Ben-Hur (1959): Shira's Take

The most pressing order of business: this felt NOTHING like the William Wyler movies we've watched so far. Mrs. Miniver and The Best Years of Our Lives both show the painful effects of war, while Ben-Hur is the type of movie to ignore the subtleties and show you the whole war instead. In fact, it wouldn't just show you the whole war. It would show you the drama building up to the war, then some flashy battle scenes, then more drama, then more flashy battle scenes, etc. until you're just so completely sick of the characters that you can't stop looking at the time and wishing those three-and-a-half-plus hours would go by quicker.

Not since Gone with the Wind have I seen a movie that tried so hard and failed so miserably. You would think that a movie this long would somehow find a way to make me interested in the characters or the plots, but you would be completely wrong. Unlike a movie like Gigi, where I'm actually frustrated with the plot, Ben-Hur didn't keep me invested enough to get frustrated in the first place. I just couldn't care, no matter how hard I tried, about anything.

Now on to the good stuff. Good performances all around (except Haya Harareet, who was simultaneously the only convincing Israeli and the only nonconvincing human). The chariot race scene lived up to its fame. It was exciting and gorgeous. I actually liked that we never saw Jesus's face.

In general, I think that Cecil B. DeMille should have been alive to make this movie, and if he had, it would have been no different. Wyler did a good DeMille impression, but it's still a generic, big, uninteresting DeMille picture. Note to myself: There was soooo much gay subtext between Judah (Heston) and Messala (Boyd). The scene in which Judah says that Messala saved his life and Messala says something like, "It was the best thing I ever did," and then looks Judah up and down as if picturing him naked is priceless. I said to Eitan early on, "It's a story of star-crossed lovers!" 5/10

Gigi (1958): Shira's Take

Not making a good first impression, Gigi starts off with a song that may have been charming and whimsical in 1958 but is just disturbing now: "Thank Heaven for Little Girls", which includes the line, "Those little eyes so helpless and appealing..." Okay, I'm sorry, but how could that not be misconstrued? Honestly, I can't even see any way that that song could ever have been anything other than messed up. It didn't help that it was sung by Maurice Chevalier (who played Honore Lachaille). If you grew up on Disney movies, you may recognize his voice from The Aristocats title track. I did, and I was deeply disturbed.

From then on, I could not help but compare the movie to The Aristocats. The trials and tribulations of the aristocratic Parisian life at the turn of the 20th century are not particularly interesting. Fortunately, Aristocats features the late great Phil Harris (Baloo, Little John, etc.), really great songs (unlike Gigi--the only one that stuck with me was the perverted one, and it will NOT be a good song to have stuck in my head in public), and an awesome story. The movies share a setting and an Eva Gabor, but the main difference between them is Gigi sucks and The Aristocats...doesn't.

I truly gave it a chance. Leslie Caron (who played Gigi) is an incredibly talented dancer, as we learned in An American in Paris, and a relatively talented singer, so I was not dreading this movie the way I presume Eitan was. But she hardly danced at all. Work with what ya got, people. I cared so little about the characters, and I found that as the movie went on, I hated Gaston (played by Louis Jordan) more and more. I don't think that was supposed to happen.

One more complaint/question. Did they ever explain why Gigi's family is so poor, when they obviously are well aware of aristocratic behavior? How did her family know how to teach her to act like a proper woman when they had no money to begin with? Actually, don't answer these questions, because I just don't care about the movie at all. On which movie do others spit their loogies? Naturellement! Gigi! 5/10

All the King's Men (1949): Shira's Take

Blah blah blah. This was one of those, "Is it over yet?" movies. Unlike Eitan, I actually didn't know the story at all, which I consider a benefit; if I had, I would have been expecting the ending to come throughout the movie and been even more antsy about it all.

Basically, the movie started out kind of like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington but not as good, and it ended up kind of like Citizen Kane but not as good. I cared so little about every character including the protagonist, Jack Burden (John Ireland), and the at-times-empathetic villain Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford). Willie Stark is a small-town man in the south who just wants the government to become corruption-free (James Stewart in Mr. Smith played the role much more charmingly). Eventually, through a way-too-long turn of events, he gets elected governor. Then, in about ten minutes that are extremely hard to follow (note: what is this Pillsbury thing?), he suddenly becomes the corrupt government official he claimed to hate. This downward spiral continues as his family grows to hate him, his advisors become too scared to quit, and he becomes very dictator-like (Orson Welles is more complex an actor, and Charles Foster Kane is more epic a role). Plot-wise, the frustrating part was how suddenly Stark went from this nice guy from the rural south to a governor at times reminiscent of Joseph Stalin (and with the cult of personality to boot). I just found it extremely hard to believe that corruption and power-hunger happen this quickly.

In the climactic act (probably halfway through the movie), Stark's son Tom (John Derek) drives drunk and kills a girl. Tom is completely willing to deal with the repercussions of this matter, but his father just won't let him. And when the dead girl's father won't accept a bribe, he suddenly goes missing (and is found dead later, a turn of events we assume to be executed by Stark). I am completely serious when I say that this was the only portion of the movie I found remotely interesting. Note to myself: Joanne Dru looked like Ingrid Bergman! 5/10