Books, Movies, and Books about Movies

2012 was an unusually busy year for yours truly, both as a film blogger and as a writer. The Virtual Virago blog is mostly a classic movie review site these days, but I still post the occasional literary or pop culture discussion, as well as conference papers. When I'm not blogging here or writing articles over at Examiner.com, I'm typing away at some project or other. What have I been up to lately? Here's a quick look.

THE COMPLETE NOVELS OF JANE AUSTEN (2013) - Just published by Race Point, this edition has all of the novels plus an introduction written by me. It will probably sell better than anything else I ever work on, but, sadly, my name isn't even in the product information (I feel like Austen in her own lifetime - "By a Lady" and all that). Here's hoping I got a byline in the actual book! The publisher is currently doing a Giveaway on Goodreads if you happen to be a Janeite in need of a lavish, hardcover Valentine for yourself.

BEYOND CASABLANCA: 100 CLASSIC MOVIES WORTH WATCHING (2012) - My darling project, which took three years from start to finish, is the book I am most proud of to date. Writing this collection of reviews was so much fun that I would love to do a second book! I have made so many wonderful friends in the classic movie fan community, and this book has been an attempt to honor those friendships by sharing these wonderful old films with others. The book is now on Kindle for $4.99, which I hope will encourage some new readers to give it a try.


 

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (2012) - Barnes & Noble occasionally hires me to write introductions to classic novels, and this one was especially nice to work on because I love Austen and her pop culture cred. The edition they produced is really nice, and I also provided all of the bonus material you'll find inside. Besides, who wouldn't love to see her name on the same page with Jane Austen's?


SHERLOCK HOLMES FOR THE 21st CENTURY (2012) - My usual partner in crime, Anissa Graham, and I co-authored an essay for this McFarland anthology by Lynnette Porter. "Sex and the Single Sleuth" looks at the ways that film and TV adaptations have made Sherlock Holmes sexy, especially in the last few years. Of course, we also talk about Basil Rathbone and the early days of Holmes on film!

THE WIDER WORLDS OF JIM HENSON (2012) - Anissa and I finished editing our second McFarland anthology of essays about the works of Jim Henson, this time widening our scope to include films like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal and series like Fraggle Rock. We had some wonderful contributors who wrote fascinating essays. I wrote "Fandom and Nostalgia in Disney's The Muppets" and co-wrote "Telling Toy Stories in The Christmas Toy." These anthologies are a lot of work, but we have gotten to know some great scholars from around the world, and hopefully other people find our contributions to Muppet Studies useful.


I've finally gotten to the point where I say, "I'm a writer," when people ask me what I do, and I think I might actually mean it. We'll see what I manage to get done in 2013...

Classic Films in Focus: FORT APACHE (1948)

The classic Western has many moods, but the tone of John Ford's Fort Apache (1948) is decidedly dark. Its clouds gather slowly, relieved sometimes by deceptive moments of gaiety and light, but still the storm comes on. Loosely based on the events of Custer's Last Stand, Fort Apache is technically a John Wayne picture, although Wayne takes a secondary role, while the full weight of hubris and its subsequent punishment fall on the shoulders of Henry Fonda as the doomed colonel who stubbornly leads his men to death.

Fonda plays Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday, who arrives with his sprightly daughter, Philadelphia (Shirley Temple), at Fort Apache only to upset the balance of the residents' lives. Determined to win glory and prove himself to the world, Thursday ignores the experience and advice of those around him, including the seasoned Captain York (Wayne), and pushes toward a disastrous encounter with the Apache chief, Cochise, and his warriors.

Ford balances comedy and tragedy in his scenes and his actors, reflecting the ebb and flow of ordinary life, even in times of crisis. Without Thursday, the denizens of the fort have formed a benevolent community of friendship and mutual respect, but their new leader soon undermines their peace with his arrogance and contempt. He even forbids his daughter to keep company with the fort's favorite son, although the young lovers persist in their romance in spite of his authority. As Thursday, Fonda gives a brilliantly layered performance; he knows to soften just enough every now and then to keep us hoping that he'll live to see the error of his ways, even though his doom is clearly written on his brow. Temple is pertly pretty as Philadelphia, an energetic rather than an elegant girl, but filled with a pioneer spirit that promises much for her survival in this untamed frontier. Wayne watches the events unfold with a grim recognition of the coming end, but his presence is a comfort to the viewer because we know that he can be trusted when everything else falls apart.

Other supporting players also contribute to the film's powerful effect. Ward Bond is jovial and kind as the O'Rourke family patriarch, and George O'Brien has a particularly moving role as Captain Collingwood. Anna Lee and Irene Rich make the fort's women solid and sympathetic, and Guy Kibbee is very good as the sociable doctor. Ford favorites like Victor McLaglen and Pedro Armendariz also put in reliable character performances. The role of young Michael O'Rourke was the first screen appearance of John Agar, who happened to be married to Shirley Temple at the time. The couple would divorce in 1949, but Agar's acting career continued, and he went on to appear in a number of noteworthy Westerns, including Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Big Jake (1971), as well as many cult sci-fi films.

For more of John Ford's Westerns with John Wayne, see Stagecoach (1939), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Fonda made a number of memorable Westerns, including The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and My Darling Clementine (1946), but you could also explore other sides of the actor in Jezebel (1938), The Lady Eve (1941), and 12 Angry Men (1957). See more of teenage Shirley Temple in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), or for contrast catch her earlier work with John Ford in Wee Willie Winkie (1937). With well over 200 screen appearances, the marvelous character actor Ward Bond can be found almost everywhere, from The Maltese Falcon (1941) to It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Rio Bravo (1959), but he was a particular favorite with John Ford, who gave him memorable roles in many of his films.

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: TENSION (1949)

Noir films like The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Double Indemnity (1944) hover at the very top of our culture's cinematic consciousness, but many of the B movies that helped to define classic noir style have not fared as well. Directed by John Berry, Tension (1949) is a more obscure example of noir, but it remains an extremely entertaining film, in large part because of Audrey Totter's portrayal of an outrageously vicious femme fatale. For those who are new to noir, Tension might well be a perfect primer of the conventions and characters that form its hallmarks, and seasoned aficionados will find much to admire in this short, snappy picture, as well.

Totter dominates the screen as the incorrigible Claire Quimby, a two-timing wife whose boredom with her meek pharmacist husband (Richard Basehart) leads her to look for greener pastures. When Claire runs off with the loutish Barney Deager (Lloyd Gough), Warren Quimby vows to take his revenge on Deager and thereby prove himself manly enough to win his wife back. Quimby assumes a new identity in order to facilitate his murderous plans, but he begins to question his decision when his attractive new neighbor (Cyd Charisse) presents him with a second chance at love. After Deager turns up dead, both of the Quimbys must deal with the consequences of their actions and the investigation of a dogged police detective (Barry Sullivan), who senses the tension between them.

Basehart makes for a sympathetic hero, particularly once he wises up to the fact that his wife is no good, and his early scenes as the milquetoast doormat also have their charms. Cyd Charisse, long and lovely, serves as an elegant foil to Totter's heartless vamp, but the audience's attention belongs to the bad girl, nonetheless. Totter really works the image of the femme fatale as a creature of base desires; there is nothing refined or even very mysterious about her. Even the way she eats a sandwich communicates the essential aspects of her character - greedy, crass, and wasteful. Utterly faithless and interested only in material pleasures, she has no patience with her husband's domestic fantasies, although she proves more than willing to use him once Deager turns up dead. In one particularly telling scene, she flatly rejects Warren's hard-earned purchase of a family home, scorning the roles of mother and wife that he assumes she must desire. Unwillingly even to leave the car, she drowns out his mild protestations with the vulgar blast of the auto horn. In every scene, she's delightfully horrid, trampy, and false, making it that much more awful that a nice guy like Warren is seriously planning to murder another man just to get her back.

Director John Berry also helmed the John Garfield noir, He Ran All the Way (1951). You'll find Richard Basehart in other noir films like He Walked by Night (1948) and The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), as well as in Federico Fellini's masterpiece, La Strada (1954). Cyd Charisse is better remembered for her dancing in musicals like The Harvey Girls (1946), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and Brigadoon (1954). For more of the fabulous Audrey Totter, see The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Lady in the Lake (1947), The Unsuspected (1947), and The Set-Up (1949).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942)

Screwball comedy director Preston Sturges offers a frothy concoction in The Palm Beach Story (1942). It's a light, short film, daring for its day in its treatment of the idea that an attractive woman might willingly use her sex appeal to advance her husband's career. The dialogue is witty, and the characters are certainly charming, but those who are bothered by loose ends will have fits over the way in which the movie leaves much unsaid and even more unexplained in its opening and closing scenes.

Our story involves a young married couple, Tom (Joel McCrea) and Gerry (Claudette Colbert), whose marriage isn't going so well because Tom has yet to get his big break and Gerry is tired of being poor. Gerry decides to help Tom out by divorcing him so that she can romance rich lovers and bankroll Tom's idea for a revolutionary airport design. Despite Tom's confusion over how exactly this is supposed to be a swell plan, Gerry takes off for Palm Beach to get a divorce, proving along the way that she can in fact charm men into giving her just about anything she wants. Her most devoted victim is an alarmingly wealthy bachelor named John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee), who falls hard for Gerry in short order. Tom pursues his wife to Florida, where Hackensacker's sister (Mary Astor) promptly conceives a passion for him, and the four besotted characters run around making fools of themselves until everything eventually gets sorted out, thanks to a deus ex machina so wild and so unaccounted for that it will either make you roar with laughter or tear your hair out in frustration.

The cast assembled for this trip to the loony bin is first rate. Colbert is lovely enough to sell the idea that men might fall all over themselves for her benefit, and Joel McCrea excels at comic reaction shots where he gapes open-mouthed in disbelief at the extent of his wife's zany endeavors. Rudy Vallee gets high marks for his amiable blueblood, and Mary Astor is a scream as the loopy sister. Even the secondary players bring plenty of laughs; Robert Dudley gets the movie off to a hilarious start as the generous Wienie King, whose inspection of the couple's apartment sets the plot in motion. Later, we get a whole club car of humorous characters with the Ale and Quail Club, who gallantly give Gerry a ticket so that she can board the train to Palm Beach. William Demarest, Victor Potel, Robert Warwick, Chester Conklin, Arthur Stuart Hull, Sheldon Jett, Dewey Robinson, Jimmy Conlin, Jack Norton, Torben Meyer, Robert Greig, and Roscoe Ates pack the train scenes with their drunken conviviality. A lot of these old character actors were regulars in Preston Sturges' pictures, and the director clearly takes great delight in their antics, literally setting them loose on the unsuspecting passengers and train crew until they eventually end up being set loose in a different way by the conductors.

It is difficult to say much about the beginning and ending of the movie without spoiling it, but it doesn't take two minutes to figure out that The Palm Beach Story opens with a scene from a completely different tale, one that won't be addressed in the scenes that follow. Who is the woman tied up in the closet? Why are both the bride and groom late for the wedding? What the heck is going on? I don't think Sturges means to torture his audience with these mystifying bookends to the main plot; I think that the title's wording is supposed to suggest that this is merely yet another story in the lives of these wild characters, and the beginning and ending show that the Palm Beach adventure is neither the first nor the last time that Tom and Gerry will find themselves doing crazy things. Like the television series Friends, where every episode is titled, "The One...," The Palm Beach Story is one story among many stories for our protagonists, with the only problem being that the other stories never actually get told. Personally, I would have liked to see the story that led up to the film's opening scenes; the comedic possibilities suggested there are marvelous.

If you enjoy The Palm Beach Story, you should certainly try out other Preston Sturges films, especially The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944). For more comedy with Claudette Colbert, try It Happened One Night (1934), Midnight (1939),  and The Egg and I (1947). See Joel McCrea in The Most Dangerous Game (1932), The More the Merrier (1943), and Ride the High Country (1962). Mary Astor is best remembered today as the femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon (1941), but you'll also find her in The Great Lie (1941) and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). See more of Rudy Vallee in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) and Sturges' darker comedy, Unfaithfully Yours (1948).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: PORTRAIT OF JENNIE (1948)

Before the time-crossed lovers of Somewhere in Time (1980) and The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), there was Portrait of Jennie (1948), a romantic fantasy produced by David O. Selznick and directed by William Dieterle. Like the more recent films, Portrait of Jennie tells the story of a couple who are both separated and brought together due to the irregular workings of time; the film also delves into questions about the nature of fate and artistic inspiration, but it is primarily a love story, more melodrama than science fiction. With a noteworthy cast of supporting players and reasonably successful performances from its two leads, Portrait of Jennie is a good picture if not a great one, although its chief attraction might be the visual creativity with which the story is told.

Joseph Cotten stars as Eben Adams, a struggling painter in New York City who seems to lack real inspiration for his art. One day he meets a strange young girl (Jennifer Jones); she introduces herself as Jennie Appleton, but her stories all involve people and places from years ago. Each time Adams meets her again, it seems as if years have passed, and Jennie says that she is "hurrying" to grow up so that he will fall in love with her. Of course he eventually does just that, but Jennie's fate may already be sealed by events that unfolded long before.

Portrait of Jennie won an Oscar for its special effects and was nominated for its cinematography, and those aspects of the picture remain its chief attractions. The violent storm that dominates the film's climax is particularly memorable, but beautiful set pieces throughout the film highlight its artistic themes. The imagery, however, is ultimately more exciting than the performances of Jones and Cotten, although they do have some good moments, particularly toward the end of the film. The supporting players, including Ethel Barrymore, Cecil Kellaway, and Lillian Gish, prove more interesting, but each plays a relatively small role, and other pictures showcase their talents more fully. Once the movie ends, its images will stay in the mind long after the characters' actions fade, leaving one with a sense of having seen a series of lovely paintings more so than a motion picture. The impression it makes is agreeable if not particularly strong, although viewers who enjoy old-fashioned romances will probably find much to love. Certainly art lovers ought to appreciate Dieterle's cinematic vision and Cotten's portrayal of an artist in search of his muse.

Director William Dieterle earned his only Oscar nomination for directing with The Life of Emile Zola (1937), but he is also remembered today for his work on films like A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941). You'll find Joseph Cotten in truly great films like Citizen Kane (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and The Third Man (1949). Jennifer Jones won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in The Song of Bernadette (1943), but she also had memorable roles in Duel in the Sun (1946), Madame Bovary (1949), and Carrie (1952). For more romantic fantasy, try The Enchanted Cottage (1945),  Beauty and the Beast (1946) and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Laugh and the World Laughs with You: Preston Sturges and the Social Side of Film

Today I began a new First Fridays Film Festival series for the LearningQUEST lifetime learning program at the local library. This term we are looking at the films of Preston Sturges, the writer and director who produced classic comedies like The Great McGinty (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), and Sullivan's Travels (1941). There are 90 people signed up for the course this term, the most I've ever had, but I think about 60-70 actually showed up today. Watching the movie with the group reminded me of one of Sturges' most important lessons, the value of comedy as a communal experience.

Most of my students had never heard of Sturges, much less seen The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), which was today's selection. A brief introduction gave them an overview of the film and its notable aspects, especially its thwarting of the Hays Code. I wanted them to understand why the movie was funny beyond the obvious pratfalls and gags, but I didn't try to oversell it or analyze it too much beforehand. I like to let the film speak for itself as much as possible.

Hearing the audience laugh throughout the movie was absolutely the best moment of my entire week. They chuckled, snorted, and guffawed through the whole film. It reminded me of the scene in Sullivan's Travels where Joel McCrea realizes that people need to laugh and that laughter is essentially a communal experience. What a wonderful thing to be able to share!

It's always fun to show classic movies to an audience, but these are the moments I love most. Thanks, Preston Sturges, wherever you are, for the gift of laughter and the chance to share it.

Classic Films in Focus: 42ND STREET (1933)

In the Depression Era, frothy, upbeat musicals were a much appreciated form of relief, and nobody made musicals any frothier or more upbeat than choreographer Busby Berkeley, who didn't actually direct the films but rather constructed elaborate, show-stopping musical numbers around which the directors filled in the gaps. Of the Busby Berkeley films, 42nd Street (1933) is the best known, partly because of visually dazzling musical interludes like "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" and partly because director Lloyd Bacon's surrounding story is the ultimate backstage theater tale that so many later films have imitated, parodied, and revised.

The picture features Berkeley regulars Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler as two of the performers in a troubled stage musical being produced by the brilliant but dangerously overworked Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter). Powell plays Billy, one of the principal performers, while Keeler is Peggy, a nervous first timer. After a couple of more experienced chorus girls (Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel) help Peggy get a spot in the show, she finds out just how demanding life on the stage can be. Meanwhile, the show's star, Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels), depends on a wealthy admirer for the musical's financial support, but she can't seem to give up her old flame (George Brent) for the sake of her career. When Dorothy breaks her ankle just before opening night, Peggy is forced to sink or swim as her last minute replacement.

The musical numbers are great fun, especially the cheeky "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," and "42nd Street" has become a classic of the genre. Baxter's line to Keeler, "You're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" is hopelessly sappy but still one of Hollywood's most memorable moments. Ruby Keeler really is the new kid in the film; this was her first screen appearance, and she is somewhat overshadowed by the scene stealing comediennes Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel. Rogers, of course, would go on to lasting fame as Fred Astaire's dancing partner, but she has a great role in "Anytime Annie" that lets her show how spunky, funny, and smart she could be.

42nd Street earned two Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. Lloyd Bacon and Busby Berkeley worked with Powell and Keeler again for Footlight Parade, which also appeared in 1933. George Brent went on to meatier roles as a leading man, starring with Bette Davis in Jezebel (1938), The Old Maid (1939), and Dark Victory (1939), among others. You'll find Ginger Rogers making her first screen appearance with Astaire in Flying Down to Rio (1933), but don't miss her starring comedic performance in The Major and the Minor (1942) or her Oscar winning work in the women's melodrama, Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (1940). The delightful Una Merkel can also be seen in Destry Rides Again (1939) and It's a Joke, Son! (1947).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.