director moves on to another subplot) make following the narrative line very frustrating; one suspects that the film would make a lot more sense when viewed the second time. The murder mystery adds some unity to the proceedings in the second part of the film: the viewer is given a few clues, and then little detective Mary uncovers the motive behind the murder: Gambon had been a rank seducer of girls working his factory; he had fathered a child with Mirren, and he had him then dumped in an orphanage; this turns out to be butler Clive Owen; mother and son then collaborate unknowingly in their revenge murder of Sir William. Entertaining film that unveils a lot of characters with strong needs and passions; if only the screenplay could have been pared down for the sake of cogency and simplicity.


Le goût des autres 2001 Agnes Jaoui (France) 3.5 Agnes Jaoui as free-spirited barmaid who is also a hashish dealer; Anne Alvaro as a not beautiful actress who exercises irresistible attraction on Bacri; Jean-Pierre Bacri as essentially gentle and sensitive industrialist who is unconsciously looking for something better; Alain Chabat and Gerard Lavin as two bodyguards for Bacri and his wife while they are negotiating a business deal with "the Iranians". Delightfully insightful, sophisticated romantic set in Rouen among the intellectual bourgeoisie who eat in lovely restaurants and at least feel obligated to say they like the theater and support spoiled and indecipherable modernist artists. Narrative focus is Bacri who is hilarious in the beginning with his disdain for the theater (his wife makes him go) and his cynical colloquialisms. He however changes rapidly when he falls for Alvaro while she is performing Racine's 'Berenice' on stage -- one assumes that part of her attraction is her physical attractiveness (one could not say she is beautiful) and another is that finally 'art' is making an impression on the philistine industrialist. He attaches himself to the artists' society and pursues Alvaro inexorably, but makes a fool of himself by telling potty jokes in the bar they frequent and by uttering homophobic slurs to a man who is obviously gay. Alvaro thinks he is an idiot for much of the film, but then -- inexplicably of course -- thaws toward the end. Bacri however is "redeemed" when he decides to leave his impossibly superficial interior decorator wife (she is also neurotically attached to her yappy, ill-tempered lapdog), and the last scene has him again watching Alvaro perform and he mouths "Je t'aime" to her from the audience. Watching the supporting actors -- Jauoi as the surprisingly lovestruck barmaid and the two bodyguards -- and listening to their dialogue is interesting and amusing. Screenwriters Bacri and Jauoi are observant, tolerant, humorous and insightful. At the end Bacri and Alvaro seem destined to get together, but the other characters are lost, sometimes disappointed, and sometimes bitter. It seems that one is better off appreciating art and the theater, but the authors bring out the pretensions also of the world of art. Fine, discriminating entertainment!


Gran Torino 2008 Clint Eastwood 3.0 Clint Eastwood rather a parody of his ‘Dirty Harry’ character, slim, haggard, grey teeth, growling, sneering, racially prejudiced, armed to the teeth, and generally disapproving of everyone and everything around him; Bee Vang usually wooden and hangdog as Thao; Ahney Her charming and lively as Sue, Thao’s sister; Christopher Carley impossibly callow as the local parish priest; Dreama Walker as spoiled punkish teenager who goes to the funeral of Eastwood’s wife with her belly button exposed. Entertaining, although a bit long and repetitive, Clint Eastwood swan song about the unlikely redemption of an extreme curmudgeon and the need to reach out to people and help them despite their ethnic appurtenance. Film is in part a comedy with most of the laughs emerging from the mutual incomprehension of the white bread Eastwood and the huge Hmong family living next door – since most do not speak English, most of the interaction is with the wise, light-hearted Her. The family itself is respectable, and well-meaning, if not sociable, but Hmong gangs and their opponents (mostly Black and Mexican) provide a continual temptation to the undecided Thao. A fair amount of melodrama, as Eastwood is outraged at the mistreatment of the decent Hmongs by the gangs, and he breaks out his old M-1 (he was allowed to keep that?) and his automatic pistol to defend his property against the ‘gooks’ and to protect and avenge his newfound neighbors. Although the viewer has no idea of it in the beginning, the seemingly incorrigible Eastwood is redeemable. It seems that his hard feelings come from having had to kill 13 enemy soldiers in Korea, something that has scarred his soul and kept him from reaching out to anyone since (this includes his two sons and their families, with whom he does not exchange a kind word). His crusty exterior is cracked by his increasingly paternal feelings toward Thao and Sue and by his anger at the extreme persecution to which they are subjected by the gang.

Eastwood’s moral outrage leads to a surprise redemptive ending, when he induces the Hmong gang members to kill him in the street; since he is unarmed, they will serve long sentences in prison. Film ends with the radiant Thao driving the Gran Torino next to the lake – Eastwood has left it to him in his will. Film is feel good: the Hmong are basically good people and at least the girls will go to college; the gang is broken up; and Eastwood’s death is noble.


The Grapes of Wrath 1940 John Ford 4.0 Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carridine. Very political presentation of plight of the poor Okies in the Dust Bowl days. Clearly sides with the Joads as they trek across the country in their ramshackle truck in search of work and survival in California. The banks in Oklahoma heartlessly drive the sharecroppers off the land with big bulldozers; the growers in California exploit the poor and hire thugs to keep the upper hand – they are in cahoots with the police. The only good guy is the federal government that through the Department of Agriculture has set up pleasant settlement camps for the agricultural migrants. Famous ending with Ma Joad saying “we are the people,” and they can’t get the people; we will always be there. Stunning black and white photography (Gregg Toland) that brings out the big horizon and the big sky, the dust of the road, the details of the physical objects in the frame. Many location shots on the road, but also a lot of studio scenes, e.g., in the camps. Fonda brings understated strength and nobility to the role of Tom Joad; at first he just wants to stay out of trouble, but then he develops a desire to face injustice and help the oppressed. Great scenes: Ma going through her things to decide what to keep and what to throw away; the men in the New Mexico diner quietly pay the owner for the candy she has virtually given the obviously deprived Joads. Tone is sentimental, full of feeling, visually beautiful, elegiac and noble. Aided by the Christian humanism of the message -- promoted by the preacher, who makes sure God is remembered in the purplish script (Nunnally Johnson): love your neighbor and help him – so simple.


The Grave of the Fireflies 1988 Isao Takahata (Japan) 3.5 Very emotional film about two children, one a teenager and the other with her 5-year-old sister, who try to survive the American fire bombing in Kobe at the end of World War II. Very beautiful and poetic, often bordering on the sentimental. Simple in its straightforward style that seems realistic, but it does dwell on heart-tugging scenes and symbols, e.g., Setsuko buries the fireflies like her mother, who was killed in the bombing, dwelling on the death of Seita in the subway, the big eyes of Setsuko. Story of survival where both end up dying. Animation is very beautiful and betrays its origin in Miyazaki’s studio. Very effective as statement about there sufferings brought on common folk by war; viewer ends up being very sad at end. No particular animus against Americans, but against war in general. Perhaps most obvious is the cruelty of people to one another; they won’t share their food even with children who are obviously starving – the aunt who hounds them out of the house, even the farmer who claims that he has no more food, especially the doctor who says the only thing wrong with Setsuko is lack of food, and then refuses to give her any! Very moving reflection on the reality of war.


The Great Caruso 1951 Richard Thorpe (MGM) 2.5 Mario Lanza looking boyish, callow, and good-hearted as Enrico Caruso, Ann Blyth as the New York socialite he marries – very artificial, mannered and staged (teeth blazing white all in a row), Dorothy Kirsten as the standout Met Opera singer who sings with Caruso. An example of the lower level of the MGM musical in the early 1950s. A kind of biopic of the great Italian/American Caruso that takes great liberties with the facts of his life – e.g., the film has him dying on stage in a performance of Martha (but we scarcely understand why except that he has a cough and has been using ether to lubricate his throat). Impossibly sentimental/corny – much about how dedicated Caruso is to the social utility of music (it makes people so happy); all of his Italian hangers-on are good-hearted, even-tempered, fun-loving, and superficial with nary a worry in the world; Blyth falls in love with him at first sight, and persists in her determination to marry her true love despite the opposition of her upper crust New York dad; Kirsten advises Blyth not to marry Caruso because in effect his first wife will always be his music (she speaks from experience since apparently she has sacrificed her own personal life for her career on the stage). Caruso is not at first popular in New York, which apparently likes its tenors to be more upper crust and aristocratic (the critics say he sings with too much emotion and in too plebeian a style), but the city comes around when another tenor praises him and it turns out that Caruso, who at first thought that Americans were cold and impersonal, is going to like them after all, etc., etc. Caruso is presented as a man of the people, who sings more to the working class Joes in the gallery than the upper crust set in the loges. Lanza sings selections from the opera repertory – ‘Rigoletto’, ‘Tosca’, ‘Martha’, ‘La Boheme’, “Pagliacci’, etc. – and a smattering of his popular songs, “Loveliest Night of the Year’, ‘Because’, etc. He is not much of an actor (and he looks like he aged and gained weight from the beginning to the end of the film [make-up?]), but his voice is smashing – clear, precise, great volume and tone, and full of feeling. Perhaps it would be more worthwhile to listen to the remastered recordings of his songs than watch his movies.


Great Expectations 1946 David Lean (Britain) 4.0 John Mills as the older Pip, absolutely unbelievable when he is still a blacksmith’s apprentice, but convincingly snobby and vapid dressed in dapper silk as a gentleman about town in London – the most passive and uninteresting character in the film; a very young Jean Simmons playing the teenaged Estella, slim, astonishingly beautiful, elegant, and sprightly; Valerie Hobson a distracting come down compared to Simmons as the grown up Estella; Bernard Miles endearing as Pip’s good-hearted brother-in-law of – he would do anything for his ward; Francis L. Sullivan corpulent, jolly, stentorian, and decisive as the lawyer Jaggers at the center of the narrative; Finley Currie as the disturbing-looking convict Magwitch who turns out to have a heart of gold despite his rough hewn ezxterior; Martita Hunt as a rather kind and benevolent, although mad and vengeful, Miss Havisham determined to punish all men for her having been jilted on her wedding day; Alec Guinness in his first substantial role as the cheerful roommate of Pip in London . Terrific, socially and topographically accurate, emotional, heart-warming adaptation of the Dickens novel that exactly recalls the Dickens novel despite a sentimental ending where Pip and Estella suddenly kiss in Miss Havisham’s abandoned mansion and go off to live happily ever after. Crisp, carefully framed black-and-white cinematography all the way through. Some aspects of the film resemble a horror film: Pip scared witless by the threatening Magwitch in the early expressionist churchyard scenes; the appearance of Miss Havisham (dressed in her wedding rags) and of her dining room (dark, curtains drawn, mice gnawing away at a rotten wedding cake on the table, dust and cobwebs everywhere), although Hunt plays her rather good-naturedly; Jaggers’ cluttered and dusty-looking law office with the death masks on the wall; the mysterious, tumbled down inn by the bay where Pip and Pocket are arranging Magwitch’s escape. Just like in the literary Dickens, the most memorable aspect of the film is the characters. They all stand out in their colorful peculiarities; most of them are kind and well-meaning – Joe would do anything for Pip, Magwitch seems dangerous in the beginning, but he turns out to be Pip’s benefactor and we cry when he dies in prison at the end; Pocket is cheerful, eternally smiling, and supportive; even Jaggers means well despite his gruffness; the only villainous characters are Joe’s wife (Pip’s sister), who however does not do much harm, and Bentley Drummle, an upper-class nitwit who plays a lesser role than in the novel. The film takes a rather dim view of the snobbery, foppery, and idleness of English gentle society: as Pip is being “educated” to become a gentleman, he does essentially nothing – no schooling, no work, just idleness. The ending in which Pip and Estella march off into the sunset for eternal bliss is tacked on to satisfy the Anglo-American audience’s demand for the happy ending; it is quite artificial. Nevertheless probably the finest literary adaptations of Dickens.


The Great McGinty 1940 Preston Sturges 3.5 Brian Donlevy solid and believable as tough street bum with bad grammar (hardly a Jimmy Stewart) who rises to become the “reform” mayor, then governor, and a true lover with the wife he married originally for political expediency; Akim Tamiroff as cynical immigrant who is now a political boss; Muriel Angelus as secretary-turned-wife pronouncing her lines like she just had a lesson from her voice coach; William Demarest begins career as Sturges regular as fast-talking cynical city politician; Steffi Duna as pretty Latin dancer. Preston Sturges’ first film as director is a sometimes comic/sometimes serious satire of machine city politics in USA; something of a relief to have a somewhat cynical satire in the Capra age of good feeling and thinking positive. Donlevy tells his story in flashback from the Central American bar. He rises to the top under the tutelage of Tamiroff, but when he becomes a humanitarian under the influence of his wife and tries to go straight, he is arrested and thrown in jail; afterwards he sacrifices his wife and flees to the banana republic, where as the bartender he remains a cynic until the final frame. Film at 80 minutes is short and taut. Very amusing sarcastic scenes: Donlevy originally draws the attention of Tamiroff by voting 37 times in an election; Tamiroff settling back into his bullet-proof limo, “America is a land of great opportunity”; “a little corruption is useful because it keeps the lower class of people from taking over”; Mayor Donlevy decides the quantity of a bribe by having his mark guess at how many people were at a baseball game photo (75,000); the fortune teller that Donlevy is shaking down invites him upstairs “to have his fortune told” (the censors wondered what sort of fortune she had to persuade him to go easy on her). Interaction of Donlevy and Tamiroff is amusing: their conversations degenerate into tough-guy insults and then they start fighting with their fists. Surprise ending: the final shot shows that Tamiroff and all his cronies are in the bar with Donlevy, and another fistfight breaks out between the two men as the camera pans to Demarest, “There they go again!” Capra-like good feeling appears periodically (McGinty’s conversations with his wife about abolishing child labor and slum housing, his sincere talking of the governor’s oath), but they soon are canceled by cynicism. Very little slapstick humor aside from the fist fights.


The Great Moment 1944 Preston Sturges 2.5 Joel McCrea his relaxed self as dentist looking for a way to keep his patients from screaming; Betty Field as sweet, adorable, supportive wife who has to put up with the shenanigans of her husband but who is charmed by the prospect of being rich; Harry Carey noble but dead pan as the first operating surgeon; William Demarest main comic relief as Morton’s first hilarious patient (“It as the night of September 30. I was in excruciating pain!”); Franklin Pangborn as fussy assistant of a surgeon; Porter Hall in cameo role as President Franklin Pierce; Louis Jean Heydt as Dr. Horace Wells, who develops the use of nitrous oxide for dental anesthesia. A rather confused biopic of the dentist who discovered the use of ether to enable painless surgery. Film begins with sequences taken from the end of the story that show Morton being sued and frustrated by rivals. Most of the film is a series of flashbacks; it focuses humorously on his trial and error approach to using ether: the viewer is led through a complex process in which ether is finally used successfully on dental patients, and then finally in surgery. Standing out is a highly comic scene in which Demarest has hallucinations and goes wild when administered the wrong kind of ether and jumps out of the window; then McCrea cons Demarest into trying it again (“Does it smell like peaches or pears?”), and bingo! first ether extraction. Film ends with an impossibly sentimental scene in which to the accompaniment of Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’ McCrea happens upon an angelic Hollywood studio girl who is about to be operated without anesthesia and then the doors to the operating theater are thrown open to a scene of ending triumph; the editors (Paramount a couple of years after Sturges wrapped the film) seem oblivious to their having started the film with scenes of McCrea being harassed by rivals opposing his patent. Everyone in the film has prejudices against dentists and objects to their invasion of the realm of medicine. All characters are overly scrubbed in upbeat 1840s studio costumes (the President is Pierce). Perhaps Sturges’ least satisfying film: curious mixture of biopic and slapstick humor; too obviously filmed in the studio; edited so that it makes little sense.


The Great Santini 1979 Lewis John Carlino 3.0 Robert Duvall in powerful, eat-em-alive performance as Marine pilot Bull Meechum, Blythe Danner gentle and moving as his long-suffering wife and mother of four, Michael O'Keefe does credible job as a rather dull straight arrow son caught in conflict with his overbearing dad, Lisa Jane Persky very amusing as his rebellious and verbally abusive daughter who teases her dad by saying that they should have some quality time together and then announce that she has been impregnated by a black dropout that Duvall will come to like (he doesn't believe her for a minute). The movie shines because of the outstanding performance of the two leads. Danner has the predictable role as the long-suffering wife, but she does it with sensitivity and skill – we cry with her when she is sad. Duvall had few roles as good as this one – overbearing, unbearable; practical joker who gets in trouble with the Corps (but they never go far with discipline since he is such a good pilot) – scenes of the mushroom soup throw up and pulling down pants of the Corporal are hilarious; what more or less works in the Marine Corps is a strike-out in the family – he treats his children like raw recruits making them reply "Yes Sir!!" to his tirades. Much conflict with his son whenever the latter shows the least inclination to independence, most famously the basketball game when dad will not accept that his son has beaten him (he follows him up the stairs bouncing the ball against the back of his head and calling his son a sissy); Duvall is also out of control in his son's basketball game goading Ben to knock down the opposing player – this leads to their team's lost of the game. Film has a noble and tragic conclusion when Duvall dies in a plane crash – he refuses to bail out of his stricken plane since he is afraid that it will crash into the city of Beaufort, SC. Some of the movie is dull – particularly the scenes with the gentle good Negro Toomer (as always contrasted with the racist white boys) wherein Ben learns to be his own man; as his mother says, this is where he learned to strike out on his own. Fun to watch Duvall!