Idle Movie Post

De-Lovely (2004)

I had seen this before, back when I was going through a phase where I was especially into Cole Porter songs. It hadn't come up on the "official" record yet so when it did I felt obligated to see it again. If you like the music and the time period it is fun enough to see once--at least I found it to be so when I was ten years or so younger than I am now. I didn't find this second viewing of it to add anything to the initial experience. This modern movie naturally puts a lot of emphasis on Porter's luxurious lifestyle as well as his homosexual inclinations and the strain it put on his marriage, which don't hold much interest for me. In the absence of genius filmmaking, I honestly would have preferred to have seen scenes set at Yale, his more youthful years in Paris, his musical upbringing. While I didn't pay much attention to it the first time, I wasn't enthralled by the modern pop stars performing their versions of the famous songs. Elvis Costello was all right, I like him as an act himself, besides that I think he has a more visceral feeling for the traditions in which those songs were composed and are meant to be presented. The other singers seemed to be doing the songs in their own styles, which is what they naturally would do--I just don't happen to be a fan of these particular artists, as they are called.


Will Penny (1968)


Late stage classic period western starring Charlton Heston as an illiterate cowhand approaching middle age who can see his life options beginning to narrow. Perhaps it is a metaphor for the genre as a whole. It is pretty well-regarded, especially the script, though I found it to be kind of strange in many ways--the antagonists are a sadistic, almost proto-Manson family (without the orgies) led by a father who speaks in the language of a 17th century religious fanatic. I was hoping it would grab me, but it never did, really. The female lead was played by Joan Hackett, a woman of the type I am often interested in without any noteworthy reciprocation, whom I had never seen before. She reminded me of someone I knew who died of cancer when she was 41. Joan Hackett herself died of cancer when she was 49, which I found out in looking her up for this article, which is kind of a downer.

This is notable in my personal history as the first time I've had to turn on the subtitles in a movie made in English because I couldn't make out the spoken dialogue. This was in part because I watched this on a very hot night during the summer when I had on a window air conditioner that was difficult to hear over. But still.


I guess the most interesting aspect of this was the consideration of its aforementioned place in the timeline of the old style Western in film history, as well as that of Charlton Heston's run as a star leading man, which was also kind of at the end of the line here. It has a subdued, pensive atmosphere about it, not emitting a great amount of energy.


I'm clearly in a part of my life where movies are not speaking to me very much, at least not the ones I am seeing. I'm not putting in a lot of time on them, being down to about one or two a month now, but as I formerly got some enjoyment from the habit and there are still a lot of the types of classics that I like that I have never seen, I don't want to give it up entirely. I might be looking into re-tweaking my method of choosing films to get the kind of stuff I like to pop up more frequently however.


Edge of the City (1957)

Another one that I saw a few years back which finally became available via the Netflix CD service. Here's what I wrote about it 3 years ago. It's a stripped down, basic movie, but poignant, saturated with that quality of yearning that was peculiar to the 1950s and comes across today, to me at least, as appealing. I know there is some ambivalence, especially from more fiery or progressive observers, with regard to the career and film persona of Sidney Poitier, but it seems to me he is pretty dynamic in this, and is in general one of the major presences of the 50s and 60s. The objections to him, I gather, are that he is too watered down and therefore acceptable to white people, such as me, such that even when he is angry or decrying some injustice he is not threatening or existentially terrifying to the mainstream Caucasian ego in the manner that one might wish it to be. His character in this, as well as in numerous of his other movies, is something of a mensch, the only man to consistently display much in the way of what are thought of as admirable qualities (the John Cassavetes character is sympathetic, but is a weak and confused young man), so it is hard to dislike him.


I have a few more but I will put those in a second post.