mystery meat's movieverse

[hey nathan]

oops toop, so for new page:

A MODERN MUSKETEER | Douglas Fairbanks | Allan Dwan | 1917

this is a movie to watch for Fairbanks doing cool cartwheels and handsprings and furniture-jumping stunts. he's this midwestern dude whose mom did nothing but read Three Musketeers while pregnant and so he's basically D'Artagnan reincarnated. like most silent movies, there's a love triangle pitting dashing Fairbanks against some materialistic stuffed shirt in pursuit of a woman with minimal agency, and it gets more when an outlaw Indian chief has designs on her too. it's a lot of the ingredients of rugged pioneer silent cinema -- dumb and problematic but also kinetic and pictorially gorgeous -- though not quite top-tier Fairbanks, or top-tier Dwan for that matter. but it's certainly better than Dwan's 1939 Three Musketeers starring Don Ameche and the Ritz Brothers, which is an abomination. also apparently Victor Fleming assisted on cinematography for this picture, that's the kinda trivia i live for.

had myself a mystery meat-esque dbl feature last night:




Salome | 1922 | Nazimova/Allied | starring Alla Nazimova, dir Chas. Bryant w/ A. Nazimova, adp from Oscar Wilde's play
Salome | 1953 | Beckworth/Columbia | starring Rita Hayworth & Charles Laughton, dir Wm. Dieterle, cin Chas. Lang

Full disclosure: I was reading and internetting during both and possibly fell asleep during the 2nd one, but not because it was boring, as both were really great from what I paid attention to. I DVR'd each off TCM sometime last month. Both were produced by their stars, which seems kinda rare and cool. The silent one is somewhat baroque/lurid in its visuals/costuming/atmosphere (but smaller scale than similar genre entries by say DeMille or Griffith), while the update is very 50s Bible-story tone/morality ala King of Kings or Ben Hur with a similar sweep to the story elaborating on Roman rule and loading Salome's backstory with details I don't recall from the Bible story, and def not in the Oscar Wilde version the silent is based on, which is contained to the point of claustrophobia. So there's a stark shift from debauched melancholy to Eisenhower whitebreadness indicative of Hollywood on either side of the Hays Code. Laughton is perfect as the bloated sadsack Herod and I liked Rita Hayworth's dancing more than Nazimova's but both were excellent. The Technicolor in the 50s version is very rich and evocative, DP Charles Lang also shot a great underseen color noir called Desert Fury I highly recommend, as I would both of these!!

[Spoilt Victorian Child]

I liked Angel a lot, though it was definitely more in the mold of Ninotchka than say Trouble in Paradise, in terms of balancing humor and romance. Still the central relationship (between Dietrich and Marshall, I guess to clarify) is genuinely fascinating; it feels both unusually realistic and also the sort of thing that doesn't exist outside of a Lubitsch film. Which I guess is a trick he manages pretty consistently. Anyway they were both great, and it's always good to see Melvyn Douglas reprising his role as "less-charming William Powell." The servants are very funny but their absence from the final third makes them feel kind of tacked-on in retrospect.

[mascotte]

bookmarked

[mystery meat]

1953 Salome is at the top of my queue for Laughton completism! gotta check it out

[hey nathan]

Laughton completism!

- "I'm so sorry for Advise & Consent."
"It's okay buddy, thanks for Hobson's Choice!" -

[mystery meat]

lmao

[mystery meat]

i gotta hurry up and finish Stanwyck first tho

1930 Ladies of Leisure
1931 Illicit
1931 The Miracle Woman
1931 Night Nurse
1932 Forbidden
1932 So Big!
1932 The Purchase Price
1933 The Bitter Tea of General Yen
1933 Ladies They Talk About
1933 Baby Face
1934 The Secret Bride
1935 Annie Oakley
1936 The Plough and the Stars
1937 Internes Can't Take Money
1937 Stella Dallas
1938 Always Goodbye
1939 Union Pacific
1939 Golden Boy
1940 Remember the Night
1941 The Lady Eve
1941 Meet John Doe
1941 Ball of Fire
1942 The Great Man's Lady
1943 Lady of Burlesque
1944 Double Indemnity
1945 Christmas in Connecticut
1946 The Bride Wore Boots
1946 The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
1947 The Other Love
1947 Cry Wolf
1948 Sorry, Wrong Number
1949 The Lady Gambles
1949 East Side, West Side
1950 The File on Thelma Jordon
1950 No Man of Her Own
1950 The Furies
1950 To Please a Lady
1952 Clash By Night
1953 Jeopardy
1953 Titanic
1953 All I Desire
1953 Blowing Wild
1954 Executive Suite
1954 Cattle Queen of Montana
1955 Escape to Burma
1956 There's Always Tomorrow
1957 Forty Guns
1962 Walk on the Wild Side

that's only like half her movies

[OKterrific]

I had that feeling looking at Chang Cheh's filmography the other day like, I'll never see all of them but there'll always be a new one to watch

[inmate]

remember the night is so fucking good

[Spooky Jim]

You know who'd love this thread? My mom. And she's pretty cool really.

[carlagain]

i wanna go to la fémis do you think that can happen for me

[Plainsong]

What are your Laughton rankings so far mystery meat?

[mystery meat]

top shelf

advise & consent
hobson's choice
the old dark house
the sign of the cross
ruggles of red gap

really good

the big clock
the private life of king henry viii
mutiny on the bounty
the hunchback of notre dame
witness for the prosecution

meh

the canterville ghost
the barretts of wimpole street
the paradine case

barely remember and need to revisit

spartacus

[Franco]

I’m gonna be underwater in here but I’d like to at least read and learn. Up next in my 1940-1980 project is Journey to Italy, which I think falls in the purview of the OP

[mystery meat]

it definitely does, that's one of my fav movies. bergman's and rossellini's relationship is so fascinating but don't ever read Donald Spoto's Bergman bio it sucks. stoked to hear your thoughts.

no worries about feeling underwater, this thread is a welcoming space for anyone remotely interested in this stuff.

[mystery meat]

THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR | Paramount | Billy Wilder | Ginger Rogers / Ray Milland | 1942

fuck no. can't do it. i'm not one of these people who retroactively cries foul at Maurice Chevalier singing Thank Heaven for Little Girls at the beginning of Gigi, but Ginger Rogers playing 12-year-old Sue-Sue with lollipop in hand is really icky and unwatchable. this isn't hindsight knows best so much as the early 40s over-frothed wartime movies consistently force some really naive constructions of interpersonal human relationships and anyone who has ever innocently liked this movie is too repressed for their own good, and if you assess it in the larger framework of Billy Wilder being one of the most misogynist and disillusioned dudes in filmmaking history (who would later call this 'the first American movie about pedophilia') then it's even grosser. and if you block all that stuff out and discipline your brain to engage with this movie on the most innocent and naive face-value terms, it's still pretty lame and goddamn i just wasn't in the mood for the kind of 'jokes' that function as studio propaganda ala that Veronica Lake gag. Wilder's Love in the Afternoon is a lot more substantive and honest and emphatically sordid in dealing with age disparities in Hollywood star couplings and it's an endlessly more fascinating viewing.

stay tuned tomorrow i'm gonna write-up this underrated 1954 Richard Quine noir in conjunction with the recently rewatched Double Indemnity to get at why Fred MacMurray is the equal of Dick Powell for switching between family comedy dweeb-dope and the best kind of noir bitterness cinema has to offer.

[palmer eldritch]

that movie sounds insane

[ratbags]

a lot of these movies are too old to be good

[alaska]

wow post as hell

[ratbags]

A MODERN MUSKETEER | Douglas Fairbanks | Allan Dwan | 1917

this is a movie to watch for Fairbanks doing cool cartwheels and handsprings and furniture-jumping stunts. he's this midwestern dude whose mom did nothing but read Three Musketeers while pregnant and so he's basically D'Artagnan reincarnated. like most silent movies, there's a love triangle pitting dashing Fairbanks against some materialistic stuffed shirt in pursuit of a woman with minimal agency, and it gets more when an outlaw Indian chief has designs on her too. it's a lot of the ingredients of rugged pioneer silent cinema -- dumb and problematic but also kinetic and pictorially gorgeous -- though not quite top-tier Fairbanks, or top-tier Dwan for that matter. but it's certainly better than Dwan's 1939 Three Musketeers starring Don Ameche and the Ritz Brothers, which is an abomination. also apparently Victor Fleming assisted on cinematography for this picture, that's the kinda trivia i live for.

like this one? just way too old

[mystery meat]

i'm cursed to lead the life cinematic

[landspeedrecord]

you should watch some pre-code movies, stakeout. pre-code films are fucking wild

I'm not going to act like the major and the minor's politics are radical or progressive, but I think its egregiousness is fairly overstated here. it's a totally unremarkable lubitsch riff. the films wilder was writing before this one (ninotchka + ball of fire in particular) feature much more interesting characters and transcend their conceits. the best part of it is the title (and the dry martini line, which people tend to get a kick out of)

anyways, watch sylvia scarlett instead!

george cukor, 1936. the first pairing of cary grant (who uses a terrible cockney accent) & katharine hepburn, who spends almost the entire film pretending to be a young boy. it was a huge box office failure at the time, but its slippery gender politics have made it a classic of early queer cinema

[ratbags]

they made movies this year

[ratbags]

i've watched literally every pre-code movie ever made. i worshipped at the altar of william a. wellman. but now? too old. those movies.

[mystery meat]

you were just in love the Wild Bill mystique but then withdrew when u realized he directed shit like Blood Alley, The Great Man's Lady, and Stingaree

[mystery meat]

i liked the dry martini line better in that one simpsons ep

i like Sylvia Scarlett but is it too precious for its own good? is the open-air theater-troupe hyperdrive whimsy too much? YOU be the judge!

[ratbags]

can't trust old movies or old movie boys...better to stick to new movies.

[hey nathan]

mystery meat watch Under Silverlake

[hey nathan]

and Youre Never Too Young

[mystery meat]

i watch new movies but they’re banned from being discussed in this thread