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.

Just Because It’s All the Rage

There’s a meme going around, and I’m going to be damned if I don’t have my say.

Best of Actresses:

Ann Sheridan for an intelligent portrayal of sexuality

Mary Astor, for maturity

Ossi Oswalda in I Don’t Want to Be a Man

Anita Page, for sorrow

Veronica Lake, the deepest of the sex symbols.

Ruth Chatterton; ‘Cold and pure, I know’

Edna Purviance, the most underrated of silent women

Glenda Farrell, the personality kid

Joan Blondell, for earthiness and emotional accessibility

Betty Compson, for toughness

Barbara Stanwyck, for anger

Maria Falconetti, for the most profound display of androgyny

Lilian Roth, for mastery of the art of the comedic interlude

Nancy Carroll, for sheer life force

Jean Harlow, for asserting a fearless masculinity in her acting

Charlotte Greenwood, for being Old Hollywood’s resident super-dyke

Eve Arden, for wit

Marilyn Miller, for sheer earnestness in the role of Sally (1929)

Lillian Gish, for intensity

Jennifer Jones, for portraits of courageous women.

The Happy Stereotype

Having watched of late 1943’s The Mysterious Doctor, I realize more than ever how much I miss the evil German aristocrat character in film. Once an indispensible presence, he is now confined, I imagine, to the ranks of some turkey like The Good German. He was rather a poetic character, despite his usually only having one good scene, in which he explains his evil plot and all the logic behind it (he comes from a long line of Germans, he finds himself in this country unwittingly, etc.) in a sort of pre-Dr. No display. There is the rather potent question of how Germans outside of Germany had to think of themselves at this point in time, when the only representation was someone like George Sanders in Man Hunt, a thinly-veiled englishman who can pass as a German on merit of his snarl.

Van and Schenck–Meet Sexy.

Perhaps my favorite thing about the ’50s was its willingness, as a decade, to shamelessly adopt the styles and sounds of another time. True, it did this snobbishly, for the most part, with the view that whatever might have been produced in the way of art in the ’20s was antiquated and stale, but they can’t help digging it up, obsessing over it, and footnoting it in strange and not so subtle ways. Of course there’s television, the truncating of silent films to be played in the off-hours as a labor of love and idiocy—-’Sure, we’ll give you NOAH’S ARK–but wouldn’t you like it so much better with this NEW SCORE complete with mickey-mousing—–What’s that? Vitaphone? Never heard of it.’ And of course the Jolson revival. Not to mention shows like “The Roaring Twenties” and an obsession with ‘flaming youth’. But my personal favorite of these plagiarisms has to be Monroe’s vamping of Van and Schenck’s nasally rendered “After You Get What You Want (You Don’t Want It)” in 1954’s THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS.  It’s a cover completely divorced from everything about the original except for the melody, and she sings it as if it written with gyrations in mind. It’s touching in a way that this kind of thing generally isn’t—-she’s actually giving instead of taking away, it is the spirit of philanthropy rather than haughtiness. As if she were taking Van and Schenck by the hand and telling them, ‘listen, boys, it’s a swell number—-all you need is a little heat under it.’ I think, in my wayward fashion, I’d take it over SOME LIKE IT HOT, and the more overt tribute therein, anyday.

Ogling Through the Ages

Bangs of Profundity

The top slot for Best Shakespearean Interpretation in a Film has been compromised—-Van Heflin’s sincere, tortured 50-second portrait of Lady Macbeth in Presenting Lily Mars (1943) gives way to John Barrymore’s Richard III as portrayed in an excerpt from The Show of Shows (1929). Loath as I am to displace Heflin, whose technique is as always a beauty, Barrymore does something here with his choice of hairpiece that is surpassingly brilliant. The combination of his dome-like head and the frame of greasy black bangs gives something to the role one scarce could dream of existing in a stagebound performance. It’s something to do with nitrate, the way it makes black that much blacker, and his eyes come blazing out from beneath the crest, the spots of light like two pins that move alike, it is eerie, impressive, and who knows about the dialogue.

Red, White and Unsteady

What would Robert Walker’s life had looked like if he hadn’t made MY SON JOHN (1952)?

I love Walker. I love the way he looks in crowds—–fidgety. I love his chronic underconfidence. I even like the fact that he went crazy after awhile. Actors don’t have poetic lives anymore. They’re given a blank slate with which to work. Working in Walker’s day, the departure from the ‘leading man’ title lay only in what one’s specific oddities and mannerisms could give it.