Is that any way to review a movie?

Jim Emerson of Scanners has devoted several video posts to scenes from The Dark Knight in which he hopes to understand better why he dislikes the film and better explain it to those who would disagree with him. One scene in particular, the school bus escape from the bank, has been analyzed, studied and dissected in an attempt to achieve these goals. Some readers like the exercise while others feel it is overkill. I have nothing against a blogger obsessing over details, it is, in fact, what usually draws me in. I like it when I start to notice the same things being focused on again and again, whether it's a genre, a director, an editing style or a time period, by a blogger. It signals to me that they have a passion for the movies, a love of cinema, that cannot be sated by a general overview but by a veritable feast of forensic analysis. The posts by Jim signal that to me as well. It's clear to any reader who happens upon Scanners that Jim has a passion for the movies. But...

The Dark Knight posts keep bothering me. Why? I've made it clear that I didn't like the movie very much so why should I care, especially since the posts are concerned with "exposing" the movie's flaws? And yet, the posts bother me. As a budding filmmaker myself, a photographer and the husband of a successful painter I have my own ideas of what makes art work and how one should judge it. And I can't get away from the nagging feeling that you don't judge a painting stroke by stroke but as a whole. If I focus on the over sized hands and arms of the reader in Edward Hopper's Chair Car, I lose not only the feel of the whole work, but the point of art as well.

It's not about getting that human figure to be perfect in shape and size, it's about the idea the artist is expressing and that is gathered by taking the painting in as a whole, not breaking it down into digitalized pixels. This led me to imagine how one might do the same thing for a fairly celebrated film in American cinematic history, Citizen Kane. I thought it might be a tad difficult, but in actuality, it was rather easy. Given access to a DVD ripper so that one may use whichever scene one desires, anyone reading this post could probably do the same with just about any movie in existence. Let's begin.

First let's take this simple shot. It begins as an exterior shot in which the viewer sees Charlie Kane writing and Jed Leland sitting and dissolves into an interior shot viewing the same two characters from behind. Here's the clip:

Anyone who knows the language of film knows that shot is all wrong. It uses a dissolve for its transition from exterior to interior. When does one use a dissolve? Most often to emphasize the passage of time. When going from exterior to interior without a passage of time one simply cuts to the opposite shot. Okay, but what if Welles actually is implying the passage of time? What if he wants us to understand that Kane has been writing up against the window for a while now? It's still all wrong. Any director worth his salt knows that if one wants to use a dissolve to illustrate the passage of time with the same characters in the same location, then the characters positions must be moved around, for the sake of both aesthetic consideration and to not confuse the viewer. For instance, in the first exterior shot we would see Jed pacing in the background and Charlie sitting at a desk writing. Dissolve to interior as we see Charlie writing against the window and Jed sitting next to him. The passage of time has been effectively communicated. Watch this shot from Casablanca, made in roughly the same time period (within a year) of Citizen Kane. It's a two for one clip in which we first see a dissolve to illustrate the passage of time and then see an exterior shot of Ingrid Bergman on a balcony then an interior shot from the opposite angle as Humphrey Bogart opens a bottle of champagne. Here is the clip:

And there you have it. The dissolve and the exterior/interior cut demonstrated properly by director Michael Curtiz. Am I to believe that Welles was not familiar with this most basic syntax of film language? That he and his editor Robert Wise didn't understand the fundamentals of dissolve transitions? It's difficult to believe and yet there it is. When they were in the editing room, and they had the two shots before them, and knew they had to put them together, they chose to use dissolve for reasons unknown. I could argue from this single scene that Welles and his editor, Wise, were incompetent, or at the very least, poor visual storytellers. It wouldn't be true, but if I choose to isolate my criticism of the film to a series of single scenes, I could do so.

Now let's examine a different part of the movie in which the criticism goes to another criticism of The Dark Knight, heavy handedness. This writer in particular leveled that criticism against it. But look at this scene from Kane. Kane is reading his Declaration of Principles and while doing so is shrouded in shadow. How far down the educational chain would one have to travel (third grade, second, kindergarten?) before finding someone who didn't get the visual metaphor there? I've heard it discussed many times and equally praised. I've rarely if ever heard it mentioned how screamingly obvious it is, how closely it falls in line with amateur writing reaching for obvious metaphor. Here's the clip:

Now let's take a different tack: Visual clutter. The Dark Knight has been accused of this and few movies clutter up the screen like Kane. Is it beautiful or is it a mess? Let's take this clip of what I'll call The Eye of Susan. It's a transition shot from Susan's face at the picnic to a hallway in Xanadu. As the shot dissolves we see Susan's eye replaced with the eye in the stained glass. Here's the clip:

Kane is full of visual treats like this but if it doesn't go towards a better understanding of the story or character, if it serves no purpose, it's just clutter confusing the viewer with too much information. Upon listening to the commentary track of both Roger Ebert and Peter Bogdanovich during this transition it was not surprising to find that neither mention it. Most people never do. Why? Because once mentioned, meaning must be discerned and what does it mean? That Susan who is now about to leave Charlie is all-seeing? That Susan is like artwork built into the house? Neither of those is very convincing and even if they were meant to show that, by this point in the film the relationship of Charles and Susan has been made clear to the viewer without the added clutter.

Finally, let's tackle the ending. Some, including this viewer, found the ending of The Dark Knight to be a bit ham-fisted. This same criticism could be levelled against Kane. Visually, it's beautiful, as the camera pulls back finally revealing thousands of crates awaiting disposal. But listen to the dialogue. It's a classic moment of "gee thanks for the sledgehammer over the head but I think we all got that without you saying it." Here's the clip:

Since this one is dialogue specific, and some viewers may not have sound available on their computer due to their work environment here is the transcript:

Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece.

Dialogue that, with some name changes, could have been lifted straight from a high school term paper on The Great Gatsby.

So there you have it. Citizen Kane is an incompetent mess of a movie. Hammy dialogue, visual clutter, obvious symbolism and baffling editing choices. It's a wonder this movie gets any play at all. Maybe if it weren't for all those Kane fanboys we'd never have even heard of it. What a disaster.

Just as it is important for the reader of A Christmas Carol to understand that Jacob Marley is as dead as a doornail, it is equally important for the reader here to understand that I love Citizen Kane and don't believe a word of what I wrote in the preceding paragraph. But if using individual elements to critique a movie is one's method, then one can elevate or destroy anything. It's too easy. I'd rather see a full review in which the entire movie is taken into account. If you're trying to convince me a movie is not worth my time based on individual scenes you have plucked from the whole then you're not going to convince me. Art is understood from a perspective of the whole. No one praises Van Gogh's Starry Night based on the church steeple alone. No one writes essays about the fourth star from the left. Those two things might get mentioned, especially the steeple as it occupies the center of the frame, but only in the context of the whole. Telling me the school bus escape doesn't make sense doesn't tell me The Dark Knight is a bad movie. It tells me that particular scene doesn't make sense. In the meantime, I've learned nothing about the rest of the film. I've learned nothing about the themes of the film. I've learned nothing about the story, the characters or the plot's development. In short, I've learned nothing except that the critic publishing the piece knows how to pick a scene out of a film to suit his or her purpose. That way lies sophistry. And that's no way to review a movie.

It's Official: The Damn Thing's Ubiquitous

Old Jonathan Lapper's daughter was only six years old. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate (to borrow a phrase from Charles Dickens).

So on Saturday I had to drive the six year old Little Miss Lapper and her six year old friend to her soccer game. It's a fascinating weekly event in which six year olds wander aimlessly in circles and oblong formations attempting to kick a ball with some sense of purpose. Occasionally, if the planets are aligned correctly and the universe engages in a brief quantum flux, the ball rolls into one of the goals. The planets do not align correctly often.

On this past Saturday we arrived to find the game had been cancelled due to the muddy field from the previous day's rain. Being the responsible and resourceful father that I am I decided the perfect alternative to a vigorous and healthy workout on the soccer field was a trip to the ice cream shop. Besides, I had a hankering for a malted. So I packed up the two little ham balls into the car and drove across town to a nice little locally owned ice cream shop for a bit of creamery delight.

The six years olds confirmed their age by ordering the oddest combination of flavors and toppings available. Maybe I'm too unimaginative but in my book gummy bears don't go with Dulce de Leche flavored ice cream very well. But who am I to judge? I got my malted, paid and we all took a seat.

Upon sitting down it wasn't long before Little Miss Lapper inquired as to the deliciousness of my malted. I told her it was indeed delicious. She (and this should be no surprise to anyone with children) immediately wanted some. I gave her the malted for a taste. She took it in both hands, as children are want to do, and that's when it happened. She looked me squarely in the eyes, furrowed her brow and said:

"I drink your milkshake. I drink it up!"

"Wow," I thought, "it's official. That goddamn line is now known by every human being on the planet."

Now obviously, movies are discussed quite a bit in my household and if I may brag for a moment, the Little Miss Lapper, at the tender young age of six, can identify by face or name most of the big stars of the thirties and forties, which places her far ahead of most casual moviegoing adults. She loves "old movies", as she says, and indeed The Awful Truth is one of her favorites, with the scene of the cat holding back the door against Cary Grant guaranteed to crack her up every time. And it's not just classics but older movies in general. Last year for a playdate she wanted to bring a DVD and picked Murder Ahoy with Margaret Rutherford. Not wanting her to face the rejection of this choice we explained that other children might not appreciate Miss Marple on the same level that she does. But at home we've watched all four of Rutherford's Marple series many times over. Margaret Rutherford fascinates the Little Miss Lapper.

But There Will Be Blood? I saw it in the theater. I still don't have it on DVD. And yet there she was, quoting Daniel Plainview to me at the local ice cream shop. Amazing.

What is it about certain movie lines that they are immortalized almost instantly? Why do some lines become ubiquitous while others go unnoticed? Casablanca is famous for it's wealth of quotable lines from "shocked, Shocked!" and "hill of beans" to "here's looking at you kid" and "round up the usual suspects." Hell, it's got so many memorable lines people even remember lines that weren't there ("Play it again, Sam"). In keeping with the classic Hollywood film theme of this comparison, Citizen Kane has a screenplay filled with great lines as well, including one of my favorites, "You know Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich I might have been a really great man." But what's the one Kane line that everyone knows? "Rosebud."

I don't have the answer for why some lines become immortal while others do not. Some are understandable. For instance, "May the Force be with you" is not only a simple statement along the lines of "Good Luck" or "Break a Leg", it also has the fortune of being spoken in a film seen more times by more people than most other films in history. Same goes for "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." Outside of the obvious advantages of that line (spoken by Clark Gable, appearing in generationally popular movie) there's also the context: It's being said to someone who connives and schemes by someone who is, to quote an old internet joke, just so tired of all her shit. It provides the audience with a "finally!" moment that they love.

So is it context that makes a line immortal? The context of the milkshake scene in There Will Be Blood could certainly fall into the same category as the Gone With the Wind line in the simplest of comparisons in that one character is telling another character off, a character the audience has been waiting to see get told off. Only in There Will Be Blood the character doing the telling off, Daniel Plainview, is decidedly less likable than Gable's Rhett Butler. But what about those famous lines that have practically no context like "Yeah Baby!" from Austin Powers that people started saying because they didn't know how to be witty or clever on their own. Or "I'm the King of the World!" from Titanic? It's not a particularly deep line or containing any kind of clever play on words but for whatever reason it became famous. A seemingly coke-addled James Cameron even yelled it out when he won one of his many Oscars that night, acknowledging it's ubiquity.

Is it quality? Doubtful. There are many lines from many a bad film that are utterly immortalized. But quality films do seem to have the advantage. More people know "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" from The Godfather than "muzzled by army brass" from Plan Nine from Outer Space (or it's almost orgasmic description of Solaranite, one of my favorite scientific explanation movie moments in film history) but Plan Nine does have its share of famous lines nonetheless.

The thing with immortal movie lines is you never know which ones are going to become immortalized and which ones aren't. So maybe it's the mood of the country or the world at any given time. I've often thought that despite its cleverness as a line, one of the reasons that "We're gonna need a bigger boat" caught on so well was due to the sinking ship feeling all over the world in 1975. Gas shortages, meat and sugar prices shooting up, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Watergate, the drawn out end of the war in Vietnam, recession and so on and so on. It was a mess and nobody had the answer. But in that movie, Jaws, Chief Brody saw the problem and addressed it succinctly, honestly and appropriately. I think everyone in the seventies felt like we needed a bigger boat.

So what's the zeitgeist now? Why is the milkshake line so ubiquitous? Is it because it uses the word "milkshake?" Seriously, is that why? If he had said "water" instead would it have stuck? I don't think it would have so the wording definitely goes a long way in explaining its popularity.

Or is it the internet? It seems more movies have memorable lines now than ever before if only because we can watch clips from them over and over at our leisure. And that goes for television shows too. Most people can quote episodes of The Simpsons or South Park liberally and with ease so maybe it's just the access we have now. Maybe if There Will Be Blood was released in 1957 the line would've disappeared without a trace.

And this technological advantage of the internet and DVDs has helped out smaller movies immeasurably. The ability to watch the movie on DVD or online again and again has helped movies that would've fallen down the memory hole just a couple of decades before become cult classics. Take The Big Lebowski. It had a lukewarm reception in the theatres during it's opening run. It got mixed reviews and seemed destined to be one of the lesser known Coen brothers' films. Then it was released on video and took on a brand new second life as a cult classic. With its release on DVD it became even easier to go to favorite scenes over and over. And the price didn't hurt either. The Big Lebowski was one of the first DVDs I ever bought, partially because I liked the movie and partially because it's price point was around seven bucks. Today its fans (and most cinephiles in general) can quote the movie endlessly even though many of the quotes are only funny within the context of the film and don't stand out as anything special on their own. The line on the phone, for instance, when the Dude tells Walter that, no, he didn't think the kid was about to crack, is hilarious, but only if you've sat through the astonishing homework interrogation scene before it.

So will there be more out of context quoting of 'R' rated movies by six year olds in the future? Almost assuredly. We have entered the golden age of movie quoting, aided by technology, that allows moviegoers the world over to connect with each other on the basis of shared knowledge. In this case, shared knowledge of movie or television dialogue. When people unfamiliar with each other can recite a scene from a favorite movie together or knowingly laugh when the other says, " I don't roll on Shabbos!" we've entered a new age; the age of quote conversations, as I like to call them. I've had many quote conversations with people I would have otherwise had nothing to say to. Usually it ends there, but sometimes it goes further and who knows, with all these quote conversations going on, some of them may end up as the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I think I heard that in a movie somewhere.

Cinema Still Life: Some Old B Movie

An important shot is set up for some old Warner Brothers movie. Based on the play Everybody Comes to Ricks it is re-titled... hold on let me check... Casa... Casa... oh, here it is - Casablanca. Hmmm, I wonder if it ever went anywhere. Who is that anyway? Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan? Nah, they'd be all wrong. You know I think it's Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Yeah, yeah, I'd swear that was them. I'm going have to read up on this movie. It might be pretty good.

Unseen Images: Doctor X

Michael Curtiz directed Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, Charge of the Light Brigade, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Sea Wolf, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mildred Pierce and of course Casablanca. His style was suited to a more modern sensibility incorporating quick cuts, fluid non-static cameras and amazing interplay with light and shadow, often letting silhouettes (the most famous as Rick goes to his safe in Casablanca) tell the story. And yet for reasons that elude me he is not revered by cinephiles or auteurists and is barely known (if at all) to the mainstream moviegoer. One of the guidelines laid down for the auteurists by Andrew Sarris in his famous essay Notes on the Autuer Theory was in fact that it was preferable for the director to be working within the studio system. Since he was given whatever assignments came his way his style would be more easily discernible as he "rebelled" against his material. Curtiz worked with the studios. And he had style. Friends and family can attest to several occasions where a Curtiz movie unknown to me would be on Turner Classic Movies and yet it would seem instantly familiar. The first was The Kennel Murder Case, a Philo Vance mystery with William Powell made in 1933. As we came in half-way through and watched I was impressed by the quick cuts and rapid pacing. I remarked how modern it felt and how it seemed like the kind of touch Michael Curtiz brought to his movies. Sure enough, once it ended Robert Osborne came on and started talking about Curtiz. I wasn't surprised. Now I'd have to say if you can watch a movie unknown to you and guess the director within minutes that director is an auteur. But try getting a table at 21 using his name. Good luck.

Another example was the first time I saw Doctor X. I came into it late and, again, had no idea it was a Curtiz film but kept remarking how amazing the pacing was for a 1932 film. That combined with the fact that it is in color led me to state that it could run well even today. Again, when it ended I discovered it was a Curtiz production. His style was noted even back in the early forties by such critical luminaries as James Agee who was not enthralled by it. Agee felt the camera movement and fast pacing was too distracting to the story. As he said in his review of Casablanca, "Mr. Curtiz still has the twenties director's correct feeling that everything, including the camera, should move, but the camera should move for purposes other than those of a nautch-dancer." (What would Agee have thought of The Bourne Ultimatum?) He finally came around to Casablanca, but begrudgingly, stating, "It is obviously an improvement on one of the world's worst plays, but not such an improvement that that is obvious." And so it seems to me we have the case of a director using a style distinctly out of touch with the times surrounding him and thus, the disapproval. Today Curtiz' films do not seem too quickly paced to be distracting with too much camera movement reminding one of a nautch-dancer, and I'm not sure why Agee considered that a put down in the first place. Today his films are perfectly paced to hold the attention of the modern viewer while providing enough story and character study to satisfy the demands of the classic movie connoisseur.

For this Unseen Images I'm focusing on Doctor X because 1) It's October and 2) It's not a Curtiz film many people know about.

The plot involves a series of murders involving cannibalism and the investigation into them by Dr. Xavier (Lionel Atwill) of the title, who may be the killer himself. All the murders take place when it is a full moon so there is also much discussion of the effects of lunar rays. Investigating as well is a reporter, Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy) who takes to Xavier's daughter Joan, well-played by Fay Wray.

The plot is twisted and contorted at times and doesn't have the simplicity or straightforwardness of story to make it a classic along with Frankenstein, Dracula or the later Wolfman which may account for it's obscurity today. But it has a fantastic climax, with the Moonlight Killer, covered in synthetic skin looking as creepy today as it must have then (make-up done by Max Factor), ready to experiment on Fay Wray with the three scientists who could help chained to chairs, forced to watch. It's ridiculous of course to the end but one does not seek out a film like Doctor X in the hopes of finding Ibsen in the details. One seeks it out for a thrill, and a thrill is what it delivers.

At a time when most films had static cameras and moved at a lethargic pace due to the still present learning curve with sound, Doctor X is a snappy, energetic film with enough camera movement and quick cuts to satisfy even the most jaded modern viewers. The scenes are filled with a menacing atmosphere, all the more impressive because it was not done in black and white, where atmosphere for a horror film's a lot easier to produce. And it is yet another tribute to the greatness of Michael Curtiz, who continues to languish in the realms of neglected directors along with other notable neglectees as William Wellman and Allan Dwan. Much of it probably has to do with Casablanca. Sometimes when you do a movie that big it takes over everything else in your career. It's as if someone said to Curtiz, "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is you've been assigned to direct Casablanca, which will become one of the most beloved films of all time. The bad news is you've been assigned to direct Casablanca, which will become one of the most beloved films of all time. Sorry Mike."