Personal Canon #74: Meet Me In St. Louis

This post is for my musical of the month party as well as the latest in my Personal Canon (100 favorite films). It's one of two entries in the countdown for Judy Garland, one of my top ten favorite actresses of all time

It's Summer 1903 in Missouri and the Smith family are buzzing about the World's Fair coming to their town the following spring. Teenage daughters Rose (Lucille Bremer) and Esther (Judy Garland) are dreaming about proposals from handsome men, the eldest son Lonnie (Henry H Daniels Jr) is off to college and the father Lon (Leon Ames), a junior partner at a law firm, is about to tell the family that they're all relocating to New York Ci -- oh, but let's stop there. For any plot summary of Meet Me in St. Louis does the movie a great disservice. This classic musical isn't plot driven at all so much as a series of three seasonal vignettes of family life: Summer, Autumn and Winter with the following Spring in 1904 serving as a coda. Almost all of what might be called "plot" in Meet Me In St. Louis is imagined. That is to say, that the story drivers are all in the future. One day the family will move to New York. One day Rose, Lonnie, and Esther will be married. One day St. Louis will catch the attention of the nation. In essence the movie is a lovingly rendered still life of a family (and town) on the brink of great changes rather than an animated portrait of the changes themselves.

St. Louis begins smartly in the kitchen, the heart of any home. Mrs. Anna Smith (Mary Astor) and her maid and cook Katie (Marjorie Main) are preparing ketchup. Katie thinks it's too sweet, Anna thinks her husband will like it that way. Various members of the cast scoot through the kitchen sharing their opinions, too. They can't seem to agree on the flavor: too sweet? too sour? too spicy? too watery? Vincente Minnelli the real gourmet cook in the director's chair doesn't have the same problem. He gets everything right.

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The Piano (1993)

A Reader Request (long time in coming --my apologies Scott!)
#9 Personal Canon: The Movies I Think About When I Think About the Movies

The menu on the 1999 DVD edition of The Piano is a hideously misleading photoshop tragedy. It’s garish, poorly composed and off putting. I won't even reprint it here to illustrate my point. It's too horrifying. I dare say I’ve never seen a poorer match between a menu and the film that follows. It’s the last less than exquisite image one will see once “play movie” is selected. If you’ve never seen the film before and you (like me) have been burdened with the unwitting purchase or rental of this particular edition, press the buttons quickly.

On to the beauty! There's so much of it...

Like mother, like daughter (Anna Paquin & Holly Hunter in The Piano)

I saw The Piano in Salt Lake City in November 1993 and I’ve never forgotten the experience. The movie held me in rapt attention from its first stirring images and Holly Hunter's high pitched but quiet delivery of one of the greatest opening monologues I'd ever heard

The voice you're hearing is not my speaking voice but my mind's voice...

I remember my best girlfriend’s hand gripping my arm during the most brutal sequence late in the movie. She was so upset she nearly bolted from her seat. I vividly remember exiting the theater after the credits rolled, both of us in a daze. We knew we’d seen something great but what exactly had we seen? Watching The Piano for the first time can feel like confronting a gorgeous but alien presence. It’s utterly transporting but also unfamiliar. Your rational mind will tell you that this shouldn’t be the case. But deeply sensual films are uncommon. What’s more, films shot through with feminine mystique, energies and point of view are arguably the rarest forms of cinema. The Piano stood womanly and defiant and far removed from other films that came before it and sadly, perhaps, has remained a foreign thing. It's still a rarity.

Jane Campion’s masterpiece, with its eerily beautiful New Zealand landscapes (before Lord of the Rings popularized the place for Hollywood) and bold femininity, felt otherworldly in 1993 but like all truly great art, it proved unusually accessible despite the challenging gauntlet it threw down. It was a major arthouse and critical success, loved by both the intelligentsia and the more middlebrow Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Before it closed its run it had won eight Oscar nominations, three statues, a sizeable box office gross for the time and a passionate enduring following.

The film begins with a curiously fuzzy image. The next cut reveals it as a POV shot: we’re looking through the fingers of Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) who is partially covering her eyes... from what we’re not sure. The camera doesn't stay subservient to Ada's point of view but rather begins to study her, this curious mute creature. Hunter's fascinating performance, incongruously both stony and expressive, demands it...

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Return and discuss if you have something to say.

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#97 The Women

"Movies I Think About When I Think About the Movies"

If you ask any group of film buffs to name Hollywood's pinnacle year --it's "best year ever"-- chances are that "1939" will be uttered quickly and then argued about. That was the year that brought us Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka and at least a dozen other extremely beloved films. Also strutting around in theaters that year was a bitchy but endearing comedy/melodrama mix. The film's impressive star line up was headlined by Norma Shearer as Mrs Stephen Haines. She was orbited by stars of similar (or then just-lesser) stature: Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine among them. Even with the mega-wattage and box office pull of the stars The Women bore the sexist, reductive tagline:

“It’s all about men!”

Not that it isn't about men, I must quickly add. Or at least women's ideas about the men in their lives. The drama and comedy in The Women comes from the way the gathered actresses fight over men, adore men, adjust themselves for men, connect themselves to men and sabotage each other --presumably also for men. What? You thought with Roz Russell and bitchtastic Joan Crawford in the mix that this wouldn't be catty?

Continue reading... for more on this starry 30s comedy.

Tags: movies, cinema, The Women, comedy women, film, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer,MGM

#97 The Women

"Movies I Think About When I Think About the Movies"

If you ask any group of film buffs to name Hollywood's pinnacle year --it's "best year ever"-- chances are that "1939" will be uttered quickly and then argued about. That was the year that brought us Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka and at least a dozen other extremely beloved films. Also strutting around in theaters that year was a bitchy but endearing comedy/melodrama mix. The film's impressive star line up was headlined by Norma Shearer as Mrs Stephen Haines. She was orbited by stars of similar (or then just-lesser) stature: Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine among them. Even with the mega-wattage and box office pull of the stars The Women bore the sexist, reductive tagline:

“It’s all about men!”

Not that it isn't about men, I must quickly add. Or at least women's ideas about the men in their lives. The drama and comedy in The Women comes from the way the gathered actresses fight over men, adore men, adjust themselves for men, connect themselves to men and sabotage each other --presumably also for men. What? You thought with Roz Russell and bitchtastic Joan Crawford in the mix that this wouldn't be catty?

Continue reading... for more on this starry 30s comedy.

Tags: movies, cinema, The Women, comedy women, film, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer,MGM

#98 The Little Mermaid

This is the next installment of my personal canon "Movies I Think About When I Think About the Movies"

American members of Generation Y and Z may have a good deal of trouble imagining this but it's true: once upon a time, animated movies were considered highly uncool. They were strictly for babies. Teenagers disdained them. Adults took their children under duress. They barely caused a ripple at the box office. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ignored them. CGI was not part of the national vernacular. Strange but true.

In a very short window of time, from November 1989 through February 1992, three major events changed modern perceptions of the animated film in a gargantuan way. Let's take them in reverse order: The final big-bang was the moment when Beauty & the Beast (1991) was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, the first (and still only) time that a cartoon has received that pinnacle mainstream honor. The middle part of the three-part revolution was when hipster American audiences began to discover that there was more to the form than Walt Disney. Katsuhiro Ôtomo's anime sci-fi classic Akira was the key that opened the door for anime, now very big and influential business in America. Which brings us to the beginning: the first key event of animation's turnaround was the release of Disney's "28th animated classic" The Little Mermaid; an orgasmic reawakening of the most flexible and fantastical of film mediums.



Continue reading "She's Gotta Have It"...
for more on Ariel's coming of age, Britney Spears and Madonna, the rebirth of the musical, and more --yes, this one's all over the place.

Tags: movies, cinema, The Little Mermaid, moviemusicals musicals, animation,film, Britney Spears, Madonna,Walt Disney, mermaids,cartoon, fairy tale

#98 The Little Mermaid

This is the next installment of my personal canon "Movies I Think About When I Think About the Movies"

American members of Generation Y and Z may have a good deal of trouble imagining this but it's true: once upon a time, animated movies were considered highly uncool. They were strictly for babies. Teenagers disdained them. Adults took their children under duress. They barely caused a ripple at the box office. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ignored them. CGI was not part of the national vernacular. Strange but true.

In a very short window of time, from November 1989 through February 1992, three major events changed modern perceptions of the animated film in a gargantuan way. Let's take them in reverse order: The final big-bang was the moment when Beauty & the Beast (1991) was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, the first (and still only) time that a cartoon has received that pinnacle mainstream honor. The middle part of the three-part revolution was when hipster American audiences began to discover that there was more to the form than Walt Disney. Katsuhiro Ôtomo's anime sci-fi classic Akira was the key that opened the door for anime, now very big and influential business in America. Which brings us to the beginning: the first key event of animation's turnaround was the release of Disney's "28th animated classic" The Little Mermaid; an orgasmic reawakening of the most flexible and fantastical of film mediums.



Continue reading "She's Gotta Have It"...
for more on Ariel's coming of age, Britney Spears and Madonna, the rebirth of the musical, and more --yes, this one's all over the place.

Tags: movies, cinema, The Little Mermaid, moviemusicals musicals, animation,film, Britney Spears, Madonna,Walt Disney, mermaids,cartoon, fairy tale

#99 Rope

This post is my entry for the Hitchcock Blog-a-Thon hosted by The Film Vituperatem as well as the next installment of my personal canon: "movies i think about when i think about the movies"

Alfred Hitchcock served as auteur-theory training wheels for me. I doubt I'm alone in this. Perhaps it's the confines of his chosen genre that throw his presence into such unmistakable relief. Or maybe it's his celebrity, cultivated through that famous profile, press-baiting soundbites, celebrated fetishes, and television fame. But what it comes down to is this: When watching a Hitchcock film, even uneducated moviegoers, even movie-loving children can wake up suddenly to the notion of the man behind the curtain. Movies do not merely exist. They are built. The realization can be thrilling: Someone is actually choreographing this whole spectacle for my amusement!

And on the subject of choreography I give you Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. I gave myself Rope, actually, it being the first Hitchcock I sought on my own as a budding film fanatic. 'Let's see what else this man behind the curtain, this wizard, can do.' In this case what he could do was quite a lot. Though Rope obviously represented a complex coordinated puzzle for the filmmaking team, the plot is unusually simple. Two former prep school mates kill a third for the thrill of it (this is no spoiler, just the opening scene). They chase their "perfect murder" with a cocktail party to which they've invited the victim's loved ones.

Phillip (Farley Granger) and Brandon (John Dall), the guilty homos of Rope !

The film's claim to fame for whatever meager fame it has managed --and I'd argue that that's disproportionate to the elaborately perverse buffet it serves up as well as its pivotal place in the director's career (first color film, first post-fame failure, second attempt at a confined space thriller, a form which would reap perfection for the auteur on his third attempt: Rear Window, 1954) -- comes from Hitchcock's formal experimentation. For Rope he uses one camera, one set and only nine actors. And then, here's the famous part: He films it all in one continuous shot. Or thereabouts --there are five or six noticeable edits (and a few more I'm told) but why quibble? Jimmy Stewart's reliably grounding charisma aside, Hitchcock is Rope's true movie star and Rope's continuous shot is the mythmaking close-up. It just happens to be stretched across the entire 80 minutes.

Read the rest ...

for more on the power of the uninterrupted camera shot and the queer baiting antics of Rope.

#99 Rope

This post is my entry for the Hitchcock Blog-a-Thon hosted by The Film Vituperatem as well as the next installment of my personal canon: "movies i think about when i think about the movies"

Alfred Hitchcock served as auteur-theory training wheels for me. I doubt I'm alone in this. Perhaps it's the confines of his chosen genre that throw his presence into such unmistakable relief. Or maybe it's his celebrity, cultivated through that famous profile, press-baiting soundbites, celebrated fetishes, and television fame. But what it comes down to is this: When watching a Hitchcock film, even uneducated moviegoers, even movie-loving children can wake up suddenly to the notion of the man behind the curtain. Movies do not merely exist. They are built. The realization can be thrilling: Someone is actually choreographing this whole spectacle for my amusement!

And on the subject of choreography I give you Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. I gave myself Rope, actually, it being the first Hitchcock I sought on my own as a budding film fanatic. 'Let's see what else this man behind the curtain, this wizard, can do.' In this case what he could do was quite a lot. Though Rope obviously represented a complex coordinated puzzle for the filmmaking team, the plot is unusually simple. Two former prep school mates kill a third for the thrill of it (this is no spoiler, just the opening scene). They chase their "perfect murder" with a cocktail party to which they've invited the victim's loved ones.

Phillip (Farley Granger) and Brandon (John Dall), the guilty homos of Rope !

The film's claim to fame for whatever meager fame it has managed --and I'd argue that that's disproportionate to the elaborately perverse buffet it serves up as well as its pivotal place in the director's career (first color film, first post-fame failure, second attempt at a confined space thriller, a form which would reap perfection for the auteur on his third attempt: Rear Window, 1954) -- comes from Hitchcock's formal experimentation. For Rope he uses one camera, one set and only nine actors. And then, here's the famous part: He films it all in one continuous shot. Or thereabouts --there are five or six noticeable edits (and a few more I'm told) but why quibble? Jimmy Stewart's reliably grounding charisma aside, Hitchcock is Rope's true movie star and Rope's continuous shot is the mythmaking close-up. It just happens to be stretched across the entire 80 minutes.

Read the rest ...

for more on the power of the uninterrupted camera shot and the queer baiting antics of Rope.

#100 Apocalypse Now

Time to kick off that Personal Canon "100 Movies I Think About When I Think About The Movies" Countdown. We begin with a reworking of an article some of you may recall from about a year ago...

Most serious war films that have arrived in the last quarter-century, and probably any to come in the next twenty-five years, find themselves judged in relation to Francis Ford Coppola's classic Apocalypse Now (1979). Certainly any movies that plunge into the psychic anguish of war risk the comparison. Some, like Jarhead (2005), acknowledge this debt upfront...though that technique hardly rescues them from harsh correlative appraisals.

Despite the fact that most new films are deemed unworthy to breathe the canonized air of Apocalypse Now, I doubt that the film would receive the same shower of affection were it released today...

READ THE REST...

If you don't know what I'm counting down or why, you missed the introduction describing the "canon". (The whole list will eventually be indexed there at that intro page)

#100 Apocalypse Now

Time to kick off that Personal Canon "100 Movies I Think About When I Think About The Movies" Countdown. We begin with a reworking of an article some of you may recall from about a year ago...

Most serious war films that have arrived in the last quarter-century, and probably any to come in the next twenty-five years, find themselves judged in relation to Francis Ford Coppola's classic Apocalypse Now (1979). Certainly any movies that plunge into the psychic anguish of war risk the comparison. Some, like Jarhead (2005), acknowledge this debt upfront...though that technique hardly rescues them from harsh correlative appraisals.

Despite the fact that most new films are deemed unworthy to breathe the canonized air of Apocalypse Now, I doubt that the film would receive the same shower of affection were it released today...

READ THE REST...

If you don't know what I'm counting down or why, you missed the introduction describing the "canon". (The whole list will eventually be indexed there at that intro page)