Has just posted a new poem with one of my early teen collages. You can view the entry at this link.
https://www.facebook.com/chad.parenteau.poetforhire/posts/
pfbid0Dczw6RZhGoMRb8r1M1NmTT27JdZWMNEAzjZWa6i
SdCBPVJbvj9LFZoiHkwXFtnjal
Joseph
L. Mankiewicz’s storied career and reputation pretty much rests on
two movies “A Letter To Three Wives” in 1949 and “All About
Eve” in 1950. The films were huge hits and won him back to back
Oscars for writing and directing, the only director ever to do so.
Both films were and still are sophisticated witty dramas with smart
and funny dialogue and a big shopping bag full of memorable
performances. Mankiewicz comes from a historically important family
of writers including his older brother Herman who wrote the script
for a little movie called “Citizen Kane”.
It’s
after these two classics that for me his career fell down and bruised
it’s knees with failed films both critically and at the box office.
Like many of the giants of the golden age Cukor, Minnelli, Ford,
Vidor, Stevens and even Hitchcock these great talents ended their
careers on sorry notes with films that failed more or less with the
critics and audiences alike. Still there are supporters of these
films among contemporary critics and movie goers today who cherish,
love and defend these films.
Mankiewicz
also petered, out ending his career with “Sleuth” and “There
Was A Crooked Man”. Sleuth based on a play did well at the box
office and even got him his final Oscar nomination for Directing, but
I recall not liking it. His films right after “Eve” were an
uneven bunch, “Julius Caesar”, “Guys and Dolls” and the
Tennesse Williams horror gothic show “Suddenly Last Summer” which
is famous for Katherine Hepburn spitting in Mankiewicz’s face
at the end of the filming because of his sour horrible treatment of
the fragile Montgomery Clift and Liz Taylor’s white tight fitting
bathing suit.
I took another look at Suddenly the other day
to see if it was indeed the mess that most consider it to be or an
unrecognized masterwork. It's a mess. Set in 1937 in New Orleans that
is never seen, most of the action of this stage bound film takes
place in Mrs. Violet Venable's mansion and the prehistoric gothic
looking decaying garden that her beloved late son Sebastian a poet
created. The garden is fun, it has an almost animated look to it, and
has the appearance of something created for “King Kong's scary
jungle scenes or a ride at Disneyland.
Sebastian the poet
would write only one poem a year after traveling with his mother on
trips across the ocean to Europe and other exotic locations. What his
mother would do when young and attractive was to procure young men
for her boy knowingly or unknowingly we never find out she's like the
venus fly trap that figures prominently in an early part of the film.
When his mom became too old for the procuring of young Sebastian's
boy toys he talks Catherine into taking her place in his summertime
journey.
Mrs. Venable played with static and familiar
Katharine Hepburn mannerisms is having problems with her niece
Catherine who has secrets about her son that she has been hiding and
its taking a toll on her mental stability. Her aunt has game, and
uses it to toss about the temptation of lots of money to a falling
apart hospital if the doctors there will perform a lobotomy on her to
render her silent and bury those troublesome stories about her
beloved son. The physicist-surgeon is played by a worn out looking
Montgomery Clift who had his own problems both on and off the screen.
It is at one of the locations called Cabeza de Lobo which translates as Wolf Head (Williams was great at naming his characters and locations) that Sebastian comes to a horrible end, paying dealing for being a homosexual. The film is needless to say homophobic and troubling for the time and still is especially the scenes in flashback of an unseen Sebastian being chased by many young male street urchins through the bleached white streets of Cabeza who pounce on him and tear him to pieces devouring his flesh. Of course this is silly cannibalism, but mixing it up together in some witch's brew along with homosexuality the maker's of this late 50's puddle added to the fear and hatred of homosexuals and it's especially nasty knowing that Tennessee was gay as was Gore Vidal the writer of the screenplay, and the male lead Montgomery Clift.
Ratcatcher 1999
I was going to write about Ernst Lubitsch's sweet 1940 pastry of a movie “The Shop Around The Corner” until I saw Lynne Ramsay's debut film “Ratcatcher: the other night. This one jolted me out of M,G.M. land into a depressed and rough area of Glasgow during a terrible and long garbage strike of 1975. You can almost smell the stench of the rot coming through the 100's and 100's of bagged up garbage and dead rodents. The focus is on one torn family Da, Ma and their three children made up of 2 young girls and a sensitive lonely young boy James 12 years old and acted by a non actor William Eadie in a wonderful big eared performance. This is not an uncommon story and has been told many times in literature, films and life. I was reminded of the recent books by the fine writer Douglas Stuart who has written two great novels “Young Mungo” and “Shuggie Bain” both set in a similar tattered Glasgow landscape as “Ratcatcher” and also has young troubled boys as the center focus.
One day a terrible incident happens
at the beginning of the film, down by the polluted canal that runs
near the shattered housing estates one of which James lives in with
his troubled family. This is the pull of the film and Young James's
life. James dreams of a better life for his family with hopes of
moving into a better place to live and there is a lovely sequence
where James takes a bus ride to an housing estate that is under
construction where he wanders the buildings sitting in a not yet
installed bathtub and taking a leak in a not yet installed toilet his
urine spilling out on the floor after which he roams through a lovely
field outside the unit which is a recurring image in the film.
He
takes up with a slightly older and sexually experienced girl in the
neighborhood Margaret Anne well played by Leanne Mullen who is a
sexual toy for some of the older boys in the neighborhood, who takes
James under her tattered wings, Their relationship is chaste but
sexual and their scenes together are both touching, awkward and
dangerous. Especially lovely is their shared bathing in her bathtub
where they wash each other and James looks for lice in her hair a
sequence that is echoed in a previous scene of his mom looking for
lice in his hair. His Da and Ma are acted with reality by Tommy
Flanagan who has two visible scars on his face from a real life
mugging incident and Mandy Matthews as his much put upon mother. Da
drinks and Ma worries. The movie has been restored by Criterion with
necessary subtitles as the Glasgow accents are dense, and without
them much would be lost. I add this film about young adolescent boys
to my list of favorites including The 400 Blows, Kes, The Little
Fugitive, Night of The Hunter, Afraid of The Dark, Moonlight, Lelo, The Long Day
Closes
The
plot is familiar for a crime movie, except the gangsters are now part
of a syndicate instead of the mafia. Using cheap looking sets with no
on location footage of New York which is a shame and would have added
much to the atmosphere. Instead we get window views of black and
white blowups of the skyline, with a few whiffs of smoke blowing past
it.
The cast is headed by Broderick Crawford as the main man
of the New York branch of the syndicate who lives well and easy with
his mama mia and his good looking distraught and unhappy daughter
played by a gorgeous Anne Bancroft. Crawford delivers his usual
blustery performance, that seems left over from his Oscar winning
performance in “All The King's Men.”
Bancroft who was
wasted in film (“Gorilla At Large” is a good bad example) finally
gave up on the movies and headed back to New York where she starred
in “The Miracle Worker” on Broadway and started her march to fame
and an Oscar.
Things in gangster land are falling apart what
with rival gang fighting and hits, investigations, bribes and
kickbacks to congressmen so Crawford calls on Richard Conte who is a
hit man in Chicago to take down a few rival gangsters, which leads to
Crawford hiring him for a permanent place in the New York syndicate.
Peopled with a good supporting cast including J. Carrol
Naish, Marilyn Maxwell, Mike Mazurki and lots of familiar character
actors all doing the best they can do with the somewhat familiar
material and production values below par. Directed and co written by
Russell Rouse who also co wrote and co directed the well received
little 1951 film “The Well” about a little African American girl
who falls down a well and the racial turmoil in the small town where
the film takes place. “New York Confidential” would have
benefited if a better director like Sam Fuller, Anthony Mann or Henry
Hathaway had helmed it and would have brought their snap, crackle and
pop to it. The cinematography by Eddie Fitzgerald is lackluster and
has a t.v. look to it which is no doubt because he was mainly a
cinematographer for the little box. Russell who was married for a
long time to that dynamite bombshell Beverly Michaels would have done
much better with her in the Marilyn Maxwell part.
The ending is
good and cynical but is marred by some awful narration which was
common back in the day.
The Fall 2013
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