THE SIXTIES! WOOO!
The Apartment is of a rare breed in best picture winners. It starts off interesting and entertaining, and it stays that way throughout. It has a PERFECT Billy Wilder screenplay, quality-wise and otherwise-wise. What's funny about it is that I felt The Apartment actually got worse about 3/4 of the way through and never got as good as it had been in the beginning, and somehow, it was still a great movie. In terms of other BP winners we've watched, it was most similar to Marty, in that it felt like a play instead of a movie (and in that it featured a charmingly pathetic protagonist).
The plot was GREAT, the characters were GREAT (especially the neighbor, Dr. Dreyfuss, played by Jack Kruschen), and the actors were GREAT. The Apartment does not have everything I ask for in a best picture winner, but it has everything I ask for in a likeable movie. 9/10
Showing posts with label Shirley MacLaine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shirley MacLaine. Show all posts
Friday, March 21, 2008
The Apartment (1960): Eitan's Take
The 30's and 40's gave us rich and dark films about masculine ambition, but in the 50's and now 60's, we're being treated to stories of human kindness and decency -- no surprise, considering that these were the years of quaint domesticity, Ozzie and Harriet, and white picket fences. But beneath the nice-guy veneer of The Apartment lies an incredible meditation on sadness, human communication, and the kind of loneliness so big and so overwhelming that it fills up a whole home. Billy Wilder directed this movie right after Some Like It Hot, which, for all of its traipsing joy, has a hint of sadness to it as well. And we first witnessed his skillful arrangement of sad human drama in The Lost Weekend, which remains one of my favorite Best Picture winners so far.
In Jack Lemmon, Wilder finds an incredible, tragic everyman -- the kind of guy it's possible to both sympathize for and empathize with. The way he carries himself, the neuroses, the runny noses, the expression on his face when he opens up the box with his new bowler hat, the sad way flips through his rolodex trying to manage the appointments for all the corporate thugs who commandeer his apartment for their adulterous charades... Woody Allen spent years trying to recreate this sort of pathos, but Jack Lemmon does it so much better because he looks like, talks like, acts like, and could be anyone. Jaded by years of watching romance fail, Lemmon's C.C. Baxter is a portrait of resignation. He's sweet and chivalrous, but he also has deep flaws and deep emotional scars. When he tells Ms. Kubilek (the radiant and smart Shirley MacLaine, who we saw previously as an imprisoned Indian princess in Around the World in Eighty Days) about his suicide attempt, he adds a punchline so as not to disturb her -- or us -- too deeply, but it's impossible to escape the tragedy of the moment. Luckily, he reaches out to her and her famous reciprocation, "Shut up and deal," is all the more rewarding for it. The whole time, I kept thinking, "This is like Marty... but sophisticated."
Pinned up next to the lives of his colleagues, Baxter's own life has a strange twist of lemon to it. Though he's continually "sexiled" from his own home, the love he finds is so much deeper and more resonant than anything they could ever hope to experience. Halfway through the film, during the Christmas party, Kubilek learns from her lover Sheldrake's secretary that she's not the first -- and won't be the last -- of his illicit affairs. As an audience, it's natural for our heart to sink with her, and in her case that moment of despair seems to last forever, as she recedes into herself and begins to rethink the value of love. But then we're reminded of the graciousness and generosity of Baxter and the endless emotional support he lends (often at his own expense), and everything feels aligned again. The world can be a great place when the right people find each other and make love and life and hope work. Over and over, the movie breaks your heart, but then bends down next to you to help pick up the pieces. That's why the ending of The Apartment is so brilliant. There's nothing cliche about it. There's no cutesy kiss or wedding bells or grandiose speech. There's just the recognition -- on the characters' parts, as well as our own -- that after the reel flips up and the theater lights come up, life goes on. There's just optimism and uncertainty and honesty, laid out on the table like gin rummy cards. It's rarely so important for me that my friends and family see the Best Picture winners that Shira and I watch, but this one is a must-see. It crumbles to a 9/10, cookie-wise of course.
In Jack Lemmon, Wilder finds an incredible, tragic everyman -- the kind of guy it's possible to both sympathize for and empathize with. The way he carries himself, the neuroses, the runny noses, the expression on his face when he opens up the box with his new bowler hat, the sad way flips through his rolodex trying to manage the appointments for all the corporate thugs who commandeer his apartment for their adulterous charades... Woody Allen spent years trying to recreate this sort of pathos, but Jack Lemmon does it so much better because he looks like, talks like, acts like, and could be anyone. Jaded by years of watching romance fail, Lemmon's C.C. Baxter is a portrait of resignation. He's sweet and chivalrous, but he also has deep flaws and deep emotional scars. When he tells Ms. Kubilek (the radiant and smart Shirley MacLaine, who we saw previously as an imprisoned Indian princess in Around the World in Eighty Days) about his suicide attempt, he adds a punchline so as not to disturb her -- or us -- too deeply, but it's impossible to escape the tragedy of the moment. Luckily, he reaches out to her and her famous reciprocation, "Shut up and deal," is all the more rewarding for it. The whole time, I kept thinking, "This is like Marty... but sophisticated."
Pinned up next to the lives of his colleagues, Baxter's own life has a strange twist of lemon to it. Though he's continually "sexiled" from his own home, the love he finds is so much deeper and more resonant than anything they could ever hope to experience. Halfway through the film, during the Christmas party, Kubilek learns from her lover Sheldrake's secretary that she's not the first -- and won't be the last -- of his illicit affairs. As an audience, it's natural for our heart to sink with her, and in her case that moment of despair seems to last forever, as she recedes into herself and begins to rethink the value of love. But then we're reminded of the graciousness and generosity of Baxter and the endless emotional support he lends (often at his own expense), and everything feels aligned again. The world can be a great place when the right people find each other and make love and life and hope work. Over and over, the movie breaks your heart, but then bends down next to you to help pick up the pieces. That's why the ending of The Apartment is so brilliant. There's nothing cliche about it. There's no cutesy kiss or wedding bells or grandiose speech. There's just the recognition -- on the characters' parts, as well as our own -- that after the reel flips up and the theater lights come up, life goes on. There's just optimism and uncertainty and honesty, laid out on the table like gin rummy cards. It's rarely so important for me that my friends and family see the Best Picture winners that Shira and I watch, but this one is a must-see. It crumbles to a 9/10, cookie-wise of course.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956): Shira's Take
It was a fine movie, but it was a bad best picture winner. I remember associating this movie with It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World as a kid (similarities being that both movies include a crazy race and both feature about a thousand familiar faces), but, as far as I remember, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is Way Way Way Way Better than Around the World in Eighty Days. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the guy at the piano turning around and being Frank Sinatra, or the conductor on the train that is getting attacked by Indians being a really old Buster Keaton, or Passepartout (played by Cantinflas) waking up on a ship to a particularly rotund Peter Lorre playing a ship steward. Even better were the ones I didn't notice and saw in the ending credits. That woman in the saloon was Marlene Dietrich? The "Indian" princess was a young Shirley MacLaine? Awesome!
Basically, I guess this movie was pretty entertaining, and it was big in a way I often like movies to be, but it had no place winning BP. 1956 was a weak year, and I don't really care too much about ANY of the movies that were nominated (Wyler's Friendly Persuasion, Giant, The King and I, and The Ten Commandments).
My final comment has to be that as Eitan and I were watching this movie, I got the corresponding songs from the Chipmunk Adventure in my head for each scene. When they were in Spain, I got the Mexico song in my head ("I yi yi yi yi yi like you verrrry much...") Then, when they were in India, and we saw snake charmers, I started singing, "Tell me what I need to do to get lucky with you." Anyway, it's a very basic 6/10.
Basically, I guess this movie was pretty entertaining, and it was big in a way I often like movies to be, but it had no place winning BP. 1956 was a weak year, and I don't really care too much about ANY of the movies that were nominated (Wyler's Friendly Persuasion, Giant, The King and I, and The Ten Commandments).
My final comment has to be that as Eitan and I were watching this movie, I got the corresponding songs from the Chipmunk Adventure in my head for each scene. When they were in Spain, I got the Mexico song in my head ("I yi yi yi yi yi like you verrrry much...") Then, when they were in India, and we saw snake charmers, I started singing, "Tell me what I need to do to get lucky with you." Anyway, it's a very basic 6/10.
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956): Eitan's Take
Around the World in 80 Days is the first Best Picture winner, to my recollection, to be filmed in both Technicolor and beautiful panoramic widescreen and boy does it earn that distinction. Though it's an imperfect film, it's so abundantly imaginative and exciting that, like the Greatest Show on Earth, it's hard to hate it. However, with its charming British wit and its adventurous cinematography, it clearly goes places -- both tangibly and narratively -- that the Greatest Show on Earth could never even dream of doing. By the end, I'd concluded that it's not quite a deserving Best Picture winner, but it's a classic that should have a place among the world's great global capers (It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, etc.).
David Niven has the perfect gravitas to play Phileas Fogg, who is a rather one-dimensional character, and Cantinflas is positively delightful as right-hand man Passepartout. The situations they get into are, of course, absurd -- floating over the Alps (and grabbing snow to cool their champagne), bullfighting in Spain, rescuing a princess from the horrific practice of Sati in India, evading Scotland Yard detectives, riding steamboats to Hong Kong and Yokohama and San Francisco, getting into a ridiculous 30 minute steampunk train fight with a gang of wild Sioux, etc. But it all makes for a rather wondrous journey, at times quaint, riveting, mysterious, and genuinely pulse-quickening. Some of the sequences are so dense and so epic, that you can forget that you're not just watching a full-length movie about the Wild West or a steamboat journey or an elephant adventure through the forests of India.
But two things must be said: first, this is merely a VERY LARGE BUDGET adaptation of the work of one of the world's greatest science fiction novelists, so it's not as though story credit can truly go to the people who made the book a reality. And second, you might as well watch it on mute, as it must be one of the most visually sumptuous films to come out of the 50's. The cinematography is done by Lionel Lindon, who also photographed episodes of the richly textured television seriesAlfred Hitchcock Presents... as well as Rod Serling's dark noir Night Gallery. Watching this movie using the digital projector in my bedroom was a great treat. The colors leap off of the screen, and many of the great vistas could have just gone on forever. A truly beautiful color film, with unique and exciting international scenes, that provides an easy counterpoint to the dark (and also brilliant) B&W cinematography of On the Waterfront. You could easily mistake this movie with films from the 60's that were shot with much better technology.
This delightful, if a little empty-headed, G-rated romp earns a 7/10. As a movie. As a Best Picture winner, I think most would agree it falls short of greatness. But if you don't have a place in your heart for a movie this FUN, I don't know what to say.
Great cameos, by the way.
David Niven has the perfect gravitas to play Phileas Fogg, who is a rather one-dimensional character, and Cantinflas is positively delightful as right-hand man Passepartout. The situations they get into are, of course, absurd -- floating over the Alps (and grabbing snow to cool their champagne), bullfighting in Spain, rescuing a princess from the horrific practice of Sati in India, evading Scotland Yard detectives, riding steamboats to Hong Kong and Yokohama and San Francisco, getting into a ridiculous 30 minute steampunk train fight with a gang of wild Sioux, etc. But it all makes for a rather wondrous journey, at times quaint, riveting, mysterious, and genuinely pulse-quickening. Some of the sequences are so dense and so epic, that you can forget that you're not just watching a full-length movie about the Wild West or a steamboat journey or an elephant adventure through the forests of India.
But two things must be said: first, this is merely a VERY LARGE BUDGET adaptation of the work of one of the world's greatest science fiction novelists, so it's not as though story credit can truly go to the people who made the book a reality. And second, you might as well watch it on mute, as it must be one of the most visually sumptuous films to come out of the 50's. The cinematography is done by Lionel Lindon, who also photographed episodes of the richly textured television seriesAlfred Hitchcock Presents... as well as Rod Serling's dark noir Night Gallery. Watching this movie using the digital projector in my bedroom was a great treat. The colors leap off of the screen, and many of the great vistas could have just gone on forever. A truly beautiful color film, with unique and exciting international scenes, that provides an easy counterpoint to the dark (and also brilliant) B&W cinematography of On the Waterfront. You could easily mistake this movie with films from the 60's that were shot with much better technology.
This delightful, if a little empty-headed, G-rated romp earns a 7/10. As a movie. As a Best Picture winner, I think most would agree it falls short of greatness. But if you don't have a place in your heart for a movie this FUN, I don't know what to say.
Great cameos, by the way.
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