Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages

Year: 1916
AFI Top 100 Ranking: 49
Writer: D.W. Griffith, Anita Loos
Director: D.W. Griffith
Star: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Margery Wilson

Well, that was an ordeal.

Three plus hours. Four distinctive storylines spanning thousands of years. Innumerable variations on the word “Intolerance.” Babylon. Beheadings. Jesus. Wine. Angry Catholics. Hopeful geraniums. Cars racing trains. Lillian Gish rocking that damn cradle.

To steal a quote from the esteemed Dr. Ian Malcolm, it seems that the filmmakers “were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

There’s one heck of a lot here. Writer/Director D.W. Griffith (in case we forget that at any point in the movie, he makes sure to remind us by stamping his initials on the bottom of every title card) gives us four stories of intolerance throughout history. The first is about the fall of Babylon at the hands of the Persians. The second is about Jesus. The third is about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and the final one tells of a family trying to live despite outside forces conspiring for their downfall.

The intercutting between these four stories doesn’t work, plain and simple. Yes, intercutting between several subplots that touch upon a similar theme to create a cohesive film has been used before (“Crash,” “Short Cuts”) and used well, but the stories are so dissimilar here and the intercutting so random and oddly timed that all it accomplishes is frustration and the immediate destruction of whatever tension had been built.

Even worse is the method Griffith uses to cut from story to story. It’s Lillian Gish rocking a cradle. And rocking. And rocking. It feels like she rocks that damn cradle for an hour of the movie’s three hour running time (obviously not, but it feels that way), and at times she’s rocking that cradle so intensely any child inside would be dead from being thrown back and forth against the wood. Yeah, it’s a metaphor, I get it. But it’s a bad metaphor and all it adds to the film is the possibility of a drinking game that could end in alcohol poisoning.

Why did Griffith feel the need to create four movies instead of just one? One really well-done movie about intolerance would be so much better than two pretty-well-realized stories and two tedious messes. The Christ subplot and the Massacre subplot are treated as superfluous throughout, almost to the point where we forget they exist until they appear again. The Massacre one in particular is bad. Really bad. The acting here, especially that of the Queen, is so hammy and overdone (and I’m saying this understanding the different styles of acting in silent films) that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. Even the quite daring development of killing off the main characters at the end of the Massacre arc is nulled since the same thing happens in the Babylon arc.

The “modern” storyline is just depressing. Really, how much abuse can these poor people take before the viewer just stops caring and tunes out. The main character is called the Dear One and here’s what happens to her over the course of the arc. Her father loses his job. Her father dies. She falls in love with a criminal. Just as her criminal boyfriend goes straight, he is framed for theft and sent to prison. She has a child while the now-husband is behind bars. She gets a cold. Her child is taken away from her. She is almost raped. Her husband, who just got out of prison, is charged with the murder of her near-rapist. Her husband is sentenced to death. The Governor denies her pleas to stop the hanging. I love a melodrama as much as the next Douglas Sirk fan, but this is too much. Tyler Perry would watch this and say “Whoa dude, maybe you should simmer this down a little bit.”

The Babylon storyline held my interest the most, not because the characters were engaging or the storyline moved me, but because there were plenty of neat toys and sets to oogle. The main city set is probably one of the coolest images ever put on film, and the battle scenes are fantastically choreographed and shot on a beautiful, epic scale. Griffith also is not afraid to shy away from the violence, showing multiple beheadings, stabbings and spearings during the invasion scenes, which have a surprising impact, perhaps because I was expecting none.

The title cards are also troublesome, beginning with the fact that there are so many of them. In the same way that the intercutting made the tension lax, the numerous cards do it in lesser ways. It’s also that the cards are so unnecessary in most cases. Some have trivia and tidbits that Griffith thought we might find interesting, like that each man in an army must perspire every day. Others just blatantly state stuff we are seeing on the screen. We don’t need a card telling us the wedding just ran out of wine if we are seeing characters tipping over wine jugs and realizing they are empty. Others are just inadvertently funny, as when a card simply says “the hopeful geranium” or the many, many, many times Griffith uses the word “intolerance” or some variation of the word that isn’t really a word (“he was intolerated for a term”).

No discussion of the movie would be complete without mentioning its close association with “Birth of a Nation” (unseen by me) and “Broken Blossoms.” There are black men in “Intolerance” in the Babylon plot, but they are called Barbarians and have horrible, cliché tribal costumes and markings. They also don’t look happy, possibly because they saw “Birth of a Nation.” I’ve read multiple times that this is Griffith’s apology for his portrayal of black people in “Birth,” but though I understand that point-of-view, I’m not sure I agree with it. Perhaps instead of apologizing, he’s simply stating that he did not appreciate the “intolerance” his last movie received from sane people everywhere. But I write that knowing that “Broken Blossoms” showed us the first interracial romance ever on film, even if the Asian man in the film was played by a white man and had an opium addiction. How muddied the water gets the more you try to see through it.

I had the distinct feeling that I was being preached at for almost all of “Intolerance.” But to what end? Isn’t this movie, by its very definition, preaching to the choir? What person is going to go into a movie called “Intolerance” and think “I wonder if being intolerant of other people is a good or evil thing?” In case you couldn’t tell from the first few paragraphs, the moral of the movie is that intolerance is bad. I have told you, in the two seconds you took to read that last sentence, what Griffith takes over three hours to convey. Thank me later.

My Score (out of 5): *1/2

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Year: 1939
AFI Top 100 Ranking: 26
Writer: Sidney Buchman (screenplay) Lewis R. Foster (story)
Director: Frank Capra
Star: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains

I remembered “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” as much better than it really is. It’s a functional, inspirational film with great acting, but those qualities are almost overshadowed by the shoddy editing and confusing storytelling. It feels like the rough cut for something that could possibly be a masterpiece, but needs a lot of work and a few reshoots before getting there.

The first half hour of the film is the worst—I’d even call pieces of it horrendous. There are huge, awkward, unnecessary point-of-view shifts throughout that keep the viewer adrift, trying to latch onto something…anything of consistence. The film opens moments after the death of a senator in (as far as I remember) an unnamed state. The Governor (Edward Arnold) must decide between naming a political puppet (he’s pressured by a crooked businessman) or a popular reformer (he’s pressured by the citizens of the state). Instead he chooses Jeff Smith, the Mr. of the title, who is the leader of the Boy Rangers.

There’s a really awkward scene of men going to greet Jeff, building up his introduction, and then they walk into his house to the fanfare of a band playing…and the scene cuts before we meet Jeff. Why? Jeff’s real introduction scene at a celebratory dinner in his honor doesn’t function well as an introduction scene. It’s obvious Jeff’s introduction in his house was cut, but why? And if it had to be, why keep the random men-outside-the-house scene?

By the time we actually meet Jeff Smith (played very well by James Stewart), 15 minutes of the movie have gone by, and the movie still hasn’t shifted to his point-of-view. Instead we are with the corrupt Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), the other Senator of the state and an old friend of Jeff’s father. More time passes and Mr. Smith does indeed go to Washington, and wanders around it in a five minute (five minute!) montage of him at all the great landmarks of the city. It’s sub-travelogue editing and shot-choice here, and I feel like it was just put in to pad the running time.

As with most Capra, the film improves exponentially in its second act, thanks to the introduction of “Don’t-Call-Me-Clarissa” Saunders (Jean Arthur). She’s as cynical as they come and begins as a paid stooge, but soon finds herself unwilling to allow Jeff to wander his way before a firing squad.

Screenwriter Sidney Buchman, working from a story by Lewis R. Foster, sets up a fascinating dynamic between Smith, Paine and Saunders. Many would call Jeff’s filibuster the heart of the movie, but I think Jeff’s relationships with these two people are what makes the movie work and garner a depth we would not expect of it. After meeting Jeff for five minutes you know he would go to any lengths to do what is right, so the filibuster is to be expected—it’s the changes we see in these characters that are surprising and rewarding.

First there is Paine, played brilliantly by Raines. It would have been easy to portray him as a simple villain. A stooge for another, more evil, villain named Jim Taylor. But he’s not. He’s a good man who made one bad decision and has slowly been losing his soul for the past two decades. We think that he’s going to use his relationship with Jeff’s father as a tool for manipulation, and though he does at times, it becomes clear that Paine really did love Jeff’s father and cherished the friendship. And, damn it, despite everything, he really likes Jeff too. He doesn’t want to do the horrible things he does, and the audience really feels sympathy for him despite hating what he’s doing.

Then there’s Saunders, who works so well because she inherently shouldn’t be likeable. Arthur infuses her with a great cynicism early and often, and even after she switches over to Jeff’s team, she does it knowing that, realistically, it’s not even David vs. Goliath, it’s an ant vs. Goliath. The scene at the Lincoln Memorial where she convinces Jeff to do the filibuster has been copied thousands of times in movies after this, sometimes better, sometimes less so, but Arthur is so good with her careful body language here that it’s some kind of magical.

Most of the filibuster is very, very well done, and Stewart is tremendous as showing Jeff’s will even as his body is failing him. The scene becomes even more emotional given the parallel stories of Taylor doing everything possible to keep Jeff’s message from getting to his home state. Hell, Capra goes so far as having a montage of Taylor’s men almost murdering Boy Rangers in order to keep a lid on the story. It would have been nice to see the grassroots movement in the state pay off, but that would be a different movie. This is about the difference one man can make. Many of my friends think that Paine finally breaking down, attempting suicide and spilling everything is a deus ex machina, but I disagree. Buchman and Capra set this moment up throughout the movie very well, and we can honestly understand Paine’s feelings at that moment.

Other plots in the movie are half-developed or abandoned entirely. The most blatant of these is Paine’s daughter Susan, who Jeff is immediately smitten with. Taylor wants to use Susan to get to Jeff, but Paine says “absolutely not.” Then, two scenes later, Susan does just that. Obviously a transition scene is missing. And then Susan disappears for the rest of the movie and is barely spoken of again. Whoops.

The other is the complete lack of closure for Jeff at the end of the movie. The last time we see him he passes out and is carried out of the Senate. Then Raines comes in and confesses everything, there’s cheering…and the movie just ends on a shot of the Vice President chewing gum. What the hell? Where’s the scene of Saunders and Jeff reuniting? Of Saunders telling Jeff he won? Of Taylor being arrested? Or a shot of Jeff’s reaction to any of this? It’s such a huge cop-out, and there was no reason why Capra and Buchman couldn’t have added more scenes.

There are other really, really bad editing choices throughout. The ones that take me out of the movie the fastest are when there’s a cut from a medium shot to another medium shot, only inches closer or farther away, for no real reason. There are shots that make no logical or story sense and a sequence of Jeff walking through Washington punching random reporters that should have been cut immediately. Seriously, that scene is in there and yet we don’t get to see Jeff and Saunders reunite? Really?

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” isn’t a bad film, but it’s an infuriating one. If only there would have been more care taken with the editing, continuity and storytelling this could have been a masterpiece. Right now, it just seems unfinished, with a first act that needs huge changes and a third act that is way too brief.

My Score (out of 5): ***

Sunset Boulevard

Year: 1950
AFI Top 100 Rating: 16
Writer: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman Jr.
Director: Billy Wilder
Star: Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim

I consider “Sunset Boulevard” to be the greatest film by a director who specialized in making great films. Though it incorporates elements of noir, horror, drama and comedy, it transcends these genres and becomes one of those rare films that is indefinable. It’s also just about perfect.

We first meet Joe Gillis (William Holden) as he is floating upside down in a swimming pool, very much dead. He’s a screenwriter though, so death doesn’t shut him up, and he narrates the story of how he got to be in that pool. Turns out poor Joe was also poor in the literal sense—about to get his car repossessed and pride long shattered from being turned down by every studio in Hollywood. A flat tire leads him to the marble doorstep of silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), who invites him to stay with her and help her rewrite the script for her comeback…er…return to film. It starts as that, but soon develops into something much, much sicker.

The first time we meet Norma she is grieving the death of her pet monkey. She and her butler Max (Erich von Stroheim) mistake Joe for the undertaker and allow him into her mansion. To call Casa Norma an overstatement would be an understatement—it seems as if Paramount dumped the entire contents of its prop rooms inside those walls. Swanson overacts throughout the film, but it is a calculated overacting that makes the film that much more fascinating. It is as if the character of Norma Desmond got so used to acting like she was in a silent film that she began acting like that in real life, and no one was around to yell “Cut!” Her melodrama underlines all of her emotions, from her manipulations to the moments of her real desperation, which paradoxically makes her all the more sympathetic.

Yes, I said sympathetic. She’s a monster, but a monster we come to care very much about. The key to this is Max, who we learn was once much more than just her butler: He was the director who discovered her and became the first of her three husbands. He still adores her as much as he ever did, handling her like a cracked porcelain doll. He caters to her every need, resends fan mail and tries not to let Joe’s relationship with Norma eat him up inside. Because he cares, we care. Because he loves, we love. There’s a moment deep in the film where Norma leaves Max and Joe to meet alone with Cecil B. DeMille (playing himself), and we are anxious and horrified that her dreams will shatter. It is in that moment that we realize how much we have come to care for this weird, unpleasant woman, and because of that the final reel is that much more bittersweet.

Because the movie has a heart, however sick it is, screenwriters Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr. have a field day making everything surrounding that heart as bleak, sarcastic and dark as possible. This begins and ends with the Joe character, who can’t be too upset that he’s dead because he knows he was never a very good guy to begin with. While he (barely) admits once in the film that he likes Norma, he fills minutes of the film with narration that deconstructs her entire world and those sad creatures that fill it. Norma’s waxworks (her silent film friends, including Buster Keaton in a great cameo). Her house. Her car. Her persona. Her script. They are all mockable and he digs in with both hands, perhaps because it is the only way to stop him from weeping from the sadness of it all. His relationship with Norma at some point becomes sexual, but Wilder is right to keep the details cloudy. During the nights, Joe escapes from Norma to meet with a young woman named Betty (Nancy Olson). She’s engaged, but he still falls for her.

There are many reasons I love the film, but Betty is one of the biggest. In any lesser film, her character would be such a write-off. She’s would be the ambitious upstart who is good personified and ultimately do the right thing, no matter the cost. But Wilder and his co-writers turn Betty into a free-thinking, strong woman. Not only does she challenge Joe in the first scene they share by insisting that his new script isn’t any good, but later is more frustrated that Joe left because he was a rung in her ladder, not because he’s just so (*bats eyes*) dreamy. She has layers. She even admits that she got a nose job when she wanted to be an actress. In the end, Betty walks out of the movie with the kind of dignity you wouldn’t expect from a character of her type.

Wilder made a career of making masterpieces, from “Some Like It Hot” to “The Apartment” to “Double Indemnity,” which are all in the AFI Top 100 along with “Sunset Boulevard.” But there’s also “Witness For the Prosecution” (rarely seen today but easily ranks with his best), “Ace in the Hole,” “Sabrina,” “The Seven Year Itch”…my apologies, I’m beginning to list. For me, this film has the most deeply felt emotions and one of the greatest characters ever committed to film. Its irony and cynicism is a mask that slowly degrades the more you watch the film, and you begin to realize that just because there is much melodrama and “loudness” (for lack of a better word), there is just as much subtlety and beauty.

The stuff that happened behind the scenes of this movie is just as interesting as what happens onscreen, and in this viewing I tried to put everything I learned and read out of my mind. And yes, the movie still works beautifully on its own, whether or not you know that Swanson was a real silent film actor and that von Stroheim was really her director for many years. There have been many masterpieces made about Hollywood, but only one of them has Norma Desmond, so let’s face it…nothing else can compare. Despite the film’s famous closing line, the film blurs to black before Norma can get that final close-up. She didn’t need it. She’s made quite an impact already.

My Score (out of 5): *****

2001: A Space Odyssey

Year: 1968
AFI Top 100 Ranking: 15
Writer: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke (adaptation) Arthur C. Clarke (source material)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Star: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, Douglas Rain

“2001: A Space Odyssey” is a movie I greatly admire. It is also a movie I don’t like very much and a movie I probably won’t feel the need to revisit for another decade. It’s a film filled with ideas and isn’t afraid to challenge its viewers in content or pace. And yet it’s a film, like most of director Stanley Kubrick’s work, so devoid of human emotion or connection that it left me cold to it every moment I should have been fully engaged.

The film begins in pre-history, with half-human/half-apes uncovering the greatest discovery since the opposable thumb. As he moves through a group of bones, one of the ape men discovers that using the bones as a weapon gives him, and his people, a power none of the surrounding species have. Oh, and a giant black monolith appears out of nowhere. Fast forward a few thousand years to 1999 when another monolith has appeared on the moon and a group of scientists is sent to investigate. Once more we fast forward to the title year and find two scientists (Keir Dullea & Gary Lockwood) on a spacecraft headed toward Jupiter. Controlling the spacecraft is a computer called Hal 9000 (voiced by Douglas Rain) who, despite being a ball of red light, displays more emotions than any of the human characters. Is Hal malfunctioning, or are the scientists jumping to conclusions? Needless to say, the black monolith makes at least one more cameo before the end of the film.

Why are the monoliths there and why do they choose those specific times to appear? They obviously represent a far greater intelligence than ape or man…look at the contrast of the rounded, intricate space vehicles to the sleek, rectangular simplicity of the monoliths. It could be argued that they feed first the ape and then Dullea’s character (named Dave) with intelligence, but I don’t think so. I believe they are there simply to observe huge breakthroughs for humanity. They first watch the apemen realize their inherent power and then see Man triumph over the “perfect mind” of a computer. Note that they leave Dave alone to grow old and “die” (rebirth) in a makeshift five star hotel room with really bad floor lighting. And yet there are still questions, like why it behaves the way it does on the surface of the moon? Had Man become to reliant on computers and the monolith sensed that? Perhaps.

There are no easy answers, of course, simply much to observe before screenwriters Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke allow you to draw your own conclusions. Kubrick structures the movie at a very deliberate pace, never quickening or using unnecessary editing tricks to alter tension. He favors medium and long shots to close-ups throughout the first two-thirds of the film, not allowing himself (or the viewer) to get too close to the world or characters. In fact, the only character who really gets one hell of a lot of face time is Hal, but even there we find ourselves drawing our own conclusions as to what hides behind the simple red light.

The film has four parts, three of which are introduced via title in the film. The second, which depicts the moon mission in 1999, feels very dated and is an utter waste of time and energy. Its conceits, like using as many brand names (Pan Am, Hilton, etc.) as possible to underline a future of brand identity, not personalization, were fresh at the time of the film’s release but have become so commonplace today that they seem hackneyed. More than that, though, the entire section seems like weirdly unnecessary non-movement. There’s much to-do about rumors surrounding the moon mission, though characters never interact with any emotion or voice inflections. Sure, the last thirty seconds of the 25 minute section are fascinating, but were this section snipped entirely from the movie, would the viewer be really missing anything all that great?

Once we move to the Jupiter mission, it becomes apparent that Kubrick is bending over backward to keep us from making human connections to anyone in the movie. Though this would become a recurring theme throughout his work, I have to say that I feel the section (which is the film’s best) would have been much improved if we felt any sort of connection to Dave or Frank. Hell, there’s probably about ten minutes of material here before we get a good enough look at the two characters’ faces to tell them apart. Their personalities are interchangeable, and their voices remain stagnant and dull throughout. Even their “looks” are tedious: Dullea is handsome, but boringly so, and his hair is always perfectly parted. The characters don’t sweat. In what is supposed to be the most tense moment of the film, when Dave argues with Hal to let him back on the ship (“Open the pod bay doors, Hal.”) and he realizes he must jump from his pod through space to get into the ship, his face never registers worry or tension.

There are still great moments here. Seeing Hal read Dave and Frank’s lips as they plot to disconnect it is quietly unsettling, as is listening to Hal go through its death throes as Dave silently “murders” it. And yet…I don’t care.

From a visual standpoint, the film is unmatched. I’d go so far as saying that it’s the best-looking science fiction movie ever made. Despite all the huge advancements in technology since 1968, I doubt the best team at ILM could make more elegant, poetic special effects than what we see here. The surreal sequence where Dave is pulled through the cosmos is still a stunner, and Kubrick was right to give all the tremendous images room to breathe and make an impact on the viewers.

Perhaps it’s that I’m a screenwriter. Perhaps it’s just the way I’m wired. Whatever the case, I just can’t manage to engage in a film, no matter how close to perfection it otherwise is, unless it presents me with characters that I care about. If Hal’s fatal flaw was that it allowed emotions to overcome its logical components, this movie’s flaw is that it is too far removed from its own emotions.

My Score (out of 5): ***1/2

West Side Story

Year: 1961
AFI Top 100 Ranking: 51
Writer: Ernest Lehman (adaptation), Jerome Robbins & Arthur Laurents (source material)
Director: Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins
Star: Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris

“West Side Story” is a movie I love, but it is a movie I love with reservations. It is certainly one of the greatest film musicals and features moments of tremendous power and emotion, and yet it falls short of transcendence. It ones of those movies where you walk out of the theater on a high and tell your friends “Oh, it was amazing! If only…” The major flaw I find with the film is entirely different than the ones my friends and colleagues often cite, and I can understand their complaints as well. That doesn’t make this a bad movie—there are too many perfect moments for that—but it does make the movie very, very interesting to critique.

Everyone knows that the film is a modernized, musicalized (I’m pretty sure I invented a word there) version of “Romeo of Juliet,” with star-crossed lovers Maria (Natalie Wood) and Tony (Richard Beymer) caught in the midst of a New York gang war between the Sharks (Puerto Ricans) and Jets (Whites). Tony was once the head of the Jets, but has lately been searching for something more to his life, leaving the gang in the hands of Riff. The Sharks are led by Maria’s brother Bernardo (George Chakiris), and also in the mix is Bernardo’s girlfriend/Maria’s best friend Anita (Rita Moreno). If you have even a passing knowledge of Shakespeare, you know where this is going, though the film deviates from its source material by allowing Maria to survive the finale.

The major, almost unforgivable flaw comes in the film’s second half, after a bloody street fight leaves Bernardo dead at the hands of Tony. Tony crawls into Maria’s window and tells her what happens, and then Maria forgives him. Immediately. Not only that, but they then sleep together. Apologies for my vulgarity, but Maria might as well say the following dialogue: “You killed my brother? That’s okay, just fuck me!” How the heck did this make it into the movie? Screenwriter Ernest Lehman made one of the most convoluted plots of all time, “North by Northwest,” seem completely effortless, and had great success adapting such musicals as “The Sound of Music” and “The King and I” for the screen…so what happened here? Not only does it completely undercut the power of the death of a person we really like, but it is so heinous that it utterly destroys Maria as a character. Up until that point, you identify with her because she is a strong girl with her own opinions and ideas, but in that moment she becomes an unfeeling wretch. The saddest part is that the answer was in the source material! In the Shakespeare original, the Bernardo character was a cousin who didn’t have a deep connection with the Maria character, so his death was inconsequential to the love story but hugely important as the spark of the tragedy. Here, it’s just…icky.

Every time I watch the movie, I wonder whether that single move makes the last third of the film irreparable. And, to be honest, sometimes it does.

But if you can look past that, and I understand if you can’t, there’s just so much to love here. Consider the sequence that opens the film, where the gangs snap at one another and ultimately get into scuffles while performing some fantastic dancing. Jerome Robbins’ choreography still has the power to take your breath away in many of the sequences, not just because you just don’t see dancing like that anymore, but because it’s just so poetic and lovely. The dancing goes hand in hand with, for my money, the best score and songs of any musical. Ever. Sorry, “My Fair Lady.” There isn’t a clunker in the bunch. “America,” “I Feel Pretty,” “Maria”…the list goes on. My favorite is the quintet version of “Tonight,” which every smart composer and lyricist has ripped off at some point in his or her career.

The music leads to moments so perfect they stay with you, fresh as the first time you saw them, years after the end credits roll. Take the dance at the gym, where Maria and Tony first see one another and the manic mambo dancing fades away into a simple, intimate melody of newfound love between the twosome. Or when the men and women bicker with one another about the pros (washing machines) and cons (organized crime) of living in America via witty barbs and dance. At this point I’m just listing, so I’ll stop, even though there are many more.

Co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins try a lot of interesting things with the visuals, like when Tony walks in a daze from the school dance singing “Maria” and the backgrounds keep fading into others. Or, during the dance, when the dancers literally blur when Tony and Maria catch sight of one another. These kind of tricks could conceivably date the film, but they still surprisingly stand up because of the underlying romantic subtexts involved.

Then there’s the acting. Wood’s performance is often stomped upon by my friends, but all I see is a young woman with high spirits and a lot of chemistry with the rest of the cast. She is so…well…pretty and charming and gay in “I Feel Pretty” that I wonder if they are watching the same film as I. Perhaps it is because of the character assassination moment I wrote of earlier that leaves a bitter taste in viewer’s mouths. Beymer is unfortunately quite wooden when left alone, and does not convince any viewer that he once led a street gang, but his scenes with Wood have an innocent, sweet charm that I wasn’t expecting.

Moreno and Chakiris are both standouts, with charisma to spare and a great repoire with one another. I can’t be the only one who secretly wishes that there was another film tracking their love story to compliment this film, can I? Tamblyn is also very good as Riff, with his great early “Jet Song” wonderfully interpreted and danced.

The highest compliment I can give the film is that, after it ends, I still wonder what happened to the characters as they continue their lives. What did Maria do with her newfound strength? Did she ever reconcile with Anita, and how will Anita’s near-rape at the hands of the Jets strain the uneasy peace between the gangs?

With a movie that reaches such powerful heights, it’s easy to get carried away with it. To overlook those obvious flaws. Rewatching the film on the big screen reminded me what a “big” movie it is, both in terms of scope and emotion, and what an achievement it is that it works as beautifully as does. It’s definitely one of the greats. And yet…

My Score (out of 5): ****

Bringing Up Baby

Year: 1938
AFI Top 100 Ranking: 88
Writer: Dudley Nichols & Hagar Wilde
Director: Howard Hawks
Star: Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles

“Bringing Up Baby” is one of those great, one-of-a-kind movies that captures comedy lightning in a bottle in every sense. If I had to brand it, I would say it’s a “Screwball Comedy,” but it’s so much more realistic than the Marx Brothers comedies. And yet I can’t class it with the more sophisticated comedies George Cukor directed…its tone is somewhere in the middle. It makes logical sense on its own terms, but those terms aren’t anywhere near reality. Its brand of humor is certainly polarizing—but I personally consider it the best comedy film I’ve ever seen.

To describe the plot would be madness. It involves a one-million dollar grant David (Cary Grant) wishes to receive for his museum, and how his chance meeting with the eccentric Susan (Katherine Hepburn) keeps muddying those prospects. It also involves a Brontosaurus’ intercostal clavicle, two leopards, mistaken identity, a dandy trick with making olives disappear and numerous recitations of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.”

All through the film Grant and Hepburn circle one another in an odd dance, delivering some of the best dialogue ever committed to film at a rapid fire pace that brings lingering laugh after lingering laugh. Alone, David is a wet blanket of a character under the domineering thumb of his fiancé. And when Susan is by herself, her babblings seem more insane than anything else. But when the two meet, the chemistry is palpable. As great as the direction and script are, if Grant and Hepburn did not immediately come across as two people so frustrated with one another they cannot see that they are meant to be together, then the movie would have imploded. The movie is funny, but it is also a romance where the viewer grows to care deeply about over as the film develops, and the moment Susan realizes she’s head over heels for David is one of those pitch-perfect moments in all of cinema.

Grant’s performance at first seems to be a variation on the one he gave in “Arsenic and Old Lace,” where he slowly went cuckoo after realizing his dear old aunts were killing people, but he does it with such gusto that he gets away with it. But even as I write that I remember, despite what was going on in that film, that Grant remained very romantic with his leading lady, especially at the beginning. Here he seems to have dropped every ounce of sexual charisma he usually brings to his romantic comedies, plasters on a pair of glasses and acts completely dorky and asexual until the final scene.

Hepburn is harder to define—looking at the film the wrong way her character can be grating and her performance even moreso—but I cannot help but fall in love with her. She (Susan) has such a gusto for life, and in the second act when she does everything possible to help David because she loves him (of course everything keeps getting more and more screwed up) you really grow to love her for it.

Something about the way they interact with one another just…works. Simple as that. It would be easy to overanalyze their scenes together and talk about tiny beats and small moments, but why? When something this special works, you shouldn’t question it. I’d rank Susan and David’s chemistry here as second to only my beloved Nick and Nora in the “Thin Man” movies, and that isn’t fair since those two have six movies to impress with.

The entire film has this timeless quality to it that many of the screwball comedies of the late thirties and forties just don’t have. Portions of “The Philadelphia Story” have aged horribly, and movies like “His Girl Friday,” “Topper” and “Dinner at Eight” are still funny and great films, but it helps when they are taken within context of when they were made. “Bringing Up Baby” seems taken out of time entirely…probably because the movie deals with reality on its own terms. If you can buy that there can be such a thing as a domesticated leopard named “Baby” in New England that makes friends with a terrier and will only be calm when sung to, then this is the movie for you. If not…well…there’s just no talking to you.

I’d say that the movie seems cartoonish in places (and I mean that as a compliment), but whenever it gets too loopy for its own good, Hepburn and Grant’s chemistry grounds it. The dialogue is so fast-paced, so quippy and so witty it would be an injustice to reproduce it here. It’s all about the delivery and the way it informs David and Susan as characters. Needless to say, the script juggles at least a dozen balls with ease, complicating things wonderfully and wrapping things up even better.

This is Howard Hawks’ only film on the AFI Top 100, and that’s a huge injustice to one of the best, most versatile directors of his or any time. How is it possible that “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” did not make the list? Or “His Girl Friday”? There are other classics, such as the original “Scarface,” “The Big Sleep,” “Rio Bravo” and the original “The Thing.” The connective thread of his best work is a complete devotion to getting his characters just right before having fun with the concepts and premises.

And if he hadn’t done that here, “Bringing Up Baby” would have been disastrous. But he did. I can’t help but watch the final scene of the film, where Susan teeters back and forth on a high ladder in glee after finding out David loves her, with a huge grin on my face. Like the earlier scene where she realizes she loves him, here is another “just perfect” moment in cinema. I believe in them as a couple, crazy as they may be and crazy as the circumstances they encounter are.

When I was writing my first book, I couldn’t help but give this movie several shout-outs. When I’m in a bad mood, this is the movie I turn to. “Bringing Up Baby” makes me completely, utterly, irrevocably…happy. Simple as that. And what more can you possibly ask for? Taken on those terms alone, it’s perfect.

My Grade (out of 5): *****

All About Eve

Year: 1950
AFI Top 100 Ranking: 28
Writer/Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Star: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders

The secret of “All About Eve” is that it convinces you for a very large part of its running time that it’s much more cynical than it actually is. Considering the film’s title, purposely dry voiceover and the framing of the movie so it begins at Eve’s moment of triumph, one would believe the story is simply about Eve (Anne Baxter) knocking everything and everyone out of her way on her path to stardom, but I think that’s wrong. It’s about those people who survive Eve as she pushes her way through them—they are good, flawed people who ultimately find the strength to be happy despite the fact that the could have easily been roadkill.

We first meet Eve, and those survivors, in the film’s opening minutes, at a theatre awards dinner where she is about to be given, from what I can surmise, the “Greatest Actress Ever” award. The voiceover that introduces us to the characters is provided by Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), a theatre critic and columnist who has declared himself the most powerful man on Broadway. He doesn’t actually say this in the film, but I’m guessing he’s forced that surname into the masthead of his newspaper. A close cousin of the Waldo Lydecker character in “Laura,” he’s the kind of guy who you can’t help but call by his first and last name because to do otherwise would feel wrong, and his words here crackle with wit:

“The distinguished looking gentleman is an extremely old actor. Being an actor, he will go on speaking for some time. It is not important that you hear what he says.”

We soon flash back to how Eve got on that podium, and meet the people she will step all over to get there. Chief among them is Margo Channing (Bette Davis), who Eve basically stalks until she gets an introduction thanks to Margo’s best friend Karen (Celeste Holm). Davis’ performance doesn’t seem like a performance, which is the highest compliment I can give it. Margo has recently turned 40 and is at the peak of her career and skills, but knows she’s now too old to play young 20-somethings. She is horrified about what will happen when the rest of the theatre community realizes this as well. She’s so afraid of her age that she refuses to marry the love of her life, Bill (Gary Merrill, memorable thanks to the extremely annoying way he holds his cigarettes) because he’s a few years younger.

Margo and Eve become “friends” and Eve begins to use Margo’s contacts as stepping stones, making small jumps at first until she ultimately uses blackmail and threats of adultery to get her way. Margo’s maid Birdie (Thelma Ritter) notices things first; “It’s like she’s studying you!” she says to Margo at one point, and soon enough Margo gets wise to what’s happening as well. Mankiewicz is extremely smart to let the characters become privy to Eve’s motives early enough to make them seem wise and not like the idiots in soap operas who can never see what’s right in front of them.

It’s the women that notice everything first, of course, and their men take a bit more time to get it together. All the while I was astounded by how raw and real the characters, particularly Margo, were. When Margo self-destructs at a party for Bill, we are horrified but our hearts still go out to her. Because we recognize Margo as a fragile person, we don’t want Eve to succeed, but of course ultimately Eve’s machinations are just the kick in the pants Margo needs to get herself and her life together.

Eve’s character becomes much more prominent as the film continues, with Mankiewicz phasing Margo and the other characters out once they’ve found their strength and happiness. Davis gets all the huzzahs for her performance while Baxter’s is usually regarded as less-than-stellar, but I don’t know about that. I’m guessing that Mankiewicz wanted her to be a cipher more than anything else, and the way he shoots and blocks her supports that. In his tremendous script, full of intelligence, humor and wit, there isn’t a single line from Eve that lingers in our mind. She never begins a conversation and only seems to speak in response to what other people say. The most initiative she takes (until the final scenes) is to ask questions instead of making blatant statements. Perhaps that is why everyone finds her so acceptable—because she agrees with everything they say and there’s a vagueness about her personality that makes you define her instead of defining herself.

Mankiewicz’s script breaks a bunch of rules about structure, voice-over and narrative point-of-view, but does it with such elegance and ease that you can’t help but go along for the ride. Note, for example, that we never see Margo or Eve actually acting on stage in a film that is about actors. I’ve seen the movie a few times now, and with each viewing I become more in awe of his direction, and that he didn’t stoop to theatrics. The movie didn’t need it. His camera is never showy until the last shot, but its placement and use is still great. Note how he always frames Eve in the frame with Margo and Bill early in the movie, foreshadowing what is to come later. Or how he blocks Margo and Bill breaking up, the most melodramatic moment in the film (purposely so) on a stage among exaggerated props.

Oh, and did I mention Marilyn Monroe is in the movie in a small-but-crackerjack supporting role? She’s never given a major close-up and yet our eyes cannot help from lingering on her no matter what else is happening in the frame. I believe that’s what it means to be a movie star.

Perhaps the smartest move Mankiewicz makes is not allowing Eve to get her comeuppance during the film. She thinks she’s triumphed, but we see that the other characters have moved on from her games and will not have to deal with her again since she’s leaving for Hollywood. And then, of course, there’s Phoebe, Eve v. 2.0. Just her introduction and a small hint of what to come was enough. Anything else would have been unrealistic and far too much. Here is a movie that knows its audience is smart, knows it can get away with subtlety and knows what we come up with for Eve’s fate is so much more delicious than anything that could have been up on screen.

My Score (out of 5): *****