Rewriting old excuses, delete the kisses at the end
I seem to be continuing to sleep more than has been my steady norm for months into years, albeit at peculiar and inconvenient hours that leave me feeling like some sort of crepuscular mammal. I have never been able to nap in my life without it making me feel worse than when I conked out and now it just seems to be an irregularly scheduled part of my day. I am operating on the theory that I will eventually evolve a circadian rhythm. I had one in college, I think.
It would never have occurred to me that the house style of 20th Century Fox was historical megaflops, but Wilson (1944) is the third to cross my radar after Cleopatra (1963) and The Big Trail (1930): it lost its $5.2 million shirt at the box office and Darryl F. Zanuck died mad that it didn't win Best Picture. In the first edition of John Gassner and Dudley Nichols' Best Film Plays of 1943–44 (1945) which![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch picked up from the carrel outside the Brattle Book Shop the week before Christmas in 2017, Zanuck is the only producer to have a preface devoted to his published screenplay and it's all on the defensive, primarily against charges of unnecessary expense and boosterism for FDR. It is not majorly concerned with the historical accuracy of the script by Lamar Trotti, which is fine because regardless of whether it has its names and dates in order, it reads like a political fairy tale. How appealing it is to imagine the twenty-eighth President of the United States as a shy dry stick of a boffin animated by an almost supernal honesty and a self-deprecating sense of humor as underestimated as his perseverance, untarnished by failures of civil rights and never so impaired by his stroke that he can't share the joke with his wife of her letting him out of his presidential responsibilities. A kind of sacrificial king of American idealism, broken across a vision that the world is too fallen and fragmented to match him in, classed by the opening titles with the national saints of Washington and Lincoln. Probably it could only have been trounced by the Catholic super-treacle of Going My Way. Hollywood gonif!
Pursuing some details about Wilson with the fervor of a person who really does not want to have to watch the damn movie, I found a profile of Alexander Knox by James Hilton in the February 1945 Photoplay and blew a gasket that I hope registered with Harry Cohn's ass:
Knox belongs to the new generation of Hollywood stars who shape so oddly into the category that they are already on their way to changing both Hollywood and the star system [. . .] Indeed, the only possible thing to say is that he's an actor, and that the fame he has secured in "Wilson" neither enforces nor precludes any particular kind of thing he will do next.
In support of this argument one has only to glance at his previous motion picture roles to gather some notion of the man's range. His first Hollywood film was "The Sea Wolf" with Edward G. Robinson, in which he played the shipwrecked author, a man of physical fear but mental courage. After that there were the memorable moments in "This Above All" as the gentle clergyman and in "None Shall Escape" as the fanatical Nazi leader which in Knox's hands had the sharpness of a steel engraving.
So Knox is a star, but like many of the newer stars, he doesn't fit into the star system; and when enough people don't fit a system it is the system that has to be changed.
I don't disagree with Hilton—about either the actor or the system—but if the latter had changed to accommodate the former in the mid-'40's, I wouldn't have spent these last ten years of my semi-professional life banging my head against the exact intractability of classical Hollywood to know what to do with its actors of whatever gender who couldn't be easily typed or ticky-tackied into marketable components of the dream machine, which are naturally the kind it seems reasonable to me to like best and inclined to be frustrating to follow. In the same way that it fascinates me to encounter criticism of the Production Code at the time of its enforcement, it's useful for me to know that my feelings about the limitations of the traditional star system were shared by its contemporaries, but then it's even more maddening that its operations would not shift meaningfully until the '60's. Justice for Jean Hagen, basically. In other news, I am charmed that Knox was into motorcycles. So was William Wyler around that time; I am glad they never collided.
I forgot to mention when the three robin nestlings fledged and launched, but the current monarch count stands at one chrysalis and four caterpillars. The moon is still wildfire-stained.
It would never have occurred to me that the house style of 20th Century Fox was historical megaflops, but Wilson (1944) is the third to cross my radar after Cleopatra (1963) and The Big Trail (1930): it lost its $5.2 million shirt at the box office and Darryl F. Zanuck died mad that it didn't win Best Picture. In the first edition of John Gassner and Dudley Nichols' Best Film Plays of 1943–44 (1945) which
spatch picked up from the carrel outside the Brattle Book Shop the week before Christmas in 2017, Zanuck is the only producer to have a preface devoted to his published screenplay and it's all on the defensive, primarily against charges of unnecessary expense and boosterism for FDR. It is not majorly concerned with the historical accuracy of the script by Lamar Trotti, which is fine because regardless of whether it has its names and dates in order, it reads like a political fairy tale. How appealing it is to imagine the twenty-eighth President of the United States as a shy dry stick of a boffin animated by an almost supernal honesty and a self-deprecating sense of humor as underestimated as his perseverance, untarnished by failures of civil rights and never so impaired by his stroke that he can't share the joke with his wife of her letting him out of his presidential responsibilities. A kind of sacrificial king of American idealism, broken across a vision that the world is too fallen and fragmented to match him in, classed by the opening titles with the national saints of Washington and Lincoln. Probably it could only have been trounced by the Catholic super-treacle of Going My Way. Hollywood gonif!Pursuing some details about Wilson with the fervor of a person who really does not want to have to watch the damn movie, I found a profile of Alexander Knox by James Hilton in the February 1945 Photoplay and blew a gasket that I hope registered with Harry Cohn's ass:
Knox belongs to the new generation of Hollywood stars who shape so oddly into the category that they are already on their way to changing both Hollywood and the star system [. . .] Indeed, the only possible thing to say is that he's an actor, and that the fame he has secured in "Wilson" neither enforces nor precludes any particular kind of thing he will do next.
In support of this argument one has only to glance at his previous motion picture roles to gather some notion of the man's range. His first Hollywood film was "The Sea Wolf" with Edward G. Robinson, in which he played the shipwrecked author, a man of physical fear but mental courage. After that there were the memorable moments in "This Above All" as the gentle clergyman and in "None Shall Escape" as the fanatical Nazi leader which in Knox's hands had the sharpness of a steel engraving.
So Knox is a star, but like many of the newer stars, he doesn't fit into the star system; and when enough people don't fit a system it is the system that has to be changed.
I don't disagree with Hilton—about either the actor or the system—but if the latter had changed to accommodate the former in the mid-'40's, I wouldn't have spent these last ten years of my semi-professional life banging my head against the exact intractability of classical Hollywood to know what to do with its actors of whatever gender who couldn't be easily typed or ticky-tackied into marketable components of the dream machine, which are naturally the kind it seems reasonable to me to like best and inclined to be frustrating to follow. In the same way that it fascinates me to encounter criticism of the Production Code at the time of its enforcement, it's useful for me to know that my feelings about the limitations of the traditional star system were shared by its contemporaries, but then it's even more maddening that its operations would not shift meaningfully until the '60's. Justice for Jean Hagen, basically. In other news, I am charmed that Knox was into motorcycles. So was William Wyler around that time; I am glad they never collided.
I forgot to mention when the three robin nestlings fledged and launched, but the current monarch count stands at one chrysalis and four caterpillars. The moon is still wildfire-stained.
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That would be an excellent development!
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Fingers crossed!
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Good luck! <3 I am glad to know that there is more sleep, even if inconvenient.
which are naturally the kind it seems reasonable to me to like best and inclined to be frustrating to follow.
Character actors are the best, though. And sometimes they go back to the UK and appear in groundbreaking 1960s forensic dramas with weird young US actors who went the other way round. XD (I feel slightly bad that this really is pretty much the only thing I know him from, barring being (v briefly) in The Damned also with my man, but all I can remember from that was that it was not really v exciting but I enjoyed JM chewing pencils in his 3 minute appearance). Anyway, excuse my flippancy, sorry. Do you need to see Wilson? ;-p
I forgot to mention when the three robin nestlings fledged and launched, but the current monarch count stands at one chrysalis and four caterpillars. The moon is still wildfire-stained.
I'm more admiring your prose than having anything to say here, although best wishes with the monarchs and may the wildfire part move on, of course.
Btw, just had news through that the ME/CFS study I took part in last year or was it the year before? - anyway, they have initial findings that it is possibly genetic, or at least that there are significant differences in sufferer's immune system and neurological results, or something, I need to look at it again, but it's the first time anyone's had anything even remotely solid about the damn thing, so it's a big step forward! (I thought you would like hearing that.)
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Thank you! Unoriginally, I figure that any sleep I get is better than any sleep I don't.
Character actors are the best, though.
Manifestly! It maddens me that Hollywood took so long to get the memo. In some ways I am still not sure they have.
(I feel slightly bad that this really is pretty much the only thing I know him from, barring being (v briefly) in The Damned also with my man, but all I can remember from that was that it was not really v exciting but I enjoyed JM chewing pencils in his 3 minute appearance)
I still really appreciate that you sent me gifs including Alexander Knox's face after your man blew his court appearance.
If you wanted to look for him, The Night My Number Came Up (1955) is a slow-burn supernatural thriller which being an Ealing production has a non-zero chance of coming around on Talking Pictures or otherwise making itself available to you. It's where I first started to notice Knox—character-actor-fashion, he still took a couple of years to flash over—and the rest of the small cast includes Michael Redgrave, Sheila Sim, Denholm Elliott, Michael Hordern, and some other, more bit-part familiar faces. I became really fond of it.
Do you need to see Wilson?
If I am trying to be completist about Knox's American career and if I want to see for myself what his only Oscar nomination was about, it would be prudent if teeth-grinding. On the other hand, I never managed to finish Tennessee Johnson (1942) even for Van Heflin. I do not know what the deal is with actors I care about playing presidents I couldn't care less. I should just count myself lucky that no one ever cast Wendell Corey as Andrew Jackson.
I'm more admiring your prose than having anything to say here, although best wishes with the monarchs and may the wildfire part move on, of course.
Thank you! The air quality has just come down to breathable for the first time in several days, so your wishes worked.
Btw, just had news through that the ME/CFS study I took part in last year or was it the year before? - anyway, they have initial findings that it is possibly genetic, or at least that there are significant differences in sufferer's immune system and neurological results, or something, I need to look at it again, but it's the first time anyone's had anything even remotely solid about the damn thing, so it's a big step forward! (I thought you would like hearing that.)
I do! That's really neat. Both that the information itself exists and that it is partly the product of something you did.
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Ha, yes; this set, was it? XD (Which reminds me, I actually collected so much info on that series which I wrote up for tumblr and kept meaning to share here, but never quite worked out how/what shape it should have, but it did turn into quite a fascinating thing to pursue).
I do not know what the deal is with actors I care about playing presidents I couldn't care less.
At least three of mine have played paedophiles and I'm pretty sure one has even played Adolf Hitler & they've all gone on murder sprees, so these things will happen. I don't really think you should get unpleasantly completist, though!
I do! That's really neat. Both that the information itself exists and that it is partly the product of something you did.
Well, my part was a questionnaire and then some saliva, but yay, yes! \o/ It is the only thing I have ever been able to do in my defence against this horrible thing and I'm glad it turned out to be useful.
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That was it! I was entertained. A+ facepalm, the showrunners obviously agreed.
(Which reminds me, I actually collected so much info on that series which I wrote up for tumblr and kept meaning to share here, but never quite worked out how/what shape it should have, but it did turn into quite a fascinating thing to pursue).
You could still work the shape out, or at least port over the Tumblr links. The great thing about old telly is there's no statute of limitations on discovering and sharing it. I keep telling myself this about movies that everyone else has known about for decades.
At least three of mine have played paedophiles and I'm pretty sure one has even played Adolf Hitler & they've all gone on murder sprees, so these things will happen. I don't really think you should get unpleasantly completist, though!
I appreciate the support! Also the reminder of this sort of thing being a known hazard. I can brace for a certain amount of terrible science fiction, but a presidential biopic just seems a bridge too far.
It is the only thing I have ever been able to do in my defence against this horrible thing and I'm glad it turned out to be useful.
I hope even more useful data comes of it!
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Yes, I really must do that sometime! It turned out to be unexpectedly interesting (from a general pov, rather than just me), because 1960s-early 1980s UK TV drama tended to default to 13 x 50 minute series, so I was used to that, but in 1964, it was in the process of changing over to that from a default of 30 minute episodes, often very anthology-like even when part of a series and an innocuous little forthcoming notice for the show caused Dennis Potter to explode in print as he saw the future of TV coming at him at speed and he didn't like it. XD
he great thing about old telly is there's no statute of limitations on discovering and sharing it. I keep telling myself this about movies that everyone else has known about for decades.
There's not really a statute of limitations on any of it! And, also, everyone? May I remind you, 0/100 noir movies score over here. Make that "everyone but
Also the reminder of this sort of thing being a known hazard. I can brace for a certain amount of terrible science fiction, but a presidential biopic just seems a bridge too far.
With UK TV & film, I get very excited if I find SFF of any sort, but at least one PM, Royal or senior cabinet minister seems to be requisite for all, so you might not want to adopt too many more Brits! (It's the period drama thing, isn't it?)
nd the rest of the small cast includes Michael Redgrave, Sheila Sim, Denholm Elliott, Michael Hordern, and some other, more bit-part familiar faces
*eyes* I did note this rec with interest yesterday, I just forgot to actually type words to say so; I was v tired last night and I got distracted while looking at gifs of JM. <3
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You should absolutely write that up. You had mentioned the diversity of the show's cast, but not how transitionally important it was to the medium overall.
With UK TV & film, I get very excited if I find SFF of any sort, but at least one PM, Royal or senior cabinet minister seems to be requisite for all, so you might not want to adopt too many more Brits! (It's the period drama thing, isn't it?)
Alexander Knox had a surprisingly low hit rate for period dramas! Chalk it up to his Canadianness. He did play the expected number of doctors, barristers, and bureaucrats, the latter being the capacity in which as far as I can tell I saw him first.
I did note this rec with interest yesterday, I just forgot to actually type words to say so; I was v tired last night and I got distracted while looking at gifs of JM.
Legit! I support your interest in non-expectant sort of way. New gifs?
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Ha, no, sorry! Just the easiest way for me to find that set again was just to click on my JM tumblr tag and work back - so that was a fair bit of looking at his face before I got there. XD
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It's nice to know that somebody noticed this stuff, though it is frustrating.
Yay chrysalis and caterpillars! (I saw two gorgeous monarchs in Glendale on Monday.)
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I appreciate people noticing! I just wish it had made a difference.
Yay chrysalis and caterpillars! (I saw two gorgeous monarchs in Glendale on Monday.)
I'm so happy to hear about your local monarchs.
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P.S.: Sleep when you can, smoke 'em if you've got em.
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Thank you so much! He's been decidedly worth it.
I'm especially interested in seeing The Damned as it has completely escaped my notice that it was directed by Losey, although I didn't know Losey from Andre De Toth until I started seeing their movies on "Noir Alley."
It's on Tubi right now if you have the necessary adblock. It was actually my introduction to Losey—I've never written formally about it, although I have a dozen-year-old note about "a sort of gloriously trashy premise out of which it then makes very restrained and upsetting science fiction." The two of his that I have managed to write about are The Prowler (1951) and Time Without Pity (1957). My experience of de Toth got off on the wrong foot with Ramrod (1947), but improved considerably with the close succession of Crime Wave (1954) and Pitfall (1948). That said, None Shall Escape has been the hands-down, no-contest, did-someone-get-the-number-of-that-history knockout. It's still in my head and I don't expect it to leave.
None Shall Escape (which I've not seen, nor even heard of before you wrote about it) sounds harrowing. How would you compare it to The Mortal Storm (which I have seen)?
Without having seen The Mortal Storm, I can't! I feel like our all our film recommendations tessellate. I have the secondhand impression it's more oblique, so what's your assessment of it?
And as for Wilson -- as opposed to Wilson which I haven't seen and probably never will -- fuck that racist asshole. And, finally, who the hell makes a movie about Andrew freaking Johnson?! Watch that and you'll be spitting out wood shavings from the bottom of the barrel!
MGM in 1942! When all stops of patriotism could be pulled out regardless of mendacity. I watched about three-quarters of it one night in 2016 because it was on TCM and starred Van Heflin in the pre-Oscar phase of his career when the studio was even more than normally throwing him at anything that looked like it might stick and I just tapped out. It's come around on TCM since and I've never finished it. I would watch Heflin read the phone book, but the phone book didn't fuck up Reconstruction.
P.S.: Sleep when you can, smoke 'em if you've got em.
"So I suggest, if anybody's holding, drop it before the fuzz arrives."
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I remember it being pretty powerful. It's not oblique, surprisingly so for being a pre-war (for the U.S.) release from a major studio (MGM). It focuses closely on one Jewish family in a small mountain town (Bavaria, I guess?) in 1933, and how Nazism turns people and eventually institutions into monsters. It would be high on my programming list for the anti-MAGA network or streaming provider that is so badly needed now.
"So I suggest, if anybody's holding, drop it before the fuzz arrives."
Sorry, I had to look that one up. While I've seen Nights of Cabiria, I've not yet seen Sweet Charity. My wife recently mentioned wanting to watch All That Jazz; maybe we'll make it a Fosse double-feature.
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That's good to know, and I'm glad to hear it. I hadn't assumed it was totally nerfed, since the Somerville ran it in May as part of the second round of their sadly perennial F**ck the Nazis! repertory series, but the degree of euphemism present even in otherwise solidly anti-Nazi Hollywood films is one of the reasons None Shall Escape felt like such an unfiltered blast.
It would be high on my programming list for the anti-MAGA network or streaming provider that is so badly needed now.
I will try to make time to see it. I am sure, thematically, it will come round again.
Sorry, I had to look that one up. While I've seen Nights of Cabiria, I've not yet seen Sweet Charity. My wife recently mentioned wanting to watch All That Jazz; maybe we'll make it a Fosse double-feature.
I haven't seen Sweet Charity since early adolescence and it may not hold up beyond the choreography! Its ending struck me as bogus at the time. That line has just mutated into an occasional household phrase.
My father showed me All That Jazz. It's one of his favorite films.
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Nazi Punks Fuck Off
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You are correctly unshocked, but that doesn't mean I won't listen to it any time.
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I heard about it when it came out, but I have not seen it! A banger of a soundtrack and a lot of dead Nazis sound suitably cathartic to me.
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We watched it tonight, and enjoyed it very much. Towards the end, my wife asked "Did he die?" and I replied, "Not yet. He's making a production of it."
Thank you, thank you, don't forget to tip your server....
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I tried the borscht, will you be here all week?
(I'm glad you enjoyed it!)
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You did, though diurnal is a Menotti opera too far.
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It is cruel and inhumane to hold slide lectures before noon.
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I wrote a bunch of stuff that's probably illegal in red states, but it hasn't got any connecty-up bits and now I have to go Circadian myself with a cast-iron skillet. I blame capitalism.
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They did in the pre-palatial era of our college years!
I wrote a bunch of stuff that's probably illegal in red states, but it hasn't got any connecty-up bits and now I have to go Circadian myself with a cast-iron skillet. I blame capitalism.
I look forward to the connectors and it is definitely capitalism's fault.
*hugs*
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How appealing it is to imagine the twenty-eighth President of the United States as ... [etc.] --When nowadays, that's SO NOT who he is to us. The civil rights stuff.....
Pursuing some details about Wilson with the fervor of a person who really does not want to have to watch the damn movie... --I so feel you on this. So feel you.
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If Ralph Richardson had been tearing around Hollywood in the '40's, I wouldn't have placed any bets.
(They did almost collide professionally in that Wyler wanted Knox for the romantic role of the minister in How Green Was My Valley (1941), but he was replaced by Walter Pidgeon when John Ford took over production. On the one hand, the original production schedule would have kept him out of The Sea Wolf (1941) and I am incredibly reluctant to lose Van Weyden. Counterpoint, that's the second time now I have heard about a casting choice of Wyler's that would have been so much more interesting than what actually made it to the screen.)
--When nowadays, that's SO NOT who he is to us. The civil rights stuff.....
It is a useful sort of reality check for me since it is a fact that I spend most of my time by preference in the weirder corners of Hollywood which are both more personally congenial and invaluable counterprogramming to conservative rewrites of history, but it does mean that every time I really trip over something from the heart of the Production Code, I get laid up for a week.
--I so feel you on this. So feel you.
We can keep on not watching Wilson!
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Thank you! I definitely do not feel that I have a sleep schedule at this point, but it is still happening.