Three essential movie reviews

I have a lot of catching up to do with the film reviewing after my 100-one-sentence-film-reviews project - and during that time I have seen no less than three films for the first time that I want to mention in this humble blog.

They are all very unique in their own way, and I will try to summarize the film experiences as best as I can. Hang on - we will start off at Berlin, then take a long trip down to South Korea, and then way back to Europe and the United Kingdom!

A Foreign Affair

Director: Billy Wilder

USA 1948

116 min

Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Jean Arthur, John Lund and Millard Mitchell, among others.

"Want to buy some illusions?
Slightly used
Just like new"

The songs Marlene Dietrich sings, in the form of the nightclub singer Ericha von Schlütow, tells a lot about what this film is about. Especially the powerful song "The Ruins of Berlin" makes it clear what the German people of the shattered remains of the capital city is in a kind of state of mind - trying to start a-new after a huge defeat.

A group of congressmen, and a strict congress lady played by Jean Arthur, is flown to Berlin after WWII to investigate the moral of the American troops in the city. As we can understand from scenes taking place in black markets and filthy nightclubs (to the tunes of "Polyushko Pole"), we understand that the moral could be better.

A little colorized Dietrich for ya!

Billy Wilder is one of those directors that could make a comedy out of this scenario (hard to get a mental picture of it, right?), and he does so in his usual intellectual manner. It's sometimes hard to laugh during the tragic and uncomfortable circumstances (especially since the surroundings are real - the film was shot in Berlin), but the feeling of triumph is overwhelming. I felt really pleased watching this film - and as I could suspect after only minutes into the film, the United States Department of Defence didn't approve of the film since it concerned such sensitive issues.

All the actors are at their absolute best too - I think they sensed that they were participated in something special. It's sad that Jean Arthur's career began to fail, and that she only made one more motion picture after A Foreign Affair. But how charming Arthur is, it's still Dietrich that steals every scene. It's simply brilliant to cast the German actress who's name could be find on Hitler's blacklist in the role of an ex-nazi seductress.





Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters)
Director: Ji-woon Kim
South Korea 2003
115 min
Starring: Su-jeong Lim, Geun-Young Moon, Jung-ah Yum and Kap-su Kim, among others.


A psychological horror/drama, that I believe everyone feels confused by after the first watching. Some people feel reluctant towards it because of it, but I think it's brilliant. Why? Because the more you go back and think about it, the more the puzzle pieces fit together. And - the cinematography! Simply stunning.

The story is based on a Korean folktale about two girls facing cruel fates because of an evil stepmother. The tale and the film do however not have more than the basic story line in common (I read the tale yesterday here) - the film adaptation has added a lot of interesting factors to a simple and uncomplicated story.

I can't reveal much of the plot without either giving away the ending or lie to you - but I can say that the main theme is about coping with overwhelming feelings of regret and guilt, and what kind of tricks your mind can play on you. What complicates things is that supernatural factors is blended in.




You get the main idea of what everything was about when you see the ending of the film. If there still are certain details that are puzzling you (what's with the fish in the fridge? what's with the seizure at the dinner? etc), I recommend a discussion thread on IMDb, where really devoted film enthusiasts have discussed every little detail of the film, and come up with a FAQ. You have the link here. (But do not read it before you have seen the film!)

All in all, A Tale of Two Sisters is one hell of a film experience - do not miss it.

Danish film poster. Brilliant, isn't it?

Kind Hearts and Coronets
Director: Robert Hamer
United Kingdom 1949
106 min
Starring: Dennis Price, Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood and Valerie Hobson, among others.


Have I mentioned that I love the British? I think so, but my adoration has reached an entirely new level. I'm in the seventh heaven of Britain.

Think British black comedy. Think Alec Guinness playing an entire part of a family tree, seen as eight different persons by the name of D'Ascoyne with a Duke on the top. (Well, nine persons if you include the oil painting of an ancestor, a painting for which Guinness modelled.) Think a narcissistic Joan Greenwood (seen in The Importance of Being Earnest, 1952) with her sweet whiskey voice. Think marvellous black and white footage. Think an upright English gentleman with a constant smirk on his face (Dennis Price, whom I now am in love with) as the main character. Think about him being a distant and poor relative to the Duke of D'Acoyne, settled to win the Duke title by all means necessary.

There you have Kind Hearts and Coronets. This is that kind of a film that you instantly feel a desperate need to re-watch immediately - it's that good. It's clever, it's bold, it's marvellous.




Why do I love the British? Their kind of humor is the one that suits me most - refined and rather stiff on the surface, completely bizarre and unlimited underneath. I never seize to be surprised, and I laugh hysterically. By myself. Me and my fat cat. Patting it, mumbling "You only live twice, Mr. Beuund..."

Jesus. I need some sleep. Here's a colorized Joan Greenwood for you, that I was pretty proud of:

The Lost Weekend (1945)

The Lost Weekend

Director: Billy Wilder

USA 1945

101 min

Starring: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling among others.

I will do my best to overcome my fatal disease (I have a cold, caughing up my intestines) and write a little review for you. My brain is however just a big "duuh...?", so don't expect too much. God, I hate being sick!

The Lost Weekend is a film (like a million others, I'll try not to mention it every damn time I write a review) I've wanted to see for a long time, but somehow never got around to it. Just like Jules et Jim [review]. Just like all darn movies you have to see before you die.

Therefore a cold is a pretty good thing, if you want to be optimistic. While lying around, feeling sorry for yourself, you can catch up a little on the movie viewing.

The script to The Lost Weekend was not what people were used to in the subject of depicting alcoholics. If the drunkards weren't a comic relief, their distorted reality wasn't depicted with the same depth as it was now. We've seen the tragic fate of a drunkard in films before (i.e. the Barrymore brothers - John in Dinner at Eight, and Lionel in A Free Soul), but they were seen from a third person perspective. From that perspective it's easy to judge. The difference with The Lost Weekend is that we, whether we want to or not, follow an alcoholic's downward spiral up close, and we are more or less forced to have compassion.

I was immediately impressed by the professional story-telling (as always, when Billy Wilder is involved). Within only ten minutes the plot was clear and the depressing tone was set:

Struggling writer Don Birnam (Milland) is packing his bags to go away for a weekend with his brother (Terry). Away from the city, away from "what he has gone through". What they are talking about is soon made obvious, when Don makes his brother leave the room to look for his typewriter. He uses the seconds alone to retrieve a whiskey bottle he has hanged in a rope from the window, probably to try packing it with him.

Enters Helen (Wyman). She and Don's brother soon notices the bottle, not being surprised at all they empty the whiskey in the sink. Helen tells them that she is going to the opera by herself, and Don convinces his brother to go with her so he can be alone for a while. A bit suspiciously they agree. His brother informs Helen that he had thrown away all hidden bottles, and that Don has no money to buy new liquor.

As soon as Don's alone he however tracks down some hidden money, and soon he sits at the nearest bar with two new bottles of whiskey. He gets drunk, misses his train and spends his "lost weekend" with liquor and a tired bartender (Da Silva).

Now, that's just a brilliant introduction. We already have experienced, and understood, Don's unavoidable, pathetic need for liquor. He has already lied, stolen money, neclected his brother and his girlfriend and fallen back in the alcohole daze he finds such comfort in.

It's a brilliant film that definitively needs re-watching. The film goes from uncomfortable to sad, from sad to despair, and from despair to pure horror. A favourite part of the film is when Don eventually ends up at a detoxification clinic among equals, and an amused male nurse (Frank Faylen) who informs Don about his awaiting horrors and deliriums. (I wanted to include that clip for you, but my film editing program has died on me.)

I adore the cinematography by John F. Seitz, nominated to an Oscar for the job. I still can't believe that this is a 1940's film. The feeling is that of a 1950's film noir, and the camera work could easily fool you to think that it's the 1960's. Truly professional, I'm simply amazed.

Ray Milland won a well deserved Oscar for his performance, but the whole cast would have deserved one each. Wyman is very believable as the troubled, loving girlfriend who won't give up on Don, Terry is equally understandable as the brother hos has given up, Da Silva is unforgettable as the cynical bartender and Dowling sympathetic as the happy, flirty woman who has a cruch on the doomed male lead.

Three other Oscar statues were dealt out - two to Billy Wilder for Best Director and Best Picture, and another to Wilder and Charles Brackett for Best Script.

One of the several sad bar scenes.

Some interesting trivia:

The liquor industry was worried that the film's depiction of the danger of alcoholism would hurt their income, and therefore offered Paramount $5 000 000 not to make the film.

The cencorship lobby was equally concerned, but the other way around - they thought the film might encourage drinking! Real smart guys, huh?

Ray Milland was perhaps one of the earliest method actors: to prepare for the role of Don Birnam he spent one night at the Bellevue Hospital (where the clinic scenes were filmed), and stopped eating much, since most alcoholics forget to do so.

Sabrina (1954)

Sabrina
Director: Billy Wilder
USA 1954
113 min

YouTube link

"Once upon a time, on the north shore of Long Island some 30 miles from New York, there lived a small girl on a large estate."

That is the opening line of the film. The small girl is Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn), the daughter of the chauffeur of the family living on the large estate, the Larrabees. She has lived all her life in an apartment over the garage, and has for all years been secretely in love with the youngest son of the Larrabee family - the playboy David Larrabee (William Holden). When the Larrabees throws parties, Sabrina use to climb up in a tree near the villa and watch David dance with pretty girls.





Her father Thomas Fairchild (played by one of my favourite supporting actors John Williams II) and the other servants are troubled by Sabrina being unhappily in love, and send her away to Paris for a cooking school.
When she returns to the estate two years later she has grown up a fashionable woman. David is taken aback when he sees her, not being able to recognize her at first. Now he wants Sabrina, just as she always wanted. But David's older business man-brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart, in a role quite different from his archetype), who keeps a watching eye on his playboy younger brother.
After an incident with two champagne glasses in his back pockets, David needs to have is bottom sown up and healed. During the recovery Linus entertains Sabrina with boat trips and restaurant dinners. Soon there are feelings between them too, and Sabrina is confused. She has been in love with David for all of her life, and only known Linus for a couple of days. Which one of them does she really want?





This is a wonderful drama/comedy and the film that secured Hepburn's position as a moviestar and fashion icon. The drama and the comedy is perfectly mixed in every scene, witty lines are served to and fro and the supporting characters are wonderful. Walter Hampden (as the family father Oliver Larrabee) steals every scene he's in, whether it is his trouble with smoking on the sly and hiding it from his wife, or he tries to get ahold of that last olive in the jar for his dry martini. His arguments with his sons are too wonderful to mention. (Hampden is, by the way, "the aged actor" in All About Eve, 1950).

Cary Grant had initially signed up for the role of Linus Larrabee, but he backed out only one week before the shooting was supposed to have started. Luckily enough they got ahold of Humphrey Bogart, who was excited about doing the part. And how great he did it!
Audrey Hepburn confessed later that she faked illness while filming, to get Billy Wilder some more time to write on the still unfinished script. That's co-operation!


Scene: Sabrina and Linus have dinner together, and Sabrina starts to be troubled by her feelings. A lovely clip from the film, and a good example of the smooth and witty dialogue. Don't miss Sabrina singing "La Vie en Rose" to Linus in the car.

Quotes:

Thomas Fairchild: [reading a letter from Sabrina] ... I decided to be sensible the other day and tore up David's picture. Could you please airmail me some Scotch tape?

Linus Larrabee: After all, this is the 20th century, Father.
Oliver Larrabee: Twentieth century? Why, I could pick a century out of a hat, blindfolded, and come up with a better one.

Thomas Fairchild: He's still David Larrabee, and you're still the chauffeur's daughter. And you're still reaching for the moon.
Sabrina Fairchild: No, father. The moon is reaching for me.

[about to go on a date with Sabrina, putting on youthful sports clothes]
Linus Larrabee: Look at me. Joe College, with a touch of arthritis.

Thomas Fairchild: Democracy can be a wickedly unfair thing Sabrina. Nobody poor was ever called democratic for marrying somebody rich.

Linus Larrabee: I wish I were dead with my back broken.

Oliver Larrabee: All columnists should be beaten to a pulp and converted back into paper!

Linus Larrabee: [slow dancing with Sabrina] How do you say in French my sister has a yellow pencil?
Sabrina Fairchild: Ma soeur a un crayon jaune.
Linus Larrabee: How do you say my brother has a lovely girl?
Sabrina Fairchild: Mon frere a une gentille petite amie.
Linus Larrabee: And how do you say I wish I were my brother?

The Professor: [inspecting the students' soufflés] Too low. Too pale. Too heavy. Too low. Too *high*, you are exaggerating. Fair. So-so. Sloppy.
[he gets to the Baron]
The Professor: Mm. Superb. Mon Dieu, Baron, you have not lost your touch...
[he looks at Sabrina's]
The Professor: Much too low.
Sabrina Fairchild: [looking at her soufflé] I don't know what happened.
Baron St. Fontanel: I will tell you what happened: you forgot to turn on the oven.
Sabrina Fairchild: Oh!

Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn on the set of Sabrina.

Sunset Blvd. and All About Eve - a comparison

Bette Davis and Gary Merrill in All About Eve. This picture is glorious - click on it for a higher resolution.
Trivia: Davis and Merrill fell in love during the filming of All About Eve. Even though they both were married , they got divorced and married each other. They were married for ten years.

I've recently re-watched two of my favourite films from the 1950's - Sunset Blvd. and All About Eve, both from 1950. I saw a lot of similarities between them, both in the films themselves and the story behind them. I thought that they could do great in a post together.



Sunset Blvd.
Director: Billy Wilder
USA 1950
115 min


Characters:
Joe Gillis - a B-move script writer and the narrator of the film.
Norma Desmond - an isolated, forgotten silent movie queen.
Max von Mayerling - Norma Desmond's butler and ex-husband.
Betty Schaefer - a script reader wanting to become a successful script writer.

Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) is an aging silent moviestar, living in a gigantic mansion with her butler Max von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim), isolated from the outside world.
One day Joe Gillis (William Holden) finds himself stranded at Norma Desmond's driveway with a flat tire. The time couldn't have been better - Norma Desmond is planning a come-back to the audience she thinks is still waiting for her, and wants Gillis' help with the script. Gillis, full of unpaid debts, feels he has nothing to loose and moves in with Norma to become her toy boy.
Soon though, he tires of the unadventurous luxuary in the mansion, and starts sneaking out at night to write a script with his best friend's fiancée Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), while Norma battles with her paranoia, jealousy and fear of aging.



All About Eve
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
USA 1950
138 min


Characters:

Margo Channing - a successful theatre actress not longer in her golden years of youth.
Eve Harrington - a theatre devotee, Margo's greatest admirer, who wants a career of her own.
Addison DeWitt - an intelligent theatre columnist.
Bill Sampson - director at the theatre and Margo's lover.
Lloyd Richards - the theatre playwright.
Karen Richards - the playwrights wife and Margo's best friend.


This film tells the story about the charming and secretely manipulative woman Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), and how she found her way from being a nobody to become the most admired actress in the theatre world. The path she chooses to reach her goal makes it necessary for her to charm, cheat and use everyone in her way.
Eve Harrington's way to the stars begins with her getting to meet her greatest theatre idol - Margo Channing (Bette Davis), a hardened, skeptical and articulate woman in her 40's, tiring of always getting parts playing 20. But that is something Eve soon shows willing to change.

So, the similarities are...?

Begins with the end.

The first likeness between Sunset Blvd. and All About Eve is noticed right from the beginning - both films begin their story by revealing the end. Both movies are also narrated. While Sunset Blvd. has exclusively one narrator, All About Eve shifts its narrating between the different characters, but dominated by Addison DeWitt.


The first scene in All About Eve takes place at the Sara Siddons Award, where the award for Best Actress is just going to be presented. We hear the voice of Addison DeWitt (played with great bravura by George Sanders), who presents the characters, starting with himself ("My name is Addison DeWitt. My native habitat is the theater. In it I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theatre.").
Margo Channing is introduced to us with the following words:

Margo Channing is a star of the theater. She made her first stage appearance at the age of four in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered, quite unexpectedly, stark naked. She has been a star ever since. Margo is a great star, a true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.

After that we are introduced to Karen (Celeste Holm making a wonderful performance), the playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) and director and Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill). And last, but not least, Miss Eve Harrington, receiving the award, with all the earlier mentioned skeptically glancing toward her.


Sunset Blvd. begins with a corpse in a Hollywood moviestar's pool. Policemen and photographers surround the body, which we get to see both from above the surface and from an upwards angle, under the water. The man had been shot three times - twice in the chest and once in the back. The narrator, Joe Gillis, informs us that it is he who lies in the pool:

The poor dope - he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.

Gillis begins to tell us the story about how a B-movie script writer ended up dead in a movie star's pool.

Comeback parts.

Another similarity concerns the leading actresses, who both made great and successful comebacks with their parts in All About Eve and Sunset Blvd.

Gloria Swanson belonged to those who made the step from silent to talking pictures in the late 1920's, but still her career declined a bit into the 1930's. From 1934 she didn't appear on screen (apart from one film she made 1941), but instead she used her time to politics and art.
When Mae West, Pola Negri and Mary Pickford all had declined the role of Norma Desmond, however, Gloria Swanson received the offer. She accepted, and there it was - the part she would be most remembered for in movie history.

Bette Davis was one of the most celebrated actresses in the 1930's, but a bit into the 1940's even her career began to fail. Her films became flops, and she was on great bit on her way to be all forgotten.
When Darryl F. Zanuck (the producer to All About Eve) wanted someone to play the role of Margo Channing it was out of the question that Bette Davis could play her. (They couldn't stand each other, going as far back as 1941 when Davis walked out on her post as president of The Motion Picture Academy.) He had visualized Marlene Dietrich in the leading role, and director Joseph L. Mankievicz hoped for Claudette Colbert, whom they eventually settled for. Unfortunaly (or fortunately), Colbert suffered a raptured disc while filming Three Came Home (1950), and had to decline.
Bette Davis stepped into the part, saved her career and did an immortal performance as the aging diva Margo Channing.

Both Bette Davis and Gloria Swanson were believed to actually more or less be their characters. Gloria Swanson wanting a comeback, Bette Davis bitter about getting old. But to quote Gloria Swanson:

It's amazing to find that so many people, who I thought really knew me, could have thought that Sunset Blvd. was autobiographical. I've got nobody floating in my swimming pool.

And I guess that goes for Bette Davis too. After all, it demands quite a lot of self perspective to appear on screen with no make up, tape in her hair and a thick layer of some strange moist in her face.
A lot of people also thought that Margo Channing was based on actress Tallulah Bankhead (which it wasn't), but it was that rumour who made Bankhead say following about Bette Davis:

Don't think I don't know who's been spreading gossip about me . . . After all the nice things I've said about that hag. When I get hold of her, I'll tear out every hair of her mustache!

Older women falling for younger men and aging paranoia.

One of the main themes in both of the films is the trouble of successful women getting older. Both Margo Channing and Norma Desmond falls for a younger man and are plagued with the knowing that women are no longer seen as attractive when they passed the 30-mark, while men on the other hand always have the charm of the grey temples.
In short, oth the leading female characters in the films are worried deeply that their men soon will be tired and leave them for a younger woman.

Immortal quotes.

Sunset Blvd:

Joe Gillis: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Norma Desmond: All right, Mr DeMille, I'm ready for my close up.

All About Eve:

Margo Channing: Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!

Birdie: All of a sudden she's playing Hamlet's mother.

Perfect cast. (Left to right: George Sanders, Gary Merrill, Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, Hugh Marlowe, William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim.)

Down to the smallest supporting roles, both of these films have been perfectly cast. All characters symbolize something, and if you had taken away any character (feel free to choose anyone) the film wouldn't be as great as it is. Notable in All About Eve is Marilyn Monroe in one of her first screen appearances as Miss Casswell. See film clip:



Of course, there are also a lot of differences between the films and their characters. For example Margo Channing is a quite normal (?) woman in a crisis, while Norma Desmond is a mental fuck-up. Also, Sunset Blvd. has a darker shimmer over it (being a classic film noir) than All About Eve. Even though either of the films endings can be seen as simply sad or happy, there is at least some hope left for the viewer when THE END hits the screen after watching All About Eve.
But I don't find it particularly interesting to discuss the differences between two entirely different movies, the similarities interest me far more. But of course, I am open for discussion.



Scene: Bette Davis in her best element in a fabulous scene you will never be able to forget.



Scene: Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond in their first encounter. Brilliant.

Academy Awards

It may seem strange that neither Bette Davis nor Gloria Swanson won the Oscar for Best Actress, but that it instead went to Judy Holiday for Born Yesterday (1950). I'm sure Judy was a real darling, but her part in that film is not even near the immortality Margo Channing and Norma Desmond have reached.
The theory behind the whole thing is that when Anne Baxter saw to it that she would be nominated for Best Actress and not Best Actress in Supporting Role, she caused the votes to split so that they weren't enough for either of them to win the award. How awful.

Anyway, All About Eve ended up with the six Oscars:

• Best Actor in Supporting Role, George Sanders
• Best Director, Joseph L. Mankievicz
• Best Picture
• Best Writing, Screenplay, Joseph L. Mankievicz
• Best Costume Design Black and White
• Best Sound, Recording

Sunset Blvd won three Oscars:

• Best Writing, Story and Screenplay, Billy Wilder
  
• Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
• Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White