TCM Classic Film Festival 2023: Part Two, by David Bax
TCM Classic Film Festival 2023: Part Two
TCM Classic Film Festival only has two screens capable of projecting film. First, there’s the American Legion theater. That’s the big one and we’ll get to it later in this update. And then there’s Cinema 4 in the Chinese Theatres multiplex. It’s easily the smallest auditorium at the festival. Add that to the appeal and it adds up to a hot ticket based on the situational ingredients alone. On this occasion, I allowed myself to be swayed by the novelty and demand and waited in line to see a movie that is pretty much a lame, boring piece of crap. That movie is Norman Taurog‘s Boys Town and the crackly, hissing soundtrack and the color temperatures that change with each reel would have been part of the appeal if it were any good. But this fact-inspired tale of a Midwestern priest who starts a home for troubled boys and turns it into a functioning town is all preaching and no real artistry (save, perhaps, for young Mickey Rooney‘s delightfully juvenile tween gangster swagger). Even though its liberal messaging–that criminal behavior is a product of circumstance, not inherent moral failure–is one I can get on board with, I’ve got to throw my lot in with the “If you wanna send a message, call Western Union” crowd. It’s so boring, I nearly turned to life of delinquency myself. I did learn a fun fact from the introductory speaker, though. Father Edward Flanagan, played here by Spencer Tracy, was the first person to be alive to see someone win an Oscar for portraying them.
Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays always pops up on lists of the best Los Angeles novels. I’ve never read it but I’ve bought it twice. One day I’ll get around to reading one of those or maybe some third copy that I pick up at a used bookstore, forgetting again that I already own it. Until then, at least I have Frank Perry‘s film adaptation (screenplay by Didion and John Gregory Dunne), which belongs on lists of great Los Angeles movies. One helicopter shot manages to include both our sprawling freeways and our beautiful fucking smog. Perry also displays good taste by including Nate ‘n Al of Beverly Hills, which may not be our oldest Jewish delicatessen (Canter’s has it beat by about fifteen years) but is one of our best. Play It As It Lays also exists alongside (and bests) Doug Liman‘s Swingers as an L.A. movie with a significant Las Vegas departure (I always have to remind myself that it’s Reno they go to in California Split). And it exists alongside Anthony Drazan‘s Hurlyburly in the category of L.A. movies that make mention of Oxnard, our northerly neighbor in south Ventura County (that one’s for you, Hurlyheads). But I could talk about Los Angeles references all day. No, I really could. In any case, Play it As It Lays has a lot more than just that going for it. Perry (The Swimmer, Mommie Dearest) proves to be something of an impressionist, giving us skittering snippets of visual information to build his grander picture and commenting on the unreality of cinema by being at his most vérité in a raw, intrusive, close-up-ridden audition scene. Most importantly, the film is a showcase for its star, Tuesday Weld, a great actor who deserves more recognition and who has a seedy blast with the screenplay’s coarse language. I will point out that a scene depicting the shooting of live ammunition on a movie set in the desert hits like an atonal clang in a post-Rust world. But you can hardly blame it for that.
TCM chose to screen Alfred E. Green’s The Jackie Robinson Story on April 15th, celebrated as Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball. That ceremonial, symbolic gesture is fitting for a film whose value is almost entirely that of an historical document, not an artistic achievement. Other than an early turn from Ruby Dee as Rae Robinson, the film does not earn high marks for acting, especially not from Robinson as himself. It also treads lightly on sensitive ground, only making the most anodyne anti-racist statements while, for instance, refusing to name the town where Robinson suffers the most brutal hatred and discrimination. But if every movie is a documentary of its own making, this is a fascinating insight into a legendary figure and also a reminder that there was once a time when baseball truly was American’s pastime.
For the second year in a row, I attended the presentation of the festival’s annual Robert Osborne award, given every year to someone who has worked to keep old movies alive and respected. This one, like last year, was at the American Legion and was followed by a screening of a film of the recipient’s choosing. The award was presented to film historian Donald Bogle. Among other things, he is Dorothy Dandridge‘s biographer and, as such, he chose a spotlight film for her, Otto Preminger‘s Carmen Jones. The 35MM presentation on an enormous screen did great service to the film’s fantastically costumed characters in a series of equally fantastic sets and locations. As in the Oscar Hammerstein musical from which it is adapted, the film resets Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen in mid-1940s America with an all-black cast and with new lyrics set to Bizet’s existing music. Though this sometimes leads to tortured grammar, that’s not at all unheard of in musical theater. As with Play It As It Lays, Carmen Jones is a wonderful showcase for its female lead. Dandridge practically threatens to burn through the celluloid with her fierce portrayal of a woman who cannot be had by anyone. Hell, it make me wanna read her biography.
TCM Classic Film Festival 2023: Part Two