1961: The Year that I Met a Girl Named Maria in Nuremberg

Natalie Wood would have made Nazi movies a lot cheerier. Just saying. It's a bit strange writing this entry because I'm currently in the process of converting my blog into podcast form. And obviously some things are funny when you see them on the page, but you can't express them in quite the same way when you say it aloud. So I'll try to get the best of both worlds, which means I'll try too hard and it'll probably suck (forewarning). But it's okay because there are a lot of good movies in this year, so I wasn't going to get too rant-y anyway. Well, comparatively.

We start with the most rant-worthy of them all: Fanny. And no I won't be making a bunch of fanny jokes. Too easy. Just like her. BOOM! Nawwww but seriously that was the only one. And for the record, that "just like her" would have been Connery-esque in a podcast. This movie is another one of those where it's supposed to be angst-y and dramatic but it spends most of its time being un-funny instead. Apparently it was originally a musical, but they took that out for the movie. Would've been way better as a musical. Then I could at least tap my toe to the melodrama. The dude in this movie is the kind of dude that dudes like me want to annihilate. We want to usher them all together on one planet and call that planet Alderaan. Because the hot girl comes in and is so overtly flirty that onlookers would assume that some type of softcore porn was about to take place. But does he care about her? Nope! Because he wants to be a sailor. As though being a sailor is like being the frigging Green Lantern and you can't associate with anyone because you're fighting monsters in space. You're a sailor! Don't reject the girl because you're at sea sometimes. And get a better hobby anyway. "Sorry Fanny, I can't go out with you because I'd really like to contract scurvy." There were probably hordes of guys frothing at the mouth to be with her, and this schmuck is too busy dreaming about living off of stale bread and getting eaten by the kraken. Of course, he still gets pissed when anyone else tries to go out with her. Needless to say, much melodrama ensues and many lives are made more complicated than they needed to be. And all because Whiny McWhine had to carry the heavy burden of having a hot French girl be in love with him. What a tragic figure. See now, this is the part where I'd say "but at least there were some catchy songs." But there aren't, because they cut all the music. So the musical score is really good but all that remains other than that is over-the-top acting and terrible dialogue. A reviewer said that "anyone with a sense of humor or a heart will love this movie." Well then call me Darth Tin Man because I thought it was terrible. It maybe could've worked as a straight melodrama or a straight comedy but not both. They just tried to fit too much into Fanny. BOOM!

A slightly more enjoyable film is The Guns of Navarone. I kind of regret the circumstances under which I watched the film, because I thought it was a true story. It wasn't until halfway through when I was perusing the IMDB Trivia that not only were there no guns in Navarone, there's no anything in Navarone because it's not real. How was I supposed to know this? It's boring enough to be a true story. I've never been out of this time zone, let alone to obscure beaches in Greece. And I watch true stories VERY differently from pieces of fiction. Because fictional characters should have more depth than real ones. You can't make too many things up about real people, so if you only know X amount of info about them for your movie then that's what you'll have to work with. But if it's fiction then you can have total freedom in terms of backstory and whatnot. Well the only significant backstory here is that Gregory Peck was sort of responsible for the death of Anthony Quinn's family. Which adds lit-trally nothing to the story. Except that at one point Quinn refuses to be rescued by Peck due to said backstory. That's some canned drama right there. What really surprises me is that the film is labeled an "action movie." Well it's no wonder James Bond was such a huge hit if this was what passed for an action movie. I'm not saying it should've had non-stop explosions a la Michael Bay because I hate that. But any excitement at all before the last 30 minutes (which were actually pretty good) would have been nice. It utilizes this very 60s style of action that I detest where there's lots of fighting but no actual violence. So you'll see people shooting guns and see explosions but you won't see anyone get shot or blown up. It's like the TBS version of itself. Thankfully, there are some darker moments later in the film. Most of what follows the scene where a double agent is discovered is good stuff. Maybe the reason the violence earlier in the film was so tepid is so they could get away with some of the more personal scenes of violence later. I would probably say that it redeemed itself in the last half an hour, but it's still way too long. No action movie needs to be 2 1/2 hours long (unless it's only pretending to be an action movie, like Casino Royale). War movies can get away with it, but only if they fill it up with interesting things. Maybe with less drama and re-writes behind the scenes this could have been a lot better, but it's not like Gregory Peck and David Niven never did anything again so it's fine.

Taking a serious left turn from what we've been discussing is a truly fantastic film, The Hustler. I had seen this years ago because it's one of my dad's favorites. And rightfully so as it's a truly intense character drama. I've mentioned on occasion that you don't need big stakes to have real drama in a film, and this is the proof. Which just shows you how much other movies fail. Filmed in glorious black and white (which makes it very noir-esque), this is the story of a pool hustler who flew too close to the sun. Jackie Gleason takes a dark turn in this as Minnesota Fats, the main "villain" (a far cry from Ralph Kramden) and he was nominated for his performance. Minnesota Fats was an actual pool shark, but facing him in the film is the fictitious "Fast" Eddie Felson, played magnificently by Paul Newman. The pool sequences actually manage to be suspenseful and exhilirating. Of course, I have an appreciation for pool (or billiards I should say) but aside from that I think the film is well-shot enough where the underlying drama ratchets up the suspense. You can actually feel the moment when Eddie should stop playing. He won a ton of money off of Fats near the beginning of the film but he just had to keep pushing it. So he loses everything, and the rest of the movie is about getting it back. But not in a Rocky Balboa kind of way. Instead in a dark, "yeah I won but at what cost?" noir kind of way. I will say that I had to check and see if he actually wins at the end because the victory is never as interesting as the defeat. What you really remember is the first 45 minutes or so where we're introduced to Eddie's con game as we watch him prepare for the ultimate match. That, along with the first confrontation itself, is about as good as the first 45 minutes of a movie gets. If you can't take dark movies then I wouldn't recommend it. But if you're into that sort of thing (which I am) then it's a really excellent character piece that's actually compelling, unlike that Zorba crap.

A film I overall liked but had mixed feelings about was Judgment at Nuremberg. My only real problem is that it's entirely too long (3 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Oh sorry, I had a spasm on the button there. Nawwww but it's too long. It's a courtroom drama, so almost all of it takes place in the courtroom. And you can't sustain one storyline of suspense for 3 hours in one location. You just can't. Even when it's about putting Nazis on trial. Here's something I will say though: we've all been kind of de-sensitized to the Holocaust. We all know it was terrible but knowledge of it is so widespread that we use it more as a standby example for hyperbolic arguments than anything else (the government makes us have pictures on our license? Next thing you know, it'll be the Holocaust!). But back then it was all still very new and I'd wager to say that when actual photos are shown in the film of the concentration camps, people in the theater had never seen them before. Not everyone, but lots of people. I've been to the Holocaust museum, I've seen Schindler's List, and I've studied it extensively in both high school and college so I'm no stranger to the horrors of the situation. But it's still so sobering every time you see it. So I can't imagine the impact when seeing it for the first time at the theater. Not a great movie to see on a date if Breakfast at Tiffany's is sold out. Still, the big reveal of Holocaust photos comes 2/3 of the way into the movie. When that's by far the most shocking part of the film, it should be saved for the end or near the end. That was the big emotional payoff after all the suspense. So I liked most of the movie but it's too slow after that scene. Lots of people are in this movie, including a young William Shatner and an old Judy Garland. Dorothy and Kirk in a Nazi movie? Craziness! Spencer Tracy is the real star of course, as he plays the judge. And it raises some interesting legal questions. They point out at the beginning of the movie that the actions perpetrated during the war were not illegal when they were committed. Horrifying, but not illegal. That's an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me before. Because it's a bit of an ex post facto, and therefore there might not have been legal basis for their incarceration. Although if there's a time for an exception to the rule, that would've been it. At the end of the film it basically says "they're all free now" so it made the whole thing feel almost pointless. I wasn't sure if it was meant to make you feel dread over that or if it was just a point of interest. Either way, it's still a good movie but I'd have ended it with the Holocaust photos.

This year's winner is completely different from anything I've said so far and it's really deserving: West Side Story. Here's an example of when the remake is better than the original. Because the original was written by Shakespeare and it was called "Romeo and Juliet" and it's bad. This version is way better. Great music, a not-spoiled-at-the-beginning storyline, and a great example of how to balance dark story turns with humor and pure enjoyment. Plus, fictionalized Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm loves it and the real Larry David probably does too. This is another one of my mom's favorite movies (if you look at which ones I mention are my mom's favorites and which are my dad's and understand that I am the overlap, then you'll see why my brain is so messed up). This is an example of one of our conversations, Me: "you can't have anything serious in a dance like this," Mom: "you liked it in West Side Story," Me: "grumble grumble..." That wasn't onomatopoeia, I actually say grumble. And let me add that onomatopeia is the least onomatopoetic word that there is. Anyway, there are any number of great scenes to highlight here but I'll just mention a few. One is, yes, the fighting. It's perfectly reasonable to have a fight be implied with a dance sequence, as long as all of the other singing and dancing sequences are in the same hyper-real tone. Let me explain: when Tony is belting out "Maria" it's understood that it's a representation of what his internal feelings are and that he didn't actually come up with all of those lyrics himself on the spot. This is consistent throughout the film. They're not actually singing to Officer Krupke, singing and dancing is simply the medium through which the scene is being displayed. Which makes the implied fighting during singing and dance sequences acceptable. When they start mixing and matching is what bothers me. Although it's okay on comedies like Glee where some of the singing is actually taking place and some is merely meant to be an implication. Anyway, you probably know a ton of these songs even if you don't know that this is where they're from. My personal favorite is "Somewhere," which I am going to use in a season 5 episode of my show in a disturbing way (spoilers!). It'll ruin it for some, but make it cooler for me. It'll be sung by a children's choir and will be diegetic, but those are my only clues. Anyway, the overtones of the story work a lot better within feuding teenage gangs if you ask me. Feuding families like the Montagues and Capulets work as a parody, but then you shouldn't have a parody within a tragedy. This is all straight tragedy, even if it makes you smile and laugh along the way.

Mostly great stuff this year. And we find ourselves almost at the end/beginning of the 60s. I have high hopes for the 50s, as some of my favorite movies ever are contained within it. So I hope they're the rule and not the exception. But before we find out about that we have to do 1960. I still have quite a bit to watch in that year...but I shall do my best to watch them in a timely manner. All I know for now is that it'll have the representative from Tennessee's 12th District, the King of the Wild Frontier, and Davy Crockett.