Bogie Watch: The African Queen (1951)

A year ago I likely would have watched this movie, enjoyed it immensely without a passing thought, recognized the brilliance of John Huston's direction in yet another movie, saluted Bogart and Hepburn for their genius, summed up the plot to about the 1/2 way mark, and called it a day.  Fair enough.

Nothing traumatic happened in the past several months, but a pal from high school watched the movie with his wife - a smart guy, highly educated, a guy with whom its a pleasure to have a beer or two - and commented on facebook about how ridiculous they found the acting in the movie.  

In 1952, when the Academy Awards were handed out for 1951, Humphrey Bogart took home the Oscar for Best Actor while Katherine Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress and John Huston was nominated for Best Director.  Of course, I'm not one to take the Oscars seriously as so much goes into both nominations and voting then and now, but it's a sign of something that all three were nominated and Bogart took home the statue.  

But I'm also not saying this guy and his wife (or the myriad facebook friends who piled on about "old movies") were wrong.  It's a fascinating bit of insight into (a) how acting styles change vis-a-vis what we'd expect and (b) a modern audience's ability - or lack thereof- to shake loose of the moorings of what they might consider "good" acting to see a dated performance - or one even reflective of speech and mannerisms of years past - and not find the whole thing a bit ridiculous.  It creates a high barrier to entry for the mass audience, I guess.

I wonder, in sixty years, what Leonardo DiCaprio will look like to space-suburbanites watching The Revenant on their Holo-Wall or projected directly into their optic nerve.  Someone's going to find all that grunting and shrieking just hilarious.  That's the nature of the beast.

Noir Watch: Gun Crazy (1950)

I've lost track of how many times I've seen Gun Crazy (1950).  And, in fact, over the past ten years its easily become one of my favorite movies.  Tuesday night JAL and I met up at the Alamo to catch a screening which was, it turned out, part of a series the Alamo was doing about social issues in movies.  And, of course, Gun Crazy is as good an example of how a good gun owner gets sucked into the issues of a bad gun owner as you're like to see.

The screening was either sold out or nearly so, which, even in a small theater at The Alamo on a Tuesday at 7:30 - for a movie that's now 66 years old - is a pretty good thing.  What was truly surprising was that the screening was of a 35mm print struck in the 1960's, as near as I could tell.

Noir Watch: Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

This one has been on my hit list for a couple of years now.  I recorded it off TCM way back in December and finally pulled the trigger and watched it.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is one of those movies like Sunset Boulevard, The Hustler or On the Waterfront that came out during a certain window of moviemaking that I think people associate with Eisenhower-era positivity, thanks to TV re-runs and a deluge of Disney movies in their youth.  Of course, Noir sort of blows the doors off all that.  But a lot of Noir gets caught up in incredible situations, with dames on the make, gangsters, long-game scams.  But sometimes something like this - stylized though it may be - gets at something a bit beyond the grift or the crime.

Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco, a press agent for live acts in the Big Apple.  Things are falling apart for him as he can't seem to place a story with any of the major columnists, especially J.J. Hunsecker - played with menace usually reserved for dictators and ganglords by Burt Lancaster in a pair of horn-rimmed specs.  J.J. wanted Falco to break up a brewing romance between his sister, Susan, and a jazz guitarist, Steve Dallas.  With the two planning an engagement, Falco sees doom for his own business and begins wheeling and dealing, going to Hunsecker with his problem and the two pair, their styles different but need to manipulate people and situations spinning into darker and darker territory.

This was one hell of a movie.