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1939 - Proxy Witch Warfare (with Nats Can Fly)
27 Plays1 year ago
Finishing out the 1930s with two of the most popular movies ever made! One is a romanticized fantasy about a place that never existed, the other is The Wizard of Oz!
We're joined by video essayist/writer/former US history teacher Nats Can Fly! Be sure to check out her YouTube channel here.
Also, we talk about a quintessential John Ford western, Frank Capra's most Capra-esque film to date, and a really sad Kenji Mizuguchi Kabuki drama!
You can watch along with our video version of the episode here on Youtube!
You can check out our Instagram, Twitter, and other social media crap here: http://linktr.ee/1w1y
And you can watch and form your own opinions from our 1939 Films Discussed playlist right here!
See you next year!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello and welcome to One Week One Year, a podcast where we watch and discuss every year of film history in order, starting in 1895, the dawn of cinema. And this episode is 1939. Indeed.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm one of your hosts, Chris Elly. I'm a film projectionist. Joining me, as always, is? I'm Glenn Covell. I'm a filmmaker. Joining me, as always, in the studio. Oh, in the studio. We'll talk about that
Guest Introduction: Nat's Can Fly
00:00:36
Speaker
more later. But joining us for the first time is?
00:00:39
Speaker
Hi, I'm Nat's Can Fly. I'm a video essayist. You can find me on YouTube as at Nat's Can Fly, and I do film criticisms. And I'm also a former US history teacher, which is why I'm here today to talk about Gone with the Wind. Oh, yes. Absolutely. That's great. Awesome. I'm very excited for that. It's going to be a good app. Yeah. And I assume it's like N-A-T-S Can Fly, right? Not G-N. Yes. Yeah. Not the book. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Good.
00:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, and ATS can fly. So yeah, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Indeed, thank you.
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, I love the show. Thanks for having me on. That's that's sincere. I actually really I actually I've for those of you listening at home, I'm a I'm a big time fan of when we came one year and I've been following the only one. The 1800s. Since the 1800s, I've been watching. Oh, thank you. This is a big get for us. I feel like I think your YouTube channel has a lot more people watch than ours. So. Yeah. Yeah. This is you're boosting us right now. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's it's about the art.
Historical Impact of Gone with the Wind
00:01:48
Speaker
Well, like I said, I have a YouTube channel, it's called Nat's Can Fly, and I have a lot of historical videos on there. I've got one about Baroque vs. Rococo, I've got one I'm working on now that's Art Jocko vs. Art Nouveau, and I also love to do
00:02:03
Speaker
film criticisms, especially if the movie is bad. Like I have one up for Dawn's Plum, which is a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio that he really wanted no one to see. I've got another one for Gigli, which might be the worst film ever. But I actually, since like, you know, I'm a historian, I'm learning about history all the time, Gigli might not even be the worst movie that came out in 2003 because I just learned about the movie Tiptoes.
00:02:27
Speaker
Have you heard of this? I've never watched tip posts, but I'm familiar with it for sure.
00:02:34
Speaker
It's having a moment. I've seen it. It's kind of on par with Julie in terms of not okayness. But I'm here to talk about the not okayness and the okayness of Gone with the Wind. When I was teaching US history, my curriculum was based on a book called Stamped by Ibram X. Kendi, which is the subtitle is racism, anti-racism, and you. If you're not watching this on YouTube, I'm not black.
00:03:01
Speaker
I'm white, but it was really important to me to teach an anti-racist US history curriculum and one of my sections that I did was about Gone with the Wind and how it was like, honestly, one of the most popular movies of all time.
00:03:18
Speaker
and how that popularity shaped the public's view of the American South and how that led to a lot of problems. So that's kind of what I'm here to discuss. Also, I just finished watching it like an hour ago, so it's all like, wow, man, I'm ready to talk.
00:03:39
Speaker
That's good. You finished just in time for us to futz with the studio for an hour trying to get it to work. Exactly. Should we talk about it? This is the first episode we were recording in a studio. Yeah. Which is exciting. Almost in a way, the first proper in-person episode. Also true, because the only other time we've done it in person was in a car in Kansas. Yeah. I feel like that. And you got the shirt, too.
00:04:05
Speaker
But yeah, this is the first time it's like, oh, you're recording like a podcast the way that people normally do that. Yeah. And like, yeah, I'm staring over at you and you're looking like a podcast guy with like headphones on and like a boom, a boom holding a mic and everything in front of you. It's wild. We're like, we're like real podcast people now.
00:04:22
Speaker
It's so fancy and exciting. Well, before we get into our discussion of Gone With Wind, I think we should give people a little historical context for the year of 1939. It's not usually my cue to cue you into it. I know, but I'm trying to keep it snappy. This is my favorite part of the whole show. The news of the year, 1939.
00:04:48
Speaker
Detective Comics number 27 debuts a new character, the Batman. The Spanish Civil War ends in a fascist victory. The 1939 World's Fair is held in Queens, New York. Siam is renamed to Thailand. The last public guillotine execution in France is held. The first recorded snow falls in Auckland, New Zealand. Nazi Germany invades Poland. The world is at war once again.
Legacy and Critique of Gone with the Wind
00:05:17
Speaker
And that was the news. And that was the news. Yeah. All right. So. You cut out a lot of stuff related to Nazis, right? Like, there was a lot of Nazis. Yeah, there were a lot of, they did a lot of things that year. Yeah. I didn't feel pertinent to mention all of them because they're all terrible. And it's like, what's the important bit? War were declared, you know? They're not doing shorts, so I don't know if we need the bumper, but future presentations.
00:05:44
Speaker
And now, we're pleased to bring you our feature presentation. Gone with the wind.
00:05:52
Speaker
the biggest movie of 1939 and maybe ever I mean if we're going purely by how much money it made adjusted for inflation it is still the highest-grossing movie ever made which is crazy how are you gonna complain about the Irishman being three and a half hours if the most popular movie ever yeah is for I think that that does
00:06:15
Speaker
account for re-releases in later years. I don't think it made all of that in 1939 and 1940 because it was released late. I don't know. Where do we want to start with this big old thing? It's real long. Let's start there. It's what, three hours, 41 minutes? It's so long. My hot take is that the second half blows.
00:06:39
Speaker
I mean, I feel like the second half is in maybe the more racist half. I don't know, man. The both are pretty bad. It is basically two movies. Like I definitely feel like the intermission point is like feels like the end of a movie and you're like, oh, the movie is done. And then it's like, no, there's two hours left.
00:07:00
Speaker
I can kick off Gone with the Wind if we want. Yeah. Totally. If you have some burning hot take about Gone with the Wind. I just want to give listeners, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this have seen this movie. It's one of the most popular movies ever made of all time. It's a movie that has a fandom people used to throw. This was a popular party theme throughout the 28th century, even after it came out.
00:07:29
Speaker
And even if you look in the comments of any trailer or any video, like any YouTube video having to do with Gone with the Wind, people are still to this day just like so fond of it. There's all these, you know, people have like, oh, like I have memories of like watching this with my grandma or
00:07:45
Speaker
this reminds me of my childhood or like just it's it's like such a beloved film and technically it is pretty spectacular like every time I see the scene where she walks through Atlanta after the Battle of Atlanta and there's just like bodies in the street it's like incredibly moving like as a as a piece of like as a technical movie it is undoubtedly a feat
00:08:09
Speaker
That shot just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah, that shot is amazing. Purely, I am amazed looking at it. I'm amazed that they did this. Right. Yeah, it's a staggering... When you think about the types of technology they had in 1939 versus now, I don't think they could make a better movie now. They really pulled out all the stops. It's sound stages, but everything is practical. Everything is crafted. Everything is just beautiful.
00:08:39
Speaker
I get why people like this movie. It's a sweeping epic. The acting is amazing. It's got this love story that I feel pretty good. I don't like it, but just if you're listening at home and you love this movie, I get it. There are many things about it that are beautiful and impressive and give it the reputation that it has.
00:09:06
Speaker
But but yeah, but however, big old but watching it, I did a faux pas and I watched it into sittings. I watched the first half last night and I watched the second half this morning because it was getting very late. Like while I was watching and I had the thought this might be one of if not the best looking movies that we've covered on the show. Yeah, like it looks incredible.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, not just the scope of it, but like the aesthetic of it is is really something to behold. Yeah, at first, like when I was taking notes at first, I wrote much more naturalistic technicolor that compared to Wizard of Oz and Robin Hood.
00:09:47
Speaker
But when I started watching it, I was like, this is actually quite stylized color. Yeah, it's like it's not it doesn't have this kind of like smack of red, green and blue that that the other ones did. Right. But like they are.
00:10:02
Speaker
They're going hard on the orange in this movie. Yeah, they're creating these beautiful sunset tones through the whole movie. Any time the movie is doing the sunset thing, which it does fairly frequently, it just gets me. It's like, this looks amazing. There's a lot of silhouettes and sunset colors. And sweeping scores while you look at that. And then, yeah, the Max Steiner score for this movie absolutely rips so good.
00:10:32
Speaker
It does not let up. There is music throughout the entire like four, five, six, seven hours. But I'm actually glad that you brought up The Wizard of Oz and the use of color, because I think that like the main thing that is important, I know these weren't the first two color movies, but these are kind of the movies people think of as being like, you know, the first color movies that most people saw.
00:10:55
Speaker
They are both fantasies, like the Wizard of Oz is a fantasy, it's set in a fantasy world. Gone with the Wind is also a fantasy, set in a very romanticized version of the American South. And it is also like, I don't think this is lost on people, but it's about the Civil War from the
00:11:15
Speaker
perspective of the Confederates. There's really only one shot where that's like where the Confederate flag is pretty clear. That's the one we're starting about, right? The big crane shot. And it's, yeah, and it's the Battle of Atlantis scene. But I was researching a little bit about this movie and I was because you're probably wondering, like, OK, how did this get made? Obviously, people were a lot more racist in 1939.
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's a different podcast. But I did think it was interesting that David Oll Selznick was like, he said, we are sensitive to the feelings of minority peoples when the NAACP was like, hey, we're not so keen on you making this. He was like, well, don't worry. We're sensitive to the feelings of minority peoples, which I just think is so backhanded. I mean, I got the sense that David Oll Selznick
00:12:10
Speaker
at least wanted the movie to be a bit more even handed at least than the book it's based on which from having not read it my impression is that the book is like goes way harder on the like
00:12:22
Speaker
The South was right. And like that kind of like the book is way more racist than the movie. But yeah, I think he did. He didn't do a great job at that. Like I think the movie is still does not really do right by its minority people's characters. You make a good you make a good point, though. I haven't read the book either, but I did do like I when I was teaching the class, I kind of talked a little bit about Margaret. Her name is Margaret Mitchell, right? I don't have it in front of me, but that sounds right to me as Margaret Mitchell.
00:12:52
Speaker
Margaret Mitchell, so she was a member of a wealthy Southern family and she had many relatives who were Civil War veterans. So she grew up hearing these stories of war. And when she was a little girl, her dad took her to see the aftermath of Sherman's march.
00:13:13
Speaker
The Sherman's March to the Sea is when they go from, I think, Atlanta to Savannah and they just burned everything. It was basically like the atomic bomb of the Civil War. People think that the South probably wouldn't have surrendered if they hadn't used this scorched earth tactic.
00:13:33
Speaker
So she was really affected by that. She didn't live through the Civil War, but she grew up around a lot of, I think, the bitterness. One thing I think that the film could have gone in a little harder, and sometimes it's not easy to see these things when you're so close, because if you think about it, it was made about 80 years after the end of the Civil War. But there would have still been people who knew people who were in the Civil War when this movie came out. What was I going to say?
00:14:00
Speaker
Oh, the carpet bagging. So the first half of the movie is kind of like the antebellum and the Civil War. And then honestly, the aftermath of the Civil War was really terrible for the South. It was like very, I know y'all talked about this, but like what they did to Germany after World War I, it was like extremely unfair financial demands. They really wanted to punish the losers. A lot of people who came in from the North to take advantage of the
00:14:25
Speaker
of the destroyed infrastructure, but I feel like in the first half of the movie it's really, um, I mean it is, and then I also kind of want to talk like how do you all feel about that? It's kind of all cased in this like sort of fluffy love story. Like in light of everything else going on in the movie?
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's like the American history is like the backdrop for Scarlett O'Hara. Basically, the movie is about Scarlett O'Hara getting over Ashley Wilkes. Pretty much. Yeah. That's like the final beat, basically. I mean, watching the first half, the first half is a lot of like, we're going to the ball and like, oh, who's marrying who? And there's a lot of that. There's like a Jane Austen-y kind of situation. Very Jane Austen-y. And it's a lot of like pastoral,
00:15:11
Speaker
garden parties and like, we're going to the barbecue. And it's like to me, I have this sort of thing where it's like you're seeing all this opulence and all this wealth and all of this, you know, sort of like frivolity happening. Right. And the movie is does never once acknowledge that this is all all of this is because these people are slave owners.
00:15:34
Speaker
like all of their wealth comes from this suffering and oppression of other people and the movie never really brings that up it like kind of it almost does a couple times but feels like it's so like tiptoeing around it there's one part where the girl the white girls have to pick the cotton
00:15:51
Speaker
And they're like, oh, this is hard. I don't like it. No one's going to love me with these harsh hands. And it's very like, OK, well, you're right. You're totally right. How they got there is not acknowledged. And the fact why they're going to war is also not ever really acknowledged. They're like, oh, there's going to be a war. Why? We really like war.
Cultural and Ethical Implications
00:16:15
Speaker
We want to have a war. And then they announce the war at the barbecue, and all of the guys are like, yay. They're all hooting and hollering.
00:16:22
Speaker
I mean it's portrayed in a similar way to the general or birth of a nation where like just this kind of excitement on the Confederate side. Another thing it reminded me of is All Quiet on the Western Front. That sort of like all the boys going off to war and being like this is gonna be great. This is gonna be like two weeks of us like going camping.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, I was watching a video essay that was kind of trying to position this movie as if it was playing 5D chess in the way that Starship Troopers is. No, giving it way too much credit. I think so, yeah.
00:16:57
Speaker
You know, it was saying, like, you know, maybe you're supposed to kind of look down on these hawkish yahoos who want to start the war. And I think, like, in some ways, there is ambivalence because, like, Rhett is basically there saying, this doesn't make any sense. I think war is a bad idea. Yeah. Big hero saying war is a bad idea. Ashley also is sort of like, I don't think war is a good idea. War is terrible. Very southern sounding man played by a British actor.
00:17:27
Speaker
Something I noticed in this rewatch. Yeah, there's a lot of subjects here. That's a really interesting video. I'd love to to give that a look. I think I think I want to point out that they say dirty Yankee in this movie a lot every time. Every time. And they say it a lot, but every single time they're like, oh, those lousy Yankees. I'm like, man, they must be Mets fans. What's going on over here?
00:17:52
Speaker
There was almost a point where I thought that they had said damn Yankees, and I was like, no, they're saving the damn for the end. No, they do. They say it twice. They do. Oh, OK. I guess I did remember that right. OK. That's why the sort of the damn at the end is sort of it's like it wasn't that big a deal because they said it earlier in the movie. Right.
00:18:10
Speaker
But Chris, I want to go back to what you said about the Rhett versus Ashley, because on second watch, okay guys, this is the only second time I'd watch this movie, it was like 20 minutes ago, but I think that the subtext that is a little bit lost is that Ashley represents the Old South
00:18:28
Speaker
And Rhett represents the future because he's very business. He's very, you know, individualistic. Honestly, all the characters in this movie, except for Melly, except for the supporting, like Scarlett is awful. Rhett is awful. Actually, Scarlett is a straight up narcissist. But at one point in the movie, she says, I was in love with something that never really existed.
00:18:50
Speaker
And she's referring to Ashley, but I, in a way, think that that's the movie's way of acknowledging that this version of the South never really existed because it was built on the back of chattel slave, like enslaved African-Americans and chattel slavery and exploitation. So I think that's kind of like, that kind of hit me this time watching. It was like, oh, maybe it is like a little more self-aware than I gave it credit for at first.
00:19:16
Speaker
It's like maybe it's trying to be a little bit even handed, but it's definitely more concerned with the the romance of not like the kind of literal romance, but the romance of the era rather than these kind of like very light kind of I'll throw you a bone of saying that there was slavery. You know, there's one scene, basically the one scene where they acknowledge the wrongness of slavery is when so she
00:19:46
Speaker
starts she's so used to having free labor that she starts doing what the movie considers to be obviously ethically questionable usage of prisoners for free labor or cheap labor and then Ashley comes up to her and says you can't you can't do this like this is uh you can't
00:20:07
Speaker
get free free labor from people that feels wrong. These people are basically enslaved. You know, he says a thing where he's like, I never want to profit off of the like oppression of others or something like that. Yeah, that's right. And then her response, if I remember the line correctly, is
00:20:26
Speaker
you never used to be so particular or something like that. When you had slaves. Right, she kind of throws it back in his face a little bit. But then in that one scene where it's acknowledging the wrongness of slavery, at the same time builds on this Confederate lost cause idea of, well, he says that he treated his slaves, quote, unquote, well, and that he intended on freeing them when they were passed down to him.
00:20:55
Speaker
when his dad died or if the war didn't do it first, which is just like, you know, portraying this idea of these, you know, plantation owners being these benevolent people who actually had good relationships with the people that they tried to own, you know? Yeah.
00:21:13
Speaker
And that's why this movie to me is so secretly toxic and problematic because that is the real, you know, the myth of the antebellum soft that's full of balls and barbecues, whatever. I'm glad you brought that up because that get out of jail free card of like, I was a good slave owner or I would have freed them anyway.
00:21:32
Speaker
It doesn't matter. It's still like belies a fundamental belief that you didn't see these individuals as people that deserve the same rights that you did. And also the way that it depicts the people of color in the movie is really offensive. Like it depicts them as like, oh, what's her name? Butterfly McQueen plays her character, Prissy. It portrays her character names are like pretty rough.
00:21:58
Speaker
Prissy, well, Mammy is not a name. I mean, maybe she was named Mammy, but she's basically named what her job is. And yeah, it plays into a lot of those stereotypes that people were already really willing to believe. Like, chattel slavery wasn't that bad. All these white people were just trying to preserve their way of life and giving really no credit at all to the role that slavery played in the Civil War.
00:22:27
Speaker
Even in the opening credits, like, Adam McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen are listed as, like, there's, like, sections for all the credits of, like, this family, this group, and then their thing is the servants. It's like, they weren't servants. I mean, I guess technically by the end they were. I would assume they're getting paid then. Yeah. Like, you know, it still kind of speaks to, you know, if this were a real thing, right, if this were a real story, the people who stuck with that family and continued to work for them
00:22:57
Speaker
they probably had some kind of like Stockholm kind of situation going on, you know? Like, I would assume, I mean, I don't know like what the, all the history is regarding what people did once they were freed from slavery, but this idea that they would just like continue happily working there, like you got like a bad relationship and you don't even realize it if, you know, in this case.
00:23:25
Speaker
I think a movie that handles this, this is another movie that I showed the kids, is the movie Harriet, which is about Harriet Tubman, because there's really no short answer. I think different people react in different ways to different situations and enslaved people of color were no different. A lot of them had various relationships with the people who
00:23:46
Speaker
owned them, some did run away, some did stay, some did see. I think it was very nuanced and it's not fair to say that they all felt a certain way. But as far as them choosing to stay with the family, that was also really interesting to me. At one point, they're like, we're house servants. We don't know how to
00:24:10
Speaker
work in the field, which I think was another, yeah, it was interesting, it was also interesting that none of them, you know, so much of the movie is like melodramatic in that it's all about marriages and pregnancies and babies. And the, you know, the people of color have no auxiliary relationships, no opportunities to have children. None of the things that are afforded to these white people that we're supposed to care so much about. Meanwhile, Scarlett is just running around like saying that she's gonna beat everybody.
00:24:39
Speaker
And she's supposed to be the heroine. Yeah, it's crazy. She is so cruel you know Scarlett is incredibly cruel to these people like like she To the point that in that scene Ashley is calling her out about it like like her kind of unnecessary cruelty actually No, it's not that scene. It's her dad her dad is telling her like
00:25:02
Speaker
you know, I don't approve of how mean you're being to them. Well, it's just a very selfish, cruel person in every scene, really. That was something that really kind of struck me watching. I'd seen this movie before when I was like, I don't know, 11 after the old movie. Go watch it. Yeah. Like I definitely got some of the kind of like historical revisionism happening in it.
00:25:25
Speaker
back then, but like the thing that really struck me I think on this watch is like how terrible of a person Scarlett O'Hara is throughout the whole movie. She like never gets better. She doesn't have... She does that. She starts as like messy and then she graduates from messy to evil. Like villainous, yeah. Like she does things in this movie that I was like kind of shocked by just in terms of how how incredibly selfish and or cruel she was. Yeah.
Production and Influence of Gone with the Wind
00:25:53
Speaker
I want to throw a scarlet of bone. I agree and I feel bad saying this now because it was so, like, things were, can I, is there swearing allowed on this podcast? Oh, fuck yeah, there's swearing. Things were so shit for women for so long. Like, they were shit
00:26:10
Speaker
in the 1800s. They were shit in 1939 when this movie came out. It was probably very empowering to see a character like Scarlett, like going after what she wanted and, you know, telling men that she didn't need them. Like, I want to, like, acknowledge that this, like, in a certain time would have been an empowering female character, perhaps, but you just can't excuse, like, yeah, she's so soft and she really doesn't change. Like I said, this isn't a story that's about, like,
00:26:40
Speaker
a girl learning to let go of the past and to evolve and change and like go with the times. It's about a girl who is like desperately clinging to something. She's clinging it to it no matter what. Like even at the end of the movie, she loses Rhett who, you know, was kind of trying to get her to like wake up and join the future.
00:27:01
Speaker
And only at that point is she like, well, I guess I'll go back to my plantation. That's the place where I've always felt the most alive. But yeah, she doesn't she doesn't change in a satisfying way. She does kind of like her traits just kind of get more hardened and she just she does become more selfish. I think the scene where she's like running the mill with the prisoners is like a great example. And yeah, that's another thing. But Vivian Lee is so beautiful. I feel like people were like,
00:27:29
Speaker
Oh my God, her tiny waist. I remember growing up, my mom would always be like, it was like Vivian Lee had like a whatever, however many inch waist. But I also want to talk about the character. They say in the movie at one point, right? It's 20 inches in the movie. But even that is so, it's so fucked up. And there's one part where Rhett is like, if you were fat, if you get fat,
00:27:49
Speaker
like, Mammy, I'm gonna divorce you. So it was hard for women, for sure, but there are other women in the movie like Mellie and who are, I think, it's interesting. It's interesting. There's definitely a lot there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you make a good point there about like the, I don't know, like empowering nature going on. I think like it's tricky because I mean, we all are acknowledging that this movie is
00:28:18
Speaker
racist and was racist for its time. The 30s is almost like the time of the like master puppeteer woman, at least in these like screwball comedies and stuff. You know, there is a lot of like women masterminds who are like manipulating people or like or like knowing, you know, choosing choosing a way to move through the world and the movie kind of supporting that, you know,
00:28:43
Speaker
And then there's this movie, which like does a version of that, but then there's also like the slavery aspect too.
00:28:50
Speaker
I was going to say that there is an interesting element of like that her dad is Irish, which because like, you know, in the North, Irish immigrants were being drafted into the war and like forced to fight against their will and stuff. And I don't like I'm kind of have questions about like the historical accuracy of like, did her dad marry the mom that had the plantation? If he was an Irish immigrant, things were so hard for them. How did he get so wealthy? I had questions about that.
00:29:15
Speaker
If you know, I always love to call on the audience. If you know why he's Irish, leave it in the comments. Yeah, there you go. So he was played, I'm trying to remember his name. Thomas Mitchell is the actor. He was played by Thomas Mitchell who is in three movies that were covering this episode and he does a different accent in each one. It's true. I think Thomas Mitchell was legally required to be in every Hollywood movie in the 1930s because he shows up so much. And he's very good, so I'm not complaining. I'm always happy to see that guy.
00:29:44
Speaker
But yeah, it's interesting in Stagecoach, which we'll be talking about later, he plays a character who is kind of not too pleased with this ex-Confederate guy. And then in this movie, he's playing a very pleased with Confederacy guy, which I think kind of speaks to just the ways that
00:30:07
Speaker
the Civil War had been almost like depoliticized by this point already, right? That's such, I'm so glad you said that. Because I think that's another thing that this movie did too, by ignoring the root causes of the war and by painting the South as a victim. There was one part where they're talking about Gettysburg
00:30:26
Speaker
They say the two nations came to death grips and I think the choice of the word nation is really interesting and kind of like is where the movie tells on itself a little bit because I feel like all of those titles like tell on themselves Yeah, all of them are like so much more vicious than even what's in the movie. I know I
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah, but I think something that if you're watching this movie now, when we have a polarized-ish nation, I don't want to talk too much about modern politics. But one of the things I do like to tell people when they're like, here, I'm a US history teacher. Just yesterday, someone was like, oh, they were not from the US. I'm like, well, what do you think people should know about US history?
00:31:10
Speaker
kind of gave them like my thing in a nutshell which is like white people showed up and stole all the land and then they tried to keep other people from getting power for as long as possible and that's kind of where we are now but something that I do think is important to look at critically with the aftermath of the civil war which most of this movie is is takes place during the aftermath even though it's not explicitly about the aftermath
00:31:34
Speaker
is that after the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, basically gangsters ran this country for like 40 years. So even though it seems bad now, and it is pretty bad, it has been much worse. And I personally would like to see us do whatever it takes to like not get to that point again.
00:31:56
Speaker
because the Gilded Age was really really awful and like the way that the the defeat of the South was handled was really bad and I do think it led to a lot of the issues we're still dealing with like and I've been to Atlanta if you're from Atlanta like go you um they were I was with like a mixed a group of people from a lot of different races and
00:32:16
Speaker
my experience there was extremely violent. Like, I'd never actually been, like, shoved before. Damn. And while I was there, there was, like, a lot of very small acts of violence that, like, were happening to me and the people that I was with. And I feel like part of the... Like, the South still... You know, I've spent a lot of time in the South. I've lived in Oklahoma. There's definitely still a lot of nationalism there and a lot of bitterness for how the Civil War ended.
00:32:45
Speaker
I wonder what we could have done to ameliorate that, and I hope that there can be an opportunity for healing so there's not another civil war. Yeah. Especially when we're recording this. I'm getting a little worried about the future right now.
00:33:03
Speaker
And I also want to be the voice of activism. I don't think it's going to quite get that bad, but I do think you need to be aware of restorative justice versus punitive justice. Because a lot of what happened to the South was punitive justice. And I know you all are about to talk about World War II. World War I was... And that's one of the things I love about this podcast is that you keep the historical context in mind when you're discussing these films.
00:33:31
Speaker
And just this idea of punishing the loser. That's one of the things this movie does show. That I am sort of like, maybe that's not the best way to come out of a war. I don't know. Maybe there's a better way. Anyway. Another thing that kind of struck me watching this is the impact this movie had. It was so popular. It made so much money. Everyone saw it. It was this huge deal.
00:34:01
Speaker
And I couldn't help but be reminded of another movie that we watched for the show that was is shockingly similar to this one in many in like its plot structure and the birth of a nation is what I'm getting at. It's like these two movies that were like.
00:34:17
Speaker
sort of incredibly popular, like, I mean, like the nation is like pre Hollywood, but yeah, like, like decade defining blockbusters, right? Like made so much money and we're so popular and people just like went to over and over and over and over again. And they're both these like very sort of like romanticized revisionist history depictions of like the the Civil War and Reconstruction.
00:34:44
Speaker
and they're both very sympathetic towards the Confederacy.
00:34:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Nat, you brought up that the author of the book was related to Confederate soldiers. And that was sort of D.W. Griffith's motivation in making Birth of a Nation and the other Civil War stuff that he did was because his dad, I think, was a colonel in the Confederate army. And so he grew up with all these stories about his dad. And I think he was born shortly after the war.
00:35:18
Speaker
And so he was trying to kind of make this thing that was like valorizing like the generation right before him. But it makes me wonder just like how much how much of the like still current because we talked a lot on our 1950 15 episode about like the cultural impact of the birth of a nation and how it was almost entirely it was like all negative. It was like this. This made the country worse. This movie existing.
00:35:45
Speaker
And while I don't want to be so harsh as to say that like going with the wind made the country worse, I wonder how much its popularity and its influence on films and American culture has sort of at least fed into that idea you're talking of like the bitterness and the like the feeling of kind of
00:36:09
Speaker
I don't know that that sort of like myth of like the old south and that kind of thing. Like it seems to me like it kind of contributed to something that was already there. Yeah.
00:36:20
Speaker
Ignorance, it made the country more ignorant. Because like I said, it's a fantasy. It's a romanticized, idealized version of the South. And I love that you brought up Earth of a Nation because even though these are films that are being made by corporations and Hollywood studios, to some extent, every movie is sort of like propaganda.
00:36:40
Speaker
And that's why I care so much about movies because the people who see them get ideas. And you know, every movie you see, even if you hate it, becomes a part of you. And this movie became a part of so many people for so many years. And people made the comparison when Gone with the Wind came out.
00:36:58
Speaker
like there were like historians and like artists and people that were like sort of oh it birth of a nation is like directly about racism or about you know like the clan right at least birth of a nation is a lot more like didactically just like the Ku Klux Klan is good yeah you should support it but it's like there was one quote I forgot who was from but it was like that movie is a frontal attack and then
00:37:22
Speaker
Gone With Wind is a sort of like subtler. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's much subtler. It holds some weight. Also, I think I found out. So there's a scene in this movie where Scarlett is attacked while she's riding through the woods. And then her current husband. Which one was it? Was it Frank? Her second husband, Frank, the guy with the mutton chops,
00:37:48
Speaker
and Ashley, and presumably some other people, like, ride out to, like, go get them. And I was like, oh, so they're the clan. They're the clans. They were a lynch mob. That was a lynch mob. Yeah. And it's like, I was able to kind of, like, read between the lines a little bit. Apparently, in the book, that is, like, very explicit. Like, no, no, no, they are in the clan. Like, that's what happened there. Oh, wow. And the movie is, like, very, like,
00:38:16
Speaker
does is sort of like, no, no, no, no, no, don't look over here. And I think even that is like, I think that was sort of David O'Sell's next whole approach was sort of like, no, we're going to kind of sanitize it. It's going to kind of sand the edges off. And I think that's still pretty insidious because it like, in a different way, it creates this like romantic fantasy, which is like not remotely accurate.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yeah, I was just hanging out with previous guest of the show, Marco, earlier today. And he was just PA on a Catherine Bigelow movie that's coming up. And I was just like, you think Catherine Bigelow, like her movie's
00:38:58
Speaker
make the world a worse place just with like the kind of like valorizing of like US imperialism and all this like kind of uncritical stuff. I think New York's pretty fun. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, but it's like I think that was a joke. That was me completely dodging the question. Okay.
00:39:16
Speaker
I mean, it's the kind of thing that we do now, right? With the US government, with these kind of uncritical... That's because the DOD's paying half the budget. That's certainly a part of it, yeah. But yeah, these uncritical newer movies that treat US imperialism with the same kind of like, let's just not pay attention to it in the same way that Gone with the Wind does.
00:39:40
Speaker
But yeah, there is, I mean, because the past is safe, right? Everyone feels secure thinking and remembering something that they think they already know. It's scary to move into a future where things could be different and better, but since you haven't seen it, you don't know how much better it can be. Yeah, that's an interesting point about Catherine Bigelow. And definitely, I think people do need to know the Department of Defense does fund a lot of movies.
00:40:06
Speaker
It's like every Marvel movie, not every Marvel movie, any Marvel movie that has like military vehicles or like gear in it. You can't get a military vehicle in a movie without having to sign off of the U.S. government. Yeah, like almost any Michael Bay movie. Right. Anything with like jets and tanks and shit. It's like you're getting that from the Department of Defense. And then they're like, we don't like this part where you say that we're we're criminals.
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like I said, movies are, I don't know, like how people define the word propaganda, but like many, many movies are made with an agenda. Yeah. And this movie is interesting because it is coming, as you mentioned in News of the Year, it's coming out the same year that World War II sort of.
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking about the Nazis a lot during this movie You know like it like trying to make some kind of comparison of like what are the like? How okay is it to make a movie about?
00:41:04
Speaker
run-of-the-mill Confederates, right? Or at least plantation owners, and then ignore that fact and just talk about something unrelated to the horrificness of their main activities, right? Have it be about garden parties and that kind of thing. If it were a movie about Nazis, right? If it were a movie about a regular Nazi, and it wasn't trying to grapple with what the Nazis did,
00:41:30
Speaker
and instead was just there in the background, like it is in Gone with the Wind. Would we call that acceptable? It was made in Germany, you'd get arrested. They'd be so pissed.
00:41:42
Speaker
Like Germany has such a sort of like I mean, I don't know if it's still true But like swastikas are like banned in any like movie not any movie I think but definitely any video game like you can't you can't like I think like Wolfenstein games weren't released there For years and years because because of that not even done that bring that up but they're like anything that could be even remotely construed as like
00:42:05
Speaker
pro-nazi they're like cut that shit out yeah and that's it's kind of weird sometimes when it's you see people walking around in like Confederate flag t-shirts here and you're like is that okay I don't know I don't I don't feel good about this
00:42:20
Speaker
It is pretty wild that this movie, which is about the Confederacy, is more careful about showing the Confederate flag than many videos you'll see today. The Dukes of Hazzard, right? Right, yeah.
00:42:36
Speaker
Yeah, just like the the poor handling of that nationalism just kind of festered into this like this bitterness. The other thing that I was going to say was I think it when you were talking about like this movie coming out before, you know, at a time when America is supposed to be sort of unifying, I was really shocked by how much they vilified the union
00:42:59
Speaker
Like by saying like the damn Yankees and all of these shots of the Union, the carpetbaggers, the Union soldiers, they're like these drooling, festering, horrible, disgusting, short. Which is in so many movies. Like it's in the general, a comedy. Well, the general is more like an action movie than a comedy. But like the general is about is like from the Confederate perspective. Yeah.
00:43:24
Speaker
And it's like the same thing where they're like, ooh, those nasty old Yankees, they're all bad. And it's like that movie, the general isn't that bad. Most of the D.W. Griffith stuff is a lot worse.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's another thing I just noticed in early film that pops up a lot. I mean, it surprises me. It speaks to the mindset, you know, the kind of subtle mindset of the people making the movie. Right. Like if you were if you were trying to have any kind of even handedness, you wouldn't make the Union soldiers into cartoon like beasts, you know.
00:43:56
Speaker
This is just strictly from a Confederate perspective, and it's from not just a Confederate perspective, but a Confederate perspective of someone who is experiencing great personal loss and at the result, as a result of the Union actions, right? She hates that the Civil War happened and that the Union won because it caused her
00:44:23
Speaker
to lose her, quote unquote, property and her livelihood. And like the big crescendo is almost like I'm going to get my revenge in the before the intermission. I don't know if that's necessarily the I don't know if she's like I'm going to get revenge, but yeah.
00:44:41
Speaker
One of the reasons I think this movie maybe should have ended there is because the first half does a really good job at showing how horrible war is. And one of the things I did when I was in schools, like I actually taught under another teacher who was really good at this and taught like eighth grade social studies, which is also US history.
00:45:05
Speaker
Is that they really, you really want to try everything before you have a war. Like a lot of politics is just how not to have a war. Because war sucks. And I think this movie does do a really good job at showing how much war sucks.
00:45:21
Speaker
and, like, how foolish these boys were for wanting a war. War is bad. But then when you see her coming out of it with, like, Rhett is just, like, comically wealthy. He has money from, like, he has magic money. She's living in this mansion. She has twice as much as she did before the war. I feel like, I don't know. Like, the second half of the movie lost me a little bit. I was like, ah, now it's just a soap opera, you know? Yeah. And also, I think a lot of the kind of, like, sweeping
00:45:52
Speaker
I don't want to say adventure stuff, but the first half has chases and stuff in it, and it's more explosions. Right, it's got the whole Atlanta burns down, and it's got all the burning buildings and stuff, and it's got a real sense of spectacle to it that I think the second half is mostly just a downer, and it's like, hey, they had a dog. They ran out of money. Oh, my God.
00:46:14
Speaker
I'm not gonna lie, I laughed because it's so over the top. It's so just like, oh my God, movie. It's so corny. And then when she's pregnant and he's like, well, God forbid you have an accident. And then the next moment she falls down immediately. That was pretty funny. Yeah.
00:46:30
Speaker
I'm like, okay. It's like comically awful. It's just like, whoa, whoa, movie, like pump the brakes. You know, when I was watching Last Chrysanthemum, I was just having this moment of like, man, 30 years of movies really love to like lay on the misery. Oh, yeah. It's just like, like, just let's be as dark as possible. Everything that's horrible is gonna happen. People were miserable. It was the Great Depression. True. Yeah, fair. Didn't call that for nothing.
00:46:59
Speaker
To be positive, I feel like we're doing- Yeah, let's say some positive stuff about the movie. We want to say some positive stuff, but I mean, two things about this movie that I think are just like on a beach board, the score and the visuals, I think are like truly jaw-dropping. Great. Both. No notes. And the costumes.
00:47:15
Speaker
costumes, production design, yes. It's stunning, visually sumptuous film. Which is also in cities. Another big historical pin in this movie's cap, is that a thing people say? I don't know. Is that Adam McDaniel became the first African-American person to win an Oscar in any category.
00:47:41
Speaker
for this movie it does feel like we should bring that up and then by the way another another african-american woman wouldn't win an oscar until 2016 crazy i think sorry 2000 it was halle berry that was for acting right for act for acting and that's also uh or just or just overall i don't know
00:48:03
Speaker
Well, I think, okay, now people are going to, they're going to jump on their, on their Googles and be like, ah, this podcast is funny. They don't tell people. I don't want to get this wrong. It's okay. 2001. It's okay. Nobody. Monsters Ball was 2001. Nobody's jumping on Google. I think, I think training day, I think training day was earlier. I think Sidney Poinier won. Yeah. Did he ever win an Oscar?
00:48:24
Speaker
But yeah, but yeah, we shouldn't we shouldn't gloss over Hattie McDaniel who plays Mammy in the film. Who's the author? It's the thing, right? We're like, I think her character isn't well written. Like I don't like that character has a lot of like, really kind of like stereotypical
00:48:43
Speaker
kind of racist tropes built into it. Yeah. Her name is a racist trope. Right, exactly. But I do think that, especially, there's a scene, I think right after the daughter dies, where she's talking to... She's not talking to scholars, she's talking to somebody else. Is it Mellie? She talks to Rhett and she talks to Mellie.
00:49:05
Speaker
She kind of gives, she kind of gives the monologue of like, this is what's happened in the movie so far. Right. But she's like speaking through tears. And it's like, like a lot of the performances in this movie, even if they're kind of fun, are these like really over the top, like old Hollywood kind of like exaggerated. Melodrama. Melodramatic performances. And I think especially in that scene, Hannah McDaniel is like really
00:49:28
Speaker
Just honest. And I was like, oh, yeah, this this I see why she won an Oscar for this in like just in this scene. I also got a got a shout out. This was maybe the first time people had seen other black people on film, which is huge. I mean, I in a mainstream like Hollywood movie made in color, like in color. Yeah, big stream possibly.
00:49:52
Speaker
Yeah, and color may be like yeah first ever possibly yeah, I'm not sure I haven't looked yeah Which I think is is important, and I think it is important that they used dark Black actors probably they probably they didn't think about that, but yeah representation representation matters um the The black actors were not allowed to attend the premiere and I think how do you make to know it was it was in Atlanta and the Jim Crow laws? meant that they could not Go to the premiere of their own movie
00:50:22
Speaker
And did Hallie McDaniel have to accept her award backstage? No, because there is actually footage of her acceptance speech on YouTube. So you can look up her 1939 acceptance speech, which is very good. It's very heartfelt and moving and a little weepy. But she couldn't sit with the rest of the cast at the Oscar ceremony. She had to sit at her own table, like off in the corner.
00:50:48
Speaker
Which is crazy, because that was California. That happened in California. There was no precedent for, like, Jim Crow. It's not called the Jim Crow, California.
00:51:00
Speaker
um but apparently uh clark gable was was sort of like very supportive of like he found out that there was like segregated bathrooms i think on set and he was like cut that shit out i'm i'm walking unless like we change this i don't know if that's true but it's a story how principled how principled when you're uh you're in this movie right yeah um and i think he also like almost protested the premiere or something like that but then didn't
00:51:29
Speaker
But there were at least stories that he was trying to be supportive on set. I think that shows people knew what was wrong at the time. Yeah, yeah. There was some semblance of a conscience during the making of this film. But yeah, you know, money is money.
00:51:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Two very quick observations that I had that I wanted to throw in before we wrap up. One is that this is our second Clark Gable movie. We did it happen one night. True. And and he is. He doesn't eat any carrots in this one. He's a fantastic shit eater. Oh, my God. One of the best. Yeah.
00:52:12
Speaker
He is just milking that smarmy grin through this whole movie. I think it happened one night, he is like a charming kind of rogue, which I think Rhett Butler is kind of supposed to be in this movie, but he comes across much more of a like... I don't know, he's an abusive husband, he's like a mercenary, he's...
00:52:33
Speaker
Rhett Butler is a much less likeable character, I think, than the guy from It Happened One Night. Despite Clark Gable's chiraby cheeks.
00:52:45
Speaker
Chris, I literally, I think that's so funny you brought that up because literally like something I Googled was like Clark Gable grinning like an idiot. And then I found this article. A thousand pictures? Well, no. And then I found this article that says the headline is, Clark Gable was handsome but dumb. Fellow old Hollywood star said. And then the actor was John Wayne. Apparently John Wayne thought that Clark Gable was a good looking idiot.
00:53:14
Speaker
I thought that was kind of funny. That is very funny. I'm speaking of Clark Gable. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn, right? True. We haven't even talked about that. It's like the most famous part of the whole movie. That part's fucked up.
00:53:31
Speaker
It is. Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, this is like kind of a rough scene. Like I had seen that line and like it's in, you know, every movie montage. I was like waiting for it through the whole movie and I was like, oh, man, it's like the last thing his character does. And it's like, yikes. That's the other thing that I think is like why the actors really sold this movie because, yeah, he's so handsome. He's got such a charming grin and he is like actually a rapist. Yeah.
00:53:57
Speaker
He's bad. He's a bad guy. Again, he's lost over in the movie so much. But since he's so good looking and charming and he's cast as the hero, you just totally, you're like, oh my God, what an iconic line. Female abuse. So romantic.
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah. Well, so Gone with the Wind was directed by Victor Fleming, amongst other people. Amongst. Yeah. Because it was it was originally going to be directed by George Kukor, who was fired. Inventor of the Kukor clock.
00:54:39
Speaker
I don't think we've watched any of his films yet, but we might in coming episodes, because he had a bunch of stuff in the 40s. But he was, I believe, fired by David O. Selznick. David O. Selznick seems like kind of the auteur of Gone With the Wind more than anyone else. He was really kind of running the show. A Kevin Feige kind of figure. Right, exactly. But so then George Cougar was, I think he shot for like two weeks, something like that, and then was replaced by Victor Fleming.
00:55:06
Speaker
who was already shooting another movie, Wizard of Oz. Yes.
Introduction to The Wizard of Oz
00:55:12
Speaker
Which he was also like the fourth director. Right. Which he also was replacing someone else on who had gotten fired and had like shot two weeks of. Why do you think that happened? Like, why do you think that the turnover for directors was so high on these films?
00:55:25
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think that was normal. Yeah, I think it's just a really weird confluence that these two movies, both credited to Victor Fleming because he did the majority of the work on them, just had really weird productions that were very troubled. Both of them had, yeah, very long, very annoying, especially Wizard of Oz. Some of the stories from this movie are bonkers.
00:55:47
Speaker
oh well and i mean it's not just that like like like i think both these movies kind of had a lot of bad luck in their productions for sure yeah uh them being also very normally giant expensive three strip technicolor productions were also a part of it that's another thing that links these two movies they're both very early
00:56:09
Speaker
big three strip Technicolor movies. And both of them had Technicolor consultants on backseat directing all of the color stuff in the movies. These movies are kind of inextricably linked just through their productions. Same director but also just weird similarities in their production woes.
00:56:35
Speaker
And also, but also there are two enormous movies that have, you know, incredibly impacted American and like movie culture forever and are like, you know, they're just like they're in the canon of just like Hollywood film forever. They're in every montage of like movies. There's like there's going to be at least a clip from either one.
00:56:57
Speaker
Yeah. Could not maybe pick two more different movies than The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. They are so opposed in just their their like worldviews, their tone, their stories. They both involve farms. True. And also I have another I have like a weird headcanon thing. I'll bring that up now because it involves Gone with the Wind. There's a part in Gone with the Wind where everyone's staring at Scarlett O'Hara and he's like, what? My face has gone green. And I was like, like a witch.
00:57:28
Speaker
Does Scott O'Hara grow old and turn into the old mean lady in Wizard of Oz? Totally. She moves to Kansas. She gives up on her beloved Tara. Right, because it's terrible. And then she moves to Kansas and she's like a rich old lady in Kansas who hates dogs. And that's where we pick up this movie.
00:57:51
Speaker
Let's go with it. The timeline almost works out. I don't know. Like, Wizard of Oz. This is how we know you're a writer, Glenn. Yeah. Where to even start on Wizard of Oz? I think even more than go with The Wind, this is like one of the most iconic movies ever made. Just hands down. No question. Maybe the most iconic movie ever made. Yeah. Like, I can't argue with that.
00:58:13
Speaker
Well, Gone with the Wind is bad. It's not bad. Gone with the Wind is complicated. I didn't like it. And Wizard of Oz is great. Wizard of Oz is so good. I like Wizard of Oz. Oh, OK. Well, I'm going to be the Wizard of Oz fan on this episode. Please do. Because I almost feel like I retroactively like Wizard of Oz more after watching Gone with the Wind because I'm like, oh, yeah, like, give me something that's like just joyful.
00:58:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's so full of joy. It's so beautiful. I did not expect this, but I mean, I think that part of the premise of what we're doing here is, you know, trying to see these movies in the kind of movie going context in which they were released. And so.
00:58:59
Speaker
because it's still an early Technicolor, that transition from the sepia tone to the color in Wizard of Oz, it moved me to tears, dude. It was amazing. It didn't get me that much, but it is great. It is really great. Also, there's something really cool and ballsy about opening this movie with 20 minutes of sepia tone, black and white,
00:59:25
Speaker
and like even like opening credits like they're not even hinting at like this movie's gonna be crazy colorful it's like normal movies black and white you know i'm sure people knew what was going on um the trailer's always ruined it i know um but but yeah that transition is is so well done
00:59:45
Speaker
It's also just like really cool and interesting from a technical perspective how they they did the transition part because it's like a sepia tone painted set and like a Texas switch with two different actors wearing different colored clothing and things. Is that called the Texas switch? Texas switch is any time an actor or a stunt person leaves frame and then an actor or stunt person comes back. So it's like you see a person like do a crazy somersault, like do a backflip and then they go behind a couch and like the actor pops up. That's a Texas switch.
01:00:15
Speaker
Well, what are y'all's histories with this movie? I think I'd seen this movie once or twice, like when I was five. And that's it. I hadn't seen it since then. More or less the same for me.
01:00:28
Speaker
I had, uh, so my grandma really did not like a lot of movies. So there were only a certain amount of movies we could watch at her house. And this was one of them. So I saw this movie a lot. I've probably seen this movie like 80 times by the time I was 10. Good, good counterpoint.
01:00:50
Speaker
But even despite that, it's like every scene of this movie is iconic, and so therefore I'm like, oh yeah, this part, the scene from Wizard of Oz.
01:01:01
Speaker
Oh yeah, that line. Oh yeah, this thing. Even stuff that I didn't remember was from Wizard of Oz, where I'm like, oh yeah, I guess that is from this movie. Cool. My other thing, I've noticed that this film is referenced in film class a lot because it's another movie that just everyone has seen. It's such a cultural touchstone. You can be like, oh, the part where the house falls on the witch and the Wizard of Oz, and everyone's like, oh yes, yes, the Wizard of Oz.
01:01:30
Speaker
It's a huge, for sure. It's like way, the scope, its reach is definitely greater than Gone with the Wind. And I also think it bears mentioning that that is probably because it's a kids movie. Like, Dorothy's supposed to be a little girl. I think that's another thing this movie has in common is like Vivian Lee and Judy Garland are both, they both look a lot older than they are because they were just so...
01:01:54
Speaker
Like, they were treated so badly. I mean, especially Judy Garland on this video. By the system. They just look trauma, like Vivian Lee less so, but just Judy Garland just looks like traumatized. Because she was on like meth the whole time. It's cruel. Yeah. That part of that part of it is kind of hard to watch. But yeah, it's a kid's movie. I loved it as a kid.
01:02:17
Speaker
It is funny because I talked to my mom on the phone the other day and I was like, hey, I watched Wizard of Oz and I was like, yeah, you know, fun, you know, like kids entertainment, you know, this and she was like, no, no, no, no, this is not light children. This is a scary movie. And I was like, yes, it's all scary. I remember being scared by parts of it. And my mom was like, no, no, no, this is like.
01:02:39
Speaker
Like, kids get nightmares from this movie. This is scary. My sister definitely got scared of the flying monkeys. Right. My mom is like, because she watched it on, I think, on TV, on a black and white TV, so completely losing that whole... Oh my God. Apparently, the house down the street had a color TV, so they got to watch it on TV, like, in color. But they never invited my mom's family over.
01:03:04
Speaker
Um, that's still bitter. Watch Wizard of Oz in black and white. Right. That's right. But it's you think how many, you know, hundreds to millions of people saw it that way. Yeah. Right. On TV. I didn't ever like the 50s through the 90s horrifying. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think that's like a very common thing is people are like.
01:03:25
Speaker
remember being scared by this movie, either by the witch or the flying monkeys or something else, like the tree. I was scared by the wizard. The wizard's scary. Yeah, he's got a big green, he's like the green goblin. He's terrifying. Yeah. So even that is kind of like, it feels so aimed at kids and it's so like fairy tale like in its storytelling and it's so kind of like bright and colorful and kind of airy and all of its characters are like,
01:03:52
Speaker
Barely people they're all these like archetypal sort of like representative things. Yeah Dorothy's basically just child like the childhood, you know if childhood was a person It's based on a children's book. I guess that's why I thought it Yeah, I mean I think it's nothing intended to be a children's film I think I mean I think that
01:04:14
Speaker
It's for the young or young at heart, it says at the beginning. Right. I mean, that's the thing. I think that like there there isn't anything. I didn't feel like it was like particularly kiddie this movie, you know, like there's kind of a distinction between kids entertainment and family entertainment where kids stuff is like stuff that adults really can enjoy, you know.
Technical Aspects and Achievements
01:04:37
Speaker
And I think that this with its kind of like iconic mythic storytelling
01:04:43
Speaker
it just kind of ends up being this kid friendly but still like kid friendly version of a lot of big parables of Greek mythology like Odysseus that kind of not to aggrandize it too much but you know like it all feels
01:05:03
Speaker
Like you're saying, the characters are not characters so much as ideas, right? And so it is able to just kind of be this kind of pure exploration of ideas. Yeah. And maybe I'm talking it up. And it's.
01:05:20
Speaker
It's very dream like. It's very kind of surreal and heightened and kind of stagey, I guess like it. It's never trying to be realistic. They're trying to look real. And I love that. It's so cool. Like, you know, there are a lot of matte paintings in Gone with the Wind.
01:05:37
Speaker
But then the matte paint and they're meant to look fully realistic and often they do. They look incredible. The matte paintings in Wizard of Oz are very intentionally fake. They're like Mushroom Kingdom. Yeah, they say Mushroom Kingdom looks like this movie, not. Yeah, there are points where they're walking along the yellow brick road and they're kind of prancing over. And I can see that they're just about to run into the wall, you know, like Wiley coyote style because but like they don't.
01:06:07
Speaker
You know, it looks it's well painted, but it is so stylized that, you know, it's emphasizing the kind of aspect of it being a dream because it is very clearly illustrated. So it's like this false world in a way like like with the movie, The Doll, the Ursula Bitch movie, The Doll, where it has all of this stuff that like makes it feel like it is being produced on a stage. There was a Vasi movie kind of. It's got a robot in it. Yeah.
01:06:37
Speaker
But yeah, and then speaking of the color, too, we came away from Robin Hood kind of noting that the early version of the- What if Ernst Lubitsch had made this movie, though?
01:06:48
Speaker
We came away from Robin Hood noticing some of the flaws of early Three Strip Technicolor, right? Where it is hyper, hyper saturated and it looks real, but it looks hyper real. It looks completely fantastical and cartoony, which is part of the fun, but I think that they were harnessing that in this movie, The Wizard of Oz. They're so intentional about the color in this movie.
01:07:15
Speaker
Something else that I think we should think about is, I remember when I was a kid, home video was becoming really big. And so they were reissuing these movies for VHS tapes. And I remember seeing a lot of those frames where it's like before and after where it slides over. So I wonder what these movies looked like when they were released. Because I think the versions that we're watching now are not the original color.
01:07:44
Speaker
these movies have been like Gone with the Wind especially has been restored like like there was like a big there was like a big project to like recolor it and I think Wizard of Oz too they so like yeah but I think they were like pretty spectacular at the time but I do wonder how they've changed like they've been bumped up a little bit
01:08:05
Speaker
Because I don't know that that ever happened to Robin Hood. I don't know that that movie ever got that treatment. But I think these movies both got kind of like retroactively recolored. I will say that like streaming versions of Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz, I think look better than Robin Hood. They look like crisper and clearer and a little bit more. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think and I'm sure the prints have been restored more because they're more famous.
01:08:32
Speaker
Right. I mean, I think that it might have something to do with more loving restoration. It might have something to do with them not being the first year that there was three strip or like not not being like a very early three strip Technicolor movie. Right. I kind of considering that most of the saturation in Robin Hood was red, green and blue or like the stuff that felt like
01:08:59
Speaker
unnaturalistically oversaturated. I felt like that was kind of growing pains of the process of the color process itself, where I would, you know, it's possible, I think, that like these movies were being restored with like a kind of mindset of trying to make it look a certain way. But I would kind of hope that they're trying to be faithful over revisionist.
01:09:24
Speaker
I mean, that's that's the thing with with any restoration, any sort of like digital scan of a negative or whatever. It's like there's always going to be some editorializing happening. Like you're always going to be making decisions in that process.
01:09:37
Speaker
I mean, I think the when if you watch the version of Sleeping Beauty that's on Disney Plus, it's like they destroyed it. It's so like, yeah, that's like because I remember I had that movie on like VHS. I had it. I was actually a big like VHS from China. It wasn't a bombshell like plastic. Oh, no, no, no, no. It was it was it had Chinese subtitles. But oh, that's awesome. Sometimes they do it really well. And sometimes they do it really badly. And I think they did it really badly with.
01:10:06
Speaker
Which is also animated weirdly has like bad Blu-rays I found what does Lord of the Rings the like 4k Blu-rays are like nasty. I've heard stuff about But whatever but you know they think the important thing is that this film is you know it can stand up to even a bad
01:10:24
Speaker
The merits are strong enough that no matter what kind of it you watch, it's going to be a great experience. Maybe even if you watched it in black and white. Yeah. Maybe even if you watched it in black and white. I think it's still captured people's imaginations.
01:10:37
Speaker
even watching the whole thing in black and white. You mentioned the negatives. I just, this isn't really relevant to anything, but I do want to say that I went a few years ago, actually it was probably like six years ago at this point, I went to the Nitrate Picture Show in Rochester, New York. It's a film festival where they play all nitrate prints.
01:10:58
Speaker
And it's at the George Eastman House, like the founder of Kodak. And they have a nitrate film vault there that you can do like a little upcharge on your festival ticket and go for a tour of the nitrate vault. Get the VIP access. Yeah. Yeah. I've been a couple of times and that that year I decided to splurge on it.
01:11:20
Speaker
It was this off-site thing, so we drove over to it. I got to look at the nitrate film and smell the different smell that comes off of nitrate film as opposed to acetate film as it's dissolving.
01:11:40
Speaker
but I got to hold original camera negatives of Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz in my hands. It felt kind of wild to hold it in my hands. Camera negatives. Camera negatives, yes. I don't know if this is a good point to talk about the camera that Wizard of Oz was shot with. I saw it at the Academy Museum in LA.
01:12:01
Speaker
It was the time I went with you, Nat. You were freaking out. I think it was before you got there. That exhibit's gone now. I think they have a Godfather exhibit in the same spot, but... They had one of the original Three Ship Technicolor cameras used for... Oh, that's cool. I'm not going with the one with Wizard of Oz. Maybe both, I don't know.
01:12:20
Speaker
What did it smell like, I wonder? It was in a glass case, so I didn't get- No, no, no. No, Chris, what did the film negatives smell like? Oh, um, so- It smelled like a glass case.
01:12:36
Speaker
Acetate film has this kind of decomposition smell that's quite notable and pungent. It is called vinegar syndrome because it smells like vinegar as it ages. And so poorly aged acetate film, which is basically all film prints that came out between 1955 and
01:13:00
Speaker
I don't know, 1990 or so. And all of those, when they degrade, start smelling like vinegar, which is the smell that I'm used to from handling older film. But nitrate film doesn't decompose in the same way. And it kind of just smells like, it's kind of like a vague garbage smell.
01:13:22
Speaker
That's the best I could describe it, like kind of a musty garbage smell. It has been a couple years and I don't have the best memory for odors, but that's about how I remember it. That's fascinating. People always, you know, the movie can only show you the sights and the sounds, but people always wonder what's it smell like? No one talks about how stuff smells. Unless it's the Rugrats Go Wild movie or certain John Waters movie. Is that they gave you a scratch and sniff? Yeah. I actually think that was the Wild Thornberrys movie.
01:13:51
Speaker
Oh, okay. Wasn't that like the crossover, like Wild Thornberrys? Oh, maybe. Oh, you're right. The Rugrats go wild. It was both. Yeah, they gave you a scratch and sniff card. I really liked that. I thought that was fun.
01:14:08
Speaker
Oh, I was loving it. That was around the same time that I got my promotional ancient Mew card from Pokemon, the first movie screening. First movie? The first movie. I'm sorry that we're excluding you, Glenn, as someone who didn't grow up with Nickelodeon. I know, yeah. I feel so left out.
01:14:26
Speaker
So the camera, they shot Wizard of Oz. Yeah, let's get back to that. I think I brought it up on the show before because I was like, oh my god, look at it. But the thing that really struck me is one, it's enormous. It's like bonkers how big it is.
01:14:43
Speaker
Because it needs three rolls of film. Right. It's like three cameras. So it's yeah, I'm going to one. Right. And it's like two of them are side by side. And one is like going the other direction, like turn 90 degrees. And there's a prism to, you know, split the light to each of them because they're each collecting a different color onto their film strip.
01:15:03
Speaker
And I was just struck by like the engineering required to build this. Like who thought of this? Hmm. Like how long did it take to figure out how to make this thing work? It was just I was and it's now it's you know, it's like your phone is better than that in terms of like by any technical measure, you know. But it's like the work that was put into it. I was like, oh, man, this is and it's all like, you know, mach machined pieces. It's like heavy, chunky things.
01:15:32
Speaker
I got to lend you my Technicolor book. From when I was at the Nitrate Picture Show, they have a film history museum at the George Eastman House. I got to go. I got this book called The Dawn of Technicolor, which apparently
01:15:50
Speaker
is not sold in many places and it was sold in that gift shop and now that book that I bought is worth a lot of money and I'm just like, oh man, do I sell that to some poor college student or something like that? But anyway, it's a cool book. It's a very cool book and it goes basically up until Snow White. It's like talking about the early
01:16:12
Speaker
development of Technicolor like all the people involved how they did it and up through two strip and then leading up to three strip and it kind of ends there cool it goes dawn of Technicolor then like you know rise and war for Technicolor mm-hmm I was gonna say well I think it's gonna it does not cover kingdom of Technicolor yeah okay
01:16:34
Speaker
Yes, the color in The Wizard of Oz is a standout. It's pretty cool. Oh, yeah. You're reminding me that we are on a really long walk here. We just got really distracted. Yeah, this is like half the episode now. I think that's great. There is a dog in this movie. There's a dog in this movie. Do you have a thought on Toto? Those guys should not be singing about Africa.
01:17:06
Speaker
Zing. Toto the dog in Wirzivaz is played by Terry. What's the actual dog's name? It was a female dog. Very creative name for a terrier. True. Terry the terrier also played Rainbow the dog in the movie Fury. Yes.
01:17:26
Speaker
where Rainbow got blown up in prison in that movie. Oh, God. So I was very happy to see- Does the dog die dot com feature on Fury? On Fury. Wait, but did they do the Texas switch for the real dog and the stunt dog before- You don't see it. You don't see it in the movie, thankfully. Before they throw it up. Terry, returning dog actor.
01:17:48
Speaker
in her most well-known role as Toto, credited as Toto in the credits. And even, so I went to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where Hannah McDaniel has a, not a grave, but a memorial. And so does Terry, but it's under the name Toto. It's like the character of Toto has a memorial, which I think is, I think that's so weird of like,
01:18:13
Speaker
if like, I don't know, whatever. Tom Hanks was like, oh no, Forrest Gump. That's what he says on like, he's still alive. But I mean, it's weird that it's just like, they completely overwrote this dog's actual name. It's like, no, no, no, this dog is Toto now forever.
01:18:30
Speaker
Um, you know, it's a dog. It's not gonna complain about it. I know, but it's like, I don't know.
Cultural Significance of The Wizard of Oz
01:18:34
Speaker
That dog could be a ghost. That dog could be a ghost now prowling the Hollywood Forever Cemetery until they change the name on the tombstone. Very, very likely. If I were Toto, I'm sorry, Terry, geez. Terry's been erased from history.
01:18:48
Speaker
that's what i'm saying justice for terry but uh the character of toto i i would i would die for terry does a great job in this movie just being an adorable dog yeah although apparently they like had to do a lot of takes to get terry to follow them properly whenever they were kind of prancing down the yellow brick road yeah i think i read that like
01:19:09
Speaker
It was like one out of every seven shots that they could use because Toto slash Terry was acting correctly in the shot. But so, super famous part of Wizard of Oz is the Over the Rainbow song. Probably the song we start this episode with in the podcast format. And it's a song about going over the rainbow, and she's singing it to Rainbow the Dog. I thought that was fun.
01:19:42
Speaker
But this movie's a musical. We haven't talked about that yet. A bunch of songs. I mean, we're really not going to talk about the... You're going to go off on how great the music was in Gone with the Wind, and you're not even going to mention the lollipop guild. I mean, true. True. I mean, Over the Rainbow, I feel like it's such a classic musical type song. It's like the I Want song, right? It's the sort of like starting the thing off with like, oh, yes. If only I could live a better life over the rainbow.
01:19:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:20:10
Speaker
And you have to believe that that song really probably hits people who were coming out of the Great Depression. Putting my history hat back on, the fact that the Dust Bowl features in this movie kinda is pretty cool. I think that probably really people were like, oh yeah, like super recent. And like the way they see you tone.
01:20:36
Speaker
They were psyched. It's like this shit really happened, which is, if you think about it, the Dust Bowl is like, like such a horrible, like unimaginable thing. It's almost like more imaginable to imagine. It's like an Emerald City is almost like more believable than this like ecological disaster. People Need Hope. I think people really like that song because it's very hopeful.
01:21:00
Speaker
If we're talking about the song, we could touch on another aspect of this movie, which is the gay association with this movie. Speaking of rainbows. This may be fairly broadly known, but there's a euphemism for a gay person to be called a friend of Dorothy.
01:21:28
Speaker
So like referring to just kind of the scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion. And Judy Garland was in an early, in a very early era for this, very friendly to gay people, very supportive of gay people. And I think like it was kind of part of
01:21:48
Speaker
Or at least what I was reading about, like some kind of kind of critics and that kind of thing, talking about this phenomenon, analyzing it such that, you know, Judy Garland's kind of struggles in the industry were things that that gay people resonated with, with struggles in their own lives. You know, back in the 50s, 60s, that kind of thing. And and then it's just like there's
01:22:16
Speaker
There feels like a queer edge in this movie in certain ways. I feel like the lion, especially, is kind of gay-coded, you know? The lion, to me, seemed 1930s-coded. Like, he's the most 1930s lion who's ever been put on screen. Yeah. Because he's got like a Brooklyn accent. Yeah, yeah.
01:22:37
Speaker
But yeah, I guess just worth mentioning the whole like friend of Dorothy thing. He gets a bow in his hair, yeah. I'm super glad you brought that up, Chris. That's like, that's great. Yeah. It's another bow on top of this great movie. I don't know if I knew that this movie was like part of that as much.
01:23:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's considered. Yeah, I think I think Judy Garland in general, but Judy Garland in this movie in particular, I need you to garland a icon. There is a Wikipedia page called like it's called something like gay icon status of Judy Garland or something. And then I love those like hyper specific Wikipedia articles.
01:23:21
Speaker
Judy Garland as a gay icon. The advocate has called Garland the Elvis of homosexuals. The reason given for her standing as an icon among gay men are the admiration of her. This is from Wikipedia, by the way, audience. The way her personal struggles seem to mirror those of gay men in America during the height of her fame and her value as a camp figure. I mean, we could talk about camp in Wizard of Oz. Garland's role in Dorothy as Wizard of Oz is particularly known for contributing to the status.
01:23:48
Speaker
Oh my God, this is kind of dark. In the 1960s when a reporter asked how she felt about having a large gay following Garland replied, I couldn't care less. I sing to people. So that could be, you know, could be nice because, you know, gay people are people. That could be interpreted either way. It's like dismissive or like.
01:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, I like everybody. In that era, it's probably the best she could do. That's fair. I first heard this phrase, friend of Dorothy in Arrested Development, which heavily features Liza Minnelli, her daughter.
01:24:28
Speaker
Oh, dang. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And watching this movie, it made me realize that like she and Liza Minnelli really have like the same voice. Right. Yeah. They have very similar like vocal qualities. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I don't even it's like where's the vase? It's like such a I don't know, like this cultural thing. Yeah. That I feel like it's almost kind of hard to talk about just as a movie. And it was almost kind of hard for me to watch this as a movie, even with like. Yeah.
01:24:56
Speaker
approaching it was like, no, this is just this 939. This is one of the 1939 movies. I'm watching it the same as I would of like, hey, we're going to the theater. This is what's playing. And it's like it's just it's so ingrained into everything. It's it's such a like shorthand. Yeah. So many lines, so many moments where it's like. So I almost feel like even trying to step back and just like.
01:25:17
Speaker
judge it it's hard for me to even like form an opinion on it almost it's just like oh yeah it's it's weird of us well it's there it does feel a lot harder to be critical of it because it's just so it's like set so many not like gone with the wind and that they're
01:25:34
Speaker
Like it's like because it's a fantasy movie because so many people saw have seen it because it's so ingrained in our culture because it has so many symbols because of all of like these things about it that are beloved it does kind of seem like Untouchable as a critic. Yeah, no one's ever remade it
01:25:50
Speaker
Yeah, well they did they did make the the the whiz and return to Oz Let's not forget about return. I will never forget return talking about movies that frighten me as a child Well, I love the whiz so I guess I've never seen the whiz. Oh, it's so good. Oh
01:26:08
Speaker
That's so good. It's dark though. Like the thing the thing that's kind of crazy like that this movie and also I want to like like draw out that this this movie is huge but there since I think the Wizard of Oz was the book was in the public domain I might be wrong about that that this is one of those things like Peter Pan that's that's been adapted in different ways like across the 20th century and it's still being adapted and it's also a very popular
01:26:31
Speaker
Play when you were talking about total I was thinking about all the productions of The Wizard of Oz I've seen where it's like part of the charm of the production is that there's this like cast members dog That's just running around the stage and doesn't know what to do. That's like it's like oh someone has a cute dog Let's do The Wizard of Oz and it's just like an excuse to watch a cute dog screw up
01:26:50
Speaker
I could see the stage-iness of the production with this movie kind of paying reference to the kind of stage history of Wizard of Oz. We've watched a Wizard of Oz movie for the podcast before, and it is very much more influenced by the stage version than the book itself. As a lot of movies, even through the 1930s have been, are like, this is really more of the stage thing than the book.
01:27:17
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, it's never been it's never been remade, but it has been reimagined. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, and that's kind of what I was getting at with this sort of like iconic mythic quality. Right. Like it feels like the way that people are like, yes, I'm making this movie. It's a riff on Romeo and Juliet. I'm making this movie and it's a riff on, you know, the
01:27:39
Speaker
Norse gods or something like that. And like it feels like this is the kind of same thing that's like just baked into our cultural fabric. It's like American mythology. Yeah, that you kind of riff off of it in that way. You're you're referencing it as you would reference a classic, the classical literary work. Yeah. But yeah, I, you know, I try and approach things to in as much of a way as possible as
01:28:06
Speaker
to look at it maybe outside of that, like when I'm watching it. I think you were saying you were trying to do that. Yeah. And so and because it had been so long since I'd seen it, I just kind of had vague memories from when I was a kid. I was just so on board with this and like the the the moments that were kind of just cultural, you know, it's like here's the part where they say the line, you know. Yeah. Usually that kind of thing is distracting and it was a little bit, but like I was so into it.
01:28:36
Speaker
uh well in the line like you know we're talking about iconic lines like frankly my dear i don't give a damn which is like taking out of context and is like kind of a nasty line in the movie the line there's no place like home is like one of the iconic lines from this movie and if you think about it that's a kind of like the theme of the movie is like this theme of home and there's no place like home and then you realize that like she
01:29:01
Speaker
It's her like, because it's all her dream, right? And all these people are like, even though it's a fantasy, they're real, they're in her life. And this is how her her imagination has, like, told the story of her childhood to her. And it's just like, it's so charming. I love it.
01:29:18
Speaker
It is very like, and that's why you don't run away from home, kids. Can I share this? I actually thought this was interesting because you got me interested in the Judy Garland as a gay icon. Can I read this quote from John Waters that I thought was really interesting?
01:29:38
Speaker
about her. So it says in the subheading, Friend of Dorothy, John Waters says, I was the only child in the audience that always wondered why Dorothy ever wanted to go back to Kansas. Why would she want to go back to Kansas in this dreary black and white farm with an aunt who dressed badly and seemed mean to me when she could live with magic shoes, winged monkeys, and gay lions? I never understood it. And I think he makes a good point. It's like, why would she want to go back to the Great Depression
01:30:04
Speaker
when she could be in like lollipop land. She lives in a magical, yeah exactly. It's kind of like the Barbie movie, like how at the end of the Barbie movie she's like, yes, I would like to opt into ovarian cancer.
01:30:21
Speaker
Because what is real is more meaningful than what is, I don't know, imagined or fantasy. It's an interesting theme to think about, especially now as we're moving into more generated imagery and more things that aren't real. It's this desire for realness. Why is that desire for realness so, why does it feel satisfying at the end of Wizard of Oz that she goes back to her ugly form?
01:30:47
Speaker
I mean, I think that like maybe another way of looking at that theme like wrapping in the other characters is kind of like reaching an inner truth. Right. Like like like finding finding, you know, the kind of lesson that all of the other characters learn is like you have had a heart the whole time. You have had courage the whole time.
01:31:08
Speaker
like you just needed to like go through an experience to like find the thing that this part of your insecurity you had to go through an experience to realize that like
01:31:20
Speaker
You know, you do feel good about it. You have a way of feeling good about it. She learns to appreciate her home by the end of the movie. By being scared by witches. Yeah, which I mean, that's what that's what the good witch Glinda says. She's like, I could have sent you home the whole time, but you needed to learn a lesson first. I kind of think that Glinda just wanted the wicked witch dead.
01:31:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And was like, all right, you've done it. OK, you can go home now. No, it's probably some likely. Oh, my god. Like, Linda's the bad witch the whole time? Oh, my god, that's so bitchy. Not necessarily the bad witch. Linda the good bitch. But just that she was kind of using Dorothy to assassinate another witch. It kind of does seem like there's some kind of, like, witch law that she can't, like, she can't. Right, she can't act against the other witches. She can't kill another witch, but she does it by proxy. Honestly, that whole fuck.
01:32:06
Speaker
Well and Glenn we saw that movie that was called Witches that was not about witches. I mean it was tangentially about witches. It was tangentially about witches but that was the dichotomy they used was the good witch and the evil witch and how like the evil witch is like how like the good witch is the the witch you want to be like Glinda is like still a witch but she's you know feminine and sparkly and pretty and
01:32:29
Speaker
She wears a crown, she comes down in a bubble. She's like the male, she's like the pretty one. And then the one with the green skin is like, oh my God. And then there's Wicked, which I don't think we have time to even. I was my big dumb blonde moment. There's Wicked and also Oz the Great and Powerful, the same Raimi movie. Yeah.
01:32:51
Speaker
Yeah, oh man, this story, because there's so much in there. It's like you're, I think you're on to something about the Glinda being a little sneaky. The kind of like negative depiction of the bad witch.
01:33:07
Speaker
She like the original actor who was playing her quit because she didn't want to be in this kind of like ugly woman, quote unquote, make old crown. Yeah, kind of like she was like, I wanted to play this character like a little more like interestingly and like less, you know, stereotypically. Yeah. And, you know, they did kind of go with this sort of
01:33:31
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah, you got like a big nose and a wart on your face. Yeah. Green skin. And those are things that in society you can't you can't. Honestly, I always thought that the Wicked Witch was kind of hot. I was like, no, that lady. She seems like she's got a fun. She's got a great outfit. She seems fun to get. She seems like the kind of person I'd like to get some tea with. You know, she seems she seems like she's got opinions on stuff.
01:33:57
Speaker
I mean, yeah, speaking of like can't value like everything that she says, you know, like she's just like she's like a perfect kind of I don't know. She's just iconic. Her laugh. Yeah. Margaret Hamilton crushes it playing like a scary.
01:34:14
Speaker
a scary old witch woman. Right. Yeah, the laugh, the like the physicality. I found out that she was set on fire accidentally making this movie because when like the flames explode around her, it set the green paint.
01:34:29
Speaker
on fire because it was flammable for some reason. That was a thing that they thought was OK. Oh, well, they also had poisonous paint on the tin man. Right. There was a different tin man actor who had to quit because he was poisoned by the paint. I think it wasn't like on his skin, but it was like.
01:34:47
Speaker
he inhaled it or something. I forget what the thing was. There's kind of an urban legend around that that is not entirely true, but it is true that they cast a guy and he had to quit. But then Margaret Hamilton got third degree burns on her face and hands and had to
01:35:03
Speaker
just like be like on on leave from the movie for like weeks or months or something yeah but it's like that happened to like everyone and everyone in this movie had an accident everyone in this movie had some weird injury or like
01:35:21
Speaker
problem with like they weren't paid enough right all of the munchkins were like hired out of like the circus in vaudeville and were not paid or then they were paid like not well there was a lot of like a lot of them there was a lot of but also like there was just a lot of like exploitation
01:35:38
Speaker
happening there when... Well, one of the Munchkins is the lead actor in Freaks. He is... Oh, is it? Yeah. Same guy. Yeah. Dang. So he has some clout at least. Yeah, for sure. He was great in that movie. He's good in this movie. He's one of the lollipop guild. I feel like I gotta rewatch that and look for him now. Hell yeah. I did have the thought watching this movie. There's a scene in Munchkinland where you see babies in eggs, and I'm like, do Munchkins lay eggs?
01:36:05
Speaker
Do they lay eggs? Because there's like a nest full of eggs with babies in it. Maybe another animal lays munchkin eggs. Probably Dorothy thought that's where babies come from. The stork brings an egg and there's a baby. I actually really like that thing because she doesn't understand where babies come from.
01:36:35
Speaker
she's like oh yeah naturally they come from eggs of course like the chickens on my farm just like my dog yeah exactly that makes a lot of sense and actually I do like that kind of thread throughout the movie that it is like this is this is Dorothy's
01:36:55
Speaker
unconscious dream brain that's conjuring up a lot of this stuff from pieces of her own life. Which I believe was not part of the book. The book was straightforwardly, she goes to Oz. She goes to Oz, she comes back. And it's literal, where this movie was trying to go for this kind of sense of realism. Every other, I feel like, version of this story
01:37:16
Speaker
gives it more of a literal like Return to Oz is like a sequel so naturally she returns to Oz not like I think also Return to Oz opens with her in like a mental hospital because they're like she came up with all this stuff we gotta put her we gotta put her away but like right I haven't
Musical and Fantasy Elements
01:37:31
Speaker
seen
01:37:31
Speaker
or Red, Wicked, the play. I have seen Oz the Great and Powerful, the same Raimi movie, but I think all these other things are like, they treat Oz as like, no, this is an actual fantasy realm. They do. They treat it like Narnia. Yeah. Whereas this movie is really leaning into the thing of like, no, no, this is just a thing that Dorothy made, that her brain conjured when she was knocked unconscious by a tornado.
01:37:58
Speaker
Which is a weird like that was a thing that I noticed. I was like, Oz in this movie is not a like, you know, another planet. It's just like it's just a way of her to like, I don't know. It's a dream world. It's her right. But it's it's her way of like working through stuff. Yeah. While she's unconscious, kind of working through her feelings about that's what your right. Your dreams are your dreams, your unconscious mind trying to work through stuff.
01:38:28
Speaker
So I actually think that- It's a large dream sequence instead of an isekai anime. But I think the like, I normally am like the it's all a dream thing is like a cop-out and I don't like it. I do think it works well in this movie because they seed so much of it in like act one in Kansas where they're like, here's the guy who's the scarecrow. He's, you know- He's still moving silly even as a regular guy. Exactly, right? Here's the guy who's the lion. He's kind of afraid of stuff, right?
01:38:56
Speaker
There's, you know, they're kind of putting all this in there. Yeah. And then so it makes sense when it comes back up. But it's so speaking of those guys like they're all great. Yeah. Like they're all so good in this movie, especially the scarecrow, I think. Like I love his physical acting so much. Right. Yeah. Credible. Really good. I genuinely believe that he is just a empty jacket full of straw. Yeah. Yeah.
01:39:26
Speaker
Uh, which I think he was originally cast to play the Tin Man. He was like, no, please. I want to play a scarecrow. He's like, look at me. Come on. Yeah. Um, I'm prime scarecrow material. I'm married. Deep cut. Deep cut.
01:39:45
Speaker
But, yeah, they're all like really good in it. I mean, you know, like I was saying, I was over the rainbow with this movie. It like from, you know, I was like kind of getting I think that the early scenes, it kind of like eases you in like you get the introduction to the characters. And, you know, it's like if the dog's getting taken away to like it really gets you emotionally engaged in the movie.
01:40:11
Speaker
immediately uh and so like that scary thing happens and then the tornado is also scary i think it's like tense and the tornado looks so good like it's such a cool effect yeah really well done for like mechanical early you know not early 30s effects but yeah i think it was like a windsock that they like blasted with sand and and
01:40:34
Speaker
air, but also just like the way that it's integrated in, you know, like, yeah, like there isn't there aren't any seams in the effects like it feels in the same place. And then, you know, it goes from that to the reveal to the color to the amazing just seen in.
01:40:53
Speaker
Munchkin Land with the music and just all of the kind of stagey fantastical looking props and backgrounds and then to like this really just kind of nice scene where she meets the scarecrow and all of these all of these companions and everyone just feels like charming in a different way.
01:41:14
Speaker
And then there's also Spooky Castle. I love it. I was like every moment. I was just like, yes, I'm loving this. I need more of this. This is incredible. I'm so sold. I'm on board. And then they went to the they went to the witch castle and I thought that it got kind of boring. But oh, yeah. But the second it got spooky, I was like, now I'm in.
01:41:34
Speaker
I felt like the movie should have just ended when they got to Oz, uh, instead of like, like having like another 20 minute side quest, you know? Well, like any proper wizard, he has to give out a fetch quest. Yeah. I did think it was very funny when, when he says like, go, you got to go get the broom from the witch.
01:41:53
Speaker
And then they come back, and they're like, we got the broom, the witch is dead. We melted her. Which, if the wizard didn't know that that's what happens when witches get wet, what did he think they did? Like, oh yeah, she's gone. We melted her. It's like, what? What?
01:42:10
Speaker
It does seem like a cruel fate, a cruel ending. The witch is only portrayed as villainous. The witch is like, we don't like the witch, right? She's scary. Stay away. I feel kind of bad when she melts. Yeah, it's a little much. That is what a way to go. I don't know if it requires capital punishment. Yeah. Also, I like apes in things. So like flying monkeys, I was pretty on board with. I think the idea of a flying monkey is pretty cool.
01:42:39
Speaker
But they're scary. I get it. I get why people are afraid of the flying monkeys. There's that really great use of perspective where you see all the flying monkeys in the background flying across the sky. Very cool. It almost felt like a malaise. A little bit. Yeah, like multi-pane kind of stuff happening.
Closing and Guest Plug
01:43:02
Speaker
Yeah. Fantasy things flying up into the sky. A malaise, yeah. A malaise would love this thing.
01:43:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I bet he would. Let's see. One other kind of like extra textual cultural thing about this movie that's probably worth mentioning is Dark Side of the Rainbow. Yeah. Yeah. The stoner activity of syncing up the Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon. I've never done it, but I'd like to. I did it a few months ago. Oh, how was it? It did not work as well as I thought it would.
01:43:35
Speaker
Apparently, it also worked really well with Paul Blart, Mall Cop 2. But, you know, that's a different podcast you have to listen to. But yeah, like there were parts of it that I thought like worked quite well. Like it was it was like a really neat kind of way of making a music video to Dark Side of the Moon. Although I guess the way that it works is that you have to
01:44:00
Speaker
like the album's a lot shorter than the movie. So you kind of have to play it like three and a half times to like get it through the movie. And so, yeah, like then like do the songs sort of like, oh, they're back in this location. This song is playing again. Like, is there there is that actually? Yeah, I forget which song it is, but there is like this almost like kind of recurring motif with a certain
01:44:20
Speaker
song which is which is cool that is but like it to me it kind of feels like more like a testament to the ability of the human mind to kind of make connections between things right I think you can put any prog rock album over any movie and it'll it'll sync up most of the time like I think those you know that's just kind of how it works
01:44:37
Speaker
But yeah, there are like, you know, the tornado scene is really good with it. And I think maybe the motif is like there's money that plays like when they're on the yellow brick road, which there's that whole thing about how the yellow brick road represents the gold standard or whatever. I don't care about that. So we need to talk about that. Nat, did you have any last thoughts on the Wizard of Oz?
01:45:03
Speaker
I mean, I guess I was it was really shocking to hear about all of the toxic face paint. And I guess we have to remember that even though it has a charming legacy, you know, people suffered a surprising amount. Yeah, like this was a very a very troubled production.
01:45:19
Speaker
Yeah, but you know, that's a discussion for a different time. Well, thank you so much for joining us this episode. Thanks a lot. It was a joy to have you here. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. You want to plug anything? Your YouTube channel? I guess you mentioned that already.
01:45:39
Speaker
Yeah. Also, for context, I'm on Zoom and these two gentlemen are in the studio, so I'm sorry if there was any weird stepping on each other's sentences, audio, whatnot, trying to get better at that. But yeah, if you enjoyed hearing me flap my gums, you can
01:46:00
Speaker
Check out my YouTube channel, NatsCanFly. It's pretty cool. And keep listening to One Week One Year, because these guys, they do good deeds.
01:46:12
Speaker
Aw, thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we've considered doing video essays before, but we said, that seems like too much work. We don't want to do that. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work, but if you ever want to collab, I am totally open to that. Hey, that's what this is, pretty much, kind of. Yeah, exactly. All right, thank you very much. Yeah, thanks again. Yeah, see you next year. Bye. Another movie with big landscapes in it.
01:46:41
Speaker
is Stagecoach, that was also released in 1939. Not a good segue, but here we are. You know, we can always segue with another movie that was released in 1939. True. I mean, that's why we're talking about all of them. Stagecoach, directed by John Ford, who we have.
01:46:58
Speaker
in the Western context, although it's been a... Something like 12, 13 years since he's made a Western. Right. I think Straight Shootin' was the last one we watched, which was his first feature film, I think. I mean, this movie is like...
01:47:18
Speaker
speaking of iconic movies as we have been doing this is like as I don't know if it's the most I wouldn't say it's the most iconic West or anything like that but it has so much iconic Western stuff in it yeah that it's like
01:47:32
Speaker
It has everything you want out of a like classical American Western, I guess. It's got shots of Monument Valley. It's got gunfights. It's got a stagecoach. It has, you know, like the character archetypes are like very classical Western stuff. This is the first time that John Ford shot at Monument Valley and he would return many times. But yeah, it just feels like this has this. This is like such a such a robust
01:48:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah, this is the Western. It's got all the Western stuff. Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of it that in a way you could call it arch, but like it's done so well, you know. Yeah, this was I'd seen this before I watched this, I think, in my Westerns class at Brooklyn College naturally.
01:48:19
Speaker
And this was a movie I was like, I'm not sure how well this one's going to hold up. I was like a little afraid that it was going to be like, I don't know, like this movie might have some stuff in it that I don't like or whatever. And it's it's got some, you know, questionable, maybe racial politics. Exactly. But overall, I was even that aspect of it. I was really kind of surprised at how well a lot of it holds up and how kind of
01:48:45
Speaker
I'm just kind of thoughtful, it was. I mean, for when it was made. I mean, I wouldn't if this movie came out now, I wouldn't describe it as thoughtful, but even it's sort of its characters are right. Our two kind of like romantic leads are a ex convict and a prostitute.
01:49:01
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, sex worker, it is not particularly thoughtful when it comes to its depiction of Indians. Yeah. But apart from that and just sort of just general character writing, it is quite complex. Yeah.
01:49:17
Speaker
It's basically like a kind of classic style of movie where a bunch of different types of people are put together in a place and have to figure it out. Yeah. A motley crew of people all get put in a stagecoach and like they don't want to be there with all the other people that are there. Yeah. And it's just kind of exploring how they all kind of clash against each other and develop as a relationship like in relation to each other.
01:49:43
Speaker
But yeah, so much of the movie is about like like ingrained like prejudices and like snap judgments that people make. Yeah. Yeah. Including. Yeah. They're you know, the Mitchell character. Yeah. Thomas Mitchell showing up again. He'll show up again in this episode of the podcast. It is.
01:50:02
Speaker
he is looking down on this gambler who is also a confederate and- Ex-confederate, I guess, at that point. Yeah, kind of like rolling his eyes at this guy. And there's kind of clashing based on that. Clashing based on the high society woman who can't, or most of the people, but her especially, that can't respect the sex worker or the way that people treat
01:50:31
Speaker
ex-convicts. It's all like a lot of really kind of interesting social dynamics. Thomas Mitchell is a doctor, but he's also an alcoholic. So then people are judging him for that too. And it's like, oh man, I don't know how to feel about this guy. And he's like, time to roll up my sleeves and go from alcoholic to high functioning alcoholic. Yeah.
01:50:52
Speaker
but so it's such a great just premise i guess for a movie to like throw all these characters together and kind of see how they bounce off each other i do think it's really well put together there's there's that one character the ex-confederate who's described as a notorious gambler which i feel like in a western is like oh that's like exciting and like notable and like kind of you know kind of glamorous i'm like a notorious gambler
01:51:15
Speaker
now in a modern context. That just seems like a sad person who's walking around in Vegas. Right. It's like, oh, he's a notorious gambler. Ooh, yikes. That almost seems worse than the alcohol. But here he's got gloves and a cape. He's a gentleman gambler, like James Bond.
01:51:33
Speaker
Like racist James Bond. But even that thing where his whole thing is about chivalry and being a gentleman and offering his coat to the lady and things like that. I mean, it's very like Gone with the Wind, like Antebellum. But I think this movie is like fairly critical of that. Yes. Yeah. Where it's like it ends with him about to shoot a woman like very prematurely.
01:51:56
Speaker
Yeah, almost like the missed situation, right? Yeah, very much so. But it's the movie is is not necessarily is like pretty.
01:52:06
Speaker
is not convinced that I think that that guy is like right for behaving that way. It's very like, oh, this guy's a little performative. And he is he's only doing this because this is like a wealthy woman. He is not treating anyone else this way. Right. Yeah, he wants to. In the movie, there's a point where they kind of all think that, you know, that they're about to die. The stagecoach is being surrounded by Geronimo's
01:52:32
Speaker
Was it Geronimo? Yeah, Geronimo's gang. And so he's about to kind of with his final revolver bullet give the new mother a dignified death or something. Then he gets shot right before. But yeah, this movie I could see
01:52:56
Speaker
Do we need to talk about the? I remembered like most of this movie kind of being the like big chase set piece. Like that's kind of the most memorable thing about it is this like, yeah, extended sort of like stagecoach chase through the like flats where there's like a hundred horses bearing down on them and like there's guns going off and all this stuff. Very cool kind of like action like stunts of like horses jumping from horse to horse. Should we just get to the stunts right away because that the stunts in this movie are great.
01:53:25
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. So, yeah, there's the bit where Ringo, who's John Wayne's character. Also, this is like John Wayne's big, you know, intro to movies. Yeah, he was in only a B movies before and he gets his like big like hero shot. The first time you see him, it's like super cool, like super quick dolly into his face. It's a very as he's like racking the shot.
01:53:48
Speaker
you know the the lever action rifle like in t2 which i mean t2 is doing it like this movie it goes at a focus which is not intentional they're like that's because the focus puller wasn't quick enough but it really kind of works for the shot but so the the big kind of action set piece that isn't even the end of the movie it's like the end of act two kind of
01:54:09
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, so it's got it's got Ringo jumping from horse to horse at the front of the stagecoach, which is just like what, like five or seven horses or something. A guy doing that as the horses are galloping. Yes, at full speed, which is insane. And there's also someone who gets trampled by the horses. I don't think he actually gets trampled because I mean, he was he was a stunt guy and he went on to do other things. But yeah, he
01:54:36
Speaker
goes underneath all of the horses and the stagecoach as it goes over him. Yeah, which I'm pretty sure if I'm remembering correctly is where the Indiana Jones going out of the truck stunt idea came from was that stunt in this movie.
01:54:52
Speaker
Speaking of directors who love this movie, apparently Orson Welles watched this movie 40 times in preparation for making his first movie Citizen Kane. Really? This one? Orson Welles, when asked about directors that influenced him, he said, the old masters, John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford. Oh, dang.
01:55:17
Speaker
I mean, yeah, John Ford, I guess very notably was very inspirational to Spielberg. Also, Spielberg met him once in his office in a scene that is in the movie The Fableman's. So go watch that movie if you want to know what what went on there.
01:55:36
Speaker
John Ford is very good at this. It's a very well put together movie. From the way the characters work with each other, there isn't flab on this movie. It's very well constructed.
01:55:51
Speaker
There's a lot of really good, I'm getting really kind of screenwriter nerdy here, but there's a lot of really good exposition through conflict in this movie. I mean, you're fair because it's like a total scripty movie. This is very much a movie that screenwriters would like.
01:56:10
Speaker
Cause it's script is like so tight and so good. Yeah. I mean, speaking of another scripty thing that seems very directly influenced by this is, uh, hateful eight, uh, including like the, the stagecoach like first act of hateful eight. Also just the idea of like a bunch of characters thrown together that don't really get along and have to kind of figure something out. Yeah. Yeah.
01:56:32
Speaker
There is kind of like a sort of revenge plot happening where Ringo is the only one who respects Dallas, the prostitute. And he wants her to run away with him to a ranch in Mexico.
01:56:52
Speaker
As soon as he can take care of this kind of unfinished Western honor business. Well, it's right Ringo's I think father and brother were both murdered by by Some ruffians the the plumber boys the plumber family has a beef with his family so they did some murders and Now we're in goes looking for revenge
01:57:14
Speaker
And so we get this, you know, this whole thing of like the stagecoach needs to get from point A to point B, but it's going through Apache country. And because of settlers going into the West and Manifest Destiny and stuff like that, the Apache are not super jazzed.
01:57:32
Speaker
about Stagecoach coming through their land. The movie does not say this part. It's just like, oh, they're Apache. They're scary. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing, right? It's just like the kind of genocide that is apparent in Gone with the Wind is also lurking in the background of this movie and other Westerns. It's kind of this thing that's just like,
01:57:59
Speaker
I don't know why but it feels easier to ignore but maybe it shouldn't, you know?
01:58:06
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I think it's, for whatever reason, it feels less glaring, but I agree. It's like, there's a lot of context here that is not mentioned. Yeah. And that goes for so many, masters that still come out like this year, not naming any names, but you know, there's not that many masters came out. Have you seen, have you seen, Fievel Goes West, an American Tale, the Kevin Costner movie? Yeah. But I still feel like the movie at least,
01:58:35
Speaker
makes an effort at a couple points. I mean, there's I think at one point there's they bring in a guy and it's like, oh, he's a Cheyenne. He doesn't he doesn't like the Apache either. At least sort of acknowledging that like this is not a monolith like Native Americans are span the whole country and have very, very different cultures. There's like a like a sympathetic Mexican character at one of the stopovers that they have. And he has an Apache wife and
01:59:04
Speaker
There's a really great line. I think it might have been the Confederate guy or something. No, it's the old guy. And he sees her and he goes, savage. And then he goes, yeah, she's pretty savage. He's like, yeah, yeah, she's pretty savage. You know what I mean?
01:59:24
Speaker
um and then yeah that guy i completely writes it off and he's like yeah yeah man like where do you think you are like yeah i have an apache wife it it helps like it means it means that like we get along with them and then i was thinking like oh it's treating them not as simple bad guys and then she like steals all their stuff and disappears and he's like well then there's a protracted action scene where they're just shooting arrows at them the whole time but i mean it
01:59:48
Speaker
That was a thing where I was definitely rewatching this movie. I was like, how, how bad is this movie going to be with it? And I, it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, thankfully. And a lot, a lot of Westerns are worse. Not that that makes anything better, but that was the thing where I was like, all right, for, for an old Western, it could be worse. I guess that plus the, the sort of general themes of like.
02:00:14
Speaker
Prejudice is bad. I guess I Think there's I think there's a lot to like this move a lot to like about this movie. Yeah, even outside of it sort of I mean, it's it's technical stuff if it's like, oh it looks great. It's got this and that it's just like it's just really Well, it's just really well-made movie. Yeah. Yeah, I think like
02:00:36
Speaker
with the parts that are supposed to be tense are really tense. Like I feel very vulnerable inside of the stagecoach. There's like a good dynamic of like comedy to drama. There's a lot of good comic relief in it. Yeah, each time they like get a new passenger, right? It's like the stagecoach gets a little bit more crowded until it's like people are like sitting on the floor and they're all right. It's all these people that don't really don't want you like each other or don't really want to be in the same room. And they're all like shoulder to shoulder, like squished in this tiny carriage.
02:01:05
Speaker
One thing about craft that I was kind of thinking about while watching this movie was, you know, you're kind of used to these kind of wide cinemascope westerns, right? Where they're showing the landscape as
02:01:22
Speaker
you know, this giant wide vista, which you can't do in this, you know, four by three aspect ratio. And so I thought it was, you know, we've seen Western movies before, but like this is like a Western movie by John Ford, the Western guy. Right. And so I was trying to think about like how how this movie depicts these kind of classic Western tableaus, but in like a more boxy aspect ratio. And it seems like it uses a lot more depth
02:01:51
Speaker
because that's sort of what it has access to. There's a lot of really deep shots of characters in the foreground giving scale to the things in the background. Even in interiors. Even indoors, there's a lot of depth. There's a lot of people in one corner of the room into another corner of the room or down hallways.
02:02:16
Speaker
yeah yeah a lot of just like really really smart framing i think that sounds like faint praise like oh so smart but it's like it's it's it's very well composed which is another sort of like john ford staple but even even after this like big you know
02:02:32
Speaker
stand out action chase set piece, which I had to remember it as like half the movie. And it's actually like very relatively. It's like eight, nine minutes, something like that. Most of the movie is them traveling in the stagecoach and then also stopping at the like homestead where the the was it Mrs. Mallory, the like wealthy woman has has a baby. The doctor has to sober up to deliver the baby. So he has to eat drinks like eight cups of coffee and like slaps himself a bunch.
02:03:02
Speaker
And like that thing is like, it's kind of funny to see this guy like try to sober up in like three minutes. Yeah. But then it's also like the scene of where it's like the baby comes out and everyone's like, oh, my God, a baby. Oh, my it's a baby. And it's it's really sweet. And it's like everyone kind of bonds over this thing because it's like, come on, come on. We've all got our little gripes, but like there's a baby here like.
02:03:26
Speaker
Even after the stagecoach gets their destination, it's like Ringo, John Wayne's character, still has his revenge plot he has to finish. And then it's like...
02:03:38
Speaker
Because the whole movie, he doesn't know that Dallas is a prostitute. And then he finds out and he's like, I don't care. Whatever. And she's like, oh, OK, cool. Yeah, let's go to your ranch. This whole thing of like, I can't be with you because I have a terrible secret. You don't want to know. Yeah. And he's like, oh, that?
02:03:59
Speaker
Okay, I also think it's kind of an interesting and Unconventional right it's like we've been building towards his like revenge his like confrontation with these these plumber boys The whole movie pretty much. Yeah, and it's like their whole
02:04:18
Speaker
like shootout happens almost entirely off screen. Yeah. Yeah. It like cuts away after the first shot. And then it's like there's all this tension right where it's like because everyone's, you know, inside listening or, you know, peeking out the windows where it's like there's like a bunch of gunshots and then everyone's like, what happened? And there's like the John Ford draws that
02:04:42
Speaker
feeling out as long as possible where it's like a gunfight just happened and we don't know who lived yet. Yeah, including there's like a kind of like classic, I don't know, Western or like samurai scene like guy walks up and then it looks like he's fine. Yeah.
02:04:59
Speaker
the best and that's the thing is like that at this point has almost kind of become like a cliche in movies I think but that's cuz it is great and it is always great and every time I see it I'm like yes it gives you this moment of like oh no did he lose is that guy still alive and then he just falls over yeah great this movie has just like
02:05:18
Speaker
right like i said before like everything you'd want out of a western it's got people like sliding bottles down down a bar it's got you know it's got horses it's got babies it's got gunfights the story it's telling i feel like is is a little pulpy maybe yeah but in in but it's so well done that it it feels like
02:05:39
Speaker
I think this is a great movie and it's the revenge plots pulpy. I don't know if the other stuff. Yes, or like the character. I didn't really look into how much like how this movie was received when it was released or sort of what the kind of general reaction to it was. But I get the sense, you know, it wasn't this wasn't a like prestige movie when it came out. I get the sense, but I don't know.
02:06:02
Speaker
But I think like this term didn't exist back then, but like more of like a, you know, action blockbuster, whatever kind of adventure movie. And yet it's so like there's so much care being put into every scene, every frame, because John Ford was good at his job. Every frame was a painting. Yeah. A painting with the horizon either at the top or the bottom.
02:06:25
Speaker
But yeah, you know the doctor in this movie. Thomas Mitchell. Thomas Mitchell. He has another accent in another movie. Indeed he does. Our third Thomas Mitchell picture of the episode.
02:06:44
Speaker
Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Another classic. Which is another classic and which may as well be called Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington. Well, funny story, it was originally.
02:06:59
Speaker
Was it? Yes. Oh, it was originally conceived. I think it might be like somewhat based on like another story, but it was initially going to be a sequel to Mr. Deeds Goes to Town called Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington. Oh, wow. And it was like, yeah, it's like this happens again.
02:07:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there are so many beats in this movie that are exactly the same. It's almost a remake. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost a remake like two years with the same some of the same actors playing like almost the same role. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I I think this is better. The message goes to town personally. I think that Jimmy Stewart kind of plays this kind of naive
02:07:41
Speaker
but like really good hearted guy. Yeah. He doesn't play him as dumb and weird as Mr. Deez. No. A little bit. I mean, that's still there. He's earnest. But he's more earnest. I almost feel like. He's just as easily distractable and easily compelled into violence. Right. That was the only thing I forgot about this movie. He goes on like a whole punching rampage halfway through. He goes around. Which I guess is just a Frank Capra thing. Yeah.
02:08:10
Speaker
fisticuffs solve everything yeah uh someone knows right off the bat opening credits montages by slavko vorka pick vorka pick not sure how you pronounce his last name no one knows yeah i think that's very cool that this guy's still getting work doing like wacky montage stuff in movies yeah after having done all these kind of like little experimental movies uh earlier i've seen this movie before this movie was actually one of the
02:08:37
Speaker
One of, if not the first movie ever watched with an analytical eye, there was a whole dossier or whatever that my mom got in the mail.
02:08:49
Speaker
like, mailed away for that was like, you know, how to teach like film studies. And it was all based around Mr. Smith Coast, Washington. Wow. So it had all this stuff of just like, what is the dialogue saying? Back before the internet was big when you had to get mail order dossy. Honestly, it might have been from the internet. I don't know. This was this was like, I was like, 12. So like 2003.
02:09:12
Speaker
But so it was part of my homeschool curriculum was watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and critically breaking it down and watching every scene and being very analytical about it. What did you get out of it back then? I don't remember specifics, but I think I did get a real sense of film analysis and just how much
02:09:37
Speaker
much intention is put into every detail and and how how much of it kind of adds up without even noticing it where it's like oh yeah we understand all of these things about the movie just kind of feeling it feels like just intrinsically but then you break it down it's like no no this is we know this because this piece of information is is laid out early in the movie and then it comes back and we know that because we remember from earlier and like
02:10:00
Speaker
There's just screenwriting, set design, cinematography, this covered all of it. And so I have a certain sort of...
02:10:13
Speaker
affinity for this movie. I don't love this movie, but I think it's very good and I enjoy it a lot. I think this was another one where I was like, how well is this one going to hold up? I don't know. He goes to Washington. I don't like Washington. Somebody called the circus because all the clowns are in Washington. It's like this movie has a whole montage of Jefferson Smith just going on Washington and being like,
02:10:37
Speaker
Oh my god, the Lincoln Memorial. Oh my god, the Washington Memorial. Oh my god, the Capitol Dome. Maybe it's the Vorkapitch montage, but a kind of very America core. Stars and Stripes. Stars and Stripes, Liberty, freedom montage. And I'm like, it's a bit much. It is a bit much. But somehow this movie, I'm like,
02:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, OK. Like, not necessarily I don't feel this outpouring of like patriotism and like, oh, isn't America beautiful? Yeah. But I think that the movie is so earnest about it and so kind of yet still having a fairly cynical overall viewpoint of like how politics function. Right.
02:11:25
Speaker
that I feel like I can't help but really like this movie. I think that Capra didn't intend this movie to be cynical, I think. Yeah, I don't know. This movie is showing how the glorious American political process can root out any corruption that exists in it because there are passionate people who have avenues like the filibuster
02:11:54
Speaker
to make that happen. Let's get it out of the way. Biggest gripe of the movie, the filibuster in real life fucking sucks and is terrible and shouldn't exist anymore. It also doesn't function the way it does in this movie. So there's that where it's like, I don't know if it did in 1939 even. I do not condone the filibuster as a thing. I think it's bad.
02:12:16
Speaker
But the scene pretty great. The scene of him, you know, with the scratchy throat and like leaning over and reading letters and stuff. I feel like tired, angry James Stewart is is the best version of him when he's just like he's like a little sweaty and his hair is kind of floppy and he's he's just like passionately yelling about something. I think broken legs, creepy version of James Stewart is the best one.
02:12:43
Speaker
This movie is about a kind of corruption plot for Graft. Graft. They want to build a dam. An earnest Boy Scout leader. The literal Boy Scout. They couldn't use the actual organization Boy Scouts, so I think he's... What is he called? It's like...
02:13:02
Speaker
it's something similar boy rangers the boy rangers yeah uh yeah he's kind of put in place of a senator right well a senator dies opening scene much like a rich person dies in mr deeds and it's like we gotta fill the seat what what idiot can we throw in here what what rube what what stooge can we put that we can control exactly and like it's like this one guy's kids are like
02:13:28
Speaker
Dude, dad, Jefferson Smith. He's the best. He's the boy Rangers leader. We gotta put him in there. Yeah, they're Brooklyn kids from no name, but no name states. Yeah. Another weird thing. No, other than like the location of Washington DC, like no states.
02:13:45
Speaker
are mentioned or political parties. This movie is very vague about a lot of things. Yes, which helps it work. It's like very it's conspicuous how vague it is. Yeah, especially now. But like, yeah, but it's but it's also like, how are you going to make this movie? Yeah, not be very off topic, but I rewatched Independence Day recently. Mm hmm.
02:14:06
Speaker
Another movie. You watched Independence Day on July 4th. I watched this movie on July 4th. Oh, boy. Both thematic. Independence Day. I was like trying to figure out, like, is the president in Independence Day Democrat or Republican? It's impossible to tell. It's genuinely impossible.
02:14:23
Speaker
But I also feel like in 1996, it like wasn't as big a deal. Well, he hates aliens. He does. Yeah. And he was and he was and he was in the Air Force. So I do kind of lean Republican on on President Whitmore from Independence Day. But so they get this guy, this like Boy Scout leader, they go to his house, which is full of like bands playing in chaos, which that's like a Frank Capra thing I'm noticing is he loves like a chaotic living room.
02:14:51
Speaker
This is full of so many Capra hallmarks. This is like one of the most Capra movies that exists. I think it's like this and it's a wonderful life or like kind of his two biggest or like most well-known movies. Yeah, this this movie really, you know, maybe I'm being a little too unfair to it in and of itself.
02:15:12
Speaker
But it's just because we just watched Mr. Deeds, and it's the exact same movie. Well, also, Gene Arthur is in both, playing basically the same character. She has a different name, but she's the cynical, more worldly kind of woman who falls for the earnest, good-hearted rube. Stooge, I should say. They say stooge in this movie a lot. They're always calling people stooges, which I think is funny.
02:15:37
Speaker
But this movie just seems like the crescendo of every little Capra hallmark that you can find. It's him just pulling it all together into one thing. This is the ultimate Capra film. Yeah. America, instruments, easily distracted... Stooges. Easily distracted Stooges who likes to punch people. But is also so earnest and good hearted. He just wants the best from the world.
02:16:07
Speaker
And then Jean Arthur's there like, yeah, yeah buddy, take a hike. Thomas Mitchell in this plays a, I think also heavy drinking reporter who is equally cynical and has a sort of change of heart towards the end of the movie also. Yeah, he's a buddy with Jean Arthur's character. Another thing about Frank Capra movies, weirdly antagonistic towards the press.
02:16:33
Speaker
antagonistic toward the press. I mean, antagonistic toward rich people, which, yeah, which based, you know, yeah. And that is part of why, you know, this movie was screened for like American politicians, like a group of American politicians. And they were mad. Yeah, I wonder why. Because this movie posits that there is a lot of or at least I don't know if it posits there's a lot of corruption, but it's like the main plot of the movie is about corrupt politicians trying to like
02:17:00
Speaker
Lie lie to their constituents. Yeah, and and also like even the non corrupt Politicians standing behind someone who is you know, their co-worker and friend, you know Yeah, I think this this movie like you saying like you don't think Frank Eppert set out to make a cynical movie I don't think he did either
02:17:19
Speaker
But I think I think this movie is like I think the ultimate point that I think I don't know. My takeaway from it is that it is about like the the American system of government is not necessarily broken, but is like
02:17:36
Speaker
super filled with corruption and problems, but that there is this hopeful Frank Capra is like, no, but if it could just work properly, then we'd all be OK, kind of. I mean, I think what he's saying is that we all like the more that we the system works, it's like it's not it's not.
02:18:00
Speaker
like it's set up so that it's impossible for things to go wrong. Right. But, you know, if you believe in America hard enough, then any kind of cancerous object can be cut out of the politics of America. Right. Using the beautiful checks and balances process and everything
02:18:20
Speaker
Yeah, which I mean, I mean, it is in of itself might be a little naive. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's the version of America that we are taught when we're younger. Right. And it is a by this movie. Yeah, it's a naive perspective.
02:18:36
Speaker
like it is i i kind of think so i mean i've you know we've we've you know it's it's been a rough couple of years for america lately but i i do just like there is something so kind of hopeful and like optimistic about this movie that is it's hard to
02:18:53
Speaker
It's hard to watch this movie and be a complete cynic about it. Yeah, I was kind of like battling the movie itself, not necessarily the system of the government. Yeah, I think I kind of went into this movie feeling kind of more cynical and came out of it being like, yeah, but Frank Capra, man. Yeah. And Frank, I was reading up on Frank Capra, like he was born in Italy and immigrated to the United States during the kind of big
02:19:19
Speaker
immigration period of time you know went to Ellis Island classic stuff and so like I do kind of appreciate his perspective of someone who like immigrated to the United States and was like oh my god it is so much better here and the fact that he went from being like he genuinely did just like come from
02:19:39
Speaker
you know, not necessarily, I don't know if he was necessarily living in poverty, but like he worked his way up through like through early Hollywood and like became a really successful director. And so it's like, if there's anyone who's perspective on this, I feel like holds at least a little bit of weight. It is like Frank Capra is sort of like, no, no, no, guys, like if, if we can, like, if this can work out, it'll, it actually is like, is good, you know?
02:20:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I feel so cynical about America. I mean, like, honestly, Sam, it's hard. It's hard not to. It's hard not to. But I mean, I think if I saw this movie as a kid before I was that cynical, I would have been like, yes, this is awesome. This is so cool. This is what makes us.
02:20:22
Speaker
This is what makes us good, you know? And there are aspects of truth to it. There are there are ways that America is good. Yeah, I must admit. Yeah, I guess there are a couple of like really interesting formal things in this movie, I thought, or like one of them is when during the kind of climactic filibuster scene while he's filibustering, there's all of this kind of like
02:20:51
Speaker
like the news industry and like the kind of owners of of like culture or not, I don't know, like the the kind of powerful barons who own the world, like who are the ones who are kind of involved in this bribery plot. Like he's trying to like seed all of the newspapers in his hometown with anti Jefferson Smith like sentiment.
02:21:18
Speaker
Right, because there's Taylor, the, like, industrialist villain of the movie. Yeah. He was, like, trying to build a dam and, you know, is, like, paying off politicians and things to get his way. To make more money for his businesses. Right. He owns all of the press in Jefferson Smith's home state. They never say what it is.
02:21:34
Speaker
It's kind of implied, I think, at what point to be either Montana or somewhere else. The original story that it's based on is yeah, it's Montana. And so he's like, right. He's like putting out all these, you know, all the big the big city newspapers are like Jefferson Smith is a fraud and a scam artist and, you know, is involved in corruption. And then there's this whole grassroots.
02:21:56
Speaker
sort of boy rangers led campaign to like, no, no, no, like, Jefferson spent is the only one like, speaking the truth. And like, it's a tailor, the guy who's like runs all this stuff is actually the liar. And then
02:22:10
Speaker
Taylor sends his like hatchet men to go like slap around a bunch of children and like drive their cars off the road and like, you know, crazy. But the the formal thing that I think is neat is like this kind of juxtaposition between, you know, him kind of
02:22:29
Speaker
Horsley and weakly like reading the US Constitution and it cuts back and forth between that and And like the the paper printing machines then that the industrialist owns, you know, and so it's like him fighting against the the Industrial radical machine. Yeah, right like kind of David Goliath Situation, but like it's literally like the machine that he's against and then like
02:22:59
Speaker
You know, this is probably not unique to this movie, but I felt like there were some some good kind of uses of like more than other movies. This is one that is just a lot of people talking to each other. It's like a lot of shots of two people speaking to each other and.
02:23:15
Speaker
And so they do a lot of neat stuff with positioning people height-wise in the frame to imply dominance in a certain part of a scene. There's a part where Mr. Smith is trying to be pressured into going along with the bribery stuff. And then there are two people looming over him on either side of the frame.
02:23:40
Speaker
It's all good stuff that I like. There's another scene too where he's like very nervous talking to the lady. I was going to bring this up next. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Well, just yeah, he's really nervous talking to a pretty lady and he's having this whole conversation with her. But the camera does not focus on either of their faces. It is only showing his nervous hands holding his hat as he's like moving the hat around his hands. He drops the hat and he has to pick the hat up and it's just showing the hat. Yeah, which is such a nice touch. Yeah, it's really good.
02:24:09
Speaker
Cause it's like the whole scene is playing out just in how he's holding his hat, which is great. Like the dialogue almost doesn't even matter at that point. I saw that and I was like, no movie nowadays would do that. You know? Like, like... I feel like someone who's like really...
02:24:25
Speaker
I don't know, adventurous or cool. Like I feel like Soderbergh or somebody might do something like that. Like a mainstream movie. That actually also I just rewatch Ocean's 11 also. And there is a bit and that's why I said Soderbergh. It's because there is a bit in that where it focuses entirely just on the the like the like cart that's supposed to be full of money. But there's actually a guy in there.
02:24:46
Speaker
And there's all this dialogue happening. The camera is staying on the cart the whole time because it's like that's what's important in the scene. Yeah, it's just like such a cool choice to yeah. Yeah. To like emphasize his nervousness and like the kind of narrative that it tells about his nervousness by like how his hands are moving in that scene. It's really cool. Yeah. I also just kind of love how like how 1930s this movie is. It's got a lot of just kind of 1930s charm to it.
02:25:14
Speaker
The Gene Arthur character is, wasn't Saunders, is like such a 1930s character.
02:25:21
Speaker
Yeah, like she was in the last movie where she played the same character. Yeah, same name, but like same exact character, basically. She's like a bit less of a hardened cynic in this movie. Right, yeah. A little bit less antagonistic, maybe. Thomas Mitchell, once again, I think he's having kind of maybe the most fun in this movie because he has kind of the smallest-ish role and he just kind of gets to hang around and like... Yeah, he's being a hammy, like a hammy newspaper guy. Yeah. He's like a... The best. I love a hammy newspaper guy.
02:25:51
Speaker
Also, didn't even mention Claude Rains also in this movie as like, yes, the mentor of Jefferson Smith, who is actually the one who is being paid off and is like going along along with all this corruption. Well, at one point gives this whole kind of speech where it's like, yes, this is just how it works. We have to go along with all the the payouts and this stuff and we have to do what the industrialists tell us.
02:26:15
Speaker
And then that's our way of getting other stuff done. Right. Like if we do all that stuff, we play their game. We can then also pass our own bills and things like that, which is an entirely accurate way. Right. That an accurate depiction of how every person in Congress right now. But I thought that was interesting, that it's like that character is is kind of acknowledged. It's like, yeah, I know that this isn't good, but it's like this is like we have to compromise. Life. Yeah.
02:26:45
Speaker
And I do kind of appreciate how much the movie is like, fuck that. Like, it's bullshit. Like, that's terrible. No, we shouldn't let that happen. And so I appreciate that about it. Also, Claude Raine's the best.
02:26:59
Speaker
He knows how to play evil. He does, but it's like, even this movie, he's a pretty sympathetic villain, I think. You can see the gears turning in him and how conflicted he is. One of the most unrealistic things about this movie, besides an earnest Boy Scout winning the hearts of everyone, is that he is able to win
02:27:22
Speaker
over Claude Rains, basically. The kind of premise of all of this is that you can appeal to the morals of the people who are ruining the world if you're earnest and nice enough. And that's just not true. The people who are ruining the world and doing bad things,
02:27:48
Speaker
Well, it's like that's that's what that's what they want to do. Yeah. Like that's this is that's not a byproduct. That's like, no, no, that they're doing that on purpose. Yeah. And so like, you know, it.
02:27:58
Speaker
You know, not to get like too modern day political or whatever, but it's like the Democrats are people who are like, yes, we can like appeal to the better senses of people who are not like acting with their senses, you know, and it's so naive and like it just feels like.
02:28:18
Speaker
You know, it's a it's a fun scene when he his efforts finally cut to the heart of Claude Rains. Claude Rains is senator character. And so he's just like, I've been a bad guy. I'm going to shoot myself now, which is very dramatic. Very, very cool. But like.
02:28:36
Speaker
There's no way that happens. Somebody who has been deeply embedded in corruption for 20 years is not going to have a change of heart. Well, much like Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, I think this is kind of a fantastical view of like, you know, what if the system did work? Kind of, you know?
02:29:01
Speaker
It's just that in the ranking of how culturally harmful the fantasy is, I would say it's like, Wizard of Oz, not harmful. This one, a little bit harmful. Gone with the wind, quite harmful. Right, yeah, yeah. That is a good hierarchy. Also, then the movie ends immediately. There was zero denouement or sort of wrap up. It's just for like, and then he confessed, the end.
02:29:26
Speaker
Yeah, like people cheer like she credits after cheering like there is no sense of like I think Jefferson Smith is unconscious at the end of the movie and it's like we never find out what happened to him. Presumably everyone loves him and is happy. Yeah. Yeah. He was elected president United States and served eight terms and World War Two never happened.
02:29:49
Speaker
Uh, anything else to say about Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? No. Okay. So our final film of the episode, we wanted to get...
02:29:57
Speaker
Get outside of Hollywood for this one. We were like too many Hollywood movies in a row. What else is going on in the world? Movies are being made all over the world. Yeah, have you ever heard of a little country called Japan? Yeah, it's about to get real prominent on the world stage in the news segment. Oh, God, yeah. Which I think that's kind of an interesting thing about this movie is thinking about it being made in militarized imperial Japan, right?
02:30:23
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah, I was almost like kind of trying to like look for things of like where they were Was it like trying to comment on like the state of the world? I don't know. I couldn't see anything in this movie But I'm also not as as familiar with sort of that era of Japanese culture or Japanese culture in general I've never been there but the movie that we watched is the story of the last chrysanthemum directed by Kenji Mizuguchi and
02:30:47
Speaker
Yes, and yeah, I've heard about Musaguchi like back in college. Yeah, I definitely had heard the name Definitely like one of those criterion type people. Yeah, we watched this on the criterion channel. Yeah I feel like there's like in terms of especially
02:31:04
Speaker
20th century Japanese filmmakers. It's like Kurosawa, number one, like he's the one that everyone likes and knows the most. Yeah. And then like Ozu, right? Ozu is like a little bit more criterion core, a little bit deeper cuts. And then it's like Mizuguchi is like the real like criterion people know Mizuguchi.
02:31:28
Speaker
And I feel like that kind of from the so this is the only music we have seen. I think the only movie I've seen is the one that we did on the show. Yeah, but very I'm excited to get to both of their and then I've seen like a bunch of Kurosawa stuff. But I do think it's funny that Kurosawa makes like these like historical like adventure movies and like Shakespeare adaptations.
02:31:49
Speaker
Ozu makes these really heartfelt dramas. And then it seems like Mizuguchi makes the most depressing movies ever made. And that goes for this movie, and then reading up on him, it seems like that was his shtick. All of his movies are just like, Jesus, man, this is rough.
02:32:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen any of his other movies, but this definitely like has some kind of... We saw that one by Mikio Naruse, which was like another cut of the other... That was the one about the like, were they sisters? Who like one moves away and then... Yeah, that one was a rough set. Or like friends or something. But it's like, yeah, they... I didn't love that one. They both really lay on the misery. Oh, yeah.
02:32:36
Speaker
This one is based is about a kind of a Nepo baby actor. I don't know if he has seen because he's yeah, I guess he's a Nepo baby actor. He's I find the Nepo baby thing kind of almost needlessly cruel sometimes. I'm just like, who cares?
02:32:54
Speaker
But I mean, in this case, like it is very clearly his association with his parents. That's like a big point that is allowing him to succeed when he is not a good actor in Kabuki theater. They keep hammering that home. And then he kind of falls in love with the first person who's honest to him and says, says to his face, you see, he asked, was I bad? And she says, you were.
02:33:22
Speaker
It's like, sorry, but like, you were really bad. Like, really bad. And so he kind of follows her and kind of tries to change his name and work his way back up. Yeah. Well, he immediately falls in love with this woman because she's honest with him. Yeah. Which no one else has been like his entire life, it seems like. And then his family is like, well, no, she's a maid. That's not allowed. Also, she's fired.
02:33:48
Speaker
And he's like, screw you guys, I'm gonna make my own name for myself as an actor. I'm gonna go move away, go to Osaka, because he's living in Tokyo, and I'll build my own life for myself. And then if that turns out to be a lot more difficult than he initially thought it would be. And eventually, Otoku, the woman you fell in love with, follows him to Osaka,
02:34:17
Speaker
And it's kind of unclear to me if she has any romantic interest in him whatsoever. She just seems like... No, I think she does. I think she does, but it's like... It's just like she knows that she is like... She's like, I don't want to get married, I just want to help you be a better actor. Well, she only says that she doesn't want to get married because she knows how scandalous it would be. Like, she is very aware of her social station.
02:34:41
Speaker
And she got fired just because they were sharing a watermelon together, you know. Yeah. But she's like, what the what the heck? Why am I getting fired? And they're just like, you know. But it like it seems like she finds a lot of meaning in like being able to express herself through like boosting up his career. The movie just is.
02:35:03
Speaker
Like she has an extremely thankless situation in this movie. Which is a thing that while watching the movie was really kind of turning me off to it and then kind of reading up on Mizuguchi's other work and sort of end this movie, that does seem like the point he's trying to make is that like this woman is sacrificing everything for this guy.
02:35:23
Speaker
Yeah, she's like being so like so sacrificial and so and getting nothing back in return. Yeah, there are points where he's outright cruel to her. Yeah. But she still stands by him, which, you know, it's an interesting thing for someone to do, you know, it's like it almost feels like, you know, well, she just like.
02:35:44
Speaker
cut your ties with this guy, you know? I think it's like five years of him on the low-rent kabuki circuit. We've all spent a few years on the low-rent kabuki circuit.
02:36:00
Speaker
to showcase his skills as a kabuki performer. Skills of an artist. Yeah. And because of all of this time he's spent with this woman where she's just been like, no, we need to keep working at it, keep working at it, keep working at it. He's become a really good actor. Yeah, through her efforts, basically. Exactly, pretty much. Or her encouragement and support. Yeah. And the movie explicitly says, because of her, because of what she did, now he's a good actor.
02:36:27
Speaker
And so then now, because he's a good actor, now his family respects him again. Because they're like, hey, you're a good actor. We're into that. And then they find out that it's really all because of this woman that he fell in love with. He's been giving up her entire life to help him. And so they're like, oh, it's all because of her. Go be with her. And so then he does go to be with her, and she dies. Yeah, too little too late. And it is.
02:36:54
Speaker
I like you know where it's going once it's like oh she's very sick it's like oh she's gonna die like I mean right away right but it's still it's like the scene of them talking like right before the end of the movie
02:37:06
Speaker
where it's like both of them know that she's about to die. But neither of them really want to say that. She kind of does. She's like, no, like I'm good. Like I'm I'm happy that you're happy kind of. Yeah. And in her last moments, right, like they are on paper in love with each other. Right. Although he doesn't always act like it.
02:37:25
Speaker
Sometimes he does. I don't want to be too harsh to him. Like there, you know, he abandons his family so that like that's in major parts that he can be with her. But then, you know, a couple of years pass and he's just being mean. She is in this not as like an equal partner, but as someone who can only exist as
02:37:50
Speaker
who can only express excellence through someone else. She sells a lot of her own objects to get him a dressing table, vanity mirror thing. And she's almost like, none of my stuff matters. Also, she's the only one who helps the guy try to bring it up the stairs. He does not help at all.
02:38:09
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, also, I wonder how much of this is kind of the intended thesis of the movie. So when they're sort of like having this conversation as she is like minutes from death, he says, like we can finally be happy both in art and life, right? Because it's like, oh, he's become a good actor. His family accepts him. If they can now just like live happily together, then it's like everything is cool. But that doesn't happen because she dies.
02:38:37
Speaker
It makes me wonder if the point that Mizuguchi is trying to make is that like, no, no, no, no, you don't get both. You want to be happy. You got to like art and life are not. I don't know. I don't know if that's his intention where it's like you can't be happy in art and life. You have to sort of like trade off one or the other.
02:38:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think another big idea of this is just like the way that like rigid social structures harm people. Oh, yeah, for sure. From like, like it all turned out to not matter anyway, right? Like this whole thing happened because like they couldn't be associated with each other because like it's not done. And then like they just changed their mind and it's fine.
02:39:19
Speaker
Yeah, and even then it's I don't know there's also the thing where it's like She's dying and he has to leave because he has there's like a parade in his honor Yeah, and she's like no no like this is part of being an actor like you need to go think of your public Yeah, it's like the fans need to see you and celebrate you like that's part of what is being a great actor is about and so he leaves and he's like in a parade and
02:39:43
Speaker
while she's dying. And it's, I mean, you can see how he's not enjoying that parade at all. Like how could you? But it's this sort of thing like he is being celebrated and adored where it's like, oh my God, he is like the greatest kabuki theater performer we've ever seen. Like he's like the greatest artistic success you could possibly hope for. And he's miserable because the woman he's in love with died
02:40:10
Speaker
right like she was sort of what gave it gave meaning to it for him yeah where like he was just kind of floating through life before having you know just a bunch of yes men around him right yeah and her last act is like yet another kind of selfless thing of like you don't need to stay with me while i die go and
02:40:33
Speaker
go and stand in a parade because that's what you're supposed to do. Apparently that is like a big recurring theme and all of Mizuguchi's work is the like suffering and sacrifice of women. Often in certain for like for like the men in their lives. There was a little criterion bonus thing on Criterion Channel. Talking about that, one of the things that brought it up is that there is sort of a a a pro and anti-feminist read of that where it's like
02:41:01
Speaker
the thing that was like, well, Mizuguchi is like having a lot of like complex female characters in his movies, but they're all suffering the entire time. Like they're all, they all just get like shit on forever. And that's like- Right. And you know, this movie isn't directly really like advocating for anything. It's just showing you like, here's the way that people suffer. Here's the way that women suffer. Maybe kind of like the blown up and dramatized here. But there was definitely
02:41:29
Speaker
sort of towards the end of the movie, I'm like, is this movie like advocating for just like, hey, just sacrifice everything for the person you love and then, you know, it'll be great. It's like it works. Right. But it's yeah, I think also like that last shot of him like at the front of the like float going down the canal is like he's he looks so miserable at the front of that parade. And it's yeah, it is the kind of thing where it's like I do not think this movie is like advocating that he like
02:41:57
Speaker
succeeded in any real way. Yeah. Speaking of his him succeeding, one of the things that was kind of weird about this movie or it's not even weird. It's not the movie's fault. It's just my my fault for not knowing culture so well. But like there is this kind of scene that's like he's finally going to get his break to prove himself that he's not a bad actor anymore.
02:42:22
Speaker
and and so it shows this like really extended scene of his kabuki performance and i am looking at it the whole time going i don't have enough context to understand if this is good or not i i thought the exact same thing i'm like i i have no idea this is
02:42:43
Speaker
As an audience member, am I supposed to be like, damn, he's done it? Or am I supposed to be like, woof, yikes? Yeah, this is kind of supposed to be this sort of the end of Whiplash. He is doing amazing stuff on the drums. And you're like, yes, yes, yes, but for Kabuki theater. But yeah, I have no idea what the difference between good and bad Kabuki acting is. I mean, he was doing something. Because Kabuki acting,
02:43:10
Speaker
is not naturalistic acting. No, it seems, from my understanding, very dance adjacent or very dance heavy. It did start with the kind of iconic kabuki. I don't know if they do masks in Kabuki or if that's just a no thing.
02:43:30
Speaker
There's no puppets. There's no puppets. I thought no was masks. I don't know. We're advertising our ignorance right now. Again, like towards the end, there's the bit where like the kind of spoiled actor dad finally shows that he's like respects his son and his autonomy, where he finds out that Otoku, the the woman he's in love with and they've been living together for years at this point.
02:43:58
Speaker
He's like, no, like we can, like the parade can wait, like go see your wife. And like that, that, that got me. I was like. Yeah. And then she goes like, I can call you my husband now. Yeah.
02:44:14
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, this is not not a not a cheery film. No, it does have. I mean, we've talked a lot about like formal filmmaking stuff this episode. And I think this this movie feels so different sort of like stylistically to the anything else we watched. Yeah.
02:44:31
Speaker
There's there's basically no close ups in this movie. I don't know if there's a. Yeah, I don't think there's like one. I feel like the only one I remember is like a single insert shot of a piece of paper. Right. Yeah. Again, apparently like I'm learning most of what I know about Mizuguchi like this week from this movie. Apparently he kind of hated close ups and was like close ups are bad. Well, at this point in his career, he'd already made like 50 to 100 movies by the time he made this.
02:45:00
Speaker
I do like how the kind of pullback perspective mirrors the theatrical subject. Yeah, I thought about that. And also it really makes you feel especially in like kind of some of the more like intense scenes, it does kind of make you feel like you're you're really kind of privy to like a private moment between two people or between one person like by themself. Like I think especially the scenes where someone is in a room by themself and we're just kind of
02:45:30
Speaker
you know wide shot at the whole room and they you know they they come in they like do their little business and they kind of have a moment just with themselves and it's like this feels like i'm not like i'm like hiding in the dresser or something but it's like it's it's very intimate and kind of not necessarily uncomfortable but it's just like you really feel you know it's not like observational right we're not aiding we're not we're not it's not trying to like tell you what's happening in the scene we're just we're just watching a person
02:45:59
Speaker
in like have a moment. And those scenes I thought really worked very well. There's sort of mirroring scenes between Kiku, who's the actor, and Otaku. Otaku? Otaku. It's in the back of my mind the whole time. I know. Where they each are sort of like sitting in a room having this kind of, this is after they've been living together but they've separated because he's become a successful actor again.
02:46:26
Speaker
Well, for the first time back and forth. Yeah. But it's like she she like set up this whole thing for him to get like an acting showcase, knowing that it would it if it works, then they will have to separate. And she's like, yes, no, that I know that going in. I'm going to do it anyway. And so then like she just goes home like and like there's no lights on. She's kind of comes into the room and like sits. It's sad. Yeah. And it's like, oh, you you feel it. Yeah. And then there's like the next scene is like.
02:46:54
Speaker
people are celebrated, it's like, oh yeah, like, he's back. He's a great actor now. Kiku's done it. But then it's like we're watching that in a wide, and like the camera really slowly just like moves over, and even like the sound starts to move away, like it's like we're hearing it from the next room, all these people laughing and celebrating, and we see Kiku just like sitting by himself.
02:47:19
Speaker
as like people are laughing in the next room. And it's like, oh, I don't know. For whatever reason like that, I was like, oh, I've been there. I've like been in a situation where there's like people laughing into the room and I'm like having a moment where I'm just like, I do not feel cheery.
02:47:35
Speaker
It's like that meme, like they don't know that I'm sad about my dying wife. Yeah, basically. But like, that's the thing where I feel like this style of being like very restrained and very just like almost every scene in this movie is like a single shot. There's like very, very few edits in the entire thing.
02:47:56
Speaker
it will occasionally cut to different angles of things just to reveal more information about something. But it's like- Not birdman style, but like every- Every scene. Every scene tends to be like the cameras on a tripod are like locked off and it's like everything is happening in one shot. And it doesn't mind like taking its time too. Like there's a scene where they just like slice up a watermelon and eat it in real time. Exactly. But it's like even that is the kind of thing where because it happens in real time, it has this kind of like,
02:48:24
Speaker
Immediately or just like intimacy to it where it's I kind of feel like I'm just sitting here eating watermelon with them You know, that's nice. I like that. Yeah kind of reminded me of the scene in was a ghost story where Rooney Mara eats a whole pie
02:48:56
Speaker
Right. Restrained filmmaking, you know, or like camera work, at least a lot of like dolly moves in this movie. A lot of kind of. Yes. And and but they all feel very deliberate. Like whenever the camera does move, it's like, oh, oh, we're we're we're seeing something now or or it's moving like with people like through a space. Yeah.
02:49:00
Speaker
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02:49:15
Speaker
But often it's like revealing something new when the camera is moving. Sometimes we like we hear a character speak off screen first and then the camera will like slowly come around and we see who's talking. Yeah, I love that stuff. I just don't know at the end of this movie when it's like, oh, yeah, she died. Like credits. I just out loud to no one to say, damn, dude.
02:49:37
Speaker
The last thing that I have to say about this movie is that they bought wind chimes at two in the morning. There was like an outdoor wind chime salesman. Yeah, like a wind chime cart. A wind chime salesman. They went to the wind chime truck. They're like, hey, they made a mention of saying it's 2 AM. Yeah. Do you want to buy a wind chime?
02:49:59
Speaker
I don't know, maybe the people are out and about real late those days. Turn of the century Japan. Meiji era or something. Maybe that was just how things went. I didn't find out a lot of information about it. I am curious just what it was like making movies in Japan as they were going to war in various places. Because Japan was already at war with China at this point. Oh, yeah. The only thing that I know about
02:50:28
Speaker
existing in that period of Japan is Barefoot Gen, just from the comic book Barefoot Gen that I read. But that's not. It's not relevant. Well, it's not real, you know. Well, well. Well, did you have a favorite film? I think I know what yours was. Wizard of Oz. What do you think? What do you think mine was?
02:50:51
Speaker
It was it was it was stagecoach. Yeah, it was stagecoach. Nice. I think both of us were pretty clear just when we were talking about those of like, yeah, we like this one the most. Spoilers, spoilers. Yeah. Wizard of Oz and Stagecoach, two great movies. Like, yeah, I think I was a little I was a little. They're both on Ebert's great movies. Yeah, I think I was a little kind of lukewarm on on Wizard of Oz, not because of any like failings of the movie. It was just sort of like
02:51:18
Speaker
it was it was hard for me to like get into it a little bit just because it was just like so it's too it's too ubiquitous yeah it's just like it's hard to even like think of it outside of just this like general like cultural language of like oh yeah Wizard of Oz stuff yeah
02:51:36
Speaker
Well, I mean, there probably isn't going to be a movie that's that bad about that for a long time. Yeah. But we're going to be watching a lot of classic movies. Yeah. Early 40s has some real bangers coming up. But we've got to do our 30s second review before that. That's the next episode. Yeah. So it's not a see you next year situation. Let's reminisce on the last 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, but we've got our top 10s drawn up.
02:52:05
Speaker
Oh, I don't. I got to figure mine out. I don't have mine, but I mean, like, I mean, I'm excited to figure out what mine are and to see where yours are. So, yeah. And I hope you're excited because everyone loves the top 10 list. Am I right? It's it would be clickbait if we actually wrote top 10 in the titles, but we don't. Yeah, we don't. Yeah, maybe we should with it with a big arrow. And it's like, whoa. Yeah.
02:52:30
Speaker
All right, that's about it for this episode. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks again to Nat for joining. Yeah. Make sure you check out her YouTube channel, which we will link in all the relevant places. And yeah, thanks for listening. Subscribe and all that stuff, you know? Yeah.
02:52:50
Speaker
If you're listening as a podcast, we also have a YouTube version of it where we have little clips and posters and little factoids and things occasionally. And if you're watching on YouTube, then if you want to whatever listen to it in the car, it's also a podcast. Yes. All right. Well, that'll do it. Glenn, I'll see you next year. See you next year.
02:53:17
Speaker
Please, sir. We've done what you told us. We brought you the broomstick of the wicked witch of the west. We melted her.