The guy who should have won, hands down, was Lee Tracy for his performance as ex-president Art Hockstader (a character roughly based upon Harry Truman) in Franklin J. Schaffner and Gore Vidal‘s The Best Man.
The winner was Peter Ustinov for his amusing but lightweight performance as the bumbling Arthur Simpson in Jules Dassin‘s Topkapi. Ustinov’s Oscar was more about charm and likability than anything else.
The second most deserving was Edmond O’Brien‘s portrayal of an alcoholic southern Senator in John Frankenheimer‘s Seven Days in May.
John Gielgud‘s King Louis VII of France in Peter Glenville‘s Becket was more of a cameo than a supporting performance — a pleasing but minor thing.
Nominating Stanley Holloway‘s performance in My Fair Lady was (a) a joke and (b) an insult to the other four contenders.
I saw a tweet a day or two ago that mentioned the social distancing element in Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Eclisse (’62). I was strolling around the neighborhood last night — empty streets, silence, desolation — and realizing that we’re all living in an L’Eclisse-like world.
The gnawing sense of isolation that we’re all feeling is about prudence and caution, of course, whereas the atmosphere of existential stillness and solitude in L’Eclisse is a portrait of angst and alienation. The 1962 classic is the climax of Antonioni’s alienation trilogy, the first two films being L’Avventura and La Notte.
It’s nonetheless the same kind of atmosphere.
I watched my Criterion L’Eclisse Bluray last night, and was struck by how well it fits into our current realm. Shot mostly in Rome, some 58 or 59 years ago. Consider this excellent assessment of the film and the Bluray by The Dissolve‘s Scott Tobias.
DeNiro couldn’t wing it? He had to read the copy in front of him, and sound like he’s reading it?
One thing he could’ve said is that Dr. Strangelove isn’t a traditional “comedy” as much as a brainy suspense thriller that’s angled toward apocalyptic, ultra-dry satire and flavored with eccentric performances.
Oh, and “gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!” was never that great of a line.
A much better one: “I first became aware of flouridation, Mandrake, during the physical act of love. A profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred. Women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence.”
Please notice the rustic woodwork in DeNiro’s office. Recorded inside a nice home in some rural area. Decor-wise it could’ve been shot inside DeNiro’s Greenwich hotel, which I’ve visited two or three times.
And what’s with the beard? Isn’t DeNiro currently portraying cattleman and convicted murderer William Hale in Martin Scorsese‘s 1920s-era Killers of the Flower Moon? (Pic may or may not be on hiatus due to the coronavirus lockdown but still.) Hale was clean shaven.
I read Patrica Bosworth‘s “Montgomery Clift: A Biography” just as I was settling into my first Manhattan apartment (a creaky, roach-infested hovel on Sullivan Street, just south of Houston) in ’78. It moved and impressed me, and I thereafter regarded Bosworth as one the most refined and perceptive biographers around. She was and always will be a very smooth writer, each and every sentence sculpted and finessed with the greatest care.
I also read and mostly admired her Marlon Brando biography (’00), although it felt a little bit skimpy. I never read her Diane Arbus and Jane Fonda bios. Bosworth was also a significant talking head in Robert Clift and Hillary Demmon‘s Making Montgomery Clift, a first-rate doc that I wrote about last October.
Bosworth has succumbed to the coronavirus. She was 86. I’m very sorry.
The bad guy in the Captain Brett Crozier termination episode is acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, who is naturally (what else?) a Trump appointee. Crozier was dismissed yesterday (Thursday, 4.2) “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command and for not using his chain of command to make service leaders aware of his concerns about the coronavirus outbreak that had infected more than 100 sailors on the ship.” Translation: Crozier was canned for allowing a letter of concern to leak to the press.
Believe it or not there are people out there who would actually prefer the black clunky shoe over the yellow, non-whiteside loafer. They would actually wear shoes like this with contentment and pride. I don’t know what to say to people like this, but the yellows are obviously the only choice. I understand that they might offend certain people, but if you’re into black clunkers I don’t want to know you. Look at how stupidly shiny they are. If I saw you walking in my direction I’d cross the street and pretend to be in a conversation on my phone, keeping my eyes on the sidewalk.
This scene is what sold me on Leonardo DiCaprio‘s potential. Not This Boy’s Life or What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, both of which I respected but didn’t especially like, much less want to see a second time. His performance as Arnie was fascinating but at the same time over-delivered, and I couldn’t stand the sight of his (and Johnny Depp‘s) massively obese mom. The Quick and the Dead struck me as posturing flash-bang. Then came The Basketball Diaries, in which Leo played poet-writer Jim Carroll (who died in 2009) and his desperate, smack-addicted life. After this scene I said to myself, “Okay, sooner or later Leo’s gonna hit big.”
“Lulling” is one word that describes “Pretty Ballerina“, a gently baroque single released in December ’66 by the Left Banke. Definitely lacking in any sense of raunch or territorial machismo, which is striking for a song about a guy consumed by erotic longing for a bandmate’s girlfriend (i.e., Renee Fladen). Michael Brown‘s singing is delicate and dreamy. (I almost wrote wimpy.) You could say it reps a sub-genre of unrequited jukebox love songs — “She’s Not There,” “Girl“, “Walk Away Renee,” “Jesse’s Girl”, etc. Always a soother.
HE to Journo Pally: I’m starting to feel like the alcoholic guy sitting on a barstool inside the Bodega Bay cafe in The Birds. I’ve also become, in a manner of speaking, a born-again Christian. As in “please God, make this thing go away by the mid to late summer, or certainly by Labor Day.”
HE to Adele Haenel and the international #MeToo Community:
Last night I re-watched Roman Polanski‘s The Pianist, which I hadn’t seen for roughly 17 years. I watched it because I’d recently seen Polanski’s J’Accuse, and was reminded of what a brilliant artist he’s always been, especially when the spirit is upon him. Repulsion, Knife in The Water, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, Tess, The Ghost Writer, Cul de Sac — uncomfortable as this may seem to some, there is unmistakable genius in the man. He also radiates (and you really have to be exceptionally stupid to miss this) basic compassion. You can always feel the pulse in a Polanski film.
You can’t watch The Pianist and not say to yourself, “The man who made this clearly knows the horror that Warsaw Jews experienced during the German occupation of the early to mid ’40s, and also knows about love, family and kindness.” I was also reminded that many of the same qualities — frankness, intelligence, scrupulous attention to detail, magnificent visual compositions — are abundant in J’Accuse.
The difference, of course, is that anyone can watch The Pianist, but no one in the U.S. and England can watch J’Accuse in a theatre, on a Bluray or even via streaming.
Because of you guys. Because you believe that Polanski’s rep must be permanently tarred and feathered and therefore J’Accuse, too, must be buried or otherwise scrubbed from existence. Because of reputedly credible accusations of Polanski having behaved badly and perhaps even criminally with certain younger women in the ’70s and ’80s. And because the distribution community is terrified of what you’ll say and do if one of their number would even consider streaming J’Accuse.
Here’s the thing — Polanski the man is not the same thing as Polanski the artist. His depiction of awful or ghastly things in his films (he’s never explored Pollyanic fantasy and escapism) has never conveyed a corrosion or poisoning of his own spirit. He understands what goes, how it all works, who the good guys are. This is quite evident in The Pianist and J’Accuse. But the latter is nonetheless going to be buried for a long time to come, or so I’m told.
To hear it from distributors, the #MeToo community has destroyed any possibility of J’Accuse being seen theatrically in this country, but is it really necessary to keep this truly magnificent and honorable film from being streamed? Prevented from simply being watched and contemplated privately, domestically?
You should understand that this is not a good look for #MeToo. If not now then certainly in the near future and for all time to come.
HE to Parisian distribution sales guy (sent Tuesday night): “How many millions in this pandemic would love to buy access to Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse? All you have to do is allow streaming from France to the US. Please level with me. You guys aren’t interested in tapping the English-speaking U.S., British and Canadian streaming market because of fears of the French #MeToo community? You’re afraid of what Adele Haenel might say? Is that it? Please forgive me but this seems so wrong.”
Parisian distribution sales guy to HE (late Wednesday night): “To make it simple, no streaming company operating in the UK or US will risk putting Polanski’s J’Accuse on their service. It has nothing to do with the potential customers but rather with the association of the Polanski brand. A streamer takes fewer chances if he/she doesn’t offer a Polanski title than if he/she does. But times may change…”
There is no place on the entire globe in which the coronavirus is more widespread, concentrated or deadly than in the five boroughs of New York City and Northern New Jersey. (NJ’s death toll doubled in two days.) Call it Plague City — a metropolitan death camp. And it’s going to get worse very soon. Fresh ventilators will be gone in a few days’ time, and then bodies will really start piling up. President Trump is mainly giving ventilators to rightwing governors of red and purple states (Florida) and letting the blue states scramble as best they can.
Trump is a malignant sociopath; NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo (the source of the “assume you are on your own” quote) is an imperfect human being, of course, but God, the gaping differences between himself and A Toxic Orange…obvious to all but the stupidest people out there, many of whom (as has been pointed out over and over) are Trump loyalists.
Ida Sessions (over the phone): “Are you alone, Mr. Gittes?” Gittes: “Aren’t we all?”
