His Girl Friday - Howard Hawks

 

.” The Front Page” (1931, Lewis Milestine),

 “His Girl Friday” ( 1940, Howard Hawks) 

 As we now suffer under the alternate reality of a totally politicized news industry, it’s hard to find any humor in the mendacity of its forebears a century ago. It’s not funny, it’s despicable - and “The Front Page” just serves to normalize it. Even more despicable is centering the drama on the careers of phony journalists while some poor witless soul may or may not be executed for murdering a black policeman. (was that really a serious crime back then?) The cynicism of “The Front Page” is unbearable - and not especially lightened by the stylized facial antics of the liar-in-chief, Adolph Menjou. 

 But it is lightened with the breezy dialog, camera movements, and gender change given the story a decade later in “His Girl Friday”.  The grim premise of the story recedes beneath a light and frothy surface that can be played over and over like a classic song. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russel are wonderful together - and so are their costumes. It’s curious how there is no sexual tension in their romantic relationship - just a light hearted zest for goofiness. Wonderful moments with the press corps as well - so you can ignore how depraved they all are. Well, it was 1940 after all - so I guess you can appreciate it as a way of coping with the impending doom of total war on a scale never seen before. ( Hitler even gets mentioned in the dialog). 

 Also liked the hopeless sincerity of Ralph Bellamy, playing the poor sod who thinks he’s found a wife. 

Isn’t he just begging to be deceived? His dreams are smashed, but he sells life insurance, so we know he had it coming. Ah, cruelty.

The craft of  American movie making traveled a long way between 1930 and 1940.

Wiody Allen - Annie Hall

Liked how Woody wrapped things up with the making of a movie within a movie - then all the sentimental flashbacks - and finally the joke about the chicken and the egg - voiced over a view of a busy New York street. Though I also liked the fact that the quip-trip into Woody’s depressing, self centered world was over. If seen in a movie theatre, I would have walked out after fifteen minutes. He’s quite upfront about his grim view of life despite his phenomenal success - and such an interior life does not interest me - no matter how clever he can be. 

Sundry observations:

* Never saw it as a satire about people who “think they’re hot shit”. Annie is struggling with low self esteem - while Alvy esteems nothing. He writes/tells jokes - people laugh - so he writes some more. 

 *Alvy meets Annie at a tennis court - as if his physicality was what attracted her. ( and women to Woody Allen as well). And she came on to him immediately with the kind of self deprecation that could be called a submission gesture. Rob had to have told Annie that her tennis partner would be a celebrity. As a struggling performer, that would have been very important. That aspect of the relationship between a struggling singer in her 20’s and a famous comedian in his forties is left out of the script. Alvy is in it for the sex. That’s why Annie leaves her body at one point when he’s humping her. We are left to speculate on what’s in it for her. Saving on the rent? 

 *great performance by Paul Simon. Truly sleezy in his sincerity. 

*did not care for the Marshall McLuhan scene — despite my distance from  academic Liberal Arts.  Pity the students sucked into the anti-aesthetic,  non-spiritual, social justice criticism that has become mainstream in American universities. Can’t see how that would affect movie making that much - but it has hit visual art especially hard because access is more of an issue.

 My problem with the scene is that it’s dumbed down. Nothing that the annoying professor says is necessarily wrong - including the reference to McLuhan. So it’s just Woody/Alvy being anti-intellectual again - like he was when he left a social gathering of his wife’s fellows writers to watch a Knicks game in the bedroom. How boorish.

*Wikipedia tells us that this film was a breakthrough for the artist. Woody went beyond farce to get serious about Jewishness, psychoanalysis, gender differences, and Modernism. I find this assertion more humorous than all the gag lines in the movie

The Apartment - Billy Wilder

Eminently watchable - over and over. Each delicious moment of acting and visuality. The sincere emotion on the face of Shirley MacLaine - the unbearable obnoxiousness of Fred Macmurray - the electric mania of Jack Lemmon - so acrobatic. But is it too silly, too unreal? I can’t imagine a real C.C. Baxter —- I just see Jack Lemmon. 

 Underneath is a negative characterization of the big city. When I first saw bits of this film earlier this year, the normalcy and frequency of furtive, recreational sex astonished me. And it was always high ranking men with low ranking women. It’s also surprising that both romantic leads had attempted suicide. What an awful place for young people to work. Things only look up - and the only true romance can begin - when both have quit their job. With no plan B.

 Their transformation was made possible by Jews. Wilder wants us to know them as compassionate, responsible , generous, competent. None of the adulterous playboys is  identifiable as Jewish - and the very worst has a Christmas tree at home. The landlady is Jewish - and she only raised the rent after installing an air conditioner. One might also note that paintings by distinguished Jewish modernists like Chagall and Rothko are up on the wall. ( Wilder was a serious collector). More significantly, the physician who saved Fran’s life is Jewish- he doesn’t charge a dime - and he’s even named Dreyfuss - in a nod to European anti-semitism. He also instructs Calvin ( his seriously Christian, but never used first name) on being a “mensch”. He is an island of morality in a sea of turpitude. 

 Officially qualified as a Jew myself - I’m partial to this ethnic propaganda - but as a film viewer, I have to say it’s nonsense and diminishes the inner truth of the movie.  Sure some Jews are like Dr. Dreyfus - but some are like Jeffrey Epstein as well.

White Lotus Season Two

 

This season has been quite uneven for me.  Love the scenery, love the ubiquitous sculpture,  love the music.  But by episode four, I’ve gotten tired of the one dimensional characters - which is all of them except for Mia - the carefree, uninhibited lounge singer ( and a very good one, too).  She’s a part time sex worker, but not at the expense of her dignity. She recoils at the piano man’s offer to advance her career in exchange for sex, until she understands it as just a way to get what she wants. And like the statue shown above  ( I guess this variant of the testa Moro is common in Sicily) her gender is flexible.

In Hawaii, the White Lotus resort was a family getaway.  In Thailand it’s a spiritual retreat.  In Sicily it’s more about sexual adventure - but other than sex between married partners, 100% of the sex is with hookers.  I don’t necessarily consider this depraved - but the opportunities for serious drama are limited unless a there’s something like a La Traviata courtesan romance.  By the end of episode six this may  happen between Albie and Lucia.

Several other dramatic lines are becoming clarified and reaching towards resolution at that moment as well. As with the sexual act itself, it's the mounting tension rather than the resolution that's the most compelling, so I'll write about this season now, before watching the concluding episdode. 

What will Harper and Ethan do about their marriage? Harper has done all that she can: she’s complained that their sexual relationship is dead - and then tried to make Ethan jealous.  It’s all up to Ethan now.  An easy going guy, he’s finally angry and doing some hard thinking.  Does he still want Harper in his life now that he’s become wealthy?  I can’t figure why he would want to marry such a shrew in the first place - but maybe we’ll get to see another side of her.

What will happen to rich Tanya and her assistant, poor Portia? At the end of episode six, a drunken Jack has let the cat out of the bag (at least for me). The wealthy Quentin pulled him up from the gutter for sex and other uses, and now his job is to keep Portia away from Tanya so Quentin can get a piece of her 500 million. Yes ... Quentin is a creep who makes friends so he can betray them. Can Mike White conceive of a gay character who is not depraved? Hopefully Portia will try her best to save Tanya and survive the sinking ship to become sadder but wiser.

Hopefully all the other characters will do the same - at least Albie and Mia who are at the beginning of hopeful adult lives.  Lucia is too entangled with the local underworld to escape. There’s always the chance that Dominic’s wife will fly in from L.A. to reconcile with her husband, but this is not Fantasy Island.

********

Well… the ending was more than I had hoped for — even if, once again, saturated in patriarchal values.

The evil, scheming Gays are all slaughtered by the rich/poor old fag hag as she desperately tries to save her life - and like Madame Butterfly she ends her own life - though inadvertently in a final act of clumsy helplessness.

Portia and Albie are sadder but wiser - and have exchanged phone numbers at the airport. (Equivalent to marrying at the end of a Shakespeare comedy)

Dominic is well on his way to being forgiven by his absent wife - thanks to Albie’s transactional intervention. I thought the monetary exchange was repulsive - but as with the sex workers, everyone got what they needed.

There was no drama in the Daphne/Cameron marriage. He does what he wants and she gets what she wants.  We can only admire her wisdom: “don’t be a victim to life”

While the intense drama between Harper and Ethan has been resolved, at least temporarily, the old fashioned way:  he finally felt like fucking her - as Mount Etna shot fire and smoke into the sky. Hurray for male desire!  No discussion  necessary. The way of the alpha male.

The season ends on a happy note as Mia and Lucia triumphantly stroll arm in arm down a narrow, busy street in urban Sicily.  Lucia had enlisted a male accomplice to help score 50,000 Euros from Albie, while Mia now has a permanent gig at the piano bar of the White Lotus - and then helped her new boss, the resort’s director, Valentina, launch her life as a Lesbian. 

All’s well that ends well.

I love happy endings.

and would really like to visit Sicily

if only I could afford the hookers

and stay in an art filled palazzo.

*******

One final thought:

It did occur to me that Roman Catholicism is as endemic to Sicily as Buddhism is to Thailand, yet it’s almost completely absent from the ambience of Season Two. Two paintings of saints are all I can recall.

********

Perugino, St. Sebastian

Topics discussed on Reddit

Concerning Season Two as a whole

For me, Season Two was all about Romantic ambience of the place - in contrast to the exclusively non-romantic sexual relationships. The music, scenery, art and other furnishings were so much better than the other seasons that I really didn’t miss the profundities. Episode 7 was great, and the final shot of Mia arm in arm with Lucia is unforgettable. Loved those girls. When Mia began to belt out her goofy version of Amore, it saved the season. And she turned out to be something of a sex therapist. What a wonderful human being. I certainly agree about the DiGrasso’s. Way less engaging than the Mossbachers. Eventually all of the tourists got tiresome - though I did admire Daphne the most. She was a child centric mom with the motto : “ Do whatever you have to not to feel like a victim of life”. Words to live by.

Concerning the singing of Beatrice Granno (Mia) :

At that point in the film, I was beginning to get bored with the repetitive petty dramas — so when a bright eyed girl started belting out old chestnuts in such a unique, fresh style .... it was thrilling. In reality, if I were actually sitting in a restaurant, she'd be disruptive. But she does express such a raw, unaffected love of life. She's not covering a song as much as filling the space with joy. I might well have been grateful for just that special moment. She's an artist - doing what artists are supposed to do. 

At the end of the final episode, the smiling Mia and Lucia walk arm-in-arm down the crowded streets of Taormina. Their joy is an antidote to all the sadness that came before. The escort and the artist - appropriate companions in a film that prominently featured the music of Puccini. Don't think that 50 grand Lucia milked from Albie will last very long, however 

 Concerning the Homophobia of Mike White:

A director need not be homophobic for his film to broadcast atavistic attitudes. As with a Shakespeare comedy, heterosexuality has triumphed with all the male/female couples re-uniting at the end: Portia/ Albie, Dominic/off-screen wife, Ethan/Harper, Daphne/ Cameron. And as with Season One, the most transgressive gays have been slaughtered by heterosexuals. The patriarchal order has been restored in a most violent fashion. 

Gangsters could have been hired to bump off Tanya with no need for a party of old, upper class, art loving men to be the intermediaries. But that would have been much less fun. And if those men weren't all gay, wouldn't it have been much less believable? Mike White is a great filmmaker - yet we also might notice that this masterpiece of satire is deeply conservative

******

Domenico Beccafumi, St. Lucy

The artworks in Season Two are discussed in "Artworks are more than just plot clues in The White Lotus season 2 – they are the show’s silent witnesses", an essay published in TheConversation.com , an international web that solicits and publishes essays whose content would be suitable for academic approval but whose style is journalistic.

Predictably, it eschews aesthetic response while focusing on White Lotus as a critique of the wealthy. Hurray for Marxism!  But it does have. this great video that juxtaposes a scene from Antonioni’s L’Avventura with the scene from White Lotus that quotes it.

here is my response:

Can’t artworks also more than just “silent witnesses” ? For some, they can be portals into specific, passionate attachments to life - contributing to the ambience of the entire season two of White Lotus. The paintings by Perugino and Beccafumi deepen the humanity of characters who might otherwise be dismissed as comic stereotypes. 

You did a great service in providing good reproductions. But similarly, you did a disservice by showing two mediocre Testa di Moro instead of the thrilling one actually used on the set. Believe it or not - when it comes to art - beauty actually can make a difference - even if it’s irrelevant to your notion of “academic vigor” .

White Lotus : Season Three

 

A Buddhist-like renunciation of the world is at the center of this season. Can Americans pull it off when immersed in a lush, palatial, tropical island sanctuary under the care of therapists and spiritual counselors? Are you kidding me?  Of course not. We are what we are.  The wellness resort is just more bling - a well appointed pit stop in the rat race.  Even the local Thai characters become, if anything, more worldly by the last episode ( as the peaceful Gaitok learns to use a pistol which he eventually uses to kill Rick and get promoted to chauffeur)

Rick, by the way, is the extreme example of an unredeemable lost soul.  His motivations remain a mystery until the fifth episode and his background is never told.  Was he a professional criminal? We’ll never know.  A last minute therapy session may have averted disaster - but this would not be his fate. I love to watch the charismatic, rubbery face of the actor, Walton Goggins - but he did fail to make this character very believable. It may have been an impossible task.

This is mostly the story of a spiritual crisis in the Ratliff family whose patriarch abruptly learns that he faces financial ruin over a brief episode of white collar crime for which he takes no responsibility. Contemplating suicide, he has an audience with the Abbot of the local Buddhist monastery- asking him what happens after we die. The venerable monk tells him that our lives are like drops of water thrown up momentarily like spray from the great ocean of being - into which we fall back when we die.  It’s a beautiful, peaceful image, and lacking evidence to the contrary, I prefer to believe it.  Zero moral content.  No merit-based reincarnation. No eternal ego.  And as some critics have pointed out, not especially Thai Buddhist. More appropriate for a spiritual retreat in the hills of California.  But this series is about Americans, by Americans and for Americans. So it’s quite appropriate. (see quote at end)

All of which may be fascinating, but the series is really about narrative ambience as far as I’m concerned. The music, sets, costumes, flow of story, control of tension and release.  Mike White is a genius - and he’s still getting better.

****

BTW - we might note that one set of characters, the three amigas, has zero interest in spirituality at all. They’re just looking for fun and friendship.  The two career ladies get fucked by a handsome young Russian dude, and the third, a housewife, just wants to hang out with women who are unlike the ladies at church.

*******

Luang Por Teera's answer to "where do we go when we die" closely follows text on page 46 of “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki  (1904-1971), abbot  of the first Zen Monastery outside Japan, in Los Padres National Forest.

 Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called "mind-only," or "essence of mind," or "big mind," After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life. When the water returns to its original oneness with the river, it no longer has any individual feeling to it; it resumes its own nature, and finds composure. How very glad the water must be to come back to the original river! If this is what feeling will we have when we die? I think we are like the water in the dipper. We will have composure then, perfect composure. It may be too perfect for us, just now, because we are so much attached to our own feeling, to our actual feeling is not so easy. But by your practice of zazen you can cultivate this feeling.

White Lotus season one

 

“An all-star cast head to a resort and unleash their worst, most privileged impulses” .. Rotten Tomatoes

…. But actually it’s the paid staff who make all the trouble.  Isn’t it Armando, the resort manager, who pilfers the pharmaceuticals, sexually abuses the lower paid employees,  double books a suite as well as a boat ride, and ultimately poops in a guest’s suit case?  Isn’t it Kai, the native fire dancer, who beats up two guests and steals  their jewelry? Isn’t it Paula, the subsidized college student, who enables and provokes Kai to his misdeed?

Tanya, the heiress,  is the only character who is seriously rich.  She over dramatizes  her unhappiness, but what rules has she broken?  She tells her therapist that she may bankroll a private practice.  She replaces  that offer with an envelope stuffed with cash - but that is hardly a misdeed.  She actually didn’t owe her a damn thing.

A fascinating woke ideology often drives conversation at the Mossberger family dinner table - and the adults resist it. When Paula boldly queries “what do you stand for”?, they are silent. But don’t their lives as parents and professionals ( not elaborated in this story) provide an answer in deeds rather than words?

Actually - this  fable, charming and beautifully created as it is, comes from a very conservative (patriarchal) place:

Poor Mr. Mossberger and his swollen testicles - redeems his masculinity by physically attacking the non-white native who is assaulting his wife.  That native is apprehended and presumably punished severely, but that all happens off stage.  His destiny is evidently  not worth knowing.

The wealthy heiress, turns away from therapy to find relief from her misery in the arms of a vigorous man who just wants  to “ have some fun”  At one point, she tells him repeatedly to leave, and he boyishly pouts “no … I want to fuck you” And so he does - with her unspoken consent.

The Mossberger son asserts  his manhood by abandoning school and running off with a .crew of strapping young lads who are circumnavigating Polynesia. 

The Mossberger daughter shows true love and comfort for her poor half-white friend who had betrayed the generosity of her family and denounced their bond of friendship. 

Rachel, the recent bride, who had second thoughts about becoming the trophy wife of a man/boy finally, meekly, accepts that as her future.

Armando, the resentful  gay resort manager who cannot control any of his urges for sex, drugs, or revenge,  ultimately does something really disgusting and is immediately violently killed by his nemesis, the rich boy heterosexual.

Feminism, socialism, anti- colonialism, gay identity, and racial justice have all been crushed and all ends up right with the world.  Wokism lies in ruins.

*******

 This reactionary agenda has been hidden in plain sight  by the arts of stagecraft.  It is not a one dimensional melodrama.  That is quite a tribute to Mike White, the auteur and the  actors, musicians, and other skilled staff he assembled and coached.  Like a silk thread pulled  from a cocoon, the narrative carefully unfolds, as the eye, ear, and mind are held tight from one moment to the next. It’s the magic of a mimetic art.

But it’s also hidden because both viewers  and reviewers don’t want to see it.  They don’t want to admit that underneath the respect for social justice they’re supposed to have, their gut feelings remain patriarchal and xenophobic.  That’s why Republicans keep winning elections, despite their egregious faults.

( it reminds me of another show that also turns a theme  of patriarchal dominance into a thing of  wonder and beauty: Mozart’s Magic Flute)

The role of Belinda, the magical negro, plays no small part in the diversion.  This multi talented black woman is the only adult shown doing an important job with competence and compassion. This would be a very different story without Natasha Rothwell being so convincing.

******

Posted on Reddit:

Concerning the final scene with Rachel and Shane

 Rachel is reconciled to Shane in less than five minutes of screen time after Shane has hunted down and killed an intruder into their bedroom just as Nicole restarts sex with Mark shortly after Mark has tackled the man who broke into their's. By a certain kind of old school thinking, both of these intruders are "others". Armond is homosexual and Kai is a person of color. See any symmetry there? Upscale white men are rewarded with sex after fighting off men who are not. Rachel consents to be a trophy wife because - well - Shane finally deserves a trophy. I'm certainly not advocating this kind of patriarchal, sexist, homophobic, racist thinking - and I doubt Mike White would either. But it's in the structure of the story he wrote — and there are other examples in Season One as well

Life Itself - Dan Fogelman

Here’s another film that I loved and movie critics hated.  They were pretty much unanimous - this film has way too much sorrow and cheap, pretentious philosophy.  It’s only virtues were it’s fine cast and cinematography - which were, of course,  all gone to waste.

For me, Part One delivered that most precious of dramatic effects: a catharsis - a thorough wash through of emotions. I felt fresh, cleansed, and invigorated.  Perhaps that’s only because I’m confined to my house, like everyone else in the city during the Covid-19 outbreak.  Perhaps the critics  would have seen the movie differently if they saw it in 2020 instead  of 2018.  The principal theme of the movie is that life authors utterly unexpected and occasionally  catastrophic narratives — and now we are all living through one.

If you, dear reader, have yet to see the film —- stop reading this blog post now.  How this story unfolds on the screen is one of this film’s principle delights.

***********************************************************

The film opens onto something like an overture -- a brief story-within-the-story written by the principal protagonist, Will --- the "hero" who turns out to be neither that nor a reliable narrator.
He's educated, charming, handsome.  and devoted to both his wife and literature.  The poetry that he's currently into is Bob Dylan's 1997 album, "Time out of Mind". So he's hip to Boomer pop culture -- and he's also politically correct -- in that  the narrator of his story-within-a-story is a street smart African American and his initial protagonist is gay.

By the way --- those are the only African Americans or gays in the entire film -- leading one reviewer to suggest that this overture was somewhat misleading.

But when this film is misleading is when it’s at it’s best.   When it gets predictable — as it does with the quick, breathless romance at the end - that’s when it falls flat.

Will is a pathetic loser - by the film’s own code of behavior.  When life knocks you down - your job is to stand back up and keep on going.  He was knocked down and then just gave up.

BTW, his therapist was another failed hero.  Her job was to reintroduce Will to life - and after pushing him to recall his wife — and acknowledge the truth of why she “left” him — it was too much for him to handle so he blew his brains out in her office.  After being mislead by the narrator, the viewer confronts that truth at the same moment —- and thus, perhaps, the catharsis I experienced.

I can’t be too hard on therapists — their job is very difficult and they’re not really very well trained for it —-it’s all on-the-job learning.  But this neat, trim, rather methodical lady in her fifties seemed just a bit too narrow minded for her line of work.  She was probably much better with doing the paper work.

********************************************

The other great narrative segment was the story of Vincent and Javier.  The tension of their class-based relationship seems utterly foreign to an American film.  This is more like a Mediterranean fable.  Life seems to have seriously damaged both of them.  Javier is way too rigid about class and personal boundaries —- Vincent seems committed to breaking them.  Clearly, Javier’s wife needed to put her foot down and demand that the family move elsewhere - but for the sake of her son, she would not.  That dilemma is what takes her life.  Cancer was just it’s agent.

***********************************************

I don’t quite share the film’s emphasis on romantic love.  I think it’s just for teenagers like Romeo and Juliet.  But I do like the idea of Life as an unreliable narrator — presumably a corollary of God as an underachiever.  And other than the last chapter - I love the storytelling and cinematography.

And I especially love the use of Bob Dylan's romantic dirge, "Make you feel my Love".  What a strange and sad song - perfectly performed by Dylan (a female character in the story) who sings it sweet and then angry.