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1940 - Little Crawling Horrors
58 Plays1 year ago
The start of a new decade brings with it a cavalcade of great movies! Foundational animation, anti-Nazi comedy, screwball banter, and moody dramas all just knocking it outta the park. Its almost like the 1940s was a good decade for movies!
You can watch along with our video version of the episode on Youtube or check out our Instagram, Twitter, and other social media crap here: http://linktr.ee/1w1y
See you next year!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'One Week, One Year' Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to One Week, One Year, a podcast where you watch and discuss every year of film history in order starting in 1895, the dawn of cinema. And this episode is 1940.
Meet the Hosts: Chris Ellee and Glenn Cobell
00:00:19
Speaker
I'm one of your hosts, Chris Ellee. I'm a film projectionist and joining me as always is... I'm Glenn Cobell. I'm a filmmaker.
00:00:26
Speaker
What's up, Glenn? I got some new decor, some movie themed decor behind me, if you can see that. If you're listening, if you're listening to this as a podcast, I have a King Kong poster now. Just imagine a King Kong poster, a very low res King Kong poster. Right. You can't tell from this distance, but if you get right up close to it, it's not the highest quality JPEG that they use to make the poster.
00:00:53
Speaker
I, uh, it is low quality JPEGs in professional scenarios are one of my favorite aesthetics. Really? Because it really bothers me. I, uh, I love to walk up to, uh, uh, I don't know, like a restaurant or something, and they have an extremely blown up, like,
00:01:14
Speaker
Shitty-looking JPEG clipart on their menu or on their yeah, I know ever I love that I live for it. I take a picture every time it is at like a diner It is charming a little bit. It's like you guys spent all of this money on sign printing, but you didn't really bother to Just get right. It was the first thing that came up in image search and they just went with that and
00:01:40
Speaker
But me, I am on the precipice of...
Glenn's Latest Tech Purchase: An LED Wall
00:01:44
Speaker
A precipice? Not quite a projection situation, but a projection-related situation. It's the opposite of projection. I just found my way into getting a big LED wall. I got it on a government surplus deals website. Wow. Did I tell you about this?
00:02:04
Speaker
No. Oh, I yeah, I mean, I have I might sell two of them or all of them, but like I for like a basically ninety nine percent discount, I got a I got four sixteen by nine, sixteen foot wide by nine feet tall LED screens that could be used for movies and stuff.
00:02:27
Speaker
You could build a whole volume stage if you wanted to. I could build a volume stage. I could do like a drive-in theater. My thoughts are blossoming. But tomorrow I'm going to go pick it up. I'm renting like a truck with a liftgate because each of the screens is like over 1,500 pounds.
00:02:49
Speaker
I'm sure nine feet tall. Yeah, that's crazy. So I'm trying to do some research to figure out like what trust I need to buy and like design something that won't fall over. Apparently they're weatherproof so I can use them outside. It's going to be going to be exciting. It's going to be exciting. Well, well, well. Yeah. So that's a whole big thing that I'm doing. But that's cool.
Cinema in the 1940s: A New Decade Begins
00:03:11
Speaker
Yeah, we're back in the 19th or we're back into the normal years. Right. Yeah.
00:03:19
Speaker
We did our decade in review episode covering the 1930s in total, and now we're into a new decade, dawn of a new decade. And what a decade it is.
00:03:31
Speaker
You know, we'll get into it, but 1940, the 1940s is coming out swinging. Yeah. There is some good cinema in this decade already. Also just like some big swings too.
Historical Context of 1940: WWII and More
00:03:50
Speaker
true yeah well before we get started with talking about the movies we like to um in this case kind of bum you all out and and give ourselves a little context for what's going on in 1940 isn't this going to be fun take it away glenn the nose of the year 1940 as the second world war rages food rationing is instituted in the united kingdom
00:04:17
Speaker
The Winter and Summer Olympics, set to take place in Japan and Finland, are cancelled due to the war. Four-year-old Tenzin Gyatso is named the 14th Dalai Lama. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet, and later Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact. Progress in the post! Booker T. Washington becomes the first African-American to be featured on a postage stamp. Germany invades Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
00:04:46
Speaker
The French government flees to Bordeaux as Paris falls and the French resistance is formed. Over 338,000 troops are evacuated from Dunkirk. New stockings hit the market, made of a strange new material called nylon. Albert Einstein becomes an American citizen. The Battle of Britain and the Blitz begin. 17,000-year-old cave paintings are discovered by hackers in France. What a time for a hike!
00:05:13
Speaker
Franklin D Roosevelt is elected for an unprecedented third term. Captain America Comics number one is released featuring a cover of Adolf getting walloped. The thief of Baghdad, talky remake, is the first film to use blue screen chroma key. The first Hollywood talent agents emerge onto the scene. I tried to end it on a bit of an up note to balance it out. Yes.
00:05:39
Speaker
Great year for movies, but not a great year for existing. Yeah, which I feel like has kind of been like the thesis of our entire show. What was the best year? We'll find out. What was the best year?
Iconic Cartoon Debuts: Bugs Bunny and Friends
00:05:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's a loaded question. Yeah. All right. We haven't done this in a minute. Let's jump into one week, one reel. Hey, there we go.
00:06:10
Speaker
Get some shorts going. Why don't we start off with some cartoons, baby? Hey, love those. For this, this year, 1940, was the debut of Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, and Woody Woodpecker. We watched the Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry one. True. But then there's also, well, I was doing some some additional sort of research into Bugs Bunny.
00:06:39
Speaker
And that's one of my favorite sentences. Additional research into Bugs Bunny. Yeah. Yeah. There was an 1938 Porky Pig cartoon that featured a sort of different rabbit character that looked different and had a different voice. But that voice by Mel Blanc, the famous, you know, cartoon voice actor, is basically the Woody Woodpecker voice.
00:07:03
Speaker
But as a rabbit, which is kind of funny that it's like, oh, wow, man of a thousand voices, maybe man of a couple of voices that keeps reusing. But so that was kind of interesting, because like that that's from 1938 and it's like very much much more of like 1930s style of animation. It's like very, very that kind of like early Disney or like Fleischer Brothers.
00:07:26
Speaker
aesthetic. It's black and white. But the first proper Bugs Bunny short that we're talking about is in color. It's called a Wild Hair. Yeah. And it has the classic kind of Bugs Bunny versus Elmer Fudd situation. Right. It opens with Elmer Fudd
00:07:45
Speaker
walking through the woods saying, I'm hunting rabbits, which is classic, which is exactly what he says. But it's like it's it's kind of funny how it is that thing. Like, I think we've watched a lot of stuff of like, especially in early animation, where it's like, OK, they've kind of got it, right? It's like, OK, this this is technically a Mickey Mouse, but like they got it. They got some some things to work out, you know. Yeah. Whereas I feel like Elmer Fudd, especially.
00:08:13
Speaker
Maybe not as much with Bugs Bunny, but like Elmer Fudd is like completely fully formed. Yeah, it narratively, if not visually, because these are kind of like what we're talking about are slightly off model Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Tom and Jerry. They're like visually not fully formed. Modeled. I mean, they they they they hadn't you know, they hadn't made the model yet.
00:08:39
Speaker
Right. Yeah. But like, you know, it's not like they came in like visually fully formed. Right. We're sort of, I guess, somewhat still in like Simpson's shorts territory and character design. This is Tracy Ullman Bugs Bunny. Kind of. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, this is like the class like Elmer Fudd is trying to shoot and
Tom and Jerry's Silent Comedy Influence
00:09:05
Speaker
eat Bugs Bunny, presumably.
00:09:08
Speaker
And Bugs Bunny is a real stinker and is sort of messing with him to try to not get murdered.
00:09:16
Speaker
When I was doing, when I was grabbing this short to watch and, you know, for the research for the episode, I ended up just kind of going on a Looney Tunes deep dive and watching a whole bunch. And I will be watching a whole bunch more because I love Looney Tunes. It's been a while since I've sat down and watched some Looney Tunes shorts and they are incredible. Yeah.
00:09:42
Speaker
I will say that, like, you know, maybe we should check in a little bit more in the next couple of years because we are kind of, you know, ankle deep in the golden age of animation right now. Yeah. And and I can I can feel it. Yeah. Like we watched a lot of animation for this episode and it's like, you know, there's there's a lot there's a lot going on. Yeah. It's kind of wild how like how different the animation
00:10:10
Speaker
right, even compared to like a couple years earlier, like how different it is. And I will say when I talk about like slightly off model Bugs Bunny, he
00:10:22
Speaker
I think that this Looney Tunes short is very good, but as I was watching stuff from 1940 and like peeking ahead a little bit and watching things from 41, 42, 43, even by the next year or two, you are seeing fully unimpeachable, like perfectly scripted Looney Tunes, where the 1940 stuff that I watched, I watched like three 1940 shorts, and they're really good, but they're a little rougher around the edges.
00:10:51
Speaker
Mm-hmm. It's worth pointing out that this is directed by Tex Avery. Fred, Tex Avery. One of the big names. Right. He's sort of like the guy who I feel like kind of set the standard for like what Looney Tunes is almost. There was like the pacing of it, the humor, the writing. And it's like a lot of that is apparent in this. It's like, right, the situation. But then it's like a lot of the jokes are like, hey, Ty's a shotgun. Whatnot. Like,
00:11:20
Speaker
We're like into a bow. That's a very Looney Toonsy thing to do. Yes, it is. And shortly after this, Tex Avery kind of had disagreements with the Warner Brothers studio. And so he moved on to MGM and was involved in Tom and Jerry for much of its run.
00:11:42
Speaker
And he made Red Hot Riding Hood, which I'm sure we'll be covering. I think we have to. It's like, you know, it's it's iconic. That's going to be like an easy 1943 thumbnail. Is the wolf with his eyeball sticking out? You know, I don't know if you picked up on this. I don't even know if this is accurate. But one thing that I. Notice that I might be completely making this up is
00:12:09
Speaker
I thought the Bugs Bunny, the character design, like you said, is not quite fully there yet. I kind of feel like Bugs Bunny looks a little bit more like Clark Gable in this than the classic Bugs Bunny design. I could see the argument. And I don't know if that's because, right, I've read the thing, which I know is kind of
00:12:29
Speaker
Not 100% confirmed that it's like Bugs Bunny is based on Clark Gable in It Happened One Night. You know, watching this, I felt a little less sure about that, you know? Because also even like saying, doesn't he say doc in that also? Maybe. Because I was looking up like what the, you know, says that in this short.
00:12:52
Speaker
Mm hmm. And I was looking into the sort of there is a fair amount of like easy to find internet stuff written about the phrase what's up doc and like where that came from. And it seems like that's just a thing that Tex Avery would say or like a phrase that he kind of knew from, I guess, from Texas, the people said. So the guy sure throw that in there, you know, unaware that it would become an iconic
00:13:20
Speaker
famous piece of American culture. It would become Danny Torrance's iconic line. Yeah, but this short, it's, you know, while still being rough around the edges in the way that I was talking about,
The Three Stooges Satirize Fascism
00:13:34
Speaker
it's still freely well put together. He says what's up, doc. He's doing like classic Bugs Bunny misdirection. Right.
00:13:44
Speaker
tricking tricking Elmer and all that. I was almost kind of thinking that we were going to see him in drag in this one, like the really fully formed Bugs Bunny. Didn't quite happen, though. Well, we'll get we'll get there. Yeah. I'm not sure how early that that starts happening, but I'm sure I get the sense based on the fact that like I do know like a lot of Looney Tunes, like we said in earlier episodes, is pulling from like especially really early silent comedy.
00:14:13
Speaker
And considering how prevalent drag is in early silent comedy, that's like, I can definitely see like kind of the kind of lineage there. Things like anvils, sausage links, right? All that stuff that we were like in 1900. We're like, hey, Looney Tunes stuff. I think that if we're to kind of bring in Tom and Jerry here, something that I was noticing about both of these shorts is that they are both
00:14:40
Speaker
very infused by the physical comedy of silent movies. But I think that Tom and Jerry feels even more directly inspired by silent comedy, where Tom and Jerry don't talk. It is all motion. It's all
00:15:01
Speaker
Action reaction, right? Yeah. Looney Tunes is able to kind of set up these more bizarre scenarios, I guess, where Tom and Jerry, by the fact that they usually don't talk, the comedy is being completely led by this...
00:15:19
Speaker
silent comedy style slapstick action, which, yeah, it's like they've got their they're taking their kind of comedy worlds and sort of separating them down as these individually definable things, which I think, you know, Sylvester and Tweety is a different vibe than Tom and Jerry, you know? Yeah, yeah. The Tom and Jerry short, Puss gets the boot.
00:15:45
Speaker
Which is a funny title to me. Directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. It is funny how like we watched right to cartoon shorts and both of them are just like full of like early cartoon. Just like big names, right? Like big kind of iconic characters and things like. 1940 was big, big year for animation, for sure. Yeah, yeah.
00:16:13
Speaker
And we'll we'll talk more about that later. Yeah. What movies are we talking about? Who knows? One thing, especially like in post gets the boot again with a character design, Tom, the cat is is definitely a lot more kind of cat like he's like less anthropomorphized. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot more he's like there's like more like hair texture.
00:16:40
Speaker
That was something that I was looking at that and I'm like, I bet they're I bet they started animating that and they're like, let's shave all this hair. Never mind. Yeah, let's make it all clean lines and not like draw, you know, give them actual like hair, you know, clumps. But it kind of adds to like it makes Tom kind of less of a cuddly looking character. It's like Tom is a bit more sinister.
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah. Or comes across that way. One thing that was kind of surprising to me about this short was that normally there's like a kind of different dynamic between Tom and Jerry, where Jerry is less like the absolutely terrorized victim and more like this kind of shit eating aggressor, you know? Right. It's a bit more of an Elmore Fudd Bugs Bunny situation, right? Where like Jerry is kind of messing with Tom a bit more. Yeah. And kind of.
00:17:35
Speaker
Right. It's the the the dynamic is more even handed as as it goes along. Yeah. Yeah. It does like kind of give Jerry some more power toward the end of the short. But for much of it, it's like this is just this is just watching this cute mouse getting terrorized. Yeah. Also worth noting that Tom isn't named the Tom in this short. He's Jasmine. So maybe it's a different cat altogether. Maybe that's why it looks different.
00:18:01
Speaker
No, it's not. One thing that is I noticed is like both this and the wild hair have animals begging for their lives by the end of it. Like at the end of the wild hair, there's the whole thing where like Bugs Bunny begging for his life and he thinks that he's dead and goes, I'm a boy to run. And like they both kind of have that moment where like the
00:18:29
Speaker
The aggressor is like, oh no, what have I done? And then they inevitably just get slapped around.
00:18:37
Speaker
But another thing that kind of no small element that links both of these is they both kind of have comedy bits where they acknowledge the camera, which I didn't pick up on that. It's an interesting choice. I mean, it's something that Louis Tunes I think is probably more known for. Yeah, a lot of like turning to the camera like directly. Get a load of this guy. Very fun cartoons. You got anything else to say on the on on these cartoons?
00:19:04
Speaker
No, I don't think I mean, it is kind of like even though right there are these like little differences, it's like it is somewhat surprising how kind of fully formed they both feel in terms of like, no, that's Tom and Jerry. That's Bugs Bunny number one. Like watching them, like I was saying, watching them made me instantly want to watch every Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry ever made. Just pump it right into my veins. I mean, that is, I think, a commendable goal.
00:19:31
Speaker
I was calculating it, right? They're only seven minutes long, these things. So there is, you know, something like eight, eight hundred to a thousand of them, depending on how you count it. Are we counting like all the way up to like the HBO Max produced Looney Tunes? I am not. No. OK. I'm talking about from 1930, 30, 1929, I think to 1969.
00:19:58
Speaker
or 1939 or something like that. That's sort of like the the canonical classic era of of Looney Tunes. Yes. Although apparently there's some debate about like when it gets bad. Well, of course there is. Yeah. I my intention is to watch a Looney Tunes a day for the next thousand days and just chew through it. That I because that's very doable. Right. Because they're so short. So it is like.
00:20:25
Speaker
If you treat it as like a TV show, I feel like that is pretty easy to throw them. Our next short, our final short, is us checking back in with the three stooges with a short called You Nasty Spy. Nasty with a Z. It's like Nazi, but nasty.
00:20:49
Speaker
This is another case where we're seeing something fully formed, right? Right. We first the last time we looked at a Three Stooges short was their first one. And it had a lot of the it had some of the bits, but it was sort of a bit more of a generic comedy short where this is full force Three Stooges. Yeah, this is like has a lot of even though I still feel like this is kind of
00:21:16
Speaker
Most Three Stooges short aren't aren't like directly satirizing like real things the way that this is as much, but like it has a lot of really just like classic Three Stooges bits and things in it. It feels much more like a kind of quintessential Three Stooges short than The Woman Haters, which was the other one that we watched. Yeah.
00:21:41
Speaker
This one is so densely packed with jokes. It's kind of I like I'm sure I missed stuff because I've seen this. I've seen this before. Also, like more than once, I think, because they used to. I used to watch Three Stooges Shorts when they aired on AMC. I probably saw this one at least twice. And yeah, but it's like just rewatching it today. I was like, there's yeah, it is. It's like every line of dialogue is like three jokes.
00:22:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's nuts. And I'm really impressed, honestly. Like, I think that the density, the tight scripting, and combined with the good physical comedy, something was kind of making me feel like this is, like,
00:22:26
Speaker
what the Marx Brothers were supposed to be in a way, right? Where it's taking this really dense wordplay and combining it with this broad physical comedy and it feels much more in synthesis than Groucho and Harpo, you know?
00:22:47
Speaker
Right. It feels right. They it's like these. It's less sort of like Groucho is over here doing wordplay and Harpo is over here doing physical comedy bits like this is like, no, just like do them all at once. Yeah. And just pack it so tight.
00:23:03
Speaker
Yeah. This is why I was so kind of let down by watching all the the Marx Brothers movies, because I'm used to seeing all the Three Stooges bits where they're like going going twice as fast. So this one is, as you might be able to tell from the title and a political satire, I suppose. Yeah, it is very, very timely. It's
00:23:32
Speaker
you know, it's being made by three Jewish men who I think have probably not, not very nice things to say about Adolf Hitler. That was one of the things that like, I remember this being like a very, very, you know, very pointed satire of, of like Hitler and Nazi Germany and fascism and all of that. And yet rewatching it today, I was like, it feels more
00:23:57
Speaker
kind of like angry, I guess than I kind of remembered it being. Hmm. Maybe I'm projecting a little bit, but it is like. It's I feel like they're they're hitting the note so hard of just like these people are idiots like they're so dumb. Why would anyone listen to this person? And it's like they're like they don't even know what they're talking about. Like three students are always playing like dumb characters, right? Like that's their whole shtick.
00:24:27
Speaker
But I feel like it's so like pointed and I feel like they're they're making such a I don't know. It feels a little bit more aimed, I guess, than I'm used to. I feel like three students tends to be more a bit just kind of broad, silly slapstick. There's definitely some like class commentary stuff going on in their stuff. But like I know this this just felt like so much of a like fuck you movie.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, it's not deep satire, but it's just no, it is very blunt satire for sure. These guys are so dumb. You might as well call it the kingdom of moronica. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But also, I mean, just like there's a lot of you know, there's the thing of like in the beginning. Also, one thing I did not remember about this short, I think it's feels also feels very pointed is that Mo is appointed dictator by a bunch of businessmen.
00:25:21
Speaker
You want a dictator because war is profitable. Yeah, like that's a yeah, that's probably the most like incisive message they have talking about like the sort of corporate connections of the Nazi Party, which is not something that you see highlighted that often. Mm hmm. And then it's like because the three shoes are dumb. They're like, oh, dictator, what's that?
00:25:44
Speaker
And the business people who are like, they're all their names are Pig Latin. They're like, Mr. Oxnay, Mr. Ixnay and Mr. Amscray. Yeah. They're like, oh, a dictator has promised the people plenty, but then they keep it all for themselves. Like they're very like even just like giving a sort of bare bones like description of what a dictator is. It's sort of.
00:26:07
Speaker
You can feel their, like, contempt, you know? And then the stooges go, that sounds like a great deal. I love that. Yeah. Curly is like, oh, a parasite. Like rubbing his hands together, all excited. And then, yeah, and then, you know, hard cut to them all in like Nazi-ish military uniforms with like a million medals on them.
00:26:31
Speaker
I feel like they're like kind of like Moe is definitely supposed to be like a Hitler analog. I feel like Curly is kind of gerbils. Oh, sorry. No, Larry's gerbils. Yeah. And Curly, I guess, is guring.
00:26:49
Speaker
Maybe, I don't know, him I'm less sure of. But it's like you can see that they're kind of glomming real people onto each of them, which that'll come up again in the next thing. Yeah, there's a lot of kind of taking Nazi iconography and sort of doing the dumb version of that, right?
00:27:12
Speaker
Right. They like call him the stormtroopers and all the stormtroopers come in with like umbrellas and raincoats. I love it. Because there's a storm coming. And I was like, Oh, get me get me a gun. And Carly takes that dice and goes, what are those for? It's downloaded. Look, look, look, look, look. There is a lot. I mean, I don't it didn't happen as much. I feel like in in their first short. But there is there's so much, especially Curly has all of his kind of
00:27:39
Speaker
Noises. Right, all the noises that he makes. And I love it. It's great. It makes me smile and giggle every time. You mentioned all the metals that they're wearing and like there was one that felt like a pretty, I don't know, pretty raunchy joke in a way, which was that like he had one like right at the base of his jacket that looked like a big butthole. I mean, who knows? Maybe.
00:28:10
Speaker
Sneak that past Breen. There is a joke that three students will do, have done in a couple of different shorts where they have a big map with a bunch of fake countries and landmarks on it. And they'll just hold on the map for a while just to let the audience read all of the goofy names. Yeah. They're really proud of those names. Right. But I noticed there's the Sea of Biscuit.
00:28:39
Speaker
Which is a, you know, timely Seabiscuit reference, because Seabiscuit was a racehorse in the 1930s. So that's like a... I don't know, that was the thing I didn't... I was like, oh yeah, I guess like Seabiscuit was a like contemporary thing for when this came out. Bologna, classic, you know. It really is like, I think you hit the nail on the head there with, it is the dumb version of everything.
00:29:06
Speaker
It's it's Bologna. It's it's a moronica or whatever. It's such a, you know, silly slapstick bullshit short film, but it's I don't know. I felt there was like a palpable sense of like, yeah, I don't know. Like they weren't just satirizing. The Hitler because.
00:29:30
Speaker
There was a war happening. I could feel the anger coming out of it a little bit.
00:29:40
Speaker
Which I appreciated. Like, I think that that is... Right, Three Stooges' shorts are never, you know, calm. They're always a little angry, I guess. No, but yeah, like, they're expressed their anger by poking Hitler in the eyes, you know? Right. And also, it ends with them all getting eaten by lions, which doesn't... Like, it usually ends with, like, the Three Stooges, like, running off, like, down a street or something. Like, they may, like, chase out of a house.
00:30:03
Speaker
Whereas this is like, no, they all got eaten alive by lions. These these these stooges deserve to die is what they're saying. Yeah, exactly. They're probably stooges in this too, because they're they're just being used to, you know, increase the profits of the Mr. Ixney and Mr.
00:30:24
Speaker
And I mean, yeah, specifically kind of saying Hitler is this person. Not just that we're making fun of Hitler, but that their premise is that Hitler is a stooge. He is a figure-headed for corporate interests, which is a nuanced commentary from a bunch of dumb guys.
00:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'd say I don't I don't get the impression that there's no Howard and, you know, like I think I think they all seem like they they were somewhat heady maybe about their their comedy as many comedians are all of that, like political commentary aside, which is kind of definitely the most notable thing about this. And also just, you know, it has all of them running into a door frame and getting stuck like just such classic three Stooges hijinks.
00:31:12
Speaker
I thought that was from the episode of The Simpsons, where Mr. Burns is getting so many bacteria at the same time that they get stuck in the door. There's definitely a lot of three-stuted stuff in The Simpsons. Yes. But there's a lot of anti-Nazi stuff. How is that for a second? Hey. There's a lot of similar silly anti-Nazi stuff in our first feature presentation.
00:31:41
Speaker
And now we're pleased to bring you our feature presentation. The Great Dictator. Yes. By Charlie Chaplin. His he's he's he made Modern Times four years ago and he's back. He's back.
Charlie Chaplin's Dual Roles in 'The Great Dictator'
00:31:57
Speaker
I mean, first, like all talk. Yes. Because like Modern Times is kind of I don't know, sort of a crossover movie. It's like mostly kind of silent, but there is a lot of dialogue in it.
00:32:11
Speaker
Whereas this is like, there's a lot of kind of classic chaplain-esque kind of bits in it that don't, that are physical comedy, but it's a talking. Yeah. Even though I think there are some ways that it feels like,
00:32:27
Speaker
The Jewish barber character in this movie is some kind of analog to the little tramp, right? He's not exactly a little tramp. He's very tramp-esque. He's very tramp-coded. He wears almost the exact same outfit at points. But I think in that role, he's kind of resistant to talking. He's kind of a quiet character who does talk sometimes.
00:32:55
Speaker
And that enables him to be the silent one in scenes where other people are talking, where he can maybe just say like a word or two, but then continue to be a silent comedy guy. Yeah. He isn't completely changing his entire style in this movie. He played two characters, though.
00:33:16
Speaker
Right? Because he's playing the barber and then the dictator. Yeah. In the beginning of the movie, it says any resemblance between Hinkle, adenoid Hinkle and the Jewish barber is purely coincidental. Kind of just hanging a lampshade on the fact that, like,
00:33:36
Speaker
that they're played by the same character. It's a very strange, you know, it's a very funny thing to put at the beginning of the movie because it's kind of like any resemblance between Austin Powers and Dr. Evil is purely coincidental. But then You Nasty Spy also had a sort of like goofy any resemblance joke at the beginning. Yeah, I guess any resemblance between the characters and any real people is a miracle, I think was the joke that they made. Right.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that that was what this was doing before I like kind of read it. And I was like, oh, it's like a resemblance between the two characters and not a resemblance of the character of Hinkle to Hitler. But it's still kind of making fun of the sort of like any resemblance between the characters and because like that thing is so often bullshit. Like it's like at the end of Walk the Line, it's like any resemblance. Like the movie is about Johnny Cash, the musician. They like show a picture of him at the end.
00:34:30
Speaker
It's like how all the movies say no animals were harmed in the making of this production. And yet everybody was eating salami on set. There you go. I mean, you're not technically not wrong. Yeah, I feel like this this movie is like also feels kind of angry in places. I think kind of more so even than the three students one in some spots.
00:34:57
Speaker
I also feel like this, this is Charlie Chaplin's way of like addressing the mustache thing. Yeah. This is his way of being like, no, no, no, hang on. I get that we have the same facial hair or like my character has the same facial hair anyway. And but it's like almost kind of using that as like part of the plot of it. But yeah, I mean, it's because it's like the the tramp esque character looks like the dictator. And so by the end of the movie,
00:35:26
Speaker
He can sort of swap places with him. Yeah, it's a classic situation where two people look alike and therefore swap lives for an amount of time. I mean, I was I was remembering this movie is it's like the whole like back half is like they swap place or it's like the the barber is everyone thinks he's the dictator. It's like that's like just the last scene. It's like very, very brief. Right. He's sort of he's still doing the tramp thing, but then the Hinkle character
00:35:57
Speaker
since he's the villain, is sort of Charlie Chaplin going back to kind of how he started, which is like playing a heel, like playing a like asshole. Guy that like isn't sympathetic that you kind of want to see get kicked around. Yeah. Right. Because like that's that's like that's kind of how like pre-tramp or even like early tramp stuff. He wasn't as much of a kind of like cutesy.
00:36:24
Speaker
sort of like, uh, I just want to like take care of my adopted son sort of thing. It was more like, Oh no, he'll like show up and like try to steal your girl and then like throw you up a cliff. It was much more, it was much more of a kind of like troublemaker type.
00:36:40
Speaker
And so I think he's leaning back into that heel character side of himself. I mean, it's interesting in this that he gets some comedy out of his extreme meanness. I think with
00:36:55
Speaker
you know, a kind of asshole type comedy character in the vein of like Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse, you know, it's somebody who's a troublemaker rather than somebody who is like a legitimately evil person, right?
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah, it is funny seeing a lot of like early versions of that, though, and maybe it's just like a sign of the time is being different. Like Mickey Mouse is like torturing animals in Steamboat Willie. Right. It's like this sort of like, oh, it's a troublemaker. But then you watch it now and you're like, this is, you know, you should be in jail. This is not good. Are we a vegan podcast now? Yeah, though, you know, I will say like.
00:37:38
Speaker
his portrayal of Henkel, Hitler, it is a combination of silly and scary in quite an effective way, I thought. I think, you know, it's kind of cutting back and forth between what's going on for the Jewish barber in the ghetto and what's going on in Henkel's office.
00:38:02
Speaker
And something about that, right? It's like, you know, you see policies that are created in one place, like trickle down into the other place. And so you're just kind of watching all this horrible stuff happen over and over again that's punctuated by this comedy. Right. But it's this melancholic comedy, I think. Yeah. This movie is not it's very it's funny at times, but this is not a very funny movie.
00:38:29
Speaker
Uh, I think that this, uh, like the comedic moments have the sense of like dread hanging over them in this movie. Whereas like the, the three students short also, I mean, three students short is what that's like 17 minutes, something like that. Two reels. It's, it's very short, but it's like, that's all satire, right? That's all like silly stuff. Whereas this is right. There's like long stretches that are not silly really at all. They're just, they're just kind of upsetting.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah, it feels in a way like the Chaplin's kind of distinction that he made between him and Keaton and Lloyd, right? Where Keaton, for example, is just like packing the jokes. It's about jokes, right? Where once Chaplin made the kid, I feel like, once he started making features, he wanted them with a little heart and with a little sadness, you know? There are moments... There was the thing where it's like, you know, this picture may give you a laugh and maybe a tear.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah. And this one, I think rather than this kind of like broad sadness that you might get, because like the prospector tramp got ditched by everybody and no one's nice to him. You know, it's this sadness that is loaded with all this real world stuff. Right. Yeah. Like, yeah. Like it's not it's not movie sadness. It's invoking some real horrors. And it's angry about these horrors. Like it is. Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker
uh... it it is
00:40:02
Speaker
almost, you know, it goes up to the point almost of advocating for like bombing their parliament or whatever because they're like political action must happen. You know, this is a step up in the political awareness of modern times. For example, I was actually kind of a little surprised, I guess, at both this and you nasty spy, but like they are both very
00:40:31
Speaker
Um, very blunt and very kind of broad satires, but I don't know. There was like kind of more insight into, I feel like maybe it's just the fact that like in over the past, but however many years in, in the United States, there's just been a lot of, uh, talk about, you know, dictatorships, fascism,
Dictatorship Satire in Chaplin's Film
00:40:54
Speaker
strong men. We've all learned a lot about this stuff. Right. And, but like the psychology of it, of how it's like.
00:41:00
Speaker
It's like based in just this like pettiness and like smallness, right? Like, yeah, I feel like great dignitaries especially is like really laying on just like how like dictators are like petty, cowardly, small men who are like childish. Like you were saying, they're like cutting between those scenes of like Hinkle and the people living in the ghetto. It'll have a scene of a kind of fairly silly scene of Hinkle be like,
00:41:30
Speaker
I'm making up an example but it's like he had like a bad sandwich or whatever and he like gets mad about it and he's like outlaw sandwiches. Right. And then it's like and then it'll cut to like people starving because they there's no food like it's that level of like kind of.
00:41:46
Speaker
You know, that's like the tonal shift. But then it's like adding that context to the the like mercurial dictator of like the human cost of the existence of that. But it's like there's such a clear understanding right of that. The petty whims of this one guy. Are lead to like the suffering of, you know, thousands to millions of people.
00:42:12
Speaker
And I don't know, it's not that I didn't think that people were aware, obviously people were aware of that in 1940, but the sort of like, how like clear cut it is, I think surprised me a little bit. Because I think especially a lot of things about World War II or about Nazis are, that I've, you know, absorbed are in hindsight, right? They're like with all of this,
00:42:40
Speaker
additional knowledge like since World War Two has happened that like there's a lot of understanding that people have about World War Two now that they didn't at the time or like there was just less information about it and I think that it's
00:42:56
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, watching both these, I'm like, Oh no, like they, they, they had a pretty good handle on it. Like they knew exactly what was up. Yeah. I mean, you know, part of his inspiration for making this movie was hearing about the suffering of Jewish people that he knew, uh, uh, in Germany in the thirties. Yeah. And I do like, as, as I think we have seen in the past like couple of weeks that like, uh,
00:43:25
Speaker
treating fascist leaning people as buffoons is a genuinely effective way of combating that ideology. It's something that has to be rediscovered with the producers, right? Like it's
00:43:41
Speaker
I think that the thing I was going to say earlier was that the horrors retrospectively of World War II, right? People knew about the pre-war horrors, which were not good. And people knew about this weird guy who was trying to make a master race and invade countries and all this stuff. And that's already bad enough.
00:44:08
Speaker
The Great Dictator is made on the basis of that level of awareness of badness, where he said in his biography in the 60s, he might not have made The Great Dictator if he knew about the concentration camps, like how horrific they were. I mean, Nasty Spy makes a concentration camp joke. Well, he ends up in a concentration camp in this movie, too. Yeah. Well, isn't it kind of more like a POW camp because you get sent with like the
00:44:38
Speaker
I mean, they call it a concentration camp, even though it looks like a more milquetoast POW camp. Yeah, because that's just that's what the context was. That's what they assumed that it was. Right. But that is a thing right where it's like they knew they existed and they knew that they were very bad places to be.
00:44:58
Speaker
But they did not, there was not a level of awareness, I guess, of like how horrific it was. They were not aware of the systematic genocide that was happening. Which makes us, I guess, some of the humor land a little differently now than it probably would have been.
00:45:20
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think I don't know if it tends to like mess up the humor. I think honestly, what it does is make this movie more upsetting than it was when it came out. I think there's a little bit more like I was able to like read things into this movie that maybe weren't even intentional in terms of like how dark it is. Yeah.
00:45:43
Speaker
The movie ends with, you know, this this kind of mixed up situation between the Jewish ankle is like he's like fishing and he falls off his boat and disappears and no one knows what happened to him. Like, that's the last time we see that character. Well, he falls off his boat and then two guards. He's like near the prison camp that the Jewish barber is is at.
00:46:08
Speaker
And so the two guards think of the escaped barber and then put him in the concentration camp, which is a great ending for Hitler, right? Put him away in a concentration camp.
00:46:21
Speaker
the Jewish barber is posing as Hitler, as Hinkle, and then ends up accidentally kind of finding his way into having to deliver a victory speech of a invaded, like we successfully invaded a country, right?
00:46:41
Speaker
And he's trying to keep his ruse up and he delivers a speech at the end of this movie that knocks you on your ass or so good. It I was overwhelmed when I was hearing this speech. It was especially with like everything that is loaded into the movie with the knowledge of the concentration camps. It's it's heavy. It's heavy. But it's I it's.
00:47:12
Speaker
It's sort of, it's not just like wallowing and sort of, you know, it's a very- Oh, it's beautiful. It's a very kind of, I feel like uplifting is kind of the wrong word, but it's a very- It's optimistic. It's a very optimistic monologue.
00:47:29
Speaker
It's talking about how greedy, horrible people will take advantage of others. It talks about how they turn people into machines, which is calling back to some of the theming in modern times.
00:47:45
Speaker
But then I think a really potent line from it was where he talks about how even horrific dictators are men and they will die. And as long as men die, then liberty will survive.
00:48:01
Speaker
because people like Hitler, even if it takes for the entire length of their lives, will eventually die. And what they stand for will die. And there is hope, you know, and it's. Oh, I wish this movie didn't like hit home so much just because like I wish the state of the world was different right now. Right. But like, yeah, I feel like this movie felt very timely to 2024.
00:48:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, well, the thing is that it's like these are universal themes because it is a universal throughout history experience of people taking advantage of other people, of people seizing power and killing and and worshipping, you know, demanding that other people worship them. It happened with kings, you know, it happens. It happened with fascists.
00:48:57
Speaker
And, you know, in some ways it's happening today. And it feels like, you know, the uplift that is meant from that speech, the optimism from that speech is something that we can apply to today. Yeah, I certainly was like roused by it. Yeah. I was like, do I need to do something right now? Right. I do think it's it's really I find it really interesting how
00:49:23
Speaker
I think this is of everything I've seen. This is one of Charlie Chaplin's best works. Yeah. And I think the best part of it is this speech. And it's for a guy who is like kind of the like the image of like silent
Chaplin's Powerful Speech on Humanity
00:49:39
Speaker
comedy. Right. It's like that is if you were to personify like silent comedy into a single person, most people would pick Chaplin. You show a picture of the tramp.
00:49:53
Speaker
people know that that's like, oh, yeah, silent movies, you know, like there's there's an immediate kind of shorthand there. And the like best and kind of most powerful moment in this movie is like him basically staring directly down the barrel of the lens and and speaking. Yeah. That's interesting in that sense, but it also it feels like.
00:50:16
Speaker
Charlie Chaplin almost being like, if I'm going to speak in a movie, I'm going to like use my voice in the sort of poetic sense. Right. It's like he's speaking up for people that he feels don't have a voice in the United States. He was like, not not part of World War Two yet. Right. There's still kind of like a big isolationist movement to be like, no, stay out of the war. We did this already. We don't want to do it again.
00:50:44
Speaker
Yeah, this movie is depicting the human horrors of it's like we need to help here. Yeah, for everything that I don't like about Charlie Chaplin as a person of like the person he was. And there's a lot not to like I think like him making this movie and being so kind of outspoken. Is is really commendable because he'd like he does a good job with it like he's not just.
00:51:11
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I don't know. Like that, the way that this movie ends, I found very, uh, yeah, very powerful. Yeah. Honestly, that ending speech was like one of the most powerful moments I've ever experienced in cinema. I was, I was awestruck by it. It's just him talking. Like there's really, it's he, he ceases to become a character in that moment. And it really does feel like Charlie Chaplin, the person is just speaking to the audience and being like trying to express.
00:51:41
Speaker
how he's feeling about this and trying to impart a sense of hope, but also a sense of sort of like, of like, right, action is needed. He's like, no, no, no, we shouldn't set this out. Like, this is important to pay attention to. Yeah, I really like what you said there about, you know, it being the silent comedy guy who's speaking right now, right? I think when we talked about modern times, one of maybe like a light criticism that we had of it is that
00:52:11
Speaker
it didn't do anything super monumental with taking the tramp and allowing him to speak. It was just, oh, he's going to sing a song in fake Italian, French, whatever. That's nice, but I feel like you're not doing much with that. If we were to take this context of like,
00:52:35
Speaker
You know the the Jewish barber is an analog to the tramp This is Charlie Chaplin's first real sound movie and so and most of I would say that there's more talking that this character does in that speech than all the rest of the movie put together and And so
00:52:57
Speaker
This is, in a way, that moment, right? It is that very powerful moment, and he found a way to make that distinction really hit hard. Good movie. Yeah. I feel like, after all that, I want to do a lightning round of just jokes that I liked. Yes, do it, do it, do it.
00:53:16
Speaker
In the beginning, when the barber is fighting in World War One, he drops a grenade down his pants. That's funny. Yes. When he's in the airplane, the pilot asks, how's the gas? And he says, terrible, kept me up all night. There's the sort of introduction to Hinkle, the sort of Hitler analog is him doing just the absolute best A plus gibberish German anyone has ever done. Yeah.
00:53:41
Speaker
Um, including his whole thing of like freedom stonk democracy stonk, which is just very funny. Also a thing that is, this isn't even really a joke, but I, I found it very amazing that like, right. The, all of the storm troopers, the like to manian soldiers that come in and like, or like, you know, burning down storefronts and things.
00:54:05
Speaker
are all played by just American actors. And so all the stormtroopers walking around saying things like, hey, you and why I order like they have this kind of they all sound like they're from Brooklyn. Maybe there's maybe there's a point there like like the movie Fury. Maybe, maybe there's the famous globe balloon dance in this movie where he's ankle is dancing with the globe.
00:54:33
Speaker
I think that's like a very kind of famous image from this movie. There's the whole rivalry thing right with Hinkle and Benzino Napolini. I wonder who that's supposed to be. Chico Marx is who he is.
00:54:50
Speaker
Again, leaning into the sort of like these people are buffoons. These people are idiots of like their whole rivalry. And like neither of them wants to be seen as like small or like like they both want to be higher status than the other person. Yeah. And so there's all like the chair stuff.
00:55:07
Speaker
like like like like winching up these uh the barbershop chairs which i like forgot was in this movie and it's such a good joke it's a very looney tunes gag right but it's it's great and also the fact that it is live action rules the fact that they've built barbershop chairs that go like 20 feet in the air yes um
00:55:29
Speaker
So yeah, it's like in addition to all of that really great powerful thematic stuff that's in this movie, there are a lot of funny silly bits in it.
00:55:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think also it's got the first usage that I've seen of, I feel like a pretty classic joke of like a translation related joke where someone says something really long and then someone translates it as something really short. And then someone says something really short and then it's like four sentences or whatever. You know, they do it on whose line? They do it in Wayne's world. Yeah, it's always funny. It's one of those jokes that's just like,
00:56:07
Speaker
It always hits. Like you were saying, they're like fake German is very good. And they're like slipping in English words. Right. Yeah. To just sort of like cue you into what's going on. But also it's just funny, like they say stuff like banana. They say, yeah, there's someone, the Goebbels character is hair garbage, which is great. Amazing.
00:56:31
Speaker
uh also like kind of alluded to a similar joke in you nasty spy but like the um the swastika their version of the swastika logo is a double cross uh which you know it works it works and nasty spy it's it's two snakes i think that are sort of like bent into the shape of a swastika
00:56:57
Speaker
Yeah. On the map, there's like a place called Double Cross, which I thought was a weird synergy. Yeah. Yeah. Good movie. Any other thoughts? Well, anything that we missed? One thing that I'll mention is that there is the kind of most classic silent comedy scene, although with a synchronized score, specifically synchronized score, is a part where
00:57:24
Speaker
the music, some classical music comes on the radio and he's doing a barbershop comedy bit. Everything, every motion that he does is synchronized to every part of that classical music. It's a good bit and it's not too dissimilar from another movie we've seen this year, which is Fantasia. Sure, yeah. Rock and roll. Let's go into Fantasia.
00:57:52
Speaker
a movie that I had never seen.
Fantasia: Artistry and Abstract Animation
00:57:55
Speaker
Mm hmm. I had effectively never seen it because I only remembered bits and pieces of The Sorcerer's Apprentice from when I was three. Right. Which is like such a small part of the movie. I think I had seen also like pieces of Sorcerer's Apprentice just because it's like it's it's kind of the thing from this movie that has lasted the most and has sort of like
00:58:20
Speaker
stayed in the Disney iconography the most? Very much so. Yeah, it's the thing that has been transposed in a lot of other places. We can talk about this a bit more in a second, but it is in Fantasia 2000, the sequel from the year 2000. Jeff, also not seen.
00:58:37
Speaker
uh and yeah it's just it just shows up places i think the the old like um clamshell puffy white vhs's that disney used to have part of their sort of like corporate branding involved the scene from the sources apprentice where he's lifting the the ocean out of the water uh so that that imagery was definitely also just making masks with like the wizard hat yes i feel like is it's very just like classical
00:59:06
Speaker
That's almost just like, oh, yeah, Mickey Masters wears a wizard hat sometimes, like that's like part of his character. But yeah, I was a little surprised at like how much of kind of this is a weird movie and that I think it is it is really trying to recreate kind of the experience of seeing a like a live event or a live show. Mm hmm.
00:59:32
Speaker
It opens with orchestra tuning and all of the musicians walking out onto a stage. And it has this narrator guy that will explain what each of the segments are before they happen.
00:59:50
Speaker
Which we got to talk about that guy. I feel like I don't know. It was just it was all at times I was like, just let us see it. Like, you don't have to explain it this much. Right. But and also just some of some of the explanations. Well, we'll get to it in a second. But
01:00:14
Speaker
Yeah, because I always knew that this I remember always knowing about this movie. Like I grew up with a lot of, you know, classic Disney VHS clamshells. Right. I feel like most of the sort of like, I don't know, 40s through 90s.
01:00:36
Speaker
Disney classics were I had I had some I had seen in some form right as a kid growing up. I had never seen any of this outside of yet maybe like clips in other things of sort of sort of apprentice. And I kind of even though I think this movie rules and I like it a lot. I understand why it isn't like
01:00:59
Speaker
a childhood favorite for a lot of people? One of my takeaways from watching it effectively for the first time is and thinking to how none of it really made much of an impact on me when I was a kid was like, this is not for kids. Like, it's not. It's not. It is. It's kid. It is more or less kid appropriate. But yeah, like this is a movie that is steeped in honestly, like modern art, you know, yeah, is
01:01:27
Speaker
it's in classical music and classical music like part of the mission of this movie was to take something that people find alienating and boring uh which is classical music and making it more accessible but the uncompromised mostly uncompromising artistic vision of this movie is something that is not
01:01:53
Speaker
particularly friendly to children unless that child can happen to get on the right vibe, you know? Another thing with that is like, I grew up watching Disney movies on VHS where it's like, you know, we're in grandma's basement, whatever, throw on Lion King, all of them, all good. I think Fantasia is so explicitly designed to be seen in a theater.
01:02:21
Speaker
in a way that none of those, I mean, all movies in the 40s and most movies now are designed to be seen in the theater, right? That is the intent of them. But I still think the way that this is so sort of like trying to create this atmosphere of like, oh, we're in a theater right now.
01:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like we're watching people on stage. It's kind of turning the movie theater into somewhat of a replication of a classical music, you know, auditorium. Right. Right. But it's it's like Fantasia is the kind of thing that you like get dressed up and like go to a place to see. Whereas I would like to do that. I would love that so much. But like.
01:03:04
Speaker
I feel like just watching this at home or like watching this on VHS would just be sort of like, it would feel off, you know? Well, I will say that I watched this twice in the last two months. I kind of snuck ahead a little bit and watched it a little bit just because I have happened to be in front of me. And the first time I did watch it on VHS, it was there was a tape in front of me. I was like, like, it's the right aspect ratio. Let's put it in, you know.
01:03:31
Speaker
And it blew me away. It was incredible. Like, I was beside myself with how good this movie is. I walked out of the movie thinking, you can pack it in. You're never going to make a better, like, there's never going to be a better Disney movie than this, you know? It is very different from every other Disney movie, but I think it is a movie that is
01:03:57
Speaker
serious and real in ways that other Disney movies are not. Like I was saying, this feels like it is
01:04:07
Speaker
steeped in the art world. It is. It's a movie that is more like more than anything else about it. It does. It feels like it is. It is art. Yeah, it's like fairy tale stories are nice. Disney animation in in their fairy tale stuff is nice. It's good. It's great. But like this is this is an advocacy. This is like a like a manifesto for the artistic power of animation.
01:04:36
Speaker
And it is using a sort of more established medium, a more respected medium, I think, to kind of elevate animation in people's eyes up to the level of something serious, like classical music. But then also part of the mission was to take classical music and make it more accessible to people through animation.
01:05:02
Speaker
What it does is this synesthesia, basically, in this movie. It is using abstract animation that was very specifically inspired by some of those German abstract animators that we've covered on the podcast. I definitely thought of those, but it was specifically inspired by those. Yes.
01:05:25
Speaker
yeah interesting i mean it makes a lot of sense partially there's there's another animator or there's another german animator who uh started work on this movie and he came around later than the opuses and the rhythmuses but like it was all part of the mix of inspiration on this movie um and that was like art stuff that is abstract art and
01:05:47
Speaker
A lot of this movie, particularly in the beginning, is full abstraction. It is taking the sounds of music and physicalizing them into light and shadow and color and shape. It's fantastic without being too like up its own butt, you know? Right. It's still just kind of like, for the most part, very kind of light and fun and jaw dropping to look at. Yeah.
01:06:17
Speaker
I do think if I had seen this as a kid, I probably would have been kind of baffled by it. I don't know what I would have made of this movie as a kid. I think I mostly would have been confused. Right. Because I don't know. I might have loved it, he used to say. It's like more or less 0% narrative, except for the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
01:06:38
Speaker
Right. That's definitely and that's like barely a narrative, but that's definitely the most narrative heavy part of it. There's also this sort of like the, you know, the like earth cooling and like life evolving and like dinosaurs and that kind of thing, which I was during that, I was like, how come I didn't watch this as a kid? It's got dinosaurs.
01:07:01
Speaker
I would love this. They're packed into the back half of the movie. Sure. But then also like the dinosaur segment is like very kind of dour. Yeah. Right. It's like a T-Rex eats a Stegosaurus and it's like sad. Especially because Stego is my favorite. There you go. It's the state dinosaur of Colorado. And then it's sort of like
01:07:26
Speaker
the narrator guy is like, we don't know what happened to the dinosaurs, but they might have all just like starved to death because there was a drought, pretty much. This movie is pre-asteroid theory. I mean, asteroid theory might have existed, but I guess it wasn't as widely accepted as like, we all agree this is what happened, right? And there's the extended segment of all the dinosaurs looking for water
01:07:53
Speaker
like all the water drying up and then like slowly like dehydrating and dying it's like really it's really pretty pretty rough and so it is even for like a thing was like oh man animation it's got dinosaurs it's like yeah but it's like very depressing dinosaur stuff
01:08:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't think this movie is particularly like necessarily definitionally not kid friendly, but it's got like scary imagery in it. It's two hours long. It doesn't have a story. It's like it's very abstract. It's like if your kid can get on the vibe of classical music and shapes and colors and, you know, they grew up on the A.I. generated iPad videos, then like maybe, maybe, you know, but
01:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this movie has not exactly, but like Satan in it, you know, right? Mephisto. Right. Because in fast, it's not actually the turn a bog. Oh, whatever. It's a big guy with horns and wings and stuff. Yeah, I definitely noticed some summer now influence, especially in that segment. Yes. Yeah. Very direct. I mean, I mean, that is like basically lifting images from fast almost directly.
01:09:07
Speaker
real quick thing with the dinosaurs there when introducing that we're like talking about the dinosaurs the the narrator guy the sort of he's not the conductor he's like the i don't know what to call call the guy the mc he's a he's a music critic the mc yeah um he's describing right it's like oh they were you know various kinds of dinosaurs most were vegetarians which i don't think is a real word
01:09:33
Speaker
I think herbivorous, maybe, is the word he was looking for. It's Dinosaur Correction Corner with Glenn. It's vegetarian or herbivorous. I don't think vegetarians is a real thing, but I could be wrong. If vegetarians is a real word, and you know this for a fact, get in the comments. And then he's saying, oh, most dinosaurs, whatever. And then he's like, but some dinosaurs, they were like gangster dinosaurs. And like, whoa, hang on. They weren't much.
01:10:02
Speaker
They were carnivorous. They weren't gangsters. They weren't organized about them. Right. They're more like running dice games in the back of a back of a bar. Like I just found that so also the most 1940 way to describe what like a T-Rex is like, oh, he's sort of a gangster dinosaur.
01:10:25
Speaker
Now I need an illustration of a T-Rex in a pinstripe suit. With the Tommy gun. Yeah. I also think they're, go back to their, I'm bouncing all over the place, but definitely somewhere now in Fluence. Also, maybe some kind of Curtiz and or James Whale stuff, especially in Sorcerer's Apprentice, like a lot of, there's a lot of silhouette stuff in that.
01:10:47
Speaker
I forget. Murnau does silhouettes, too. True. That's why it feels like less of like a direct kind of like Curtiz thing. I think there was something else that was like very James Whale-esque, but I don't remember what it is now. This movie opens, I think the first segment they do is with the Nutcracker Suite. Maybe it's the second one. Yeah, the second one is Nutcracker Suite. The first is the Tokada and Fugue in D minor. Right. Which is in The Aviator.
01:11:17
Speaker
when he's shooting the dogfight in Hell's Angels. That's right. Yeah. And I kind of think that might be a Fantasia reference just because of like it's that part. It's like the music used in the aviator is over like clouds and like things moving through clouds in Fantasia. And then it's like in the aviator, it's like that music starts as you see a plane like moving through clouds.
01:11:42
Speaker
I don't know. I think I'm sure Scorsese loves this movie. So it seems likely that he was like Fantasia reference Fantasia in there. I mean, this movie is like is going hard from the very first moment, because if we're talking about that first part, the Tokada and Fugue in D minor, the first part is they're kind of like orienting you in to the animation, right? They're framing everything from this kind of
01:12:10
Speaker
It's as if you're walking into a theater and getting an introduction and you're hearing the strings and everything like that. But the way that it enters, it takes you from reality into cartoons, is making an incredibly stylized reality that is beautiful.
01:12:32
Speaker
It is so cool it is taking these kind of like Busby Berkeley like lavish amped up and in Technicolor Busby Berkeley tableaus of
01:12:47
Speaker
imagery and using it to make the light dance and the shadows multiply across the the walls and Like someone hits the drum and it changes this color and then the next color it is some of the coolest lighting I've ever seen I've ever seen I hadn't even thought about buzz Berkeley which makes I mean I feel That's like weird because it feels like there is such a clear like Busby Berkeley influence on this maybe
01:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, even that's the thing is like, I think I knew that there were some live action stuff in this. I don't think I realized how much of it there was, but like that stuff all looks.
01:13:27
Speaker
Absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, like the lighting in that in those like live-action things with the orchestra art is so good and the way that they like when they reintroduce the Like come from the animation to the to back to the conductor and the camera like does this Dramatic motion toward the back of his silhouette. Yeah while he's making these like really dramatic like hand movements It's so cool. It's so cool. So good
01:13:57
Speaker
I just can't stop gushing praise on this movie. I mean, I'm right there with you. Like, this thing is... It feels weird that it took me this long to see it.
01:14:08
Speaker
But it's yeah, it's it's really I mean, I think my letterbox review of it is just the word breathtaking exclamation point. Like that's that's my response. I'm just like, this is incredible. This is just like such a symphony of of, you know, light and sound, whatever. It's I feel like it's it's easy to get kind of sound a little hyperbolic talking about it, but it does like
01:14:30
Speaker
It really, I was leaning forward watching all two hours of it. I was really enraptured by this. Well, yeah, you say like a symphony of light and color. This is a movie that the most accurate description is literally a symphony. Right. Like, you know, they didn't use the word synesthesia, but like part of what the MC says is sort of the premise of doing this animation.
01:14:57
Speaker
is to take what you might imagine in your head while listening to this complex music and then drawing it out, making it, you know? And so they have a couple of different ways of understanding that. Some of that is a little more narrative. Some of it is a bit more representational. Some of it is more... Some of it is a horny sintorette dance.
01:15:21
Speaker
And some of it is like abstract and non-literal, like there's this like play in the movie between, not to like get all like art critic or whatever, but it's like there's this constant like playing between like a literality and non-literality.
01:15:37
Speaker
and like representation and non-representation. And so you have these abstract shapes that are like evoking in their movement the movement of a bow string or of a drum hit.
01:15:54
Speaker
and like that's on the more like the the the higher side of you know non-representation but then you've got like the kind of highly representational dinosaur sequence but then like walla like a horn blows the lightning kind of fizzles with this in the same rate as the horn the the world
01:16:16
Speaker
is forming itself to fit the music right it's like all the volcanoes are erupting in right in synchronicity with with the music yeah and and the way that they usher you into this is they make an almost animated reality through light and shadow yeah
01:16:37
Speaker
Great. Yeah. Love to see it. The center rat thing was very weird and made me laugh because also the MC at the beginning is sort of like and we're going to see, you know, mythological creatures going to see that we're going to see centers, you know, half man, half horse. And we're going to also meet the girlfriends, the center rats. It's like, wait, hang on. Yeah, that was that was just so like it felt like such a.
01:17:05
Speaker
I don't know, kind of 1940s in not as good of a way, but like, it's just like, wait, what? Like, why would you do it that way? When he's introducing the like origin of life on earth like thing, he calls, I don't remember if it was the dinosaurs or like proto, proto, mammalian things, little crawling horrors.
01:17:28
Speaker
Like there's so many things that that guy says where I'm just like, wait, who wrote this? Like, who is this guy? Why are we listening to him? Because it seems like he either.
01:17:39
Speaker
doesn't either quite know what he's talking about or just has very strong opinions about certain things. Steve Martin is that guy in Fantasia 2000. Dang. I mean, that's exciting. So it's a choice. Yeah. Right. There's the whole kind of like Greek bacchanal segment also, which I feel like was just full of very silly
01:18:04
Speaker
I thought very silly imagery, including the horny santorette dance, which is just like... Who's that comedy bang bang character? Who's the guy who runs the Rockettes?
01:18:21
Speaker
I don't know the show and he's like, yeah, we got it. It's a Christmas show. We've got to put a little something in there for daddy. He's just like the worst, most like creepy like theater owner. And that's that's kind of what that felt like. It was like, we got to put a little something in there.
01:18:39
Speaker
to keep the fellas happy, including a fish. There's a part that has an inexplicably sexy fish. And I mean, why make that choice? That was just a thing that I guess all Disney movies from 1940 were required to do.
01:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, that would have been a good segue. Yeah. There was a, what is it? One of the ones from the, or the kind of main sound from the part, Dance of the Hours, which I only knew as Hello Moda, Hello Fata,
01:19:16
Speaker
the like 1950s novelty song or whatever. Yeah. And I was like, oh, my God, like that that is a song, actually. It's a I I did not realize that the reference was a reference. Do you have anything else you want to talk about? Well, a couple of things. OK, one is this is an AMD. That's I'm just going to drop that there and then and then leave it. Hard to argue against.
01:19:45
Speaker
Another one is I want to talk about The Sorcerer's Apprentice a little bit. Okay. Yeah. It's true. We didn't really talk about it hardly at all. You know, I don't know if we need to get too much into their themes and it's like it can have themes because it's less abstract and more narrative. But this movie came out of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The Sorcerer's Apprentice was
01:20:09
Speaker
going to be a Mickey Mouse short that was going to have this kind of musical element to it. And he was working, Disney was working with Leopold Stikowski on conducting the music for The Sorcerer's Apprentice. And The Sorcerer's Apprentice's budget got so way out of hand that they were like, we cannot release this as a short because they will just lose all of its money because the short can't make that much money.
01:20:38
Speaker
So, like, Fantasia exists as a way of justifying the existence of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. And so, you know, it's all kind of in line with that. But I think it is elevated in many ways, right? Like, I didn't know that when I first watched it. I didn't have that context when I first watched it. And I was like,
01:21:02
Speaker
What is this?
Fantasia's Origins and Soundtrack
01:21:04
Speaker
What is happening right now where this art is getting interrupted by branding? You know, like, like it is this abstract, beautiful, amazing every Disney movie. Right. Yeah. I mean, now. Right. But like, I think that there are ways that I really like it because it does break up the abstraction. It is like a different kind of thing that's nice in that, like, you know, it's more character animation, which and it's good character animation.
01:21:31
Speaker
But it is, it feels, it definitely sticks out more than the rest of the stuff. And, you know, it hasn't, after it's over, a silhouette animated Mickey Mouse goes, Oh, Mr. Stokowski, Mr. Stokowski. And he like, he pulls on his, on his coattails. Yeah. And then, and then shakes, shakes his hand.
01:21:54
Speaker
Which is cool. It is cool. It's well done. It's this mix of animation and live action that's done in a really effective way of blending these two worlds together. But it's also just stinks of branding. Well, I I think it does because like Disney as a company is like so well known for that now. And that's like their whole deal. Mickey Mouse was already their their mascot, their icon for sure. But I think that is something where it's like
01:22:24
Speaker
It feels a little bit more innocent in this movie I think than it would if.
01:22:28
Speaker
Like, if you if that happened in a movie now, I'd be like, Oh, God, I hate this. Yeah. But it's like it's it's 1940 is fine. I I got upset by it, but I think that there's a lot that contextually works for it. And so I do like it in the movie, even though it is like this sub perfect thing in a perfect movie. If Deadpool had come out, then I would have been upset. Oh, God.
01:22:55
Speaker
And then with The Sorcerer's Apprentice, it was the debut of a new design for Mickey Mouse that was just like he had pupils now, right? He had whites of his eyes with pupils in the middle instead of pupils like floating in a giant, you know, 1930s animation space, right?
01:23:14
Speaker
And the last thing I'll say about this movie is because I have to because I'm I'm the projectionist half of this podcast is there is a part where like coming back from the intermission of the movie, the MC says, let me introduce you to like an unknown character here. It's the soundtrack, you know. And so coming out, coming out from and it's like another kind of more abstract
01:23:44
Speaker
animation but like grounded on this like real thing that I think a lot of people might not have had the context for fully understanding is it comes out from the side of the frame right where the soundtrack is it like I would love right where the the physical soundtrack is on a strip of film
01:24:03
Speaker
Yes, yes, thank you for clarifying that. Yes, if you're looking at a strip of film, the soundtrack bursts out of the literal place where the soundtrack is printed on the film that you can't see when it's being projected, which is so cool. Talk about Meta Deadpool. The soundtrack is really the Deadpool of this movie.
01:24:27
Speaker
It's so, so cool. Like, and it's almost like this kind of like, it's like taking the form itself and making it the content. I don't know why this movie inspired me to get so artsy fartsy about all this stuff. But like, and so like, you know, as someone who looks at soundtracks on printed on film periodically, it felt really cool to have it like,
01:24:53
Speaker
come from and then go back to its home sitting on the side of the film. I like how even like the soundtrack is kind of anthropomorphized and adding syllables in there. But it is like right because the MC is like having a conversation with the soundtrack and soundtrack is kind of like, you know, moving around like it's a character. I think it's funny that it's it's a character that isn't just it's it isn't treated as just this like piece of film technology or of
01:25:23
Speaker
Conceptual thing it's like no it's it's it has personality it has
01:25:27
Speaker
Intelligence and it's using its character to Show the text the texture of different instruments so it uses color and shape of this kind of manipulated waveform to Evoke like a bassoon or jazz drums or something. Yeah, so cool So let last thing on
Controversial Content in Disney's Fantasia
01:25:52
Speaker
either of the two times. Did you watch this on Disney Plus? Yes the second time
01:25:57
Speaker
Did you get a disclaimer at the beginning being like, I did we know there's some there's some insensitive stuff in here. Yeah. And then so I didn't know what it was going to be. And so I was like, oh, boy, here we go. And then.
01:26:12
Speaker
The only thing that I that stuck out to me that I was like, oh, I think this is what they're talking about is the mushrooms. Yeah. Which are animated to look kind of like Chinese caricatures. Well, it's from it's animated to the Chinese dance from the Nutcracker Suite. Oh, see, I didn't pick up on that aspect of it either. They have slanted eyes and they're bowing and stuff. Yeah. Which see, I didn't realize that that's what that segment of Nutcracker, the Nutcracker Suite was called.
01:26:40
Speaker
Because it felt like a complete non sequitur to me. It's like, are they just throwing in some some casual racism just because? Yeah, I guess they probably were. It wasn't until I like looked that up that I was like, OK, there's a slightly a reason for this. Yeah, but it was the kind of thing where I was just like, wait, why? Like, what is what is the justification here?
01:27:02
Speaker
And I think it was just that in 1940, to a primarily white American audience, they were just like, that was considered amusing, I guess? I don't know. I was mostly just confused by it.
01:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is expressive. It is, you know... Right, it's giving human characteristics to inanimate objects, but... Yeah, which is sort of the theme of that part of the Sugarplum fairies is like, you know, they're taking flowers and other things and making them humanoid.
01:27:37
Speaker
I mean, the most current day offensive thing in Fantasia is not in it anymore. It's not in the Disney version because there are they is there a this movie is censored. You're saying there is actually more Fantasia. There are some like kind of racial caricature like Sambo type centaurs in the center. See, that's what I thought it was going to like. I thought it was going to be kind of more
01:28:04
Speaker
Direct kind of like racist caricature not that the mushrooms are good Yeah, no, I have mixed feelings about that because I hate censorship very much and at the same time. I'm like, yeah, that sounds gross But yeah, you know it is I I think that at least what's left in the movie is
01:28:28
Speaker
like kind of abstract enough that it doesn't pull away from it too much where like having like, like the racial character, I was just looking it up, the racial caricatures in the movie were bad enough that they got rid of them in a 1969 rerelease. So, you know.
01:28:47
Speaker
They took the worst out, definitely. Yeah. I also just find it slightly amusing when like you pull something up on Disney Plus and there is a thing that was like, we know, we know. OK, like, yeah, don't yell at us. You know, there isn't there isn't consensus about how to deal with that stuff. You know, and that is that is one way to do it.
01:29:08
Speaker
I I'm broadly supportive of doing stuff like that. Like I think especially with movies or with like works of art, I hate things that just go away forever. Yeah. I think with stuff like I guess like statues could be considered works for it because they're sculpture, but also like I don't know. I think statues are kind of dumb and that I don't think we should use statues as a like form of I don't know, like cultural currency.
01:29:36
Speaker
I feel like there's a lot of uproar. This is a whole topic. You can't get rid of the statues. I'm like, why do we want statues? Who cares if statues exist? I don't care about statues. I on the whole agree with you, except for the day that I spent in Madrid, I specifically went to go see the statue of Lucifer in their central park. Hey.
01:30:03
Speaker
That's cool. Is it like, does it look like an angel? It is depicting him falling from the sky. Is it a biblically accurate Lucifer? It is a, not in the way that you mean, but a biblically accurate Lucifer. Well I guess if you were
01:30:22
Speaker
really gonna take it all the way biblically accurate Lucifer would be like a weird eye monster with wings, right? Right. I meant not in that way. Although apparently there's some kind of contention about like the meme of biblically accurate and how like
01:30:37
Speaker
how like whether those things that like the wheel of eyes is specifically what people what they meant when they described angels in other scenarios like it seems like those eye wheel things were a specific thing and then angels were just never really uh specifically talked about this is getting very deep into something i don't know that much about right i also think with like with a lot of mythology there's things like
01:31:03
Speaker
Like, oh, trolls. And it's like, oh, that isn't like a single like species of creature. That's just like a broad term for like a thing that isn't human. And I'm guessing that probably depends on translation, too. But like an angel probably is kind of in that realm where it's like angels can be a lot of different stuff. Anyway, that's not what this podcast is about. We should probably cut this all out because it is not relevant.
01:31:27
Speaker
The last thing is that it has a Bacchus slash Dionysus, who is the only true humanoid character in it. There's the wizard, sorcerer, I should say. That's true. That's true. But he's even more, I don't know, he's stylized in a way that doesn't make it feel that way, I guess. But he looks like Captain Underpants, and he drinks gay wine. Yeah, well, I did write down
01:31:54
Speaker
This is the feature that liberals want. And it's during the scene when Bacchus is literally drinking rainbows. Yeah, it's great. I think we could all stand to learn something from Bacchus. Yeah, sure. There's also a bit where like a little old cherub, a little sort of like Cupid, like turns away from the camera and you see his butt and then the butt turns into a heart. Oh, and that's the end of the scene.
01:32:22
Speaker
What do you want to talk about next? Maybe another Disney cartoon. Okay. When you wish upon a star. Hey, a song so good they made it the Disney fanfare.
Comparing Pinocchio to Fantasia
01:32:37
Speaker
Yeah, Pinocchio. It's a pretty slight movie compared to Fantasia. Yeah, I definitely did not like it as much as Fantasia.
01:32:50
Speaker
I had seen this one before kind of oppositely to Fantasia, a movie that probably would have baffled me as a kid. I think I kind of took Pinocchio kind of at face value as a kid and watching it now, I'm like, what is happening in this movie? No, I wasn't confused, but I was like, yeah, just kind of baffled by a lot of things in Pinocchio. I mean, I'm not that I didn't expect.
01:33:14
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if this is what you're getting at, but this movie is kind of like, I mean, it's it was based on something that was serialized. And so therefore it is a bunch of stuff happening. Right. I mean, structurally, right. It's very kind of episodic. It's like each one is kind of.
01:33:32
Speaker
somewhat built around like Pinocchio learning a lesson, even though the lesson mostly in this movie seems to just be kind of like, don't trust strangers. Right. I think that there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of the viciousness, but also the kind of didactic morality of the original Pinocchio story that is taken out of this, where it is sort of just like, he's a boy who lies sometimes and he needs to learn to, yeah, he needs to learn to stay on task.
01:34:02
Speaker
I mean, I do think I think there's plenty to enjoy about this movie. And I think that the broad kind of like moral messaging of it is very much just like, you know, don't be naive, I guess. Yeah, it's kind of the main lesson that don't lie and don't be naive. If you're a child, the world will crush you. Yeah. But I do think there's something about like the original Pinocchio story and the way that it is so much built around like lessons and like moral
01:34:31
Speaker
things like that that i think when it is kind of like softened and streamlined in the way that it is in this movie a lot of that's kind of lost and it's so and it i'm not saying it like loses edge it needs to be edgy or whatever but it's like it it feels like it loses some of its actual like what is the point of panocchio if panocchio is kind of a hapless victim right all of this and not a like troublesome child who is like
01:34:59
Speaker
Making a mess and like ruining things for other people. I mean or just like aid in Uncontrollable like like cadence of chaos. Yeah, like can't stop himself from being an asshole to everyone around him Yeah, which is really like what the original story is It's like Pinocchio is awful and he needs to learn to not be awful right and I feel like by making Pinocchio really innocent like he is in this movie it kind of then just becomes about like
01:35:27
Speaker
A puppet becomes half alive and is then kind of like shuffled around by various people trying to take advantage of him. And then he gets bit out of a whale and he becomes a real boy. Like it feels like thematically, it's not quite as potent, I guess. It's not, I mean, you know, in line with being a bunch of stuff happening, it's not thematically focused.
01:35:54
Speaker
It's that being said there's a lot of stuff in it. That's vibes. It's cool. It's good And the animation is such a step up from Snow White It like the character animation is great in this movie the and it like it from a technical perspective I definitely think it is I think
01:36:12
Speaker
I overall, I think I like the kind of aesthetic of Snow White more than this movie, I guess. Hard disagree. I'm allergic to rotoscoping in most contexts. One rotoscope character in this. Yes. Weird that it kind of works in this movie because the Blue Fairy is rotoscoped and no one else is. Yeah. And that it does kind of set her apart. It gives her this kind of very like ethereal, weird.
01:36:36
Speaker
thing where it's like, oh, like she is from like a different like plane of existence than the rest of the gear. She's from a Ralph Bakshi movie. She's from World of the Rings. Galadriel shows up. It's Galadriel. Another thing I did not remember about this movie from watching it as a child is that the entire reason that Jiminy Cricket is appointed to be Pinocchio's conscience is because he is like head over heels like horny for the Blue Fairy.
01:37:06
Speaker
which is just a weird choice, I thought.
01:37:11
Speaker
Honestly, everything in this movie is weird choices. I just think a lot of stuff like that where I was like, I don't remember this part. This is strange. Jiminy also, he's supposed to be the moral center of the movie, but he's kind of like the Statler and Waldorf of the movie. He is just kind of sitting on the sidelines, like ribbing everything that's happening, saying like, this sucks.
01:37:41
Speaker
But mostly just complaining a lot. Yeah. I mean, this is a fairy tale. So applying logic to it is like a fool's errand. There are a lot of like very big logical leaps and just like
The Dark Humor in Pinocchio
01:37:53
Speaker
there. There are several points of either fairy ex machina or letter from the sky ex machina that happened in this movie where the narrative will just sort of take a jump. It's like, oh, no, Pinocchio, he's not going to cage. He's been kidnapped by this kind of
01:38:10
Speaker
Uh, also kind of broad, uh, racial stereotype. Yeah. This movie didn't have a disclaimer, but, uh, and then it's like, Oh, the fairy shows up. It's like, Oh, last time I'm going to help you out of a jam. And then, but then I assume that's where the letter came from later. Hmm. I have like screenwriter gripes with this movie. I mean, overall it is like.
01:38:32
Speaker
It's for kids. It's a fairy tale. I get it. The animation is just incredible, even if I'm sort of like Fantasia and Snow White are better. But I think that like because this movie has a lot of kind of creative visual energy, I found myself pretty bored by Snow White and Fantasia is kind of in a world of its own.
01:38:55
Speaker
So this movie, like, it feels like the craft being honed, you know? I think when we were talking about Snow White, I was saying, like, this is a different look from a Disney movie. It is a sort of proto, like, prototype look for them. And Pinocchio, I think, kind of solidifies the Disney house style, especially when it comes to how to draw people. Yeah.
01:39:22
Speaker
One kind of thing that I thought was interesting about the animation in this too is that like, if you're to compare it to... So this is like an early cell animated feature, right? Where... And comparing this movie about a toy boy to an early 3D animated feature Toy Story, which is about an animated toy boy. And...
01:39:46
Speaker
where Toy Story, they're toys specifically because they couldn't get the 3D animation of the squash and stretch and the kind of subsurface scattering of skin to look good on humans. Everyone looks kind of plastic, so therefore let's make every character literally plastic. Exactly. So it was a way of compensating for
01:40:10
Speaker
it limitations in the animation where this movie the way that Pinocchio moves is so distinct it's a way of flexing animation skill because he's moving in this very like
01:40:26
Speaker
You know, in a way, I don't know if it's necessarily hard to animate, but it's hard to get to look good, I would assume, as like character animation, right? Because he moves in this herky jerky sort of like, I only have like joints at this one spot kind of way. So an interesting kind of parallel, I guess. The character animation is really, really impressive. This may be for sure.
01:40:51
Speaker
That was a thing I noticed. And like the movie is like showing it off, too. Yeah. There's also like there's there's not like long stretches, but there's like a lot of stuff with the cat and the fish that don't really have a lot of agency. They don't really, you know, necessarily even have a lot of personality. It's like the the cat does the classic useless Disney animal sidekick. Two of them.
01:41:19
Speaker
Um, but the character animation on both of them is is great. And yeah, especially the cat. He's like very aggressive, but also like very cat like like a lot of like just cat behavior that is like so obviously a cat. Yeah. I think fish fish aren't very expressive animals anyway. So like the, you know, the lady fish that is like making eyes at everybody, which also is like, I don't know.
01:41:47
Speaker
There's something I find kind of just like, oh yeah, the lady fish is like this kind of like seductive character almost. It's just like, I don't know, what's going on there, Disney? Is this what femininity is to you? Stick some eyeballs and makeup on it and that's what a girl is. Right, it's this sort of thing where it's like to make a character appear feminine, they're just like put big eyelashes and like big lips on them.
01:42:14
Speaker
I would say that the fish, the fish in Fantasia are a lot more specifically sexual than the fish in Pinocchio. But they're both more than you would expect. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of like references to butts in Pinocchio.
01:42:32
Speaker
either for humor or just sort of like it's just there. I don't know if that is like an intentional thing, if that was just the humor of 1940, which it kind of was. Butts are funny. I feel like Chaplin. I mean, like he has a lot of fun. So many. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of butt based comedy. For sure. Pinocchio does also.
01:42:55
Speaker
People know the plot of Pinocchio, right? Geppetto is an old man. He makes a little puppet. He wants the puppet to go to school and he doesn't go to school. He goes to the donkey island and then whale eats them and they escape. Yep. That's the plot of Pinocchio. I mean, we could touch on some of the abject horrors in this movie. The island of kidnapped children that are then turned into donkeys to be sold to the mines, I feel like warrants discussion.
01:43:26
Speaker
They, something that kind of shocked me watching this, because I think I watched this one when I was a kid, but I didn't really have any memory of it, as with many Disney movies that aren't from the 90s, but like,
01:43:37
Speaker
They do not address all of the other suffering, crying children who are turned into slave documents. They are never seen or heard from again. You'd think that Pinocchio would bust this scheme wide open, but he's just like, I'm out of here, whatever.
01:43:57
Speaker
I'm back home. I'm good. Not my problem. But yeah, I also write again, fairytale. Don't think about it logically. Are donkeys that valuable that they need to set up this whole elaborate. They have like a whole steamship to take kidnapped children to an island that they're like with a full amusement park on it. They are child trafficking to Pleasure Island, which is not good. It's not. It doesn't doesn't. Yeah.
01:44:24
Speaker
No. And I also wonder about that. It's like how much how much are they aware of the like implications of all of that? I hope they're not. I mean, like otherwise, this movie is way darker. Post Epstein, this has a more unsavory look to it. All I could think of while watching. It was all already unsavory. Yeah, I don't know. It is what it is, I guess.
01:44:51
Speaker
But right. But it's like they're being turned into donkeys to be used as like labor in the mines somewhere. It's one of the crates just as salt mines on it. I haven't gone back and looked because that is part of the fairy tale. Right. That is not it. There's not a Disney invention. I have to assume so. But it is. It seems like a lot of work to get some donkeys. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think you could just go to like a farm and get some donkeys that way.
01:45:19
Speaker
My assumption is that they want donkeys who suffer. They want donkeys who suffer on a human level. Right. That's part of it. Yeah. That makes sense. Two things that stuck out to me about this whole sort of chapter. The ways in which they are portraying like childhood
01:45:39
Speaker
like mischief or sort of like, what's the most indulgent thing for like a child to do? Like what does every child want? You know, what is like the most sort of like, if you could do anything, if you had like free reign, like no rules, right? They say what, no school, no cops.
01:45:53
Speaker
Everyone dreams dreams of hey, I agree and I think it's very funny that they go to pleasure island and it's like bars and like like pool halls and stuff like All the kids are like I want to go drink beer and have a cigar I want to go to what is it? It's like the rough house you go in there and you poke somebody in the ear and it's like no
01:46:16
Speaker
I mean, children do love roughhousing. I don't know about smoking cigars. I think the roughhousing thing and like the red, the big fancy house, you can like break everything makes total sense. But I think it's very funny that the sort of like fantasy that they're presenting to these kidnapped children is to be like.
01:46:36
Speaker
a guy who hangs out at like a duff bar. You know, I mean, like there is an aspect of childhood that is like attempting childhood play that is attempting to emulate adultness. Right. Sure. Absolutely. Like you see people hang out in pool halls and maybe your fantasy is to be cool like them. And and I do think it is a very accurate depiction of what happens if you inhale a cigar.
01:47:05
Speaker
which is that you turn bright green and you fall over. Slump over, yeah. I'm like, yeah, accurate. That is about how it feels. Love the whale stuff. Monstro. Big fan of Monstro over here.
01:47:23
Speaker
Pro-Pro Monstro. I mean monsters a sea monster. So, you know what's not to like? Also, hey, I Completely missed my note where yeah on pleasure island. They're this sort of like goblin minions Hmm that will like close the doors behind them and are like loading the donkeys onto the crates and
01:47:46
Speaker
Also, the transforming into donkey stuff was I was I remember that that happened. But then as it was happening, I'm like, this is very upsetting. It's body horror, basically. Right. Because there's the one there's the other kid with that is kind of hanging out with with Pinocchio that you like see a full like werewolf transformation. Yeah. Of him like slowly and horrifically turning into a donkey.
01:48:11
Speaker
Okay, so I forgot that I should make a note of this, is that my partner has a story about going to see a rerelease of Pinocchio in theaters when she was a kid. She was like four years old. And... G-rated movie. Yeah. She was sitting next to her dad, and the scene where the donkey transformation was happening scared her so much that she ripped out, like,
01:48:40
Speaker
hair from her dad's arm, like just tore out tons of hair from his arm from fear. I mean, not surprising. It's it's it's pretty upsetting to watch. Even now, I was like, oh, damn. And then while it was happening, it like triggered, I think, childhood memories of like, oh, no, this did freak me out as a kid also. And then all right. There's there's the bit where like some of the donkeys can still talk and they like keep them like a separate pen.
01:49:10
Speaker
I didn't notice that. That actually I think might be the most upsetting part of the whole transforming kids in the donkeys thing because there's the one donkey.
01:49:19
Speaker
who is like crying and like calling out. It's like, I just want to go home. And it is that to me, I was like, this does not belong in a children's film. This is too upsetting. Like that got me. And I remember that upsetting me as a like a young kid to being like, no, like someone help. Also, right. Like you said, they never go back to the the donkeys.
01:49:43
Speaker
That is never addressed again, presuming they're all just working in the mines somewhere. Well, they were bad kids, so they get what they deserve. Right, they all smoked cigars. They went to the rough house. Rough housing is classic. You don't get Christmas presents that year if you smoked a cigar. Right, yeah. Not that year.
01:50:10
Speaker
But yeah, the monster stuff I think is cool and fun. All the looks are like going through the bottom of the ocean with the fish and the coral and stuff.
01:50:20
Speaker
I enjoy that. I enjoy ocean stuff. I think that like they were sort of showing off water reflection effects that they could do in Snow White and in here they've got these like effects of like underwater kind of underwater and heat like shifting of the air and they're kind of like being showy with this effect. They figured out how to do.
01:50:44
Speaker
how like blatantly showy the animation in these early Disney movies are, where it's like things will happen that exist for no other reason than just to be like, hey, check it out. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah, I like that. I mean, I think that like I remember with the band concert and all of the like rotation in it, I was like, this is this is just flexing like they're just going like, how can we do something really difficult just to show that we can do it? You know, which is cool.
01:51:14
Speaker
Yeah. And I think is like it is impressive. Like, yeah, that looks like it was hard to do to animate. And then they are so they get eaten by Monstro. They're in the belly and then they they decide to hotbox Monstro's stomach by lighting a fire to get the smoke make you sneeze. I thought it just makes you suffocate. But so Monstro sneezes and they they escape that way.
01:51:44
Speaker
And then that leads to the, I guess, now somewhat famous image of Pinocchio lying face down in the puddle. That's kind of become a meme. Oh, I'm not sure I've seen that one. I've definitely seen that about the internet. Oh, yeah. OK. That's a relatable image, certainly. Sure. Yeah. Kind of reminded me of ET a little bit, where it is like this moment of like, oh, no, like the main character is dead.
01:52:13
Speaker
That's where this movie is. And it very briefly, it very, you know, quickly walks that back. But again, a sort of thing where it's like surprisingly upsetting for a G rated movie because G didn't exist in 1940. Yeah, kids were more hard edged back then. Yeah, they had cigars. They lived through the Depression. They knew they were world weary. They were little rascals.
01:52:39
Speaker
They had gangs. Not our gang. They were little rascals. And then becomes a real boy at the end. I felt very bad for the cat and the fish throughout this movie, who really seemed to just have a bad time. Like they do definitely warm up to Pinocchio by the end, but for most of the runtime, it is a net negative, the fact that Pinocchio was around.
01:53:04
Speaker
Hey, it's the classic experience of being a kid in an existing paradigm. And then a new baby brother or sister arrives and wrecks everything up. Right, yeah. But yeah, Pinocchio, weird movie. It makes sense why it's had the influence that it has. And yeah, Wish Upon a Star, great song. It's a good song.
01:53:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's the rest of the songs, not as much. There are a few other songs in this movie. None of them really have the the sticking power that I literally don't remember them. Exactly. So we've been in the belly of the beast. Where do we go next? We have sort of like, I guess, more like kind of pairs of movies to talk about next. Right. We've done our animation block and our chaplain.
01:53:57
Speaker
block. I feel like our Nazi block. Sure. Yeah. I think we should talk about the two comedies that we watched. I think that is more of a natural progression. Let's I don't really have a good transition here, but let's let's let's let's talk about some comedies. OK. Starting with, I guess, the Philadelphia story. I watched that first, so you did not enjoy. I take it. No.
01:54:28
Speaker
I mean, I saw your letterbox review, so I know you didn't think it was great. And I think I get it. I definitely think I enjoyed it more than you did. What was your main gripe? I didn't care about anything that was happening. OK. I mean, yeah, fair. I did have the thought watching this. This is sort of directed by George Kukor, which I don't know if we've
01:54:55
Speaker
Uh, watch any of his features. Yeah, maybe we have. I don't think so. Yeah, me neither. Is screwball comedy. Uh, I had thought, has screwball comedies finally gotten too mean? Yeah. Like, like it's not playful. It's not fun. It's not, it's not even that I think this movie is necessarily mean. It's the fact that I think all of the characters are in it are kind of awful people.
01:55:21
Speaker
Which can work. I think it's it's sort of has and I'm doing sort of a, you know, boss vibes joke here, but it has kind of a succession or development thing going on where it's like all the characters are.
01:55:34
Speaker
are terrible people, but there is amusement to be had in watching their hijinks, you know? And I don't think that the characters in this are necessarily as bad as the characters in those TV shows, but they're definitely leaning into this whole sort of like, tabloid people are bad, and rich people are also bad, so let's pit them against each other and watch the sparks fly, kind of.
01:56:00
Speaker
Right. But I think that like in that there is this kind of like you're supposed to kind of feel this tension, right? Between, you know, it's a love triangle movie. It is a love hexagon movie.
01:56:15
Speaker
There are five characters who are all somehow romantically linked to at least one or two others. I didn't count the faces of this Pentagon, but this love Pentagon. I guess it's the same shape, right? Wait, a polygon is what I meant. This love polygon, the number of sides on it.
01:56:40
Speaker
Yeah, like, you know, this is because these people are just kind of despicable to each other. I think that it like doesn't really sell like
01:56:52
Speaker
you don't get swept up in the romance, right? Like if you are to take some of these other screwball comedies that have meanness and snippiness in them, there's this affability to it. Very crucial is that it's getting you
01:57:12
Speaker
It's giving you affection for the people that are in this so that you can laugh while you watch them be nicely mean to each other. Right. I don't know. It's hard to explain, but there's something about the form like the way this movie came together just really didn't work for me. Hmm. I do think there's there's the characters in this are a little bit less charming than I think some of the other similar kind of scribble comedy movies that we've seen.
01:57:40
Speaker
And I think overall, I think this is kind of a dumb movie, but I think it's a fun time. I don't know. There's enough just like 30s, 40s silliness in it that I just enjoy, right? It's got a great cast of Katherine Hepburn, James Stewart, and Cary Grant. Just doing the most 1940s voices possible.
01:58:06
Speaker
But yeah, I mean the the opening scene of this movie is like let's start the movie off some some light domestic violence Get get everyone on you know in the right mood And I think that is kind of like that kind of sums up what doesn't work about the movie It's like it's it's sometimes a little it's sometimes too mean or it sometimes just feels like it is It's harder to root for the characters when they're being this kind of just like sniping it's less of the kind of like charming
01:58:34
Speaker
Meanness right that and it's I think that's it's a very subtle distinction. Like I think that's a really hard If anything, it makes me appreciate a lot of the other movies more because it makes me like oh in the script when when the dial is just a little bit off It really doesn't work as well. This is a beloved movie. I don't really get it It I think I think that you're that you're right that it's like I mean, I don't
01:59:04
Speaker
I want to be comfortable with any kind of setup of a movie. I'm not the kind of person that's like, you got to like the protagonist. But I think that if you're going to do this kind of movie, then you need to have affection for your characters because it just doesn't work otherwise, like we're seeing. It's just watching a bunch of people sniping at each other. I think the movie wants you to feel the stakes, but
01:59:30
Speaker
But because you don't have this kind of fundamental care for the characters and where they go, like it doesn't feel like anything is loaded with real stakes. Right. The worst part of it is weirdly like the first act, because that's kind of where the characters are at their worst a lot of the time. Like that's where we're establishing just sort of like how kind of miserable all these people are. And so therefore, just like how much they're just treating everyone around them not well.
01:59:57
Speaker
Once it gets to the point where everyone is like, or where at least Katherine Hepburn and James Stewart are like hammered and are just sort of like drunkenly kind of stumbling around, then I'm on board fully. Then I'm just like, well, no, this is fun. There's some charm in that part. Yeah. Some really great drunk acting by Jimmy Stewart in this movie. Yeah. And a lot of subtle little drunk things
02:00:24
Speaker
like just like the way in which he'll like get caught up on words and things like that or like have to, it's a pretty like comedic drug performance.
02:00:35
Speaker
but it's still, there's a lot of little things where I think he's getting like, like sits in a wheelbarrow and then Catherine Hepburn starts pushing him in the wheelbarrow and he goes, weeee, like in the middle of a sentence. He's like talking. That was very good. Between like two words of his sentence, he just goes, weeee, and then just immediately continues talking. No, I love that part actually, yes.
02:00:57
Speaker
They were like, hey, you know, we've seen love triangles. What if we do a love Pentagon? Right. Like, what if we just crank this up even further? Love Pentagon sounds like a Netflix reality show. It absolutely it probably is. And, you know, for all I know, this movie has the the classic. I mean, one of the two movies that we watched for this year, the classic. There's a wedding happening tomorrow and Cary Grant is involved and
02:01:26
Speaker
Like that is a thing, right, because like Bring Up Baby has that, this movie has that, and then spoilers for the next movie that we're talking about is Gore Friday. All three are Cary Grant movies where he is somehow involved or adjacent to a wedding that is happening the next day. Specifically in these trying to stop that wedding so that the woman can be with him instead. Well, in Bring Up Baby, right, it's his wedding.
02:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this and his girlfriend. Yeah. And in in all three, they're sort of right. There is a kind of like fiance character who's kind of a buffoon. There's like a fiance who gets introduced and immediately you're like, oh, no one's ending up with this guy. Right. Or this gal. Yeah. In this one, it's like this guy doesn't know how to get on a horse. Like you think he's a real man. I mean, that basically is kind of what the movie is positing a little bit.
02:02:23
Speaker
I think there's a lot of stuff in this movie that doesn't work, but I think the stuff that does, it works well enough for me that I enjoy it. And just kind of like the very silly rom-com stuff of right towards the end when it's like, oh man, Rishi has this drunken fling with Jimmy Stewart the night before her wedding. And so then she's like, oh no, what am I gonna do?
02:02:53
Speaker
And then she also write is like she's divorced from Cary Grant, but like there's there's that thing. And so there's this moment where it's like the wedding is about to happen. And there's like three possible grooms. And it's like, oh, no, who is she going to marry? It feels like a real kind of solid screwball comedy premise. I almost kind of wish that section of the movie had been kind of stretched out a little bit more. I think the first half of this movie is
02:03:20
Speaker
doesn't work that great, and then I think the second half has a lot of really good stuff in it. And I wish that maybe, I don't know, they'd found a way to kind of incorporate more of that stuff earlier or just have the beginning not be so kind of unpleasant. Right. And yeah, speaking of the wedding, this is like kind of the ur example of a comedy of remarriage, which- Yeah, a lot of divorce in these like screwball comedies I've noticed.
02:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so a friend of the show, Jack Vernick, was talking to me about, you know, a book about the kind of coin to this term called The Pursuits of Happiness, the Hollywood comedy of remarriage, where it's basically like the idea with this is because like extramarital
02:04:09
Speaker
things are kind of not allowed so much. They kind of have people and like kind of this like boyfriend swapping situation is not something that that would be allowed. They kind of create this like sort of contrived scenario where like this person's temporarily not married, where they can like do all this fun, silly plot stuff. And then they kind of bring them back together again. It's wholesome and you know,
02:04:38
Speaker
and Hays appropriate, you know? Yeah. Right. Which I feel like even I think even a lot of like the Ernst Lubitsch movies tend to have this like they end up in a place that is very kind of traditional normative. Yeah. Right. Like I don't want to be a man. I think was kind of the one that stuck out the most because that one's like German.
02:04:56
Speaker
I mean, it doesn't even matter pre-code because it wasn't in the States. Weimar era. Yeah. But like even that movie, I think, right, it ends in this very kind of like, right, normative man is with women and it is it is all above board, you know. And yeah, that definitely seems to be a thing with I think even even the more kind of boundary pushing comedies that we've watched. Right. They tend to end up in a fairly
02:05:24
Speaker
traditional place, except maybe. Design for a living. Design for a living, which is kind of the thing that makes that one really stand out. Yeah. They say somewhere over the rainbow. That's true. Right. That's that's interesting. It's a pretty it's a pretty new reference. Right. New reference, but also, you know, is a big song, you know, very popular, made it into other movies. In my opinion, the the superior Cary Grant is divorced, but his ex is getting married the next day of 1940.
02:05:53
Speaker
is Girls Girl Friday directed by Howard Hawks. And yeah, this one's a whirlwind. Yeah. I mean, this is like kind of I think the movie that kind of sets the precedent for like Howard Hawks movies are about people who are talking faster than anyone has ever talked. Everyone in this movie talks like Jamie Taco from I Think You Should Leave. Nice reference there. Yeah.
02:06:21
Speaker
And it rules I I love absurdly Overpaced 1940s dialogue. Yeah, you know surprisingly Something about the way that bringing up baby was structured in comparison to this I felt so much more exhausted with being bringing up baby and I felt kind of invigorated by this movie hmm bring a baby was also Howard Hawks, right and
02:06:45
Speaker
Yes, it was another Cary Grant Howard Hawks, Katherine Hepburn movie where a lot of stuff happens and people talk really fast, right? I think that the talking is faster in this movie, I think, though.
02:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the thing that kind of stressed me out about bringing a baby was this kind of like element of chaos to what's happening where like you don't know what's good. Like everything's really hectic, but you also don't know what's going to happen next. Where this movie is everything's moving really fast, but it's about everyone getting on the same page about something.
02:07:17
Speaker
right it's about someone going ah no i've turned the newspaper life away like i'm not gonna be that guy anymore and then like you see a news story happening on one side of the frame and she's just looking looking at it like oh god i need it i i need to be a newsman i do love how this movie kind of treats working for a newspaper as like an addiction
02:07:41
Speaker
where it's like, she's like, no, I'm done. I can never go back to that life. It's behind me. I want to live a boring life. I want to be a housewife. I want to live in a house. All this stuff.
02:07:55
Speaker
And then, right, it's just like, ah, but there's a story here, God damn it. And it's, ah, it's great, yeah. This is like a kind of similar movie to Civil War in terms of just being about like the- The power of the press. The power of the press, but also the kind of- You gotta sacrifice. Like the disturbing amorality of the press, you know? Yeah, I mean,
02:08:24
Speaker
I think this movie almost is kind of more celebratory of that amorality. I think Civil War is very much being like... I think you think that that movie has more of a pro-amorality stance. Yeah. This one's rocking with amorality because it's having fun, you know? It's about like part of her being a newsman, as she calls it, is
02:08:48
Speaker
being a scumbag. And the guy who she's engaged to, who gets in the way, compared to all this other stuff, there's nothing wrong with him. He's fine. He's a regular guy. He's nice. He seems like a very stand-up guy. But he's just not a scumbag, and she's addicted to being a scumbag. Just like Cary Grant is like, I'm going to be a scumbag and show you how much fun it is.
02:09:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, which feels very like the movie knows that the movie knows that it is kind of like working for a newspaper isn't necessarily this like addictive lifestyle thing. I think there's even there's kind of a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie being like, we know that this isn't actually what newspapers are like, right?
02:09:38
Speaker
One of the first things I thought of watching this movie is all of the Daily Bugle scenes in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. Yeah, definitely. And I know that Sam Raimi loves Howard Hawks and 40s movies also, so it does seem very much like that is...
02:09:54
Speaker
a pretty direct kind of like, not necessarily a reference, but I mean like an influence, I guess. Right. Where he was like, oh, I can I have newspaper stuff in my movie. OK, it's going to be like, they're going to be like this. Yeah. Yeah. But I think even this movie might have been influenced like how Stan Lee approached that stuff, too. Hmm.
02:10:13
Speaker
I think this movie kind of I don't know if it has created this, but it definitely I think helped popularize the image this movie presents of what a newspaper is, is and like what work in a newspaper is like, which is like incredibly hectic, fast paced, which I think is just true. But then I don't know the kind of thing of like, you know, a bunch of reporters who are like competing for stories. You've all got the little thing in their hat like yelling at the candlestick phones.
02:10:43
Speaker
Cause it's like, that's been in some of like the earlier thirties comedies, right? There's like newspaper people, they're always backstamp and they're like, they're trying to find stuff. But I think this, this movie just cranks it up to such a degree. Yeah. I think it's like, it's like kind of asking what if, uh, the kind of journalists from Mr. Smith goes to Washington were like about like twice as amped up and twice as much cocaine.
02:11:12
Speaker
old timey cocaine. Yeah. And yeah. And then we're just trying to, you know, find whatever story was out there. Yeah. They're roaming roaming the streets for stories. Yeah. There's also that there's an SNL sketch that I think is like very directly about like supposed to be this movie that is like making fun of like really fast paced 40s dialogue. Have you seen that? No. I'll throw that in the
02:11:38
Speaker
episode description or whatever. There is a plot to this movie, but I feel like it takes place mostly in like the prison, like press room. Yeah, it's based on a play and it's very obviously based on the play because it has two locations. It has two locations. It's all dialogue. I think if that is my as much as I love the dialogue of this movie, that's kind of my biggest gripe with it is that it it feels very stagey. Like, yeah, not it's hyper real.
02:12:07
Speaker
But I mean, not so much in like the tone or sort of like its approach to like the reality of the movie, but just in terms like you can very easily tell this is based on the stage play. Hmm. And it doesn't feel like they changed a lot. It doesn't feel like they're necessarily trying to do that much in terms of adaptation in terms of making it a movie. It's not that it it doesn't look boring. It doesn't. It has, you know, stuff going on. There's a couple of good editing bits and, you know, where it's a cutting between all the different people on
02:12:37
Speaker
phones but for the most part I don't know it feels a little bit a little bit removed a little bit kind of theatrical in that sense where it's like
02:12:48
Speaker
Kind of like a lot of the early talkies did, but thankfully this has, this movie I think has a lot more kineticism and it is blocking and it's the way in which it's, yeah. I mean, I wonder though, right? Like, you know, you think about like a, like, especially when you compare it to like a more boringly shot early talkie, like I think that those movies really suffered from that. And at least for me with this movie, it, um,
02:13:16
Speaker
I think that if it was being too indulgent with its visuals, then it would be giving you too much information. It would be like sensory overlay. Exactly. Like the cinematography almost needs to step back to just allow all of the chaos to be in the dialogue. Right. I mean, that is the thing that I think
02:13:39
Speaker
I'm intrigued to see like to revisit a lot of like 40s movies I've seen before because that that is something I think overall is something that's kind of nice about a lot of 40s movies is how much they tend to shoot stuff and just like a single wide master shot and really have a lot of the movement that you're seeing just in blocking right it's like the blocking in these movies is usually really good in a way that
02:14:02
Speaker
I think a lot of more modern movies don't really do that as much with blocking. I think this movie feels a little bit too skewed towards the theater side. I wanted a little bit more cinema in it somewhere. I'm doing the hands, rubbing my fingers together. Because saying cinema in any context sounds pretentious to me, but I also understand its use as a word.
02:14:31
Speaker
when you talk about the plot like there is this kind of like thing about like a wrongfully imprisoned person and then like they uh you know he the kind of person in charge like knows that he's innocent but then he shot a cop and the cop is black and he needs like the vote of like black people in the town that he's in yeah and like it is
02:14:56
Speaker
It's such a kind of mess. It's hard for me to tell if it's really trying to say anything with all of that stuff. In a way, it has this detached view of the political implications of what's going on that the newspaper people do. The movie itself does.
02:15:21
Speaker
I don't care what's going on. They're all like all these politicians and like in everyone around me, they're all scumbags. I'm just here because it's thrilling to get a story. And like I know what's dramatic and and they almost like frame scenarios in order to make them more dramatic, which is better journalistic ethics. Well, yes, absolutely. I mean, right. They are fully right. Cary Grant and Roslyn Russell, what are their character names?
02:15:51
Speaker
Walter and Hilde are like fully like controlling the situation in order to like get the story and also to kind of like pump the story up a little bit. Yeah. But it's like they become active participants in it.
02:16:06
Speaker
Which, yeah, is not great journalistic ethics, but, you know, this movie is not concerned with ethics. This movie is concerned with getting the story. Yeah, if we're to compare it to the last movie too, like Cary Grant, I think pushes right up to the edge.
02:16:23
Speaker
like pretty close to the edge of being too much of a jerk to like feel good about you know but there's still like enough of a playfulness to what he's doing that like even though he's doing legitimately bad things oh yeah it's it you can still be on board with it right he's he's like so manipulative and he's like doing all this stuff like behind people's backs and kind of to try to like
02:16:48
Speaker
control that you like he gets the fiance arrested what like twice three times. Yeah. Oh, one thing I really love about this movie is how right because it's Cary Grant used to be married to Rosalind Russell's character. Like but they were divorced now. They both used to work in the newspaper. Now, Hildy is like
02:17:08
Speaker
I'm out, I'm done with that life, I'm marrying a boring guy, I'm moving to the suburbs. And he's sort of like, nah, I know you, you'll never, you'll never actually be able to quit this biz. And he keeps kind of like, right, trying to get the fiance arrested and like sending all his sort of like goons out. He like knows all these sort of like low level criminals, because he's like, he's, you know, he's been around doing journalism. So he like knows all who all the local criminals are.
02:17:35
Speaker
But then it's funny that Hildy also knows who all the criminals are. So then whenever they show up, she's like, no, I know who you are. Like, get out of here. Like, there's there's the bit where her her fiance is on the on the phone. What's his name? Bruce, right? And he's like, oh, like there's this like this woman approached me and like now I'm in jail.
02:17:58
Speaker
And she's like, a woman, huh? Is she blonde? Like, gay, high? She's like, yep, I know exactly who that is. You're not in trouble. Like, I know who's behind this. Like, it's all of a...
02:18:09
Speaker
all of Walter Care Grant's schemes. She knows what all his schemes are already. Whenever he's trying stuff, she's sort of like, I see you. I know what you're doing. It's a couple of savvy people trying to outmaneuver each other. One of them is trying to
02:18:28
Speaker
get out and resist the temptation to be a newsman again. And the other one is trying to get her to drop the other guy and marry him instead and get her to become a newsman again. But I think it's very funny that he wins in the end. Like, yeah, she does abandon her fiance and go back to being a newspaper man and remarries Cary Grant.
02:18:50
Speaker
in like a whirlwind of like chaotic energy where they're just like oh we're so we just broke the biggest store of the year yes let's go get married and had never fall.
02:19:01
Speaker
They said they were going to spend a week in Niagara Falls and I was like, what do you what do you do for a week in Niagara Falls? I've been there. I don't know how you spend a week there. Yeah, it's like it's kind of it's not treated as like a happy ending. It's like, oh, hey, like the couple got together. But it is this kind of there's there's a bit of kind of acidity to it, I think.
02:19:22
Speaker
I think the movie the movie knows that there's a bit of a city to it, right? She is abandoning her sort of like, yeah, it's like boring life or whatever, but she's sort of like getting rubbed back into this thing that she wanted to get away from.
02:19:36
Speaker
And that's where the movie ends. It's like, yeah, no, she's going back to being a newspaper. I mean, I think if you look at it as an addiction metaphor, sure. But like to me, I don't really think it's supposed to be an addiction metaphor. I do think it's supposed to be like, no, this is something that she genuinely loves doing and is very good at. That's the thing. And therefore, I think there is something very triumphant to her.
02:19:56
Speaker
Returning to it. Yeah, I mean I think that like maybe the movie is kind of putting saying her being Addicted to being a scumbag and and like and like and the news the newest news story like that is
02:20:14
Speaker
not the aberration. The aberration is this normative life that she yearns for, right? The moral is that she's kidding herself about wanting to be a normal person. Yeah. Rather than her having this kind of toxic relationship with her work and with another guy. Like, she's like, that stuff is kind of like, it's just there, but she likes it, you know? Kind of a phantom thread ending.
02:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, actually they're not a bad comparison. I do kind of like how yet the movie is like and on this note of like no no reject like normal stuff like
02:20:55
Speaker
Like it is a triumphant ending where like the character embraces this like chaotic, but really like energizing lifestyle, but also kind of like expression, right? Like her whole thing is that she's really, really good at journalism and is a really good writer and can like get people to talk to her in a way that other people can't. As a weird eccentric artist person myself, I do definitely see
02:21:22
Speaker
I did kind of, I didn't cheer at the end of this movie, but I was like, I was in a good mood. I was like, yeah, good ending. And also, yeah, it feels like especially a lot of like romantic comedies are like, like we're just saying, like they usually end in this way where it is like, no, at the end of the day, we're embracing this kind of like very stable or like normative status quo at the end.
02:21:47
Speaker
No matter what crazy hijinks happened earlier, I do like how this movie kind of ends on a thing like, no, the hijinks will continue. We are doubling down on the hijinks. Right. Yeah, I mean, you know, since we've been watching these postcode movies, I think one of the one of the more surprising things to me is how these movies don't necessarily feel like too much less edgy than the ones pre the code. Like, like there are there are ways that you can tell, but they're
02:22:17
Speaker
there's still an edge to them. There still can be an edge to them. And in a way, I think that people got very deft at navigating the code very quickly because the code is really just some boxes that have to be checked.
02:22:32
Speaker
And it doesn't, you know, it doesn't say all movies must be G rated. It just has these like weird arbitrary rules about like what what can and cannot happen in a movie. And as long as you can work around that, then you can be relatively filthy. Yeah, there is a moment like kind of halfway through this movie where the stakes suddenly become way bigger, right? Where the the guy there, they're like at the prison to interview breaks out and has a gun and they're like the cops are shooting
02:23:01
Speaker
Tommy guns everywhere. And also this movie is like fairy. The movie does not have a very, I guess, positive view of like the police either. It feels like it kind of portrays them as kind of buffoonish, right? And and dangerous also a lot of the time when it's like we're sending every cop out to look for this guy and they're like almost running people over. They're shooting Tommy guns at all the windows, just willy nilly. Yeah.
02:23:27
Speaker
all the reporters are like, excuse me, we're up here. That stuck out to me as like, oh, we've established this. It's about, you know, romantic tension and like newspaper stuff. And then kind of halfway through, it's like, right. There's a whole scene where the guy is like confronting Hildy with a gun and she has like talking down so she doesn't get shot. Mm hmm.
02:23:47
Speaker
And it's like, the stakes get a lot higher than I thought that they would for a movie like this. But like, I think that like, what's notable is that in some ways they're just kind of blase about these really high stakes, you know? Yeah. They're too busy talking on two different phones at once, back and forth. Yes. The most iconic scene, definitely. That and another sort of, I guess, gif or meme that comes out of this movie is the Cary Grant saying, get out and pointing to the door.
02:24:18
Speaker
That's that's a give I've seen many times. And how many 40s memes have you seen? I don't know. Maybe I'm just it's the right corner of the Internet that I see a lot of 40s. But I think they're not like in context with that. I feel like the Pinocchio thing and Cary Grant pointing at the door are not not usually in the context of them being from the 40s. You know what I mean? You're right. You know, I have I have seen this GIF. OK. And as soon as it happened in the movie, I was like, yep, there it is.
02:24:46
Speaker
There was there was a joke in this that really reminded me of an arrested development joke that does feel like a kind of like post code joke in the same way that like arrest development jokes are like we can only do so much on Fox because the network show. But we're going to be creative about it and somehow make it like even more transgressive, I guess. There was a joke in this movie where I forgot who says it, but they're on the phone.
02:25:15
Speaker
because 90% of this movie is people talking on phones. Yelling on the phone. Yeah. Shot right in the classified ads. No, ads. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Which is like a joke through inference, right? It's like ads sounds like ass, but they don't say it. They just plant that in your brain by having the person repeat it, which feels like a very arrest development type.
02:25:45
Speaker
joke, like they use that kind of humor a lot in that show. Oh yeah, like the the blown away thing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You forgot to say away again. Right where it's like they can get away with making pretty filthy jokes just by like saying a word that sounds similar to something or like so I don't know that that joke I wrote down like really stuck out to me of like, that's that's good writing.
02:26:11
Speaker
And also a good example of ways of which it's pretty easy to kind of circumnavigate all the kind of dumb rules of the Hayes Code. You got anything else on His Girl Friday? Oh, Cary Grant name drops his actual name, Artia Leach, at one point. Oh, I didn't think about that. I'm not entirely sure even why. It's like he's using that like as if it's like some other person he knows. Yeah, but weird and notable that
02:26:40
Speaker
He was like stealthily just like saying his own name in a movie. It's like how when Tom Cruise is in a movie, he just sometimes goes, Tom Cruise. But Tom Cruise is his actual name. Yeah. Or actually it might not be, right? It's not his actual last name. Cruise is part of like, as far as I know, that is part of his legal birth name.
02:27:03
Speaker
He says, Thomas Cruz Mapother the fourth. Yeah, exactly. He says that in Top Gun, Maverick. Yeah, I think that's probably about it. I'd been looking forward to watching Whose Court of Friday for a while. That was like, me too. Yes. Yeah. I want to see people yell into phones. It was a really fun one. Now we're just bouncing back into drama and good Lord, this is going to be a long one. I guess, I mean, we watched a lot of movies.
02:27:28
Speaker
We did. We watched seven features for this, which is... Yeah, and three shorts. Yeah. The most we've done in a while. Yes. Grapes of Wrath. Yeah. Another movie that has some incompetent shoot first, talk, ask questions later. Yeah. But in a much more pointed way in this movie. Yeah.
02:27:52
Speaker
This movie is rough. Yeah, but it is oh so good. Yes. I had seen this before. I read the book when I was a teenager and then I watched the movie. I remember thinking it was very good at the time, but rewatching it, I was kind of like,
02:28:13
Speaker
awestruck at how good this movie. Yeah, it's it's like in like on every level. Yeah. Naturally. I mean, it's based on a Pulitzer Prize winning book that is very good and people should read because it's it's a good book. But yeah, it's like it's one of the best looking movies we've watched for the show in a while. Hmm.
02:28:37
Speaker
I mean, speaking about like how his core Friday like doesn't really feels like it isn't reusing what a lot of like, you know, cinematic tools in the toolbox necessarily. This feels like it's using a lot of them. Hmm. Like the casting in this is like really incredible, like really stands out from the other stuff that we've been watching, I think.
02:28:58
Speaker
Yeah. Henry Fonda is so good in this. The his his mother. Yeah. Jane Darwell as Ma Joad. Yeah. Really, really stand out and like so many good faces. Yeah. And I also think there's there's really something to this movie where we've been watching a lot like movie star movies and.
02:29:24
Speaker
I think even in the early thirties when the depression was at its worst, movies would address it. They would directly have scenes addressing the depression. Mr. Deeds does that. King Kong does that. It happened one night, does that. But there is a bit of this kind of remove to those where it's like we're usually following fairly wealthy or at least comfortable characters.
02:29:50
Speaker
Right. I mean, the whole thing that happened one night is this like rich woman who then is like, oh no, I have to stay at like the camp at the side of the road. They don't have running water. And it's like, oh, what a funny joke. Whereas this movie is like very much about like people.
02:30:07
Speaker
Real people. It's about capturing something true. It's about capturing something gritty and real and felt. And it is about characters that a lot of the other movies that we had watched
02:30:26
Speaker
just wouldn't be about like I think there is in a lot of the 30s movies there's this thing I'm like no characters movies need to be kind of a little bit larger than life a little bit like they need to be like important people they need to be even like Mr. Deeds who's like he's a country bumpkin he like he still lives in this like massive house and has like eight tubas and is like crazy eccentric guy I think I got tuba money
02:30:48
Speaker
Yeah, whereas the characters in this are just like people who live on a farm. And that's like every character is just like someone who came from like rural Oklahoma and also just like the stakes of this movie are like, where are we going to sleep tonight? And will we be able to eat today? Yeah. And it's like about a family that is just struggling with that question every moment of this movie there. Like this movie is.
02:31:16
Speaker
kind of unrelenting, except for one point where it relents. I was thinking after the movie what it was about. And I feel like at first blush, you might say that the movie is about perseverance. But I think that the movie, through adversity or something like that, but I think that the movie is not about the perseverance. Perseverance is sometimes a factor
02:31:46
Speaker
but what the movie is about is suffering. The movie is about horrific, kind of one of the big points of it is to put a spotlight on this horrific situation that real people were in, right? And so it is taking all of this really true misery
02:32:08
Speaker
It's not like this kind of Pandora's box style, like, what dark and gritty and horrible thing can I think of next, you know? Like, this feels earned, I think. So it is talking about the ways that people experience and deal with suffering of this kind. Sometimes that's with perseverance. Sometimes it's with giving up and going home. Sometimes it's with dying.
02:32:33
Speaker
Like it's telling the story of all of these different people. And some of them don't persevere. Some of them kick the bucket, you know, and it's sad. And everyone else now has to deal with that, too. And it's just like the this movie feels so, so different. And it's like filmmaking approach, I think, then almost anything else that we've watched is directed by John Ford. I think we even mentioned that yet. It definitely feels the most similar to his movies, naturally.
02:33:03
Speaker
But I think even compared to like stagecoach, stagecoach has this a bit more of this kind of like, ah it's the old west, there's like gun fights and you know, romantic stuff. Whereas this is like, it is attempting
02:33:18
Speaker
a kind of sense of realism and a sense of, yeah, like truthfulness that I think, yeah, I mean, outside of maybe something like, and what is it called? Manil Monton, which is a lot more abstract and kind of surrealist than this movie is. This movie is like very, very grounded. Yes. While still having, being super expressive. Like, I don't know, there's just so many choices that I feel like a different director or a different movie wouldn't have made.
02:33:47
Speaker
Honestly, like, you know, maybe this is a testament to the to the filmmaking, but I felt so engrossed by what was happening that I didn't even notice any kind of interesting cinematic stuff that was happening. You know, I was I think it makes such a such a compelling emotional appeal that it's it's just guiding you through masterfully through everything that it does. Mm hmm. Yeah.
02:34:14
Speaker
I mean, a lot of that I think is a lot of what makes us maybe great is it can be traced back to the novel. Right. I think a lot of a lot of the thematic stuff, all the great character stuff, a lot of the dialogue is verbatim from the novel. A lot of the all the sort of like big situations that
02:34:33
Speaker
they have to deal with. I mean, the novel goes harder than the movie. The movie is they sort of like cleaned up like nicer version of the book. That's crazy. Like I don't I don't I don't know how much darker you can get. But I mean.
02:34:49
Speaker
I don't know if I want to like, will you read the book? You should read the book. I kind of want to now. I thought about talking about the ending of the book versus the ending of the movie because they're very different and they strike very different tones to end on. Mm hmm. Because I think the movie definitely ends on this sort of even with everything, it ends in this kind of bright spark of hope. Mm hmm. And it does feel kind of like driving off into the sunset a bit in this sort of like.
02:35:14
Speaker
you know, there's a bit of this kind of like uplifting that the book does not really, there was an element of perseverance to the end of the book, but it is this just like, Jesus Christ, this is, this is something. There's so much, but I won't, I won't, I won't go further than that because, uh, yeah, if anyone who hasn't read the book, go read it. This is one of all the awards. It's great.
02:35:37
Speaker
New York Times bestseller, Caldecott. But I think right. So the book came out in 1939. So like towards the tail end of the Depression, I mean, it's sort of like there's it's arguable, like when the Great Depression. Ended because it's like when does the economy bounce back, right? It's I think that kind of generally accepted thing is like World War One happens or sorry, World War Two happens and that kind of like galvanizes the country to kind of
02:36:04
Speaker
come together a bit more, but I mean, it was happening before that, right? All the other countries were economically devastated by World War II, but America turned out great afterwards. I mean, there was, right? It was like restart all this industry and like all these factories reopened and that kind of thing, but there was a lot of, there was all the public works stuff, all the New Deal stuff, like there, I think from about like 36 on, there was this kind of like,
02:36:31
Speaker
steady kind of road to recovery. 33 is when the worst unemployment was.
02:36:40
Speaker
I think this is set in 1929, like right right in the heat of the. No, because the crash was like December 29. I'm I'm guessing I'm guessing this is probably set right because he was in jail for four years. I think this is probably set in 33 if I had to guess. OK, because that was also the worst year. And I think but they also make some references to like the part of agriculture like New Deal stuff.
02:37:09
Speaker
although that might be like a whole year after the movie starts or more, I'm not sure.
02:37:15
Speaker
But so another thing that really stuck out about this movie that feels notable and like different from a lot of other things that we're watching is it was shot by Greg Tallend. We'll talk about him more next episode. Very famous director of photography. And I think the lighting in this movie is feels very different from I think a lot of thirties movies with plenty of exceptions tend to be fairly
02:37:43
Speaker
Well lit. They have this kind of a bit more kind of like sitcommy vibe to them. You know, this movie is like very, very dark and a lot more. There's plenty of like sets and things like that, but it feels like there's a little bit more attempt at least to get at the idea of like.
02:38:01
Speaker
I don't want to say naturalistic lighting, because it's not. It's very expressive. Scenes that are being lit with someone holding a match, they're actually using lights to simulate that. They're trying to bring you into the world that these characters inhabit, which is a lot darker and
02:38:23
Speaker
and harsher and less clear. Yeah I mean there's a lot of scenes that are in this kind of like oppressive bright sunlight also. Right yeah. Where like the whole frame is almost white from uh you know I don't know if it's really going that fully expressive but it is um you know it does like they're out working outside they're out suffering
02:38:47
Speaker
Uh, uh, without cover, you know, in, in, in a, in a shelter and, and the sun beats down on them. I mean, it's, it's really the visuals in this movie are really expressive without feeling abstract or sort of like expressionistic, I guess. Like they, they feel very grounded, but it's like, um, also all those great faces, right? Like every actor in this movie, I feel like has like such a great face.
02:39:15
Speaker
They get a lot of, like, interesting texture out of the stubble on Henry Fonda's face. Right. It's like all the kind of, like, chiaroscuro, like, low-key lighting is really accentuating, you know, all the wrinkles in everyone's face. It kind of makes everyone look a little bit more like sun-aged also. The guy who plays the former preacher, John Carradine, is an amazing face. Yeah. And just like, what a character that is.
02:39:45
Speaker
Yeah, he's a preacher, he loses his faith, and then he tags along on a cursed Route 66 road trip, and then he becomes a communist. I don't know if he would even necessarily become a full communist, but it was- No, I know. Yeah. He becomes a labor organizer. Advocate. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
02:40:07
Speaker
Henry Fonda plays Tom Joad, who was just released from prison. I like how the movie opens with him hitchhiking. And while he's in the car with the hitchhiker, he's like, yeah, he's got out of jail. I killed a guy. The guy's like, oh, OK. Well, he said he says and just also just like the way that he talks about
02:40:29
Speaker
killing someone is he's like so matter-of-fact and I was like yeah he's stuck a knife in me so I you know I've hit him in the head with a shovel and he died like I was I went went away for like eight years but got four like he's just so like it's like it's the kind of like yeah I got a flat tire like what are you gonna do you know right and I think that's kind of that character's approach to like everything he comes up against he's a very
02:40:57
Speaker
I hesitate to use the word simple minded because that implies a level of like unintelligence. But it's, it's this guy who like, I feel like is, he's very present, right? He's really only is thinking or caring about the immediate situation.
02:41:14
Speaker
that's all he's ever really had to think about and it's also when when you have no home to go to no job there are no jobs yeah right like you were just released from prison with like your clothes it's like
02:41:31
Speaker
that he doesn't have time to think about anything else other than just like, where am I going to sleep? What am I going to eat? And that applies to then his whole family because they get kicked off their their farm that they've lived on for decades. Yeah, like every moment has this kind of immediacy to it because like.
02:41:49
Speaker
You know, when the grandpa dies, spoilers, like when the grandpa dies, like they just have to bury him and keep moving because they have so much gas. They only have so much food. They're trying to make it to California because they've heard their jobs there and ends like they have a flyer that says there are jobs in California. That's all they're going up. That's like, hey, it's it's a lead. It's something I guess we're going to California. And so we'll just go. We'll.
02:42:17
Speaker
you know, we're going to suffer whether we stay or whether we leave. And so he might as well do something. And it's funny, I keep talking about suffering, you were talking about him being a character that's in the presence, like, is this a Buddhist story or something? But
02:42:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense that it's like they can't think about the past, they can't think about the future because they are too worried about the present. It's kind of similar to the conversation that Tom ends up having with the labor people, right? Where he's like, all of these people are just suffering through the circumstances that they're in right now. And they are not willing to put what they have, like the meager thing that they have right now at risk
02:43:03
Speaker
in order to create a better future. And it isn't until their situation goes from horrific, like horrific but barely scraping by doable to actually exploitative, cannot do this anymore, that people are able to turn around and make a stand. There's a scene a little earlier than that, right, where he's like, he finally gets a job.
02:43:31
Speaker
right through I think the Department of Labor thing. There's like all this stuff or like the Department of Agriculture right is like running this kind of housing project. It's like little development that like will let people stay here as long as you like you clean it up yourself. You appoint your own like law enforcement and it's like paid for by the Department of Agriculture. Government pays for it. The like local
02:43:57
Speaker
Police and a bunch of other local people are like, no, that's communism. We hate this. We're going to ruin it as much as we possibly can. And there's a scene before that where it's like Tom Joad is working on a farm and he's like, over here is a conversation. There's a conversation happening around him.
02:44:18
Speaker
With like, yeah, they're going after those, you know, they're, they're going after those reds over by the thing. And he's like, everyone keeps talking about reds. I don't understand what that is or why anyone cares. Like, what is that? Like, what, what is, you know, a true, a true member of the proletariat, right? He doesn't even know, know about the reds. But it's like, that's something I really like about his character, right? Is that it's like,
02:44:40
Speaker
Yeah, he might not. He might not be the smartest guy, but it also is this thing where he's like, I don't care about like communism versus like capital. He's like, he's not thinking in those terms. He's just like none of this matters because I don't have food. Yeah. Yep.
02:44:58
Speaker
And neither is anyone in my family. Just give me a house to stay in. And it's like, if the government pays for that house, great, please. I can't afford it otherwise.
Tom Joad's Determination in the Dust Bowl Era
02:45:10
Speaker
And so, yeah, there's something very endearing, I think, about Tom Joad in this movie and just how much he is sort of like, all I have time to think or care about is like, what am I doing tomorrow in order to improve my circumstances?
02:45:27
Speaker
Yeah. And and I mean, I think that, you know, the the note that the movie ends on, which is maybe, you know, you might consider to be an artificially positive note, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. I think it's a good ending to this movie. Like, but definitely compared to the book, it is like it's it's very different. He delivers a speech that I think another movie with like a really touching speech at the end, you know, like he
02:45:52
Speaker
decides he's kind of wanted at this point. Right. He is Jim Casey, the former preacher.
02:46:01
Speaker
to later became a labor advocate is killed by either like a service deputy or maybe just like a guy who's like part of the posse. And so Tom is like, well, you killed my friend. I'm going to hit you on the head with a big stick and run away. And because he's a big dude, he kills him. And so then he is now wanted for a second murder.
02:46:25
Speaker
That is not necessarily self defense, but it's sort of this thing where it's like he's not going around like setting say out to kill people, but he's like instant. He's being put in situations where like he gets into a fight and the other person dies. Yeah. And it becomes clear that he can't stay with his family anymore because he would bring too much heat to them even though he would love to. And so.
02:46:50
Speaker
this speech that he delivers as he he decides like he's going to take up the mantle of this like kind of labor organizing he's going to go and try and make the world better because there isn't a place that he can be and so without having a place he's going to like he might as well go and do something dangerous and good.
02:47:11
Speaker
Right. And so his mom is worried that he'll die in the process. And he talks about like a very red collectivist sort of thing of just like I'm one of many people like I'm contributing to the better world that you'll be living in. And so you are experiencing me in every breath you take, whether I live or die in the future. You know, it's a very nice speech. I think it's a really nice note to end the movie on.
02:47:39
Speaker
Yeah, both of them, Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell. Yeah, both. I mean, throughout the whole movie, they're both great. But yeah, that scene especially. There's a bit at the beginning sort of like one of the people that Tom and Casey run into is this other farmer that they know who's had his farm bulldozed because like the bank sold it. There's like the whole kind of like Byzantine
02:48:05
Speaker
this, you know, American system where it is like, which just really happened during the, during the Dust Bowl, where it was like, all these people lost their, their property and their farms and their homes.
02:48:17
Speaker
Because it was like, well, they had a loan from the bank, but then the bank lost all its money. So then, you know, I'm I'm genuinely not entirely sure how it all worked. I mean, I think it's like sharecroppers, which I don't remember from my history class. But it's nothing like the movie also doesn't really explain it because like the characters are trying to like figure it out. It's like, no, but like, why? What happened? Why can't I stay in my house?
02:48:42
Speaker
And the guy's like, hey, I'm just doing what my boss tells me to do. And he's just working for the guy who works at the bank. That guy's just working for some fat guy on Wall Street. And that guy's just working for it. And it's a thing where they ask, no, but who do we shoot? Who do we get mad at?
02:49:01
Speaker
It's indicting a system rather than a person. Right. But I like how all of the characters, like this question comes up multiple times during the movie and the characters are like, we don't know.
02:49:13
Speaker
Like no one knows where the buck stops, right? It's just this like circular labyrinthine system that, you know, at the end of the day of the people who are suffering the most from it, the people that have the least resources that can't really do anything about it. Which is very, again, unfortunately feels very timely to me. And then yeah, there's all the shots of like bulldozers, like tanks, like rolling through and just like knocking over houses.
02:49:42
Speaker
which is like you can find like documentary footage of that happening too. It's not quite as, you know, elaborately staged as it is in this movie, but it's like it's offering kind of like lots of because it's like a road movie.
02:49:56
Speaker
It's giving you kind of like lots of little pockets into just like situations that arose because of the Great Depression. Yeah. And also just like little vignettes of different types of people's lives. Yeah. In in this, you know, time in this place like.
02:50:12
Speaker
People who might not be the most economically stable, but they recognize that there are other people passing through who are on the brink of death. And so they will give them a discount on a loaf of bread. There's a lot
Hitchcock's 'Rebecca': Class Tensions and Identity
02:50:30
Speaker
in this movie about like.
02:50:32
Speaker
dignity and the indignity of poverty, I think also. Where it's like, there's a lot of times where people are kind of, they're like, no, don't say anything. We're too proud. We can't let them, we can't show that we're suffering kind of. Which I think is, I totally understand in it, I also think it is, it's a very human thing to be like, no, no, no, everything's fine. But then it's like, you could also just ask for help.
02:51:02
Speaker
like the thing with like with the bread right where they're like we can only afford this much and they're like no like you can you can have the whole thing of bread they're like no like we we're only gonna pay for what we have the money for and it's like just take the bread man that's all the food you have for like the whole day like take the bread and yeah just like all the kind of uncomfortable situations that arise from that right there's like they're cooking
02:51:26
Speaker
cooking up some soup in one of the Hoovervilles that they're staying at. And all the kids come over because they haven't eaten. And they're all like, is there any leftovers? Any leftovers? And they're like, we can only feed the eight people that is in our group. But then how do you tell a starving child that? They're like, sorry. Yeah, and then they lose their appetite because they're starving children next to them.
02:51:52
Speaker
Yeah, this movie is brutal. Yeah. But also like that scene, I am like riveted. It's it's so every scene feels like that, where it is like it's it's like dredging up all these kind of questions and just about just about humanity, man.
02:52:12
Speaker
All right, yeah. So, on that note, what's the next movie? Our last movie is Rebecca, which my camera's not on in the podcast right now, but I got a poster for it right behind me. Hey. I just acquired this poster, but I like the movie okay. Maybe not enough to have a poster for, but you know. I thought it was pretty good. I was pretty into it. It was good.
02:52:37
Speaker
It's a movie about... It's a Hitchcock movie. It's a Hitchcock movie, which is... The first American Hitchcock movie. And yet it's a thoroughly British movie. It really is. It is about upper-class British people being bitchy to a poor British person. All stuff that Tom Joad would not care about whatsoever. Yeah.
02:53:03
Speaker
Tom Joey could not be bothered by a single thing that happens in this movie. Yeah, this is a movie that's kind of full of poor person microaggressions, you know?
02:53:14
Speaker
It's about somebody who is kind of through a whirlwind sort of marrying into an extremely aristocratic family. She's not just a fish out of water, but almost, it becomes the subject of this kind of intense ire of many people around her. Because you don't live up to the old wife. Yeah, it's the whole thing right where, what's her name?
02:53:42
Speaker
Well, she doesn't have a name, I guess is the main. Joan Fontaine is the the lead, but it is very notably like her character does not have a name. She's only ever referred to as Mrs. De Winter or like, you know, darling or something. Right. Where she she's working for like some rich woman on vacation.
02:54:02
Speaker
and she meets this handsome fella, George Fortescue Maximilian Dewinter, or Maxime. Played by Laurence Olivier. Laurence Olivier, a guy who hated method acting, famously. Not relevant to this movie, but just a funny thing.
02:54:19
Speaker
They're like, hit off, get married. And it is funny. I think there are a couple moments that really reminded me of the lodger in that. Oh, there's like mysterious, super wealthy man. It just shows up and it's like, hey, you seem you seem fun. You want to get married and come live at my, you know, palatial estate.
02:54:39
Speaker
Okay, okay, and then it's like I think there's all this stuff of like I was married once but something terrible happened He's like I don't want to talk about it And then it's like won't speak of my ex-wife But I can't stop thinking about my ex-wife right and she's like who's that fellow? I bet he did kill his wife and But so there's there's I think there's all these sort of like red flags that keep popping up and
02:55:05
Speaker
right? That it's like, I don't want to talk about it. And then it's like, he, he does like sort of little things where he's like very controlling, where it's like, don't bite your nails. And then other people that know him are like, Oh, he's lovely. He's the best. Like you're gonna have a great time. He does occasionally fly into a rage, but like, you don't need to worry about that.
02:55:23
Speaker
So it's like it's it's being like very obvious about setting up like oh this guy definitely killed his first wife, right? Like yeah, sure just like everybody around her. It's it's not just him It's like she gets into the situation. That's sure that's sort of the the red herring of it It's not completely red herring, but it is like it's it's drawing your attention to one thing to kind of kind of keep your attention off
02:55:48
Speaker
who the actual kind of villain of the story is. Hence the twist. Which is delivered in a, was it a one take with Laurence Olivier? It was like a very long- It might have been. It's a very long scene. Where he like recounts the kind of alternative version of history that makes you re-examine everything, even though it still doesn't excuse the way that he acted. Right, of course not. But I love how that scene
02:56:17
Speaker
I know it's just like kind of poo-pooing His Gore Friday for being like so like talky and like not having enough like
02:56:27
Speaker
I don't know, cinematic stuff going on. I do really like how that whole scene is done purely in dialogue. One, because I think Laurence Olivier is very compelling in his performance, but I like how it's... Laurence Olivier? Good actor. Who knew? He's telling the story, and so there's a degree to which it's sort of like...
02:56:49
Speaker
Okay, this is like, this mostly explains everything, but it's like, I guess I just have to take his word for it. Like, I think if they had done a flashback, or anything, sure, you can have unreliable flashbacks, but I like how I think both the main character, right, John Fontaine's character and the audience also are sort of like, I think I believe him.
02:57:11
Speaker
But I might not. Well, it ends up being true. And what the truth of it is, is that through the whole movie, she has been almost like kind of metaphorically haunted by the ghost of the first Mrs. Oh God, what's the last name? De Winter. De Winter. Another thing I love about this movie is that it is kind of a, it is a haunting movie, but it is, there's no ghosts. It's like a metaphorical haunting movie. Yeah.
02:57:37
Speaker
The titular Rebecca, you know, maybe the better way of phrasing it, the more conventional way of phrasing it is that she is living under the specter of Rebecca, right? So she's always being compared to her. That's not the way Rebecca would have done it. That's not the way that the first Mrs. De Winter would have done it, you know? Yeah.
02:57:58
Speaker
then when Lawrence Olivier gives this big kind of expository speech. He's like stressed smoking the whole time, which I feel like is a good business for him to be doing. One of the really cool like cinematic things that it does in that scene is that it creates
02:58:18
Speaker
like as it's talking about he talks about her walking across the room that they're in and the camera moves and follows where she might have been at this where she would have been during the scene but it's just following nothing
02:58:33
Speaker
And so it is making this ghost of of her almost more literal while still not being true. You know, and I think it does like a really good job of like mirroring her experience and almost like saying this thing that you felt haunted by. Like it really is haunting you. You know, Albert Hitchcock, good director. Yeah.
02:58:59
Speaker
And then i mean right there's there's so i guess the big reveal right is that rebecca was actually like a psychopath. And she was the one that was like controlling me in the manipulative and like all these things also she had terminal cancer and was going to die and so wanted to like get.
02:59:22
Speaker
Yet, Max seemed to murder her so that he would take the blame for it. Yeah, she's like, I'm terminal, so I'm going to use this opportunity to make other people around me as miserable as I can in the process of me dying. Which I think the thing that she had cancer is in the book that this is based on. But in the movie, it's like there's a scuffle and he pushes her and her head gets smashed against something.
02:59:53
Speaker
So it's mostly accidental. He didn't really intend to murder her, right? Right. That's manslaughter. Right. In the book, he straight up shoots her. Oh, so she successfully tricks him.
03:00:08
Speaker
Yeah, which I think apparently David O. Selznick was like really pissed that because of the Hays Code, it was directly because of the Hays Code that they made the change. And David O. Selznick was was like the whole point of this book is that it's about a guy who like murdered his wife and that it
03:00:26
Speaker
the end is that like oh it's like kind it's not necessary justify but it's like this the twist is that like bread it like turns kind of that on its head huh and then it's like now it's the story of a man who buried a wife who was killed accidentally he's like that's not as good of a story.
03:00:45
Speaker
I mean, I guess it kind of turns it less. It turns it more into like about the suffering that he went through as a result of her manipulativeness. Right. I do think it kind of still works and it kind of still has this thing of like, yeah, he murdered his wife, but like there's more to it than that.
03:01:03
Speaker
Yeah, which I think is a very Hitchcocky story to adapt and also it just right. I think the thing that works well about it is the fact that it is is laying it on so thick at the beginning to be like this guy definitely killed his wife. Right. And then the movie is like, well, yeah, but there's also the center thing.
03:01:21
Speaker
Which is kind of reminded me of the larger a bit where it's like no he's not a serial killer he's just a weirdo. The great moral of that story yeah yeah and then one kind of big element of this movie that we haven't talked about is mrs danvers right i mean kind of the key to the whole thing.
03:01:40
Speaker
Which also was like another Hays Code thing is that like a lot of crux of the Mrs. Danvers character is is not really cut out of this movie, but it is thoroughly downplayed, which is that she was in love with Rebecca and they had a whole thing. And so that is like why why she hates the new Mrs. De Winter so much.
03:02:03
Speaker
she she liked the old established kind of paradigm and she bristles a lot at any changes to to that but also yeah just it's not explicit but like i feel like fairly i don't know it's like a fairly
03:02:20
Speaker
clear read that like it's either like read into the movie to like get that out of it i mean you could say it's either a sexual or a non-sexual obsession that she might have with rebecca i think it was more explicitly sexual in the book is my impression yeah i haven't read the book but that seems to be
03:02:40
Speaker
A thing where like, you know, Breen being a homophobe was like, no, that can't be in there. And like when they like submitted the script before they even shot it, it was like he was like, none of that. Apparently had no problem with the very explicit fact that Rebecca was sleeping with her cousin. But, you know, whatever you do, you Breen.
Mrs. Danvers' Obsession and Destruction
03:03:00
Speaker
That's the English aristocracy, you know? Yeah. Mrs. Danver is played very, very well. She is so creepy in this movie. And from the very beginning...
03:03:15
Speaker
She says all of this stuff that in words is friendly, but in her whole vibe is horrific. She's constantly doing, I guess, this passive-aggressive stuff to the main character. Mrs. Danvers is kind of the crux of her not feeling welcome there.
03:03:38
Speaker
in addition to her sort of just unsupportive, flies off the handle sometimes, new husband. Rhett, her new husband who says things like, don't be such an idiot, darling.
03:03:50
Speaker
real line from the movie. Which is not dissimilar to the lines that the parents tell their children in, oh god, the other Hitchcock movie, The Man Who Knew Too Much. It's like, shut up, darling. Right. Also, I don't remember if he says that, but at some point someone in this movie refers to scrambled eggs as that mess, which is what I'm going to call scrambled eggs from now on.
03:04:13
Speaker
The most British thing that I loved in this movie was someone going, there's a thrilling article on what's the matter with English cricket? What's the matter with it? I think the most English thing about this movie is the fact that the creepy incest cousin always says to Lou whenever he leaves a scene.
03:04:38
Speaker
often buy a window, just appear and exit scenes in upsetting ways. Steal people's chicken wings. Getting back to Mrs. Danvers, she seems very obsessed with Rebecca from the start, and there's immediately this thing where it's like, you're not the same as the old Mrs. Dewitt. You're not as good as her.
03:05:03
Speaker
Which at first, right, does seem just this kind of like general antagonism of like, you can't live up to her, her greatness. Yeah. And then whenever she tries to talk to Maxime about it, he's like, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. Which you kind of get the sense that, you know, the character probably thinks that it's like he's, he's too distraught, right? He misses her too much, right? That's kind of like the impression that she's getting. The audience, I think is getting a little bit more of like, he doesn't want to talk about it because he murdered her, right?
03:05:31
Speaker
Right. And then I mean, the truth of it is is mostly that it's like, no, he hated her. She was terrible and was like super emotionally abusive.
03:05:39
Speaker
Amazing, physically abusive also. I mean, she tried to have this whole murder plot happen. Right. And that leads to one of my favorite scenes of the movie where Mrs. Danvers is like, oh, we're having a big cost. They're having a big costume ball. And Mrs. Danvers is like, hey, you should wear a dress like in this painting. He'll love that. That's like his that's his favorite painting. Evil. And then she's like, oh, great idea. It'll be a surprise. And like this is how they makes makes this whole dress. And then I feel like
03:06:08
Speaker
Me as an audience member I'm like oh that this is not gonna go well and right so she makes this whole dress that looks like the painting and like during the ball it comes down this big staircase and was like big entrance.
03:06:21
Speaker
And her expression on her face, the new Mrs. De Winter, is this happy, excited thing. And I'm like, I, as an audience member, know that this is going to be a disaster. And it is so tense and agonizing to be like, she's so happy and excited in this moment. And I'm like, no, no. And then, yeah, it ruins the evening or whatever. He's like, get back in there and take that off.
03:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of the first time that I think Mrs. Danvers does something that is like very explicitly like manipulative. And it's not like she's not being passive aggressive at that moment. She's just being aggressive. Yeah, it's the moment I think the movie takes a turn from like this kind of subtle experience of this, you know, of these microaggressions of like, like rich people just like making her feel like she doesn't have a home. That's more of a macroaggression.
03:07:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's just like her just like we are we are in open warfare now, you know, and yeah, it all culminates with Mrs. Danvers in just a crazy scene of like, what was it? She's like, if you're going to make some kind of change to the way that I liked
03:07:37
Speaker
living at this place, Mandalay. I would rather torch this entire mansion and go down with it to live truly to my way of existing than have you sully it any further. And so she just is a creepy lady in a burning building. It burns down the whole mansion with herself inside.
03:08:06
Speaker
Um,
'Rebecca's' Gothic Legacy
03:08:07
Speaker
she can join Rebecca in the afterlife. Indeed. Yeah. I do. I really like how gothic this movie is. Not a not a hot take that this movie is very gothic. Not a hot topic. No. I don't know. Yeah, I'm into it. I feel like it makes me want to kind of dig more into the kind of like gothic literature genre. Hmm. And and that sort of like
03:08:36
Speaker
I like big spooky houses and like, you know, people who like appear mysteriously. And we're sort of like, yeah, come, come live with me in my mansion.
03:08:48
Speaker
Right. I was reminded by most of my exposure to like the Gothic romance kind of sub genre is like Crimson Peak. Right. Which is kind of a similar set up. Right. Where like Tom Filston like comes out of nowhere and is like, hey, you want to come live at my creepy, very haunted mansion or movie we already mentioned once this episode, Phantom Thread, which I think might be the world's only Gothic rom com.
03:09:15
Speaker
That movie rules. One quick behind the scenes thing that feels worth mentioning is that Joan Fontaine, the lead of this movie, is Olivia de Havilland's younger sister.
03:09:27
Speaker
Hmm. I forget which like one of them is like one family name, one is the other. And like, I think Olivia to Havilland took the to Havilland name first. And so then like Joan Fattane was like, well, now I can't now I can't use that. There was like a whole sibling rivalry thing between those two. Wow. We're like they had careers in Hollywood at the same time, but we're like not happy about it. I think a lot of it was like it seems to me like the very cursory amount of reading I did that like
03:09:55
Speaker
their their mother was like very much favoring Olivia of the two was like oh she's the older one she's in Robin Hood like that's you know I'm like putting all my effort as like a stage mom behind her and then Joan was sort of like I'm also in movies you know
03:10:12
Speaker
But so they were always billed under different last names and I think had this sort of long standing rivalry that I think got kind of cleaned up later on in life. But I didn't know that while watching the movie, but I did thinking like watching it. I was sort of like John Fontana is kind of an Olivia de Havilland vibe. Well, yeah. And then my only other thing is
03:10:37
Speaker
Did you know that, when you went to sleep no more, did you know that Manderlay was a Rebecca reference? I did not. And then as soon as I said Manderlay, I was like, oh. I think the first line of dialogue in the whole movie is like, oh, Manderlay or something. And then I found out after this that there's also a Laura's French Air movie called Manderlay that is unrelated. But I think also it's like an estate, but it's like a plantation, I think.
03:11:02
Speaker
So unloaded. Very loaded. I'm sure he'll be very respectful with that. I'm sure he'll be very chill about it. All right. Well, yeah. That was Rebecca. Chris, do you have a favorite film of 1940?
03:11:19
Speaker
I thought that I would have a very easy favorite film because of the extremely good experience that I had watching Fantasia, but then I watched other movies from the year and it's so difficult.
03:11:38
Speaker
Um, I have three that I feel like I could, um, I could put in my top spot. So, um, please, please go first so that I can, uh, I can eliminate that one. Well, much like you, I also had a, uh, a granule time watching Fantasia and I, I think looking at everything, I feel like that kind of has to be my favorite.
03:12:04
Speaker
for this year. Like there was some really, a lot of solid choices, but I do feel like in terms of my overall, that was just such a thing where I was just like, where has this been all my life?
03:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, which I mean, it's always been there. I've always been aware of it. So I was like, oh, yeah, Fantasia, that's a movie. And I just never got around to watching it. But I was really quite impressed, quite quite taken with it. I feel like it's something that I now want to just like have on like in the background at all times.
03:12:36
Speaker
You know, I think that what you said makes sense and that I it's hard to pick anything that isn't Fantasia. The other two that are kind of in the running for me are Grapes of Wrath, which I thought was incredible, and The Great Dictator, which blew me away. You know, maybe because so we're not picking the same thing, I'll go with The Great Dictator, which
03:13:04
Speaker
is a kind of a movie that gives you everything that you could want out of a chaplain. And it's his sentimentality and emotion just cranked up all the way in a non-tasteless way, I think. Yeah, it really works in that one.
03:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, that ending speech gives me chills. It's incredible. I don't know. Maybe in some ways it actually is Fantasia, but let's say the great dictator. Yeah. I could just as easily say Grapes of Wrath was my favorite, I feel like. It didn't have quite the same impact that I think Fantasia had, like seeing that for the first time since I'd seen Grapes of Wrath before. I'm like, oh yeah, I knew this was great, but it's like a renewed sense of how great it is.
03:13:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm just kind of only talking about Fantasia, even though it's technically not my pick or whatever, maybe just should be. But like there's something special and unique about Fantasia that that I haven't seen many, if any other movies get anywhere near. That's it for this week. Let me let me pull aside so you can see the Rebecca poster in it on the YouTube. Go to our socials.
03:14:23
Speaker
Follow us on Instagram all that sure you know the deal or
1940 in Film and a Look Ahead to 1941
03:14:27
Speaker
do not I don't care
03:14:30
Speaker
Yeah. I'm pulling a Ron Swanson. Yeah, it's your own life. We don't need your validation. Whatever. We can't be riffing at the end of this four-hour long podcast. No, we can't. We need to just wrap it up. Thanks for listening, everybody. Yeah. Did you have something, Glenn? If you listen to it as a podcast, it's also on YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube, it's also a podcast. Worth saying. Next episode.
03:14:56
Speaker
Kind of a big one. 1941. Yeah, let's tease. We're not we're not talking about the Spielberg movie 1941. We're talking about the year 1941 in which in which Citizen Kane was released, which is kind of kind of a big like one of the whole reasons we started doing this to begin with was sort of yes. Watching Citizen Kane in context.
03:15:15
Speaker
change theoretically would really change how you watch it. So exciting to do that. Yes. So so tune in on your radio. Yeah, your radio or television with a dial. Don't don't turn that dial because we'll be right back with 1941. All right. See you next year. See you next year. Goodbye. Wait a minute, buddy. You just done some jackass and you can't shut up now.