The human race is having a nervous breakdown

Do you believe in equal rights for women? Adam’s Rib (1949, George Cukor) is a courtroom romcom that asks us to consider a topic that’s always been fertile for laughs: the double standards that exist between the male and female sexes.

     Mother of 2 treated like shit by her husband. He beats her. He cheats on her. She infiltrates love nest and opens fire. He’s lightly wounded. The other woman uninjured. ADAM (Spencer Tracy) is old fashioned. He believes men and women are different. His wife AMANDA (Katherine Hepburn) believes in equality. Anything a man can do a woman can do better. If a man catches his wife cheating and kills her it’s sad. But if a woman were to catch her husband cheating and kills him it’s horrifying. Why? What’s the difference?
     Adam’s the prosecuting attorney. Amanda’s defending MRS. ATTINGER (Judy Holliday). The defendant is found not guilty. In her closing argument there’s a scene where Amanda asks the jury to consider sexual relativism. There’s a tribe somewhere where the female sex rule and the males are subservient. And “every living being is capable of attack if adequately provoked.”
     During her closing remarks though we also get a series of singles on the other woman, Mrs. Attinger and Mrs. Attinger where the jury is asked to consider them for a moment as if they were the other sex. So three consecutive shots where each of them transforms into the binary counterpart gender to that of their trad cis one. And in the movie, in the court case, the point is to see that Mrs. Attinger would get away with it; free of our stringent moral condemnation, were she a man. However. In a way something else happens.
     When each of the two women are in their drag king shots—thanks to John Waters movies for where I picked up that term—there’s something dramatic about it. Serious. They’re dashing. But when it’s finally on Tommy Ewell, in drag, he’s a clown act. He looks ridiculous. Of course it’s played for laughs. But I think it brings up an interesting point to ponder about society. Am I allowed to say that there are trans and nonbinary people that I’ve taken seriously, yet there have also been times when that initial reaction has been less so?

 

Adam and Amanda have a dream domestic life together. I derive so much comfort vicariously when he’s going through the fridge and sorting through the lamb, chutney, wine and on a whim they decide on curry. They’re happy. The get along at home and argue in court.
     After the verdict they’re on the rocks. The neighbor is coming onto her and Adam busts in pistol drawn. Amanda breaks down and decries “Adam, no one has a right to [murder their spouse].” So Amanda won the legal argument, but Adam won the moral argument. Tricky?
     They reconcile. At home Adam mentions running on some Republican platform, to which Amanda counters that she’s interested in running against him as a Dem. Adam then threatens to cry if she does. She’s incredulous. He proves to her that when he cried during the legal division of their assets with the accountant as part of their divorce he was faking. The final word in the movie is that the whole time some part of Adam has known there’s not really that much of a difference between the sexes.
     But they both agree to the compromise that there is. A little difference. And I’ve always thought Americans, if not all people, are wired in some way to respond to a good fight between two opposing forces. They will it into existence. Like a boxing match. Like all the sports between two teams. Democrat vs Republican. Men vs Women. Prosecution vs Defense. God and the Devil. Good vs Evil. Adam and Eve. Free will vs human nature. Will and representation. Spirit vs the flesh. Shot reverse shot. Film and video.

The serious side of screwball

There’s something wholesome about Woman of the Year (1942, George Stevens). There’s a scene early on at a baseball stadium that sets the tone for the whole thing. It’s something like a romantic domestic hangout movie. Neither of the two leads are ugly to each other for a change. Nor is there any cynicism, nihilism, or cruel defamation of either of the sexes. Woman of the Year is however a clash of culture, class, and gender screwball romantic platitude (propaganda?) honoring the sanctity of marriage.

     The thing about the rules of the game is when it’s love we’re dealing with, suspension of disbelief can stretch pretty far. I know Tracy and Hepburn were an item, so the chemistry there is palpable. But do I buy TESS HARDING falling for SAM CRAIG? How could a wealthy, polyglot, steeped in international affairs, strong, independent, star columnist fall for a sports writer who takes a cheap shot at her in one of his articles? The absurdity of it is ripe for screwball. There’s maybe even a possible subtle cue it could be read as Tess wants to get laid; Sam Irishes because he wants to marry. Whether or not you view it this way, what follows in a more emphatic comedy of trad gender role-swapping.
     The midpoint is Tess and Sam consummating the marriage. Shortly thereafter, Sam becomes the woman and Tess the man. It all starts when Sam gets his feeling hurt because Tess doesn’t notice his new hat. And then he has to cook dinner for everyone. Then Sam gets over-emotional, and distant because he feels like Tess’s heart isn’t committed to their relationship. What happened? Did sex have anything to do with it?
     Right before they sleep together, Sam is overtly masculine. He is an expert on sports. He’s assertive. Confident. Calm. And right before they make use of their nuptial bed and there’s that screwball misleading appearance gag with the Jew who escapes Hitler in Tess’s bed, Sam invites his riffraff crew over and seems bent on fighting to preserve his tough guy identity. Yet after they’ve shared their night of passion (the cut way before anyone can even come close to glimpsing), Sam becomes femininized. It’s funny then, less far-fetched in today’s modern culture but still fun. I’m just trying to highlight and emphasize the abrupt implausible shifts as characteristic of the screwball nature of Woman of the Year.
     The film’s climax is a set piece that plays around with the way Tess doesn’t know her way around a kitchen, but wants to prove her subservience as a way to reclaim their marriage. The film’s resolution is Sam bashes GERALD, Tess’s (male) secretary over the head with a bottle of champagne that she was to christen an ocean liner with, to show he’s putting an end to her career once and for all so she can be his wife. Or so it seems? The ending is such a mess. You know I’m saying it: screwball context it gets away with it. But even for screwball, this is a big ask. How will they resolve their marriage? There’s no way Tess should quit her career to be a wife. She’s like one of the most successful important, literally “outstanding woman of the year.” 
     I think Woman of the Year is an early example of one of those Hollywood movies that have an ending on the surface to appease the masses and morally just set; but the rest of us know there’s no way that ending is meant to be taken seriously. What happens when we ask ourselves would Hepburn really take a role of an empowered woman who gives up everything to be a docile wife? And if not, why would she take the role? The only way I can reconcile these questions is to imagine she means it as a send up; a put on; the ultimate screwball sentiment being if you actually buy this ending the joke’s on you. All this despite knowing George Stevens would never be complicit in something so subversive. I really do feel bad. I thought for once I’d found a screwball that wasn’t underhanded.

     Unless marriage really meant that much to Hepburn. And the dream doesn't have to correspond to real life. It can be funny. Tender. Sweet. Hopeful. Impossibly perfect.

With the rich and mighty always a little patience

If I haven’t exceeded my capacity for superlative esteem beyond meaning The Philadelphia Story (1940, George Cukor) my friends is the most perfect film Hollywood has ever made to gift us with the uh stuff that dreams are made of. The dream of true love to be precise. It’s self-reflexive in that it both expresses a disdain for the American public’s pathetic moronic indulgence in tabloid celebrity gossip rag culture while allowing us into the ultimate inner lives expose of the young, rich, good-looking trying desperately to hide away from the public light couple as we steal our very own voyeuristic intrusion into their world. The Philadelphia Story is a domestic psychological dissection of the female mind and her growth into maturity screwball luxury excursion drama away into the seas of the wealthy class, which makes that rarest of all forays, sympathizing with them, allowing us to empathize with them, understand true love through them, and most importantly of all to laugh with them. 

     If Lubitsch shows us how sex is luxury, George Cukor distances us from the wealthy so that we can appreciate love’s high price tag without necessarily needing to let us take it home ourselves; so that next time we go shopping we’re a little better discerning in how we go about it. Cukor feels like our own American Lubitsch. Lubitsch is the Riviera. Cukor is Mid-Atlantic.
     In The Philadelphia Story the middle-class journalists mock the decadence and refinement of the upper-class household. But they also want to be a part of it. There’s no rags to riches Cinderella crap here. They can’t. And by the end they’ve stopped making jokes about them. That’s the arc. But there’s also this aspect to the narrative whereby the family is blackmailed by the tabloid to allow the tabloid to sneak a spread of their wedding, but have the tables turned on them, yet just at the moment they’ve taken the spoils, the final twist ending is that the tabloid loses the high stakes but still walks away with what they came for—and sell it to us with the end superimposed over our gluttonous eye candy. That’s the pitch-black noir-tinged screwball edge: the house always wins. 
     C.K. DEXTER HAVEN (Cary Grant) is screwball characteristically alpha. Everyone in the family acknowledges his binge drinking and wife beating in the most charming light. When the little girl mentions the violent assaults she’s full of glee and phrases it like “I wonder if he’s gonna sock her again?” TRACY LORD (Katherine Hepburn) is confronted with the truth by her father in Act II when he tells her she’s a prig who lacks an understanding heart. These aren’t Lubitsch ideal lovers. They’re deeply flawed. They’re relatable because they’re human. But we see them working on becoming better people. They are exemplary of the truth that love takes work.
     It’s also cool how in The Philadelphia Story the Ralph is actually a loser. When KITTRIDGE tells Tracy she’s a goddess and he wants to worship her, it isn’t how sweet, it’s how nauseating. The Ralph is typically neutral or naïve, but Kittridge is repulsive. Most of The Philadelphia Story is posh indulgence interspersed with flights of sublime wit; but there’s always that cynical bloodthirsty clawed wild nature of it all just slightly underneath. Hearth fires and holocausts is right.
     My favorite gag is when MIKE and LIZ are invited outside for sherry with the family. The sound of Liz’s camera shutter snapping offscreen with the cut revealing each shot subsequently gets increasingly off-putting to the point of aggravation. When Cukor films the wide with Tracy kicking over the table and breaking Liz’s camera that’s the kind of robust cathartic laugh which utilizes the reserve energy of the aggravation to fuel the explosion. An exhaust valve is therapeutic.
     Finally for me Tracy is my way into all this and the star in every sense. The way Act III is entirely Tracy hungover and piecing together what occurred during her blackout the night before is revelatory. She’s the light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long emotionally. Right there with you Tracy. That final exchange between Tracy and Dext tells us everything we need to understand what makes this picture work so well: “How do I look?” “Like a queen. Like a goddess.” “How do I feel? Like a human being.” 

Who cares who stole the bonds murdered Wynant's ex-wife or Nunheim

Everyone knows cinema’s greatest power is to communicate through emotion. And what better emotion than love encapsulates our hopes, desires? Therefore what subject is best suited to manifest a projection of our dreams than romance? And isn’t the best part of being in love with someone making each other laugh? That’s what makes the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s so perfect. Especially when what’s at stake is our true feelings. 

     But crime is a diversion. As a genre it doesn’t deal with the same stakes. In its own way it can be fun. But it’s as though because one gets tired of only melodramas, romance, women’s pictures and musicals, every once in a while a change of pace is sought. Mark it the same goes for westerns, action, and horror while we’re at it.

The Thin Man (1934, W.S. Van Dyke) is a whodunnit crime movie that really wants to be a screwball comedy. Except the couple have a seemingly healthy relationship and are happily married. Like the most dazzling screwball (and something it shares with the hard-boiled detective genre), the dialogue in The Thin Man is rapid-fire top shelf slang. As a blended genre it’s quite the cocktail. Even though NICK & NORA’S repartee isn’t as barbed as we might be accustomed to. 
     Nick (William Powell) might be the coolest character Hollywood ever created. If modern discourse in pop culture describes confidence as not caring about the outcome one way or the other, this dude gets it. The 50s delinquents, 60s hippies, 70s loners, 80s punks, 90s slackers were a different type of indifference: they were all anti-establishment, outside of society fringe. In The Thin Man, Nick is the very center of society.
     Think about the setting in this thing. Remember that line at that party when drunk Nora says something to Nick like: he has all the best friends and that’s why she loves him? The endless dinners, parties, and all manner of social gatherings where half New York knows Nick and shows up for are all full of the worst criminals alongside all of the most respectable types. Lowlifes and uppercrust are merged. It’s so refreshing how in this imaginary sphere there’s no class division whatsoever. It’s kinda cute. 
     And it’s not that Nick doesn’t care. Yes, as far as the narrative goes, for the first half of the movie what drives the plot is that Nick doesn’t want to take the case. He’s too cool to let his screwball comedy life turn into a noir. Or like Nora says, “Sleuthing isn’t much fun, is it?” He only finally gets involved because no one else can solve the case and he has a hunch he can figure it out himself.
     What’s also so hilarious about the end of the movie is that Nick invites every single possible suspect, even that entire family, to a dinner soiree and everyone shows up. Because Nick’s too busy hanging out, drinking literally every second he’s awake, with his hot wife who’s just inherited a fortune so he doesn’t ever have to work another day in his life that he can’t be bothered with solving the case. But what if he could manage to work it into just another clever diversion to entertain his party guests? Done.

The Birds

With a career that spanned five decades and a personal vision that always remained uncompromising and experimental, Robert Altman, more than any other American filmmaker, requires time when one attempts to warm up to his talent. Most of the time I've spent has been laborious, tedious, and sometimes disappointing. But so has my search for great films in general. Now that isn't to say the payoff wasn't exceedingly worthwhile on numerous occasions. Yesterday downtown at a movie theater here in Austin I was lulled into a sublime hypnotic trance by Brewster McCloud (1970, Robert Altman).

For someone who considers themselves a fan of Independent American cinema Altman's is one of the most revered of reputations. However it was only after seeing Magnolia (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson) that led me to Short Cuts (1993, Altman), which I thoroughly and profoundly connected with, due to its vast array of troubled, struggling, funny, romantic, believable characters. Short Cuts is serious Altman at his finest.

Later I found 3 Women (1977, Altman) to be indecipherable, frustrating, and bewildering. But also funny, captivating, poetic, and a real treasure. Again, as has he always been reputed for, the ensemble casting, namely Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, are revelatory. 3 Women is surreal Altman at his finest.

And finally the most impressive of all Altman's work, which I'd seen only recently is his made for television opus Tanner '88 (1988, Altman). It is his most serendipitous, inventive, and enjoyable narrative, in the guise of a political satire.

If the aforementioned three titles are his crowning achievements--and I realize McCabe & Mrs. Miller might belong there but I haven't seen it and I demand the opportunity to watch it projected in a theater--then their other, their counterparts, their vital components are Altman's rebellious comedy satires. For me those have been O.C. & Stiggs (1984, Altman), The Player (1992, Altman) and now Brewster McCloud.

Not quite having to structure my thoughts here as either a movie review or film criticism, the Reviewiera platform is my medium for expressing the bliss of truly, sincerely, and without pretense, enjoying the hell out of a movie.

All I'd ever heard about Brewster McCloud can be seen in its poster. Bud Cort plays the title role, lives in the Astrodome, and builds wings to fly with. As great as MASH (1970, Altman) is, and an admirable beginning to Altman's canon, that he followed it up with Brewster McCloud really makes me appreciate his reach.

Hearing that a movie was a flop, panned, alienated audiences, or was weird often makes my mouth water, and Brewster McCloud was known for all of those things. But what a payoff. It opens showing the MGM studio card without sound and as the lion roars we hear "I forgot the opening line." It's unbelievable that MGM distributed Brewster McCloud and the only one other Altman film, O.C. & Stiggs. O.C. & Stiggs also plays with the MGM opening logo card. There are several similarities between both of these MGM Altman comedies: rampant drug use, offensive racist slurs, misogynist jokes, adolescent male protagonists, contemporary pop soundtracks, non-sequitor gags, car chases, violence, and satirizing American culture. Yet they were both commercial flops, though destined for cult status.

Brewster McCloud is full of references to birds. His name sounds like rooster and his surname is a nod to the clouds. And parallel with the entire film is an inexplicable completely set apart classroom lecture by a character played by Rene Auberjonois, who is evolving into a bird before our eyes. Altman's got imagination.

There's also Michael Murphy playing a Bullitt spoof pursuing a string of homicides where there's bird shit at every crime scene. (The Murphy gags about his obsession with personal appearance and his turtlenecks is killer.) All of the cars have license plates that refer to a type of bird. The Road Runner driven by Suzanne (Shelley Duvall) has the license plate DUV 222.

The movie also has some marijuana humor that feels a lot like Cheech and Chong. Coincidentally Brewster McCloud was produced by Lou Adler (that tall skinny dude with the white beard and pink shades who always sits next to Jack courtside at the Lakers games), who managed Cheech and Chong and would go on to produce and direct Up In Smoke in 1978.

More references to flight include Sally Kellerman as Brewster's guardian angel (who in yet another bird reference plays a scene bathing nude in a fountain that also recalls her exposed shower prank in MASH), Brewster's construction of his own wings, and the name Astrodome itself alluding to a celestial monument. There's also some remnant of the Icarus myth, but Brewster McCloud becomes its own fable. It's not for me to question why Brewster is pursued as an object of physical desire by the women characters, but it adds to the anti-Hollywood feel of this comedy. Like the character Hope wrapped in a blanket masturbating while wrapped in a quilt as she bounces on Brewster's inflatable raft, how do you explain that to a producer? There's so much different stuff going on in Brewster McCloud that I'm just glad made it into the cut.

And what a debut for Shelley Duvall, more than ever I honed in on her naive nuances as the virtuous ingenue with a hint of worldliness. I'd just happen to rent Thieves Like Us (1974, Altman) a couple of weeks ago and began realizing more than ever before what she brings to a performance. Furthermore she is like the Altman actress.

A refreshing break from my usual high art preferences and mainstream interludes, Brewster McCloud won me over with its sumptous 2.35:1 canvas, Houston streets, whip zooms, long lense work, and deserves its own special place with my appreciation, due to succeeding while being unlike anything I've ever seen.

--Dregs