Films I Watched On New Year's Day

[poliphilo]

The Bridge Over The River Kwai: I only watched the last five minutes, but it reinforced my feeling that Lean's later movies, for all their cinematic grandeur, are actually a bit crap. I hate the solemnity- and the way nuance and ambiguity are hunted down and killed like rats. "Madness, Madness!" intones Alec Guinness's side-kick over the artistically composed mayhem- and I'm wishing he'd just let the images do the talking. 

Dean Spanley: An Edwardian clergyman recalls a previous life as a beloved hound- but only under the influence of Tokay. It could have been insufferably whimsical, but it's done with care and feeling, and the attempt to imagine a dog's life from the inside is genuinely imaginative (I suspect the original writer- Lord Dunsany- should get credit for this). Sam Neil has fun as the doggy dean with the snuffly-wuffly nose and Peter O'Toole- as his erstwhile owner- is just wonderful. The things that man can do with his eyes!

True Grit: The John Wayne version. It's not the greatest western ever made, but it may be the most adorable. The script is snappy, the landscapes mountainous and summery and Wayne deserved his Oscar.  Kim Darby is cute and mostly convinces us she's 10 years younger than she actually was and Glenn Campbell comes close to delivering an adequate performance as the third member of the bickering trio (but what a truly great movie this might have been if they'd hired a proper actor!)  The presence in the supporting cast of Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper- future icons of the new Hollywood- reminds us that this was one of the last of the movies the like of which they don't make any more. Even as a young wannabe Robert Duvall was spectacularly bald- with long sidelocks flapping around his gleaming dome. 

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Really? You think True Grit looks summery? It's been some time, but I thought it took place in the spring.

Wonderful movie, I thought, and arguably Wayne's finest performance. I thought Campbell was painless, certainly less so than Ricky Nelson.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think you're right about the season.

I don't think it's Wayne's finest performance- good though it is. I reckon he did his best work when he was stretched- the way Ford stretched him in My Darling Clementine and The Searchers.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I won't argue against the work he did for Ford. I think Wayne even has his moments in The Quiet Man, where he otherwise sometimes looks a bit awkward, without his usual persona to lean upon.

The Searchers starred Utah's Monument Valley and Ford very cleverly prevented Wayne's supporting role from upstaging it. Mostly, the actor kept his mouth shut to great effect. It really is an amazing emotive performance, though. I don't know how Ford drew it out of him, but he did. However unfair it might be, I never quite give Wayne full credit, there.

True Grit is something special, I think. The screenplay allowed John Wayne to play the character he had so carefully crafted over the years with raucous, drunken abandon, almost to the point of parody. It was a man who had always seemed bigger than life portraying a man who also seemed bigger than life, and just as Rooster proves himself in the end, so too does John Wayne, turning in a performance of almost startling warmth and humanity.

[sovay]

I don't think it's Wayne's finest performance- good though it is.

I am incredibly fond of him in The Long Voyage Home (1940), where he's not the lead—it's a true ensemble piece and he's young enough not to have grown out of being a character actor. He's a shy, sweet-tempered young farmer who keeps shipping out with tramp steamers because there's no more profit in cows; he swears with each voyage that he's going home at the end of it, and so he becomes a kind of talisman to the rest of the crew who know they're as home aboard the Glencairn as they'll ever be. He's their innocent and their outsider, their lucky last chance for redemption; if they can get him back safely to his family in Sweden, it might pay off all the things that have happened before now. (Shades of the Flying Dutchman, now that I think about it, or maybe the other way around.) I don't want to tell you what happens in case you haven't seen the film. It's my favorite John Ford and one of my favorite movies. Arthur Shields gets a real role with more than a couple of scenes. Thomas Mitchell and Ian Hunter are amazing.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen that.....yet.

Thanks for the recommendation.

[sovay]

- and I'm wishing he'd just let the images do the talking.

Great Expectations (1946) is probably his most impressive film, because there's no way he should have been able to bring a Dickens adaptation in under two hours without destroying it and instead it's a classic, but Hobson's Choice (1954) seems to be the one I love.

Sam Neil has fun as the doggy dean with the snuffly-wuffly nose and Peter O'Toole- as his erstwhile owner- is just wonderful. The things that man can do with his eyes!

I should see that!