Read part I and part II of this series to read about movies from my adolescence and the early film school years.
Self-directed Pseudo Study Abroad (Paris for three weeks)
In the 2003-2004 school year a few of my fellow film students and I felt like we weren’t getting as much out of the available screenwriting classes as we could. We put our brains together and started a writer’s group. We brilliantly referred to ourselves as ‘writer’s group’, or sometimes ‘the writer’s group’ when our egos were especially swollen. Because we were all single, and up for anything, our Saturday night meetings often flowed into late night discussions on any number of topics. We started meeting for lunch occasionally. Next thing you knew we were playing basketball into the wee hours of the morning, catching an afternoon matinee, or accidentally talking until 5:30 am on a school night. It was the first time in my life that I was really part of what I would call a ‘tight crew’. Everything flowed with that group.
I mention all this by way of introducing how I wound up in France for a month in the summer of 2004. My friend Shane was widely touted as the most talented member of the writer’s group (he’s now a grad student at Columbia). I had lived in France for a couple of years and was always thinking about going back. Shane was just a fan of France (this was right at the height of the ‘Freedom Fries’ movement as well, shows you what kind of character Shane has). He and I began throwing around the idea of going to France that summer. Every couple of weeks we would ask each other if we were really serious about going to France. I’m serious if you are, is how we would respond. It was like a staring contest and neither of us blinked. It’s safe to say everyone wound up a winner. The prize: a weekend in New York, a week visiting my future wife in London (who was on a legitimate Theatre Study Abroad program), and three weeks in Paris, France.
Most of our time in Paris was spent going to movies. We saw the city, of course. We went to museums, ate crêpes (and gyros which are really good there), sat in café’s, took pictures and all that. But one of the great things about the French is their love of the cinema. They have a nationwide Festival of the Cinema, for crying out loud. Three days worth of movies for a quarter (or something very cheap), day and night, as many as you can see. Beyond this they have a healthy respect for all-night retrospectives and the genre-themed series. We were able to easily see two to four movies a day, all in English (Shane doesn’t speak French, he just loves the place). While we were there one particular theater was running a series of films noir. They had one film that played all week, and then the other screen was playing a movie that changed every day. We were there often. At this theater the usher actually walks you in and shows you to your aisle, and you tip them some change for their efforts. It took us a day or two to catch on to this practice, but we made up for it from then on.
We caught a Jim Jarmusch all-night marathon. That night was our record, four movies in one twenty-four hour period. But the gem of the movie-viewing on this trip was Some Came Running.
13. Some Came Running
Some Came Running stars Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley Maclaine. We watched it one night, and then the next night we took Lucie, the daughter of the family we were staying with, out to watch it again. I hadn’t ever heard of it before we went, and we couldn’t find it on dvd upon our return, so we bought it on laserdisc. That’s how excited we were about this movie. There’s no use restraining myself when I talk about it, and now that it’s available on dvd many of you will be able to watch it and will inevitably be disappointed (according to Posnanski’s rating system). But there’s no slowing down my enthusiasm for it. The bright lights at the carnival ending are certainly outdated, the story is couched in melodrama and could seem old-fashioned. But this is the movie that still has me saying that Shirley Maclaine is hands down the best actress of all-time.
Let’s break down what I love about this movie:
1. Vincente Minelli uses the melodrama structure to critique the societal airs put on by small town America circa 1950s
2. Shirley Maclaine disappears for ⅔ of the film and still owns it
3. The shear amount of drinking people did back then (at least in this movie) was unbelievable
4. The contrast between the teacher and Maclaine’s character
5. The relationship between Sinatra’s brother and sister-in-law is priceless
6. As writer’s group member Lee S. later put it, “You think it’s going to go one way, and then it turns out going a completely different way.”
All of these elements combined to create a viewing experience that I will never forget. Did you ever like a movie (or song, or anything really) so much that you want to share it with everyone? But then when you’re watching it you are so nervous that they won’t appreciate it like you do that you almost can’t enjoy watching it? That’s the way this one is for me.
14. Elephant
Elephant was another movie I saw in France. I had been wanting to see it since it’s release, but for some reason missed it while in the states. Some people aren’t that into his current ‘realism’ style. I love it. I find it mesmerizing. In this case I think the style is perfect for the content. We know what’s going to happen, and we just dreamily follow along as it unfolds.
There’s a moment in the film where the camera passes through the lunch room and it drifts by a couple in the midst of a mini-argument. The girl says something like, “I don’t understand why you would say that. A couple of weeks ago when I sang the national anthem everyone liked it.” And the camera drifts off. There’s something about the way the girl nails that line that I loved. The timing had to be just right. With the camera going on one long take, she had to deliver her line at a specific time, and in the perfect way. That’s a lot more work than you would imagine. With that one line I had a glimpse of their whole relationship.
This exemplifies what I love about the style. The small moments are magnified by the silence that surrounds them.
Nearly made the list:
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Les Choristes
Force of Evil
Read parts I and II while waiting for the final part of this series, coming soon!
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