#33 - McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, Robert Altman)

Had to go with an Altman this week. Proper obits can be found everywhere, so some shitty beginner's blog post ain't gonna do him justice but in the Best American Director 1970-now division, let's face it, Scorsese's probably his only real competition. A true original who leaves behind a body of work that will take years to fully digest. Now someone PLEASE release Brewster McCloud on DVD!!!!

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is probably the most major Altman I hadn't yet seen and it's an oddity in his oeuvre. One of two westerns Altman directed (Buffalo Bill and the Indians will never see its way into this blog if I keep this up until I'm seventy years old), it's one of the classic "anti-westerns" of the late '60s and early '70s. But rather than reinterpreting the violence and heoroes / villians mythology, McCabe attacks the institution of capitalism.

The film takes place a few decades later and a few hundred miles west of most westerns. John McCabe (Warren Beatty) is one of the founders of Presbyterian Church, a Pacific Northwest town. He is a gambler who hopes to open a whorehouse with the cunning prostitute-cum-madam Constance Miller (Julie Christie). They make a ton of money and a large corporation comes to town to buy McCabe out. He refuses their offer, a decision with dire consequences.

Manifest Destiny has been achieved geographically, so what is left of the American Dream but to buy and sell bits and pieces of what's already been conquered. It is fitting that the industries being established in McCabe are sex and gambling (the two most profitable web industries today until those damn puritans shut down the online casinos), with drugs thrown in for good measure.

Though I dig the themes, I gotta say this isn't among my favorite Altmans. My main gripe is with the soundtrack, which may seem superficial but as we all know, innovative sound design is one of Altman's trademarks. Dialogue isn't quite as big here as in his other films and the use of natural sound is distracting. Voices echo and are poorly mic'ed, the overdubbing that contributes heavily to the stoner fantasia of Brewster and 3 Women, not to mention "striaght" ensemble masterpieces like Nashville and Short Cuts, is sorely missed.

It's definitely a worthwhile film and Altman's films are always more rewarding upon multiple viewings. I wasn't that hot on Nashville the first time I saw it after all.

New #100: Floating Clouds

#22 - His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)

The fastest-talkingest of all fast-talking comedies, His Girl Friday crams what must be a 200-page script into a 90 minute movie. The pace of the film, not just the dialogue but the blocking and editing, is so quick I must've drank about six cups of coffee just to get up to the level of the characters I was watching. My initial reaction is to compare Cary Grant's Walter Burns to an auctioneer but Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) beat me to it about 10 minutes into the film.

Hildy is the ace reporter for a New York newspaper but she's living the business to get married to some schmuck in Albany. This doesn't sit well with her editor / ex-husband Walter who'll do anything to get Hildy to stay. The story he needs her for involves the impending execution of a man accused of killing a police officer and an alleged cover-up of parts of this crime. Hildy's travel plans keep getting pushed back to make room for new developments in the story, which culminates in the man escaping from prison (located conveniently next door to the newspaper office!) and hiding out in a desk in the newsroom.

I've never seen The Front Page, the play and 1931 film from which His Girl Friday was adapted but the original had the Hildy character as a man (same name, but short for Hildebrand rather than Hildegaard) whose impetus for leaving was a higher-paying job in advertising rather than settling into suburban domesticity, although I suppose that's what the advertising job leads to.

By changing the sex of the character but not the gender, girl Hildy has even less reason to leave the newspaper game. This woman does not want to be a housewife despite what she says in the first act. The balance of power between her and her fiance is fun to watch as there is no balance whatsoever. Bruce, the fiance, is a gullible mama's boy (he and Hildy are even planning on living with his mother after getting married) who constantly falls into Walter's traps. How he and cynical, streetsmart Hildy ever got together is a total mystery but it sets up a battle of the sexes where a straight woman acting like one of the guys is never belittled or ridiculed and is rewarded at the end (ok, by getting remarried to Walter but you saw that coming).

New #100: Marnie (#244)

#17 - My Darling Clementine (1946, John Ford)

Whoo hoo, more Ford! I also saw The Informer (not on the blog's itinerary) today. This guy is pretty damn essential to any discussion of American culture (although i could've told you that before I began my binge - three films in two weeks isn't exactly a binge though, is it?).

Ford's pictures with Henry Fonda bring out the lily-livered blue-stater I never tried to hide, a way to enjoy a John Ford film without that John Wayne aftertaste ("Whoa, take 'er easy there, pilgrim"). I kid because I love, but My Darling Clementine is one of Hollywood's gentlest westerns, pre-Costner division.

The characters are much more sophisticated and well-mannered than in most westerns. If I called Stagecoach an Arch DeLuxe a couple posts ago, My Darling Clementine is McFoie Gras (no more McDonald's puns EVER AGAIN, I promise). Surprisingly non-action-packed although it does climax with the famed shootout at the OK Corral, the film is more of an old-west melodrama, a love triangle triggering a meditation on friendship. Wyatt Earp (Fonda) comes to town with vengeance on his mind, looking for the outlaws who killed his younger brother. But Earp is not bloodthirsty, he wants these men to face justice, although he'll resort to violence when the legal system is not an option. Victor Mature plays Doc Holliday, whose girlfriend Clementine from back east comes to Tombstone, setting up a rivalry between Doc and Wyatt.

It's late and it's already been like 4 days since I watched this so I'll just duck out and say, My Darling Clementine is good and you should watch it. Bye.

New #100: Salo

#51 - To Be or Not to Be (1942, Ernst Lubitsch)

Though released months after the bombings at Pearl Harbor pushed the United States out of isolationism for good, To Be or Not to Be was in development before the U.S. military was directly involved in World War II. This puts the dark comedy about Hitler's invasion of Poland in the company of early '40s Nazi awareness films like Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, Frank Borzage's The Mortal Storm and Powell & Pressburger's The 49th Parallel.

The film follows a troupe of actors led by husband and wife team Joseph and Maria Turas (Jack Benny and Carole Lombard) in Warsaw attempting to put on a satirical play about Hitler. The impending invasion by the real Hitler causes the players to scrap the Nazi parody and put on a production of Hamlet. When a Nazi professor comes to town, the actors scramble to stay one foot ahead of him and the Gestapo in order to escape to England.

Absolutely no one in classic Hollywood did innuendoes and double-entendres as well as Lubitsch, and this film certainly holds up in that category to pre-Code treasures like Trouble in Paradise and Design for Living. Lombard and Robert Stack's backstage flirting about his ability to "drop three tons of dynamite in two minutes" (he's a bomber!) has to be heard to be believed. The infidelity subplot between Lombard's Maria Turas and Stack's Lt. Sobinski is for the most part a nuisance distracting from the main plot, but the lightness Lubitsch plays this subplot for is interesting; in a domestic drama this would be the thing that brings down a household, but the Gestapo is on its way and infideilty is considered frivolous in the face of life and death.

Benny is wonderful (the look on his face before giving the "to be or not to be" soliloquy is priceless) and Lombard is totally gorgeous if underutilized. Not my #1 Lubitsch (if you haven't seen Trouble in Paradise DO IT NOW!) but one of the great Hollywood comedies with a social conscious.

New #100: Shane (#241)

#23 - Stagecoach (1939, John Ford)

I must admit, westerns are a major blind spot for me, as is the filmography of John Ford in general. I don't dislike westerns, never have, just haven't delved into the genre too much. Oh boy, I really want to now! Stagecoach is considered a landmark in the genre, taking a much-maligned genre of cheapie afternoon thrills for the kiddos and inflecting it with visual panache and fantastic dialogue for grown-up tastes. You know, like the Arch DeLuxe.

Ford was no stranger to the western: his 1924 The Iron Horse is among the few silent westerns still held in high regard today. Much of Stagecoach's lore surrounds the casting of "unknown" B-movie actor John Wayne as the lead, escaped con The Ringo Kid. Ford and Wayne had been friends for years and many of Wayne's early "b-movie" roles were in Ford pictures. In 1930, Wayne had the lead role in Roaul Walsh's groundbreaking early talkie western The Big Trail. I haven't seen The Big Trail yet, but I gather it was quite a big deal back in the day, the first film ever shot on 70mm stock. Apparently, the film was a bust though, which may be why it took almost a decade for Wayne to become a major movie star.

Stagecoach is kind of weak on plot, but big on character. A motley crew of residents from an Arizona town head out east? west? Does it matter? Some of them have been run out of town, others have actual purpose. We've got a drunken doctor (my favorite of the gang), a "loose woman", a greedy banker, a meek Kansan father (played by Donald Meek!), a pregnant woman seeking her husband in the cavalry, a Hatfield, and of course, Duke!

It wouldn't be a Wayne/Ford review without mentioning the film's treatment of Native Americans. Here the enemy is the Apache. Apparently they are being led by the great and fearful Geronimo, a character spoken of often but never appearing in the film. Really, none of the Apache figure as characters. None ever speak, but when the stagecoach pulls through their territory they jump on it (literally!). Admittedly, the fight/chase scene with the Apaches is one of the great action sequences of the American cinema, a purely visceral experience expertly shot and edited.

The other oddly racist scene occurs when our heroes visit a Mexican camp. The Mexicans are portrayed as stupid but harmless and therefore sympathetic. But that's not my concern. When it is revealed that the lead Mexican (damn '30s movies and their limited credits) has an Apache wife (a fact the stagecoach gang can tell just by looking at her, how I dont know because the wife is clearly played by a STUNNING Mexican-American actress), the Mexican thinks "oh well, now the Apache can't bother me" but the Whites know better. Bitch is up to something. Sure enough she steals some horses overnight. One wonders how long she was married to the guy waiting to do some patented Apache evil.

The film's main theme of camaraderie was refreshing in light of politically loaded later Wayne pictures. Ford, whose political allegiances have been debated for decades, is I think, ultimately a social conservative whose Catholicism inspired a mix of conservative socialism and liberal libertarianism, both values completely lost in 21st century red state / blue state pluralism.

All in all, a great film, its (major) flaws serve an important historical context in laying the groundwork for one of the great American film genres, both to inspire and to destroy.

New #100: Kings of the Road (#240 overall)

All right, so lemme rap about myself first off. My name is Mike Ouderkirk, I'm an American Studies major at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. I'm a junior, but at 24 I'm a few years older than most of the kids in my classes. I was a journalism major at UMCP for the first 2 1/2 years outta high school but then I fell into a deep funk and dropped outta school, moved back with my parents and worked a bunch of dead-end jobs for a bit.

I was never much of a film buff growing up. Before leaving UMCP I took a class called "Film Culture in the 1960s", a 300-level American Studies class, for an upper-level elective, thinking we'd just watch "The Graduate" and "Easy Rider" and write essays about how "this film really reflects the counterculture and its views on Viet...blahblahblahblahblah." My professor exposed me to a wide range of films from the period, such as "Scorpio Rising" (!), "Flaming Creatures" (!!), "The Connection" (!!!), and "Guns in the Trees" (!!!!!). He even played the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs" once as we walked into class, which I was already very familiar with, but dude was 65 YEARS OLD!! Everyone my age knows VU but it's rare to find someone who was down with them in the '60s.

Anyway, as much as I'ld love to say I passed this class with flying colors, nah, it was one of my straight-W semesters, W for Withdrawal, when I was too depressed to wake up before 1 p.m., let alone attend a class more than once a month. I found myself living back at home in Frederick, working dead-end jobs at gas stations and Target. I found refuge in my downtime giving myself a crash course in cinema. By day I was making $7.25 an hour making sure the deodorant section looked like clockwork; by night I was absorbing the films of Dreyer, Ozu, Godard, etc.

Anyway, so, eventually I got a job managing a video store, had that for year, made approx. $3 in that span but had major fun watching Looney Tunes 8 hours a day. Now I'm at Starbucks, making more money, but unfortunately no Looney Tunes. I'm looking out for a career in film preservation. UCLA is offering my dream major for grad school, so that's what I'm aiming for after I finish my undergrad studies.

OH HEY, this is about my blog. There is a list maintained at http://www.theyshootpictures.com/ of the 1000 best films of all time. I made a list of the top 100 films from that list that I haven't seen. Each time I view a film that is among my top 100 unseen, I will post about it. Here's how the list looked as of Nov. 1, 2006:


1. Singin' in the Rain (10)
2. Children of Paradise (24)
3. The Gold Rush (37)
4. Pather Panchali (42)
5. Intolerance (44)
6. The Wild Bunch (59)
7. La Strada (60)
8. Fanny and Alexander (62)
9. Greed (63)
10. North By Northwest (64)
11. The Earrings of Madame de... (65)
12. Sherlock Jr. (66)
13. Rio Bravo (67)
14. Voyage in Italy (70)
15. Pierrot Le Fou (75)
16. Sansho the Bailiff (77)
17. My Darling Clementine (80)
18. Gone with the Wind (88)
19. Last Year at Marienbad (90)
20. The Leopard (91)
21. The Decalogue (92)
22. On the Waterfront (93)
23. Stagecoach (94)
24. His Girl Friday (96)
25. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (98)
26. Letter from an Unknown Woman (99)
27. Chimes at Midnight (102)
28. Gertrud (106)
29. Hiroshima Mon Amour (110)
30. Stalker (113)
31. Umberto D (114)
32. Earth (115)
33. Napoleon (119)
34. Broken Blossoms (120)
35. Shoah (121)
36. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (123)
37. Black Narcissus (125)
38. The Grapes of Wrath (126)
39. Ivan the Terrible (128)
40. Red River (130)
41. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (131)
42. Brief Encounter (132)
43. Paisan (133)
44. Two or Three Things I Know About Her (135)
45. The Red Shoes (136)
46. Kind Hearts and Coronets (137)
47. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (139)
48. Rome, Open City (141)
49. The Sweet Smell of Success (142)
50. The Exterminating Angel (145)
51. Once Upon a Time in America (147)
52. To Be or Not to Be (148)
53. Out of the Past (150)
54. La Notte (152)
55. Close-Up (153)
56. Ashes and Diamonds (154)
57. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (158)
58. The Maltese Falcon (159)
59. Monsieur Verdoux (160)
60. The World of Apu (162)
61. The Philadelphia Story (164)
62. The Traveling Players (169)
63. Meet Me in St. Louis (170)
64. Jalsaghar (171)
65. Performance (172)
66. Alexander Nevsky (174)
67. The Crowd (179)
68. A Matter of Life and Death (180)
69. The Exorcist (181)
70. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (182)
71. The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (183)
72. Rocco and His Brothers (185)
73. Crimes and Misdemeanors (188)
74. The Crime of Monsieur Lange (190)
75. Schindler's List (191)
76. The Conversation (192)
77. Throne of Blood (193)
78. Paths of Glory (195)
79. The Wages of Fear (200)
80. The Shop Around the Corner (201)
81. Germany, Year Zero (206)
82. Mouchette (207)
83. Berlin Alexanderplatz (209)
84. A Day in the Country (211)
85. Vampyr (212)
86. Written on the Wind (213)
87. Death in Venice (214)
88. Wings of Desire (215)
89. The Navigator (218)
90. Zero for Conduct (219)
91. The Band Wagon (220)
92. Les Vampires (224)
93. Ninotchka (229)
94. The Tree of Wooden Clogs (231)
95. Strangers on a Train (232)
96. The Life of Oharu (234)
97. Unforgiven (236)
98. The Time to Live and the Time to Die (237)
99. Strike (238)
100. The Awful Truth (239)

Lots of movies that I'm personally kind of shocked I haven't seen (North By Northwest? The Exorcist? The Good the Bad and the Ugly?). I'm only counting as "have watched" films I have actually sat down and watched all the way through. Back when I worked at the video store we'd have movies on in the background all day and that includes some of these films.

Anyway, enjoy the site!