Bonjour, salut, and âllo...

Hello, all! Sorry for the long absence; my internet connection in France was surprisingly spotty, my free time was unsurprisingly short, and I've been working nonstop since I've been back. That's all over now though, and I have three weeks in which to catch my breath and catch up on everything before I go back to school. I have a whole slew of movies (both old and not-so-much) to ramble about, but first I thought I'd dip my toes back into the proverbial blogging water by sharing a few film-related experiences I had in Paris.



First off, in my after-class wanderings I stumbled upon what might just be my favorite place in the whole city. The Bibliothèque due Cinéma François-Truffaut is an entire library dedicated to film history, with books in both French and English. It's located in the underground shopping mall/cultural center/métro station in Les Halles, right next door to the Forum des Images, a cinema and instructional center with thousands of archived films I unfortunately did not get the chance to peruse. I could have happily camped out here for the entire month, but as there was much else to do I settled for a quick snapshot and a single evening of browsing the stacks. (Apologies for the poor picture quality; my camera was on the wrong setting and I didn't want to make my friend stand there and take it again.)



My second great discovery came in a poster shop in Montmartre. They had stacks and stacks of classic film posters in English and French, but when I saw this French version of Bringing Up Baby I just had to have it. I limited myself to just this one purchase, but I did go back to that shop again to look for more. I would have felt kind of silly coming home from Paris with a suitcase full of English-language movie posters, but I was so, so very tempted.

That's about it for now. There's one more place that gets its own post before I go back to talking about movies, but first I'm going to go watch Notorious and catch up on my blogroll.

Crazy Eights

Since Lolita, Ginger, and Nicole were all kind enough to tag me, I thought I'd take some time out of our irregularly scheduled movie-related rambling to do this meme. I'm not sure who's left that hasn't been tagged, so I'll just be lazy and tag everyone.

8 Things I Look Forward To
1. Studying in Paris! I'll be there for all of June in a Fine Arts program, taking Contemporary French Cinema and Art & Architecture of Paris, and hopefully brushing up on my français on the side.
2. Shopping, in preparation for the aforementioned trip. My wardrobe sorely needs updating from the ripped jeans I've been bumming around campus in all year.
3. Being able to relax for the next couple of weeks, now that I'm done with finals.
4. Getting back onto a less insane sleeping pattern. I actually miss waking up before noon.
5. Seeing the Gaslight Anthem perform live again. This may or may not happen while I'm in Paris, but if it doesn't then I'll definitely catch them the next time they come back to Jersey.
6. Going back to Rowan in the fall. I miss my friends, I miss my apartment, I... even kind of miss my classes.
7. Expanding my DVD collection. Which brings me to...
8. Having a disposable income. Or even simply an income. I must remind myself how much I look forward to this, because I certainly do not look forward to returning to my summer job.

8 Things I Did Yesterday
1. Woke up.
2. Laundry. Lots of it.
3. Relived the '90s via the first two discs of Beverly Hills 90210, season 1. I still think Brenda Walsh is the most realistic fictional teenager ever invented.
4. Spent some quality time with the internet.
5. Listened to "Engines" by Snow Patrol multiple times. Set a line from that song as my Facebook status without knowing my roommate had been using it as an away message, thereby accidentally managing to convince a mutual friend that there's a conspiracy afoot.
6. Ingested more caffeine than is probably healthy in any 24-hour period.
7. Played the Sims 2 until I got annoyed with my slow laptop.
8. Tinkered with the layout on my Dreamwidth blog. Gave up tinkering and picked a premade layout as a placeholder.

8 Things I Wish I Could Do
1. Learn languages easily. I've been working on French on and off for seven years, and I'm nowhere near fluent.
2. Find a profitable way of combining writing with film history.
3. Cook. I can feed myself adequately, if I have to, but I wish I had the desire to try it more often.
4. Sit down with some of the important figures in film history and talk about what went on in their time periods from their perspectives.
5. Sit down with Joss Whedon and talk about why exactly going back to Fox seemed like a good idea, and also, can we have more Victor pretty pretty please?
6. Finish writing something without having a grade and/or the shame of losing NaNoWriMo dangled in front of me like a carrot on a stick.
7. Be a professional student.
8. Invent a weather-controlling machine.

8 Shows I Watch
1. Dollhouse... which is actually the only show I've actively been following this season, so the rest are DVDs and/or reruns on TV.
2. House
3. Family Guy
4. Supernatural
5. Firefly
6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
7. The X-Files
8. Beverly Hills 90210
9. Scrubs
10. And of course, anything on TCM.

Now just because you got your neck washed, you think you're a gentleman...

The semester's finally over, which hopefully means I'll have a couple of weeks free to catch up on all the TCM I've been missing. I did have the chance to watch one movie in between finals, parties, presentations, and move-out last week, and naturally it was the one starring Bette Davis: Bordertown.

Of course, the film really centers on Paul Muni's character, Johnny Ramirez. After studying for five years to become a lawyer, Johnny's first real case reveals that his education just didn't match up to that of his richer opponent. He devotes himself to earning as much money as possible, and moves from L.A. to a town on the Mexican-American border, where he gets a job working for casino owner Charlie Roark. Now, Johnny didn't leave his law practice behind just to be a bartender -- he climbs the ladder all the way up to the top, becoming Charlie's partner. So our protagonist made good. The end, right?

Not even close. Charlie has somehow (and we're not explicitly told how) procured for himself a young, feisty wife who's quite interested in Johnny -- and who wouldn't be? Marie Roark actively despises her husband, though he's oblivious and Johnny just plays dumb. In fact, Ramirez tells her outright that he's more interested in money than in her, but since the plot wouldn't move very far if she respected that, Marie is just crazy enough not to care, and just crazy enough to do something about it when the opportunity presents itself:



As the film progresses, Marie slowly goes mad with guilt or paranoia, becoming ever more obsessed with the man she killed her husband for. While doing his best to ignore her, Johnny pursues a relationship with the woman who cost him his law career almost as relentlessly as Marie pursues him, although with much better results. Up to a point, at least.

It's impossible to discuss this movie without discussing the ending, so if you haven't seen it this might be your cue to turn elsewhere. For the rest of you: The film seems to be sending mixed messages about the status of Mexican-Americans. On the one hand, Johnny is presented as an intelligent and capable character; his love interests are two white American women, and his friends and employees all seem to like and respect him. On the other hand, there's, well, everything else.

To be fair, although there are incidents of racism scattered throughout the film, it feels much more like an accurate portrayal of the way these characters would act and think than an actual statement the movie is trying to make. Miss Elwell calls Johnny "Savage" because that's how she sees him; the audience is not necessarily meant to agree. Then suddenly at the end, the message is "go back to your own kind," the implication being that Johnny somehow isn't worthy of the society he's been functioning just fine in up until then? It feels like something that was tacked on to appease the general audience of the time, rather than an organic conclusion to the story. It would have felt more natural to have Johnny go back because he had an epiphany about losing sight of the people he'd originally intended to help, making the character come full circle rather than simply hit a brick wall.

Clearly the ending didn't age well at all, but I still enjoyed the movie as a whole. Bette Davis excels at bringing the crazy, and Paul Muni sizzles with every woman he shares screen time with.

I can see what's good, tell me the rest...

My Little Chickadee is the perfect film to see Mae West playing Mae West. It's also the first film in which I've seen Mae West at all, but she was well represented throughout my childhood in icons ranging from Betty Boop to Jessica Rabbit. I'd always taken those to be caricatures -- greatly exaggerated portrayals of Mae's most famous habits. I was actually surprised at the feeling of déjà vu that I got upon seeing Mae speak those first lines from inside her carriage. I had definitely seen this somewhere before.

Of course, as close as the cartoons I grew up with came to the real thing, nobody can do Mae West like Mae West. The slinky walk, the batting eyelashes, the smokey delivery of each and every line... The actress definitely overshadowed the character, but I can't say I didn't find her fascinating to watch anyway. I tend to be drawn to larger-than-life performers, so I can easily see myself becoming a big fan of Mae.

I found it a bit funny that after the film, Robert Osbourne said Mae West had been angry because she'd been overshadowed by her co-star and co-writer, W.C. Fields. Don't get me wrong, Fields' performance was stellar (and quite a bit more dynamic than Mae's), but my eyes were on her the whole time.

Mae West's Mae West-ness aside, I really enjoyed this movie. The script was witty, although not all of the jokes hold up in the present day. Still, it was a fun film that pitted two great performers against each other. Regardless of what they thought of each other when the cameras weren't rolling, the way they shone together was timeless.

What a charmer!

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

I finally did it. After years of hearing about this movie, after being dragged to the Von Trapp tourist trap house on a family vacation, after never having had even the slightest desire to see this film, I finally broke down and watched The Sound Of Music.

This is the part where I'm supposed to renounce my prior disdain for the movie and admit I just didn't know what I was missing, isn't it? Sorry, kids, but the best I can do on that front is just to say that it wasn't as bad as I had been bracing myself for.

The main problem I had was Saint Maria. She was just too good to be true -- and this was even after I'd just watched "Practically Perfect" Mary Poppins. It wasn't Maria herself, or Julie Andrews' portrayal, that I had a problem with; what bothered me most was the way that other characters talked about her, particularly the other nuns. "How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?" Really? I hate it when characters' flaws are excused or benevolently tolerated for no reason. Even in a children's story, I think it just makes that character feel flat.

The story itself felt like it should have been two different movies. First there's a would-be nun acting as governess to a widower's children; she gains the children's trust and falls in love with her employer, and there are a few mentions of the political climate strewn about here and there. They live happily ever after until someone decides the movie was too short, so hold on a second -- there's Nazis! Maybe it was because I'd expected the main plot to be about the family's escape from occupied Austria, but the entire ending felt tacked-on to me.

Maybe if I'd grown up with this movie, I would have liked it better. I did enjoy parts of it, but it isn't a film I'd actively seek out to watch again.

Jane says to Michael, "I know of a man with a wooden leg named Smith." And Michael says, "Really? What's the name of his other leg?"

On Easter Sunday, I woke up to two things: A chocolate bunny, and Mary Poppins. The latter I watched twice over the course of the day, so I feel extra prepared for this post.

Of course, watching Disney movies as one of the grown-ups is an entirely different experience. When I was little, I had no idea what the woman's suffrage movement was, and I had never seen someone trying to make a living by performing on the street. I accepted these, and the myriad other aspects of the film that didn't match up with my middle-class American upbringing, without much thought. Odd how its those same details, the ones I'd always just skipped over as a child, that most hold my interest now.

The most poignant scene in the film by far is Mr. Banks' late walk through the deserted London streets on his way to being fired. It was never something I paid attention to as a kid -- after all, where was the Mary Poppins magic or animation? -- but I now find it riveting. Here's a man who is just starting, with the help of Bert, to realize how screwed up his priorities are. His entire worldview is in the process of being shaken, and before he has the chance to get his bearings, the one thing he's valued most is about to be pulled out from under him. To the credit of David Tomlinson, the audience can see the confusion in Banks' face when he pauses at the place where Michael had wanted to feed the birds. It's clear that he's still not quite sure what it all means.

I really liked that the parents -- particularly Mr. Banks -- were such an integral part of the story, to the point of having side plots of their own. It's a more interesting alternative to the static or absent parents in many Disney films.

One thing that hasn't changed about my perception of this movie is the "Step In Time" number. It's always been one of my favorite choreographed sequences in film. As I was watching on Sunday morning, I started reading some of the trivia on IMDB, and I saw that they had to film this scene twice because of a scratch on the original film. I tried to find more information on this number, but my Google-fu is failing me today. I did find a clip, at least.



Can you imagine having to nail this twice?

He's the perfect example of that dying race, unpressed gentleman of the press...

It feels like I've had this entry sitting, half-finished, on my computer for almost a month. Sorry, guys; school's been eating all my free time lately, and just when I think I've found a way to make it work to my advantage, it goes and devours some more. Anyway...

This blog started as a combination of my personal and academic pursuits. Through sheer coincidence, those two parts of my life are crossing paths here once again. I spent much of one Sunday, a few weeks ago, reading The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel for my Evaluating Writing class. I woke up the next morning to find my school closed, and a journalism-themed marathon on TCM. How's that for timing?

I sat down that afternoon wondering, dork that I am, if I'd be able to pick out any of Kovach and Rosenstiel's lessons in the careers of these fictional characters. One of the issues in journalism, though skimmed over in the book, jumped out at me immediately in Teacher's Pet. The question alluded to by these writers and posed by the movie script is whether and to what extent education is necessary, or even desirable, in journalism.

By the time Kovach and Rosenstiel's book was published in 2001, journalism schools had long been a part of the business. Its effectiveness, however, was not universally accepted among journalists. Yes, Jim Gannon is alive and well, although the nature of journalism has undergone some changes since this film was made. The fundamental argument made by Clark Gable's character seems to still hold water to a certain extent, even today. On page 155, Kovach and Rosenstiel make note of "the degree to which journalists, compared with other professionals, failed to communicate the lessons of one generation to the next." They go on to state that "hairdressers have more continuing education than journalists." I'm sure my journalism-major friends would dispute this, but it's an interesting idea. What ultimately constitutes an "education" in journalism: the Poynter Institute, or the School of Hard Knocks?

In the film, James Gannon firmly believes in the latter. A high school drop-out who worked his way up to editor of the city paper, Gannon at first holds all education in pure contempt -- "The important thing is he's had no experience," is how he dismisses his rival for Erica Stone's affections, the pretentious Dr. Hugo Pine. "He didn't start at the bottom and work up. That's the only way you can learn." His opinion on the matter is made very clear early in the film, when a distraught mother asks him to fire her son so that the boy will go back to school. Gannon ignores her, confident the boy will fare much better under his wing. Shortly thereafter, he discovers a certain journalism teacher has a particularly low opinion of him and decides to do some undercover reporting, for his own edification of course.

Miss Stone, played by Doris Day, represents everything that Gannon abhors: "Amateurs teaching amateurs how to be amateurs." A former reporter and the daughter of a well-respected editor, Erica Stone decided to teach "for the same reason that occasionally a musician wants to be a conductor; he wants to hear a hundred people play music the way he hears it." She believes that carefully training reporters in the art of explaining not just what happened but why and how is the only way for print journalism to overcome the blow it was dealt by television newscasts. When a mild-mannered older gentleman who introduces himself as James Gallagher appears in her classroom, she sees in him the potential to be a great reporter -- if only he had a little bit more schooling.

Naturally, Gannon-as-Gallagher attempts to be as antagonistic as possible towards the unsuspecting Erica without actually giving himself away. And naturally, this being a romantic comedy, he finds himself falling in love with her despite her wildly different approach to the job he's spent much of his life married to. His growing attraction to Erica opens his mind to her side of the debate, and he even comes to question his own self-worth, especially after a night on the town with his well-educated competition. He begins to think that formal education may very well be the best path to becoming a journalist -- until he sees what a well-educated editor who lacks reporting experience can do to a front page. Unfortunately this boost to his self-esteem comes courtesy of Erica's late father, which has the expected consequences for their relationship, but it also leads to interesting conclusions from a journalistic perspective. Good instincts, after all, can't be taught.

Neither the film nor the debate ends there, but I won't spoil the ending. Everyone should see this movie; it's a hilarious romantic comedy if you aren't interested in journalism, and if you are, it raises some important points that are still valid today. In fact, with the rise of amateur internet-based reporting and the uncertain future of print journalism, this film may become even more relevant with time.