1948: The Year that The Melancholy Dane Donned a TuTu

You'd think my title was a merge between the famous Shakespeare play and a ballet movie but oh...it wasn't. It's just the play. Despite my title's implication, this was quite an edgy and dark year. Which is odd because I'm sure the people back then were thinking that a new age of harsh films was about to be ushered in. Well I've seen the 50s nominees and this was largely not the case. So what happened? This was such a great year with such interesting stories and even though several of them ended more cheerfully than I would've liked...they were still pretty excellent. Perhaps America cried out in disgust and they scaled it back. I have no idea. But let's hope that this trend continues on my reverse journey because if it does then the 40s are going to be awesome.

Well after all of that buildup we start off with the only movie this year that I thought was crap: Johnny Belinda. It seems that even in 1948 there were exploitative films that were edgy just for the sake of being edgy. That's how I viewed this film. Because other than the acting, which netted Jane Wyman an (in my opinion: undeserved) Oscar, there's no point in this movie existing. It only seems to be here to shock people and to be an excuse for audiences to say: "what a powerful performance." As has been said many times, if you play someone disabled in a "high brow" film then there's a good chance you'll get a nomination. Tom Hanks, Daniel Day-Lewis, the list goes on. I think it's kind of a cheat. You're playing someone who inherently garners sympathy by being disabled and since the manner in which these characters think and act is foreign to most of us it concordantly feels more like "acting." The same goes for playing psychopaths but I'd say that for the most part, they at least have actual characters and there's more to them. In the case of this film, Jane Wyman plays a deaf-mute woman named Belinda. So her whole performance is just with expressions. Impressive? Sure. But then again, I think acting is about subtlety. So once again: it's a cheat to telegraph all of your emotions because that's what your character needs to do. Of course it's realistic but from a purely objective standpoint...it's a cheat. Anyway, the first 40 minutes might as well be the Helen Keller story. Then she gets raped. Then she has a baby. Then the father of the child tries to steal the baby with his wife and Belinda shoots the guy (!). She then goes on trial and is acquitted. Cue happy ending music. Whaaaaaaaaa? It's based on a true story but there are lots of messed up things that happen which don't need to be movies. The film is mostly known for being the first to really deal with issues like rape in an in-depth way. To which I say: that's disappointing. The first movie to deal with such a heavy and important subject should've been more than a 102 minute excuse to shoot a rapist with a shotgun. I'm always in support of movies that shoot rapists with shotguns or other firearms but there should be more to it.

A far better film that I shockingly really liked is The Red Shoes. It's about ballet. This means there are entirely too many ballet movies that I like (2). And this one was likely an influence on the other one: Aronofsky's masterpiece, Black Swan. When I read the Netflix description of: it's about a lady who has to choose between her love of ballet and her love of guys with moustaches (slight alteration), I was thinking it'd be crap. Well, high-class drivel anyway. It ties in with a Hans Christian Anderson tale also entitled "The Red Shoes" which is about a ballet dancer who uses a pair of red shoes (shocking). But when she wants to stop dancing, the red shoes don't. So that's already a very interesting little morality tale about obsession with one's work. But it goes far beyond a brief mention at the beginning of the film. The ballet dancer's lover creates a ballet based around the story, which of course becomes the writing on the wall for the fate of the characters. The movie starts off somewhat slowly but the cinematography soon makes it simply mesmerizing. Its usage of color was particularly impressive, considering the year. And the lengthy ballet sequence was just incredible. Very cerebral filmmaking for 1948. The ballet plays out in an eerie, dreamlike way. There are a lot of reds and dark colors, creating an almost afterlife-esque feel. See now, remember when complained at length about the overly long dance sequence in An American In Paris? That's because that was bloated and useless. This meant something. There was a story to this dance sequence, both within the ballet itself and as a reflection of the main character's inner struggle. This is always a fascinating theme to me in many movies: career vs. relationship. To me it's always been a struggle between immortalities. You live on through your children but will be forgotten after a few generations. If your career is impressive enough then you will be immortal through that but you'll likely live your life utterly alone and probably miserably (if the "tortured writer/artist" stereotype is to be believed). Kind of a lose-lose. But that's the human condition for you. She initially picks her lover but will that last? As per usual, I don't want to spoil movies that I find actually good. Apparently this is one of Scorsese's favorite movies and I can see why. It was a truly great surprise to discover this film and it reminded me why I went on the escapade in the first place.

Another surprisingly great and dark film was The Snake Pit. Its ending was a little too upbeat for my taste and they missed a great opportunity to have a Twilight Zone ending (before that show was made of course). But it was still a great piece of acting by Olivia deHavilland and I think she should've taken home the Oscar instead. Even though she's playing someone who's losing her mind and that can also be a cheat: she has an actual story arc. There are flashbacks to when she was first losing her mind, further flashbacks to when she was sane, and then she brings her way back around to sanity again (probably). So there's a lot of variety in there. If she was just being crazy the whole time then I'd say forget it. But that wasn't the case. Essentially this is just about a woman in an insane asylum who is trying to remember what happened to her with the help of various psychiatrists. Its usage of flashbacks was particularly forward-thinking back then, in terms of how they're used to slowly reveal her backstory. Notice how I'm pointing out that it was both innovative and effective. They weren't doing flashbacks just to do them; they made sense within the story. That's how it's done when you're doing it correctly. Her condition ties into a very Electra-esque complex involving her father which is truly fascinating. And we're left with this question at the end of whether she's truly cured or not (at least I was). All in all some pretty great stuff.

Another good one that I had actually heard of before (getting rare these days) is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I asked my dad what it was about and all he said was "greed." He's ominous and cool like that sometimes. And I couldn't have said it any better myself. It's about treasure hunters looking for gold in the mountains who let their lust for money get the better of them. This is another one with an oddly upbeat ending, but considering someone had been beheaded in the movie fairly recently it was actually a disturbing ending...so it was pretty cool to me of course. And any movie that involves Bogart in a cool hat automatically goes up a few points in my book. Something truly fascinating that it touched on with one brief scene (but an important scene that also established a main theme of the movie) is the idea that gold is inherently worthless. This is something I've been thinking about for a while: the idea that money is essentially based on the honor system. A heavily regulated and enforced honor system of course...but an honor system nonetheless. The guy essentially says that the pursuit of gold is circular reasoning. People spend so much time trying to find it that its worth increases due to the amount of man-hours spent trying to find it. That's why the whole thing kind of baffles me. You find some food or some shelter and that's inherently useful. Gold is the world's most expensive paper weight. A vestige from humanity's "ohhhh look, shiny!" age which is all too prevalent today. The fascinating thing about this film is that some of the characters start going crazy before all that much money is involved. And they also have to keep the whole operation a secret because otherwise hordes of people would be scouring the same location. So their wealth wouldn't be readily attainable anyway. It's all about the idea of the money. The idea of having more than your fellow man. The paranoia that their chief priority is taking what you have. It's the world's most destructive pissing contest. This is why I find it so funny that the oft-quoted line from the movie is "we don't need no steenking badges!" In addition to being misquoted anyway, that's one of the goofier scenes in the movie. It touches on another major theme of corruption within organizations with money...but still. Odd that such a great movie about such an important issue is mostly remembered for funny Mexican accents. But that's society for you.

Which brings me at last to this year's winner, a film I had some mixed feelings about: Hamlet. This is THE version according to most people. It stars Laurence Olivier (not yet a "sir") who was once known as "the greatest actor in the English language." I'd hate to have that title personally. Pressure! He requested any slobbering actors that met him to call him "Larry," as he was uncomfortable with his acclaim. This is what has always saved his performances for me, because I know that he holds himself to a normal standard and not a crazy one. And his performance in this is undeniably excellent of course, but I was never a big fan of the play. It runs the same risk as Olivier himself, interestingly, because it's so often called the greatest play of all time that when you finally read it or see it you're kind of like "eh?" Well, when the "you" in that sentence is "me" anyway. I was always more of a "Macbeth" man myself. Or "Richard III" or "Henry V" or any number of ones besides this one. Macbeth and his wife go on a true character journey. He starts out as the reluctant villain and she is the criminal mastermind and by the time it's the end they've switched places. Great stuff. Richard III was the pre-modern Tyrion Lannister (of Game of Thrones fame): an impish genius who connives behind the scenes to manipulate people who are dumber than him (which is everybody). Hamlet is about a guy who sits around and whines because he wants to bang his mom. There's more to it of course but that's essentially it. He sits around contemplating for 4 hours (this version is 2 1/2, which many purists complained about but I say it's still too long) and is basically in the same position at the end that he was in at the beginning. Except he's dead now. That's his whole character journey: melancholy dane to melancholy dead. There are speeches in it that I've always really liked (especially poor Yorick) but that's about it. What's cool about it is that it's directed in a very interesting manner. I read that it was emulating Citizen Kane but it more reminded me of a lot of Bergman films. Very cerebral and ominous and odd. Stuff that should make you laugh from the hokey delivery but instead really creep you out. And it all looks like it was filmed on a stage (which I'm sure it was) but this actually helps the feel. Due to some aspects of the story being a "play-within-a-play" and of course the play itself having been popularized on stage, this really works. Not that this is intentional, I'm sure they had to film on a stage, but it's effective anyway. So for the atmospheric cinematography and acting I give them a lot of credit. And by "them" I largely mean Olivier who also directed. But it definitely isn't as good as The Red Shoes, which was also robbed of a cinematography Oscar. But when you drop the Bard on Hollywood, this can be the effect. I enjoyed it more than almost any other Shakespeare movie I've seen though, I'll say that.

Well that was overall a pretty excellent year. They're reinforcing the idea that I really should've lived in the 40s. Awesome suits, awesome hats, awesome cinema. I hope that next year continues the positive trend. All I know for now is it'll include a possibly drunken clergyman, a possibly drunken Santa, and a possibly drunken anti-semite. Just got real on you on that last one.