KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Fortune

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

The Fortune

As usual, I tried locating a trailer to accompany my film selection, but this does not seem possible with "The Fortune". I was unable to locate a trailer on YouTube, which is the most likely site that it would be available on. I looked at Google to search for the same thing and also got no results. Maybe this is the reason that this film was a Blind Spot for me, I never remembered seeing anything promoting it, except newspaper ads. The fact that the movie flopped on release probably accounts for it never being available for me to see in 1975. To catch up with it today, I purchased a copy from Umbrella, an Australian Media company, this actually had to clear customs before being delivered to me. Anyway, the above video is a clip from TCM when they showed the film a few years ago.

"The Fortune" stars Jack Nicolson (This is his fourth film in the Throwback Thursday Series) and Warren Beatty (Only his second). They were both big stars at the time and the movie was directed by Mike Nichols. With that pedigree, you would think this was a surefire smash. Unfortunately, like "Lucky Lady", also in 75, casting cannot make up for all the elements of a movie. Somehow this light comedy farce, just lacks the delicate touch that it takes to pull off this kind of material, and part ofd the problem is the two stars.

Nicolson and Beatty are both laconic actors, who need some pushing to feel like active participants in a movie. Here they seem to be cruising rather than working, and the script and direction are not enough to compensate for a lack of wattage from the stars. There is a scroll at the start of the movie, to explain the complication that the story is trying to deal with. This immediately suggests trouble. When you have to have a history lesson before the story starts, it is never very promising. Basically, the two are small time scam artists, who are trying to get a hold of the wealth of an heiress by marrying her. Unfortunately, the man who wooed her is unable to complete a divorce, so if he takes her with him across the country, he could be violating the Mann Act. 

 During the 1920s, in the United States, the law known as the Mann Act was much feared. It prohibited transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. Because of the Mann Act, a man who wanted to run off with a woman and was willing, or unable, to marry her, would sometimes go to unusual lengths.

So Beatty wants to marry Stockad Channing, but can't, so he has her marry his pal Nicholson, as a way of getting around the law. Of course that presents some awkward moments in the story, and those are the only places where the film comes to life. The movie is less than an hour and a half long, but it seems to take forever to get to the real complications. A car ride, train trip and Airplane flight, all use up a lot of screen time, without really building the story or the characters. Once the trio arrives in Los Angeles, and settles into the same courtyard apartment that was used in "The Day of the Locust", the comedy feels more connected to the goings on. There just isn't that much of it.

Channing is in her first credited role here, and for the most part she is great, but there are a couple of scenes where bickering is featured and she was given the direction "louder". It annoys rather than amuses. The final section of the film, is where the slapstick humor comes in, and the hapless con men, having decided to murder the woman they both claim to love, can't quite pull off the act. There is a scene of a traffic jam on a bridge that showcases what the film could have been, if only that spirit was infused in the rest of the story. 

Anyway, it's not as big a misfire as "Lucky Lady", it still isn't something you need to add to your list of essential viewing. 

Lisa Frankenstein

 

I didn't hate this movie but I didn't love it the way I wished I had. Diablo Cody has written a couple of films that I do admire quite a bit, both “Juno” and "Jennifer's Body" are regular visitors on our TV screen. So it was with some enthusiasm that I looked forward to this newest film penned by this talented screenwriter. I can't say the fault for this film's failures is entirely with the director, because the screenplay is a mess. Instead of being funny or cute or sexy, it's just gross and it relies on obnoxious stereotypes to sell some of its jokes.

The premise is a cross between “Heathers” and “Warm Bodies”, two films with horror at their heart that also try to slip in some romance. Maybe “Heathers” can successfully pull that off because its black heart is clear from the very beginning. “Warm Bodies” just didn't work when it was released a few years ago, and this film has the same problem, dead bodies are just not sexy or romantic. Dress them up in period clothing and try to style them as if they were poets of the era, they are still decaying, oozing, cold bodies that would not be attractive to anyone.

This film takes the idea of a wicked stepmother, and tries to update it into Dawn of the Dead. There's not enough humor to make it work when the film's tone changes dramatically after the first murder. At first the film seems to want to be a wacky romance between a girl who's an outsider and a little odd, and the idea of a Lost Boy from the old days, you know, when men were cravats and vests. The idea that a short circuiting tanning bed will substitute for the elaborate Laboratory of Dr. Frankenstein, is funny at first, but the joke gets repeated several times and it never really makes sense in the story why this would work. I know this is supposed to be a fantasy, so I shouldn't take most of these things seriously, and I don't, but come on. There needs to be a little bit more of an explanation about why a body that's been in the ground for almost 200 years suddenly rises from the grave because of the lightning strike. Lisa, the teen girl who is the protagonist in the story, is suffering from PTSD after the loss of her mother by an Ax Murderer, and the acquisition of a sister and mother when her father remarries. So okay, she's not stable, but her reaction to the character that shows up in her bedroom makes no sense at all.

Speaking of teen comedies that this film borrows from, we also get a little bit of “Pretty in Pink”, where there is a romantic interest, but not the one that we should be rooting for given the setup. It just doesn't make much sense that Lisa continues to want the editor of the school literary journal, after practically engaging in voodoo to get the corpse of Victor Frankenstein animated. Expecting the corpse to go along with this, without any jealousy also makes no sense. This is just a series of scenes that are supposed to be funny but don't work. We get ax murders that aren't funny, and characters who act as if there's no consequence to their actions, when in fact anybody can see the consequences coming from a mile away.

Oh, and another team comedy that we can throw in, “She's All That", where the dowdy little girl turns into a teen Queen that all the boys at school want to be with. Not sure that this is the right way to go from a screenwriter who came up with the clever premise of “Jennifer's Body”, and the terrific contrarian “Juno”. This movie feels like it was manufactured by somebody who is trying to make a successful Teen Movie by doing the same thing that Dr. Frankenstein did, sewing together the parts of dead films and hoping to revive them as something new. It's been tried before and rarely is it successful.

Comedy in horror, it's hard to pull off well. When it happens, like in the film “American Werewolf in London”, we are lucky that we can laugh and be scared at the same time. Lisa Frankenstein doesn't pull this Balancing Act off, it's not as disappointing as Five Nights at Freddy's, but the number of laughs is almost as low, and despite the cute actors, and three or four clever lines, there's just not much here to recommend.

Dune Part 1 (Revisit)

 

In anticipation of the second chapter of Denis Villeneuve's Dune films, the first part from 2021, has been released in theaters for a week so that we can all catch up. When I say we, I was hoping that there would be other Dune fans in the theater, sadly I was by myself without another soul in sight. That didn't change the movie much for me, I still liked it very much, and was happy to see it on the big screen.

There was an interesting phenomenon in the film and my experience in the past 3 years which showed up at yesterday's screening. I had read the original book again for a book club 3 years ago, and we had talked about some of the scenes that were missing in the film. Apparently my memory of the book intruded on my memory of the film, and I kept waiting for a scene that I saw vividly in my head, but was never in the film to begin with. That's just my imagination working overtime and filling in some blanks. I may have done the same thing 40 years ago when I saw David Lynch's Dune, and I thought the film was great even though others saw it as occasionally incoherent. My brain apparently wants me to embrace the concept of Dune as a film in a more complete form than either Lynch or Villeneuve was able to complete. 

Next week I am seeing the David Lynch version of Dune on the big screen, and I'll make more comparisons between the films then, but for now I'm happy to have the new version of Dune. This version has a magnificent score, some terrific visual effects, and casting that is quite effective. Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, and Oscar Isaacs are all excellent in their respective roles. It's taking me a little while to get used to Zendaya as Chani, and I'm still not sure why we had to gender swap Dr. Keynes. Timothée Chalamet has turned out to be a much better choice for Paul Atreides than I had hoped. 

I know several film fans who are irritated that the film stopped where it does in the story, but given the impracticality of having a 7-hour movie, I think it was the correct cut off point. The story finishes at a spot that completes what is essentially the First Act of the story and sets up what is to come pretty effectively. At the conclusion of the film screening, we got an 8 minute preview style trailer, which featured a long segment that will certainly be coming near the beginning of part two. Paul, riding a giant sand worm for the first time, is the important plot point, and it's a little surprising that they give away this sequence in a trailer. I guess they don't think any real Dune fans are unaware of what's going to happen, and those fans who are casual fans, need a little inducement to push the button.

Of course I have already purchased my tickets, I'm excited for the movie, and I would be happy to go to a double feature and see both part one and part two playing together. I'm sure that will happen sometime down the road, until then the spice must flow.

KAMAD on the Forgotten Filmcast

 

I visit with Todd tp talk about an obscure Jimmy Stewart film, featuring Strother Martin.

My Fair Lady (2024 Revisit)

 

I've been watching reaction videos on YouTube this week. When I see Gen Z kids reacting to bands that I listened to back in the seventies, and they are emotional in the way they hear the music and the voices, it reminds me quite a bit of the way I feel every time I see a movie like “My Fair Lady”.

It would be completely inappropriate for me to simply video myself in a theater while watching a movie, but that's sort of the way I think this review should go because my reaction to this movie is completely emotional and spontaneous. If you watched my face while I'm watching the movie, you would see smiles and tears and a hundred other emotions because this movie evokes some of the nicest feelings you can have about a film. I'm not a huge fan of musicals on stage. I have seen my share, and I usually enjoy them, but I'm not a completionist and I don't insist on seeing every musical that comes along in a stage production. I've never seen the stage version of “My Fair Lady”, but I have seen this film a dozen times and it gets to me with each viewing.

The presentation of this movie on Sunday, included an overture, which is one of the things that is frequently missing from modern films. The musical score is given sort of a greatest hits montage of themes from the film in a brief preliminary before the start of the movie. In the background are screenshots of dozens of different kinds of flowers, which of course evokes the reminder that Eliza Doolittle is a flower girl. Just hearing the themes gets my emotional Mojo going. When the title comes up I'm ready for just about anything. The movie could easily have won the Academy Award for costuming after the first 3 minutes of the film, during which none of the principles actually appears. A crowd leaving the Opera is filled with elegant gowns and elaborate headpieces that make you wish you were going to the same Opera just to see what everybody is wearing. When the story finally starts, the costumes of Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn are not particularly interesting, but they do sell the characters and their social position. But don't worry, there is greatness to come,

First though, we have to meet our main players and set up the plot. Rex Harrison created the role of Henry Higgins on Broadway. The rumor is that Jack Warner offered the part in the film to Cary Grant, who said that if the part didn't go to Harrison, not only would he not do the movie he would not even see the movie. Whether this apocryphal story is true, it does reflect the accuracy with which Rex Harrison is appropriately cast in the role. Henry Higgins is a self-righteous, accomplished, over privileged, snob. Yet his snobbery is not based on wealth or social status, but rather on the enunciation and dialect of the people that he interacts with.

My background is in rhetoric rather than in linguistics, but sometimes those two fields cross paths, so I have a natural interest in many of the things that Henry Higgins points out. I would have very little patience for practicing an elongated “e” or an abbreviated “i” or any of the other tools that are used to make Eliza's speaking voice more effective. As an American it's probably true that I'm much less influenced by the manner of speech than I would be if I were a subject of the British Empire. We are a little more egalitarian, but not without our prejudices. Those biases that we usually do have, reflect cultures that are expressed more in clothing and manners than in pronunciation. While not completely outside of the realm of enunciation prejudice, it is the British who are notorious for their obsessions with dialects and vowels.

Audrey Hepburn was cast in the role of Eliza Doolittle, despite the fact that Julie Andrews originated the part on the stage. Jack Warner was unwilling to allow a first-time screen performer to try and carry his movie. As we all know, the irony is that Julie Andrews won the Academy Award for best actress this same year, for “Mary Poppins”, after being passed over for the role in “My Fair Lady”. Still, Hepburn does a magnificent job in portraying Eliza, regardless of the fact that her singing voice is usually dubbed. She gets great comic power out of her speaking voice and facial expressions in the first act. She also looks glorious on screen. She has the magnetic quality that real film stars possess. Paired with Rex Harrison, the sparks really do fly. Harrison has a highbrow attitude and vocal disdain for Eliza, and can manipulate her with his snarky comments and indifference. The fact that the supporting cast of household servants all see Professor Higgins as the oppressed person in the relationship is particularly amusing. There are glorious moments of laughter when he mocks Eliza's pronunciation, and when  Eliza herself reacts to something that Professor Higgins said.

The production design on this film is extraordinary. The house the professor Higgins occupies and moves Eliza into, is a multi-storied puzzle, which gives the characters the chance to move up and down a set of stairs while singing both in frustration and in happiness. The drawing room/library and the workroom where Eliza practices her vowels, are rich with little details that make it clear that Professor Higgins is a meticulous academic and certainly qualified in his field to undertake the transformation he is attempting. The production design doesn't let down even in moments of obvious backlot work, for example the race at Ascot. Even though it is clearly not an actual race track, the emphasis is appropriately on the characters rather than the horses. The black and white gowns worn by all the ladies at the track are simply stunning. Each one seems more elaborate and stylish than the one that came before it, capped off by the Beautiful form-fitting gown that Eliza wears, putting everyone else to shame. In regard to her speech however, she has mastered her pronunciation, but her pace and rhythm are not yet representative of someone from the upper crust. Her vocabulary also contributes several moments of hilarity in the situation. The fact that she is dressed to kill, makes all of those moments even more preciously funny.

The first half of the film is just about perfect. The presentation we saw on Sunday, through another Fathom event, included an intermission. The third Act that plays after the intermission has some of the best songs, but some of the weaker parts of the book that the play is based on. Eliza's dilemma and Higgins' resolution does not make a lot of sense, but it does have an emotional component to it that makes it work. There are songs throughout the film that you could probably sing on a continuous loop like an earworm that simply won't go away. Not only could you have danced all night, you could have hummed all night.

I have no hesitation applauding the changes that took place in the film industry in the years following this movie. Storytelling has gotten better, and actors are all more naturalistic. I am however still very nostalgic for the kinds of quality and craftsmanship that showed up in this film, a quintessential studio movie of the era. Director George Cuckor does a masterful job. The film glides along effortlessly, making use of a massive street set, detailed Interiors and Professor Higgins house, as well as the ballroom in the Transylvania Embassy. This is the kind of stuff that was done to perfection in the old Studio factories. The artifice works because the details look wonderful. The Craftsman who created these settings are incredibly talented. Today most of this work would be done by computer technicians creating a CGI environment, with the actors performing in front of green screens and being inserted into the context. Somehow we've lost something despite adding to our toolbox.

I don't drink or use hallucinogenic drugs because I understand how damaging an addiction can be. The euphoria that comes from seeing a movie like this is probably as close as I will ever come to the rush that the heroin user first feels when they shoot up. I am perfectly happy living within the boundaries of that kind of high. As long as I get my fix every once in a while, sitting in a theater, watching a film and listening to the music and being overcome with emotions as a result, I don't really feel I've denied myself anything by refusing illicit drugs.

Argylle

 

I will confess from the beginning that I am a Matthew Vaughn fan. Out of the films that he's made there hasn't been one that I haven't loved to some degree or other. I anticipated “Argylle” like I would have one of the Kingsmen films, it's a spy thriller with that Vaughn touch that makes them so entertaining and unique. I must also confess however, that this is probably the weakest of the films that I've seen from this director.

Let me point out the things that are problematic before I get to the things that I love so much. Everybody expects that there will be twists in a spy Thriller. After all, betrayal, double agents, and hidden agendas are all part of the field. So of course there will be some surprises along the way. The issue this film has is that it has a change, twist, or revelation every 10 to 15 minutes that makes the movie suddenly change direction and make us question not just our loyalties but the plot structure itself. Sometimes you can just be too clever for your own good. That's what happens here, screenwriter Jason Fuchs seems to be operating under the assumption that if we're going to give up any sense of reality in the visuals, then we don't have to be realistic to the plot points.

It's a Fantastical story, that asked us to suspend our disbelief from the very beginning,and then it asked us to do so again, and then one more time, and then several more times, leading to a little bit of exhaustion in trying to keep track of what the hell is going on in this movie. They have compensated for those faults by creating inventive action sequences and interesting characters, but action sequences are not plot, and when characters change repeatedly, we begin to distrust our own sense of what it all means. Those are not the kinds of things that are going to make most audiences happy.

The main things that keep this film from collapsing altogether are those action moments and the main characters that we get to know from the very beginning. Let's just face it, Sam Rockwell makes everything better, and when he dances, the movie is probably going to be a lot more worthwhile as a result. Rockwell does dance in this movie. Bryce Dallas Howard, plays a somewhat introverted character for the first half of the film, and without giving away a big spoiler or two, there are some dramatic changes that take place in the second half of the film that even the greatest of actresses would have trouble pulling off. She does the best that anybody probably could with what the script gives her.

Two other actors in the film also have their plot lines substantially seem to change the characters they are playing, at least for a short period of time. When it happens it's a little disconcerting, until we get another twist that reveals why even these characters have changed their personalities. The story also gets complicated by the fact that we are jumping back and forth between three different World Views. In one, Bryce Dallas Howard's character Elly Conroy, is visualizing the fictional story that she has written in her spy novel. The second viewpoint comes from Sam Rockwell's character, Aidan Wilde, as he appears to be a real life spy who is intervening in the story in a way that makes Elly extremely nervous. When we finally get to two more big twists, another perspective is added that we bounce back and forth between, without being sure where we are going to land. I'm sure the director and writer thought that this would be a fun ride for the audience, but I think you have to win the audience over before you can pull off something like this, and they don't quite accomplish that in time.

As is usual with a Matthew Vaughn film, there are cleverly directed and visualized gun battles throughout the story. The most effective one, includes a lot of scenes of hand to hand combat, as well as the use of firearms, on a speeding train in the first half of the film. There are inventive moments where Aidan acts quickly and definitively when dealing with the threats to Elly. One thing that might slightly undermine all of this is the presence of a CGI cat and an exit by Parachute that is also clearly a CGI moment. It's my belief that the CGI in a more primitive form is being used this way to remind the audience that this is all a fantasy, and not to take all of the murder and death too seriously.

As the plot gets more ridiculous, which distances us a bit from the movie, we get rescued by over the top visual sequences which are also ridiculous but are completely entertaining. On the podcast this last weekend one of the guests cited two sequences near the end of the film that she was bored by, these were the two sequences that I was most amused at. The fight in the hallway with the different colored smoke and the gas masks made me laugh hard. When we get to the next sequence which involves an oil slick, a couple dozen thugs, and some improvised ice skates, I not only laughed at how preposterous it was, but also how confident Vaughn and Fuchs were in designing this silly but nicely rendered moment. I didn't just have to suspend my disbelief, I had to suppress all reasoning and just enjoy the stupidity.

There are some very clever moments in the film where the main character Elly, mixes the events that are happening to her with the visualization that she has of her fictional spy. She sees the very same events that she is going through through the lens of her hero. Henry Cavill seems to be auditioning for at least the third time to be the next James Bond. These spy films have very different tones, and this one would suggest that Cavill would be playing Bond closer to the Roger Moore version, then to the Sean Connery or Daniel Craig versions of 007. I'm not sure that this is the best direction to take. John Cena is in the movie briefly, but was completely delightful in the moments that he had. Samuel L Jackson plays Samuel L Jackson as usual in this case, as an ally rather than an antagonist.

The most valuable player in the film, aside from Rockwell, is Catherine O'Hara who is playing Elly's mother, and her plot line is dramatically different from what I had anticipated. Of course that's one of the twists that you will probably wonder about when it shows up. On the other hand, Bryan Cranston is chewing the scenery exactly how a villain is supposed to in this kind of movie. There are a couple of other characters that pop into the story a little bit, and they provide exit strategies and some ridiculous answers to difficult plot choices. I just had to keep reminding myself that it's all in good fun. Otherwise, you're going to have a better time mocking some of the things that happened in this film, rather than laughing at the silly things that the filmmakers want you to laugh at.

A Birthday Game

As the years go by, I find more time to indulge in some distractions. To celebrate another trip around the Sun, I have given you a quote from a movie,  from each year I have been around.  The question is "can you name the movie?"

Some are easy, some will be difficult.  If you bother to answer,  I will bother to tell you what you got right and what you missed. Have fun storming the castle.