Another few days, another few AFI movies. Yeah, that's about all I've got for an intro. Move along.
I'll be honest here: it has been a very long time since I last saw Sullivan's Travels. Consequently, this discussion is going to have to be kind of vague on the details of this film. I cannot remember, for instance, if the cinematography or direction is any good (though given that it's Preston Sturges running the show, I'd guess they're both at least functional, if not exemplary), so those are topics I'm going to avoid. What I do remember, however, is the plot. And man, that plot is good. It's not just an engaging, funny, slightly satiric story (although it is all those things); it's a story that has such a potent thematic thrust regarding the filmmaking establishment that its barbs are still poking modern-day Hollywood. It's actually kind of hilarious that this film made it onto the AFI list at all [1], given that Sullivan's Travels is an indictment of the self-serious prestige machine that fuels the Academy Awards, film criticism, and, yes, the American Film Institute. When the film's fictional filmmaker John Sullivan decides that comedies are just as socially valuable as prestigious social dramas with capital T Themes, he might as well be directly addressing this list, which, I remind you, is made up of (not counting musicals) less than 10 percent comedy and about 80 percent prestigious social drama with capital T Themes. Now, I like prestigious films as much as the next guy (and goodness knows I've praised plenty of them on this blog), but there's something sort of rousing to Sullivan's Travels's critique. To quote another film on this list, "Make 'em laugh," dangit!
In discussing George Lucas, a lot of people focus on Star Wars, which is entirely reasonable considering that the original Star Wars trilogy and especially Episode IV are some of the biggest, most groundbreaking, most culturally significant, most aesthetically successful movies of all time. But what often gets lost in all the galaxy-far-far-away shuffle is poor old American Graffiti, the little movie that immediately precedes Star Wars in Lucas's filmography. And that's kind of too bad because not only is American Graffiti, like Star Wars, a great, distinctively personal film (as well as proof that at one time, George Lucas was actually a good writer), it also is pretty groundbreaking in its own right. The extent to which it incorporates classic rock and soul tunes into its soundtrack was pretty much unheard of at the time of its release, and it remains one of the most technically and thematically sophisticated uses of pop music ever in American cinema. The wall-to-wall-songs approach to its soundtrack has also been hugely influential on subsequent generations of filmmakers—you can bet that Dazed and Confused and Do the Right Thing, to name two of American Graffiti's biggest heirs, would sound a lot different without it. And speaking of those heirs, another piece of American Graffiti's groundbreaking legacy is that it (to my knowledge) pretty much invented the whole cinematic subgenre of wistful coming-of-age stories that take place over a single night. Movies like Sixteen Candles, Superbad, and yes, Dazed and Confused all work within this mode and basically follow the structure of American Graffiti verbatim, with a series of mostly episodic (and mostly comedic) events slowly escalating to catharsis at dawn. It's a killer way to construct a plot, and it's always a treat to see a movie adopt the form. I've talked so much about the influence of American Graffiti that I've run out of room to praise the actual movie itself. Don't let my lack of discussion fool you; American Graffiti is great, and, for what it's worth, I think it's better than at least sixty-seven percent of the Star Wars films. I'm guessing it's pretty obvious which sixty-seven percent.
So this is the kind of musical American filmmakers made in the '70s. You know, for all the movie musicals I've seen (and, for all my tepid feelings toward them, I've seen quite a few), I don't think I've ever watched one from the '70s, unless you count something like The Aristocats, which I don't (and besides, it's rarely the animated musicals that I complain about anyway). Now that I've seen it, I'd say Cabaret fits perfectly within the decade, and, if we throw out auteur theory (which we should, because it's just silly), as representative of the New American Hollywood aesthetic and moral concerns as any work by Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola. Social consciousness, grimy sets and costumes, dark lighting, beautiful cinematography (an especially pleasant surprise, given that musicals tend to pride themselves on inventive but not particularly beautiful camerawork), complicated sexuality, a bleak, bleak ending—it's all here, and I liked the film a whole lot. In fact, Cabaret is now probably my favorite musical on this whole AFI list[2] so far behind The Wizard of Oz (and Nashville, if you count that). Cabaret succeeds in taking that position largely because it works as an anti-musical, in the same way that films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Godfather: Part II could be called, respectively, anti-sci-fi and anti-gangster movies, in that it majorly tweaks or ignores many of the genre's conventions. The biggest nose-thumbing Cabaret gives the musical genre is that it almost entirely forgoes the device of delivering plot and character through song, instead relegating almost all of its music to the actual cabaret stage, which makes the music feel totally organic and integrated into the more serious intonations of the plot, an effect almost entirely foreign to most conventional musicals (where, I realize, the heightened artificiality is a good portion of the fun). The disconnect from plot development gives the songs a chance to relate to the characters in a more tangential, thematic way that pays especially well when the editing cuts from the stage to the characters going about their lives. Oh, and just so I don't give the wrong impression, this movie, for all its '70s dourness, is still a lot of fun. The cabaret performances are giddy, hilarious, catchy, and the performances, especially Liza Minnelli[3], are impassioned and charismatic. This one's a winner.
Per usual, I'd love some discussion on these films. Until next time!
If it strikes your fancy, you can read the previous entry, #s 58-60, here.
Update: The next post, #s 61-63, is up here.
1] In fact, Sullivan's Travels didn't make it onto AFI's original 1998 list, being only added for the 10th anniversary version that I'm working through now.
2] The irony is not lost on me that, when one of my perennial complaints of movie musicals is that they rarely capture the energy of a live stage performance, one of my favorite musicals ended up being a movie whose music is very self-consciously confined to an actual stage. For what it's worth, though, I should probably admit that I've never seen the stage version of Cabaret, so who knows how I'll feel about this film once I do.
3] aka Lucille Austero! I'd like to think that her character ends up escaping to Southern California and, late in life, developing crippling vertigo and an unflagging infatuation with one Buster Bluth. We can only hope—it's certainly a happier ending than Cabaret suggests for her.
