My Favorite Movies

a story enhanced by murder and deceit. and the best thing in this movie shall be claire trevor's performance as the ambitious, complicated seductress who is in eternal struggle between the crave of peace and security and the longing for strength, excitement and corruptness. naturally this ambivalence is anchored by her choices of men: the rich loyal fred and the shrewd ferocious sam(lawrence tierney). besides the warobe of miss trevor in this movie is dynamically femme fatale to delineate the iceberg women with the coldest surface and rottenest inside. one of the pleasure for the film noir aficinados is the savor of its dialogues of cynical wisecrackers which reflects the simmering irony of life. and this one shall have one of the best scripts. for example. "life is coffee, the aroma is always better than its actuality"....besides it's also the best chance to take a glance over the young lawrence tierney (one of the coolest original tough guys)whose youthful dashing looks matches his razor-sharp toughness.

the best applauded movie adapted from hemingway's short story. (hemingway claims so.) also the crucial overnight success for burt lancaster and ava gardner. it was said that "the killers" is the film noir version of citizen kane, especially its posthumously introvert angle to tackle the lethalness of a woman who tunes the golden harps. (her weapon shall be love.) there're plot twists interwined together with the refreshing swift-paced move. lancaster gives a sympathetic portrait of a gangster romanticist who would sacrifice everything for the flaming passion. gardner's screen time is limited but impressive, a woman with the deadly charm which could take a man with one icy-cold glimpse. you can't help but captivated by her southern belle feline voice. there's also some otherworldly ethrealnss beneath her hell-cat sexy looks. perhaps most film noir pieces are demonstrating how un-worthy it is to devote your love to that she-devil. but it takes a real man or an original tough tough guy to embrace her in his bossom on the perils of becoming her tragic prey.

a popularly recognized fair flick that almost classic fans would adore. the leads are striking creatures, especially the youthful laurence olivier with his gorgeous looks and suave manners. (even he plays an elder man with some dark secret around the corner.) joan fountain has the charm of virtuous lady-next-door that appears mostly appropriate to what the role requires. the castle-like mystic canvas setting is breath-takingly eerie where hitchcock actually demanded to re-build in america despite the story geographically holds in europe. the most successful strategy applied would probably be the abscence of rebecca, if rebecca trully graces the screen with her presence, it would de-mystify the central allure of this movie. the best acting would be from judith anderson who plays the spinster housekeeper who worships rebecca, and her performance is a mixture of self-inflicted obessession, ruthless indifference, severe repulsion and torn frailty. anderson is a fine actress who constantly gives her best in supporting or trivia roles in various movies. the lyrical romanticism between a tormented man and his redeeming female savior is gently touching as they embrace together to confront the evil haunting power of "rebecca." it is said that hitchcock considered employing olivier again in "the paradibe case" (instead of gregory peck) as the love-struck lawyer falling for a beatiful mysterious muderess which was a role originally assigned to greta garbo for her comeback. eventually peck turned to be one of the worst miscast in the movie and garbo disappeared from silver screen for good. and audience would never know how wonderfully "paradine case" would sizzle with laurence olivier and greta garbo.

a neglected classic directed by raoul walsh (who also handled the ultimate james cagney gangster classic "white heat"), a star-studded flicks with good wisecrackers from its appealing cast. it's a story about a pair of trucker brothers(raft and bogart) who take the risk of having everything expropriated by the scrivener just to strive for the chances to rise high...then with a twist, everyone seems to obtain what he/she desires at the first place except the dame (lupino) who has an intense crush on george raft's character, consequent with murder, un-requited love and heart-twenching insanity.

the first issue with this movie is that it's departed into two gendres of storylines which have been re-blended into one piece: social drama and meldromatic noir. it could be deemed as one flick before humprey bogart's crippling accident. a quaint social drama which discusses the bloody grimness about the prole trucking business, the labour and sweat from the working men, also emblemished with the pleasant romance between raft and ann sheridan, particularly their witty flirtation about "red means stop"...and sheridan utters her quick wits as the dainty waitress whom the customers drool over. lack of his usual mystic aura, bogart still gives a nice performance of a tough trucker even it's not quite riveting, and raft is quite in the right niche of his ambitiously clever truck leader with charisma. the three of them all inspire audience's empathetic approval of their hardship and occupational dignity..a peacefully cozy scenarios with likable characters that shelter you in an easefully relaxed atmosphere....

it all works harmoniously until the emergence of the sharp-tongued spunky ida lupino takes the spotlight from everyone who turns out to be lackluster compared to lupino's deliriously edgy performance as the love-struck rich wife who desperately craves for raft then disposes of her own husband to facilliate herself to court him, eventually ends up in a straitjacket. no one could ignore her running-amok scene in the court room that sets her overnight reputation. this twist transforms the whole flick into a semi-film-noir which is quite uneven. besides it's dealt with thick melodramaticity..(accordingly it was recycled from the plotline of bettie davis' "border town" with paul muni from warner bros.....) but the arrangement of lupino's doom is a bit too coincidental just to deliberately grant audience a crowd-pleasing happy ending.

sketchily "they drive by night" is a well-acted movie which is a bit un-usual and deserves more credits and applauds toward today. and it has enough social topicality and flamy dramatization to keep your interests throughout the whole flick. it's worthy taking a view in holiday just to shift into a congenial mood.

jean harlow's notorious sex farce in the 30s that originally enraged the moral code...(barbara stanwyck's "baby face" was released next year. all tales about material girl climing toward wealth by sex )...as i discussed in "baby face" review. the femme fatale stereotype is "gluttonish sensuality and sex appeal" which is attributed to red-headed woman....she's utterly mercenary and she would not pull back once she's determined to claim what she desires...once her appetite is tickled, she wants more and more and more..the loothole of greed could never be fulfilled....always un-content and un-grateful, and her misdemeanor is purely out of avarice. (bad without a cause.)..stanwyck's babyface utilizes men more out of a revengeful hatred toward their exploitations...generally red-headed woman is a flat character for comic relief without the grim complexity of stanwyck's babyface.

unlike babyface which could be deemed as a social satire about a ghetto girl's eager angst to clander to the top in search of power, harlow's reddish circe is more like a ridicule of sex such as the scene she's trapped in the phonebooth and the absurd connotation of sadism & masochism as harlow remarks "do it again! i like it!!!" when the man slaps her facecheek...the first 30 mins, she illuminates her lecherous glitter to pierce audience's eyesight...miss harlow's wardrobe looks its best as the red-headed woman is still on wrong side of the track, later the glamour of flashy ornament is a bit redundant. it offers what the audience wants, it serves you with a shamelessly joyful happy ending for the bad girl to get her way. in a nutshell, jean harlow definitely gratify your mental libido with pleasurable orgasm, then she incarnates into sex itself.

the first garbo sound flick adapted from eugene o'nell's cynical story about a prostitute. garbo plays low-life women in the burgeoning period of her sound stage such as susan leonix: her rise and fall, later she's got more polished into those roles of tragic divine creatures such as camille, mata hari, anna karenia, queen christina and the ballerina in grand hotel...etc....anna christie might reflect the ambivalent gender-ambiguity on the real life garbo with her babbling men-hating remarks. "oh! men! all these men! i hate them! " that concides with the mannish side of garbo that manifests severe grittiness. as the one man who captures her heart emerges, she represses her mannishness into oblivion then she transforms into the affectionate ingenune who yearns for love at any cost that is the pattern of my so called "garbo cinema romances" except garbo's breakthrough into sound with her husky idiocyncratic voice and her innovative presence. the movie's aestheticism is mainly attributed to its elaborated dialogues with the craftmanship of master eugene o'nell, tinted with literature catharsis full of human-concerned pathos toward its characters. of course, the proper casting is also one of major factor which adorns the movie. as garbo utters "gif me a visky, ginger ale on the side, and don' be stingy, baby, " anyone would turn around and drawed by this raw magnetic androgynous voice then observe upon her statuesque facial contour with awe.

the ultimate biller wilder film noir classic with the smashingly riveting barabra stanwyck in her glorious best. the plotline is widely known already: insurance man walter hooked up with a glamourous but vile married woman, phyllis, scheming to knock out her elder husband to gain the enormous profits of double indemnity, then two are set against each other to the last stop of murder, gravestone.

firstly about walter's motivation to consent to phyllis' suggestive provocation into murder...out of his love for phyllis? perhaps not. it's more like long-lurked subconciously formed brooding gained from observing people's conning contrivances daily...the occurance of phyllis is only the catalysizing bait....walter is the slave of his own darkly shadowed thought and phyllis is the one who pushes him into the abyss of it. as he claims in the narration, after the murder, he cannot feel his footsteps and it's like the walk from a dead man that symbolizes his official pledge to the devil in his mind at the cost of his soul. he's not a romantic steer as lancaster in "the killers" or john dall in "gun crazy"....he's rotten as well, and it's more of a matter of degrees.

of course, you can not pretermit the kick-ass performance from edward g. robinson as the cynical but righteous insurance investigator keys who utters the best quib lines in this movie with all those sharp-to-the-bone dialogues...he's the re-incarnation of furies who serves justice even only rewarded with piles of cheap cigars without matchstikes...a biggest, kindest heart ironically trapped in an obnoxiously scolding face with a runty-trunked body who is the most likable character in this movie.

as for dynamic barbara stanwyck as the rotten phyllis, she dominates the screen with all the accessory gadgets of sex appeal for a bad girl: her sleazy blonde hair, big square emerald ring, inscrided anklet who catches walter's attention and acid icy tea which stirs his gustation....etc....unknown to the most, this femme fatale image is attributed to the wardrobe of edith head who also designs the wardrobe of lots of hitchcokian icy blondes in the blooming 50s and 60s....

the stanwyckesque femme fatale archetype had been aforementioned in my "baby face" review: gutsily takes what she wants as a man would at any expense of mercilessness, tough and shrewd like a man, especially the scene the camera centers on her pupils when walter's killing her husband in the backseat of the car, she shows no blinks but only blistening twinkles in her eyes that manifests the bliss of her manipulative acquisitions.

one big enigma about stanwyck in DI would be her demise: she could have disposed of walter by firing the shot but she chooses not to then askes him to embrace her tight... "i have never cared for anyone, i was rotten to the heart until i can't fire that second shot, i don't know what's wrong with me?".....why she reveals her frailty in a winning crucial moment as this? it's never ceased to puzzle me for years. maybe it's like an awakening from a persistantly haunted spell of nightmare, then she suddenly obtains a heart? strangely, stanwyck's sleazy blonde image sorta reminds me of david lynch's "lost highway"...patrica arquette's sleazy blonde also resembles stanwyck in DI.

prestigiously, the seamless tour de farce script is written by billy wilder and two noir masters: james m. cain and raymond chandler. how could you resist a flick like that? huh?

scarface in 1932 was one of the first film with the primitive perspective to dig into the anti-hero american dream.....perhaps partially spoiled by its moralistic ending, but subtled by its several metaphoric index such as the x sign which stands for toni camonte that is utilized as hommage by martin scorsesse's latest flick "the departed"....and also the cocktail glittering neon logo which says "the world is yours" that symbolizes camonte's greedy ambition to take it all....besides each time scarface tony camonte commits a murder, the sign of x in various forms would appear as some mystic forshadowing, even at camonte's demise. during several scenes, as camonte casts his covetous eye upon his boss' mistress puppy, he frequently utters words like "expensive? huh?" or "this is hot!" or showing off his extravagent leisure robe which is a token of wealth then. the man's concepts of success mainly base on materialistic conquest of interior decoration and daily accessory gadgets or imitating the taste of upper class by attending some refined drama show....but his trynnical inference over his younger playful sister manifests his crude and barbarian side that is the catalysis of his doom. as mentioned earlier, camonte terms his success by the materialistic conquest, so his ultimate success would be the conquest of boss's mistress puppy, he reaches his pinnacle of gangster career as he officially possess puppy who is the symbol of his american dream. camonte embraces puppy while pointing his finger to the cocktail sign "the world is yours" with a conspicuous demeanor.(same as the fitzgerald novel "the great gatsby", gatsby's term of success is to win rich girl daisy's love), then he flops into the lowest when his brutal obessession over his sister emerges upon the surface that is his tragic flaw....except paul muni as the legendary scarface whose character is drawed upon the notorious mobkiller al copone....george raft made his leap of fame by impersonifying camonte's good pal vs top hitman guino. (his trademark would be the mindless toying of a dime.).....the 30s scarface might not be as provocative and thrilling as al pacino's 1983 version but definitely riddled with more reading-into-mind sign language.

"lifeboat" is hitchcock's commentary on wwii, and it condenses the cosmos into an atom with besieged passengers striving to survive that contains various social classes from bolshevik rags to the well-to-do capitalist...engrossingly, the existence of blacks is also included...a nurse in dillemma of disgraceful affair with married doctor...a lonesome but kindred workingman....a lovelorn one-legged sap...a deranged mother with her dead infant..a tycoon who assumingly chews his last cigar by his mouth.....of course, mostly capitivating of all, the cynically sassy cosmopolitan female journalist connie porter played by husky tallulah bankhead who has the sexiest siren voice when she utters "darling!" as she unbashfully makes love to the hulky capitalist-loathing virile bolshevik.

essentially, there must be a vile enemy: a german nazi captain who methodically reverse his disvantage of POW(captive) into his advantage of the captor by utilizing the shipmember's disintergration as his favors, sneering at the polarizing system of our so-called "democracy", smirking at the naievete of americanism. whether it's hitchcock's uglification of german nazi or realisticly sharp depiction of their inhumanity by interpretating nazi as the shrewd selfish kind who is too keenly with his own survival without sharing the water with his generous rescuers, pretending to be ignorant of english for self-protection, reserving the beneficiary equipment such as compass merely for himself, ruthlessly eliminating any possible member to saboteur his scheme: sending them all to concentration camp.

talluah bankhead's connie is the only character with enough mettle(or willpower) to contend for survival since she makes a mytical class adjustment from the rags to the rich with her un-defeated stamina. she has the foresight to occupy a lifeboat beforehand then she loses every item of her personal belongings such as typewritter, minkcoat and her precious diamond bracelet in the course of helping others selflessly that symbolizes her denuniciations of egoism by the gradual loss of her possessions that are the tokens of her social level, thus graudually she's descended into more endeared humanistic affinity instead of her aloof egoistic self......maybe scarstically the breavement of her diamond bracele due to the distraction of the ship members might manifest the flawed discord of democracy...as for the tumultous reacton(casting the nazi off the boat) everyone has toward the german after she/he exposes to his sinister contrivance, it declares one thing outloud: democracy is sometimes just a mob.

it's more of a billy wilder satire on the modern-day american don juan who's infatuated with the parisian transiet romances without commitments than just an audrey hepburn romantic classic. as "sarbrina", hepburn plays an ingenune (again!) falling for the upper-class playboy gary cooper. obeserving senile cooper frivolously flirts with youthfully fair hepburn leaves you peculiarly wondrous about his attraction to her...

a daydreaming schoolgirl who reads adultery cases as touching romantic stories decides to meet the "authentically fictional character" she's read about all her life in her father's "library". she's like a bored junvile who relishes her drably dry life with aficinado-alike enthusiasm toward romantic illusions ...one day she rushes to rescue her dream character from being slaughtered in the hotel room just to preserve her romantic illusions from being obliterated, then as her dream man kisses her randomly, her heart is taken away for good.

the character of cooper's mr. flannagan is wilder's mockery to americanism: he's an egoistic arbitrary man in his elder years but romances like an adolescent boy who flatters himself for being "the one who loves and runs aways but lives to love for another day", besides there's no really love except the temporal conquests of excitements, but after his purpose's served, those women are littered like disposable goods. his americanistic naivety obscures such cruelty in his mindset since he always assumes that he could pop in like pepsi cola without giving himself away to anyone out of his self-protective bachelor selfishness.

as one dialogue from arianne filled with acid tongue:
""They're very odd people, you know. When they're young, they have their teeth straightened, their tonsils taken out and gallons of vitamins pumped into them. Something happens to their insides! They become immunized, mechanized, air-conditioned and hydromatic. I'm not even sure whether he has a heart"".....""What is he? A creature from outer space?""..."no, he's an american."

the irony is that she has to fake to be something she's totally not just to gain his interests for her or arouse his jealousy or shake his pride as retribution by also belittling him as some conquered object without too much worth....the whole flick is more bittersweet than romantic....she's secretly bewailing his casanova fickleness but meanwhile she has to conceal her frailty then comes up with new strategies to stir him...he's utterly fascinated by her becuz of her reluctance to bare herself that stimulates his wishes to penetrate or explore her mystery that she's aware of as well....two are toying with some psychological guerrila, attempted to break through each other's fence....her relationship with flannagan is built upon these provoking deceptions to shield her true helplessness in a world filled with disillusions....as for mr. flannagan, it's more out of morbidly shallow curiosity to dig the truth out of her as trophy.

the movie is so bitterly cynical at its pinnacle as the detective father advises flannagan to cut arianne loose when flannagan's about to dismiss him by money then shocked by the fact that he's her father "give her a break, monsieur, she's too young, don't dump her in the gutter like the rest of others"..then flannagan silences with the implicit shame toward his own immorality....it's also agonizing at most when she pursues after the train perilously and tells those tall tales of affairs to him with yearning tears in her eyes while he's standing at the traingate shamefully aware that she only loves him and there's never been another man, out of his frivolosity, she has to lie to be with him...then eventually our don juan has decided to be a mensch that is almost surprisingly moving.

furher, the white carnation hepburn takes from cooper's jacket is the blatant symbol of the purity of a girl's first love, and she even freezes it in the icebox girlishly as if she wanna restore what she has had with him even she's conscious that it's an un-requited love only from her side since mr. flannagan is disabled to love....it's so realistically tragic but intoxicatingly sorrowful as a girl's first love...even somehow this love only exists in the afternnon...with the fetching waltz of "the fascination"....

it's a social satire about the corrupted bureaucracy in modern enterprise culture surrounded with hypocrites. lemmon is. c. c. baxter, a petite worker-bee-alike embloyee in some big insurance company, infatuated with maclaine's charater, the elevator lady miss kubelik who unfortunately stuck with the womanizing egomaniac head boss played by mcmurray. in the system of bureaucracy, there're takers and those being took, following the rules of game is the only guarantee for success, but that inevitably causes the sorrow of self-induced exploitation for the petite bourgeois like baxter trapped in this machinery. baxter diminishes his principles by facilitating the adulteries of his superior with the traded apartment key for promotion, and female employees disregard their own self-esteem by having affairs with married executives for bonus outside the office.

the only innocent victim of the system would be maclaine's miss kubelik who falls for the sake of love and self-destructs for the gain of decency that inspire the chivalric noblity in lemmon's baxter who suddenly decides not to connive the crime of womanizing. in a rage, he raises up, flings away his silly executive hat to a janitor and finally "be a mensch." (just like a human being as the doc says.)

this movie is bittersweetly heart-felt about the common little men with their own human flaws and private environment-adapted anguishes, but wilder has his humanisticly sympathetic mercy toward his characters and he dubs them with complementary warm gleam in the grim harsh despair(such as norma desmond's last screen shot in "sunset boulvd."), particularly the end credit "i love you, miss kubelik.....do you hear me, miss kubelik? i absolutey adore you!" "shut up and deal!" as mclaine smiles at the awe-struck jack lemmon, audience rejoices with tears inside their hearts.

a lyrically pastoral story about the marginalized vagabonds at some harbor village in france antecedent to WWI....sublimely anchored by the vicissitudinary theme melody and its grandeur misty impressionist photography which is the best phenomenal success in this film....french classic actor jean gabin(he's sorta like james steward in america) plays jean, a defected soldier with chivalric bravado rescuing the smolderingly fair nelly from her crabbed gangster suitor and also her incestously morbid guardian. from time to time, they shelter in some shabby cabinet retreat by the shore that is a former tavern in care of ex-cons, street bums or the morally mistrayed painter, in brief, the deserted loners...one of the most memorable subplots for the minor roles would be the suicidal painter who visionalizes death and decay in his works as well as the charismatic dog which chases after jean gabin royally. the foggy scenery foreshadows the tragic undertone in movie, predicting the disastrous heart-ache for the doomed love. the idealistically sad closure might be a bit too corny for certain audience. and jean gabin's knightly behaviors might be a bit too well-schemed for the niche of his masculine decency. but still gabin is one of the archetyped tough guy in the early french b&w cinema. "port of shadows" is the fable-like noirish tale paved with cozy hues in the canvas of realist romanticism to vent the sentiments of ephemeral love.

a highly underrated film noir flick starring tyrone power who is usually the typecasted swashbuckler....a story around the circus and the art of con. power plays a drifter who seeks a job in the circus and acquires the trickery of conning art supervised by the senior con woman played by joan blondell. he escapes after accidently sparking off one drunk member's death....he elopes with another female performer who has a crush upon him, soliciting her as his co-schemer(and his marital spouse) as the upcoming fraud. then he recruits a female psychiatrist as his extended crew to enlarge the scale of his racket and evolve his status of fame....then he flops into the gutter due to one trivial failure of conscience. eventually he gets doublecrossed by the psychiatrist then becomes a degenerated drunk drifter without any perspective....retracks back in the primitive spot he begins...even worse, he transforms into an authentic geek which means beast-alike man without no intelligence.

this flick amplifies the noirish cynicism to the sublime extremity, simmering with errosive irony: he observes the geek when he just joins the crew then utters "how could anyone get so low?"...also he disbelieves the old flame of bondell's used to be a master of con...at last, he sinks into the deepest low with double-level bastardization.

power is notably a gorgeously striking man, and it's alluringly convincing to cast him as the womanizer, the taker who extract profits from female affinity, and he's made by women's benevolence but also ruined by the misdeed and the malice of women. just as the latin saying "what nourishes me destroyes me"...eventually his male beauty is despoiled of then devastatingly wasted that stimulates some shock effect to the audience, particularly when you recall the devilishly seductive expression on his face when he whispers love to his wife's ear then coaxes her tenderly into compromising to his next con, then you look into the carved uglified face later, then hearing him growling like human beast geek, what a shock....even he's still redeemed by love at last that doesn't dissolve a bit of its sour taste since it also parallels another sorrowful love story of bondell's character in the beginning.

this movie proves the potential depth of tyrone power as an actor, and he's much more talented than most people assume. "nightmare alley" is the proof that he could be the noirish anti-hero as well...just as "witness for the prosecution" shows that he can be a evil villain... but his conspicuous male beauty is so pleasant to the eye that you just could not help but infatuated that overshadows the recognition of his talent. is that a blissful bless or a ill-fated curse?

one of the best romanticized noir pieces which foundamentalizes gene tierney's cinema status and a smooth vehicle to emit her allure of mystica. it's a story about socialite laura hunt who tantalizes all the men's covetously yearning eyes but unwisely she falls for the frivilously worhless playboy that almost detonates her catastrophic doom. there's an obsessive admirer with exuberantly murderous drive and also a persistent detective heroic copper. further, it's ambushed with a twist which is not un-pleasant at all.

the best strategy applied in this flick is its abscence of lauren hunt in the first half, and you glimpse over her while other people babblingly talk about her, your mind is guided into seeking some remnant fragrance of this deceased lovely creature. if dana andrews' copper is a necrophilia who fancies the demised lauren hunt, so are the viewers in front of silver screen....you admire her well-porportioned facial contour and her glaringly demure wardrobe which just seems so perfectly agreeable on her, and every smile of hers sublimates you into an unknown heavenly bliss.

unlike the most noir pieces which tend to taut audience's crave for the femme fatale by enlongating the hero's anguished hunger, "laura" gratifies your secret wish by resurrecting laura hunt at its pinnacle of cynicism: while the copper stares into her portrait with agonized desire, and a cup of whiskey over his hand to mourn for his crush, with an annoying bystander commenting "i don't think i have a patient to fall in love with a corpse." just as he almost worsens into irrevocable bitterness, laura walks into the doorgate to salve him with her re-incarnation into life to grant his romantic wish.

another clever strategy about the story is that laura hunt is never aware of the perils of her charm, and she's oblivious to her surroudings...she just gleams with the ease of her natural glamour without any deliberated trial. she even sympathesizes her attempted murderer with an redeeming mercy. it's more of a romantic story of fatal obsessions and un-requited love. clift webb gives good portrait of a poignant lonesome man who is boiled with un-fulfilled desire for love. and there's finally a flick to provide judith anderson with a chance to present her glamourized self with elegant wardrobe, and as usual she gives good performance as a nymphomaniac aging socialite who loves vincent price's playboy role. dana andrews is in the right niche of his machismo. as for vincent price, he's barely passable as the playboy with his contrived trial to deliver any glossy charm which doesn't really work.

something worthy of a mention, there's some greek shock-cinema called "singapore slang" trying to pay its hommage to "laura" by recycling the plots of the same name, the same symbolic portrait, the same theme melody with extreme dose of perverseness by savoring it with necrophilia, bondage, sadism & maschoism, and vommiting intercourse(yuck!)...it's weird enough to take a look at it...but if you wanna have a cozy day relaxing on the couch, leave it alone!!! it's morbidly sickening to the actual literariness.

in a nutshell, "laura" is the mostly romantic film noir ever made with feminine rosy dreaminess tuned well with masculine chivalry in a gruesome murder case.

a jean renoir socialistic satire upon the petite bourgeoise..the storyline goes with an elder timid accountant who leads a pathetic life overruled by his critically dispiteful wife, he gets infatuated with a streetwalker one day then fends her as his kept mistress. unfortunately this whore is a miserable slave to her sadistic flanerie pimp, and these two discover the artistic painting talent of this dull acountant, thereafter merchandising his art as their fodder of luxurious living under her name. randomly the accountant murders the prostitue in a rage of passion, but the pimp gets executed for this crime instead. eventually the accountant becomes a shady vagabond on street.

rarely known to most, edward g. robinson's "scarlet street" is fritz lang's adaption from renoir's french original "the bitch"....lang's approach centers more on the psychological interactive drama between these three. lang softens it by transforming the prostitute as a showgirl, the pimp as just an amateur womanizer, the sucker as an ingenuine who longs to live vigorously...lang emphasizes more on the mental trauma of guilt from the main character, thus it's interpretated as the personal tragedy of a romantic steer.

as for renoir's "the bitch", it's social criticism: the pimp stands for the nouveau riche who lies upon the resources of the ghetto(the prostitute) to make his rising fortune by exploiting the bourgeois(the accountant), even including his soothing inspiration of art...the pimp drives his cadillac to extort money from the whore, parking his flashy roadster in the crowd of common people that hinders their daily function, coincidentally he arrives in the bad timing to be the scapegoat of the crime he hasn't committed....it's renoir's severe condemnation on the amoral nouveau riche. after the bourgeois' fund has been drained up, he wanders in the street as ragged bum, cadging small cashes from the merchandizer who purchases the last portrait of himself(his own work) in the antic shop.

the billy wilder classic of noirish inside-hollywood story which centers on a middle-aged woman who cannot lead a life exclusive of camera, daydreaming in the fragments of reminiscent glories, norma desmond(gloria swanson). this tale also involes an ill-fated writer(william holden) who stumbles into her elephant-alike mansion then dwells in it as her kept man, as well as her voluntary loyal servant(erich von stroheim) who used to be her first husband, who loves her so much that he dedicates the rest of his life to maintain this woman's wanton reverie of eternal stardom regardless of his own pride and self-esteem.

enough has been said about this flick's master touch of sharp-tongued poignancy, and its gothic sense of decadence on the remnants of tumultous 20s aura in stark anachronism that is strangely enhanced by the guest celluoid of buster keaton....gloria swanson and erich von stroheim are practically impersonating their own caricatured versions. swanson's the role of yesterday's glamour queen was once assigned to the vamp sex symbol theda bara. william holden is the first actor in cinema history to play a giglo, and his role was once dispatched to montgomery clift who chose to pair elizabeth taylor then in "the place in the sun"(good choice, monty!).....the last scene in the movie is literarily a creepy parody of silent macabre constrasted with 50s news reel, one last remained saving grace for the damned dreamer.

"sunset blvd." is holden's chance to make a turning point in his withering career then, and he dignifies the role with his mocking machismo, despite the fact his mr. gilis is a dishonorable man who makes a living on woman's allowance, you could still perceive his reluctance to succumb to her domineering compulsion as well as his strong sense of self in repulsive resistence of her inflicted confinement. gloria swanson delives the best flatulent lines as a tigress woman who refuses to surrender to the course of nature: decay and death that somehow ironically circulate around her, especially when she says "i'm still BIG, it's the picture gets SMALL!"

erich von stroheim's role as the hound-alike max with sullen face deserves more attention and recognition. in spite of his grim-countenance, max is severely self-aware, and also a romantic steer concealed under his frown solemn outlook. stroheim is cooly idiocyncratic with his thick accent and his distinctively exotic (xenophobic?maybe) outfits that suits his soldier-alike demeanors. his character simmers with undercurrent nobility which you could also identify with his role as the decent nazi in renoir's "the grand illusion"...

maybe on some sunday afternoon, as you're weary of those hollywood glamously inflated flicks, you might be welcomed to drive into the desolated "sunset boulvd." as your ultimate retreat of cinema wasteland.

it's a great parody on maternal love with its contrary perversion. directed by versatile michael curtiz who creates the legend of errol flynn swashbucklers as well as humprey bogart's war romance "casablanca"...this time curtiz bridles the fierce joan crawford to gallope full throttle, and crawford's absolute woman power gets enhanced further by her wide-shouldered mink coat, but backfired by her trampy grasping daughter. as one line eve arden suggests "alligators have the right idea. they eat their young" which would be the most advocative notion after viewing this flick.

crawford plays title character mildred pierce who possess the ironly mettle to perform her maternal duty. after her husband's sudden collapse of career which unfortunately leads to divorce, she stiffens her heart to go thru all sorts of hardship to be a successful businesswoman who could offer her children the best qualities of life. ironically this grandeur female menace is pupeteered by an adolescent brat whose every snobbish comment could induces ripples, sometimes even waves of tides, inside mildred that enslaves her into a unrepetent sucker-alike provider, just like nature's merciless circuit of food chain. worse of all, later her giglo-alike lover joins the league of her daughter on the scheme to drain the last penny of this seemingly powerful woman.

ann blyth plays the highly manipulative daughter who combines sinisterness and childishness into the right dose of objectionability. only eve arden who plays mildred's confidate could almost upstage blyth's bitch-perfect pungency. when blyth remarks "i like you, ida...you're so delightful...for a bitch", she conducts herself with ease.."i like you, too." that means a toast back to fellow-bitch.

the best pleasure of this flick is to witness a bunch of shrews urgently vying for their paranoiaic sense of esteem effortlessly. also crawford's boisterous private family affair of "mommie dearest" might also contrast or complement "mildred pierce" as another page of best exemplified cynicism in old hollywood history.

the best vintage flick ever made upon the theme of arabian nights, and it integrates several mythical tales such as the most well-known "djinin in the bottle" into one kaleiscopic story of sinister magician, conspiracies, pure first love, and junvenile adventurousness which is appropriate appetizer for minor audience. despite some techniques might be primitively edited, but the visuality has enough fodder of eye candy to be intriguingly dreamy.

the best creative device would be the murderous lutist siren with mutiple hands, such a feast for the sight, and the nuance of the exotic cosmetic design is admirable tinted with allure of mystica. it's the story of a legendarily chivalric thief who rescues bagdad with the stolen flying carpet and the allah-conferred arrows of justice. some king with ingenuin-alike male beauty falls head over heels in love with a princess who has the eyes as fair as the moon.(maybe a bit exaggerated term, if so, this role probably should be played by other actress prettier than fita benkhoff.) it's an escapistic fairy tale of ancient arabianism, plentiful of flat characters such as the king and princess who live for the eternal quest of their one true love, sabu who lives for brotherhood and freedom, only jaffar, the evil vizier, is a round character played by the idiocyncratic conrad conveidt notorious for his role as the casablanca nazi who gets prosecuted by humprey bogart.

"the thief of bagdad" is the perfect showcast for veidt to emit his smoldering sensuality simmering beneath the arabian hood who looks just gorgeously fit with his facial contour, vedit has the most mesmerizing blue eyes ever, enhanced by his virile thick eyebrows, especially as the camera draws near to the close-up of his pupils, you could sense the complicatedly tangled thouths wirling around his mind when he wonders if he would hypnotize the princess into loving him, eventually he chooses not to, then he utters with agony "i'm cursed because my eyes could only see you!"...jaffar is an egoistic opportunist who lives only for his own beneficiariness, a skepist on virtues who taunts the world right under his palm with his power of magicalness, who sneers at the whole universe thru his crystal ball with contempts....but he's a romantic steer, a man with enormously flaming passion to seize what he wants with relentless violence....jaffar seems far more sophisticated than the innocent-eyed rash ahmad...more polished with a shrewd grace of his own, and all the arabian constumes seem to exuberate a particular sense of exotic aura on veidt, and his remnant german accent is so properly tailored for this role....why can't the princess take a second glimpse at this interesting man with dark charisma?

"the thief of bagdad" has the swashbuckler element which serves good retreat for audience who still enjoy the sheer dualistic duel of good and evil, and also exotically bizarre enough to further your wishes of escapism....may you immense your being in the transparently piercing pupils of conrad veidt! recluse among them then linger.

a highly underrated james whale flick which surpasses the tear-jerker remake starring vivien leigh and robert taylor in the 40s. most audience who's fond of the taylor/leigh production would recall the sweetened tragic romance between a military prostitute and a naive young soldier: she's the chorus girl who meets a handsome officier during a bomb raid, then love at first sight then they get engaged. the officier departs then she receive the ill-fated news of his demise. to make a living, she degenerates into a prostitute then one day she remorsely discovers her one true love survives and ready to marry her...out of personal shame, she commits suicide by being run over by a truck, then he mourns for her in the rest of his life, chic flick, beautiful with all those talks of romantic idealism, right? huh?

what about the 30s original? nothing like that sort!! our leading lady is from the wrong side of the track, doomed with her slum upbringing, she's a desceneded prostitute long before their encouter when she attempts to pick him up as a potential customer to pay for her debted rental. romantic? huh? then she falls for his boyish innocence, determinated not to ruin his life with deception of her disgraceful profession but she hides this fact with tormenting guilt. eventually our male protagonist acquires the truth of his lover, he still chooses to marry her come what may, stiffening his mind to rescue her with all his consuming passion. ironically our leading lady gets hit by a bomb right after she consents to be his spouse. how consoling. cynical to the top notch. audience wouldn't know if he should laugh or cry when it comes to the end. just chilling coldness strikes over the back of your mind.

the 30s waterloo bridge is more of a psychological drama of conflicted characters bound by the circumstance of war and social level. somehow the spirit of our leading man might be more selflessly chivalric than the dashingly gorgeous robert taylor since he accepts her being whore without contempt but only compassion. our leading woman might not be as beautiful as the feline-eyed vivien leigh, but she demonstrates more of hellish agony to suffer and live with her tainted mark. leigh does a good acting job in warerloo as well, but her prostitute is more like a feminine masochist to accomplish the male ideal of love without the contamination of reality.

if you're a cynicist with a sheer observant eye, you might enjoy the original waterloo bridge without the sparing mercy of idealized romanticism.

mae clarke is notorious for being the woman who gets hit on face by james cagney with grapes in "public enemy"...maybe she deserves much better roles in her acting career.

the founded stone for james cagney's overnight success of his classic gangster status. this flick is adapted from a moralistic social stiric novel called "beer and blood" which is applied in the lines during the flick as well. one of the first movies tackles the mob tumult under the prohibition in the 20s.

cagney's character tom is a hoodlum who's been meddling with the "wrong kind of people" since childhood with his pal matt, he's learned how to steal, intimidate and rob, generally an incorigible man who takes what he wants without hesitation. as tom's relationships with family, a spoilt younger son with mother fixation, hostile toward the paternal prestige: his father and senior sibling mike, thus he defies authority and contempts the government as he remarks on his brother's diligence on schooling "he's learning how to be poor!" and also his disapproval on patriotism which is serving your country in the war, he dismisses as getting medals for killing people, just as rotten as his success made by the brutal violence of blood, especially when mike shows tom his disdain on tom's unjust fortune by thrashing the beer cask aside...by contemporary standard, those family dramas upon postwar social condition seem dated, hardly to be resonated with empathy. but public enemy has its own relevant importance by being one of defining evidences of this decade's spirits as some historical residual with characters in simplistic archetypes.

the mere timeless element which contributes "public enemy"' as one mighty unshakable classic is james cagney's conspicuously ballistic performance as the cocky gangster who growls and curses like a machine gun, a misogynist who smashes a grapefruit to mae clark's facecheek after quibbing "i wish you were a wishing well, so i could tuck a bucket and sink it"....also delivers the famous line "i aint so tough!" after being shot down to loblolly in the rain.

jean harlow also makes her cameo as cagney's mistress after tossing away mae clarke out of abhorrence...harlow says her lines bluntly like "oh, my bashful boy...i could love you to death"...harlow is more like decorative vase as gangster's eagerness to boast his flamboyance. but harlow's wardrobe is glamous enough to nuance her screen time. one trivia is that the role tom was assigned to co-star ed woods but director demands the exchange as temporal trial, then woods' carrer became luckluster after public enemy, cagney remained ace still.

typically the public enemy is enclosed with a moralistic ending just as your parents would preach: you would end up no good being a gangster.

one of the mighty classics from the versatile howard hawks, and this settles as the enormous base of screwball comedy gendre.

the gender reversal between grant and hepburn is apparently figured as grant's tucked in a female silky nightgown then utters "because i just went gay all of a sudden!" gayness then is still utilized as joy, but the pun is undeniably amusing. hepburn declares enough mettle of her female individuality since it's her susie who solicits grant as her love of life, after her strike of determination, she squeezes up every frivolously chidlike little scheme to keep grant over her palm, courting him without reservation. despite such strong assertion of her vigorous want, her character remains mischieviously likable without descending into a nymphomaniac, even she always intervenes in the conversation to interrupt you.

even grant evidently plays a milder nerdy character whose awkwardness causes his own mishapping to get stuck with trouble-maker susie, but he evolves himself with his suaveness. as several times, hepburn's character sinks him into recurring irretrievable jams, his character still demonstrates great demeanors as a gentleman to tolerate hepburn in spite of his obvious imapatience. (who wouldn't be?ha) as a fashion critic comments on grant that the reason why he's so mysteriously attractive is: always women chase behind him, he rarely takes any active move, always gentily considerate enough to yield to the ladies that contributes to his ultimate status of lady's man, complimented with his gorgeous male beauty, who wouldn't fall for the charm of cary grant? huh?

the episode of leopard creates a sense of absurdness in this particular gendre, and a uniquely applied plotline, refreshingly unusual but believable in the same time. it is laughably hilarious as the leopard is fond of listening "i can't give you anything but love"...and the sequence of chasing after puppy george in search of the dinosaur bone is also another ingenious comic touch.

even under this prosperously arranged condition as everything goes topsytuvy, love could still occur and nourished....as she sabotages his four years of dinasour model, she wails "could you still love me"..then they embrace with through acceptance and mutual affections. simply cute, maybe a bit too cute.

"sabotage" is one of hitchock's neglected british productions which are the protypes paved to promote his prosperous 50s masterpieces. it is a tale about mr. verloc who pursues an underground career of socialpathological sabotages beneath his surfacial disguise of theater owner with a virtuous wife and her muddled adolescent brother. meanwhile verloc is being tailed after by the neighbor undercover detective who comouflages as fruit clerk.

what differentiates "sabotage" from its routined hitchcockian pattern is the absence of wrongly accused innocent man and his highly applied bond of gender harmony which appears in lots of his flicks such as "39 steps", "lady vanishes" and "north by northwest"...etc. the pinnacle of suspense centers on the bomb explosion scene, and audience's adrenline intensifies as the clock clicks. and one innovative visual comparison would be the saboteur imaginative association in acquarium to indicate the villain's hidenous appetite for destruction, and hitch's camera close-up approaches on his virilely haphazard eyebrows with snearing gaze frequently. the episode of detective ted's smothering fondness over sylvia sidney is tenderly pleasant in reminiscence of the suppressed civility in early times.

the potentiality with robert donat might relish this flick with his debonair charm that is something excluded from the audience's knowledge for good. just hover in the period that conspiracies were still performed in cinema tastefully without the despicable redundance.

hitchcock's grand-daughter claims that "shadow of a doubt" is hitch's favorite piece of work. as for its authentiy, it's another business, but "shadow of a doubt" is phenomenal considering its double parallel of its smitten moral dualism.

the story is about the characters of two "charlies" in an average household. the uncle charlie is a closet sociopath with penchant to strangle rich widows to serve his twisted idealism. young charlie is a naive small-town girl with whimsical ruminations all the time. to escape from investigator, uncle charlie takes refugee in his elder sister's home under the expectation of young charlie's mental telegracy that injects some dreamy hope into young charlie's dried life of boredom. but she would never know her dream degenerates into a horrisome nightmare as she discovers her uncle's deadly secret.

the appliance of two charlies with the introduction of them laying on bed in seperate scenes is the resonation of their connected twin personality. uncle charlie is the dark evil side while young charlie stands for the bright gentility. as uncle charlie dies, part of young charlie's perspect of innocence also withers just like she would never be completed ever again, consuming the rest of her life mourning over the uncle she's infatuated with, as hitch once remarks "sometimes you would slaughters the one you love"....her self-guilt is severe becuz her uncle's vice is partially indulged by her connived silence, then she has to run the risk of his murderous elimination for the sake of his own safety.

joseph cotten as the merry window strangler is sinisterly dynamic, and he delivers some cynically spiteful lines upon women by demeaning old rich widows as "faded, fat. freezing animals" who squader their diligent husbands' hard-earned fortunes by being wastefully leisure all the time, he detests them but takes belief that their annihilations would improve the world as a better place that is the most harsh misogynisitc comment ever in hitch's movies. or lines like "women are fools! they could be in love with anything!!" his idealism detorted with his pervert killing is the so called "moral ambiguity"... there're some stylish shots of cotten's smoking poises full of contempts and complacency as he gazes outside the window as well as his disregard to the conventional superstition by tossing his hat toward the bed purposedly.

there're some engrossing symbolic metaphors, such as the train cotten takes as he arrives the town emits black fume that means devil is approaching here; then the train he takes to depart exuberates white smoke that crytalizes the town as the devil's going away. ironically the ending shows the whole town santa rosa is all lamenting over uncle charlie by dubbing him "son of santa rosa" that is literarily consecrating a murderer with righteous holliness.

the tasteful part is that hitchcock never demonstrates one scene of the actual widow-strangling crime, and it's simply hinted with the killer's fierce strength to string over a napkin with a ferocious gaze. joseph cotten shall be one of the best hitchcockian villains among claude rains, robert walker and ray millard, recognition approved by hitch himself.

the protype of hitchcockian action piece outsets since 39 steps with our debonair gorgeous robert donat as the wrongly accused innocent man who is forced to expose conspiracy to retrieve his integrity. it proves a theory of hitchcock's that the potentiality of a man could be enlightened under the enormous pressure, such as the scene donat is propelled to lecture a political speech then obtain the public affinity.

the first 20 mins is intriguing with the brief cameo of beautiful german spy called annabella smith who takes shelter in hanny's lodge(donat) that is arranged with taunting mystery. then annabella is assinated that drives hanny to clarify his murder charge. so he stumbles from place to place in various british and scottish landscapes. he hasn't made any concrete progress until he meets the combatively quarrelsome blonde pamela played by madelein carroll.

the best distinguished hitchcockian action pattern is the harmony of genders. lots of his action pieces have a pair of man and woman collaborated to confront mighty crisis, such as his rear window, north by northwest, the man who knew too much, the lady vanishes...etc. here he even wittily has the two leads tied in one handcuff as their feuds and concilliation. when man's being doubted, he remains in good humor of suave demeanor then he gains the confidance of the woman. it's so called hitchcockian symmetry of opposite sexes. none of his flicks are throughly testicular or estrogenic.

of course, the ingredient of hitchcokian mcguffin is firstly brought out here in 39 steps, the macguffin in this flick would be "mr. memory" in london musical hall. the thrill doesn't reply on the content of the macguffin but the speculating suspense upon it. such as you never knew what kind of big secret those agents are exploring in "notorious", either. but you enjoy the teasing process of its espials anyway.

madeleine carroll is the first hitchcockian icy blonde who matches adaptably with robert donat from their brawling discord under a handcuff to their deux of clasping hands at the last shot.

this flick is the best example of classic sophistication comedy which depicts the droll mannerishness of upper class, and william powell excercises his playful debonair charm to the utmost scale, and myrna loy resonates him greatly like a harmonical symphony.

the thin man detective plot is simply operated on the formula of "who'dun'it!" but the point is not about the crime but its seemingly insipid detective who doesn't wanna tackle this case at the first place but gets involved due to the whim of his mischievous wife.

the constant requirement of booze is one element in this flick to indicate the hedonism of the well-to-do but the point is they drink with class and glamour without objectionable gaffe. every moment is a joyous drinking time, and being leisure gracefully seems to be their sacred obligation to perform. the camera looms over powell's cynically mocking gestures for times as he exuberates the cigarette circles aloofly or his famours line "oh! bull's eyes!" and loy's comic flair could rival with powell with her perfect timing of grimaces toward his trivial mild jokes that is adorably likable as well.

the best allure of thin man is also the cozy backset of gender symmetry with agreeable family picture, powell as good paternal image who respects his lovely wife who also expresses enough matron sophistication as a demure female. they sleep in seperate beds without contiminating audience's consecrated protype of parents, and there's one cute puppy who could only bark but hide during the gun shots. the whole picture arouses audience's thick nostalgia of soundly ideal family atmosphere as if you back to the easeful days of childhood without the complex misgivings of life as you burden in your adulthood.

a must-see hitchcock classic in 50s, and it features one of the best hitchcockian villain, ray milland as well as the stunning grace kelly as the hitchcockian icy cold blonde. this time the plotline begins with one of hitchcock's commonly favorite themes: murder on one's spouse.

ray milland plays the former tennis star who highly relies on the well fortune of his wife, angered by her infidelity, he schemes to blackmail his college acquaintance into slaughtering his wife. but the wife accidentally grabs a pair of scissors as self-defense, then the thug dies that forces him into entrapping his wife with muder-charged death sentence....

one of the elements on hitchcock's success is his thrust upon audience's intelligence and focused patience, and he hasn't altered any location of scenery in the whole flick, and all the plots all occur in one fixed tiny appartment which form the atmosphere of clausphobia. and his clever use of macguffin is upon the crucial drawback of this crime event, the key in grace kelly's handbag. the suspense is totally absorbed by the viewer while his attention is in quest of the key as hitchcock intends to manipulate.

the showstopper in it is marvellous pro ray milland whose caculated composure savors his ruthless villainy with excellence. the scene he tricks a man into his apartment with murder proposal is brilliantly formidable, and from time to time, the complacent smirk upon his face gives him the adequate aura of an aloof villain. milland's character also confronts his final catastrophe with grace and fine humor like a good loser.

as hitchcock always sympathesizes his villians, milland's wife-murderer also has a cause: marital unfaithfulness which resonates another classic hitchcockian trait: moral ambiguity. she cheats him first, then he schemes to kill her as an unworthy spouse.

the 30s "cleopatra" is cecil b. demille's epic piece as well as claudette colbert's ultimate height of shimmering glamour in lavish period costumes by the 30s fashion genius travis banton.

the triangle between cleopatra, caesar and marc antony is grandeurly reputed and celebrated with the rosiness of feministic romance to the seductress blessed with beauty, intelligence, wealth and supreme power, wholeheartedly in love with elite studs. it's simply too surreally divine to befall on earth.

compared with the 60s cleopatra made with elizabeth taylor, demile's aware of the art of conciseness, and his cuts of cleopatra's affair with caesar is transient but sharp to the crucial point: caesar doesn't love cleopatra but infatuated with the inquisiton of her gold as well as the deliciously prosperous egypt.

then the scenery shifts to the romance with marc antony who contempts love and deems women as the play things of the warriors that makes it tastefully witty to witness how cleopatra conquers the steel-hearted antony by disarming him level by level with sly humor. and the showcast of those egyptian vaudevilles are tour de farce which could only be presented by demille's wheeling camera, such as the she-leopard circular flame-diving sequence. and henry wilcoxon as antony delivers enough virility to dignify this grandly masculine man melted by the lure of a siren. the scene he reacts to roman's defying duel with reckless bravado to fight with his last breath is the exemplification of primitive manhood while cleopatra kneels beside him to surrender as a woman in love, a conquest of his enormous machoness then she nullifies the fickle scheme to poison him into death.

the prestigious suicide to declare cleopatra's sacred love is written with mighty aloofness "be careful when you seek love, if you cannot find love, don't give a thing...if you're rich as cleopatra, give everything!"...then the camera looms over her statuesque dead posture as she demises by the snake bite, permeated with her egoistically lofty pride which prevents her from consdescending at last moment, even defeated by backfires.

"the grass is greener" is one excellent work from classic comedy director stanley donen who could elaborate those bedroom drama which mainly be epathetic with estrogen to a divine sophistification, even a mundane subject of un-marital affair could be polished with civilized suaveness.

the main story set is cary grant and deborah kerr are happily married in their old historical british mansion, living by exhibiting fair of their ancient house, until one day american prodigal charm boy robert mitchum steps into their private living room to captivate kerr's matronly affection by exclaiming "your eyes are beautiful as poetry"...then the composed grant sinks into a predicament of his happiness with his competent love rival who is recklessly unpreditable and boyishly charming...

usually the corny scenario of cuckolded man would run amok to bombard the wife with the accusation of infidelity and rageous condemnation, but not our resourceful grant with fine spirit of sportsmanship who schemes to connive his wife galloping to her provocatively exciting lover, escpecially the third party is insolently luring as robert mitchum. since he comprehends his objection would even enhance mitchum's rascal attraction to kerr, so he intends to stand his position without movement...then everything is drastically modified after a challenge of pistol duel. you gotta admire the clever wits in the lines of grant, and his mellowed wisdom as the ultimate debonair who conducts himself gracefully, retains his dignity under such a circumstance of potential humiliation.

jean simmons plays the talkative friend who flashes herself in the gaudy wardrobe of christian dior, and her vivicious humor is also adequately humorous under such an awkward condition as the outsider of a threesome.

"the grass is greener" is definitely very british, and incidentally it parodies the feud between america and britain, symbolizing it with marvellous line like "maybe it's time for america to place a statue of liberty (or libertine!) in britain" as the insinuation of mitchum's bold inference to grant's married life. such sophisticated comedy could be only made with stanley donen and stars like grant, kerr, mitchum and simmons, and nowaday show business can no longer produce such tasteful comedy with such pearly dialogues, impossible to exist under the absurd emphasis of savagely rugged manhood in contemporary action cinema or the radical effimination of male beauty in various recent advertisements.

"rope" would probably be the most experimental flick of hitchcock, adapting from the real life nietzschian superman-crazed crime of "leopold and loeb"...two upper-class students who commit murder just to prove their superiority to the ordinary men, also mixed with the repressed homosexuality of these two co-existentant men.

brandan and philip strangle their close friend david in one afternoon, then hide his corpse in the chest where they serve food upon in the subsequent dinner party that turns into a ritualized routine since they invite the dead's parent, lover and love rival all joined together to morbidly cheer for david's demise unknowingly, also to satiate brandon's egoistic pride, the inquisitive gurdian rupert(jim stewart) also arrives to elucidate their transcendal philosophy of superior beings who live beyond moral standards which are built only for commoners.

the whole flicks was shot within weeks only in a stage-play improvisation, confined in one location, the apartment of brandan and philop, for the ambience of claustrophia which also permeats in "dial m for murder"...it discards the hocus-pocus of cliched "who'dun'it" formula, and audience witnesses the crime at the first scene. the rest of suspense all relies on the "mcguffin" which is the dead body of victim david itself.

it's also one of the daring cinematic trials to present the homosexual characters, brandan and philp: the former is the domineering manipulator and the latter is the submissive follower. brandan always designates philip to comply his instructions, such as one confessed line from philip "you always bully me in highschool, part of your charm, i suppose." that indicates the implicit sexual tension between these two, simmering hostility mingled with overwhelmed attraction. inextricably, they sexuality sublimates into the realization of murder which could simulate cerebral orgasm.

"rope" also articulates hitchcock's masochistic moral stance, these two sociopathological men who disobey the norm by indulging in their world of forbidden sexuality, and they're narcissistic enough to aspire to manifest their amoral arbitrariness by actually committing a murder. naturally they're doomed to fail with severe punishment, and that ethic viewpoints are lectured thru the senior guest, david's father, "it is a contempt to humanity, jeopardizes a society which is believed to be civilized" as well as the righteous copper-alike jim stewart "it's not about what i'm going to do, it's about what society's going to do. you're gonna die! both of you!!"

hitchcock is also regarded as a great moralist, letting aside his cinematic genius, he preaches his concepts of right and wrong with a much less doctrined approach. in "rope", he expresses his firm belief in humanity and moral principles by baring the "human flaws" of philip who suffers from the mental disturbance of freudian superego while brandon is strutting around complacently with his overdone perfectionism to savor up his "masterpiece."

silent "thief of bagdad" is raoul walsh's lush classic with original swashbuckler douglas fairbanks in the imaginatively turbulent exotic land of arab...it is intertwined with the bizarre outlandishness of persia, india, china as well as the essence of arab under intepretation of the primary stage of hollywood aesthetism. the visuality is mythically expressionistic thrived with every stroke of riotous imageries, such as the prophetic magic crystal upon the pupil of indian buddha with multiple hands, the swirling marine palace with mermaids, the flaming caves within the moon and the mongol eccentric courtesies.....of course, it also includes the cameos of the first chinese american hollywood star, anna may wong as the undercover mongolian slavegirl who doublecrosses the princess. inevitablly chineses are the ultimate villains douglas fairbanks have to confront then conquer.

fairbanks stars as the title role, theif of bagdad, who is a frivolous but resourceful man abiding upon the life philosophy of grasping everything he wants at once...an incorrigible crook who lives for his own pleasure...he enjoys his unrepetant thieveries until his arms are set upon the fair chaste princess of bagdad, so he gotta earn himself a honour of prince by seeking the rarest treasure on earth seperately with his competitors: princes of persia, india, and mongol...how shall he overwhelm the persian flying carpet, indian crystal ball and mongolian healing golden apple?

eventually chinese mongols are the evil ones who entrap the princess then besiege bagdad with insidious ambush...the odd thing is mongols are all dressed in the constumes of merchurian dynasty in the last century of china as if it's whimsical pastiche of silent hollywood with all the background extravagenza which functions highly upon human endeavor in the age without CGI...the result might be blatantly exposable but still a granduer visual feast....most of all, our athletic swashbuckler douglas fairbanks is flamboyantly dashing enough to live up as the fearless romantic hero.

"theif of bagdad" is somehow the best exemplification of the so called "american orientialism" with a distorted image upon the east by dismissing it as "primitive, slavish, exotic, manipulative, and amoral," particularly upon china. arab, persia, india and china are all "orient" by the ancient definition of the occident, so " the more eastern the more twisted" would be the principle to comply. personally, as what i mentioned before upon "the shanghai gesture," at least being "primitive, slavish, exotic, manipulative, and amoral" is still uncompromisingly edgy with its luring characteristics. so far, the coolest asian hollywood star to me is still anna may wong with her quirky orientalness blended in the sensuality which populates in 20s~40s.

"toni" is jean renoir's pioneering stimulus to italian neo-realism under the aroma of picturesque backwater surrounded with the rural pastures, the barren cliff and placid vineyards that weave a backset of astrayed affairs in a noirish mode with the trampy femme fatale and his willing romantic sap as the sacrificial lamb.

the story is about the italian immigrant toni who is transported to french countryside to earn his honest living...and toni gets tangled up with two females, one is his virtuously generous landlady marie, the other is the lecherous josefa who literarily sleeps with every possible man she could seduce. futilely toni crazes for virtueless josefa but heartbroken by her infidelity so he ends up marrying marie but still carries a torch for josefa. eventually toni becomes the sucker utilized and doublecrossed by josefa and her ruthless cuckold.

the social satire aspect is the whirling round of italian immigrants, after toni's ill-fated closure, there're yet another bunch of naive foreign immigrants departing from the train with their naive dreams in this desolate field.

to be faithful to the consistancy of neo-realism, the music score of toni is accompanied completely by immediate guitar -playing by the background, and every character looks as crudely primitive as possible to create an atmosphere of wasteland, and contrarily this arrangement feels offbeatly poetic in an artlessly natrual way just like an endearing folk song with contagious affinity.

"sea hwak" is the quintessential swashbuckler with golden team of errol flynn and driector michael curtiz as well as flynn typecasted sidekick alan hale despite the abscence of basil rathbone and olivia de havilland who had been weary of the repeated stereotypes then.

flynn plays the legendary captain thorpe who serves england by robbing the ships of spain who mistreated british privates by severe slavery at ship-decker. this time flynn's competent villains would be claude rains and henry daniell, and his rosy beauty would be branda marshell who happens to have a likable nanny played una o'connor.

heroic patriotism, just brotherhood, gallant chivalry and debonair suaveness are all well-applied in "sea hawk" with the grandly vital music of erich konkorg who also supervised flynn's "robin hood". two knights of good and evil have duelts by swords with their massive shadows magnified on the wall as michael curtiz's signatured expressionistic photography. striking woman plucks thorn roses in the garden, rescued by a gorgeous dashing flynn, then two whispers the ingenundo of love with the talk of monastery statue. manhood is projected in the most idealistic way with its shining glamour, and errol flynn would be its best representative.

british stage actress flora robson incarnates as queen elizabeth who has the adequate screen presence, personally fonded by flynn who has good chesmistry with her at the scene together with the courteous monkey. allegedly, flynn prefers performing with her as elizabeth to the abrasive bette davis who also plays elizabeth with flynn in the later "elizabeth and essenx." it is complained by flynn that davis overslaps him in one scene.

further, "sea hawk" also has a hinted political stance then by comparing england as the league of decent democracy against the spain which stands for the sinisterly arrogant nazi then, reflecting the world war II condition at the time it's released.

"the big sleep" is howard hawks' well-exerted star vehicle for humprey bogart and lauren bacall who have formed their sizzling chemistry in "to have and have not"..but hawks also has a crush on bacall who prefers the elder bogart, so this trio causes great tension on the production set since hawks is sour that bacall, whom he catapults to stardom and whom he looks forward having a fling with, has been captivated by the embrace of humprey bogart who is also having nuisance with his divorce then. so naturally the trio has been messed by their own private affairs but what makes "the big sleep" function so wonderfully, the sheer romantic flame ignited in the private lives of its major stars, bogart and bacall.

bogart is now philip marlowe, another detective hero by ramon chandler who also creates the mythical sam spade in bogart's "maltese falcon" which contributes to his stardom after a decade of obscurity as small-time mugs on screen. marlowe is now dealing with general sternwood's willful daughter's misdemeanors which involve murders of jealous and mobster entrapment, meanwhile marlowe falls in love with another sternwood's daughter vivien (bacall) who attempts to save her trampy sis at any cost by aloofly dealing with gambling crooks herself, interfered by marlowe who is determinated to set the records straight completely for her even he has been beaten up, blackmailed and also risks his life for it.

let's put it this way, the best pleasure of watching "the big sleep" is not really about how intriguingly the plots develop but seeing humprey bogart flirt with several females, from the two sternwood daughters to bookstore woman clerk who sheds off her spectacles to lure bogart and the female taxi driver who volunteers to be "his girl" then tosses a business card to him with a hint that "i'm more available at night" then bogart hands a generous tip "sugar, it's some for you to buy candies"...of course, the shrew bogart trully desires would be lauren bacall who mocks his "un-impressive height" in the beginning defyingly while bogart bombards her back insolently as well. then she's impressed with his reluctance to flatter her after our big man teaches her a lesson to be good!

there're numerous classic dialogues of sexual connotations which are gonna set records at cinematic history...one about the horse races, and how she enjoys watching him racing in the front and he wanna take the helm to bridle her. one scene in her bedroom while he suppresses her hand from slapping him and the lightening strikes outside the window, "i don't like to get rough at this time of night" "you're going too far, marlowe" "it's harsh word to throw at a man while he's walking out of your bedroom"....the most titilating one would be their kiss in the car with bacall exclaiming "oh! do it again! i like it!!"...even moments like her sitting on his desk, trying not to scratch her knee, being detected by him "go ahead and scratch it, i don't mind!", it's full of witty humor, then she walks over the doorway, confused by how to open the latch then looks back at him suspiciously "oh that was not intentional!" marlowe's office's door is sorta designed to halt clients who just wanna hurry to escape interrogation which also happens in "murder, my sweet"

whether bogart is suitable as philip marlowe is not an revelent issue since he has a personality bigger than life, and he's merchandising his machismo flick by flick, with his wisecracking sarcasm, romantic gallantry to acquire the hearts of beautiful dames despite he ain't massive. even bogart literarily plays it directly with the lines delivered just like his own words, sassy, sneering and uncompromisingly tough. in a brief, his charisma is too idiocyncratic to be obliterated by the roles he takes, so every role bogart plays feels just similiarly like bogart. despite bogart and bacall only utter love in one scene on the car, but that could be magnified into a thousand times since you could tell he's pulling everything off just for her sake, he could spend 200 out of his 500 salaries just to buy off the information which is gonna get her out of this corrupted deal. as he's hectic to instruct her how to handle the crime aftermath, she askes "how about me?" "so, how about you?" "nothing you could fix" while the police siren rings its signal approaching.

plus. elisha cook jr. from "maltese falcon" also appears here as a romantic sap to enhance the "tough guy with a soft center" concept in this flick that tints "the big sleep" with more gentle hues while men are ballsy bravados who rescue their women from the clasping thorns.

as the studio shedded off the moral code which had been effeminating the flicks for a decade in 30s, james cagney rises up again to be the incorigible villainy man without converting to the heroic roles he had taken such as "g men", "each dawn i die" and "city of conquest"..etc. this time his sinisterness erupts as some volcanic force which detonates right in front your face when his cody jarret finally reach toward "the top of the world"....

cagney plays cody jarret, a mobster leader with oedipus complex, morbidly fixed at ma, and his mystically legendary headache tears him into pieces then he besseches ma's bossom to soothe it. obsessed with absolute domineering power thru brutal violence that is the psychotic trait of homicidal inclination. he swears like machine gun and he slaughters mercilessly. except his affectionate adherence to ma, his human-ness is amputated then he's a thug machine bridling his gang mugs and his harpy wife. and director raoul walsh settles some scene even with the suspense horror to interpretate cody's intimidating evil momentum: in one scene, his murderous glare creeks thru the leak of doorgate on the eve when he's about to dispose of his rival, then cody cold-bloodedly grabs his mistress' arm to drop-kick the corpse downward the stairway complecently. here you witness a monster striking around with tricky chortle.

as some misogynism expresses proudly in "public enemy" such as the notorious grapefruit-smashing scene, "white heat" also bears cagney role's misogynism in a more subdued way by enhancing cody's affinity with ma that explains his reluctant neglect to his wife, as one scene says it outloud: cody inquires his wife where ma goes, she replies with impatient smirk "don't you like strawberry?! she happens to go to buy some for her boy!!" then cody spurns her away from the chair while she stands upon it to wear her mink coat. as a mama's boy, cody has no concrete relationship with women excpet the amative lust. he treats her friendly only when he's in the urge of sex that suggests his compliment on her looking good in the shower curtain. genuinely cody's heart belongs to ma, the prison scene of him runing lunatic after acquiring the news of ma's demise is a great showcase for cagney. eventually cody ends up ruined without the discerning flair of ma, enmeshing into the scheme of doublecross.

unlike the 30s gangster flicks which always enclosed with a moral lesson, our cody jarret simply doesn't give a damn! he would rather torches himself into the outburst of gasoline than submit to the police imprisonment, persisting untamed as his consistent revolt against society and morality. self-destructs before be destructed by others as he hollers "make it, ma! top of the world!!!" with his last inconformable flatulency.

"baby face" was an mighty milestone to set up the stanwyckesque femme fatale image before the fatally classic "double indemnity"...generally..the vital charm of most femme fatales is their gluttonish sensuality and sex apeal...but the allure of stanwyck's femme fatale is based upon her ruthless toughnes and also her un-willing-ness to comprise..sorta refreshing...it's just like a man who takes what he wants without hesitation...basically BF is an heavily melodrama-driven story even it's worthy being praised for its audacious outrage in a conservative decade. to apply nietzscheistic superman into the "bad girl survives and rules" pattern is indeed feministically offbeat that could be considered a defying moral dynamite at that time. babyface's hostility against man is motivated by her experience of being exploited by men, especially her father. her remarks about her father philandering her was incredically explicit in the concern of the censor in the 30's. the quick wit and dare-devil adventurousness of stanwyck's material girl sorta savor the audience's appreciation over babyface's resourcefulness. but the devilsih brazen fun of the movie is somehow hindered by the moralistic closure. (bad girl is suddenly stricken with the meaning of love.) if interpretating it from a different perspect, perhaps it could be a touching story of an astray female discovering the warmth of bona-fide human affection. only stanwyck's swiftly polished acting talent could carry it off without diverged distortion.

"out of the past" is one mighty example of the old proverb "women are not to be trusted"...jane greer is the incarnation of classic noir femme fatale who backstabs men for profits and survival, a giant rotten swelling beneath her strikingly angelic beauty.

jeff bailey(mitchum) is a private eye hired by mobster whit (kirk douglas) to retrack back his mistress kathey(greer) who shoots him four times then elope with $4000. as the moment bailey sees her, he's enchanted to her, so both of them together cheat whit to shelter upon the north for thier love-nest. unfortunately their traces are spotted that leades to one murder which also unravels the sordid darkside of kathey. then bailey recluses in some countryside to reform and seek a kind gentle woman as love companion until one day whit sends his sidekick for bailey....

spontaneously all the men in "out of the past" are chain-smokers who transcend fume circles into enigmatic white clouds that might be an indication of their masochistic empheral doom. everywhere mitchum goes, he ignites a cigarette even at the crucial moment of robbing important documentary. maybe their choice of the woman is the best eloquent case of such chronical suicidal tendency which reflects on non-stop smokings.

both bailey and whit (mitchum and douglas) are shrewd men with sharply fierce sight to see things thru, but they still select to embrace the defying perils, such as bailey knows whit wanna frame him, but he still goes for it; whit understands kathey is no good but he still want her back at any cost. they're tough guys with imperious confidence preferring to be surrounded with apparent danger, enjoying messing up with beautiful dame who is utterly no good just like boys like to play with firecracker even it might blow them off into pieces. jane greer would be the best pretty poison for these two extraordinarily cocky men.

in one dialogue, greer tries to persuade mitchum into her faux innocence, mitchum simply replies "oh baby, i don't care!"...men in "out of the past" are prodigals stuck in their transient life philosophy under the adrenlined sensations for the dazzling sparks, always some case, some feud, some unexpected doublecross to settle, eventually mitchum's character explodes by the forthcoming curse of his tragic flaws.

another tale of the legendary private eye philip marlowe under the whirling pen of raymond chandler, and this time our noir hero is not humprey bogart from "maltese falcon" but the comical dick powell. certainly the endearing noir queen claire trevor seems to be intertwined as the master manipulator behind the several mysterious crimes circling around the desoiled china jade necklace.

around this turn, dick powell's marlowe doesn't appear so bright and he keeps being pushed around very often by the crooks. without the participation of bogart's grittiness, powell's marlowe lacks a certain macho grittiness but the witty tongue-in-cheek humor that truns out to be one of the merits in this flick. besides it demonstrates the human side of marlowe who is no longer bogart's tough guy who ditches mary astor to prison for the sake of his occupational enthicity. dick powell is more warmed up with liveliness but without the wild unpredicatibility of bogart's un-negotiated manhood. marlowe now is not aloof anymore, and he embraces beauties around his arms joyfully without the gender tension of possessiveness between bogart and astor. marlowe has been incarnated into flesh and blood, capable of bathing in romance, eventually powell's marlowe fondles the kind-hearted red-head over his yearning bossom, tossing his pistol aside just for a decently thorough smack of kiss.

the nightmare sequence of marlowe being narcotically toxicated is visually engrossing as well as marlowe's self-encouraging voice-over: prove you're a tough guy, put on your pants. this apparently purposed "tough" lecture could even be mellowed into a farcial joke by dick powell, if it's said by bogart, it would be roughed with edginess. claire trevor is the blonde femme fatale this time to toy everyman into her sidekicks only with some confidently contrived smirks. maybe she should have grappled some cameos instead of just few scenes, but even limited with empheral time, she makes quite an impression as "the woman with snakes and pits lurked beneath her devilish smile"

"the naked city" is a story about one gorgeous blonde murdered in her own bathtube that triggers the police force doing the hide-and-seek of all the suspects involved, narrated in first-person voice over, but the identity of the narrator is mytically absent.

this flick is uniquely done with the ominiscient narration as the voice of the city. it settles from the dissected perspect of policeman crime-interspecting. the audience's attention is strung with each move of the coppers, thus we sense the hard effects of collecting evidences, and also realistically depicted to objectify every character as secondary except the naked city, new york itself. it demonstrates the labourous process of those trivial crime scenes on news paper that is destinated to dismiss into oblivion circularly, saturated within the existentialistic carthesis.

"bride of frankenstein" is one of the rare cases in cinema that the sequel indisputedly surpasses the original. naturally lots have been remarked upon the brilliance of james whale.

unawared by most, "bride of frankenstein" also extends the homoeroticism from its precessor on the character dr. pretorius who utters the legendary line "to the new world of gods and monsters" while he flaunts his little men in the jars (strangely it provoked the japanese ban then due to its mockery toward the royalty.) the mostly apparent scene would be dr. pretorius intrudes dr. frankenstein's bedroom in spite of the maid's warning in his fiancee's presence, discussing the course of "creating life" with insistence on excluding her. (an "intercourse" with discrimination toward the woman) it's a impudent poise on the caricature of elder anemic homosexual, admitted by whale himself.

and the most heterosexual character with masculinity would probably be the monster who is eager to have a female mate (compared with the deviant pretorius and the wimpish frankenstein), demonstrating his enormous interests toward the creature called "woman". but the monster's friendly lovemaking is rebuffed abruptly as whale's ruthless disdain for heterosexuality as well as the pride of his own orientation. but wouldn't be it another suggestive tone of homosexual identification with woman since frankenstein and pretorius are ardent to create a female being (a pursuit of feminity?). they might be my crude speculations.

un-noticed by most, the actress who plays frankenstein's fiancee is substituted with valerie hobson instead of mae clarke in the original since mae clarke is forgotten or dismissed as the grapefruit lady in "public enemy". and it is wonderful opportunity for una o'connor to showcase her comic flair as the screaming maid whose neurotic nerves borders on annoyance.

"boogie nights" is mark walhberg's breakthru into the caliber of a actors, and it might be paul thomas anderson's best work by far as well as a good enclosure among the 90s. walhberg used to be the calvin klein model for underwear so the size of his private thing has been nicely anchored before,and his "marky marky" white rapper image is highly helpful for the audience to lead into the imaginary ground of dirk diggler.

walhberg palys eddie, an astray teenager who gets one special talent, his 13 inches phallis, then he gets spoted by the porn director, john horner(burt reynolds), so he re-incarnates into the legendary stud in porn cinema, dirk diggler. but the movie centers not merely on dirk but also the people around this pornography circle, such as roller girl (heather gramham) and the maternal porn actress(julianne moore) as well as various sub-cast like philip hoffman and don cheadle..etc. you may view these people frivolously wasted as social scums, but they do sincerely deem porn flicks as a form of cinema with sincere enthusiasm.

even in the degenerated role like that, mark walhberg does emite some lovable boyish innocence in this character, for example, dirk often inquires his co-woman-star's feelings in the sex scenes, for instance, he askes julianne moore in the firse scene of their intercourse, "where you want me to shoot? are you all right?" and she also shows some affectionate encouragements back in return. there's no misogynism in its female characters, and men do show some respect of equality to women even in a seemingly rotten bussiness like porn cinema. they consider lovemaking an exhibitionistic enjoyment, and they do care about the works they've done. and also, there's some strange ethics among this group of people, burt reynold's like a proper paternal figure, in the scene he kisses moore on the shoulder then remark "i stare at the foxiest bitch in the world". vice versa, julianne moore is the maternal figure who is a gentle nuturer while joanna gleason is the opposite as dirk's judgementally harsh mother who deems him as forever loser and dirk's father is a meek quiet man without opinions. and dirk's life is like an elongated adolescence while he's eternally obsessed with oriental kung-fu, various subcultural items and flashy roadsters. but i must say, walhberg really gets the poise and the moves!

the course of american dream would be the earnest naivete of its dreamers, and even sex workers also have their american dream in spite of the outrageous notoriety they receive from drug abuse and promiscuity. "boogie nights" has the capacity of humanity and pathos for its characters, but it also bares the price these people have to pay for such self-abandoned lifestyle. they're bittersweet tales of porn industry's idealistic narcissism and its sour mistreatment from social prejudices. it's like an obscene american dream awaken in the end with corrosive disillusion while walhberg demonstrates kung-fu to his 13 inches dildo.

the 1958 "auntine mame" is the pinnacle of rosalind russell's career, and it does jolly rosalind great justice to glitter her comic genius in screwball comedy gendre that had been neglected or underused before. overlooked by most, rosalind russell has uncanny parallel to another classic star katehrine hepburn who was also a screwball diva in the 30s, considering her numberous collaborations with cary grant like "bringing up baby". they share the traits of being tall fair brunette and both funny with their non-stop swift-paced british accents except hepburn had more sharp edginess within her aggressive mannerism which has been constantly mocked in movies like "woman of the year" and "philadelphia story". (after all, we all like to cut a lofy dame down, aren't we?)

mame dennis is an eccentric socialite from the roaring 20s, wallowing in an extravangant life of endless gayety and diversities of styles and interior decors. mame has a stuff-shirted brother who sets up a will to keep her little son from her "bad influence" after he passes away. unfortunately it arrives soon, so auntine mame is ready to open doors for her nephew with mighty enthusiasm.

the title protagonist auntie mame is a larger than life character as you cannot demand realism upon such a cozy heart-warming fair tale. it is a comedy which relies upon its witty lines nourished by its deviant naivete of exaggerated demeanors. and this sort of comedies could merely exist among the 50s (age of innocence despite its fatal mccarthyism) since the cleverly phrased comedy without relishing profanity is no longer popular after the mid 60s, another read-between-the-lines "refined" humor celebrating "santized bohemianism".

the philosophy behind "auntine mame" is more of a hygienic hedonism without the darkness of alcoholism and prosmiscuity as mame exclaims "life is a bandquet, and most suckers are starving to death". and it does pose some anti-bourgeois sign without intruding middle-classed moralisticness. perhaps it casts a positive user-friendly democratic view that everyone should live beyond prejudice to appreciate a lovable cucko-cucko like auntine mame with enormous social acceptance. and my conclusion would be auntie mame is a fruitation of indulgent whims upon childlike innocence.

one praise goes for orry-kelly who designs most clothes for warner bro. from 30s~40s,, also lots of bette davis vehicles like jezebell and little foxes. and rosalind russel does have episodic sections of various dyed hairdos and exotic costumes, and she even dresses herself like a drogn lady with a dragon-headed doorgate which fumes everytime guest rings the bell. that anchors the great idiocyncrasy of auntine mame.

except katherine hepburn, no other actress could deliver those oddball lines so well so proficiently as rosalind russell who is mildly underrated. russell does appear as demure love interest in her 30s mgm days in flicks like "china seas" and "they met in bombay" with, again, clark gable. russel could be competent in most roles hepburn made prestige among 30s~40s. the major distinction would be russell is more feminine and less domineering and invasive than hepburn. thus rosalind russell makes an appropriate goofy adorable auntine mame as every adolescent boy's ideal auntine. an escapic retreatment for childhood dreams.

"possessed" is one of the few flicks in the 40s which allows miss crawford to behave demurely like a lady, and effectively "possessed" has a sympathetic touch of ingrid bergman's "gaslight" with charles boyer as the insidious husband who schemes to trap his wife into insanity for the diamond thivery. here crawford takes the reverse aim to her patterned vixen image and also nullifies her constant dose of glamour that catalyzes her brittleness to fracture into shattered pieces as genuine frailty.

the plot whirls around an inwardly knotted woman named louise whose avidity for the love of a man called david sinks herself into the abysmal disillusion when david gets weary of her clingy affection, then her problematic mental disorder is ripping her off relentlessly with guilt-ridden hallucinations. the script is written on the basis of freudian psychoanalysis of the relieving function of confessions, and the story builds along her narrative descriptions. this applied technique is nothing innovative but stereotyped psychological drama thru the protagonist's gradual sequence of self-revelations.

the psychology of louise would be her fear in the void of love, and she alerts herself with her perennial detachment required in her occupation as a nurse, then once the wall of passion collapses, neediness starts to haunt her in despair. except crawford's accomplished performance of the mentally illed, the rest of the movie is actually stiflingly cliched, even it's arranged with firmly condensed structure but inevitably melodramatic.

the heartthrob who captivates poor louise's heart is played by van heflin whose david is a repellently cynical womanizer who operates upon his careless whim, who has no pity upon louise. he's aware that she suffers from the want of his love and intimacy in the level of sharpeningly errosive agony, but he still refuses to grant just a bit more of tenderness or compassion, worse of all, he chooses to reoccur frequently in her life without a bit merciful avoidance, eventually he even courts her daughter-in-law shamelessly that stimulates her extremity to crack up in slices. the charisma of helfin's david is bewilderingly beyond comprehension, same as louise's possessive infatuation upon him, heflin doesn't look convincingly gorgeous enough like a martini idol, and there's no likability in the character of david who is neglectfully indifferent and playfully ruthless. one particular line he utters "i've done nothing wrong to you except falling out of love with you, and that's man's previledge" is obnoxiously chauvinistic, maybe repulsively sexistic as well.

it resembles olivia de havilland's "snake's pit" with the presence of paternal figure with infinite patience and supportive love: in "snake's pit", miss dehavilland has her nodding husband and her kind-faced doctor; miss crawford only has her willingly awaiting husband who still remains a thread of hope upon her..as dehavilland, crawford also de-glamourizes herself to manifest the deeper scale of her acting talent....is paternal gentility a necessity to heal off female mental perversenes? maybe so, in freud's over-anatomized interpretation of parental fixation.

"kiss me deadly" is not the conventional noir which populates in 1940s with detective hero scenarios, and contrarily our opportunistic protagonist could be the meanest dubious anti-hero who sticks to his chauvinist womanizing lifestyle without redeeming mercy. and the catastrophe at last is the metaphoric phobia for the atomic age when chemical explosion is the deadliest phemonal crisis then. the femme fatale is ruthlessly trigger-happy pandora who unravel the lethal box of doom. the world surrounded within "kiss me deadly" is not entirely realistic decadence for the crimes of passion but a crooked labyrinth where man's avarice dominates, and the cynicism of such macabre is timelessly contemporary.

the profile of our male protagonist is cleverly anchored within the dialogues at the opening sequence while a female asylum inmate hitchhikes his two-seat chic roadster: "a self-indulgent male who cares nothing but his clothes, his car, who only takes but never gives in a relationship."....then the horrid murder under the disguise of car wreck follows after a brutal kidnap. so this self-indulgent male happens to be a bedroom dick, who philanders his own girlfriend to profit from divorce cases, is eager to investigate the truth of the matter on his own, NOT for the sake of performing justice but to gain an angle of earning quick cashes. the process of mayhem is highly practiced within the procedue of obtaining what he yearns to know. so this self-obessed man intimates everyone involed and embraces to kiss every woman to attain his purposes. and that includes whoring his own sappy girlfriend AGAIN. BUT his effortless greed is futile since what he's after turns out to be an appartus of apolytic condemnation.

this is an universe running amok with its sinister overpower, and its lack of heroic savior is modern syptom of aloof amorality which detonates the explosion of pandora's box to ruminate man's own misdemeanors. ralph meeker's self-assumptious chauvinist ends up being a dope who takes the bullet of punishment from a guiling female con, so he retreats into his maternal girlfriend's bossom to do away with the forseeing descent of pandora's evil venom...could he be immue?

needless to say, the illuminator is ralph meeker's devilish womanizer as well as gaby rodger who emanates a modern sense of diabolism which rivals lena olin in "romeo is bleeding"...there's not much realism in "kiss me deadly" but an intriguing concept expressed in an utterly self-centered perspective.

"private life of henry viii" is the academy award winner for best actor for non-american actor, charles laughton, in a non-american movie, helmed by british epic piece director alexander korda. it also has the young fresh-faced robert donat (alfred hitchcock's 39 steps star) who transcends a smoldering stroke of romanticism as the doomed lover of the queen. inevitably this flick centers upon henry viii, the lecherously obese man who constantly seeks a potential light of happiness even at cost of decapitating two women and recklessly raging notoriety, but the flick is keen to maintain a delightful tone to emphasize henry's naughty whims instead of his egoistic brutality, brightened by laughton's jolly likability.

the story skips the first wife of henry viii, the stingy square katherine, and the scene catapults the beheading of anne boleyn (mother of queen elizabeth) on the king's wedding night...it shows the fickle nature of this man who eliminates any emulating spouse of his, and he even rejoices "if you want to be happy, marry a stupid beautiful woman like my new wife" like a little boy who exults at getting a new toy while he's disposing of his old obsolete one.

it has two scenes during two executions which bare the cynical reaction of the mass as well as the dialogues in the kitchen. the king's indignantly motivated to get married for two of the 6 times just by the barber's careless criticism, and his infamous one-night marriage with the german princess(elsa lancaster) who purposedly infuriates him by cheating in the poker games. it depicts henry viii more in a mischieviously boyish perspect, and he truly sheds the tear of genuine sorrow for his fifth wife, katherine howard, who commits adultery with his confidante thomas culperer(robert donat). eventually henry settles with a homely wife who conducts himself to the smallest detail of food, but he remarks "the best's also the worst" to the last marriage of his life.

"the private life of henry viii" sneers at the man with a forgiving generosity, mocking at his easily influenced temperament as well as his naivety to the prospect of love. charles laughton's charisma is crucial to the success of it since only laughton could dub this polygamic king a redeeming sense of clever wits.

"long day's journey into night" is faithfully adapted from eugene o'neill's semi-autobiographical play which is also his greatest work alive, and it deepens further upon katherine hepburn's prestige as a versatile accomplished actress since she again receives academy award nomination for it. frequently i tackle into the issue of purist notion of dialogue-driven movies as the supreme essence of cinema, and "long day's journey into night" would be a perfect exemplification with a masterful script as well as its refined stagy casting. but the film lacks public appeal due to its thick element of constant dialogue-focus as well as its unflattering 3 hour screen time, to enable the film's production, hepburn had to reduce her own payment for this exasperatingly heavy role, and she made it but under one condition: the movie has to be meticulously devout to its original play.

the story's basically about the collapse of a problematic family addled with morphine addiction, alcoholism, capitalist money-slavery, unreconciled pessismism upon death gravitated by consumption illness. the sceneries whirl around the haunting phatom of past memories as the fog forshadows every misery into the belligerent darkness of nightmarish hell, each character imprisioned by his/her tragic flaws and the unredeemed mistakes made in the past.

dean stockwell who plays the youngest son inflicted with consumption demonstrates an amazing horrowingly melancholic attribute which could emulate james dean, whose youthful good looks inspires your ideal personification of a depressed poet once as he frowns.

the flick has a strong claustrophic atmosphere with fixed backset and four steady actors constantly upstaging each other with the uncanny puncturality. if you're a cinema purist with a virtue of patience to read into dialogues, "long day's journey into night" would be a gem to elaborate your mind's empathetic capacity for life's poetic sorrow of dacadence.

"prisoner of zenda" is an original british swashbuckler with aristocraticly dashing ronald colman as the brave knight who defends the secred throne of a nation; madeleine carroll, the british rose, as the divine love interest; dandy douglas fairbanks jr. and raymond massey form a league of doublecrossing vallainy. the infatuation over this swashbucking tale has been remade four times in cinematic history.

colman impersonates dual roles in this piece, the king to be throned and his identifical double who is merely an english man visiting outlandish nation. the king-to-be has been narcotized before the day he's about to be throned in consecration. so the loyal defenders of the king scheme to have the englishman as temporal substitute during his recovery. but the king's grudgy half brother covets the throne while his mischievous accomplice(fairbanks) drools over his mistress (mary astor). to add up the hardship, the englishman falls head over heels in love with the queen-to-be (carroll)...with all the conditions above, the price of honor and chivalric nobility appears precious. wouldn't that be the whole swashbuckler thing about?

ronald colman has the elegant screen presence as well as his composed charisma in the aristocratic costumes, while madelein carroll luminates the scenes with her striking beauty in the utmost degree, particularly in the cross-staring in the annoitment scene. douglas fairbanks jr. has limited screen time but remain impressive with his naughty mannerism and rascal-alike grinning.

"the prisoner of zenda" has every quintessential element of swashbuckler gendre except the consummation of romance since the queen-to-be selects her destined course of serving her royal house at the cost of her great one true love. the scene madelein bursts into an abrupt change of mind is sheer excellence of good acting. this is an aloof swashbuckler without the reward of his fair woman. perhaps tragic love emphasizes its gallantry for the ultimate swashbuckler without glorious compensation.

"two for the road" is a refreshingly unique example of abandoned gentility from both director stanley donen and demure glamour star audrey hepburn who has impressed audience universally with her princessly benevolent attribute. now both donen and hepburn have to deal with blatant exclamation of sex without descending into vulgarity even at moments audrey hepburn gets scorned as a "BITCH". meanwhile donen has to exert the french new-wave method on a non-linear script without losing his masterful touch.

this is a story upon a couple falling head over heels in love on the journey of hitchhiking along europe continent, entwined with their sizzling chemistry of opposite attraction: an amorous ingenue get smitten with cynical chauvinist who mocks marriage. somehow these two eventually gets married despite the collisions of their living philosophies.

the camera wheels along their conjuring of past memories, and it's like a story book clipped into pieces then pastiched together as the protagonists' threads of thoughts catapult from one ground to another, resonated with french post-structualist literature as the stream-lined time scale has been omitted while our spectrum of emotionality has been excerpted into microscopic inspections. but "two for the road" is incredibly far from self-indulgent eccentricity or disjointed style over substance that has permeated in "thomas crown affair" which is also another new-wave-tinted flick released in 1967.

albert finney is definitely not a debonair like cary grant who has been the frequent lead in stanley donen's romantic drama like "indiscreet" and "the grass is greener" (both movies are very britishly suave), and the rawly sneering mannerism of finney has been a great contrast to hepburn's girlish naivete (even she was 37 then), such as the conversation about "virgin detection", and once again it's also a dialogue-driven movie with timelessly contemporary wisecrackers upon love and sex within marriage. it doesn't appear dated even at 2000s with its bohemian viewpoint upon romance on the road.

once again, audrey hepburn's star magnitude whitewashes the possible sordidness within some serious subject matters in the movie, and that includes infidelity with lines like "i humuliated you, but i'm back!" or "sex is better when it means less because it ain't personal anymore"...the potential abrasiveness gets purified due to the childlike interactions of hepburn and finney even when the couple are committing improper sins, just like their remarks toward each other as "bitch" and "bastard" at the brightful ending of their smacking kisses. there's no sense of profanity but taunting of two kids playing houses.

as for the fashion aspect of "two for the road", audrey hepburn emancipates from her genteel wardrobe of givenchy (who has created the whole hepburn legend in movies like "breakfast at tiffany's" and "sarbrina") to reel into the leisure-wear with leather-skin jacket and blue jeans, along with a beatnik leading man who prefers sex as "good service without binding contract"...perhaps it reflects the conforming phenomenon of the upcoming 70s, even icons of gentility have to demonstrate their cinematic liberations for chicness as audrey hepburn into slacks and stanley donen into road-movie romance without self-composed gentlemen and ladies.

"feeling minnesota" is keanu reeves' attempt to prove his calibre as an actor after his success at the "speed" which catapults his clean-shaved heartthrobber status. whether reeves is a good actor or not, he definitely strives to be one by the iconclastic diverse roles he has taken. perhaps this movie is neglected due to audience's disaproval of his maverick ambition. but in spite of reeves, "feeling minnesota" is an underrated neo-noir meshed with road movie gendre as well as slapstick black-humor.

reeves plays jjacks, a ex-con whose brother blackmails a trashy blonde(cameron diaz) into marrying him. then this sappy never-do-good shows up at his brother's wedding and steals the bride's heart away. so these two intend to flee for vegas by thieving the cuckold's stashed money. unfortunately the couple is short-witted enough to be backstabbed by the cuckold...what ensues is phony death as well as posthumous resurrection, and the process involves someone's ear gets chewed off ghastly.

the subject matter of this flick could hardly attract keanu reeves' usual fans who adore his neatly wholesome boyish charm, and low-life debauchery doesn't seem an adequate dish for keanu. but keanu's guileless innocence is also what diverges this flick from sleazy melodrama, transcending it into an unusual romance of absurdity, a strange kind of love affair.

cameron diaz builds her early career with a series of spunky dirty blonde roles, and gender-reversal is a common theme in diaz's beurgeoning days. diaz was often the manipulative woman who takes the wheel, sort of edgy controlling freak type in movies like "a life less ordinary", "very bad things" and "any given sunday"...her best talent was being seductively feminine but insidiously domineering with a deviant paranoic drive until her success in "something about mary" and "charles' angels" sink her into commercialized movie star who gains quick bucks by cheesy chic flicks.

it has attention-gripping cameos from punk-goddess courtney love as the waitress who gives sassy murder advices, and the last performance from old-time classic starlet tuesday weld, who was once steven macqueen leading girl in "cincinati kid" and cult-noir "pretty poison"(it was later adapted into "poison ivy" with drew barrymore in the 80s) as keanu reeves' un-affectionate mother. vincent d'onofrio, keanu's cuckolded bro, later would incarnates into the pervert child-molester in thriller "the cell".

the movie also shows a realistic side of minnesota, the spontaneous angles from minnesota highways, cheap motel in slums, car-wagon with driver wearing hillbilly hat and the road-side forest with autumn leaves. it feels cozy with tangible affinity while its characters at the wrong-side of track merely dream to live in vegas just to enjoy a four-dollar buffet and the incessant glitters of neon-signs that sounds sympathetically petite but earthily endearing.

one admirable quality would be the movie is still dialogue-driven with dimensions for each character. it's neo-noir without the pretentious flatulency to boast the circumstance by excessive violence and gruesomely inhuman femme fatale like "romeo is bleeding" or "reservoir dogs"...perhaps it's inappropriate to deem it as neo-noir since it still preserves the simplistic human aspect of noir with nostalgic country songs like "ring of fire" as well as its sly contemporary sense of black humor, experimentally hybridized with road movie and farce of ridicule.

the ending was origionally plotted as a tradegy but altered as comedy with pleasant blossom of love due to reeves' stardom. so which would be better? you may never know.

since wwi, the orient, especially the far east, has become the colonial prey of occiental domination, and frankly such aggression has only been deepened by the progress of globalization(from material level to ideological standard) which is a beauitified utopian term of cultural assimilation, to diminish the tribal characteristic then create a homogenic mode for people in various ethnicities. despite the orient does possess great exotic fascination over the occient, but merely in a superficial level, which manifests in various highly popularized yellow-face movies with oriental themes like kung-fu, samurai, geisha. (i mislike to mention samurai and geisha becuz it's jap, but to the western mass, what's so different between jap, korean and chinese? just like my compatriots ignorantly dismiss every caucasian as american.) in the international market, asian directors are eager to make period pieces like red cliff, crouching tiger and hidden dragon, the curse of gold flower...etc, but they're campy ridicules to gratify audience's oriental dreams.

the term "multiculturalism" arised around the 60s with the raging countercultural phenomenon of beat generaion, worship of zen and orientalism as the apparatus against the conventional anglo-saxon culture, so the point is they just desire to revolt against the orthodox by showing off their fascination over the orient, such as jack kerouac has acclaimed himself as buddhist...such rebel spirit still exists nowadays, just like great many of my hipster flixster pals are fanatic to foreign, non-american movies and some hong-kong old martial movies made by the shaw company to flaunt how cool and unique they're. honestly it leaves me callous because none of those oriental movies has manifested a bit of authenticity but magnify its eccentricity to serve audience's wanders of curiosity as if we're freaks and monsters for demonstrations.

"the postmodern life of my aunt" is the only chinese movie i've seen recently, which really contains three-dimensional protagonists and genuine paradox of cultural reflections, it's about the disillusion of a middle-age woman's metropolitan aspiration, how she decays and awakened from a false fancy of intellectual smugness. i feel awkward to elucidate further since the appreciated audience belongs to those who identify themselves as chinese, those with great absorption of its cultural sophistication, or everything might appear un-comprehesible and drab to the outsiders.

this movie doesn't sell in taiwan and hong-kong despite the residents are all chinese by blood, the cultural identification has patheticaly disintegrated. letting alone chinese americans or any other dispersed chinese all over the world. (but it's a smashing hit in mainland china.) also none of my flixster pals has seen it or want to see it, perhaps i should feel complacently consoled by this lack of popularity because it means its exclusiveness, and every country should have movies like this as cultural preservations. just like "creature from the black lagoon" is an ultimte american b classic for kids who grew up watching every saturday's monster flicks on tv. to non-american foreigners, it might appear laughably obsolete.

1949 "tension" is an underrated b picture with audrey totter who made her cameo in "postman always rings twice" as the flirtatious red-head hooks with john garfield, of course, also richard basehart who later archieves international fame in fellini's "the road" in europe right after this picture. it has all the quintessential noir elements melt with kitsch-like melodrama, but what else you could expect? it's a b picture for aficionados with a quaint knack for noir in various forms.

but its scenarios are grappling in its blatant way: a drug-store nobody who pursues his dream of 50s suburbanite lifestyle by slaving himself over the nightshifts to earn as much as he could to please his harpy wife who only fancies the luxurious goods like mink coats. but this harpy blonde would sneak any chance to cuckold him as soon as she finds some other sucker to take care of her bills, so she elopes with a liquor salesman who is apparently more capable to provide her what she wants. then this miserable nobody still refuses to concede his wife without fighting, so he shows up in the love nest of the wife and the cuckold, but he gets beaten up and sneered as "four-eyed punk"....to reclaim his pride as a man, our protagonist decides to launch a make-over of himself by getting rid of his coy glasses to re-appear as a hunky sheik named paul sothern to assassinate the cuckold...

it has the castrated sap, the ferocious dame with trademarked blonde hair, and the scheming detective copper as the fury who squares for justice. the story wheels along with a detached narrator whose simmering cynicism boils out to resonate audience's nosy by-stander mentality. as noir frequently favors to dichotomize women, there's alawys feminine nurturer to contrast the lady predator who nearly gulps men alive to attain the happy ending after the justice is served.

audrey totter was contracted b actress of mgm studio which recruits her as the bubble-bath blondie to shape another starlet with semi-lana-turner-like aroma, don't totter's hairdo and wardrobe in "tension" somehow reminiscence a bit of "postman always rings twice" in which totter also has a small but impressionable part? but totter's femme fatale may not be as glamourous as turner but definitely much more aggressive here while she glows her lines with comtemptuous mockeries to basehart. the woman characer in "tension" becomes an exaggerated grotesque of femme fatale, since b picture tends to have very limited resources so it must create its dramatic tension by deepening its stereotypes. that's what happens with "tension". it even has a music score for totter's entrance in every scene to enhance the effect as if it's notifying the audience: here comes the sexy bad woman, pretty tacky, isn't it?

(ps)

just like most normally functioning dames in her time, totter chooses to settle for marriage and homelife instead of manuevering her starlet career like a down-to-earth dame, but acting comes like fun for her to tackle ocassionally during intervals. she also leaves another noir classic "the set-up" with robert ryan as the caring brunette girlfriend. "tension" and "the set-up" proves her caliber as an actress that she could play benevolent lily and malevolent wench.

"lost highway" is actually not as incomprehesible as most people think by first-time viewing, and it's probably the most "linear" storytelling of lynch, a zigsaw awaiting to be jointed together. from my perception, it's about a night-club jazz musician's suspicion upon his wife who constantly cheats on him and possibly an underground amateur porn actress. so the betrayed hubby sets his way to brutally slaughter all the cuckolds involved, then escaping the police as well as his chaotic life forever in the lost highway. the rest is his nightmarish imaginations of love, lust, self-loathe and hate. so he dreams of killing his wife to be sentenced to electric chair to be redeemed/rejunvenized as a stud-like young dude who gets laid around, particularly the blonde seductress who resembles his estranged wife (in reality, he's so traumatized by doubts that he cannot even consummate the intercourse, ain't we always dream what we can't have?). but when the issue of the woman's promiscuous treacheries occur, the gleeful dreams of erotica awakens by the gruesome reality as he gazes her orgastic expressions on the pornographic screen, shame and humiliation start to take over in its way to torment him. then he retreats to his impotent older true self after the young dude makes love and exclaims "i want you" repeatedly...the response is leanly echoed, as our femme fatale whispers insidiously "you will never have me!"(truth revelt.)...all this wronged husband could do is to obliterate his rival who disgraces him. at the last scene, he talks to the doorgate speaker "dillon is dead!"(as if his mission is completed) then drives toward the highways to get lost for good since his affections cannot be requited and his possessive lust cannot be fulfilled despite he revengefully gets riddance of his symbol of shame in the middle of desert.

patricia arquette shall be one of the hottest actresses in the 90s, ideal incarnation of neo-femme-fatale, blonde bombshell and the gritty it girl with edges. she has to bare and dangle her tits over 5 men within this movie, from young to old, handsome to ugly(they're all lucky bastards. ha)...it surely does transmit a daredevil raw sensuality like a contemporary barbara stanwyck without hesitant pretension but brazenly unlimited sesuality while she struts naked in her immaculate luring body. spicy furry red heels or leopard short-jacket, any overly gaudy clothings just look right on her. she even has a bettie page reminiscence hairdo at the start.(everything about this woman is all sexualized.) in one moment, she even poses a gun to tease the man and tells him to stick it into his pants(what an obvious insinuation), and she wears leopard jacket like woman predator with a residual of vintage glamour. which actress in the 90s or 2000s could rival THAT? patricia arquette is the coolest postmodern femme fatale/phallic woman could ever be in the pinnacle of the prime stage of 1990s.

bill pullman is a mighty surprise since he was the typecasting of mr. right in those 90s chic flicks. and belthazar getty does have it-boy aura of marlon brando in "the wild one" with his leather jacket and the big harley. (david lynch must love those archetypes since the vintage hollywood hommage appears even stronger in muholland dr.) "lost highway" would probably be the best neo-noir ever made in 1990s(letting alone the tarentino jokes) as well as lynch's most contagious work so far since it has one of the best soundtrack in contemporary cinematic history when industrial rock'n'roll weds so gluingly with improvised jazz.

"the dreamers" is classic new-wave director bernardo bertolucci's smashing hit in 2004 to anchor a tribute to the ultimate flaming passion of cinema and, of course, its dreamers that could include anyone of us who dedicate ourselves in flixster for sure. but the audience has to ask himself one question: have you watched any of those movies referred within this flick as its protagonists mimc in their oblivious existence fabricated by the fragments of the cinema.

a hippie-orientated american student of tumultuous 60s, the cynic period of vietnam war, on his cinematic crusade to paris, then he meets a pair of french twins who are also movie buffs, the edgy IT type with leftist politic tendency, who worship mao's cultural revolutions, deranged with their intense daring trials of sex. so the fresh-faced young american college student falls head overs heels in love with their charismatic allure of avant-gardist thinkings as well as their provocative sensuality when he sees the twins's naked sleeping poise. they dare each other to guess scenes of movies and the loser pays the price of punishments which strays an exhibitionistic masturbation and freewheeling intercourse.

undeniably sex is a massive attraction of this movie like one quote of cinema notebook mentioned within the movie that filmmaking is an art of voyeurism, like peeping your parents have sex thru the key hole, you feel guilty but rapturously aroused, and filmmaker is like a criminal who philander the audience this forbidden desire, audience naturally takes the spot of michael pitt's coy american who covets eva green and louis garrel who shamelessly dangle their lovely youthful fleshes in front of you as if it's nothing big deal, then a phallic dream is granted as pitt's got to make love to eva green and deflower this gorgeous french apphrodite, this crazy but quirky ingenune of guileless seductiveness. which gentleman in the seat wouldn't crave for that, huh? but the sex is nothing gratuitous, it torches the supremacy of lustrous passion and tender affections, especially the scene when pitt and green embraces harshly after lovemaking, and the girl's face is smeared with tears and her own virginal blood at first time. (quite touching, indeed.) the sex looks nothing dirty but innocent like kids who toy with their newly experimented genitals.

the most interesting parts would be michael pitt's philosophical dialogues with louis garrel, the angry youth who resents his highly proper and dignified father, who despises the bourgeois hypocrisy of cold war despite he's a descendant of middle class. they debate over keaton and chaplin, and the awestruck cultural revolution and its fundamental contradictions. you see posters of chairman mao hung in garrel's bedroom and he's reading the little red book so sincerely like it's a sacred bible. garrel takes it so literily that he even goes on street with a bomb to protest against the facsist french police (as he claims) while michael pitt strives to hold their faces for a quick smack of kisses to demonstrate his notion "an orgasm is better than bomb" (this slogan appears in the t shirt pitt wears in the premiere of "dreamers" as well) just like the highly welcomed hippie's idea of "free love" in 70s america: if we make love to each other instead of using our fists, the world would be in peace forever. i suppose frenches were more militant to resort to communism and sweeping revolutions while americans were more self-indulgent with their naive hedonistic beliefs. whatever happens in the world is all silmultaneous and contagious, china of the orient was going thru cultural revolution with a little mao book while the occidental country like france had various riots to echo that. meanwhile my country, taiwan, was dozing itself with a non-existent fancy pushed by governmental proganda that chiang kai-shek could retrieve mainland china, along with his american conspirators to perform his oriental "mccarthyism", which was just like mao's cultural revolutions, had all costed more real bloodshed than the occidental side of the world.

as roger ebert remarks in his professional review of "the dreamers" that the people who really change the world are not those who watch movies but those who have money and power. "the dreamers" showcased the most fascinationg period of cinematic worship when moviegoers do have a sense of political involvement with the worldwide conditions and project a true absorption of culture to the movies they watch without discriminations like "i cannot accept silents" or "black and white screen is blurry"or "oldies are intimidatingly boring"...it was the time when filmviewing was taken very seriously like the air they inhale and breathe out...but today audience watches movies with an easy expectation to "amuse himself to death" (a pun to the book witten by neil postman), there's nothing too idealstic but simply cheap fun-seeking..i wonder whether i should rejoice over this apathy even i deeply realize that dreamers truly cannot the world. somehow, in the end, does it really matter anymore? youth is a like a budding flower of frivolity and naivete, a fair blossom of dreams and hopes, you're the most beautiful when you smile with hope or frown with purist idealism because it's a utmost expression of your non-speckled humanity.

"the loves of carmen" is rita hayworth's excerpt of sex appeal in the end of 40s. the marvellous novelty is that the music score doesn't include the cliched opera tune of carmen but a bunch of swifty catchy flamenco which rita hayworth dances feverishly along, especially in the scene of gypsy squad. hayworth sways her long skirt and you glimpse her fair lengthy legs during the vivacious choreographic sequence as if she's caught on fire, sizzling with millions watts of charisma despite she's full-clothed under the gypsy constumes without baring her crevice but the tender neckline of hers is enough to intoxicate you.

hayworth incarnates into the love godess carmen who embraces the epicureanism of ephemeral fun for life, love as you want, do whatever you want for the sake of ultimate gayety in spite of morality and commitment. supposedly, the role of carmen is a nymphamaniac tramp, but she is queen bitch who dominates men under her skirt. but hayworth's interpretation transcends her into something tinted with a oblvious naivety to a degree, a charming ingenue who disregards the consequence of her deeds but live with all her passion of life. besides hayworth's sensuality is never too blatantly exposed, considering the routines of bombshell liks monroe or bardot, the feminine accesories of hers remain concealed for most of the time except several crucial scenes her legs become the catalysis of don jose's doom. mostly she allures you with her brillaint smile and the shiny marble grin of hers. (her teeth look so incredibly beautiful indeed when she grins)...even in some scenes, rita curses, glares and spits but she would never leave you an impression of being vulgarly chessy.

don jose is played by glenn ford who is dashingly handsome to match hayworth whether ford is polished enough to be the well-bred don jose. ford does perform well as the don jose with boyish admiration for carmen, a man of pure vigor that could burn for love. the technicolor hues are cheerfully spirit-reviving that is appropriate to embellish the background of carmen's tumultuous affairs (or simply just romances. she only appears as a sporty heart-stealer, not really specifically a horny phallis-stimulater. oh. pardon.)

above all, some further notes would be the wardrobe designer jean louis and the hairstylist helen hunt who help to accomplish rita's refinded devilish allure on her gorgeous constumes and flamy wavy hair. of course, mostly the music score is worthy of applaud for composer mario castelnuovo-tedesco. and the choreographer is robert sidney who might be the hispanic male who dances with hayworth in the gypsy squad.

at the last scene, the camera angle is also well-shot with hayworth laying upon glenn ford over the stairs in distance then a black cat passes the flatform as fatalistic closure of the story.