DC is for (Movie) Lovers

 

Washington DC can fairly be called a city of museums. Thanks to the long-ago generosity of a wealthy Brit who never made it onto American soil, the capital city of the new United States  built a castle-like museum on its national mall. From these beginnings back in 1846, the Smithsonian has evolved into a massive umbrella organization for some twenty-one museums, as well as libraries, research centers, and even a zoo. Most, though not all, of the Smithsonian’s treasures are located in the heart of the District of Columbia, where they can be visited sevcn days a week, free of charge. DC is also the home of many other remarkable educational sites (some public, some private)  designed for the public’s education and enjoyment. As someone obsessed with movies, I was surprised by the many creative ways in which film and video have been  put to use for visitors’ education and enjoyment.

 Of course some of the Smithsonian’s most popular museums use film to show us glimpses of a nation’s preoccupations over time. The African American Museum contains film clips from the bad old days when people of color were automatically assumed to be either brutal defilers of white women (see Birth of a Nation) or lovable mammies (see Gone With the Wind). The Museum of American History, one of my very favorites, boasts a pop culture exhibit that shows how films can help raise discussions about complex issues, like What is Justice? Or What is Family? Or What is Love? (In this day and age, I was impressed to see clips from such still-controversial films as Brokeback Mountain.) But this same museum also shows off footage and memorabilia from well-loved classics, like The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars, that underscore the romantic idealism of the American people. Dorothy’s ruby slippers –which have long been on view in this museum—seem to be a special favorite of visitors. In the museum’s gift shop, you can even buy a T-shirt bearing a sketch of the slippers, still on the feet of the now-expired Wicked With of the East, along with these words: SHOES TO DIE FOR.  

 What surprised me was how many museums now use sophisticated video applications to connect the individual viewer with the exhibit. At the Museum of American History you can virtually try on clothing from the museum’s historic collection by using your cellphone and following posted instructions. At the International Spy Museum (a pricey but fascinating attraction that’s not under Smithsonian auspices), you can establish your own spy identity, and even (via video) be outfitted in a nifty disguise of your own choosing. (I’ve supplied a photo, below, of my adventures in spycraft.)  

 The huge stately building dubbed the National Archives is best known for housing our nation’s essential documents, like the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. But the lower floor of the building on Constitution Avenue also features serious exhibits pertaining to social issues,, with showcases devoted to such-hot button topics as immigration, civil rights, and the struggle of women to attain the vote. Naturally, newsreel footage of protest marches is prominently featured.

 One floor up, before you get to exhibits celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, there’s a surprising opportunity to be interactive.  On a large screen you see these words: “THE AMERICAN STORY. The film collection of the National Archives contains motion pictures made by the U.S. government to engage and inform  Americans.”  If you’re tech savvy, you can sign in to a favorite topic, then watch appropriate films to your heart’s content.

                                                    Shhh! Beverly in disguise
 

                                

 

 

 

 

Listing All-American Movies

In the wake of this historic (and very unusual) 4^th of July holiday weekend, news outlets have been vying with one another to publish articles that are relevant to the story of the United States. This past Sunday, film critics at the Los Angeles Times joined together to produce a feature titled “10 Must-Watch Movies That Capture America in Times of Profound Change.” Here are their topic choices: (In every category there are also a few alternate suggestions.)

(1)   THE GREAT DEPRESSION: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

(    (2)   POSTWAR OPTIMISM: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

(    (3)   CAPITALISM, UNCHECKED: There Will Be Blood (2007)

((  (4)   POST-VIETNAM/WATERGATE CYNICISM: Nashville (1975)

((   (5)  MEDIA DOMINATION: Network (1976)

(6  (6)  GENTRIFICATION AND RACIAL TENSIIONS: Do the Right Thing (1989)

(7  (7) RISE OF THE YUPPIES: They Live (1988)

( ) (8) ‘80s WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: Working Girl (1988)

(9 (9)  DIGITAL ALIENATION: The Social Network (2010)

(1 (10) POST-9/11 ANXIETIES: Team America: World Police (2004)

 To me this is, for the most part, an excellent list. I would certainly put The Grapes of Wrath, The Best Years of Our Lives, Network, and Do The Right Thing on any best-film list I was compiling. By the same token, I wonder about the criteria at work here. Why is the 19^th century (especially the Civil War) so completely ignored? Why does this list contain not a single work made in the turbulent 1960s? I am particularly passionate about a seminal film year, 1967, which captured for a mass audience the tensions both between races and between generations. (Here are four of the five Oscar Best Picture Nominees for that year in film: Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to  Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate). Every one of these very distinctive films, screened in a turbulent year, has something vitally important to say about the differences that keep Americans apart.

 I also don’t see on the critics’ list any representation of films shot in the 1990s. That was a period  that balanced social optimism with the belated acknowledgment of the scourge of HIV, especially as it applied to the nation’s gay community. Remarkably, it was America’s favorite Everyman, Tom Hanks, who starred in a mainstream Hollywood movie that  finally looked with compassion on the plight of a gay man dying of AIDS. Hanks’ willingness to take on this role, especially after other leading men had turned it down, marked a new era for audiences and for the motion picture community, which honored Hanks with his first Oscar for this acting challenge. (Just one year later, he won again, for the very different Forrest Gump, which contained—in many people’s eyes—its own much more subtle AIDS reference.)

 Another film I think should be noted was also made in the Nineties, and also starred Tom Hanks, who seems to have a special talent for representing what’s on the minds of his fellow Americans. The 1995 film Apollo 13 (perhaps the seminal achievement of director Ron Howard) is a celebration both of American technological excellence and of the brave astronauts who are vaulting us into the world of the future. Apollo 13 was made, with the full cooperation of NASA, to showcase the story of a near outer-space disaster that, happily, turned into a human triumph. It’s surprising indeed to me that the L.A. Times critics seem to have nothing to say about American technological mastery. Social media (as shown in such listed films as The Social Network) has certainly changed all of our lives, but our relationship to our planet has also certainly evolved, right? 

 

They Could Have Been Contenders: The Hollywood Blacklist

I’m just back from a week in Washington, DC. To my surprise, the nation’s capital currently seems a lot more bipartisan than I would have guessed. Yes, there were giant Trump portraits hanging from some prominent government buildings. But I also saw a major Washington boulevard shut down on behalf of a wild and crazy Gay Pride festival. And overt dissent was on display nearby: outside a tent manned by some dedicated anti-Trumpers, I spotted a large placard that gave MAGA a new definition: Make Algae Great Again.

 Washington’s wonderful Smithsonian museums (open daily and free to all comers) seemed as welcoming and as even-handed as ever, pointing up our nation’s failings but also its glories.  Some of the city’s private museums, though, were clearly interested in viewing today’s deep political divide in the context of past eras that were equally contentious. That certainly seemed part of the reason the Capital Jewish Museum is now hosting an exhibit called “Blacklisted: An American Story.” Its focus is on the era—starting in 1947 and lasting until the early Sixties—when the House Un-American Activities Committee was terrorizing Hollywood, forcing the major studios to remove from their ranks anyone (Jewish or otherwise) who had ever been sympathetic to the Communist party. (The only way to return to the film industry’s good graces in that era was to dish up the names of others whose politics were—or had ever been—suspect.)

 As part of this exhibit, the museum showed a series of film clips relevant to the blacklist period. Two of the films were directed by Elia Kazan. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) makes a brave argument against the built-in anti-Semitism of that era; the clip from On the Waterfront (1954) shows Marlon Brando as a longshoreman and would-be boxer climatically choosing to risk everything by bringing a mob boss to justice. Because Kazan was infamously known as one of those who “named names” to save his own career, many in Hollywood never forgave him. Orson Welles, for one, disparaged the latter film as “a celebration of the informant.”

 Three films written by Dalton Trumbo are also included in this montage. Two are from 1960, when the once-disgraced Trumbo was finally able to resume getting on-screen credit for his work. After writing Spartacus, he was championed by star Kirk Douglas, to whom he said, “Thanks, Kirk, for giving me back my name.” On earlier Trumbo films that appeared during the blacklist era, Trumbo had had to submit each of his scripts under a fictive monicker, or that of another writer. The screenwriting Oscar he won in 1954 for crafting under an assumed name the delightful (and totally apolitical) Roman Holiday was not awarded to him until 1993, almost three decades after his death.

 The exhibit also focuses on the sad example of John Garfield, one of many actors whose careers (and lives) were destroyed during the blacklist years. Garfield (born Jacob Garfinkle on New York’s Lower East Side) was a longtime supporter of liberal causes. He began appearing in major Hollywood films in 1938, usually in blue-collar roles, and was twice nominated for Oscars, notably for his lead role in the 1947 boxing film, Body and Soul. But his refusal to speak against his wife (once a member of the Communist Party) as well as his unwillingness to provide the House committee with the names of other Hollywood “Reds” ultimately destroyed him. He died of a heart attack in 1932 at the age of 39, just after a dream project in which he was to star was abruptly cancelled.

Despite it all, Happy 4^th of July!

John Garfield, with quote from his daughter