Some like it cold

So what have we learned from The Golden Age about love? That those who are best suited for it are thieves, spoiled shallow wealthy brats, narcissists, tyrants, emotional masochists, greedy capitalists, those suffering from mental illness, con-artists, social climbers, career opportunists, blackmailers, murderers, but most of all those driven by the sex impulse? And how it helps to pass yourself off as someone you're not? 

     Why does the screwball show us all this? What’s the point? Because cinema’s greatest power is to communicate emotion. Love is irrational. Emotions ignore reason, that’s what makes them emotions. What seem like the worst character traits to the intellect ring true as the course of nature in pursuit of sex and love because they’re emotionally authentic. Relatable. Emotions, like cinema, are illusions; some for love, some for tears.

 

Here's a great character in a comedy we haven’t seen yet, a Nazi slut. A Foreign Affair (1948, Billy Wilder) throws us in the middle of the crossfire, looked at from any angle as survival instinct or self-interests ensnared by motivations and circumstances beyond their grasp; their hearts, their bodies, goods to be bought, sold, or traded on the blackmarket of human whimsy. It’s about a frigid woman and a whore. One incapable of love and one who offers it freely. But in the end who’s to say which is which?
     Jean Arthur is FROST. Dietrich is VON SCHLUETOW. Wilder inherited subtlety, innuendo, double entendre, sneaking in jokes and the like from Lubitsch. Dietrich’s name is supposed to suggest slut. When Jean Arthur’s character is asking how to spell “sloot-oh,” the officer throws in “with the umlaut.” If anything, I will say A Foreign Affair is fair to both women; fair to both sides. What I take from it is that Americans and Germans are pretty much the same. Germans aren’t all Nazis. Well, some are. Some will always be. Some were caught up in it and then tried to move on. And for many, it wasn’t easy. When Erika Von Schluetow says a woman goes with whatever’s in fashion, she’s saying transactional sex, hairstyles, outfits, make-up looks, shoes, joining the Nazis, (can) all (be) frivolous, impulsive, meaningless temporary fixations. And I believe her. For who’s to judge a woman’s character? Who knows what it’s like for her? What she was up against?
     The first tenderness for me is in Act II when Frost recounts her woeful account of what would lead her to nearly cry her eyes out of her head. But the first pain is approaching the second act break when PRINGLE confronts Erika with that line “How much of a Nazi were you?” (We know what he really means by that.) Afterwards when Pringle takes Frost on a date to the Lorelei and Erika is singing and spots them, that’s the low point for me. Erika is made to feel used up. Love can make you feel like that.
     It’s even worse when Erika tells Frost about what happened to her after the war. “What do you think it was like being a woman when the Russians first stepped in?” My imagination conjures up the worst. However. At the end the when the COL arrests Erika and she solicits him, out of indignant resignation he orders a bunch of MPs to see to her—yet we are given to surmise instead she’s in for a gangbang. And she’s coy about it. At this juncture I rethink everything from earlier. Maybe she made up stuff about the Russians to manipulate Frost? Maybe she doesn’t love Pringle. When he’s in her room at the beginning and with her neck in his hands he says “Why don’t I choke you a little? Break you in two. Build a fire under you, you blonde witch,” this could likely be more of an affair of passion.
     Pringle is a man. A man who uses Erika for sex like she uses him for military protection. When Frost brings Pringle that chocolate cake with I love you written again and again in frosting, he sells it—poignant image. So the fitful ending is Pringle is stuck with Frost. Erika, those GIs are finished running a train on her, walks away free and clear. But what about Frost?
     Frost is the only one who doesn’t realize she’s being used. And therefore it’s her I feel sad for. Erika tells her: “Some people are lucky at love. Some people are jinxed. You shouldn’t even sit down at the table.” But Frost is also a congresswoman from Iowa who’s getting married to the war hero Army Captain from her home state. So I think I’m safe in concluding that A Foreign Affair is about people not necessarily being what they appear; that there’s more to it. Don’t judge people based on moral prejudices. Sex, love, what’s the difference? When it comes to matters of the heart it’s every man for himself blackmarket. Or, some people are lucky and some people are just jinxed. But who’s to say which is which?

Sic erat in fatis

Opposites attract. The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges) is equal parts hopeful and cynical about romance. It’s a screwball comedy about the love that strikes between a virgin scientist nepo bookworm and a sexpot grifter career criminal. Yet it does stick with one creative choice that links the two through a similarity. At its midpoint when the couple awake to the reality that their dream of sharing a life together happily ever after has ended, they both suffer equally from the cruelty of it all.

     JEAN’S (Barbara Stanwyck) seduction of HOPSY (Henry Fonda) lays it on pretty thick. The dialogue in which they finish each other’s sentences gets risky dangerous at the part about her wanting to be taken by surprise like a burglar. I won’t spell out what that innuendo means for me but in the context of the scene it works well. 
   Act III is a gaslight melodrama that really throws you off any attempt at guessing what Jean’s motives are. Because we the audience are being conned. There’s this red herring involving why Jean’s alter ego EVE SIDWICH has wedged her way back into Hopsy’s life. Is she imposing herself as a British aristocrat imposter into his social circle in order to humiliate him? Rob him again? Harass him out of spite? What kind of revenge does she have in mind we wonder. Because of that line right before the end of the second act: “Unfinished business. I need him like the axe needs the turkey.” 
     After Hopsy and the Lady Eve are married, she confesses to him. She tells him about several sordid sexual partners she’d had in an elliptical anecdote montage. And we think that makes them even. She wanted to hurt him like he hurt her. But after a tacked on shockingly thrillingly random bumping back into each other encounter we learn what the third act was really all about.
     Jean created Eve as a proxy to get Hopsy to reevaluate her. After having his heart broken by the royal teen slut, the crooked felon hustler in comparison now looks to him ideal. So The Lady Eve is telling us a man can forgive being swindled out of vast sums, lied to, used, and tricked, but not a woman who’s slept around alot. It’s funny in a screwball context. So its moral is: whatever it is keep it to yourself if you want to build a relationship on trust. 
     Lastly, I don’t know why but I’ve always hated Charles Coburn as the COL character inordinately. Like just how this grifter family is out to scam the poor Henry Fonda character just aggravates me because I have to see it coming and he can’t maybe. Also I’ve always liked Coburn in anything else I’ve seen him in. Which brings me to ask myself how I feel at the midpoint when Jean gets busted and subsequently broken up with. Something that always works in movies is having a character vow to reveal some immoral spot from their past to a loved one, and the other party finding out just a little too soon. I know she’s good, which is why this plot point probably works so well. So can we really buy the ending? Or do we buy it because we’ve been conned and don’t realize it? In which case would that also possibly be intentional? To on some level equate falling in love or being moved emotionally by a love story as falling for a grift?

Phone worshippers

What joy films from this era bring me. Midnight (1939, Mitchell Leisen) is an identity theft screwball comedy about social mobility that’s hopeful, life-affirming, sweet on its surface, but underneath one of the most bleak confections to hold a shattered mirror up to human nature. And maybe I’m the problem here. The reason this material connects with me so is because I don’t believe the possibility of upward vertical class integration exists. I read this movie as reinforcing an inferiority complex. What’s more important is that Midnight can be read as the cabbie looms lurking around every corner as a specter, a grim reaper to drag EVE PEABODY (Claudette Colbert) back where she belongs lest she think she can rise above her station.

     I’m big lately on what I perceive as one of cinema’s greatest strengths, which is communicating emotion. Emotions that can’t be put into words. Emotions that your literal mind can’t figure out through reason. Take Eve’s crashing the party when she’s arrived in Paris. The hostess makes an announcement that the pawn ticket of a woman named Eve Peabody has been tendered as counterfeit admission and asks for the culprit to identify herself. But Eve keeps silent. In the hotseat squirming. The suspense she’ll be revealed as imposter. This is what it can feel like for some when they feel like they don’t fit in socially. The feeling is authentic and conveys this so well. Is it all in her head? Is it all in our head? But it gets even better. We’re in psychological horror territory when her lies have her cornered and she’s about to be busted going into a room that isn’t hers. But the key works. And when she goes inside it’s so scary. Dark. Shadows. She keeps asking who’s there? This is what it can feel like if you actually make it in. Dangerous. But somehow a key that shouldn’t have worked did. For you. But technically it’s breaking and entering. And there are laws against that. You will pay.
     The character work in Midnight screams real life fodder. Eve is emblematic of a woman who’s hot, young, and inherently stubborn about accepting anything less than a life full of luxury, wealth, opulence, fame, and parties. Everything social media uses to ensnare its target demo with today in real life. Is this a toxic stereotype? Doubtful. Who’s saying there’s anything wrong with it? It’s aspirational. Eve is a gold digger by her own self admission. She identifies as such. That hits. She’s supposedly in love with the Don Ameche character but won’t let herself be with him because what she most desires is a future in pursuit of materialism that he clashes with. 
     So when the film has them end up with each other happily ever after, I think it’s bunk. It feels like moralizing. Like Midnight is telling us there’s no way she could have had any other life than with this cabbie because they’re equally matched because they’re from the same lower class. Because they’re both fakers and can’t keep going without giving up the false illusion. Hollywood owes us more. The fairytale can replace reality. In Hollywood, but not in real life. And that’s what makes the ending sad. We don’t get the Hollywood ending we get the real life ending. Also come to think of it that’s what makes the ending of Some Like It Hot (1959, Billy Wilder) the best ending for a comedy. The audacity to subversively defiantly refuse to accede to the hoax.

It's a deal. It's a bargain. It's a scandal

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938, Ernst Lubitsch) conveys a certain condition through both thought and emotion. It’s scenario simultaneously ridicules and empowers women. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife is a marriage screwball comedy that comes on like a carefree swooning rom com but goes down like a psychological horror.

     Here I argue that other movies don’t do both. Thought and emotion. In Adaptation (2002, Spike Jonze), Kaufman’s screenplay allows us to think about how adapting a cerebral source into a movie has to compromise because we’re watching a movie that tries to and fails at avoiding the very same pitfall. Irreversible (2002, Gaspar Noé) makes us feel what it’s like to be in love with someone who is everything to you and then losing her which is losing everything. It’s one or the other.
     In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife Lubitsch gets us to think about how marriage is like a business transaction. MICHAEL BRANDON (Gary Cooper) says “Love and business are just the same. You have to gamble. You have to take chances.” (I apologize it’s obnoxious at this point for me to keep repeating this but I’ve always thought the exact same thing. Schopenhauer saying nature doesn’t care about us only for us to reproduce. Nothing’s free.) When Mr. Brandon buys the Louis XIV wash basin NICOLE (Claudette Colbert) sees through him: 60,000 francs is his down payment on me.
     Also when Nicole’s father hears she doesn’t want to marry Mr. Brandon and he starts negotiating the aunt calls him out “Are you a father or an auctioneer?” we know what she’s really implying is more like pimp or sex trafficker. But what’s up with right before the second act break how Nicole is repulsed by Michael’s proposition and wants nothing to do with him and then they’re out dancing and she’s swept off her feet? Doesn’t it feels like a reel’s missing? Plot twist. It’s because she’s scamming him.
     Here’s the empowering women part. So this rich, arrogant, over-confident American businessman thinks he can come along and meet this cute French woman on the Riviera in a luxury boutique and after meeting her one time, marry her? After he’s already been through 7 marriages and 6 divorces (1 died)? Nicole’s dad (I love Edward Everett Horton in a Lubitsch and he’s in many) gets the deal up to a $100K prenup. Cruel plot twist. No sex. Not on the honeymoon. Not ever. Not even a kiss. No touching. He can buy her but he can’t have her. I love to imagine all of these beautiful young women who some rich guy thinks he can swoop up for a trophy wife taking his money and giving him nothing in return to balance the scales.
     Does the scene where Michael is trying to seduce his newlywed bride then resorts to increasingly desperate attempts hint on an elliptical implied attempted rape moment? It’s played cutesy. But when they leave the room and she’s applying iodine to a severe wound she’s inflicted on him by biting him I mean she can only have had to be defending herself for one reason right? That’s what they call the Lubitsch touch.
     Act III Michael changes the terms of the business deal. If she’s nice to him he’ll let her have a divorce. But Nicole, not one to acquiesce to defeat has a scheme of her own. She’ll make him think she’s cheating so he’ll divorce her. Spiteful isn’t she? It works though. And yes very screwball of Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife to employ such a sophisticated deception. So Michael has a nervous breakdown and winds up in a sanatorium. And this is a comedy. I love it.
     Michael tells Nicole “You made a nervous wreck of me. You tortured me. You took my pride away. My self-respect. And I took it.” He’s literally in a straightjacket because of her. And the climax at this point makes me feel like wow that’s exactly how women make you feel. How marriage makes you feel. How love makes you feel. And Nicole tells Michael she had to break him down. Now that’s an ending. A resolution. The power balance is even. They’re now equals. Partners. She’s no longer a possession, a property. And they live happily ever after. And I buy it. That’s why I love screwball. It supports both my most cynical conclusions about life and my most tender romantic desires. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife makes me think about how unfairly a man can behave towards a woman, and makes me feel what he goes through unless he’s able to recognize it.

The Bull of Broad Street

It becomes apparent immediately that what sets Easy Living (1937, Mitchell Leisen) apart from most movies that are in the business of sketching a narrative, is that instead its emphasis is on individual sketches complete in and of themselves—nuanced precision plot points. Furthermore, Easy Living is a screwball comedy where what drives it isn’t sex, it’s money. It’s refreshing.
     The opening credits sequence’s jewels, furs, and orchid are lavish materialistic wealth signifiers that aren’t far removed from the timeless pop American obsession that still exists to this day. Along with the American dream of becoming wealthy without having to work for it. But what’s most effective here and gives Easy Living structure is its reliance on quintessential screwball genre ingredients: misunderstandings, false assumptions, and misleading appearances. These are found often as both plot elements and wordplay.
     Most of all the sable coat. MARY SMITH (Jean Arthur with why the most generic character name ever?) thinks it’s Kolinsky but doesn’t find out until the end it’s real sable. Another distinct quality of Easy Living is how in that opening scene when we are introduced to the BALL household, the way they fight doesn’t feel like aristocratic refined manners; it’s more like wild quick to lose their temper new money, which is more relatable, or at least more enjoyable. 
     But the other big misunderstanding crucial to the plot is the way Mary is mistaken for J.B. Ball’s mistress and every vulture in town swoops in to cash in on exploiting her for what they can gain from it. The whole tone of it feels like it’s relevant and could easily happen in our own times. Preston Sturges knows how to wring the comedy out of it though. The mistress angle plays out into the third act and through to the film’s climax turning into insider trading and market manipulation. And it’s all so outlandish yet somehow that makes it even more plausible.
     In keeping with this whole misunderstanding thing, there’s a scene played so indelibly by Jean Arthur when LOUIS LOUIS is showing her the suite and they’re discussing how much for “whatever it is you want?” where she seems in an honest sweet endearing way to be acquiescing to some sort of sex transaction. It’s quick. And despite how later she’s explosively offended that someone could even consider she accepted the sable from Ball as his mistress, I still think this reading of interpreting her suggestion in the earlier scene plays. Maybe it’s best left to our own imagination. 

 

What an ending. You don’t see it coming. And it’s what keeps the mistaken for mistress premise from running thin. It’s non sequitur. The way the Ray Milland character who’s only ever found himself capable in the work sector as a busboy out of nowhere proves himself ideal to run one of the largest financial institutions in the world is so funny because again it’s so outlandish but in real life that makes it even more plausible. It’s how people think now. It’s how people are now. It also fits with the title, with the theme. It's even more now the American dream to achieve financial gain or some shortcut to prosperity through scamming. But that’s not all. When Milland tells the Jean Arthur character “and I have a job for you… cooking my breakfast.” He’s serious. And it’s not meant to be funny which makes it even more funny.

     

Sweet repose

How is W.C. Fields by the same turn both hero of the little man and at the same time slyly above it all? Both doormat and Übermensch? The way he talks in and of itself is the main attraction. His slow, deliberate way of feigning civility through his manner of speech is his passive aggressive means by which he weaponizes sarcasm. 

     And the way he mumbles his comebacks for only us to hear thereby makes us complicit in the joke. And this is what his best comedies are built upon.

 
It’s a Gift (1934, Norman McLeod) is a slapstick ballet led by one MR. HAROLD BISSONETTE in which his indomitable dignity is maintained through his cool as a cucumber surface façade. The comedy is derived from this Zen tranquility in the face of endless domestic aggravations, annoyances, and all types of everyday disturbances to the point it becomes poetry. 
     And It’s a Gift takes its time. Fields commands the pace of this thing, and you don’t rush the man. The narrative is composed of a series of set pieces that are all drawn out sketches. But it’s the one where he goes outside to sleep on the porch that sets the tone for the whole movie. Everything’s so calm. Quiet. And here we get some of the most creative sound design. The musicality in the rhythm of that conversation the neighbors are having, abstracted inane chatter as mockery. And the laundry line as mouse. How do these incidents seem to be such a bother to Bissonette, yet only ever seem to prove momentary obstacles that he quickly defeats, constantly thwarting any distractions life could throw his way?
     What makes Fields’ character work here so effective is that all of these attacks that in real life would raise a man’s blood pressure, put him in the hospital with a severe case of stress mismanagement, drive him insane, or otherwise break him down, become catharsis through his ability to dismantle them. And that’s the secret to life.

What's he got that I don't got?

Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch) is the greatest film of all time. Because Hollywood rules the world when it comes to getting rich by selling people their own dreams, and Trouble in Paradise is a timeless artifact that proves this can be done without being garbage. 
     What’s the first thing that happens in Trouble in Paradise? We’re in Venice, aka paradise, (to be read as the world of artifice, i.e. cinema itself). And a gondolier is taking out the trash and transporting it away in his trash barge. Why? What’s the meaning of this? The trash is commercial crap romantic movies. The trouble in paradise is artless product pandering to undiscerning mainstream audiences. But we’re not here for that. We deserve better. We deserve suite 253, 5, 7, and 9. And one of the most effectively hottest sex scenes in any movie, by way of some inserts of clocks.

 
At a light 80 minutes, Trouble in Paradise deftly crafts a narrative that is deceptively simple because of its clarity and focus; it’s made for us the audience, always with us in mind; and it’s always one step ahead of us. The most rewarding thing about Trouble in Paradise is trying to guess where its going. Somewhere in the middle of Act II, I asked myself whom I would rather Gaston end up with: MME. COLET or LILY? I couldn’t say.
     That is until Lily asks aloud “What does she got that I haven’t got?” That’s when I realized I am all for Miriam Hopkins in this thing. That’s when I realized this movie is speaking to me; through real emotions. That line is everything. A version of that line is also spoken by another character in one of the quintessential treatises on love, when TONY MONTANA asks MANOLO the same thing in Scarface (1983, Brian De Palma). It’s the logic of unrequited desire.
     And that’s the other thing that makes Trouble in Paradise so profound: it deals with real stakes. Yet what Trouble in Paradise is really saying is so pragmatic it could be mistaken as cynical: that sex is a crooked business transaction. And a limited one at that. That this partnership between man and woman is an endeavor best suited to 2 crooks who know that they’re using each other. Because nothing’s free in this world.
     It’s why I care about Miriam Hopkins’ character but not Kay Francis. Dumping the Miriam Hopkins character hurts. Why is it I’ve always been vulnerable to looking at the popular rich kids’ lives as something far more glamorous and exciting than my own, even after growing up? Why was it the same with the idealized romantic notion of true love? Because Mme. Colet embodies both of these poisonous flaws, along with ultimately being a depiction of overly sentimental Hollywood escapist fantasy. That’s why I know Gaston isn’t really in love with her.
     And that’s why after the denouement, even after the idealized perfect romantic paradise proves a hoax, and the grifters Gaston and Lily walk away with the money, the jewels, and each other, we know it won’t last long. It’s all too shaky. But we get to feel how happy we are that they have each other. That Miriam Hopkins’ character has found her dream of paradise. Because it’s also our dream, and that’s what Hollywood was built for. 

We Must Be Doing Something Right to Last Two Hundred Years

I'd prefer to avoid being repetitive. However, I wish to express again the marvel of seeing a film projected in 35mm in a theater; and, rediscovering a movie that I've already seen on DVD at home several times. It's like time travel. It's like experiencing the same thing audiences did when the film was first released.

When I was nineteen Mike Clark's Movie Madness Video and More in Portland, OR was like being Charlie in the Chocolate Factory for me. It offered the chance to see anything I wanted or could think of. Now there are subsequent generations who have the internet for the equivalent of what for me were the VHS archives. I still enjoy home video. But, after seeing something like some of Altman's work from the Seventies on film, larger than life, it almost makes me want to throw my TV in the trash.

Before Prêt-à-Porter (1994, Robert Altman), Short Cuts (1993, Altman), and The Player (1992, Altman), there was Nashville (1975, Altman). Nashville is the Altman template. Nashville has a prestigious notoriety that caused me to see it on DVD many years ago. I wasn't a fan. It felt bloated, boring, and initially caused me to file Altman's status as possibly the emperor not wearing any clothes. But after returning to Altman's work, I found different aspects of his talent rewarding. Talents I began to realize were featured in Nashville.

As part of a mini-Altman retrospective here in Austin, a couple of days ago I again found myself spending Saturday afternoon alone in a dark theater surrounded by strangers. Quickly, once immersed in Nashville's panoramic, rich, colorful, aurally-assaulting portrait frame, I regretted how it'd taken so long for me to give this film my full attention. The 35mm print was clean, and provided the scale with which I was able to truly engage with the film. It's like the whole vocabulary of shot selection took on a new strength.

The opening credit sequence blasts a radio station DJ voiceover hurrying through a list of cast members as he advertises a greatest hits album that features them while illustrations bombard us front and center, their names scrolling up one side of the screen and the titles of their hit songs scrolling down the other, all to some twangy good ole country and western music. Sidenote: I can't think of any other instant in my life that I've not only tolerated country music, but enjoyed it.

The Altman template I'm talking about uses his large ensemble cast, intertwining plot threads, a satirical focus on some niche aspects of American culture, improvisational dialogue, and typically a limited temporal range, in general. But where Nashville stands apart is the music. There are so many performances, done by the cast, and featured extant.

The opening scene is with Henry Gibson as HAVEN HAMILTON in a recording studio working on his patriotic anthem (which has always managed to stay stuck in my head) with the chorus, "We must be doing something right to last two hundred years." Geographically, the ensemble aren't always in the same place, with the exception of the Airport scene at the beginning and the concert at the Parthenon that ends Nashville. And while many of the ensemble recur popping up with varying degrees of screen-time, Haven Hamilton feels like the lead to me, if for no other reason that he seems to be the biggest star in Nashville and wield the most clout.

Nashville's structure follows its locations. The primary locations, in order, are:

• Airport
• Freeway pile-up
• Hospital
• Haven's cabin picnic
• Opryland concert
• Church
• Race car track
• Parthenon concert

Between all of these there are smaller concerts, night clubs, and like, the boarding house that the Keenan Wynn character runs and the Lily Tomlin character's home.

And the glue that bonds these set pieces together is a technique of mosaic conversation jumping. Often intimate, these nuanced moments are accompanied sometimes by fragments, varying from comedic to odd, but always captivating. These characters all feature in a symbiotic relationship to each other. Altman doesn't play favorites and that is one of his most accomplished feats in Nashville--he's concerned with both those who made it as stars and those who didn't. Fame and stardom is the draw in Nashville, and Haven, CONNIE WHITE (Karen Black), BARBARA JEAN (Ronny Blakey), and BILL, MARY, AND TOM reside at the top, while at the bottom are the parasites that constantly seek them out.

The stars obviously need the parasites. But with OPAL, the BBC journalist (Geraldine Chaplin) as the most desperate, L.A. JOAN (Shelley Duvall), ALBUQUERQUE (Barbara Harris), and SUELEEN GAY (Gwen Welles) a pattern begins to emerge that tends to show how much sex as the currency of the female characters buys them in Nashville. Never one for on the nose depictions, Altman keeps these intricacies graded, with for example, Albuquerque appearing the most desperate and the only one of these women specifically motivated by being a star herself, while not using sex to her own ends. Albuquerque's opposite is Sueleen, who uses her sexuality for what she hopes will be fame until in the heartbreaking surreal scene where she performs at the nightclub and gets booed off and coerced into stripping nude. (It's not easy for me to buy her complicity in that moment.) And to add further insult, when the Ned Beatty character drives her home and propositions her, she sadly amounts to nothing more than a sex object.

But I shouldn't get too analytical here. I mean Opal and L.A. Joan appear as though they have no regrets about all of their different sexual partners and having a good time. They're just drawn to the scene. But another big thread that's set up early and takes time to play out is Tom's (Keith Carradine) pursuit of gospel singer LINNEA (Lily Tomlin). There's that moment when he keeps calling her house when you realize this guy who at first sounds like a harassing pervert stranger is Tom from folk group Bill, Mary, and Tom--and yet further, that Linnea wants him too. This leads to his performance of "I'm Easy," where he dedicates the song to a special lady, and there are singles on Opal, L.A. Joan, and Linnea, each sure he's talking about them.

Next to fame, and sex, there's power. Nashville makes so much more sense than the first time I saw it, as then a random series of vignettes. The opening Hal Phillip Walker campaign voice of God van that keeps appearing is connected with Michael Murphy's character, whom we find out is trying to sign all of the big music stars to perform at a political rally. Everybody needs something from somebody.

Keenan Wynn's (Damn I can't even begin to describe how much of a fan of Ed Wynn and his son Kennan Wynn I am) character generates so much pathos is because he's mixed up in this frenzy and is the only person not eager to worship the Nashville stars, but to get his niece--L.A. Joan--to go along with him to visit his sick wife, her aunt. The aunt dies while L.A. Joan's out cruising the scene, and the last scene of Nashville shows the Keenan Wynn character's desperate search for his niece. And this rounds out for me, just about everything that could have been put in Nashville. And now, I don't feel like it's bloated or boring, but the amazing portrait I'd long ago heard it hyped as.

So along with the satire on fame, sex, politics, there's race (I haven't gone into the Charley Pride parody), and several bursts of comedy. The freeway wreck is silly funny and great. The Elliot Gould as himself cameo is a lot of fun (wow, what a cool shirt). The line BARNETT (Allen Garfield) shouts at his wife Barbara Jean, as her manager, "Don't tell me how to run your life. I think I been doing a pretty good job of it," cracked me up and was spontaneous. Tom trying to score dope, requesting "speckled birds, L.A. turnarounds, uppers?" was neat. And Haven's wife's obsession with the Kennedys is very funny in an awesome, odd way.

Like Brewster McCloud (1970, Altman) before, Nashville's cinematography is never dull--roving long lens work, wide angle authentic location time capsules, and requisite slow zooms give the film its character. Nashville is Altman's perfect mix.

--Dregs

The Spy Who Shagged Me

Josef von Sternberg made six more films with Marlene Dietrich, after directing her 1930 debut, Der blaue Engel. While her supporting role in Der blaue Engel showcased Dietrich's confident and empowered on-screen sex appeal, Dishonored (1931) further capitalizes on that breakthrough by featuring her as the star of a Spy Film where her missions all require her to "use her body as a weapon."

Von Sternberg's legacy is sex and glamour. Typically he also uses exotic settings, such as Austria in Dishonored. And it is in this film where one may observe his innovative medium close-ups of his lead actress, which show the woman backlit and filmed in soft focus. The backlight (sometimes called a hairlight) gives Dietrich a halo effect, accentuating her swirling tresses with silver. But another effect of the backlight, which is placed above and behind the actress, is to leave a deep shadow under her chin. This shadow gives her face a quality that makes it look like a porcelain mask, and it's funny that this film's central motif is the masquerade.

Dishonored opens with the iconic image of a formally attired Agent X-27 (Dietrich), veiled, pulling up one of her thigh high silk stockings--this image also bookends the film. Like Lola Lola, there is absolutely nothing life can throw at this woman that could even come close to cracking her icy cool veneer. X-27 is more though. She's "not afraid of life, of course [she's] not afraid of death either." And she's fearlessly clever, always up for a party, a master of disguise and just so happens to have a pet black cat with her at all times.

The film's romantic cynicism is embodied in the recompense the Austrian military gives X-27 for all of her service. In one of the more bizarre climaxes of classic Hollywood, we await the execution of X-27 before a firing squad while she smugly defies any sense of panic, glammed up and applying lipstick as she (and we) wonder if anyone would actually be able to shoot a woman who looked this good (and who, it is subtly suggested, fucked most of, if not all, the men who are raising their rifles at her--the prurient subtext abounds throughout the film).

Victor McLaglen has real chemistry opposite Dietrich. And his Russian military uniform maintains the masquerade motif--I forgot to mention, von Sternberg also spares no detail with costumes.

If von Sternberg's influence seems to pop up in some of Kubrick's (or Ophüls') costume dramas regarding mise en scène, then Strauss' "Blue Danube Waltz" played during the party scene may have been partly responsible for the space ballet sequences in 2001: A Space Oddyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick). But there's no way to know--I'm probably reaching. The party is what ultimately caused my appreciation for von Sternber's delirious, baroque decorative touch. The frame is crowded with streamers and elbow to elbow party guests masked, continuously blowing party favors erect. And somehow, in spite of all of this clutter, the camera omnisciently sweeps up and down as it cranes and pans.

For me this artifact is timeless. But in a way, it's almost more risque than anything else I can think of from modern films. For instance, the scene where X-27 seduces the adjutant is uncomfortably kinky. After we follow a cut and find them drunk in his room, X-27 pretends she's a child as foreplay. Was this a request on the adjutant's part? An offer? It's a little creepy.

Finally, I'd just like to point out one more instance of how far this film goes in its unabashed camp sensibilities. In addition to the vagina as weapon of mass destruction, and the spy who somehow always gets to have her black cat with her (even when imprisoned for treasonous acts), the central plot device here is also one of the classic screen maguffens. X-27 has to find a piece of music that the Russians have that will potentially kill thousands of Austrians (Umm, how exactly?).

And I wish I could say more about the lighting in this movie. Some directors just got that knack--the play between light and shadow here are wonderfully displayed.

--Dregs