What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Trenchfriend]

Who's still watching "Blade Runner" on VHS-cassette, recorded from TV-channel in 2000, too?

 

[EngProf]

I recall watching these films on local TV as a kid, and while most of the racially-questionable bits had been cut out, they seemed to leave all the violence alone. There's another early-talkie Gang short, "The First Seven Years," where Jackie Cooper and Donald Haines fight a duel in the backyard with actual sharp-looking swords, using nothing but garbage-can lids and bird cages for protection, and slashing all the neighborhood clotheslines to shreds in the process. I remember watching this one and wondering exactly what kind of household it was that had actual swords right at hand for the kids to play with. On top of that, there's this exchange:

Wheezer: "If you get killed, can I have your knife?"

Jackie: "Yeah, sure, if I get killed you can have my knife."

Wheezer: "Then I hope you get killed!"

And then there's wee little four-year-old Spanky's line in "Birthday Blues," suggesting that his older brother buy their mother a gun for her birthday. "What's she gonna do with a gun?" asks big brother. "SHOOT PAPA!" enthuses li'l Spank, in a line that always brings down the house.

Ah, the Good Old Days.

Being about a decade or so ahead of LizzieM in time, we saw the uncensored versions of the Our Gang comedies. In those days no one thought about taking anything out, and we saw them so often that we virtually had them memorized.

As for swordfights with real swords, in our day we outdid the Gang and played Army with real rifles.
My best friend's father had brought back two Japanese rifles from WWII, so we used those for our Army activities. "Ah, the Good Old Days"...

 

[LizzieMaine]

The versions available now, on DVD and on cable, are the original 1930s negatives -- so they include everything, even the original title art that was removed for the TV syndication package in 1955.

In looking at these films in depth, it's interesting to see what a broad gamut of racial material was included. There are plenty of crap-shooting/watermelon type gags of the sort that were par for the course for the time, and it's possible to rationalize these just on the basis of "well, everybody was doing it and that's how it was." On the other hand, these were little children being taught lines by rote -- and it isn't the same as Stepin Fetchit doing those same types of gags. He was a grown man who understood the context of what he was doing, and even managed to subvert the jokes in his performance -- a five-year-old doesn't have that same level of understanding, and you can understand why, as adults, some of the kids themselves questioned and resented these aspects of the films. Stymie Beard, for one, was quite outspoken about his distaste for some of the lines he had to recite.

That said, though, some of the racial business was just inexcusable even by 1930s standards. The single most offensive racial gag I've ever seen in a lifetime of watching 1920s and 1930s film comedy came from "Our Gang" -- a short bit in "Birthday Blues" where Stymie wipes sweat from his face and flicks his hand toward a wall to dry it off, and you see a streak of dirty pitch-black spots appear on the plaster. There's just no way to rationalize that kind of gag -- even some people in 1934 were offended by it, and it never should have made it into the finished film.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Picnic" 1956 with William Holden, Kim Novak and Cliff Robertson

• It's a big mess of a movie, but there are some powerful moment of human emotion and misery that are on par with Tennessee William's broken people (they just happen to be the supporting characters - Rosalind Russell and Arthur O'Connell - and not the leads who are, overall, two-dimensional caricatures)

• Let's get this out of the way quickly, lead one, Holden, looks way too old for the role - should look 30, is 38, looks 45

• Let's get this second thing out of the way, lead two, Kim Novak - despite TCM's Ben Mankiewicz's shilling for her - sleepwalks though the entire movie, it's not acting, it's the opposite of acting, it's hiding

• Arthur O'Connell - as boyfriend to melting-down-over-fear-of-becoming-a-spinster Rosalind Russell - delivers the most natural and, in a way, powerful performance in the movie / a genuinely nice man seen pushed to the point of almost having to be not nice produces a wonderfully quiet moment of a human being making a life altering decision by being unwilling to not be nice

• It's a poor cousin to "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "The Long, Hot Summer," other mid-'50s movies about rich and poor families in the South breaking and smashing their own and other people all over the place

 

[Doctor Strange]

I totally agree on Picnic, like a lot of fifties films based on plays THAT STRIP BARE THE FEELINGS BENEATH THE SURFACE it seems overwrought and histrionic now. Kim Novak was a beautiful woman, but a very limited actress who worked best when there's something "off" about her, as in Vertigo and Bell, Book, and Candle. (And regarding the other films you mentioned, nobody today is confusing William Inge as being a social observer on anywhere near the level of Tennessee Williams or William Faulkner!)

My latest viewing was Mr. Wu, a silent film with Lon Chaney DVR'd from TCM. Between the howler Chinese stereotypes and "yellowface" casting of Chaney and the French leading lady, this is a bit of a rough watch for anything other than historical curiosity now. But Chaney always delivers: not for nothing was he considered the greatest film actor of his era. Compared to everyone around him, he underplays, consistently doing more with a gesture or slight facial expression than his typical-silent-movie-acting costars. I can't recommend this particular film, but Chaney is always interesting.

 

[Benzadmiral]

This Saturday night and again on Sunday morning, my local PBS outlet is showing Raintree County w/ Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Rod Taylor is in it too, apparently, as is DeForest Kelley. I had no idea it was 3 hours long. Presumably it's one of those big "Southern" Civil War epics? Is it good?

 

[Fading Fast]

This Saturday night and again on Sunday morning, my local PBS outlet is showing Raintree County w/ Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Rod Taylor is in it too, apparently, as is DeForest Kelley. I had no idea it was 3 hours long. Presumably it's one of those big "Southern" Civil War epics? Is it good?

I haven't seen it, but Worf (whose opinion I'd take over mine anyway) had this to say: http://www.thefedoralounge.com/thre...ovie-you-watched.20830/page-1244#post-2387644

 

[Benzadmiral]

I haven't seen it, but Worf (whose opinion I'd take over mine anyway) had this to say: http://www.thefedoralounge.com/thre...ovie-you-watched.20830/page-1244#post-2387644

Worf is, as always, succinct. Well, I may tape it and watch it in two parts.

 

[1mach1]

Thor: Ragnarok.

Very fun and enjoyable.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[2jakes]

Coolest entrance in a movie by an actor!

 

[Worf]

I haven't seen it, but Worf (whose opinion I'd take over mine anyway) had this to say: http://www.thefedoralounge.com/thre...ovie-you-watched.20830/page-1244#post-2387644

Thanks for the assist my good friend! You're aces... saved me a post! Back to my morning cuppa Joe!

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

Coolest entrance in a movie by an actor!

Agreed ⇧, and the coolest entrance by an actress ⇩

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Last night for Movie Night, the 1969 True Grit. We enjoyed it very much. Not fair to either film to compare the original to the remake since both are very good in their own ways. Much of the evening passed amiably with calling out favorite lines. Biggest laugh of all was the intonation of "What we have here--" moments before Strother Martin spoke his first line as Col. Stonehill.

 

[Seb Lucas]

I adore the Welles entrance. Much as I like Rita, that Gilda entrance was too obvious, too contrived and I just laugh whenever I see it.

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Painted Veil" 1934 with Greta Garbo, Herbert Marshall and George Brent

• A bit slow and clunky out of the gate, but picked up speed and intensity when it gets to China

• Herbert Marshall and George Brent have to be two of the quietest, laidback male leads...ever

• Garbo always seems like Garbo to me, not the character, but oddly it works most of the time as it does here - it's her movie with Marshall only rising to her equal in the last few scenes. (Growing up in the '70s and reading the NYC tabloids, I remember that, even then, the papers would still put a picture of her - wrapped in a headscarf with big sunglasses on - in the "society" or "famous-people" pages now and then.)

• Because it was MGM, despite the overall vibe of China being one of poverty and despair amidst a cholera outbreak, there was a production number during a Chinese festival that felt very "Broadway Melody -" each studio had a personality that usually comes through

• This might be one of the very, very few few movies where the original is good but the remake is better as the 2006 version - which I saw when it came out - from memory, was more engaging and powerful (I'm going to try to find it to watch again while the '34 version is still fresh in my head)

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The King of Jazz," Universal's legendary 1930 screen revue featuring Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra.

There are many films that capture the look of a period, there are many films that give you the sense of a period. But there is no other film even remotely close to "The King Of Jazz" when it comes to capturing a single specific *experience* of a period -- in this case the experience of attending a smart, all-stops-out, top-drawer Broadway revue. That was the purpose of the film, and director John Murray Anderson -- a master of the format on the legitimate stage -- succeeds in a way in which he, perhaps, might never have intended. In 1930 most people could, if they were so inclined and had $3.50-up to spend, actually attend their choice of smart, all-stops-out, top-drawer Broadway revues. But today, in 2018, no amount of money can buy the actual flesh-and-blood experience, because the revue is as dead as the vaudeville era that spawned it. But with this film, shot entirely in two-color Technicolor and now impressively restored to nearly its original glory, you can get a sense of what it was like to experience such a show.

Revue films enjoyed a very brief vogue in the latter months of 1929 as a way for studios to show off their talent rosters and see how their players did in talkies. But only Universal had the idea of building its review around a single main act -- in this case the most popular dance orchestra of the age. The word "jazz" in 1930 didn't mean what it does today -- instead it had a very broad sense of referring to what, today, we'd call pop music. And while Whiteman could not be considered the king of what 21st Century people call jazz, he was most certainly the absolute monarch of what people called jazz in 1930.

He's a pleasant, rather avuncular presence in the film, a jovial fat fellow waddling about the stage with the delicate primness of a Gluyas Williams cartoon come to life, but it's the band itself, as a unit, that's the real focus of the picture -- and each of the key members of the ensemble gets a share of the spotlight. Though none of them perform characters or speak lines as such, you get a sense of their personalities thru the way Anderson films them -- when you see 27-year-old Bing Crosby for the first time, his hairline just beginning to recede and his pale Technicolor-greenish eyes glittering, you get more of a sense of his up-close charisma than you will in any of his more studied later films. He isn't BING yet -- he's just one third of the Rhythm Boys -- but the camera loves him and he, clearly loves it. No one seeing this picture in 1930 could have doubted for a second that he was on his way to something big (if he could put down the bottle and stay out of jail, that is.)

As a revue, there is no story or plot -- it's a series of musical numbers by the band and various stage-oriented guest stars, interspersed with quick, endearingly hokey comic blackouts enacted by Universal contract players, most of whom are completely forgotten today. Some of these numbers are ponderous and overwrought -- none more so than the famous "Melting Pot of Music," which purports to show the roots of American popular music by turning it into a tedious Geography Day pageant which conspicuously omits any mention of either African-American or Jewish-American contributions to the art. Neither influence is entirely omitted from the film -- the performance of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue" begins with Whiteman's declaration that "jazz has its origin in the African jungle" -- but their absence from the "Melting Pod" bit does render it a bit more ludicrous than it ought to be, even to the sensibilities of a thinking viewer in 1930. "Rhapsody" is positioned as the high cultural point of the film, and while Gershwin declined to perform the piano solo himself, he is still very much present in the composition, which receives a magnificiant performance in a audacious, elegant staging. Two-color Technicolor famously couldn't reproduce any shade of pure blue, but an effective combination of carefully-chosen shades of green and silver, coupled with sensitive lighting, gives an agreeable impression of a sort of light teal as befeathered dancers, a caped, top-hatted clarinetist, and a mammoth piano containing the entire orchestra give the Rhapsody a definitive performance.

But it's the less-highbrow parts of "King of Jazz" that make the film so much fun. "A Bench in the Park" is a bouncy comic ode to moonlight lovemaking featuring the Rhythm Boys and the Brox Sisters, "Ragamuffin Romeo" features a couple of limber vaudevillians in an exhilirating double-jointed rag doll dance, and "I Like To Do Things For You" might be the comic highlight of the picture -- helium-voiced vocalist Jeanie Lang boops out the first chorus, popping her eyes and contorting her face in exagerrated, deliberately cartoony expressions as Whiteman writhes with put-on embarassment, his rouged cheeks aflame in a Technicolor blush, and then William Kent as a sotty lush of a playboy husband and Grace Hayes as his formidable wife in art-deco pajamas take over for the second. There are no jokes in this bit, but the wilting expression on Kent's face as Hayes methodically tears his clothes off while snarling out the cutie-pie lyrics like Blanche Payson is nothing short of hilarious. And "Happy Feet" is the apotheosis of Jazz Age fun, with giant chorines stomping thru a neon-lit miniature of Manhattan as the mysterious "Sisters G," two lithe Germans with identical Louise Brooks haircuts, declare "ve got doze Happy Fveet, geef us dot low-down beat, und ve begin dahns-sin!"

"King of Jazz" has a sad history of both critical and physical negelct. It was first released at the exact point in time when the movie audience suddenly lost its taste for musicals, especially Technicolor ones, and when it was re-released in 1933 it was chopped severely to accomodate the double-feature fad. It then disappeared for the better part of forty years before resurfacing bit-by-bit in chewed up 16-mm printdowns. A VHS release in the 1980s offered the film with routines out of sequence, random pieces still missing, and visual quality that gave the effect of watcing the picture thru greasy, thumbprinted glasses. But the discovery of a nearly-complete nitrate print of the 1930 release in the early 2000s motivated Universal to mount an expensive restoration -- spending an astonishing amount of money to reconstruct as much of the original film, in its original quality as possible. This is the best two-color Technicolor you will ever see -- with a depth and an intensity that will leave you breathless: when the Rhythm Boys first appear in deep black silhouette against a liquid green background you'll gasp. A few bits are still missing, mostly bridge scenes connecting acts, and these are represented by stills shown over the original complete soundtrack, but otherwise this is "The King of Jazz" as audiences experienced it in 1930. It's played to sellout audiences on the big screen at arthouse shows in major cities, and Criterion has just released a sparkling DVD and Blu-Ray for home viewing. There is nothing like this film, and there will never again be anything like this film. If "Jazz Age" culture means anything at all to you, see it on the biggest screen you can. You will never forget the experience.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ As always, really interesting comments, history and observations.

I really want to see 27 year old Bing.

Any idea why Universal was willing to spend an "astonishing amount of money" to restore it? Is there a way for them to get a direct return on that investment or is it more of a "halo" effect they were going for? Or, even more rare, did they simply just do the right thing?

 

[2jakes]

The Getaway (72)
Peckinpah and McQueen, the kings of violence and cool, working at full throttle.

MacGraw as Carol McCoy:
I'd give anything to have a babe like her by my side.

 

[3fingers]

The Getaway (72)
Peckinpah and McQueen, the kings of violence and cool, working at full throttle.

McGraw as Carol McCoy:
I'd get on my knees and give thanks
to have a babe like that by my side

I haven't seen the picture for years. I need to watch it again. One of my favorite scenes is when she rolls up to the end of the alley where McQueen is sitting on the bench.
She gets his attention by calling out "hey dummy."

Ali made me sweat as a young man. She was still beautiful in The Winds of War.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it's a combination of all those things. Universal in 1930 was considered a bargain-counter studio, turning out formula melodramas and cheap westerns for an undiscriminating small-town audience, but that year Carl Laemmle was determined to do something special -- and as a result the studioit made the two most impressive, culturally-signficiant films it would ever make: "All Quiet On The Western Front" and "The King of Jazz." "Western Front" got a similar prestige restoration some years ago, but they didn't have the materials to do the same with KOJ until recently. As the one studio with, historically, the shabbiest record of film preservation, I think they also have a sense of trying to atone for past sins by doing something really spectacular.

I doubt they'll ever fully recover the cost of the restoration, which was well into the millions, but they have had surprising success with high-prestige screenings -- it was rapturously received when it opened in New York last year. If you ever notice it playing anywhere I strongly encourage you to go see it. I wish I could show it here, but our director's musical sensibilities don't extend much before 1975, and she wouldn't even consider it. But I have a key to the theatre , and a disc of the film, and ain't nobody gonna stop me from my own private midnight show...