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1932 - Gooble Gobble
18 Plays2 years ago
We're keeping it spooky (mostly) this episode! Vampires! Mummies! Pervy Trees! Circus justice! Also, original Scarface, a chill Ozu film, and the Best Movie Title of All Time!
You can watch along with our video version of the episode here on Youtube!
You can check out our Instagram, Twitter, and other social media crap here: http://linktr.ee/1w1y
And you can watch and form your own opinions from our 1932 Films Discussed playlist right here!
One Week, One Reel
Flowers and Trees
Our Feature Presentation
Vampyr
The Mummy
Freaks
I Was Born But...
Scarface
Merrily We Go to Hell
See You Next Year!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Details
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to One Week One Year, a podcast where we watch and discuss every year of film history in order, starting in 1895, the dawn of cinema. And this week is 1932. I'm one of your hosts, Chris Ellee. I'm a film projectionist. And joining me, as always, is... I'm Glenn Cobell. I'm a filmmaker. And yeah, this is... And we are podcasters.
00:00:35
Speaker
up with something better than that. It's a joke that only works once and then we do it every time. Anyway, if you are listening to this on a podcast, we can let you know that you can watch it on YouTube and you can get some little extra bonus stuff in the video, some behind the scenes pictures, that kind of thing.
00:00:59
Speaker
Whatever copyright, whatever clips the copyright pigs will let us use and some posters and that kind of thing. And if you're watching on YouTube, you know, you can just relax, do some dishes, and listen to it as a podcast, if you like, as well. And hear about some movie history.
Personal Projects and Film Festival
00:01:20
Speaker
So Glenn, yeah, how's it going? How you doing?
00:01:24
Speaker
Fine. I mean, still looking for proper work, but as you know, I shot a silent short film in the park a few weeks ago, so that was fun. Finishing up work on that, so keep an eye out either online or in film festivals.
00:01:43
Speaker
Don't know where that's going yet, but hopefully somewhere. We'll keep you posted on it. We keep you posted on every Glenn project and we keep you posted on every thing that's bringing me nightmares, like the Denver Film Festival, which starts in five days. So I don't know how I am doing this right now, but this is effectively my last day off for like three weeks. Damn.
00:02:10
Speaker
but it's all worth it for you, podcast audience. The precious listener. My precious. So this is 1933 we're talking about.
1932 Film Context and Historical Events
00:02:20
Speaker
This is early- 32. Sorry, 32. Jumping the gun a little bit. I'm already ready for next week's, for the next episode. This is 1932, which is early sound era, pre-code era. We're getting to see some edgy stuff in this. We're getting to see some zany stuff.
00:02:40
Speaker
But let's give ourselves a little bit of context for the environment of these movies in which they are coming out. So, Glenn, why don't you take it away with the news of 1933? Two. What? God! The nose of the air, 1932. In the face of brutal Japanese occupation, Korean independence activist Lee Bong Chang lobs a grenade at Emperor Hirohito.
00:03:10
Speaker
The attempt failed, but the Chinese nationalist party said they'd wished it didn't. Japan completes its invasion and annexation of Manchuria, declaring it Manchukuo, and installing a puppet emperor. Wanted information as to the whereabouts of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. David Lindbergh has been kidnapped from his crib, and his famed aviator parents receive a ransom note. Finland's prohibition ends, turning the booze trade into a state operation.
00:03:38
Speaker
Government alco stores are the only place to buy wine, liquor, and beer above 5.5%. Art dealer Otto Wacker is put on trial for selling dozens of fake Van Gogh paintings. King Faisal of Iraq orders the remains of two companions of the Prophet Muhammad exhumed and relocated after a dream that their graves are in danger. Sir James Chadwick discovers the neutron. Months later, Carl D. Anderson discovers the positron.
00:04:06
Speaker
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. When she lands in a field in Ireland, a farmer asked, had you flown far? Our girl Amelia said, from America. A bloodless coup d'etat establishes the constitutional kingdom of Siam. The Dow Jones reaches its all-time lowest point at $41.22. Unemployment in the US reaches 33%. Schnell, Schnell, the first auto barn is open.
00:04:34
Speaker
The Kennedy Thorndike experiment developed special relativity by proving the link between time and motion. Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover in a landslide. Australia declares war on emus, who destroy untold numbers of crops. The emus are declared the victor.
Venice Film Festival and Technicolor Innovations
00:04:51
Speaker
George Eastman, founder of Kodak, commits suicide in Rochester, New York. The first Venice Film Festival is held, becoming the first major film festival, and longest still running.
00:05:03
Speaker
René Claire's film, a new deliberately, is what it most amusing. And that's the news. It probably should be noted that the first Venice Film Festival was started by Fascist Italy. Yes. Which then led to the, was it Cannes Film Festival? Was invented in order to be a non-fascist film festival.
00:05:26
Speaker
Oh, I did not know that. I mean, I was reading into it a little bit when I was writing the news and I saw that I don't know if they gave this award out the first year. It seems like they didn't. But for the first 10 years or so of the Venice Film Festival, people were receiving the Mussolini award. So, yeah, good on can for that at least. Yeah. Anti-fascist can.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah. They got a real can-do attitude. Okay, let's move on. We were just going to watch features for this episode, but last second we were like, oh my God, the first Technicolor
00:06:10
Speaker
Short film short the first the first three strip technicolor animated short film and the first animated short best picture Winner best short. Yeah, best and made short. I can't talk today. Let's go into one week one real and talk about tree people Our one short for this episode is flowers and trees a Walt Disney production directed by Bert Gillett
00:06:40
Speaker
And it was the first commercially released three strip Technicolor film, I think of anything, animated or live action. So that's pretty cool. The movie itself is, I don't know, a bunch of trees and flowers dancing around, getting in tree fights. Yeah, it feels very much of a piece with the skeleton dance, as far as just like, it's things that don't move, moving, and wiggling around. You get to watch them wiggle and play music.
00:07:10
Speaker
No dialogue, but there's some plot, there's like, you know, some romance, some fighting, some disaster, some... You know, there's something for everybody in this picture.
00:07:25
Speaker
It's seven minutes long. Go check it out. It's on Disney+. There is, unlike a lot of stuff from early Disney, which is unfortunate. I want to watch the stuff about Satan on Disney+, but they really only do the ones that are notable. They're about flowers and trees. Yeah, exactly. The most they go is
00:07:51
Speaker
the most scariest they go is Skeleton Dance. This one, it has some fun cartoon gags in it. There's a fire that breaks out and some bell flowers start ringing like bells and there are some birds that go and pierce through a cloud to make rain fall down through it. It's good stuff.
00:08:17
Speaker
There's the actual fire itself is like sometimes personified into like little fire guys that like walk around. Just real classic thirties cartoon stuff. Love it. It's hard to talk about cartoons, but like, yeah, they're fun. They're great. The three-step Technicolor thing reminds me of when I went to the Academy Museum in L.A., they had probably a later Technicolor
Analysis of 'Vampyr' and Its Mythology
00:08:41
Speaker
camera than
00:08:43
Speaker
I mean, it was for live action, but it was a three strip Technicolor camera that they used for Wizard of Oz. And just the engineering of that thing is mind boggling, like looking at it and all the gears and like mechanisms inside and has three actual film strips that go through it.
00:09:01
Speaker
and a prism and like the film is going in different directions and it's like, it's crazy. Well, I missed that when I went to the museum. Maybe they moved it, I don't know. But, so the three strip pentacolor process I think is a really cool innovation. So that's really cool for this year. It's real serious. They got blue now.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess they show that off with the sky. This movie, I'm not sure if it is to do with any kind of degradation. I feel like the colors are a little washed out at least a little muted, but they look good. Like it's noticeably kind of more color than anything else we've seen.
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's more normal color that you're used to seeing and not this kind of like bizarro two strip like lead green kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Like this kind of strange reality of two strip type of color, which does look cool, but no less.
00:10:00
Speaker
no less and in fact even less artificial than black and white, I suppose. Right, yeah. Do you got anything else on this? There's a spooky tree with a lizard in it, that's fun. Yeah, there's kind of a creepy, a creepy lecherous tree. Which is kind of like, why do we need one of those in there? But there needs to be some conflict. Have a creepy perv tree in there.
00:10:29
Speaker
They read the screenwriting book that said that you got to have conflict. Yeah, you got to actually has to save a cat in the first act and there needs to be a creepy tree to fight, have a sort of fight with. So we move on to bigger, longer films. Yeah, we're watching South Park, the movie.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think we just felt like we needed to throw this in as the first three strip thing. It's cool. If you like cartoons, watch it. It's fun. But let's move on to our feature presentation. And now we're pleased to bring you our feature presentation.
00:11:09
Speaker
We were just talking about a creepy tree. You want to just talk about a creepy movie? I'll talk about Vampyr. Sure. This is Carl Theodore Dreyer, whose last film was Joan of Arc. His previous movie was a silent Jesus-y movie, and this is a sound devil movie. A little oversimplified. This is
00:11:39
Speaker
Not wrong, though. This is a sound movie, but really only barely. Maybe in the vein of Blade of Gold, the Bunuel movie. Yeah. It's just used as very sparing dialogue and mostly it's just vibes. And in fact, I think that this movie, it feels like it owes a lot to
00:12:05
Speaker
uh, Bunuel and Chan Andalou and that kind of thing. It, like, it is a horror movie, but it's a horror vampire movie, but a lot of it feels kind of surreal and avant-garde. Yeah, it feels very kind of a piece with the other, like, European avant-garde stuff that we've been watching. Yeah, it's wild, like, how... This is also a vampire movie, but it's, like, so wildly different from 1931 Dracula. It's like... And Nosferatu, for that matter. Yeah, yeah.
00:12:35
Speaker
And yeah, I think all the sound was recorded after none of it was recorded sync.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah, it was produced simultaneously in a number of different languages. And I think, yeah, it was like a kind of ADR, like English, German, French, whatever on top of it. Yeah, it feels, I think, stylistically kind of more similar to silent movies and a lot of the talkies we've seen for that reason. Like it's got I mean, it has intertitles and it has like exposition through just intertitles for one thing.
00:13:08
Speaker
Well, yeah, I guess it's like they're not like intertitles with dialogue, though. They are. Yeah, they're intertitles that are just kind of setting scenes or talking about stuff, which actually it almost feels more like some of those really extreme silent films like The Last Laugh, where it's like we're not going to use any intertitles, right? Because this movie is told
00:13:32
Speaker
very visually, even for a silent film, even compared to silent films. Maybe having just a little bit of sound helps it get away with that, make it easier to handle. It plays around with sound design a little bit. There were a few moments where there's off-screen sound or things like that. Nothing quite as wild as
00:14:02
Speaker
like Lodge D'Or was doing, I think. But there's some use of sound in this movie in cool ways.
00:14:12
Speaker
I think the most striking thing about it is the camera stuff. Right. As opposed to the sound. Yeah. There's lots of moving camera. There's a lot of, kind of like in Joan of Arc, there's a lot of really inventive usage of camera in this movie. Yeah. Probably my favorite thing.
00:14:37
Speaker
One of the more notable scenes from this movie is the guy getting loaded into the coffin and the cameras and looking out of the coffin in POV as the coffin's getting taken away. Rules is great. Yeah, so like they put like a.
00:14:53
Speaker
they put a top on top of the coffin that has a little window right above his face. And so you're seeing a point of view shot looking up at the sky of him being wheeled around, lying down on the coffin. And I can't say I've ever seen a shot like that in any movies before. Just looking straight up
00:15:18
Speaker
and then like moving around watching kind of buildings go by looking up into the sky. It's eerie. Yeah, I think it's eerie because it's simultaneously not something you see in movies very often, but something that I think like people experience sometimes. Yeah. Like being on like a table or like any kind of moving thing and looking straight up as you're like moved around.
00:15:44
Speaker
even if you're just like on a sled or something. You know, it's like that's an experience I've definitely had many times. Right. But it's yeah, it's like it puts you into the POV of the movie in a really effective way that. Yeah, it doesn't happen often.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, like speaking of the kind of like weird stuff going on in this movie, this character is not actually really getting loaded into a coffin because like sort of what's happening is there's some vampire stuff or whatever. And like he ends up chasing after a bad guy, the main character. And then he just kind of gets tired, sits down on a bench and then just randomly astral projects into a potential future. Yeah, that's the kind of movie this is.
00:16:32
Speaker
So, yeah, he's like sitting on the bench and then he just splits into two people. And one of them is kind of sneaking around a castle and looking and looking through stuff. It's a it's a double exposure, which, you know, we the age of double exposure, I feel like, is over a little bit, which is sad winding down. But it's got some life left in it, I think. I think we still got some some cool multiple exposure things. Yeah. To look forward to.
00:17:01
Speaker
I don't know if Invisible Man uses that, but that's next episode. But yeah, it's like the classic Phantom Carriage style double exposure where it's just, he's ghostly and looking at stuff.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah. This movie has a lot of really interesting like shadow imagery in it. Yeah. Like a lot of stuff that must have been like kind of interesting three dimensional objects that were like behind the camera and had a light splashing onto them so that you could see like a really, really deliberately crafted shadow in front of the camera.
00:17:40
Speaker
stuff with like, you know, a guy with a peg leg climbing up a ladder and like you can't tell exactly like what's going on until like he moves through the scene in a full way and just kind of like interesting three dimensional objects like hanging and spinning around and creating interesting shadows. Yeah. I think like Joan of Arc, this movie has a very kind of like minimalist set design. Hmm.
00:18:07
Speaker
which I think helps the kind of the shadow play stuff where it's like, there's a lot of big blank walls to kind of like throw shadows onto. Throwing shade. There you go. And I think I was watching and reading some of the criterion bonus features for this movie. And one of the things with like how kind of mobile the camera is,
00:18:37
Speaker
I guess that came partially from because it was filmed in real locations, a lot of the rooms were too small to get a single wide shot of. So it ended up being like, oh, I guess we have to move the camera over here to this thing, move the camera over here to this thing to get everything in one take. But that leads to this really cool roving POV camera thing that's revealing different things.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely like something we've talked about is our excitement at like where silent film could have gone if it continued on a little longer because it had been in this period of blossoming
00:19:16
Speaker
ingenuity and then sound came along and kind of stopped all of that. And I feel like this is sort of picking up along the same lines of a lot of the late silent film. Yeah. Where it's doing really interesting stuff with the camera that I think a lot of the sound films are not. Another thing that kind of struck me about this movie is because it's it's a vampire movie, but it's not a Dracula movie. Yes, I think it uses kind of like different vampire lore than
00:19:47
Speaker
I'm kind of used to seeing, like I feel like so much of what at least like Americans associate with vampires is just Dracula stuff.
00:19:55
Speaker
Whereas this feels like it's kind of going back to the source of like original, like pre-Dracula vampire mythology, which is pretty cool. Yeah, this, yeah, it, like you're saying, it predates Dracula and it's specifically based on an Irish writer called J. Sheridan Le Fanu. I wonder if there's any relation. I have some Sheridan family history, so.
00:20:22
Speaker
I share it in Ireland, it's like the most common last name, so that's... Is it really? It's up there. When I was in Ireland, I talked to someone and they said, yep, they're not rare. Are you also related to the hotels? That's Sheraton with a T, so I don't think so.
00:20:44
Speaker
But yeah, there was a collection of stories that Jay Sheridan Le Fanu wrote called In a Glass Darkly, which I enjoyed the scanner darkly structure of things. I think it ends with darkly is fun. Yeah. It's like I feel like
00:21:08
Speaker
A scanner darkly, a glass darkly, it's the same kind of good joke structure of I blank. Like I have no mouth and I must scream. I riff on I have no mouth and I must scream endlessly to the annoyance of everyone around me. No, it's a good structure to build off of.
00:21:35
Speaker
Anyway two things about like the vampire lore in this movie is like in this vampires are like explicitly demonic which it feels different from like Dracula lore Yeah, and the you have to use an iron stake to kill a vampire and that is to nail their soul to the ground and
00:21:59
Speaker
Which I think is really, I guess that's where Vampire Staking came from. It's like you're nailing the body down so that their soul can't escape. Yeah, and it talks about how you have to like, you know, they are these kind of evil murderers in the afterlife and you need to murder their body.
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, to as like a sort of karmic justice or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. The vampire in this is almost more like a ghost that then they have to like murder the body from the ghost in order to kind of. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting take on it for sure. This movie is primarily composed of the main character wandering around and looking at weird stuff.
Exploring 'The Mummy' and 'Freaks' Themes
00:22:44
Speaker
One of the first things that happens is that he kind of checks into a hotel room and then just a weird guy walks into his room. And then he says, hi, I have a book that I have a little package here that says open this when I die. And you can have this.
00:23:07
Speaker
And soon enough, he dies. They open it, and it's like a vampire lore book. It's like, here's everything you need to know about vampires in case I'm killed by a vampire, which he kind of was not. He was shot.
00:23:25
Speaker
I think the vampire caused him to be shot. Right. He was shot by one of the vampires, Henchman. But yeah, we get a lot of interesting proto-Draculian vampire lore from these little bits of the book that we get to see, including the details about the communion with the devil and all that kind of thing. Also, does vampire spelled with a Y is fun?
00:23:55
Speaker
It's sort of a... I mean, yeah, they don't say it out loud in the movie, but I always like in vampire movies when they like are researching and someone's like, there's some expert Van Helsing or whoever and it's like, ah, yes, the wampier. And they always have to really chew on the word and make it sound old and European.
00:24:18
Speaker
Love that. Love to see it. You got anything else on this movie, Glenn? I don't think so. I think we covered the main bits that I wanted to talk about. Yeah, it's like this movie is a cool example of like Euro avant-garde, like experimental movies, and also like a cool comparison to like the Universal Monster movies that are coming out around the same time. Yeah.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, this is criterion core European art, the universal horror. But we could pivot to then talking about an actual universal horror picture. Hey, let's do it. You know, we are recording this two days away from Halloween. Let's get spooky in here. Let's hear about the mummy. Mummies.
00:25:08
Speaker
Uh, such a funny thing that mummies are like a classic monster. It's just like Egyptian people who are dead is a monster. But hey, a lot of that has to do with, I don't know, lay it all on this movie's feet because like mummy stories were a thing throughout the like 1800s into the 1930s. But, um, hey, this is like.
00:25:33
Speaker
This is the original Mummy. It's got, you know, much like Frankenstein and Dracula the year before. It's like, it's really kind of cemented mummies as like a classic movie monster.
00:25:44
Speaker
Yeah, which I was excited to watch this movie because I've always been a little unclear on what Mummy's deal is, you know, like Dracula wants to suck your blood. Frankenstein is tortured. But like what is the mummy really want? Like what's what's his what does he do? Mommy just wants his lady back. You know, mommy is just mommy's just, you know, heartsick and and lovelorn.
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah, which is interesting. I feel like this movie did not answer the question of what the monster mummies does, because it is very individual story of this one guy who was mummified and wants to find his lady across time, basically. For that, we might have to watch some of the later 40s mummy movies with Lon Chaney Jr.
00:26:37
Speaker
Because those are kind of much more of those are the really like mummy and bandages chasing people movies. This has like a single scene of Boris Karlov and bandages. And then the rest of the time he's just Boris Karlov with dry skin. Moisturize Boris. I know. Yeah. Been stuck in a sarcophagus for a thousand years. Got to get some get some lotion.
00:27:02
Speaker
Uh, so yes, uh, Boris Karlov is Imhotep. Imhotep. So as a big fan, I had never seen this movie until we watched it for this show, despite being an enormous fan of the 1999 remake of this movie.
00:27:17
Speaker
Which is very different, obviously, like the 99 movie is like a pulpy adventure romp. Yeah. This is not. But I was... There's no Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in this one. No. I mean, to be fair, that isn't in the original, the 99 Mummy either. But I was kind of pleasantly surprised at how much stuff from the 99 Mummy comes from this movie. Hmm.
00:27:42
Speaker
like there was more like lines of dialogue and just like story elements than I had realized I thought it was like a very loose remake of just like the name of the mummy and the fact that he is a mummy and he wants to get his his lost love back but yeah there's there's more more to it there's I mean there's uh there's the line Imhotep does not like to be touched
00:28:07
Speaker
Which made me chuckle, just because that's in the 90s one also. I need to rewatch that. Yeah, there's a... I thought this was a fun movie. Not great, but...
00:28:19
Speaker
Maybe there are some things in this that really kind of pushed it higher in terms of quality, I think, than Frankenstein or Dracula. I think maybe it is less idiosyncratic than Frankenstein and Dracula. It's got less of a unique identity, but I think it is less uneven than those two movies.
00:28:41
Speaker
uh it's like much more like watchable than yes nothing wrong with the other ones but like like it's i mean a little bit wrong with the other ones but like it's a movie that's like solid you know yeah yeah
00:28:53
Speaker
I think that probably something has to do with it's not based on a stage play as far as I know. I think it is like an original screenplay. This movie is directed by Carl Freund who shot Dracula and also Metropolis and Last Laugh. And I feel like he does a he does kind of a better job of I think the like visual style of this movie is a lot more there's a lot more to it than than Dracula for sure.
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah, Dracula trades a lot on its sets rather than its like actual, yeah, camera work or anything like that. Yeah, there's like, camera moves around, there's a lot of like great shadow stuff, like real spooky lighting in this thing. The lighting just around Boris Callow's face in a lot of scenes is incredible. Like, this movie knows that Boris Callow's face is a special effect. Like, that's all you need. Like, light his face spooky and you're set.
00:29:49
Speaker
gets a lot of mileage out of that, that face. Yeah. There's like a part where they're kind of, um, like super imposing, like a was skull or like mummy imagery on top of his face. Uh, looks, looks cool. But yeah, like you're saying his faces, he's got, he's got, he's got a unique enough face anyway. They can just go, ah, Karloff. Yeah. I think maybe one of the things that makes us maybe sort of.
00:30:15
Speaker
hold up less well than the other universal ones or like maybe feels less memorable is like he's only really a mummy in the first scene, right? Where like they dig him up, they find him, he comes to life and then he immediately like leaves, right? He steals the scroll and walks out and you just see the bandages walking out the door. Yeah, there isn't like so much creature stuff in this. Because after that. He's just a guy. He's just a wizard.
00:30:45
Speaker
like he's just a wizard trying to do his his nefarious plans but it's like the only like he was a mummy but you know the actual mummy aspect is sort of lost at a certain point which I guess happens in the remakes and things too but
00:31:04
Speaker
But I don't know, I feel like I would agree with you, maybe, that if this movie had more creature stuff in it, it would probably be more just fun, I guess. I do think that that first scene where he is in the sarcophagus, in the bandages, and comes to life and scares a guy into insanity, basically, I think it's a very spooky, good scene. Yes, yeah.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah, you get the hand coming in and like into frame and things just like good subtle scary stuff.
00:31:43
Speaker
Yeah, and then and then we time jump ahead and get kind of the more I know I think traditional mummy story, which I guess is just the remake but it's like, you know, there's there's much, you know European explorers come in and they're digging up stuff right and they want to find treasure and then Imhotep shows back up again. It's like hey, you want to dig look over here and
00:32:13
Speaker
like whoa tomb how'd you know he's like i don't know man i'm just i'm just around yeah um i did think this movie is sort of like uh if i had one major criticism of it it's it's like very uh kind of like colonialist view of archaeology because there's there's a line where like our theoretically our like heroic
00:32:37
Speaker
lead character. It's like, oh, what a dirty trick that Kyra Museum keeping everything we found. And it's like, yeah, the stuff you found in their country, dingus. I wonder if this movie is being critical of that kind of stuff. Like, in some ways, it feels like it because, right, like, there's a there's a certain
00:32:58
Speaker
I don't know. There's a certain like idiocy to those characters and there's a certain kind of righteous fighting back that Imhotep is doing. Like he's the villain but it's like one of those situations where the villain is saying the right thing but quote-unquote going too far.
00:33:19
Speaker
Because, yeah, they do seem like total colonialist dinguses, basically. So the kind of male lead of this movie is a guy named Frank Wemple, which is a hell of a name. And he reminds me of right. So like the like male lead of the 99, my me is like a heroic, like mercenary, you know, rough and tumble action guy in this. He's like a stuck up tuxedo wearing
00:33:47
Speaker
archaeologist guy. He reminds me of like the characters like in his dad's shadow. Yeah. He reminds me of like the character that instead of romantic lead, he's the guy that like the woman needs to like escape from in order to you know, he's like the guy from Titanic.
00:34:06
Speaker
I forget the character's name. Billy Zian and Titanic. Billy Zian and Titanic, where it's like, oh, he's wealthy, and he comes from a good family, and all this stuff. And then it's like, you spend 10 minutes with him. It's like, jeez, this guy sucks. Get away from here. Go find a greasy boy to be with. And that's what Frank Wemple is in this movie to me. But he's kind of treated as just like, oh, no, this is our lead character. Deal with it. Yeah.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah, I like the kind of mummy backstory of Imhotep, where it's like he is driven by his love for Anaktsuna Moon, which feels more, it's a more relatable kind of like empathetic motivation for a villain to have, for sure. Yeah, you get a lot more from him. He's not, you know,
00:35:03
Speaker
Frankenstein's monster was just confused and angry and Dracula was kind of mysterious. Yeah. But there's like a lot more interiority with Imhotep. Yeah. He's more of kind of a fully formed character, which is which is good. So much so that I think it's funny that later Dracula movies kind of at least the Francis for a couple of one has the sort of like lost reincarnation
00:35:30
Speaker
love interest angle that this movie does, which I don't think is in the book Dracula, which I haven't read. But I think I said last episode, like I'm pretty sure that comes from this movie, but I could be wrong. Also, this movie has a score, like a musical score.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yes. Which really stuck out to me. It's uh yeah it's rare but like have yeah diegetic or non-diegetic music uh yeah like used in like key moments yeah yeah yeah some other things that I I liked about it like I like how it's it's the Cairo in this movie this movie takes place almost entirely in Cairo and it it Cairo in this movie is like a big metropolitan city which is how it actually is I feel like
00:36:15
Speaker
Raiders of the Lost Ark maybe is the main culprit of making movie Cairo always seem like a place like way out in the desert. And it's like, no, it's a city. Like it's there's cars and things around like it's not because Raiders did not shoot in Cairo. They shot in Tunisia. Hmm. And so all like the weird like back alleys and stuff from that movie. I'm like, oh, I always grew up in like, oh, that's what Cairo is. It's like, no, Cairo has like big buildings and cars and things. Yeah. I mean, I guess I
00:36:44
Speaker
Uh, I guess that checks out because I haven't been to Cairo, but I've heard one of the best free views of the pyramids is on the second story of a KFC. There you go. Yeah, I think this movie has like, it does have a lot of like drawing room scenes, like Frankenstein and Jack at Ladue. There's like kind of people sitting on sofas and talking.
00:37:10
Speaker
Which isn't isn't my favorite, but I think this might be my favorite of the three Despite it. It has a lot of clunky writing, but I think it's like the best directed maybe yeah Yeah, I would say so I I realized that I I took all of my notes in Microsoft Word and I didn't transfer them over to my Google Docs So I'd have nothing Oh
00:37:31
Speaker
So I'm just working off a memory, but also I just clicked over to the Scorpion King Book of Souls, which is the fifth Scorpion King movie. What? How many? The fifth installment in the Scorpion King series. It's a direct-to-video sword and sorcery action adventure film that was released in 2018. Damn.
00:37:54
Speaker
I thought there was only the two Scorpion films, one of which was direct-to-video, which is a prequel to the first Scorpion King, which makes Scorpion King 2 a prequel to a spin-off of a sequel of a remake.
00:38:13
Speaker
which to my knowledge makes it unique in all of film history. I love telling people that fact. I love talking to people about the Scorpion King 2, a movie I've never seen and probably never will see. I know there's some good bits of tension, nice spooky dark museums in this movie.
00:38:34
Speaker
you know a swirling pool of flashback smoke that was cool yeah kind of having like a frame around the whole thing yeah yeah other than like the clunky writing i feel like uh there was a lot to like in this
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's a solid movie. I would agree that it's probably the one that I would most readily throw on, not in the background, but as an actual movie to watch. Shall we keep it Halloween-y in a sense? I think so. We might as well. Let's continue with a classic film.
00:39:11
Speaker
One that I've seen before, but you could call it an exploitation movie, but it's complicated. It's called Freaks. Yeah. I mean, just the title itself is a bit like, hmm, is this OK? Yeah, which I think kind of lulled me into a false sense of I was ready for this movie to be like.
00:39:31
Speaker
very exploitative and kind of like hard to watch for that reason. Is this your first time seeing it? Yeah. OK. Yeah. And it was far. It was not the movie I expected it to be. No. Yeah. Yeah. It is a surprisingly nuanced and pro freak movie. Oh, yeah. It is a very pro freak movie for sure.
00:39:58
Speaker
This is directed by Todd Browning, who did Dracula in 31. But this is probably his like second most famous movie. Yeah. And probably is more like well regarded as like part of his filmography, I feel like. And it's a much better movie than Dracula. I think so. It also it's also like more up from like his wheelhouse, too, because Todd Browning grew up in the circus.
00:40:24
Speaker
He's like a weird circus guy. Yeah. And so it's like he's making a very kind of like pro circus person movie.
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah, like Charlie Chaplin, I think. It's like the dignity of circus people. But this is specifically the dignity of sideshow freaks. It's showing their interiority. It's showing their day-to-day lives. It's showing how they are treated poorly by other people, by
00:40:59
Speaker
by, I mean, honestly, like to use 2023 parlance, but to share sentiments that the movie has, like able bodied people, neurotypical people, just like, yeah, non disabled people, like this movie
00:41:19
Speaker
is like these people oppress other people who are just trying to live their lives, basically. Yeah, you wouldn't expect it from a movie called Freaks that has a tagline
00:41:37
Speaker
Oh, God, what is the tagline? It's something real scary. It is. Yeah, this is an antiquated term. I'm using it in this context. But can a full grown woman truly love a midget is the is the tagline of this movie, which is not what the movie is about at all.
00:41:57
Speaker
Not really, it's more like, yeah, it's more like can a little person tolerate a horrible woman? Yeah, it's like 80% of this movie is the sort of like...
00:42:11
Speaker
day-to-day lives and like dramas of a group of sideshow performers and then only the last like 10% is what I kind of expected more of the movie to be which is a sort of like dark revenge thriller
00:42:28
Speaker
which was where a lot of this movie sort of like famous imagery comes from. Speaking of famous things from this movie, the phrase one of us comes from this. Although I feel like people usually go one of us, one of us. But in this it is Google gobble, Google gobble. One of us, one of us. We accept her, we accept her. Google gobble, Google gobble, one of us. Another like hugely surprising, because I'd heard that so many times, like that's been parodied.
00:42:58
Speaker
up the wazoo like it's like super common just in culture right like it's in the simpsons it's in south park it's in other cartoons i'm sure but um that's the thing where like context is the context of it is really different in the movie than i think it's usually they usually is in parodies in parodies yeah in parodies it's like a threat right but in this
00:43:24
Speaker
It is like- And they always leave out the very important part of the chant, which is, we accept her, we accept her. Yeah. This is in a scene where sort of main character, who's a little person, he is marrying a
00:43:43
Speaker
He's marrying a full grown woman as tagline says. And but she is only marrying him for his money and she mocks him behind his back and she doesn't respect him. She's a she's a trapeze artist named Cleopatra and is just the worst is she's awful, awful, awful human being is marrying this poor guy that is like infatuated with her purely for his money.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah. And it's like everyone else like around them can kind of see what's happening, but like doesn't really want to say anything because like they don't want to hurt anyone. They're just like, all right, fine. And so they have this big wedding banquet where they are like accepting Cleopatra into their
00:44:28
Speaker
their community. They're like, oh, we're so happy that you're here. We accept you. This is such a happy moment. Yeah, become a freak with us. We accept you. That's where the chant comes from. And so it's like you're really affirming celebratory thing in the film.
00:44:48
Speaker
Which makes it all the worse when she hears one of us, we accept her, and she goes, oh no. She's like, I do not want to be associated with these people at all. I look down on them and don't see them as real people. Which is funny that that's how it's always parodied. It's parodied from that character's perspective, which is the threatening sort of like, oh no, this is bad.
00:45:15
Speaker
Which then leads to Cleopatra trying to poison her husband. Yeah. The husband is named Hans, played by Harry Earls. He may be known to some people as a member of the lollipop guild. Oh, I don't know if I knew that.
00:45:37
Speaker
He is part of a family of I think four little people who were in circus tours and
00:45:50
Speaker
Vaudeville and that kind of thing. When he is marrying, getting infatuated with Cleopatra, he's already engaged to another person of his stature who actually is his sister in real life. Right. It's played by his actual sister, Daisy Earls, but they are playing unrelated, romantically connected characters in the film.
00:46:15
Speaker
Yeah, which I'm sure is awkward times on set, but I don't know. They did strike me as like not professional actors. Like initially I think their performances felt a little bit stilted.
00:46:29
Speaker
when they're just kind of like talking to each other generally and just sort of like making conversation. But weirdly enough, I feel like as the movie goes along and they like they have to really get into like much more like emotionally complex, like heated scenes, I think their performances really got better. Like I think when it really counts, like when they need to like nail like an emotional scene, they nail it.
00:46:54
Speaker
That is totally true, actually. Yeah, like they they're they're they're good at. I mean, because a lot of the emotional scenes that they are being asked to handle are probably akin to. Right. Things that they've experienced in their own lives. Yeah. And and yeah, they just are not that good at dialogue, but also, I don't know, they're originally they're German. So that too. It's like second language that might, you know, that might not help. But I mean,
00:47:24
Speaker
These are largely the people in the movie are not professional actors. He hired real freaks, real sideshow people. This isn't as it would have, this was originally intended to be a Lon Chaney movie. And this would have been another kind of transformative role of him kind of pretending he has no legs or something like that. But like all of the people here are, you know, real, you know,
00:47:53
Speaker
They don't really know how to phrase it. Real side show performers. Yes. They're often side show performers. But they are like nobody is like pretending to have some some kind of condition. Right. They don't have any like wacky prosthetics. It's like, yeah, everyone is appearing as themselves in the movie, more or less playing a version of themselves.
00:48:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And and some of them are doing like acts that they have done on stage. There is a guy who is called the pillow man in some contexts who like has no arms and no legs. And there's just an extended scene of like you get to see him roll and light a cigarette because that was one of his signature acts. Yeah. And like it's just really impressive to watch. It really is using his mouth to be clear. Yeah.
00:48:45
Speaker
There's all the plot stuff of the—right, there's like, Cleopatra wants to marry Hans for his secret fortune, and she does not want to be included amongst the freaks. So she plots to murder him with poison. Yes. But Hans figures that out, and so does everyone else, like, in their community of circus people.
00:49:09
Speaker
There is sort of the like able-bodied couple that are sort of like put there almost as the sort of like normal people in the movie to have like, we need some like normal actors in this film just to- Like they're wearing shirts that say ally on them. Pretty much, yeah. Which I actually think like, even though they are kind of, right, they're the only sort of like normie characters that aren't absolutely awful people.
00:49:38
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And even though they it does kind of feel like they're like placed there just to like Give general audiences someone to empathize with I do think their place in the story works It's like I think we're like on paper. I'm like you don't need that like just have the casp be the cast but I actually I was surprised at how effective those characters were I think the thing of like having
00:50:03
Speaker
real sideshow performers in this movie is one of the things I think that makes this movie stand out and like hold up now and is like one of the more like one of the better reasons for this movie to exist and yet that's also the thing that kind of like killed it upon release is like most audiences in 1932 just couldn't deal with it or at least test audiences couldn't
00:50:28
Speaker
Mm-hmm, which is why MGM decided to cut 25 minutes out of this movie and make it an hour long Or like under an hour long isn't this movie was like 50 something minutes long in its current form No, it's over an hour. Okay. Yeah, it's an hour 10 something like that Yeah, there are a number of different endings to this movie they
00:50:52
Speaker
It's a little unclear to me exactly like what the initial intended ending was. I think, so basically what happens is that when all of the freaks discover that Cleopatra is trying to poison Hans, they- Cleopatra is also sleeping with the circus strongman.
00:51:20
Speaker
During this whole time and it's sort of like actively discussing her murder plot with him and kind of evolving him in in it Hercules is that character's name? So the two of them
00:51:34
Speaker
There are some really, really good scenes of the two of them kind of walking around and then like having a bunch of eyes like peering at them through stairs, like through the gaps and stairs or just like looking around the corner, just some like really threatening looking dwarf like on the side, just like, I'm going to get you, I'm going to get you. But
00:51:59
Speaker
This movie kind of ends up taking a bit of a turn because like these You know able-bodied Quote-unquote normal people like end up just being so Horrific like yeah, it's a real. It's a real who are the real freaks movie, right? For sure Hercules and Cleopatra are so terrible like they are just the most horrendously cruel people and if we're like
00:52:26
Speaker
Yeah, like 40 something minutes of runtime you're just seeing them like Treat everyone around them terribly and just being so selfish and so sort of like looking down upon everyone because they're you know, they're both tall and and you know statuesque and Then the last like I don't know 10 minutes. It turns into like a crazy revenge movie and it kind of race Well, that's the thing right? It's it's like like the
00:52:53
Speaker
So what it seems to be is that the original intended ending of the movie is that, you know, we have developed Hercules and Cleopatra as these horrible people. So now we, the audience, are going to get to enjoy the catharsis of the freaks killing them and not killing or maiming horribly maiming them and turning them into what they look down upon in the first place.
00:53:22
Speaker
which is fantastic in the original. I don't think footage exists of this anymore, but in the original version, they castrated Hercules and and and so turned him into like like a he has like a high pitched voice in the end. What we do see is that Cleopatra has been cut up into a chicken lady. Basically, she's she's been turned into a squawking bird that
00:53:51
Speaker
You know, she can no longer speak. She's got like a like a wings and like a beak basically legs. Yeah. Yeah. And like my eye is messed up. Yeah. And so, yeah, they're like cut her up and did some, you know, Dr. Moreau stuff on her. But like and that was like it seems to be the original intended very dark ending of the movie. But but cathartic and like, yes, like
00:54:20
Speaker
the poetic justice, basically. After some test screenings, they tacked on the ending, which is currently on the movie, where Hans talks about how he didn't want the rest of the freaks to go that far. And he just wanted to take the poison from her and kick her out, basically. And then they're like,
00:54:46
Speaker
Yeah, and so kind of positioning him as the sort of moral, he's superior. Yeah. He also lives in a mansion now in that ending. Yes. Yeah. There's a quote I found from the art director of the movie, Meryl Pie, where halfway through the preview, a lot of people got up and ran out. They didn't walk out, they ran out. So test audiences were not crazy about
00:55:15
Speaker
the film, I think probably largely to do with the ending. In its current form, I feel like this movie feels like almost a good movie, but it's so clearly been cut down and re-edited. During the height of tension of the climax of the movie where Cleopatra and Hercules are being confronted and chased through the woods,
00:55:44
Speaker
be all the other performers, it just like hard cuts out of that scene and like goes back to the kind of framing device from the beginning. Um, so it's like the, the way it's been reedited is so poorly done that it like completely robs any sense of tension from that entire third act, which sucks.
00:56:04
Speaker
And so it's like, I feel like if the original version of this movie existed, I would be like, great, like four stars. What a picture. But as it stands currently, it's this like, you know, kind of not quite good movie because it's so like, it's so clearly been censored.
00:56:22
Speaker
I think it still works in many ways. I think there are parts that you can ignore, that you can see as very obvious concessions to an unwoke public.
00:56:42
Speaker
I think you can look at that stuff in context, and I think that the intended meaning still shines through, and a lot of the intended emotions still shine through. I think the scary stuff that I'd always seen clips from is much more that righteous anger
00:57:03
Speaker
feeling in the context of the movie. And so like I was I was like almost cheering during the like revenge stuff because it's so it's also just like directed really well. It's like there's a thunderstorm, there's like rain coming down. And especially early like you were saying of like Hercules and Cleopatra like slowly catching on that everyone knows what they're up to.
00:57:28
Speaker
And like there's a bit where they're in a caravan. I think it's like Cleopatra's in the caravan that she shares with Hans. And two guys come in and one of them just pulls out a switchblade and the other one just kind of casually takes a luger out and starts like cleaning it. It's so good. It's so good. And then all the kind of like crawling through mud after them stuff is
00:57:52
Speaker
It's really good. I think that's the thing, right? Is that like that that those ending scenes, they really tow a strange line between like this cathartic revenge fantasy and and then this other kind of interpretation of someone who would call this a horror movie, which is that the that the freaks kind of end up becoming scary villains by the end.
00:58:21
Speaker
uh because that those scenes the scenes are definitely playing up how sort of like unusual i guess they're there i'm trying to not be offensive but maybe i should just like i don't know when when the the guy with no arms or legs is crawling through the mud with a knife in his mouth it's it's a little scary that's that's an that's an unnerving sight to behold
00:58:47
Speaker
I mean in a similar way to how, I don't know, like strange different bodies even now are just a shortcut to horror through the uncanny valley in horror movies. But like that's the thing is like I think that like
00:59:08
Speaker
There's horror imagery, there's scary imagery, but I think the movie does enough, to me at least, I think the movie does enough contextualizing of these people as real people with real feelings that, like,
00:59:26
Speaker
that it's almost like subversive. It's almost like subverting this horror iconography. If you see a guy with no arms and no legs and a knife in his mouth kind of wiggling toward you, without that context, you would go, oh, scary. But then in this context... The movie has set up that it's like, you know who that guy is, right? And it's like, so there's a certain amount of like, you are rooting for him in that moment.
00:59:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's very complex. It's like kind of a perfect example of a weird line that horror kind of sits on of like simultaneously like the horror genre tends to be very celebratory of like outcasts and
01:00:14
Speaker
and sort of like people on the fringes of society. At the same time, horror also is like very exploitative of like deformity or of like scarring or even things that are just like, this is just people. But horror really tends to play up things that kind of set people on edge, even if they're not always for the right reasons. And this, yeah, this movie is playing into both of those things for sure.
01:00:42
Speaker
Yeah. But it was a much more kind of like empathetic nuanced movie than I was expecting.
Ozu's Filmmaking Style and Impact
01:00:50
Speaker
There's like so much to chew on with this movie. Yeah. You could do a whole episode just about this movie, I feel like. Yeah. There is a graphic novel that came out a couple of years ago that is so one of the
01:01:06
Speaker
most notable I'm gonna I keep using the word freaks because like what the what the movie uses but one of the most notable freaks there there are a few people with microcephaly or also known as pinheads I guess that's that's that's the old circus term the old it's an old circus term which is yes probably very unkind one of them is named Schlitzy
01:01:35
Speaker
who was a pretty like, I don't know, pretty famous, pretty long running sideshow person. And there's like a graphic novel that came out a few years ago that is like a biography of him, which I'm very interested to read.
01:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, I read up, I tried to read up at least something like Wikipedia of a lot of the cast in this movie just because I was curious like how either have they got involved or just like what seeing how much of their just kind of like interior lives are portrayed in this movie like how much of that reflected
01:02:14
Speaker
reality, I guess. But being circus performers in the 1930s, there's not a whole lot written about them. There's not a lot of real documentation even for some of them. So yeah, I would also like to check that out. Send me a link.
01:02:34
Speaker
Sure. I'll send you a link so you can put it in the notes, too. There you go. But yeah, just to shout out some of the people that are represented in this movie, I guess. There are dwarfs and other little people. There are some real Siamese twins. There's this B-plot about them and their troubled
01:03:03
Speaker
I don't know, relationships with men or whatever. They're sort of like the like sham marriage, like Secret Fortune revenge plot is only it's like the one that the movie kind of ends with. But there's a lot of other plot stuff involving everyone throughout the whole movie.
01:03:19
Speaker
You kind of hit it on the head when you said that it's like soapy. Like there's like a lot of... Yeah. A lot of, yeah, just drama happening. Right. There's like the Siamese twins are both married to different men. And so then there's like... Initially this thing of like, oh man, how are they gonna make this work? And at the end it's kind of like, ah, they figured it out. Like, they'll be okay. It doesn't super resolve. It doesn't super resolve. And the one husband still seems like he's probably abusive, but...
01:03:50
Speaker
For what this movie is going to put into that, I feel like it resolves nicely. There is an intersex person who's kind of like half woman, half man, they call them in the movie. But in the context of the circus, split down the middle. Yes. There's someone who was
01:04:15
Speaker
known in circus circles, Frances O'Connor, as the living Venus de Milo. She had no arms and was very dexterous with her legs, and there is more stuff in this movie that
01:04:31
Speaker
such as the living torso or the pillow man who just showing her kind of being very dexterous with her feet and just getting to like, yeah, watch her skill there. There's a human skeleton, which is an extremely skinny guy who I was reading as often, they often kind of had arranged within the circus marriages to the fat lady, super skinny guy.
01:05:01
Speaker
That sounds circus-y. Yeah. There's a bearded lady. There is Cuckoo the bird girl. And then, yes, a number of people with microcephaly in that kind of situation. And then some just clowns, too. Yeah. Throw some of that in there, too. Yeah. Who's the normie couple?
01:05:26
Speaker
I forgot their names. Frozo and Venus. Right. And they're like the clown and the, I don't know, dancing lady. That is Freaks. Good movie. Or I don't know. The way it's edited and it's like so clearly been recut is like hurts a lot for me just in its current form, you know.
01:05:50
Speaker
It feels partially lost. It does feel like it's missing scenes because it is. I don't know. I think it works. I like it. I think despite the troubles in the final product, I think that there are so much interesting ideas in it. I think a lot of it works very well.
01:06:18
Speaker
Should we just do something completely different? Hop to the other side of the world and talk about, I was born, but, dot, dot, dot. Our first Yasujiro Ozu film and the first Ozu movie that I've ever seen. Same. And this is described in the beginning as a picture book for grownups, which I think is very interesting. Okay. I get that.
01:06:46
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, this is a lot of the lodger, like we're kind of like hitting on like, oh, this is like a famous well-known director in the sound era. We're actually getting to recognizable kind of pop culture names. Although this is a silent picture.
01:07:06
Speaker
It is, yes. Japan was still making silent movies up into the mid 30s. A lot of other countries didn't hop on the sound bandwagon as enthusiastically as America. Yeah. Well, I think just the Hollywood machine was big enough at that point that they could very quickly just outfit all the theaters, change their entire production pipeline.
01:07:33
Speaker
within a few years, whereas like, yeah, all that stuff takes a lot of time and money and effort that if you have a smaller film economy, it makes sense that it would be kind of slower to adapt to sound. Also, I think a lot of people were just like, why? You know, like, I'm sure that was probably part of it, too, where filmmakers in other countries were just like, no, like, we're not going to put sound in our movies. It's crazy.
01:08:00
Speaker
Um, but I don't know. I found this movie refreshingly kind of low stakes compared to a lot of other stuff that we've been watching. Yeah, right. Like after, you know, like the mummy and, you know, some of the like murder and like massive, just like dramatic stakes. This is a movie about like a family that moves into a new house. And it's just like, yeah, that's, that's kind of crazy, huh?
01:08:25
Speaker
But it's very, like, I think this movie is great. And I think a lot of it, a lot of what I like about it is just that like very kind of low stakes, like relatable stuff where it's just like, it doesn't have to be world ending problems. Sometimes it's just like, I don't want to go to school today.
01:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's not like fantastical Hollywood drama, right? This is not melodrama, which is kind of for a lot of early thirties movies are very melodramatic. Yeah, it's it's understated. Yeah, which yeah, which it feels it. Yeah, it feels very real life, feels very real world.
01:09:06
Speaker
The main things that it is about are some kids who are getting bullied by other kids and some kids seeing their stern father being a doofus and then losing respect for him.
01:09:23
Speaker
Well, it's there's like all of the there's a lot of parallels between the kid's life at school and dealing with the bullies and the dad's life at his new office job and dealing with like his coworkers and kind of drawing a lot of parallels between the two. There's a great shot of just like cutting from a bunch of office desks to a bunch of school desks. It's like, great, you know, clear connection being made there. But yeah, I there's
01:09:52
Speaker
I also just like the way that the bullying in this movie is dealt with. It's just kids being like little shits. They're not like horribly injuring each other. They're just like being mean.
01:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, it shows some kind of like very arbitrary meanness and also like this sort of eight year old bully like power dynamic structure. Yeah. All of the we're like social hierarchies, which again is like kind of mirrored in like the office social hierarchy stuff.
01:10:23
Speaker
yeah i think that's like let there's less focus on the office stuff and that comes in a little later but i do like how it's sort of like kind of building these two like weird sub societies of like the playground children's like all the rules and things they self-imposed rules that they create
01:10:42
Speaker
Yeah. And then applying those kind of silly rules to like, wait, like modern adult society also has all these weird arbitrary rules. Like, why do those matter anymore or less? Yeah. You know, I think, you know, it calling it a picture book for grown ups really speaks to a lot of what's going on in the movie and that like the two central characters are children. They're probably like eight or something like that. And
01:11:08
Speaker
And so it is looking from their kind of innocent perspective at like kind of Japanese like respect culture and like honor culture and that kind of thing. Like politeness. There's something about this movie that is kind of surprisingly
01:11:31
Speaker
anti-Confucian, I suppose. I don't really know what that means, but please continue. Confucius is Chinese, but like his philosophies kind of spread through Asia in a lot of ways. In particular, Confucius was very
01:11:52
Speaker
pro-hierarchy and pro-respecting hierarchies, where you are a child, you respect your parents, you're a commoner, you respect your feudal lord or your emperor, you are a worker and you respect your boss. Yeah. This movie is definitely challenging that for sure.
01:12:16
Speaker
Yeah, and it's like aligning a lot of these things and looking at them from this innocent children's perspective and like deconstructing them in many ways. Yeah, we can get into like, there's a bunch of just like fun kid stuff in this movie. But while we're still on the topic of like, it's broader, like philosophical stuff, I do like the way it kind of uses like kid logic in certain ways, or at least like it does feel like it's kind of from the kid's perspective for most of it.
01:12:43
Speaker
There's a couple of interactions between the kids and their dad that are just like, just great example of kid logic, but also are this sort of thing where I'm like, they make a good point. Like one of the, it's like, they're like, they come home. They're like, hey, we're getting, we don't want to go to school. We're getting bullied. And the dad is like, just ignore them. And they're like, they can still beat us up if we ignore them. And it's like, yeah, true. Like it's hard to argue with that. And then later when they, you know, they see their dad in a home movie being, being a goofball,
01:13:11
Speaker
And they're like, what the hell? Like, we thought you were like a stern, respectable person. Like, we don't respect you anymore. Look at you, you're making faces over here. And then like the dad of their bully is...
01:13:27
Speaker
their dad's boss. That's not of the bully himself, but like one of the people who wanted to sort of like the main bullies. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Right. It's not the main bully. Um, but so that they're like, Oh, like he's now like, you know, he's in charge of our dad at the office. Like what's going on there? And so that's why is he your boss? The dad says, well, because he pays me and the kids are like, well, you should pay him. That'll show him.
01:13:58
Speaker
which yeah, I love that. But yeah, it's like, if that's all you know, how the rules work, then it makes perfect sense. And these home movies where they see their dad being a goofball, right? It is specifically like the dad doesn't want to be a goofball, but he is having to show deference to his boss and the kids recognize what is happening and then lose respect for him. And earlier in the movie, like,
01:14:25
Speaker
in dealing with their bullies and kind of conquering them and becoming the rulers of the group, basically. Allah, like little Caesar. They have come up with their own rules about how like hierarchy should work or be fought for. And and then they're watching these like socially prescribed rules.
01:14:55
Speaker
dominating their dad to the point that he is watching the movies and then doing the anime head scratch thing, which is very interesting seeing that in such an old movie. In live action, in such an old movie, this Japanese gesture of you're embarrassed, so you're scratching the back of your head.
01:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, that was interesting. That was very interesting. Yeah, yeah. There is, yeah, like I said earlier, like there's a lot of just like fun kids being kids stuff as examples of all of their like hierarchies and rules and things, but like early on the kids don't want to go to school because getting bullied so they go and they try to do their homework
01:15:46
Speaker
Instead of going to school, they leave the home and then just don't go to the school. They just go sit in a field and try to practice their calligraphy and then use the calligraphy brushes as chopsticks.
01:16:00
Speaker
Which, to me, watching this, I'm like, oh, they're just living the homeschool dream. Why go to a school with all of its rules and mean people? Just go sit outside and do your learning. And then all the stuff with the sparrow eggs was very amusing. For some reason, get the idea that if you eat sparrow eggs, it makes you good at fighting.
01:16:25
Speaker
I love that. I mean, I was wondering if that's like some kind of cultural thing that I was missing, but I love the idea if it's just something that they made up. I got the sense of something they made up because it's not like it seems like everyone else in the movie is like, I don't know where that came from. Which is great. And then they start using the sparrow eggs as like currency. Yeah, they make a whole egg economy.
01:16:48
Speaker
Nice. So it's like in addition to this movie has a lot of like thematically rich stuff to chew on but then it's also just like a really kind of like it's just a really like nice movie to watch too I guess it's it's funny it's like charming it is like maybe I was just in the perfect right mood to watch it but it's like it felt like such a kind of like calming just like
01:17:11
Speaker
nice movie to sit with and it's like oh this is like no this is very chill i'm i'm into this it's interesting because it's like it is a calming nice movie but also there's a lot of just random cruelty in it too oh sure yeah they're like they feed the sparrow egg their dog and then like the dog gets sick that's upsetting um i do really like how it ends also
01:17:36
Speaker
with the dad telling the kids, don't become miserable apple polishers like me, which at least that's the English translation. And I really like that sentiment to end on where the dad is like, oh yeah, I can kind of see myself how my kids see me now. And like, I don't really like necessarily like the person that I've become. And I don't want my kids to kind of follow in my footsteps in the same way.
01:18:04
Speaker
Right. Like he wants them to to like fight for themselves in the way that they have learned how to and like stick up for themselves in the way that he cannot or he doesn't feel like he can. To not be as like deferential as he has kind of lived his life. And they're like, yeah, we get it. Yeah. The kids are like, yeah, my plan is to be general and my plan is to be like the president. They both have like the most like wildly ambitious career plans.
01:18:32
Speaker
Um, and it's like good for them. This movie, um, I guess there is something that is called the tatami shot, which is sort of an Ozu trademark, which is putting the camera down very, very low, like lower than eye level on a tatami mat and then, and then just like shooting these scenes
01:18:56
Speaker
from, I mean, almost like a child's angle, but this like very dispassionate low angle in a lot of ways. And so there are a lot of, there's a lot of like visual style and imagery that it's difficult for me to disentangle whether it is highly influential in Japanese movies and anime, or if it is just like- Just a good example of it kind of.
01:19:24
Speaker
Yeah. Or at least like, you know, if you're composing shots with the Japanese tables that you sit at and paper doors and tatami mats, like, is this just kind of how you compose these shots? Yeah. Or like how much of this is like informed by like what he is shooting and how much of this is like, oh, Ozu invented the way that Japanese people shoot movies. Right. I mean, I think
01:19:54
Speaker
That is at least partially true. I know that Ozu is an incredibly influential filmmaker. I don't know to what exact degree that is of how much his visual style has just informed an entire country's visual media. The last Japanese movie we watched was A Touch of Madness, which is very different from this. Right, yeah. And it does almost feel like this movie does have a sort of
01:20:22
Speaker
a noticeably kind of like Japanese visual style. If that can be, you know, put into a single thing. But I think there's like certain, there's certain like visual trademarks that I don't know if I could point them out, but it does have a kind of cumulative effect.
01:20:41
Speaker
It feels Japanese outside of the context of the stuff that you're looking at. Right. And yeah, it's because I was thinking watching it that a lot of that had more to do with architecture and the way that houses are set up and that kind of thing. But I do feel like there is probably some amount of just like visual style that has either was this movie is just part of a greater movement or quite possibly.
01:21:09
Speaker
It's also just like a specific Ozu influence. I was noticing also that like a lot of these shots have a lot of depth in them. Yeah. They say a lot of like extreme background foreground stuff.
01:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, like deep focus and things. And like, you know, a lot of this is shot in these like places with paper doors where you're kind of like looking from one room into another room and then there's another room past it. And so like even if it's not using all the depth, it kind of feels very like full in its Z axis, which a lot of times
01:21:52
Speaker
A lot of American movies kind of just feel like a plane in front of you compared to this. Yeah, for sure. One of my big complaints about a lot of American movies from this era is how, yeah, how kind of flat they feel. Speaking of American movies, having to do with ambition. Yeah, having to do with
01:22:17
Speaker
violently overthrowing the person who is in charge of you.
'Scarface' and Gangster Film Commentary
01:22:23
Speaker
Yeah. Let's talk about Scarface. Original Scarface. I feel like 80s Scarface is one of those movies that I think, I don't know, I feel like a lot of people don't.
01:22:34
Speaker
know that it's a remake or don't think of it as such like a lot of 80s remakes like the fly or the thing that it's like the remake is so much more famous and well known than the original that it has kind of like supplanted it in culture and having seen neither of them before this i was i kind of just watched this as a movie and it didn't but similar to the mummy there was like kind of more things even though i haven't seen that the de palma scarface there's like more scarface stuff in this than i thought there would be
01:23:02
Speaker
There's a guy with a scar on his face, first off. Sure. Yeah. But even beyond that, there was like, you know, there's more to it. I thought that that would be it. I thought that would be like the only, you know, it's like it's about a guy who's a criminal, but there is more. Yeah, I don't really know pretty much anything at all about the 80s Scarface. So I was also watching this without too much of that context. I mean, and they're both based on a book, so.
01:23:30
Speaker
I think the 80s one takes a lot of stuff in the book that it wasn't used in this movie. So. But this is about a guy named Tony Camante, Tony Camante, who is a thinly veiled Al Capone. Yeah. Down to having the nickname Scarface, which comes from Capone. And this is a Howard Hawks picture. I think the first Howard Hawks movie that we've watched.
01:23:56
Speaker
I believe so, yes. And this is also produced by Howard Hughes. This is one of the other big Howard Hughes pictures. Yeah, and Howard Hughes making these movies that really push boundaries. This is one of the more extreme pre-code movies that we've seen. Well, that's like Hell's Angels as I cranked up Schlocky version of Wings.
01:24:24
Speaker
This is like a cranked up schlocky version of a different William Willimon movie, Public Enemy. Yeah. Yeah. This is like it's got it's got like a lot of striking violence in it. Yeah. Including like stuff that they were like, we are going to show this, but we're just going to show the the shadows doing this so that we can get away with even more violence, basically.
01:24:54
Speaker
Right, but I feel like the other gangster movies that we watched last episode...
01:25:02
Speaker
We're like had a lot of they have a lot of murder in them, but they're like very artfully presented where it's like it's happening off screen or we just see the aftermath of it or what have you. Whereas this movie is like, no, no, we're going to show you so many people getting shot by Tommy Guns that you'll be sick of it by the end. This movie is like gritty. It's it's it's like you feel kind of on edge watching this movie, I think. I found it very effective.
01:25:31
Speaker
And like, it's a little, there are aspects of it that are fairly cliche, you know, but like, I think that like, there's this tension that goes through the whole movie that comes from the kind of extremity of it, which yeah, I found very, very affecting. Yeah. Howard Hughes did hire Howard Hawks to direct this movie, even after Howard Hawks had previously sued him
01:25:58
Speaker
because Howard Hawks had directed a movie called The Dawn Patrol. Oh no, sorry. Howard Hughes sued Howard Hawks because Howard Hawks made a movie called The Dawn Patrol, which Hughes said was a rip-off of Hell's Angels, which is pretty rich because Hell's Angels is very much a rip-off of Wings.
01:26:20
Speaker
A lot of Howard's throwing shade around. Too many old timey first names. Yeah. And yeah, this is kind of loosely based on a novel that itself was kind of loosely based on Acapone.
01:26:37
Speaker
Um, in the book it follows Tony and his brother who's a cop and like both of their kind of like rise to powers in their respective, you know, groups. Um, it cuts out a lot. But, um, according to the screenwriter, Ben Hecht, uh, Capone sent some, some hatchet men to his house in LA to make sure the movie wasn't based on him.
01:27:03
Speaker
which I find very, that might be not be true. That's just a thing that he said, but that also sounds like something Al Capone would do, so. This movie is definitely, it has an interesting relationship with gangsters as a film. It opens with some text that is quite a thing. It says,
01:27:31
Speaker
This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty. Every incident in this picture is a reproduction of an actual occurrence, and the purpose of this picture is to demand of the government, what are you going to do about it? The government is your government. What are you going to do about it? Pointing the finger right at the audience.
01:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, which, you know, it feels like very much like it's trying to have its cake and eat it, too. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that was the thing that was added late to be like, we got to have something in here just to be like, don't actually be a gangster, please. This is bad. Right. Like this movie is.
01:28:15
Speaker
very, I think even more than Public Enemy and Little Caesar, it is glorifying gangsters. It is saying they are cool guys who have fun and do cool stuff. I think it has a very, it has kind of a less kind of, it has a similar structure to those movies in that it is a kind of like rise and fall
01:28:39
Speaker
of this guy right like he's like moving up through the ranks and then he like takes over and then things end horribly for him.
01:28:47
Speaker
It's got a lot of similar plot beats to both of those movies. But it feels schlockier than those two, for sure. It feels kind of more overblown and pulpy and it's like way more violent and way more kind of romantic in the sort of old-timey sense of the word. Or it feels like it's kind of fetishizing gangsters a bit more than these movies were.
01:29:13
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, along the lines of the opening, which does feel like it is at odds with the rest of the movie, there is a really random scene in the middle of the movie where... Oh, yeah. That was definitely added late. I read that. Oh, really? Yeah. They like went back and shot that after the rest of the thing. In fact, no, Howard Hughes, you have to put something in there to be like, you know, saying that this is bad.
01:29:40
Speaker
Which yeah, that's the thing is it's like this crawl at the beat not it's not crawl but like these titles the beginning of the movie and That scene in the middle of the movie very much feel like
01:29:53
Speaker
They are not the same as the rest of the movie, which they aren't, right? Because the rest of the movie is like, this is a cool guy and being a gangster is fun. And then this stuff is being a gangster is bad. What are you going to do about it?
01:30:11
Speaker
Yeah, there's a scene in the middle of the movie where there are some politicians who are telling the journalists. This is like very, very metatextually commenting on the movie itself. No characters from the rest of the movie and none of these characters appear in any of their scenes. It's like completely its own thing. Yeah, so ridiculous.
01:30:31
Speaker
There are some politically influencing people talking to a journalist, and they're saying that they're glorifying the gangster by giving him all of this publicity. And the journalist says, you think you can get rid of the gangster by ignoring him, keeping him off the front page? You're playing right into his hands. Citation needed.
01:30:53
Speaker
Show him up, run him out of the country, that'll keep him out of the front page. And he's literally addressing the camera when he says this. The people are behind the camera and he looks right into the lens when he is saying, it's okay for me, the journalist, to do all of this stuff that is depicting gangsters being cool.
01:31:16
Speaker
aka me the director do all the stuff depicting gangsters being cool. Because people should be catching them and deporting them is specifically what they're saying. Literally, they say like put teeth in the deportation act. And like these gangsters don't belong in this country. Half of them aren't even citizens. So like, yeah, very much like
01:31:43
Speaker
We're going to keep making a movie that is glorifying gangsters. And if you care about this, then deport Italians and pass a law quote that puts the gun in the same class as drugs and white slavery. Yeah. I mean, it makes me think about like the context this movie came out in a bit. Like I think that scene is garbage. But I guess 32 was like kind of prime.
01:32:11
Speaker
like gangster violence in America like prohibition era gangster violence I mean where it was like yeah that's like when like a lot of or I guess it was more like late 20s into early 30s but so yeah I'm I guess I'm I'm curious how much this felt like this was like a very relevant pressing issue for for most of the audience for this movie where it did really feel like they had to kind of like take a stance like that on it
01:32:41
Speaker
I don't like this movie does not care about the movie itself doesn't the movie itself is so just like popcorn like look at this guy you know do crazy stuff yeah so yeah I mean I think this this movie is honestly like
01:32:59
Speaker
So I get a lot of flack for this criticism that I have of Martin Scorsese a lot of the time, which is that his movies do this a bit sometimes. They are more nuanced than this movie, certainly. But I think that people are dumb and they watch Scorsese movies and they go, oh, cool guy, you know? Yeah, it's true.
01:33:25
Speaker
And I think it's funny to watch recent Scorsese movies, Killers of the Flower Moon included within that, where it feels like Scorsese also knows that and is going out of his way to be like, no, they are not cool. They're shitty. Do not think these people are cool.
01:33:43
Speaker
Right. Because that's like the whole point of The Irishman is like three and a half hours of like this guy is miserable. He is an empty hollow shell of a man because of the choices he has made. And a thing that Clothes of the Flower Moon does that this movie also does kind of maybe less knowingly is its its main character is kind of an idiot.
01:34:07
Speaker
is like just a big dumb guy who is like can only kind of understand like money and like like material objects as as value and uh yeah because i i mean that's my impression of actual aquapon was like he wasn't like a smart guy he was like kind of dumb but people did what he told them to do so it was like
01:34:35
Speaker
So he ended up with a lot of money and influence. But Tony in this movie is like not not presented as like a sharp, sharp guy. You know, I don't know if he's specifically presented as a dumb guy, but I kind of took it that way. Like he's presented is just like, hey, I'm I'm I'm a gangster guy. I want to shoot guns. And it's like, all right, cool, man.
01:35:00
Speaker
I feel like both Little Caesar and whoever the public enemy's character's name was, both those characters feel like they have real intent behind everything they do and they're really trying to plan out their assent through organized crime. Whereas Tony is just murdering everyone around him until he gets promoted.
01:35:30
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's more vibes. Yeah. Less less thought. I will say I think like we're like we're talking pretty negatively about this movie as like this kind of like schlocky not well thought out thing. It's but it has some amazing scenes in it like. Yeah. The opening scene for one is like incredible.
01:35:58
Speaker
The whole long oneer going through the aftermath of the party with all the streamers and then you see the guy walking in and you see the shadow come in and shoot him. This movie is so stylish. It's honestly one of the best looking movies of the sound era that we've seen so far.
01:36:21
Speaker
There's a part which I thought was so inspired where they're doing the kind of tearing the calendar pages off thing to show time moving, but they do it by having a gun superimposed off it, like a machine gun, so with every shot, a new page tears off. It's a double exposure of a timey gun shooting and then a bunch of pages coming off the calendar.
01:36:48
Speaker
It's so good. It is. I was just talking about that shot with another friend of mine who was like, I was saying, I'm going to watch Scarface soon. I was like, look, there's a calendar bit in that that is great. And so like when that happened, I was like, oh, yes, there it is. It's so good. But it's not even just that. It's like the camera moves around in this a lot more than than other stuff we've seen of this era. I feel like this to me honestly feels like the first
01:37:19
Speaker
The first sound movie that has felt like it is completely unencumbered by sound technology.
01:37:29
Speaker
Like they are just making a movie and they are doing a good job with it. They're making very good choices like filmmaking wise, I think. Another thing that I noticed with this is that it has a lot of, a more modern amount of like chest up medium shots in it. And it got me thinking about like the sort of differences in
01:37:59
Speaker
demands of the silent medium and the sound medium, and how in the sound medium most of the emoting and acting is happening with the face and the hands, right? Where in silent
01:38:16
Speaker
acting like you're using the whole body a lot more, which kind of explains a lot more of those like much more pulled back shots in in a lot of silent movies. And this one has made the choice correctly, I think, to bring the camera in closer to because more of the acting is just happening with words and and faces. Yeah. Also, you can get a microphone closer to actors that way. That might have been part of it, too.
01:38:46
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, that's, that's a really, that's a, that's a, I hadn't noticed that specifically, but now that you say it, I'm like, well, yeah, of course. Like, right. Yeah. Yeah. I think both this and the mummy feel like they feel kind of a notch ahead of the other talkies in terms of like the tools that they're using and like how well they're.
01:39:06
Speaker
kind of incorporating all of the techniques that have existed so far. We get like a rear projection car part, a car driving part. Yeah, we get like the camera moving in some cool ways. Like there are some shots of
01:39:23
Speaker
uh you know that are made to hide more violence than they want the these you know people getting uh lined up and lined up against a wall and shot right in silhouette but like also it's just cool you know which like it's not even just like an exact recreation of the same valentine's day massacre which al Capone really did like mastermind
01:39:47
Speaker
So that's a real kind of like pull from the headlines moment because I think that happened in like 29. It was in our newsletter, I don't remember. Another thing in that scene and in I think not every scene where someone is killed, but almost every scene, there is an X somewhere in the frame. Like somewhere there is an X.
01:40:08
Speaker
And at a certain point, I started to notice that of like, oh, there's always an X, like either an X like built into the set or like kind of lit on a wall somewhere. Wow. Yeah. And at first I was like, oh, OK, that's like a fun little flourish or whatever. Like there's always an X when death happens. But then as the movie continues and like as it gets towards the end, I started seeing X's built into stuff and being like, oh, shit, oh, shit, someone's going to die soon.
01:40:37
Speaker
Wow. Oh, that's so cool. Even if they didn't in the same scene, like they started that then starts to like use that familiarity to like build anticipation to be like, oh shit, I just saw an axe on screen. I know someone's going to die soon.
01:40:50
Speaker
That's rad. Yeah. I mean, that that that that is what I'm talking about, like, you know, thematically, maybe or like response, responsibility to society wise. This movie is maybe not so well thought out. But like as a movie, it is so well put together. Howard Hawks, good director. It's it's kind of wild, the amount of
01:41:14
Speaker
like more recent directors that I think are kind of, uh, probably more well known than, than Howard Hawks that like cite him specifically as like the entire reason they wanted to make movies. Um, John Carpenter, especially is like, he, he always goes back to just like, I just wanted to make Howard Hawks stuff. Like that, that was like his biggest inspiration as a filmmaker. Um,
01:41:40
Speaker
Which is, and it's cool now to like watch Howard Hawks movies and see what inspired so many other people. And it's like, yeah, he's good at it. Yeah. This is another movie with Boris Karloff in it. Yes. Boris Karloff plays the. He talks in the mummy too.
01:41:59
Speaker
You get to hear like his, I don't know if he's trying to do an American accent and somewhat failing. I don't think he isn't either of these. No. Yeah. He's he's he's doing Boris Callout voice. Yeah. Which is English. Yeah.
01:42:13
Speaker
Yeah. So he's a kind of British-ish rival gangster who controls the north side. And there's all this back and forth about like, don't go into the north side. We've got to wait for our moment. And then he says, I'm Scarface. I'm going to go into the north side. But like another amazingly stylish bit is while Tony is taking over,
01:42:42
Speaker
in his sort of crowning moment of taking the entire city, he kills Boris Karloff while he's bowling. And so he like rolls the ball and then gets shot right as the ball leaves his hand. And so you see him bowl a strike, but there's one last pin that's like wavering and then falls down as he dies.
01:43:10
Speaker
So cool. So stylish. So cool. Unbelievable. Another funny thing about Boris Karlov in this movie is that on the poster for this movie, he's credited as Boris Frankenstein Karlov. Like that movie was so famous even a year after it came out that Boris Karlov was straight up getting credited as Frankenstein in other movies. Wow.
01:43:37
Speaker
And not even Frankenstein's monster, too. I did not look that closely at the poster, and that's hilarious. Stylish, fun movie. Very influential, for sure. The phrase, the world is yours, I know, is the thing that carries over into the remake. And that's a big deal in this one. There's sort of a thing that reminded me of M, also. There's like, during that opening one-er shot of murder,
01:44:07
Speaker
you hear whistling and then later on you see it's always kind of a mystery like who did that at the beginning it's like it's probably the main character right and then later he's he whistles the same tune kind of revealing to the audience that yeah very very well put together speaking of good movies
01:44:25
Speaker
I thought, anyway.
Dorothy Arzner's 'Merrily We Go to Hell'
01:44:26
Speaker
Yeah. We have Dorothy Arzner's Merrily We Go To Hell. Maybe the best movie title ever. Yeah. It's up there. I don't know how well it pays off on the title, really, but there is a lot of interesting stuff in this movie. See, I thought the title was just going to be a fun title and not really have anything to do with the movie. And I actually think it's a very apt title.
01:44:52
Speaker
Right. And it's it's said repeatedly throughout the movie also. Yeah, it is. It's the catchphrase of, yeah, a guy who is watching himself descend into alcoholism. I had heard of this movie most is like looking up Dorothy Arizona's filmography and it always stood out of like that's out of the title. Got to check that one out.
01:45:16
Speaker
And I went into it not knowing anything about it and was very uh pleasantly surprised by this movie. I think this movie is very good. Yeah. And it's very uh it feels very unusual for this era too and sort of like kind of like freaks and sort of like how nuanced it is and how like
01:45:39
Speaker
unwilling to just like kind of take the easy route and like the easy melodramatic way of doing things. Because I feel like we've seen a lot of movies about like either like marital strife or alcoholism or a lot of the kind of like thematic things in this movie. Infidelity whatever it may be and this movie I feel like handles all of them with so much more like maturity than anything else we've seen for this show.
01:46:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this movie is also it's also like great talk like great dialogue in this movie. Yes. Yeah. It deals with a lot of surprisingly progressive like ideas. Yeah. Including like, yeah, a modern marriage, what they call which I guess. Yeah. Yeah. As one might say today.
01:46:38
Speaker
But yeah, it portrays so much of this stuff with nuance, people trapped in shitty relationships, people who want to see the best in other people and get let down.
01:46:58
Speaker
like watching a dynamic get like more and more toxic despite all like warning signs. Oh, this movie is good. So the broad strokes of this movie is about Jerry, a penniless reporter, writer. He wants to be a playwright, but he works at a newspaper. And Joan, a wealthy heiress. Very great opening shot also, like going through miniatures and like combining miniatures with moving camera stuff.
01:47:28
Speaker
And it's like they meet at a party. They're like they're both out on a balcony to like escape the party kind of, which is like I find that very relatable. And they're both a little tipsy, especially Jerry, but really kind of hit it off and have some some good some good banter. Yeah, I wrote this is that early that good early 30s dialogue. Yes. Oh, this is like.
01:47:52
Speaker
early 30s dialogue. Yeah. This is a great line where Jan says, you mean, of course, alcoholically speaking, which I'm going to steal that. I also wrote down good dialogue, question mark. Like, this is new. And yeah, the title is Jerry's toast. Like, whenever he's drinking, that's how he toast. He goes, I really would go to hell. And then he, you know, down something. But so they hit it off at this thing and
01:48:22
Speaker
the early section of the movie is a lighthearted romantic comedy of them two getting to know each other and trying to meet each other, but nearly missing or this and that. But it all feels very light and cheery and charming. There's a really great bit where they're kissing in a car, but whenever they kiss, they lean on the horn, so the horn goes off.
01:48:50
Speaker
um just like really good uh good little florist is like that yeah and along the lines of it being a romantic comedy uh you know her rich dad doesn't want her to be with him yeah right and so it's it's it's a writer how dare you he hasn't made a play yet yeah
01:49:15
Speaker
But and so it's kind of like, I want to do what I want. Dad, I love him. But the movie does such a good job of like really selling you on this romantic pairing. Like they're so charming together. They have such good chemistry. Like I felt so immediately like invested in this of like, I really want to see these people happy. Like they clearly make each other very happy and like I want to see this, you know, work out.
01:49:42
Speaker
but it also does a really great job of like planting the seed. Yeah, seeding all of the ways in which it won't. Yeah, yeah.
01:49:51
Speaker
Yeah, Jerry's very much a like four drinks. I'm having fun and I'm doing great guy and then five drinks. I am a complete wreck. Yeah. Asleep and don't remember anything. But which, yeah, is like a thing throughout this whole movie is that like Jerry's alcoholic and like he misses they get engaged, be married. He misses his own engagement party because he he like passes out in the back of a car and it's like throughout the whole movie. That's like a thing where it's like
01:50:20
Speaker
He's gonna drink and he's gonna, you know, but it's, I like how he's not like an abusive drunk. I guess you might be kind of like,
01:50:29
Speaker
emotionally abusive in certain ways, but I like how this movie doesn't treat his alcoholism as this thing where he flies off the handle and breaks furniture and shit. Not that those alcoholics certainly exist, but I like how this movie is more focused on he's just kind of embarrassing and a bummer. Right. And he's self-destructive in many ways. Right, yeah. He's more self-sabotaging in his alcoholism than he is outwardly destructive.
01:50:57
Speaker
He also reveals that he is hung up on his ex. Right. Which is like right from the get go. You're like, he is very hung up on this person. You keep a picture of her on your wall. Yeah.
01:51:12
Speaker
He talks to the picture and gets real dramatic, talks about opening his veins and carrying his blood away in a golden bowl. Normal stuff. Another sort of sign that his alcoholism might be a problem is during his wedding, he forgets the ring and has to use a corkscrew
01:51:38
Speaker
as a ring, which he like holds up like it's a ring, but then once it's on her finger, it's revealed that it's actually like his pocket corkscrew. Which is a great reveal and like really great character moments. It's sometimes like a funny kind of like uh like screwball comedy moment and also this this thing we're like especially later on in the movie you're like oh no like this is such a
01:52:02
Speaker
Like it almost takes on a darker note the further into the movie it gets and you kind of like see the deaths of like how much of this is a problem for him. Yeah, that's almost like that. To me, that felt like the moment where it stopped being cute and started being like, oh, yeah, right. Hmm.
01:52:20
Speaker
But so then like a flash forward head into their marriage and he's trying to sell, he's trying to be a playwright and sell plays. And he gets a letter back that says, as it says on screen, while we think your play shows promise, we do not think it's sufficiently interesting to warrant our producing it, which is a very politely worded, but also like very mean letter.
01:52:48
Speaker
He got another one that says, we see no merit in your script. We do not think it's sufficiently interesting, I think is very funny. And also there's a great bit during this section where you hear the sound of either typing or cocktail shaking and it's like not clear at first, which it is, which I think is a really cool sort of use of sound.
01:53:12
Speaker
hmm i didn't notice that that's awesome i forget which it's then revealed to be but it's it's that sort of thing where i'm like wait is he shaking i think it's like you think he's typing but he's actually hate shaking your drink and yeah there's just like they they're having a big dinner but like jerry ruins dinner because he like drops the chicken on the ground
01:53:30
Speaker
So then they have to make canned chicken, which I guess was a thing in the thirties. But then he gets his play produced. He gets an acceptance letter like, we're making your play in New York. The rest of this movie has taken place in Chicago. So they moved to New York like, hey, we got this. We've learned earlier that his ex was an actor and then they like go to New York and like, we found this great, this great hot actor to be in your play. And then who walks in?
01:53:58
Speaker
I wrote, oh shit, in my notes, in that moment. His ex, Claire, who immediately is trying to seduce him back, kind of.
01:54:09
Speaker
Um, and it's like, oof, yikes. This is, this is an awkward, bad situation. And you can tell that like, because he is so, uh, not only so hung up on her, but so unable to control his drinking that like, for a while he quits drinking, right? Like, for a while he's on, as they say, the water wagon, which I'm like, is that what the wagon is? It's the water wagon. Oh, huh. I'd never heard the full phrase before, but I guess that's what that means.
01:54:39
Speaker
Um, but then yeah, like once he starts hanging out with Claire working on the play again, he like immediately starts drinking. There's even a scene where she like offers him a drink and he's like, no, no, no, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not drinking right now. And then she's like, here, just hold this for a second. And just like puts it in his hand and he just like slowly starts like, it's like moving it towards his face until eventually he's just drinking it. Great, uh, blocking there.
01:55:04
Speaker
Um, but, uh, yeah, there's, there's a bit where they're like, uh, Joan and Jerry are, are like getting in bed together or like, you know, having a sort of nice quiet moment. And he, he accidentally calls her Claire cause he's drunk. And it's like, I was so invested in the beginning that now when it's like the cracks are starting to form and like there's real tension, it's like, it's so palpable.
01:55:33
Speaker
I do feel like this and The College Party are both movies that you can tell like have a woman's touch in a way. Yeah, there's nothing even more so than Wild Party. Oh yeah, The Wild Party, sorry. Where I think, especially like a lesbian making this, right? Like it is...
01:56:00
Speaker
you know, she's got to make movies about straight people because it's 1932 but like there there is a sort of like disillusionment with Traditional straight relationships that this movie has yeah and sort of a you know, this movie is maybe a little less outwardly negative toward the like the toward men then
01:56:27
Speaker
than the wild party where they're all just horrific people but like this one's like men are subtly disappointing right but it's like even that feels like right because wild party is like men are either just like lecherous monsters or just kind of jerks
01:56:46
Speaker
There's like the professor who's like kind of treatise, right? He's like the male romantic lead. He's just kind of... He's bland. Right. Yeah. He's just, you know, getting shot in the shoulder and things and shrugging it off. But yeah, I like how much the ways in which kind of like Jerry is flawed are very...
01:57:10
Speaker
Yeah, they're just more subtle about it. They're not like, he's not like an awful guy. Like his alcoholism isn't like that destructive. It's just like, oh, God damn it, Jerry. Like again, you know, it's always like.
01:57:25
Speaker
Both the characters and the audience just feel disappointed in him more than anything. In many ways it resists cliche. Yeah. Yeah. But so at a certain point it's like very clear that he is carrying on an affair with Claire.
01:57:40
Speaker
behind Joan's back. And Joan's like, I know what's up. And so she's like, all right, fine. If that's how you want to play this, great. We'll have an open marriage, and I'm going to go hang out with Cary Grant for the evening. And then Cary Grant is in one scene just being handsome.
01:57:57
Speaker
And it's a very, at this point, it feels very Lindsay and Tobias Bluth. Right. But it might work for us. Like trying to one up each other with like the hottest other person they can find. But then it's like very
01:58:15
Speaker
clear very earlier that Joan doesn't actually enjoy that. Like she's kind of doing it to get back at Jerry, but she doesn't actually like want to date other people. She's basically just doing it to piss them off. There's some like kind of fun party scenes in here where there's a bunch of wealthy people in tuxedos at like a typical 30s streamer party.
01:58:37
Speaker
um with just you know ticker tape everywhere and someone says what depression which is like for a movie made in 1932 is like damn that is a topical and also like kind of dark joke to like show like rich people partying and be like depression what depression who cares yeah and then and then someone says the very charming depression between your shoulder blades which is again good dialogue
01:59:07
Speaker
Um, yeah, there's like, there's so much tension in these scenes, especially like when there's like so much unsaid between Jerry and Joan in a lot of this stuff. We're like, you want to just shake one or both of them and just be like, just like talk to each other, like just actually express your feelings to another. But, um, but they don't do that.
01:59:29
Speaker
Yeah, specifically it becomes this kind of the thing that like Jerry never says, I love you. Right. He always says, I think you're swell, which is no substitute. You know, it's like it's charming when they meet. But at a certain point, she's like, you've never said that to me. Not once. And and like and like he says it to deflect so much stuff. Right. Yeah. Like.
01:59:53
Speaker
where there's a point where she confronts him and she's like, do not tell me that I'm swell. Yeah. And yeah, like it reaches a head where they like have a big argument after like he like has brought Claire home to their apartment and is like partying in the kitchen and like making out with her in front of Joan. And she's just like, fuck this, I'm leaving. Like I'm going back to Chicago. Like I'm you can deal with this shit on your own.
02:00:19
Speaker
And so his play then falls apart and he has to go back to his job at the newspaper and he's sending letters to Joan to try to apologize and all this stuff and they keep getting sent back. Return to sender. Until eventually he finds out from the newspaper who works at that she has given birth to a baby boy
02:00:48
Speaker
So then he rushes to the hospital to meet her only to find out that the baby has died. Which is like, that one-two punch is like such an emotional whirlwind of like, yeah, oh shit, like they had a child together. That's a big deal. And then he gets there and the kid is dead.
02:01:07
Speaker
That's that Hollywood melodrama, baby. That's like the only thing that works as well as it does because the movie has like so far been very kind of like restrained in its drama and much more about these sort of like slowly building tension and like resentments and sort of things that when it leans full melodrama, it's like it really feels shocking.
02:01:31
Speaker
And the person who tells him that the baby died is her dad, who is the one we find out has been sending the letters back.
02:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, it turns out that she was really ill during the delivery and all of that, and she was calling out wanting to see Jerry again. And her dad was deliberately keeping the two of them apart.
02:02:02
Speaker
And eventually, Jerry kind of realizes what's happening and just like pushes the dad aside. And there's another good example of like subtlety that there's a line the dad says where while he's in the hospital, he tells Jerry, if she dies, I'll kill you. But he doesn't say it like if she dies, I'll kill you. Like he says it like so quietly and understated where I'm like, I believe like, yeah, that guy would do it.
02:02:28
Speaker
I got money, I'll disappear you. Which feels like in like, I don't know, having seen a number of other 1930s movies, I would think that that line would be delivered with like a lot of gusto and like drama and it's like very quiet and very understated.
02:02:45
Speaker
Cuz he like absolutely hates Jerry at this point, which I mean like he's not entirely Out of line for for disliking this guy at this point. Yeah But the power of love yeah, but so that yeah Jerry pushes through the dad and like goes in And Jonas there and he finally says I love you to her but it it does end on kind of a moment of like a
02:03:10
Speaker
like happy reconciliation and reunion but at the same time there's like a little bit of like graduate style like unease to the last scene too like like they they kind of reconnect but at the same time it's like I don't know like there's still I don't see just like sunshine ahead for these two like
02:03:32
Speaker
You know, they both have, like, this relationship has a lot of issues to work out still. I mean, that unease that you're speaking of is the unease that I felt watching sunrise. Oh, yeah. The reconciliation there. But also it has no attempted murder in it.
02:03:54
Speaker
But yeah, this another kind of thing adding to the scene is just like, you know, it's happy, but also a baby just died, too. Yeah. So like it kind of sits in that too, where it's like, this is still a pretty sad ending. Yeah. Despite its ending with like our character saying, I love you to each other. It's still like, but they're they're kind of saying it with like tears in their eyes a bit. Right. So it's sort of like happy ending, question mark.
02:04:22
Speaker
Which even that feels like an unusually kind of nuanced way to end a movie. Yeah. For this time period anyway. I think I'm being very harsh on 1932 as a time period for movies, but hey, you know. Well, and it's the end of the movie and guess what? It's the end of our podcast. That's right. Did you have a favorite film?
02:04:47
Speaker
we were. My favorite movie was Scarface. Yeah. I thought Scarface was so fun, so cool. I think it is the best movie. It's not the smartest movie, but it's the best movie. I think you should put up a big poster of 1932 Scarface on your wall just to be a contrarian old movie nerd. Oh my God. That
02:05:11
Speaker
That's a good bit. And then you can look at Boris Karlov's Frankenstein credit all the live long day. Maybe I should like make it that black and white poster. But make it. But the old one. Yeah. That would be. Does that exist? Someone's done that for sure. We don't have there's no fans of this movie. It's all it's all Tony Montana. Yeah.
02:05:33
Speaker
I fully expected The Mummy to be my favorite movie this year, but Merrily Go To Hell really surprised me in how much I liked it. Like, I really liked that movie a lot. It's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my favorite.
02:05:47
Speaker
Nice. Well, that'll be it for this episode. Might be another little while before the next one because of the Denver Film Festival, but we'll be back at it as soon as possible. Well, next episode we got some real doozies.
02:06:04
Speaker
Next episode, no effort needed for the album art because- Just our original show artwork? Yeah. Just a photograph of a frame of King Kong that I took. Yeah, right. We don't have to edit it at all. We don't have to insert a frame from anything. It'd be funny to just put a different frame from King Kong in there. No.
02:06:28
Speaker
But also, you picked the most iconic frame possible, pretty much. I don't think there's a better choice anyway.
02:06:37
Speaker
But yeah, applied to Invisible Man, some other stuff. A 33 is a good year for movies, so. Yeah, yeah. A lot of interesting stuff coming up next episode, so make sure you catch us then. Follow us on Instagram and stuff. And subscribe, you know, if you've watched.
02:07:01
Speaker
Subscribe. Subscribe, like, do all those things. You know, engage. Engage with the media that you're consuming. Our content. Don't call it that. It's a podcast, all right? We have words for these things already. Yes. Anyway, thank you for enjoying your content. God damn it.
02:07:24
Speaker
And that'll be it. I'm not vlogging off. Is that the new sign off? That'll be it for this one. Excited for 1933. Thanks for listening to 1932. Appreciate you all. Glenn, I'll see you next year. See you next year. You know they buried everything with them that they used in life. Well, when we came to unwrap the girl herself. How could you do that? Had to, science you know.