One of those trends though...is too much forced romance. We see this a lot in The Bishop's Wife. I don't think this is a bad movie at all. It was pretty good actually. But I think the premise is far more fascinating than the delivery. It's about a lady who's married to a bishop. Obviously. But I'd have been far more interested in a movie called "The Bishop's Wife's Husband." He's the character that you think is going to be the main character, but Cary Grant ends up Kid Dyno-Miting himself into basically every scene. Cary Grant plays an angel who comes down from heaven to assist a preacher (played by David Niven) who has lost his way (ish). They could have gone in a lot of fascinating directions from here. How involved should the Almighty and his emissaries be in our everyday lives? Where is the line between showing us the door and walking us through the door? Do angels exist? If angels exist, do they make their own decisions or do they just follow instructions? All very fascinating questions that have plagued mankind since its inception (title drop!). But they instead decided to focus on two very different questions: "how many nifty magic tricks can Cary Grant do as an angel?" and "how much sexual tension can we get away with in 1947 involving a married woman and a supernatural being?" To be fair, I believe there was only one magic trick-y scene involving Grant's character. It annoyed me though. There's definitely a thread of excellence that goes through the film with its various cynical characters coming around to believe again. But they spent so much time on the romance (which was never going to go anywhere anyway) that the rest just gets lost in the background. It's still a charming movie and I'm betting that the last thing anyone wanted after World War II was a slew of existential questions...but still. All of this being said, I did quite like the ending and the speech that Niven gives near the end. They were well-done pieces of the movie that it could've been. It remains a good movie on a technical level, just not my cup of Kanar.
My favorite film of the year by far is Crossfire. I'd never heard of it before and it stars mostly people I haven't heard of (I know Robert Mitchum but that's about it). It's not a true film noir for various nit-picky reasons but its style is definitely film noir. The story revolves around the murder of a Jewish man and the group of demobilized soldiers who are being questioned about it. This is a great movie for a lot of reasons. For one: it keeps it simple. The movie is 86 minutes long, which is more than enough time to tell the story that they're telling. It doesn't get distracted by inane romantic sub-plots or useless character-building scenes that are meant to trick you into feeling sympathy for one character or another. It's just the investigation and the flashbacks. Plus, it has an intense ending that reflects the state of criminal justice in the 1940s. Not a system I'd want to be subjected to. But one that can inspire some schadenfreude when viewed in a fictional story. I've just realized that it might not be in the best taste to use douchey German academic words like "zeitgeist" and "schadenfreude" with all of the anti-semitism going around this year...so I'll try to watch that. Anyway, the word on the street is that the director and producer refused to testify before the House Un-american Activities Committee and that's why it failed to win any Oscars of any kind. I'd believe that, because a lot of crazy stuff like that went down back then with regards to award-giving. And there's some very impressive directing and intense acting in this picture. Ahead of its time in many ways. Definitely a gem of a film that deals with many of the same issues that this year's winner deals with, and it does a better job of it.
Another unexpectedly great movie was Great Expectations. Ahhhhhhh see what I did there? I usually expect these adaptations of classic novels to be overly long or bogged down with goofy sub-plots but this one was particularly well-done. It helps that it was directed by David Lean, a master of his trade even back then. Throughout the years, whenever my dad would tell me not to get hung up on things that happened in the past he would always use the example of Miss Havisham. She's not the focal point of the story but she's a fascinating cautionary tale. She was left at the altar by her soon-t0-be-husband and for the rest of her life remained in her wedding dress with all of her wedding decorations still up. Depressing! Her story always snapped me out of whatever melodrama I was experiencing as a teen though, so I suppose Dickens did his job quite well (Captain Obvious). The story actually revolves around a young fellow named Pip who is given the opportunity to live the life of a gentleman. With...wait for it...great expectations (boom! Title drop). One thing that did throw me off is that I thought this would be another Oliver Twist type of character who stays a kid for the entire movie. So when 30 minutes or so had passed and all of a sudden he was played by an older actor and time had progressed I was a little thrown off. Quite oddly, this is the exact same problem that the new Conan the Barbarian has. Just thought I'd throw those two stories together. This is always the difficulty of adapting a book: too much time and important life events to cover. But it's handled about as well as it can be, given the 2-hour running time. There are a lot of interesting and cerebral camera shots, especially for 1947, and all of the actors put in very subtle and powerful performances. I'm once again pleasantly surprised at the lack of over-acting in a 40s movie. This is also one case where I prefer the cheery ending of the film to the ambiguous one of the book. Don't let me imply that I've read the book because I haven't. But I looked up the main differences between the book and the film and in this instance I think the happy ending was earned and appropriate. So there you have it: not a curmudgeon all the time. Amirite?
Perhaps not, I'm about to put the smack-down on Miracle on 34th Street. What a bunch of drivel. I was expecting a heart-warming tale about a kid who believes in Santa and wants everyone else to believe in him too. A kid who has reason to believe that this person is actually Santa. What I got was some kind of weird courtroom drama that espouses that you can legally prove you're Santa by saying that you are. And all we get as an audience in terms of evidence (until the ending) is that he speaks Dutch (something they didn't even bring up in court). Here's what a good movie would have been: "a young child discovers that her local Santa Claus is, in fact, the real Kris Kringle. She has proof of this. The child then informs people of this but they are too cynical to believe. Cue an uplifting story about jaded adults who learn to believe in the unknown again. Adults who begin to have faith in something beyond themselves and beyond full understanding. They realize that after growing up they had forgotten how wonderful it was to be a child." That's pretty good. That's what I thought I was getting. Instead I got: "old guy who speaks Dutch claims to be Santa. He is taken to court for some reason. He keeps saying he is Santa. They eventually believe him. He's revealed to probably be Santa at the end when the kid's wish is granted." Whaaaaaaat? When they changed the game and made it a courtroom deal, they had to start playing by the rules of that genre. Which means that you need evidence beyond "well, he says he's Santa." The Macy's guy even has a vision of a newspaper that says "Macy's Santa proven to be a fake" and decides he needs to testify that the guy is Santa. Because he's clearly not afraid of a "Macy's CEO believes in Santa, proven insane" headline. Ridiculous. It's not heart-warming except for a few scenes at the beginning and the one at the end. So if you're not that then you have to be real. Engage in some real discussions in the courtroom about the merits of faith vs. evidence. Much like the other Christmas movie this year, they could have gone to some really interesting places. Or at least been the schmaltzy-but-enjoyable nonsense I was expecting. Instead it was neither and I was left wondering why it's the famous movie that it is.
This year's winner was also one that left me a bit underwhelmed but was still pretty good: Gentleman's Agreement. It's fascinating to me that in the wake of the Holocaust there was anti-semitism in America. That's staggering. Although I'm also not sure about how educated people were about everything that went on in World War II. And this was only 2 years after it ended, which is a pretty crazy thing to think about. Anyway, it's about a reporter who pretends to be Jewish in order to gauge people's reactions and feelings towards him. So I figured it'd sort of be like Ellison's "The Invisible Man." I was seriously expecting Gregory Peck to darken his skin and put on a yarmulke and have various sobering experiences as he went about his day. Instead he basically just had conversations with people about Jewish issues and then would randomly drop in: "I'm Jewish you know" and watch everybody get all awkward. Elia Kazan stated that this was one of his least favorite movies as a director, largely because it gets bogged down by pointless romance. See? It's not just me that says these things. I felt quite vindicated knowing that Mr. Kazan felt the same way that I do. It's not afraid to raise some interesting issues, which is pretty cool, but it also doesn't seem to go much of anywhere. There aren't any real stakes. He's just kind of...curious. And that's fine I guess but it's all just so underwhelming, especially as compared to a taut murder mystery with anti-semitism at its heart. The main character certainly learns his lesson, as I hope some audience members did, but that just makes it an especially well-done PSA. Not a bad movie by any means, but not a best picture in my book.
Well it took me longer than expected for me to put this entry up but what can I say? I'm a busy guy. Lots of tv to watch you know. Hopefully I'll get through this next year a little more quickly, we're kind of sort of reaching the home stretch on this escapade! I'm sure the next year will hold some intrigue as they always do. All I know for now is that it will involve more post-WWII woes, more schmaltzy Christmas cheer, and more Shakespeare. I could go back and make all 3 of those rhyme but I won't.
