16 May 2015

#WTW: Seven Chances

(Another mild milestone! here's the 25th #WhatThomWatched) (plus another 7 Glances...)
#WTW: Seven Chances

Seven Chances

(1925, Buster Keaton; from The Art of Buster Keaton box set, Kino)



Lots of people like their romantic comedy sappy; some prefer it a little weepy. And then there are the enlightened few who want it deadpan. And no one does deadpan better than the Great Stone Face, actor-director Buster Keaton. He is now celebrated for his annus mirabilis times ten, the decade from 1920 to 1929, during which he completed 13 features and 19 shorts under his famously tight control, and these films all together contain numerous highlights and historic scenes, gags, and shots. But only one scenario has been endlessly remade and rehashed into (inferior) comedies to this day (sometimes credited, but usually just stolen): the peerless Seven Chances. Starting with a David Belasco-produced play from 1916, Keaton came up with riffs on a basic comic idea that could only be realized in film, winding up to one of the most famous sight gags ever created.

#WTW: Seven Chances

The plot is pretty ridiculous, but Keaton’s light touch keeps it just on the right side of plausible. His character has a perfect girlfriend (Ruth Dwyer), on whom he dotes but to whom he repeatedly fails to commit. On the morning of his 27th birthday, as he and his business partner are agonizing in their office over a ruinously expensive legal issue, he’s pursued by a man who he thinks is a process server but who turns out to be the executor of his grandfather’s estate: Keaton’s business troubles are over, because he’s inheriting a fortune, seven million dollars. As long as he’s married. By 7:00 PM — on his 27th birthday, of course.
#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances


No problem — he’s got Dwyer on his line, just waiting for him to reel her in! But in a scene that is far better than the usual rom-com “misunderstanding that puts the couple at odds,” she’s turned off by his newfound urgency — or in his words, he’ll inherit the money “provided I marry some girl today” . . . oops. Despondent at the loss of his true love, he trudges back to his partner and his attorney, who then have one mission for the rest of the film: get Keaton hitched at any cost. The romance is built in to the fact that we know Keaton and Dwyer are still in love; we don’t have to see any further interaction between them. Keaton’s emotionless demeanor tells us here exactly how unenthusiastic he is at each opportunity, starting with the first set of women — all seven women that he knows at his country club and therefore can approach without a formal introduction, the “seven chances” of the title — and then continuing down an increasingly desperate search. As he runs out of the socially acceptable choices, the options (and the jokes) turn surprisingly transgressive, starting with the gorgeous woman who accosts him in the county club, asking “Would anyone marry me?” with doe-eyed innocence; as Keaton proudly walks her past all the women who rejected him, the girl’s mother shows up to scold her — she’s an underage teen who has dressed up and snuck into the club as an adult. From this narrowly avoided scandal, his choices quickly devolve as random woman after woman is approached and proves to be unsuitable; as a title card explains at the end of this sequence, Keaton approaches and is rejected by “Everything in skirts including a Scotsman.”
#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances


Meanwhile, his partner has secured a church and minister and told Keaton to be there by 5:00, promising to have a backup bride in place in case Keaton strikes out; his bright idea for this is a newspaper ad:

#WTW: Seven Chances

Of course, this leads to the last third of the movie, in which hundreds of women show up; told by the minister that they are all victims of a practical joke, they are out for Keaton’s blood and pursue him through an escalating series of gags, all based on the idea of a mob of angry women cutting a path of destruction through traditionally male groups (drivers on the streets, workers at a job site, a football game) and male authority figures (streetcar operators, a marching police squad). On the one hand, this all reads as an old sexist joke about what unmarried women are like; in contrast to the beautiful country-club women who reject him in the second act, these third-act pursuing brides tend toward the older, less-attractive “battleaxe” stereotype (abetted by the fact that many of them are certainly played by male extras in drag). But, at the same time, the women are shown to be an unstoppable force, literally tossing man after man out of the way; en masse, women have the power and will to upend society itself, working together across generations and even races (more on that below). Along with Dwyer and Dwyer’s mother, who quickly realize that Keaton is just being a ninny and work to patch things up (money or no money), women in this story repeatedly come out ahead. 

#WTW: Seven Chances


#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances


In addition to Keaton’s expected mechanical stunts there are several surprising and wonderful directorial choices here; later in the film there will be moving vehicles galore, but early on a couple of car trips are handled by Keaton climbing into a parked car, sitting immobile while the surroundings dissolve to the destination, and climbing out. Not only does this economize and focus the storytelling, it hints to the audience that they’ll have to wait for the inevitable vehicular mayhem to come. There’s great use of a moving camera that follows Keaton in his quest, eventually representing the increasingly large mob that’s stalking him. The script also has impressively mature touches, probably from the original source play; as Keaton checks his pockets in the church to make sure he’s got everything, he pulls out a bouquet, the ring, a marriage license, honeymoon tickets to Niagara Falls — and then tickets to Reno, which he puts away in an inside pocket; Reno was the divorce capital of the country at the time, with the shortest residency requirements. There’s no question that Keaton’s character has no illusions about marrying for love.

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances


Reminds me of:

All of those smart, liberated women at the country club have flapper-style bob haircuts, and some of them seem to be specifically channeling Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box — but a quick check shows that this can’t be the case; Brooks had not yet broken out in 1925. Yet multiple women including the receptionist (“Miss Smith”) and some of the “chances” have the jet-black flapper bob. The ubiquity of short hair is more likely due to Colleen Moore (Flaming Youth was released in 1923) or Olive Thomas (The Flapper and others from the early 1920’s); Clara Bow is also famous for the bob and had appeared on-screen many times by 1925, but her short hair was curly (and Irene Castle, who literally invented the “Castle bob,” also had curly hair). The heroine, Dwyer, has a curly bob too. (Speaking of fashion, I may as well note here the book that Miss Smith is reading; it’s Elinor Glyn’s Three Weeks, the trashy (and hugely popular) sex novel of the day, which had been made into a movie just the year before.)

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances


So, spoiler alert if you somehow didn’t know — the genius finale that Keaton came up with (and the thing that finally scares off the pursuing mob) is an avalanche of increasingly larger rocks that his character inadvertently sets off. The sequence is hysterical and still amazing to watch; even knowing that those are prop rocks, not really as heavy as they look, their scale to Keaton is startling. I don’t know for sure but I can’t imagine that Spielberg and Lucas weren’t paying homage when they came up with the rock bit for the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And yeah, Spielberg’s (single) rock is bigger, but Keaton’s free-fall down a slope with hundreds of rocks is still a more impressive accomplishment overall.
#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances



The mass of brides running, running, inexorably running in pursuit — sometimes suddenly joined by another mass from the side, unexpectedly — is certainly reminiscent of a horror-movie situation. Back when zombies were slow, up to and including the George Romero era, this wouldn’t have been as visually obvious. But now that “fast zombies” have arrived, the brides could easily compete as nightmare fuel.
#WTW: Seven Chances



My favorite Charlie Chaplin gag of all time is also a “stone face” bit — in one of his pre-Tramp shorts (The Idle Class), he’s a callous rich man; receiving shocking news in a note, he turns his back to the camera and begins to rack with sobs . . . until he turns and reveals that he’s really just been shaking a cocktail, with no expression on his face at all. I love deadpan.
#WTW: Seven Chances


But then — the guilt!

Keaton’s great movies of the 1920s have racist jokes about African-Americans and others, including (as with Dwyer’s servant, here, who is tasked with delivering an important note) actors in blackface. There’s no excusing this now and the blackface isn’t funny, no matter what the intentions were back then. If you are willing to look closely, there’s at least some evidence that Keaton was more progressive than some of his peers (albeit not progressive enough to stay completely away from blackface). There are at least three other roles for African-Americans in the film, one in each section: a well-dressed man at the club who opens a door and steps in front of Keaton just as he’s looking in a mirror; a woman he approaches on the street thinking to propose to her; and one of the many women in the church who accost him when they think they’ve been tricked (in her case she works with a white woman to pummel Keaton); all three of these appear to be played by black actors and not whites in blackface. In a movie from a later time, we wouldn’t think twice about a handful of what are essentially black extras (other than to perhaps note how few there are). But if you compare these four black characters, the only one who is cruelly satirized with the nasty stereotypes is the blackface actor; it’s almost as if the movie is saying that for the joke to be funny, a white guy has to be the buffoon, but when we’re meant to see a black person as real, a black actor will play him. That’s especially the case in the country club scene: It’s odd to see a black person there at all, unless he were to be costumed as wait staff; instead, everyone in the club including the waiters are white, and this gentleman is dressed exactly like Keaton — I’m not sure how that looked in 1925, but watching it today the thought is that this is just another member of the local high society. All this aside — regardless of Keaton’s intentions at the time — it’s still the case that these jokes don’t work today; thinking you’ve “turned black” in a mirror is not a cause for panic, and nor is the idea of wooing or marrying a black woman. There’s a similarly gentle-but-not-funny joke with Keaton approaching a woman who turns out to be Jewish (revealed when her newspaper is in Hebrew).
#WTW: Seven Chances (NOTE: NOT acceptable!!)

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances


The music for this 2001 Kino release is by the great Robert Israel, ubiquitous across countless DVD and Blu-Ray releases of classic silents. I like Robert Israel’s music, of course. But . . . as I watched Seven Chances, I started to imagine it with a much more serious, sinister soundtrack, especially during the escalating chase sequence. Keaton’s social failures could take on a far more cynical and sour tone, and the gathering storm of brides could be scored as a horror show; I think the visuals in each case would work perfectly well. In fact the church scene has a lot in common with The Birds: Keaton’s character, unsuspecting, is asleep in the first pew when a single woman drifts into the church and sits at the very back. Then three more women float in; they glare at each other. Then we see a streetcar disgorge twelve women who all arrive in a group. Then from a shot outside the church we see streams of women begin to descend upon the church from every direction . . . .

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

#WTW: Seven Chances

I should make my whole family and everyone I know watch this every year, yet I never have. I was laughing so hard just while trying to take the screencaps that I was crying.

#WTW: Seven Chances

Pitch:

There’s a scene with Keaton in a car, trying to propose to a woman in the next lane over, that simply had to inspire my all-time-favorite Chuck Jones Roadrunner gag. Its timing is perfection. If you don’t laugh so hard that you are crying, your soul is clearly dead — or maybe you’re just in training to be the next Great Stone Face yourself.




<< The Pit and the Pendulum (-) Coming soon: Whiplash >>

02 May 2015

#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

(Boo! It's #WhatThomWatched #24....)

#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

The Pit and the Pendulum

(1961, Roger Corman; from The Vincent Price Collection, Shout! Factory disk set)


From Brian De Palma’s horror-movie homage to the real thing: The Pit and the Pendulum*, a prime entry in the Vincent Price/Roger Corman series of collaborations based on Edgar Allan Poe stories and themes. In addition to being the films that really put Price on the map, these are often cited as the best examples of how Corman’s low-budget, streamlined-process filmmaking could turn out gorgeous and even groundbreaking results: he knows where to put the money (scripts by Richard Matheson and other top talents, a couple of eye-popping setpieces) and where it can be saved (very limited sets and little-to-no location shooting, public domain stories, costumes and props recycled from other films). The only other key thing he needed was a troupe of actors who knew how to commit 100% no matter what the premise. Price can be accused of hammy overacting, but that’s what works for these scripts, and no one did it better.

#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

As with the other Poe films by Corman, the script takes its title and one act (the final section) from the short story and fills out a full-length movie by inventing story elements that are Poe-esque. Here, John Kerr travels from England to the castle of his brother-in-law in 16th-century Spain to investigate the reported death of his sister (Barbara Steele) six months earlier. There he meets the tightly-wound Price, his sister’s widower; Price’s younger sister (Luana Anders); and the family physician (Antony Carbone). Kerr pushes and pries for details, eventually getting the story out of the Spaniards: rather than the “rare blood disease” cover story the household has been telling, Steele had been going crazy — becoming obsessed with the castle’s collection of Inquisition-era torture devices — and eventually locked herself in an iron maiden, literally (per her husband’s reluctant retelling and Carbone’s confirmation) dying of fright. Furthermore, as Anders reveals to Kerr (who doesn’t buy this whole story but sticks around to investigate), there’s a whole back-story to poor Price’s jumpiness; when he was a child living in the same castle, he happened to witness the death of his mother and her lover at the vengeful hands of his inquisitor father (also played by Price). Therefore the latter-day Price is a nervous wreck, terrified by his own house and the memories that live there. The screw is turned another notch when Kerr demands to see his sister’s remains; as he and Carbone disinter Steele’s corpse, Price protests that it was Steele’s worst fear to be sealed in a casket alive . . . . of course, in her absence, this fear has been transferred to her doting husband, and when her (his!) nightmare scenario is confirmed, it’s time for Price to go over the edge. (Which, needless to say, is what we as the audience have been waiting for.) 

#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

Plenty of critics (many contemporary to the film; fewer but still some today) accuse Price of scenery-chewing here, but whatever you may say about Price and his acting style, it’s undeniable that he can convey internal states using his face and eyes and with his body and carriage. Here he gets to play a completely corrupted evil guy, a kind and even likable good guy, and finally that same good guy driven utterly insane, and you can tell that last just from his childlike expression of confusion:
#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

Note that all of this has very little connection to the source story. The original is tied to the Spanish Inquisition, but anachronistically takes place a couple hundred years after its heyday, while the film is more realistically set during it. Poe’s story is primarily a first-person account of torture, with a bizarre and inexplicable device (a room with a descending blade, a bottomless pit, and walls that can both push inward and become red-hot) and unseen torturers with unknowable motivations; it creates pure terror in the reader, nothing more or less. The film takes the Spanish setting and the idea of a descending, swinging razor blade (centered in a pit), but then has to build the rest of the story around it. Matheson chooses Gothic themes that are very common to Poe’s work: premature burial, grief over the death of a beloved woman, generations doomed to repeat tragedies, and inevitable descent into madness. There’s no supernatural theme in this one; the horrors of the torture implements in the mansion and the Inquisition in general seem to hang over everything, but there’s no literal ghost or spirit. All told, other than a very credulous reliance on nose-on-the-face Freudianism (apparently a common Corman trope), this plot is relatively “realistic” — for a Price horror role, anyway. (All eight Corman “Poe movies” similarly spin out loosely from their source material; some are better efforts than others, but they all use the talents of either Matheson or another Twilight Zone stalwart, Charles Beaumont, with only one exception — and that one (The Tomb of Ligeia) was written by Robert Towne!)

#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum


Reminds me of:

Anthology television shows from the same decade like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, many episodes of which also are set-bound and tend to use simple/recycled props and set dressing. This works particularly well for the small screen; it forces the viewer to pay attention to the story and acting, not to spectacle. As with Corman, Rod Serling and the other producers of these shows knew where to spend their money; Twilight Zone for example shot most of their episodes on film even as they worked around many standing sets and other less expensive locations, creating a high-quality look that stands up today despite the fact that there are few custom setpieces. And speaking of these shows, it’s easy to look at the mysteriously slashed portrait of Steele and think of Serling’s 1970’s horror anthology Night Gallery.
#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

The movie opens with an abstract scene of swirling oil colors, now somewhat of a 1960’s cliché given the heavy use of similar effects in later “groovy” visuals, often coupled with psychedelic music. But it’s easy to imagine that in 1961 this opening was an excellent lead-in for the weird, non-specific dream landscape of the film including Kerr arriving on a desolate and unpopulated landscape, staring out at the mansion perched on the edge of a cliff. (Non-objective color fields aren’t completely out of use, either — P. T. Anderson uses color fields by the artist Jeremy Blake to open and set off sections of Punch-Drunk Love, for example.)
#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

#WTW: The Pit and the Pendulum

Speaking of color — of course this and the other Corman Poe movies have riotously rich color in many scenes (I’m looking forward to watching The Masque of the Red Death in particular on that score) . . . but here we also have the flashback sequence, which is shot black-and-white and then processed into a rich blue and/or red (and filtered, and distorted). This is nothing new as an emotional elevation technique but I’m reminded most recently of Youth of the Beast and the black-and-white-to-color games that Suzuki plays there.




But then — the guilt!

Horror film experts have so much experience with these films and can cite myriad ways that this and other Corman movies influenced later productions, especially Italian giallo films and British gothics from Hammer Films. I am so far behind that I’ll never catch up — horror is just not my main bag. That said, this is just the first Vincent Price movie I’m watching out of the two Shout! Factory box sets I’ve got (plus The Fly, plus Shout! has announced an upcoming third Price box), not to mention the rest of the Val Lewton box . . . this all amounts to a mere fraction of the genre but it’ll keep me busy for a while.

Pitch:

Stephen King has cited the first big shock scare in Pit as “the most important moment in the post-1960 horror film,” which is a darn-near impeccable recommendation for anyone interested in horror history. For me, it’s my first time to really watch actress Barbara Steele in action after years of reading reverent tributes to her in my “weird movie” books, and she’s as amazing as advertised. Her first moment of reversal — where her true nature is revealed — is chilling, and played far more naturalistically than Price (as good as he is here).



* The actual title of the film is unclear; all of the promotional materials for the film call it The Pit and the Pendulum, but the on-screen title card (which many reference sources, IMDb included, take as the correct name for a work)
leaves off the “The” — Pit and the Pendulum.