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1949 - Post-war Baseball
50 Plays1 month ago
Ringing in 2026 by closing out the 1940s! This episode we discuss iconic Looney Tunes, acidic Ealing comedy, Orson Welles dunking on cukoo clocks, crime & baseball in postwar Japan, feminist gun violence, and THE Miss Turnstiles!
You can watch along with our video version of the episode here on Youtube!
You can check out our social media crap here: http://linktr.ee/1w1y
And you can watch and form your own opinions from our 1949 Films Discussed playlist right here!
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:24 - The News of the Year!
00:03:22 - Fast and Furry-ous
00:11:02 - Kind Hearts and Coronets
00:28:15 - The Third Man
00:58:23 - Stray Dog
01:21:04 - Late Spring
01:49:19 - Adam's Rib
02:10:14 - On The Town
02:33:10 - Favorites and Outro
See you next year!
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
New York, New York, a wonderful town. The Bronx is up and the battery's down. The people ride in a hole in the ground. New York, New York, it's a wonderful town!
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome to One Week, One Year. Live in New York? It's it's Sunday night. It's a podcast where we watch and discuss film history ah from... we God. yeah just just keep Just keep going. It's a podcast where we watch and discuss every year of film history in order, starting in 1895, the dawn of cinema. And this episode is 1949. I'm one of your hosts, Chris Ellie, and sitting right next to me is... I'm the other host, Glenn Covell.
00:00:45
Speaker
And we have jobs related to movies, but we didn't mention that. Wow, I really can't do this if I'm reading right up here. It's the end of the decade. Yeah. It's, you know, it's time for a nice... The casual one's the next one. This is very serious. A fireside chat, as it were.
00:01:02
Speaker
think I should have, like, a little whiskey. That's for the next episode. Tune in next episode where we are going to be... Where we drink whiskey, but our are least watched episodes, even though they have the most clicky, ah kind of clickbaity kind of hook of our top tens of the 1940s, and then we'll that's a more chill one. This is Very serious. Six films from 1949. Some rather serious. Yeah, Glenn, how's it going? What's up?
00:01:33
Speaker
You're here? That's fun. Yeah, I'm here. In town? Yeah. I'm on the town. Indeed. Yeah. I feel like that's the thing is we've already caught up off mic now. So now it's just like, what's new? It's like, uh.
00:01:44
Speaker
I'm furloughed, which is why I'm here. Hanging out in New York. That's okay. I mean, not a great reason, I guess. but That's all right. um I'm chilling with it for now. I'm a film projectionist. He's a filmmaker. That's the part that we that we missed. And, you know, we we make it our our priority.
00:02:02
Speaker
Number one priority not to care about how many people watch the show, listen to the podcast. But I was just noticing that we are just on the cusp of 100 subscribers. Ugh! 100?
00:02:16
Speaker
one hundred That's when they give you the big gold plaque. Okay, i was gonna I was gonna do this as a surprise, actually, but I thought it was gonna be funny to like take a really shitty-looking piece of cardboard and just Sharpie like a little YouTube plaque for each of us for 100 subscribers. That'll do it.
00:02:36
Speaker
Before we get into the the real meat and potatoes... We like to give ourselves a little bit of context for what's going on in the year 1949. And so, right next to me, Glenn, take it away with the news of the year.
1949 Highlights: News and Pop Culture
00:02:49
Speaker
The news of the year, 1949. The VW Beetle hits the USA. The Lucky Lady 2 completes the first nonstop flight around the globe. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, is formed.
00:03:02
Speaker
George Orwell's 1984 is published. Siam changes the name to Thailand. The rhesus monkey Albert II becomes the first primate in space. NASCAR holds its first race.
00:03:15
Speaker
The Vatican discovers the bones of the first pope. The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb. Chairman Mao's forces overwhelm the Kuomintang, and the People's Republic of China is founded.
00:03:26
Speaker
Germany is separated into two countries, east and west. The first BAFTA awards are held. And that, that's the news. All the news that's fit to speak. Indeed.
00:03:40
Speaker
ah So, first we're going to start off with a little short one-reeler. Half a-reeler, actually. ah And that is the first Roadrunner and coyote, Wile E. Coyote short, the fast and the furriest.
00:03:57
Speaker
Get it? And this is our segment, One Week, One Reel. Yeah, classic Chuck Jones story. Looney Tunes stuff. Yeah. This thing is ah great. I feel like we watched Tweety Pie recently, another kind of ah Looney Tunes character debut, and I was not super impressed. But with this one, I was. Yeah, it is. It's like it's... it's It doesn't feel like it's like, oh, this is the prototype of this thing. It's like yeah it is fully formed. yes It is all the sound effect. Well, not all the sound effects, I guess. More or less all the sound effects are there. All of the the joke structure, the character design. It's like it's exactly what the like public image of.
00:04:43
Speaker
ah coyote and red runner this has got the freeze frame to show the uh the scientific the like that the fake latin names for each yeah it's got the painting a fake wall a fake tunnel tunnel on a wall yeah uh it's got a it's got a rocket that explodes It's got like the same shot that they use all the time of him like falling, like the straight down shot. Yeah, falling straight down. It's got, it's got Acme naturally. It's got Acme products that don't work.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's just like, yeah, it's, it's a Roadrunner cartoon. Yeah. It is, it is the, it's the Urg Roadrunner cartoon. Yes. Yeah, also, like, I think the thing that I noticed about this, too, is that if you're to compare it to, like, even Tom and Jerry, certainly if you're to compare it to the the Tweety Bird one, like, that it is, like, not even joke a minute. it's like It's like they're coming up with a whole new scenario every 30 seconds. And it's just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. boom Like, lot there isn't a lot of it's ah it's a lot of... It's a lot of jokes packed into ah a short...
00:05:49
Speaker
package yeah they they don't really have much to do with each other either it almost feels like um like you could just kind of remix these things in any order it's just like i mean i did notice this being the first one there's a bit of like escalate like the first time coyote chases after the road runner he just has a fork and knife and that is his his whole plan is just running with the fork and knife which Seems very kind of simple and straightforward. It's like he doesn't have any weird, you know, contraptions.
00:06:21
Speaker
But then there is a kind of buildup of like, his attempts at getting kind of more and more absurd. ah one One other thing that I wanted to mention about this is that I know that it's like part of the whole thing with Looney Tunes. I feel like we've sort of touched on it a bit before, but the tunes aspect. Tunes. I think, no, not not tunes.
00:06:42
Speaker
Tunes with a Oh, excuse me. Because like something that's really special about these cartoons, which I think you don't always notice because it just fits really well, is how it has, like, an orchestral score that is perfectly emotionally tied to every single gag and every single moment. And so there are parts where, like, you know, he's really deflated and it's just like...
00:07:07
Speaker
strings and like oboes and everything more yeah and yeah it's it's just a super customized orchestral score for every single moment of these seven minute cartoons it is it's like i i think it's easy to take looney tunes for granted because they're they've been around for so long and we don't take looney tunes for granted on this podcast and it's you know it is it's such a like you know cultural touchstone whatever it's like it's very uh commonplace but it is like especially these kind of early ish classic ones there is like the animation is gorgeous the yeah like the music is incredible it's like the the craft of them is is incredibly high
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah. And they've been doing this for a good while now. i find the reality bending cartooniness to be something that is just really special about this golden age of animation.
00:08:05
Speaker
Like in terms of just the the kind of creativity, visual creativity of it feels like it takes live action film so much longer to catch up to what cartoons are doing. I love cartoons. Mm-hmm.
00:08:19
Speaker
I mean, i think live-action movies early on kind of were a lot more playful in terms like, figuring out what they could couldn't do. Yeah. And it it is nice to see that in animation kind of hold hold hold on to that a little bit more. I guess because animation is is more malleable, so it's like they hold on to that sort of playfulness and that ah unreality ah for longer.
00:08:44
Speaker
I mean, my my favorite joke in this, which... I think it was the biggest laugh from either of us was the, um, when the Coyote takes out the, like, school crossing sign. And then Roadrunners runs, ah runs him over and then comes back with a sign that says Roadrunners can't read.
00:09:04
Speaker
Which is like the logic of that joke is insane. Yeah, yeah. But it's so funny because it's so insane. It's totally insane-y as they say. Well, that's not legit. They're related. It's Animaniacs. They're related. All right, fine.
00:09:21
Speaker
Same DNA. um I guess the only other thing that like struck me about this one is like the the landscapes. It's got really... like One is really right like the setting lightce nice landscapes, but it feels very... Other Looney Tunes don't have the like focus on landscape, I guess, that like the Red Runner ones do. Yeah, but like the Saguaro cacti and the like big monuments everything. red rock mesas and stuff. like just the Yeah, the like setting of it is is so kind of specific and also just really...
00:09:53
Speaker
It's a Western. Yeah. It's secretly a Western. But, oh, yeah, just things that were, like, there'll be, like, a weird rock overhang. Or, like, they they use the setting to, like, true kind of create more jokes, too. Yeah. The settings can come from the animals. A lot of cliffs. Like, it's interesting that it's, like,
00:10:12
Speaker
ah Roadrunner and Coyote is Looney Tunes thing that kind of more or less exclusively takes place in nature and not in, like, buildings or that kind of thing. But it's also...
00:10:25
Speaker
very technologically oriented right right ordering gadgets lots of like mail order gadgets all the time ah boxing gloves on a extending arm yeah that's not in this one but like usually with elmer fudd it's just a gun you know right right i don't think robert coyote has ever tried just like using a gun sure he has and then the gun explodes right yeah because it's from acme which oh i can't i can't wait to see coyote versus acme just Just on principle, if nothing else. But also because it's supposed to be very good.
00:11:00
Speaker
Also, you know, after watching this, I think, you know, Coyote deserves his day in court. Because those Acme products really are very defective. Is that what the the plot of that is? assume so. It's about a court case of Coyote vs. Acme. So I'm assuming that's the... You know, I didn't think about the title at all. Oh, well.
00:11:18
Speaker
ah Anyway, you got anything else on this? I don't think so. Then it's good time for our future presentations.
Film Analysis: Revenge, Morality, and Social Themes
00:11:25
Speaker
And now we're pleased to bring you our feature presentation.
00:11:32
Speaker
And we're starting off with Kind Hearts and Coronets. This is a movie that is an Ealing Studios comedy film. The basic plot is there is ah a man who grows up in poverty because well is working he thinks he grows up in poverty the indignity of of being working class because being like upper middle class this is just like how um uh in mr deeds like he's supposed to be like right he's like oh he's a man from small town he's a man of the people he's like he's comes comes from nothing and he only has one servant right exactly
00:12:16
Speaker
um ah His mother ah marries an opera singer out of love and not out of a kind of duty to a royal like ah kind of royal family. And so she's excommunicated and suffers indignity after indignity in the stiff upper lip world of ah British dukedom and duchess duchessness. Duchessdom.
00:12:41
Speaker
And he... and he swears revenge on his family for ah doing that to him and his mother. And he is, I believe, 12th in line ah to become Duke of D'Artagnan. don't think that's what it was, but...
00:13:03
Speaker
is i could be misremembering he das coin that's what it's the the das coin family the dukes the duke of chalfont uh so he hatches a scheme to arrange the deaths of everyone in the family who shut him out him and his mother out in order to become the duke right he tries to stage a king ralph situation Or I guess not really a King Ralph situation because he's he's trying to murder them one by one, not all in one go.
00:13:35
Speaker
Systematically. and And this whole thing also has a kind of framing narrative of him starting off on like about to be the on the eve of his execution. Right. And he's kind of confessing to all of this. Yeah.
00:13:51
Speaker
ah Yeah. Yeah. It's a comedy. It's a black comedy. Indeed. Yeah. About murder. But it is like... it is This movie is very British.
00:14:03
Speaker
Incredibly British. Aggressively British. Certainly... You know, one one thing that kind of ah edges it up in terms of Britishness is that it doesn't have only one Sir Alec Guinness. oh It has eight. Yeah.
00:14:19
Speaker
What's better than one Alec Guinness? Eight Alec. Alex Guinness. Alex Guinness. um Yeah, I think that might be one of the more notable things about this movie is that it is it is a sort of nutty professor style.
00:14:34
Speaker
Alec Guinness plays eight different characters in different makeup. Yeah. lot of... And wigs and such. ah Yeah, ah that it's... And honestly, like, I feel like they don't draw a huge amount of attention. Well, I don't know. i They put enough makeup on him that it's not, like, trying to be conspicuous and, like, reality-breaking far as... Right, it's like the the... I guess, like, the makeup designs aren't that absurd. It's, like, old Alec Guinness. Like, woman Alec Guinness.
00:15:05
Speaker
ah Like, big mustache Alec Guinness. Like, they're not... they're They're not going that bananas with it. Yeah, they play it kind of straight. Yeah. But I think this movie is maybe funnier to British people and funnier to British people in the 1940s. Yeah. Because i thought it was kind of, you know, it's charming in know in a way. and i got i got a couple chuckles out of it. But like, there's an anecdote about Alec Guinness reading the script and howling in laughter. and i don't I don't know if I can imagine Alec Guinness howling. Unless he's doing, ah what is it, the the alien dragon noise from Star Wars, yeah which is not him.
00:15:46
Speaker
So, yeah, does it does feel like his kind of multi-role aspect is being played relatively straight, which I think is it's a different choice than what you would see in These kind of Eddie Murphy movies or something. Right, yeah. It's not it's not going as... ah Right, it's not as absurd about it as those. But it is it is, like, fun to see him kind of, like, play each different character a little bit. Like, it's still just kind of... yeah It's entertaining just to see him play that many different characters. Yeah. These are all of the different members of the Daskoin family who are being murdered by our hero, ah who is ah Louis Manzini. Yeah.
00:16:28
Speaker
yeah Who was changed to be Italian from ah Jewish in the original story in order to... ah Not be antisemitic. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting. We've encountered this a couple of times lately where like movies have had alterations made to them post like, post like short, shortly post World War Two movies have had alterations made. to their stories or scripts in order to kind of remove any kind of semblance of antisemitism.
00:17:01
Speaker
Like painting a Jewish character in a bad way. They're just like, yeah, you guys just went through something really rough. Yeah. It's like, that's not, not a great look. Yeah. Um, uh, yeah. I mean, this movie is, uh, uh, what was I going to say about it? Um,
00:17:22
Speaker
shit. You're saying the movie's shit? No. Oh, just to to go back to the sort of thing of like... Right, it's established early on that like his the the mother was sort of excommunicated from the the royal family.
00:17:37
Speaker
Or, you know, the the family of whatever. Deskoin. um And it's like... The narration is like, we were poor. It was like the... You know, we we were living rough. And it's like, the footage is like a a much nicer apartment than mine. Like, it is...
00:17:53
Speaker
It is a, like, very well-furnished, nice, like, brownstone on like, a nice street. And it's like, oh, we were so poor. Like, we... And it's like... I think that is intentional. That it is, like... Right. The narration is not matching what you're seeing. It's like, they weren't living in a literal castle.
00:18:11
Speaker
And so he's like, oh, we were... we had a rough... We were cheated. yeah i mean... In a way, they were cheated, but, like... But, yeah, I think it adds to his kind of bitterness that he's he's still got, like, a... He's still living in like, an incredibly comfortable, like, privileged life. Right. Yeah. But he he becomes more bitter because the kind of girl next door is from, like, a, you know, 1% family. Right. Something like that. and And she doesn't take him seriously because he's not...
00:18:38
Speaker
like achieving that level of status it is very very much a movie about like british status yeah and decorum and and uh all that kind of stuff but it's as per a lot of british humor it's like it's really it's really taking the piss out of that too it's really like like it is i do think there is a ah level of kind of Trying to play that stuff as as absurd. Of like, what why and why do we care about this? Yeah, it's making a mockery yeah of these things. um And it is like, as the tone of it is fairly dark and not super silly. But it is like, the things that are happening are kind of silly. But they're also very morbid and very like sinister. Yeah.
00:19:27
Speaker
It's really leaning into the kind of like, everyone is acting incredibly proper and incredibly like... you know, mannered, and yet it is just the most sinister stuff is happening. Yeah, and it's interesting because like the movie you know starts with an acknowledgement that this character is about to be executed for murder. um But like there's like a there's like a charm to him in the beginning of the movie. Sure, yeah. and I think he becomes more and more sinister throughout the course of the movie. Even after he's murdered one or two people, you're like, ah this guy's kind of fun. Also, it's like the people he's murdering, especially at the beginning, you're kind of like, ah, they they they kind of had it coming. Right. yeah those Those guys are assholes. But like, yeah, as his scheming becomes, I think, like more bloodthirsty. Yeah. You so you watch the characters sort of transform into like...
00:20:19
Speaker
ah Into someone with, from someone with murderous ambitions to someone who's murdered people but still kind of fun to, like, this, like, evil person. Well, because then he he starts, like, seducing the widow of one of the people he murdered. Yeah. He's kind of just taking every opportunity to mess with people and, like, yeah like be, like...
00:20:40
Speaker
it I don't know, very vindictive. um Some of the murders are are pretty absurd. There's one where he ah someone's in a hot air balloon, which he shoots down with a bow and arrow. That was an easy one. That was a freebie. There's one where just ah two ships crash into each other. He doesn't have to do anything. That was an actual freebie, yeah.
00:21:02
Speaker
There's one where he kills someone by... giving that like delivering exploding caviar to them, which might be the most British way to murder someone. That's very- The most sort of like- Very on the nose. Not the most British, but the most posh way to murder someone is exploding caviar.
00:21:19
Speaker
I mean, if you're talking about status and all that kind of thing, caviar is definitely an apt delivery mechanism of death. There's sort of the point where he he's he's murdered his way to this title.
00:21:34
Speaker
achieved the thing that he's been trying that he set out to do at the beginning and then the police show up and he's like oh no the police are here and the police arrest him for the one murder that he did not commit yeah he is unable to prove his innocence of that murder that he is actually innocent of In court. And so he's put on death row.
00:21:55
Speaker
And thus is like. Writing writing you know writing his his memoirs. At the last minute. Is is saved. from From being put to death.
00:22:07
Speaker
And it's like. Oh man he got away with it. But. like right the like last thing that happens in the movie spoilers is that they're like oh like we're here to publish your memoirs and he goes oh no and it like cuts back to his jail cell and his you know his memoirs of confessing to the 12 other murders that he did commit are lying there on the table Which is a great ending.
00:22:32
Speaker
like Yeah, I love that. I love that twist of that he went to jail for the one that he didn't do. I think that that works really well. It is very like clever, like satisfying writing, this movie.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah. Which I really like about it. Yeah, it's just it's like ah it's a fun time. i enjoyed it. I think that um the the murders are inventive and it's kind of interesting because he's like killing these people, but you're also watching him sort of ingratiate himself into their world at the same time. He's like working his way up the ladder, but like he wants... These people are like, even though he's related to them, they're barely aware of him. Yeah.
00:23:16
Speaker
so right it's like he doesn't they don't recognize him they've never they've like if they've met it's like at a at like a big dinner somewhere i mean it seems like his mother was not invited to the dinners right but it um it kind of ah reminded me a bit of barry linden yeah as like sort of like scumbag working his way up yeah through like the social hierarchy yeah very much so Wow, yeah, that is actually a very a very apt comparison.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah, I read that this this movie, had when it was imported to the U.S., it had a couple of Hays Code edits. Unsurprisingly. Yeah, I mean, one of which is the ending. that I think they they did they did some re-edit of the ending, I'm not sure exactly what, to sort of to show his memoirs being discovered. So it's like...
00:24:07
Speaker
fully confirmed that he will be punished for the other murder. Like, there is no possible possible way that he is actually going to get away with it. They're like, no, in the Hays Code, you have to be punished for murder, always, no matter what.
00:24:20
Speaker
um And even though that is, you know, implied in the British cut, it is, I guess, not sort of like hammered home as much, which I think makes it better. But, you know, yeah so I often disagree with the Hays Code, so...
00:24:37
Speaker
I think they're right most of the time. And then I think the other one was removing the racial slurs, which do come out of nowhere and are just like, whoa, movie. Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker
This movie was just, it was just doing fine. It was yeah having an okay time. They even made the movie less racist on purpose. Exactly. Right. They were like, oh, we're going to go out of our way to make this movie less racist. We're still going to put the N-word in it.
00:25:04
Speaker
i ah Man, I was watching that movie and somebody walked in at that scene. And I was like, this um the rest of the movie was not like this.
00:25:16
Speaker
This came out of nowhere. This eeny, meeny, miny, moe digression. Don't know why he had to put that in there. but Yeah, right. It also it is like it serves like no purpose. It's like very it seems totally incidental. Yeah. When when it happened, I audibly said, whoa. Yeah.
00:25:37
Speaker
Well, it's like Agatha Christie books were like had to be edited it in the in the US to take out all the racial slurs. I think like Britain just didn't. It wasn't as loaded, I think.
00:25:49
Speaker
over there i think also something i mean i have to assume i get the sense also in current day that people in uh europe uh just don't have to confront race issues as often as uh people in america do and so they're dumber about that stuff you heard here folks europe're up europeans are dumb about racial sensitivity um but Not that we're any that Americans are that great either. hurt um I guess it's just sort of ah a footnote that i found interesting is that this movie is shot by Douglas Slocum, who was also the director of photography for the Indiana Jones movies.
00:26:32
Speaker
So that's cool. Wow. Yeah. What a career that guy had. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. The couple, a couple of spare things in this movie, like the, the, uh, when you're first getting introduced to the character, like there are some, the hang man's kind of coming and it's his last kind of hanging before retirement. He's looking through the little window into the cell. And instead of staring at the man, he's staring at his neck, which I think is like kind of, kind of like a fun little like visual joke. Yeah. yeah that is and uh and then there's also like along with this kind of like status stuff uh there's this thing in the beginning of the movie of like them trying to figure out how to address him like you do i call him your honor like as a duke because he's like they he he is arrested right after he becomes a duke right uh like at yeah like at like the ceremony yeah
00:27:27
Speaker
And and so they're like, no, you you call him your grace. And so they're like going up to this guy who's about to be executed. And he's like, uh, your grace. Right. Which is kind of a, it's yeah, it's a funny, it's a funny interaction. Yeah.
00:27:42
Speaker
Which is all like, the movie is very much leading into... Yes. sort of Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. It knows what it's doing. there There is also a point where he says, as the old Italian proverb says, revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold. Yeah, I'm like, is that Italian or is it Klingon? I thought it was Klingon myself, yeah.
00:28:02
Speaker
um Considering this is ah several years before Star Trek, i'm I'm going to go ahead and assume that it did not originate with the Klingons. Or Kill Bill, for that matter.
00:28:13
Speaker
Well, at least that acknowledges yeah a previous... ah do i I do very much appreciate Quentin Tarantino, though, for attributing that quote to the Klingons and not Italy.
00:28:26
Speaker
Another ah British produced film. Indeed. ah One of the, probably the most famous movies, actually definitely the most famous movie from from this year, I think. Yeah.
00:28:38
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say so. Is The Third Man, featuring Orson Welles. Indeed. Not directed by Orson Welles. Not directed by. Although apparently there was a bit of back and forth about whether he did like a Toby Hooper poltergeist kind of situation. don't know if I've ever heard that. I think he he put some fuel on the fire and then was like, nah I didn't actually do it. That sounds like something he would do that he would be like, i actually directed that.
00:29:01
Speaker
And people would be like, sure, I guess. ah But yeah, this movie, ah do you want to you want to sum it up? ah Sure. This movie is about ah um Joseph Cotton, classic ah Orson Welles co-star.
00:29:15
Speaker
What is his character's name? His character is Holly Martins. So Holly shows up in post-war Vienna. And we get this nice sort of opening montage with narration of like kind of setting the scene of what post-war Vienna is like. Like the seediness. The seediness, but it's how it's like split into different districts. There's like the Soviet district, the British district, the American district, and the French district, I believe. No Austrian district.
00:29:39
Speaker
I guess that's all Austrian. And yeah, there's like a lot of black marketeers and sort of like, yeah shady goings on. And Holly Martins is a sort of pulp Western writer of kind of cheap Western stories.
00:29:52
Speaker
And he was currently broke. And so his old friend, Harry Lyme, is in Vienna and is offering him a job. So he's like, sure, um I'll go. And immediately he gets to Vienna and his friend Harry Lime is dead.
00:30:06
Speaker
Everyone's be like, he died. He got be hit by a car. He's gone. And he's like, that's weird. Okay. And so it's like he's expecting to crash on his couch and then he ends up at his funeral. Right. Exactly. um And then like the he like gets kind of into a a bit of an altercation with like the British kind of head of police.
00:30:24
Speaker
But he he can't shake the idea that like this is all very weird and suspicious. Like no one's stories are lining up. He keeps asking people about what happened. And like there's always a little bit something's always a little bit off. Something doesn't line up.
00:30:37
Speaker
And so he starts investigating. He like stays in Vienna under this, the pretense of kind of like talking to this like literary group. um But he's actually doing detective work the whole time. He's ah he's he's he's hitting the pavement trying to find out what happened.
00:30:54
Speaker
Who murdered his friend? Or did his friend... Was his friend even murdered a lot at all? Which then, of course, we find out he wasn't. His friend is Orson Welles. And he's faked his own death because he is a a racketeer who is running a a diluted penicillin racket. Yeah.
00:31:13
Speaker
which is causing lots of ah child injured or child death and ah illness. They've got sort of a ah ah battle of morals going on, and then then the police ask him to help catch his friend, Harry Lyme, um which he he does, and we get a nice cool chase through the sewers.
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah. And then he ends up being the guy to shoot Harry, which is a real kind of like turning point for his character. Like he's he's he's not a detective. He's just like this penniless writer who shows up in Vienna. And like by the end the movie, he's kind of become more of a like hardened, cynical, noir character almost. Yeah.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And like the course of the movie too, it starts with sort of defending the honor of his friend. Right. Everyone's like, oh man, like this guy was a real piece of shit. and He's like, what are you talking to Like, that's my friend you're talking about. Yeah. Like, what are you...
00:32:15
Speaker
Like, and then, and along with the stories not lining up, like, he doesn't want to accept all these people saying, like, don't even go down this road. Like, he was involved in the the post-war Vienna underworld. he he sucks. Just let him be dead. and there's, like that that like, that doesn't add up. That is the thing that doesn't add up is everyone's telling me that my friend is a bad guy. right ah And so that's like sort of the genesis of the investigations. And yeah, eventually the police kind of lay out ah like here is all of the proof that we have have that your friend is an awful person. Right. And then this is like a classic example of like one of the lead characters kind of like, I don't know, is Orson Welles first build? I think he is.
00:33:04
Speaker
I think so. um He doesn't actually show up in the movie at all until like at least halfway through. if not more. Like, yeah, three quarters or two thirds. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. um And then like, of course, as soon as you shows up, he's like the most sinister man who has ever lived. He's like so villainous. Yeah. Immediately. It's wild. Yeah. He's like laughing at the petty morality of a normal person. Right. Yeah. And he has one of the most famous parts of this movie is... when holly and harry go up in a um an empty ferris wheel and harry has this whole kind of monologue almost of just kind of laying out his kind of like moral depravity but in like a very sort of like yeah it all makes sense right he's he's presenting it as like just like a very reasonable kind of like outlook on life
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah, and and it's ah it's an upsetting scene. It's like, he's so scary in that scene. Yeah, but it's like, he's scary in that it is like, you can tell that he is... Like, this does not bother him.
00:34:06
Speaker
Like, hes he has fully embraced his immorality. Yeah, it's like ah it's like a ah nihilism, I guess. It's this nihilism taken to, you know, taken to this kind of self, boosting himself up or or, like, you know, get ahead from any by any circumstances kind of thing. In particular, yeah, what he what he says is he talks, they're at the top of the Ferris wheel, they're looking down,
00:34:30
Speaker
and He's like, look at all these people below us. They're dots. They're little dots. They're they're nothing. Because we're looking at we're looking down at them from far above. What difference would it make to you if one of these dots was gone? If I offered you $20,000 and said that that would make one of the dots disappear. He's pitching the movie The Box from 2008. Oh, don't that.
00:34:55
Speaker
ah Like, like would you would you really have a problem if one of those dots disappeared? And you got 20 grand? Yeah. but Would you turn it away? ah i don't think you would. I wouldn't. And so sometimes that's a disease-stricken child, but who cares? yeah And I think that the the other thing that makes it scary is because it's Orson Welles, he's very charming about it.
00:35:18
Speaker
Like, he's... Yeah. He is scary, but he's not, like, creepy, if that makes sense. Yeah. He's menacing his friend a way, but he's being friendly. Yeah. he's He's like almost kind of, he believes in himself so much that he thinks that he can get someone else on board with his like depraved world Well, that's because they're like, they're like childhood friends. Yeah. it's like they have a long history together.
00:35:46
Speaker
Um, and yeah, Orson Welles, I do think is, is very good at that kind of like, yeah, like charming menace. Which he's done a couple other movies. There's like The Stranger from I think like 46, which we didn't walk for the show. But he's very good in that too. I mean, this is one of his more famous roles, I would think. Maybe.
00:36:07
Speaker
It's up there. I feel like Harry Lyon... his Hannibal Lecter, i guess. Yeah, kind of. I feel like the name Harry Lyon pops up in other things. I meant to look this up before we recorded, but it's like... Like, that name was referenced in in other things.
00:36:20
Speaker
yeah I feel like this movie has, like... Like, we've been watching a bunch of noir movies, especially the kind of, like, very, like, kind of detective... kind of procedural focused ones. Yeah. um And there is, yeah, there is that kind of like dark, somewhat nihilistic worldview that kind of pervades noir movies. But I think this one, this one nails it in a way that not a lot of others do.
00:36:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's not necessarily the movie itself is nihilistic, but it's like, yeah, there's, there's just this like undercurrent of real kind of like post-World War two cynical nihilism that is like,
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah. You can feel like ah the character of Holly is like fighting against, even though he's like, you know, he doesn't have much in in the way of like alternatives, but it's like he's he's kind of still pushing back against this just like overwhelming sense of just like, everyone is basically telling him just to like kind of like give up and like give in to just like, this is how the world is.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah. In different ways, right? Like Harry is like, like given to all of your like basis worst impulses and then like also the police are just like very kind of like are not um altruistic at all they're like very much just like this is how it works we gotta we gotta like make deals they're very like they're they're not like presented as like heroic characters at all the the head of the police who's the the guy from uh brief encounter who was such a, like, warm character in that. And he was playing ah the coldest, most, like, pragmatic police captain guy. Yeah. Where he's just, like...
00:38:01
Speaker
I got, if if I gotta hand you over to the Russians, we're gonna send you to Gulag. That's what i gotta do. Like... But it is, like, he is trying to, like, save children. That is his end goal.
00:38:11
Speaker
Right. But it's like he's doing it in, like, in this... Everyone's hands are dirty in this movie. Yeah. And, yeah, it's like... the the The American noirs that we've been watching, or just the other noirs, they they just kind of have, like, a...
00:38:25
Speaker
I don't know, like a kind of dour outlook, I guess. Or just a mood. I mean, I think this kind of dehumanization that he... that Lime does is meant to evoke nazism uh and so it's got this kind of you know nazi dehumanizing evil combined with this post-war destitution there's so much rubble yeah movie a lot of rubble and like it's always very kind of at least up until maybe towards the end of the movie it's like it it it feels like
00:39:02
Speaker
It's like just casual piles of rubble. Like they're not focusing on it. It's just like walking down the street and like one building is destroyed. Yeah, but, like, just spending the entire movie in that environment and you're seeing... It's like Bicycle Thieves, like, another kind of thing that's set post-war and just how rough it is being in, like, like rebuilding life in a bombed-out place. Right. Which is the thing that I think... A thing that I always find so compelling about movies either about World War II or sort of adjacent to it that are made in Europe or about Europe is, like, how different they feel to U.S. ones. Which i think I've brought this up on the show before.
00:39:40
Speaker
is like, right, like post-war US s is like, a the, you know, booming economy, like, hey, all our jobs are back. Yeah. And in Europe, it's like, our whole town is gone.
00:39:50
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot more cynicism that's coming from Europe. It's a very different kind of, like, reality to, like, return to. um It's just the the the kind of geo-privilege of America, you know? um Yeah.
00:40:05
Speaker
But i that that is something I find really... compelling and kind of like striking about this movie is its its uh depiction of of like post-war Vienna yeah and maybe you want to like read about what the conditions right and also yeah the way that like ah all these other countries are like carving up Vienna for themselves yeah and like they don't all none of them speak the same language so there's all this miscommunication going on there and there's all these kind of like back door deals being made between the different countries to kind of like Because there's, who we haven't even mentioned Anna, who is Harry Lime's girlfriend, who thinks he's dead for most of the movie. And thinks he's innocent for most of the movie, too. Yeah. I mean, for pretty much the entire movie. but up until ah Up until Joseph Cotton also but finds out that yeah that he is not...
00:40:54
Speaker
She is Czech, but is pretending to be ah Austrian, I believe, and has forged papers that she got from Harry that then the police confiscate. they're like, these are fake. We can tell.
00:41:07
Speaker
um And then they they use that to sort of like... Like apply pressure. Yeah. They're like, we' we're going to give your fake passport to the to the Soviets and they're going to take you somewhere.
00:41:19
Speaker
We don't know where. Yeah. or you can rat on Harry Lyme. Yeah. Yeah, and initially she's working with Holly to make like to try and get around the police and and figure out a way, like, what happened. The third man of the title is, like, kind of have this big discrepancy in a lot of the stories, which is he got hit by a car. Did he...
00:41:46
Speaker
Like, did he die instantly or did he have time to say some stuff before he died? he was being carried away. But was it by two people or was it by three people? And he heard ah an account of. Well, he talks to two of the people, but then other people say that a third man was carrying a body and they're like, no one knows who that guy is. Yeah.
00:42:05
Speaker
It was him. It was him carrying, quote, his own body in ah air quotes. Yeah. um Which just ended up being a guy that he killed. for um But yeah, like, like, there, I mean,
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, you know, initially you're kind of seeing the police as these completely uncaring, like, kind of borderline villainous people who are not listening to reason when ah he tells them that his friend is a good guy. Right. It almost seems like they might be involved in a cover-up. Yeah, yeah.
00:42:44
Speaker
ah Or if not, like, a cover-up intentionally, then a cover-up of, like, who cares? Like, whatever, you know? He's dead, whatever, it doesn't matter. It kind of becomes... Like, this movie... really follows, you know, the the growing kind of darkness and corruption, in a way, ah of these characters who are kind of like losing their naivete, right? Right. Like, they they want to believe in a better version of the world, and the worst version of the world comes slamming in to make them have to confront it. Up to the point of...
00:43:22
Speaker
kind of agreeing to do this sting to take it like he realizes his friend is so dangerous that like they they should actually participate after the after he has the conversation with him on the ferris wheel he's like oh yeah he actually is he's he's he's not a good good guy yeah and and and ending with him pulling the trigger to kill him Yeah. Which I think, you know, like really... At that point, he's almost kind of a mercy, because he's already been shot, too. And it's like, on he's like, he can't even escape at that point. It's just like, just end it. The last bit of that kind of like, that scene at the at the Ferris wheel, um Orson Welles has his his, it's not even a big part of the speech, but it's like the the capper on it.
Notable Scenes and Directorial Styles
00:44:09
Speaker
It's this thing of like, in Italy, they they had, you know, war, pestilence, all these things. And it gave us the Renaissance and we were Da Vinci and, yeah you know, the Enlightenment, all these things. And then it's like, and then what a country was? Switzerland. In Switzerland, they head they had brotherly love and peace for hundreds of years. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah. Nice Orson Welles cuckoo clock. Oh, thank you. Which, um I mean, I wonder if this was like a direct reference back to this movie. really reminded me of Zorg's speech in The Fifth Element.
00:44:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Where he's like, know, by... Chaos. Yeah, but by creating little destruction, I'm actually encouraging life. It's a very similar type of villain speech. Right. But I think i think this one really kind of like... It it ah it holds up as like a really solid... Because it's not it's not overdone. It's like he's not going that... It's not super villain. It's real bad guy who has let his morals. This is just what actual people who have like corrupted morals talk like. Yeah, yeah. Another kind of famous scene outside of the...
00:45:18
Speaker
outside of the ferris wheel is the last shot which is incredible and i mean almost every shot in this movie is incredible like i feel like we gotta to have ah maybe a whole sidebar just about how this movie looks yes but so the last starting with the last shot um is anna his his girlfriend she has kind of acknowledged that he's not good but i think she still has feelings for him she has not been able to fully to say this person is not the person that i once knew right and and participate in then taking him down well because they right the whole time right like holly and anna have been getting closer and closer they get the sense that
00:45:59
Speaker
Holly is falling for Anna and maybe vice versa. Once Anna finds out that Harry's not dead, she's like, nevermind. Like I'm in love with Harry. This is, I'm all in on this guy. Yeah.
00:46:10
Speaker
Even after, pretty much after she finds out that he's also been selling, uh, was it diluted penicillin? Yeah. Um, the children's hospitals. I like that sort of like, they're kind of on parallel, like parallel tracks for most of the movie.
00:46:26
Speaker
And then that is kind of like the breaking point where like Anna refuses to turn against Harry, but Holly does. And when when that ends in ah Harry dying, ah we have a kind of mirror of the beginning where they're attending not a fake funeral for him, but a real funeral for him. And there's a scene where Holly is kind of ah ah is gonna go and leave the country with the cops, but he decides to sort of give it a try with Anna. And there's this really great kind of shot looking down the road. They're they're leaving the funeral, and he's standing on the side waiting to kind of...
00:47:11
Speaker
have some kind of debrief with her about the, about the funeral and everything that happened and hoping to kind of like patch it up. And, uh, maybe she would understand why he participated in all of this. And he's waiting for her. And like this scene just hangs for a really long time while she's walking closer and closer. And then she just walks right by without looking at it. And that's the end. And, oh,
00:47:38
Speaker
Oh, it's so it's so loaded with feeling. It's really good. It's a really great, like, noir ending, and then it is, like, unhappy, but it's not... I don't end this movie feeling bummed out. I end this movie feeling like, hell yeah, this movie rules. Yeah. It's, it's it's like...
00:47:57
Speaker
I don't know. Is wistful the word? Like, there's like a kind of like... Yeah, i don't know. Because even like Joseph Cotton's body language where he like, was when she walks by, he's kind of just like, okay, I guess that didn't work.
00:48:11
Speaker
yeah yeah i guess it's like yeah fair enough i did shoot the love of your life yeah yeah but yeah this whole movie looks incredible goes really hard on dutch angles maybe too hard i don't know i like them i feel like there there are so many dutch angles in this movie it feels a little unmotivated at times like Yeah, but it's the whole world's off kilter, man. i mean, I guess. Nothing's straight up and down. It's all crazy. I mean, I, you know, i guess I'm on board with that reading, but it does. there There were a lot of shots where I was like, why does this have to be sideways? It is like, it is approaching like.
00:48:51
Speaker
batman and robin levels of dutch angles where it is like every shot seems like a dutch angle and then the just like some of the best shadows in any movie yeah just like the noir-y vibes especially as they're going through the uh the sewers oh yeah this movie has a extended sewer chase which oh so good i i don't know if i assume a lot of this movie was shot in vienna on location it certainly looks like it was I don't know if that's actually what the sewers in Vienna look like.
00:49:21
Speaker
I'm kind of assuming that they are, that they did shoot shoot it there, because, like, I don't know. It doesn't look like a set, really. It is. But it's, like, they're so atmospheric.
00:49:33
Speaker
And there's so much like variation too of like different levels and like tunnels and like waterfalls and things, railings. And yeah, the whole kind of like big third act chase through the sewers where there's, yeah, just like flashlights being shined down tunnels and things. And it's like, oh yes it starts in there's one of the most like bombed out ruinous areas and then it descends further into the sewers it's great there's just some there's some really great kind of flourishes i think too there's like like right before we get the first big reveal of orson wells there's
00:50:09
Speaker
It's like in an apartment where Holly and Anna are and the camera kind of like pushes through some potted plants on the windowsill. I think it's like ah like two or three shots combined together that is maybe a little unmotivated, but it it's really cool. So I don't mind. yeah just Yeah. Some nice like subtle kind of filmmaking things like... um Early on, Anna has a cat, and she's and Holly's trying to like play with the cat, and the cat isn't having it.
00:50:39
Speaker
And he's like, oh, that that cat only likes Harry. And then later, that cat gets out and runs to a pair of shoes and, like, muzzles up against them. And you're like, oh could it be?
00:50:52
Speaker
Yeah, that was great. That's like a little free reveal. Right, but it's like just great, like, set up, pay off. good. They don't have to say anything. It's just like, boom, it's Incredibly well done. Yeah. the the The narrative aspects of this movie are, like, really tight. Like, really, really well done. Like, especially...
00:51:10
Speaker
you you think about this in terms of the characteristic of a number of noir movies in particular uh the big sleep is just how like ridiculous and confusing they are and the thing that i kind of like about this movie and i get lost with detective movies a lot of the time yeah the thing that i like about this movie is like one thing is happening at a time you know right yeah and so like you can really follow along and it's like an amateur who is solving this mystery yeah and so I think that does help. You can follow along with the mystery a lot more easily than you could certainly The Big Sleep. Yeah. It is a very plotty movie, but it is, think, yeah, having this sort of much more of a kind of Avery Mann character that we're following who, like, doesn't know what he's doing. He is kind of, like, stumbling through stuff.
00:51:52
Speaker
Makes it, yeah, a little a bit more it it i You don't get quite as overwhelmed with the like, what? How many characters are in this thing? Yeah. There is still a degree of like, there were there are still a lot of characters in this movie.
00:52:06
Speaker
But I found it, yeah, a lot easier to keep. But people end up getting bumped off as soon as they're not relevant anymore. Right, there you um also just like speaking of shadows the the the big reveal of orson wells yeah is also the actual reveal of him is is really good where he's see standing in the dark and then uh someone turns on a light um in the and turns on a light inside an apartment across the street and that lights up the door it's so good It's yeah like the dramatic moment of that is incredible. Yeah. that There's a ah really great shot I love towards the end when, as Harry is trying to escape.
00:52:45
Speaker
As far as he gets, he's like, he's been shot already. He's like climbing up. a staircase out of the sewers. And with the last of his strength, he's just put, he's putting his fingers like through the sewer grate.
00:52:58
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a shot of like above ground, like at street level of just like the fingers poking through the grating. That is like his last chance at freedom. Yeah. It's ah it's so good. And then we haven't talked about the the score at all either, which is weird. Very notable. Very weird. It's,
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's Zither. It's all Zither. Yeah. Which, I don't know. it Zither, I don't think I knew what a Zither was before I saw this movie. No. At first, when I when i first got... How would you describe Zither?
00:53:31
Speaker
I know that you were not a Nickelodeon child, but what I will say is that a lot of these scenes that otherwise seemed to be going for something serious had this kind of Spongebob chase scene sort of vibe to them. Tiny Tim music. Yeah. Just do do do de do. dode Yeah. It's like, it's like, it's like really jaunty, upbeat string music.
00:53:54
Speaker
It's like plucked string music. I mean, it's a choice. I think it contrasts a lot with the darkness in the movie. Yeah. I think sometimes it feels like, like, what are you doing? movie like but i shit it's like a really bold choice that I think works.
00:54:09
Speaker
I think in many ways it works. I think it there it doesn't work well enough that it didn't make me go, should you maybe have not done this? you know um Right, as opposed to the sort of like you know spooky jazz score that is normally associated with noir movies.
00:54:26
Speaker
I don't... Is Zither a Austrian instrument? I think that the director, I believe, had been kind of scouting in Austria and heard someone playing Zither. And that was sort of what inspired yeah that. But I think the like the, like, upbeat, weird music does... It does something...
00:54:52
Speaker
With the tone of this movie that it that feels really unique and feels very much like... i can't think of another like weird noir movie with Zithra's score. Because like it would just be doing this again. Yeah. It really... it does something that is hard to kind of quantify.
00:55:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's... some but I remember I was... i it The opening titles are over... It's like a shot over playing Zither strings. And I originally wrote, cool guitar string intro. And I was like, there's like way too many strings on that to be a guitar.
00:55:26
Speaker
I think the Zither score kind of plays into the the undercurrent of humor in this movie a bit too, which... I feel like the way we've been describing it, this movie sounds very dark, which it is.
00:55:36
Speaker
But there's like there's lots of really great moments of levity in it, too. fun It's a fun movie. It is fun. There's a couple I want to highlight. Um, one of which is when, when they're the, the British police are trying to like really nail down, like this is hairlines, like evil schemes. This is why we're after him. This is like why he's such a bad dude. And they bring out a s slide projector to show evidence. yeah And the first slide that comes up is like a rhino, I think.
00:56:04
Speaker
And like the, the sort of like Lieutenant cop, not the lead guy, but he's like, Oh, oh, blast. I've got the wrong slide in the projector. And he's got to like fix it. And like that's like a thing, like that doesn't that's not a plot thing. It's comic relief.
00:56:18
Speaker
Right, but it's like but it's like such a It's not really a joke, it's just like a real thing that might happen. Yeah. Of like kind of just taking some of the picking some of the weight out of this scene. But it also like draws contrast. Because it is a very weighty scene. Because it goes it goes from silly to... like ah horrifying right right after right but it is it's sort of like giving you a laugh right before we're like laying on like some of the most horrible stuff we're gonna tell you in this whole movie there's also like when they're when they're like waiting like for the sting to catch harry like uh he's supposed to meet holly at like a coffee shop and the police are waiting outside and then just a balloon salesman comes up to the police and is like ah balloons balloons and they're like get out of here go away
00:57:07
Speaker
Which is, again, like a thing that's like, it's just, that's just a ah thing that could happen in in that situation. Yeah. That makes it funny. That I appreciate.
00:57:18
Speaker
Good movie. don't know. Any other, ah anything else to say about it? No. I guess... I think at some point Roger Ebert might have said that this is his favorite movie of all time or something like that.
00:57:32
Speaker
I feel like that that's how it first got on my radar was that Roger Ebert heaps a lot of praise movie. I guess another thing I should probably say is that... So during my youth, my my early teenage years, when I realized that film noir was a thing I liked and I like started watching old noir movies.
00:57:52
Speaker
This was one of the this like was always at the top of like a lot of lists. of Yeah. Best noir movies. It was like Maltese Falcon, Big Sleep, The Third Man. And so it was one of the first ones I sought out and watched. Oh, you've seen this before? Yeah. When I was like 13 or 14, probably. And I do not, I did not like it that much the first time I saw it. I think I was very much just, I was too young. I was just like, I don't understand this movie.
00:58:15
Speaker
Give me the detective vibes. I was like, the sewer chase is great. But yeah, I wanted more just sort of like... Like 40s lingo and, you know more of the kind of like, yeah I guess, cliched or kind of classical stuff.
00:58:30
Speaker
But then revisiting it recently, I'm just like, oh, this movie, this is so good. Another crime solving movie that we covered is the only, so far, non-samurai Kurosawa movie that I have seen. Same.
00:58:49
Speaker
Uh, although, I mean, I guess we watched his, uh, what is it? Judo movie or whatever, but yeah the what same deal, whatever, you know, like contemporarily set crime driven Kurosawa movies of which there are many.
00:59:01
Speaker
Right. High and Low is another one. Yeah. Yeah. But this is Stray Dog. Yeah. Uh, Which feels like the progenitor of many things. Yeah. ah this Definitely. This movie is about a young, like ah a fresh new cop who, or detective, I guess. Who ah is on a crowded train and gets his gun pickpocketed from him. And he tries to give chase, but it gets away. And he is haunted by the things that his gun may have may be doing while as after it has been stolen from him.
00:59:46
Speaker
ah and ah some of the other cops are like, yeah, you know, you could get fired, but probably not. Like, you're just gonna get disciplined. It's not great. It's not a good thing that happened, but, you know, just try and move on. He's like, I can't move on. Yeah. um And so he becomes singularly driven to track down his specific gun and get it back.
01:00:11
Speaker
So the movie is him, is following him kind of trying to track down what happened by going to kind of linking in into the criminal underworld, yeah and kind of getting to, getting to learn more about their ways and find the way to, you know, the the way to kind of words to say to, you know, uh, meet the people who deal guns and,
01:00:39
Speaker
ah and track down the specific person who has his gun and starts doing doing crimes with it and so fred first he's kind of haunted by the idea idea he's like this is so embarrassing and also like it's really not good and i should get my gun back but it ends up being used in violent crimes and eventually his gun is the one that kills someone And you can see it just tearing him apart that this is what happened. So like the movie really lays on a lot of like darkness. Uh, it's like twisting him up.
01:01:17
Speaker
What is happening, uh, with his gun? There's this kind of procedural aspect of like interviewing subjects. And then he ends up getting paired up with this older cop, uh, uh who is kind of telling is part of him saying like i'm i'm cynical about things and it's not a big deal man don't like we're gonna catch this guy but like it could have been anyone else's gun if it wasn't gonna be your gun that he bought it would have been a different one the same crime would have happened and all this uh and so we have this buddy cop situation mismatched
01:01:53
Speaker
cops yeah on on a case together yeah who have differing worldviews and their worldviews ah clash in the different ways that they want to handle the case and oh wait you you meet the family yeah right before the old cop brings brings him to have dinner at his house to meet the family um and It's right before something really bad happens. Yeah, yeah.
01:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. ah like this movie isn't I would not describe this movie as a comedy, even though there was a lot of levity in it. Whereas as I think i I kind of associate buddy cops with primarily being comedies, or at least more than this is. But this does feel like a very ah real sort of like... and It's probably not safe to call this the first buddy cop movie, but it is certainly a a notable early example of the genre. I think this this counts as a buddy cop movie. Like, this has enough of the kind of staples. yeah This might be the the first time that it has actually like fully coalesced into like...
01:02:56
Speaker
um the form that we now recognize it as. Right. Yeah. And similar to um The Third Man, this movie is super steeped in post-war destitution. Yeah. Yeah.
01:03:12
Speaker
ah This time in Japan. So, you know, there there are a lot of people who are kind of pushed to the margins of society and into crime that he ends up interacting with. And he's got this kind of like moral uprightness to him. And there's this movie, it mentions a lot, this of phrase. Après guerre. Après guerre. Après guerre.
01:03:40
Speaker
Which, yeah, post-war. the po And so it's it's this generational thing of, like, ah you post-war kids, you kind of see things a little differently. People who came of age after the war. And there's this kind of dynamic between...
01:03:57
Speaker
the imagined other person who has the gun and he hears that, you know, he got like robbed at one point and that kind of made him lose his morality. And now he's going and, you know, ah robbing other people and contributing to the cycle of violence. And the the main character, he has also been robbed in a very similar way. And he used it as a reason to, you know, fight for justice and all that. But yeah, like there's a lot of political post-war stuff like we had in Third Man of like the the kind of occupation and rules being put in place by ah the U.S. in this case. Yeah, yeah. Like how it's affecting day-to-day life in post-war. I mean, another thing with the sort of like the perils between him and the guy who has his stolen gun
01:04:49
Speaker
Who bought his stolen gun and has been shooting people with it. They were both kind of set on their paths by being robbed and took very ah opposing... Kind of reacted to it in very opposing ways. Yeah.
01:05:02
Speaker
I think especially as the movie goes on, especially towards the end, it starts to lean even more and more into the idea that, like, they these two guys... are, like, more similar than they are dissimilar. Two sides of the same coin. Yeah, or, like, either one of them could have been the other one had they made a slightly different decision. You know, like, had their trajectory been reversed at one point, they could have ended up, you know, on on opposing sides, only flipped. And I think that is a... ah i mean, it's not a ah terribly, like, complex idea to put into this story, but I do think it...
01:05:39
Speaker
um It talks a to a lot about how, like, what, like, there are no bad people, only bad circumstances. Yeah. I don't know if that line is in this movie, but um that that is kind of an idea that at least is posited by um i to the younger detective. Yeah, i think the perspective of this movie is very much what the younger detective feels. Maybe he takes a little overboard, but that, like...
01:06:08
Speaker
It is your responsibility to respond to bad circumstances and not let them drag you down. Yeah. It is your responsibility to, like, rise to the occasion to do good yeah in response to bad circumstances. I think that is, like, the overall kind of, like, movie's perspective or, like, Kurosawa's perspective.
01:06:30
Speaker
I do like how that isn't... Like, the the the kind of opposing... During the family dinner scene, like, you know, old old and young detectives have their sort of, like, opposing things where... Right? What are their names? and start Stop calling them old and young.
01:06:45
Speaker
Murakami is the young one, and Sato is the older one. um Like, Murakami has the kind of more empathetic worldview, but he is also presented as, like, being very naive.
01:06:57
Speaker
Yeah. And I like how it is, like, he's kind of overcorrecting, almost. Yeah. um And then... It's his first case. Right. And then Sato is is, like, in the other direction, is also kind of, like, a little too far in the other direction.
01:07:12
Speaker
the The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Yeah. But more... i do think, yeah, the movie is more on the side of Murakami. Yeah. And I think that as they start working with each other, they start, right you know, kind of... Murakami becomes more worldly and Sadhu becomes a little bit softer. Yeah. Yeah.
01:07:29
Speaker
Classic buddy cop situation. Yeah. Speaking of these two characters, they're played by two absolute Kurosawa staples. Yeah. um toshira mifune baby face toshira mifune here as the young detective murakami uh i've never seen toshira mifune look this not greasy don't know if i've ever seen him clean shaven before yeah Like, I mean, he's good in this, but like, he is so good as a grizzled weirdo in all of his other movies. And it's really funny to see him as this like very clean cut, like, you know, a presentable young young man who's like, I just want to do good and fight crime.
01:08:11
Speaker
Yeah, not this ah ah yeah apathetic Ronin type that he usually is. And then Takashi Shimura, who ah is also in Seven Samurai. He's in Rashomon, and he's also in Godzilla, not in the Kurosawa movie. ah He's like the... And and in in Seven Samurai, he's just such a like lovable grandpa type. Yeah, you know that's great he's great. great in this, too. Yes. He's always good.
01:08:39
Speaker
Reliable. uh i mean kurosawa has ah good taste in actors i would say yeah one one thing to mention ah along with more post-war stuff is as he's kind of first going undercover to to find the the uh to find the gun manufacturer the gun sellers uh he gets a tip That you kind of need to walk around in these bad alleyways and look desperate. I like it. The way he gets there, he's like around the police station. He's like, what can I do? And someone's like, I don't know, go talk to people who sell guns. And he's like, oh, I hadn't thought of that.
01:09:20
Speaker
Like, he's he's so kind of fresh-faced and new new to being detective that he, like, doesn't even think of that. But he gets it he gets a tip from the person in the pickpocket world. Yeah. Like, your gun belongs to the gun people. So, like, it's it's this very... It almost becomes a bit of a John Wick-y, like, criminal underworld. Right. Descent into the... Network of...
01:09:43
Speaker
i Yeah, i like I like the kind of views, like little views into this kind of structures of of the the world of crime in this movie. yeah ah But yeah, there's... And there's like, we see like different pockets, like we're introduced like different characters and different lines of crime. Yeah. Yeah.
01:10:04
Speaker
But yeah, there's there's a scene in this movie which gives gave me very Bicycle Thief vibes. I wrote down that this movie like... are about someone who is robbed yeah and then is on a like desperate quest through the streets yes to find it again. Yeah. yeah I called this Law and Order mixed with Bicycle Thieves, basically.
01:10:25
Speaker
In its most bicycle thievey section, it's like a part that is really, like, like something like 10 minutes long of him just walking around trying to look desperate ah in in these alleys and, you know...
01:10:43
Speaker
crimey areas and in some ways you should look at it and say this is boring like why is this so long and why why are there so many scenes of him just walking around silently but it puts you in this mode of like being on the lookout like who's somebody who might be the one who knows about the guns who who are the people are you know you like you You're analyzing the glances of everyone around him. I really like that scene, even though like on paper it is 10 minutes of him walking around and not much else happening. but i mean That's the screw of saw. He can make 10 minutes of guy walking around the streets really interesting and compelling. That is true. yeah he is good He's good at making compelling glances.
01:11:29
Speaker
I think the kind of like crime procedural elements of this to feel pretty ahead of their time. there's like gun There's like bullet forensics in this movie. Yeah. Lining up bullets to see if they were fired from the same gun, which is cool to see. cool Yeah, just like the... the that There's a lot of process in this movie. Yeah, yeah. A lot of procedure. Well, yeah, I guess it's true. It reminded me also of of Seven a little bit. Yes, very so. Old cop, young cop...
01:11:58
Speaker
investigating crimes and like sort of like visit like they're being kind of this like somewhat episodic feeling of lyn like going to different crime scenes and also like delving into darkness yeah as they do it right yeah sato almost gave me a morgan freeman kind of yeah feel i mean it's a fake family dinner like there's there's a lot of parallels there for sure The bit where Sato is sort of closing in on the the suspect. they like they've They think they figured out who the guy is, and they've tracked him down to a specific hotel, I believe.
01:12:31
Speaker
And he is on the phone, like, calling it in. And we just see, like, the feet come down, and something he, like... overhears someone talking about there being cop in the lobby and then goes back up and there's this like long extended scene of tension of sato on the phone like in the phone booth yeah we were like he knows he's there and also at that point sato is you the audience know more than sato does sato doesn't know that he's in danger but we as the audience do
01:13:02
Speaker
And there's just this elongation of time and just like every little thing feels like it's going to break the tension. It's a nail biter. Yeah. um Really great use of weather as Rathawa staple. Like the rain in that scene is really... Okay, I want to talk about the rain actually because this is...
01:13:22
Speaker
You know, if you want to bring it to another ninety s movie, or no, not 90s, but almost, do the right thing, right? This is a heat wave movie. Also, yeah, i did I thought of that too. This is yeah this is a movie where the whole time everybody is sweating too much. yeah They're fanning themselves. They're just like, Jesus, it's so hot right now. yeah And then when the heat wave finally breaks and the rain pours down, that's when the darkness starts. Right. Like the weather is reflecting the kind of narrative of the movie. Yeah. ah Right. Sort of an end of act two low point is when the rain happens. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also like this big release. Right. We've been like searching and searching and it's this. you know, in the heat. And then, they like, we found him, but it's like ah it's like a sad finding because Sato gets shot, he gets away. Yeah. um
01:14:19
Speaker
And, and it yeah, it's like this... But then... Dark, like... darkness Right after that, it then plays into the plot again, too, whereas they he's able to recognize him From the mud on his shoes, because he's the only one with muddy shoes, because he's out in the rain. Yeah, I love also that this person, we don't know what he looks like through the whole movie. yeah We talk to a lot of people who have seen him. Yeah. ah we We hear descriptions. We hear descriptions of him, but it is not until the last of this movie that know... All the descriptions are also so generic. They're like, he's a guy in his late 20s, he has a linen suit, and it's like... Yeah. I mean, in the scene right where he finds him, there's like...
01:14:57
Speaker
eight other guys who are also in their late 20s in a linen suit. Also, Murakami's a guy in his late 20s wearing a linen suit. So it's like, that's another sort of parallel thing of... it's It's just like his whole generation is kind of part of this. They're very... they They're big on linen suits. Yeah.
01:15:14
Speaker
But yeah, like that scene where, you know, he discovers the mud on his shoes. That, I think, is the most tense scene. Because you're just... You're like, this guy's about to get on a train and get away. And this is his last chance to find him. And he does not have his gun anymore because he gave it away. And he is just he gets this tip minutes before he can use it. And so he just runs to the train station. And he's like...
01:15:44
Speaker
Who is the guy with the linen suit? Who is the guy with the linen suit? And then there's too many of them. And then you you can see how the desperation on his face. And he's like, think, think, think mud. It was raining. you know it's It's such a, oh, it's so good. It's so delicious. um and then And then that becomes... there This is another movie another movie that I thought of as The Mist.
01:16:07
Speaker
ah Because it this is a movie where you are counting specific number of bullets oh yeah that are in a gun. And that's over the course of the whole movie. You know how many bullets are in this gun. And so there's this final confrontation where they're duking it out in the mud and then a swamp. the Yeah, the big like swamp...
01:16:28
Speaker
like, uh, standoff kind of showdown is really, really good. And, but like hanging over that scene is he has three bullets left in his gun. Right. What happens with those three bullets?
01:16:41
Speaker
It, it, it, it works so well for that scene. It's great. Right. And then like Sato doesn't, it doesn't die. He gets shot, but he lives. And so like we get, we get a nice happy ending. And right. And also like the, the guy has the gun lives. Yeah. He's like, he, he brings him He doesn't kill him.
01:16:57
Speaker
Yeah. And when he gets caught, the guy, the the bad guy, with the the guy that has a gun, he you know he just barely gets this you know the the handcuffs on him. And he i think that he does this really great scream when he knows that he's caught.
01:17:16
Speaker
I think he's like kind of looking at the outside world for the last time, right? he's like Maybe. I think he he yeah kind of feels like he's like on the ground in nature and he's just like, I'm not going to see this. ever again man i didn't thought of that that is yeah yikes the drawing the perils between even just like the way that they're dressed morikami and the the guy is chasing i think is kind of again part of that like i think i guess i sort of said this already but like the the menu we're not so different you know yeah it's they never really have that conversation but it um
01:17:50
Speaker
I do like how just like the closer and closer they get to each other to that confrontation to like the more similar they start to seem. And then there's a there's a line I think it might be during like the family dinner where Sato is is saying like the more people you arrest the less sentimental you'll feel.
01:18:11
Speaker
Mm hmm. Um, cause more comments like, I just want to like, want to like help people. Like I want to like, don't want to just arrest people. Like, you know, I'm, I'm here to actually do a public good. And so I was like, that's not the job. Like you that, that's going to get beaten out of you like so quickly.
01:18:27
Speaker
And that's like, that's a thing I've talked to people who have actually worked in law enforcement and they have said things similar to that of like the job itself like strips you of empathy. Wow. Which is so... I mean, it's horrifying. Yeah. um But I like how this movie is...
01:18:43
Speaker
I mean, it's not really dramatizing that that strongly, but i like how it's like putting that in there where it's like, so this is what has happened to Sato is that he has been, he's been doing this job long enough where a lot of his empathy for the people that he is ah apprehending or chasing or whatever ah has been has been kind of stripped away. He's just like not, he's like, I can only do this job if i I'm not sentimental at all. And and ah Murakami has a sort of similar dehumanization of the other side because he has this, like, naive perspective of, like, they're bad guys and I need to take them in. Right? There's a scene where he says, like, they're asking... He's being asked about, ah like, his feeling toward the other people. Right. He's like, criminal arrest. Yeah. He's like, I hate them. That's all. The bad guys are bad, says. Right. Yeah. um But also, right, like, pretty early on, he... he
01:19:38
Speaker
Right when he after he's done his whole sort of like walking the streets looking desperate thing, he finally gets a lead and is like immediately like police, I'm arresting you. And it's and when he brings them in, everyone else is like, you could have kept this going a lot. Like arrested a nobody.
01:19:56
Speaker
Like everything everything you're actually looking for is like you've blew this lead. Right. Because he was just like, oh, I found a criminal. I will arrest them. That is what cops do.
01:20:07
Speaker
um Yeah, having having them both kind of... meet in the middle a little bit more is um is great one little spare thing about this movie is uh there is a big scene involving like catching somebody involved in in the story at a giant baseball game it's like a baseball game with thousands of people at it uh must have been shot like I believe it was. Like real baseball game. I'm pretty sure it was, yeah. ah Like the end of The Naked Gun as well. ah
01:20:42
Speaker
and And yeah, I don't know. It's just like a kind of cool scene where there there's a huge crowd and it's one one person of but thousands thousands friends. The way that they get him is they like call him out in the Jumbotron. Like, there's someone here to see you like in in the lobby or whatever.
01:20:57
Speaker
Like, I... Yeah, that that scene was really cool. And it also feels... Pretty... ah um Maybe influential. like Just like... Detectives trying to catch somebody a baseball game.
01:21:09
Speaker
Yeah. Definitely something that I've seen before. But not this not this early, I don't think. The Japanese love baseball. It's true. Speaking of which... Speaking of Japanese baseball. Speaking of Japanese baseball. Post-war Japanese baseball. Hey, there we go.
01:21:27
Speaker
ah We've got...
Cultural Reflections in 'Late Spring'
01:21:29
Speaker
The Yasujiro Ozu film, Late Spring. Another which famous... We could do a plot summary of this, but it's really just... um ah Noriko is 27.
01:21:46
Speaker
That's too old to not be married. And ah everyone's like, when are you going to get married? And she's like, I don't want to. Never. And that is the whole movie, basically. I mean, not incorrect.
01:22:03
Speaker
um Yeah, I mean, as ah as per this being an Ozu movie, there's lots of domestic scenes of people in houses just kind of eating dinner.
01:22:15
Speaker
Yeah. Which I think... Depends... yeah how How much that works for you, i think, depends kind of on just how much you vibe with Ozu's whole deal. Yeah. I think the other Ozu movie that we watched from, like, 1939 or whatever... Early thirty s It was the silent one. um I Was Born But... I Was Born But... I liked I Was Born But more.
01:22:39
Speaker
Hmm. I mean, that was, like, more of, like, a like childhood coming-of-age movie, kind of. Yeah. um Whereas this is a, like... You're too old not to be married movie. Yeah, this Which I just didn't... I didn't quite connect to as much. I think, you know, there's interesting stuff going on in this movie, certainly. But it is like a kind of... It's a kind of meditation on a a kind of cultural phenomenon that feels, i think, so foreign to us that it's hard to, like, really...
01:23:13
Speaker
understand what they're going for. Like, there's a lot of, like, arranged marriage stuff in this yeah movie. And, like, there's a lot of, yeah, like, saying 27. Can you believe it? Like, and I feel like there's a bit of expectation, maybe, be that the audience has a bit of ambivalence about this.
01:23:32
Speaker
like Because the movie has a bit of ambivalence about it. Yeah. ah And it's yeah it's it's like presenting an argument between two things that feel so unlike our own reality, you know? i you To a certain degree. I think there there are some fairly universal kind of ideas just of like... ah Yeah, just like what what is expected of someone and like at what age you're supposed to do things by. Yeah. And like...
01:24:01
Speaker
if If you're single, if you're yeah like, are you going to be with? And it's like, this shut up about it. Like, they I'm doing other things. Right. But yeah, I think a lot of the details of it do feel fairly specific to post-war Japan.
01:24:18
Speaker
Which are things that, I don't me personally, I didn't connect to as much. um I thought you were i thought you were you kind of came of age in the 40s, 50s in Tokyo, wasn't it? It's a common misconception about me. But I still like i think the performances in the movie are...
01:24:38
Speaker
phenomenal like i think that there's a lot of again it sort of feels like an ozu thing there's a lot of things that are unspoken or things that are kind of communicated just through like glances and by language it's it's incredibly understated and i think that like one of the cool things about this movie and about his movies in general is they are about you know we we i went over the plot Extremely quickly. Because... Things happen in the movie, but it's all... It's all related to that. It's all coming back to that central idea. It's like... The movies are... His movies really just seem to be zooming in on extremely specific real-life experiences. And there isn't anything crazy or fantastical. You're not like...
01:25:29
Speaker
finding finding the love of your life and ah on a subway in New York. That's for later. what cause but like I think it is an interesting contrast of like two Japanese movies released the same year.
01:25:42
Speaker
yeah One's a Kurosawa movie, one's an Ozu movie. They could not be more different in terms of like how they feel, how they play as movies, right? like Yeah. Kurosawa movie is at like... pretty fast-paced, like, right, detective crime procedural thing. He has more Western sensibilities, I would say. Sure, yeah Or at least Western sensibilities are more in line with the Kurosawa. It's very, like, it's, like, high drama, right? Yeah. It's, like, it's life and death stakes. It's, like, really... It's the stuff that you make movies about. Right, yeah. And Nozu is, like, i don't care about any of that crap.
01:26:15
Speaker
Like, I want to make a movie about, like, what are people thinking at dinner? Which is legit. I mean, I think that, like, you know, like... Because you have an hour and a half, two hours, and and you're spending however much money on it, you kind of expect to have a certain amount of bombast in a movie, right? yeah And is that necessary? But it's, I also think a thing about Ozu movies is like, they're so understated that like when something does happen, that's like a little dramatic, it feels bombastic. Yeah. right Like, it it makes a thing where, like, someone someone's, like, smile, like, faltering is like, oh, my God, this is huge. Yeah.
01:26:56
Speaker
So, yeah, I think if you, like, if you if you can get in ah if you can get on the wavelength, then it can be very rewarding. rewarding Yeah. But if you can't, this movie is extremely boring. Right. And I think I felt both of those things while watching it. Like, I think there were points where i was like, oh man, like, movie is, like, really...
01:27:14
Speaker
like, is, like, very understated, but is, like, really pulling off some some, like, very emotional things just through, like, a lot of, like, very subtle filmmaking choices. Yeah. And there are other times I'm just, like, i i'm i'm I'm ready for this scene to be over. I mean, i didn't like, Ozzy does a thing a lot in this movie, which I think is sort of a bit of his, like, ah one of his directorial staples where, like...
01:27:42
Speaker
A scene will happen, often all in one shot, that is like from the doorway. And then the character will leave the room And it doesn't cut away for another, like, minute.
01:27:54
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, not a minute. But it will just, like, stay in an empty room for, like, a couple of beats. And all of cinematic language expects that to mean that something's, like, somebody's going to come back.
01:28:06
Speaker
Or, like, something's going to develop. Yeah, like a box is going to open and someone's going to come out. Or, yeah, whatever. Like, some something's going to happen because the camera is just lingering. But it's more just, like... No, no, sit there and think about that a second. exactly. That's like, I think that it kind of works for that. Where you're, like, you just, right, I think you, you to enjoy an Ozu movie, you have to really be, like, you have to be very, like, zen about it. You have to just be like, i'm just ready to, like, watch a bunch of like, really calming, or just, like, not even calming, but just, like, very slow-paced.
01:28:40
Speaker
Sedate. Yeah. Yeah. Things happen. this is the its I don't think that that is necessary. that That style is not necessary to make a movie that is about such small stakes and such a like a subtle ah personal interpersonal interactions. And and so like it is made more difficult because...
01:29:05
Speaker
His style kind of emphasizes that smallness by and and that mundanity by making it in a quote-unquote boring way. Yeah. Right? I mean, say boring. Like, I don't think there's a single shot in this movie that looks bad.
01:29:22
Speaker
Yeah. It's elegantly shot. Yeah? Yeah. um I also, I think probably some of my sort of waning attention also just came about from just like...
01:29:34
Speaker
ah Right. i ah Contrary to popular opinion, I did not come of age in post-war Japan. And this movie is so much about like very specific cultural um kind of like conflicts. Yeah.
01:29:49
Speaker
That are like pretty intrinsic to like that time and place. And it's also dealing with something, I i gather, is relatively old-fashioned even at that point. Right, yeah. um It's about these...
01:30:05
Speaker
I mean, a lot of the dynamic in this movie is between old-fashioned perspective and a newer perspective. But it's not even always the younger person who has the newer perspective or the less old-fashioned one. Because, you know, there's there's a way that you kind of look at everybody in this movie and you're like, I don't agree with any of you. Because The person who is 27 and rebelling against the idea that she should be married is rebelling because she has kind of settled into this subservient, like, mother to her own father kind of relationship ah that she feels like she's already married to her widower dad.
01:30:50
Speaker
um Right. that she's And she's like, I like my life the way that it is where I'm serving you as if as a wife would be serving ah ah would be serving a husband.
01:31:02
Speaker
ah You know, there's ways that you could dig into that. Certainly there's a lot of ah there's a there's a word that's for Oedipal, but um the other the other direction. Yeah. I don't know.
01:31:13
Speaker
the Not the other... to You know what I mean. But, like, ah there' there's a word for that. Gender-swapped Oedipal complex. Right. there's There's another, like, Greek figure or something that's like that. But anyway, um that kind of deal.
01:31:26
Speaker
So the 27-year-old young person is having, like, all of these extremely traditional viewpoints that even her parents are like... Like, calm down, you know? like Don't you want to like, travel and, like, meet people and do things? No, I just want to i just want to serve you tea save you serve you tea and take your coat, you Yeah. But then all the other people are like, you know, the way out of this is to get married to someone that you don't know.
01:31:56
Speaker
An arranged marriage. ah Also, you're quickly becoming a spinster at 27. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that I think is... I don't know if the movie is presenting that as old-fashioned. that was still in the late 40s a little bit of like, if you're not married by 27, it's never to happen. Yeah. Like, I think that was still true in a lot of America also.
01:32:25
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. But... I think it's still true in a lot of America today. So... And I was noticing a lot of, not necessarily clashing, but just like um um a mix of like very traditional Japanese like ah furniture and clothing and a lot of much more kind of for the 40s contemporary. Like in in the house where Noriko lives with her dad.
01:32:53
Speaker
There is, like, that the traditional kind of, like, very, you know, low-to-the-ground table. We just sit on the ground and eat dinner. But then they have, like, a tea room that has, like, wicker chairs that are more kind of Western style.
01:33:09
Speaker
And i don't i I don't really know enough about, like, the shifting of, like, Japanese ah culture in the 1940s to know, like, how much, I guess, like, meaning is is imparted through all of those things.
01:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, um definitely Japan has had a complex relationship with Western influence on aesthetics. I've seen movies that, like, maybe we've talked about movies, that, like, talk about, like, ah like wearing a suit.
01:33:39
Speaker
Right. Like, as this kind of, you you'd wear, like a like, more traditional Japanese garb. I think that might have been in the other Ozu movie that we watched. And, yeah, so it is, like, I can tell that there is...
01:33:52
Speaker
There is, like, story being told there. But I am not... ah I'm not smart enough. Or I'm well-versed enough to to fully unpack, like, all all of the meaning that is being imparted. But as you were saying, like, there's a lot of specifics about this the way the story works that...
01:34:11
Speaker
we might not directly relate to but its it gets at certain kind of essential human things yeah within it ah ah in terms of yeah like wanting the best for somebody wanting to see someone like grow out of a way that they're stuck right ah being like being a caregiver versus doing what you wanted I mean Norca doesn't really want to do anything besides being a caregiver but it is like I think that, like, there's a bit where she says, like, I've been so selfish.
01:34:45
Speaker
And she's saying that in relation to, I just want to stay home and, like... And like serve you and like help you with stuff. Yeah. Which is like the the very fact that that is being, that that idea is that she's like, oh shit, that's like really selfish of me is really, don't I found that kind of heartbreaking.
01:35:03
Speaker
Yeah. I think this whole movie is felt kind of heartbreaking to me. And that might be another reason why i i feel a little lukewarm on it. It's just because it's like ambient bummer the whole time. Ambient bummer is a really good phrase. Yeah.
01:35:17
Speaker
um like i don't think this is a bad movie by any stretch i think it's like i i i really like how much it is able to do with so little like that is kind of ozu's whole deal i guess is that it's like he's like there's one shot it's on the floor the whole time like and then ah by the end of it you're like oh yeah i feel like i've like i've seen a whole thing like the yeah his very observational style of just like it's very like kind of like Everything's wide shot, very few close-ups.
01:35:45
Speaker
It does kind of feel like you're just kind of sitting in the corner of the room watching scenes play out. But yeah, I think like just that the story that this is telling is is so kind of... and it doesn't It doesn't feel like it has sort of a big moment of catharsis. It doesn't have like a big kind of like hooray ending. It's just kind like, oh and that's that's what happened. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, along with, you know, ambient bummer, there is just utter ambivalence through this whole movie. Everybody in the movie, except her aunt, who is driven by in one direction the entire time of Get Her Married. Everybody has... And get...
01:36:25
Speaker
her her brother her dad married right a big marriage booster yeah like everybody has this kind of ambivalence to them uh so you're watching an ambivalent person like and another ambivalent person who have like are on different poles a little bit of ambivalence and then an ambivalent movie like on top of that so it's just like there is the movie doesn't to have a big moment of conclusion because everybody's just like i don't know what i want i don't feel good in any scenario but like i guess this is what happens and there's there's a lot of like different characters will present like differing viewpoints on marriage too like there's like at the beginning norik was like i never want to get married but i also think that if
01:37:13
Speaker
You marry someone and they die. You should never get remarried. They're like that is gross and like indecent and filthy. Yeah. So conservative. Yeah.
01:37:24
Speaker
But then also was just like, I don't care about marriage. Like that's not what I, you know, it's like on on one hand is like very dismissive. On the other hand, it's like the sanctity of marriage is just too important. Right. And then someone else, uh, sort of I guess paraphrases,
01:37:38
Speaker
An off-screen character saying that marriage is life's graveyard, which is another great phrase. And I think there was, like, a maybe another one that is, like, someone had some kind of, like, very direct kind of, like, viewpoint that they voice about marriage. But you're right. It's, like, we see characters who are... There's, like, a widow. There are widowers. there are There's someone who's been divorced and is, like, doesn't really want to get remarried.
01:38:07
Speaker
um and hates their ex-husband with a passion. Yeah, she's the best character, actually. favorite character, for And so it's like, yeah, it's it's not a movie that is really, think, attempting to sort of like have a a strong like thesis at the end. It's not like this is, you know, this is the point we're trying to make. It's just sort of like. It's not didactic. It's right it's just like, that's life. Right. It's like giving you a lot of like opposing viewpoints on yeah on one thing and kind of seeing a bit of a, I don't know, a prismatic view, as it were. Yeah.
01:38:41
Speaker
Another thing this movie does, which I think is kind of interesting and, like, leads you to feel a little emotionally off-kilter with it, is there is a lot of people kind of...
01:38:55
Speaker
accepting circumstances that they don't like with a smile. Like, smiling through something that they... that, the like, is causing them pain.
01:39:06
Speaker
Yeah. and they're smiling so aggressively that, like... Norco, especially. It's, like, smiling 90% of the movie. Yeah. And it's, like, there are moments where it cracks. Yeah. And you're, like, I don't believe anything that you're smiling about right now. Right. You know? um And...
01:39:22
Speaker
Her smiling is so overdone that like it feels like everyone around her is being naive when they like take it at face value. ah yeah like she's When she's in a situation that she doesn't like, she but she knows that everybody just wants her to go along, she smiles, but like it's so clearly fake. and ah But because...
01:39:48
Speaker
she's doing the thing that she's supposed to do and everyone's begging her to do the thing that she's supposed to do. They're kind of just like, ah let's just believe that that's real so that we can like keep going with getting you arranged married or whatever.
01:40:02
Speaker
ah And it, yeah, it's a lot of like tragedy ah that you can, it's just these situations where you just wish you're like, you, why don't you like pay attention to what's obviously happening here? Yeah.
01:40:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. A lot of baseball talk in this movie, Yes. is what we started with, but we never really looped back on. Yes, the Japanese love baseball. And ah the person... Another character, like, who... You know, this and Snow Dogs, they have ah they have, like, a kind of key character who you just don't really see for, like, the whole movie. You you do end up seeing him at the end of that movie. But... um Straight dog. uh
01:40:47
Speaker
ah where yeah there's the her suitor the um or her betrothed is um the person she is set up with yeah everyone's like oh you remember you really like that baseball movie with gary cooper he looks like gary cooper yeah Which now I also want to be like, what what movie were they talking about? Yeah, I'm not sure. Which which baseball movie did to Gary Cooper? It seems like it's referring to something specific.
01:41:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's funny the amount of times that they name drop Gary Cooper in this movie. And also, yeah, wild that like that character is never shown on screen. Yeah. um Probably because they couldn't find somebody who really just captured yeah Gary Cooper's essence. I mean, and I think this movie does a lot that I think is another kind of like Ozu staple is it will like, it will kind of skip over what you would traditionally think is like a very important scene in a movie. And it will just like go ahead to like what the next scene will be and will just be to people talking about what happened.
01:41:53
Speaker
As opposed to showing it, which I think normally I would find very frustrating, but it's like such a deliberate choice in this case where I'm just like, huh, okay. Like... That's a choice. don't know. I'm thinking back to like Todd Browning Dracula that we talked about on the show. It's like that is a movie that will often just have people like point out windows and be like, look out there. Something's happening. I'm like, yeah, show us, please. And it never does. And that just feels frustrating because it's like they only built one set. Whereas this is sort of like...
01:42:25
Speaker
It's like not giving... It's like deliberately skipping over like the most dramatic scenes. Which is just like... Ozu's just like... No. the Quieter. Quieter. More sedate. yes I think the the title is kind of neat. like It's life, is...
01:42:43
Speaker
you know it's her late spring it's like it's you think if you think of like you know the the the seasons as someone's life right she is She's stuck in an earlier phase, right?
01:42:57
Speaker
So her her her kind of mid part of her life, her summer, is being like kind of put on hold for a while in sort of traditional viewpoint. Right. um And yeah, i think it's just kind of, it's like a nice, well, nice little...
01:43:14
Speaker
marriage could be seen as spring right a a new beginning all that stuff yeah it's the it's the it's the end this this movie is about the end of the beginning of someone's life yeah yeah uh a couple just straight things that i well and not a straight thing a pretty important thing is like the last scene of the movie is after norco has has gone through with her arranged marriage she's moved out of the house and ah We see her dad come back to the house, which he said, like, oh, like, he's, like, really happy. He's, like, told people, like, oh, i'm like, really happy that she finally has, like, moved on with her life.
01:43:49
Speaker
And it also reveals that, right, like, the only reason Uruko agreed to the arranged marriage is because she thought that her dad was getting remarried, which then he reveals was a lie. He didn't really intend on doing that.
01:44:01
Speaker
And then he returns home to his empty house and starts peeling an apple, sadly. And he peels the whole apple in one... you know, continuous spiral. Yeah.
01:44:12
Speaker
Which is a callback to earlier in the movie when Noriko is, uh, kind of flirting with, uh, Tori, who's her dad's assistant, who's engaged, um talking about how like was it like peeling ah pickles all in one thing is like a sign that you're jealous i'm a little i'm a little shaky on the exact metaphor that was being made in that pickled radishes i think pickled radishes is what it was and hattori is like i don't think that like peeling radishes has anything to do with jealousy like there's no correlation there but but it's like right it's like that is a callback to a really early scene in the movie and it is sort of like oh yeah like
01:44:51
Speaker
he's not He's not happy. He's feeling it all in one piece. That means he's jealous. Yeah, I mean, the lie makes the dad seem a little more sinister, maybe? Like calculating? Calculating. Sinister, I think, is too strong a word, but callous is maybe a better word. Yeah. Maybe it was like, oh, he was also just manipulating her into this thing that she didn't really want to do.
01:45:20
Speaker
Yeah, and it seems like he is a bit more empathetic to her situation for most of the movie. ah Like, he he's a more even-handed than his sister, is very on task, right? And, ah you know, talking about, like, hidden reactions with her smiling through the whole movie, right? Like, so half of what her dad does in this whole movie is...
01:45:43
Speaker
Just smile and go, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. that's... but Half of his lines are, hmm. like, he's just kind of yes-ing stuff. He's kind of agreeing.
01:45:58
Speaker
But, like, you can't tell... He's, like, hiding so much whether he actually agrees. Right. It feels like that last scene is, like, one of the only times we, like, actually see... him, like, without any sort of, like, affect.
01:46:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. i Yeah, I was thinking while I was watching this, even with Noriko, it takes a while. It takes until her facade breaks for you to get... a bit like right get a true idea which is like halfway through the movie yeah yeah and so like remember thinking i'm spending so much time with these people but i feel like i i don't know them feel like i i'm being prevented from knowing because you're only seeing the facade yeah that they're presenting yeah to other people yeah
01:46:44
Speaker
her Her dad at one point says, I'm 56, so i' like I'm nearing the end of my life. it was like, oh, damn. Life expectancy, not what it, or it has improved somewhat.
01:46:55
Speaker
He does have a ah sort of whole mini kind of monologue where he, in so many words, says like happiness only comes through effort. Which I... it's it' ah It's a perspective. Yeah. He was kind of saying... I don't know if I fully agree with that, but I like the way that that scene was written.
01:47:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, his... Yeah. What he's basically doing is, you know, in view of the end of the movie, you can kind of say, like, he wants his daughter to get married...
01:47:23
Speaker
So he is telling her what she needs to hear in order to have the explicit goal of being married. well And he's like like, you might hate him for the first couple years, for the first five, ten years. But the real happiness is working on it, is finding a way to make it work and finding a way to like him. And the most important thing is being married. Right. Which, I mean, I don't agree with that part. But, like, I do, I guess...
01:47:52
Speaker
like the idea of like happiness is not a like passive state as so much as it is like it's something you actively have to like pursue or create for yourself that that was the part where i was a bit more like i'm i'm i'm like this is this is hitting for me now it's interesting i think it's like an interesting perspective but it almost feels warped a little bit because it's saying happiness is something you have to work for Like, and finding happiness is is working within a shitty situation, not making your situation better.
01:48:26
Speaker
Which... Yeah, right. that That's the part I'm a little shaky around. Another thing I thought was interesting is there's kind of pretty briefly mentioned that, like, a couple characters mentioned how, like, Noriko is, like, looking a lot better.
01:48:41
Speaker
And then someone brings up how she was during World War II in a forced labor camp. Um, and had to, like, you know, carry potatoes home after, or i don't know if it was, like, a camp, but was, like, there's, like, very brief mention of, like, during the war, her having some, like, illness, and everyone's, like, oh, she's, like, she's looking a lot better than she used to. She's, like, it's sort of implied that she was, like, incredibly underweight or something, and it's, like, not really, it's not really expand expanded upon, but...
01:49:13
Speaker
that was like That was one of the few parts of this movie that is explicitly kind of like post-World War two I guess. It's another thing where i'm like I feel like i i I don't know enough about what they're talking about to like fully unpack it.
01:49:27
Speaker
But i it at least sparked, I was like, I wanted to know more about what that what was going on there. Would you like to know more? Yes, even though I'm sure it will be a bummer to read about. But yeah, another movie concerning Mowage.
01:49:39
Speaker
Mowage. is an American picture, Adam's Rib, a George Cukor comedy in in question mark? Yeah, no. i mean i I do think this movie is intended as a comedy. It is certainly ah ah sort of presented as such. um This is the second time that I've watched a George Cukor comedy and not really found it funny at all. I did not i did not like Philadelphia Story. I like Philadelphia Story. And, you know, I was looking. I was like, man, do I hate everything? But I love Gaslight.
01:50:16
Speaker
Gaslight's Was that George Cukor? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, shit. um Gaslight's great. That's a hard pivot. But, like... Right. When he's leaning into things being creepy and upsetting... Yeah, yeah. He's trying to make it funny.
01:50:28
Speaker
These were beloved comedies. Like, it's Tracy... Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Yeah. This was, like, a vehicle for them. This was their sixth movie together, think. We've watched, I think, multiple movies of them separately. I think this is our first, like... Yeah. But they're known as a duo many places. Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn movies, right?
01:50:46
Speaker
And I don't They were... Married? Question mark? During the making of this? I think they were at least together. I know this movie primarily from seeing the movie poster on the wall at um a Daily Planet, the local diner-themed restaurant in Gypsy. Diner-themed restaurant. It's not really a diner. It's not 24 hours. um Correct. But ah back in the olden times, they had all all the rooms were themed on 20th century decades, and the forty s section had a big poster of this movie on the wall. Ah. And so I recognized it from that. It's the hilarious answer to who wears the pants. This, uh, so yeah, this is ostensibly a comedy movie, but I really think of it as like... I like the premise a lot. I think the setup is great. the thing, is it's like, it is...
01:51:36
Speaker
It's a drama with a cute premise. Right. Like, that it's it's not a comedy movie. it's it's like ah It's like a movie about things being bad. yeah Well, it's like, I'm always very impressed when, like, a comedy movie can, like...
01:51:52
Speaker
get very serious or like have really dark subject matter or that sort of thing, but remain funny and remain threading that needle of tone. I'm always, whenever it's pulled off, I'm like, I'm very impressed. I love that when it's pulled off. I think this is, I think this is a very good example of like it,
01:52:10
Speaker
Not quite pulling it off. No. yeah yeah Not threading the needle of being like, this is supposed to be a comedy. And yet it is like, at times, incredibly upsetting or dark or where it's like, the tone feels out of kilter. Yeah. The funniest part in this movie. Because it's like really silly and farceful at times. And it is at other times like...
01:52:31
Speaker
like shockingly dark yeah yeah shockingly like but not in a way where it's like they pulled it off it does both it's like it it does both but it's like it's jesus it feels like it's breaking the movie yeah uh the funniest part in this movie is in the very beginning i think when ah there's somebody who is like walking like about to walk into a room uh she's she's she's holding a gun ah and she's like okay i'm gonna shoot the people in the room and then she is like reading the manual for like how a gun works right while right outside the door it's like pulls out a gun and you're like oh it has a gun and then pulls out like the manual and is like reading
01:53:11
Speaker
You know, how I don't know what she would be reading. and that you know Take the safety off. Pull the Pull the hammer back. Put bullets in gun. Yeah. That was very funny.
01:53:23
Speaker
i don't think anything else was this movie. I mean, that's that feels almost like a Looney Tunes joke. That feels very kind of cartoonish, which is not really something this movie ever really gets back to. Maybe a little bit in some of the courtroom scenes.
01:53:35
Speaker
the I guess the the basic premise of this movie is Spencer Tracy and Catherine Hepburn are both lawyers who are married. And to each other. Yes. And wind up on ah opposing sides of the same court case where Spencer Tracy is ah the the prosecutor.
01:53:56
Speaker
for the the state of New York against this woman who shot her husband but didn't kill him. And Catherine Hepburn is defending the woman who shot her husband because she's like, womanhood is important.
01:54:09
Speaker
And so then it's like, oh, they're married, but they're, you know, they're against each other in the court case. What's gonna happen? Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a cute premise. Yeah. um And, but like, the second that the premise begins...
01:54:26
Speaker
It's bad vibes. Right. Well, because it's like the movie is trying to mine their like marital strife for laughs, which I guess is maybe just a thing that I don't find very funny or at least not in this instance. Yeah. Like...
01:54:43
Speaker
It's, it's, you're just watching, like, the dissolution of a marriage, but, like, not in entertaining, not in really an entertaining way. It's just them, like, getting meaner and meaner towards each other. And I'm like, ah. Yeah. And, like, so she takes, she takes this case. She wasn't going to take the case. It's hard to know where this movie stands, too, because... she is basically like, I believe in women's lib. I believe that women are equal to men.
01:55:11
Speaker
The whole kind of premise is that like of her taking this case is that she ah ah wants to make sure she this is a crime that a man might have gotten away with and a woman wouldn't. And so she wants to fight to make sure this woman who if she thinks otherwise probably should go to jail would get away the crime. It's a domestic violence case where she is advocating for the woman to get away with domestic violence because she's like, equality. Yeah. And like, and and she basically admits like, I know that this person is kind of bad and did the wrong thing.
01:55:51
Speaker
But like... I'm attaching this external meaning to it. Yeah. It's like, it's become a crusade, basically. Also, a lot of this premise is like, founded upon the idea that like, if a man shot his wife, he'd get away with it. And it's like, wait, what?
01:56:07
Speaker
nineteen forty s are you okay? I mean, no, clearly not. But we all knew that. And like that I think that too is as a thing where I kind of chafed on pretty early on of like, wait, this argument seems...
01:56:20
Speaker
Strange. Yeah. And so it it just becomes extremely petty, but not in a cute way. Yeah. like ah in like ah like a gross way. right it's like i didn't really I don't really feel this way about Philadelphia Story. I do think the Philadelphia Story is funny and charming.
01:56:34
Speaker
But i think I think watching this movie, I felt the way you did during that, which was like, this just feels mean spirited in a way that I do not enjoy. yeah right and i i mean it's like i can get on board with a mean-spirited movie but this movie is trying to be cute and it's like just it is at times i think yeah trying too hard to be cute too where like it's it's going too far into like farcical stuff that the like more grounded things it like it's like wait this yeah that again that's the tone thing like
01:57:10
Speaker
If you've already established this is like a grounded thing about like important topics and then it gets like really wacky, it starts to kind of undermine that. trying to have its cake and eat it too. I guess so. I mean, really, if you're going a cake, you should eat it. But um one of the things that kind of...
01:57:28
Speaker
did kind of break this movie for me is like Catherine Hepburn's character wins the court case. The woman who shot her husband been is is not, not declared, not guilty. She gets away with it.
01:57:39
Speaker
I also feel like she's declared not guilty, I guess on all charges. Whereas I think maybe not guilty for like a attempted murder, but guilty for like aggravated assault might be acceptable. The movie is like, we don't care about that.
01:57:53
Speaker
And then Catherine Hepburn is sort of caught in a a somewhat half-joking, like, canoodling with her next-door neighbor. Who's been, like, hitting on her super hard. Yeah, but, like, hitting on her in a way where it's like he's hitting on her so much that it's sort of like, oh I'm just joking around. But it's like, says that tracecy he reveals that he is actually serious. Yeah.
01:58:14
Speaker
And, yeah, the whole time Spencer Tracy is like, this guy sucks. Yeah. And I agree. He does. That guy is, i do not want him in my house. Like, he is a guy that like shows up to a dinner party and is immediately just like touching everything. He's sitting on your couch. He's drinking all your drinks. And you're like dude, you need to chill the fuck out.
01:58:35
Speaker
They go to watch home movies and he's talking through the whole thing. He thinks he's the funniest mystery science theater guy. He's doing bits the whole And I'm just like, you need to shut the fuck up, dude. You're not as funny as you think are. And that's Spencer Tracy just sitting there, just like getting... Withering glare against him, which like, yeah. mean, I'm to seeing... was also how I was watching that character. Yeah. Just like, this guy sucks. You know, I wanted to see this movie because I wanted to see Spencer Tracy in a comedic role. He has nothing funny to do. Like, my feeling, my thought toward him is seeing him in Fury. Right. Where he is just reaching the pits of humanity. Yeah. And then in this movie, he's just mad the entire time. He is like...
01:59:20
Speaker
I mean, he's got a good, like, kind of pissed off Mike Ehrman Trout face, you know? yeah. Good good good comparison. But, like yeah like, and he, so he plays mad good, but like, it's... He plays mad good, mad good. So I would say if I met him in the court, ah in the basketball court, I mean...
01:59:43
Speaker
The ways that you're watching their marriage fall apart, it kind of ends up mirroring some of the case. I think that, like... But so, right, the the scene that, again, like kind of broke the movie for me, was after Spencer Racy catches them two together. And, like, Catherine Hepburn is not into it, but it's sort of, like, you know, not...
02:00:04
Speaker
is sort of humoring him a little bit. And then Space Crazy breaks in, he's got a gun and he's, happens to them at gunpoint. And it's like a very tense, like scary upsetting scene of him, like with a gun.
02:00:16
Speaker
and then And like both of them, like Catherine and I are like, please like don't shoot. like And it becomes, it feels entirely plausible that he would have gotten to this yes this point. And it's played entirely straight. And then he puts the gun in his mouth And bites down and starts chewing and goes, mmm, licorice. And I'm like, no. that I'm sorry, that joke does not not work for me. It was a crazy thing to see. Like, it's it's extreme. it It goes to such extreme darkness. as this thing, it's like, if it were more cartoony and it went to a place that dark, it would be okay. You know, I think it could be okay. Yeah. But like, like because...
02:00:56
Speaker
Everything in the movie feels like it's it could naturalistically be leading up to this guy. Like, he's having this mirroring reaction where, like, his marriage is falling apart. It's driving him to murder, you know? Or suicide or something. And, it like, when he puts the gun in his mouth, you're like, oh my god. There's also, us so to a certain degree, there's a thought where, like...
02:01:21
Speaker
I do think the older a movie it is, something is, like, the less bound to what our, like, expectations of it are a little bit. We're, like, I think we've we've watched enough early movies at this point to be able to say, like, sometimes they just take wild choices and are just like, oh, that's how you're ending this movie? Okay. yeah And, like, that was a moment where i was like, this movie's old enough where, like, this might just, like...
02:01:44
Speaker
Take such a wild left turn. The movies still do this, but, like... It seems to have been received well at the time. Yeah, I mean, which you know... People were in a weird mood in the late 40s, I guess. The thing that works the best about this movie, for sure, is the, like... Just the chemistry between Spencer Tracy and Catherine Hepburn.
02:02:04
Speaker
like Like, particularly in the courtroom. Particularly in the... I mean, in... In every scene. Like, I think a lot of the scene is them, like... Like sniping at each other. Which is a little bit less fun to watch probably.
02:02:17
Speaker
But like definitely courtroom scenes. And also just like their do they're they're like banter. Feels very ah naturalistic. Very he lived in. yeah Understandably.
02:02:28
Speaker
Like I understand. They're going for the third man. Or not the third man. The thin man. right they' They're not pulling off the thin man. Because I also think like their banter in this movie. The writing this movie is not nearly as strong as the as in the thin man. Yeah.
02:02:41
Speaker
And I think the Thin Man tonally is yeah a little sillier. oh it's way sillier. Yeah. um Even though the Thin Man is all is like about murder and crime and is like also tackling pretty dark subject matter a lot of the time.
02:02:55
Speaker
But there's never a point where, like, Nick Charles puts a gun in his mouth is like, I'm going to kill myself. ah But, like, I can see why the like, Tracy Hepburn duo became such a, like, people just wanted them to be in movies all the time.
02:03:11
Speaker
Like, more, and more, more. Like, give us that all the time. Like, i I get it. um i I want to watch more of their movies, hopefully, that maybe are a little bit more successful than this one. I mean, i think Spencer Tracy, I think he's good in stuff, but I feel like the dynamic is being held up by Katherine Hepburn's charmingness. like Yeah, I mean, I think...
02:03:36
Speaker
I think in the scenes where they are happy, Spencer Tracy is... three scenes that they're happy. Yeah, I think Spencer Tracy gets a bit more lightness to play. Yeah. Right? he's He's playing, like, angry in this movie so much that it does start to be, like... You're like, can't can this guy, like, do something fun? Yeah.
02:03:57
Speaker
She's doing all of this because she has this kind of like feminist perspective or like a political project, like behind, like all of the actions that she's taking. And like, I think in many ways he's like,
02:04:12
Speaker
I'm on board with what you're doing, but you're, like, ruining my life specifically right now. Like, the way that you're doing this is really, like, causing problems for us. and she, I think, is kind of, like, so swept up in her project that for for so much of the movie that she is, like, not fully witnessing how much it is ruining their marriage. Yeah.
02:04:41
Speaker
Yeah. And, and then like by the time that she realizes it's too late, basically, I think that the, the movie that it isn't because like, The stakes of this movie are like, oh no, what about their marriage? And at the end, it's kind of like, they have this huge fight, and then it's just sort of like, eh, I guess it's fine now.
02:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, not earned. And also, like, they subvert it again, like, right afterward, where he's just like, yeah, I can fake cry too. I didn't mean any of that stuff I just said. Yeah, it's like the... Yeah.
02:05:11
Speaker
Yeah. this This movie, I think... It seems like it's trying to say something about, you know, equal rights for women and feminism and all that. I think that it is maybe... It's kind of trying to make fun of that as a concept, though. It is a bit.
02:05:29
Speaker
Yeah. Like, I think that it's saying that she is going too far. Yeah. But, like, I don't know if the movie is saying that she's going too far...
02:05:40
Speaker
Well, there there are some ways where it's like she's going too far with her project, but not her perspective. um But I think that that gets kind of muddled in the movie because like they they get tied together. And so you're watching... like the There's a way of looking at this movie and going, crazy feminist ruins a marriage. you know And like that would be an entirely legitimate reading of this movie.
02:06:07
Speaker
Because the movie kind of suggests that in a way. But like, but there are other ways that the movie, you know, shows, oh like he puts an apron on and he like, you know, they cook dinner together. That's kind of a nice scene. Right. And there are ways that they have this kind of very equal between each other dynamic. She's a, they're both lawyers. They're both, you know, really like, they're a power couple. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
02:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, like where this movie stands with women's equality stuff, it wants to kind of like play in that water, I think. but that doesn Right, but without really taking too hard of a stance on it, almost. It feels a little bit noncommittal, I guess, in that sense. Yeah.
02:06:53
Speaker
I think that there it it inspires some interesting thoughts along those lines. I think some of the more interesting things... like the The ways that this movie is interesting are like some of the ways that it brings up the the feminist issues. I think that there it does inspire some interesting thoughts. And also, just the if you were to take it as a drama, the ways that you watch their marriage fall apart...
02:07:19
Speaker
are kind of like really upsetting and heartbreaking in this, ah in this interesting gut-wrenching dramatic way.
02:07:30
Speaker
Uh, but like, I think so much else about the movie does not work. Yeah. I think, yeah, I'm, yeah, I wasn't thinking of this while I watched the movie, but I, now that I'm thinking back on I'm kind of reminded of the recent release, The Roses, with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as a married couple whose marriage is dissolving.
02:07:54
Speaker
And they were very mean to each other, that whole movie. I think that movie is more successful in sort of like a comedy about the dissolution of a marriage. Right. Because both those characters are kind of presented from the get-go as being like kind of not great.
02:08:09
Speaker
Like they're presented from the beginning as like kind of mean, not terrible not traditionally likable characters. But also they're played by two of the like most charming British actors possible. So it's like they're still very watchable the whole time.
02:08:23
Speaker
And it's not that possible for British actors to be charming. That's what you're saying. It's not that possible? You said the the most charming possible. For a Brit, they're pretty charming. For a Brit! No, I'm saying that's like, you know, there ah like of of all of the charming British actors you could have cast, yeah you got two two of the best. Yes. but but i I think the strengths of both are the same. Like...
02:08:47
Speaker
The strength of that movie is definitely casting. I think the strength of this movie is also casting, like... You were saying, like, the the courtroom scenes, which we haven't... It's, like, most of the movie you we haven't really talked about. they they do the They keep doing the thing where, like, the...
02:08:59
Speaker
One of them will drop a pencil under the table because they're both at the you know at the same table. Yeah. On opposite ends. And they drop pencils so they can like look, like duck their heads under the table and like have a silent conversation under the table with each other. Yeah.
02:09:12
Speaker
And it starts like... Always good. Like that, they do that like a couple of times in the movie. And every time I was like, great, I love this. But it starts as cute. And then it ends up with them to like...
02:09:23
Speaker
It almost feels like she flips him off, like, under the table. no, she does. She kisses her middle finger. Yeah. Like, yeah I was kind of surprised that that flew, you know. And, yeah, there's, like, I think there are points in that, look like, where they're...
02:09:38
Speaker
They're like at each other's throats as lawyers and yet they keep theyre keep like going back to sort of like moments of like they'll they'll refer to each other as pet names in court.
02:09:50
Speaker
And then the stenographer is like, you called her what? Pinky? Like, how is that spelled? And it's like, Y for him, i.e. for me. There are lots of moments in this movie that I think are very charming.
02:10:01
Speaker
um I just think they are outweighed by the moments where I'm just like, no, this does not work. Yeah. um I felt awful after watching this movie. didn't feel awful. I just felt kind of a little bit disappointed because I was i was hoping I would enjoy it more.
02:10:17
Speaker
There's nothing stuff to be enjoyed in this movie. It's just, yeah. yeah i I found the off-putting parts... to be they won out in the end well a new york movie that is more charm than off-putting right i would say another movie involving the new york city subway system yes is on the town on the town new york new york nice a nice musical it's a wonderful town the bronx is up and the battery's down and hey guess what we're recording this in new york
02:10:54
Speaker
It's wait yes, it was an immersive 4D experience. I'm always looking for 4D experiences, whether it be Twisters or watching a New York movie, a New York City movie in New York City.
02:11:06
Speaker
ah Yes, On the Town. um Yeah. A um Gene Kelly musical, Technicolor musical. Yeah, co-directed by Gene Kelly and co-starring. Yes. ah And it's about some sailors who have one day to spend. They got 24 hours in New York City and they're going to see as much of that city as they can. they They're going to see an unrealistically large amount that city in 24 hours. And also they're going to find some dames to hang out with.
02:11:34
Speaker
It's based on a Broadway show. Yeah. Music by Leonard Bernstein. Heard of him. Yeah. ah choreography in the movie at least by Gene Kelly. Heard of them. Yeah, I don't know. like I feel like ah i i I had a lot of fun with this movie. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I think this movie is very dumb. yeah i don't I don't mean that entirely in a disparaging way. It's just that's that's the kind of movie that this is. It's it's it's it's simple. well it's it's And it's very silly. It's like really, really just like...
02:12:09
Speaker
There are no rules. Everything is a joke. It's, it's, I think, I guess the only, I think the only other Gene Kelly comedy I've seen is, uh, uh, Signing in the Rain. Mm-hmm. Which I think they're definitely like kind of like flashes of that movie's like goodness.
02:12:27
Speaker
Yeah. In this one, there's a lot of similarities between the two. But I think this movie is much sillier and much more comedic and a lot dumber. But I also think that that kind of it it lends it this kind of just like very, don't know, just kind of like casual fun vibe. Yeah. That that is it goes down very easy. it's it's ah It's a nice movie to... It feels like a nice movie to just throw throw on and have a good time. yeah i was I was sitting... it is also It is such a like, ah, New York, what a city movie. that is like it's It's hard to dislike for for that aspect. Yeah.
02:13:02
Speaker
I was like... Yeah, i was watching this... Unless you hate New York City, in which case you will hate this movie. I was watching this movie just kind of feeling like... um Like, maybe I'm just a real sucker for... ah For just Technicolor, just joyful musicals, you know? Yeah, they're fun. It's like...
02:13:22
Speaker
he i can I can see, I don't know, why a certain type of person gets like really glommed onto this type of thing. Because there's something infectious about it. you know yeah Especially with Gene Kelly. Gene Kelly is an incredibly infectious person. I think...
02:13:41
Speaker
The thing I always tell people is it's like... Steve Kelly, infectious. if you Circa 1916 or and whatever. ah The thing I always tell people who say that they don't like musicals is watch Singing in the Rain ah and then tell me that you don't like musicals because it is impossible not to like that movie. It is literally impossible.
02:14:03
Speaker
And, yeah, you get some of that here. ah His smile and his ah his charisma and and and dancing goes a long way. I think this movie, I mean, compared to Sane in the Rain, which is probably unfair to do. it's It's later in his career. It's, ah you know, whatever. It's not that much later. i know, a couple years. But, like, that's, you know, the the closest...
02:14:25
Speaker
other movie that I've seen to this one, so it's it makes for an easy comparison. I think this movie feels a lot more kind of like scattershot than that one does. I think this movie is a lot less successful in what it's trying to do than that one is. Singing in the Rain is like a story with stuff going on. Right. And this is just like...
02:14:43
Speaker
The plot of this movie is quite literally a bunch of stuff happens. Like yeah three sailors show up in New York City and they hijinks ensue. But like, I think of the way that like, I feel like each big musical number in Singing in the Rain feels so like integral. And like, it is, it it's not necessarily like plotty, but it is, I'm like, you couldn't, you can't take any of those out. And like, the movie wouldn't still work, you know?
02:15:10
Speaker
Yeah. Whereas this one, I feel like there were definitely at least a few musical numbers where was like, this one's going on a little long. Or like, this one feels a little... ah They start for random reasons, right? like It's not like, because that's like i just a musical thing. Right. I don't need a reason why you're going to break out in a song. that's I know that's what's going to happen.
02:15:30
Speaker
I think with this one, I mean, I was really on board with this movie. But it will take like long musical interludes. Yeah. But, like, a musical number would start, and I'd just be like, sweet. And I'd just kind of kick back and enjoy it, you know? Most of the time, true. Yeah, but I think, like, the musical numbers aren't quite as elaborate or quite as, like, just dazzling as Signing in the Rain. It is hard to compare to a perfect movie. I think it's... Right. It's... Comparing it that is uphill battle because it is, like...
02:15:57
Speaker
Sin in the Rain is very much iterating on this and like making it better. Yeah. So then, once you've already seen like the best possible version of this to then go back to like an earlier kind of version of it, it it does feel a little bit clunkier.
02:16:12
Speaker
It's a little clunky, but yeah yeah. I mean, I know what I want to say about this movie, and that is I'm obsessed with the concept of mis-turned styles. Yes, yes. The kind of like... The inciting incident of the movie. Is these kind of like, I don't know, credulous bumpkins who are ah walking into New York City for the first time and yeah not really experience... Whoa, big city! Yeah. Said... Said...
02:16:40
Speaker
with a new york accent of like i mean frank sinatra who's also in this movie uh is from new jersey so i guess he has a new jersey accent i'm talking about the the other guy the one that's not gene kelly or frank sinatra i don't he had like he had like a uh he had like feel like he had a kind of a new york accent he's like wow can you believe in this place new york yeah right it's like where are you from you have never been here And yeah, they're in a subway and they're loving being in a subway. This their Emily in Paris moment, as people say. I kind of love how, right, this movie is partially shot on location in New York City in late 1940s.
02:17:19
Speaker
I don't know if it was shot in 48 or 49. Yeah. And it's just, it is kind of, I find it charming how little has changed in certain respects. Yeah, the opening shots. I'm used to like really saturated Technicolor movies, right? And the opening shot of this, the opening couple shots of this movie are just footage of the New York City skyline and buildings. Yeah.
02:17:41
Speaker
Like, and it feels very realistic. Well, it's just like, know that building. Yeah. That's what it looks Yeah. And it's just cool. Like, yeah, a lot of it's on a stage, but the parts that aren't feel like a really neat kind of just a window into another era. Right. There's like the things that are very obviously different of like subway turnstiles look different. They use tokens instead of a phone, you know, like, but also just the way that is like the subway platforms are the same subway platforms. Like they look the same.
02:18:12
Speaker
Subways are still just like a rickety train rocketing through a room like um that way too many people get shoved into.
02:18:23
Speaker
But anyway, inciting incident is ah they're on the subway and they see a poster for like a kind of... gimmicky uh like a gimmicky comp like like like a miss america type thing but they have like ah a miss turnstiles uh which is it's like every month there's a new miss turnstiles who's the like subway like subway maven yeah they're like yeah the the the new york city subway pageant and that they see this and they immediately think this is the most famous woman in new york city
02:18:57
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, oh, she's Miss Turnstiles. They're very naive. She loves high society. Yeah. She's, yeah she's the biggest celebrity in the city. ah And yeah, and so ah ah Gene Kelly falls in love with the poster at first sight. Right.
02:19:14
Speaker
I'm going to use my 24 hours to find this woman. right They were like, we got to find some gals. And it's like, I got my eyes set in that Miss Turnstiles. And they're like, there's a million people here. You're never going to find her. The Miss Turnstiles. Yeah. And then immediately runs into her, like, looks in the other direction. And she's there. They meet cute.
02:19:32
Speaker
Incredibly so. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, it's it's now they they disconnect, they reconnect. And it's just like they're on a quest. He conscripts his buddies into into his quest to find Miss Turnstiles again. because All of Act Two is them on the hunt. Crisscrossing New York City trying to find Miss Turnstiles so that Gene Kelly can go on a date with her. But in the process, the other two find girlfriends or single day girlfriends. Right. And kind of get distracted with with their own days. Because they they hail a cab and ah the cab driver is a woman. A lady? woman. And they're like, a woman? But the war is over. Why do you have a job? Which is, I was like, oh boy.
02:20:16
Speaker
And then she's immediately... the the horniest person that you've ever met. Quite possibly. Because she sees Frank Sinatra and she's like, I will do whatever corny nonsense you guys are doing as long as he can sit up front with me and I can drive while looking at him and not the road. And also i'm not going to take where you're going. I'm going to take him home with me. Yeah.
02:20:41
Speaker
On the, like, goofy poster for Miss Turnstiles, it says that she, like, she loves museums. And so they're like, we gotta go to all the museums. And so they go to the Museum of anthrop Anthropological History, which I don't think is a real museum. I think it is a play on the Museum of Natural History. I'm assuming so. They also go to the Museum of Surrealist Art. And I was trying to, like, i don't think that's a real play scene. Yeah, it could be. um It could have been in 1949. It isn't anymore. i also...
02:21:10
Speaker
I was trying to unpack it. Like, is that like a joke? Are they trying to like make some joke about like surrealist art or not? Or is that like... They did make a joke at some point. They went to... and They went to actual MoMA, I guess. I don't know. It wasn't yeah shot in MoMA, but it was like they went to... a sign that says MoMA. Yeah. And they they make a modern art joke where they walk by a ah painting, an abstract painting, and then flip it upside down. Like, oh, it's the same... like Well, then and then everyone else is like, oh, yeah, um which they did.
02:21:41
Speaker
Actually, I just learned this recently. They did with ah Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings when her paintings first kind of became. This is a complete tangent. But like when Georgia O'Keeffe. What if a vulva was upside down? Well, no, here's the thing.
02:21:55
Speaker
Georgia O'Keeffe. It's a face if you turn it upside down. Georgia O'Keeffe originally painted her paintings sideways. So they were not ah they were not like Yannick imagery necessarily like they were kind of thought to be. And then like male art patrons whoa and everything were like...
02:22:17
Speaker
We're going to turn this sideways and say that she's this revolutionary artist who's painting the female form in abstract. And then she was just like, all right, I guess I'll that. It's like, yeah, sure. I can deal with that. Like she, she never really was like fully on board with that reading her, of her work.
02:22:36
Speaker
And it was kind of like her making a concession to this sort of like, like patriarchal like view of her. And she also, but like part of this treatment was that she was, before she was known as a painter, she was known as a nude model for her, like in the art world as a nude model for her, the person who later became her husband. And so like, everyone was just like, oh, well we don't respect her anyway. She's just like a sex object anyway. Yeah. Yeah.
02:23:05
Speaker
George O'Keefe. Yeah. But anyway, um this movie is about sailors. This episode on art history. And yeah and so they one of them meets a taxi driver and the other one meets a ah an and an anthrop an anthropologist who is obsessed with this. Who has a caveman fetish.
02:23:24
Speaker
the Yes. Yeah. Another very horny person. Yeah. Another like absurdly horny character. And they go... right they're They're at the museum. ah they There's a dinosaur skeleton.
02:23:36
Speaker
um They have a whole musical... ah number which gets into some i would say racially insensitive uh territory yeah um where they're like oh we're talking about cavemen and they start just like pulling you know objects off the wall and doing various uh cultural stereotypes yeah i mean that's the thing right it's like if we're making fun of cavemen Sure. Who cares? There's no cavemen around. But if you're making fun of cavemen while wearing African masks and going ooga booga, that's not good. And like Native American headdresses. Yeah.
02:24:18
Speaker
ah Not a great look. for this movie um it's something that you could just get past pretty quickly yeah i mean it's yeah i your mileage may vary but your my yeah the legitimate if you yeah to have a real problem but then then they knock down a dinosaur skeleton in a in amusing manner a lot bringing up baby yeah but it's like in an even more like they knock the tiniest little piece off of it and then entire thing like it explodes And so then there's a kind of like, that like from both of those ladies, there's like a sort of like recurring element of them.
02:24:55
Speaker
Like one's hanging on to her cab for too long. And the other is like her boss is like trying to find her because she went along with these men who destroyed a dinosaur skeleton. And it just kind of introduces back into the movie a little bit of stakes. Right. It's like there's like this increasing sense that like the police are after them for the crimes that they're committing.
02:25:15
Speaker
um But they're just trying to find love and have a good time. At one point, I think it's Frank Snatchel's like, hey, look, cops. like Book it, boys. And so, yeah, then they they they split up.
02:25:27
Speaker
the The two that already have dates sort of go off to to canoodle. And then Gene Kelly sort of wanders into, what was it? The um Juilliard. It's not Juilliard, but it's like the, the it's it's described in similarly sort of like, it's like the generic version of Carnegie Hall. Yeah.
02:25:45
Speaker
It's just like the concert hall or something. And there he finds, uh, Miss turnstiles herself. Uh, what's her actual name? Ivy Smith. He's like, oh, you're like the most famous gal in New York. And she's like, yes, I am. Not wanting to let on that she's actually just like the face of this like goofy subway ad campaign thing.
02:26:07
Speaker
Is it an ad? Is it a pageant? I'm i'm very, i want to know more about Miss Turnstiles. We need to start Miss Turnstiles. We've got subway takes now. Like we can, we can. we can That's if I'm ever conscripted into subway takes, my take is going to be, we need to bring back Miss Turnstiles. A hundred percent agree. Yeah.
02:26:25
Speaker
the the The twist is that Ivy Smith is sort of like trying to work her way up through showbiz by like taking ballet classes and like dancing in Coney Island and is like not a celebrity by any stretch. Not just dancing.
02:26:38
Speaker
She's a cooch dancer. Which is less rude than it sounds. think only became rude because of its ah of its association. I mean, it's it's still lewd, I guess. Yes. It's still sort of, yeah. It's something to be, to be yeah.
02:26:55
Speaker
There's the shame. Right. She's she's not going out of her way to tell people that she's a cooch dancer. But it's like, hey, this is this this nice sailor thinks I'm a celebrity. like I guess i'll i'll you know I'll go along with it.
02:27:08
Speaker
And then he's like, oh, my my hometown in Indiana. And then it's like, is made very clear without actually saying it, that they're both in the same town. Wow. And like had the same teacher in school.
02:27:20
Speaker
Hijinks. Yeah. me But cut but then then she's like, oh, I have a high society party I need to get to, which is actually just her job. um Yeah, she's like not like maliciously lying so much as like sort of going along with what she believes partly because she sort of wants to get rid of him. Right. And also I think is a little bit ah ashamed.
02:27:42
Speaker
Like is a little bit like embarrassed and sort of like this guy thinks I'm like big big time famous glamorous celebrity and it's like, oh. It's like I couldn't be with, I mean, i shouldn't I shouldn't expect to be with the Miss Turnstiles. Yeah. The amount of jokes that get out his turnstiles is incredible. Because, right, then they they go to the top of the Empire State Building.
02:28:03
Speaker
They all meet up. They get chased by the cops. There's the great gag where there's the one guy who's hanging off the side Empire State Building. Oh, my God. While they're, like, leaning off the side, holding him casually to hide him.
02:28:16
Speaker
And then they they ah they start hitting hitting the clubs, which are also all kind of, like, based on some kind of, like... yeah Ethnic stereotype. Each one is like a different stereotype that it's based on. Thankfully, they don't dig into those stereotypes too much because they did the, like, the second club they go to is like a Dixieland club. And I was like, uh-oh.
Themed Nightclubs and 'On the Town' Film Discussion
02:28:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
02:28:40
Speaker
Yeah, um none of them were a great look. But the first one they go to is sort of I guess, vaguely like Cuban. Cuban ah themed. I will say not racially insensitive ones, but we should have more highly themed nightclubs. Yes. I am on board for that. Themes i I'm 100% on board with.
02:28:59
Speaker
um when they When they get to the That's what I say in my high school English class. Like the the two other... ah ah girls break off and they're like you know slipping money to the maitre d being like hey like get us a table and also when you do tell tell like tell the group that you're doing this from the famous miss turnstiles honestly legendary wingman behavior yes like they they it honestly they were great they were they were doing a great job and i i think that is also a thing that like
02:29:30
Speaker
major d's will do like i that might be sort of that might be sort of like a cultural uh misnomer like that's the thing i've just seen in movies uh-huh but it's common enough where i'm like this must come from somewhere like enough people have had the experience of like slipping the major d some money and being like hey like talk like say something nice about me yeah Say that there's a rule about sharing three... ah Fully loaded nachos. Yeah.
02:29:58
Speaker
And so then he's like, ah, there free champagne for the table for for for Miss Turnstiles. and And of course, then ah Gene Kelly is like, oh boy, oh boy, like, I'm, you know, I'm the luckiest guy in the whole city. Like, I get to i get to have a date with the Miss Turnstiles. Me!
02:30:19
Speaker
But then she has to leave to go to her job, and he's heartbroken. And then they go on another chase. They go they try and find her again. they they ah They recruit um ah the cab driver's ah roommate, who is has a cold and is generally kind of presented as off-putting.
02:30:39
Speaker
But even like the way that, like that character initially feels a little mean. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking like, I was really kind of concerned because everybody sees her and the instant they see her, they're just like, oh, you're obviously the grossest person, the most grossest, most unattractive person that I've ever met. was like, I don't know. She seems all right. You know, maybe a little tone deaf or whatever. but it's like, that is kind of like almost like the character arc of the movie is like, or like her, the section that she is featured in is like,
02:31:09
Speaker
it starts that way and by the end of it it is like the other characters like you know what you're okay yeah you're not as gross as we thought it's not that bad i mean they're kind of just like like we're sorry that we like you know like the last scene between her and gene kelly i thought was very sweet and very nice yeah in a way that kind of took me off guard a little bit yeah yeah and i think yeah they treat that character as such like a simple joke and yeah i think And I was starting to kind of feel like, oh, this is a little too mean spirited the way that they're treating her. And then they they flip it around in a way that's like, okay, you I guess you can have this, you know? Yeah. And so they they they find out that ah that Ivy is is working down to Coney Island. So they go down to the cooch show.
02:31:56
Speaker
in Coney Island, and then the cops show up, and they have to dress up as, like, uh, belly dancers in drag to try to escape, which leads to ah some real kind of Scooby-Doo-esque hijinks of, like, running through the stage as, like, police chase after them. Um...
02:32:16
Speaker
if That whole section felt very, like, vaudevillian to me. Yeah. um In a good way. And they, like, hide in the back of a van, which ends up being the, like, shore police for the Navy.
02:32:29
Speaker
And they're like, these we gotta take these guys back to the boat. they Their shore leaves up. um But then... And also put them in the brig. right cause yeah. Because they've been up to no good. And then the cops are about to rest, the three the three gals. But they're like, we were just trying to have fun, officers.
02:32:45
Speaker
Don't you believe in love? Yeah, and they're like, ah, fine. but let's Let's all, like, pass a hat around and gather money to, like... pay their bail and so then the the three gals uh drive off to the brooklyn navy yard to to to say a final goodbye to the three fellas and we get nicely in a nice little ending and then also i like how right there's like the beginning of the movie where they they come off the boat they're like ah new york and then a like almost identical group of sailors get off yeah as they're going on the boat get all gets off the boat and sight oh boy new york what a town and the cycle begins again
02:33:24
Speaker
it the circle of life the circle of fleet week uh fun silly musical time i i i enjoyed watching it glenn what was your favorite my favorite film that we watched for 1949 was for sure the third man i mean it's too up my alley not to be right although as we as a dog stray dog gives it a good run for its money Yeah, as we're in the noir era, I feel like you're having to encounter that a lot where it's like, this is too much my thing for me to not say that. Yeah, yeah. To protect my brand. Yeah. yeah Which is not, I mean, that's that's not why it's my favorite. I i leg legitimately think that was my favorite movie that we high quality movie.
02:34:04
Speaker
Yeah.
Favorite Films of 1949 and Wrap-up Teaser
02:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, Stray Dog, also very, very good. i Like, okay, um' I'm really torn because i think I enjoyed watching On the Town the most. I had a blast watching that movie.
02:34:19
Speaker
But, I mean, probably The Third Man is just the best movie. And Stray Dog also was quite good. But, yeah. ah So I'll answer the same thing as you, but also saying highlighting that I thought that On the Town was a was fun time. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
02:34:36
Speaker
Well, that about does it. People of the internet. Indeed. For ah One Week, One Year, 1949. And guess what? That also does it for the 1940s. The 40s are over.
02:34:49
Speaker
Yeah. What a time it's been. Another decade in the can. Yeah. And it's time to... What a terrible decade for humanity, and yet, pretty good decade for movies. Thank you for listening.
02:35:00
Speaker
Appreciate it. Stick around for our next episode, which will be our 1940s wrap-up, where we will, you know, normally we try and stay very professional here on this podcast, but on the on a Decade and Review episodes, we'll loosen up and have a little era-appropriate cocktail. And then we will also ah count down our top ten favorites.
02:35:26
Speaker
favorite movies yeah of the 1940s it's gonna be tough i think for i don't know i mean i'm not i'm kind of i am looking forward to it'd be fun to like rank movies but it's gonna be i think it's gonna be difficult you heard it here first watch glenn struggle on air I already know by far what my what my favorite one is. Interesting.
02:35:49
Speaker
Well, don't say it. Yes. you had to We'll save that for next episode. Anyway. Preserve the mystery. Thank you all for listening. And thank you all for sticking with us through another decade. On to the next one.
02:36:02
Speaker
And Glenn, I'm seeing you right now, but I'll see next year. Indeed. Good night.