Not Over the Hiller

For an actress who was the pet of the densely linguistic George Bernard Shaw, Wendy Hiller was a remarkably physical actress. At least, that's what my notes are overflowing with - bullet points about how she holds herself, or moves, or doesn't. But this physicality is never at odds with Shaw's politically and socially pointed scripts, because Hiller's movements and vivid expressions are all in service of corroborating the words her character's speak, and how she delivers them. Throughout the highlights of Hiller's limited film career, this approach has its successes and it has its limitations. In the first two films that brought her Oscar nominations, separated by a clean twenty years, we can see a remarkable progression.

Pygmalion, the film that brought Hiller to global attention, casts her as Eliza Doolittle, a rather mangled posy seller who crouches on the streets and speaks out of the side of her mouth, missing out half of her letters. As becomes even clearer having watched the second Shaw-Hiller cinematic adaptation, Major Barbara, Hiller's natural mode is the creature Eliza is transformed into by Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard, whose brisk, emphatic style nails Higgins' scholarly fascination), rather than the bedraggled creature we meet initially. Indeed, the mode of Hiller's most famous characters is exactly this sort of poised but earthy character, one whose control is constantly poised, never quite a facade but certainly a conscious effort. When strong emotions really get to her, Hiller's change in body is always noticeable, even if her characters quickly gather themselves back to their smooth gait and implacable stare.

The clean structural arc familiar both in Pygmalion and its musical adaptation My Fair Lady, exposes Hiller's approach so thoroughly and openly that, to some extent, it gave away too much. Her Eliza Doolittle is a very accomplished technical accomplishment, carefully charting the physical education that less prolifically accompanies Higgins' vocal teachings. She progresses from a duckish walk and an unbecoming thrust forward when she speaks to a poised, straight posture and cleanly rounded vowels, taking in along the way a deliciously exaggerated sequence where Higgins takes her to tea with his mother. She performs her learning with robotic, stilted speech, sucking in her cheeks so the words seem to pop out of her mouth.

But Hiller rarely seems able to anchor this technique into a vibrant emotional experience of Eliza's journey (something Audrey Hepburn also suffered from years later), almost always seeming conscious of technique first and feeling second. To a certain extent, this makes narrative sense, reflecting Eliza's focus and dedication on improving herself. There is marvel in the scene where Eliza rails against Henry and comes to the realisation that her mode of expression has irrevocably changed - her "No! No. Thank you.", in one brief moment, charts this epiphany, a sharp rejection giving way to a sad, muted nicety, the choked sound of her "no"s one of the most peculiarly heartbreaking moments I've ever seen.

More often, sadly, Hiller gets trapped in theatric precision, the flight of any emotions betraying a long-limbed bodiliness that makes sense for neither cockney Eliza nor the newly cultured one, and her face restrained to a limited amount of expression that seem mostly to involve the shape of her eyebrows. These features hamper Major Barbara more (at least when her titular character is allowed control of the narrative, which wanders all over), where she's stuck in business mode, only occasionally pricking her smooth voicework despite different attitudes to the diverse characters around her, hitting emotional notes with completely inexplicable reactions, and seeming to forget to act at all when the camera isn't focusing on her.

Fastforward to 1958 and Hiller's victory in AMPAS' Best Supporting Actress category for her work as Bournemouth hotel owner Pat Cooper in Separate Tables. Though the film's split focus on a a sour David Niven being lusted after by a jittering Deborah Kerr, and a taunting Rita Hayworth bothering Burt Lancaster pays very few dividends, Hiller quietly brushes through the crowd to a worthy performance. Pat has Hiller's familiar smooth walk - carefully closing swinging doors behind her - and implacable orderliness, but it cracks sooner, and so Hiller can't try to build Pat through the same bag of techniques. And how, when it cracks! Taking aside John (Lancaster), it quickly becomes apparent that he and Pat are involved in a relationship, because Hiller suddenly gets to play sexy, and suddenly her sharp face softens in coy, cowed lust, her body undulating as she uncrosses her arms and leans towards him.

The mark of twenty years is remarkable - Hiller has moved forward with the shifting acting styles of the time, and none of her physicality is exaggerated as it once was. Pat's horniness burns off the screen, but rather than forced by sharp gestures, it exudes from Hiller's small adjustments - breasts sticking forward just a little, eyes fixed but slightly drawn back. The sex folds back into her as Pat recognises the boundaries of propriety, but Hiller makes it clear that Pat's reticence isn't due to any shame, but self-respect. Pat shifts from a surprisingly desperate plea to John into ordinary hotel business with natural ease, because Pat, and Hiller too, are experienced enough at this stage of their lives to understand the shape of their emotions. Her physicality separates the different parts of her life while seeming unconscious - her more controlled body while around the hotel guests speaks more of her general disinterest in them, not allowing them views of sadness that her body betrays when alone. You finally understand how she is the centre of a misshapen bunch of people when she gives a little worldly smile at Niven's dramatic suggestion of suicide - Pat's assessment of his situation takes on a kind, non-judgemental mood in Hiller's imploring reading. She convinces as caretaker and as woman without ever denigrating the other side of her character.

A third and final Oscar nomination followed for Hiller in 1966, with a supporting role as Thomas More's wife Alice in A Man For All Seasons - the period film a more traditional source of awards attention for British cinema than the contemporary films Hiller made her rare camera excursions for. Her tendency towards emotional compartmentalisation perhaps more sense in a historical context, and you certainly can't imagine Hiller being greatly successful in today's landscape, and not merely because roles relying so heavily on the face are so few and far between. But her linguistic alertness and her angular features make Hiller's legacy bigger than merely the first Elisa Doolittle of the silver screen. If nothing else, that surprising but deserved Oscar win will keep her as a stop on any obsessive's tour of the past, and maybe, like me, they'll stay longer than expected.

Freaks in Love

Let's get this out of the way. There's only one reason people see Freaks these days. Here it is.

Scientists and I are still baffled as to how this is realistically possible, but look at that jacket! Quite swank for a duck-lady, I think you'll agree.

I'd seen Freaks a few years ago and somehow managed to forget this deliciously insane revelation, so I do admit, I rolled up for a packed screening in the centre of London with slightly embarrassed anticipation at the madness I'd blanked on. What I recalled from my first viewing was a rather frightening climax where the freaks move like terminators through sticky midnight mud, preceded by the most boring and stilted machinations concerning circus freaks that had ever been filmed.

But lo! What I found on second viewing were the most stilted machinations concerning circus freaks ever filmed, that somehow had a tragic romance at its heart. Real-life husband and wife Harry and Daisy Earles bagged the plum roles here, as Hans, the rich midget taken in by eventual duck-lady Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), and his girlfriend Freida, powerless to prevent that gold-digging whore!! from stealing her man. Despite the awkward, halting manner in which the pair deliver their dialogue, there is something affecting in their performances, particularly Daisy's. As Freida becomes increasingly forgotten by Hans, the faltering speech even adds to the devastation she feels and that we feel for her.

Mostly, though, it's in the facial expressions. Harry Earles is certainly expressive - watch as he mimicks Cleopatra's sycophantic pretence - but the emotional power of Freaks is almost entirely in Daisy Earles' melancholy faces. Observe.

I think this unexpectedly beautiful shot telegraphs the tenderly tragic, and surprisingly straight, romance at the film's core, though.

Although if you've not seen the film, that probably just looks like two people facing away from the camera. AMATEURS.

P.S. Of course, none of this is as wonderfully 'hilare' as the scene where the suitors of the Siamese twins discuss how they should visit each other sometime. Just imagine the sexual intercourse.

Romance Isn't Sacred

Nothing Sacred is an odd film. Although it's not particularly unusual for a pre-1940s film to be as short as this - a spry 77 minutes - there's a strong feeling that things have been cut out here, whether that's actually the case or not. It's more a satire than a screwball, and the odd moments don't feel intentionally kooky and offbeat, merely mysterious, like a character used as a plot device at the film's start suddenly reappearing to be a plot device in a completely different place. Strangely, given the script by Ben Hecht, one of Hollywood's great screenwriters, and the charismatic leads Carole Lombard and Fredric March, it takes until the final scenes to reach the expected plane of hilarity, though it's never less than watch-able thanks to the mere presence of Lombard and March, sparkling individually as ever even as their pairing seems underdeveloped. Similarly, there's some punch in the idea of the city taking in the fradulent Lombard as their dying heroine, but it never lands the blow. As it is, this all feels a little rough around the edges, but it makes for an interesting curio rather than something that might just have faded into obscurity. In particular, there's a few strikingly diffident shot choices.

As March's Wally Cook invites Lombard's Hazel Flagg to New York, making her keep the truth about her (lack of) illness a secret, they walk under a tree and proceed to have a large part of their conversation hidden by a branch. It's so outrageously noticeable, and director William A. Wellman even emphasizes it by giving them a mere one second on the other side of the branch.

Later, Wellman makes a similar, and more crucial, choice. This is the scene of Wally and Hazel's first kiss, in most movies, the 'money shot' of sorts, but here it's hidden inside a wooden crate! The expected, if sudden moment of only hearing the kiss keeps the scene in the realms of humour rather than straight romance, as we imagine what Lombard's shocked little noise might look like. It makes it a little more erotic, illicit, but also more sardonic - tradition romantic union is eschewed by covering both possible directions.

The camera then pans around the box, with the expectation that we'll land on the traditional mid-shot of the clandestine pair. Only we get there, and there are planks in our way. Their conversation, and their kisses, are still hidden in shadow. Throughout, Nothing Sacred deliberately shys away from indulging in a properly romantic plot, from the possibility of a delirious reunion kiss in the frenetic boxing climax - the scene cuts instead - to the coda, where the plot necessitates them being hidden by both costume and shadow. And even then, with the pair alone, together, in love, romance capitulates to a completely bizarre comedic ending. Is nothing sacred?

Treading Gingerly

It's perhaps fitting that when I eventually saw Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' final film together, The Barkleys of Broadway, it was separated from my viewings of their previous films by at least two years, since in a vague way that apes the ten-year gap there was between 1939's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and this final pairing, which occured when Judy Garland (who had already partnered Astaire in Easter Parade) had to drop out (though she apparently showed up on set repeatedly to make things difficult for Rogers). It's somehow not really a surprise that this is one of the weakest offerings from the legendary partnership- the most magical moment comes in a retread of Shall We Dance's 'They Can't Take That Away From Me', where everyone involved seems to acknowledge that Barkleys is a film clutching hopelessly to an unreachable past. There is no new ground to tread here, simply a brief reunion of faded magic.

I'm always someone who's been far more interested in actresses than actors, and even if Fred Astaire is a rather brilliant man, I'm concerned about the treatment of Ginger Rogers in these movies. The plot of The Barkleys of Broadway is, rather obviously, referencing the desire Ginger had to be a 'serious actress', which one suspects is partly what lead to the break-up of their partnership at the end of 1930s. The cycle of their movies in the 1930s sees a gradual move towards more equality in the partnership, and with that more weight, more drama in the romantic plotlines. Swing Time marked the first time their love wasn't sealed with a romantic dance- 'Waltz in Swing Time' ends with Ginger spinning off and Fred gesturing sadly after her, and the reunion is instead sealed afterwards, proving Ginger can no longer be so easily won. As the partnership wound down, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle had them already married, already stable, already equal.

Ginger doubtful; Ginger convinced

The Barkleys of Broadway, though, undoes the good work that the previous film did in sending Astaire and Rogers off in a pleasant fashion. For whatever reason, Ginger seems all too happy to mock her former serious self, and finally to accept the idea that Astaire really is her "Svengali". She is the one who has to be dragged onto the stage for the estranged pairing's reunion dance at a charity event- and is visually convinced during said dance to 'They Can't Take That Away From Me', even if she still leaves afterward. It is still Ginger who must realise her mistake and come back to Astaire, back to musical comedy, and leave her own aspirations behind, by convincing herself that those no longer are her aspirations. She cannot even be an actress without her "Svengali"- who pretends to be her French director (Jacques Francois) in order to boost her confidence and perform well.

In essence, during The Barkleys of Broadway, Ginger comes to believe that she is nothing without Fred, that it is to him she owes her career. While it's true that her post-Fred career never really took off, despite winning the Oscar for Kitty Foyle in 1940, is it not a bit much to say that Fred could have stood without Ginger? Who can say if he would have become the star he did without Ginger as his partner? There's no question he was the better dancer, but would their films have been as good an escape from the Great Depression if Ginger hadn't been there as a tough cookie counterpart, a twirling dervish of a dress-wearer? Astaire stayed where he knew he could succeed. But Ginger tried. Trying to be a 'serious' actress isn't necessarily better than being a dancer or a comedienne, but she stretched her legs, she ventured into the unknown, she had a go. And it's a shame she's not more celebrated for it.

Um... Did You Save The Receipt?

It's A Gift is possibly the most unamusing comedy I ever did see. Moreover, it's completely uninteresting.

It's not even as if it's particularly offensive (although it is deeply misogynistic, but in a way that doesn't rile you up but more puts you into a coma; if such a thing seems impossible to you, you evidently haven't seen this). It's just dead. W.C. Fields, while not held up as a Chaplin or a Keaton, is still fairly well respected today, but on the basis of this I have no idea why. I know the film is simply built around comic setpieces for Fields to show off in, but for me to laugh at something that is riffing off a realistic situation, I need to believe the validity of the situation we're given. And since Fields is generally not depicted as a complete idiot (he generally seems to be ahead of the game, but just a victim of other's stupidity), I find it hard to believe he'd be so stubborn as to risk cutting his throat just because his daughter was using the bathroom mirror. Either WAIT, or ask the girl to MOVE. Don't position yourself on the back of a chair so that you almost fall on top of your blade.

And don't even get me started on the coconut that is actually a cannon ball.

I am not against old comedies. On the contrary, I find Chaplin and Keaton and the Marx Brothers and especially '30s screwball to be an utter delight and a welcome respite from what the Hollywood mainstream of today generally serves up for our delectation. (And now I sound like a snob. Hurrah.) But W.C. Fields- at least as far as It's A Gift demonstrates- is NOT funny. He's just a boorish fool who somehow ended up married to the 1930s American incarnation of Hyacinth Bucket (that's prounced Boo-Kay).

The thing is, really, that I see none of the virtuosity in Fields that his contemporaries- those aforementioned- demonstrate, either verbally or physically. (Supposedly he was a fantastic juggler. But he didn't juggle in this film. Not even with the coconut.) But compare to the Chaplin film I saw last week- The Rink- and we see Chaplin charm us with his (silent) chuckling and his rising hat effect, and wow us with his skating virtuosity. (I haven't even mentioned the way he walks. Like a penguin. I love it.) Buster Keaton takes my breath away with his dangerous stunts on the train track in The General. Groucho Marx (and sometimes Chico and Harpo too) has me on the floor with laughter with his wisecracking, clever gags. And Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn run around with a leopard and walk on the side of imaginary hills and I doubt anything can ever make me laugh as much as I am at that moment.

But all I got from Fields was him yelling at a blind man, trying to kill himself as he shaved, trying (and failing) to sleep at 5:00 in the morning (in the only neighbourhood that has a girl who is sent out to the shops at that time of day), and waving a pillow vaguely at a dog. (See? He can't even do that properly.)

And, after all that, he ends up a rich bugger relaxing on the sunny veranda of his orange grove. Life just isn't fair.

Why You Can't Take It With You Sums Up Everything That Was Good About 1930s Hollywood While Also Managing To Be Distinctly Mediocre

I think the title hints what this post is about.

Alright. I'll fess up. I only put You Can't Take It With You at the top of my rental queue because it's one half of the next episode of the holy trifecta's Best Picture thingamawhatsit. (For what it's worth, Titanic is as bewitching as it ever was.) The inhumanly perfect pairing of Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart should have been enough to drive me to rob a DVD shop at gunpoint for a chance to watch it, and yet somehow, by perverse logic, the fact of it's being a winner of Oscar's top prize tainted it's appeal. (Like: if they like it, it can't be good enough. And yet I must see it because I am under their foolish thumb.)

Turns out, naturally, that I was quite correct. You Can't Take It With You, apart from having an irritatingly long and un-shortenable title, is basically the manic screwball comedies that I adore so much, but diluted with the infamous corn of Capra. If making films was a culinary art (and you know you wish it were), then here we have at the helm a chef who got noticed for his originality but has landed a boss who is terrified of bad press. 'Play it safe, lad,' he says, and so our precocious young cook looks down at his delicious concution and sadly pours in Capra's Creamed CornTM into his pot. Stir, and voila! You have crazy that Oscar can adore without having to laugh too much. God forbid people think the golden man's got a funny bone.

You can't contain the crazy. But you can put a sign that says 'Home Sweet Home' on it's front door and pet it gently. They may end up in a jail (like all the best and worst screwballs do), but this is a jail with 'ladies of the night' and scruffy homeless people, who certainly aren't there to be laughed at (you'll find no leopards here). You can mute the absurdity by throwing such disparate elements as dancer Ann Miller and wizened straight-face Lionel Barrymore into the same melting pot, but they doesn't mean they make a family. You can't present the ultimate kooky family as if it's normal and teach us moral lessons about the world at the same time: it's our world, or yours. Choose.

In the end, it's the cast that defines this film, in terms of how good they are at salvaging its worst moments, but also in how their disparate personaes represent the confusing mess that this film emerges as. Jimmy Stewart was to become the poster-boy for Capra's social concerns. Jean Arthur is the wiseacre of 40s social comedies. Lionel Barrymore is like a relic of the stage, gentle and loveable, sitting in the corner as a marker of prestige. Ann Miller is like a moth (a musical moth) that sneaked into a house and is fluttering to get out before someone squashes her for flying into their face. Spring Byington is the fluff that tickles Oscar's ear and makes him melt inside. Mischa Auer is the marker for xenophobic hilarity. And Edward Arnold... well, he's the cream of Capra's corn. You Can't Take It With You is that most frustrating of films: the film that isn't quite sure what it wants to be, and so tries to be them all. (Much like this highly schizophrenic post.) B-

Romeo, Romeo... thou art not Romeo!

Why is it so much easier to believe that Norma Shearer is a teenager...

... than it is to believe the same thing of Leslie Howard?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't think I believed for a minute that Norma Shearer was actually thirteen, or even twenty, but the whole idea of casting a 43 year-old (Howard) and a 34 year-old (Shearer) as two characters who are supposed to be at least twenty years younger than they actually are is deliriously absurd, and I'm not sure if you were ever expected to believe it. But I think my problem with Howard lies elsewhere: he's just not a convincing romantic lead. I've yet to see Pygmalion, but basing expectations on the Rex Harrison of My Fair Lady, that seems like a role Howard would fit: literate, upper class, refined, slightly reedy. He worked in Of Human Bondage because the entire point is that Bette Davis is just using him. But as a straight, supposedly handsome young man, he just can't work. At least parts of Norma Shearer's almost painful attempts to look naive and innocent work; her face is smooth and fresh enough that she occasionally charms you into submission, even if she can't really work the Shakespearean dialogue. But she's probably the best thing this film has to offer, unless watching Edna May Oliver chew ferociously on every single thing she says is your cup of tea; personally, it got old fast. I think I'll stick to the Baz Luhrmann version.