Gregory La Cava's SO's YOUR OLD MAN (1926) with live piano accompaniment at NYC's Anthology Film Archives 'W.C. Fields' retrospective for the first time. I'm not a W.C. Fields fan but I don't dislike his work. I was shocked when he first appears in "So's Your Old Man" (which was remade with sound as 1934's "You're Telling Me!") as a relatively-thin mid-40's guy that, through body language and on-screen attitude, manages to instill his Sam Bisbee character with the same lovable rascal attributes of his sound persona. At 67 minutes the main comedic story (Bisbee failing to sell his indestructible windshield and chance-meeting a Spanish princess on the train ride back home) barely leaves time for the 'B' story (Bisbee's daughter falling for the son of wealthy Mrs. Murchinson, who looks down on the Bisbees for being poor). Between the golf routine, Sam's hilarious suicide attempts on the train, his test-drive/brick-smashing glass tests and Sam showing-off his family history album to Mrs. Murchinson (Julia Ralph as the straight man) there's plenty of belly laughs in this silent comedy to qualify it as an undiscovered gem. Shame Alice Joyce is wasted as the smile-and-look-pretty Princess Lescaboura.
GUN CRAZY (1950) on TCM-HD for the first time. No wonder French movie critics (particularly Godard) flipped their collective lid over this fictitious re-enactment of the Bonnie & Clyde 'doomed lovers on the run' myth. "Gun Crazy" is an awesome little B-movie with an energy (the rags-to-riches montage from jewelry to pawn shop), chemistry between the leads (Peggy Cummins and John Dall giving Beatty and Dunaway a run for their money, especially during their seduction-by-shooting carnival scene), cinematic craftsmanship (the one-take drive/stick-up/getaway scene) and the dramatic know-how (making Laurie the trigger-happy nut instead of Bart) that makes it a perfect cinematic allegory of America's love affair with the gun. Even though Bart feeling guilty about the couple's crime spree comes across as a Hays code imposition (which gives Arthur Penn's "Bonnie & Clyde" the psychological edge by showing two amoral selfish criminals) "Gun Crazy" has enough dramatic beats and good actors in supporting roles (Bart's sister and childhood friends back in Cashville) to carry it past some minor B-movie flaws. Great flick.
Michelangelo Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA (1960) in 35mm at NYC's Anthology Film Archives for the first time. Since I'd already seen "The Passenger," "Blow-Up" and "Red Desert" I thought I was ready to handle whatever "L'avventura" threw at me. But I was thrown a curveball because this wasn't at all what I expected. To see how gradually Antonioni transforms the search for missing Anna (Lea Massari) into the effect her absence has unleashed on her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) & boyfriend Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), and how little in the end Anna meant to them and the other boat party guests (via symbolic, well-framed B&W imagery of rocks, churches and bodies/faces in relation to each other and the space they inhabit), is to watch a master director in complete control of his actors and camera. Like Whit Stillman with his smart-ass NYC socialte elite characters Antonioni cares about these well-off characters' meaningless trists because (a) their lifestyles/playgrounds make for great cinematic eye-candy and (b) that's the way they were raised so they're not bad, just blind to the normal emotions most normal folks would feel when their best friend/girlfriend disappears. These character flaws are the perfect human metaphors to give the visual representations of what these characters can't say or communicate (like normal folks could) the drive that propels "L'avventura" toward its dramatic (and completely open-ended) singular image conclusion. Plus, courtesy of the audience I saw this with (including a loud snorer next to me for the movie's last 45 minutes
), also one of the funniest and warmest Antonioni movies I've seen (James Addams' Corrado or Lelio Luttazzi's Raimondo kept us smiling and laughing whenever they appeared). Fred Dekker's THE MONSTER SQUAD (1987) on Blu-ray for the first time. Having now seen all Dekker-directed flicks (this, "Night of the Creeps" and "Robocop 3") I can safely say it sits comfortably in the middle. I never saw this in the 80's but, if I had seen "Monster Squad" back then, I want to believe I would have found it as moronic, loud and boring as I did 2004's "Van Helsing." Like a loud and cheesy Count Chocula TV commercial brought to live-action life, "Monster Squad" is both an homage to classic Universal movie monsters and to Spielberg-produced fantasy 80's movies ("Goonies," "Gremlins," "Poltergeist," etc.). Dekker says as much in one of the commentary tracks, but his attempt to play in Spielberg's fantasy playground results in something akin to an extra-long "Amazing Stories" episode without commercials. Duncan Regehr is an OK modern-day Count Dracula (Lee and Lugosi run bat circles around his one-dimensional routine though) but Tom Noonan makes a very appealing Frankenstein monster; his too-brief scenes with then-little Ashley Bank (homages to James Whale) are the highlight of the movie. Everyone else (including the kids) is either bland (Jon Gries' wimpy Wolf Man), a stereotype ("Galaxina's" Stephen Macht as a cop with family problems) or a cipher (Leonardo Cimino, Stan Shaw, etc.). That said, a poe'd Dracula driving over to Sean's house and blowing up the Monster Squad's treehouse with dynamite has got to be one of the coolest scenes I've seen in any movie... ever!
Woody Allen's CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989) on MGM-HD for the first time. As a diehard fan of Woody Allen movies and TV's "Law & Order" I finally found the one movie that combined them both (Sam Waterston, unrecognizable at first, and Jerry Orbach have small key roles). Martin Landau gives career-best work as a respected NYC Ophthalmologist that juggles an unhinged mistress (Anjelica Huston) while trying to keep his reputation, family life and society standing unblemished. This rather-dark story shares equal billing with a more typical Woody comedic story about his character's (a documentary filmmaker) troubled marriage, his rivalry with successful brother-in-law Alan Alda (whose face when he sees himself compared to Mussolini is classic
) and his courtship of a producer (Mia Farrow) that is also being pursued by Alda. "Crimes and Misdemeanors" goes to places Allen seldom went to in his movies ("Match Point" being a recent example) and the experience is the better for it because, like its characters, it asks its audience to ponder questions about life, upbringing, religion and morality without providing easy answers. It's a joy to see Woody using the cinematic techniques he honed doing comedies like "Annie Hall" (present-day characters interacting with their flashbacks, visualized memories contrasting with what's being said/done, imaginary conversations, etc.) being put to equally-brilliant use for dramatic effect. A well-paced funny drama that waits until the very end to tie its two very different stories together (a classic scene of Landau and Woody alone drinking). "Crimes and Misdemeanors" is one of the best and most different (while also being comfortably familiar) Woody Allen films I've seen. An 80's classic from a decade that had so few of them.
