Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 06/23/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, June 23, 2019

My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)

Cast: Gordon Warnecke, Daniel Day-Lewis, Roshan Seth, Saeed Jaffrey, Shirley Anne Field, Rita Wolf, Derrick Branche. Screenplay: Hanif Kureishi. Cinematography: Oliver Stapleton. Production design: Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski. Film editing: Mick Audsley. Music: Stanley Myers, Hans Zimmer.

A fusillade across the bow of Thatcherite Britain, My Beautiful Laundrette manages to take on racism, homophobia, and capitalist entrepreneurship all in one breathtaking moment. It also served as a breakthrough film for Daniel Day-Lewis as Johnny, a gay skinhead with an Anglo-Pakistani lover, Omar (Gordon Warnecke).

The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason, 1938)

Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in The Mad Miss Manton

Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levene, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges, Hattie McDaniel. Screenplay: Philip G. Epstein, Wilson Collison. Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Carroll Clark. Film editing: George Hively. Music: Roy Webb.

If The Mad Miss Manton seems to me a laborious misfire of a screwball comedy, it may be because I can't help comparing it to another film that also stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, Preston Sturges's sublime The Lady Eve (1941). Stanwyck plays the doyenne of a gaggle of silly socialites who get involved in trying to solve a murder. They tangle with a police lieutenant played by Sam Levene and a reporter played by Fonda in the process, but Stanwyck's character and Fonda's naturally fall in love during the proceedings. It's over-frantic and under-motivated.