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1948 - The Grizzling of the Soul (with Trace Thurman)
58 Plays3 months ago
Murder! Dancing! Treasure! Bicycles! This week we're joined by Trace Thurman to discuss a Hitchcock experimental thriller, plus we talk about comedy monster mashes, transcendent technicolor ballet, Italian neo-realist velocipede theft, and the origins of the "prospector who dances a jig" character!
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 1948 Films Discussed playlist right here!
See you next year!
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to One Week, One Year, podcast where watch and discuss every year of film history in order, starting in 1895, the dawn of cinema. And this episode is 1948. I'm one of your hosts, Chris Ellie. I'm a film projectionist. And joining me as always is... I'm Glenn Covell. I'm a filmmaker.
00:00:25
Speaker
And joining us for the first time, we have...
Programming Horror Screenings
00:00:28
Speaker
trace thurman i am a film watcher and podcaster yeah yeah thanks for thanks for joining trace i i i um uh i have been attending uh horror movie screenings that you program uh when i was in denver i was attending it as often as i possibly could and i've made bunch of great discoveries uh because of the things that you've ah program Oh, that's always nice to hear. Yeah, that that was a dream gig of mine. i'm
00:00:57
Speaker
I'm relatively new to Denver. Like I've been here for about three years, um but i so I've spent the last, well, pre-2022, I had spent the 13 years before that in Austin, Texas. And I'd always wanted to like host one of those screenings, but like the guy that does it there has been doing it like since its the and it's inception in That's right, yeah.
00:01:12
Speaker
that's right yeah And so when I got here, one of my friends who was working as a booker at the draft house was like, oh, like we're going to bring Terror Tuesday and Weird Wednesday back to Denver. Do you want to host it? And I was like, do I fucking ever? I absolutely do.
Expansion of Terror Tuesday
00:01:24
Speaker
but nice i get to program it, too, which is always fun. Yeah, that's super fun. That's great. i um I started at the Alamo in 2013. 13 at the Yonkers Alamo. And I was always like hearing about Terror Tuesday from Oprah in Austin.
00:01:41
Speaker
And they wouldn't want us to do it because because they're like, they're like, oh, no, we got to kind of keep it close to the close to the test to keep that like the real official Alamos. Yeah, they've definitely expanded it now. I mean, I don't know. It's definitely not every market, but I know Chicago has it. I know San Francisco has it. I think Houston has it. New York's got it.
00:02:00
Speaker
Raleigh, North Carolina. Yeah, but like I think it's also they they have to find someone they trust. like they they They don't do it in-house. Like, i mean, I've never worked for the draft house. This is a contract gig for me, but um they're going to have to pry my hands off of it if they ever want me to not do it.
00:02:15
Speaker
I appreciate what you've done. I was just recommending The Den to somebody today. Good. One that you really turned me on to. One of the best horror films to come out of the 2010s that no one knows about. I don't know about it.
00:02:29
Speaker
it's bigger because people It really kind of kickstarted the screen life trend, um but it came out like ah less than a year before unfriended and that one of course got a theatrical release but no I think the den is like legitimately scary whereas I think unfriended is very fun and silly um but not scary I like it though you you were saying you're a podcaster too you want to tell us about your podcast Yeah, no.
Horror Queers Podcast
00:02:52
Speaker
So I, as I said, I'm a film watcher and film podcaster. So I've written for the horror website, Bloody Disgusting, for, God, god going on 10 years now. But back in 2019, I co-started a podcast called Horror Queers for Bloody Disgusting. And it's on the Bloody FM podcast network. And they see me and another gay guy in Canada. And we, it kind of started with us like being like, oh, we're going to like talk about a different queer horror film each week. And we still do that. Like, I mean, you'll be hard pressed to find a horror film that doesn't have a queer component to it or one that we can't. find a queer component to but generally speaking we're just looking at a different horror film each week through a queer lens if it has a queer component that's great it could be explicit or non-explicit it could be like the director or the writer was gay or actor is gay um or queer and yeah that's that that's what we've been doing for the past six or seven years and uh yeah it's uh it's fun if you ever want to like hear us uh go search horror queers wherever you get your podcasts and on every social media channel at horror queers so um yeah we are irreverent though so if you are
00:03:50
Speaker
but averse to non-PC things, maybe don't listen to it. You know, I didn't realize when you started the podcast, which was only about a year before we started ours. And you have so many more. You're so much more thorough with your episodes.
00:04:08
Speaker
You're a lot better about podcasting than we are. My host and I are very type A. ah like i mean we we We have our schedule for 2027 started already. so like we We are oh big planners. i know One time ah someone asked me to be a guest and I was like, do you want to come on our show tomorrow? and I was like, oh you've got to give me like two weeks notice at least. because i have a very like I've got a day job. I've got this podcast. I have my contract gig at the draft house. like I can't just do something tomorrow.
00:04:35
Speaker
i mean I could, but like I don't like that. I like scheduling things. ah Well, ah yeah, even considering that we go a lot slower than we even we expect.
00:04:46
Speaker
Thank you for joining when I asked you a year ago to. Yes. i on the podcast I'm happy to be here and discuss rope of all things like I and something that we have covered in our podcast as well, because this movie is gay as fuck.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. there's There's a lot of interesting angles there for sure. There are many interesting things about it. the things about him. Yeah. yeah um Why don't we just ah jump right in as far as getting ourselves a little context for what is going on in 1948.
1948 Significant Events
00:05:22
Speaker
So, Glenn, do you think you can take it away with the news?
00:05:26
Speaker
The news of the year, 1948. Alfred Kinsey releases the results of his studies on human sexuality, showing a greater diversity in sexual orientation than ever thought by the scientific establishment.
00:05:37
Speaker
Amidst the violence of the partition of India, Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated. Start the races. NASCAR is founded. ah new scientific paper is published presenting the idea for something called the Big Bang.
00:05:51
Speaker
The state of Israel receives its first prime minister and president amidst many skirmishes and massacres in the formerly British-occupied area. Apartheid is instituted in South Africa.
00:06:01
Speaker
The monkey, Albert Wan, becomes the first primate astronaut. The House Un-American Activities Committee is in full swing, with accusations of red affiliations being herald in every direction.
00:06:13
Speaker
Operation Beaver Drop. 76 beavers are relocated to a new region by aeroplane and parachute. Howard Hughes buys RKO Studios for $8.8 million. D.W. Griffith dies. Hooray! Hooray!
00:06:25
Speaker
dw griffinth dies
00:06:29
Speaker
<unk>y
00:06:32
Speaker
From the Supreme Court, the Paramount Decree breaks up the monopolies of movie studios and theaters. Yeah, rough year, 48. was going to say, like you did you just there there was not really any levity in that at all.
00:06:44
Speaker
There was a monkey astronaut? That's fun. Did he die in space? Is that what happened in 49?
Grim Realities of the 1940s
00:06:51
Speaker
We don't talk about that part. I really tried to, yeah, I really tried to find the the fun stuff like NASCAR and monkey. but mean I think that's that's like almost become not a, i it's like part of the news segment is it's like a silly thing that we try to do that is like, oh, Jesus. Yeah, the thing when we started doing this news thing, it was 1895 and all of the disasters that we were talking about. It's like, oh, it's quaint. Who cares? You know, but this this stuff is now in living memory and it's hard to.
00:07:25
Speaker
I was going to say like, it was all like molasses floods and stuff. hey Y'all made it through both world wars at least. so that's done. Yeah. Yeah. Vietnam up next. Right. Yeah. so So many great things happened in the 1950s and 60s.
00:07:41
Speaker
But anyway, one of the great things that happened in the 1950s is 1940s is the movie wrote. So let's get into it. And now we're pleased to bring our feature presentation.
00:07:54
Speaker
I guess first
Analysis of Hitchcock's 'Rope'
00:07:55
Speaker
first impressions. so What are your guys thoughts? I had never seen this movie before i think my one of my like first big takeaways is the thing I had always heard about this movie is that it is shot like it is a single Take and all the edits are hidden, which is not true.
00:08:12
Speaker
There are multiple clear traditional cuts or edits in this movie and Well, I mean, kind of. They just like zoom the camera into the backside of someone. Outside of that, there are whenever there's a ah whenever there was a real changeover.
00:08:28
Speaker
hmm. There's just a a traditional hard cut to a different angle. And that happens, I think, like three times in the movie. ah kind of didn't notice that. I mean, I think it's it's what, 10 shots total. So that makes for nine cuts.
00:08:42
Speaker
Right. So most of them are the sort of hidden cuts that the movie is famous for. But I was like, wait, there are are there are also... but Everyone who says like, oh, this movie looks like it's all one shot. It's like, no, it doesn't.
00:08:54
Speaker
Even discounting the the hidden cuts. It's basically 10 long takes, which in and of itself, I think is pretty impressive. ah Right. yeah But it's like the the the the famous gimmick of it is like not.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah. um and I guess not as thorough as or as sort of. I don't know. It was a a thing that immediately stuck out to me of like the famous the thing this
Themes and Subtext in 'Rope'
00:09:18
Speaker
movie is famous for is kind of not kind of not true. I mean, it's the same deal with Birdman. You know, everybody who tries to do this gimmick like doesn't quite do it except for ah Victoria. I think that's what it's called. ah Yeah.
00:09:32
Speaker
Which has no hidden edits. It's just all. Which has no hidden edits and is incredible. Yeah. Incredible, incredible other gimmick movie. 1917 has an edit in it.
00:09:46
Speaker
Otherwise, ah cool movie. Yeah. the The first place that I think makes sense yeah to go with this movie is just this really kind of in-your-face aspect of it, which is the single-shot element. Yeah.
00:10:02
Speaker
and And that's why it was kind of like it didn't get great reviews when it came out in 1948. And it was mostly critics being like, oh, well, like if you know film, yeah, this is interesting. But there's not a lot here. And, you know, I i mean, Hitchcock, what is Hitchcock's nickname? It's like the master of suspense. Right. And I don't think there's a ton of suspense in this movie.
00:10:21
Speaker
I actually find this movie quite comical. I would argue intentionally so. um but But I really enjoy a lot of the interplay between John Dahl and Farley Granger, both of whom were queer men, which I think adds to the queer component of the film.
00:10:35
Speaker
Definitely. which Which seems to, from what I've seen, seems to have been pretty intentional from the beginning. At least like they they had been... sort of intentionally masking two people who might have the opportunity to use it as an excuse to, you know, cut cut it from the movie. They intentionally masked the way that they were talking about it to ah to other people.
00:10:59
Speaker
They seem like they're in a relationship the entire time, though, right? definitely. I mean, yeah, sure. In the 40s, you're like, oh, they're just friends. One of the first notes, I was like, these guys are gay, right? They live there together, right? They never... Even ever say that they live there together. There's just it just it's implied very obvious. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're going go to the country house in Connecticut together to celebrate their murder.
00:11:22
Speaker
yeah Yeah, exactly. ah The plot of this movie is pretty straightforward. not a very plotty movie. I mean, it's it's one of those things. It's based on a play. And if you had told me that, which I knew, was like, yeah, that's it's pretty obvious. like It's very static.
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, it feels very theatrical in that sense. Like it feels right. It's all one set. It's like set in a living room of an apartment. There's a a body in a chest the whole time.
00:11:46
Speaker
I think that it's interesting its kind of play roots, right? Because what distinguishes this from a play, right? It's using these long takes. It's trying to give you this experience almost as if you were seeing it on stage by having this quote unquote continuous camera angle.
00:12:04
Speaker
But like what it does cinematically, i think is interesting when it like reduces the amount of differences between ah play and a film by saying like,
00:12:15
Speaker
you know, what can we do with blocking and angle ah that we can't do on a pulled backstage? And I think that's why some critics were like, oh, if you know film, if you pay attention to editing, because like and that that's the thing is like ah the the camera is kind of the star of this movie as opposed to like a lot of the actors in it.
00:12:34
Speaker
And so like I was doing some like I was reading up on ah ah some of it and it was kind of like, oh, yeah, like they like you know The walls would move much like a the theater set so that the way the camera could move through them as the shot was going on.
00:12:46
Speaker
ah They couldn't actually do an 80-minute continuous take in this movie because 10 minutes is how long a roll of film lasted. so like they would have The longest take they could do was 10 minutes. um But yeah, I guess...
00:12:58
Speaker
Whenever I feel like it's a common critique, especially nowadays, if something's based on a stage play and someone's like, oh, it's very stagey. It's very, you know, theatrical in that way and not always as a compliment because it's like, well, what's the point of making this? You know, why make this a film if you're not going to let it step out of those kind of stage roots? And ah I think wrote for the most part does an OK job with that just by virtue of its gimmick. um But I know that, you know, this isn't necessarily Hitchcock's most beloved film, even even by his like fans.
00:13:25
Speaker
I think it it does almost feel like he's he's kind of making this movie with
Cinematic Techniques in 'Rope'
00:13:29
Speaker
one hand tiy tied behind his back. By by sort of like folks being so meticulous about the kind of formal conceit of it.
00:13:39
Speaker
I think that, right, i I think, you know, intercutting is such a, you know, a a good way to build tension. And I think something that Hitchcock is typically very good at is like, building tension through simultaneous action happening and having everything happening in a single frame is it. Yeah. I mean, it is limiting, I guess, but I, I also, my impression of this movie is that it was sort of like, why not try it? Like, yeah yeah, it's never really been done. It was Hitchcock's challenging himself. That's quite literally all this was. And I mean, and there's a true crime component to it too, of course, because like it's based on a play, which is based on the real life, like murder, or the the Leopold and Loeb murders, who I believe they were also in a relationship together. So like, again, gayness just all through this shit.
00:14:21
Speaker
Um, actually, if you want to see a quote unquote remake of this movie, um, there's a movie from the mid two thousands called murder by numbers with, uh, Sandra Bullock and, um, Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt. That's,
00:14:33
Speaker
basically the same plot. Huh? Well, I'm sorry. Two guys try to make a perfect murder and then Sandra Bullock's the detective that like, you know, makes it not perfect. ah But it's not ah it's not a corpse in a box situation.
00:14:44
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And you mentioned the corpse in the box. I mean, and and with Hitchcock having his hands tied behind his back, like there are ways that he can't use certain cinematic language to get to get his signature attention going.
00:15:00
Speaker
but he has probably most don't second most famous device after the concept of a mcguffin which is an unexploded bomb under the table yes right yeah this movie is literally like that anecdote just in 80 minutes yeah i mean it was like this is the most hitchcocky setup is that there's a dead body in a box in the center of the room the whole time But I will say, i mean because I think the most suspenseful moment in the film is when the housekeeper is like, you know, she's about to ah she's about to put the books back in the box. like that That's the most suspense I think that Hitchcock gets out of this conceit of, yeah, there's a body in the in the trunk and hopefully no one opens it.
00:15:39
Speaker
um But that's why I mean, I watch this more of almost like a relationship comedy that happens to have a murder in it. Because watching Farley Granger and John Dahl, like just bicker back and forth is really entertaining.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like, and you were saying, there's, I think that i think the comedy is intentional in in this movie. it's it's It has this really macabre sense of humor.
00:16:03
Speaker
Which was controversial at the time, too. Some critics at the time were even like, it's just, it's really nasty. Like, even though there's no, like, there's no gore. Like, they had to they hit issues with the opening scene with the murder, and it's like, he's already dead by the time we cut to him. Like, it's fine. Yeah, even by Hitchcock standards, it's almost like, it's decidedly un-nasty. Mm-hmm. But I think it's just the subject matter. The fact that like we our protagonists are murderers. And and i mean, I guess Hitchcock would kind of play with this again they'll get to 1951 in Strangers on a Train.
00:16:30
Speaker
But it's just the the matter where it's like, yeah, who are we supposed to root for in this movie? Especially when the, I guess the hero, for lack of a better term, played by Jimmy Stewart, like shows up more than halfway into the film.
00:16:43
Speaker
And kind of isn't presented as a like... heroic character, at least for most of it.
Moral and Philosophical Themes in 'Rope'
00:16:49
Speaker
No, yeah he he's just the one that solves it. But and I believe actually in the play, too, because in the movie, it's pretty definitive. He called he it fires the gun to get the cops to come.
00:16:59
Speaker
That doesn't happen in the play. The play ends ambiguously where you're kind of like, what's he going to do? Like, what is the moral quandary here? So here's the moral quandary. What's he going to do? And I don't think the play answers that question. So we do get an answer at least here.
00:17:14
Speaker
So so what what point does the play cut off? It's it's like when he's determined. Big picture, like it's the same play, but like all the characters are changed. um Even the names are changed. The only character that stays the same is the Jimmy Stewart character.
00:17:26
Speaker
But he's also meant to be like 29 in the play as opposed to like, you know, his mid 40s. But they do they twiak but i think it still ends the same way where he finds the corpse, but it's kind of like, oh, what do I do about this?
00:17:37
Speaker
And fade to black, you know? you You know, you I guess you could argue that the kind of moral cleanness of this movie, it having a an ending that is not ambiguous would be sort of like post Hays Code kind of thing. It's got to have a happy ending or whatever. Well, or you can't let the murderers get away with it. Like that was like, did y'all did y'all discuss Hitchcock's Rebecca when y'all did 1940? Yeah.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And so that was the thing where it's like, yeah, in the book of Rebecca, like Maxim de Winter killed his wife. like that That is an answered question. But they couldn't have that in the movie because you can't have a main character like your hero be someone who murdered and got away with it.
00:18:19
Speaker
So they had to like say, oh, we don't know how she died. And I think that's probably something we're doing similarly here where it's like we we have to give these guys a comeuppance. I think the the the way that the movie ended, though, even if you kind of consider it a bit of ah like a cop-out, it's interesting in that I think it really sells this theme that it's going for of the idea of like this schism between...
00:18:44
Speaker
philosophical musings about dark ideas and putting dark ideas act into actual practice where the movie kind of really comes down and says like you kind of being devil's advocate and thinking about how oh shouldn't it be okay to just murder people um and the movie is just like kind of definitively saying these things have no relation to each other.
00:19:11
Speaker
And especially because, know, this original story at with Leopold Loeb, it happened before World War II. And there's a lot about this movie that feels very post-World War two in that it's like we have seen the kind of deep, the deepness of horrors that can come from taking sort of the eugenesis, for example, ah points of view of um of like philosophy philosophy and then putting that into practice, which is basically what these two characters are doing.
00:19:41
Speaker
Well, and that's the most interesting part of the narrative, because does anyone care about the the the trials and tribulations of Janet and Kenneth? Like we have this romance in here because we just have to have a romance in here, I guess. But yeah I found like all the philosophical quandaries like the most interesting part. And, you know, we're dealing with like Nietzsche and super the Uberman or whatever in this a lot like. i But but yeah, I found the film was that it's most successful when it was more contemplative in that way. Like, I liked watching that repartee at these discussions about like, well, what does it mean? Kind of removing from removing removing ah black and white notions from it, good and bad, right and wrong. um I mean, it doesn't mean that John Dole's character was a Brandon ah is not a huge ah psychopathic asshole, but it's still fun to watch him talk.
00:20:29
Speaker
Jimmy Stewart's character at one point ah basically pitches the purge. yeah
00:20:36
Speaker
like We should have like a strangulation day.
00:20:41
Speaker
And Strangulation Day Anarchy and Strangulation Day. Yeah, yeah it's like you you kind of get the sense, right, that he's he's doing it kind of just to be a little bit like of an edgelord. Like he's yeah he's just kind of musing on stuff in ah in a pretty, in a kind of a jokey way, um even if it's pissing people off at the party.
00:21:02
Speaker
Whereas ah yeah Brandon is like, no, but I i believe all of this. Yeah, but I but i think i think and the and that that's when it's the most... that Again, the most interesting is when they're having the conversation with everyone in the room.
00:21:14
Speaker
Because I guess I was trying to clock it too, because I think like the the guests of the party, like they're there for like kind of like the... It's like 20 minutes with just Brandon and Phillip, then 40 minutes with the whole party, and then 20 minutes with Jimmy Stewart and the two guys.
00:21:27
Speaker
Is this real? It's not real time, right? Because we don't really get to see the dinner happening. i feel like we skip over the dinner, right? I... thought it was supposed to be real time, but it I think the dinner kind of happens off screen almost.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's like they kind of float into other rooms, and then while they're in a certain room, like more time passes in the room that we're not in than kind of would make sense. So they're able to kind of skip forward that way, it sort of seems. I think it is it is kind of fudging.
00:21:56
Speaker
Like it is compressed time, but it also isn't. We're not cutting away for any sections it's just sort of like you get it ah element to the like the time passing thing that I did really like it's just the the huge backdrop oh yes outside the window and how that basically every every scene changes a little bit from day to night And so we see like the sun start to go down and like the lights coming on and all the other buildings, which I think does really kind of sell the, the, the, the time span of the movie.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah. That backdrop looks great. Like really realistic. But again, i i think that adds to the whole, Oh yeah, this is based on a stage play. i mean, even though like backdrops were common of the time, but like watching it today, you're kind of like, Oh yeah, it looks like a state. It looks like a stage set.
00:22:41
Speaker
yeah Yeah. It looks like a really great backdrop, but it still looks like a backdrop. It doesn't look like an actual city backdrop. Right. Yeah. so not like oh they shot They shot this in a real apartment. Where can I, where can I, yeah you know, where where is it? Yeah.
00:22:55
Speaker
I think that's a very Hitchcock-y thing. Like, I think Hitchcock is very... All of his movies tend to take place in, like, movie land. Like, he's not really afraid of VFX or sort of... He's not afraid of a little bit of...
00:23:09
Speaker
kind of staginess or things that draw attention to it being a movie. Yeah, as long as it's effective, you know, I think that's always kind of been his motto. I just revisited the birds recently and he's very much like ah if it works, who cares? Like it doesn't have to be. Right. Well, yeah.
00:23:24
Speaker
For example, I feel like I almost had this, like, as soon as I, as soon as the movie started, I had this almost cinema sins, that like kind of like, kind of like perspective of just like, like, don't people shit themselves when they die?
00:23:39
Speaker
Like, like cinemas and that's going to be destroyed movie culture like because i feel like so much for so many people like they walk into movie and like their judgment of whether it's good or bad is whether it's believable or not i'm like if you're just watching a movie just to see how it's believable even if the situation is like fantastical but like you want like people to behave in weird ways i'm like that's not that's not a fun way to watch a movie man like i just just go with the flow and also those aren't critiques i'm sorry like and then that that's why i mean i i mean i've been in the horror business for 10 plus years and it's whenever people like well Why did they go through that door? You make such stupid decisions. And I was like, you know what, though? I've been in some really like I don't.
00:24:16
Speaker
and I don't ah do well under panic or duress or pressure or things like that. And so I'm like, you know, I would probably be one of the people you're yelling in that horror movie because I would make it. You don't know what you're going to do in the moment when someone is chasing you with a knife. Like you just don't know.
00:24:29
Speaker
Yeah. Who cares? Don't gripe about it. but That's kind of like my, my big criticism of whenever people like, Oh, like this, this character is so stupid in this, you know, scary scenario. And I'm like, have you met people? Like, yeah, they're stupid. People do not behave well in, in dangerous scenarios. a lot of the time.
00:24:46
Speaker
A hundred percent. And I'm like, okay. But the people that say that are more often than not like like Brandon in this movie, that they just think that they're the smartest person in the world and above everyone else.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. lot of hubris in this movie. A lot of really like delicious moments where yeah you're getting to enjoy this like really just kind of shit-eating kind of like like vibe that that that he has while he's like tempting he's like testing the fate especially when he uses the rope uh which is so like so like so twisted really like he'd be like uses the rope that killed the guy's son to wrap up his gift for him it's like so much like chutzpah in this movie and you're just watching from both the perspective of like love loving the deliciousness of it from from from one perspective and being anxious about it from from the other guy's perspective
00:25:44
Speaker
but Because Brandon is an idiot. Like, but, but, but because basically the, the murder scene that opens the film is kind of like the sex scene of the movie, right? Like these two men have just finished fucking and they're really enjoying it, but then they're constantly chasing that high for the road. I'm sorry.
00:25:59
Speaker
Brandon is constantly chasing that high for the rest of the film. Um, Philip is done like he he he actually seems disturbed by the act they have just committed and doesn't really want to poke the bear any further along.
00:26:11
Speaker
But Brandon is like, no, no, no. and we I want to keep feeling this thing that we got from this murder. And so he's making these dumb, dunderheaded decisions like, oh, let's invite our old college professor who's like a detective and might like. the like He was asking for it the whole time.
00:26:26
Speaker
That's right as murderers often do. when but that's the thing you know they always say murderers want to get caught if you have if you want to be famous you have to get caught and that's not necessarily what brandon was doing here but i he i he really didn't think he was going to get caught so when but when when he realizes that jimmy stewart is about to solve this thing it's actually really fun to watch him like fall apart and be like oh i've lost and that that that to me is the actual climax of this movie is him realizing i've lost a Kind of what reminds me of, I mean, completely unrelated, I guess. It reminds me of the part at the end of Mandy where where the guy who's like has all of this power and and influence suddenly realizes that it's like it's gone from him and and he just completely crumbles and... and
00:27:19
Speaker
it's in any movie and it's always revenge films for me, but I'm always like, it if someone's like killing someone because of some reason, like I always hate it when they just show up and just like shoot him in the head or just kill him really quickly. I was like, no, no, no, no. no no no no no no Villains get monologues before they kill you.
00:27:34
Speaker
You need to, ah you need to tell that person, this is why I'm doing this and you're dying. I am killing you. And I want to go, I hate when they just kill him. No, but I guess maybe that's how people get killed, right? Cause they do the monologue and then they they get killed during the monologue. Yeah.
00:27:47
Speaker
I also I think to ah ah listen in like revenge movies that can often be a thing of like actually getting the ro actually killing the villain is like unsatisfying. It is like it's it's like doesn't you don't get this big moment. It's like very mundane.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah. like I can think about like Road to Perdition. It's like most of the movie Tom Hanks is like. trying to get revenge on Daniel Craig. And it's like when he does, it's like, so there's like no words are exchanged. It's like, it's it's, it's a tiny short scene that you can almost like it's anticlimactic.
00:28:23
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want that emotional catharsis, which I guess is not really much of that in this movie. Cause even when they get caught, it's kind of like, well, let's just sit down. Right. That ending scene, by the way, like I love how we've kind of transitioned all the way into night, and then we get the neon blinking light that it starts casting over the entire scene.
00:28:46
Speaker
it's It's kind of the prototype, it feels like, of what he ended up doing in Vertigo with the with the neon lighting. Mm-hmm. and but it's just like a super super stylized way of kind of bringing you into this other realm. They get also a bit of a prototype for Suspiria in a way, I think, like this really like bold lighting that that is that is kind of unrealistic, but like
00:29:17
Speaker
It's like a hiding a reality sorts. Yeah, people's emotions, that kind of thing. Yeah. yeah yeah the Notable that this is Hitchcock's first color movie. Oh, did not know that. I didn't realize that either.
00:29:30
Speaker
Switching to Technicolor, which I guess, and I mean, he'll keep going back to making Black White movies for a long time. ah Yeah, was I was like, is this the first the first one that he shot in color? And it is.
00:29:41
Speaker
Huh. Yeah, i think he was because i this I guess when there's that time to work the Academy, would ah there was like a cinematography award for black and white cinematography and one for color cinematography. And so yeah because I remember I remember always being curious that he why he made psycho in black and white because 1960 was pretty late for still doing black and white. but It was very intentional in his part. He was like, oh, this is a black and white movie.
00:30:01
Speaker
Yeah. But then like it if they shot this movie in black and white, I'm sure it would have been easier because the cameras wouldn't have been as big. Oh, true. That's yeah. Valid point, actually. Mm hmm.
00:30:12
Speaker
But there is something to just the kind of the the lushness of Technicolor that does sort of it makes this movie feel kind of, I guess, more like an A movie, like a big. Like a AAA feature? Yeah, yeah. Or it's like, this one's in color.
00:30:26
Speaker
yeah Which I think, yeah, i don't know. it It seems like, it's also just a yeah it's like Hitchcock getting another and tool in the toolbox. I wonder that was... already kind of like playing with that, right? With like, trying different like different weird colors and...
00:30:38
Speaker
Yeah. I wonder if that was a intentional too, where it was kind of like, oh, well, like if people like don't think there's enough action in this movie, then like the color of the film, because this is, I'm assuming a relatively new concept at this time. I and i know we had color before, but like not every film was doing it. um Yeah. So don't know. Maybe was let but the bright colors distract them from the story. Yeah.
Technicolor and LGBTQ+ Themes in 'Rope'
00:31:00
Speaker
Maybe. you know Yeah, I mean, I do think it was like, it was a draw to see something in Technicolor. Like, it definitely wasn't uncommon, but it also, yeah, it was sort of like, I think it it gave movies shot in Technicolor an extra prestige.
00:31:16
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Indie films. Whatever the indie film equivalent of 1948 was, they weren't doing color films. Yeah. Or they were like weird experimental colored movies. Yeah. yeah I mean, it does feel like a bit 3D of the 2010s. Well, I was actually going to ask. I was like, do you know if they charge more money per ticket for color films versus black and white films? I i would i wouldn't put it past Hollywood, but, you know. So, I don't know about that. That's an interesting thing to look up. One thing that
00:31:47
Speaker
That might have been the case around the turn of the century, actually, yeah because because all of the color films were hand-painted. And so they charged more for reels of color films than black and white films because the extra labor.
00:32:03
Speaker
Did they charge more for tickets, though? That I'm not i not certain on. yeah They're always passing it along to them. I think a fun thing about doing this podcast is we have seen how much, like,
00:32:14
Speaker
Like 3D we think of as, there's been a recent 3D like boom, but it's like they were trying to make 3D movies right away. Like that's been around for like as long as movies have almost. They remade Arrival a Train in 1913. Yeah.
00:32:36
Speaker
next 1913, something like that. Yeah. the Scariest movie ever made. you The best possible premise. I thought it was really interesting what you said earlier about seeing at the beginning of them killing the guy being almost like they had just had sex and like having to grapple with that and chase that high. I think there's like, there's some rich, there's some rich stuff in there. Yeah. And again, this is all subtext or honestly, sometimes text in this movie's case. I mean, I think it's really hard to watch this movie and not view them as a gay couple, but.
00:33:12
Speaker
as someone who's immersed in horror in the genre film so much, like sex scenes and murder scenes can be interchangeable very often. You know, how many times have you seen like an orgasmic gush of blood come out of something? And it's like, uh, um, we do it a lot. And so I, I think if you really, if you're looking at this film from the angle of, Oh yeah, this is, this is a gay couple, like,
00:33:34
Speaker
getting the rocks off, murder just takes the place of sex in this scenario. um Which is funny because you can show the murder in the movie but not sex. Right. This is also interesting. It's just like it if you were to sort of take that along a different angle of just like the idea of wanting to get caught and wanting to hide. It's almost like this metaphor for coming out in a way. Right. Or or being out one. One person's afraid to be. Right. Well, no, absolutely. And so if you view this like as, you know, um like
00:34:08
Speaker
ah Brandon is the one that's very comfortable his own skin, you know, he he's out and proud kind of or he's at least at this time period, he's willing he's willing to push the button so far to where someone might realize that he's gay or slap slash a murderer.
00:34:21
Speaker
Whereas Philip, the Farley Grander character is like is not he he is someone who has not come to terms of is with this queerness yeah with a sexuality. and It plays in every single scene, even the the the the story about, you know, did he struggle with chicken or not? Like, again, you could read that as um just another instead of murdering a chicken, murdering it. Can you murder a chicken?
00:34:40
Speaker
i Just another in instance of ah of a sexual encounter with another man that he has as a teenager or a kid um that he's still viciously lying about. Is that ah is that a euphemism that I'm unaware of? Murder the chicken, choke the chicken. Yeah.
00:34:58
Speaker
yeah I somehow didn't even put that together. yeah yeah And i mean you know I think also kind of worth highlighting that this is sort of... i mean, as far as we've seen this is some of the more explicit and like traditional queer coding that that we have seen so far at least in an American movie and definitely in and like a Hays Code movie yeah yeah and and it's like kind of beginning this tradition of having the queer coded characters be the villain characters.
00:35:35
Speaker
Well, I mean, I know Maltese Falcon is a i mean, there's two. There's the pre code one also. that I guess I shouldn't say beginning this tradition, but I I think like in the year of our Lord 2025, do think there's more sensitivity around like depiction of queer characters and like, oh, like that we don't make them villains.
00:35:51
Speaker
i I personally don't have an issue with it. I think it always the issue I have is whenever a person is villainous because they are queer. But if they are villainous and happen to be queer, i don't really have a problem with it.
00:36:02
Speaker
um But that being said, though, I mean, like with the way queer people are treated in this country, even today, if someone wants to go crazy and murder someone because they're gay, mean, Sure. Like, I buy that. Like, it's depiction does not equal endorsement, you know?
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. i think it's like, um yeah, not not castigating the movie for this as much as just ah like, kind of noticing its place in like a sort of trend yeah yeah that that existed in in cinema history.
00:36:32
Speaker
um Also, I'm sorry to go back to this chicken thing. like I had to look to this line of dialogue. But but but Brandon does tell Philip when he's like, you've done this multiple times. He says, you're quite a good so chicken strangler, as I recall. I'm like, OK, come that's not even subtext that you're just saying he he's good at jacking the you off.
00:36:50
Speaker
Also, right, like strangling someone, I feel like is is both a sex act and a way to murder someone. Yes, very much so. hmm. So like they could have, I guess, stabbing him could be, you know, interpreted that way, too.
00:37:06
Speaker
I mean, Hitchcock also notable guy who intertwines sex and violence. Yeah. So he he definitely um he definitely liked like pushing pushing both as much as possible.
00:37:20
Speaker
The guy was a big old horned dog. Oh, yeah. I guess like the kind of villain archetypes that Brandon and Phillip kind of fit into. and i i could definite I could recognize a certain degree of just like the...
00:37:34
Speaker
the the The like villainous duo where one is always nervous and one is always really overconfident. like That seems like... that i mean This movie definitely didn't invent that, but that feels like a kind of... A classic like villain ah ah yeah like archetype.
00:37:53
Speaker
That there's somewhat pulling the other one along with them. like One's the top and one's the bottom. yeah I guess so, sure.
00:38:02
Speaker
Yeah. It's funny how many, you like, parallels there are. yeah Well, it's I found ah this this piece. It's written by Armand White, who's a critic that I don't like very much. but Oh, my God, the famous. I know. arm a but but The infamous.
00:38:15
Speaker
But for out.com, he wrote an article titled How Hitchcock's Classic Mystery Rope Cleverly Depicted Queer Life. And but one of the... but excerpts that i highlighted from this was he says rope story of one upmanship and intellectual warfare among a particular class of gay men is ultimately universal.
00:38:30
Speaker
It shows extraordinary insight subtly observing mid 20th century gay behavior. The film's greatest suspense is in its recognition of secret furtive lust. Certainly Hitchcock knew such hookups as part of modern urban life.
00:38:44
Speaker
i like that. And he also ah reads the opening the the the murder as a threesome. Yeah. a threesome gone awry Armand White king of good takes I guess I'm not gonna go that far yeah I would never say trust me when I saw this I was like Armand what is that the same Armand what it be the same there's no way he's just an angry, bitter old queen. He had a good opinion.
00:39:11
Speaker
Yeah. I have a couple of spare observations, unless you guys have any other big things that you talk about. want to talk about one. One is that there's a scene where they're all talking about astrology and and they're talking about like, what time were you born? And i have been at this party where everyone's just like, oh, you guys download CoStar right now. Yeah. huh Because because coar you have to know the it's the location, the day and the time of birth. And that's always like everyone's yeah i like good mom, dad. When was I born?
00:39:43
Speaker
I know I've said that I've said that that text before.
00:39:49
Speaker
um And then also one other thing is the part where I'm so bad at people's names. The part where Philip is playing the piano and then there is ah metronome that that is like ticking back and forth. And i think it's such a genius little device where this metronome is exact. Right. And you can judge how anxious he is by how close to the metronome he's playing.
00:40:17
Speaker
It's like, it's it's so well done. Well, and that that's the thing. I think that Philip is ultimately the more... his He's the more one-dimensional character in the film because he he's kind of one note. Like, he's just anxious and stressed all the time.
00:40:30
Speaker
Whereas Brandon is very much... He contains multitudes. But I always find myself wanting to know more about Philip or get more from Philip in the movie. Because I feel like, again, yeah, he just is that kind of one note character. And i want I want more layers for him. But I guess at the same time, we don't really have time. Yeah.
00:40:44
Speaker
but Yeah, i mean, this movie is so constrained that so much has to be done through implication of what happened before and what might be happening right now.
Suspense Techniques in 'Rope'
00:40:55
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of good off screen dialogue. I think in this like the most tense moment is when ah what's it? What's her name? They're like the housekeeper. Miss Wilson.
00:41:07
Speaker
Mrs. Wilson is oh like opening the chest with the body in it. And like that's all happening. It's like her putting away like everything from dinner, like taking the tablecloth off, putting like blowing out at the candles, like putting taking the plates and trays, like putting them in the other room.
00:41:23
Speaker
And it's like that's what the camera is on the whole time. And there's this other discussion that's happening off screen that is like. you know more just like intellectual musings going on. But it's like, we're not looking at that. We're focused on like this sort of... all of like And it's that thing, right? what's like the The more like busy work she does, the tenser it gets. like yeah The more like little sort of ah like almost opening it, like i almost doing this...
00:41:49
Speaker
um And that's that feels very Hitchcock and just a good ah good moment of sustained tension. Yeah, because I actually had wondered if... Oh my God, I don't know. I remember the director's name. if it's yeah but Whoever directed Diabolique, the French film. It was like 1955. But a lot of that is also kind of what going around ah a body in a trunk that you know you can't reveal or whatever.
00:42:11
Speaker
And so I do wonder how influential this was, even though it wasn't as lauded its initial release. There was some dialogue in this movie that I thought was a little... a little clunky especially in the beginning like a little expositional stuff where they're like well of course as we all know that they are his parents oh like yeah stuff like like you know i think anytime someone starts a sentence with like um as you know yeah right like after all you know and it's like nah just you know so that i think that i think that's very that feels it's very also kind of though
00:42:45
Speaker
Yeah, but I also think there's lots of movies that I think anytime I see a movie that feels very kind of like theatrical or in in ah in a clunky way, because it it I often like when movies are like actively not trying to be...
00:43:01
Speaker
reality Actually, I guess. So maybe it may be like another kind of like because we're thinking, OK, well, what are like stage plays that have been adapted? But I'm like, OK, what about single location films? Because I think single location films can also feel a little bit stagey sometimes. We're kind of like, oh, it's not dynamic enough. And I mean, even like have you ever seen is relatively recent Roman Polanski's Carnage from like, I want to say 2013.
00:43:22
Speaker
I think it's 2011. I did see that 10 or 11. I did see that when it came out. and I have very little memory of it. but it Yeah, really good movie. but it's two It's two sets of parents, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and they're meeting because their kids got in a fight at school. And so they're meeting to talk about it. And the whole movie is just them in this apartment getting drunker and drunker and drunker and fighting over their kids.
00:43:44
Speaker
um That also started as a play. Yes, that that one was a play. But then on the flip side, there's another movie that came out two years ago called Mass that is directed by Frank Kranz from like um ah Cabin in the Woods and like a bunch of Joss Whedon stuff.
00:43:58
Speaker
But um that movie is almost the same concept, but it's a drama and it's two sets of parents that meet because the kid of one set of parents was a school shooter who killed the kid of the other set of parents and they meet you in a church basement to um to talk about it. And it's like, oh, it's fucking, it's not based on a play. It's an original story.
00:44:16
Speaker
Fucking great. But it's um it's Anne Dowd and like Martha Plimpton and jason Jason Isaacs. And I can't remember who the other a guy cast. But this reminds me of that. you know This is like the 1948 Hitchcockian version of that where it's like, yeah, let's get all these people in a room and we are with them for the entire time.
00:44:30
Speaker
And again, you can view that as a gimmick. And I think it is. But does it does does that gimmick work for you? And I think for a lot of people, it doesn't always work um unless the dialogue is charged enough. because even in both, um I want to say Carnage and Mass, the camera isn't doing a ton. Like it all relies on the script and the actors. But in this film, I think it's the opposite, where it's the camera is doing all the work.
00:44:51
Speaker
The actors are doing good work, but like the script is kind of like, it's a little basic script. um But it's fine. ah Just whatever floats your boat. Whatever hangs your rope. yeah I did have the thought that this is like, this movie is what like conservatives think like coastal elite elites are. Right. and into Intellectual gay murderers who are constantly hosting dinner parties.
00:45:17
Speaker
Well, I also love like, we're better than everyone else. I also love the etiquette behind the champagne. Like they say, Oh, we're going to have champagne. Is it someone's birthday? Is it an occasion? No, we're just having champagne, bitch.
00:45:27
Speaker
Shut up. Yeah. It's suspicious. Yeah. yeah
00:45:33
Speaker
ah Yeah, fun movie. I enjoyed it yeah yeah Glad I finally seen it after having heard about it for many, many years. I mean i think the fact that it is 80 minutes helps. This is a two hour movie. I think it would feel very long and drawn out. And um I think 80 minutes is just perfect. brenttime It is exactly 80 minutes because when it ends, it just ends. There's no end credits for this movie. Right.
00:45:52
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Which I think is like is not that uncommon. No, not not at this time. Yeah. Because we get all the credits out of the way first, which really was a smart idea because like people leave during the end credits of a movie, but you they have to stay during the opening credits of a movie. Yeah.
00:46:08
Speaker
It does seem... Pushing credits to the end does seem like a something that has happened more and more just as movies have existed for longer. Yeah. Well, yeah. It's always... It's a pretty rare move that people pull lately of putting the credits to the beginning so that you can just end, which people do sometimes. And it's always... I like i like the... i like the moxie of it, you know? It's just like, boom, movie's over. Get out. Yeah, dang. i Can you think any recent movies that have done that?
00:46:36
Speaker
Not the top of my head. Not off the top of my head, I know. like Well, it's a thing also because we live in a world with post-credits scenes, so like you have to have the credits if you want to tease something at the end of the movie. Yeah. That's my my my challenge to Marvel movies is to put all the credits at the beginning next time. And the movie. yeah
00:46:54
Speaker
Yeah. Thanos snap. Have the credits run yeah during the movie. like Every like kind of a couple of seconds, like a credit just pops up at the bottom of the screen. I'm not against that either. I love ah a late title drop in a movie. Oh, 40 minutes in that. Oh, he's fun. Honestly, I think one of the best examples of that, too, is um the remake of Friday of the 13th, because that movie has a 25 minute cold open before the title card pops up. It's fucking great.
00:47:21
Speaker
Hopefully someday we'll get a rope X in space. Rope in space. Honestly, I'm a little surprised. Wait, rope in space. I'm a little surprised they almost tried to remake this though. Now want to that. I know, right?
00:47:33
Speaker
ah But I guess maybe it's because, like oh, we don't remake Hitchcock. That's kind of the thing, like especially after Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho. but like i guess like one One notable example. Yeah, but it's kind of like, well, I mean, like, this is this is not a perfect Hitchcock film. It's not one of his best. It's not one of his worst. But, like, I think there's something, again, I don't know how would keep the single take gimmick for a remake. But, I mean, like, whatever a filmmaker wanted to do, like, just, or make it make it an actual single take.
00:47:58
Speaker
Right. Yeah, I mean, you know it's not ah it's not a ah thriller in the Hitchcockian sense, but I do think that the actual single take movie, Victoria, like, does a good job of, like, building tension through this whole through the whole film.
00:48:14
Speaker
And so I feel like if we were that if people were to attempt something like that today, could be could be effective. Yeah. Birdman won a lot of awards, I guess. I mean, they're a bit more modern. Oh, God, there was one a couple years ago called Soft and Quiet. Did y'all ever hear about or see this movie?
00:48:30
Speaker
No. It's one of those ones. a it's It's presented as a single take, but it's like not but like I think it hides the cuts really well. But it's like this movie starts and it's a bunch of women. They're like ah this small town. They're meeting and you're like okay like, what are these women doing?
00:48:42
Speaker
And they start talking and this woman pulls out a pie and she pulls the top off the pie and there's a swastika like carved in it. And you realize that you're watching a meeting of like white supremacists. And the whole movie is like they come across some Asian women and it's kind of like what they do to them. So you're basically watching a hate crime in real time with a single take. Yeah.
00:49:02
Speaker
but I would not recommend this movie to most people because i my husband, it's say it's he hated it. like He's like, I don't know why you would make this. like You're just watching racists commit a hate crime. like what's What's the artistic value in this?
00:49:13
Speaker
But I think it's a really effective movie, and I think it also has the writer and director is not a white person. So there's a reason for it, clearly. But anyway, Soft and Quiet, recommend that, too. he Uh, well, uh, if you, uh, uh, if you want to see ah trace recommend, some more movies, uh, I know that's really why I'm here. Uh, you can check out his podcast, horror queers. Uh, and yeah, thanks a lot for joining us. appreciate it. Of course. And yeah thank you if you happen to live in Denver, come to the Sloan's Lake draft house on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and come see my programming.
00:49:47
Speaker
Yes, I highly recommend that. from any any any Any cool screenings coming up that people should be aware of Yeah, I have to think. I was like, what have coming up? No, I will tell you in just a second when I look at my schedule. We are... Maybe give it like an extra couple of weeks just because we got to edit this and everything. That is true. Well, I will say that for September, what I've been screening is for Terror Tuesday, I've screened the 1999 remake of House of Haunted Hill.
00:50:19
Speaker
I've screened 2007's The Orphanage, Child's Play 2, and Audition, the 1999 J-horror film. ah For Weird Wednesday, we I've done Jawbreaker, David k Cronenberg's Crash.
00:50:31
Speaker
and So not the racist one, but the one where ah Holly Hunter and James Spader like to fuck by car crashes. um And Dread three d Nice. Oh, you're doing it in 3D? I was shocked because I've been told before we can't do 3D. And I was like, oh, do I have this in 3D? Yeah, we got it in 3D. So, yeah, we're getting dread in 3D. Nice. I want to see. i I did not get to see that in 3D. So it's a blast. It's a blast. Yeah, sure.
00:50:55
Speaker
But yeah, thank you for having me on. This is this is again any any chance to come on and talk about Hitchcock. It's just fun. great yeah yeah yes you appreciate it once again uh i guess now on to the next movie uh thanks again another technicolor movie uh which in some ways i feel like could call the most technicolor movie it kind of is yeah uh is the red shoes definitely a very very famous technicolor movie Yeah, i think that's nice technicolor i think my Technicolor book actually has the red shoes on the cover.
00:51:28
Speaker
Right, yeah. yeah Another Powell and Pressburger joint. Lords of Technicolor. Yeah. I just want a filter that I can put on things that makes it look like a Powell and Pressburger movie.
00:51:41
Speaker
Don't we all? Maybe that's like, ah you know, AI taking the jobs of ah of color timers or whatever, but... ah color you want you You don't want a filter. You want a look-up table is what you want. Is that what it's sort for?
00:51:56
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So The Red Shoes ah is a movie about um a woman who becomes... ah who's Who's ambitiously trying to get into the high-tier ballet world. but She meets someone who runs an opera company who is...
00:52:14
Speaker
ah kind of brutal and possessive in certain ways, but he's a true artist. Boris Lementov. Lementov. And she and and another kind of prodigy ah come together to create the Red Shoes, which is a real ballet.
00:52:30
Speaker
They come together to to put on this big production of the Red Shoes. Yeah, and and it goes very, very well, but then things start kind of falling apart because this guy is a monster to work underneath, and he's also, like I was saying, very possessive, and so when the two of them fall in love, he destroys everything and would rather tank the relationship that he has with both of them in order to not have any kind of threat to his...
00:53:00
Speaker
He said, none none of this adolescent stuff. I want pure dance. You one of the greatest dancers. Dance is all I care about. and And then there's this kind of tearing that happens of, you know, do we start out on our own and be our own thing?
00:53:19
Speaker
ah And ah that doesn't really work out. ah but the Bad things happen. Mm hmm. Mirroring the ballet in many ways. Indeed.
00:53:30
Speaker
It's a bit of a Hamlet situation. About a sort of cursed pair of red dancing shoes that force you to dance until death. And yes. And so, spoilies, this movie ends in death.
00:53:43
Speaker
It is the way that the meta production of the red shoes, you're able to she's able to become free of vicki What are your thoughts on the red shoes?
00:53:55
Speaker
ah Pretty good. I enjoyed it. I got to see this one in a theater, which is a rare treat. Never seen it before that. And the yeah the only Powell Pressburger movie that I've seen and a theater, which is ah pretty cool.
00:54:11
Speaker
I also got to see, before I even saw the movie, I had seen the actual titular red shoes at the Academy Museum. yeah They had a whole whole exhibit about not just Technicolor, but just color in general in movies.
00:54:27
Speaker
They have multiple red shoes on, multiple distinct red shoes on display at that museum, right? Because they also have the ruby slippers. Right, yeah. Red shoes are a big ah big thing in early Technicolor films.
00:54:42
Speaker
I mean, they look great in Technicolor, so why not? Yeah. Yeah. um I think that's kind of the most notable maybe thing about this movie is just its its use of color and it's sort of, it's it's just vivid ah costumes and sets and color palette.
00:55:00
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's like, like we're saying, it's like the showbiz drama, but it is kind of centered around this like 20 minute section and like right in the middle, which is just the the ballet, the red shoes. Yeah.
00:55:14
Speaker
And it's like, it completely abandons all sense of reality. It becomes the this surrealist, expressionistic, silent ballet film for 20 minutes. And it's, oh, like the showbiz movie is like a good movie. You're like, great drama, high stakes,
00:55:31
Speaker
yeah my but But the ballet section in the middle is like transcendently good. It's it's hard to come down from that high and in a way. Right. You're like, oh, now we have to go back to like a movie about people, like real people. bor Yeah.
00:55:45
Speaker
Yeah, it it it's like the, um you know, it's it's getting at the kind of unreality of Busby Berkeley type thing. Or, um you know, I rewatched La La Land recently, and I feel like it's kind of a vote, like in some of its scenes where it's kind of leaving reality. It's sort of evoking sort of a similar type of deal as what's going on here.
00:56:07
Speaker
ah Yeah, I love I love movies that like leave physical space. but Yeah. Oh, yeah, whether it's 2001 or the end of Evangelion or the Red Shoes or La La Land.
00:56:20
Speaker
I think this movie, did like it did remind me of Busby Berkeley and it's just its scope and it's like just the amount of kind of spectacle of it. But I think it goes eat much further than Busby Berkeley or probably La La Land, which I think La La Land is pretty directly inspired by this movie.
00:56:37
Speaker
It's like it's way more impressionistic, I think, than either of those. it It feels really the thing that reminded me the most of is like silent movies. It's like got real kind of Caligari vibes at times.
00:56:51
Speaker
You're talking about particularly during the opera scene, though, or the yeah ballet scene. and Yeah, yeah. And it's just, oh, just the the sets in that. And it goes into just like, you start to even lose sense of like, what is a set and what is like the effects? Yeah. Like it it gets so kind of abstract.
00:57:09
Speaker
It's one shots kind of morphing into each other, like as as an element kind of comes into frame, I guess. Very cool stuff. Yeah.
00:57:19
Speaker
It really does feel like a kind of um like a blending of of like filmmaking and ballet or dance. Like it's kind of pulling all of it together into this thing that is really... it simultaneously feels like it is sort of like going back and pulling from a lot of silent movie techniques.
00:57:41
Speaker
And it also feels like this kind of new thing that hasn't really been done to this extent. Yeah, man, I wish I had just rewatched um just the dance scene again, because I want to watch it again anyway. But um I have a difficult time with dance sometimes ah because it is really abstract, right?
00:58:04
Speaker
Like, it's hard to pull a narrative out of dance. It's hard to pull meaning out of dance. And, like, what any individual moment of human movement is...
00:58:15
Speaker
is kind of hard to define. um Or it's it's it's the the way that you appreciate it is non-literal. The way that you appreciate it is like in feeling.
00:58:26
Speaker
and And so I feel like there are aspects of what this movie is doing, maybe a la Fantasia in certain ways, is it's trying to like use color and cinematic techniques to...
00:58:42
Speaker
mirror slash emphasize the sort of abstract beauty of dance. I think the intent of this sort of like very abstract way of shooting the the dance sequence is to kind of put you Put you in the the the the brain of the dancers a bit. And it's sort of like, this is what this is what it feels like to be dancing, as opposed to like, this is what it actually looks like.
00:59:09
Speaker
Which is very cool. And I think is a great, just like a good use of film as an artistic medium, I think. Not to get too like hoity-toity about it, but it it does feel like it's sort of like, it's using...
00:59:25
Speaker
the Yeah, it's it's it's using all of the tools at at hand in really smart, creative ways. Yeah, very cool sequence. I'm glad that I have it on. It's one of my few 4K Blu-rays.
00:59:38
Speaker
And when I saw that go on the Criterion sale, I was like, it's hard to think of a movie that justifies 4K more than the Red Shoes. Yeah, probably. i mean, I think it it's been like restored fairly recently, right? To like its full grandeur, right?
00:59:55
Speaker
I guess if they put out a 4K disc of it, then it means like it has been. You should hope so. and And so, yeah, I mean, I saw it in a theater and it looked phenomenal. And that was like, you know, on a very big screen.
01:00:08
Speaker
ah The first time that I saw this was at the nitrate picture show. So I saw this on film, on nitrate film. Damn. ah And yes. very Having never seen a nitrate film, I mean, I don't know if that is necessarily any better, but I've been told that it is. So I'm going to assume that that's correct.
01:00:27
Speaker
I think people want to believe that it is Maybe somebody can prove me wrong, but like everyone says like, you know, most nitrate films because it's pre 1953 are black and white.
01:00:39
Speaker
Uh, and so the thing that people say about nitrate is that it like, it's the, the, the silvers are more silvery, like it glistens in a different way. And I don't know if I could necessarily determine that to be the case.
01:00:53
Speaker
ah But ah because the, the, the crystals and silver on the print on the emulsion are the same. It's just a different plastic, ah but maybe, I don't know. Anyway, it's kind of cool anyway, just see a film that could catch on fire.
01:01:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, element of danger in there. Yeah. Anything about the outer kind of melodrama of this?
01:01:22
Speaker
I mean, the melodrama feels pretty um not standard, but it has a lot of kind of like showbiz movie tropes. I guess it is about sort of like the push and pull between like personal happiness and And kind of professional success or artistic success.
01:01:44
Speaker
Yeah. um Sacrificing yourself for your passion for your art. Yeah. um Apparently, i think it was ah Powell who said that this movie is about, like, art that is worth dying for. That that is, like, explicitly kind of what it's about, which...
01:02:05
Speaker
I don't necessarily know if i agree with, but um i and in a very sort of melodramatic way, I like how this movie is sort of like... It is taking, I think, a lot of common things that artists struggle with and blowing up blowing them up to just like incredibly massive stakes and scale.
01:02:27
Speaker
And apparently ah it is not necessarily reflective of what like... ballet is like I don't know man there's enough of these movies like Whiplash and Tar and this that like make me think Black Swan another movie I think is very directly inspired by this movie to the extent that it's not in all the ways that it's not inspired by Perfect Blue is inspired by this movie besides Perfect Blue this is the movie that it's pulling the most from
01:03:04
Speaker
um Down to I mean this movie has Swan Lake in it so yeah um and and it does the same thing with the like the pirouetting whip pan point of view thing we're like as someone's pirouetting the cameras like whipping to their point of view as they stop in this, the dance spin.
01:03:24
Speaker
It's a hard thing to describe. Yeah, no, I know that that's like, that's a camera thing that blacks one is. I, I am, I have to imagine pulling directly from this because it's like the exact same camera move.
01:03:34
Speaker
Right. Yeah. In the exact same context.
01:03:39
Speaker
POV, you're a ballet dancer. There's so much texture in this movie. um Even outside the context of just the um the dance scene. Like the the walls, the the wallpaper, like yeah the the paint on the banisters, like everything has this kind of ombre to it.
01:04:00
Speaker
You know, ah this like it has a one an ombre. It's like a like a gradient. OK, I've never heard ombre used in that.
01:04:11
Speaker
Not ombre, like... Not the Spanish ombre. Yeah. or Who's this hermano guy? um But... ah it Like, nothing is like a pure color. It's like almost just this, like...
01:04:26
Speaker
coffee stain kind of like a beautiful version of a coffee stain, like on the entire, on the entire frame. ah Everything is just flowing from one color to the next. And it's like a really, really pretty thing going on, I guess. Yeah.
01:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, this movie shot by ah Jack Cardiff, once again, who also did ah Black Narcissus last year. One thing I did kind of appreciate about this movie is that right it sets up this sort of not really love triangle between the three lead characters, but this sort of triangle of like attention.
01:05:07
Speaker
and yeah And I like how it it's it's never treated as a like romantic character. love triangle like two of the characters are in love but then Lermontov the the head of the ballet is like he is very possessive and controlling of um Vicky but it it's it's never really treated as like a romantic relationship I feel like there's like some you know vague implication that he has some kind of jealousy with a romantic flair.
01:05:40
Speaker
He's also kind of gay coded at the same time. Right. which i end like Yeah. Leads me to adds to my sort of assumption that it is, is not romantic, but, but yeah, he is definitely like,
01:05:57
Speaker
He wants absolute control over everything in his life. And um Anton Walbrook, who we also saw in yeah Colonel Blimp, he's really good in this. um Yeah.
01:06:08
Speaker
Playing a very different character from the one he did in Colonel Blimp, who's like ends up kind of being a sweetie pie a little bit. like Yeah. And then this is like a very like cold, controlling, like imposing figure.
01:06:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, um Colonel Blimp was made during the war, maybe before they had discovered the full extent of ah the the Nazi crimes.
01:06:37
Speaker
And ah it's possible that now for for for now and for a long time, a German will never get a non-evil role. Well, it was Austrian. It wasn't German.
01:06:47
Speaker
so So was Hitler. Okay. Hey, you know what you know who else was only following orders? Hitler. And also the character is Russian, I think. Not German.
01:06:59
Speaker
But anyway. Anyway. He's scary. He's domineering. um And I think that the movie kind of delivers him a shock in a way because he has lost control of his muse.
01:07:18
Speaker
in a way that he can regain and plot to regain. But then you can see, you finally see him sort of break when he is fully lost control of his muse in death.
01:07:29
Speaker
i And, and kind of reckoning with how he drove her to death. So apparently i was I was watching some of the movie with commentary earlier today to to brush up because it's an old movie. The commentary is mostly you like clips from different interviews have been taking.
01:07:47
Speaker
And one of them is with Moira Shearer, who plays Vicky, who was a real ballet dancer. and was cast in this movie precisely because they they they knew they needed an actual dancer to play the lead role because they didn't want to like switch between different people.
01:08:03
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And apparently when she was first given the script this movie, she thought it was terrible and was like this, like none of this rings as true to me as like, this is not, this is like such an exaggerated, absurd kind of view of what like ah a ballet company is like.
01:08:20
Speaker
um And she was basically like bullied into making the movie a little bit where like the the directors kept showing up, just like showing up at the ballet company until finally her boss was just like, can you make the movie so that they'll go away?
01:08:38
Speaker
But he's very good in the movie. And for, I think, for someone who I don't know how much like dramatic sort of acting experience she had before this, um does really well in the sort of the the more dramatic scenes that aren't as dance heavy.
01:08:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. She doesn't kind of read as an amateur necessarily. Big ah red hair, which I feel like is a Powell Pressburger thing. They love it. They love a a color thing.
01:09:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Great hair in this movie all around. I feel like know. Maybe that's just a thing that I noticed. But I was like every scene. i mean, every scene has like great costumes, great hair.
01:09:17
Speaker
I feel like the yeah the why that out to me so much but the composer Julian Craster, his hair seems like maybe in in your style area. Maybe, yeah.
01:09:28
Speaker
Apparently he ah naturally was also redhead and they were like, you need a different hair color because we can't have we can' have like similar hair hair colors in this movie. Everyone needs to have a really distinct hair color, which is smart, I think, to like...
01:09:45
Speaker
You can't have two of your main characters have the same hair color. That would be absurd. I mean, I guess red hair does ah ah very notably draw attention to itself.
01:09:57
Speaker
Even today, in our times when we've come so far, i don't think the... I don't think that you could have a movie with two incidental redheads. Yeah. Unless unless they're members of the Weasley family, you can't have more than one redhead in the movie.
01:10:15
Speaker
It's union rules. ah Exactly. The redheads union. Yeah. The redheaded league, I think is what it's called. ah Yes. I think that I do kind of enjoy. I don't know how reflective of like of the times this was, but like this movie opens with a bunch of like music students who are like excitedly going to the new ballet that's opening.
01:10:39
Speaker
i like the idea of just like all of these like ballet nerds who are like, oh, man I cannot. And they're all in like, but they're all in like suits and smoking pipes and stuff.
01:10:50
Speaker
And I feel like that's just such a great like forty s Like ah image of British too. Yeah. Yes. Very British. As with all of the Powell Price burger movies, I guess.
01:11:03
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know if I have any like big, big takes on it. It's mostly just like, it's, I mean, my, my, my big take is like the dance scene is far and away the best part. And the rest of it is like also good, but like, come on.
01:11:16
Speaker
Yeah. ah Yeah, it's yeah it's it's good. It's not great. But then there's a transcendent 20 minutes in the middle.
01:11:27
Speaker
Which is so good. A movie that is not good. At least in my opinion.
01:11:38
Speaker
Well, what we're going to contrast on this is Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, which I thought was so boring. You thought it was boring? Yes. See, I feel like if if of all of the criticisms could level it on this movie, I think boring is...
01:11:54
Speaker
is I well I kind of get where you're coming from because it moves so slow these scenes are like movie is like five scenes and they're all a little too long yeah yeah it's a short movie but it doesn't feel like it because every scene is taking forever to do what it's trying to do it is and not ah funny it's like I disagree it is It's like spending a whole bunch of time trying to be funny, but it's like slowly trying to be funny.
Three Stooges vs. Abbott and Costello
01:12:25
Speaker
It's not even like throwing a bunch of jokes at you.
01:12:27
Speaker
like After this, I was trying to check in with my sense of humor, and I watched Three Stooges short, and I was like, was so... so It was so much more what I wanted then than yeah in this movie. i I don't disagree. I think Three Stooges, especially in terms of its like physical slapstick humor, is so much better than this movie. I haven't seen a lot of Evan Costello movies. I think this might be the only one I've ever seen.
01:12:54
Speaker
i also had forgotten that I'd seen this movie before. like i i think I'd seen this movie multiple times, maybe. It used to be on TV a lot, like around Halloween. And so I think I maybe had never seen it all the way through in one sitting before, but I definitely seen the whole thing.
01:13:09
Speaker
I don't know. It's this movie is you're right. It's not it's not great, but I kind of love it.
01:13:18
Speaker
I wanted to love it in the way that I think that you do love it. I really wanted to love this movie. And like, I think it's a not that good universal monster movie that is made worse by a bunch of unfunny scenes.
01:13:33
Speaker
ah in the middle. And it's not a good comedy movie because it's mostly a universal monster movie with these guys here. And I think it's like, it's kind of a neat idea to like take these comedic characters and then you're just straightforwardly going through ah Frankenstein movie. Like I think that's, or more like Wolfman movie as, as usual.
01:13:53
Speaker
ah But like,
01:13:57
Speaker
I don't know. It doesn't work. It doesn't work for me. It works for me. I think I do kind of like how the monsters are played pretty straight. Like they're played pretty much as like they are the characters from the other Universal Monster movies and they are supposed to be scary for the most part.
01:14:16
Speaker
They're not supposed to be as scary as they are in their original
Science Dracula and Set Designs
01:14:21
Speaker
movies. Also funny that this movie is called Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. One of the three monsters.
01:14:28
Speaker
Yeah. Frankenstein's monster is the one with by far the least screen time. It is like is barely a character in this. this is This is really, yeah, Abbott and Costello and the Wolfman versus Frankenstein. Or versus ah versus Dracula.
01:14:45
Speaker
ah Versus Science Dracula. Science, which also, like, yeah, this movie is about Science Dracula, which is like, oh, yes. Right, this movie is very dumb. It's so stupid. This movie super dumb.
01:14:57
Speaker
Like, i I will fully admit to that. I don't really have a problem with that. But it is, it's like the dumbest... This movie feels like it was shot like in a weekend.
01:15:08
Speaker
Yeah. But on amazing sets. Like the sets in this movie look gorgeous and are like, there's an island castle with a spooky laboratory in it.
01:15:19
Speaker
Yeah. There's like trap doors and like secret passages and like swamps and stuff. there's ah People
Comedy and Horror in Film
01:15:27
Speaker
go to a masquerade ball in a swamp for some reason.
01:15:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that this movie is... you know, we haven't seen... There's a ton of Universal Monster movies that we haven't seen at this point, because they're just cranking them out, but...
01:15:41
Speaker
um and but Most of the ones that we've seen so far are not are like trying to be actual monster movies and not just like, you know, silliness.
01:15:52
Speaker
Right. for maybe Bride of Frankenstein. Like this, I feel like is kind of. This is the Deadpool and Wolverine of the Universal Monster. Oh, no wonder I hated Yeah. Where it's like we're taking the same characters, but the same actors and we're playing it for laughs instead. That's true.
01:16:10
Speaker
Well, I was going to say is that like, this feels like the beginning of like, it's not a horror movie. It's not a scary movie. It's a Halloween fun time movie.
01:16:21
Speaker
yeah Right. This is a very Halloween. Yeah. Monster mash movie. Yeah. It's like, it's like we're having a spooky themed time, but we're all still having fun. Just like,
01:16:33
Speaker
but Just like you do in October. It's got animated opening credits where the the words are made out of bones. And whenever Dracula turns into a bat, he fully just turns into an animated cartoon. I really like that, actually. that's that That part, I like. Kind of rules.
01:16:50
Speaker
It feels like it's completely breaking reality in a way that it's just like, we're all comfortable with this. He's going to turn into a cartoon because we don't have the technology to do a transformation of him turning into a bat.
01:17:03
Speaker
I have seen i saw a House of Dracula a long time ago, and I think he does the same kind of animated um transition in in that one.
01:17:15
Speaker
First Sailor Moon transformation sequence. I do you think that the Wolfman transformation looks better in this than it does in the 41 Wolfman movie. I think they're iterating on it.
01:17:26
Speaker
Yeah. think Yeah. They're kind of like, you know, adding a little bit of makeup each time between dissolves works better in this one. It does kind of feel like Chaney Jr. is maybe the only one who is like,
01:17:39
Speaker
taking it feels like he's he's like the most invested of all of the actors in this. He's the one who's like, no, this is like my i think he was the guy that was like he kept going back and making more Wolfman movies. He was like, no, I i love making these.
01:17:52
Speaker
Please let me play the Wolfman more. He he gets better and better at being the Wolfman. It's true. Every time
Dracula's Comedic Plot
01:17:58
Speaker
we've seen it. And this is this is the the second of two times that Bela Lugosi played Dracula, like in a Universal Monster movie.
01:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, Bela Lugosi has been like every other person besides Dracula. Right. He's like played Frankenstein monster. He's played like the Wolfman. He's played Igor. ah Igor. But this is the only other time that he was just like regular Dracula.
01:18:23
Speaker
I guess he kind of played like Dracula-esque characters and other things. but Yeah, but he's not even regular Dracula in this one. He is ah he is a brain scientist Dracula. he's He's Dracula playing... He's Dracula being Frankenstein, which is...
01:18:42
Speaker
Right. He's like, what's his plan is he wants, right. He wants to replace the Frankenstein monster's brain because it's too uncontrollable with Costello's.
01:18:55
Speaker
Right. That's Costello is is the short one. Yes, Costello's... Yeah. Well, yeah, Ab and Costello, classic tall, skinny guy, short, fat guy ah combo ah that we've seen in many other places.
Historical Comedy Bits
01:19:10
Speaker
Laurel and Hardy, R2 and C3PO, etc. Yeah. I think is this that this is the first Ab and Costello that we're doing on the show, right? We haven't watched any of the other stuff.
01:19:23
Speaker
who Who's on first? Which is from... Which movie? Oh, I don't even know. but like Right, that's that's that's their famous bit, um which is not in this movie, sadly.
01:19:35
Speaker
Too bad. Isn't it kind of like, it it really... has come this is a complete sidebar but like it used to be the case that comedians had a bit that everyone was like say your bit now right like they had like they had like a classic joke and they weren't expected to like necessarily always have something new it was like you know play the hits it's uh uh like the thing is i don't I don't think play the hits works in comedy the way that does in music.
01:20:07
Speaker
That's probably why that kind of thing faded away. i feel like the last time that I can remember a comedian having a signature bit that he's expected to do over and over again is the Jim Gaffigan Hot Pockets thing.
01:20:21
Speaker
Yeah. I'm not sure I'm familiar. ah I'm not upset that that has sort of gone away. Like, I think having a comedian just having, like, one signature bit that they do over and over again is usually not great...
01:20:37
Speaker
ah great I mean, a thing who's who's on first is a classic, though. Right, but it's like you got to iterate on You got to do something different with it each time, yeah which I think maybe they did. and don't i'm I'm not that familiar with Abbott and Costello's greater oeuvre, their greater
Universal Monster Crossover Films
01:20:53
Speaker
body of work. I know that this is the first of several monster movies that they did.
01:20:58
Speaker
um I think they were like not they were not pleased about making this movie. They were like, we don't want to make like a monster movie. like This is not our shtick. But it was so successful that they're like, all right, we'll do four more of these.
01:21:13
Speaker
We'll be second to or second, second most famous for monster movies after who's on first. And then I think like as a this is not the first sort of like universal monsters like, you know, crossover movie.
01:21:28
Speaker
Right. We we did. um Was it Frankenstein meets the Wolfman? Yeah. Already. But I think to my knowledge, this is the first sort of like Dracula is the is like the main villain of a bunch of monsters movies, which has become sort of like if Dracula is in your movie.
01:21:49
Speaker
And there were a bunch of other monsters in it. Dracula is like the main villain and is sort of the one like pulling the strings of the other. He's like the mastermind. Right. Right. Like that's in Monster Squad. That's in Van Helsing. That's like also rewatching this. I'm like, this has almost the same plot as Van Helsing.
01:22:05
Speaker
Like Van Helsing is basically Evan Costello meet Frankenstein. But without with less chokes, I would say. And more action scenes. Yeah. Right not even that many less jokes So I mean the A joke that happens minimum Like three to four times in this movie that I do think Is funny but also Definitely goes on for too long Is Luke Costello Playing Wilbur is doing something in the foreground. He's got some business that he's doing, some you know mundane activity, and there's usually the wolfman behind him like sneaking up really slowly in the background and almost catching him, but he moves out of the way just in time.
01:22:50
Speaker
And I do think it's really... I think it's very funny because it's so absurd and it's so obvious that... The Wolfman isn't going to eat him. Right. It's just this like really slow, like it's like fully lit. Like there's no shadows. It's not scary whatsoever.
01:23:08
Speaker
The Wolfman in this is like a total klutz buffoon is getting like tripping over stuff. The whole movie is like getting kicked downstairs. It's like gets stuck in half of a bush. Yeah.
01:23:23
Speaker
Right. It's like any sense of menace that the Wolfman had is is gone. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think that in on one hand, it's fun.
01:23:34
Speaker
On another hand, I think the best thing about the Wolfman is the kind of, I don't know, the the the the scariness of the prospect of him turning into the Wolfman. Speaking of...
01:23:46
Speaker
Did we just kind of change gears on whether it's the full moon that turns him into a wolf man? No, it is. It is the full moon. There's just three full moons in a row in this movie.
01:23:57
Speaker
I like it doesn't make. Yeah, I'm like, this movie does not care about that. This movie is like, we know that you don't give a shit. You just want to see
Vincent Price Cameo
01:24:07
Speaker
monsters. i do. aise shit I do. I mean, like that that was very disorienting to me. I was like, did a month pass? Like what's happening here? You just want to see Dracula's coffin open up really slowly and then close again when someone looks at it.
01:24:21
Speaker
yeah See, you're laughing now. It is funny. But that's the thing. It's like, that happens once, it's funny. It happens like eight times in a row. You're like, I i get it. I get the joke. Yeah, let the scene end, please.
01:24:34
Speaker
I enjoy this movie. It's very silly. it's got some some it's got yeah It's got some really great just like Monster shit in it. It's got a great spooky laboratory with like Tesla coils.
01:24:48
Speaker
There's ah lots of really goofy wordplay of people saying like, I'll bite. I'm like, no, I will. but um Also, Vincent Price pops up as the Invisible Man as an uncredited cameo at the very end of the movie.
01:25:07
Speaker
ah When they they jump in a boat to escape and the the Invisible Man is in there. it's ah It's a notable voice, that that Price voice. Definitely had some familiarity there.
01:25:20
Speaker
Although I think, because they did later make an Abbott Costello meet the Invisible Man, and I don't think it's Vincent Price. They're changing actors all over the place in these Universal Monster movies. They've been doing them for 15 years at this, or 18 years at this point. The Frankenstein Monster, and this is played by an actor named Glenn Strange, which is a great name from my perspective.
01:25:41
Speaker
Glenn Strange. Yeah, wow, the first... the Dracula was 1931, 17 years before this. Crazy.
Monster Mash Movie Comparison
01:25:51
Speaker
Also, just a ah funny 1940s accent thing is whenever, especially Bud Abbott says Dracula and monster, he says Dracula and monster.
01:26:05
Speaker
He like switches the switches the end vowel sounds. The Dracula monster. Yeah. Dracula and the monster. Um, and it's, I, I like, that's not a joke at, at all in the movie, but it made me laugh every time.
01:26:21
Speaker
So I think if you, if you want just, if you want like the song monster mash in movie form and it's, you know, it's, it's the middle of October and you've like, you've watched all the good, uh, monster team movies, then you know what?
01:26:36
Speaker
Throw this one on. It's, it you don't have to pay attention to it because like you get Yeah, like, you know, we have our playlist of ah movies too that are visually interesting, silent movies to put on the background.
01:26:49
Speaker
This, I think, is a background movie. It's a TV. It's a throw-it-on-TV movie. yeah Specifically because it's not that interesting, but, like, it is something that just brings you, it's just like, ah, you just look every once in a while and there's Dracula. Nice, you know? yeah It also, like, it does look surprisingly great for such a silly movie, I think.
01:27:11
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we have two more films, and neither of which are very silly. No, not very much at all. There's no real transition here, but let's talk about Bicycle Thieves.
01:27:26
Speaker
ah Switching gears entirely. All the way.
Introduction to 'Bicycle Thieves'
01:27:30
Speaker
Let's talk about the movie Bicycle Thieves, which is maybe the least silly movie that we watched for this episode. It's one of the least silly movies ever made, to be honest. Yeah, probably.
01:27:42
Speaker
Well, I don't know about that. that's that's that's a That's a strong statement. but What I can say about this movie is that it's a huge downer. Yes. And... Yes, and it is. And it's a downer. i was thinking about this recently.
01:27:55
Speaker
It is a downer in a way that would not be quite reached if it wasn't realist, right? this ist it This is kind of the poster child of the Italian neorealist films.
01:28:11
Speaker
And there's something that feels so grounded and so true about the things that are happening on screen that that the when it is...
01:28:24
Speaker
it's real It's brutal, but not in a way that you would get in a melodrama where you have a bit of remove from it. You know, you're watching Bicycle Thieves and you're like, this could be happening to a real person. And that would be, it would be a really bad day in their lives.
01:28:39
Speaker
Yeah. It does feel like everything in this movie, maybe not didn't happen in a short of timeframe or all happened to one person, but it does feel like everything that happens in this movie has happened to someone in like post-war Italy.
01:28:54
Speaker
Yeah. ah Short ah synopsis. It is ah economically destitute times in
Bicycle Theft and Poverty
01:29:00
Speaker
Italy. And our main character, whose name is... reach sonio rich Antonio Ricci. Antonio Ricci.
01:29:08
Speaker
He... um is looking for work and he's ah almost in this like the great depression say situation where ah there's a bunch of people all clamoring to, to get the jobs that are distributed from this one guy.
01:29:24
Speaker
He gets a job ah putting up posters, but he needs to have a bicycle to do it. It's a requirement, um but he just pawned his bicycle recently. So ah he's so excited to get the job.
01:29:38
Speaker
His wife, sells their sheets so they can just sleep on the bed without sheets ah so that he can get the bicycle back from the pawn shop. And then on his first day on the job, his bicycle is stolen.
01:29:53
Speaker
And the rest of the movie is them trying to... Them thinking... We have spent all of the last of our money on this one last chance that we had to support ourselves.
01:30:04
Speaker
And ah we need to get this bike back. Otherwise, like, who knows what could happen? We'll all become homeless or or just, yeah, bad things will happen.
01:30:16
Speaker
ah So they're searching for the bike, and eventually they track down the person who stole it, but he's in a mafioso neighborhood, and they're all ah they're all protecting him.
01:30:29
Speaker
and Well, so they have they have no evidence. like yeah the The bike isn't there. It's just their word against his, basically. And so he's got a bunch of friends that are sticking up for him, and they're like well...
01:30:41
Speaker
Shit out of luck. Like, there's nothing nothing think we can point to saying you stole our bike. Yeah. And he's got his son Bruno in tow almost this entire time.
01:30:52
Speaker
Bruno. And then there's a point kind of in in in total desperation when he knows he found the person who stole his bike, but he can't get it back. ah He contemplates stealing someone else's bike that he can keep his job.
01:31:07
Speaker
He gives it a try and gets caught immediately. But ah Bruno's crying face lets them kind of let him go. But then they walk away and there's no real solution to their problems.
01:31:20
Speaker
And then Hine... He now has to deal with the fact that Bruno saw him steal this bike and, like, all of all of Bruno's, like, respect for him feels like it's been sort of tainted by this. Like, he he's seen his father steal a bike out of desperation.
01:31:39
Speaker
And it's like... You can just feel that it's like that. that's That's really changed how his son sees him. Yeah, there's a really pivotal moment in the movie, maybe the pivotal moment in the movie, where he in a kind of like his emotions get the better of him, and he slaps Bruno.
01:31:58
Speaker
And after he slaps Bruno, and then Bruno starts crying and sort of running away, I think he kind of realizes that like he's gotten a bit too wrapped up in this whole...
01:32:09
Speaker
you know, finding the bicycle thing. And ah he has to kind of reexamine the the ways that he can maybe make the best out of a bad situation. Yeah. And so he gives Bruno wine instead.
01:32:25
Speaker
Yeah. He's like let's get drunk. My, i don't know, eight year old son, seven year old child. Yeah. Let's go to the pizzeria and get a bunch of wine. Don't tell mom. Yeah. He literally says, don't tell mom, let's go get drunk.
01:32:39
Speaker
And then there's also the bit right where he for a second thinks that Bruno has drowned in the river and starts freaking out and then sees that it was someone else who was drowning who then gets pulled out of the river and Bruno's fine. And so there is this like, oh, I thought I had lost my son, and but like i we still still have we still have each other. I still have my family.
01:32:55
Speaker
Yeah. And then he goes and ruins that by stealing someone else's bike. mean, it's the character arc of it did remind me a little bit of Nightmare Alley from last episode of like, at the beginning of the movie, right? He's like, how could someone do this? to Like, don't they know that this bike is all I have? This is like my entire job depends on this. Like, how could someone steal my bicycle?
01:33:19
Speaker
Who would do so who would do that? And then he ends up stealing someone's bicycle. Yeah. And I mean, I think that that's interesting because I don't really think that the movie is fully trying to like demonize him or say, look at how far he fell.
01:33:37
Speaker
I think that... The movie is talking about how it's kind of using this kind of poetic wraparound, his bike stolen, he tried to steal a bike, to give you empathy for people in such hard situations yeah that they have to resort to unethical means of keeping themselves afloat.
01:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think it it does. It does a really good job of that. I think it's a very it's a very like harsh, but I think also very empathetic and kind of. Yeah, it's not ah not melodramatic look at like poverty and how that changes people and like what what people think.
01:34:22
Speaker
you know, are, are driven to, or how they deal with it. It felt very, even though it's set and made in 1940s Rome, it did to me, it felt like a very kind of like New York city movie, or I saw a lot of parallels with New York city life and New York city stories, I guess.
01:34:42
Speaker
Um, the mafia, like communist meetings. Pizzerias. Pizzerias. Italians. Tons of people cramming onto a bus. um Bicycles being stolen.
01:34:55
Speaker
there you know lots Lots of parallels. oh Legitimately, this movie almost like giving me flashbacks to my bike getting stolen two years ago. I also had a bike that was stolen. So it's like, you know, I think that's it's a very universal thing. If you've owned a bike, it's probably been stolen at least once.
01:35:12
Speaker
my My bike was stolen. i put it down to go and like watch like a small performance type thing happening for like half an hour.
Personal Anecdotes and Empathy
01:35:22
Speaker
And it was next to a whole bunch of other bikes.
01:35:24
Speaker
Yeah. And I came back to it and I couldn't find it. And I was like, maybe I misplaced where it was. ah Maybe, you know, maybe it was around here.
01:35:36
Speaker
And, and ah you know, it's next to all these other bikes. And I left before the performance was over. So all the other bikes were still there. There were like, there were like dozens and dozens of them. ah hundreds maybe and like ah i was walking around in circles for an hour getting more and more depressed as as it sank in more and more that my bike was not coming back and ah yeah and I was like while he's wandering around trying to find his bike it's like i I was there I was right there it wasn't my bike didn't just disappear from outside of my house I needed it to get back yeah ah yeah that
01:36:16
Speaker
sucks you needed to go put up rita hayworth posters yeah that's another thing we should definitely mention need we need to talk about the fact that his job is putting up posters of rita hayworth but not like movie posters for a movie that rita hayworth is in it's just like a pin-up poster of rita hayworth with just her name on it yeah very weird and i'm like what who had who hired him to do this I think it's it's neat because it is a real just stark contrast between the glamour of movie stars, you know, and the grim realities of normal people, right? Which I think is is very deliberate. Like, that is very much... Like, they're picking a this, like, the height of glamour of, like, Hollywood stardom in 1948. And, yeah, and just this guy who is, like...
01:37:06
Speaker
his entire life depends on him having this bicycle. And the fact that it is stolen is he, he has no, he has nothing else to like, to turn to.
01:37:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, and like how his entire livelihood in this case is not directly, but it's almost like his entire livelihood is based on the fact that like the incidental fact of Rita Hayworth being famous, right?
01:37:33
Speaker
um Like it's just hanging on by a string of all of this stuff of the idea of rich people being job creators. You know, it's like Rita Hayworth's celebrity itself saved this guy from destitution, ah except it really just draws into stark relief how ah some person has such power that their celebrity can employ someone to put posters up and another person is struggling and ah loses his soul, ah loses his moral soul ah just to stay alive.
01:38:15
Speaker
Oh, I appreciated how i don't know if you have any experience with this, with your bike being stolen of like, he immediately goes to the police and the police are like,
Real-life Struggles and Economic Hardship
01:38:24
Speaker
get in line, bud. Like your bike was stolen. Tough shit. Like, what are we going to do about it?
01:38:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. like What are we supposed to do? Like send cops out to every corner be like, did you steal a bike? They're like, good luck, man. And they like go to like the the secondhand like bike market to like look through all, you know, they like accuse this, like, let me see the serial number on the bike. and the guy's like, ah, no way.
01:38:49
Speaker
And they have to like, like almost get into a fight with the guy just to like check to see if this bike frame is his. And it isn't. And it's like, there are so one thing that did strike me is like, there are so many bicycles in this movie in like every scene Like every scene there is even just in the background, like four to eight people on bicycles at all times. it's It's the movie is like rubbing in his face that he does not have a bicycle. Yeah.
01:39:14
Speaker
Yeah. But also just the fact that it is, it does kind of feel like your bike is stolen. It's like, it could be anywhere. Yeah. Like anyone could have it. It could be anywhere. It could be no, it could be stripped for parts.
01:39:26
Speaker
The second you lose sight of the person who stole your bike, it's like, it's gone. Yeah, yeah. And then he does find the guy. And even then it's like the bike isn't there. So it's like he has nothing to accuse him with. Really, it's just like, hey, you you stole my bike. And he's like, no, I didn't.
01:39:44
Speaker
And that's all he can do. Yeah. and Like, that's the thing is that, you know, after going to from like the Red Shoes, which is such a huge melodrama, right, to this, which these scenes, these ah like scenes of awful things happening, it's not fantasy awful.
01:40:03
Speaker
It is real life awful. It is just like this guy. right it's like it's It's like mundane awfulness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, yeah, I understand why.
01:40:15
Speaker
this movie made such an impact, you know, because it it feels um like it's getting at something that cinema has had. but cinema with its glamour, with its Rita Hayworth, you know, the ah hair flips, like it doesn't gesture at reality in this kind of way.
01:40:36
Speaker
ah Certainly not in this kind of um of a dour way, I suppose. Yeah. I did find this movie a little dour for my taste, I will say. I don't think it is a bad movie. Yeah.
01:40:47
Speaker
But I also was just like, wow, what a bummer this movie was. Okay. I mean, it feels it feels essential, but it also doesn't feel like a movie that you just go and casually watch.
01:41:00
Speaker
ah No. um and But I do think like a a lot of the the details of it do feel very rich in how kind of real the the reality that they conjure. like I think a lot of just the outside of the sort of quest to find...
01:41:15
Speaker
the bicycle, just all of the, all of the side characters. They, they meet all of the little, the sort of worlds that they kind of enter into briefly. Like there's the whole section of like following this old man into a church. Cause they saw him talking to the guy that stole the bike.
01:41:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And they're, like, harassing this old man in church. And, like, everyone in the church like, get out of here. What are you doing? Like, get, leave. Like, what? Why are you here? he's like, I got to talk to this old guy.
01:41:42
Speaker
One of the few moments of levity is, like, he's getting, like, kind of followed or chased around through the church. And the people who are work for the church are, like, they have to stop and cross themselves. And then Bruno stops and crosses himself, too.
01:41:54
Speaker
Got stop mid-chase for a little... Is that what's called crossing yourself when they when they do that? I think that's yeah, I believe that um but that's referred All that stuff is so alien to me. I don't really.
01:42:09
Speaker
And I think another thing that struck me about this movie being watching it, I guess, sort of in close proximity to ah Rome, Open City, and another Italian list movie that we covered.
01:42:23
Speaker
That movie is so much about sort of like the the end of fascist Italy, sort of like the last days of fascist Italy lee while it's sort of crumbling. and And even like like a kind of true believers in fascism are like turning against it or just like doing it out of spite or just because they have nothing else to do.
01:42:45
Speaker
um And this movie feels like a very sort of, you know, it is very like post World War Two Italy. And it's like, you really get the sense that this is like, don't know, I the movie doesn't make a big point of this. It's mostly just like, Italy is in a state of economic hardship.
01:43:01
Speaker
And that's where the story takes place. But it does feel like I couldn't help but think about the kind of like, this is the this is the end result of fascism is just like destitution.
01:43:13
Speaker
And like, it's just this thing that's going to fail and ruin people's lives. Yeah, yeah. And it's also the the the destitution as a result. And war, too. like This is what yeah war does to a country. it is It is the effect of ah having the biggest war of all time having just happened all across an entire continent.
01:43:39
Speaker
Yeah. And and happening directly upon that continent and being in a country that was on the losing side of that war. Yeah. Yeah. Just all all of the kind of nationalism and all of the, you know, the pomp and circumstance of fascist Italy after World War Two is like it means nothing.
01:43:57
Speaker
People are selling their spreadsheets to buy bicycles to put up Ria Heworth posters. Yeah. I mean, there's there's definitely a left-wing edge to this movie. And, you know, there were power struggles, I think, in Italy happening at this time with, like, what the next government should be.
01:44:15
Speaker
I believe there's, like, a Christian party that won over, like, ah like a labor or socialist party Italy.
Community Support and Political Undertones
01:44:24
Speaker
in in 1948. I believe I saw that in the news.
01:44:29
Speaker
But there's a point in the movie where where Ricci goes to like recruit some friends of his to help him track down the bicycle thief.
01:44:40
Speaker
And they are kind of just casually at a like a communist meetup. ah but Like in, in like, not sewer, but like in in like underground, like catacomb.
01:44:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Like the place where you have secret political meetings is in a catacomb. Which, ah like, that, I don't know where that would even happen in New York. It'd probably just be like the basement of a bar.
01:45:05
Speaker
But like, I want to go to a catacomb meeting. Right. Yeah. Have some. Someone invite, someone invite me to a catacomb meeting, please. Yeah. I'll do whatever you want. I'll become i'll become ah ah some kind of agent, whatever. ah Invite me to one that I agree with, please.
01:45:24
Speaker
ah But yeah, like outside of just the kind of presence of friendly communists, like this is a movie that is very interested in class, very obviously. Yeah, and and community too. like right He like rallies his community to help him find the bike, and they're all on board. They're like, we're all going to help you find the bike. And they're like, they're really...
01:45:42
Speaker
ah like helpful and gung-ho about it. And then very quickly, they're like, well, we didn't find it. Sorry. Life goes on. Yeah. And then, right. Like the actual, the other bicycle thief, because I do like how the, the plural of the title is like, right. As soon as so one guy steals a bicycle, you're like, yeah, but it's, it's not the bicycle thief. It's bicycle thieves.
01:46:04
Speaker
Who else is stealing a bicycle in this movie? ah Um, which is a great sort of, yeah. Uh, Chekhov's bicycle thief um is that what it is it isn't at all but uh like he also is like his community sort of comes together and is like no like this guy like we trust this guy you're not like you can't just come in here and accuse him of stealing your bicycle yeah yeah and I i do like how it is and like the the the the church that he is like running rampant through like there are all these like kind of pockets of community that he does sort of encounter mm-hmm
01:46:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a bit of a tour of different aspects of Italian life. And I think that as you go through the movie... Eat mozzarella sandwiches. Yeah. I didn't realize that that was a thing, but I want one now. As you go through the movie, you're seeing people um of different class situations, right? Like when they're trying to blow off some steam and and he's trying to fix his relationship with his son after he slaps him.
01:47:04
Speaker
ah He takes him to a nice restaurant and there's this dynamic between them and Bruno kind of staring at this rich family. Talks about how you'd have, we'd have to make a million lira a month if we were going to eat like them.
01:47:20
Speaker
ah And yeah, there's, there's people in so many different stations of life that, not just class-wise, but culture-wise, that he's kind of on a tour through as he's trying to track down his bicycle.
01:47:38
Speaker
i think I think that's one of the other things that made this feel feel very New York City to me, is the sort of, like, all the different pockets of community and the sort of, like, at any given point in New York City, you can kind of you can see, like like, someone at rock bottom standing feet away from, like, a millionaire.
01:47:58
Speaker
yeah And it's like that these things exist like in such close proximity with each other. And there's like there's so little kind of physical divide between people that I think is also true in in Rome.
01:48:11
Speaker
um just It's just like a city thing, I guess, but maybe you put you put it enough people in a small enough place and like that's going to happen. i just got I just got an advertisement for ah Dance Dance Revolution DJ dance party night.
01:48:29
Speaker
And I thought for a second that it might be in my city. And then I realized that it was an ad for ah show for an event that wass happening in New York City. And it is another aspect where it's like, if you get enough people together, every niche can be catered to.
01:48:45
Speaker
And unfortunately, mine cannot unless I go to Brooklyn. ah Yeah. ah Yeah, it's why I don't want to leap. I was definitely... i can definitely see the influence of this movie on...
01:48:59
Speaker
what I think of as like very New York movies, like After Hours or or Good Time.
Influence of 'Bicycle Thieves' on Cinema
01:49:07
Speaker
Good Time, I think, being very directly influenced by After Hours. I don't know if either of those have any sort of, if they've like name checked Bicycle Thieves, would not surprise me at all.
01:49:15
Speaker
Good Time is a good pull, I guess. Yeah. I mean, even more broadly, though, it feels like a an influence on... realism right we talked ah we talked forget if was earlier this episode or during the last episode about the beginning of uh uh the method acting right where the style of films was intentionally this heightened style uh uh this heightened hollywood kind of thing and this movie is doing its best to not be heightened
01:49:49
Speaker
And it seems like it's kind of paving the way for a lot of, you know, 70s dramas, ah ah things that are very, yeah very down to earth, very matter of factly acted and not very fantastical.
01:50:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Very much like very, very opposite to like the Red Shoes, which is like so abstract. So like colorful and I guess fanciful, you could say.
01:50:17
Speaker
Red Shoes is also like a pretty dark movie with a downer ending. But that down like that downer ending does not hit hard like this one does, right? like Right. It feels like you're watching the same way. It feels like you're watching a sad opera and then like everyone dies at the end. You're like, okay, cool. That that was fun. That was good.
01:50:34
Speaker
you' know You're like, well, of course. Yeah. I mean, that's we knew what we all knew that was going to happen. Whereas this, yeah, this like, it's it's so heartbreaking. Or it ends on ah like a downer note, but it also ends on ambiguity, right?
01:50:46
Speaker
Like it just leaves you to sit. Right. It's like, they didn't get the bicycle back. What now? Who knows? Yeah. Like, He just has to like go home. And, you know, presumably in like a, yeah. And like a worse situation than right. Like course he's going to lose his job.
Introduction to 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre'
01:51:03
Speaker
Almost. Definitely. He didn't find his bicycle and he like lost his son's respect. Yeah, yeah. Like, like the movie kind of knows that you can sort of fill in the blanks of everything that's going to happen next.
01:51:19
Speaker
Right. And it's not good. i do kind of feel like we have spent all this time investing in this character. To end on that note does feel, i do feel, it is unsatisfying.
01:51:34
Speaker
And I realize that that is very much the intent. And the point of the movie is that like some shit happens, kid. Right. But I yeah don't know. It's like it it it left me feeling a little. I was heartbroken. But at the same time, I was left feeling a little bit just like, oh, oh, God. Like, what was all that for? a little bit.
01:51:56
Speaker
Yeah, I don't really like that's not my main takeaway from the movie. But I i think that that is like. i i To a certain degree, just my personal taste, I think, of just, like, I want a little bit more catharsis or, like, at least sort of some more kind of poetic bookending.
01:52:16
Speaker
Well, it's going to be hard to, I mean, I feel like we could say more about this movie, but also that's a great transition. Right. ah To a movie that is also about sort of like living rough and sort of the, the living with shitty situations.
01:52:33
Speaker
dealing dealing with shitty situations um But I do think Wright has a much more, certainly a much more conventional ending that is not not uplifting, I wouldn't say, but does feel like it it it it ties things up really nicely.
01:52:49
Speaker
And I do like that about it. Yeah. And that movie is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Yeah. ah This movie is so fun.
01:53:00
Speaker
i Yeah. I love this movie. This movie is fun, but it also is like really dark. Yeah. Really like, I mean, in in some similar ways to Bikesville Thieves is, yeah, it's just about like desperate people.
01:53:13
Speaker
being pushed to like their absolute limit. Yeah. Poverty. It's another movie about poverty. It's another movie about
Themes of Greed and Paranoia
01:53:20
Speaker
poverty. People like people in poverty getting kicked while they're down.
01:53:24
Speaker
And yeah, and And just watching that happen. But this one has... um This one's a bit more of a glimmer of hope in it.
01:53:35
Speaker
Ah. This is a movie... And yes, this is basically... um the Humphrey Bogart goes crazy, the the movie. Yeah, Humphrey Bogart decides to become a prospector and go out into the desert with two other dudes to find gold.
01:53:53
Speaker
And it goes badly. Yeah, that's that' this basically that's basically the best summary that you could give it, right? Yeah, it is it is sort of like, it I guess it it has a somewhat similar kind of episodic structure. It's not really episodic the same way that Bicycle Thieves is.
01:54:12
Speaker
This movie feels very much like a kind of a descent where it is like that the tension is just getting ratcheted up a little bit more and more as the movie goes along. Yeah. then the The movie... As we see Humphrey Bogart, yeah, just go crazy.
01:54:25
Speaker
Yeah. in In the first five minutes of the movie, it kind of tells you what is going to be happening because we encounter ah the the kind of older prospector who they're using his gold panning knowledge to ah help strike it rich.
01:54:41
Speaker
ah They're all... at their lowest in like a, what what do you call those places that Charlie Chaplin was staying in all the time? a place with a bunch of beds for really cheap.
01:54:51
Speaker
A hostel? An old timey hostel, I guess. Yeah. He's talking about how just being around gold and being around all of the wealth and the potential of wealth leads people to insanity and murderousness. yeah but Gold changes a man's soul. and And then the two of them just go, sounds like a good idea. Let's, let's do that.
01:55:18
Speaker
right they're like Right, they're like, ah, yeah, it never works out. But it might work for us. ah And, ah ladies and gentlemen, it does not. No. well it because, right, there there's three lead characters, right? There's Humphrey Bogart as Dobbs.
01:55:36
Speaker
there There's Tim tim holt As Curtin. And Walter walter Houston. As one of the most iconic prospectors that ever was. like I mean, the the original prospector character. Like, he is... Like, picture prospector in your head from voice to mannerisms, and that is his character. I would say the only thing missing is that his beard is should be a little longer. Maybe. He doesn't have a big gold tooth, I guess.
01:56:07
Speaker
Like, sure, I guess there are little there are little things that that cartoon character version of a prospector gained along the way. But but ultimately it it comes back to him in this movie. But yeah maybe maybe the best moment in this movie, by some measure, is the point where he starts dancing on the ground because he has he has struck gold.
01:56:27
Speaker
And he's like, yeah, yeah you ah crazy, am I? He's the most reasonable person in the whole movie. He is, right. He is the only level-headed person in this film. Very true.
01:56:39
Speaker
Right. Like, the crazy prospector is, the like, the only guy who has any sense. And that really just... I mean, Bogart... Like, everybody's going crazy in this movie. Bogart kills it. Bogart is incredible. Well, it's like...
01:56:53
Speaker
Right. Dobbs, Bogart's character, starts the movie kind of at rock bottom, you feel like, and then proceeds to dig his way further down. Yeah. but This movie is like, the the it's the process of watching him ah become more and more grizzled ah over the course of the movie.
01:57:12
Speaker
One of my most striking images in my head from the last time I saw this, ah like, eight years ago, is just... The absolute like, like wreck that he is at the end of the movie, like his beards all ah like disheveled. He's got dirt all over him and he just like he's got crazy eyes.
01:57:35
Speaker
I don't know if a person has ever been dirtier on film than Bogart is in this movie. He is like caked in dirt. And yeah, yeah. This was ah ah the I was describing it to my partner as like you watch him get grizzled.
01:57:50
Speaker
And then at the same time, it's the grizzling of the soul. Yes, grizzling of the soul. But so this movie directed by John Huston, who also did Maltese Falcon and is the son of Walter Huston.
01:58:05
Speaker
who plays the prospector. So that's fun. ah nice A nice, father son production, more of a pappy son production. And maybe, and then you like Walter Houston is the, the, the, you know, great grandfather of the, the, the Houston acting family dynasty.
01:58:23
Speaker
There's a lot of Houston actors. Angelica Houston, Danny Houston, Jack Houston. Houston's all over the place. And they're all good at ending. So, yeah, I guess we've we've mostly covered the ah plot of this movie.
01:58:36
Speaker
It's it's a Yeah, a lot of it is... Most of the movie is them in the process of collecting gold and various tensions... happening and allaying themselves and kind of rising and falling.
01:58:51
Speaker
There's like a general tension level going up and up and up through this movie. But there is like a moment where you kind of think it's all going to work out and then it gets so much worse. Right? Yeah.
01:59:03
Speaker
um right right Right when they they leave, Humphrey Bogart gets a somewhat bullied by a child into buying a lottery ticket despite throwing water at him.
01:59:16
Speaker
That child is played by um um got ah Robert Blake from Little Rascals and also from ah Murdering Someone Later in Life.
Iconic Lines and Influences
01:59:26
Speaker
Oh, my. and And also Lost Highway.
01:59:29
Speaker
That too. Which I didn't realize until after the movie. But a fun fact. Less fun fact. A big part of this movie that we have not mentioned yet is the when they are ah waylaid by bandits up in the mountain.
01:59:45
Speaker
It's... Banditos. Banditos. Banditos. Excuse me. i have to use the the proper nomenclature, which leads to one of the most famous like movie lines or often misquoted movie lines, which is ah the I don't have to show you any stinking badges line.
02:00:04
Speaker
Yes. Which is like classic. I mean, I had heard that. Yes, me too. so many parodies before I ever saw this movie. And i was like, oh, the the thing. That's where this comes from. Badgers.
02:00:15
Speaker
We don't need no stinking badgers. Right. So many variations of we don't need no stinking badgers, even though that exact phrase is never spoken in the film.
02:00:27
Speaker
It's we ain't got no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges. Yeah. I mean, like the ah it's it's weird. It's like Maybe, you know, the banditos are a bit of a racist caricature, but also like they're so iconic and they're they're so fun.
02:00:48
Speaker
They're not being played by like white actors with like fake mustaches, which I appreciate. Yeah, I think this movie is pretty well cast across the board. Yeah. the The sense of place that we get, I don't know necessarily how realistic it is to wherever this is supposed to be in Mexico, but it's like we get we get jungle, we get mountain, we get desert.
02:01:08
Speaker
There's like lots of... lot of great location film. Lots of biomes yeah represented here. And I think it is like when they're in the jungle, it's playing like the most classic like 1940s jungle sounds.
02:01:21
Speaker
There's no monkey sounds, thankfully, but it is like... And and no peacocks. But it it feels like I think there are jungle sounds in this movie that are directly might be the exact same sound effects used in the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
02:01:34
Speaker
I'm not sure. But um this movie was, as as far as I know, a somewhat of an influence on on Raiders. I don't think it was a very big one, but it is like Humphrey Boggart is a fedora wearing grizzled treasure hunter in this.
02:01:50
Speaker
They're both kind of they're both pretty dusty movies. Right. Humphrey Boggart is certainly a much crazier, morally dubious person than indiana jones ever is yeah but i think that was i think spielberg had some quote where he was talking about when lawrence casner wrote the script for raiders he was sort of like adding in a lot of like 1940s movie influence and he was sort of like pushing indiana jones a little bit more towards the humbry burger character from this of like he's a little bit sketchier than he was in the initial kind of conception
02:02:24
Speaker
ah this movie also kind of reminded me, especially toward the the end of it, of ah Greed, the von Stroheim movie. Yeah. Well, especially like once it gets down to Humphrey Bogart is like,
02:02:36
Speaker
you know, pushed everyone else away from him. And he's like trying to keep all the gold for himself. And he's like alone in the desert, just like delirious and insane.
02:02:47
Speaker
It did feel very, very greed-esque. And it like a movie that may have influenced this one. I'm not sure. I mean, yeah, like greed. Also another movie that features gold a whole lot. And right. I think that like,
02:03:00
Speaker
You know, greed was still of the era where people were hand coloring in certain parts of the frame. and a lot of the red coins, gold coins, red flag and battleship Potemkin. And I feel like this movie could have if it was black and white and gold, ah that it would have it would have really worked for this. Right. I think. Right. That is a thing where like the like mid to late nineteen twenty s like film techniques that were used in greed.
02:03:31
Speaker
aren't like, right. That like selective hand coloring thing wasn't really used in the forties that I know of. Like, it certainly doesn't seem like it was as common. And I agree. Like if, if just the scenes of gold had it like, had been colored gold in this, it would have been incredible.
02:03:47
Speaker
and yeah Maybe, maybe uh, i'll i'll I'll make my own version. You made your own version of greed. I'll make my own version of this. Right. There you go. Apparently, ah Paul Thomas Anderson watched this movie like every day or like once a week while shooting There Will Be Blood, which is kind of interesting, I guess.
02:04:08
Speaker
i They do have some like they're both movies about just like about greed and like insanity and like descents into madness and murder.
02:04:19
Speaker
So, I mean, I can, I can definitely see the parallels there. I ain't seen it, but, um, uh, there's never seen there will be blood. No. Damn, dude. You got, you got something to look forward to.
02:04:30
Speaker
i love, uh, Paul F. Tompkins. So, uh, he's, he's in it very briefly. now yeah, but, uh, I feel like we need, we haven't mentioned the character of, uh, of James Cody, who shows up
Climactic Encounter and Poetic Justice
02:04:44
Speaker
sort of,
02:04:45
Speaker
half to two thirds way through the movie and is like hey i know what you guys are up to up in the hills digging for gold i want in and he's like all right you got three options you can murder me you can chase me off or you can bring me in as as an equal partner on your and in your your gold prospecting And they all confer and they're like, we're killing him, right? Yeah, we're killing him.
02:05:11
Speaker
Then the banditos show up. They have the badge argument. They get into a big gunfight and Cody is killed in the gunfight anyway. So they're like, well, it solves that problem. Then they find he has a letter on him from his wife that is like the saddest letter yeah ever written. They just pause for like two minutes to just read this sad letter.
02:05:31
Speaker
At least, right, Curtin and Howard, the the two non-Bogart characters are like, wow, this is really sad. I feel really bad now. Like, we should probably give some of our our gold money to this guy's widow because, like, holy mackerel, this is this letter is so sad.
02:05:47
Speaker
And Dobbs is still just like, no, I'm keeping all my money.
02:05:52
Speaker
um At that point, he's pretty far gone. Yeah. He starts to get paranoid like pretty early in the movie. But it's sort of like a background paranoia.
02:06:03
Speaker
it And paranoia, I feel like, really is like the the word here. Maybe less than less than insanity is... um there The movie just kind of spends a lot of time exploring the dynamics that happen when...
02:06:20
Speaker
you have a lot of money around people who you initially trust, but then that stops, you know, that trust gets broken down by the height of the situation.
02:06:34
Speaker
Yeah. Because they all enter into it in such good faith. They all enter into it like, oh, I'm putting more money into buying all the tools. but like, don't matter. We're all in this together. Like, this is a group thing. Like, yeah i like it's fine.
02:06:46
Speaker
It so quickly turns into like, well, we going to divide up the gold now or divide the gold later? Like, I don't know. Maybe we should divide up the gold now so that we each have... we're each responsible for our own thing. And it's just like all, even just like the small, like logistics of like, yeah, where do they keep all the gold that they've found?
02:07:01
Speaker
What happens when a Gila monster gets inside of your, uh, your gold stash? There's exactly. yeah And like, so paranoia, like it, it is a movie about ratcheting up paranoia and like paranoia creeping in to every interaction that they have. Uh, but particularly roughly with, uh, with Dobbs.
02:07:23
Speaker
Yeah. Dobbs is really the one that is like, we can see them each get a little bit paranoid, but Dobbs is like, goes so far off the deep end so quickly. he starts He literally starts looking like Gollum.
02:07:36
Speaker
like It's not far off. He's like a hunched over. That's a good comparison. And yeah, like the paranoia of like, they're they're after my gold. Like they want they want the precious. Yeah.
02:07:49
Speaker
is yeah he's very Gollum-like in this. To the point, he doesn't bite anyone's finger off, but he does ah shoot people. Yeah. If you gave Gollum a gun, he would shoot people. yeah and there's ah Yeah. So as they're leaving the mountain with all of their bags of of gold dust, basically, it's just like gold that they've sifted through, and it's like, you know, fine...
02:08:11
Speaker
It's like dirt, basically. Howard, the the old prospector, gets asked by ah a local tribe to help the a kid who has, i think, drowned? Or like, Ben, he's alive, but... He's like in shock, but had just drowned.
02:08:30
Speaker
ah But he's not waking up, I guess. And so and so he leaves. They're like, he's gotta go. Well, initially, he he helps he helps the kid sort of recover and, and they're all like, thank you. Thank you.
02:08:44
Speaker
As thanks. You have to come like have dinner with us. And he's like, I got to go. And the other the other two were like, I guess you've got to go have dinner. Like we're going to keep all the gold and continue on. I guess we'll meet you back in town. And he's like,
02:08:58
Speaker
Okay. And so then it's just the other two. It's just Curtin and Dobbs. And like that Dobbs. The saneifying force is now gone. Right. It's like, right. Howard was like the level headed ones. And I was just these two.
02:09:13
Speaker
Curtin is still pretty level headed. He's still fairly reasonable. Whereas Dobbs is like very not okay. The great bit where they're at the campfire and Dobbs has already like tried to pull a gun on Curtin and Curtin took his gun away.
02:09:28
Speaker
But then it's sort of ah contest of who will fall asleep first. Yeah. And he he says, i like, I bet you $130,000 that you'll fall asleep first.
02:09:39
Speaker
And just like the scene of them both like staring at each other across a campfire. As like, they're both struggling to stay awake. Mostly Curtin, though, who does fall asleep first.
02:09:51
Speaker
And then Dobbs takes his gun and shoots him. That scene is like definitely super directly referenced in The Iron Giant, too. ah ah One of my favorite movies. Holy shit! i didn't I didn't even think of that. And you're right. It's like shot for shot. It's the same scene. Incredible.
02:10:06
Speaker
Right? This movie is like, it was one of those movies where it even if things aren't like directly like naming it, it it is so influential. Like... Yeah, it's every like little bit of this movie's DNA has sort of like just seeped into other movies somewhere.
02:10:21
Speaker
Yeah. ah You were talking about the moment where the it all kind of goes down. I think what you were saying was there was a there's a part where where Dobbs lies down on the ground after he shot Curtin and ah he's next to the fire and the flames kind of fall.
02:10:37
Speaker
fill up the frame and consume him, which is a little heavy handed, but it's fun. you Yeah. The flames of madness consuming him. Yeah. Um, but right. It it looks great. So I'm like, and I'm okay with it. Yeah.
02:10:50
Speaker
Um, and then like from that scene, we cut to what Howard has been up to and he's like in a hammock eating fruit by like ah a river. And it's like the most idyllic, like cushy, nice existence that he's living in.
02:11:05
Speaker
And then Curtin is not killed. He escapes having been shot. And so then they they take off after after Dobbs, who's taken all of the all of the gold and all of the cargo. And Dobbs starts talking to himself. And when he sees that the body's gone, he says, there's a tiger. And it dragged him off to his lair. po Of course. thinking about tiger's Yeah.
02:11:35
Speaker
I mean, yeah that's what paranoid, you know, people who are ah trying to keep their gold are thinking about tigers and layers. Then he stops for water and he gets he meets up with the banditos again. and the banditos are like, hey, you look familiar. Are you that guy that was shooting at us? And he's like,
02:11:49
Speaker
no
02:11:52
Speaker
And ah the banditos murder him very brutally, I would say. Like, it happens off screen, but it's just like the guy grabs a machete and just chops him down. Yeah.
02:12:03
Speaker
And then don't realize that he's carrying a bunch of gold, so they just, like, throw it on the ground because all they want is, like, his boots. And like the hides, like they think that he they still think that he's a hunter and those there there are pelts or hides that he's taking back.
02:12:18
Speaker
And so they take those and his burrows and try and try and sell them. But they mentioned earlier in the movie that like before it's purified, ah gold that that comes out of the the whole process just looks like sand.
02:12:33
Speaker
And so they dump all of the $130,000 worth of gold onto the ground and and sell, try and sell the donkeys or the jackasses. ah about who's Who's the jackass now?
02:12:50
Speaker
at Back at town, Curtin and Howard see that the they recognize that the banditos are like wearing Dobbs clothes that they've stolen. And that they have his burros and that the the bags of gold are gone.
02:13:04
Speaker
So like where like where did they get those from? Because that the banditos get shot by the federales. But they're like, got to go off to the ruins. That's where they got the stuff from. So they go off to the ruins and the wind has just blown all of the gold.
02:13:18
Speaker
Every which like there's it's it's all gone. Like it's been blown away by the wind. And and that's that's the poetic ending that I was mentioning. and They're both kind of fine with it at that point. They're both just like, well, that didn't work out.
02:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And like how Howard is like, he's like, hey, I can go back to that village and like be a medicine man and eat fruit by the river all day. And like, that's great. I'm I can do that for the rest of my life because I don't actually need the money. but Right. It's like that's that's a perfectly fine existence for me. And then he's like, Curtin, you're young. you you have tons of time to like go off and travel and do whatever. it's like and also there is some sad widow somewhere.
02:14:05
Speaker
That you can go meet. And he's like, that sounds like a pretty good idea. ah So Curtin goes off to meet a sad widow that he's never met before. And so it it does it. The movie ends on a pretty positive note, despite this, this, you know, vast fortune that they've fought so hard over being lost.
02:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the scene where they're making this decision is one that i quite enjoy, which is that ah they recognize the absurdity of what just happened, that all of their gold looked like sand and it blew away in the wind.
02:14:38
Speaker
ah And Howard starts laughing with gusto, and with extra gusto. And he basically advises Curtin... You have to laugh right now. Like you're you're gonna you're going to be too upset if you don't look at how funny this is.
02:14:56
Speaker
Which I really like because I think that that really lines up with my personal philosophy of things. i whatever Whenever I have a day where...
02:15:08
Speaker
bad things are happening over and over and over again i start enjoying it after a while because it's like it's gonna be a good story later it's kind of ridiculous that like bad things are on top of each other you gotta just laugh you gotta just uh you can control your experience of a scenario if you spent 10 months hard laboring for gold and then it blows away in the wind Yeah, I mean, you hope that you can laugh about it.
02:15:35
Speaker
i think it it can be a struggle sometimes. but It helps if you have a sexy widow to come back to. There you go. I do like the the sort of how much this movie is is kind of trying to show you the the realities of what mining for gold is, too.
02:15:54
Speaker
They don't just like take pickaxes and hit a rock and then like big chunks of gold fall out. There's a lot of process in this movie. The slow... Like so the slow painstaking process of panning for gold, finding out where gold veins are.
02:16:09
Speaker
like and it's like And it doesn't look like anything when you find it. It is just this like you know fine dirt sand that if you know what you're looking for, you can find. But it's not...
02:16:21
Speaker
Doesn't look like anything glamorous in the moment. And yeah, I like how it is. It is trying to like, this movie is a very unglamorous movie. Like everyone in this movie is sweaty and dirty the whole time. All their clothes are like ripped up and old and nasty.
02:16:37
Speaker
I do like how everyone looks like they, they're like, they're stinky. Yeah. They haven't taken a shower in years. Yeah, but there is like a little bit of when they're out there in the mountain and there's like they got to they're all sleeping in a tent and they're like waking up making coffee. I'm like, I'm camping is fun. How about some beans? You want some beans? Better have some beans. Time to play harmonica. They're eating beans in every scene.
02:17:01
Speaker
And it is it did kind of remind me of like my favorite part of Blazing Saddles. No, I guess that too. My favorite part of Red Dead Redemption 2, the video game, is not the train heists or the gunfights or it's like that stuff's fun. But my favorite part is like waking up in a tent early in the morning and like making beans on a fire because it's like that's the part that feels like I can. That's it. It captures that so well. We're just like, yes.
02:17:28
Speaker
All right. It's like early in the morning. There's a nice like low fog. You can you can almost feel the dew on the grass. Damn, I want to go camping so much right now.
02:17:39
Speaker
Go camping and then, ah you know, don't get bit by a Gila monster. I've never been camping in the desert, which I'm sure would be a very different experience from camping a forested mountain.
02:17:51
Speaker
Yeah. or we're We're from a a pretty nice camping region. Yes, very much so. We're very spoiled in terms of camping landscape. Also, Gila monster, one of the only animals that has monster in the name.
02:18:04
Speaker
One of only two, I think, venomous lizards. Although think the science on that's a little... is you there i i i There was some article that was like positing that there's way more of venomous lizards than just those two.
02:18:15
Speaker
But I don't know how in agreement the scientific community is on lizard venom at the moment. I did find out this movie did make me do a little, I was like, I want to read up on Gila monsters because they're great.
02:18:28
Speaker
um I do not realize that Ozempic is made from Gila monster venom. That's crazy. What? Yes. Like, like directly or it's like in there's some like there's some like it there's like some enzyme in Gila monster venom that oh my God being made.
02:18:48
Speaker
Wow. I don't know any of the science behind it or like how that happened or any of it. But I know that there is at least some direct lineage. So that's fun. Has nothing to do with this movie, but yeah.
02:19:00
Speaker
But yes, I mean, even though this movie is about like the darkness of the human soul and about people being mean to each other, there's something that just feels like a fun
Adventurous Tone Amidst Dark Themes
02:19:11
Speaker
romp to it. It's like an adventure. It is kind of an adventure movie. There are gunfights. There's like just like great character dynamics. There's like lots of moments of levity.
02:19:19
Speaker
It does feel like a real journey. So, yeah, and I think another movie slash movies that I was reminded of that, you know, came later are Wages of Fear and Sorcerer.
02:19:30
Speaker
i think Sorcerer especially feels influenced by this. Isn't Sorcerer a remake of Wages of Fear? Kind of. I mean, it's like... The same plot set up, but like all the characters are different and it's take the setting is different.
02:19:45
Speaker
I've actually seen either of them. They're both really good. Like they're both they're kind of the same movie, but they're also so different from each other that it's like they're both really worth watching. And those are both just like tense kind of descents into they're, they're not less paranoid than this is, I think overall, but um also are just kind of like desperate, desperate men kind of like thrown into this situation somewhere. And I mean, i think in, think in both it's Central America.
02:20:16
Speaker
yeah. um But we just fear is more of a desert movie and sorcerers more of a jungle movie. So we got a little both. Yeah. the but Biomes.
02:20:26
Speaker
Love biomes. Do not seek the treasure. I mean, this is also like real classic, like treasure hunt movie where they don't get the treasure, which I think is like the treasure was in us all along.
02:20:44
Speaker
I don't know if that's really what this movie is saying. Not really in this. yeah But no, not so much. But I do think that that that plot of like seeking the treasure and then the treasure is lost is like... Yeah.
02:20:57
Speaker
This is kind of the the the the poster child of that kind of movie. This is like... The thrill is in the hunt. And it's not about the destination. But it's also like the the way that it falls apart too. That it's like... Yeah.
02:21:11
Speaker
They could have... If they'd all got along... They could have just made off with $30,000. Yeah, I mean, I think this movie would have been fine. This movie and like stories like that that you're talking about, you know, it has a suspicious perspective on greed.
02:21:30
Speaker
And I think that that kind of, you know, narrative wrap up that poetic justice, it is like it's meant to be the sort of cosmic justice for the sin of greed. Right. Right.
02:21:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I think that checks out in terms it it is like, it is a karmic thing. Cause the only character who dies is Dobbs, who is like by far the most paranoid and greedy of all of them. He's the only one that is like actively taking steps against the other two in order to like get more money for himself.
02:22:04
Speaker
Cause he's like so afraid that they're going to betray him, that he betrays both of them. Yeah. Classic scenario. Right. Also, Humphrey Bogart, I feel like, is really, really good in this movie.
02:22:16
Speaker
Like, yeah I feel like most of the movies that we've watched with him so far, he has played very kind of like... very like high status kind of like slick detective types. You know, he's like, yeah. Someone who's, who's he's not a detective, but he's like, he's in a tuxedo. He's like, Hey, what are you, are you talking you know, he's like, he's very confident. He's very like people respect him.
02:22:39
Speaker
And this, he's kind of just like a ratty dude. Right. Which i I think works with his face better. Like not to say anything about his face, I guess, but like, I mean, it works well. Like, I think he looks great a tux and he also looks right covered in dirt.
02:22:53
Speaker
We should we should all hope to to be that way um I guess this is... The two sides of man. It's it's almost well it's almost like surprising that he can play like glamorous characters as well as he does, considering he has such a character-actor-y face.
02:23:09
Speaker
Right. And this is a much more character-actor-y role for him. Yeah. It's a character-actor-y role that I think is given enough like ah emotional depth that it is like a awards baby role if it were if it were around today you know it would be like maybe leonardo dicaprio transformed himself in order to be the crazy guy in right treacherous yeah her most unrecognizable in this movie which i don't think that has ever once been true Like anytime someone says an actor is unrecognizable, I'm like, they look like themselves. I don't know. Like just because they have like a fake nose doesn't mean they look that different.
02:23:48
Speaker
That's something always look at you, Bradley Cooper. Right. And it's like, all right. Like, he's got big eyebrows in this one. And it's like, but i he still looks like Bradley Cooper. You got anything else on Treasure of Sierra Madre?
02:24:00
Speaker
Only that I'm pretty sure is my favorite of the movies that we watched. for Yeah, if we're going talk about favorites, it's also my favorite. This movie works. Oh, yeah. I mean, I do really enjoy Red Shoes.
02:24:12
Speaker
Also, I like, I mean, I like all of them except for Abbott and Costello. And I like that one. But Bicycle Thieves, I think, is is quite good. Yeah. Rope is a lot of fun and really good I disliked to none of them.
02:24:25
Speaker
Good year. Yeah. Good year, 48. ah That being said, ah thanks again to Trace for joining us. Yeah. And I hope to see you all on the internet where you can follow us and to see you, Glenn, next year.
02:24:42
Speaker
Ah, yeah. See you next year. See you next year.