TCM Classic Film Festival 2023: Part Three, by David Bax

TCM Classic Film Festival 2023: Part Three

Most years, I try to take in at least one silent during the TCM Classic Film Festival (though I haven’t always been successful). This year, I did manage to make it to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, directed by Wallace Worsley. He wasn’t able to be there, having died in 1944. But the screening was preceded by a brief discussion with Doug Jones, a friend of this site and a terrific actor who has made his reputation by transforming into all sorts of different creatures. He has that in common with Lon Chaney, the film’s star. One thing Jones mentioned–though it would have been immediately apparent to any viewer anyway–is the massive scale of the production. Chaney’s personal commitment to the performance is matched by the production design and construction, including a very faithful re-creation of the façade of Notre Dame itself, and by the army of extras assembled. At 133 minutes, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is easily the longest silent movie I’ve seen at the festival over the years but the screenplay is stuffed end to end with incident (and just as stuffed with title cards). Add that to the spectacle and it flies by.

Speaking of spectacle, Ernst Lubitsch brings it in 1943’s Heaven Can Wait (the second movie with that title I’ve seen at this festival over the years). TCM Classic Film Festival is a great place to scratch a blind spot off your list since you’ll likely be enjoying it among a group of people who already love it. It feels nice to be welcomed so warmly into a club. Especially one so well-appointed as this. The costumes and production design are lavish and tactile. And I now have a new favorite Don Ameche role. That might be because, due to my age, I grew up knowing him from Cocoon, Harry and the Hendersons and as the voice of Shadow in Homeward Bound. You better believe I was not allowed to see Trading Places until I was much, much older. So seeing him not only as a young man but as a cad and philanderer delivering dagger-sharp dialogue is a welcome shock.

Walking into the theater to see Arthur Hiller‘s The In-Laws, I didn’t think I was checking off my second blind spot in a row. I mean, I’d obviously heard of the movie and knew that it was well-liked (and, no, I didn’t see the 2003 remake). But, outside of shouts of “Serpentine!”, I’d never encountered many details. For all I knew, it was another Caddyshack, a movie that people a generation or two older than I am revere but which, frankly, stinks. But it turns out that this isn’t just some mismatched buddy crime caper flick. It’s the mismatched buddy crime caper flick. For pure laughs, I’d put it up against Blazing Saddles, a movie that people a generation or two older than I am revere and which, frankly, rules. The In-Laws is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.

I finished off this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival with another trip to Cinema 4 to see a celluloid obscurity from 1930s England called Mr. Cohen Takes a Walk. Paul Graetz stars as Cohen, a self-made man and owner of a hugely successful London department store who nonetheless feels unfulfilled as his adult children begin to take over the operation and push him toward retirement. And so he takes a solo trip on foot into the countryside to possibly rediscover himself. Unlike Cohen, as a film ages, its usefulness grows because it becomes a document of the time. The location footage of both the city and the country make for an illuminating portrait of England at the time. Interestingly, as Cohen’s journey goes on (and gathers a cute dog, to boot), the movie departs from the obvious tack of being about aging and relevance and into one about tolerance and liberal values. The Cohens are Jewish, a fact about which the film is refreshingly straightforward. It’s not just a fact about that, it is a crucial part of how the family see themselves, their neighbors and their country. But their son wants to marry a Catholic girl. “I’m glad,” Cohen says, “we don’t have any foolish prejudices.” TCM Classic Film Festival is always a way to connect the present to the past. Sometimes it can be a little disheartening to see how little we’ve changed.

TCM Classic Film Festival 2023: Part Three

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