Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Warned against the siren call of adventure
By Edward Copeland
Many years ago, I saw Scarlet Street, the great noir collaboration of Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett with director Fritz Lang. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to see the same team's earlier entry in the genre,
The Woman in the Window, but for some reason I never got around to it. With film noir being the theme for this year's For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon being hosted by Ferdy on Films and The Self-Styled Siren, I thought now would be the ideal time to finally catch up with it. Before I discuss my thoughts on The Woman in the Window, I would like to give you some background about this year's blogathon. The blogathon this year benefits The Film Noir Foundation. This year, the fundraiser will be working to save a specific film. As Marilyn Ferdinand wrote when announcing this year's blogathon: "In 1950, United Artists released a searing drama called The Sound of Fury, aka Try and Get Me. The film recounts the same story Fritz Lang told in Fury (1936) and was directed by Cy Endfield, who would run afoul of the Hollywood blacklist. Its star, Lloyd Bridges, never had a better role, and Eddie told me that when Jeff and Beau Bridges finally saw the film, they were blown away by his performance. A nitrate print of the film will be restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, using a reference print from Martin Scorsese’s personal collection to guide them and fill in any blanks. Paramount Pictures, which now owns the film, has agreed to help fund the restoration, but FNF is going to have to come up with significant funds to get the job done. That’s where we come in." To donate, click here. Now, let's talk The Woman in the Window. Be warned: There will be SPOILERS. Usually, you can tell when your reaction to a film will end up being negative early on. It's not something that hits you suddenly. That's why it's a surprise when a film such as The Woman in the Window, which pleased me for most of its length, manages to ruin itself and leave a sour taste in my
mouth with a bad ending. If it had ended just a few moments earlier, the way it looked as if it were going to, I'd have loved it. Then they had to do that ending...more on that later. Director Fritz Lang opens the 1944 film outside the walls of Gotham College, before taking us outside a classroom where the course being taught is Some Psychological Aspects of Homicide and the professor lecturing the class is Richard Wanley, Ph.D. (Edward G. Robinson), who spends the summer teaching at the Manhattan college. When we first meet Professor Wanley, he's explaining to the class that while the Ten Commandments may say "Thou shall not kill," it's not as cut and dried as that according to the law. Killing in self-defense is viewed quite differently than a murder for gain, he tells the students. Are we hearing some foreshadowing of events that could be coming down the road for Professor Wanley? Wanley lives as a solid family man and shares a tender goodbye with his wife and two children at the train station before going to meet his friends District Attorney Frank Lalor (Raymond Massey) and Dr. Michael Barkstane (Edmund Breon) for some drinks.
As the trio walk to the hotel where Wanley will reside for the summer, Wanley finds himself captivated by a portrait of a woman in the window of a building. His companions comment that they also have been struck by this vision of beauty before. Once seated in the hotel's lounge, noting that the professor still seems preoccupied by the woman in the painting, the two men jokingly congratulate Wanley on his "summer of bachelorhood," but Wanley laughs them off, saying that they are just three old crocks and lamenting "this stodginess" he feels. His days of adventure have passed, he tells them. "Life ends at 40," the professor declares. The three friends continue to discuss their youthful exuberance and to speculate about the woman and carousing in general and where that can lead. Lalor reminds the doctor and the professor that sometimes trouble can start from the littlest things. Wanley tells them they needn't worry about him. "The flesh is still strong, but the spirit grows weaker by the hour," he tells them. His friends decide that it's safe to leave Wanley alone in the big bad city and bid him goodnight.
After his buddies have left, Wanley isn't quite ready to turn in yet, so he grabs a book of the shelf of the lounge, has the steward Collins (Frank Dawson) bring him a cup of tea and tells him to make sure to tell him when it's 10:30. Apparently, either the reading isn't enough to hold Richard's attention or he still can't get that portrait off his mind, because Professor Wanley grabs his coat and steps out into the brisk night air to stroll back to that building with that painting in the window. Wanley's a little tipsy, but he goes inside and gapes at the framed beauty, but then he gets a start — in the top left hand corner of the painting he sees a reflection of the woman's face. Wanley regains his bearings and realizes it isn't his imagination — she's standing there by him. She apologizes for startling him and introduces herself as Alice Reed (Joan Bennett). Richard asks if that's really her in the painting and she admits that it is and that sometimes she comes by, just to see what people's reactions will be. She tells him it is usually one of two: a kind of solemn stare for the painting or a long, low whistle. Richard asks which look he had. "I'm not sure," Alice replies, "but I suspect that in another moment or two you might have given a long, low, solemn whistle." She then invites him out for a drink and, despite all that Wanley said before about life ending at 40 and his weakening spirit, the professor takes Alice up on her offer despite his class the next morning and being well on his way to inebriation.
Really, up until this point (and even after what comes next), The Woman in the Window doesn't really follow the broad definition of what you think of when you think of the typical film noir, especially in comparison to what this team would produce the following year with Scarlet Street. Bennett's Alice Reed doesn't remotely
resemble the femme fatale archetype of noir you'd expect her to be or come close to matching the cruelty her Kitty March is capable of in Scarlet Street the following year. Similarly, Robinson's Professor Wanley in no way resembles a dupe or a mark as his bank cashier Chris Cross will be in the 1945 film. Interestingly enough, Robinson did co-star in a true 1944 noir — as the good guy, the insurance investigator unraveling the scheme of his co-worker, the ambitious Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and Barbara Stanwyck's wicked Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder's masterpiece Double Indemnity. Back where I left off in The Woman in the Window, Richard and Alice share some late-night drinks and discuss her posing for that painting that so entranced Wanley. Alice asks if he'd like to come back to her apartment to see some other sketches that have been made of her and though the faithful husband in the professor pleads reluctance, Richard decides to make the jaunt anyway.
Despite Richard's insistence that it's late and he's drank too much already, he gives in to Alice's offer and consumes more alcohol as they sit on her couch and look over her sketches. Once Alice has removed her covering, you can see her sheer black dress and it's almost see-through. Even though both Richard and Alice have gone far past the point of being tipsy by now, the two still maintain a chaste relationship. Alice might not have seduction on her mind, but with the outfit she has on, she wouldn't have to do much to make it happen. As Richard tries to open another bottle of booze, he cuts his hand. He asks for a pair of scissors to help get the cork out, which Alice brings him. Perhaps Alice flirts a little, but the married professor continues to be on his best behavior. Of course, the possibility of Richard breaking his marital vows could have been on the horizon: Alice seems to genuinely like him and it's obvious
that Richard finds Alice terribly attractive. However, neither will ever know if a romantic dalliance loomed in their future because on the street below, a cab stops in front of Alice's building in the pouring rain and a man (Arthur Loft) gets out and vaults up the steps and into her apartment. When he finds Richard there, the man explodes, yelling at Alice something to the effect that she promised he was the only one. Alice screams, "Frank!" before the man then viciously smacks her, sending Alice to the floor. Frank then throws the bottle against the wall before turning his rage on Richard. He climbs on top of the professor on the couch and begins to choke the life out of him. Alice manages to get back on her feet and Richard reaches his hand out to her and she hands the scissors to him and he stabs Frank several times in the back until he's dead. The professor's first instinct is to call the police, since it obviously was an act of self-defense. He questions Alice about Frank, and she says his last name is Morgan, he lives out of town and she sees him occasionally when he comes to New York. Richard starts to call the police, but then he puts down the phone and pauses.
Wanley asks out loud, "Do we have the nerve?" The question, seemingly asked to the ether, puzzles the distraught woman at first. Wanley asks if Alice thinks anyone would have seen him coming to her apartment or had she mentioned Frank to anyone and Alice answers no. Richard says that even though it clearly was an act of self defense and that they haven't done anything wrong with each other, it could look back to his wife when she reads about it. Perhaps they should just make Frank disappear. Richard searches through Frank's pocket for identification and they both discover that he'd been lying to Alice: His real name was Claude Mazard. They also find a pocketwatch with his initials "CM." Richard decides that he'll go get his car and then sneak his body out and dump it somewhere on the side
of the road. Alice wants to go, but Richard says they shouldn't be seen together and they can't just leave the body there unattended. Since they've just met, she's afraid that he'll abandon her to take the fall. Richard decides to leave her his vest as proof that he's
coming back. Alice agrees. Richard doesn't notice, but in his clothing is a pen bearing his initials "RW" and Alice sets that aside separately, just to be safe. Richard washes the scissors and tells her to try to get the apartment back in order while he goes to retrieve his car from the parking garage, reassuring her that it will be OK. At the parking garage, the attendant notes that the professor is getting his car at an awfully late hour and Richard offers a half-assed excuse that seems to satisfy the man who tells him that he needs to get his brakes checked — they appear to be running loose. Wanley assures him that he will. Surprisingly, this bit, which would seem to be a setup for something that will pay off later, never gets referred to again in the film.Richard returns with his car and parks outside Alice's apartment building, the same spot where the cab stopped to let Frank/Claude Mazard off to the place where he'd meet his fate. Careful to make certain no one sees him, Richard makes the return trip to the steps where a nervous Alice awaits. Richard and
Alice prepare the dead man for the journey to his almost final resting place, but first Alice looks out the door and spots another resident coming home. She smiles at him and he smiles back. Once he's safely in his place, the two lug Claude down and toss him into the back of Richard's car as if he's a drunk. Alice says she guesses that this is the last they'll see of one another and Richard says for safety sake, he sees no other choice. She returns his vest (though she kept the pen) and says goodbye. As Wanley drives slowly and carefully on the wet streets he hasn't gone very far when he hears sirens and a cop pulls him over. The professor figures that it's all over, but the cop has just stopped him for driving without his lights on. Wanley shows him two pieces of ID and says he thought the attendant turned them on and apologizes and the officer lets him move on. Once he's cleared the city proper, he finds a wooded area on the side of the road and stops. Mazard's eyes are still open, giving the corpse a creepy look and as Richard drags him out to dump him, it reminded me of the similar scene in Blood Simple, only Claude doesn't come back.
The next night, Richard gets together again with Dr. Barkstane and D.A. Lalor for dinner and drinks. The previous night's actions, not to mention lack of sleep, weigh heavily on Wanley's mind and the total tonnage only increases when Lalor receives an urgent call and returns to the table with the news that a well-known industrialist who had been scheduled to arrive in New York more than 36 hours ago is missing — and his name was Claude Mazard. As is their usual game, the doctor begins speculating and Richard slips and asks Lalor how Mazard was murdered. "I didn't say he was murdered," Lalor replies. Wanley emits a nervous laugh and says he just assumed that is what Lalor meant. Lang directs The Woman in the Window with great efficiency, getting the story going quickly and effectively, leaving little fat on the cinematic bone. Now that the essential action has taken place, it shifts gears from the usual noir pattern. Bennett's Alice stays on the sidelines for a little while Wanley, who does teach on the psychological aspects of homicide, gets invited by his friend the district attorney to tag along on various aspects of the investigation, as when Lalor receives the news that a Boy Scout has stumbled upon Mazard's corpse. This is the part of the film where subtle humor also plays a larger role, as with the aforementioned Boy Scout, who seems to be appearing on a very early newscast and, since this is 1944, how many would have even seen it?
"If I get the reward, I'll send my young brother to a good college and I'll go to Harvard."
Richard, already a bundle of nerves in his room, also hears a commercial for an antacid that reminds listeners that, "Overindulgence in food and drink can affect a person's whole outlook on life." He doesn't know how well he will sleep: He'd already accepted Lalor's offer earlier in the evening to go inspect the scene where they found Mazard's body. When they arrive, another officer notices Richard scratching at his arm and says that it looks like he might have contracted poison ivy. Lalor introduces Wanley to Inspector Jackson (Thomas E. Jackson) of the homicide bureau. Without even thinking, Wanley starts leading the men to where the body was found. They stop him and ask where he was going and how he knew which direction to go. Richard really doesn't
have a good answer for that, but Lalor laughs, reassuring his friend that, "We rarely arrest people just for knowing where a body was." Jackson also warns him to be careful because the place is full of poison ivy. They also mention that they know the murder took place elsewhere because of the signs of footprints with less weight coming and going. They also note blood on the barbed-wire fence which doesn't match Mazard so it most likely belongs to the killer. Richard finds himself feeling sicker to his stomach and tells Lalor that he's going to wait in the car. "If you simply confess professor, we could wrap this up by noon," Jackson says jokingly. "Afraid you'll have to work for this one," Richard laughs nervously. "There ya go. Never any consideration for cops," the inspector sighs. Richard climbs in the back of the car and watches nervously, hoping they can't connect that blood to his cut or his poison ivy to that source.
Later that night, Lalor is late meeting Wanley and the doctor for their usual supper. Even though Wanley is itching (literally) for updates about the case, the doctor's natural curiosity runs just as hot and saves Richard from looking as if he's too inquisitive. Lalor repeats the story about the blood on the fence and Richard, choosing the path of hiding in plain sight, shows the cut on his hand. He tells them he got it opening a soda can. The doctor could care less about blood evidence, he wants to know about suspects. Lalor tells his friends that they are interested in finding a woman that Mazard would see when he came to New York. They don't really know much about her, but they know he'd see her every trip and have been speculating that perhaps they fought or there was a third party and that led to Mazard's death. Then Lalor changes his tune and tells them that was the leading theory earlier in the day, anyway. It seems that Mazard's company knew of his tendency to cat around, so they had someone trail him everywhere he went, but this man hasn't turned up, so they figure that either the spy also is lying dead somewhere or he's the one who killed Mazard for some reason. The news that Mazard had a constant tail does not please Richard.
As I said at the beginning, I had not seen The Woman in the Window prior until the time I watched it for this blogathon so when Alice suddenly calls Richard, with a decidedly different tone in Joan Bennett's voice, I thought that this would be when her character took a malevolent turn (She had kept that pen after all). Wanley isn't happy to hear from her, since he knows that the police are seeking her and he needs to keep himself as far from her as possible. He's also displeased that she knows who and where he is, which he never told her, because she got it out of the newspaper which carried a story about a new title he'd earned at the college. She tries to make small talk, but Richard wants to get her off the phone as soon as possible. The next time Richard sees Dr. Barkstane, he tells him that he's been having trouble sleeping and the doctor prescribes him something. When he goes to fill it at the drug store, the pharmacist says he only has it in stock in powder form, so be careful — too much and he'll go to sleep for good.
When Alice calls Richard again, the call isn't to congratulate him about his career, it's because she's in trouble. It seems she's started getting calls from that man who tailed Mazard for his company and he knows he went to Alice's apartment that night. He didn't mention anything about Richard, but he knows that he never saw
him come out of Alice's apartment and now he wants money. She doesn't know want to do — she's frantic. Richard tries to calm her down and agrees to try to scrape together the cash, though he tells her blackmailers never stop with just one payment. Wanley arranges a place where he and Alice can meet without being spotted to discuss their plans. For such a studious family man, crime has come rather easily to Professor Richard Wanley, but for him it's a matter of self-preservation. He tells Alice, "There are only three ways to deal with a blackmailer. You can pay him and pay him and pay him until you're penniless. Or you can call the police yourself and let your secret be known to the world. Or you can kill him." Even Alice is taken aback at how calmly Richard suggests murder as a solution. He gives her the money, but tells her to only give him part, saying she couldn't come up with the full amount. Then, if she feels she can do it, he gives her part of the prescription he just filled and tells her how to poison him and to call him if that doesn't work.
For the first time in the film, we get a sequence that doesn't begin with Richard Wanley. In Alice's apartment, she awaits the arrival of the blackmailer, who was the man (Dan Duryea) who tailed Mazard and goes by the name of Heidt. Heidt tells her that he doesn't want to make trouble for anyone, but he will. With the arrival of Duryea, who also plays a key character in Scarlet Street, I figured that things would really be getting as good and complicated as they did in the team's followup film. Alice turns on the charm, fixing them drinks (she wastes no time — she stirs the drug in his drink before she finds out whether or not the plan works) and telling him that she doesn't know what happened to Mazard and she could only raise part of the cash, which she gives him. (Aside: Am I the only one who thinks that, from the right angles, Duryea bears a striking
resemblance to Willem Dafoe?) Heidt tells Alice he needs the cash because the police will try to pin the murder on him and he plans to leave the country. Alice sidles up to the extortionist and suggests that she's in a similar position and perhaps they should run off together. Unfortunately, Alice's eagerness to get the night over with pushes her to go for the hard sell on the drink, offering to freshen his ice. Heidt turns and tells her to drink his, which she naturally refuses. He throws the glass down and asks her what kind of dope does she think he is and starts searching the apartment. He opens a drawer and finds Mazard's pocketwatch (which he takes with him) and asks if she's interested in changing her story now. He pushes her down on the bed and rifles through some books and finds the rest of the money. The phone rings and Heidt correctly deduces that it's her "partner" and tells Alice to tell him that he'll return tomorrow for another installment and then leaves, tipping his hat on the way out, a gesture, caught in reflection in the mirror over Alice's hearth. As you'd expect in this genre, Lang makes plentiful use of shadows, but he also seems particularly taken with mirrors and reflections. What his obsession with straw hats is, which many characters wear at different times, I have no idea. 
When Alice gets on the phone with Richard, she tells him she blew it, that Heidt plans to come back the next day for more money and he took Mazard's watch. Richard's look shows his devastation. The calm, rational man who plotted a blackmailer's murder has evaporated and he half-heartedly tells Alice to remain calm and he'll try to come up with something. After he hangs up, Richard goes to his bathroom, pours what remains of his prescription into a glass of water and drinks it. Lang films the fading away of Wanley in quite an interesting perspective. Unfortunately, if he'd waited a few minutes more, Alice would have called him back with some startling news. When Heidt left Alice's apartment, he stopped briefly for some reason and some cops recognized him and told him to stop. Heidt took off and the police opened fire and shot Heidt dead. When they searched his body, Inspector Jackson found Mazard's pocketwatch. Richard had killed himself and Heidt
would have taken the fall for Mazard's death. What a great ending. Unfortunately, that's not the ending and that's when The Woman in the Window ruins itself in its final moments. As Richard continues to slip away from life, we hear a voice say, "Professor." Wanley wakes up and he's in the chair in the lounge of his hotel with the book in his lap. The steward Collins reminds Richard that he wanted to be told when it was 10:30. Yes, my friends, it was ALL a dream. The copout ending of all copout endings that stopped working after The Wizard of Oz. Wait, there's more. Richard, so disoriented from the dream, decides he needs to get some fresh air. He goes to get his coat and hat and the coatcheck man turns out to be Claude Mazard! When he steps outside, the doorman greets him pleasantly and it's Heidt! He strolls down and look once again at the portrait when a hooker asks him if he'd like a date and a scared Richard replies, "Not for a million bucks!" before taking off running. That's the end: a jokey, comic note, complete with a musical score to match. Those few moments wipe out all the film's effective moments of a different type of noir and tries to shoehorn it into a comedy about a man's midlife crisis with a conclusion that wipes out everything you've seen before just as they did decades down the round to explain away an entire season of TV's Dallas.
On a humorous level, I can see where The Woman in the Window's ending could have worked and, admittedly, the film contains some funny bits in it before the story wraps, but not enough to make the entire switch in tone work. The ending annoyed me so much, that it compelled me to re-watch Scarlet Street. I figured, "Why not do two pieces for the blogathon?" When I saw Scarlet Street again, I noticed that it was based on the same novel that Jean Renoir's 1931 film La Chienne was. Since I owned the Renoir film on DVD, I figured, why not re-visit it as well, so what started as watching one noir film for the first time has now turned into three pieces. Oh, well. It's for a good cause. If you can, donate.
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Labels: 40s, Beau Bridges, blacklist, Blog-a-thons, Dafoe, Edward G., Jeff Bridges, Joan Bennett, Lang, MacMurray, Renoir, Scorsese, Stanwyck, Wilder
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Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Walt Disney of Situation Comedies
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
During the '30s and '40s, actor Fred MacMurray established a silver screen persona as one of the movies’ most affable and likable leading men. He excelled at leads in romantic comedies such as The Gilded Lily (1935), Hands Across the Table (1935) and The Princess Comes Across (1936), and extended his range to dramatic fare such as Alice Adams (1935), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), The Texas Rangers (1936) and Above Suspicion (1943). He even demonstrated that he could reach even farther with a critically lauded turn as a killer in Billy Wilder’s film noir classic Double Indemnity (1944), a film which was nominated for seven Oscars (though the actor himself went without a nod)
But by the 1950s, MacMurray’s box-office luster as a movie star had dimmed slightly, though he would appear in two of his best vehicles in The Caine Mutiny (1954) and The Apartment (1960). Instead, his career took a different path when he agreed to star in The Shaggy Dog (1959), a slapstick romp produced by the Walt Disney studios. Fred became one of the most recognizable faces in Disney flicks from that point on, appearing in six additional movies released by the studio…most notably the 1961 box-office smash The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and its sequel, Son of Flubber (1963).
The original concept of Dog was actually pitched to ABC (who had asked Walt Disney to create more hit programming along the lines of Disneyland and Zorro) as a situation comedy, but the network was a little lukewarm about the idea, and so Uncle Walt decided to make a feature film instead. But there are those who believe that MacMurray’s turn in the film was essentially a springboard for a weekly comedy series that he would star in for ABC (and later CBS); a show that premiered on the network 50 years ago on this date. You know it as My Three Sons.
“The same dog, the same kids, and Fred” was the pungent observation of Walt Disney Studios writer-producer Bill Walsh on the sitcom success of My Three Sons…though that may be stretching things a tad. But there’s no denying that Sons had a Disney-like feel to it; MacMurray’s…or, I should say, Steve Douglas’ (the father he played on the show) oldest son Mike was played by child actor Tim Considine, a veteran of the Hardy Boys and Spin and Marty “serials” that were featured on Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club. Don Grady, who played the middle Douglas offspring (Robbie), was a Club “Mouseketeer” on the early years of the program (as Don Agrati). Stanley Livingston (Richard, though nicknamed “Chip”) may not have had a Disney connection but he had made appearances on TV’s The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet…which was practically Disney to its very core.
My Three Sons, created by producer Don Fedderson and former Leave it to Beaver scribe George Tibbles, essentially chronicled the weekly misadventures of the Douglas family, humorous tales from an all-male preserve (Steve was a widower) that was run by Michael Francis “Bub” O’Casey (William Frawley), the kids’
grandfather. Though a series that had a noticeable lack of female participation might seem a bit chauvinistic (the show did sometimes suggest that males were superior and could do very nicely without the opposite sex), it’s important to note that Sons often offered wry commentary on gender roles in society. Bub, a feisty ol’ Irishman who took no guff from anyone, was technically the “female” of the household — he did the cooking, cleaning, sewing, etc., and essentially looked after Steve’s brood with care and love. (In the show’s first episode, he is summoned to the front door when a cosmetic salesman asks young Chip if he can speak with “the lady of the house.”) Sons also was unique in that it was one of the first situation comedies to ignore the traditional nuclear-family concept of domestic comedies on television, a model established by shows such as Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show. While there were occasionally comedy series that featured unmarried adults in charge of children (Bachelor Father, Love That Bob), Sons really kicked off the single-parent trend, ushering in a vogue of sitcoms that would later include Family Affair (created and produced by many of the same people who worked on Sons), The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Julia, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Nanny and the Professor.At the time of My Three Sons’ debut, there still existed a stigma about television that kept big-screen actors and actresses away from the small screen — even after a few of them began to stick in their toe to test the boob tube waters. MacMurray, in a casual conversation with Robert Young, asked his fellow thespian about the working conditions on Young’s Father Knows Best, and Young launched into a complaint about how time-consuming the schedule could be. So MacMurray — who owned 50% of Sons — had it stipulated in his contract that he only had to work a total of 65 consecutive days per season, a system that was soon dubbed “the MacMurray method.” All of the actor’s scenes were shot within this time frame (so all Fred really had to do was change his cardigan...and facial expression), allowing him to work on feature films if the opportunity presented itself — but it turned out to be a nightmare for the show’s writers, who often had to have a backlog of scripts completed beforehand to accommodate the actor’s unorthodox schedule. This situation was rife with any number of inconveniences for the supporting actors as well — particularly if a scheduled guest star suddenly passed away or if an actor gained weight or had a growth spurt. (The writers often fell back on featuring limited participation from MacMurray, alibiing that his character was “out of town” or phoning in from a business trip.) As problematic as filming out of sequence was (the other performers despised it, with Bill Frawley being the most vocal), the “method” soon became an accepted practice in the business, and was later adopted by new-to-TV stars such as Brian Keith, Henry Fonda and James Stewart.
At the beginning of My Three Sons’ fifth season, actor Frawley (who was 77 at the time) was in ill-health, and Desilu — the company where Sons was filmed — could no longer get insurance for him…which necessitated his character be “written out” out of the show at mid-season (his last appearance was in the episode “A Woman’s Work,” where it was explained that he’d moved back to Ireland to help out the family’s Aunt Kate). The following episode would introduce Bub’s cantankerous brother Charley (William Demarest, who no doubt got the part due to his friendship with star MacMurray, whom he had known and worked with since the 1930s) to the cast, a retired Merchant Marine who would continue on as the household’s chief cook-and-bottle-washer for the next seven years. Frawley made no secret of his displeasure at being replaced…and was particularly nonplussed that Demarest was filling his shoes because of his legendary feud with the actor. The fact that Desilu — who had employed Frawley on the landmark sitcom I Love Lucy as iconic wacky next-door neighbor Fred Mertz — had to give the actor his walking papers is bitterly ironic; Frawley’s last TV role was a cameo appearance in the studio’s The Lucy Show before his death in 1966.
The fifth season also would see the departure of eldest son Mike, who started dating Sally Ann Morrison (Meredith MacRae) in the show’s fourth season and would manage to propose marriage in only a few episodes that followed. The extensive planning and execution of Mike and Sally's eventual nuptials certainly provided a valid reason for their exit…but the real reason for actor Tim Considine’s bow-out was that he elected not to renew his contract after a major disagreement with producer Fedderson. Considine, who had penned a pair of scripts for Sons, was far more interested in directing the show than appearing in it. (Considine was also a auto racing enthusiast, something his contract forbade.) Considine and MacRae appeared in the first episode of Sons’ sixth season in a brief sequence that found the two tying the knot — but for all intents and purposes neither of them were ever heard from again (MacRae later turned up on Petticoat Junction, replacing actress Gunilla Hutton as Billie Jo Bradley). This situation, in which a character drops out of sight and is rarely again referenced by the family came to be known among television aficionados as the “Mike Douglas Kiss Off” — no connection to the legendary talk-show host, of course. (Considine wouldn’t reunite with his TV “clan” until the 1977 Thanksgiving reunion special, which curiously paired the Sons cast with the members of TV’s The Partridge Family.)
Faced with the decision of having to re-title the show My Two Sons, head writer Tibbles hit upon the idea of adding a replacement “third son” to the cast with a three-part story arc that found the Douglas family adopting young Ernie Thompson, a friend of Chip’s that also had been introduced during the show’s third season (Ernie, in order to become a Douglas, had to suffer the indignity of having his parents perish in a car crash as well as becoming two years younger). Ernie was played by Barry Livingston — Stanley’s real-life brother — and he pretty much settled into the “Chip” role for the rest of the show’s run. The disappearance of Mike and subsequent replacement by Ernie, in fact, coincided with Sons’ move to CBS in the fall of 1965 when ABC refused to pay for the show’s switch to color production.
With one son marched down the matrimonial aisle and out of the house, it wasn’t long before the middle son, Robbie, found a fiancée in Katie Miller in the beginning of My Three Sons’ eighth season. (Grady had no directorial aspirations and didn’t race cars so he stuck around on the show for a while until the 12th and last season, when it was explained that Robbie’s job had relocated him to Peru.) Katie, played by Tina Cole, was one of the benefits of the family’s move to Los Angeles, Calif., from their original stomping grounds in the fictitious burg of Bryant Park. Again, in keeping with the Douglas family tradition of moving fast into wedded bliss before their intendeds could change their minds, Robbie and Katie were wed a mere four episodes later — and at the beginning of season eight, the newlyweds got a visit from the stork…in the form of triplets (which they dutifully named Steve, Jr., Charley, and Robbie the Second…which kind of gives you an idea of how much stock Bub and Mike held at that time). Chip wasn’t quite old enough to get hitched (he’d get that done in season 11 with girlfriend Polly Williams [Ronnie Troup]…and ever the rebel, he bypassed the whole ceremony nonsense and just eloped) so patriarch Steve stepped up to the plate by tying the knot with Barbara Harper, a widow played by cult favorite Beverly Garland, not too long after the start of the 10th season. Barbara had a little girl from her previous marriage, a precocious little tot named Dodie (Dawn Lyn), who fortunately arrived just at the right time on the series because Ernie was starting to outgrow his cuteness. (MacMurray must have enjoyed the wedding so much he did it again a second time — only as Laird [Lord] Fergus McBain Douglas, the Scottish cousin of Steve’s who scooped up cocktail waitress Terri Dowling [Anne Francis] in a four-part story arc that ushered in the show’s last season.)
During its phenomenal 12-year stint on television — the second longest live-action family situation comedy after Ozzie & Harriet — My Three Sons failed to crack the Top 30 shows only twice…in its seventh and last seasons. In fact, in its penultimate season, the show was still popular among viewers (#19) and would have probably soldiered on after its 12th year were it not for CBS President Fred Silverman’s insistence on moving it from its Saturday night slot (where it had resided since the 1967-68 season) to a new berth on Monday nights, awarding its old spot to network newcomer All in the Family. The ratings took a nose dive, and a move to Thursdays at midseason couldn’t repair the damage…though in Fred’s defense, Family would soon become the #1 show on TV. (The story goes that MacMurray, who renewed his contract on an annual basis, would have continued playing the Douglas patriarch had the show been renewed for Season 13…and even lobbied Silverman to save the show but to no avail.)
For years after the show’s demise and its inevitable arrival at the Old Syndication Home, My Three Sons was rerun constantly…but only in color; Viacom withheld the early 1960-65 black-and-white shows, much in the same manner as they did the first two monochromatic seasons (1963-65) of Petticoat Junction. A generation of couch potatoes grew up not knowing of Bub and Mike until Nick at Nite reintroduced Sons’ early years to its schedule in 1985, often publicizing the series with wacky promos including an unforgettable spot that added “lyrics” to Frank DeVol’s memorable “Chopsticks”-like theme (“And then there’s Bub/He makes them food/They’ve got a dog/They’re My Three Sons”). The black-and-white reruns (and the shows from Season 12) were a mainstay of the cable channel until 1991; they briefly resurfaced again on TVLand in 2000 and were featured on FamilyNet about a year ago but have since disappeared in the mists of TV memory. CBS DVD-Paramount has released the first two seasons of Sons to DVD but one has to wonder how committed they are to making certain it’s not forgotten; not only have the releases been the dreaded “split-season” issues but much of the music has been changed for copyright reasons.
Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. blogs at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, and for years couldn’t figure out why his mother considered Beverly Garland her favorite actress (“You mean the lady on My Three Sons?”).
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Labels: 60s, 70s, Disney, H. Fonda, J. Stewart, MacMurray, TV Tribute, Wilder
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Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The poor dope — he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.
By Edward Copeland
Some may whine that the lead art that I've chosen for this post marking the 60th anniversary of Sunset Blvd. is a spoiler, but I beg to differ. First of all, that means you have not seen Sunset Blvd. and shame on you for that, no matter how old you are. Secondly, the shot comes from the film's opening minutes and if you can't recognize that it's William Holden floating dead in the pool, then I just plain give up on you. Stop reading now, go rent the movie, watch it and come back here when you are done. Then we can talk.
OK. I'm assuming that everyone still reading has seen Billy Wilder's 1950 masterpiece (or just finished watching it) and knows that it is narrated by struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis (Holden) after he's died. Really, it's the
next step from Wilder's Double Indemnity where Fred MacMurray's Walter Neff shares the story as he's dying, only Joe starts once his pulse has stopped. It's also probably the last time it worked in a movie where the narrator was a dead person (at least where that fact is supposed to be somewhat of a surprise and yes, I am looking at you The Sixth Sense). It's the same reason the "it was all a dream" ending stopped working after The Wizard of Oz (and if that just ruined that movie for anyone, I give up). Franz Waxman's magnificent score opens this darkest of satires with music more appropriate for a police thriller as we see a cadre of cop cars racing to that address at 10086 Sunset Blvd., to investigate that writer's body in the pool. Joe's voiceover decides not to give you much information upfront and instead takes the story back six months earlier, when he has to hide his car from debt collectors out to repossess it and he's behind on his apartment's rent.Gillis has about given up on his screenwriting career, contemplating a return to the copy desk of his old newspaper in Dayton, Ohio. As his narration informs us, perhaps he's lost his writing touch and his pitches and scripts just aren't original enough. Then again, maybe they are too original. Watching Sunset Blvd. for the
umpteenth time, the early, pre-Norma scenes play even more like outtakes from Robert Altman's The Player than I remember. When he goes to beg the Paramount exec Sheldrake (a name Wilder must really love since he used it again for Fred MacMurray's character in The Apartment 10 years later) you get the comedy of Sheldrake (Fred Clark) suggesting that Joe's idea for a movie about a struggling baseball player being pressured to throw the World Series be turned into a Betty Hutton vehicle after it's been dismissed by studio reader Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson) who labels it as "a rehash of something that wasn’t very good in the first place." The Player even referenced Sunset when Tim Robbins' character got a note after he'd killed the writer he thought was threatening him and it was signed "Joe Gillis." The studio scenes though are rather standard comedy. The film takes its macabre turn when Joe's car seeks refuge in the garage of a run-down mansion. It's still funny, but not of the type of humor everyone recognizes.
Because even 60 years ago, Los Angeles was a place where a car was essential for survival, Gillis has been doing everything in his power to hide his jalopy from its creditors (Let's face it: Today, it practically takes an automobile and 30 minutes to travel three doors down in L.A. I've never liked that city. I've never lived in either city, but I'm a New Yorker in my heart and soul). Joe's desire to stay a step ahead of the repo men hits a snag when trying to outdrive them on Sunset Boulevard, the car suffers a flat and he's forced to glide it into the garage of that seemingly abandoned mansion. That simple twist of fate brings Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) into the writer's life. His first glimpse of the former silent screen star is behind the shades of a second story window, her head wrapped in some sort of turban, eyes hidden behind sunglasses as she beckons him, accusing him of being late, obviously mistaking him for someone else. "A neglected house gets an unhappy look," Gillis says in voiceover, comparing the decrepit look of the place to
Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Voiceover narration goes wrong so often in film, it’s a pleasure to listen to it when it’s done as exquisitely as it’s done here in the script by Wilder, Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr. The screenplay won an Oscar for best writing (story and screenplay). Two others went to Waxman's score and the team behind its black-and-white art and set direction. As Gillis approaches the mansion entrance, he meets the film's fourth major character, Norma's all-purpose manservant Max (Erich von Stroheim), well dressed down to his white gloves, who insists that Joe wipe his feet before entering the residence. In a way, Joe Gillis serves as a jaded Dorothy Gale stepping into a warped vision of Oz, only there isn't a Technicolor world he's about to escape to from some sepia-tone plains: it's still John F. Seitz's black-and-white cinematography, only the cynical and standard satire of Hollywood struggles that Joe Gillis lives with daily will meld with a form of Grand Guignol opera in a virtual gated community of the mind, where time stopped about 20 years earlier. That doesn't mean the movie's laughs will cease, just that the humor will be buried deeper, much like the deceased pet chimp Norma believes Joe has come to prepare for the primate's final resting place. Alas, it will be very close to where Gillis' end will come.
Once it becomes clear that Joe is not a mortician for monkeys, he could have made a hasty exit and perhaps he would have returned to Ohio to a different life, but a life nonetheless. However, Gillis recognizes Norma and engages her in conversation and mentions that he's a writer. He informs her that his last screenplay was about Okies in the Dust Bowl but she probably didn't recognize it because by the time it reached the screen, it took place on a torpedo boat. Norma, it seems, has a screenplay she'd like him to look at, a gargantuan, jumbled silent mess about the life of Salome that she expects Cecil B. DeMille to direct. Joe, sensing an easy mark, decides to give it a look and maybe bilk a loon thinking that "sometimes it’s interesting to see how bad bad writing can be." Gillis thinks he's the con artist in this scenario, but is that really true? Norma just lost her chimp companion. Perhaps she wants one who can talk, write and do other things now. It's in that first meeting when Norma delivers one of the film's most famous lines as Joe says that she's used to be big and she protests that "I am big. It's the pictures that got small." What isn't repeated as
much are some of the gems that follow in her continued rambling as she laments the state of motion pictures since the advent of sound. "They had the eyes of the world, but they had to have the ears too." At another time, she mentions how they didn't need dialogue, because they had faces and all they had now was nobodies, except maybe for Garbo. Joe does tell her (in the classic screenwriter's complaint) that the audience doesn't know there is a writer: They think the actors make it up as they go along. Swanson's performance sometimes does not get the acting praise it's truly due because Norma is so larger than life. Too many assume that she's playing herself, but in real life while Swanson might not have been making movies, she adjusted her life rather well after sound with smart business ventures. She's giving a silent performance with dialogue, but she's also giving a realistic one at the times when it's called for. Really, von Stroheim's real life more closely parallels Norma's than Swanson's when his directing career was basically destroyed in the silent era and he had to scrape by, turning to acting to make ends meet, not only here but with Wilder as Rommel in Five Graves to Cairo and for Jean Renoir in the remarkable Grand Illusion. When Norma screens one of her old films for Joe, it's one of the last films that von Stroheim got to direct and it actually starred Swanson, 1929's Queen Kelly.Back to praising Swanson. Many years ago, when I was first playing around on this Internet of ours and was a member of AOL, I used to frequent the Playbill chat room for theater nuts. Around that time, it was frequently debated, because of Andrew Lloyd Webber's travesty of a musical version of Sunset Blvd., who made the best Norma? There was the Glenn Close contingent, the Patti LuPone stalwarts, the Betty Buckley boosters, the Karen Mason fans and even the occasional Faye Dunaway iconoclast. I made a point of pissing
them all off by insisting that the best Norma always had been Gloria Swanson and always would be (It was embarrassing how many didn't even know who Swanson was). Swanson may never had the chance to sing the musical's horrid score (for which she must be eternally grateful) and I only saw Buckley's stage version, but I imagine my claim is true. Just take one scene from the film and it's almost as if you're watching Swanson give a master class in acting. Norma is "entertaining" Joe with the Norma Desmond Follies and then she disappears and comes back costumed and does a spot-on impersonation of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp. That would be impressive enough for such a frequently imitated character, but then she goes further. Max interrupts with the news that Paramount is on the phone. First, she registers excitement, assuming it is DeMille calling about her script, but it quickly turns to indignation as she realizes it's someone else from Paramount named Gordon Cole. She switches that quickly from Chaplin to excited Norma to miffed Norma, all while dressed as the Little Tramp with the tiny mustache still perched above her lips. (One bit of Twin Peaks trivia I'd never noticed before. Is this where David Lynch picked up the name for the FBI agent he personally played in Twin Peaks?) I would have given Swanson the best actress Oscar that year, but 1950 was one of the toughest fields ever. The only nominee you could easily toss is Eleanor Parker in Caged. Swanson's other three competitors were Anne Baxter and Bette Davis in All About Eve and Judy Holliday (who won) in Born Yesterday. As I said, Swanson was my choice, but if she didn't get it, it should have gone to Davis next. Tough year.
In a way, the film marked Holden's emergence as a true star. He'd toiled in films since his breakthrough in 1939's Golden Boy, but none of the movies really launched him into the Hollywood hierarchy until Sunset. In a way, the film served as Holden's coming-out party and he remained a fixture from 1950 on. Joe serves as an interesting protagonist for the audience. Should we really respect him or feel sorry for him for the situation he's become embroiled in? After all, he chose to use Norma as much as she's using him and that's not particularly a noble trait. He does exhibit standards by purposely pushing Betty away despite their mutual attraction because of his friendship with and her engagement to Artie Green (a non-staccato Jack Webb). Still, Gillis certainly doesn't deserve the fate he ends up with, no matter what his initial motives were or how far his relationship with Norma went. (The film drops hints that Joe might have slept with the silent star, but never says so explicitly. He's definitely her boy toy, so much so that she inscribes a gold cigarette case she gives him "Mad
about the boy") Still, even Joe can only take so much of that "peculiar prison" of his as when he storms out on New Year's Eve in a driving rain, which he describes as "oversized, like everything in California" and ends up at a party at Artie's. Joe is having a relaxed, good time when Betty talks him into getting out of his situation (though she's unaware of its details) and Joe decides she's right and is ready to get his stuff and leave Norma's strange world once and for all. When Gillis calls Max to make arrangements to pick up his stuff, he learns that Norma found his razor blade and slit her wrists (though the party seems to be proceeding without her and no one noticed the hostess' suicide attempt). Her melodramatic action works and Joe rushes back, though once he arrives, Max urges him to go calmly upstairs so that the musicians won't notice that anything's amiss.
It would be difficult to find more disparate acting styles between the leads of a motion picture than William Holden and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. (or their interactions with Nancy Olson or Erich von Stroheim, for that matter). As widely and justifiably revered as Billy Wilder is, most of his acclaim tends to fall largely on his skills as a writer, but his directing prowess shouldn't be given short shrift. His ability to get such great performances out of so many performers in so many films and especially to make such different ones mesh as he so successfully did here, is no easy feat. Sunset also marks some of his most daring work behind the camera. Throughout most of his filmography, as good or great as much of it is, there aren't a lot of what you might label "showy directorial touches," but there are quite a few present in Sunset Blvd., from the simple but odd choice of beginning an entry to the mansion from the point-of-view of Max's gloved hands playing the organ to many overhead shots and lots more movement than you see in most of the Wilder film canon. What's more, none of these touches look as if he's showing off; they all feel as if they were exactly the right way to film that moment of the movie.
Earlier, I mentioned some allusions to Sunset Blvd. that were made in The Player, but one other trademark of Altman's film could have been even more prominent in Sunset than it ended up being: the use of cameos by real-life Hollywood figures. Now, even if Wilder had used all the ones he filmed or succeeded in getting all the ones he sought, he wouldn't have come close to topping Altman in terms of numbers. Of course, Wilder did have such a good reputation with his studio (Paramount) that they actually allowed him to use it as the studio in the movie, with the real lot and the real gates, despite the darkness and any possible negatives it might inadvertently toss its way. The one cameo that got filmed but ended up on the cutting room floor was that of
noted columnist Sidney Skolsky at Schwab's when Joe mentions the place as a pseudo-headquarters for people circulating in the business. The other thing that differed in how Wilder used his cameos and Altman used his was that Wilder actually put all of his in the credits. There was the famous bridge game Norma plays with fellow silent stars Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson, who is hysterical with the angle at which her cigarette perpetually dangles from her lips. In the climax, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper shows up to grab the phone from police who have come to apprehend Norma after Joe's slaying because, as far as Hedda is concerned, her work takes precedence. Given that it's Hollywood, she's probably right. In real life, Wilder had a better relationship with Hopper's rival Louella Parsons but since Hopper began her career as an actress, he thought she'd come off better.
One thing that Wilder had to do with most of his cameos which Altman didn't was make deals of a monetary nature (hence the credits). One of the film's most touching sequences is when Norma returns to Paramount to see DeMille, assuming all those calls from Gordon Cole concerned her script, unaware that Cole merely sought to rent her classic car for a film. DeMille tries to treat her kindly on the set, realizing what a fragile sort she
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is. The sequence shows DeMille setting up for the actual filming of part of Samson and Delilah, so the extras were the real extras and actors from the film. One of them happens to be Henry Wilcoxon, who more recent filmgoers will recognize (if they spot him beneath the beard and biblical garb) as the reverend in Caddyshack. Wilder wanted Hedy Lamarr, but her demands were so steep, he said forget it. You get more of Swanson's great work here, as with the disdain she shows as she brushes off the boom mike that floats over her head. However, when some of the old-timers, both on the tech and acting side, recognize her and swarm her, she beams at being in the spotlight again. When DeMille finally clears them away and almost tells her the truth about the car, her tears convince him to lie to her, to preserve her illusions. While Norma is reliving her stardom, Joe is conferring with Betty, deciding to try to find time to work together on a screenplay. Max does learn of the real reason for the calls, but he keeps quiet as well. After Norma leaves, DeMille's assistant inquires about Norma's sanity on the set, but C.B. says she was only trouble toward the end. "A dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit," DeMille tells him, also ordering him to tell Cole to leave her alone. He'd buy him five old cars first.
That visit to Paramount ends up being the pivotal scene setting the stage for the film's climax and wrapping up all the story strands. DeMille's efforts to be nice do nothing more than further Norma's delusions, as she undergoes a strenuous project of getting her body and face back in shape for the cameras in that era's version of Botox and plastic surgery. It's always worth remembering, especially in this sequence, that even though we are dealing with someone delusional, the older an actress gets, the harder it seems to be for her to get juicy lead roles (unless your name is Meryl Streep) and that Norma Desmond is only 50. Meanwhile, Joe is sneaking out each night to meet with Betty about re-forming an old script idea of his into something new that will get him work and her out of the readers' department. Max knows what he's up to, but he keeps quiet. Unfortunately, a careless Joe leaves some of the pages of the screenplay with the title
page in his coat jacket and the jealous Norma starts calling and harassing Betty. Joe walks in on one of these calls and grabs the phone from Desmond and tells Betty to come on over. She should see how he lives. Norma tries to fall back on her usual tricks, but they've lost their ability to work on Joe now. "There’s nothing tragic about being 50," Joe tells Norma, "unless you are trying to be 25." Around then, Betty shows up, understandably confused, and Joe is purposely cruel but he makes no bones about how he's been making ends meet as Norma's gigolo. He tells her the script is hers and to go off and marry Artie, despite Betty's pleas to leave with her right then. Betty leaves solo and once she's gone, Joe starts packing and tossing Norma's gifts back at her. She goes apeshit. She shows Joe a gun and says she'll kill herself without him. "You’d be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left 20 years ago." He marches down that long staircase with his bag and she follows with the gun, bringing us back to the film's beginning, with the added touch of Norma finally getting her wish of being in front of the cameras again — and directed by Max no less, though in her delusional world, she thinks he's DeMille.
As is the case with all the films I routinely cite when asked to name my all-time Top 10, each time I watch Sunset Blvd., I see something new, discover a sequence, a line, a moment that excites me in a way my love
for the film hasn't been aroused before. Since last year, as I knew this 60th anniversary would approach, countless ideas invaded my mind as to how to salute this favorite. I'm not a writer who frets about overriding themes when it comes time to salute a film's anniversary. For me, it's usually just a matter of watching the movie again, jotting down some notes and then writing a piece to reflect why it's a favorite of mine. However, with some films, that's simply not good enough and there are several of those coming this year (though you haven't seen the others yet). I could approach them in a myriad ways, but what's most important to me is that I write something that attempts to do that film justice. When I salute a Quick Change or a Men Don't Leave, I don't feel that pressure. When the film in question is a Sunset Blvd., the equation changes and while I seldom suffer writer's block, I can get so enraptured with the subject that my piece turns directionless. That's what I tried to avoid with films that were especially important to me such as The Rules of the Game and Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise. It even happened with the 20th anniversary of television's Twin Peaks. I'm going to do my best not to ramble on here much longer because this piece, essentially, is a 60th birthday present to the film and the gift I hope I'm giving it is a new generation of moviewatchers who might try it out for the first time and fall in love with it the way I did the first time I saw it as a seventh-grader lying on the floor of my living room on a Sunday afternoon.Coming from the world of daily movie reviewing, these anniversary pieces are something I always wanted to do at newspapers but there neither was the space nor the interest for such things. I have to be grateful to blogs and the Internet for allowing me to fulfill my dream on that count, even if there isn't a paycheck involved, just personal satisfaction and the nice feedback I get from you, those wonderful people out there in the dark. (OK, you probably aren't in the dark, but I had to quote Sunset at least one more time.) The old journalism cliche is that reporting is the first draft of history and in a way, the same can be said about reviews of new releases. If you've had a run of so-so films, you might inflate how good a film is when you finally see one that doesn't suck. That's why I have my own personal rule of never considering a movie for my all-time list until it's at least 10 years old. In a way, it makes each year's 10 Best List a temporal thing. If we who make lists all had unlimited time, we should go back and revisit the films on old best lists to see how much we'd change them. I know that American Beauty certainly has sank in my estimation since I first saw it and watched it again. In contrast, Die Hard wasn't near my Top 10 for 1988 when I saw it at the time, but now it's in my All-Time Top 100 and I consider it my favorite for 1988. Of course, the films didn't change, perhaps it's just me, but it's still an interesting idea. Perhaps that's what the Academy Awards should do: redo past years with a more historical perspective. It's been 20 years, can't we correct that Dances With Wolves mistake and give the award to Goodfellas as it should have gone? The greatest films, such as Sunset Blvd., need to age so you can see if they were truly as great as you thought they were the first time. Even though I haven't been able to see it, that's why I find all this critical backbiting and gnashing of teeth over Christopher Nolan's Inception funny. I'd like a time machine to skip ahead to 2020 and see what all the critics who loved it or hated it or were part of backlashes against it or backlashes against the backlashes feel about it then.
I don't know what the answer will be about Inception, but I feel confident that Sunset Blvd. still will be as great on its 70th anniversary as it is today on its 60th.
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Labels: 50s, Altman, Chaplin, Christopher Nolan, Dickens, Dunaway, Garbo, Glenn Close, Gloria Swanson, Holden, Jack Webb, Lynch, MacMurray, Movie Tributes, Renoir, Streep, Tim Robbins, Twin Peaks, Wilder
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