New Movies Do Not Fill the Landscape of My Dreams

 

Why do I find going to the movies to see new films so unsatisfying? I want to keep an open mind and heart and want to support the theatergoing experience, but I rarely, if ever, find new films at the theaters truly, madly, deeply enjoyable. They might be truly enjoyable. They might be madly enjoyable, and they might even be deeply enjoyable. But rarely, almost never, are they meet the truly, madly, deeply threshold for me. Why?

The answer is in the title of this article and it came to me while watching Peter O'Toole in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips." Objectively, the film is not great, although it has a lot going for it. It's very long, a little full of itself, and the score is forgettable. But, it has the captivating Mr. O'Toole, who always leaves nothing unfelt or unexpressed, and I saw it when I was a teenager when the landscape of all that I would love forever and always was being painted on my psyche.

I've read countless books about Charlie Chaplin and one of the things that touches me is how the trauma and longing associated with his childhood poverty and fractured family were embedded in all of his work. What scarred him, what inspired him, what frightened him and where he found beauty was imprinted on his soul at a tender age and there was no changing that no matter what life held. Fame and wealth and celebrity could not change it, nor could the reversal of professional fortune. Time revealed the public's changing tastes, but Chaplin could not change at his core.

And so I find it to be with me. The films that drew me to them were the ones I discovered early on. What is charming, what is beautiful, what is good and what is desirable all were found in the movies I saw in my youth. Films that moved me after I became an adult somehow were related to the same type of film. I probably should have gotten some of that stuff from family life, but clearly I needed to seek them elsewhere. While not at all a horror of a childhood like Chaplin's, I admit there might have been a few things lacking. Or maybe I just had a dreamer's imagination. Mercifully, there were movies. And I am so very grateful that I can access so many of my favorites upon demand these days and not wait until 3 a.m. to watch the Late Late Late show ( I did stay up until 3 once to watch a Bing Crosby film when I was about 12). They are like a comfortable blanket or a hug from a friend. At some point during those formative years, a private understanding between myself and Cary Grant, Crosby, Chaplin, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, both Hepburns, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Bob Hope, and especially Cagney was established that endures to this day. We truly, madly, deeply get one another. If this sounds weird to you, your landscape and mine are completely different.

So, today's films, for so many reasons, can not connect with a landscape of dreams and desires that has been built and fortified over time. It can not change and I don't want it to change. I like it. I only hope that young people who go to the movies are building their own internal landscape with images and feelings that will stay with them throughout their lifetime.  

VENUS (2006): Peter the Great's Last Hurrah

This is my entry in the Diamonds and Gold Blogathon hosted by Caftan Woman and Wide Screen World. Click on their links for more about frisky cinema seniors.

A ruin at sunset

I love this film. I love Peter O'Toole and I love him in this film. I have had a mad crush on this man from the day he sat atop a camel. He can do no wrong in my book and here, playing and actor who is a ruin of his former beautiful self, he throws the autumn roses of his brilliance to all of us who have adored him for so long.

As Maurice, a washed up and burned out actor, O'Toole gives his last Oscar nominated performance (don't get me started on that particular snub). His career is a thing of the past, he is suffering from prostate cancer, his family are strangers and his days are filled with hours passed just being old. But, for Maurice, there is one last chance to grasp life with both hands, as into his life comes a girl. The grand-niece of his friend, Jessie (played by Jodie Whittaker) is young, lovely, frightfully modern and a hell raiser. One imagines that Maurice was quite a hell raiser in his day (as we know O'Toole surely was). She is no match intellectually or emotionally for Maurice, but, reluctantly, needs him. For one last time, he can play the gallant knight. Taking her under his wing, Maurice takes her to the National Gallery to view his favorite painting, Velazquez's Rokeby Venus. In his eyes, she is as lovely as the woman in the painting and he begins calling Jessie Venus.

Sharing his love of beauty

Sadly, his Venus is no Gueneviere. She is just a common young girl who likes boys her own age. But she  gives our knight one last chance at romance - a romance of the mind and heart, if not the flesh. Her's is the true purpose of beauty - to adore, to inspire and to live for.

In the beginning of the film there is a photo of the young O'Toole on display on a dresser. God, how beautiful he was. And here he is now, truly a wreck. But, what is outside is not on the inside. Inside he is still beautiful. Inside he still craves romance. His frame is old, but his heart is young. Venus is a love song to the last gasp of romance of an ancient with the spirit of a youth. The love of beauty is the secret of youth. This film comes ever so close to the dirty old man dance, but it never crosses that line because the touch, the warmth and closeness that Maurice craves is romance, the romance that stirs not just the loins, but the soul. Who cares that he chose not see the common and the tacky and the rough edges? How lucky for Maurice that he found his Venus to adore before the end. How lucky for Jessie to have been so adored.

Her gift was youth and kindness;
his was a glimpse into the soul of a romantic

How To Steal a Million: Wyler in Twilight

This is my contribution to the William Wyler Blogathon, hosted by The Movie Projector. Please click here to read the other wonderful posts covering Mr. Wyler's long and superb career.

A faded ruin seen in twilight can be a beautiful sight. Time, decay, and benign neglect don't usually show a monument to its best advantage, but if she is structurally sound and inherently lovely "age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety" (to quote Will S.). Filmed at a time when Hollywood as the natives knew her was thought to be on life support, William Wyler's "How To Steal a Million" was made while pieces of the great studio system fell around it like a burning building.

The art of the romantic caper in the hands of experts

The old gal hadn't quite stopped breathing in 1966. Studio-backed films such as "The Bible," The Sand Pebbles," and "Hawaii" still pulled in big bucks at the box office, but change was imminent. Cary Grant made his last movie, "Walk Don't Run," that year and hard on Hollywood's heels was a leaner, meaner, grittier international product that was all the buzz. "Alfie," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," "Georgy Girl" and "Blow Up"  were the anti-Hollywood "in" films to see. Blast-from-the-past directors like Alfred Hitchcock ("Torn Curtin") and Billy Wilder ("The Fortune Cookie") were still in the game, but films were shifting focus from the star to auteur-directors such as Mike Nichols, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Claude Lelouch. Hitchcock could easily move to center-stage when called upon, but this was not so easy for William Wyler.

The chemistry between the 2 stars is undeniable

Master director William Wyler was the antithesis of the director as star. His work, it seemed, revealed nothing of himself, his psyche, his obsessions, fetishes and passions. And so, in 1966, what was one to make of "How To Steal a Million," a charming and frothy and forgettable romance and crime caper? While hardly a ruin, it features Audrey Hepburn, at age 37, in her last "jeune fille" role. As yet another young lady with a "father dilemma" (Hugh Griffith as an incorrigible art forger), Audrey could never be less than enchanting. Together again after their historic collaboration years before in "Roman Holiday," Hepburn and Wyler have all the right moves. Besides working with a favored director, Audrey also has terrific chemistry with an equally ingratiating Peter O'Toole (proving he could have been just another handsome leading man if he hadn't decided to be a great actor). Together, they are smashing.

Hepburn & Givenchy: there can never be too much

Everything Audrey did and wore in this film
 was ultra glamorous and ultra chic

Dressed for a caper as only Audrey can

Looking very "swinging sixties"

Filmed in and around Paris, Wyler and company create a chic, madcap comedy of crime and love. And never discount the role of "the look" as a major character in any Audrey Hepburn film. Givenchy is ever-present in a series of gorgeous get-ups (except when Audrey has to don the duds of a scrub woman - with glittery eye shadow), sports cars abound and everyone looks just ooh-la-la. Charles Boyer is on hand for authentic Gallic charm, Hugh Griffith and Eli Wallach lend solid comic support and John William's score (scoring always being an asset in a Wyler film) adds to the general overall sense of romantic delight.

Not exactly "Roman Holiday," but their admiration and
respect for one another was obvious

Standing in the sidelines of all the cinematic grandeur and all of the folly that followed, "How To Steal a Million" still stands today as exactly what it was meant to be; a delightful, beautiful, glamorous escape. This was the product that professional Hollywood perfected and was perfectly served up by one of its master craftsmen. Wyler is in complete control of this sweet cinematic bon bon and, as with all sophisticated and slightly expensive sweets,  it is a pleasure for more than one of the senses. Whether they knew it or not, it was a fond farewell to Audrey's "girl" character and to the sumptuous productions that could only be made by a state of mind called Hollywood. But, as they say in the backstretch, breeding tells. Today, this film holds up just as well, if not better, than so many of the "hot" movies that were the critics' darlings that year. When you build with good material and your builder is a master like William Wyler, the ruin stands tall in the twilight while the upstarts crumble like dust at its feet.

Care to join me in a caper? Not quite a classic, but lots of fun!