Movie Update 13

Here is a brief summary about my movie watching and the fact that these movies are all movies and that I like watching movies.

The African Queen


Some weird combination of an adventure, a buddy road picture, and a romantic comedy, The African Queen rests almost entirely on the shoulders of its two leads, played excellently as always by Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. He's an eccentric, hard-drinking boatman and she's an uptight religious woman, so the conflict between them is obvious at first, but the way their relationship develops as they face the various perils of their journey through the waters of Africa is constantly intriguing. I haven't fallen in love with any of John Huston's work yet, but he's nothing if not an extremely competent director in a variety of styles and moods. Good ending, too.

Gone with the Wind

For the 1930s, this is a pretty darn remarkable technical achievement. Vivien Leigh and especially Clark Gable do really good jobs in their roles. And those are about the only truly positive things I have to say about this film. It's an overly long story with not a whole lot of real enjoyable substance. Scarlett doesn't have much character beyond being an opportunistic homewrecker, and there's no really great alternatives to latch on to. I don't require characters in a story to be likable, but there's gotta be something, and this just seemed like a long series of unfortunate romantic events set (pretty effectively) against a dramatic historical backdrop.

The Sugarland Express


Steven Spielberg's first real theatrical film isn't bad, though it isn't great either. Goldie Hawn stars as a troubled young woman who breaks her husband out of what's basically a halfway house I guess to help rescue their young child from his adoptive parents. They end up getting chased by the police, holding one hostage, and leading them all on a grand chase across the country to Sugarland, where their kid lives. There's some humor and some brief action and some family drama. The most interesting part is the relationship that grows between the couple and their captive over the couple days the story takes place in. Other than that, it tends to drag here and there. There should be more urgency to a chase movie than this. It's mostly based on a true story, which is probably more remarkable than the film itself. You can definitely see the promise his career would later capitalize on.

Tootsie


I've seen parts of this before, but this is my first time watching the thing start to finish. I'm not usually a patron of films heavily featuring cross-dressing main characters, but the difference between most of them and Tootsie as I see it is they don't bother to make their female counterparts compelling in any way, while Michael Dorsey's Dorothy Michaels alter-ego becomes a full character in her own right. Dustin Hoffman is great, Bill Murray is possibly more great in a smaller role as his roommate, and the film is a nice combination of a truly funny comedy and a solid romantic drama about people who want what they can't have. It was a little too early 80s for my taste in places, but for the most part Tootsie is just a likable, fun movie from start to finish.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

What's interesting to me about this film was how much it surprised me with Humphrey Bogart's character. I thought it would be a fairly standard if well made old fashioned adventure movie, with him and a couple other guys seeking gold in a foreign land. Early scenes had a bit of an edge, as he and another man who were swindled out of proper pay for some work they did beat the cash out of the guy who cheated them. But he still seemed like his usual self with the rough charm and everything, and as the plot really got going, I saw no reason to change my mind. But very slowly, the movie reveals how much of a dick he really is under that likable exterior, and after a while, he's basically playing the villain. The pacing of the transition is really great, as he gradually transforms from a guy eager to make a fortune, to one a little too defensive of the money he's made, to a completely delusional, paranoid and basically crazy son of a bitch. His companions see the warning signs but aren't quite prepared for what he ends up doing, and the movie ends up a lot darker than what I thought I was going to see.

And it's a better film for it, I think. I was certainly enjoying it up to the point where things start changing, with the three main actors developing an interesting little community together and a script totally rife with snappy dialogue. It's known for one of the most famous misquoted lines in history involving stinking badges, but there's a whole lot of talking the whole movie through, and there's no shortage of nice bits. I also liked how the Spanish dialogue wasn't subtitled at all, either letting characters translate it for their monolingual cohorts or just making you figure out what's happening in a scene through action and context. I'd generally expect movies from this era to just have Mexican characters always speaking English, and it really helped add to the authenticity of a fairly gritty tale. The acting is solid, and although I wasn't sure about Walter Huston winning an Oscar for his work, there's something really likable about the old guy. And all of that would have made for a solid movie, but the way things turn bad as it goes on are what really make it the classic it's considered today. It's not quite one of my favorites of the era, but it's hard to deny that it's a really good one.

The Maltese Falcon

I didn't enjoy Falcon as much as The Big Sleep, but it was still a really good example of film noir in its prime. John Huston's another director I know at this point mostly be reputation, but this was a very good first effort and he's had some other stuff I definitely would like to see. Bogart's several years younger than in Sleep, although it's kind of hard to tell the difference. It's pretty much the same hard-nosed persona, maybe a little more prone to laughter in certain situations but still a detective who just wants to finish the job.

What starts as a simple tail job results in a couple murders and a rapidly growing conspiracy as several people search for the falcon, a supposedly priceless treasure from hundreds of years ago. Everyone wants to get their hands on it, except for Bogart, who just wants to solve the murders and get paid. The main plot might have been a bit stronger than Sleep but the dialogue wasn't nearly as consistently enjoyable on its own merits, and I really didn't like the leading lady. She was supposed to be really attractive and seductive, but she was merely average looking and constantly breaking down into fake crying to try to lie her way out of trouble instead of just being alluring. Even man-voiced Lauren Bacall was better than that. I really like the noir style whether in traditional usage or a more modern take on it, and I'd like to see more good examples soon.

The Big Sleep

I always like it when a director has range, and can do a good movie regardless of genre. I knew Hawks could do comedy from Bringing Up Baby, and now I know he can do serious film noir, in probably the best example I've ever seen. The Big Sleep is a complex story with lots of twists and intricacies, and can be sort of hard to follow, especially after they apparently reshot and reedited it after it was delayed by the war to focus less on the plot and more on the relationship between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who were married off screen. I saw the original cut though, with helpful expository scenes intact. It's not that the movie is completely impenetrable without the scenes that help make all the obscure connections, it's just that having them makes for a more satisfying experience.

The movie completely thrives on its dialogue and acting, which is good because as with any film from the era its attempts at portraying violence are pathetic. If it were remade today, it would probably be half as witty and twice as bloody. Anyone who's seen Casablanca knows Bogart can deliver a line, and the words he's given here allow for some terribly clever banter with everyone he meets. He's definitely the star of the show, as he bounces around gathering information, getting beat up, and winning the heart of most girls he meets. I thought the movie took a little too long to get to the real meat of what was behind it all after the initial conflict is seemingly wrapped up, but otherwise it's exactly what I want out of a movie like this.