Gentleman’s Agreement
1949, Elia Kazan (dir)
Gregory Peck
This film was pretty good, which is saying something when one considers the horrifically stilted opening scene with Peck and his son. “How are you son?” “just swell dad”. One felt, right from that opening moment, that this film concerning anti-Semitism was going to attack the problem with all the same levels of subtlety and trite condescension that Hollywood has managed to maintain for many generations.
However things did improve. Anne Revere, as Peck’s mother, is stern and magnetic, and Peck’s brash friend played by Celeste Holm left many a viewer (if the viewers are anything like me) feeling that in the end, he certainly made the wrong choice. His wife is the supposed pivot-point of the film, as she progresses to ‘show through action’ how she has converted from a passive country club anti-Semite to an active supporter in the cause to crush the anti-Semites through vocal public action! Yes, the ending is served with a generous helping of cheese.
That is perhaps what makes the film so pathetic. It is working, ostensibly, to show the latent anti-Semitism of the more sophisticated elements of society (rather than just the most vocal and obvious advocates of prejudice). It is intended to be subtle, and works to justify it’s re-hashing of a familiar topic by going beyond the obvious. But the final scene is as unconvincing and transparently shallow as the opening interaction between father and son. Kazan’s ‘solution’ is clearly artifice, designed for mass consumption (and academy awards, which it won for best picture). It is not genuine. It is a moral film, which presents itself as deep and studied, but is, in the end, plastic and cheap. So in terms of message, it is a poor film. If one reads up on Kazan, one sees that he himself was not settled in his fundamental ideas (he says so himself), and so could be considered as one who ‘runs with the tides’. And that is the only way the contrived ending of this film could be considered a success – if one were preaching to the already converted. Therefore, it may be considered in some ways a groundbreaking film, but in terms of simple quality, it is a film with some very good character depth, well filmed, but with a poorly executed plot.
Still, a fair film. Three excellent performances. The girlfriend (soon to be wife), played by Kathy Lacy, is one would presume exactly as written and directed. We are supposed, I think, to be hoping for her – she is the ‘incumbent’ love interest. The final triumph (over casual anti-Semitism) is tied to her final victory of the love interest. But it is a dangerous game. If the viewer should happen to feel that Holm was the far better choice, than where does that leave our blatant moral choice? It is as if – and this hurts to say – her ‘victory’ over her own anti-Semitism became in the end a tool for a staid Hollywood 1949 advocacy of conservatism in the choice of one’s spouse. Not so good. But still, an all right film to see.
Dir Delmer Daves, 1947, B&W, USA
Bogart and Bacall
Viewed at Cinmatheque June 2004
Tremendous plot, very clever camera work. Figure, whose face we are not allowed to see (using in some cases some ‘first person’ camera work, seeing through the man’s eyes), escapes from prison and is picked up mysteriously by the beautiful and stern L. Bacall.
She has been watching his case, and has a personal interest – he is an accussed murderer. He gets, on a tip from a taxi cab driver, an ‘underground’ plastic surgeury facelift – and low and behold, when the bandages come off, it is Bogart. The final scene is ridiculously and artlessly sentimental; however a supurbe and in several ways innovative film. Five Stars.
Chaplin
1940
2 Hours
Not bad, funny, with sound. The moralizing speech at the end shows the quixotic frailty of Chaplin himself; an odd, beautifully simple-minded idealist; one in great erst.
four stars, but no more.
Chaplin
1947
2 Hours
I just erased, in error, a very through review, and do not have the wakefulness to repeat it. A magnificent film, a critical and commercial failure that Chaplin described as “the cleverest and most brilliant of my career”.
Verdoux loses his position as a bank clerk to the depression: a position he has held for 30 years. He becomes a ‘blue bears’, a serial killer, seducing middle aged women and making the disappear when he is able to obtain their assets. This all to support, in middle class comfort, a young son and disabled wife.
The marvelous horror of it comes when the final market crash ruins hinm completely, despite his disparate methods of seduction and murder. The film than jumps to him as older, and worn out, and he describes how his wife and so did not survive the market crash. One suspects that, having used the most desperate measures to obtain the ignorant tranquil happiness of his family, he himself killed them to spare them the impossible but inevitable downturn that would have followed. Thus we see, like a great tower, the pride, even in his middle class standing, of this middle class hero and villain.
Jacques Tati
1949
viewed at Cinemateque, Aug 2009.
I thought I’d seen a Tati before, but was not sure. Now I’m sure. It’s slapstick, and looks like it’s from 1930. Now I like physical comedy, but this is heavily over-emphasized (like the early dramatic transitions from silent to sound film) and has no clever angle or subtlety to counterbalance the ‘blockheaded-ness’ of the physical aspect. It’s the three stooges, done by some other three guys. Not so good. The audience, though, liked it. I guess they knew what they were in for. I myself don’t think it’s funny to watch a person flail around in the air for 2 minutes to try and hit a fly, and then to have a cyclist go by and watch him flail around in the air as the fly has transferred to him. There’s nothing funny in that, at least the way Tati does it. It’s just ’signs’ of comedy, without the comedy itself. But I was glad to see it, so I cross him off my list of ‘film makers to look out for’.
Vittorio De Sica, 1948.
Viewed at Cinematheque, July 2009, w/ LN.
A nice film, better then I remembered. It’s a bit thin; the plot is very simple – perhaps too simple. A story of poor people, like ‘La Terra Trema’, but not as sophisticated in it’s development. The acting and general production are all good, but not quite remarkable; in a sense, the ’solid, but not remarkable’ tenor carries remarakably consistently through all aspects of the film (the camera work, the writting, the production, the acting). It’s like a supurbe amateur film, without any pretension.
The film’s fame on the cinemaphile circuit is unjustified, but that is not the fault of the film. It is a good film. It is very clever in one way, in that the title tells you what is going to happen, but after that does happen, you discover in the end it,, or the title, meant something different then what you had expected. I would (and you would need to know more then I am willing to say here to properly understand this) not agree with the titling as “Bicycle Thieves”. I can’t translate from Italian, but it should be, without question, ‘The Bicycle Thief’.
Chaplin
1940
2 Hours
IMDB 8.4
—
Not bad, funny, with sound. The moralizing speech at the end shows the quixotic frailty of Chaplin himself; an odd, beautifully simple-minded idealist; one in great earnest.
four stars, but no more
