Naked Hands (1918)

Naked Hands (1918) – Humanity (1916)

A 5 reeler originally, it was reissued as a 2-reeler as Broncho Billy Anderson was attempting a comeback in 1918. It is tight, quick, and interestingly rough. The characters move in all directions in the frame, but whenever you’re given depth of field you can bet your six-gun that they’re going to be moving from background to foreground at some point. There’s a heck of a fight scene with Billy bleeding from a nasty cut to the head and not a vase safe in the house. It’s packed, to say the least.

But I don’t need to tell you. You can see the whole shot list for the film here, with some comments (in French!), courtesy of yours truly.

My Favorite Brunette (1947)

My Favorite Brunette

I had never seen a Bob Hope and this seems like a good place to start. I know it’s been remarked before, but Woody Allen’s comic persona is a complete rip-off from Hope ! Every mannerism, every routine, the way lines are both nonsensical, hyper-sexed and self-deprecating, it’s all there.

Double Exposure (1944)

Double Exposure

If you’re going to be at war and in 1944 to boot, this is a pretty good flick to spend your time with. Such nice people ! From Nancy Kelly as Pat Marvin to the soft-spoken Ben (aka Phillip Terry) to wolf-turned-lamb Larry (Chester Morris), such gentleness, such respect for careerist desires, for other people’s feelings — and then no one really dies (Ben who survives the torpedoed convoy) (By the way, what is Larry, able-bodied Larry, doing in an office in 1944?). Even in the straighforward B people care for each other in ways that are not as obvious in other cinemas. It’s a major attraction of American films, as corny as it sounds. The play on female independance is also quite funny though the final resolution (she does marry her boss after all) may not be to every feminist’s taste. Yes she is in the kitchen with apron and all — but she’s cooking pictures, not cakes.

And how about this dialogue as he takes her in his arms:
- Pat: “Just because I’m in your kitchen, that’s no reason to take advantage.”
- Ben: “Jee, Pat, I wish you’d stay here for always.”
- Pat: “Where ? In your kitchen ?”

Plenty of obvert narration too here as character after character looks straight at the camera: exhibit A:

“If I get kissed more on the cheek…”

Exhibit B, as Mr. Tucker offers some posture advice and a turnip:

Nothing revolutionary for a goofball comedy of this type, but still, it’s always pleasant to find reminders of how rich and resourceful Hollywood narration could be within the classical paradigm…

Danger Ahead

Danger Ahead (1935)

Sub-par B fare but with very good fighting (long silent fighting sequences) and a very good number by Fuzzy Knight at the piano. Something funny happens after the first 15 minutes. To all purposes the film is as good as over — but then it just has to fill another 45 minutes of screen time. So more nonsense and changes of hand of “that dough” — but wait ! Fuzzy Knight gets going at the piano in a pretty funny act.

The goings-on are quite erratic but those B-films are what you’d get if Hollywood went cheap and realistic on you: filming in the streets with non-star quality material in the leads, and very simple shooting techniques (for once we see the dolly tracks as the dolly pulls back — but they’re motivated as railway tracks along the docks !). No rhetorics. Very straighforward drama. Sounds like the Danish Dogme 95 ? Apart from that bit in the Danish contract about the drama being born of the situations and characters themselves, it could almost be. (except that Dogme 95 films are not opposed, in practice, to a lot of rhetorical effects, high angle shots, parallel editing, and so on)

Funny thing about that basic Hollywood realism: it’s never very disturbing. The plot is foolish and naively sunny enough to fend off any nastiness.

A Bride for Henry (1937)

A Bride for Henry (1937)

An interesting Monogram B program picture. If only for its funky Architectural art deco titles

The film itself is like an aborted “comedy of remarriage” à la Stanley Cavell, since the girl does marry the wrong man but does not remarry the right one in the end — rather, the wrong man reveals himself to be quite the playboy (hey, he’s a lawyer!) and to be the right one after all.

Was this really made in 1937 ? It looked more like 1931 to me: the social-cultural background of big honeymoon hotel in some very fake , do-nothing American gentry, very awkward frontal staging at all times
it just doesn’t look like Gone with the wind is a mere 2 years away ! The only 1937 element I can identify for sure is the Ginger Rogers-like performance of Anne Nagel as a vivacious, messed-up, but deep-down good minx.

The most interesting element is the absolute lack of any non-diegetic music. Even in the titles: the organ playing the wedding march is linked to the very first scene (the bride waiting for her bridedgroom). The only exception is in the closing title where the same wedding march is heard with no diegetic justification. But otherwise,, this takes place in eery silence, and every time music plays in the background, someone is sure to remark that the orchestra plays beautifully, or “did you hear this music” — in other words, they make double sure that we don’t think the music comes from anywhere else. Such emphasis seems rare to me — and it can’t be just a way to save money from Monogram (even their B westerns from that period have background, non-diegetic music).

daily-life beauty, questions

Tzvetan Todorov, Eloge du Quotidien, my link between Dutch 17th century paintings and 1920s Hollywood cinema:

Finding beauty in daily life, unaware

Tzvetan Todorov, Eloge du quotidien: essai sur la peinture hollandaise du XVIIè siècle (1993)

Vers la moitié du XVIIè siècle, pour des raisons esthétiques (le Carravage, Rembrandt) mais aussi historiques (commerce) et culturelles (protestantisme, valeurs domestiques), des peintres hollandais se sont retrouvés à peindre avec précision et, souvent, bienveillance des scènes de la vie quotidienne: vie quotidienne des femmes, des enfants, et moins souvent, des hommes. Mais ces tableaux ne nous parlent-ils que de cette “réalité” — ou bien parlent-ils surtout du bonheur du quotidien ?

Kafka’s America

Published posthumously in 1927 by a not so scrupulous testament executioner.
Most of the book is spent in explaining the surrounding logic to the hapless character, who seems to always be asking the same questions: “why…?” or “and what would happen if…?”, much like a child trying to grasp the logic of the world. It’s sometimes fun in a keatonesque, burlesque sort of way (the opening scene in the boat, fighting for the “rights” of a self-centered stoker, or the catching match in the girl’s room), when Karll Grossman is lost but it all somehow ends up OK. And then, for a long middle portion, the logic is dark, humiliating, as the characters floats from characters who use and abuse him in one way or another (taking his money, his personal photographs, pinching his arm, having him throw out, or all-out beating him to turn him into an obedient servant (Mme Brunelda).
And all throughout, Karl is gently lost, drifting uncomprehending in a world that ought to be much more gentle, but turns out to be based on exploiting boobs like him. Kafka made him just shy of 16, but even without this justification, there are so many rules, points of view, and ceremonies around him that just making some sense (let alone understanding their true meaning) is hard enough. Consider the scenes at his uncle, or the nightly street demonstration for a local judge’s election, or the movements of lift-boy and secondary porters at the Hotel Continental, or the last scene at the circus. The world, says Kafka, is a strange place where events must follow their logic, though to reconstruct this logic is near-impossiblle — one can be content to have one possible meaning in mind, even though this is naive.
In the end, and though the book is unfinished Kafka seemed to have a happy ending in mind, all this exploitation, enslavement, humiliation, violence, a dizzying dance where Karl is tossed around mercilessly, comes to an end in a very American leap of faith: the beauty of the landscape. For a writer who’d only known America through guide books, that’s quite a moving tribute indeed.