LADY AND THE TRAMP
(Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske, 1955).
I'm not a big Disney fan, but I've always had a fondness for this movie
- a guilty pleasure, if you will. Seeing it again, I believe that my
pleasure needn't be so guilty. This is a film of gentle charm and wit,
one of the more underrated animated Disney features.
Lady is a cocker spaniel living in domestic comfort with her owners,
"Jim Dear" and "Darling," until the status quo is upset by the arrival
of a baby. The Tramp is a street mutt who romances Lady and tries to
get her to run off with him. The story details the joys and challenges
of a dog's life with whimsical bits of humor, character, and song -
nothing too exaggerated, except for an ethnic stereotype here and there.
A few of the voices are by the great Peggy Lee, who also co-wrote the
songs. Highlights includes the "We Are Siamese" number, in which two
Siamese cats display their attitude of elegant disdain towards Lady,
and an extended scene at the dog pound, with howling in harmony and
a song by Lee as a sort of floozy hound.
Children's entertainment nowadays seems to suffer from a need to provoke
frenetic overstimulation. Lady and the Tramp is smart, funny,
wonderfully drawn, and enjoyable for kids and adults. You don't feel
exhausted after watching it. Although not as technically brilliant as
some of Disney's more famous animated films, this one deserves a high
place in the canon for its good-natured celebration of domestic bliss.
POINT OF ORDER! (Emile de Antonio, 1964).
The 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings were among the first government hearings
to be televised live, providing a spectacle rivaled only by the Watergate
hearings of 1973. Ten years later, Antonio edited the six weeks of kinescopes
into an hour and a half film, and it remains the most enduring record
of what people are talking about when they use the word "McCarthyism."
Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin made himself famous by claiming
to expose Communist infiltration in the highest reaches of government.
But he was not alone. Republicans used anti-Communism as a weapon against
opponents, a tool to instil fear in the public, and as a method of political
advancement, practically since the end of World War II. The persecution
of leftist (and Jewish) writers and directors in Hollywood, which resulted
in the infamous blacklist, was just one of the tactics by which unscrupulous
politicians gained power and attention. The hysteria, one of the more
shameful episodes of recent history, still finds its vocal defenders
today, who seem to believe that the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution
are dangerous luxuries that need to be curtailed in the name of security.
In 1954, the Secretary of Defense charged that McCarthy and his assistant,
Roy Cohn, had attempted to improperly influence the Army in its treatment
of a private who had been a member of McCarthy's staff. McCarthy charged
that this was a smoke screen to keep his investigative team from exposing
Communist infiltration of the Army.
The early stages of the hearings focus on the rather bewildering issue
of the former staff member. As time goes one, the real issue emerges
- a struggle between McCarthy and those who were weary of his accusations
and wished to discredit him as a fraud. The film provides a fascinating
glimpse of the famous senator - with his snide manner and impressive,
intimidating vocal delivery, it is easy to see why he captured the spotlight.
Eventually the hearings come down to a duel between McCarthy and the
Army's counsel Joseph Welch, a folksy, plain-speaking lawyer who is
not above using sarcasm while sparring with the senator. McCarthy's
viciousness becomes more and more pronounced, and when he pulls one
of his underhanded tricks - revealing that one of Welch's young assistants
(who was not at the hearing) had done work for a group that had defended
Communists in the 40s, Welch responds with the withering speech beginning
with "Have you no sense of decency?" that became legendary.
It's great theater, and a great education in how dishonest political
rhetoric poisons the democratic process. McCarthy self-destructed at
the hearings, and at the end of the film he is ranting and raving into
the microphone while everyone is walking out. The Senate censured him
soon after. He was finished, and he died three years later.
It's nice to think that, for once, decency was able to win out over
cynical grandstanding and the perversion of power. The truth is more
complicated. McCarthy was already ripe for a fall. It was to be expected
that his previous attacks on the State Department had made him powerful
enemies. Certainly Eisonhower was tired of him, and refused to cooperate
with his investigation into the Army. The fact that McCarthy took on
the Army at all was a fatal bit of hubris. Welch just happened to be
there to give the tottering statue a push so that it would finally fall
to the ground. The real damage to the country had been done, thousands
of lives and careers ruined, and the struggle continuing, even up to
today. Whenever a politician implies that his opponents (or those who
protest and dissent) are a threat to national security, McCarthy's heritage
continues.
It helps to know a little bit of history before watching Point of
Order. There is no narration. Antonio lets the events and participants
speak for themselves. It's a no-frills kind of movie, but also one of
the first directly political documentaries of any scope in the U.S.
In addition to being an invaluable record of a pivotal moment in modern
American history, it demonstrates how television had become a force
to be reckoned with on the political landscape.
THE HORSE (Ali Özgentürk, 1982).
In rural Turkey, a father (Genco Erkal) decides to move far away to
the city with his young son (Harun Yesilyurt) so as to make enough money
to send the boy to school. But once there, he finds that the job he
was lured with, selling vegetables on a cart, is much harder than he
thought, because the markets are controlled by gangs who exclude independent
sellers. Living out in the open in some ruins, along with other poor
merchants, they sink into desperate poverty, while the father continues
to cling to the dream of getting his son an education.
This is one of those heartbreaking works of social realism, born of
grief at the plight of the downtrodden, and fueled with anger at their
neglect by society. If that were all there was to it, the film wouldn't
have much to distinguish it. But Özgentürk has a marvelous
feel for his characters and their world. The way the father struggles
to retain some dignity in the face of humiliation, the atmosphere and
variety of people living in the ruins, the weary sense of time spent
looking for work or running from the harassment of the police (who are
in league with the gangs) - all are rendered with great intimacy and
understanding. There is no need for melodramatic effects - the story
is allowed to develop with its own logic, in a style as simple as it
is effective. The ending is close to perfect.
Özgentürk and his wife Isil, who wrote the screenplay, worked
as assistants to Yilmaz Güney, the courageous innovator of Turkish
cinema. The Horse, with its rigorous style and feeling of incorruptible
honesty, is directly in the Güney tradition of social protest.
The Turkish government certainly saw it that way, because on the basis
of this film, Ali Özgentürk was arrested and convicted of
sedition, serving a three year prison term. The depiction of the living
conditions of the urban poor was too real to be tolerated. In the twenty
years since The Horse, Özgentürk has only been able
to make three films. This picture deserves to be better known in the
West, along with the activist film movement of Turkey from the 70s and
80s in general.
A CANTERBURY TALE
(Michael Powell, 1944).
An American soldier (John Sweet) gets off the train by mistake at the
small town of Kent, where he runs into a British soldier (Dennis Price)
and a London woman (Sheila Sim) who has come out to do some "land work"
on a farm. While walking into town at night, the woman is attacked by
a mystery man who pours glue into her hair and then gets away. It turns
out that the town has been plagued by this "Glueman" for months, and
the three band together to figure out who is doing it, and why.
This peculiar plot device is not much more than an excuse for Powell
and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger to stroll through country life,
making wry observations about England through the mouthpiece of the
American GI (a charming, if a bit studied performance from the real-life
Sergeant Sweet) and making connections between English life in the present
and the country's ancient heritage, symbolized by the journey of Chaucer's
pilgrims to nearby Canterbury. This latter element is brought to the
fore through the character of an eccentric magistrate (Eric Portman)
who is devoted to the Canterbury tradition, and is suspected by the
three main characters of being the "Glueman."
It must be admitted, as Powell himself did, that the story is rather
too strange and complicated to be wholly successful. But this doesn't
really detract much from the enjoyment of the picture, simply because
the style is so witty and self-assured, and the point of view so humane.
Made in the middle of the war, there is no jingoism or trumpeting of
national virtue. Instead it's a quiet film about tradition, and how
its benefits are felt in a sense of personal freedom that extends to
the smallest things in life that are normally taken for granted. In
other words, this is the best kind of film that could be made in a time
of war - one that displays the simple joys of peace and freedom.
The photography (Erwin Hillier) is the finest of Powell's black-and-white
films, I think. The acting is spirited. The director's crisp style,
and his great sense of how best to frame a face, is in evidence. The
ending, when everyone finally goes to Canterbury, ties things up in
a satisfactory, almost mystical fashion. A Canterbury Tale, despite
being something of a lost child in the Powell-Pressburger canon, is
full of unexpected delights. It is hard to imagine such a quirky film
being made during wartime in any other country besides England. But
then, it seems to me that "the Archers" were always a special case.
I wish we had more like them.
THE CROWD (King Vidor, 1928).
Hollywood films were generally about extraordinary people and events
- The Crowd was part of a trend in the late silent era to tell
stories about ordinary folks and their problems. The film concerns a
couple with generic names - John (James Murray) and Mary (Eleanor Boardman).
John works in an advertising office in New York. He always thinks that
his big break is just around the corner. His marriage to Mary starts
off blissfully, but her family disapproves of him, and his foolish habits
causes her some distress. News of her pregnancy unites them again after
the marriage seemed to be over, but a later tragedy shatters his confidence,
and his world begins to unravel.
The picture has a fine visual style. The most famous sequence, early
in the picture, has the camera swoop up the side of a sidescraper, shoot
through a window into a huge office filled with identical desks, and
finally pull into a close-up of John at his desk. Besides this unforgettable
flourish, the picture sports a fluid editing style, understated acting,
and excellent photography by Henry Sharp.
Unfortunately, the intertitles reveal a script of deadening banality.
The words rarely rise above the level of cliché, which presents
an unpleasant contrast to Vidor's inventive direction. This was not
an uncommon problem. Silent films never relied on dialogue. The pictures
told the story, and the titles were just a necessary evil. It wasn't
until the sound era that dialogue came into its own in movies, understandably,
so in retrospective the movies with fewer titles are the ones that work
better for the modern viewer.
In this case, though, there's something about the conception itself
that prevents the film from touching the heart. The Crowd, true
to its title, is about the soul- killing anonymity of modern life. But
the two main characters are too anonmyous for us to care much about
them. It's something of a miracle, then, that the movie works as well
as it does. Vidor's commitment to the spirit of the material, the message
he wants to convey, manages to triumph over the script's limitations.
Its fame is justified despite its faults. It's also important as an
inspiration for the realistic tradition in cinema, a break with the
melodramatic form that had dominated the art since Griffith in favor
of a subtler and more direct appeal from director to audience.
©2003 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
