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The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
The Greatest Show On Earth - But Not The Best Picture
As a circus buff, I can't imagine anybody BUT Cecil B. De Mille having the scope of vision to do justice to a show deliberately created to be so big that one person simply can't take it all in, and the stories and subplots that abound under the biggest of the Big Tops. That said, I do have to wonder what on earth the Academy was thinking when they voted TGSOE the Oscar as Best Picture of 1952.
That year saw the release of High Noon, Ivanhoe, The Quiet Man and Singin' In The Rain, any one of which could lay better claim to the title of Best Picture in terms of writing, plot and cinematography. Why did TGSOE win the Oscar? I believe it is because the film was seen as a "last chance" vote for De Mille; particularly ironic given that C.B. received the Thalberg that year for creating and producing consistently high-quality movies.
De Mille's best work was decades behind him when he filmed the 1951 edition of the Ringling Brothers - Barnum & Bailey Circus. The subplots, purple prose and some of the situations have more in common with the silent cinema spectacles for which De Mille is justly famed than they do with the realities of running a three-ring railroad circus plus midway under canvas on the road for an 8-month season.
One subplot almost derailed the production, in fact. From its beginnings, Ringling Brothers was renowned for running a totally honest show. Considering that at one point Ringling had been nicknamed 'the Sunday-School Show' for its total intolerance of grifters, pickpockets and thieves, the subplot involving a crime boss planting a team of con men on the show to run the midway's games of chance was about as welcome to the circus's management as a skunk at a picnic. There were rows between De Mille, Art Concello (Ringling's Director of Performance) and John Ringling North (the show's owner) over this subplot until C.B. convinced them he needed that plot line to set up the climactic train wreck at the end of the movie. (Ringling's management didn't like THAT much either, because RB&BB hadn't had a train wreck since 1892!)
However, Ringling Brothers extended itself beyond their usual standards to accommodate the filming. Concello, a famous aerialist in his time, even gaffed The Great Sebastian's fall for De Mille. Despite the tensions engendered by the needs of two different forms of entertainment (there is a circus legend that De Mille got a royal chewing-out from Concello for moving the lighting around without asking so he could film better, thus nearly causing a trapeze artist to fall because he couldn't see his catcher), the principal photography is a marvelous chronicle of circus life in and out of the ring. The photography, in fact, is what makes The Greatest Show On Earth such an important picture. De Mille succeeded in capturing on film a way of life that even then was starting to die; John Ringling North would strike the Big Top for good midway through the 1956 season and convert his circus into an 'arena show.'
Forget the corny subplots involving Brad Braden, Angel, Holly, Buttons the Clown, Klaus the elephant trainer and The Great Sebastian. Watch this movie in a documentary frame of mind and you will realize not just how important the circus used to be back before television brought the world into your living room, but the sense of wonder that has been lost from our faster-paced, wider-ranging lives.
Glory in the music as well, much of it written either for the movie or the 1951 Edition. Victor Young's "The Greatest Show On Earth March" instantly sets the circus scene just as well as Fucik's "Entry of the Gladiators" ever has.
Remember that all those acts are doing their thing in real time, not with the help of a green screen and CGI. Those are real people really risking their necks out there! (Oh yes: and that really IS Betty Hutton working on the single bar above Ring One. She was doubled for the sequences on the flying trapeze, but she learned and performed her own routines on the single bar. There is an extant film clip of her being presented with an award from Photoplay Magazine by C.B. De Mille, who had to ride up on a camera crane to give it to her while she was rehearsing under the Big Top.)
We owe the great Cecil B. De Mille many thanks for documenting The Greatest Show On Earth at its peak. I personally believe this movie should rank high on the AFI 100 Greatest Movies List. However, as I've said, the best picture of 1952 it isn't, not by a long shot.
Even so, buy the DVD and go to the circus again... and again... and again! "Bring the young 'uns! Bring the old folks! Come again!"
Veronica Mars (2004)
Best High School Series Since Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I'm a sucker for shows with good writing regardless of the genre. The writing in Veronica Mars sparkles. There is real wit and the kind of cultural references you wish people really used in everyday situations. (Example: At one point Vinnie, a rival private investigator, is retained to bird-dog Veronica, who is suspected as an accessory in a kidnapping. Veronica spots Vinnie's van with the one-way glass, yanks its door open and looks at Vinnie ensconced in an easy chair inside. She says, "Hello, Sam;" and Vinnie responds with a deadpan, "Hello, Ralph," referring of course to the Ralph Wolf - Sam Sheepdog Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1950s.) Best watched, as another poster noted, on DVD in a marathon session or sessions, this show pulls you in the way BTVS did ten years ago.
Creator-Producer Rob Thomas and the writers have used in the two seasons I've watched thus far a season-long overall story arc, with an individual mystery or mysteries in each episode format. The regular and recurring characters are all real; and you have to be careful or you'll learn something about human nature as the series progresses and the characters develop. You'll grow to care what happens to the characters, though not always in a positive way and there are a few instances where what happens to them will break your heart or make you cheer, depending on the circumstances.
I don't know how the series is going to go now that the characters are moving on to college and the show no longer has Neptune High School and the American high school experience as a common denominator. That transition is always a tough jump to make. However, I look forward to seeing what will happen next, and that's praise indeed for a show given the amount of utter crap that airs these days. Veronica Mars is definitely a glittering gem in the dull sand and gravel of American network television. It is not to be missed.
Hatari! (1962)
Bringing 'Em Back Alive - The Hard and Honorable Way
As with another favorite of mine (The Greatest Show on Earth), this movie is best viewed in a documentary frame of mind. It shows how African game was captured alive for zoos and circuses back before the invention of the tranquilizer gun and drugs that would not kill the animals. It shows the confrontation between men and beasts - and that the men don't always win.
John Wayne's Sean Mercer is 'the leader of the pack,' a bunch of genuine characters: Pockets, a man without fear behind the wheel of the catching truck, who is actually terrified of wild animals; Kurt Mueller, Grand Prix racing driver who demonstrates his intrepidity behind the wheel of the herding car; 'the Indian,' multilingual and a wolf in any language; 'Chips,' a Frenchman who is Kurt's backup man and sometime rival for the affections of; Brandy Delacourt, daughter of the pioneering owner of the Momella Game Farm and the nominal boss of the others; Luis, an ex-bullfighter whose skill with a lasso is invaluable; and Dallas, a professional photographer sent by the Basel Zoo to document the animal-catching - and a total African greenhorn.
The team has orders to fill and goes about it professionally, despite the presence of a newbie and the loss of the Indian's services due to a rhino goring in the first 5 minutes of the movie. Howard Hawks documents the difficulties of bringing 'em back alive when you have to get ropes on the beasts from a moving truck in such a way that you don't harm them. Hatari! also documented the tribal habits of the Masai and the Warusha back when Tazania was Tanganyika in a way that's more Wild Kingdom than Hollywood and adds immeasurably to the depth of the movie.
There are comedic moments: Dallas taking a bath and having Sonja the pet cheetah walk in on her; Brandy declaring her undying love for Pockets after he falls off a fence - on the same day her two suitors Kurt and Chips have been hurt in a herding car rollover; the adoption of Dallas as 'Mama Tembo' by the Warusha in honor of her becoming surrogate mother to three elephant calves; the "Your Father's Feathers" chase in the compound when three ostriches get loose; Pockets attempting to milk a billygoat to feed Tembo, the first of Mama Tembo's three babies; the costumes the team has to assemble to help Pockets capture 500 monkeys with an improbable invention; and Tembo and his two brothers tracking Dallas by scent through downtown Aroosha. But what's really important are the animal-catching sequences. Very few animals are taken from the wild these days, and those that are, are caught by use of tranquilizer darts. Hawks did us a great service by showing how it was done in the old days.
The two love story subplots don't get in the way of the action, but you won't watch Hatari! for them. This movie is all about the hunt and the capture, where everything from antelope to zebra is taken alive and the men and women are proud of their skills. By rights, it should have won for Best Documentary, particularly if as has been claimed the actors you see on the screen really did catch the critters themselves in realtime. Some people won't like it because it's not always politically correct, but it's an entertaining and educational film that stands up to repeat viewing. Add it to your library by all means.
As a postscript, I believe it is the earliest movie (in terms of release date) to ever have inspired a video game, Jambo Safari, which lets the player try to do what Sean, Pockets and Company do. It's not as easy as they make it look, and it's great fun!
The Great Raid (2005)
"No One Gets Left Behind... Or Forgotten."
I've seen hundreds of war movies. I've studied the history of World War II since I was a small child. I knew the background going into the theater, having read not only the two books the script was drawn from, but also others containing the point of view of the guerrillas who were instrumental in making the jailbreak possible.
Even given all that knowledge and knowing how it turned out, The Great Raid still mesmerized me. That's how good a war movie it is.
I believe part of the reason why is both of the authors (William Breuer and Hampton Sides) were technical advisers on the film. When you have two authors who between them have spent almost half a lifetime researching the material, you know they won't let the director get away with much! Not that he needed to; the story is compelling.
The plot is simple. 500 survivors of the Bataan Death March, most too sick to work and all too weak to walk very far, are being held at the main Japanese POW camp at Cabantuan. Intelligence from the guerrilla forces in the Phillipines has reached Sixth Army headquarters that the Japanese intend to execute all Allied prisoners before they pull out of the camp area. It is known that at least one prisoner massacre has already taken place.
The 6th US Army Ranger Battalion is handed the mission: Rescue the prisoners locked up 30 miles behind enemy lines before the Japanese can kill them and bring them home. Oh, yeah, one other thing. You've got at most 5 or 6 days to plan and stage the mission before the killing starts.
The camp is located on the main road the retreating Japanese are taking into the mountains. Whole regiments and divisions are retreating past it at night, the only time the Rangers can make the element of surprise work for them. There is a beaten fire zone 200 yards deep all around the camp, with no cover for the Rangers to hide in. There may be tanks in the POW stockade; there certainly are tanks present in a transit camp across a nearby river. There's a large concentration of Japanese troops in Cabantuan City, four miles away. And the Ranger force Colonel Henry Mucci selects for the strike is one reinforced company.
All things considered, this is a job even Jim Phelps of Mission: Impossible would turn down. Yet Colonel Mucci and Captain Prince, whose company has been selected for the job, must make it work. The lives of 500 Allied POWs depend upon it.
The movie builds tension beautifully right up to the moment the strike on the camp begins. The tension is superbly released as the Rangers get the job done. It's good movie-making.
I could have done without the grossly inaccurate portrayal of the Manila Underground; I'd love to know where they got, and why they used, that Lockheed Hudson, a type which had long since been retired from frontline service by 1945; and the platonic love story left much to be desired and borders on the irrelevant. However, the melding of the guerrilla force under Captain Pajota with Mucci's rangers was accurately shown, and the raid itself is almost 100% faithful to what really happened. I also approved of the US Army Combat Photographers' film being used over the end titles, including showing quick glimpses of the real Colonel Mucci and Captain Prince.
The performances aren't likely to win any Oscars; the material rather forbids it. But in terms of historical accuracy, attention to detail and special effects not involving a computer, this movie is the best thing you'll see this year. It stands as proof that before you can have a good movie, you have to have a good script. This script was a great one. You'll want to see it in the theater before you buy the DVD. It's that good.
Racing Stripes (2005)
Babe meets Seabiscuit by way of National Velvet and Rocky
I had a feeling before I went to see Racing Stripes that I knew how it would turn out before the credits rolled; that I even knew which Hollywood formula David Schmidt and Frederick Du Chau had elected to follow. I wasn't wrong.
That said, Racing Stripes is as charming a movie in its way as Babe is. The animals can talk to each other when humans aren't around or aren't paying attention, and the dialog as much as the action is what moves the picture along.
We have as our nonhuman heroes Stripes, a zebra accidentally abandoned by a circus who wants to race with all his heart; and Tucker, a Shetland pony who has participated in the training of many thoroughbreds as their stable companion. That is, as the humans see him; when they aren't around he's very like Mickey in the first three Rocky movies. On the people side, we have Nolan and Channing Walsh, the father-daughter team who own Stripes and Tucker. He's an ex-racehorse trainer who lost his heart when his amateur jockey wife was killed in a racetrack accident and she is the teenage girl who loves Stripes and wants to race him as her mother would have. A little cardboard cutout-ish for my taste, but not obtrusively so. There is also Woodzie, a 'track rat' who is the first outside the Walsh menagerie to believe in Stripes as a racer. Woodzie is somewhat disreputable (and I do wish there had been some explanation as how why he limps; is he a crippled ex-jockey or just carrying the damage of not paying off his bookie promptly?), but he knows what he's looking at and is instrumental in convincing Nolan to train Stripes.
Of course, where you have heroes you have to have villains. On the animal side, there is Sir Trenton, a black thoroughbred stud who is bound and determined that A) Stripes will NOT be permitted to sully the racetrack with his presence; and B) That his son Trenton's Pride will continue the family tradition of winning the Kentucky Open. On the human side we have Clara Dalrymple, a wealthy bloodstock owner who is a combination of spoiled rich girl and Class A bitch, who in my opinion is in desperate need of a spanking.
Without getting into the plot, I note that the supporting voices cast does an excellent job. Then again, when was the last time Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg, Fred Dalton Thompson or Joe Pantoliano turned in bad performances? They are total professionals even when they don't appear on-camera.
The one thing about the movie that grated, apart from the two horseflies Buzz and Scuzz who serve as mere comedy relief until the race actually starts, was the constant reference to other classic movies. I spotted references to Field of Dreams, Seabiscuit, Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Good Morning Vietnam, Babe, The Karate Kid, The Godfather and Scarface. And that doesn't count the homage to Rocky IV in the training-for-the-big-race sequence. There IS such a thing as overkill, folks. I know this film is aimed more at the kids than at adults, but Schmidt and Du Chau do a good enough job of entertaining and holding the adults' interest that most of their references qualify as gratuitous.
The bottom line is that Racing Stripes is a movie parents can feel good about taking their kids to watch. The kids will be entertained and the parents won't end up with their brains dripping out of their ears like tapioca. This flick isn't going to win any Oscars, but it's a good example of its type. It's quite enjoyable regardless of your age.
In This House of Brede (1975)
Somewhat irritating to one who knows the book well
In This House of Brede is just about my favorite Rumer Godden novel. However, this adaptation shows the limitations made-for-TV movies labor under better than any other example I could name.
Granted, it's hard to take a 369 page novel spanning more than 20 years and boil it down to something that can be turned into 90 minutes of film. The secret in doing it right is not what you leave, but what you take away and why. In this case, a better job could have been done.
All right; I can see why the whole Duranski subplot went away. It's too hard to film and despite what it reveals about the nuns and their interactions, and how secular people interact with the religious, it does not really advance the plot. Likewise the subplot of Lady Abbess's pectoral cross; it does not really advance the main plot line. Ditto the whole Vatican-II-changes subplot. However, the writer and director did not stop there. In my opinion, deleting the entire Sister Kazuko-Dame Colette plot line was a major mistake; it reduces the entire Japanese novitiate subplot almost to a device. It makes me wonder if the screenwriter missed the whole point of the novel.
The core of the book is about conflicts. Conflicts of self, of want versus duty; conflicts between people; conflicts between the secular and the sacred. Very little of that came through in the final version. Indeed, many of the conflicts were eliminated by the transmogrification of characters. McTurk is gone, with some of his wisdom and understanding grafted onto Sir Richard. Dame Maura is completely eliminated; that was a bad move. The cloying, annoying Dame Veronica has likewise vanished, and with her the conflict between the fluff she writes and the weighty substance of Dame Agnes's work. Dame Agnes herself has been fused with Mother Mistress Emily Lovell in one of the odder recharacterizations I've even seen in a movie, with the result that her edge (Dame Agnes's trademark) is thoroughly blunted. We see the Scallons (Dame Johanna's parents in the movie, Dame Cecily's in the book) only for moments, scarcely long enough to figure out who they are, but not long enough for us to understand why Dame Johanna ended up as she is and where she is. Larry Bannerman, of all the minor characters, is the only one whose part actually illuminated one of the major characters and pointed up best the real conflicts of the religious life as opposed to the secular; far better even than the compare-and-contrast of Philippa Talbot versus Dame Philippa of Brede Abbey.
The best thing about this TV movie is that it points out the crying need for a theatrical feature to be made from this book. It cries for a director with clear vision and a fresco big enough to paint not merely the major portraits, but the miniatures around the edges and in the background. Oh, this 1975 version stands on its own; but it has the same sort of choppiness Cuaron brought to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban, and that does not serve the novel at all well. It requires a slower, more deliberate pace - and above all, a budget big enough that characters do not have to be combined to their detriment, and at least a couple of the plot lines that had to be cut, to be restored.
Even with all these grumbles, there are worse ways to spend an evening than in the company of the nuns of Brede. It's not a bad little movie when all is said and done; it is simply one that could, and should, be done better on the large screen.
The Majestic (2001)
A throwback film in the Frank Capra style
That comment sums up the movie. If you happen to like Capra-esquire movies, you will adore The Majestic. If you think they are silly, sentimental and simplistic, you won't. It's just that simple.
The movie plot runs on two levels. Jim Carrey, playing straight, is Peter Appleton, a B-movie screenwriter in 1951 Hollywood who is trying to break into A-pictures when he is accused of being a Communist by the House Un-American Activities Committee. As the witch hunt begins to unfold, he has a traffic accident that ends with him and his car falling into a river. He is carried out to sea only to be washed up on the beach below Lawson, California - with no memory of who he is, his past life, or how he got there.
He is promptly mistaken for Luke Trimble, a local hero missing and presumed dead by the entire town, who like 62 other Lawson boys gave his life for his country in World War II. Lawson's sacrifice was recognized by President Roosevelt declaring the town a national monument and sending a bronze sculpture to commemorate its dead. However, the town's losses have caused Lawson to lose its heart and its way.
The reappearance of 'Luke,' and Peter's actions taken in another man's shoes, revitalize the town beginning with Luke's father, Harry (Martin Landau, in a great role) and The Majestic, the theatre owned by the Trimbles, which Harry had closed in 1942 presumably on learning of Luke's death. While Adele, the doctor's daughter (and Luke's fiancée) tries to restore 'Luke's' memory, Peter and Harry refurbish and reopen The Majestic, and bring life back to the town. All is going well in 'Luke's' life... until the investigators for the HUAC show up with a subpoena a couple of days after Harry's death - on the day of Harry's funeral, in fact - and coincidentally after Peter's regaining his memory.
Peter's agent also shows up. He has news. It has occurred to the HUAC that in Peter's case, perhaps they are mistaken; but they have to save face. All Peter, a man who has never had much in the way of personal convictions, has to do is stand up at an HUAC hearing in Los Angeles and read a prepared statement in which he abjures his membership in the Communist Party, apologizes for his error, promises to mend his ways and name names, and all will be forgiven. He'll get his life back. His A-list film, which the studio shelved, will go back into production. He'll get everything he ever wanted.
But Peter has a problem. It's Luke, you see. He was not just a local hero. He was a Hero with a capital H, and Peter has been him for a few months, as Adele points out to him; and when Luke reaches out from the past to touch Peter, Peter is ready to listen.
If you are a Capra fan, you can guess the ending and will approve. If you aren't, you'll say this is a mixture of schmaltz and hokum with just a dash of idealism and SO not realistic. And if you say that, I say you're wrong.
Capra could have made this picture, with Jimmy Stewart as Peter/Luke, June Allyson as Adele, Edward Arnold as the head of the HUAC, and a whole bunch of MGM's "old reliable" character actors in the supporting roles. The movie is a throwback to a more innocent time when people still believed in heroes and dared to dream about more than just maintaining the status quo. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it an 8; and I wish Carrey would make more movies like this. He's a better straight actor than he is given credit for. This is one of the movies you can tell will stand the test of time, and as such you should add it to your collection and your list to the 200 Greatest American Movies.
Stalky & Co. (1982)
Three loyal friends confound the Establishment at a British public school
Stalky & Co. is a faithful adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's book of the same name (less one chapter and the afterstory chapter). Kipling was telling tales based on his own public school experiences as a boy (he is 'Beetle' in the book), and he did an excellent job of capturing the tenor of life in 'the Coll,' a school that catered to boys who would go on to govern and defend the British Empire in the Civil Service, Foreign Service and the military.
Partly shot on location at an actual British 'public school' (which in America would be called a private school), the series chronicles the actions and activities of the denizens of Study No. 5 in Mr. Prout's 'house' (residence hall) as they chart their own courses, running somewhat against the grain of the Establishment. The inseparable threesome are:
Stalky, son of an officer serving in the Indian Army. The leader of the band, he's skilled in the arts of war and capable of unorthodox thought and action. Good at sports, he nonetheless disdains them in favor of the pursuit of fun with his pals;
M'Turk, scion of a family that owns 5,000 acres "... of Irish bog," to quote Stalky. Devoted to the writings of John Ruskin, he has a highly developed sense of honor and a smouldering hatred of bullies, prefects and unsportsmanlike conduct;
and 'Beetle,' the wit of the gang, a writer of scurillous poems and songs with literary leanings and the skill to make good on them. Eventually editor of the school paper, he's not above putting his skill as a compositor to less orthodox uses, among other gags Study No. 5 pulls in defense of the honour of their House and to settle scores with various students and teachers of the school.
Their friends include the Padre, the school chaplain; Colonel Dabney, a retired officer who served in India at the same time Stalky's father had command of a regiment of Sikh cavalry; and 'Foxy,' otherwise Sergeant Fox, a retired infantry sergeant and the school's resident cop. Their undying enemy is Mr. King, Latin teacher and Master of another house, whose hatred is returned by the trio with interest. (There is something of Mr. King in J.K. Rowling's Professor Snape, in my opinion.) The only adult at the school who truly understands them and their interpersonal dynamic is 'the Head,' the school's Headmaster, apparently patterned on the head of Kipling's own coll. He talks to them like men while yet understanding that they are boys, and feels that in the end they all will make their marks on the world.
The ways these three find to achieve their goals, sometimes within the rules and sometimes without, in the several self-contained episodes are a delight to anyone who ever lived in that sort of environment or wishes they had. The mini-series recaptures the flavor of a long-gone age admirably. Kipling fans will adore it, and those who've not read Kipling will be inspired to do so by this series. I impatiently await its release on DVD. If you can find it, by all means watch it.