A weird bit of list synchronicity: all three of this post's films were released in years that ended in the number 7. Yeah, I got nothing. Read on.
I've never understood the "masterpiece" status of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Look, I get that this film is monolithic in terms of its historical and technical significance. Being not only the first feature-length animated film from what would become one of the juggernauts of animation (heck, of entertainment in general) but also one of the first feature-length animated films ever is no small accomplishment. And yeah, I also get that there's an appealing maturity to the animation that hasn't been present in Disney animation since like the forties. I'll give it this much: Snow White looks mighty pretty, and at parts it's legitimately unsettling and even Gothic, two adjectives that describe maybe three percent of the rest of the Disney canon. And yeah, I get that the dwarfs are charming and that "Heigh Ho" is a fun song. But one of the best movies of all time? The only Disney animation represented on this list? Better than Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, The Emperor's New Groove, and Fantasia [1]? Not in my book, buster. While I acknowledge all the feats mentioned above, I also reserve the right to claim that the film is, as a whole, remarkably slight when considered outside of its historical importance. As a person, Snow White is as dull as a toothbrush and has none of the psychological depth that characterizes even the most basic of dental tools. What's worse is that she's irritating, to boot. I swear, she coos and giggles and yelps more than she actually utters words in this movie. And when she does speak, she's spouting off irritating platitudes about washing hands before dinner or asking for apples from the creepiest, most hello-I-am-dangerous fruit peddler of all time. To put it another way, she's not going to be the valedictorian of the princess class anytime soon. Disney gets a lot of flack (some deserved, some not, I'd argue) for the social backwardness of its "princess" brand, but there's a possibility that the single worst bit of gender regression the company ever did was create this shell of a character. I mean, 1937 was a relatively good time to be a female character in a Hollywood movie; the screwball comedy was at its height, at least, and the first rumblings of film noire were being heard. Surely Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs could have come up a more lively princess, especially if she's the protagonist of the film! Even forgiving the awful sin of Snow White the person, there's still no escaping the fact that I find the songs (save "Heigh Ho," of course) cloying and insufferable, and the general tone muted and lethargic—not in a stately, mesmerizing way like Sleeping Beauty but in an oh-my-gosh-when-is-this-movie-over-show-me-the-wicked-queen-kicking-skeletons-again-already way. I could go on, but I've already had quite the rant. Better move on. Y'all, I do not like this movie.
Y'all, I do like this movie, though. I love it, in fact. So much so that it's hard to write about it. Annie Hall is one of those films that just haunts you, even years after you first see it. At least, it haunts me, and I'm a happily married Christian man living in the American South—pretty far out of this film's intended demographic, I'd say [2]. In my mind, it's unquestionably Woody Allen's best film, and I can't count the times that I have been thrown into serious introspection by the sudden memory of a stray line or scene from the film. Even after I'd seen it only once, I felt I had the whole thing committed to memory, since every last corner of the film is brimming with magnetic nuggets of humor and insight, often both contained in the same punchline. That's the real kicker about Annie Hall, too; the funniest bits are also the most bracingly honest. It's an immensely quotable movie, and part of that is the screenplay's remarkable ability to turn a punchline into a gut-punch that eviscerates we audience members along with protagonist Alvy Singer. And about Alvy: of all the Woody Allen movies I've seen (and I haven't seen all of them, unfortunately), Annie Hall is the only one that really nails the Woody Allen character [3]. Alvy Singer has enough of that Woody Allen charm and vulnerability that I sympathize with him and even project my own life experience onto him, and yet, the film also seems perfectly aware of the sleazier aspects of his personality and is often quite critical of his fussiness and arrogance. That character's balance between affable audience surrogate and object of criticism is crucial to the success of this movie, and a failure to pull off that balance has derailed plenty of Allen's other films (including, for me at least, his second most-popular '70s movie, Manhattan). Of course, all the great Alvy Singers in the world wouldn't amount to much if there wasn't someone for him to riff on, and Diane Keaton's Annie is perfect in that regard. Keaton and Allen have terrific chemistry together, which isn't surprising, given that they had been a couple at one time (although the relationship ended before the writing of this movie). One final note: this movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1977, beating out none other than Star Wars for the award. There are precious few films that I would be okay with taking the Best Picture from Star Wars, but Annie Hall is one of them. It's just that good.
About 90 minutes in, I was ready to dismiss The Bridge on the River Kwai as not my cup of tea. I didn't think it was bad, exactly, just kind of dull and lumpy and disappointing after the awesomeness of the last David Lean flick on this list, Lawrence of Arabia. In fact, up to that point, I had just two things to say about the film. First, that hey, it stars Ben Kenobi (or, as people who weren't weaned on George Lucas call him, Alec Guinness) twenty years before A New Hope, and he looks nothing like Ewan McGregor. Strike three for the prequels. Second, that hey, it features that song that the teens whistle in The Breakfast Club, which a mid-film Google search revealed to me as being "Colonel Bogey March." Apparently, the song was written in 1914 and became a big deal for the British in WW II when its tune was used for the novelty song "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" (move over, Weird Al). You learn something every day. But a funny thing happened around an hour from the film's end: this movie got good fast. Like, really good. The turning point, I think, is the sequence in which the Allied troops, on their way back to the river to blow up the bridge, are ambushed by a few Japanese soldiers and have to chase one through the jungle. The scene is completely devoid of music, dialogue, or anything other than environmental noises, and it plays out with pea-soup-thick tension and brutality (I won't spoil the scene's outcome because if you don't know how it ends, it's a gut-punch). It's here that seems to be the linchpin for the entire film, both ethically and aesthetically; not insignificantly, this scene has the most prominent use of the film's bird motif, and the events of this sequence add layers and layers of meaning to that image. From that scene on, the movie picks up and never lets up, building to a truly tremendous climax. It's not just the plot that makes the end of this movie so engaging; there's also a towering moral complexity to the proceedings that took me completely by surprise, where capricious chance picks at the systems of command and obedience that war fosters and draws them out to their destructive conclusions. It's something to behold, and if I'm speaking in overly vague terms here, it's only because I'm still processing what happened.
Until next time!
If you like, you can visit the previous post in this series, #s 31-33, here.
Update: The next post, #s 37-39, is up here.
1] No secrets about which Disney animated movies I consider to be the best, eh?
2] Although, I am an graduate student in English, so I suppose the Woody-Allenness of that occupation counteracts any other demographic concerns.
3] You know this character if you've seen him: that nervous, stammering man crippled by insecurity and neuroses while somehow still remaining a pompous dick, who delivers most of the funny lines in the movie. Usually played by Woody Allen himself, though in the past couple decades the role has occasionally shifted to people like Owen Wilson.
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