A few years ago, I was told by someone who studies film history that The Thing from Another World (1951) was a right-wing film about the Communist menace. It stood out as a right-wing film because the scientists in the film are weak and untrustworthy, unlike scientists in left-wing 1950's sci-fi who usually try (and often succeed) to save the world.
That's one valid reading. However, I think there is a stronger reading than this. A few things stood out for me when I watched this film for the first time a week ago.
The movie is about intrepid air force Captain Pat Hendry. He is called with his loyal men to a remote scientific base in North Alaska after they discover a mysterious aircraft (an unidentified flying object, if you will) crashed in the ice. It is occupied by an eight foot tall humanlike creature entombed in a block of ice for easy transportation. They bring the creature back to the base where it thaws out (thanks to an unthinking airman and an electric blanket - D'OH!) and proceeds to make life miserable for everyone since it is a blood-drinking vegetable. I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that ingenuity saves the day. This is a 50's sci-fi/horror flick, after all. Ambiguous endings were a no-no.
The first thing I noticed about the film was that the Soviets weren't mentioned, or if they were, I blinked and missed it. There was no sense that the fallen spaceship was from the Ruskies, or that there was a risk they might acquire it, or even that there was a place called the Soviet Union where they practiced Communism. The Thing is not the only science fiction film to fail to mention the enemy of freedom-lovers of the day. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) similarly does not mention the Soviet Union and many would agree that movie is singularly about the Communist menace. But it's hard to imagine a so-called right-wing film of the 50's passing up an opportunity to denounce their favourite bugbear.
Interestingly enough, you could get a better anti-Communist reading from the film's remake. John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) has the same plant monster, however this one changes shape to resemble its prey. This leads to many 'who is the enemy' moments which recalls the paranoia that infused Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But there is no such confusion in Christian Nyby/Howard Hawks's Thing. We know who the enemy is for the entire movie.
(It's a dumb enemy at that. This thing invented a spaceship and presumably faster-than-light travel and when it gets to Earth its idea of military strategy is to lurch around and swat people with a giant paw? Huh?)
One of the great causes of social anxiety during the Cold War was the threat of nuclear war. This manifested itself in many films, possibly most famously in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). This anxiety is probably the reason more than anything that we see the untrustworthy scientist in The Thing. Dr Carrington seems unable to realise that the creature is a deadly threat and wants to study and communicate with it even if it risks the lives of everyone at the base. He secretly tries to grow more Things using blood packs to satiate his curiosity, even though it's obvious that doing so means more literally blood-thirsty monsters running around to assail Our Heroes.
Obviously Dr Carrington can't be trusted. But he is only one scientist on the base. Others disagree with his actions, and the root of their disagreement is on the basic merits of Carrington's argument. Uhm, hello? This thing is trying to slaughter us like sheep? Stuff science. No rousing speech or admonishments from Our Hero is required to change their minds. They independently recognise that Carrington's course is reckless and wrong. If the definition of a right-wing 1950's sci-fi film is that the scientists are untrustworthy, The Thing fails in this regard.
The manner of the air force pilots is peculiar, especially to a modern viewer so used to the rabid jingoism of the right-wing elements of America. They treat their Captain quite casually, never saluting him. In fact, they usually don't even refer to his rank, often they simply call him 'Pat'. Considering the right's fetishization of the military, especially during the Cold War, it is difficult to imagine that a film could be considered right-wing with such disregard for military tradition.
If the film isn't a right-wing parable about the Cold War, what is it? (Other than a movie about monsters tearing up the place - film students aren't allowed to state the obvious) One of the striking themes of the film is the general rejection of authority and bureaucracy. One of the pilots dryly comments, "(the air force will) Probably make you a general for destroying evidence that they are wrong." One of the tensions of the film is that the heroes cannot take the right action because it will bring them into conflict with their faceless superiors.
It seems that the gripe about science goes along similar lines. The problem isn't scientists - they can be good or bad just like anyone else. The problem occurs when a pedantic adherence to some authoritarian notion of scientific progress is slavishly enacted.
One of the most interesting moments in the film happens when the love interest, Nikki (who incidentally is a character full of sass and independence that I can't fathom having a place in a right-wing 50's film) plays with Pat. She ties him up, forces him to drink, and ignores his pleas to be untied. For a moment we see a complete reversal of traditional 50's male/female relationships. What is striking about this scene is that it doesn't seem to be a facile comment about women tying men down. Instead it seems to ironically be a moment of freedom, the couple playing like children with carefree abandon.
So it seems that this film, more than a comment on the Cold War, is a piece about individual freedom versus stale conformity. This is hardly a radical reading of the film: the same themes abound in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Thing only predates The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by five years. Carrington idolises the monster because it feels "No pleasure or pain. No heart. Superior in every way." This mirrors the fears in the post-war period of conformity stifling the American soul, a fear that would lead the the breakout of cultural rebellion in the 60's. The enemy of The Thing isn't Communism, it's the death of freedom.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Touch of Evil
I'm going to review this without reading anything by other critics or academics who've had anything to say on the film. I heard David and Margaret say that the beginning of the film has an amazing single-take, but that's it.
The reason is quite simple: Everything has been said about Orson Welles, it's like trying to review Alfred Hitchcock. It is off-putting, to say the least, to write something knowing for a fact it's already been written dozens of times before. At least this way I can pretend my words are fresh, an enjoyable illusion.
One of the interesting things about Hollywood in the 50's is that a-list films often only showed the glitzy, glamorous face of the US. To get grime, you had to look to b-list films, usually involving Roger Corman. There were exceptions, one that immediately springs to mind is Blackboard Jungle (1955). But usually, even when dealing with crime, there was a certain shine to the seediness.
Touch of Evil (1958) is not such a movie. It is steeped in filth. One memorable scene has a man washing blood off his hands in putrid water. It seems to sum up one of the main themes of the movie, the omnipresence of corruption.
Corruption is personified in the character of the detective Quinlan (Orson Welles). He is morbidly obese, his face twisted and unshaven, he talks only in mutters. He is apologetically bigoted, openly contemptuous of humankind, and finds no solace in drink, candy-bars, or his former paramour Tanya. It seems that the cause of his profligacy is the murder of his wife, a case he never solved. To compensate, he ensures he solves every murder case since, even - and especially - if he has to frame someone to do it.
His counterweight is Mexican narcotics officer Vargas (Charlton Heston in blackface). Vargas is indefatigable in his pursuit of the evil that blights Welles's Mexico, but is the sort who would rather see a hundred of the guilty walk than an innocent condemned. He locks horns with Quinlan when Quinlan frames yet another suspect over the bombing death of an American citizen.
The film is incredibly well-made, you can drink in every scene as though you were viewing portraits in the Louvre. Sometimes the dialogue is muddled as actors talk over one another. I am in two minds about directors who allow their actors to do this. On the one hand it does add some realism to film - after all, in real life we all talk over one another. But on the other hand, it confuses the action, and I think that film-makers would be better off realising that film isn't 'real life', it is film. There are situations where this technique works, but Evil is not one of them.
Still, I spent more time writing about these bad moments than there are in the film. The film is amazing at building intensity and suspense. It is a worthy rival of the best of Hitchcock. It is because of Welles's mastery with the camera that this film is usually listed in the top ten crime films (if not the top ten films) of the 50's.
The reason is quite simple: Everything has been said about Orson Welles, it's like trying to review Alfred Hitchcock. It is off-putting, to say the least, to write something knowing for a fact it's already been written dozens of times before. At least this way I can pretend my words are fresh, an enjoyable illusion.
One of the interesting things about Hollywood in the 50's is that a-list films often only showed the glitzy, glamorous face of the US. To get grime, you had to look to b-list films, usually involving Roger Corman. There were exceptions, one that immediately springs to mind is Blackboard Jungle (1955). But usually, even when dealing with crime, there was a certain shine to the seediness.
Touch of Evil (1958) is not such a movie. It is steeped in filth. One memorable scene has a man washing blood off his hands in putrid water. It seems to sum up one of the main themes of the movie, the omnipresence of corruption.
Corruption is personified in the character of the detective Quinlan (Orson Welles). He is morbidly obese, his face twisted and unshaven, he talks only in mutters. He is apologetically bigoted, openly contemptuous of humankind, and finds no solace in drink, candy-bars, or his former paramour Tanya. It seems that the cause of his profligacy is the murder of his wife, a case he never solved. To compensate, he ensures he solves every murder case since, even - and especially - if he has to frame someone to do it.
His counterweight is Mexican narcotics officer Vargas (Charlton Heston in blackface). Vargas is indefatigable in his pursuit of the evil that blights Welles's Mexico, but is the sort who would rather see a hundred of the guilty walk than an innocent condemned. He locks horns with Quinlan when Quinlan frames yet another suspect over the bombing death of an American citizen.
The film is incredibly well-made, you can drink in every scene as though you were viewing portraits in the Louvre. Sometimes the dialogue is muddled as actors talk over one another. I am in two minds about directors who allow their actors to do this. On the one hand it does add some realism to film - after all, in real life we all talk over one another. But on the other hand, it confuses the action, and I think that film-makers would be better off realising that film isn't 'real life', it is film. There are situations where this technique works, but Evil is not one of them.
Still, I spent more time writing about these bad moments than there are in the film. The film is amazing at building intensity and suspense. It is a worthy rival of the best of Hitchcock. It is because of Welles's mastery with the camera that this film is usually listed in the top ten crime films (if not the top ten films) of the 50's.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Boardwalk Empire
This isn't a review of the TV show. If you're wondering if you'll like it, well, here you go: It's well-directed, well-scripted, the sets and costumes are fabulous, the actors know their way around a camera. Watch the pilot if nothing else, you'll either like it or you won't.
This post is trying to answer a question, is television good? More to the point, is television better?
I remember television in the eighties, growing up. Endless 'couch comedies' (a term coined by Jerry Lewis - they all took place on a couch) with their tired, predictable rhythms and monotonous moralising. Cop dramas that preached just how dangerous those damn drugs were. Game shows which seemed deliberately designed to damage your brain. A recent study implies that TV can shorten your life by watching it, and if you had shown me this article in the eighties, I'd believe it.
We now live in what's been called the "HBO revolution". TV isn't simply your fix of moving images to kill time between the period between your return home from work and bed. There are shows which are challenging, mesmerising and rewarding. My personal favourites are Battlestar Galactica (compare it to its eighties father and tell me which is the better), Arrested Development and The Sopranos, but if I surveyed this modern period there probably wouldn't be enough room on the internet for all the good television to watch today.
Boardwalk is the latest example, from the creator of The Sopranos. But now that I am about to sing its praises, I wonder is it truly better than TV in the olden days? Boardwalk is great because it doesn't focus only on the actors, the scenery is part of the show too. Yet couldn't the same be said of the old Western series, like Bonanza or Gunsmoke? Wasn't there a sort of mise en scene to 21 Jump Street?
Boardwalk is great because it cares about its characters. Yet didn't Hill Street Blues, St Elsewhere, Cagney and Lacey, even Moonlighting do this, too? Boardwalk has an excellent script. Did no show until the HBO revolution have an excellent script? Really?
Has TV simply become more better? I mean, we have lots more good shows? Well, some growing up in the HBO revolution would point to reality shows (really another name for the modern game show) and point out, correctly, how terrible they are. And they seem to be pervasive. Complicating matters is the rehabilitation of shows in the past which have been rehabilitated. The A-Team had much to say about racial relations in America. To dismiss Dynasty et al as empty melodrama is to miss the point. The eighties Battlestar Galactica was the better show and here's why.
I'm left wondering if I'm committing anti-nostalgia (to coin a clunky phrase) on modern television. Instead of denouncing it as 'not as good as in the ol' days', I'm instead insisting it's so much better by looking at the past through a tainted prism. I can't say, memory is such a treacherous thing and I haven't the means to do a full survey of the shows I grew up with, or even a full survey of modern television. All I can say is that I'm glad I lived long enough for the HBO revolution.
This post is trying to answer a question, is television good? More to the point, is television better?
I remember television in the eighties, growing up. Endless 'couch comedies' (a term coined by Jerry Lewis - they all took place on a couch) with their tired, predictable rhythms and monotonous moralising. Cop dramas that preached just how dangerous those damn drugs were. Game shows which seemed deliberately designed to damage your brain. A recent study implies that TV can shorten your life by watching it, and if you had shown me this article in the eighties, I'd believe it.
We now live in what's been called the "HBO revolution". TV isn't simply your fix of moving images to kill time between the period between your return home from work and bed. There are shows which are challenging, mesmerising and rewarding. My personal favourites are Battlestar Galactica (compare it to its eighties father and tell me which is the better), Arrested Development and The Sopranos, but if I surveyed this modern period there probably wouldn't be enough room on the internet for all the good television to watch today.
Boardwalk is the latest example, from the creator of The Sopranos. But now that I am about to sing its praises, I wonder is it truly better than TV in the olden days? Boardwalk is great because it doesn't focus only on the actors, the scenery is part of the show too. Yet couldn't the same be said of the old Western series, like Bonanza or Gunsmoke? Wasn't there a sort of mise en scene to 21 Jump Street?
Boardwalk is great because it cares about its characters. Yet didn't Hill Street Blues, St Elsewhere, Cagney and Lacey, even Moonlighting do this, too? Boardwalk has an excellent script. Did no show until the HBO revolution have an excellent script? Really?
Has TV simply become more better? I mean, we have lots more good shows? Well, some growing up in the HBO revolution would point to reality shows (really another name for the modern game show) and point out, correctly, how terrible they are. And they seem to be pervasive. Complicating matters is the rehabilitation of shows in the past which have been rehabilitated. The A-Team had much to say about racial relations in America. To dismiss Dynasty et al as empty melodrama is to miss the point. The eighties Battlestar Galactica was the better show and here's why.
I'm left wondering if I'm committing anti-nostalgia (to coin a clunky phrase) on modern television. Instead of denouncing it as 'not as good as in the ol' days', I'm instead insisting it's so much better by looking at the past through a tainted prism. I can't say, memory is such a treacherous thing and I haven't the means to do a full survey of the shows I grew up with, or even a full survey of modern television. All I can say is that I'm glad I lived long enough for the HBO revolution.
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Collector Collector
I'd love to do a blog where I spend all my time saying how shit it is. I'd write the snarkiest of snarky comments, with withering sarcasm and devastating commentary on the state of literature or political discourse. But, while I won't pretend I don't have a lot of time on my hands, I don't really have time to read shit books unless it's part of my degree (take 2). Books are like wine: there's too many out there to try to waste your time with the bad ones.
I might get around to reading something spectacularly bad, the book reviewing equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. Maybe Ann Coulter, I hear she's hilariously terrible to the point of sore sides. But for now, I think I'll concentrate on the good books. If you happened across this blog - no doubt by complete accident - please accept my apologies in advance for dull reviewing.
The Collector Collector is by British author of Hungarian descent Tibor Fischer. If you want a quick-and-dirty rundown of the book, click here. It's not an easy book to describe, with an unconventional narrator spanning through all of history who's actually a shape-changing piece of pottery. There's not enough space to explain why the book is so funny.
Partly it's the manner in which the narrator observes things - how many different types of objects he's seen and how he pigeon-holes them, for example ("It's (nose) eighty-eight or the begonia"). His obsession with earrings; one pair, for example, are perceived to be "in the shape of the sound of stolen guitars". The hilarious stories he relates to his co-protagonist, Rosa, of human misanthropy.
What I like most about this book is the way it balances cynicism and optimism. Sure, people treat each other like shit, in spectacular ways, with sadistic pleasure. But that's the comedy of life, isn't it? You have to laugh. And Fischer's strength is that in this book he makes us laugh, in a healthy, positive, optimistic way. And he's not so cynical that he won't allow a little romance into the plot or give villains their just-desserts. Even though there's so much pain in the book, it's the pain of watching a clown prat-fall (even if the prat-fall turns out to be lethal). You're reminded of Mel Brooks's definition of comedy which is 'watching you fall down an open sewer and die'. For all the suffering, you can't feel bad about it.
I guess what helps is that he details suffering not only in the present, but throughout the whole of history. It lets you look at the horrible things happening today and, even if you're paralyzed with helplessness at the scope of modern-day atrocities, you can shrug and say history marches on.
I might get around to reading something spectacularly bad, the book reviewing equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. Maybe Ann Coulter, I hear she's hilariously terrible to the point of sore sides. But for now, I think I'll concentrate on the good books. If you happened across this blog - no doubt by complete accident - please accept my apologies in advance for dull reviewing.
The Collector Collector is by British author of Hungarian descent Tibor Fischer. If you want a quick-and-dirty rundown of the book, click here. It's not an easy book to describe, with an unconventional narrator spanning through all of history who's actually a shape-changing piece of pottery. There's not enough space to explain why the book is so funny.
Partly it's the manner in which the narrator observes things - how many different types of objects he's seen and how he pigeon-holes them, for example ("It's (nose) eighty-eight or the begonia"). His obsession with earrings; one pair, for example, are perceived to be "in the shape of the sound of stolen guitars". The hilarious stories he relates to his co-protagonist, Rosa, of human misanthropy.
What I like most about this book is the way it balances cynicism and optimism. Sure, people treat each other like shit, in spectacular ways, with sadistic pleasure. But that's the comedy of life, isn't it? You have to laugh. And Fischer's strength is that in this book he makes us laugh, in a healthy, positive, optimistic way. And he's not so cynical that he won't allow a little romance into the plot or give villains their just-desserts. Even though there's so much pain in the book, it's the pain of watching a clown prat-fall (even if the prat-fall turns out to be lethal). You're reminded of Mel Brooks's definition of comedy which is 'watching you fall down an open sewer and die'. For all the suffering, you can't feel bad about it.
I guess what helps is that he details suffering not only in the present, but throughout the whole of history. It lets you look at the horrible things happening today and, even if you're paralyzed with helplessness at the scope of modern-day atrocities, you can shrug and say history marches on.
Opening Precautionary Instructions
Look at you. Just look. 35. If you can get your weight under control (you can see your dick, yeah, but don't kid yourself - you're fat) you can reasonably expect to live another 35 years, tops. That means your life is half over.
And what have you done? Nothing. Where are all the books you were going to write? You never wrote them. Weren't you supposed to be the playwright who was going to get arses back on seats with his revolutionary new style of theatre? I don't see that happening. Oh, so you still fantasise about being a film director one day, eh? Keep dreaming.
You travelled a bit, you even left the country. Once. You got in trouble with the police as a teenager. Once. You experimented with drugs if, by 'experimented', you mean that you smoked bongs and giggled in front of the TV with your mates while you ate slices of pizza from Dominoes. Lots.
You never finished high school. You ditched your apprenticeship halfway through. You got into university by a miracle and dropped out after two years of part time - part time - study. You held a job for a whopping five years before you got fired.
In short, not very good. A very below-average 35 years. Sure, people you grew up with have done worse than you, but they accomplished that by dying. So why the blog? Who gives a fuck what you think?
I suppose you still want to be a writer. Can't kill that impulse no matter how much a part of you knows for sure that you can't write for toffee. And one thing writers do is write. You spend enough time writing on bulletin boards - imagine if that counted for something! You'd be the Hunter S Thompson of the internet! Still, one thing you can say about blogs, they may be pointless, but they're utterly harmless.
So go on. Write your pissant little blog. And have fun.
And what have you done? Nothing. Where are all the books you were going to write? You never wrote them. Weren't you supposed to be the playwright who was going to get arses back on seats with his revolutionary new style of theatre? I don't see that happening. Oh, so you still fantasise about being a film director one day, eh? Keep dreaming.
You travelled a bit, you even left the country. Once. You got in trouble with the police as a teenager. Once. You experimented with drugs if, by 'experimented', you mean that you smoked bongs and giggled in front of the TV with your mates while you ate slices of pizza from Dominoes. Lots.
You never finished high school. You ditched your apprenticeship halfway through. You got into university by a miracle and dropped out after two years of part time - part time - study. You held a job for a whopping five years before you got fired.
In short, not very good. A very below-average 35 years. Sure, people you grew up with have done worse than you, but they accomplished that by dying. So why the blog? Who gives a fuck what you think?
I suppose you still want to be a writer. Can't kill that impulse no matter how much a part of you knows for sure that you can't write for toffee. And one thing writers do is write. You spend enough time writing on bulletin boards - imagine if that counted for something! You'd be the Hunter S Thompson of the internet! Still, one thing you can say about blogs, they may be pointless, but they're utterly harmless.
So go on. Write your pissant little blog. And have fun.
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