Post by klep on Apr 15, 2019 7:02:10 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/15: It Happened One Night
1930s WEEK!
There are only three films to have won the top 5 Oscars - Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay. The most recent was The Silence of the Lambs 28 years ago. Sixteen years before that the feat was accomplished by One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. But the first film to do it was It Happened One Night all the way back in 1935.
So it's rare accomplishment that requires everyone involved to be firing on all cylinders, and boy are they here. Frank Capra working with his frequent writing partner Robert Riskin deliver a script that is laugh-out-loud funny while giving proper treatment to all of its significant characters (excluding of course Jameson Thomas' King Westley, who is more of a symbol than a character). The script is full of little gems like the singing highwayman (Alan Hale) or the "Walls of Jericho" which gets an hilarious payoff in the final shot. It takes great pains to pay off the things which need to be paid off, and moving on from things its done with (like Roscoe Karns' greedy womanizer Oscar Shapeley).
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are perfect as the leads, both individually and with each other - their chemistry is excellent, making their characters' mutual attraction evident from the very start. Claudette captures the naïveté of Ellie, but also conveys that she's an adult woman. It's a frequent trap for films like this to make the female lead little more than a child, but it's always evident that Ellie's foibles are largely a result of inexperience and uncertainty. She's introduced asserting her own agency to the point of jumping off a boat and swimming to shore; she's no shrinking violet.
Meanwhile Gable does a great job capturing the unsettled nature of Peter Warne, who swiftly loses his certainty about whether he's truly only interested in a story. Over the course of the film his gestures grow from expedient to caring, and the hard, prideful way he reacts when he thinks Ellie abandoned him is a natural consequence of his pragmatic nature. And of course his carrot-eating would come to be forever immortalized in Bugs Bunny.
There's just not a false note anywhere in the film. It's a warm, optimistic story brought to us by a director who made his name on warm, optimistic stories, and he was backed by a cast and creative team all on the same wavelength and doing some of their very best work. It's lightning and a bottle, and we're lucky to have it.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/22: Ran
SHAKESPEARE WEEK!
For Shakespeare Week we'll be discussing one of Akira Kurosawa's most sprawling and epic productions, his masterwork Ran. A combination of King Lear and Japanese legends, Ran is an engrossing tale of a warlord trying to peacefully cede power to his ambitious sons. Join us next week as we delve into feudal Japan and the tragic cycles of violence in Ran. Ran is available for rent on Vudu and Google Play.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 4/16: Big
This week the podcast kicks off a pairing on films about boys trapped in men's bodies with the new Shazam and the Penny Marshall classic Big. Join us Wednesday for a thread about the older film, which is available for rent in the usual places including Amazon Video (though it is not free for Prime members).
1930s WEEK!
There are only three films to have won the top 5 Oscars - Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay. The most recent was The Silence of the Lambs 28 years ago. Sixteen years before that the feat was accomplished by One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. But the first film to do it was It Happened One Night all the way back in 1935.
So it's rare accomplishment that requires everyone involved to be firing on all cylinders, and boy are they here. Frank Capra working with his frequent writing partner Robert Riskin deliver a script that is laugh-out-loud funny while giving proper treatment to all of its significant characters (excluding of course Jameson Thomas' King Westley, who is more of a symbol than a character). The script is full of little gems like the singing highwayman (Alan Hale) or the "Walls of Jericho" which gets an hilarious payoff in the final shot. It takes great pains to pay off the things which need to be paid off, and moving on from things its done with (like Roscoe Karns' greedy womanizer Oscar Shapeley).
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are perfect as the leads, both individually and with each other - their chemistry is excellent, making their characters' mutual attraction evident from the very start. Claudette captures the naïveté of Ellie, but also conveys that she's an adult woman. It's a frequent trap for films like this to make the female lead little more than a child, but it's always evident that Ellie's foibles are largely a result of inexperience and uncertainty. She's introduced asserting her own agency to the point of jumping off a boat and swimming to shore; she's no shrinking violet.
Meanwhile Gable does a great job capturing the unsettled nature of Peter Warne, who swiftly loses his certainty about whether he's truly only interested in a story. Over the course of the film his gestures grow from expedient to caring, and the hard, prideful way he reacts when he thinks Ellie abandoned him is a natural consequence of his pragmatic nature. And of course his carrot-eating would come to be forever immortalized in Bugs Bunny.
There's just not a false note anywhere in the film. It's a warm, optimistic story brought to us by a director who made his name on warm, optimistic stories, and he was backed by a cast and creative team all on the same wavelength and doing some of their very best work. It's lightning and a bottle, and we're lucky to have it.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/22: Ran
SHAKESPEARE WEEK!
For Shakespeare Week we'll be discussing one of Akira Kurosawa's most sprawling and epic productions, his masterwork Ran. A combination of King Lear and Japanese legends, Ran is an engrossing tale of a warlord trying to peacefully cede power to his ambitious sons. Join us next week as we delve into feudal Japan and the tragic cycles of violence in Ran. Ran is available for rent on Vudu and Google Play.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 4/16: Big
This week the podcast kicks off a pairing on films about boys trapped in men's bodies with the new Shazam and the Penny Marshall classic Big. Join us Wednesday for a thread about the older film, which is available for rent in the usual places including Amazon Video (though it is not free for Prime members).