Chaste Entertainment–Its Roots and its Consequences

Watching Captains Courageous I don’t know which i’m more nostalgic for: the streak of boys-to-men films that overwhelmed the direct postcode period (1935-41) as i kind of  ‘-oh-shit-we-can’t-talk-about-sex-anymore-what’s-there-left-to-say’ backlash, or the heyday of the obnoxious child actor. the best thing about actors like Freddie Bartholomew andJackie Cooper is that one finds oneself necessarily empathetic towards and repulsed by them at once, creating a truly ambivalent viewing experience. the death of the code would have seemed to kill any pretensions Hollywood ever had towards telling stories which inspire ambivalence, and yet the most fascinating thing it did was produce a perfect hoard of uninteresting actors which one was suddenly asked to identify with. This is perhaps why I’m beginning to warm up the post-code period—-complications keep arising even in the simplest stories which i never expected. for instance, how to feel sympathetic towards blander-than-eggs George Brent in a film like THE RAINS CAME? How to understand the post-code character of Miriam Hopkins in films like A GENTLEMAN AFTER DARK and OLD ACQUAINTANCE? How to give three-quarters of a shit about the Hardy family? These things can be done and more. I don’t think I’m too wide of the mark in saying that the post-code film, if nothing, forces upon its viewers the gift of boundless patience.

Gynandrous Images #1

Ellen Terry as Sir Galahad

G.F. Watts 1862

Aesthete Versus Aesthetic

In trying to reconcile my two great loves, I lately find myself wondering, what precisely would Oscar Wilde have felt about the cinema?
Had he not died so criminally young, and lived a mere 25 years longer to the ripe old age of 71 he would have not only been able to see his Salome and Lady Windermere’s Fan made into fantastic films (albeit somewhat insulting—-Nazimova may have paid more attention to Beardsley than Wilde, and Lubitsch used to brag how he hadn’t used a word of actual Wilde in the script for Windermere) but a plethora of titles which seem to draw out his very obsession—-Easy Virtue, Dangerous Innocence, The Virtuous Sin. Because in the ’20s and early ’30s, it seems, the way we thought about sex was as a total, and totalizing, paradox—-something cruel and beneficial, destructive and pleasurable. Something to be had at all costs—-but to be shunned in the cool, clear, public light of day.  It was held as something like to Bunburying. In short, he would have found himself in a paradoxical paradise. Part of me thinks he would have dismissed film as trash, as genius is wont to do on finding himself face to hideous face with something described as the ‘opium of the masses’. But then I come across an image like this:

and think he would have had no choice but to love it as i do. perhaps to retain a disdainful attitude towards what was being done with film itself, but to love film as film, the principle of it, the new, the reflective, reflexive, the moving art. Here could be found the wild, weird Salome of one’s dreams, more alive than the fabled painting which was so beloved of the uranians (paging Husymans):

and with all the added ethereality and vulgarity of movement. Plus there’s the yum factor

which I hardly think he would have been opposed to.

Let Joy Be Unconfined

Mae Murray is perhaps old Hollywood’s most serious mugger.

And that’s certainly saying something.

The reason Murray is of all the silent women to me the most endearing is because she’s such a goof. There is nothing pristine about her beauty. She doesn’t feel the need to protect or preserve it. On the contrary she goes out of her way to appear outre,  never losing sight of the comic potentiality of ‘the pose’. In scenes with outrageous bathrooms where Gloria Swanson seemed to at home, Murray makes felt the sense of travesty in all of it, and after watching her for an hour one finds that her incredible personal beauty is only secondary to her comic sensibility. She is so…impish

In a way that is unpredictable. Fascinating. Kind of like the Pickford prototype infused with the spirit of Pan.

Gynandrous Icons of the 20th Century #3

Eric Blore

Need I say more?

The Strange Duality of Fredric March

Seldom has an actor of such understated beauty been given, seemingly, his pick of the juciest, most literary roles in Hollywood.

I say this because it seems to me that most of the really excellent and especially dimensional roles were saved for the bona fide uglies on the lot. Of course, no one can convince me that an actor like Edward G. Robinson or even Charles Laughton is without a kind of situational beauty. However the fact remains that they were not by any means marketed as such. So that when March comes on the screen in the roles that are supposed to stand for the internal battle of man vs. beast it’s no small shock. He seems to have a distinguished beauty without being at all an intellectual figure. He’s a step above the ‘everyman’, playing roles of a kind of complexity someone like Gary Cooper or even Ronald Colman couldn’t have handled, and yet what is exactly complex about him as an actor? His style isn’t particularly refined, he tends toward overstatement, and at times he can be downright hammy. So why exactly was he thrown Jean Valjean and why, the more pressing question, was he able to do such brilliant things with it?

It is perhaps his passion, which seems to alternately weigh on him and release him from worldly care. He has a sort of ambivalence, as in he’s never really secure in any walk of life. When he’s happy, there’s always a question behind it, and when he’s devastated one senses he gets some kind of power from it, that sorrow for him is a force. He is perhaps the perfect actor to play a role like Orpheus, the eternal mourner who turns to music and buggering to try and get away from his sorrow, only to find out that sorrow makes up so much of who he is in the first place. After all, it is the sorrow, I imagine, that made the music of Orpheus so irresistable.

Gynandrous Icons of the 20th Century #2

Claude Rains

In a state of majestic unconsciousness (I’m sorry, too clean to resemble death) at the close of The Invisible Man.

Of course I’d have to say my favorite Rains is his turn as Jasper Johns in the bizarre but awesome Mystery of Edwin Drood, a man more often than not in the throes of an opium-induced nightmare, the subtle contortions of his face during which could rival those of Hedy Lamarr in Ecstacy.

However I think I shall always wear The Invisible Man in my heart simply because it is the most abberantly sexual of the early monster films—the image of a naked Claude Rains, left entirely to our imagination, while all that is tangible about him is the evidence of the chaos he creates, is too delicious.

Side note: Rains also ranks high on the gynandrous scale because he is the only Hollywood figure who could have convincingly played the Baron de Charlus. How many nights have I wept for that never-conceptualized Hollywood adaptation of In Search of Lost Time, with an all-male cast and directed by  Richard Boleslawski?

Men…at the halfway mark

The 20 actors meme…genderfuck edition:

Burgess Meredith- The most fascinating presence, and the most communicative actor who seems to have the least faculty for it.

Robert Walker- I’ve already discussed my love for him, however I must add that he’s about as shaky in his adoption of masculine ideals as it gets—which is a beautiful thing to watch, especially in the context of a wartime film.

Edward G. Robinson- Escapes masculinity in the way he displays emotion.

Herbert Marshall- Ambiguous sexy

Harold Lloyd- The most sensual of the silent comedians. He is not averse to objectifying himself–in fact one suspects he rather likes it.

Ramon Novarro- For beauty which precludes masculinity.

John Gilbert- Too passionate to be accepted within the standard masculine canon

Bob Hope- Insecurity breeds the most interesting kind of comedy—especially where gender is concerned. It doesn’t hurt that he often is paired with the butchest love interests of all time (Jane Russell, Betty Hutton etc.)

Robert Montgomery- By far the most physically comfortable actor in Hollywood–which gives him leave to expose, explore, and generally play around with the feminine aspects of his personality. He one of the only actors who can give the impression of being in drag while in dinner clothes.

Oscar Levant- The wallpaper for some of the best films–tending to lend them the sensitivity that they lack.

Ricardo Cortez- He has the most fascinating vanity. Not averse to playing throwaway roles (they comprise the larger part of his career, in fact) but when he gets a choice one (i.e. Sam Spade in the 1931 Maltese Falcon) he comes out of left field and becomes a genius at it.

Lee Tracy- The most innovative actor in Hollywood. Natural in a way that seems studied, it’s that good.

Al Jolson- God knows it’s not for his acting. But being in his presence is like watching someone in the throes of an identity crisis.

James Murray- The most gluttonously expressive actor in the silents.

James Cagney- The way he moves is freeing simply to watch—he has a knowledge of his body which is unabashed, and somewhat feminine.

Harry Langdon- For never feeling the need to be explicit about his sexuality.

Jack Oakie- For being consistently awesome…and close at hand.

Lew Ayres- The perfect innocent.

Edward Everett Horton- The pansy in its most decadent form.

Eddie Cantor- Gynandrous icon #1 of the 20th century. And the regality with which he wears the title.

The Pitch of Style

Liliom (1930) is a film notable for its striking, somewhat contrary choices, made the more distinct by the way they seem to frame this most straightforward of stories. These are baffling choices at times, and yet the result is so harmonious that you have to wonder if the stories that read as uncomplicated tripe on paper are not in fact, through the lens of film, the best palates for style.

-The pace. the way they seem to wait thirty seconds in between words–and when a scene calls for two person dialogue, forget it. You could go into the next room and peel potatoes for half an hour only to come back and find you’ve missed about half a sentence.
-the interiors are some of the most beautiful i’ve ever seen; spartan sets, and always a corner of interest in an otherwise blank frame, something we can appreciate but not be distracted by. And the point of interest, boldly enough,  is not always where the action is.
-The pitch of Farrell’s voice v. that of Hobart. Hers is a low, long drawl, not quite husky, but a half-tone shy of dietrich territory. The fact that she isn’t in any way sultry just makes it seem masculine, which works, because his intemperate squeak is about as feminine as it gets without entering the realm of the fey.
-The fact that it’s quiet.  So sparsely quiet as to compliment the set design, everything is minimalist, from the emotions to the directorial interference to the mise-en-scene. Quite different from what we would come to expect from Hollywood in the following years.
-Lee Tracy. The jewel in the crown of any production.

Of course it’s Borzage, the current darling of the blogosphere, but it’s hard to rhapsodize about style when you’re talking about someone who seems to have developed a romantic viewpoint from within the womb.

But Beautiful…

Late december and january having always been for me, the bleakest of times, that half-assed point between the new year and the old being akin to the feeling one might have at the prospect of being in your last pair of underwear before allowing yourself to do laundry–it’s a gritty feeling for the time being, but the future, too, can’t look all that bright because after all, it’s really only laundry, and there is a limited happiness one can feel at the prospect of something slightly fresher but after all only recycled–
Nonetheless a nostalgia descends, for often it is at the point when we are lowest in spirit that the most remarkable consolation visits us, whether seeming so due to it’s actual beauty or by that which we attribute it being so used to a dull and dragging state of mind that our reception thrills at the smallest evidence of color. this consolation has, for me, always come in the form of film, and more than the film itself, the discovery that the film has allowed me to make about the year at it’s ebb–
I take this oppurtunity, then, to laud a film which came to my attention last year and has existed as a benevolent echo ever since, a sort of reminder of the sensory experiences that are waiting for us behind however pervading a grayness;

ROMAN SCANDALS (1933)

I will not say too much about this film, as my love for it is entirely specific, thoroughly personal, and often alienating–I will leave you to watch it for yourself. But it’s as brilliant a reminder of how absolutely freeing absurdity can be as any Marx Brothers film. Cantor, in being so thoroughly who he is even as a caricature, gives a sense of the freedom one might feel if there were really no such thing as social constructs. That a caricature itself can be so freeing likewise says something–it is a dimension of comedy which has somehow been allowed to die, that through laughing at ourselves and all our cultural compulsions, the things we are so ready to believe about ourselves, we can actually feel like we’re getting past them. With this film I can most easily trick myself into believing (not that it’s all that hard) that 1933 was the last time a filmed comedy had the power of opening up, rather than narrowing, an aspect of the world.