100 Years...100 Movies 64-66: Network, The African Queen, Raiders of the Lost Ark

Hello all! I'm working my way through AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list, giving thoughts, analyses, and generally scattered musings on each one. For more details on the project, you can read the introductory post here.

...in which I can't think of any introduction whatsoever. So...

64. Network (1976, Sidney Lumet)
It's been said before, but I'll say it again because I remain amazed: Network is an astoundingly prescient film, one that even borders on prophetic. I mean, get this: Network not only predicts the rise of both reality TV and the 24-hour news cycle at least a decade before either was a major cultural force, it also understands these future trends deeply enough to critique the exploitation that runs rampant in each creation. Even in 2014, Network is still a relevant, wicked-sharp media satire, which is incredible considering that the major targets of its satire didn't even exist in 1976 [1]. All that prescience wouldn't wouldn't be worth nearly as much, though, if the movie weren't also hilarious and fantastically acted, two characteristics that go hand-in-hand. Network won three of the four acting categories at the Academy Awards (Fay Dunaway, Peter Finch, and Beatrice Straight), and it probably should have won a fourth for William Holden's performance if that had been possible (Finch and Holden were both nominated in the same category, Best Actor). It's loud, showy acting through-and-though, but goshdarnit, it works. I can't stress enough how much the acting helps to turn what is really a bitter, caustic, ugly movie into one of the funniest comedies in American film history. Even so, Network is angry, shrill, and more than a little smug, and I can see how that did (and still does) turn people off—heck, I usually baulk against this sort of "television is the demise of civilization" tirade, because come on, there's a lot of great, intelligent, socially valuable TV out there, and that was true in the '70s, too [2]. And yet, for all the self-congratulatory airs of Network, there's still something pure about the righteous anger on display, pure enough that it sucks me in every time and reminds me that yes, this hatred of the disgusting reality of the media cycle is the reason why Network is one of my favorite movies ever.

65. *The African Queen (1951, John Huston)
For as long as The African Queen sat dormant on my Netflix queue, I had assumed that the film was a serious movie, the sort of straight-laced drama that tends to have Big Themes and attract Academy Awards, the kind of movie that's often kind of a bore to watch outside of the original cultural moment that birthed it. I'm not quite sure why I thought this (although its presence on both iterations of the AFI list surely bolstered this assumption of mine), and as it turns out, I was dead wrong. The African Queen is nuts. I mean, there's barely a serious bone in its cinematic body; to put it in perspective, I'm about to (sort of) discuss Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Raiders, with all its winking and exploding of heads, is only slightly sillier than The African Queen, as far as its prioritizing of swashbuckling over serious ideas (and realism) goes. No archaeologists-as-Errol-Flynn here, though; in The African Queen, the hero is clearly Katharine Hepburn's Rose Sayer, a Methodist missionary-turned-war-monger who, after her brother dies in the aftermath of a WWI-era German attack on their African village, becomes intent on turning the riverboat of friendly neighborhood captain Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) into a makeshift torpedo to blow the Germans' boat to kingdom come. Yeah, we're definitely not in the land of self-serious Hollywood. And that's not a criticism whatsoever. The African Queen is lots of fun, with both Hepburn and Bogart delivering charming performances. A welcome surprise of a film for me.

66. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)
You know, sometimes it's kinda hard to write about my favorite movies. Like, I'm not talking about writing about movies I merely love—if anything, this series has shown that I can yammer on for hundreds of words on movies I love. I mean those movies that have been a part of my life since childhood, movies I internalized deeply before I even knew what film criticism was. Maybe I'm too close to these movies to consistently find analytical footholds. Or maybe they are movies that I've already read so much critical discourse about that I'm paralyzed by the possibility of repeating those critics. I dunno. All that is to say that I have embarrassingly little to say about Raiders of the Lost Ark, even though it's one of my favorite movies ever. What makes writing about Raiders especially difficult is that it's also one of those movies that has little or no interest in making any sort of real-world point outside the joys of cinema culture itself, which, to be clear, is one of my favorite types of movies, but it also means that discussions are limited to the the purely allusive and technical aspects of the film. "Oh, this is cool because it alludes to x movie from Lucas's childhood," "Spielberg's direction is effective because of its efficiency with space," and the like. Those are valid, important discussions to have, but they aren't always discussions I feel especially equipped to engage in, particularly in the case of Indiana Jones, when the allusions refer to a cinematic form (i.e. adventure serials) whose heyday predates my birth by half a century. So yeah. I'm sorry for the lame "discussion about discussions" thing. I love, love, love this movie so much, but beyond gushing that sentiment, I'm all hot air.

That's all for now, folks! Until next time.

You can read the previous post, #s 61-63, here.
Update: The next post, #s 67-69, can be found here.

1] What's arguably more incredible, though, is that TV media rose (sank?) to the challenge of Network's colossal cynicism by actually making the sort of dreck the film cautions against. In a way, we have nobody but TV itself to thank for the intelligence of Network's screenplay. If television had become some completely high-brow medium in the years since '76, I think it's possible that we'd now dismiss Network as self-satisfied paranoia.

2] That's not to say that there isn't tons of crap out there, too, but overall I tend to prefer my film critiques of television (a dubious genre if there ever was one) to follow the path of Good Night, and Good Luck: TV is a medium with a rich potential, and it's sad that people don't always take advantage of that potential.

100 Years...100 Movies 37-39: The Best Years of Our Lives, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Dr. Strangelove

Hello all! I'm working my way through AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list, giving thoughts, analyses, and generally scattered musings on each one. For more details on the project, you can read the introductory post here.

Judging by the number of pageviews my last post got, it seems that people really like reading about Disney princesses. Regrettably, there's nary a princess in any of these movies, and two of them don't even feature significant female characters at all. Welcome to the AFI, folks.

37. *The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler)
This movie bored me. I'm sorry. I hate that word, "boring," because it's a critique that never really goes anywhere productive. But boredom was the overriding feeling I got while watching The Best Years of Our Lives. The cinematography is flat, much of the acting feels phoned-in, and the plot lacks a clear structure and compelling stories. It's not for lack of trying on the plot's part, though, as I gather (from the largely didactic and tiresome score that plays throughout most of the film) that the movie at least intends to make me feel very deep emotions throughout. And it seems to have managed to swell those emotions in other people, given its placement on this list and the fact that it pretty much swept the Academy Awards back in '46. Heck, Roger Ebert even liked it. It just didn't click for me, though. Part of me wonders if this is just one of those "you just had to be there" movies (though, unless he's a time traveler, Roger Ebert wasn't "there" either). There's no question that the concept of soldiers returning home after WWII was a lot more immediate in 1946 than it is today. Its thematic territory might have felt a little fresher back in the '40s, too; by 2014, we've had dozens of movies, documentaries, TV shows, and books, chronicling the challenges soldiers face when trying to reenter domestic life after being in combat, and conditions like PTSD and some of the other emotional and psychological trauma experienced by those men and women have reached a decent level of mainstream awareness. Looking back almost seven decades to The Best Years of Our Lives, I can't help but find the whole thing a little uninspired and uncompelling, not because of the subject matter (that will always be important) but because of the relatively trite way in which it engages that subject matter. This movie seems content to say, "Yeah, it's hard for soldiers to return home after war," and leave it at that, whereas so many other movies since then have dug deeply into the specific whys and hows of the soldiers' difficulties. It isn't all bad; the early sequence depicting the soldiers' first night back with their families is engaging, and there's some spectacular framing of shots in the final wedding scene. But overall, The Best Years of Our Lives was not the best three hours of my life (ha. ha.. ha... *rimshot*).

38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, John Huston)
I don't have a whole lot to say about this movie except that it's a ton of fun. It's funny that my write-up of the last John Huston-directed movie on this list (The Maltese Falcon) spent so much time trying to parse out if the movie had a moral or not, because in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, there is most definitely a moral: don't be greedy. And that's a fine moral and all, but it has absolutely no bearing on why I like this movie so much. Whereas The Maltese Falcon sometimes feels like it's trying its hand at profundity (hence making the moral, or lack thereof, kind of important), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is pretty much cool with just being the most entertaining, thrilling picture it can be. Whether or not it has a moral "point" isn't all that important. And as far as entertaining and thrilling pictures go, this one works like gangbusters. It's one of the great adventure movies of all time, and Humphrey Bogart gives a fantastic turn as the film's villain. It also has one of the more useful of famous movie quotes in the "We don't need no stinkin' badges" line. Really, you can use that quote anywhere. Observe: We don't need no stinkin' barges. We don't need no stinkin' vegetables. We don't need no stinkin' bicycles. We don't need no stinkin' Transformers sequels. We don't need no stinkin' long write-ups of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Wish granted.

39. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, Stanley Kubrick)
I like Dr. Strangelove a whole lot. It's a wonderful mix of the dry and absurd flavors that I usually prefer my comedies to come in, and it's also the rare comedy that is beautifully shot, which should surprise nobody once the Stanley Kubrick name flashes on the screen. The screenplay is tight and fun and greatly accessible for the kind of brainy comedy that this is; even as a kid, I loved the "precious bodily fluids" bits and some of the more slapsticky moments, even though most the sociopolitical satire flew way over my head. It's a movie filled with so many instances of comedic ridiculousness of such a wide range of types that I imagine most people will find at least one joke that lands for them. There are the big "you can't fight in here, it's the war room" moments that are of course huge laughs, but my favorite jokes come at the film's margins, those little details of uncommented-on silliness, like the way the flight commander dons an enormous cowboy hat when he gets word to drop the bomb. Great stuff. And yet... I can't help but wonder if, like The Best Years of Our Lives, I haven't missed the boat on this movie. Don't get me wrong; it's great. But how much greater must it have been back when the Cold War was actually happening? How much more would the fear of a real-life nuclear apocalypse have galvanized the humor? How much sharper must the satire have been when it was picking apart versions of actual possibilities? How much more bite must that final montage of nuclear blasts have had? With the world no longer a sneeze away from H-bomb oblivion, Dr. Strangelove must have lost a little of the terrifying edge that it once had. It's no longer a movie speaking directly to our society. Sure, there are plenty of ways that this movie's themes are still in conversation with contemporary culture (heck, the world is still a violent place rules by raging military powers), but you have to generalize the film a bit to make that work, forming metaphors and fables out of things that were once quite literal. That's the thing about great satire, I guess; there's always the chance that it'll become slightly obsolete.

That's all for now, folks! Thanks so much for reading. It's always great hearing from y'all, so if you have any insights or grievances or humorous anecdotes or whatever, feel free to share. Until next time, be sure to protect your precious fluids from the dirty Reds.

If you feel so moved, you're welcome to go back to the previous post, #s 34-36, here.
Update: Also, you can go on to the next post, #s 40-42, here.

100 Years...100 Moves 31-33: The Maltese Falcon, The Godfather Part II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Hello all! I'm working my way through AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list, giving thoughts, analyses, and generally scattered musings on each one. For more details on the project, you can read the introductory post here.

Well, folks, I'm on vacation this week, but never let it be said that leisure prevented me from blogging about movies. Plus, these are three movies I've already seen, so it's not like it required all that much effort on my part.

31. The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston)
When I first saw The Maltese Falcon (I was maybe eight or nine at the time, and, unless I'm forgetting something, I've only seen it once since then), I thought the ending made the movie a kind of moral fable. Spoilers follow, obviously: that the falcon in question is revealed to be a fake signified to me that the whole movie (and, I guess, the novel it's based on—I haven't read it) was meant to show the futility of greed. That big, fat bow of a twist was telling me, "See how much trouble all those folks went through, and it was just for some fake treasure? [personified plot twist somehow begins to channel J. Walter Weatherman] That's why... ya don't throw your life away for money." But now that I've thought about this movie for a decade and change, I'm not so sure I can get completely behind that reading anymore. That moral is there in some form, but stating it as cleanly as I just did makes it seem just a little off, in the same way that Marge Gunderson's speech ("There's more to life than a little money, ya know") at the end of Fargo feels more like someone reaching toward a meaning rather than firmly grasping one. When I think about that final twist in the movie now, it feels a little bit distressing and existential to me; what these characters have been so focused on this entire film isn't real. Their life's purpose (at least, within the confines of the story told here) is one of futility, a futility not just caused by their lust for wealth but by the essential unpredictability of the universe. And it's a little upsetting. Then again, it also hasn't escaped me that most of the characters in this movie are villains on some level, so aren't they getting what they deserve? I'd have to see the movie again to answer that question. It's been a while. Regardless, existential or moral fable, it's still one heck of an entertaining movie.

32. The Godfather Part II (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
I prefer the first Godfather. The Godfather Part II is great and all, but it's also a lot more difficult to follow, considerably bleaker, and overall less fun to watch. Basically, I'm just a little too lazy to love Part II as much as I love Part I. There's also the issue that whereas The Godfather feels like a New Hollywood update of a particularly Old Hollywood cinematic and philosophic sensibility, Part II is very much a 1970s movie, with all the brown color palettes, "fucks," grit, and cynicism that come with that decade, and without any of the old-school lushness that graced the first film. But, my series preference notwithstanding, The Godfather Part II is still a great movie and an absolutely ripsnorting sequel. It's got that great quality that only a few sequels (Before Midnight comes to mind as a recent example) manage to have, which is that it's in such deep conversation with the themes and motifs of its predecessor that it practically renders the first movie's insights obsolete, or at least incomplete. The rise of Michael Corleone into a ruthless mob boss is such a vicious takedown of the mafia romanticism of the first film that it's hard to go back and watch the original without at least a little of that griminess coloring the viewing experience. Al Pacino gives one of the all-time great performances as Michael, and the transformation he undergoes from the beginning of Part I to the end of Part II has all the enormity of the very best of tragedies. The flashback immigrant storyline is compelling as well, getting down to the roots of organized crime and turning the whole series (as all mafia-related works of art must be, apparently) into an investigation into the American Dream. Surprise: it's a myth. Welcome to '70s American cinema. 

33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975, Milos Forman)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a good movie. A very good movie, even. The problem is, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a great book, and great this movie is not. I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry; after my Grapes of Wrath writeup, I promised myself I wasn't going to focus so much on the book end of the book-to-movie adaptation process. But my feelings on this movie are too tied up in my disappointment with it after reading (and loving—like, loving it enough to write multiple papers on it) the Ken Kesey novel. It's an old criticism, but the major misstep the film makes (as far as adapting is concerned) is the perspective switch from the Chief's to McMurphy's, which makes a gigantic difference on the trajectory of the plot in the film, despite following the major events almost to a tee. Randle P. McMurphy is a great character, but he's no protagonist like Chief Bromden is. For one, McMurphy has no arc. He's a rebel and a libertarian and a hero the whole time, and while there are different nuances to those characteristics in different moments, he doesn't exactly grow. At least, not compared to the Chief, whose interior, psychological journey is beautiful and heartbreaking. The weight of McMurphy's actions is directly tied to the effect those actions have on the Chief, and by taking us out of the Chief's POV, the movie only gives the barest hint of that effect, at least until the final moments. For two, McMurphy is an archetype, which makes the film a lot less interesting than it could be. The sidelining of the Chief and the protagonistizing (a term I just now coined) make the film adhere a lot closer to the specifically '60s/'70s counter-culture type than the book does. You don't have to go too far to find cinematic precedents to the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in films like Cool Hand Luke and Bonnie and Clyde, which makes the proceedings feel just a little less special than in the novel (whose publication predates both those films). But enough of that. Credit where credit is due: this movie is undeniably powerful, and there's a cleanliness to the cinematography that's crisp and engaging and that probably wouldn't have been possible if Bromden had been the focus. Also, the acting is phenomenal across the board; I'm hard-pressed to find a cast better suited to their roles than the one in this film. So yeah, it's a good 'un. Just be sure to pick up the book, too.

If you round off the .3 repeating, I'm officially one third of the way through this list. Woot woot!

If you'd like, you can read the previous entry, #s 28-30, here.
Update: The next post, #s 34-36, is up here.