MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Crystalline

Crystalline

posted a year ago by ecarle (14979)
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I was watching The Trouble With Harry the other night. Its always a "good break" for a Hitchcock buff to "break free from the ones that have a grip forever" (Psycho, North by Northwest, Rear Window, Strangers on a Train, Vertigo with reservations and yep...Frenzy from my own cognitive lifetime) and check out some other Hitchcock films.

I've always liked The Trouble With Harry. All the critical emphasis is on its being "a rare Hitchcock comedy," or "a deadpan British comedy set in America," or "a black comedy about a body that won't stay buried"
is true enough, but rather misses the point of the EXPERIENCE of watching and listening to the movie itself.

Its star, Shirley MacLaine, put it this way: "It was a bomb...an arty bomb, but a bomb nonetheless." And it was her movie debut. But not to worry, her next movie was a Martin/Lewis and she was on her way.

But she was right about The Trouble With Harry. It IS arty. Almost an art film(though it can't be, because I understood it.) The art is largely in the very quiet pacing of the film, the way -- even with Bernard Herrmann's first score for Hitchcock floating in and out in ways alternating the pastoral with the macabre -- it is almost a SILENT film. Hitchcock uses what film critic James Agee called "air pockets of silence" to almost FORCE the audience to take it easy...slow things WAY down...and take in this tiny little Vermont hamlet with its very small assortment of very eccentric people.

John Forsythe's "entrance" is a case in point. Before we see the man clearly -- before we see his face -- he is a tiny, distant figure walking into "town"(two buildings) from the beautiful fall foliage. And he is SINGING. Acapella -in a big rich deep masculine voice that , quite frankly CANNOT be the voice of John Forsythe(someone compared it to Paul Robeson.)

Hitchcock paces time between the lyrics for Forsythe to STOP singing, for silence to take over, and we all lean in to the absence of sound. And then the big voice starts singing again. Its all very emotional AND technical(to create the ILLUSION of a man singing far away from us, his voice disappearing into the whispery rustle of tree leaves and the silence of nobody there.)

The rest of the movie follows a "fade out and pause" structure that was first used in Rear Window to capture James Stewart's "awake then asleep" napping in his hot NYC apartment, then used in To Catch a Thief to turn Monte Carlo into a dangerous city of night and silent rooftops and here-- to convert a small place in Vermont into a kind of "Brigadoon with 7 people" -- where IS the rest of the world. (A Psycho reference would be Arbogast's take on the Bates Motel: "This is the first place I've seen that looks like its hiding from the world.")

The movie is famous for its gorgeous Technicolor shots(by cinematographer Robert Burks, fresh off of an Oscar for To Catch a Thief) of the gorgeous golds, yellows, browns, and reds of autumn in Vermont under blue skies and against green hillsides.

As I've noted before, I personally love -- sometimes -- to pull out my Trouble With Harry DVD and just watch/listen to the opening minutes (before Jerry Mathers arrives as first on screen) -- with calm shot after calm shot after calm shot of the Vermont countryside and homes as Herrmann spins out his most BEAUTIFUL music ever. Its like one of those "relaxation tapes."

But on this recent re-watch, I was reminded that along with its gorgeous daytime scenes, The Trouble With Harry has several great NIGHTIME scenes.

Most of them have to do with the "burial squad" (one young couple, one middle aged couple) moving up and down the hillside to bury, dig up, and rebury Harry. There is at least one great shot of all of them along a ridge against the night sky.

But also two shots from different angles:

ONE: Long shot looking UP the hill: the deputy sheriff's old jalopy coming DOWN the hill road into town.

TWO: Long shot looking DOWN the hill: the deputy sheriff's old mother running UP the hill to tell "the burial squad" that they must come quickly...something WONDERFUL is waiting for them in town, the answer to all their dreams.

These night time shots all have some "plot" to them, but they are more important for setting a MOOD...in this tiny Vermont hamlet surrounded by countryside, spooky things are going on -- a man's dead body is being moved about, buried, dug up and reburied , but -- the WORLD in which this story takes place -- especially the night world -- is otherworldly.

And, as a photographic matter, that world is : crystalline.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Burks images of Vermont at night are so clear and clean and "lonely" , we can't help but feel strong feelings just looking at them.

I will note that some of these shots look done "day for night"(filmed during the day with a filter) and one, maybe two of them -- looks like they were done by shining actual lights on the actors in the darkness, carefully so as not to to brightly illuminate them. But either way, the shots play the same to our eyes: crystalline. And we experience EMOTION(as Hitchcock wanted) accordingly. We RELATE to these "night movements."

Which brings me, indeed, to Psycho:

Psycho, like The Trouble With Harry, is set largely in rural America. Vermont on America's East Coast in Harry becomes California on America's West Coast in Psycho...and in Psycho, things move to the northernmost inland region of the state -- far away from Los Angeles and San Francisco.

I can't remember the name -- if any-- of the "town" (two buildings) in Harry. But the town near the Bates Motel is the fictional Fairvale (in real Shasta County, California.) In both films, the towns matter somewhat less than the open rural areas beyond them -- and in BOTH films, a lot of the action takes place at night, away from any population. And in BOTH films, at night bodies are moved and buried(though not reburied in Psycho.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Los Angeles Times critic Philip K. Schuer wrote in his 1960 review of Psycho that "this is Hitchcock's most disagreeable film since The Trouble With Harry, which was disagreeable in a different way." I suppose so, but perhaps that "disagreeability" in both films was in the callous handling of corpses -- and an emphasis, in all cases, that the corpses WERE living , breathing, human beings. Marion Crane was the worst of these -- we spent 47 minutes in her company watching her as a living , breathing human being. But with Harry, we certainly hear a LOT about how HE was when HE was alive, and all the people he "touched" (pretty badly as it turns out --- did one of them murder him?)

Anyway, that's the "content" link between The Trouble With Harry and Psycho.

As to the visual link: crystalline.

I'm thinking of two particular shots from the same angle at different moments:

Arbogast has finished talking to Norman inside the office and walks to the edge of the porch while Norman heads to Cabin One to change sheets. Arbogast looks up behind the house:

Arbogast's POV:

The Bates house. On the hill. Standing proud against a night sky(more gray than black.) And painfully intensely CLEAR to the eye.

Crystalline.

This is probably the best individual shot of the house on the hill in all of Psycho. And Hitchcock returns to that same crystalline shot later, when Arbogast returns to the motel and again looks up at the house on the hill before deciding to walk up there.

Crystalline.

The only difference between the two shots -- likely taken at the same time or as one continuous shot "split into two" via editing -- is that in "shot one"(Arbogast on the porch with Norman nearby) -- Mother can be "seen" in the window. In "shot two" (Arbogast on the porch with Norman...out there somewhere) -- Mother CANNOT be seen in the window. Otherwise, same shot: crystalline.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I will here note that "shot one" has one of the few real "glitches" in Psycho to me. Mother in the window -- we learn later -- is DEAD mother. When we saw Mother in the window much earlier(when Marion saw her up there), she MOVED. We learn later -- that was Norman in dress and wig. Thus are we tricked for the whole rest of the movie. We saw her move ONCE...so later, we don't see her move(when Arbogast sees her) or we just HEAR about her in the window(when Sam tells the sheriff what he saw.)

But "dead Mother in the window"(from Arbogast's view) just looks bad to me. I'm guessing that they took the "crystalline" shot of the house on the hill and "drew in" Mother in the window. The figure looks too tall and thin -- like a stick figure -- and a chair is drawn in as well. Unreal. if you are looking to "solve" Psycho, that weird unmoving stick figure in the window might do it.

Thus of the TWO "crystalline" shots of the house on the hill, the second one(NO mother in the window) is the better one and...

...I think THAT photo of the house on the hill is the one that has been used MOST ever since in internet articles on Psycho. A screen capture of the crystalline shot. No fake mother in the window. The Psycho house shown -- in glorious gray on black on white -- as great and weird an otherworldly as it has ever looked on film. No such shot can be found in any of the Psycho sequels, and Van Sant(incredibly) used a DIFFERENT HOUSE.

Interesting: Robert Burks shot all the Hitchcock movies from Strangers on a Train through North by Northwest, and they are ALL crystalline -- almost three-dimensional -- in texture and clarity. And yet, Robert Burks did NOT do the cinematography on Psycho. Hitchcock used one of his DPS from his TV show -- John L. (Jack) Russell.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

This begs the question to me: maybe NEITHER Robert Burks NOR John L Russell was responsible for the crystalline quality of the shots in The Trouble With Harry and Psycho. Maybe Hitchcock was the real genius about how his movies LOOKED.

John L. Russell ended up with one of the few Oscar nominations given to Psycho: Best Cinematography(black and white.) The Apartment won. The Apartment has some great shots(one with Ray Walston in a phone booth with a Marilyn Monroe clone waiting outside SHIMMERED on the screen.) But Psycho has more. And the cinematography isn't just a matter of the "crystalline" thing. We get those great camera MOVEMENTS (down into a Phoenix window, up over Arbogast on the staircase, WAY up over Norman on the staircase).

Truth be told, though Hitchcock never got a Best Director award and had few of his movies nominated as Best Picture(Rebecca won), I think many of his movies got "Best Cinematography" noms, and To Catch a Thief won.

Meanwhile back at Psycho:

I've stated before that my favorite SHOT in Psycho indeed has the house in it but the shot has other elements: Arbogast IN the shot(he is not in the POV shots) climbing the bushy, furry hill up stone Gothic steps to the house, motel screen right. My favorite shot in Psycho, my favorite shot in Hitchcock.

But not quite as crystalline as the POV shots. Its too "busy" for that, what with Arbogast and the motel in the shot. Probably day for night(Arbo casts a long shadow as he climbs the stone steps.) Also, to get all the elements into the shot, Hitchcock shows us LESS of the house -- none of the roof as I recall. Still, this shot MEANS something: it brings together the Gothic horror of the atmosphere with the modern crime noir character of the tale(the detective, the cheap motel where sex might happen).

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I like the Arbogast SEQUENCE in Psycho the best, not just because of the character(Arbogast), but because of how he interacts with Norman(who looks his best in dark crew neck sweater with white button down shirt), and because all those great SHOTS are in there: the two crystalline POV shots of the house; the shot of Arbogast climbing the hill to the house -- AND -- that great shot that takes in Arbogast's return to the motel, Norman seeing him and scurrying off, and the "day for night" take on the motel in the distance and the house on the hill behind it(window lit, no Mother, it seems.)

Not to mention ALL the shots attendant to Arbogast's murder.

Meanwhile:

In Marion's segment earlier, the house POV shots are first "realistic" (the house viewed through pouring rain, its wooden sides gleaming like reptile skin) and then "fake/messy"("matted in clouds" after the rainfall, courtesy of Saul Bass.) The rain shots of the house are good; the "matted clouds" less so -- the clarity of the Arbogast scenes (a week after any rainfall) are better.

And: there is one scene late in the film when Norman goes up to the house having hung up on his call from Sheriff Chambers down below at the motel. This looks like it was shot the same day/night as all the earlier shots of Norman going up and down the hill (during the Marion sequence) and while the sky doesn't have that bad matted cloud look, they had to do SOMETHING with the sky, and it doesnt look right.

And: finally when Sam and Lila come to the house, it is in DAYLIGHT. A bit less scary looking but terrifying because we know who is in there(Mother) as Lila climbs the hill to the house(Hitchcock here uses, for the first time in approaching the house, his travelling POV shot -- Arbogast was not given that identification.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

But zeroing back in:

The "crystalline" night shots of countryside in both The Trouble With Harry and Psycho share something: they create a mood, an emotion, that drives the weirdness of both tales and links them in a specific way: they are both tales of people living "away from urban society" and engaged in long nights of illicit body-burying activity. That's the content. "Crystalline" is the look.

PS. I forgot to mention it above, but I think a big contributor to the artiness and weirdness of The Trouble With Harry is John Forsythe as the "hero" -- an extremely free-living, liberal(in the pure sense) and almost countercultural artist ...he's laying the groundwork for the beatniks and hippies yet to come while living apart, it seems, from society at all (he calls the big city - NYC? - a place populated by "people with hats," and he finds that horrible. I can picture Forsythe and MacLaine as married old hippies in the 60's, hanging out in their Vermont commune, smoking pot and selling paintings. Arty.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

Interesting series of posts ecarle. I haven't seen Trouble With Harry for a while so I think I'll give it another look soon while paying particular attention to the night shots. I was very intrigued by the night shots in Jordan Peele's Nope. Peele experimented with a camera splitting the image into two streams, one of which was fed to a normal camera and one of which went to an infra-red camera. Those images were then later combined in a computer to give a new sort of at-night imagery that had a lot more detail in the shadows and blacks than had previously been possible. With your thoughts as an inspiration I'm definitely looking forward to comparing Trouble With Harry and Nope in this regard (although Nope has many *more* night scenes than TWH).

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I haven't seen Trouble With Harry for a while so I think I'll give it another look soon while paying particular attention to the night shots.

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Might be interesting for you. The Trouble With Harry is sometimes too "twee" for me(Edmund Gwenn's opening speech to himself is just too cute -- and I sure hear the personality of Hitchcock in it), but overall, this is a very unique movie and ultimately very sweet and uplifting about human connection and love -- an antidote to the "meaner" Hitchcock of Psycho and Frenzy. Still, I am speaking in this post to the MOOD of the film..as fed by the visuals, the sound and silence patterns, and the music.

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I was very intrigued by the night shots in Jordan Peele's Nope.

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You've got me inclined to see Nope. I think its available on streaming right now, might have to pay for it. I'll check. I'll see it eventually.

Which reminds me. My "movie world" is far narrower than yours, swanstep, but within it, I still haven't seen a movie that really "locks in" as my favorite of the year. I've put Top Gun in as a "place holder" more perhaps for the experience(full house with friends) than for the movie itself.

Maybe Nope gets the slot. Otherwise, there are two pending right now which I may not actually be able to see until 2023:

The Fabelmans. It flopped. I guess nobody cares about Spielberg's childhood or early movie days. But I still do. I think. West Side Story last year flopped too, so it might look like Spielberg is in trouble.(Still superrich, just not cared about) But the Oscars helped WSS last year and they may help The Fabelmans this year.

Babylon. I"ve read some reviews -- one of which gave too much away about the ending, but it is an ending that has me excited to see the movie so I can SEE the ending. Its from the director of La La Land(which I liked...somewhat) and about Hollywood in the 20s...the NINETEEN 20s. It sounds like the sexual content is high, which I remain supportive of, and it takes a new look how silent movie stars ran headlong into the talkies.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Babylon has Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in it. Both from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and this is ANOTHER once upon a time earlier in Hollywood. Mr. Pitt does loom high on my list of "actual real bona fide movie stars" and I like his screen presence. I actually went to the theater to see him in Bullet Train last summer and he was the best thing in it (the movie was stylish in a Japanese manga way, but some critic called it for what it was: a group of hit men and hit women pitted against each other ala the movie "Smoking Aces" of a decade back.)

The one downside of Babylon for me as related in the reviews: it has feces, urine and vomit as key visual elements in the film. That never does it for me, movie-wise. Anyway, I'm going to see it, I guess I'll just close my eyes when those appear. But why do filmmakers put that in a movie, anyway? (Especially with Pitt and Robbie on beautiful view.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I was very intrigued by the night shots in Jordan Peele's Nope. Peele experimented with a camera splitting the image into two steams, one of which was fed to a normal camera and one of which went to an infra-red camera. Those images were then later combined in a computer to give a new sort of at-night imagery that had a lot more detail in the shadows and blacks than had previously been possible.

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That's extremely interesting and I look forward to seeing the technique in action.

Which reminds me: do movie productions even USE "day for night" techniques anymore? Perhaps with new film stock and camera technology, night scenes can be filmed "as is" on location at night(I would suppose new technology in lighting scenes enters in, too.)

Its funny: I believe that both Psycho and North by Northwest (and The Trouble With Harry) have "day for night shots" and done well -- these deliver cool images indeed(the shots of the house on the hill.)

There are photographs of Hitchcock directing Anthony Perkins on Psycho in his "swampside burial of Marion's car" and they are in broad daylight. So clearly that was an entire" day for night" SCENE. I'm not sure if Van Sant had to do that day for night in 1998, or not.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

With your thoughts as an inspiration I'm definitely looking forward to comparing Trouble With Harry and Nope in this regard (although Nope has many *more* night scenes than TWH).

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All the more interesting for Nope to have so much more nightwork.

You know, I forgot about (and then remembered) a great "tool" for looking at screen shots from Hitchocck movies:

"1000 Frames of Hitchcock." On the internet at Hitchcock wiki. You can just type in "1000 Frames of Psycho" or "1000 Frames of The Trouble With Harry."

I did so, and "found" the crystalline POV shot of the house on the hill and "stick figure mother" (she doesn't look as bad as I remembered) and then I found the (indeed, not too many) night shots in The Trouble With Harry.

"1000 Frames of Hitchcock" is a great way to look up shots in Hitchcock movies without having to put a DVD in.

PS. I have to note that Francois Truffaut made a movie called "Day for Night" in 1973. It was about the making of a movie and I actually paid to see it on release, one of my first foreign films. I had noted that Hitchcock and Truffaut exchanged ideas on movies they wanted to make. Hitchcock said wanted to make a movie about food, from farm to store to plate to sewage (which became, somewhat, Frenzy.) Truffaut said he wanted to make a movie about making movies. THAT became Day for Night.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

I have to note that Francois Truffaut made a movie called "Day for Night" in 1973.
Interestingly that film is called 'La Nuit américaine' ("American Night") in French, which is the French film critic and business term for day-for-night shooting. The wiki page for the film also relates the following French pun and in-joke regarding the title:
The film's French title could sound like L'ennui américain ("American boredom"): Truffaut wrote elsewhere of the way French cinema critics inevitably make this pun of any title that uses nuit.

Day for Night is a fun movie with an amazing score by Georges Delerue that was later *stolen* wholesale for a big, event British mini-series in the early '80s, 'Brideshead Revisited' (which introduced the world to Jeremy Irons).

Here's the French trailer for La Nuit américaine"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKoEVBHMp3s
Here's the opening titles of BR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVnkvM_v6N0

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

Babylon has Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in it. Both from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and this is ANOTHER once upon a time earlier in Hollywood.
From the trailer, Babylon looked quite a bit like Day of the Locust (1975). I'll be very impressed if it is even half as good and challenging as that film.
The one downside of Babylon for me as related in the reviews: it has feces, urine and vomit as key visual elements in the film.
There was a lot of gross bodily fluids stuff in Triangle of Sadness, the Cannes winner this year, too. It was pretty funny (and not too gross) there. Shame Triangle didn't add up to more.

I haven't see The Fabelmans yet, but I can't say I'm especially excited by the thought of it. I'm looking forward to/have high hopes for Aftersun and Banshees of Innisherin. [Update: BoI is a well-acted, picturequely-set aggressively/artsily pointless and depressing fable. Hard to warm to I'd say and it's going nowhere at Oscars-time.] The 'big' Oscary film I have seen, Tar, is worth seeing. Cate Blanshett's main character (first 2 hours of the film) didn't quite ring true for me - she's supposed to be literally one of the smartest people and best musicians in the world but I wasn't convinced. Still, it's a good effort by her (and I'm probably just being fussy). The final half hour is her character's shockingly fast fall with lots of hyper-subjective camera. Interesting, and it stays with you. Enough so that there's some chance it could end up my film of the year despite my reservations, and I'm definitely going to have to see it again.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

I have seen both The Fabelmans and Armageddon Time now. They're both period semi-biographical, coming-of-age and family dramas by Jewish directors. While the films over-lap considerably (fathers with engineering mindsets barely comprehend their sons' arts interests; eccentric elderly relatives intervene crucially; Shiva is sat in both; and so on), Spielberg's overall focus is relentlessly personal whereas Gray's overall focus is on questions of privilege (and the advantages conferred by family background) and entrenched racism that the director sees his younger self as struggling to become aware of. Gray also characterizes a specific political moment just as the Reagan becomes President for the first time whereas Spielberg surfs across about 12 years. Because Gray simualtaneously aims higher and tries to dig deeper about a time, he's actually open to a lot more criticism for shallowness, for not being adequate to its aims (e.g., did it characterize its time correctly)?

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

(Cont'd) Spielberg avoids all such criticisms by keeping his focus tight on his Sam Fabelman's family and school life. Put another way, the considerable charm The Fabelman possesses feels entirely earned. The only problem with The Fablemans, in fact, is just its slightness. Nothing *that* dramatic or cinematic happens, and one moment of confrontation with a sister that feels like an opening to a better movie ends up just being puzzling. Interestingly, what we know about Spielberg's life suggests that he's given Sam a much tidier arc than his own. E.g., Spielberg wasn't on good terms with his father until much later than young Sam is. Maybe a film that stuck to the facts of Spielberg's life a bit more would have cut a bit deeper, and started to pay off the film's various warnings that a life in film is going to be hard on one's family etc.. But maybe the fact that Spielberg's actual ascent through the film industry was so fast and substantial and generally blessed means that there's no way to plausibly argue that in his case there's been any especially steep price to paid for the career path he's chosen. Maybe too there's just the problem that Spielberg always has been a basically nice, sane, mellow guy that any fictional story based on him, like any documentary on him, just can't rivet us.

Still, The Fabelmans' 2.5 hours flies by so there's undoubtedly fun to be had working through a moderately quirky Jewish family break-up and through recreations of the making of various Spielberg student films, etc.. I enjoyed it but it felt light.

I dare say that I'm finding that a lot of the big Oscar films are less-than-exhilirating, OK-ish, 7.5-8/10 kind of achievements.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Babylon has Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in it. Both from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and this is ANOTHER once upon a time earlier in Hollywood.

From the trailer, Babylon looked quite a bit like Day of the Locust (1975). I'll be very impressed if it is even half as good and challenging as that film.

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Day of the Locust was quite a film. Evidently very faithful both to the bleakness and the hallucinatory final scene of the book. I think it is more of a 30's Hollywood story whereas Babylon will be a 20's(silent era) Hollywood story.

I had a friend whose brother was a child actor and they got me onto the soundstage set of the movie's BIG climax sequence: a mock-up of the street in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater at a movie premiere. I only got on a few Hollywood soundstages -- TV series, mainly -- but I was IMPRESSED to be on that soundstage with a gigantic Grauman's theater INDOORS(on the soundstage) and choking exhaust from the cars being used for the premiere scene(with Gable and Cooper lookalikes) This was at Paramount. I'm pretty sure this was the Rear Window soundstage.

Anyway, I watched director John Scheshinger (Midnight Cowboy) huddle with the main star of the scene -- Donald Sutherland as a weird sad mentally slow guy. The scene: a golden-tressed child star(Jackie Earle Haley) starts insulting Sutherland and finally throws a brick at his head. Sutherland goes nuts, stomps on the boy, kills him -- triggers a riot, dies...hallucinations begin.

Well.

I never got to see the riot being filmed. But I did see Jackie Haley throw a rubber brick at Sutherland's head a few times. And I got to see them switch in a "Jackie Haley doll" for Sutherland to stomp on and "kill."

THAT day was one of my most memorable "in Hollywood." For watching, at least.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

A bit more about Day of the Locust (1975)

I only saw Donald Sutherland and Jackie Earle Haley working on the film. But its star was...Karen Black. Karen Black seemed to have such a brief, wobbly career AS a star, but she had one.

Day of the Locust was Karen Black's biggest movie, production wise -- but it flopped. It was so sick and downbeat and arty. Black was perfect casting though, for a pretty but not pretty enough starlet wannabee in Hollywood -- I can't remember if the character makes it to stardom or fails.

"Day of the Locust" got Karen Black the top billing(out of four actors) the next year in Hitchcock's Family Plot. Black got a Time magazine profile(with Hitchcock beside her) as a "next big star." Alas, it didn't happen. For one thing, of the four not-quite-really stars of Family Plot -- Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris and William Devane were the others -- top billed Karen Black came off the worst of them(her acting was a bit arch and mannered, her "look" not quite gorgeous enough, with those distinctive crossed eyes.) Note in passing: Time ALSO did a profile of Bruce Dern as a "next big star" ALSO with Hitchcock next to him. Was Hitchcock a "jinx"? (Both the Dern profile and the Black profile talked about their work to come...in Alfred Hitchcock's "Deceit.""

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Karen Black ended up in two classics: Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. She got to headline Day of the Locust. ALSO in 1975, Black did an NBC TV movie ("Trilogy of Terror") that actually had one scary segment(out of three) that got famous (its about Black being chased around her apartment by a really vicious little killer doll with a knife in his little hand and really sharp teeth.)

Black ended up in Hitchcock's final film, for what it is worth. She got two very good scenes -- the one where she silently picks up the ransom diamond and controls a roomful of male cops; and the scene at the end where she and Devane have to deal with Barbara Harris stumbling onto their crime scene.

I mention Family Plot(and its good dialogue) because not two years later you can find Karen Black in a movie called "Killer Fish" where her lines are TERRIBLE and her acting is rather desperate.

I saw "Killer Fish" recently on streaming where its part of a "Mystery Science Theater" package of movies where guys make wise cracks all the way through these bad movies. Here was Karen Black -- again, only TWO YEARS after Family Plot and THREE years after the prestigious Day of the Locust -- in a movie made in South America about a jewel heist and piranha killings. Lee Majors, James Franciscus(a stalwart of these movies) were in it. Marisa Berinson(only three years after Barry Lyndon -- ANOTHER comedown.) Margeux Hemingway(not Mariel.) Killer Fish was a classic example of how hard it is to maintain an acting career in movies.

Oh, well, it was a career. And Karen Black was well received at the Hitchcock Centennial evening that I attended in 1999 at the Motion Picture Academy in Holllywood. I recall Janet Leigh being there, too. And Joe Stefano. And Peter Bogdanovich as the host. Don't recall if Tippi was there.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

The one downside of Babylon for me as related in the reviews: it has feces, urine and vomit as key visual elements in the film.

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swanstep replied:

There was a lot of gross bodily fluids stuff in Triangle of Sadness, the Cannes winner this year, too. It was pretty funny (and not too gross) there. Shame Triangle didn't add up to more.

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Eh, I guess its a particular thing with me. In a way, (on topic)...this traces all the way back to Psycho, when Hitchcock famously not only showed a toilet on screen for the first time, but gave us an overhead shot of it being flushed. But only with paper - he spared us human waste. Still, there it was, a reality we all face every day: going to the bathroom, acknowledged in a movie. (And yet, there were surely 1960 restrooms in theaters SHOWING Psycho.)

A couple of Babylon reviews specify the film's major "elephant poop" sequence in grim detail and I have to ask: what's the POINT? To show us how decadent 1920s Hollywood was by dousing the actors in elephant poop?

---

Vomiting is a different thing. Flash back to The Birds. There comes a scene late in the movie where Veronica Cartwright's young girl Kathy announces that she is about to throw up and Tippi Hedren scurries her out of shot to do so.

Out of shot. Vomiting used to be out of shot with not too much sound of the vomiting.

No more. It seems that everytime someone vomits on screen, we have to SEE it (I believe vegatable soup is used.)

Its not a "bodily fluid" thing, but in addition to SHOWING vomiting on screen, I've noticed that the movies ALWAYS like to show, when somebody gets a SHOT, a close up of the needle puncturing the skin. Why? Hell, I refuse to look at the shot going in when I GET a shot.

I've already discussed Babylon with someone I might see it with, and she is out on the basis of the bodily fluids stuff. See, lost a ticket right there.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I haven't see The Fabelmans yet, but I can't say I'm especially excited by the thought of it.

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I'm getting less so all the time. Its like my "peak interest" has faded. I think I wanted(and still will) see The Fabelmans because of the 50s/60s/70's nostalgia(1973 got me into the theater for Licorice Pizza last year) and to see at least some of Speilberg's early TV and movie career enacted.

I KNOW his family story and I'm intrigued to read(as you have now seen the film, swanstep) that the movie rather soft pedals Spielberg's relationship with his father. It was Hitchcock suspense as I recall: Spielberg didn't know the REAL situation with his father so forever blamed him when he was blameless.

Still, I'm going to see The Fabelmans soon. Its on streaming right now for a pricey rental. I guess ol' Spielberg has given up on fighting streaming.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago


I'm looking forward to/have high hopes for Aftersun and Banshees of Innisherin. [Update: BoI is a well-acted, picturequely-set aggressively/artsily pointless and depressing fable. )

Innisherin is available right now on HBO Max without having to pay a rental. The Oscars ain't what they used to be...Part 587.

Hard to warm to I'd say and it's going nowhere at Oscars-time.] The 'big' Oscary film I have seen, Tar, is worth seeing.

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Tar sounds Oscar baity. And you can go all the way back to the 2008 Oscars for 2007 movies to see a "comedy clips bit" about how Cate Blanchett was in everything BACK THEN (they even showed her playing one of the dogs chasing Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men.)

I gave some thought to my own "lining up" with Oscar movies and used my list of favorite movies from the 2010s and I get this:

2010: True Grit(got Oscar noms.)
2011: Moneyball (got Oscar noms.)
2012: Django Unchained (QT wins Best Screenplay, Waltz wins Supporting Actor).
2013: The Wolf of Wall Street(got Oscar noms; Leo, Scorsese, Picture.)
2014: John Wick(I don't think any Oscar noms.)
2015: The Hateful Eight(wins Oscar for Morricone)
2016: The Magnifcent Seven(no Oscar noms.)
2017: Molly's Game (writing Oscar nom? Maybe?)
2018: Buster Scruggs(got Oscar noms even though on Netflix)
2019: Tie: The Irishman/Once Upon a Time in Hollywood(both got noms, even with The Irishman on Netflix; Hollywood won an Oscar for Brad Pitt.)

So...its not like the Oscars DON'T honor my favorite films...its just that my favorite films rarely WIN the Oscars and the movies that DO win...don't matter as much to me.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

Still, I'm going to see The Fabelmans soon. Its on streaming right now for a pricey rental. I guess ol' Spielberg has given up on fighting streaming.
Having now seen a couple of the more 'artsy' contenders for awards this years - Banshees of Innisherin, Aftersun - I'm already appreciating The Fabelmans more. It's just made with a lot of craft and with a lot of attention to both clarity of messages and maintaining forward momentum that's just a complete pleasure. An hour into both BoI and Aftersun, however, you're honestly saying to yourself things like 'Is that it? Is this going anywhere? When is something going to happen? Do we have a dead shark on our hands?' In both cases we know that *something* strange is going on at the 1 hour mark and by the end we've been given a little more information but nothing conclusive. A few simple additional scenes in both cases would have clarified everything. The Fabelmans, on the other hand lays out its secrets for you and expends much ingenuity on how to do that wittily and beautifully. It doesn't tease you with stuff it's never going to tell you clearly anyway. I appreciate that right now. Go Spielberg.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

Thinking about Aftersun a bit more. It really is a *very* demanding movie. I got off completely on the wrong track with it because the film relies on you being able to identify a character who's only introduced very late in the film with a figure we've been seeing since the beginning of the film in single frame/strobe light flashes. I didn't make that ID since I thought the figure in the strobe light was male and the late-introduced character was female. Freeze-framing all the strobe flashes now I can see that the characters are the same and the whole gay-reading I had of the earlier stuff was just wrong. The film now hangs together better than I thought.... but really it is the jolly film's fault that I was wrong-footed. We don't get a particularly clear view of the later character and the strobe flashes are mostly only single frames so 1/24 sec. So both sides of the identity equation are pretty degraded Since we are already having to make a bunch of inferences about other stuff that happened in the film (when the film could have used a few lines of voiceover to tell us what was going on so we didn't have to infer so much stuff ourselves) it would be nice if the crucial identity equation wasn't so easy to get wrong too. And I dare say that a film that's probably impossible to fully understand without doing lots of freeze-framing - so it probably can't be fully understood just in theaters - is going to rub a lot of viewers the wrong way. I now accept that Aftersun *is* kind of an amazing piece of work but it's almost Mulholland Dr-level demanding of its viewers. Maybe such films effectively get tamed and become accessible through critical pieces explaining them. As an alternatve to driving themselves mad nutting things out (as I did in this case with a freeze-frameable copy at home to play with) people just end up doing a little prep./homework to see them.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Spielberg avoids all such criticisms by keeping his focus tight on his Sam Fabelman's family and school life. Put another way, the considerable charm The Fabelman possesses feels entirely earned. The only problem with The Fablemans, in fact, is just its slightness. Nothing *that* dramatic or cinematic happens, and one moment of confrontation with a sister that feels like an opening to a better movie ends up just being puzzling.

---

I have seen The Fabelmans. In accordance with Spielberg's wishes, I had intended to see it at a movie theater a few weeks ago, but things got in the way. So I elected to see it on streaming at home and I must admit its harder to watch a movie you REALLY want to see , on the home screen. Too many interruptions.

As a personal matter, I watched it(with others) on Christmas Day and noted that a year ago on Christmas Day, I saw PTA's Licorice Pizza -- but AT A THEATER. Makes a difference, still.

And I'll cut to the chase: as much as I really, really liked Licorice Pizza, I really didn't much like The Fabelmans at all. This is important because both films eventually settle in among "the teenage crowd," and whereas all the kids are real (and VERY likeable) in Licorice Pizza, the teenagers in The Fabelmans eventually turn out to be cliches from 50's TV and movies: bullies, shallow girls, NICE girls(to the nerdy lead) who disappoint, etc.

Indeed, to me the "shocker" about The Fabelmans is that the movie about "the movies" is shortchanged very much in favor of a fictionalized version of Spielberg's own childhood and teens. Its hard to care about the Fabelmans.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Interestingly, what we know about Spielberg's life suggests that he's given Sam a much tidier arc than his own. E.g., Spielberg wasn't on good terms with his father until much later than young Sam is.

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Yes, I've read about the Spielberg divorce and evidently the dad(WHAT a gallant guy!) let his kids think the divorce was HIS fault, HIS idea..not the mothers over an affair and marrying the other guy. There's some real suspense in that version but Spielberg elected not to write it that way.

The script is by Spielberg(his first credit since AI) and his recent collaborator Paul Kushner but one feels that Steve directed the writing of this one and then played "switcheroos." Which of these things REALLY happened? I found the anti-Semitic bullying segments very false, but maybe they happened, and the movie has a "gotcha" moment where a bully says "You'll never tell about this, will you?" and the Spielberg character says "No, but I might make a movie about it." Well, DID he? If so...not a very good one (the bully's crying is one of a number of ongoing falsities in the movie.)

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I must admit when I read about The Fabelmans going into production, I imposed my own hopes on the tale -- would we SEE Spielberg sneaking onto the Universal lot and taking an office there? would we SEE Alfred Hitchcock have him thrown off the Torn Curtain set?

I even wondered this: Spielberg lived in Phoenix in 1960. Psycho released in 1960, opens its tale in Phoenix. I'm sure Spielberg saw Psycho in Phoenix, would this make it into The Fabelmans?

No, it didn't. Spielberg seeing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in 1962 in Phoenix -- complete with clip -- DID figure, and while that was good enough, it wasn't what I was hoping for.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

SPOILER: The best scene in the movie -- which Spielberg swears happened exactly as scripted and filmed -- comes at the very end when Spielberg meets John Ford in his office and gets a brief, brusque lecture on how to make movies. The camera pans posters of all of Ford's great work until it lands on "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." Which, hey , is MY favorite John Ford film because its the only one that feels modern to me(ha, 60 years ago) -- Lee Marvin's baddie is VERY 1962, not 1939. Plus you got John Wayne and James Stewart together, with Wayne just so massively overpowering Stewart as a "manly man" that Stewart looked brave to take hisrole.

Anyway, the movie stuff is the best stuff in The Fabelmans but that's not the movie SS really wanted to make.

In fact, consider this: last year, Spielberg remade one of his OTHER childhood favorites(West Side Story.) THIS year, Spielberg remade his CHILDHOOD. And both times...flops. He can comfort himself that his relevance as "blockbuster man" seems to be over but he can make movies HE wants, on topics HE likes.

That' said, there is something worse about The Fabelmans to me, something I really had to confront , which is this:

Hitchcock's late daughter Pat Hitchcock said that she felt Spielberg was the closest to her father as a moviemaker because "they both thought of the audience first." Hitchcock made a lot of popular films, and Spielberg(for awhile) made even more. So they DO match up there.

But I"ve never really felt that Spielberg is nearly as satisfying as Hitchcock in the "auteur" category. Because Spielberg simply made too many films that aren't really all that good. I'll name them:

1941
The Twilight Zone(Spielberg's segment)
Temple of Doom(big hit, pre-teen grossness of tone)
Always
Hook (REALLY irritating with the Goonie-like kids and the overkill.)
Minority Report (starts great, gets depressing and rips off LA Confidential's big scene)
The Terminal(just a dumb script)

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I reached a point where I simply stopped going to Spielberg movies unless the subject matter intrigued me, so I missed War Horse and Tintin and The BFG.

But wait: I thought Lincoln was really good(the way the script showed that lobbying, corruption and flat-out bribery was necessary to serve Lincoln's noble goals; DDL's performance.) I loved Bridge of Spies -- mainly for its in-depth visit behind the Iron Curtain in the 60's(a place and era that needs MORE movies) and for the Loveable Russian Spy ("Would it help?")who won an Oscar.

So, its not like Spielberg makes BAD movies. Its just that he has not only rather exhausted his early fame, but that the movies seem to occasionally simply ...fail. Or bore (The Post, with Streep and Hanks).

So often with The Fabelmans, I felt that Spielberg was over-doing the emotion (ET had it down just RIGHT), giving us overly broad characters, living up to the "infantilism" attacks made on him back in the 80s.

One small failure that I really noticed, not quite Spielberg's fault, but sad nonetheless:

That poised child actress, Julia Butters - to whom QT awarded a major role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- here works for Spielberg as one of his sisters and -- practically disappears even though she is on screen(background) a lot of the time. Actually, Butters doesn't turn up until after younger children have played the Spielberg children in the first act, so its even HARDER to notice her.

She's the girl with the glasses, I finally figured it out. And though she indeed does get one big dramatic moment, it is only a moment, and then she is back to the sidelines. Oh, well, roles like the one QT gave her will be hard to find for her whole career. But she seems to have the chops. I expect her to blossom into a real adult beauty some day.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Looking back over the decades, Spielberg's career remains interstingly divided to me.

He made his name with an incredible run from Duel(TV movie) to Sugarland Express(movie debut) to Jaws to Close Encounters to Raiders to ET. THAT's where he made his name and his fame; Hitchcock lived to see Jaws and Close Encounters(and Lucas' Star Wars) and saw the Next Generation.

1941 was the flop in that run(oh how Spielberg's enemies savored it) but its good ENOUGH, and with Belushi and Ackroyd and Tim Matheson from Animal House and DePalma's wife Nancy Allen being sexy and John Candy aborning and...Warren Oates...its special enough.

But after ET climaxed everything, the decline was rather fast. Spielberg's Twilght Zone segment contains the roots of "emotional overkill' that mars The Fabelmans; Spielberg himself felt that Temple of Doom was too childish and gross and his "apology" (The Last Crusade) was good but a bit of an Indy retread.

Spielberg put his producers name on movies both good(Back tot the Future) and bad(The Goonies); he got very rich off genre while keeping it largely at arm's length.

And then there were the "serious works" the Oscar bait that never quite clicked(The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun) until Schindler's List.

Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan DID click. But now they are decades ago.

What am I saying? (Good question.) I'm saying that Spielberg might just be the most uneven name director we have. And there seems to be a square, Stanley Kramer feel to his post-ET works that will forever pull him away from the "hip" Scorsese and DePalma(in his time) and QT and PTA. I dunno. Its weird.

He made some of my favorite movies of all time. And then he made The Fabelmans. And also he made Hook. And The Terminal. Bad films. Its a mystery.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

A little more on my problems with The Fabelmans:

Tarantino has gotten slammed a lot for how arrogant and self-absorbed he sounds in interviews and I'd say: well, he's being honest. He knows how hard it was to take 8 years trying to make it before he finally DID; how hard it is to make a good movie, a hit movie, an Oscar movie. He knows that he developed a fanbase and he earned it all. So that's how he's gonna sound.

Spielberg doesn't beat his own drum quite so much, except in The Fabelmans, he does. One disser(young) over at the Fabelman's page calls the film "Steven Spielberg's love letter...to Steven Spielberg," and that's about right.

Cuz when we get these scenes showing all his brilliant ideas for his student films(gunfire as light through holes etc) the movie is saying: "Isn't this young man a GENIUS? Isn't he going to be a GREAT filmmaker? LOOK at how smart he is!" as others watch in awe.

Oh, well, Spielberg's another one who made it all the way to success. Possibly the greatest success in Hollywood history. And he did it younger and faster than QT (Though this: QT came up from poverty; Spielberg, the movie shows us , did NOT.)

Its a little queasy-making how the story ends up lionizing Young Steve, but he earned it, and he shows us how it can be done. He did it with Super8...he's telling the Next Generation..."you can do it with video digital."

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

One disser(young) over at the Fabelman's page calls the film "Steven Spielberg's love letter...to Steven Spielberg," and that's about right.
I've been thinking about this diss a bit. I'm struck that nobody has ever much complained that Truffaut's 400 Blows (a loosely autobiographical piece with Jean-Pierre Leaud playing the Truffaut-figure Antoine Doinel) is just a love-letter to himself. Rather there's a long tradition in novels and movies alike of writers drawing on aspects of their own childhoods and lives. People used to understand that and didn't automatically, cynically second-guess as narcissism or as any other vice.

400 Blows was directly referenced in a theft-of-a-computer scene in the *other* fairly autobiographical 'Jewish director looks back on his family' movie of the year, 'Armageddon Time' (which has a great joke at Ronald Reagan's expense! the film's almost worth seeing just for that). But 400 Blows also seems to be a background influence on the Sammy Fableman character. For one thing, the kid who plays Sammy looks very like Leaud:
https://tinyurl.com/yc38nm35

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

Haha....The Fabelmans has just been released in France and, no surprise to me, The French *love it*:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/24/film-spielberg-the-fabelmans-reviews-french-critics-audiences
I felt sure that the French would *feel* the connection between The Fabelmans and Truffaut's Antoine Doinel Films (the casting of the lead builds the visual equation), and, moreover, that what sometimes reads as smug self-indulgence in the English-speaking world would probably play as refined genius in France, Italy, Sweden because some of their greatest film-makers (Fellini, Bergman as well as Truffaut) extensively mined their auto-biographies too.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Haha....The Fabelmans has just been released in France and, no surprise to me, The French *love it*:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/24/film-spielberg-the-fabelmans-reviews-french-critics-audiences
I felt sure that the French would *feel* the connection between The Fabelmans and Truffaut's Antoine Doinel Films (the casting of the lead builds the visual equation), and, moreover, that what sometimes reads as smug self-indulgence in the English-speaking world would probably play as refined genius in France, Italy, Sweden because some of their greatest film-makers (Fellini, Bergman as well as Truffaut) extensively mined their auto-biographies too.

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I suppose that's true...I feel more and more like I should NOT have aligned myself with the "love letter to himself" viewpoint of Spielberg's Fabelmans..autobiography has been the soul of novels and movies for years. And I guess the French WOULD dig it...they gave us Truffaut and they famously loved BOTH Hitchcock and Jerry Lewis when others looked down on those two. (Note in passing: I'm not much for Lewis's persona, but his 50/60s cusp movies actually play very MUCH as art films, IHMO. Different from the usual Hollywood stuff. Just like Hitch's films.)

I'll likely see The Fabelmans again, but I just found it not very involving and uninterested in really mining the "outside" 60's world of movies beyond SS's nuclear family and friends.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

That poised child actress, Julia Butters - to whom QT awarded a major role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- here works for Spielberg as one of his sisters and -- practically disappears ....She's the girl with the glasses
*That's* who that was! She popped in that one scene for sure, but, as you say, she disappears after that. It was all very odd with the sisters. We never even got their names straight to my knowledge - they blur into each other. (Good comparison with ET where Eliot's sister and brother are indelible.)

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

I found the anti-Semitic bullying segments very false...the bully's crying is one of a number of ongoing falsities in the movie.
It sounds like you reacted more negatively to some of the high-school stuff than I did. I guess I'm prepared to believe that a lot of kids in High School *do* present initially as almost cartoons. They have depths and individuality most of them but there's a kind of initial shell of performance (that can include performative racism and insensitivity of various kinds in different eras). E.g., I have a nephew who's just finished high school and I was chatting with on Xmas day this year. He's a nice kid *but* he has this initial shell that's almost like a comedy routine about his social life where supposedly nothing phases him. Teens BS about everything I suppose and always have. There's lots more to them than that but first impressions are loud and clumsy. I can believe that a young Spielberg had to deal with some clumsy Jew-baiting, got picked on at school sports, had a sexually teasing, Christian-and-trying-to-convert-him girlfriend, and so on.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

One disser(young) over at the Fabelman's page calls the film "Steven Spielberg's love letter...to Steven Spielberg," and that's about right.

I've been thinking about this diss a bit. I'm struck that nobody has ever much complained that Truffaut's 400 Blows (a loosely autobiographical piece with Jean-Pierre Leaud playing the Truffaut-figure Antoine Doinel) is just a love-letter to himself. Rather there's a long tradition in novels and movies alike of writers drawing on aspects of their own childhoods and lives. People used to understand that and didn't automatically, cynically second-guess as narcissism or as any other vice.

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I was thinking of Truffaut and The 400 Blows(which I have not seen) when I was watching the Fabelmans and I suppose even if I didn't quite "join in the diss" of "a love letter to himself," I did rather buy into the argument. (Oh, hell, I DID buy into the diss, I just read my own post on that).

So not so much to apologize as to acknowledge my bias...

I'll come in another way. The narcissism OF directors. They gotta have it to survive and thrive in the movie industry.

I'm reminded that Alfred Hitchcock in interviews pretty much sold himself AS a narcissist -- or as "better than the average thriller maker."

He was always saying "I avoid the cliche." This fed MY unpolished childhood fanship OF Hitchcock: "I love Hitchcock because, you know what? He avoids the cliche!"

He was always comparing the crop duster scene in NXNW to a straw man "dark alley late at night" scenario that he turned into broad daylight terror.

He said of Janet Leigh's casting in Psycho, "In the average production, Janet Leigh would have played the sister who is investigating. But I wanted to kill off the bigger star." (Sorry, Vera Miles!) Again: "in the average production." Hitch is saying: "Mine is not the AVERAGE production."

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

So Hitchcock's narcissism and QTs narcissism, and Spielberg's narcissism rather "go with the territory of being a very famous and successful director." They "had the goods" (made good and wildly popular movies) but they also knew/know how to self-promote.

Certainly there is a long tradition of novelists turning THEIR young lives into great stories. To Kill a Mockingbird is one example.

Its probably too bad that more movie directors have NOT given us their stories, but let's face it: modernly in particular, they don't have very interesting backstories. They simplyi "made it in ovies"(very hard to do) got rich and NOW their lives are interesting.

There's evidently a fair amount of Hitchcock's childhood in Frenzy because Hitchcock's father was in the produce trade in Covent Garden(just like killer Bob Rusk!) but at a higher, different level than the fictional Rusk. (I think that Rusk's trade makes him an interesting character, BTW, just as Norman Bates is interesting in his job as a motel manager.)

I'd like to assume that there is MORE of Hitchcock's childhood in his 30's British movies because they were made closer TO his childhood and youth.

Truffaut is of double interest here because not only was he a fillmaker, he was a working critic BEFORE he was a filmmaker and thus(like QT but not lilke Spielberg), Truffaut's opinions on other people's films were written down . A lot. He was an "angry young man" film critic, by the way. He dug Hitchcock AGAINST movies like Bridge on the River Kwai and Ben-Hur. And I love this sentence from his bad review of The Bad Seed: "Having seen The Bad Seed, I have no interest in ever seeing another movie directed by Mervyn Leroy again." Wow. That's ruthless.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I found the anti-Semitic bullying segments very false...the bully's crying is one of a number of ongoing falsities in the movie.

It sounds like you reacted more negatively to some of the high-school stuff than I did. I guess I'm prepared to believe that a lot of kids in High School *do* present initially as almost cartoons. They have depths and individuality most of them but there's a kind of initial shell of performance (that can include performative racism and insensitivity of various kinds in different eras).

---

That's true. We've had a LOT of movies about teen agers and high school over the decades, and they've required making unformed "children-plus" into interesting characters.

Actually, I'd start with a TV show -- "Dobie Gillis," which gave ITS teenage characters witty one-liners that might have sounded more appropriate being spoken by 30 year olds.

American Graffiti got things very right. These kids weren't given overly witty dialogue, they spoke rather like KIDS. But the film treated them all with an adult intelligence.

Fast Times at Ridgemont high moved sex(sometimes shown) into the mix and got an R rating.

And Dazed and Confused put a certain indie film intelligence into the mix -- though, like Graffiiti, it was first an exercise in nostalgia -- 1976 through 1993 eyes (Fast Times came out only a few years after its story year.)

Y'know, I have to say this to underline my point: American Graffiti, Fast Times, Dazed and Confused and Licorice Pizza are ALL more entertaining to me than the high school story Spielberg tells in The Fabelmans. Its just a matter of the material -- and the memories -- involved, I guess.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago


Recall that most(all?) of those high school films above used rock hits as their soundtracks. The Fabelmans sticks to Spielberg's guy John Williams for the most part -- with one of his less memorable scores(the guy is 90, it has to be hard to write and conduct, now.) Though I do recall Spielberg putting emphasis on the 60s rock novelty tune "Make an Ugly Woman Your Wife, Be Happy for the Rest of Your Life." Not sure how that fit his story, maybe as a kid he loved the song. (He did NOT make ugly women his wives in real life.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

E.g., I have a nephew who's just finished high school and I was chatting with on Xmas day this year. He's a nice kid *but* he has this initial shell that's almost like a comedy routine about his social life where supposedly nothing phases him.

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Ha. Sounds familiar. To teens I know now and teens I knew ...a long time ago(including me.) These are formative years.

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Teens BS about everything I suppose and always have. There's lots more to them than that but first impressions are loud and clumsy. I can believe that a young Spielberg had to deal with some clumsy Jew-baiting, got picked on at school sports, had a sexually teasing, Christian-and-trying-to-convert-him girlfriend, and so on.

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I need to see the film again. To repeat: I can't even remember why the bully started crying(near the locker) over that film that Stevie made of him.

There is the issue, here, I think of what I was HOPING to get with The Fabelemans versus what I got.

And here's a thought: I keep using Licorice Pizza to "beat The Fabelmans over the head" as a lesser story, lesser film.

I did that man years ago when I went gaga over "Sideways" by Alexander Payne and then a couple of years later did not like a movie called "Little Miss Sunshine."

"Little Miss Sunshine" got some of the indie raves and Oscar love(screenplay win, I think) that Sideways got. And yet I thought that Sideways was much more nuanced and adult and believable, whereas Little Miss Sunshine went for "sit com art film tropes" -- a son who never spoke(Paul Dano, "dad" in The Fabelmans), a father with a wacky "Self Help" book he had written and tried to sell. Even Alan Arkin's Oscar-winning "dirty grandpa" type was good(the movie gets worse when Arkin leaves) but...contrived.

So I can get weird about these things. I pick my beloved -- Sideways then, Licorice Pizza now -- and then perhaps unfairly use it AGAINST other movies that didn't have the same intentions and probably never intended to compete.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

The Fabelmans sticks to Spielberg's guy John Williams for the most part
The song that jumped out for me for The Fabelmans was the band at the school dance covering the Bacharach/David/Warwick tune, 'Walk On By'. It catches your ear so much, a stunningly beautiful distinctive piece of music, that even now it stands as a kind of totem of sophistication. I immediately went into a reverie about how it must have felt to have that all-time-great song as just the latest thing, the thing every high-school band's trying to pick out a version of, draft some cutie into the band to sing it, etc..

Later on I had to check that Walk on By was period-accurate ....and it was. WOB was released and a hit in 1963 and the scene's in 1964.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

The Fabelmans sticks to Spielberg's guy John Williams for the most part
The song that jumped out for me for The Fabelmans was the band at the school dance covering the Bacharach/David/Warwick tune, 'Walk On By'. It catches your ear so much, a stunningly beautiful distinctive piece of music, that even now it stands as a kind of totem of sophistication. I immediately went into a reverie about how it must have felt to have that all-time-great song as just the latest thing, the thing every high-school band's trying to pick out a version of, draft some cutie into the band to sing it, etc..

Later on I had to check that Walk on By was period-accurate ....and it was. WOB was released and a hit in 1963 and the scene's in 1964.

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We have since this post discussed the passing of Burt Bacharach(recently) in another post and on my re-read of this thread...here you were talking about him(and his GREAT song, Walk On By) way back then.

I will here note that I'm surprised Walk On By goes back to 1963. I seem to remember it as a late 60's tune(wrong, I guess.) Did Dionne Warwick do it in 1963, or later?

AND: Diana Krall did a great cover of Walk on By...in the 90s? OOs?

Burt Bacharach, Walk On By. GREAT. Burt Bacharach, Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head. Not so Much.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

I will here note that I'm surprised Walk On By goes back to 1963. I seem to remember it as a late 60's tune(wrong, I guess.) Did Dionne Warwick do it in 1963, or later?
I too originally thought WOB was 1967-1968, but it's definitely from 1963/1964. It was recorded by Warwick in the same Decemeber 1963 sessions that produced 'Anyone who had a heart'. WOB peaked at #6 on the Billboard charts the week of June 13:
https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1964-06-13/
Also in the Top 10 that week:Chapel of Love, Love Me Do, My Guy, Hello Dolly!, Streisand's 'People', I Get Around. In a very busy Beatlemania chart year WOB ended up the #37 song of the year on Billboard's Chart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1964
I can also report that WOB got to #4 on the NZ charts in July 1964.

I suspect that what may be tempting us to surmise WOB as later than it was is that 'The Look of Love' *was* very specifically 1967/1968/Casino Royale and it's harmonically very similar to WOB (lots of minor seventh chords in a row = a jazzy feel compared to most pop-songs) and has a similar slow temp (only with Bossa Nova elements of the rhythm section pushed forward).

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

I suspect that the greatest cover of 'Walk on By' is Isaac Hayes's 12 minute epic version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqR4CZj0mJQ
This piece has the story about Hayes's version(which saved Stax Records):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrM-5967HYY

The following more 'electronic' version of WOB from the '80s (by an Australian artist) is also worth hearing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70oYZ8sdudM

The underlying song is so very strong that it can support any number of remarkable versions and re-interpretations.

BTW, I've been listening on Spotify to Dionne Warwick's early '63 debut album Presenting Dionne Warwick. It's produced by Bach. and Dav. and has 9/12 songs written by them. 'Don't make Me Over' was the biggest single from it (got to #21 on the main chart but #5 on R&B chart), but the album also includes lot of tracks that only became hits when recorded by others: Wishin and Hopin'., Make It Easy On Yourself, This Empty Place... All this stuff is great but they're not 'Walk On By'. This shows what level of fantasticness is often required to really break through and make a career. If you can make a WOB you get the whole world on your wavelength forever. You can coast on that to some extent, and even your old stuff will start sounding much better.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

Spielberg character says "No, but I might make a movie about it." Well, DID he? If so...not a very good one (the bully's crying is one of a number of ongoing falsities in the movie.)
Spielberg swears that the Bully being strangely upset by his very positive portrayal in the 'Ditch Day' film and even crying about it *really* happened to him as shown. It does feel like something that nobody would ever make up. [In general it's a funny moment in a film which has some factual basis when something happens that feels quite narratively unhelpful or utterly random, and you think, "Oh that's right, this is based on real events, no one would or could make up that kind of detail."]

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Spielberg character says "No, but I might make a movie about it." Well, DID he? If so...not a very good one (the bully's crying is one of a number of ongoing falsities in the movie.)

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Spielberg swears that the Bully being strangely upset by his very positive portrayal in the 'Ditch Day' film and even crying about it *really* happened to him as shown. It does feel like something that nobody would ever make up.

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You and I reach an interesting juncture here, swanstep. So...I was sure this scene rang false (I even used Norman Bates' word "falsity") and it is based on a real incident.

Last year(or so) you found a scene involving a Jewish Shabbat (sp?) dinner in Licorice Pizza to be false in its presentation and yet I read where THAT scene was based on a real incident with the real Haim family who are in the movie.

So..."one for me, one for you" and in my case, it shifts the debate:

OK...so that really happened with the bully and the movie and the crying. I'm still not sure I much enjoyed the scene or, for that matter, the entire dramaturgy of "Young Steve in high school being bullied and courting a born again Christian girl" (SHE was overdone in my book, but I dunno, I guess she was real TOO?)

That scene and the Spielberg stand-ins line "...but I might make a movie out of it" had gotten an article somewhere on the net. I found it but I can't cite it. It IS rather the centerpiece of the movie, the idea that if you're Spielberg, you can serve revenge as a dish served cold 60 years after it happened. (I wonder if the bully is still with us and has seen the film -- I'll bet he's a pretty successful guy if not Spielberg level.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

...and there is a sophisticated notion within the scene: Spielberg has made a "Ditch Day" movie that worships the handsome, athletic bully as "a God among mortals" the Great One, the Hero...and the bully senses he's being MOCKED. In public, in front of his schoolmates. Hey, I can't even remember why he started crying and I saw the movie only a week ago.

Which raises another point. Elsewhere on another thread I've noted that I didn't much connect with the movie "Out of Sight" back in 1998(its not that I didn't like it, it just wasn't all that memorable) but I would be willing to watch it again to see if I liked it better. The response from a poster was that if I didn't like it then, I wouldn't like it now.

I'm not so sure. I've been making a mental review of a LOT of movies I didn't "get" the first time which indeed were much better for me when I saw them again and connected in a better way. Examples include No Country for Old Men, The Exorcist(which I actively HATED the first time I saw it after waiting in line for two hours), and Blazing Saddles.

So I'll give The Fabelmans another chance. Some day.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

[In general it's a funny moment in a film which has some factual basis when something happens that feels quite narratively unhelpful or utterly random, and you think, "Oh that's right, this is based on real events, no one would or could make up that kind of detail."]

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I expect that happens with filmmakers a lot...."fact is stranger than fiction." And they want to tell that real anecdote in fictional form and they KNOW it really happened....but it doesn't "play."

I've read enough about Spielberg's life that I could accept all the scenes in Phoenix(it always tickles me that Spielberg lived in Phoenix when the Phoenix-launched Psycho was released in 1960-- what did he THINK about that?) and the scenes with his student films, and everything about his parents break-up (which echoes in one of his better films "Catch Me If You Can").

I just wasn't familiar with the Northern California years(Early Silicon Valley, Saratoga...not too far from Vertigo's San Juan Bautista area), and the anti-semitic bullying.

About which: in my college years I was among many Jewish students (I am not) , friends with some, dated some and anti-semitic stuff just didn't come up, "wasn't in the air" THEY didn't mention it(but why would they, I guess). So I'm always a little surprised to see it in a movie I'm sure it exists/existed in American high schools, but ....just a little "foreign" to me.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I'm thinking that The Fabelmans suffered a bit from the same problem as "Hitchcock"(which is now TEN YEARS old), about the making of Psycho.

With Hitchcock, I had hoped to see more scenes showing them making the movie (spending more time with "Anthony Perkins" and "Janet Leigh" and "Martin Balsam") and legal reasons kept them from doing so. So we were stuck with the "romantic problems of Alfred and Alma Hitchcock." Huh?

In The Fabelmans, the problem is: there are all these stories of Spielberg crashing the Universal lot, taking an office there, getting thrown off of Torn Curtain, making the short film "Amblin", making Night Gallery, Columbo and Duel....and the movie ENDS before any of that. Its very much about the romantic problems of Mr. and Mrs. Fabelman and...sadly...we've seen that story before. (The great scene with the great David Lynch playing the great John Ford is the one really GOOD connection to what could have been.)

The rather typical high school scenes in The Fabelmans can't help in my mind but suffer compared to the more realistic and much "nicer" scenes of teenagers (and one mixed up 25 year old woman) in Licorice Pizza. PTA hit a more sophisticated tone than Spielberg, and that just reflects differences in their mind set and approach.

An example: In Licorice Pizza, Gary at his favorite "lounge restaurant) stumbles onto his "unrequited love" Alana having dinner with old movie star "Jack Holden". Painful -- but Gary takes command and takes his "picked up girlfriends" to a booth to scope out the situation with "direct eye contact."

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

That's the set up. But I REALLY like a close-up given to one of Gary's young lieutenants as he comes through the door of the restaurant and sees what's going on. He's a handsome young fellow -- HE could be a star someday -- but he DEFERS to the older Gary, sits down with Gary and the girls and after noting his excitement at seeing a REAL movie star, realizes that Gary doesn't care about that and is upset that Alana is there. So the "lieutenant" obeys his young commander, takes his side, and the scene continues, with Gary leading his group of loyal guys and girls.

Compare that to The Fabelman scenes which have such familiar figures as bullies, jocks, mean girls and "the cute girl who might break out and go for our young nerd hero."

Its perhaps an unfair comparison, but I see it. Both movies feature teenage years and BOTH movies feature a Jewish family (its the Haim Family as the Kane Family in LP.) One is just a more enjoyable watch. For me. Your mileage may vary.


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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I expect I've made clear in recent years that Steven Spielberg is a real conundrum to me. I KNOW that he is the most financially successful filmmaker of all time -- its not just his blockbuster movies, its his producer ties to things like Transformers, his cut of Dreamworks, his ties to TV series ownership, etc.

I KNOW that a few of his movies are MY favorites of all time: Duel, Jaws, Raiders, ET, Jurassic Park, and Saving Private Ryan. (Close Encounters, not so much. Schindler's List -- "one and done.") War of the Worlds is my second favorite movie of 2005 but matches some great attack/flight sequences with truly lazy and perfunctory sequences.

But it also seems that some more exciting filmmakers have come down the pike in the same decades -- or more exciting individual movies have been made -- and Spielberg will always seem a bit stunted in some weird way. I think we looked at a list of his movies in the last decade and there's not a lot of classics in there.

And this: whereas Martin Scorsese can talk movie history right off the top of his head, I recall Spielberg giving a filmed interview quote on Psycho(for the AFI?) and it was CLEAR that the quote had been written for him and memorized by him and was "over-written"(something about Psycho having the "smell of flowers and formaldahyde in a funeral parlor.") Spielberg just seems a bit corporate to me.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

Spielberg just seems a bit corporate to me.
It's funny, quite early in his career, Spielberg *told* everyone that cared to listen that he didn't think he had much of an individual style or POV, and that he thought he was most akin to and most influenced by the very proficient, fluent studio directors from the golden age - Curtiz, Fleming, Stevens, Wyler, Cukor, Hawks, etc.. This self-perception has been proved true I think. While Spielberg has interests he doesn't have the obsessions and streaks of perversity that keeps us coming back to Hitchcock, Scorsese, QT, Lang, and the like. And he doesn't have the interest in capital A Art like Welles or Nichols, or the often college-stoked commitment to art film and film history the way Scorsese and even Lucas did and lots of others have ever since.

Spielberg himself is comfortable with all this. But it also makes him a poor fit for documentaries and other sorts of critical apparatus that are mostly keyed off notions of 'genius' and 'individual vision'. Curtiz, Fleming, Wyler, and co made lots of great films but plenty of indifferent ones too, and there's just the odd book about each of them in film libraries...whereas there's a shelf of Hitch-books and and a shelf of Welles-books, half a shelf of Fellini, and so on.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Spielberg just seems a bit corporate to me.
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It's funny, quite early in his career, Spielberg *told* everyone that cared to listen that he didn't think he had much of an individual style or POV, and that he thought he was most akin to and most influenced by the very proficient, fluent studio directors from the golden age - Curtiz, Fleming, Stevens, Wyler, Cukor, Hawks, etc.. This self-perception has been proved true I think.

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Well, that's a great insight because I do think it has been proved by a lot of his recent work in recent years...er DECADES. Just good, polished middle-brow stuff.

Sometimes it "hits" for me: Lincoln(with its great look at the bribery and corruption of THOSE years; nothing much new today) Bridge of Spies(a bit too corny, but a really great journey into "Torn Curtain" land but better written.)

But a lot of time, it misses (The Post rendering everything that made All the President's Men interesting...not.) And frankly I have just skipped a lot of his recent work.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

While Spielberg has interests he doesn't have the obsessions and streaks of perversity that keeps us coming back to Hitchcock, Scorsese, QT, Lang, and the like.

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Well, let's face it, THOSE guys have stuck to blood and guts (and thrills) a LOT. Hitchcock and QT: exclusively. And Scorsese may make "serious" films like Silence and The Age of Innocence, but let's face it: he SCORES with his gangster stuff: Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed. And his thriller Cape Fear(biggest hit?) and his "art horror film" Taxi Driver. Etc.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I would like to note in passing how many of the "70's movie brats" started out by "making a Hitchcock."

Hitchcock was the big deal then. Modernly, young ones try to emulate Scorsese and QT more than Hitch. But Hitch was BIG back then.

Consider:

Francis Coppola: Dementia 13. The plot ain't like Psycho, but in the key scene a nubile blonde strips down to bra and panties for a night swim in a pond ...and is hacked to pieces by an axe wielding Psycho.

Peter Bogdanovich: Targets. Though Boris Karloff is in it and his brand of horror is examined, too, the movie uses a Charles Whitman clone to give us "the boy next door gone psycho" ---a sniper who climactically picks off people at a drive in as Karloff saves the day.

Brian de Palma: He made some counterculture comedies before going to the Hitchcock well, but when he went, he WENT. Sisters -- a Psycho/Rear Window clone with a scary Bernard Herrmann score and..history.

Spielberg. In 1971, he shot a Columbo(which was Dial M for Murder on TV), AND he gave us "Duel" which turned a Hitchcock set-piece(think the crop duster) into a full TV movie (with a truck instead of a crop duster). Later came Jaws (Psycho at sea) and Close Encounters(with a Mount Rushmore like finale) and....pretty much Steve dropped Hitch from then on.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Spielberg himself is comfortable with all this. But it also makes him a poor fit for documentaries and other sorts of critical apparatus that are mostly keyed off notions of 'genius' and 'individual vision'.

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Yeah...they have a documentary on Spielberg on HBO Max, but he can't really get it going on personality enough to interest us.

My take on Spielberg is pretty simple:

With Hitchcock et all leaving the stage in the 70s, Spielberg had a string of blockbusters by sticking to GENRE:

Duel(a "TV blockbuster)
Jaws(Biggest hit of all time)
Close Encounters
Raiders of the Lost Ark
ET(Biggest hit of all time)

and he managed to slip The Sugarland Express and 1941 in there , too.

BUT...AFTER ET, things got wobbly fast.

Spielberg's segment of The Twilight Zone movie: simply bad.

Temple of Doom. Big hit, loved by many, but disliked(not hated) by others: so childish, so gross for grossness' sake.

..and then Spielberg began his "I'm too big for genre" period, and it has continued ever thus, with only two key departures: Jurassic Park(BIG) and War of the Worlds.

The rest of the time, this guy is a cross between Stanley Kramer and Samuel Goldwyn.

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