Fall 2014 #14: It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) - Frank Capra

So my Fall 2014 Movie Bucketlist included two horror films for Halloween (The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby) and one of the most classic Christmas movies of all time… and here I am five months after Christmas finally sitting down to watch it. Good thing there are no classic Easter films.

Alright, I somehow managed to go 22 Christmases without seeing this movie, ranked as #26 on the IMDb Top 250 and #20 on the AFI Top 100, the closest I have seen these lists agree since The Godfather (which is #2 on both). 

The Frank Capra film is based on the 1939 short story by Philip Van Doren Stern. When he couldn’t publish the story himself, he wrote it on about 200 Christmas cards and mailed them out in 1943. Somehow this got the attention of a producer for RKO pictures, who bought the story for $10,000 with the intention of making the movie for Carey Grant. When three separate scripts proved unusable, the rights were sold to Frank Capra. 

Cue the gym-to-swimming pool transformation? This is real by the way, Beverly Hills High School actually still has this. Okay, so the film was shot on the Oscar-winning sets for the 1931 film Cimarron in Encino, CA, which included three city blocks and 75 store fronts and a residential neighborhood. So crazy.

Anyway! The story follows George Bailey (James Stewart), the owner of a loan business of some kind, who decides to kill himself on Christmas Eve. Luckily, his guardian angel, Clarence, stops him and shows him what the world would be like if he had never been born. It’s basically A Christmas Carol but with a more likable protagonist. 

Shocker, he learns to appreciate his life. The crazy part about It’s A Wonderful Life is, while ANYONE would tell you it’s a movie about a man who sees what the world is like if he were never born… is that this 130 minute movie spends 105 minutes building to this moment. I’m not kidding, at an hour and 45 minutes into It’s A Wonderful Life, Clarence decides to show George Bailey a world where he doesn’t exist. So how did they keep our interest?

Besides great one liners and amazing supporting characters like these. The film opens on a shot of three galaxies having a conversation, and we’re basically told that they’re angels, and in order for the 293-year-old angel Clarence to get his wings, he has to help George Bailey realize that his life is worth living. This “George Bailey is going to kill himself right now on Christmas Eve, but let me first show you the first 40 or so years of his life” tactic is insanely risky, because they hardly ever return to the frame-tale. Instead, we follow George, growing up as the small-town dreamer who can’t wait to get out and explore the world, but is bogged down by sudden responsibility and empathy for his fellow man.

This is Mr. Potter, or, as Wikipedia describes him, “a rapacious slumlord.” Mr. Potter is the richest man in town, and is constantly trying to destroy the loan business that George’s father established to help the people of Bedford Falls. He’s Scrooge if Scrooge never learned his lesson. When George takes over his father’s work, he is equally giving in his style of business. This comes back to bite him, and a financial mistake made on Christmas Eve almost convinces him to take his own life.

But Clarence intervenes! Apparently the world would look a lot different without George Bailey. But watching this buildup that is literally the entire runtime of The Incredibles, She’s the Man, and Psycho, I start to get kind of selfish for George. Yeah, he helped a lot of people have fulfilling and happy lives, but this small-town boy with big dreams to see the world is trapped, and he’ll always be trapped, and why should him realizing that it’s all been worth it make me happy?

George gets married to the girl that has loved him since childhood, but did he love her? When his brother goes to college instead of him, joins the army instead of him, becomes a war hero instead of him, are we supposed to be happy because it’s all possible because of George? (The first scene shows George saving his brother’s life in their childhood). 

But the film is problematic in other ways, as the characters do end up remaining slaves to capitalism regardless of where they place value in their lives. It is, however, their perspective on the importance of money that makes them better than Mr. Potter, not their rejection of it. Lots to think about here.

I don’t know. Either way I cried in the end. The movie is beautiful. It was a box office failure, reporting a loss of $525,000 on a $3.18 million budget, and now it’s one of the most televised movies of all time. Do yourself a favor and watch it. Not in color please.

Spring 2014 #2: Rear Window (1954) - Alfred Hitchcock

So I realized last night when I stated that my theme was “Directors who always come up in conversation but whose films I’ve never seen,” it was basically a complete lie. Last night I saw my fourth Hitchcock film, after Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Psycho (1960), and Vertigo (1958). So let’s get started!

The story focuses on a man named L.B. Jefferies, who is confined to his room after his photography job caused him to get in an accident at the racetrack, where he broke his leg. He is played by James Stewart, the same as the protagonist from Vertigo (and It’s A Wonderful Life, which just failed to make my last list). He is stubborn, intellectual, and a bit pretentious. He spends most of his time spying on his neighbors through their windows.

His girlfriend is Lisa, played by Grace Kelly. This was actually my first Grace Kelly movie ever, which was exciting. So Lisa is basically the opposite of Jeff, she comes from an upper class background and she sells designer clothes and enjoys her lavish lifestyle. In the beginning of the film we find out Jeff is reluctant to marry her because she is “too perfect.”

Which the sassy nurse explains is stupid.

So Jeff has a neighbor living across the courtyard who has a wife that is an invalid, and one day the man is acting super suspicious, and the next day his wife is gone. He call his detective friend, who assures him that murder is not the answer. They soon begin investigating, and each piece of evidence assures the detective that the man’s wife went to stay in the country, but Jeff, Lisa, and the nurse don’t buy it.

The film is very funny at times, because it shows how glimpses into people’s private lives can be so misleading. Other critics have argued that each couple that Jeff spies on is a potential path for Lisa and Jeff’s relationship, and that’s why he is so hesitant to propose. Also Jeff has some pretty interesting neighbors, including this ballerina who has never heard of blinds before.

Anyway, the film, in typical mid-20th century fashion, is incredibly slow to start up. But Hitchcock knows his audience, and he certainly knows suspense, and I think the payoff was worth it. It had me like:

So I recommend that everyone take the time to see it. The film ranks #31 on the IMDb Top 250, and #48 on the AFI 100 Movies list. It’s no Psycho, but on the bright side it also didn’t make me afraid to shower.

Day 8: January 10th, 2014: Vertigo (1958) - Alfred Hitchcock

I’m going to start this review by stating that I made the mistake of seeing two films last night, American Hustle at 8pm and then this film, Vertigo, at 11pm. Turns out double features are more tiring than they look? Especially since I haven’t stayed up past midnight in a while, I was kind of hold holding my eyes open like this:

So Vertigo is a film I was very excited to watch, but unfortunately I think my tiredness left me a little unprepared to really watch the film as the classic that it has become. Vertigo is a Hitchcock film about a man named Scottie who is forced to retire from the police after a tragic accident left a policeman dead and left Scottie with a crippling fear of heights. Oh… and vertigo, a sensation of false, rotational movement. See Liza Minnelli as example:

Scottie is then hired by his old friend Gavin Elster, who believes that his wife, Madeleine, is being possessed and should be followed. Scottie reluctantly agrees, and finds that Madeleine is in fact up to a lot of weird stuff.

After Madeleine falls in the San Francisco Bay and Scottie saves her, the two start to develop feelings for each other. And then shit hits the fan! I don’t want to give away the ending but let’s just say there is a decent level of drama. Not to mention the film also popularized the dolly zoom, which is now known as the Vertigo Effect.

But Vertigo wasn’t always the masterpiece of cinema that it is known as today. In the 50s, it barely had any mention in scholarly articles about film. It wasn’t until the late 60s that it started getting attention from film critics, and all of the sudden it was heralded as one of the greatest films of all time. It is number #9 in the AFI 100 Movies list, and #66 on the IMDb Top 250, but it recently made #1 (beating out Citizen Kane) on the Sight & Sound list.

Most of the critics’ main problem with the film at the time was that it was too slow to be considered a psychological murder/suspense film. And I can attest to that, because sometimes I felt like I was begging for something crazy to happen.

And when things did happen, they felt a little overacted and cheap. Especially in regards to Scottie’s fear of heights.

But a film as critically praised as this one can’t be judged after only one viewing, so I’m not going to pass judgment here. Let’s just say I was less than thrilled to be watching this thriller, but the whole time I kept telling myself that this wasn’t the last I would be seeing of Madeleine.