Climbing The 39 Steps

 The great Alfred Hitchcock directed his first film in 1922. He started in the silent era, and most of his early efforts have been lost. By 1935, when he premiered The 39 Steps, he was no novice, but it would take several more years before he transferred his macabre vision of life from English to Hollywood soundstages.

 I first knew The 39 Steps as a remarkably silly stage production that showed up on Broadway circa 2008 after a successful British run. The hard-working cast of four played all the roles in this espionage thriller, and elaborate scenic effects (like a working railway train) were hilariously worked into the production. But Hitchcock’s original film (loosely based on a 1915 novel) takes itself a bit more seriously. This despite the fact that the mordant Hitchcock wit is very much in evidence.

 One key fact about The 39 Steps is how much it became a template for later Hitchcock masterworks like North by Northwest. It deals with matters of life and death, but for most of the film the tone is relatively light. Except, of course, when a mysterious lady to whom Richard Hannay gives shelter in his London flat ends up dead as a door-nail the next morning, with a knife sticking out of her back. Hannay, played by the dapper Robert Donat, is very much a precursor for Cary Grant and the other actors who’ve played Hitchcock’s “wrong man” roles. Everyone thinks he’s a murderer, which is why he has to flee from London to the Scottish highlands. But in fact he finds himself more and more embroiled in a scheme that’s never entirely clear, though it seems to involve the sending of super-modern aircraft plans to an enemy nation. (The threat of impending war in Europe understandably hangs over the film.) It’s been said that this aircraft can be considered an early Hitchcock McGuffin—this being a Hitchcock-named thingumajig that everyone chases after, thus providing the engine for a film’s plot.  

 Donat, as Richard Hannay, manages to keep things light, even while being chased by everyone under the sun. Eventually there’s a woman—Madeleine Carroll as perhaps the first Hitchcock blonde—who first rebuffs our hero and then, of course, succumbs to his charm, in the course of a priceless scene in which the two (handcuffed together by thugs claiming to be police officers) have to pose as runaway lovers at a Scottish country inn. There are also some wonderful train scenes (Hitchcock clearly adored trains), in which Hannay tries not to attract attention while the  two businessmen in his compartment discuss at length the latest styles in women’s undergarments.

 But it’s not all fun and games. There are additional threats of violence, of course, and also an extraordinarily poignant scene in which Hannay seeks shelter at a farmhouse in the Scottish countryside. His host for the evening is a cranky old coot who will put him up, for a fee, but certainly doesn’t trust him. When Hannay enters the rustic home, he sees an attractive young woman, who turns out to be not the coot’s daughter but his wife. Peggy Ashcroft, in this small but significant role, clearly longs for Hannay and the big-city world he represents. In the wee hours, as his adversaries close in on him, she helps him to escape, giving him her husband’s warm coat . . .  which leads to a clever plot-twist. But the result for her is her husband’s wrath, and a vicious slap we hear though we don’t see it. (Not everything in Hitchcock is a joke.)

 

 

The Philadelphia (and Newport, Rhode Island) Story

High Society (1956) promises fun at the movies. And it delivers. This spritely screwball musical stars Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, both of whose characters are at least somewhat in love with an elegant heiress, Tracy Lord, played by the blonde and beautiful Grace Kelly. This was to be Kelly’s very last movie role before she married a real-life Prince Charming and became Princess Grace of Monaco. Rounding out the cast are the acerbic Celeste Holm and the delightfully ebullient Louis Armstrong. The setting is ritzy Newport, Rhode Island, where the central characters live in posh mansions, surrounded by fawning retainers.  

 Armstrong’s presence is explained by the fact that there’s a jazz festival in the vicinity. He acts as a kind of narrator to open and close the film; he also memorably duets with Crosby on the up-tempo "Now You Has Jazz.” In this story, Crosby plays  C. K. Dexter Haven, a well-heeled singer/composer who is Tracy Lord’s neighbor, as well as her former husband. Though they were once deeply attached, and shared a romantic honeymoon aboard a yacht called the “True Love,” affection has turned to loathing (on Tracy’s part, at least), followed by an acrimonious divorce. Now Tracy is on the brink of marrying a staid businessman, and Dex wanders over to observe the hubbub. You see, C. K. Dexter Haven has (in his relaxed way) never quite gotten over Tracy, and he’s hanging around to check on what his former wife is up to.

 Also in residence on the wedding weekend are a magazine journalist (Sinatra) and his photographer sidekick (Holm), determined to get a scoop on this big society event. Everything goes haywire on the night before the nuptials, when Tracy gets drunk and Sinatra’s character gallantly comes to her rescue.

 The Cole Porter ditties (including the romantic hit, “True Love” and a nifty Crosby/Sinatra duet) are appealing, and there are no false notes among the performers. Still, seeing High Society again after many years, I became convinced that there was a better version of this tale to be found. And so, of course, there is. Back in 1940, the great George Cukor directed The Philadelphia Story, based on a Philip Barry stage hit that starred Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn’s Hollywood career had recently been foundering, and so she bought the play’s film rights in order to reintroduce herself to the moviegoing public. It worked magnificently well, especially since Cukor invited two of the era’s brightest male stars, Cary Grant and James Stewart, to play the main men in her life., If Hoboken’s rough-and-tumble Frank Sinatra is amusing when he romances the soignée Grace Kelly in and around her estate’s swimming pool, imagine how much funnier it is when aw-shucks Jimmy Stewart pitches woo to the imperious Hepburn. And of course Cary Grant is Cary Grant, effortlessly suave and just the fellow to tame this particular shrew. What we love about Katharine Hepburn is how wonderfully she plays a woman who is absolutely wrong about pretty much everything. Seeing her get her comeuppance is a delight for those of us who admire strong women but also place great stock in happily-ever-after.

 F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, insisted that the very rich “are different from you and me.” To which his pal Ernest Hemingway wryly reposted, “Yes, they have more money.” Movie fans, particularly in the years coming out of the Great Depression, preferred to think that—despite all their riches—the wealthy could be as foolish as those of us with emptier pockets. The Philadelphia Story certainly proves this is so.   

 

M is for Matriarch: “Greek Mothers Never Die”

With Mothers Day on the horizon, I’ve started thinking about movies in which mothers are front and center. All kinds of mothers. Noble, self-sacrificing mothers (Stella Dallas). Shrill harridans who make their kids’ lives miserable (Mommie Dearest).  In a dark comedic vain, mothers who mean well but drive their children crazy (Throw Momma from the Train).

In a special category are family films showcasing American kids who chafe against the rules and superstitions of their old-world mothers. Such films, comedies with a sharp edge, blend a scrutiny of family relationships with the humor we find in newcomers (or those remaining close to their immigrant roots) who don’t quite fit into their American surroundings. There was a time, back in the early Philip Roth era (let’s say the late 1960s) when Jewish mothers were considered comedy gold. The stereotype of the abrasive, all-consuming Jewish Mother shows up in movies made from works by such hot young novelists as Roth and Bruce Jay Friedman. See, of course, Portnoy’s Complaint (filmed in 1972 with Lee Grant in the mother role). And, in the same category, see portrayals by Shelley Winters in films like Next Stop, Greenwich Village and Over the Brooklyn Bridge. 

Of course, other ethnicities have their own humor focused on moms who refuse to let go of what they see as their duty to the families they’ve created. There’s a touch of this in the hit 1987 comedy, Moonstruck, which won Olympia Dukakis an Oscar for her portrayal of the Italian-American family matriarch. Ironically, although Dukakis came from Greek immigrant stock on both sides, she was nowhere to be seen in 2002’s huge indie hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, in which Mama was memorably played by Lainie Kazan. 

The longterm public enthusiasm surrounding My Big Fat Greek Wedding—which spawned two sequels and a 2003 sitcom—has seemed to propel Greek Americans into the ranks of funny foreigners with crazy accents and wacky beliefs. Just in time for Mothers Day, writer-director-actor Rachel Suissa gives us Greek Mothers Never Die, a well-meaning comedy that juxtaposes an epic mother/daughter clash with the kind of supernatural underpinnings that mark generations of movies like All of Me, Death Becomes Her, and (for those with long memories ) the Topper series.

 In the Topper movies and the later TV sitcom, a stuffy bank president is haunted by the ghosts of a fun-loving young couple (originally played by Constance Bennett and Cary Grant) who try to teach him to relax and enjoy life. The dead (and very Greek) mother in Greek Mothers Never Die constantly shows herself to her daughter, an aspiring singer now living on an island in Florida, to dispense maternal wisdom about life’s dangers. In Mama Despina’s mind, olive oil is the nectar of the gods, and pretty much everything else on earth (from butter to pre-marital sex) may well lead to cancer. But though she’ll never dispense with worry and warnings, Despina truly has daughter Ella’s best interests at heart. She can orchestrate a dandy makeover, and knows just which young doctor will be the right future mate for her late-blooming little girl. (A telling moment: on Ella and Nick’s first romantic night together, guess who shows up lying between them?) 

This is not the sort of movie in which traditional Greek religion occupies much of a role. The characters hardly feel a deep link to their Greek Orthodox faith. Still, there’s room for some amusing ancient Greek mythological deities (Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and so on) to comment on the romantic action. But Mama is the true deus ex machina here.

The film is released by Gravitas Ventures and is now available on AppleTV+

 

Cinema and the City: New York, New York

I’m newly back from New York City, a place where you’d think the locals would look down on Hollywood. New Yorkers, after all, have Broadway, as well as some of the world’s best museums and attractions. Yet Hollywood loves making movies about New York City, even giving them evocative titles like Manhattan and New York, New York. In films, New York City seems made for romance—see everything from Splash (where a mermaid comes ashore in front of the Statue of Liberty) to Moonstruck to You’ve Got Mail. And of course there are celebrated TV series like Sex and  the City, in which every central character is hot, funny, and out looking for Mr. (or Ms.) Right. 

What I learned on my most recent trip to the Big Apple is that New Yorkers too are secretly infatuated by the lure of Hollywood. They support funky little neighborhood cinemas, and gather in local eateries for Oscar watch parties. They’re proud of landmark locations like the exterior of Carrie Bradshaw’s Sex and the City apartment on Perry Street in the West Village. If you visit the museum near the top of the Empire State Building, you’ll find yourself surrounded by reminders of how many films include the famous skyscraper in pivotal moments. There are tearjerkers like An Affair to Remember, in which an attempted meeting at the top of the building leads to near tragedy. (The famous Cary Grant/ Deborah Kerr scene was to be mirrored, decades later, by the romantic climax of Sleepless in Seattle.) There’s also a joyous dance number in the World War II classic, On the Town, that takes place on a soundstage re-creation of the building’s observation deck.

But of course the most famous use of the Empire State Building (or a Hollywood facsimile thereof) occurred back in 1933 when a giant ape climbed the skyscraper with Fay Wray in its arms, only to be shot down by a passel of buzzing biplanes. Today the building’s museum can’t get enough of King Kong: there are posters and models, and you can pose looking horrified while in the grip of the ape’s enormous fist. (I admit that I couldn’t resist trying it out.)  

Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where generations of immigrants have crowded into tenements while trying to pursue their own American dreams, also has movie and showbiz connections that go back generations. This slightly squalid but picturesque area is home to a cramped little shop called Orchard Corset. It’s been around since 1949, and in the same family since 1968, but these days it doesn’t cater solely to buxom mamas from the neighborhood. This is the place from which none other than Madonna orders her sexy custom bustiers. And Orchard Corset is also beloved by theatrical costume designers, who count on the shop to supply period-appropriate undergarments. Remember the 1950s-era torpedo bosoms featured in the TV series, Mad Men? Where do you think those imposing bras were found? (Improbably, Orchard Corset also does a lively mail-order business from a site in Wenatchee, Washington.)   

Visitors to the Lower East Side would be well advised to check out the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where you can book tours of what once were the cramped little quarters of Jewish and Italian immigrants. What’s special is that these tiny apartments reflect the actual daily lives of specific well-researched families. In one flat, circa 1935, the children’s bedroom reflects a fascination with Hollywood glamour. On the wall over a young girl’s bed you can see vintage images of her movieland favorites: a very young Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford.  

                                                                                    

The Play’s the Thing: "Arsenic and Old Lace"

Once upon a time, hit movies got their start as Broadway plays. This was long true of blockbuster musicals, of course: think of the stage-to-screen metamorphosis of (for example) Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Fiddler on the Roof. (Today, though musical theatre is a much harder sell than it once was, the current box-office success of the screen’s Wicked reminds us how a beloved stage play can translate into a motion picture bonanza.)  But stage comedies without musical underpinnings have also been the source of screen success. Think back to 1936, and the Kaufman and Hart screwball stage hit, You Can’t Take It With You, about a family of lovable eccentrics whose daughter falls in love with the son of a stodgy banker.  Two years later, the play was filmed with an all-star cast led by Jean Arthur, James Stewart, and Lionel Barrymore, winning Oscars for Best Picture and for Frank Capra’s direction.  

The awards racked up by You Can’t Take It With You may have been somewhat unique (it’s rare for light comedies to take home top prizes), but there was a time when many a Broadway comedy enjoyed additional kudos for its screen iteration. Clearly loads of people who lived far from Broadway were eager to see shows they’d only heard about, especially if their favorite Hollywood stars appeared in the movie version. Here’s one example: a little farce called The Solid Gold Cadillac, a big Broadway hit of the 1954-55 season, was filmed in 1956. The little old lady of the stage version—someone who upends the business world with her unexpected financial savvy—became in the film the much-younger, much-cuter Judy Holliday, who won critical praise and a Golden Globe nomination. 

Which leads me to mention that the little-old-lady star of the original stage version of The Solid Gold Cadillac was Josephine Hull, who was almost 80 when she created the role. Though she lost that part to the thirty-something Holliday, she did appear on screen in several classic stage-to-screen transfers, including Harvey (that’s the one with the invisible rabbit) and Arsenic and Old Lace. For the latter, released on screen in 1944, Frank Capra was again involved. This time the laughs came from a macabre set-up involving a Brooklyn theatre critic whose two sweet elderly aunts have a surprising habit of bumping off lonely old men with glasses of elderberry wine, delicately laced with arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide.

 In the film version, Mortimer Brewster (a newlywed after a lifetime of disparaging marriage) is played by none other than Cary Grant. I’ve enjoyed Grant’s appearances in many film comedies (from Bringing Up Baby to Charade), but this may be his most physical role of all. His job is chiefly to react with astonishment to all the zany, grisly doings occurring around him, and Grant is definitely up to the challenge: watching him drop his jaw, bug out his eyes, and do elaborate double-takes is a masterclass in comedic acting. But there are lots of other talented farceurs involved. Chief among them are Jack Carson as a cop with dramatic ambitions, Edward Everett Horton as the proprietor of a lunatic asylum, Jean Adair as Josephine Hull’s lovably addled sister, and the inimitable Peter Lorre as a surgeon with a serious drinking problem. The stage version had featured Boris Karloff as Mortimer’s disfigured (and very scary) brother. As the biggest name in the cast (as well as the play’s chief investor), Karloff couldn’t leave the play to perform in the film version, so Raymond Massey (in Frankenstein-adjacent Karloff makeup) does the honors. 

 

Katharine Hepburn is (and is not) Sylvia Scarlett

I just finished watching an early cinematic romp starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Bringing Up Baby? Nope. The Philadelphia Story? Still nope.  While reading an advance copy of Joseph McBride’s fascinating George Cukor’s People: Acting for a Master Director, I became curious about a vintage film I had only barely heard of. Its name: Sylvia Scarlett. This 1935 flop was Cukor and Hepburn’s quixotic attempt to circumvent the Hollywood standards of the day. It’s the story of a young woman trying to protect her petty-criminal father by disguising herself as a young male as the two go on the lam, Hepburn’s transformation from female to male and back again was not taken well by the audiences of the day, nor by Hepburn’s studio, RKO, which demanded an inept explanatory prologue in which she appears in long braids and speaks in a meek girlish voice.

 The questions about gender and sexuality just beneath the film’s surface have belatedly made Sylvia Scarlett a favorite of feminists and some branches of the gay community. Personally, I consider it something of a mess, though a fascinating one. Various aspects of the plot are inconsistent, or just don’t make sense. Hepburn, though, is a marvel to watch. After that silly prologue, Hepburn in cropped hair and boys’ clothing is wonderfully convincing. The film makes full use of her natural athleticism (we see her jump over fences and climb through windows, and there’s a key instance when she plunges into a turbulent ocean to save someone from drowning). There are also those magical moments when she seems trapped by her disguise, trembling on the brink of declaring that she/he is in love. But when she decides to give in to her undeniable female self, dressing in a filmy frock and picture hat, we don’t believe her at all. Though Hepburn as pretty ingenue seems to enthrall the eligible men around her, it strikes the audience as a grotesque betrayal of her genuine personality.

 It was especially this film that caused Hollywood to label Hepburn “box office poison.” When she regained popularity, it was through roles that allowed her to be spirited and spunky, but also much more conventionally female, and ultimately content to accept a bit of male domination.  See, of course, her later outings with the hyper-male Spencer Tracy, and also her role opposite Cary Grant in Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story, wherein machismo ultimately wins the day. But the Sylvia Scarlett project hints that Hepburn, like the not-so-closeted Cukor, was shaped by a form of sexuality that was out of the ordinary, what we might call a complex mixture of yin and yang.

 The DVD version I watched, part of the Warner Brothers archive collection, has as an extra a short vintage travelogue that should delight every Angeleno. Advertised as A FitzPatrick Travel Talk, this Technicolor short is titled “Los Angeles, Wonder City of the West.” The L.A. about which the narrator enthuses (consistently calling my hometown “Las Angle-Us”) was then the country’s fifth largest city, boasting a population of 2 ¼ million souls. The travelogue begins with the lovely “Spanish” senoritas of Olvera Street, then coasts down “modern” thoroughfares, waxing lyrical about wacky features like the long-gone Brown Derby. Of course there’s a visit to several movie studios, complete with a sighting of Walt Disney himself, bouncing out of his modest headquarters to smile amiably for the camera, as “Whistle While You Work” plays on the soundtrack. We end up at the Hollywood Bowl, as some cuties and muscle-men rehearse a “cultural” dance performance that looks like pure kitsch. Those were the days!   

 

The Olympic Games Go Hollywood

Now that the Paris Olympics are history, I can go back to watching movies instead of international sporting events. But I must say I fully enjoyed 16 days of stirring competition, despite the sometimes smarmy NBC coverage and (of course) the endless commercials. The games themselves were mostly a delight: exciting outcomes, lots of sideline drama, and the most beautiful locations imaginable. (How can L.A. in 2028 possibly hope to compete with those shots of the Eiffel Tower? Honestly, the plugs at the end of the late-night broadcast for our next Olympic Games made my birth city look gorgeous, though I’ve learned that a lot of the hoopla on the beach was filmed not in L.A. or Santa Monica but some miles down the freeway in Long Beach.) 

 Once upon a time, I was lucky to attend the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. It was a simpler era, with less demand for outsized spectacle. The highlights, as I remember them, included the finale of the first-ever women’s Olympic marathon: we all cheered for the last-place finisher as she staggered painfully into the Coliseum, clearly ailing but waving off medical help because she was determined to finish the race. There was also Lionel Ritchie singing about partying as though it were 1999 (that date seemed so far off!). And the Joffrey Ballet (then L.A.-based) performed in tandem with a Korean dance troupe, as a prelude to 1988 in Seoul.

 One thing that surprised me about Paris 2024 was the TV coverage’s repeated emphasis on Hollywood stars in the stands. The NBC cameras picked out the celebs: Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman, Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, et al. Then of course there was the constant intrusion of ageing rapper Snoop Dog, sometimes with his BFF (really!) Martha Stewart. True, Snoop does come off as surprisingly endearing, but I would have strongly preferred coverage of some of the more obscure sports and some of the more exotic national teams. I’m sure they had their own stories to tell.

 At the Paris closing ceremony, following a rather overblown dance-drama about the resurrection of the Olympic games of ancient Greece, we moved into an L.A. state of mind via a memorable stunt that underscored the Hollywood aspects of Southern California.  It featured none other than Tom Cruise, plunging into the stadium from on high, grabbing the Olympic flag, and roaring off on a handy motorcycle, heading through the streets of Paris to an L.A.-bound plane. What fun! But also a promise that LA 2028 would be heavily invested in Hollywood star culture.

 Which made me muse  about how many movies have used the Olympics as their climax. Some have been silly (like Walk, Don’t Run, a wildly exaggerated look at Tokyo 1964 that featured race-walking and Cary Grant). Some have been stirring, like The Boys in the Boat and (best of the lot) Chariots of Fire. Of course there have been documentaries too. The most notorious is Olympia, the portrait of the 1936 Munich games by Adolf Hitler’s favorite filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl. Tasked with glorifying the Fatherland, she introduced brilliant camera techniques that are still widely used today. She also included plenty of awe-inspiring Hitler footage, but couldn’t resist according the same admiring gaze to the Black American athlete Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in track and field events.

 It used to be that newly-minted Olympic champions went to Hollywood and got turned into movie stars. Like Johnny (Tarzan) Weissmuller and skating cutie Sonja Henie. But it didn’t always work. Remember the acting career of Mark Spitz?  

 

High Anxiety: Mid-Level Mel Brooks

What would we do without Mel Brooks? He’s been the comic genius behind TV (Get Smart) and recordings (2000 Year Old Man), but I associate him mostly with movies, as a writer, a director, and sometimes a star. His first directorial outing was in 1967, as writer/director of The Producers, which introduced the world to the outrageous combination of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, as well as to the most hilariously tasteless production number of all times, “Springtime for Hitler.” I suspect that if you watch the film you’ll agree it runs out of steam midway though, but Brooks would later enlarge it into a Broadway musical blockbuster.

 I’m fond of The Twelve Chairs, Brooks’ off-the-wall 1970 look at Tsarist Russia. (I’ve adopted its original song, “Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst,” as my own personal philosophy of life.) But Brooks’ greatest year was arguably 1974, when he introduced not one but two comedic masterworks, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Both showcase Brooks’ talent for parody, his success at spoofing familiar genres like the Western and the classic monster flick. Next came the considerably more effortful Silent Movie, featuring Brooks favorites Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise, along with a cast of Hollywood stars in cameo roles. In 1977 it was back to a genre spoof: Brooks’ High Anxiety (despite its title’s witty nod to High Society) is dedicated to poking fun at the suspense classics of shockmeister Alfred Hitchcock. Many critics have noted that Hitchcock’s films are themselves frequently tongue-in-cheek, and don’t need to be parodied. Still, there’s fun to be had in seeing how many Hitchcock references you can spot.

 First of all, the jaundiced look at the whole field of psychiatry reminds us of Hitchcock’s 1945 Spellbound. Here Brooks himself plays an eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Thorndyke, who has flown out to California to lead the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous,  a place that is clearly not as salubrious as it seems. (Thorndyke’s name is an immediate reminder of Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill in  North by Northwest.) Despite his sterling reputation, Thorndyke is suffering from a Brooksian psychological ailment called “high anxiety,” which seems a cross between vertigo and acrophobia. He is not helped by the institute’s location, high above the rocky shoals of the Pacific, and his troubles are compounded when he’s victimized by a flock of pooping pigeons, à la Hitchcock’s The Birds.

 Things go from bad to worse when Thorndyke attends a conference in San Francisco, where he’s housed on the 14^th floor of the brand-new Hyatt Regency. This real locale was famous in its day for being built around an enormous atrium that would make almost anyone dizzy if she were on the top floor looking down. Of course there’s a beautiful, mysterious Hitchcock blonde (Madeline Kahn) who needs his help, leading to the film’s single most hilarious scene: when they sneak a gun past airport security by posing as the world’s most annoying traveling couple. Predictably the film’s climax is staged as an homage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, with Dr. Thorndyke forced to pursue the bad guys up the high twisted staircase of the institute’s bell tower. Of course villains like Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman get their comeuppance, and everyone else lives happily ever after.  Kudos to the 1940s-style black & white cinematography and the surreal elements borrowed from Salvador Dali’s Spellbound dream sequence.

 I’m told Hitchcock himself was mightily amused. He reportedly sent Brooks a case of six magnums of fine wine with a note that read, "A small token of my pleasure, have no anxiety about this."

 A very happy 98th birthday to the 2,000-Year-Old Man! 

 

 

 

Captivated by “Charade”

Valentine’s Day is a grand excuse to catch up on romantic films. The 2022 additions to the National Film Registry include some great ones. When the list was announced last December, I was otherwise engaged. But Valentine’s Day 2023 reminded me that, two months back, several classics of the genre were deemed worthy of Library of Congress preservation. For the animation crowd, there’s Disney’s charming and family-friendly The Little Mermaid. For rom-com lovers (and lovers in general), there’s the wise and witty When Harry Met Sally. Not only is this one of the most quotable movies of all times (“I’ll have what she’s having”) but it makes a trip to a certain crowded Lower East Side deli much more exciting.  Manhattan, of course, is always a popular backdrop for screen romance. But me, I’ll take Paris . . . and another entry on the Library of Congress list. Yes, I mean Charade.

 I never saw Charade when it was first released in 1963. Frankly, I tended to confuse it with another delightfully wacky romantic comedy from later in that decade: How To Steal a Million. There was a certain amount of overlap between the two: Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy and Paris in the spring, both on grand display. Charade of course had a musical theme that was on everyone’s lips: Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s lilting (and Oscar-nominated) song remains a classic, and I can’t imagine how it was beaten out for the statuette by “Call Me Irresponsible,” from something called Papa’s Delicate Condition.

 What Charade also has is a real sense of danger. Even as the story begins, with Hepburn’s character lunching al fresco, backed by snowclad mountains, the barrel of a pistol pokes into the frame. It’s a joke involving a naughty kid with a squirt gun, but the possibility that anything can happen does linger. Hepburn’s Regina may be a kook given to rattling off droll non-sequiturs, but there’s a real sense of shock when she returns home from her ski vacation to a palatial flat that’s completely empty, along with the news that her husband has been tossed from a train while on a baffling errand. And then there are those three Ugly Americans (played by Hollywood stalwarts George Kennedy, Ned Glass, and James Coburn) who keep following her around, demanding a huge sum of money . . . or else!

 What’s a girl to do? If she’s Audrey Hepburn in Charade, she turns to the older and wiser Cary Grant, an innocent bystander—or is he? Charade does a remarkable job of encouraging our emotions (like Hepburn’s) to turn on a dime, while blood is shed and promises are proven to be lies. Cheers to the screenwriters, and to director Stanley Donen, who keep us guessing as to where all the twists and turns will lead.

 Looking back, the early Sixties was a wonderful era for satisfying film entertainment. Stars like Hepburn and Grant were larger than life: they were as beautiful as the bad guys were ugly. Paces were swift, and outcomes (after a lot of canny misdirection) were what we’d want them to be. After the lights came up, there was nothing to be puzzled about, and no social ill that we’d been charged with fixing. Lively, jazzy music made sure we were effortlessly swept along by a cleverly designed story. In Charade, even the opening credits contribute: after some somber shots of a railroad train and then a man tumbling  down an embankment, the screen erupts into a kaleidoscopic frenzy of neon-colored lines and squiggles. Ah, Paris! Ah, Hollywood! 

 

 

Walking, Not Running, to Cinematic Gold: The Olympics at the Movies

I’m a great armchair Olympics fan. Much as I love movies, I’m mesmerized by spectacles, like sporting events, in which the outcome is entirely uncertain. In which the better competitor – at least on paper -- doesn’t always win. But watching the 2020/2021 Olympiad is not always pleasant. There’s been joy, certainly, but often the mood has been sober, even somber. It’s daunting to learn that Simon Biles is human after all, and even more daunting to discover that the boo-birds are now calling her names because, at a time of personal crisis, she’s not willing to put her body at risk for the sake of a medallion on a ribbon.

 Of course there’ve been movies about the Olympics, largely more focused on the joy of victory than the agony of defeat. After all, we expect our Olympics movies to be uplifting. One that certainly filled the bill was the 1982 top Oscar winner, Chariots of Fire. Some consider it soppy now, but I look back on this film with great pleasure. It’s a canny mix of history lesson and heart-tugging emotion, highlighting the fate of two very different runners on the British team that traveled to Paris in 1924 to compete in Olympic track and field. Ian Charleson plays Eric Liddell, a Scottish missionary to China who runs for the glory of God. Ben Cross portrays Harold Abrahams, a Jewish student at Cambridge who fights class snobbery and polite anti-Semitism as he exercises his passion for running. Each of the men succeeds, in his own way, with Abrahams, despite his less-than-lofty pedigree, going on to become the grand old man of British athletics.  Hokey? Maybe, but it really happened, and it’s fascinating to see the early days of a famous sports competition. And that much-parodied opening, with the runners – in training – striding down a Scottish beach to the majestic Vangelis score never fails to inspire me.

 The Tokyo Olympics of 1964 itself led to several films. One was a masterful documentary, Tokyo Olympiad, by Kon Ichikawa. Far more than a record of what happened at the Olympics that marked Japan’s post-war rise, it is a celebration of athletes and athletics, as well as a joyous view of the people of Tokyo interacting with a world event. The other film that captures (sort of) the Tokyo I remember from my college days is a breezy 1966 romantic comedy that updates a 1943 feature called The More the Merrier. The original had lampooned the post-World War II housing shortage in Washington DC. Walk, Don’t Run takes that plot thread and applies it to Tokyo, just prior to the Olympics: pretty Samantha Eggar announces she’ll be willing to share her apartment during the games, but she’s shocked when her applicant turns out to be Cary Grant, in his last film role, as a suave British tycoon who’s arrived too early for his luxurious hotel suite. And she’s even more flummoxed when Grant invites in a needy young American architect (Jim Hutton) who also happens to be a U.S. team member. Naturally, sparks fly, though Grant (who at sixty-plus had decided he was too old for romantic roles) plays Cupid, not Romeo.

 The film makes much (rather dated) comedy out of national stereotypes: obsequious Japanese, stuffy British, brash Americans, Russians bent on either drinking or spying. And despite the glimpses we catch of authentic Olympic venues, the film’s handling of the actual games is not exactly convincing. But the scene of Grant, in his skivvies, race-walking through crowded Tokyo streets to stave off a romantic kerfuffle is one worth savoring.