MOVIES - an exercise in self-education

I have disliked cantaloupe all my life but I keep trying it just to see if I will ever like it.  Last year I had some cantaloupe that I kind of liked.  Just because I don't really like something that doesn't mean I am done with it forever, and if it is something extremely popular or acclaimed I keep wondering what it was that I missed.  I decided this week to re-visit three very popular or highly acclaimed movies I didn't think much of when I saw them.

Some younger acquaintances were chattering about The Big Lebowski the other day and I figured I ought to give it another try to see what it is that makes people like it enough to repeat all the taglines and catchphrases at each other and even dress up as the characters at Lebowski conventions.  It's true, they really do that.  It was fairly amusing when I first saw it but except for one or two things it mostly just slid right off my brain and disappeared.  So I watched it again and Donna joined me because she felt about the same way.  She still feels the same way about it that I do. There are some good laughs, interesting characters and situations, the acting and direction is all good but after about an hour I said, "My god, how much more of this am I going to have to sit through?"  Good storytelling requires the creation of a satisfying dynamic emotional form which rewards the audience.  Coen bros movies often fail for me in that the story is buried under a lot of noise - the characters, dialog and incidents distract from the flow of events and when a big plot turn takes place it is overpowered by details and its effect is lost.  The Big Lebowski did not reward my second viewing and I am glad I don't have to see it again.  I believe most of its fans become attached to the characters and catch-phrases and they could watch half hour episodes of The Big Lebowski indefinitely and never tire of it.  As a movie, it is a sitcom.  Please continue to enjoy it!

In the mid-'70s my college-going acquaintances had the opportunity to see Casablanca and their rapturous raving was unceasing.  Oh you have to see it, it's so great. When it came around to the revival house as it did once a year I went to see it and it didn't do much for me.  I had been watching classic movies on TV for years at that point so I was no dilettante, and compared to Key Largo or To Have and Have Not, it seemed like a pretty weak outing for Bogart.  Seeing it again I feel the same.  I was not captivated by the characters or situations.  There was a frisson of the forbidden which I didn't appreciate at the time in their unknowingly adulterous affair, but on the whole it just didn't do it for me.  What did impress me immensely was the lighting.  Casablanca has some of the best lighting I have ever seen.  The set of Rick's Cafe is just a big barn with white walls and empty arches, but it is brought to life by the lighting and staging of deep shots with multiple layers of shadows and moving figures.

 Every surface in every shot is brought to life by dappled shadows and angled illumination, and the space is filled with an endless variety of  baroque lamps.

 The palm fronds cast upon the arch here is especially brilliant, and the spaces beyond are filled with detail and shadows.

The gambling room in the back is not such an exotic jungle and the surfaces are more detailed but they are brought out clearly by well-placed lighting.  The framing of that rectilinear corner within the curved arch is great.

I think Casablanca is a pretty good movie but I have seen a lot of movies I like a lot better.


My mom took me to see Gone With the Wind on a whim.  It was re-released to theatres around 1970 or so and we went past a theater in a nearby town where it was showing.  It probably didn't make it to the small town where we lived thirty miles away.  She asked me if I wanted to see it and I said okay.  I had been hearing about it of course as one of the great artifacts of our culture and we had a copy of the book in the house but I never gave it a try.  I was 13 or so and it was obviously over my head, but that was not an uncommon experience for me as I had been taken along to Spartacus and Dr. Strangelove when they came out, and I would experience movies like Dr. Zhivago in much the same way.   Now I have had forty years to experience relationships and emotions and I was very pleased to find Gone With the Wind extremely enjoyable in every way.  William Cameron Menzies' production design is magnificent, especially the extended scenes in silhouette or near-monochrome of deep reds and ochres, and the framing scenes of silhouetted figures beneath the reaching tree against a lurid sky tie the whole thing together in a remarkable fashion.  The production overall is truly outstanding, and one of the greatest products of studio filmmaking.  The story itself kept me riveted for nearly four hours (compared to being utterly weary and exasperated after an hour of Lebowski).  I was also very pleased with the sophisticated nuances of adult relationships, and most impressed with the character of Scarlett, one of the great monsters of the cinema.  Vain, greedy and stupid, she wavers only momentarily from her singleminded obsession with herself, and even then she is rapidly slapped back into form by the protective wall she forces others to build against her.  Where a lesser story might permit its protagonist to reach a breaking point and learn to become a better person, Scarlett never does.  She remains both pitiable and admirable to the end in her utter blindness to others' humanity, and especially her absolute lack of a sense of humor.  She is a pure sociopath and a brilliant creation, ugly inside and fantastically beautiful outside in the spectacular settings and luscious costumes.  Seeing Gone With the Wind again has been the most memorable and rewarding film experience I can recall for quite some time and of the three movies in this exercise it is the one I would gladly see again in a few years.