Glamour, Unapologetically

Films do not come more luxuriant than 1955’s To Catch a Thief.

Flush with splendid vistas from the French Riviera, lavish hotel interiors populated with beautiful people and a plot that revolves around priceless jewels and culminates in a costume party, the film as it unfolds almost literally bubbles and sparkles like a cool glass of champagne. Even so, I cannot help but imagine that part of the film’s success is the result of an unintentional contrast brought about by time. In this I mean that if filmed today, such an endeavor as To Catch a Thief would likely come across as opulent and irritating, but under the astute and tasteful direction of Alfred Hitchcock the original retains a unique charm, despite its almost paper-thin plot and rather predictable resolution, that many other films hunger for but more often than not fail to achieve.

The critical difference, I suppose, is glamour and how we understand it and what it meant --- both then and now --- and how Hitchcock was able to harness the glamour of an exotic location and two Hollywood legends in such a pleasing manner. In the case of the former, I doubt the Riviera has ever filmed poorly, but at the same time, I do not think Hitchcock made his choice by happenstance, either. Rather, I believe he chose the sunny coast of South France because it was about as far away as possible, in aesthetic terms, as the soundstages that represented the courtyards and alleyways of 1954’s Rear Window, the masterpiece of film that Hitchcock made just prior to To Catch a Thief.

Indeed, To Catch a Thief is something of an ethereal twin to Rear Window, if you ask me. (The bright, shiny side of Rear Window's dark half of the coin?) Consider, both films essentially track a courtship between an action-oriented, somewhat roguish leading-man and a leading lady -- played on both occasions by Grace Kelly -- who is refined, erudite and wealthy. In both cases, the female is attracted to the man, in part, precisely because of his circumspect employment (freelance photographer in Rear Window, former cat-burglar in To Catch a Thief). To further the comparison, in Rear Window we see grubby alleyways and the confined, interior courtyard of an apartment building, whereas in To Catch a Thief we are outdoors for the vast majority of the movie, swimming in the ocean, riding in open-top cars or moving dangerously across rooftops. If Hitchcock, a man ever prone to boredom, wanted to make a film almost the polar opposite of Rear Window, he did a decent job in selecting this lighthearted romp.

That is not to say the Hitchcock touch is absent from this film. Indeed, a good many of the traits are on display here and part of the reason why the film works so well is that it remains in the hands of master craftsmen. Had another director, paired with another set of stars, made this picture, it simply would not have worked as well. In this sense, the fact that Hitchcock himself abandoned the deeply psychological themes of 1954’s Rear Window and settled on proverbial cinematic, champagne bubbles cannot be held against him if we simply adjust our expectations and allow ourselves to relish the results onscreen.

This is a majestic picture, with much to look at and enjoy, not the least of which is Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. It would be difficult under any circumstances to dislike the two and almost impossible here, where they shine together with real chemistry and purpose. That both are beautiful, charming people is even more obvious in their placement together (I always though James Stewart a bit to parochial for Kelly in Rear Window, whereas Grant seemingly was born in a tuxedo.) The absent power of yesterday's stars is again affirmed, in that if you try to imagine Grant and Kelly's counterparts today making such a film, you simply cannot imagine it being worth watching.

The death of old Hollywood at the hands of tabloids has made the modern day greats less mysterious, in that we know too much about them, and consequently more annoying. If you cannot catch my meaning hunt down the famous bit where Grant during a television interview quips something along the lines that everyone wants to be Cary Grant even Cary Grant wants to be Cary Grant. Back then, the persona and the person were inseparable and that only adds to the fireworks, which in this case, Hitchcock took pains to physically depict on the screen.

As is the case in North by Northwest, Grant is almost entirely a passenger to the plot here and he simply reacts wherever he is thrown. Although Hitchcock utilized this method in quite a few of his films because it put the audience and the protagonist on equal footing, I have always felt Grant seemed the master of the method, perhaps because he made so many comedies, such Arsenic and Old Lace, that required such physical, reactionary acting. Here, he is accused of returning to his former thieving ways and decides the only way to clear his name is by "catching" the thief himself, a feat he almost literally achieves when he grabs hold of the cat burglar on the rooftop of a swanky French villa that has just hosted an equally swanky party.

Of course the real "thief" being "caught" is Grant himself and the person doing the catching is Ms. Kelly, who for the second Hitchcock outing in a row will essentially snag the unmarried, action-oriented bachelor through a combination of glamour, flirtation and mystery. There is then some interesting dissection in the film about feminine virtue, which often appears in Hitchcock’s films with leading actresses of the blond persuasion. That is, Kelly throughout presents herself as graceful and strongly effeminate. Although she is not virginal, she is virtuous. In contrast, the film's true antagonist --- in both the crime and the courting --- is Brigitte Auber's young Frenchwoman, who clearly is not virtuous. Her sexuality, unlike Grace Kelly's, is flouted openly, and therefore is presented as tawdry and insincere. Although Auber's character clearly has some feelings for Grant, it is also apparent she is willing to manipulate him and sacrifice him for herself. The opposite of this, Grace Kelly is honest and supportive, even as she too nudges Grant towards an idea he himself might not have thought of: Marriage.

The results, as I have said, are sumptuous and fun. If this is a "weak" effort of Hitchcock's it can only be thought of as so given the enormity of the man's stronger pictures. The plot twists here are fairly appreciable before they arrive and the thieving itself a rather flimsy and far-fetched excuse for some excellent diversions. Lest we forget, this is courtship on cinema, and as such, the majesty of an allegory feels appropriate. That Hitchcock still chose crime and mystery as the vehicle for his romantic comedy certainly says a great deal about him, but it also works so well here in all of its finery that I doubt viewers complained too loudly.

The Greatest Nonsense of All

What can I say about one of my favorite films of all time?

I once compelled my three best friends to accompany me to AFI’s opulent theater just outside the nation’s capital so I could see North by Northwest on the big screen. Neither the wonderful setting – all classic film lovers should go there – nor the film disappointed.

Alfred Hitchcock made better pictures, with greater depth and a more detailed examination of the human condition, for sure, but none of those Herculean efforts comes even remotely close to this outing in terms of sheer cinematic enjoyment. Put simply, this movie is like candy or whatever other guilty pleasure you enjoy: You know it is ridiculous and you probably should not be eating it, but you savor every bite because of its inherent wonderfulness.

The plot of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, which does not stand much scrutiny, revolves around a rather juvenile case of mistaken identity that eventually leads to attempted murder and some grand chases that all eventually have something to do with international espionage. Cary Grant, whose smarmy turn as the smug Madison Avenue advertising man has rightly attracted adoration, famously quipped to Hitchcock that the film had a terrible script and he could not make heads or tails of it. Hitchcock told Grant he was unconsciously repeating his character’s lines. I leave it to the audiences to determine who is more right, but there is a sort of uncontrolled zaniness in how film rushes – almost madly – from one scene to another, until, in perhaps the film’s most famous sequence, everything slows and there is nothing but silence and the drone of an airplane for several agonizingly long minutes.

The crop duster chasing Grant might not have aged well – the crash, in particular, looks and feels a little silly – but the scene’s inherent power remains. After being hurled through the plot, Grant is finally dangled a respite that hints at some sort of resolution to his case of mistaken identity, only to be attacked and propelled back into the fray yet again. However, to assert the whole movie, like this scene itself, is completely bewildering would be a mistake. The fields surrounding Grant in the iconic scene are intentionally as grid-like as the title sequence, signifying that there is a deliberate pattern to the film, one in which almost every line is carefully constructed to edge the plot along in its general direction, which is, geographically speaking, Northwest.

At the same time, Hitchcock himself said he practiced “absurdity quite religious” when interview by Francois Truffaut, and this is never more on display than it is in this film. From almost the film’s opening scene, when Grant tells us that “In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only expedient exaggeration," the film motors along, with barely a care as to how realistic its various parts are functioning. But at the heart of all its madness, as I have already suggested, there is indeed order, as many of the scenes themselves show us. The library Grant is accosted in is immaculate. Later, the wilderness he encounters his lover in is equally as ordered. From chaos, comes a kind of order, Hitchcock is showing us. And thus, his film works and it becomes believable after it has stewed in its own irreverence.  

Man and a woman in an ordered wilderness...

In addition to a reference to Grant’s travels, the title is a nod to a line in Hamlet’s rant about his own insanity, insanity that of course was concocted to shield his true motives. And herein lies another clue, as it increasingly becomes obvious everyone in the film is not what they seem. Grant is a dilettante forced to play a spy, whereas Eva Marie Saint is spy forced to play a dilettante in order to get closer to James Mason, the film’s excellent and cunning villain. Mason himself also plays several roles. He is the host of a party in a home he does not own and a culture vulture buying precious art not out of any sense of refinement, but to enable his espionage transactions. That a love between Grant and Saint emerges at the end of all this deception and role-playing is surely not a plot-twist inserted to please audiences? I rather think it's another of Hitchcock's wry commentaries on life. 

Along the way, there is a great deal of fun. Grant is pitch-perfect throughout and Saint manages to be both sensual and smart at the same time. Indeed, the knows more than our hero does for much of the picture and outmaneuvers him on her way to marrying him, a theme later repeated by Hitchcock in Rear Window. The scene between the two on the train to Chicago is also an amazing exemplar of how the scripts of yesterday were forced to dance around sex with flirtation and suggestion, both of which seem preferable to where movies have sunk to today. 

At the same time, it is also interesting to note precisely how close the film is to a Bond movie. There is a cultured villain (Mason), the scenes on train reminiscent of From Russia with Love and the showdown on Mount Rushmore feels like a Bond ending, though perhaps one with less gusto.

The cultured villain

No matter, a foot hardly is put wrong in this effort. The acting, direction and general melee of a picture all conspire together to create great enjoyment, none of which I think has abated today. The theater I saw the film in was packed and had people of all ages. From the comments I gathered after, the film was thoroughly enjoyed by all, no matter how much of it was sheer and utter cinematic nonsense…

The Greatest Little Steamboat in the World

It does not get much better than this ... for classic films fans.

The African Queen, the dingy, rundown hooting and smoke-spouting little boat from the 1951 classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn has been refurbished and put back on the water -- where it belongs. One wonders who the audience will be ... or not so much. After all, Suzanne and Lance Holmquist, the couple who found and refurbished the boat do live in Florida, a location likely to attract an older, more appreciative crowd for what is surely an iconic piece of film history and Americana. Found in a Florida marina (see this news story), the boat looks better than ever and hopefully has a few more memories left to make... 

See also my review of the film.

Difficult to Dislike

Like climatic battles between two titanic empires, romantic comedies are damn near run things that fail or succeed by the scantest of margins. Miscalculate the levity, make a poor casting choice or choose an inappropriate setting and any effort in this genre can easily become ridiculous, sappy, unfunny – or worst of all, irritating.

 

Thankfully, the convergence of skill and craftsmanship behind Charade make it almost impossible to dislike. The 1963 film boasts a talented cast led by Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, a delightful score and a spy game stratagem that unfolds with exactly the right mixture of playful shenanigans and baited-breath. There is nothing approaching greatness in this movie, but whoever goes looking for greatness in romantic comedies is bound to be disappointed. Fun, formatted with typical cleverness, is more what we are after – and we get to have quite a lot of fun in this semi-serious romp of a picture.

Unfortunately, I suppose some of the tongue-in-cheek that makes Charade such a hoot is lost on the contemporary viewer. Released at virtually the height of the Cold War, a time when both the local cinema and the living room television are alive with spy stories, Charade’s not-so-hidden agenda is levity in the face of overwhelming dread. That director Stanley Donen succeeds so well in satirizing the easily recognizable tropes of the spy genre and the thriller is a testament to precisely how well he understands both. Labeled the “best” Hitchcock film never made by Hitchcock, Charade’s audience is continually asked to follow a film that looks and feels like the great British master’s work right up until the punch lines materialize and burst whatever self-important bubbles were forming.

Parade of Fools.

Joel and Ethan Coen achieved something close to this in 2008’s Burn After Reading, but the Coen duet do not have Donen’s appreciation for the musical rhythms of humor. Donen, the director of the seminal Singin’ in the Rain, knows more about moving humans around the set, and as a result, set-pieces such as the funeral scene in which Hepburn watches in amazement as a parade of oddball characters parade before her eyes unfold with a dizzying feeling of frolic almost completely devoid in the Coen satire.

Hitchcock-ian?

Elsewhere, the mood remains far too light, the plot far too much what-you-see-is-what-you-get for it ever to really be mistaken for Hitchcock, but even so, there are certainly some Hitchcock-ian flourishes on display.  Chief among them, of course, is the fact that the plot revolves around the innocent bystander (Hepburn) who unwillingly becomes immersed in a complicated espionage plot – a setup Hitchcock utilized several different times, each to great effect. The other touch that made me think of Hitch comes when Grant faces down one of the film’s villains on the roof of the hotel where much of the principle action occurs. Part Rear Window, part North by Northwest, the scene unfolds in a wonderful series of lattice-like shadows cast by a neon sign. The roof’s gradual slope to death-by-falling is both obvious and suspenseful at the same time, and the choreography leading up to the inevitable is staged as masterfully as anything Hitchcock did. Other moments, such as the opening at the ski resort, are funnier when viewed from the historical aftermath of the numerous snow scenes in the James Bond franchise we have all loved and endured for more than four decades. And I doubt there is anything more perfect than the gun pointed at Hepburn in the film’s opening few shots.

Always ephemeral.

The timely murder of Hepburn’s husband saves her from agonizing about divorcing him in favor of Grant (who she meets at aforementioned ski resort). The death also launches the film’s action, as we quickly learn the husband was involved in some kind of espionage or criminality plot. What follows is a largely a comedy of errors, in which Hepburn muddles and giggles her way through several acts of spying and a few attempts on her life. Through it all, Grant is conveniently at her side, dashing and indecipherable until virtually the last frame of the film, when his true nature is finally revealed. Even more interestingly, the film takes great pains to chide Grant for being far too old for the petite and always elfin Ms. Hepburn. Grant, who turned the lead in Roman Holiday several years earlier precisely because of the age difference between the two, supposedly insisted the script contain the jokes – and they work precisely because one of Grant’s strengths has always been self-depreciation.  

Everyone involved probably made better pictures, but as a B-side to the rest of their careers, this is not too far off in sheer quality. I enjoyed this film for what it is and throughout felt a twinge of nostalgia and sadness, largely because contemporary attempts to recreate the chemistry that works so well in Charade now seems beyond Hollywood. The occasional moments of slowness – the script, I think, could have been tightened 15 minutes – does not detract from the final product’s overall punch. This is a fun movie, made by skilled people who know how to entertain audiences.

Classic Date Night?

Why not?

I say forget paying in excess of $10 and then digging even deeper into your pocket for popcorn and candy and soda. Avoid the packs of boisterous teens, bleeping and chatting on cell phones as they snort and surge in restless herds around the contemporary cinema and the gluttonous shopping malls that tend to abut them. If you want to do dinner and a movie with that special someone, I urge you to go out to eat or prepare something nice at one of your home’s, then settle down on a sofa together for a classic movie. It will be cheaper and more rewarding.

In terms of quality, I can assure you, whichever classic film you watch will operate on a mental plain far beyond today's contemporary romantic comedies. The classic will eschew ribald humor, avoid obvious puns and leave a touch of mystery to sexuality and romantic encounters – through what the film does not say or does not show – that is both charming and refreshing. Couples actually had to court and communicate in classic movies because they could not make eyes across an ill-lit dance club, leave together after too many cocktails, peel their clothes off and “hook up” on screen (see Knocked Up et al).

However, I admit it can be difficult to know where to start if you want to do a Classic Date Night. Some people – amazingly and oddly enough – do not like classic films. Others adore classic films and either love or hate certain actors and actresses. And finding films that please both men and women is difficult no matter what era of movies we are talking about. So to help with all this, I offer up five films that are a perfect for any date-night scenario. These are classic crowd-pleasers that everyone should love, regardless of age and relationship status…



They will always have Paris...

 1. Casablanca

Still my favorite film and one that I believe is impossible to dislike. Humphrey Bogart is perfect as the savvy nightclub owner trying to escape from his past and Ingrid Bergman gives a delicately poised performance as the woman unwittingly at the center of a love triangle. Rooted in an incredible setting – Morocco in the early days of World War Two – and chock full of snappy dialogue and complicated moral conundrums, this is a film of many genres. Espionage, politics, war, adventure, romance and comedy – it is all in the film’s perfect screenplay, which is why every generation continues to rediscover this gem. Guys will enjoy this film because of Bogart – he is cynical, cool and forever one step ahead of everyone else – and the wartime setting that forces people in the film to make important decisions about what they stand for and what they are willing to sacrifice. The ladies will appreciate Bogey, too, but they also will swoon for the film’s romanticism and the notion of a joyful but tragic love affair that is hostage to a particular time and place. See immediately if you have not already done so. If you have, watch it again with a partner. As a shared experience, few movies can match it...

Stuck in the middle...

 2. Sabrina

Sometimes derided as a rather formulaic re-imaging of Cinderella, in which the servant girl falls in love with master of the manor, this film surpasses the limitations of its script thanks to the acumen of the actors involved and the skill with which they play off one another. Juxtaposition is, of course, a critical element of comedy, and it has never worked better on the screen than it does in the love triangle depicted here between Audrey Hepburn, William Holden and Humphrey Bogart. The contrast between Hepburn’s smooth femininity and Bogart’s chapped masculinity works particular well, and as an audience, we completely believe these opposites ultimately attract. Guys will like this film because Bogart and Holden are both great and there is a very real examination of a man’s commitment to his family and the unfortunate tension between pursuing happiness in one’s private life and being successful in business. Ladies will enjoy Hepburn because she is Hepburn. The maturation of a young and immature girl who slavishly pursues the wrong man into a confident woman who chooses to be courted by the right kind of man also hits home. Sumptuously filmed, the movie leaves both sexes with the positive message that love is perhaps the only invigorating force capable of provoking radical positive changes within a person stuck in a rut.

Two gals gabbing, only one isn't a gal...

3. Some Like it Hot

A truly scandalous film for its day, Some Like it Hot is a bizarre comedy of errors that chronicles how a pair of friends and musicians –Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon – must disguise themselves as women in order to avoid being killed by powerful mobsters. Curtis and Lemmon excel as oddly paired friends who are barely able to keep up their disguise once they encounter a certain Marilyn Monroe. The hilarity that ensues when costume changes and forever-shifting stories are called upon to keep the cross-dressing ruse alive verges on wacky, but remains entertaining without drifting into hyperbole. And Curtis doing an intentionally stiff and obvious Cary Grant impression is particularly funny. That everyone in this film is confused about what they want and being misled about who the other characters truly are says something both sweet and ironic about the gamesmanship involved in courting. What – if anything – the film ultimately says about sexuality, I leave for others to decide. Guys will enjoy Monroe. She is sultry and sensationally lurid throughout – and her dresses barely contain her considerable body (has any other actress ever had her sexual presence?). Guys will also enjoy the film’s great humor and the witty repartee between Curtis and Lemmon. Ladies will enjoy Monroe’s unintentional humor and the film’s rollercoaster examination of just how far a man will go to flirt with a pretty woman.

Kelly convinces Stewart to pay attention

4. Rear Window

Most Alfred Hitchcock films make for great date movies, but this effort just beats out North by Northwest to top them all. I chose this because the mystery involving whether a man killed his wife is absolutely enthralling and watching it with someone else and dissecting the scenes is incredibly fun. More to the romantic point, this film – despite all of its loftier themes and tropes – is about a how a pair of opposites – Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly – work as a couple. In trying to unravel the picture’s mystery, the audience is afforded an incredibly intimate portrait of two people on the brink of marriage. That only one of them wants to get hitched and neither of the two realizes they are already verbally jousting like an old married couple is one of the film’s great charms. Guys will enjoy this movie because its plot addresses the notion of voyeurism – in particular, the male penchant for looking – and it forces the audience to consider what is normal and what is moral. The ladies will enjoy how Kelly floats almost ethereally across the screen in her scenes and how the film deals with nearly every aspect of love through the various depictions of the apartment complex’s residents. Both sexes will appreciate how cinematic the movie is, with its wonderful dialogue, its incredible set-pieces and the odd but ultimately tender take on courtship.

Tender mercies

5. It Happened One Night

This might be the hardest sell. For starters, it is difficult to find. For seconds, it has all the appearances of being the kind of old movie contemporary audiences avoid (it looks hokey, old and filmed with dubious quality). However, anyone who passes on this film is truly missing out. I first saw this in college in a film class and I can safely say the entire audience of 20-somethings was delighted. Since then, everyone I have shown the film to has responded with similar glee. It is, quite simply, a wonderful picture, full of warmth and charm. Clark Gable’s cynical newsman melts when he encounters naïve heiress Claudette Colbert. The guys will like this picture because Gable is masculine, believable and funny. The girls will enjoy Colbert’s emotional adventure: She runs away from a proscribed and boring existence, has an once-in-a-lifetime trip on the road and falls in love. Everything that Roman Holiday is, it owes to this film. Not to be missed.

Perfectly Believable Happenstances

It is difficult for the first-time viewer to approach Roman Holiday with anything like objectivity.

William Wyler’s 1953 romantic comedy about a princess who escapes from her handlers to experience the beauty and splendor of Rome on her own created the cinematic formula for just about every romantic comedy that followed. It also, in many ways, is the film that launched a thousand study abroad programs in Europe for American princesses keen on seeing something of the world beyond shopping malls and sand-covered spring breaks.

The film itself has three essential problems, one of which it cannot help.

The first is the core of the plot: A young and naïve girl who has plenty of money and status escapes her lavish life, goes on an adventure and falls in love with hardscrabble reporter – the latter of whom initially gives her the time of day because he wants the exclusive on her story. We have seen a great deal of all of this before in the Frank Capra classic It Happened One Night, and for my money, Capra’s effort with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert outshines Roman Holiday in just about every aspect, including believability, though I am willing to grant such a thing really does not matter in this genre.

The second problem is casting. Audrey Hepburn was born to play a princess, but Gregory Peck is the absolute wrong man to put beside her delicate, elfin form. Peck is a fine actor, of course, but he is far too rigid for this role, and as a result, we never quite believe that he is the kind of rakish reporter who sleeps through assignments and then lies to his editor about it. Even worse, the notion that the ethereal and fun-loving Hepburn could fall in love with Peck’s stern gravity seems farfetched (he comes across as her father). When I imagine Cary Grant in Peck’s role (Grant was in fact offered the part), the film becomes more enjoyable.

The third and final problem – the one the filmmakers cannot really help – is that this is a movie built around imagery. More specifically, filming in color was sacrificed in favor of shooting on location. Lavish passages with Hepburn and Peck cavorting on Capitoline Hill or riding a scooter on real Roman streets are the tangible results of this decision. These scenes (and others) were undoubtedly incredibly attractive to a 1950s audience, most of whom had no idea what Rome looked like. Consequently, the scenes do not work quite as well on contemporary viewers, some of whom will have actually been to Rome, while the rest have no doubt seen it on television, in books and online. Rome, in other words, cannot be as equally arresting today as it was then.

Before the torches and pitchforks come out and people accuse me of stomping on what for many is a beloved cinematic whirl, let me quickly add that despite its shortcomings Roman Holiday hums along with an intangible magic that just about every contemporary romantic comedy forever reaches for and misses. Exactly what the critical ingredient Roman Holiday has and its successors do not is difficult to pin down.

I suppose part of it is Hepburn herself. Although she is too flighty for my fancy, her performance here is beautifully precise, in that she manages to act aloof and unobtainable at the same time she oozes charm and fun. The openning scene, where her royalty is in full effect, is poked fun at by her taking off a slipper (under the safety of her lavish gown) to scratch an itch with her foot. This is pure Hepburn, and I do not suspect there is a male in America who would mind sharing a scooter with her or taking her dancing on a warm night in Rome, though whether the proverbial male could date her for an extended period of time is an entirely different matter.

In its initial review, The New York Times said the film soared because of its “perfectly believable happenstances.” To reiterate an earlier theme, after some 60-plus years later of romantic comedies, I believe audiences are fairly jaded with such happenstances that we now see them clearly for what they are – carefully crafted plot pointss that unfold exactly so and produce near clockwork like emotional responses. However, Roman Holiday remains amazingly fresh, despite its age and its innumerable imitators (Notting Hill actually robs scenes and re-writes them).

Two of the better passages involve Hepburn getting her hair cut and receiving a speeding citation for her now infamous scooter jaunt. The fight that breaks out on her night of dancing – to say nothing of the rather silly escape – is more farfetched and less believable.

But towering over it all, what really works is the warm – and ultimately bittersweet – message of the film: Chance encounters can lead to love and life-altering experiences, but all too often these encounters are chained to a particular time, a particular place and they are not made of permanent stuff.

The indeterminate nature of the film’s ending, in which Hepburn slyly acknowledges Peck’s affections during a press conference, but then seems to close the door on a shared future (given their differences in age and stature), would never stand in today’s everything-ends-well moviemaking world. Herein the film's greatness lies. It is self-aware, honest and it understands what the “holiday” is for its main characters and what it is not. This truly makes it a film for adults and a film for the ages.

Together, They are Better People

The African Queen is a perfect example of the sort of finely tuned moviemaking that seems to have virtually disappeared from Hollywood these days. Made with just the right amounts of romance, adventure and humor, the film manages not only to defy classification, but also please just about every conceivable demographic of viewers in the process.

Although it is well-regarded, what seems to have been missed in all the adulation the film attracts is the very mature way in which it depicts love as a kind of expert social partnering, in which the man and the woman rise to new heights because of the attributes and demands of the other. Without this, the film could almost be ordinary.

The whole of the 1951 picture stands much taller than its constituent parts thanks to timeless performances from screen legends Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. People who like to talk about inspired casting should watch this movie.

According to John Huston, the film’s director, the warm comedy we see on-screen was completely absent in both the C. S. Forester novel and the script derived from it. Rather, the humor radiated naturally from Bogart and Hepburn, who got along so famously they could not keep their playful banter in their trailers and off the film’s set. For this, we should thank them. Forester’s novel is a grim and rather straightforward enterprise, and like much of his work, it possesses a kind of juvenile flair that does not make a good foundation for portraying courtship in anything like believable terms.

Chemistry is a word often thrown at the feet of romantic duos in movies, but this is what it looks and feels like when it is present in a picture – and genuinely felt by the requisite actors – and not the paid creation of a studio publicist or the whimsical invention of a movie critic. Bogart, in particular, is worthy of praise.

His performance as gin-soaked riverboat captain who begins the proceedings with a nearly toxic combination of loose morals and low education is a host of delightful contradictions throughout. Allowed to play with a range of emotions unavailable to him in other films, he shrugs off his usual debonair self and deftly displays a pleasant mixture of strength and vulnerability, intelligence and naiveté, and stoicism and sweetness – sometimes even in the same scenes.

Hepburn is her usual intelligent and whippet-like self, gradually bending but not breaking to Bogart’s charms until just the right moment. I have always liked the way she draws out her sentences as if she is not sure what conclusion they will reach, and here it serves her character’s brazen – but ultimately forgivable – machinations toward her opposite.

The action of the film centers on the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and the nascent threat the Germans could pose to British interests in Africa. When Hepburn, a British Methodist missionary intent on bringing Jesus to the Dark Continent, loses her brother to a German war party, her soul fills with righteous patriotism and singular purpose: She will exact her revenge by destroying the Louisa, a German steamer that controls a nearby lake. Unfortunately for her, to achieve her aim, she must convince Bogart, an agnostic and rather unpatriotic Canadian, to risk life and limb – not to mention his boat, the tiny African Queen -- for distant King and Country.

While these details are important, as an audience we are more invested in what is happening between Bogart and Hepburn and we follow their journey down the dangerous river and toward their inevitable confrontation with Germans because we want to see what happens to them as a couple much more than we want to see the Louisa sunk.

Love contains a great many things, but one of the most important is that the couple should augment each other in such a way that they bring out the best of the other. Films often fail to depict this facet of love, largely because writers and directors are more interested in exploring the power of attraction and the contrived drama that surrounds courtship. And while The African Queen certainly depicts attraction and courtship, it would fail to be a great film if it stopped there.

Bogart thaws the puritanical block of ice that is Hepburn’s missionary with his earnestness and worldly commonsense, while she civilizes his character’s coarseness and convinces him to believe in noble purposes and act selflessly. Separately, both begin the film on opposite poles of the human spectrum. Through their flirtation and courtship, they converge together in the middle, where both are happier and inherently more human. By the time they embrace as man and wife at the end, they are better people precisely because of their relationship with each other. This is ultimately what makes the film so charming: We witness the growth of two people into one better person.

Look But Do Not Touch

The iconography of Breakfast at Tiffany’s is its most powerful legacy.

The images of Audrey Hepburn in her famous sunglasses, form-fitting black dress and oversized pearls have been so successfully branded that they have come to represent our collective idea of glamour with an intensity few other Hollywood classics can match. Hepburn now adorns every variety of product imaginable: There are posters, coffee mugs, purses and t-shirts galore to choose from, all of which immediately identify the purchaser as someone who understands that chic does not necessarily have to be new or gaudy – or so they hope.

Indeed, the only comparable icon that communicates retro-style and coolness today in quite the same way is Jacqueline Kennedy, a woman who talked and dressed a heck of a lot like Breakfast at Tiffany’s Holly Golightly.

The fact both women – one the wife of a president, the other a fictional character – forever  seemed both bored and beautiful only adds to their appeal. The unpracticed aloofness of the sort of woman capable of appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair is something F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about quite convincingly at the height of the Jazz Age. That the nation continues to this day to appreciate what I will call polished-yawners as inherently feminine, fashionable and positive is a topic for another day, but there is no doubting a great deal of Breakfast at Tiffany’s success and its canonization by subsequent generations is mixed up in that opinion.

Imagine then how the contemporary moviegoer – having absorbed a lifetime of Hepburn glamour – must feel when they actually sit down and watch the 1961 movie that is based on Truman Capote’s novella? To put it bluntly, Hepburn’s Holly Golightly does look great in that little black dress, but she is also trading oral sex in bathrooms for money. Exactly how the pre-teens with the movie poster on their wall react to this realization is probably something to behold.

Henri Mancini, who penned the film’s oft heard theme of “Moon River,” said it took him a long time to figure out what Holly Golightly was all about. If he has figured her out, he might be the only one. Holly was a hard-scrabble, somewhat empty-headed socialite to Capote, an eccentric and overly naïve wanderer to filmmakers and something quite else to audiences, many of whom like to think of her as the central player in “a hymn to love and to loneliness – to sex and to style” – hence the posters and mugs and what-have-you.

Capote himself said “the book was really rather bitter, and Holly Golightly was real – a tough character, not an Audrey Hepburn type at all.” Having read the book, I was prepared for the subtle intonations of immorality as well as the carefully-inserted hints that Holly Golightly’s seemingly happy-go-lucky approach to life might not be so enviable after closer inspection. I was not prepared for most of Capote’s frank exploration of socialites to be jettisoned (a good exploration of the film’s legacy and its difference from the novella can be found here).

In both Capote’s original version and the film, the character who gradually unravels Holly’s charade is her downstairs neighbor – a down-on-his-luck writer named Paul Varjak, played here by George Peppard.

Like Holly, Paul is quite literally selling himself for money. Unlike Holly, he is ashamed of his actions and realizes how much damage the transactions are doing to both his outward character and his personal self-esteem. Paul falls in love with Holly’s charade precisely because of its uniqueness and power (say what you like about her, but Golightly is an interesting character with a worldview that is entirely her own). His love survives his discovery of how dark and desperate the inner life behind Holly’s string of pearls and sunglasses really is. The intangibilities of love triumphing over all worldly impediments – like, say Holly being married – is  not a new theme, but at least in this film we have two characters who grow into their victory with enough original material to bolster their journey’s predictable course.

But what still endures beyond all of this is the image of Holly – or Hepburn, seeing as the two are virtually inseparable these days – standing in front of the window display Tiffany’s. Holly goes to Tiffany’s whenever she feels down because the “quietness and the proud look” of the place make it safe and beyond physical or emotional danger.

The irony of all this is incredible when you think about it.

The act of Holly staring at a window and finding a self-created meaning is much like the act of taking a movie poster or a still image from a film and branding it as the embodiment of glamour. As with all illusions, the process is built for observation alone. Try to touch what you have created and it falls apart. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a very beautiful movie with a very ugly heart beating inside. That the filmmakers tried to dress this up with fetishes of fashion and a happy ending does not change this.

Nobody Falls in Love Anymore…

Or at least, not on screen they do.

We live in the age of insufferable romantic comedies, wherein aesthetically pleasing actors and actresses engage in childish antics as they annoy their way toward some kind of emotional and physical connection. Is it love these contemporary celluloid couples finally arrive at after their gaudy comedy of errors careens to a distinctly unremarkable conclusion? Somehow, I doubt it.

This is not to say we expect to go to romantic comedies today and see something completely original.

The cagey among us know there have been too many films, too many plotlines and pickup lines exhausted for that. Indeed, I am not even certain we want originality from this genre. Rather, like the true and tested lover in our lives (or the one we yearn to find), I believe we want our romantic comedies to skillfully repackage everything we know from past experiences in a way that continues to tickle the better bones in our body. But we also want to watch two people actually fall in love. I mean, that is the point, right?

Unfortunately, nobody falls in love in the movies anymore. That something like a hangover or a rot has eroded the genre’s former standards is fairly obvious, if you look for it. The people we watch in movies nowadays meet and hookup. For how long? Who can say? To find two people who appear to be falling in love on film one has to go back to classics like 1934’s It Happened One Night. It is not an easy journey, because there are so many clichés one must get on the other side of, but it is a trip well worth taking.

To be sure, there is something overtly artificial in Frank Capra’s classic about a rich girl who runs away from an unhappy marriage and finds true love in the form of coarse and underclass reporter, but the fantasy behind this setup is much more palatable than the ridiculousness that all too often accompanies the Cinderella-story knockoffs we are forced to endure in today’s theaters. Capra was a skilled craftsman of the highest order, one who knew how to portray human sentiment without sliding down the slope and landing in the land of sentimentality.

In the hands of less talented actors, the relationship between the leads might have devolved into farce, too. But It Happened One Night boasts Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, both of whom took home little gold statues for performances more than worthy of the accolade. Gable, in particular, is impressive in the way he mixes grandeur and desperation to craft a wholly believable ruffian who stereotypically harbors a hidden idealism built on pride and good will towards his fellow man. That we accept him and accept the almost insane premise that throws the two into each other’s lives is entirely down to the undeniable authenticity of  the pair's interactions. And they are helped in this task by a script that is alive with wit.

You see, people fall in love – real love, not lust or infatuation – by talking to one another. There must be a certain level of shared understanding, a certain level of what I will call deftness and presentation – and, of course, infectious flirtation.  Without a delicate and case-specific combination of all of these, the spark between two people never truly turns to fire. And before you think I have forgotten about the film under review here, let me hasten to point out that It Happened One Night captures exactly what men and women say to another when they are engaged in the benign combat that begins love.

I will make no predictable claims about films being “better” back then. I will only say that writers had to work, in that they had to rhetorically walk around much of the crudeness that pervades – some would say perverts – the romantic comedy genre today. As Sam Wasson said, “wit was the best (and only) way to talk about sex” back then and so we are privy to remarkable conversations that dance around obvious attractions and even better metaphors concerning attraction’s end result.

 

Consider how Gable drapes blankets over a string to separate the couple at night. He blithely calls this the Walls of Jericho. Later, of course, these walls come down. An even more famous scene has Colbert showing a leg to stop a car. The act is hardly noteworthy today, but back then it was both scandalous and sweet, and in terms of the film’s plot, it helps convince Gable that the girl he is falling for really does have some spirit in her. My mind boggles at trying to imagine what a contemporary director would have to come up with to achieve the same effect.

The romantic comedy is dead – or beeping away faintly on life support – these days precisely because the whimsical subtlety and misdirection that makes flirting with a potential significant other so much fun is largely absent. There is goofy hilarity to be sure, but the actors today are not talking to each other the way Gable and Colbert did. And because of that lack of precision in the scripts, the contemporary equivalent of catching a glimpse of that special someone’s leg no longer matters all that much...