A Streetcar Named Desire

As far as I'm concerned, Desire really has two things going on at this point: it's a notable risque and sexually-charged film for the time, and Marlon Brando's performance, which was somehow the only one out of the four nominated for Oscars to not win that year. Otherwise it's pretty standard. Vivien Leigh plays Blanche, who moves from the family plantation to her sister's apartment in New Orleans under mysterious circumstances, and begins to clash immediately with her brother-in-law, Brando's Stanley. Stanley is a crass, mean drunk, and Blanche a completely self-deluding liar, so the two butt heads pretty heavily. Her sister Stella tries to keep the peace, but she's torn between her devotion to both of them. Stanley is rightly curious as to why his wife is suddenly without the valuable plantation property, and sets to find out what the truth about Blanche really is, and it's not a pretty one. There is a lot of yelling and eventually some actions that can never be taken back.

To be honest, I had quite a bit of trouble watching Leigh's character in this one. It's not that Blanche isn't at least a little sympathetic, it's just that with both the way that she's written and the way she's performed, she's hard to take seriously. She's always giving grand speeches and talking about herself for minutes on end, and you just get fed up with listening to it. In a way it helps put you in Stanley's mindset, but that's not exactly a person I want to find myself agreeing with. Brando really does give a hell of a performance, though. He's a totally commanding presence for every second he's on screen, and he is just doing stuff that viewers at the time had never seen before. He tears around the set, shouting and mumbling his lines, and it's just arresting in a way that classical stage acting isn't. No one else in the movie is really operating on his level, but his work manages to elevate the film rather than the rest of it dragging him down. I was pretty ready for it to be over by the end, but it was a worthwhile watch simply for the history of it. If they ever decided to update it though, they'd really have to take a chainsaw to those Blanche monologues.

Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon is one of Stanley Kubrick's least known films, especially looking at his later career, but that certainly has nothing to do with its quality. 2001: A Space Odyssey is famous for its length, but Lyndon is even longer, with a running time that matches the breadth of its scope. It's essentially a historical epic set in the 1700s centered around the titular character, who goes from being a poor Irish kid to a hardened soldier in the Seven Years' War to the husband of a wealthy landowner trying desperately to earn a title. Ryan O'Neal plays Redmond Barry, and while it's not exactly the most memorable performance Kubrick ever directed, it's a subtly good one. The character ages quite a bit during the story, and beyond a few hair and costume changes, that's all carried by O'Neal's acting, who gradually has his character grow up in an impressive way over the movie's three hours.

It's a very stately movie, with a few moments of violence scattered about, including a duel near the end that's among the finest scenes Kubrick ever filmed, but mostly sticking with the same pace and mood the entire time. It's the kind of movie that could have easily been achingly boring if not handled properly, but the cast does well with the potentially awkward period dialogue and makes every supporting character worth existing and taking up screen time simply because they're interesting enough. The acting is good and the story is interesting enough especially if you're at all interested in history, but the movie's strongest asset is definitely its look, which won it multiple awards.

Kubrick and his crew developed techniques that allowed them to film using only natural light, and the effect is often stunning. Many movies are visually impressive because their images pop in a way that real life just doesn't, but what's impressive about Barry Lyndon is how close it actually looks to real life. The effect is greatest on indoor night scenes, which are lit only by candle and are just unlike anything else in cinema. It could be because I only just saw it, but I might call it the most natural looking film I've ever seen. And that really helps the historical aspect of it. It definitely wouldn't be the first thing I'd recommend to someone looking to know more about one of my favorite directors, but if you know what to expect it can be quite enjoyable.

The Exorcist

It seems like scary movies don't hold up that well. Psycho is one of Alfred Hitchock's most famous and popular movies, but it didn't do that much for me. The Night of the Living Dead and its sequels are staples of the zombie genre, but I enjoyed them less than more recent work. And The Exorcist received a ton of award attention and was considered one of the scariest movies ever - and it's really not a very scary film. It hardly even tries to be. As a film, it's a good one - well shot by William Friedkin and his crew, and well acted by the whole cast. The story is pretty intriguing, as a woman's life is turned upside down when her daughter seemingly becomes possessed after a priest apparently unearths some ancient evil, and he must cast it out along with another who is troubled by the death of his mother. It has some truly iconic imagery, and it's a pretty enjoyable movie.

But it's just not scary. It thankfully avoids cheap jump scares for the most part, relying on the simple horror of its story's events. But while those scenes are well put together, there's little about them that I found effectively horrifying or even that creepy. I wasn't filled with a sense of dread or worried about what would happen next. Almost all of the horror attempts to be derived from simple shock value, a shock that has essentially disappeared in the nearly forty years since the film was released. I mean yes, it's unusual to watch a young girl mutilating and defiling herself while swearing and blaspheming in a man's voice. But it's not really frightening. In the culture that existed when the movie was released, I'm sure it was surprising and controversial stuff. But it just doesn't work anymore. And there's some grotesqueness to the girl's appearance over time, sure, but it's not enough to turn the stomach today either. The Exorcist is lucky that it's actually a pretty good movie, because otherwise there wouldn't be much to say about it.

It Happened One Night

I've already blogged about two other films to win all five of the most prestigious Oscars,and this one was the first. It's pretty fitting that I saw it right after Intolerable Cruelty, as it's definitely right in that romantic screwball comedy groove and judging by the awards it received it was considered one of the very best examples of it. And it really is a damn good movie. Clark Gable is one of the last very famous old actors I had never seen before, and while I didn't like his character at first, his brand of tough guy charm did eventually grown on me. Claudette Colbert is also great as his female counterpart, and the two are one of the best pairs I've seen in films from the era. Director Frank Capra is probably better known these days for It's a Wonderful Life, but It Happened is the one that was actually a big success at the time, and while the style seems pretty traditional, there's no doubt that the whole movie is well put together.

Colbert plays the daughter of a wealthy banker who runs away when he threatens to annul her marriage to a thrill-seeking gold digger, and she's helped on her trip to see him in New York by Gable's reporter, who does so in exchange for a story about her. Of course they fall in love during their travels, and while these kinds of infidelity stories always bother me a little bit, the movie makes it obvious that her husband is more interested in money than her and really the focus is all on the comedy and the developing romance. I've seen a couple of the more famous scenes before, but they work even better in context of the whole thing, and it's the kind of clever, good-natured comedy that just doesn't exist anymore. It's also pretty suggestive, as I think it's one of the last big movies before Hollywood started censoring itself for a while. It's a fun movie, and while it's not the kind that would get that kind of award attention these days, it's certainly an example of what the old studio system excelled at.