Luck's not on Clooney's side with Good Night and Good Luck

Good Night and Good Luck has been a movie that I have avoided for around 10 years now because 1) I wasn’t well acquainted with the main subject of the film: famed newscaster and journalist Edward R. Murrow’s fight against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his criminal methods of rooting out suspected communists in American society and 2) to me, from its previews, the film looked extremely boring. I know it is unfair to judge a film by its promotional ads. There have been many films, too many for me to count, that I have written off as shallow or simply not entertaining by a glib rendering of its most interesting scenes. Then after viewing the film, I have come away with a lesson on not judging books by their shitty cliff notes.But after watching I understood something. This movie isn’t extremely boring. It is excruciatingly, unbelievably, almost criminally boring to the point where it’s avoidance of any dynamism whatever seems skillful on the part of director George Clooney and even the cast! What a disappointment.

Many, I know, will disagree with my feelings for this movie. Even my hero, Ebert, gave it 4 stars. My experience clearly differs from the average viewer and legendary film critics entirely. This is almost completely incomprehensible as there is hardly any episode in recent political history that holds more drama, more fascinating characters and incites more outrage than does McCarthyism of the 1950s. My knowledge of it until recently has been very touch and go. I knew terms like ‘Red Scare’ and ‘Political Witch Hunt’ and names such as Elia Kazan, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart but hardly anything in depth about it. After watching a biography channel doc on John Garfield, I became aware that his short career was marred by an accusation from the McCarthy board that he was a communist spreading un-American sentiment through the films that he produced. Interested in knowing how an almost baseless accusation would poison such an illustrious career, I did some research. I found that Joseph McCarthy was a soldier turned politician imbued with undue power by a vulnerable American public terrified of a nuclear attack from Russia and a Republican party succumbed by the same fear coupled with a single minded reliance on the adage “an ounce of prevention Is worth a pound of cure.” Using his influence as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations he alleged that one person after the other was either a communist or a communist sympathizer usually with little or no evidence.  Edward R. Murrow attack on McCarthy and his methods was unprecedented in a time where the CBS evening news was more for entertainment than a platform for serious investigative journalism. Murrow stayed on top of McCarthy’s goings on, joining the list of the senator’s many carpers early. He turned his dislike of the man into nerve enough to launch an attack on McCarthy’s handling of investigations within the State Department and the man himself. His hard hitting expose of McCarthy’s questionable methods eventually created enough ire to condemn McCarthy in the public, the senate and finally in the annals of American History. Murrow’s drive against McCarthy despite the resistance from his network and the risk of ending up on the black list himself represents the best of Journalism. It demonstrates a dedication to truth and almost reckless disregard of personal safety on par with Woodward and Berstein and even Julian Assange in a way.

This is a linear delineation of the facts of this period and in communicating these facts, the film is successful. I know what happened. The problem is, I don't really know why. What Clooney's production gains in historical accuracy and detail, it loses in the pure art of storytelling. In Clooney's production all of the action happens within clips from the era showing footage of McCarthy himself, the trials of his victims and interviews with those involved. The characters (Clooney as Fred Friendly, Murrow's producer, Robert Downey Jr. as Joseph Wershba, another journalist, Patricia Clarkson as his wife Shirley Wershba, Frank Langella as William Paley, CBS chairman and David Straithairn as Murrow) surround these clips in limp scenes where clever intelligent dialogue is whispered drolly to one another with all of the energy of your 10th grade geometry teacher  in 6th period. Each of these actors, all boasting a well known personal charm and charisma have all seemed to dial back these attributes to play these serious news people convincingly. Even Clooney and Downey Jr., usual powerhouses of personal charisma, walk in and out of the movie with all the energy and magnetism of, well an aging jaded movie critic.The movie doesn't give them enough room to, well, act. Running a tight 93 minutes, The film is too tightly wrapped around its good intentions to develop characters and create relationships that are meaningful to the audience. Staihairn's performance as Murrow basically amounts to a stiff list of characteristics. In the film's estimation, Murrow is only a tight lip, a low brow, a deep voice and one expression: somber and resolute. And of course an ever present cigarette held loosely between two fingers. His words echo the real Murrow and even contain the gravity of the journalist, but there is a distance that the film never allows us to overcome. Who is Murrow? What was his motivation for fighting McCarthy? Because he's a journalist and that's what journalists do? Well that gives him as much depth as The Man in the Yellow Hat. It's History with a capital 'H' that we're dealing with, but we're also dealing with the people involved.

Hating Critics and Why it's Stupid

 Ok, so this. I just watched a video where an actor in a production of The Little Mermaid said "the critics hated it, but that's only because they have an axe to grind hee hee." It's that type of attitude that really stands in the way of good art. Critics evaluate what's in front of them based on the production's merits and follies. It's a job that can only be written with integrity or you literally risk your credibility and paycheck (for professionals). When you say in response to a bad critique "they just mad" then you call yourself out for being oversensitive and incapable of growing. If you don't give a shit about critiques, fine. However, blaming imaginary beefs among critics and producers is dumb. Most people have this view of critics as lonely, disturbed and above all else bitter bitches butt hurt over something in their past. Their path as critics is a way on unleashing hell on a world that has hurt them. You see this type of depiction in "Ratatouie" for instance. But it's important for a layman to realize that this image of the bitter critic is circulated by the artists themselves. They've crafted this idea of criticism as only a revenge activity for the emotionally damaged. In fact, it's a job. Someone with experience has to tell others if this art has merit. Doing so can save money, time for film goers which are among the most important things in our lives. It can also have an edifying influence on the film industry itself. Without critics to check them, producers could technically put any self-aggrandizing nonsense they want on screen and audiences would have to put up with it. Instead critics provide the balance to an industry that desperately needs it. Their services are undermined however when artists in the production distregard their words as fodder for hate. Can it be fun to tear into a movie that you don't like? Yes. Is it even better to be swept off your feet by a great film? Absolutely. Much better. If you give me something gross to digest, don't be mad if I spit it back up.

I care a lot: what the actual fuck is this movie?

 

SPOILER ALERT 📢 

Netflix: Are you serious? You can't be serious with this movie! I knew when this movie laden with oscar winners and nominees was released in February, a month that's considered a graveyard of studio stepchildren, that I was in for some shit. But little did I know that I was actually going to feel harrassed and deeply offended by a movie starring some of my favorite actors! I'm not even done watching this movie and I had to stop and express how much I hate it! Maybe it will all come together in the end, you say? Nope. It done fucked up so badly that there is little hope for them to fix this tone-deaf mess.

If you haven't heard of it. Good. Don't watch it. It will seriously piss you off. You will be pissed off during a pandemic about a movie. I shit you not. 

This is what happens. Rosamund Pike subtracts all of the sociopathic satisfaction she aroused in Gone Girl and replaces it with irritating cockiness in her role as Marla Grayson, a con artist who cons old people out of their life savings by convincing a very stupid judge to appoint her as the elder's legal guardian. Her and her network of  illegitimate medical and legal consultants proceed to liquidate the victim's assets and bilk them for all their worth until they die. Ew, right? It's not fun to watch someone do something so icky, I don't care how many off-the-rack designer pant suits they wear. Anyway, Marla learns about a "cherry" from her corrupt doctor partner which propels the events of the film. A "cherry" is 1) a term they use to define an elder who is wealthy with no living dependents or relatives and 2) a gross word to use to refer to an old person, or anyone for that matter. 

This "cherry" is Jennifer Peterson played by freaking treasure Dianne Wiest. With altered records from the doctor, Marla and her associate Fran easily gain a court order to make Marla Jennifer's legal guardian. They steal her house, sell all of her stuff and remand Jennifer to an assisted living facility. The scene where they take her to the facility, shut her in a room and deny her cell phone usage is so frustrating and rage inducing that you'll seriously want to punch Rosamund Pike in those skeletonal cheek bones. But considering how extremely fucked the situation is, we still wait patiently until some kind of justice is done. Well, 2 hours in, I'm still waiting. 

I get it. How can I like Scorsese and not enjoy an anti-hero criminal at the top of their field doing what they do  best and getting away with it? Well, that's because Scorsese films follow a satisfying and well executed story arc. This is not what we have here. We do not have a good storyarc. Why? Because this movie is poorly written, poorly acted, badly directed and clearly suffering from some kind of identity crisis. To make it even worse the movie seems to be angling for some kind of female empowerment message which is laughably unfufilled. 

The beginning of the movie signals a problematic message and  general bull. The film opens with a disheveled man appearing to try to break into a nursing home. The man looks unhinged and we suspect there is something wrong with him. In the court room we learn that Marla is trying to keep the man from seeing his mother, who is one of Marla's charges. Marla with Rosamund Pike's fantastic bob and high fashion looks easily convinces the judge that she is the best possible choice to care for the woman. We would probably be convinced too, but the film employs a running narration of Marla which makes it pretty clear that being good is just something she's not interested in. Actually the narration is kind of fucking irriating too. Marla addresses the audience directly and is all like "you think you're a good person, but you're not. Good is just something normal people do to hide within their weaknesses" or something like that. And you're like, okay, that's annoying af, but you assume its going to connect with something meaninful and intelligent later. I mean, obviously the voice, Marla, is an asshole, but that can't be strictly all she is, right? Well, unload those expectations right now, my friend. Pike's Marla is one dimensional, period. In fact, most of the characters are cartoonish in either their exaggerated ignornance or their exaggerated, unexplained evil. 

Marla, who's identifyer is smart, beautiful lesbian and her partner, who can also be identified with 3 words, beautiful tough...Okay, I can't think of anything else actually, get away with the rouse for a good part of the movie until they learn that Jennifer actually has some powerful friends who begin to threaten Marla to get Jennifer out of the facility. But Marla, who is a stone-faced psycho is never once, not ever, bothered by any threat of physical violence to her person and infact will in any and all situations react with nothing but venom laced quips and a stoic cockiness to these threats. And worse, instead of meeting her challenge, all of the dangerous people she meets falter at her every raised eyebrow.  I guess they just can't handle her because she's a lioness! (she says this several times throughout the movie. It is never not cringy.) She's a lioness, a winner and she never loses. That is why she can get away with all of the unfiltered evil she's been serving. Why is she this way? How did she get into this business? What problems has she surmounted in her life to give her this upfront confidence? These questions that are never answered or addressed even once. 

At one point Marla is tied to a chair in a secluded location in the middle of the night and is threatened by the film's "baddie" Roman played by Peter Dinklage.  Roman is apparently high in the leadership of the Russian Mafia and Jennifer is his mother. We really think that this confrontation will drag some vulnerability out of Pike, you know like normal human reactions to this situation, but no, instead we get quips. You want to murder her mother? "Go ahead. I hate that fucking sociopath." That is about all we get of Marla's backstory and it's pretty unfilling information at explains nothing. 

Given that Marla is in this situation and is only answering the very reasonable calls to simply release Jennifer with endless jokes and hubris, you expect her to die. Unfortunately, she does not. That is Roman's intention, but even though she is put in a pretty much guaranteed die situation, she manages to survive. As irritating as that is, the actual scene is fucking infuriating. Marla is made unconscious, put in a running vehicle with a bottle of vodka between her legs then sent off a cliff. The scene is almost a shot for shot remake of a similar scene in the 1992 melodrama "Death Becomes Her." All it was missing was Bruce Willis and Goldie Hawn kissing triumphantly behind the car as it careens towards the edge. Why would this movie, which is trying to be a smart, biopic thriller, sample a scene from a famous trash comedy? This is a prime example of this movie's entirely confusing tone. Peter Dinklage does angry, violent boss guy so over the top in some scenes that you're not thinking of Tyrion Lannister, you're thinking about the character Dinklage played in the movie Elf. That's how little range he exhibits here. Continuing with this cartoony, Tim Burton movie merged with a scorsese film we have Danny from The Mindy Project who isJennifer and Roman's legal represenative. His acting is OK in this, but the fact that he literally dresses like Colonel Sanders and is described as "dressing expensive" makes me want to laugh during all of his scenes. Am I supposed to laugh? I dunno. I prefer it to the frustration and rage I feel throughout the rest of the film. 

And then we have Dianne Wiest. One of my favorite actresses. She, in this shit cyclone, is the calm center of the film. Her performance in this jumped up Lifetime movie, is good and believable. Her confusion and drugged frustation all appear to be genuine and it's unfortunate that she's in this movie at all or that the director didn't point at her when the other actors asked for guidance. Instead, he told Rosamund Pike to "do Gone Girl without the writing or complexity", Told Peter Dinklage "do Sunny Corleone without the range" and told the writers to "Write the kind of movie where they say the title a lot, unironically."  

At the end of the movie she gets shot by the random due who we met in the beginning. It's supposed to make us feel better and drive home an ulitmate morality message. Instead the last minute comeuppance is insulting and the movie is all the worse for it. If you're going to let your herione be this top notch infallible bitch at least drive home the message to the end. Don't water it down with some half-assssed attempt at justice. Fuck this movie. 

Malcom and Marie: I don't like this movie

       I don't like this movie. It is painful to watch, but probably not in the piercing introspective way that the filmmakers want. Instead it's painful in the exhaustively irritating way that a fly buzzes in your home from an unknown spot, keeping itself cleverly hidden so you don't know where to squash it. The buzzing is interminable and unyielding, with a predictable rhythm that you have a strong instinct to end as soon as possible. It starts out as something you think you can live with and ignore, move past to focus on the things that really matter in life. However, as the buzzing becomes stronger, louder, demanding more and more of your attention, you realize that the monotony of it and it's loud obnoxious insistence on itself cannot be bared. But enough with this metaphor. This is why Malcolm & Marie sends me in search of my fly swatter.

First of all, shut up. Just shut up. Second of all, fuck already. Just fuck already. Or actually don't because he's way too old and you are way too young. It's upsetting. But let's put some details in this shit.

Malcolm & Marie is about a couple who are really wealthy, but apparently have a lot of problems. They may look like a beautiful It couple living lavishly in probably the Hollywood Hills, but actually, they are a fractured, co-dependent sado-masichistic man and woman with exceptional diction and lung capacity. After credits in a style that signal that this is an "art film," we dive in. We learn that following director Malcolm's successful film premiere, former actress/model Marie is mad and the high on life Malcolm doesn't know why. Actually for a good portion of the beginning, he doesn't even notice her attitude. This, for us, the viewers who can feel and see her silent anger, sets Malcolm up as the self-centered asshole who doesn't recognize his beautiful arm candy's feelings. But Marie's feelings don't go unrecognized for long. In the first of one of the films many eloquently delivered, impassioned soliloquies, Marie expresses her disappointment that Malcolm didn't thank her at the premiere. He should have thanked her because she is the former drug addict that Malcolm based his film on. She is the woman "Emony" the damaged protagonist of his masterpiece. And he didn't thank her. So she's mad. 

Marie lets all of this out and we're thanking "you're right, he should have thanked you." Then Malcolm volleys back with "I apologized for not thanking you. You said it was fine at the time." And she's like "I changed my mind." And I'm thinking, you know what, that's fine, you can change your mind and be angry and pick an argument about something that is long past been relevant. The problem I have with the film isn't Marie's insistence that Malcolm doesn't value her and her artisitc and personal contribution to this film and his personal success. This is a problem in many relationships and kudos to the film for examining it. My problem is the relentless way the film keeps hammering home this point over and over again. The film begins a pattern of fight, conclude, attempt carnal reconciliation, and repeat. The pattern becomes so predictable that all of the relevations that are dug out from these interactions become powerless and unfulfilled. The filmmakers, possibly do this intentionally to mimic and reflect the frustrating waltz of "fight, fuck, repeat" that couples fall into sometimes (although no couple, anywhere, fights this eloqently outside of a Shakespeare play), but since the film is so hell bent on showing this elevated, exceptionalized couple fighting and that it's artistic and special, that I get annoyed and it becomes one-note really. 

The power of the performances, the writing which are exceptional. They are, weakens and flattens until you find yourself searching for that fly swatter, as exhausted as the characters must be and in search of your fly swatter to end it. I think after the 3rd of 4th round, we really do want Malcolm or Marie to end the relationship, not for their benefit, but for ours. Release us from this interminable pattern! Only when the film breaks this pattern and shows a fight that does not include "heartbreaking relevations" does it attain any true merit. Malcolm's enraged frustration leveled at the "white lady from LA times" who criticizes his film includes some delightful vitrole directed at "Woke" filmmaking and includes an education in classic film that this reviewer can't help but enjoy. However, just when we think the film is done playing that note, it returns and strangles it until that neck bone chokes to dust. The ending speech by Zendaya is too long. It loses it's affect and is just annoying. I don't feel anything from it. And judging by the way Michael David Whatever struggles to eek out a tear in the face of it, he doesn't either. It's highly indulgent emotional filmmaking and really pretty pretentious in how you just know the filmmaker expects us to eat all of this up and revel in all of the brilliance. I'm sorry, but I don't think this film is brilliant. I think it desperately wants to be and in that relentless search for it, loses any and all hope for it.

 Despite the strong performance by marvel Zendaya. But she's a problem too. She's all of 22 years old. And looks it. How long has she known Malcolm? How could she have known him so long as to have so much history with him? He's 35, and she's 22. When did he meet her, help her through her overdose, write a film with her influence, spend years trying to get it filmed and finally live through that acheivement together. If this relationship is as old and weathered as the fights would have you believe, where is the evidence of that in Zendaya's casting? It felt like the words of someone older, but in a younger package. Which is so Hollywood. But that's another problem. This movie feels like it was conceived, written and made in a Hollywood vaccum. The characters, the setting, their voices are those of an elite group who view their problems, their fights as the stuff of art and you can tell that these are fights that people in the film industry write to elevate and glorify how they are better people because of their passion and how it erupts as eloquent solioquies, not the ignorant stutterings of the masses. But that's what a real fight is. It isn't polished and currated, it's visceral and ineloquent and more interesting than these arguments by far. Just look at a film that this film is obviously referencing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" in that film the protagonists played by Burton and Taylor are smart, witty and cutting, but there words are also random and unfiltered. That's what makes the film a gut punch: there's restraint and authenticity. Even though the word authenticity is repeated an annoying amount throughout this movie, it has very little. 

This film is highly filtered and it's from SnapChat. And it appears not to even realize the ways that it is contributing to the kind of troupes it attacks. There's this whole part where Marie attacks Malcolm's male-gaze film making...while she wears nothing but a tight wife beater and panties! Malcolm comments on this so we're not supposed to notice that low hanging fruit, but it's still true! She's practically naked or sexualized throughout the whole movie. And she's 22, not 32 which would be more realistic. It just doesn't work. I will admit, I wasn't excited to see this movie. I didn't recognize the actors and the style didn't excite me. But that's why I was so excited to be proven wrong. In some ways i was, the performances are stellar and some of the writing too, but the cliches and general lack of restaint in the filmaking, really kills it. It doesn't make it a horrible movie, but it doesn't make it approach good either. Bare with me for a moment with another metaphor: it's like a tennis match that everyone's excited for, and in the beginning it is good. The masterful players are lobbing one shot after another at each other. But then they keep doing it. And keep answering each volley with another slam, and keep going and going and going. The match becomes monotonous. I am no longer excited, I just want to leave. It goes on like this until, when the last spike (i don't know tennis) goes down in the pavement, the player may cheer but we're just like, I don't even care, I'm ready to go. That's Malcolm & Marie.

Movies That Quarantine Makes Better...Kind of: EAT, PRAY, LOVE

So, like all of you, I have time on my hands. Instead of eating and slowly disappearing into my couch I have decided to revive my movie review blog. Because what the hell else are you supposed to do when a virus is streaking outside besides stay inside and watch movies? Discussing movies with my boyfriend is not as satisfying as I want it to be. So, I will come on here and discuss them with all of you possibly infected people. Which movie did it? Which aroused me to the point where I had to shake the dust off this mumblecore post grad soap box? It was Eat, Pray, Love and the fading charm of Julia Roberts.

 I will save the suspense: Eat, Pray, Love is not a good film. People have known this for 10 years. The movie has been out for 10 years. But I watched it again on IMDB TV and I did not think it was as bad as I initially thought. Granted, when I first saw this movie I was just out of college, the ink on my English degree not even dry yet. My job for four years had been to think critically about every piece of art put in front of me and to lampoon it viciously if it did not soak with meaning and verve. Things are different now. I am different. In my organelles, I am different. If my mind were those posters that showed the different parts of a cow, the difference between my mind then and my mind now would be vast. My mind then was leaner, more fertile. There was space to grow. Now, my brain is fatter, its grown bigger with more experience than knowledge. Facing Eat, Pray, Love with this brain, it is better. But in that I realize that my original conclusion was the correct one.

What is wrong with this movie? How can so much add up to so little? I think the issue is this: In the pages of the book, I am sure the journey to find self-love and satisfaction that Liss goes on feels personal and important. But the stretching and stuffing process of filmmaking did not do the story any favors at all. The director, Ryan Murphy, is also the creator of Glee and American Horror Story. Those shows are great, but he got too ambitious with this movie. The pair of them, Roberts and Murphy turned a sweeping journey into a fluffy feel good film with ersatz spirituality whose best moments do not hold a candle to Nora Ephron in her most phoned in screenplays. If the movie had scaled back a bit and settled for just entertaining, it may have been good. But since it wanted to change your life along with Julia Roberts, it falls flat.

 The beginning moments are unbearable. Julia Roberts is beautiful, white, successful, and unhappy, a familiar character that even in 2010 we were kind of done with, right? The reason for her unhappiness is even less clear than the usual reasons given this kind of character. She is gifted in every way, but she just cannot “see herself in the life she’s built,” whatever that means.  She divorces Billy Crudup (who seems to have had layer after layer of talent striped from him every year since Almost Famous. He’s a skinless onion now. a hollow wooden boy puppet man. Did you ever see Stage Beauty? What the fuck happened to Billy Crudup after Stage Beauty?!) and then dives into the bed of the pseudo spiritual James Franco, who is not that bad in the film. I expected him to be a Smith Jerrod type, but he dropped some lines in the right spot so kudos to him. It is one of the only things I’ve seen him in where I haven’t thought he was parodying himself somehow.

So why did I enjoy the film? Well, watching the movie in the comfort of your home, dressed in a giant hoodie after eating an enchilada can make Dude, Where’s My Car look like a masterpiece. But there is more: I appreciate the good parts more than I hate the bad parts now. I can tell the book was well-written because there are several good lines in the film. There are unexpectedly deep words shared between Roberts and Franco. And everyone in the film is trying hard to shade in an extra dimension to their character. At times they even trick you into thinking they are more than just Shutter Stock figures from a “friendly foreign person” search. But only few succeed in doing this. Sadly, not even wearing fuzzy socks everyday all day can change the fact that Eat, Pray, Love wastes all its hype and great actors. Julia Roberts unfortunately, the anchor of the film, is the least multidimensional of all. Behind all her tears and hysterical breakdowns, there does not feel like there is much there. In a movie with a lot of rich food on display, she is as thin and wispy as a wafer. The other actors barely achieve more than Hall Mark Movie character depth with the notable exception of Richard Jenkins as that one-character Roberts meets at an Ashram in India. This phrase is bandied about too often, but Jenkins’ performance deserved a better movie. It is a shame that his warmth and heartbreaking monologue were buried under the Smoltz and predictability of this movie. Javier Bardem was super-hot at that time. It was honestly nice to see his big tearful face again. It was a little annoying though how he, and too many other characters in the film, used sex to describe things that really didn’t need sex as an analogy (“A pluot if is a plum made love to an orange”….really?) All that being said, the best thing that can be said about Eat, Pray, Love is that its shiny beautiful emptiness creates a nice fluffy hole to sink into during quarantine.

"Hot Saturday": Early Cary Grant is Heaven

         

Cary Grant and Nancy Carroll in the film's poster

        In  1932's "Hot Saturday," a rumor rips through a small town and damages an innocent girl's reputation. The film sports a cast of familiar names from pre-code films including Nancy Carroll, Randolph Scott, Jane Darfield and a young Cary Grant looking better than you've probably ever seen him at 28. The movie moves quickly and perhaps a little unevenly through its plot, excelling in some scenes with an easy evocative grace (usually those featuring Grant and Carroll together) and bobbing clumsily through others. 'Saturday' makes up for less refined moments with an ending that stands as a delicious example of the kind of subversion of mores that make Pre-Code films so satisfying to watch.

              The film stars Nancy Carroll as Ruth Brock, a pretty young bank clerk living in a small middle-class town. Romer Sheffield (Cary Grant), a millionaire playboy living on the outskirts of town, plays the field with glamazon socialites, but has his heart set on simple Ruth. There's chemistry between the two, but Romer's reputation makes him a untenable choice for virtuous Ruth.

           In a completely innocent scenario, Ruth hides out at Romer's home one night after a disastrous date with beau Conny (Edward Woods). Conny and one of Ruth's frenemies witness Ruth leaving and waste no time spreading the news. From there, her life begins unraveling very quickly.  The bank fires her and she is relieved from her post at the local woman's club.

            With no one to turn to and the entire town whispering about her, Ruth runs to the arms of Bill Fadden, a hunky geologist and childhood friend who breezes into town one day completely oblivious to the rumors swirling around about his former crush. Made desperate by her current situation, Ruth quickly accepts Bill's proposal of marriage and from then on lives in a perpetual state of anxiety for fear that Bill will find out about the Romer rumor (fun bit of alliteration there). Meanwhile Romer makes his intentions clear to a distressed Ruth: "Would it interest you to know that I've wanted you ever since I saw you in the bank?" The tension of the film rises as Ruth tries to keep Bill uninformed while dodging vindictive friends with cruel intentions and sorting out her feelings for Romer.

       Like the 50s drama "Peyton Place," our movie tells the story of the destructiveness of lies and rumors. However, "Hot Saturday" is not a hard hitting drama bent on social reform. It is a work of camp and melodrama more apt to delight than to edify.  Even scenes featuring the town's injustice towards Ruth carry only a lightweight sort of  wrong compared to the maltreatment of Lana Turner in PP. This is not a disparagement. The movie's blatant 'B movie-ness' is part of its charm.

        The script is mostly mediocre, but moments between Nancy Carroll and Cary Grant are at times worthy of a better movie. Their scenes together follow the usual romantic arc from banter-y pals to wistful lovers towards the end. Carroll gives Ruth an impressive depth and her charm is palpable in this film. Grant secures his place as a future leading male powerhouse with a sincerity in look and speech that provides weight to light words. He even outshines established male lead Randolph Scott whose aw-shucks boy-next-door performance feels underdeveloped.

Grant, Carroll and Edward Woods who played Conny

Spoiler Alert!!

          Besides witnessing Grant's sterling potential as a leading man, the film's denouement is another reason to watch this film. After Bill proves inflexible, our heroine "sullies her good name" by shacking up with Romer and then running off with him to New York in the final act. The idea of marriage is brought up between the two but is not seriously regarded. Instead the real union is between Ruth and the possibilities of a new life without limitations. Though she technically becomes a "fallen woman," instead of regarding this as tragic, the film emphasizes the joy in Ruth discovering that after everything, the real punishment was denying her real feelings for Romer for the sake of morality. Once she lets go of self-judgement, she is able to truly live her life. The solution is not marriage and social inclusion, but venturing into the unknown and believing in one's self. This is a daring message for its time and a testament to film's ability to guide the direction of the social compass. If only Tess of the Durbervilles ended this way....sigh.

Each Dawn I Die

Whatever happened to the prison film? Have I missed them? Are they underground now? And I mean a good one, not that Adam Sandler bullshit "The Longest Yard" or the overdone action thrillers where the prisoners are solid blocks of muscle with manic eyes. I mean a prison movie where we go behind the bars and learn about the individuals that make up this fascinating society. A good prison film, like "The Shawshank Redemption", can teach us about ourselves and give us a deeper gratitude for life. In the 1930s audiences could not get enough of quality prison films that sympathized with the plight of the common man.

"Each Dawn I Die," a film released by Warner Brothers (who else?) in 1939, is a fast-paced, fast-talking film that includes familiar elements of the prison genre and important pieces that defined future film styles. The movie boasts two of the most engaging faces of the era, James Cagney and George Raft, in leading roles as well as a really fine group of lesser known actors from the period. The film entertains from beginning to end with action and engaging word play. Cagney brings his regular Cagney schick (stiff walk, fast talk, deadly accurate punches), but he also shows some raw emotion that raises the movie from a B-picture to a film that earns its place as one of the best genre films released in Hollywood's best year, 1939.

Cagney stars as Frank Ross, a hard-hitting newspaper man who is framed for a drunk driving rap by a corrupt politician. District attorney Hanley and his "equally disgraceful assistant Grayce" view Cagney's investigative journalism as a major threat to their dirty dealings. Pulling strings that you hope are only so effective in movies, the men have Ross tried, sentenced and incarcerated within the first 10 minutes of the film. On the prison bus, Ross meets and quickly engages in rat-a-tat 30s dialogue with George Raft's character, 'Hood' Stacey, a died-in-the-wool gangster sporting the kind of flippant attitude towards crime that really grinds Ross's gears. The two alpha males naturally start out as adversaries, but soon become allies as they face deadlier enemies than each other inside and out of the prison's walls. For Stacey, he becomes the target of a former lackey from his crew, Limpy Julien (Joe Downing) who vows to make Stacey pay for giving him the limp of his namesake. With his case hopelessly tangled in red tape by the evil lawmakers, Ross's enemies are those keeping him in prison to prevent him from spreading the truth. On the outside his newspaper team, his mother and his girl Joyce, (played little know actress Jane Bryan), are pounding the pavement daily to get Ross help.

After a prisoner is murdered, Stacey reasons that if Ross fingers him as the murderer, it would get Ross a pardon and put Stacey in the right position to escape. For George Raft the plan goes off without a hitch, but Cagney isn't so lucky. The warden and nasty guard believe that he helped Stacey to escape, a suspicion that leads Ross to 6 months in the hole. His time there produces a real change in the character who up until that point still believed that justice would be done. "I'll get out if I hafta kill every screw in the joint!" This exclamation marks the beginning of his  literal and figurative descent into darkness. While in the hole, he becomes the most difficult prisoner in the place, and seriously jeopardizes any possibility for parole. Meanwhile, Stacey and Joyce  on the outside devise a plan to help Ross get out. But whether Ross will maintain his sanity by then, remains to be seen. The final moments of the film are of an explosive prison riot that brings the film's angsty Marxist undertones their most startling visual representation.  

The acting here is really superb. As I mentioned before, Cagney's deeper emotional moments are highly gratifying to watch. When he begs the parole board to release him, head hung low in humble dejection, voice cracked with desperation, your hearts breaks at his sincerity. Together, he and Raft are the perfect duo. Cagney's intense and sharp, Raft is aloof but penetrating. 

As great as the chemistry is between Raft and Stacey, scenes that include one or more of the colorful inmates that make up the film's cast are a pleasure to watch. Although some of the characters can be described with just one adjective such as dumb guy or angry guard, the actors are so good that they make the best of the little screen time they share with Cagney or Raft. 

The best of them is played by Stanley Ridges. His character is Mueller, the guy that has gone stir crazy and can't take much more time behind bars. Prison films always have this person, the one who goes off on rants and tangents, but Ridges makes the character his own by delivering some of the best lines in the film. The way he describes prison life is deeply moving: "I'd sooner be dead than livin' in this madhouse. Break your back workin' all day, sit in your cell til next morning with nothing to do but stare at the wall, Screws goin' by snoopin,' rats like Limpy. Next thing you know you're stir nuts. Just bidin' your time until you can kill the next creep that comes your way." He speaks these words in a strained, desperate voice that rises in intensity with each phrase. His words slowly grip you and somehow make you a little more grateful that you can turn the knob of your door and exit your room as you please.

But an appreciation of freedom is not what the film is about. Though Ross becomes a free man by the end of the picture, many of the film's lovable characters meet their end in the deadly prison raid. The way the camera stays trained on the faces of the fallen inmates, and all but dehumanizes the throng of intruding guards makes it clear where our sympathies are directed. The movie makes the point that the system simply isn't fair. The scales of justice are weighted.  "Each Dawn I Die" is really a precursor to Film Noir, that great genre that made pessimism and the inevitability of perpetual disappointment look damn good. Noir did not really become an identifiable style until the mid 1940s, but our film showcases its most classic features. It's scrutinizing look at society and its failings is one of them. As a character from one of my favorite noir films Detour once said "no matter where you turn fate always sticks a foot out to trip ya." Characters like stacey, Ridges and even Limpy Julian come from the wrong side of the tracks and thus can never climb the ladder to success without rigging it first. Movies like this, where the villains are those in power, turn an accusing spotlight on culture and ask "what are you doing to cause this?"