In
1945, Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend was a big deal. If it wasn’t the
first Hollywood movie to portray alcoholism as a serious problem, then it was
certainly the most visible and influential one.
In
the latter 1940s, Hollywood’s output changed from the sunshine-feel
good-entertainments that the Golden Age had produced in the 30s and early 40s.
American GIs came home from the war, and many were disillusioned and cynical.
The war was the catalyst for Americans to “grow up.†They were ready to accept
more serious, darker fare. Thus, we got film noir—crime pictures that
were full of angst and betrayals—and we got the “social problem film.†The
latter tackled subjects that Hollywood had previously never touched—alcoholism,
racism, anti-Semitism, government corruption, and drug abuse. Titles like Gentleman’s
Agreement, All the King’s Men, Pinky, and The Lost Weekend,
which kick-started the trend.
Starring
Ray Milland in a harrowing performance as Don Birnam, a hopeless drunk in
Manhattan, the picture presents a “realisticâ€â€”for the time—depiction of a
weekend bender, a binge complete with DTs and night terrors. Jane Wyman costars
as Birnam’s long-suffering girlfriend, Helen. From the get-go, she sympathizes
with Birnam and haplessly attempts to help him with his problem. Birnam’s
brother, Wick (Phillip Terry), also indulges him, although he’s at the point of
giving up.
The
movie’s gritty wake-up call was likely the reason it won the Academy Awards for
Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (by Wilder and Charles
Brackett, based on the novel by Charles R. Jackson), and Best Actor (Milland).
That
said, today The Lost Weekend has problems. Billy Wilder was one of the
great Hollywood writer-directors, and his handling of the material is fine.
Milland deserved his Oscar win, although he’s often over the top—which perhaps
underscored the horror of the film’s subject matter. The difficulty that
today’s audiences will have with the film is its naivete. For one thing, Helen must
be nuts and a glutton for punishment to stick around Birnam for over three
years. The biggest sin is the abrupt “everything’s going to be okay†ending,
which will assuredly cause one’s eyes to roll.
In
many ways, there’s not too fine a line between The Lost Weekend and some
of the better cheap exploitation films about drug abuse and teen sex that were
made outside of Hollywood and were exhibited in the manner of a sleazy
sideshow. The difference is that Weekend had a big budget, stars, and
the benefit of being backed by a major studio and was made in Hollywood. The sensationalism
and morality-play aspects, though, are the same.
Kino
Lorber’s new high definition restoration looks darned good, despite some visual
artifacts here and there. The audio commentary by film historian Joseph McBride
delves into the production history and offers interesting anecdotes. The
supplements include the complete radio adaptation starring Milland and Wyman,
plus a “Trailers from Hell†segment with Mark Pellington narrating. Theatrical
trailers for this and other Kino Lorber releases round out the package.
Make
no mistake—The Lost Weekend is an important American picture that broke
new ground. One must always judge a movie within the context of when it was
made and released. Nevertheless, 75 years has not been kind to the film.
For
fans of Billy Wilder, cinema history, and a stiff drink.
The
Christopher Guest “Ensemble†was on a roll after the success of the wonderful Best
in Show (2000), which in turn was the follow-up to the brilliant Waiting
for Guffman (1996). I informally call it the “Ensemble†because
actor/writer/director Guest tends to make ensemble pictures featuring a stock
company of ridiculously talented comic actors. Not all the actors appear in
each Christopher Guest movie, but familiar faces are in every title.
It
all began, really, with This is Spinal Tap (1984), which Guest did not
direct (Rob Reiner did), but Guest and his partners in comedy, Michael McKean
and Harry Shearer, were likely the driving forces behind this “mockumentaryâ€
about a fictional rock band. The mockumentary genre, of course, is a comedy
that is presented as if it’s a documentary. Spinal Tap was a massive hit
and became a cult movie. It wasn’t until a little over a decade later that
Guest pulled together some of the same creative team to make Guffman,
which was about a small town community theatre (McKean and Shearer do not
appear in it, but they co-wrote the songs with Guest). More importantly, the
film featured the fabulous SCTV alumni Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, who
are today basking in the deserved success of their TV show Schitt’s Creek.
Other Guest stalwarts were in the cast as well, such as Fred Willard, Parker
Posey, and Bob Balaban.
Best
in Show was
next, and this time McKean was back along with Levy, O’Hara, Posey, Willard,
and others. This one, about the world of dog shows/competitions, was extremely
popular, and it paved the way for A Mighty Wind, a send-up of the folk
music scene of the 1960s. Interestingly, the Coen Brothers tackled the same
subject a decade later with Inside Llewyn Davis in a more serious vein, but the brothers put together an authentic live
concert featuring many real folk acts in much the same way that A Mighty Wind brings together several fictional folk acts for a contemporary reunion
concert in the film.
The Spinal Tap boys are back (Guest, McKean,
Shearer) as The Folksmen. The New Main Street Singers is a parody of a New Christy
Minstrels-style large ensemble group and feature John Michael Higgins, Jane
Lynch, Parker Posey, Paul Dooley, and others. Finally, the duo Mitch &
Mickey (Levy and O’Hara) were a couple back when they made records, but there
was a painful breakup. They haven’t spoken in decades—but they’ve agreed to
perform again for the reunion concert being mounted by the promoter and son
(Balaban) of the bands’ deceased music producer.
All of Guest’s films are improvised by the cast. In
many ways, Guest is the Robert Altman of comedy. Every performer here nails his or her
character—and they’re all excellent singers and musicians to boot! The songs
are clever and hilarious, especially those by The Folksmen. Mitch &
Mickey’s love ballad, “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow,†is such a
crowd-pleaser that it was nominated for Best Song at the Oscars (written by
McKean and Annette O’Toole) and both Levy and O’Hara performed it at the
Academy Awards ceremony of 2004.
The Warner Archive has ported over their original
DVD to high definition, and it looks great. All of the supplements from that
edition are present, too—a wonderful audio commentary by Guest and Levy; loads
of deleted and additional scenes; the complete reunion concert without edits;
the complete “vintage TV appearances†by the bands, of which only excerpts are
seen in the finished film; and the theatrical trailer. This reviewer especially
likes the deleted scene in which The Folksmen argue about the lyrics to a song
that contains the phrase, “Hey Nonny No, Nanny Ninny Noâ€â€”or is it “Hey Nonny
No, Nonny Ninny O� (Apparently there’s an iron clad rule—Nonny comes before Ninny!)
Oddly, the only supplement from the DVD that does not appear here are the
“biographies†of the bands that were static screen text displays, but this being
missing is negligible.
A Mighty Wind is well worth the upgrade to Blu-ray. The movie is a heck of a lot of
fun, full of laughs and charm, and you’ll find yourself humming the tunes
later. Highly recommended.
For
a while, it didn’t look like we’d get to see Woody Allen’s most recent film, A
Rainy Day in New York. Amazon Studios had been the company behind it, but
when the #MeToo movement exploded in 2017 while the movie was in production,
decades-old allegations against the filmmaker resurfaced, and Amazon dropped
the picture. It had originally been slated for a 2018 release, but the search
for a new distributor took another year. Finally premiering in Poland in 2019,
and ultimately in the U.S. in 2020, A Rainy Day brought Woody fans back
to an alternate universe Manhattan that exists only in the pictures of Woody Allen.
It’s
very typical Woody Allen stuff, yet another valentine to his beloved
city. In fact, for fans of the filmmaker’s work, in many ways it’s a somewhat
refreshing return to a milieu of decades past in which a new picture by Allen
would evoke the illusion that we’re in a Manhattan that exists only in the
universe of Woody Allen movies. A Rainy Day in New York is about upper
class, snobby, intellectual young people who seem to have stepped out of the
1970s and into today. Therein lies the rub, as one might find these characters
a little difficult to believe as real in the year 2020.
Nevertheless,
it’s decent middle-of-the-road fare for Woody Allen. Since the New Millennium,
the director’s output has been hit and miss (and more miss). This is an
in-between. It’s enjoyable and will bring back much of the vibe that admirers
of Allen’s work once felt when viewing his movies. For those who have turned
their backs on the filmmaker, it will likely be a turn-off.
The
actors are winning and attractive, even if their characters and dialogue are
out of another era. The script may be phone-in Woody, but there are some funny
lines and charming, sweet sequences that typify his pictures. Vittorio
Storaro’s cinematography provides a gorgeous view of the city, and there’s no
question that this is indeed a handsome, feast of a visual production.
MPI’s
Blu-ray release is a no-frills package with no bonus features, but it looks
marvelous. If you’re a fan, you’ll probably have a pleasant hour-and-a-half with
A Rainy Day in New York. It will remind you of a time when a new Woody
Allen film was an event, and the bittersweetness of the nostalgia will
permeate your viewing. It’s too bad that the movie has so much… baggage.
Turner
Classic Movies (TCM) has lately been getting into the publishing business with
such tomes as The Essentials (two volumes) and now this
handsomely-designed and intricately-researched book on some of the lesser
known, somewhat sensational stories from Hollywood’s past.
Written
by popular Instagrammer Carla Valderrama (@thiswashollywood and
@thiswasfashion), This Was Hollywood—Forgotten Stars & Stories (published by Running Press) presents
a bundle of Tinsel Town tales that have a slightly tabloid feel to them, and
yet they are as irresistible as a sighting of your favorite star at Hollywood
and Vine. Many of these accounts come from the long, lost vaults of movieland
history.
For
example, the book opens with the early beginnings of the town of Hollywood and
how the “movies†(as the people in the budding film industry were called
by the locals) took over and turned the sleepy community into one of the
world’s most well-known cities. There’s a piece on the first movie star,
Florence Lawrence, who was so popular that when she moved from Biograph Studios
to IMP, she was promised that she would receive an actual billing of her name
on screen. You’ll learn the remarkable story of how Rin Tin Tin was found,
brought to America, and trained to be one of the biggest stars of the silent
era.
Some
of the stories you might know. There will be more that you didn’t. Clark
Gable’s love child. Sessue Hayakawa’s years as a “sex symbol.†Olivia de
Havilland’s lawsuits against Warner Brothers. Marni Nixon and her
“ghost-singing†for famous actresses in musicals. And much, much more.
The
hardcover edition comes with a lovely jacket that feels remarkably nice
in one’s hands. Kudos to the designers of both the exterior and especially the interior,
which is lavishly illustrated.
In
short, there is enough silver screen archaeology and anthropology here to make
any Hollywood history enthusiast salivate.
Also
available in e-book and audiobook formats (although the latter would surely be
missing the great visuals), This Was Hollywood is highly recommended.
The
widespread COVID-19 pandemic which took hold at the end of 2019 has made its
way around the globe and looks like the sort of thing one would expect to see
in either a David Cronenberg or George A. Romero film. Mr. Cronenberg has made a
career out of making films which essentially depict human beings experiencing
their bodies revolting against themselves while the late Mr. Romero directed a
series of zombie films wherein droves of flesh-eating, reanimated corpses,
presumably brought back to life by radiation emitted from a space probe
returning from Venus that blew up in Earth’s atmosphere, wreak havoc among the living.
Both directors present simultaneously dark and comedic visions of humanity, and
we all now find ourselves in a precarious scenario that one would equate to the
nightmares conjured up by these filmmakers since the quarantine orders took
hold some seven months ago and show no signs of being relaxed anytime soon. Few,
if any, of the Times Square revelers ringing in 2020 could have foreseen the
rug being suddenly and viciously ripped out from underneath our feet three
months hence.
By
the time he got around to shooting his first feature film between August and
September in 1974, Mr. Cronenberg had already accumulated a good number of
short films and television work under his belt. His most well-known early works
consists of Transfer (1966), From the Drain (1967), Stereo
(1969), and Crimes of the Future (1970). Following three years of
television shorts/documentaries, Shivers (1975) slithered its way into
the Cinerama II in New York on Tuesday, July 6, 1976 under the title of They
Came From Within, a title I always preferred. It was shown on a double bill
with Mark W. Lester’s Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw. Set in the Starliner Apartment
complex, the sort of milieu that today stands as a dreaded COVID-19 petri dish,
Shivers is eerily prescient in its depiction of a virus run rampant. Dr.
Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlein of 1981’s Scanners) forces his way into
Annabelle’s (Cathy Graham, her sole screen credit) apartment. A fight ensues
and he kills her, then performs a horrific procedure on her body prior to
committing suicide. He is obviously trying to stop the spread of something
ghastly. Nick Tudor (Alan Migicovsky of 1974’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy
Kravitz) is another tenant who suffers from stomach pains and his behavior
is unorthodox. It comes to light when Rollo Linsky (Joe Silver, who would also
appear in David Cronenberg’s Rabid in 1977) confesses to Dr. Roger St.
Luc (Paul Hampton from 1972’s Lady Sings the Blues), the Starliner physician
who finds Hobbes and Annabelle, that he and Hobbes, his medical colleague, were
experimenting to produce a parasite that can be inserted into the body for the
purpose taking over the function of a failed human organ. This may work in
theory, however in practice things go wildly out of control.
Little
by little, we see various tenants get sick as a phallic-like bloody organism
travels from host to host with what initially appears to be an unexpected side
effect: everyone affected becomes sexually aggressive. Linsky later confesses to
St. Luc that sexual arousal was the intention from the get-go. Hobbes’s effort
was to return people to their natural sexual desires and to squash their
over-intellectual tendencies. Nick is now in the same sexual state as the
others and attempts to force sex on his wife Janine (Susan Petrie, who bears a
resemblance to Michelle Pfeiffer in her early years) who seeks refuge from her
lesbian friend Betts (Barbara Stelle in a fun cameo) who passes the parasite
onto Janine, and the other residents, including a dishabille nurse (Lynn Lowry)
who is involved with the doctor. Soon, the infection spreads throughout the
building until it turned into “Night of the Horny Tenantsâ€. The final scene is very
calm and humorous as it suggests that the cure to society’s ills is a “happy
endingâ€, one that director Cronenberg offers the tenants. The same cannot be
said for poor Candy Carveth in the final moments of arguably his best film,
1979’s The Brood.
The
original shooting title was Orgy of the Blood Parasites and the French
title was FrissonsThe Parasite Murders. Audiences may be
surprised to see the inclusion of Ivan Reitman’s name, best known for producing
the comedies Stripes (1981) and Ghostbusters (1984) among many
others, but everyone has to start somewhere. I recall this fact being touted on
the Vestron VHS cassette: “From the makers of GHOSTBUSTERS…†It’s gory kills
notwithstanding, Shivers itself is a comedy of sorts, satirizing society
a gone wild.
The climaxes of these films make one wonder
what is next in store for humanity. It would seem that we all have the
potential of being wiped out not by parasites or flesh eating zombies, but
rather by human indifference and a perplexing failure on the part of citizens
to simply wear a face mask and remain away from one another. It would not
surprise me to see Mr. Cronenberg tackle this motif at some point down the
road.