Summer Under the Stars 2011 -- Day Twenty-Seven Review: Fallen Angel

The problem I'm having with writing these last few reviews for Summer Under the Stars -- and the reason I still haven't finished them, even though it's now closer to this year's Summer Under the Stars lineup than last year's -- is because, with a few very notable exceptions, the films I watched for SUTS 2011 are not among my favorite I've seen on TCM, and the more distance I get from watching the films, the less inclined I am to write about them. The truth is that I watch a lot more classic movies than I write about on this blog, and most of them don't move me to review them, regardless of how I feel about them; I like writing about films when I truly have something to say, but more often than not I prefer watching them to criticizing them. If I do something for Summer Under the Stars 2012, which I probably will, then I likely won't do the reviews the way I did for the 2011 version, because while I liked making myself watch a movie for each featured actor rather than just watching a bunch of movies for one or two people, at this point, I'm basically just writing these reviews to get them done -- partially from fatigue, and partially because the last eight or so movies I watched for SUTS '11 were my least favorite from the whole festival (not necessarily the lowest-graded; just some of the ones I would be least likely to watch again).

Fallen Angel, a 1945 noir by Otto Preminger, fell right in the middle of those final eight films, and my problem with it was that despite it being well-made and skillfully directed, the studio politics behind the making of the film are more interesting to me than the film itself. I'm picky when it comes to noir -- it's a broader genre than people realize, and my favorites are often the short, simple classics like Act of Violence and Detour that follow one man's descent into the dark side of reality; I also like the "stereotypical" hard boiled-detective noirs like The Big Sleep, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Blue Dahlia. Ironically, although I like complex storytelling in other genres, especially comedy, my least favorite noirs tend to be the ones that interweave mystery, romance and drama into a more complicated plot. These are the biggies of the noir genre among many film critics, movies like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and, of course, Fallen Angel. I think the problem is that these complicated films end up losing some of the more stylish aspects of noir filmmaking, leaving behind a story that I don't find particularly interesting, and what ends up standing out to me are the performances within the films -- Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity; John Garfield in Postman -- rather than the films themselves.

pic via here

Fallen Angel has two strikes against it, then, because in addition to being a broader noir, it also doesn't feature any performances that really got under my skin. The basic plot in Fallen Angel involves a drifter (Dana Andrews) who falls in love with a small-town waitress (Linda Darnell), and while I like Darnell, I didn't find her performance as electrifying as it's reputed to be, and I never really like Dana Andrews, except in The Best Years of Our Lives. The marquee name in Fallen Angel is actually Alice Faye, who plays the local spinster Andrews tries to fleece out of her money in order to woo Darnell, but this is where the backstage politics -- and, for me, the most interesting part of the film -- come in, because while Faye and Andrews were supposed to be Fallen Angel's leads, Preminger was so impressed by Darnell that he gave her extra scenes and cut a number of Faye's from the final edit. What resulted was a film that seems to be about Andrews and Darnell, with Faye in a supporting role... until suddenly it isn't, and Faye and Andrews are the stars, and the whole things shifts gears. That Preminger was able to shift directions mid-stream and still make a basically good film is a testament to his skill as a director, but Fallen Angel still feels a bit lopsided to me, and with no truly strong performances to prop it up (or see it all the way through), I also can't say that it changes my opinion on what kind of story makes for the best noir.

Grade: B

Springsteen

I could write a long post about everything I think is wrong with country music today, but I generally think that diatribes against any type of music are ill-advised and end up making the critic (in this case, me) look worse than whatever he's criticizing, so instead of going into a lengthy disclaimer about how I don't usually like country music as defined by Toby Keith and Jason Aldean, I'll just stick to saying that I really do like the Eric Church song "Springsteen." I mean, I really like it. I really, really like it. And the thing is, it's not that different from all the songs currently playing on country radio that I don't like, but I think it's got a unique (-ish) melody and a nice chorus, and I'm mostly just glad that a thirtysomething male country singer decided to namedrop an artist other than Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, because it seems a lot more likely that the guys singing country today spent more time in their youth listening to singers like Bruce Springsteen than the scratchy recordings of guys making music fifty years ago. I understand that part of being a country singer today is proving your country credibility, but I find it a little disingenuous how guys like Aldean (and "guys like Aldean" describes roughly fifty percent of country music right now) seem to skip right over the superstars of their youth, people like Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire and, yes, Shania Twain, and act like they owe everything to way-back singers like Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings, people whose music actually bears very little resemblance to their own -- sort of the way Chris Martin from Coldplay is always going on and on about The Beatles, when we all know he owes a lot more to Radiohead.

But "Springsteen"! I like it! I wish they would play it more on the country station in my town, but then that would mean less time to play Luke Bryan's "I Don't Want This Night to End," which makes me want to jump off a bridge. I'm less excited about the video -- I like that it uses real-looking people (credit where credit is due, a lot of country artists are good about using real-looking people in their videos), and I like that it captures the feeling of nighttime in the song, as well as the chilly sound of the piano notes (which is ironic, since the song is about a "July Saturday night"), but it's also set in one of those modern, tree-less neighborhoods that make me feel like I can't breathe just to look at them, and the chronology is pretty wonky: there's no way the guy or the girl in the video are seventeen, and the video seems to be set in present time, yet the song is set in the past, back when people made mix tapes instead of CDs, so...who knows. I have now put way too much thought into this. I like the song! And the kid on the bike in the video is a nice touch.

Film Review: The Man with Two Faces (1934)

The subtitle for The Man with Two Faces could easily be "How to Ruin a Movie That Might Have Otherwise Been Good," because despite the strength of the premise and the presence of two of my favorite actors, The Man with Two Faces is ultimately a disappointing adaptation of a play by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott that is neither as suspenseful nor as clever as it attempts to be. The film stars Edward G. Robinson as an actor whose sister Jessica is in the midst of her own triumphant return to the stage when her evil, presumed-dead husband resurfaces and immediately forces her back under his heel. Mary Astor plays Jessica, with Louis Calhern playing Jessica's husband Stanley Vance.

The film starts promisingly, setting up an effective sense of foreboding by contrasting Jessica's current state of happiness with the imminent return of her husband. The scene depicting Vance's return also works quite well, especially because Calhern -- at least in this initial scene -- strikes a good balance between self-centered dandy and malicious abuser, but the rest of the film doesn't match this first portrayal, quickly turning him into nothing more than a stereotypical money-grubber who has no real relationship with Jessica except that he can manipulate her into making him rich. The problem with The Man with Two Faces is that we're supposed to believe that Jessica is completely in the thrall of her husband, to the point that she turns into a listless zombie as soon as he enters the room, but the film gives us no reason to believe that Vance is the sort of man who could have that effect on a woman: he's not very good-looking, especially compared with Jessica's current boyfriend (played by Ricardo Cortez); he seems quasi-gay, and not in the way that would fool someone like Jessica; and he and Jessica have absolutely no chemistry, nor anything else to suggest they were formally great lovers. In the end, Vance isn't even uniquely evil in a way that could mentally trap someone; he's just mean and oppressively nasty.

The rest of the film revolves around Robinson's character trying to free his sister from Vance's clutches, and the means he devises to accomplish this are, again, potentially interesting, but also extremely transparent to the viewer, which is all I'll say on the subject so that I won't spoil the story. Robinson does a nice job in his part, as he always does, but the material is beneath his talents, just as it's below Astor; she had one of the most unique screen presences of the thirties, and in The Man with Two Faces she is reduced to sleepwalking through her scenes. For a better Astor film, I would recommend Dodsworth, Midnight, or The Great Lie (not a great movie, but a great Astor performance); The Man with Two Faces isn't completely without merit, but it's nowhere near the apex of the work of anyone involved.

Grade: B-

Downton Sixbey

Parodies of Downton Abbey abound right now, but this is the best one I've seen so far, and the only one I would consider really funny in its own right. What I'm really waiting for, though, is the parody where somebody points out that half the drama on the real Downton Abbey comes from Bates having some problem or another and then refusing to talk about it with anybody, thereby making himself look more guilty than he is. BATES. SPEAK UP. 

Destination: HORROR -- Define "Lucky"

When it comes to the young actors of today, my feelings on Zac Efron generally reside somewhere between "Ambivalent" and "Mildly Irritated," which is also how I feel about Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, and all those other guys who are intensely interested in their own abdominal muscles. (To be fair, I don't think Robert Pattinson is actually all that interested in his abdominal muscles... or in shampoo, or personal hygiene in general.) The idea of Zac Efron is more annoying to me than he is, kind of the way the idea of Kim Kardashian is more annoying to me than she is, but the thing that puts Efron closer to my "Mildly Irritated" marker than those other guys is because I have such a hard time taking him seriously, or even of accepting him in anything other than Disney-related projects. And the reason I can't take him seriously is because I think he's a big old fake.

I believe that Efron wants to be a good actor. I believe he really, really wants to be a good actor, and to be taken seriously as an actor, and it's partially that desperation to be seen as legitimate that makes seeing him in the trailer for any kind of movie such an uncomfortable experience. He is appealing in a sparkly teen idol sort of way; he is not appealing in a rebellious, moody, James Dean sort of way, but damn, he wants to be, and he seems to think the best way to achieve that sort of persona is to pose and strut and seem angst-ridden whenever the camera turns his way. But he's not James Dean. He's not even close, which is why when you watch the trailer for a movie like Charlie St. Cloud and one of the female characters actually says, "He's like James Dean or something," it's sort of like saying a green crayon is like a stalk of celery... or something.

Efron's main problem, as far as a I can tell, is that he's far too interested in how he looks, and his entire acting style -- perhaps even his entire acting strategy -- revolves around emphasizing his appearance. You can tell when a person's confidence derives from the symmetry of their face, from the way their hair rests or their arms flex; it's not self-consciousness, necessarily, but a tenuous self-confidence, tinged with a hyper-awareness of one's own exterior. Efron is not the kind of actor who's going to let his body "go" in between films, or the type to let his appearance evolve naturally as he gets older; he's the kind of actor who's going to put a lot of effort into every inch of how he looks, which is why I have a hard time buying him as a rugged soldier type in the upcoming The Lucky One.

Granted, The Lucky One is a Nicholas Sparks movie, so there are a whole host of reasons I won't be seeing it that have nothing to do with Zac Efron. I haven't even seen The Notebook, which is the gold standard of Sparks movies and features two actors I actually like. Efron is the reason, however, that I can't watch anything having to do with The Lucky One without becoming extremely embarrassed and sinking so far down in my seat that I'm at risk of becoming trapped in the sofa. The male character in The Lucky One is obviously supposed to be a very specific type of guy, and Zac Efron is not that type of guy, at all, but he's got himself all dressed up like he is, with the flannel and the beard and throwing-around of the hay bales; whoever persuaded him not to slap a Southern accent on top of all of it is eternally in my good graces, because one hint of twang in his voice and I may have been forced to become an expatriate right there on the spot.

The actress in The Lucky One, Taylor Schilling, also seems much older than Efron, but I looked up their ages, and she's only three months older than I am, and I'm only three years older than Efron. I think the reason for the weird sense of age difference in the movie is because she actually seems appropriate for her role, which may or may not be a good thing for her career, because I have a feeling she's setting herself up to be known as that girl who stuck her hand down the back of Zac Efron's underwear. The producers should have gone with somebody like Scott Porter to play the male lead, or even Porter's Friday Night Lights cast mate Taylor Kitsch, and saved Efron for the Sparks adaptation where he plays a wealthy male model who has to learn to pose again after a terrible accident involving a jeep, a skateboard, and his male model friends, because at least we know he can do that with aplomb -- although not necessarily any more believability.

Destination: HORROR

Book Review: Just Kids

I read Just Kids a while ago, but I thought about it again this week with the news that Urban Outfitters has issued -- and now removed -- a graphic tee shirt sporting a print of one of Robert Mapplethorpe's self-portraits. Just Kids is the singer/writer/artist Patti Smith's remembrance of her youth in New York with Mapplethorpe, particularly the time they spent in the Chelsea Hotel as they both refined their creative impulses and etched out careers in the arts, she (most famously) as the leader of a rock band and he as a photographer who pushed the boundaries of depicting sexuality in a visual medium. As the title suggests, the book is mainly about Smith and Mapplethorpe when they were kids, from the time they met in the late sixties until they went their separate ways in the late seventies, with little said about the years leading up to Mapplethorpe's death in 1989, and through her writing, Smith perfectly captures the spirit of youth as well as the spirit of New York City in the middle of the twentieth century. When she shares anecdotes about cultural icons like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Andy Warhol, her simple, nostalgic style brings them down to a human level and never feels like name-dropping; perhaps this is because while she accompanied Mapplethorpe during some of his forays into the world of New York's artistic elite, she always maintained the perspective of an outsider and a unique personality, ultimately finding her place in the small punk rock club CBGB rather than lounging around Warhol's Factory.

Just Kids is, at its heart, a love story and an ode to two people who were destined to be together, even as the way they related to each other constantly changed -- first as lovers, then as friends; first as struggling artists, then as champions of the artistic paths each chose to pursue. Their relationship was full of contradictions, just as Mapplethorpe himself was a bit of a paradox: he was more hedonistic and inclined to the drug culture than Smith, but he was also more focused on turning his art into a career and scolded Smith when he felt she was letting her talent go to waste. He struggled to reconcile his free spirit with his strict Catholic upbringing, just as he struggled to reconcile his homosexuality with the love he felt for Smith, and it is his struggle -- as well as Smith's -- that makes their love story both universal and ultimately poignant. The moment when they meet again in the late eighties, as Smith is preparing to give birth to her second child and Mapplethorpe is gradually succumbing to AIDS, is a beautiful and sad coda to the story of their youth.

photo via here

What is interesting about Urban Outfitters using Mapplethorpe's photograph to sell tee shirts is not that the consumerism at the heart of putting any artist's work on a piece of clothing would necessarily bother Mapplethorpe -- as I said, he had a businessman's approach to photography as well as an artist's approach -- but the way art can easily end up serving a purpose contrary to the wishes of the artist, not to mention (some of) the art's consumers. As this article points out, Urban Outfitters caters to young, city-dwelling twenty-somethings with a penchant for the vintage and the ironic -- hipsters, in other words -- a group that is primarily associated with liberal attitudes and the support of human rights, yet Urban Outfitters' CEO is a stanch conservative who has donated large sums of money to politicians like Rick Santorum, which means that a photograph by a man who made a name for himself by blending elements of pornography with photography is now being used to clothe people who have the kind of money Mapplethorpe never had when he was hustling to pay his and Smith's rent, as well as putting money into the pocket of a politician who seems hell-bent on oppressing the gay population Mapplethorpe strove to represent and who recently said he wants to make pornography itself illegal. Now that is ironic.

Either way, the shirt is no longer available, either because it was pulled from the shelves (for one reason or another) or because it simply sold out, which, considering the scenario outlined above, might actually be the worse option. Yet it's naive to think this sort of thing doesn't happen all the time, because art doesn't -- nor should it -- exist in a vacuum; it is just as easy for someone to misappropriate and misinterpret art as it is for them to honor and champion it. We might cringe when a politician like Ronald Reagan tries to turn Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" into a patriotic anthem, but how many people today realize that "Born in the USA" isn't a patriotic anthem, that it's actually a protest song about the aftermath of the Vietnam War? I wonder how many people go into reading Just Kids knowing who Robert Mapplethorpe was, or that he was gay? But that's the beauty of universal art at the same time that it's the downside: no matter how art reaches us, it's still reaching us, and there's always the chance that it will change us, too. That fact alone might be worth the risk.

Brothers

I have no idea how this video works, or how they filmed it, but if you click and drag the image, you can see different parts of the room in real time -- "real" meaning while the video was filmed, not live, obviously. Anyway, it's pretty cool, and the song itself is one of my favorites from 2012 so far.