Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) – J. Foley

It’s an acting masterclass from Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, and Alec Baldwin using a script by David Mamet (based on his play) and directed by James Foley. Aside from Spacey (the office manager), they all play real estate salesmen, mostly down on their luck. Alec Baldwin (a high-flyer from the head office) is brought in to threaten them to start closing deals – or else!  Lemmon seems to be in the most dire position, with a sick daughter in the hospital and out of funds.  Only Pacino has been selling and he has Jonathan Pryce on the hook as the film unfolds.  But when the premium “Glengarry” leads are stolen, the office falls apart as everyone is suspected.  Although only Pacino received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, everyone here is given some choice dialogue in that emphatic (and highly profane) Mamet style.  It’s gripping…and sad.  These guys are busting their butts in order to convince people to invest their hard-won savings in some highly doubtful get-rich-quick property schemes.  Clearly, they’ve got to sell their souls (as Baldwin seems to have) and be ready to exploit others without feeling in order to climb the ladder of success.  Such is capitalism.

  

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆  ½

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) – F. Capra

Been a long time since I watched this but I felt in need of some political uplift!  Jimmy Stewart plays the naïve but sincere and morally right boys’ club leader who suddenly finds himself the junior senator from his rural state when the incumbent dies and the governor (a puppet for a evil machine) picks him as a pushover.  The machine run by news magnate Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) already has the state’s senior senator (played by Claude Rains with perfect ambivalence) in his pocket and together they are pushing through some major graft – trying to get federal approval for a dam after they have conveniently bought up all the surrounding land, putting the deeds in dummy names.  Of course, Senator Jefferson Smith (Stewart) puts a crimp in their plans, first accidentally but then with moral purpose – but the machine uses all their evil power against him.  The highlight of the film is Smith’s long filibuster to stop himself from getting ejected from the Senate and to defeat the bill.  Director Frank Capra can be Capracorny at times but there are so many great supporting actors here (Jean Arthur, Thomas Mitchell, Guy Kibbee, Beulah Bondi, Eugene Pallette, Harry Carey, etc.) that he can’t really go wrong, despite the total emotional manipulation at play.  Of course, the film ends abruptly on a high note, with little chance to contemplate the realities of the situation.  But hey, this sort of fable where corruption is defeated by those who advocate that the government should care for the people is just what I needed!

  

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) – M. Heller

I am one of those people who grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood on PBS (and I sometimes wonder whether this is one of the things that encouraged me to move to Pittsburgh in the mid-90s).  I am still keen to see Morgan Neville’s recent documentary (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, 2018) but it hasn’t come my way yet.  Instead, despite my general dislike of Tom Hanks (as an actor, if not a person), who plays Fred Rogers, I thought I would give this film a try.  And I must confess that I liked it – because it is very weird!  First of all, it isn’t a bio-pic.  Instead, it is based on an Esquire magazine article that details how a cynical “broken” writer Lloyd Vogel, played by Mattthew Rhys, is assigned to interview Rogers in 1998 (for a special issue on “heroes”) and the transformative effect the meeting has on his life.  Sure, it is one of those uplifting films (like Silver Linings Playbook, which I also enjoyed) that can move you – but Hanks’ portrayal of Rogers is so damn odd that it is hard to look away.  At one point, he suggests that Vogel and he take a minute to think about all the people who loved and cared for us when we were small and the camera allows Hanks to gaze goofily out of the screen at us (this technique also seems drawn directly from attachment theory’s recent “security priming” interventions that boost well-being/reduce insecurity).  The problems that Vogel faces – family drama with dad Chris Cooper – are probably not too unusual and there are many adults with emotional problems out there – overcoming them for a heart-warming finale is screenwriting 101.  But the intervention of Mr. Rogers – the fact that there ever was such a person as Mr. Rogers – seems extraordinary.  Director Marielle Heller and her team manage to inject some creative elements (dream sequence, models of Pittsburgh and NYC that echo the TV show’s sets/methods) but in the end it is Hanks who pulls this off.  Now I’m going to be gentler with my kids!

  

Wanda (1970)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Wanda (1970) – B. Loden

Intense character study written, starring, and directed by Barbara Loden, her only film.  With no music and shot in that cinema verité documentary style (familiar from the Maysles Brothers) it is easy to think that what you are watching is “real”.  Wanda (Loden) is something of a lost soul (declaring “I’m no good” at one point), wandering (get it?) aimlessly throughout the picture, not seeking out trouble but not avoiding it when it finds her, just trying to get by, it seems.  The film opens in a poor PA mining community with Wanda accepting a divorce from her husband and willingly giving up custody of her two children.  Then we see here move from beer to beer, scrounging money where she can, sleeping with guys who help her out.  She doesn’t say much and perhaps has not much to say.  When she stumbles into a robbery in a bar, she follows the stick-up man to a motel and stays with him even though he is cruel to her.  Perhaps out of loneliness she doesn’t leave when he plans a bank robbery.  When that’s over, she moves on, aimlessly.  An interview I saw with Loden reveals that she felt that Wanda knows “what she doesn’t want” but isn’t sure what she does want.  Most descriptions of the film refer to it as feminist, perhaps because Wanda rejects the expected role for women at the time (mother and housewife) but finds that society offers no other opportunities. 

Midnight (1939)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Midnight (1939) – M. Leisen

I thought I had thoroughly mined the screwball comedy genre (popular in the ‘30s & ‘40s) but I had missed this prime example, directed by Mitchell Leisen but written by Charles Bracket and Billy Wilder (all responsible for other screwballs with other partners).  Claudette Colbert (herself no stranger to the genre) plays a broke chorus girl just arrived in Paris (after losing all her dough in Monte Carlo) who allows a sympathetic taxi driver (Don Ameche) to drive her around from nightclub to nightclub looking for a job.  No luck, but there are sparks between them – nevertheless she flees, winding up in a posh society piano recital (hosted by Hedda Hopper!) where she catches the eye of John Barrymore and ends up playing bridge with his wife (Mary Astor), the man trying to seduce her (Francis Lederer), and another friend.  To avoid being thrown out of the event, she claims to be the Baroness Czerny (taking the taxi driver’s surname off the top of her head).  Soon, she finds herself employed by Barrymore to continue playing the Baroness in order to divert Lederer’s attention away from Astor – but when Ameche (the real Czerny) shows up, chaos ensues.  As it always does in screwball comedy.  Somehow too each film in this genre challenges us to guess who ends up married/not married or divorced/not divorced – and Midnight offers as complex a conclusion as any.  

  

The Mother and the Whore (1973)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Mother and the Whore (1973) – J. Eustache

This film, a sort of epilogue to (or elegy for) the Nouvelle Vague, captures that feeling in your twenties when you are finding your way, establishing relationships under heightened uncertainty, not just about the rules of relationships but about yourself and your values and goals.  In its typically French fashion, the film is all talk – often fascinating talk that reveals character (or character flaws), shot with actors speaking directly to the camera. At the start (of its 3 ½ hour length), the main talker is Alexandre, played by New Wave stalwart Jean-Pierre Léaud who we know so well from his work with Truffaut (from The 400 Blows onward).  Although he is our main point of identification, we are likely meant to be ambivalent about him, since he is clearly setting out to cheat on his live-in girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette LaFont; her flat, not his) with another woman he notices at an outdoor café/pub, Veronika (Françoise Lebrun).  He is a charming talker but selfish and narcissistic, even while he aims to be totally honest with both women (if not always with himself – there is a lot of bad faith on display here). As the film progresses, we get to see more about Marie’s perspective (angry, hurt, jealous) and especially that of Veronika who starts to have monologues of her own by the film’s end -- and she is quite willing to offer her graphic views on sexual matters, laced with a lot of profanity.  Indeed, the film is shocking in this respect, calling to mind the films of Andy Warhol or John Waters that know no boundaries.  Although not pornographic, the film does not shy away from presenting the ménage à trois as it appears, struggles, and collapses, with all the heightened emotions that you would expect. Given its time period (and the title), it isn’t too difficult to ascertain that the film has something to say about “women’s liberation” and is questioning Alexandre’s (and society’s) attitudes toward women and their role.  To its credit, it sees women as free to make their own decisions about life and especially sex; however, I also got the sense that director Jean Eustache (who wrote every word) may yearn for simpler times (or have empathy for those who do) when gender roles were clearer. The end result is nothing less than completely absorbing and intense (if dated) – viewers be prepared!

The Fire Within (1963)

 

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Fire Within (1963) – L. Malle

Apparently, director Louis Malle identified so much with Alain Leroy, the protagonist of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle’s novel, that he even dressed actor Maurice Ronet in his own clothes.  Malle was reportedly insecure about his ability (despite several awards and commercial successes, including Les Amants, 1958), and saw glimpses of himself in the character who feels at a dead-end at age 30 after a (short) lifetime spent indulging himself with nightlife and women and especially alcohol.  When we meet Alain he has been living at a clinic in Versailles, separated from his American wife (still in New York) and his friends (all in Paris); he is introspective and unwilling to leave despite having been detoxed and “cured”.  After sleeping with his wife’s visiting go-between, Lydia, he restlessly decides that he should kill himself – but first, he makes one last trip to Paris to say goodbye.  His encounters with his old friends prove rather unsatisfying:  they have either matured into adulthood (with wife, kids, career) or they remain as they were but seem distant or foolish.  Anyone who has struggled with depression can see Alain’s troubled self-loathing in Ronet’s eyes and in the way he alternately lashes out at others and wallows in his public shame (feeling he is seen as a burnt out degenerate). It’s an impressively complex and sad performance.  However, the film, despite Alain’s downward trajectory, occasionally offers reasons for living. Alain’s friends profess their love and try to convince him that he has things to contribute. The film itself, with its beautiful B&W cinematography (by Ghislain Cloquet) and its thoughtful piano score (by Erik Satie), often stops to observe Paris, its people, and Alain’s immediate surroundings.  This sensual experience reminds us of those little pleasures that the mindful existentialist can focus on to keep angst at bay.  However, it is not enough for Alain.