![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Movie Reviews
Aug. 26th, 2020 09:16 amI've been watching a lot of old movies lately. "Old" being anything from the 1930s to the 1970s. I like watching not just the famous ones, but also the forgotten ones. It helps me to get a more complete picture of the past, even if they're terrible (and oh, some of them are terrible).
Stagecoach
This is a classic Western, and will be enjoyable directly in proportion to one’s tolerance for the tropes of classic Westerns. It is perhaps less bad than some, but…yeah. The reason to watch it are the stunts, which are unbelievable. You know the stunt in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones is dragged along under the middle of a truck? That was inspired by this, but in this, it is a guy doing that between the legs of six horses. If you just want to see the stunts, check out the Stuntmen React video, which goes through the gnarliest of them.
This movie is also filmed in Monument Valley. I’ve read about the history of Hollywood filming there, and the very complicated relationship it has with the Navajo, whose land it’s on—let’s just say, they got screwed over, though Hollywood made Monument Valley famous enough to persist as a tourist attraction. The amusing thing is, though, that the action of Stagecoach takes place over several days of stagecoach riding, but the same geologic formations are in the background the whole time. Which makes it seem like they’ve fallen into to some existential loop where no matter how far they go, they’re still in the same damn place.
She Done Him Wrong
The pre-codiest of pre-code films, this is Mae West’s second film and debut of her line, “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me.” It’s also one of Cary Grant’s first films. At 66 minutes, it’s the shortest film ever to win the Oscar for best picture. Mae West’s life story is fascinating—she was 40 when she broke into Hollywood, after a long theater career that involved multiple problems with censors and even being jailed for obscenity. She Done Him Wrong is an adaptation of a play she wrote and starred in. The plot is irrelevant (though does not land where I expected it to)—the reason to watch this film is to watch Mae West. Her voice and movements have been so parodied it’s incredible to watch the original and realize that there was a person who actually did talk like that.
How to Murder Your Wife
Oof. Oof. I came across this film digging through the filmography of Terry-Thomas, who stars in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He has an enormous filmography of things I’ve never heard of, and then this one movie with Jack Lemmon. Since I’m always interested in expanding my knowledge of the lesser known movies of the past, I thought I’d give it a go. I expected it to be sexist, with a title like that. I did not expect it to take quite the turn that it did.
Imagine if Stepford Wives was actually a comedy told from the man’s perspective that ended with the main character’s husband being put on trial for her murder and a jury of men acquitting him because they, too, all want to murder their wives. That is this movie.
Jack Lemmon is playing the author/artist of a syndicated newspaper comic strip about a secret agent called Bash Brannigan. Because this is 1965, this makes him a wildly rich minor celebrity—he lives in a literal mansion in mid-town Manhattan and has a manservant, played by Terry-Thomas. One night, at a friend’s stag party, he gets black out drunk and marries the girl who pops out of the cake in a bikini. He immediately wants to divorce her, but because she only speaks Italian, he…doesn’t? Cause annulments don’t exist?
The middle of the movie is then about how she ruins his life by…cooking for him, and organizing dinner parties, and being overall bubbly and wonderful. Oh, and she watches a lot of TV to improve her English. What a shrew. (The wife, played by Virna Lisi, is the best thing about this movie. She is wonderful to watch. She’s stunningly beautiful, and all the sixties makeup and fashions are marvelous.) The movie also, weirdly for the premise, does not make her a mean or unlikeable character. She doesn’t at any point do anything unreasonable. The movie just totally fails to provide any justification for why she wants to be married to this guy at all.
Lemmon, because he can’t write anything in his comic strip that isn’t self insert, turns his comic into a family friendly strip about married life in which the husband is a “hen-pecked boob.” It becomes even more wildly popular.
After a few months of this, he decides his life is awful, everything is terrible, and he is going to kill off the wife in the comic strip and make his character a spy again. The movie, weirdly, is very aware that this is a terrible idea—all his editors tell him to absolutely not do this. You hear a clip from a radio show saying, “What’s next—Dagwood murders Blondie?”
Because Lemmon is incapable of writing anything without first acting it out (which is established in the prologue), this mean that he goes through all the motions of murdering his wife with a lookalike mannequin. He also drugs his real wife with tranquilisers for—they don’t actually give a justification for that. The wife then finds the comic strip where her husband has not only written about the non-consensual drugging she just experienced, but continued on to illustrate in great detail murdering her and dumping her in the cement foundation of the building next door, FUCKING LEAVES. Because DAMN RIGHT SHE DOES.
This, though. This is where the movie goes from “yeah, this is pretty sexist” to OH SWEET BABY JESUS. Since his wife is missing—and he has just published a murder fantasy in hundreds of papers nationwide, he is arrested for her murder. You then get a trial scene where the evidence against him is pretty damning. Including his manservant, who had been filming the whole playacting the murder with a mannequin so he would have references for the strip, becoming convinced that he had actually witnessed an actual murder and being ecstatic about it because it means that woman is gone. (!!!)
Lemmon then decides to represent himself, and in one of the most excruciating scenes I’ve ever watched, argued that he is only accused of doing what every man wants to, and that they should acquit him to strike a blow for men’s freedom. Which they do, to show their own wives a lesson.
So yeah. That movie deserves to stay in the bin. Even the NYT review for 1965 is like, yikes: “Never have I seen a movie, serious, comic or otherwise, that so frankly, deliberately and grossly belittled and ridiculed wives…Believable or not, this stuff is funny just so long as one can go with the sour joke- -and that depends upon one's tolerance of trivia and also, perhaps, upon whether one is a fellow or a girl.”
This movie honestly made me wonder whether the screenwriter’s wife is okay.
Yikes.
Stagecoach
This is a classic Western, and will be enjoyable directly in proportion to one’s tolerance for the tropes of classic Westerns. It is perhaps less bad than some, but…yeah. The reason to watch it are the stunts, which are unbelievable. You know the stunt in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones is dragged along under the middle of a truck? That was inspired by this, but in this, it is a guy doing that between the legs of six horses. If you just want to see the stunts, check out the Stuntmen React video, which goes through the gnarliest of them.
This movie is also filmed in Monument Valley. I’ve read about the history of Hollywood filming there, and the very complicated relationship it has with the Navajo, whose land it’s on—let’s just say, they got screwed over, though Hollywood made Monument Valley famous enough to persist as a tourist attraction. The amusing thing is, though, that the action of Stagecoach takes place over several days of stagecoach riding, but the same geologic formations are in the background the whole time. Which makes it seem like they’ve fallen into to some existential loop where no matter how far they go, they’re still in the same damn place.
She Done Him Wrong
The pre-codiest of pre-code films, this is Mae West’s second film and debut of her line, “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me.” It’s also one of Cary Grant’s first films. At 66 minutes, it’s the shortest film ever to win the Oscar for best picture. Mae West’s life story is fascinating—she was 40 when she broke into Hollywood, after a long theater career that involved multiple problems with censors and even being jailed for obscenity. She Done Him Wrong is an adaptation of a play she wrote and starred in. The plot is irrelevant (though does not land where I expected it to)—the reason to watch this film is to watch Mae West. Her voice and movements have been so parodied it’s incredible to watch the original and realize that there was a person who actually did talk like that.
How to Murder Your Wife
Oof. Oof. I came across this film digging through the filmography of Terry-Thomas, who stars in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He has an enormous filmography of things I’ve never heard of, and then this one movie with Jack Lemmon. Since I’m always interested in expanding my knowledge of the lesser known movies of the past, I thought I’d give it a go. I expected it to be sexist, with a title like that. I did not expect it to take quite the turn that it did.
Imagine if Stepford Wives was actually a comedy told from the man’s perspective that ended with the main character’s husband being put on trial for her murder and a jury of men acquitting him because they, too, all want to murder their wives. That is this movie.
Jack Lemmon is playing the author/artist of a syndicated newspaper comic strip about a secret agent called Bash Brannigan. Because this is 1965, this makes him a wildly rich minor celebrity—he lives in a literal mansion in mid-town Manhattan and has a manservant, played by Terry-Thomas. One night, at a friend’s stag party, he gets black out drunk and marries the girl who pops out of the cake in a bikini. He immediately wants to divorce her, but because she only speaks Italian, he…doesn’t? Cause annulments don’t exist?
The middle of the movie is then about how she ruins his life by…cooking for him, and organizing dinner parties, and being overall bubbly and wonderful. Oh, and she watches a lot of TV to improve her English. What a shrew. (The wife, played by Virna Lisi, is the best thing about this movie. She is wonderful to watch. She’s stunningly beautiful, and all the sixties makeup and fashions are marvelous.) The movie also, weirdly for the premise, does not make her a mean or unlikeable character. She doesn’t at any point do anything unreasonable. The movie just totally fails to provide any justification for why she wants to be married to this guy at all.
Lemmon, because he can’t write anything in his comic strip that isn’t self insert, turns his comic into a family friendly strip about married life in which the husband is a “hen-pecked boob.” It becomes even more wildly popular.
After a few months of this, he decides his life is awful, everything is terrible, and he is going to kill off the wife in the comic strip and make his character a spy again. The movie, weirdly, is very aware that this is a terrible idea—all his editors tell him to absolutely not do this. You hear a clip from a radio show saying, “What’s next—Dagwood murders Blondie?”
Because Lemmon is incapable of writing anything without first acting it out (which is established in the prologue), this mean that he goes through all the motions of murdering his wife with a lookalike mannequin. He also drugs his real wife with tranquilisers for—they don’t actually give a justification for that. The wife then finds the comic strip where her husband has not only written about the non-consensual drugging she just experienced, but continued on to illustrate in great detail murdering her and dumping her in the cement foundation of the building next door, FUCKING LEAVES. Because DAMN RIGHT SHE DOES.
This, though. This is where the movie goes from “yeah, this is pretty sexist” to OH SWEET BABY JESUS. Since his wife is missing—and he has just published a murder fantasy in hundreds of papers nationwide, he is arrested for her murder. You then get a trial scene where the evidence against him is pretty damning. Including his manservant, who had been filming the whole playacting the murder with a mannequin so he would have references for the strip, becoming convinced that he had actually witnessed an actual murder and being ecstatic about it because it means that woman is gone. (!!!)
Lemmon then decides to represent himself, and in one of the most excruciating scenes I’ve ever watched, argued that he is only accused of doing what every man wants to, and that they should acquit him to strike a blow for men’s freedom. Which they do, to show their own wives a lesson.
So yeah. That movie deserves to stay in the bin. Even the NYT review for 1965 is like, yikes: “Never have I seen a movie, serious, comic or otherwise, that so frankly, deliberately and grossly belittled and ridiculed wives…Believable or not, this stuff is funny just so long as one can go with the sour joke- -and that depends upon one's tolerance of trivia and also, perhaps, upon whether one is a fellow or a girl.”
This movie honestly made me wonder whether the screenwriter’s wife is okay.
Yikes.