After Tomorrow (Frank Borzage 1932)

After Tomorrow is definitely lesser Borzage. The film powers by more on its jaundiced view of marriage than any visual/sonic intelligence despite cinematography by James Wong Howe. But as with Young America, Borzage creates an indelible portrait of the modern psyche under siege.

The title refers to the endlessly deferred marriage of New Yorkers Pete (Borzage regular Charles Farrell) and Sidney (Marian Nixon). Pete's mother (Josephine Hull, in a fantastic performance that finds the insidious evil in Marie Dressler) refuses to move out of her home, effectively shackling Pete to her financially when she's not manipulating him emotionally with crocodile tears and smothering. Sidney's mother Else (Minna Gombell, another fine performance delivered mostly through gritted teeth) is no better, wasting money on clothes and carrying on an affair with a tenant. Devoted to their undeserving parents (albeit with increasing exasperation), the couple see no end to their engagement in sight.

But New York City in general gives them no peace. The first shot (another dolly as in Young America) reveals right away how little the couple enjoy privacy. It follows Pete out of an elevator as three different women inform him that Sidney is working late which he already knows anyway. The last woman uses the time to hit on Pete, an unsuccessful endeavor even before Sidney arrives and kicks her in the leg.







Most of the secondary and minor characters are unhappily married or joyfully widowed. Borzage uses them to create a sort of ambient dread around marriage that permeates even the moments of respite Pete and Sidney find at the top of the Empire State Building or in Central Park. It all results in a rather heavy film which the rushed happy ending does little to dispel. One is left with the distinct feeling of scores unsettled as the heroic couple kiss at Niagara Falls before the end credits.

As a pre-Code film, After Tomorrow features some frank discussion of sex. Pete's mother embarrasses him with talk of how "in every man lurks a beast that can be aroused," undoubtedly to arouse that very beast so that he might step out on Sidney. Sidney herself suspects that the long engagement is putting undue stress on Pete's loins and suggests a "holiday" together. But Pete has self-control and vows to wait for Sidney until hell freezes over.

Finally, for anyone like me interested in the representation of music in film, Borzage includes a scene where Pete gives Sidney the sheet music for "that tune you're so crazy about." As they discuss how much spending 40 cents will cut into their marriage fund, a car drives by advertising a song (although whether it's hawking sheet music or a specific recording is unclear).



Later, after a demoralizing argument with Pete's mother, Pete and Sidney sit at the piano and sing the tune. It's called "All The World Will Smile Again...After Tomorrow."

Young America (Frank Borzage 1932)

The next few weeks, eh?

Ok some spoilers below although I tried minimize them as much as possible. As always, click on the pix to make the bigger.


Like all great directors, Frank Borzage synthesized seemingly contradictory ideologies. His oeuvre reveals a 19th-century Romantic suspicious of, if not utterly blindsided by, modernity and industrial capitalism. But films like Liliom and 7th Heaven display a total immersion in the technological wizardry of that most modern of 20th-century entertainments, the cinema. As Murnau, Borzage and Fox (both the documentary and the book) proclaim, Murnau's work (and Fox's money) spurred Borzage to exploit cinema's potential more fully. But any dazzling effects and byzantine camera movements were put in the service of a melodrama that harked back to the 19th century and arose from the wear and tear of modern life.
Young America lacks the cinematic fireworks of some of its predecessors in the box. But it's a perfect introduction to the melodramatic mode in which Borzage worked and flourished.

An often didactic plea to approach juvenile delinquency with compassion, Young America resembles the Warner Bros./First National social problem films of the time, e.g., I Am A Fugitive From The Chain Gang (1932) or William A. Wellman's extraordinary run of gritty programmers, especially Wild Boys of the Road (1933). But Borzage juices the genre for maximum melodramatic impact by fixing his gaze rather calmly upon secondary or even seemingly throwaway characters for whom the swift injustices of the modern city have proven devastating. So his take on modernity is less hectic than Murnau's. Both directors evoke the bewilderment of encountering a wide array of urban dwellers on a daily basis. But where Murnau in Sunrise (1927) whizzes by blurred bodies on a city street, Borzage here contemplates his characters in the lengthy proximity of the train or bus ride, taking in their faces, their gestures, their ways of speaking.

Juvenile court provides Borzage with a perfect opportunity to indulge in this aesthetic. Here we encounter "young America - boys from all walks of life" as Borzage parades several of them in front of Judge Blake (Ralph Bellamy) to hear their cases. The first shot of the film explicitly links their fates to not just Blake but to Edith Doray (Doris Kenyon) as well who will serve as the film's heart and thus Borzage's closest surrogate. A dolly shot, it follows the boys into the court room



where it picks up Edith as she walks into the judge's chambers (overseen by a painting of Lincoln and a bust of what looks like Shakespeare)



and finally rests on her meeting with Blake.



She has come to see Blake to gather information for a paper on juvenile court that she is to read at her woman's club. Blake obliges and allows her to sit next to him as he hands down his verdicts.

As unconventional as this already may seem, even odder is Blake's appearance and demeanor. He has stiffened his hair into a wind-swept look that comes off rather "mad scientist" in the spectrum of male Hollywood star coiffures of the era.



And he affects a downright insolent slouch while addressing the young men from the judge's bench.



No doubt he presents himself in this manner in order to create a bond with the juveniles whose lives he will change forever. But it also makes him a type, a weird sort we don't time to figure out as we pass him by on our way through the city/ movie.

While Blake remains a bit of a cipher, however, he serves to render modernity more legible, one of the key goals of melodrama. As a judge, he plays a vital role in the dissemination of what Foucault calls biopower, the explosion of judicial, medicinal, psychological, etc. discourse that the modern state uses to create ever-knowable subjects. Privy to biopower's enormous paper trail, Blake knows every boy "mentally, morally, and physically" before they even step foot in his courtroom. Little passes him by. So by the time the JDs are seated across from him, he can read the truth behind their faces. For instance, he knows that George is crying because he's sorry for himself and not for what he's done.



After consulting the paper work on Freddie, Blake knows that he has run away only not out of delinquency but rather to see his mother who has been committed to an insane asylum.



Most importantly, when Edith comments sypmathetically on Sam's "fine face," Blake informs her that he's a thief and a gang leader, "one of the worst boys I've ever handled."



By the end of the scene, Blake has transformed the boys, passing before us like unknowable strangers on a train, into docile subjects capable of rehabilitation and legible through and through.

Before that happens, though, we are introduced to the hero, Arthur Simpson (Tom Conlon), an orphan living in poverty with his aunt.



Crucially, his crime is most explicitly linked to modernity - he drove a car that didn't belong to him (but only to move it away from a fireplug). Contrast this with Washington Lincoln Jackson who stole a vegetable wagon because he wanted to ride its horse.




The city in Young America plays up this contrast because it is a city in transition, poised between agrarian and urban modes of existence. And the fundamentally good Arthur finds himself caught in between with various adults and authority figures convinced that he is the worst boy in town. Much of the time, Borzage blames this predicament on cars as a sort of modern scourge. The first time we see Arthur outside of the courtroom, he is already driving another car which does not belong to him, again to move it away from a fireplug so that the owner will not receive a ticket. But it always brings him to the wrong place at the wrong time.



In this instance, he meets up with his friend Nutty (Raymond Borzage, the director's nephew). Nutty too bears the marks of a city in transition. But he has arrived at a more peaceful relationship with his environment, a farm boy making do in a rapidly developing town. Arthur finds him trying to hypnotize chickens.



And later Nutty mans an elaborate rig constructed from modern detritus such as tires and Fuller Varnish cans.






But quickly Arthur gets in trouble again as a man bursts into the scene and accuses him of trying to steal the chickens. Arthur flees to a busier part of town where he rescues a dog stuck in traffic, one of many reminders of Arthur's good in the face of dangerous modernity.



The dog belongs to Edith who rewards his good deed by entreating her grouchy, suspicious husband Jack (a perfectly cast Spencer Tracy) to give Arthur a job in his store because she is one of the few people who she believe in Arthur's goodness.

In the next scene, Arthur and Nutty walk to school and come across Clarence Paine. "Guys like (Clarence)" make them sick because he is always hanging around girls. "Any guy that walks to school with a girl is a big sissy," Nutty proclaims.



If we accept John D'Emilio's theory in "Capitalism and Gay Identity," then here we have another effect of modernity before us - the modern gay subject. Or at the very least, Clarence exemplifies the wider range of masculinities available in a city. After a classroom fight that gets Arthur suspended, the teacher (an uncredited Jane Darwell) elects Clarence to monitor the class (presided over by another portrait of Lincoln) while she takes Arthur to the principal's office. Clarence's swishy response of "yes, teacher" sets him up for the ridicule of his classmates who proceed to ignore his temporary authority.



Without spoiling too much more of the remainder of the story, suffice it to say that Arthur does everything, including breaking the law, for a greater good and gets punished for it each time. Edith's awareness of this fact compels her to take Arthur in to her middle-class home despite the vehement protestations of Jack. When the couple return home one evening to find Arthur gone and some money missing (again, taken by Arthur for a good reason), Jack gives Edith an ultimatum - either he goes or Arthur goes. Arthur overhears this conversation from outside and knows he has to do yet another bad thing for the good of the marriage.





He comes inside and acts the bad boy he never was before storming out of their lives. Jack assures a devastated Edith that there was nothing she could do to help the boy and the couple reconcile. Arthur looks on again through the window, happy that his ruse has saved their marriage.



And in a gut-wrenching shot that resembles the end of Stella Dallas (King Vidor 1937), he makes his way towards an uncertain future, wiping the tears from his eyes.




Film theorists such as Linda Williams and Patricia White have suggested that the end of Stella Dallas fuels a fantasy of escape from motherhood. Similarly, we ought to entertain the notion that this sequence in Young America fuels a fantasy of escape from bourgeois standards of comportment. Mitigating against such a reading somewhat is the fact that the film does not end here. Arthur wanders throughout the city and catches Jack being held up by two burglars in his store. The burglars notice Arthur and take him along in their getaway car. As Jack and a police officer drive after them, one of the burglars tries to shoot at them. But Arthur saves their lives by taking the wheel and slamming the car into a ditch. At last Jack sees the true, good Arthur as he cradles the injured boy in his arms. The last scene shows Arthur has finally found his place in the city, integrated into the middle-class utopia of the Dorays' home. But the fact that it took the destruction of a car to arrive at this happy ending (in a film sewing a great deal of anxiety around city life) suggests that Borzage believes much more fervently in an agrarian, pre-modern utopia. As classical Hollywood's most incurable Romantic, where else would he find it?

Murnau, Borzage and Fox (aka Box Sets Sometimes Rule...Sorta)

So starts a series of commentary on the it's-about-damn-time Murnau, Borzage and Fox box set - 12 DVDs and two books honoring William Fox and the geniuses he funded (for a time), F.W. Murnau and Frank Borzage. Check back here over the next few weeks for an in depth look/listen into each film complete with copious screen grabs (I just discovered Command-Option-S on VLC - try it!!!).

For now, though, I want to comment on the box itself. The adjective I've encountered most in reviews of Murnau, Borzage and Fox is "overstuffed." And indeed opening the behemoth burns many calories with the books sliding all over (save those ugly cardboard stoppers - they help!) and the title plaque becoming frequently unglued. Plus the discs are sequestered in thin folders which means that in order to remove a disc, one has to pick at it like chocolate in an advent calendar. (Complaints about the $239.98 list price are silly. How cheap can 12 DVDs and 2 books possibly be? Don't answer that, Mill Creek Entertainment.)

But only cinemaniacs (coughs) would purchase the thing for home consumption. It's ultimately designed for video stores and libraries where the discs only need to be plucked from the box once to begin their rental/checkout lives. And if a box's gotta be stuffed with something, then lordi let it be looooooooooong unavailable Murnau and Borzage films.

I'll work backward so first up next time is Young America (1932). Stay tuned.

Queer To The Core!: Queer Rock From The Vaults! (Quick Nuts c. 1998)

Queer To The Core!: Queer Rock From The Vaults! (Quick Nuts c. 1998)
1. B. Bubba: "I'd Rather Fight Than Swish"
2. B. Bubba: "I'd Rather Swish Than Fight"
3. Teddy & Darrel: "I'm Hungry"
4. Teddy & Darrel: "Wild Thing"
5. Teddy & Darrel: "Gary Ghoul Boy"
6. Teddy & Darrel: "Little Red Riding Hood"
7. Teddy & Darrel: "The Hollywood Agent"
8. Teddy & Darrel: "These Boots Are Made For Walking"
9. Teddy & Darrel: "Strangers In The Night"
10. Teddy & Darrel: "Say There"
11. Teddy & Darrel: "Hanky Panky"
12. Teddy & Darrel: "Hollywood Swings"
13. Teddy & Darrel: "They Took You Away, I'm Glad, I'm Glad"
14. Teddy & Darrel: "Hold On, I'm Comin'"
15. Bonus Cut - Billy Devroe and The Devilaires: "There Once Was A Man Named Durkin" and "Queer Police [aka You're Arrested]"
16. Byrd E. Bath: "Mixed Nuts"
17. Byrd E. Bath: "London Derrierre"
18. Unknown: "The Ballad Of The Camping Woodcutter"
19. Unknown: "Scotch Mist"
20. Bonus Cut - "Redd Foxx Is A Lesbian"
21. Selections from Pearl Box Revue: Call Me MISSter

Here's Queer To The Core!: Queer Rock From The Vaults! released around 1998 on the (presumably) ad hoc label Quick Nuts. It contains:

Several comedy 45s from Camp Records

The entirety of Teddy & Darrel: These Are the Hits, You Silly Savage!!!! (Mira 1966)

Bonus cuts from Billy Devroe and The Devilaires and Redd Foxx

Side two and the second half of side one of Pearl Box Revue: Call Me MISSter (Snake Eyes, c. 1970). This is a hilarious and poignant two-record round table discussion featuring four drag queens: Jaye Joyce, Clyddie McCoy, Tony La Frisky, and Dorian Corey (of Paris is Burning fame). Soul journeyman George Kerr serves as a ring leader of sorts. It was distributed by Sylvia and Joe Robinson's All Platinum Record Co. and produced by Coasters baritone Billy Guy. I own the album and will up it in its entirety when I finally figure out vinyl-to-mp3.

Get it here (YSI so move quickly)

Pazz & Jop 2008

Here's my Village Voice Pazz & Jop 2008 ballot:

1. Ghislain Poirier: Bring The Fire Mix (MP3)
2. Steinski: What Does It All Mean?: 1983-2006 Retrospective (Illegal Art)
3. Raphael Saadiq: The Way I See It (Columbia)
4. Belong: Colorloss Record (St. Ives)
5. High Places: High Places (Thrill Jockey)
6. Gang Gang Dance: Saint Dymphna (Social Registry)
7. Royce Da 5'9": Bar Exam 2 (Mixed by Green Lantern) (MP3)
8. The B-52's: Funplex (Astralwerks)
9. Girl Talk: Feed The Animals (Illegal Art)
10. The Service Industry: Keep The Babies Warm (Sauspop)

1. Blackout Crew "Put a Donk On It" (All Around the World)
2. T.I. feat. Rihanna: "Live Your Life" (Grand Hustle/Atlantic)
3. Alphabeat, “Fascination” (Copenhagen/EMI)
4. Lil Wayne: "A Milli" (Cash Money/Universal/Motown)
5. Grace Jones: "Williams' Blood" (Wall of Sound)
6. Kanye West: "Paranoid" (Roc-A-Fella)
7. Tmberlee ft. Tosh: "Heels" (MP3)
8. Burial: “Archangel (Boy 8-Bit's Simple Remix)” (MP3)
9. Nas: "Black President" (Def Jam)
10. Royce Da 5'9: "Shot Down" (MP3)

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle 2008)

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire can best be described as ambient Bollywood. Given its Mumbai setting, the film is dusted with references to India's (if not the world's) largest motion picture industry but in the end (and how!) steadfastly resists the structure of its films. There's a shit-covered encounter with Sholay icon Amitabh Bachchan. Boyle has enlisted the scoring talents of singer/composer A.R. Rahman (best known in the States for Lagaan). And the story is no less preposterous than any number of Bollywood feel-gooders. Street urchin Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) winds up on the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and each question just so happens to reference a usually horrifying event in his life. The game show provides the paint-by-numbers grid and flashbacks to Jamal's past color in the details all the way up to the beyond obvious climax.

That's bad enough right there. But what's really infuriating about Slumdog Millionaire is that Boyle felt compelled to indulge in the annoying English-speaking film practice of shunting off a musical number to the final credits. Just as the obsessively plotted story comes to an end, cast and crew run out on a subway platform and perform a choreographed dance (but do not sing) to "Jai Ho" (sung by Sukhwinder Singh) with Patel leading the charge. Thus when it comes to song, the film has more in common structurally with There's Something About Mary, Shrek, Bend It Like Beckham, Garage Days, Down With Love, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Hitch, Jackass 2, Inland Empire, The Game Plan, and I Think I Love My Wife than it does with Sholay or Lagaan. And thus Boyle flubbed a perfect opportunity to invigorate his stiffly conceived film with song and dance.

This is not a plea for Bollywood authenticity (sort of a laughable concept anyway). Indeed, if we're to believe Rahman, the film has nothing to do with India in the first place. In an interview with Logan Hill for New York magazine, he admits that:

"For me, it’s not about India at all. It’s about human emotion, how we suppress so much and it all comes out. It’s a human film, not about India at all. The soundtrack isn’t about India or Indian culture. The story could happen anywhere: China, Brazil, anywhere. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is on in every damn country."

After sucking on 120 minutes of Slumdog's sap, I'm inclined to agree with his human's lib perspective. But my One World movie would feature a more regular alternation between narrative and number. Slumdog Millionaire is missing that regular alternation which offers not only a set of disjointed pleasures but the potential for auto-critique that is the gift of the best Hollywood musicals and Bollywood films. Instead the story remains confident of its own cleverness throughout even though its architecture is laid out in its entirety by the first ten minutes. And the benefits of musicality come too late, as we're walking out of the theater.

Rocky Horror movie to be remade

Blowing off dust:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7558091.stm

Shangri-La Plaza (Nick Castle 1990)

About three years ago on the a_film_by list, Mike Grost mentioned a TV pilot musical called Shangri-La Pizza. It was apparently shown only once one godforsaken night in 1990 on CBS. Mike was lucky enough to catch it. And his site was long the only site on the internet that mentioned the thing.

Well, that's because Mike, bless him, got the name wrong (and you really can't blame him - he was taking down credit info as the show was being broadcast!). It's Shangri-La PLAZA and in our era of immediate gratification, you can now relive that fateful night in 1990 on youtube as the entire episode is there in three parts. Here's part one:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhOa_i12GtY

After watching it twice now, it's clear that we didn't need Nirvana to sweep away Shangri-La Plaza (and Cop Rock in the same year no less!). Apparently, TV execs took the enormous success of MTV-style danceicals of the 1980s as an excuse to greenlight these spontaneous outbursts of song. But by 1980, such outbursts were long since verboten (despite very occasional successes here and there) and Shangri-La Plaza goes Cop Rock one better by featuring very little spoken dialogue. That is, it's almost sung through which ups the ante for a nation already turned off by such musical expression.

So it's no shock that it never got past the pilot stage. Still, loving the musical as I do, I just gotta give Shangri-La Plaza the hug it so desperately needs. I love the main theme, the "Donut Hole" song, and I mourn the fact that we'll never get to hear the blond skater/surfer dude sing.

It was directed by Nick Castle whose odd career seems indicative of the type of floundering (profitable or not) that he would not have had to do in the classical Hollywood era. He played Michael Myers in Halloween and dipped his toes in quasi-musicals such as Tap and August Rush. Also, watch for a young Savion Glover.

If I had to be mean about any of it, I'd say that the apparently requisite dual focus heterosexual narrative of the musical is not resuscitated here by tweaking the formal into a triple focus heterosexual narrative (two brothers after the same woman). In fact, it's forced and awkward to watch. And trust me - you don't have to be gay to come to that conclusion. In the end, then, it's a measure of the dead end of the musical in the 1980s and 1990s, the impoverished bank of stories to tell via music. But that in itself is a perverse kind of pleasure anyway. Enjoy!

Roswell

I'm surprised a trip to Roswell didn't happen earlier seeing as how Stuart's a conspiracy nut. But I was recently invited to fill out a panel at a conference in Albuquerque. And given that Roswell is only three hours away, we made a vacation of it.

We spent very little time in Albuquerque so I don't have much to report beyond that we ran into a lot of tough guys. And the mountains outside the city were absolutely gorgeous.

I told a conferencer I was heading to Roswell and he responded that he'd be reluctant to visit because he imagined his stay would be an imposition. Having felt like a pestilence-bringing imperialist during my two loooong days at Niagara Falls, I know how he feels. Somehow, I escaped this feeling in Roswell probably because we spent a lot of time just sleeping. That is, this was one of those real vacations where you simply veg rather than rush to cram in as many memories as possible.

Not that there was much to cram. The sight of the UFO crash (and if you're wondering what that phrase is doing here, brush up on the event here) is off-limits. And besides, the crashed happened near Roswell (wonder what town is pissed losing all the tourist dough). So you go to Roswell for The International UFO Museum and Research Center which, like the museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, strives to present an even-keeled assessment of the situation (with an obvious lean towards "the truth is out there and the U.S. govt. is hoarding it"). However, if you're not inclined to wade through the word-heavy exhibits with the diligence they require, you can breeze through the entire thing in an hour tops. Which means that either you or the person you accompany must be a UFO/conspiracy freak to get something out of it.

And actually, as a mere tagalong, I did get something out of it. Below is a placard listing some reasons why the U.S. govt. would want to keep UFO information under wraps. Nos. 3-5 seem particularly sound to me.















Here are some of the showier attractions.








































And some cool art work.












































































And some props used for a TV movie about the crash.









































After the museum, there's really not much else to do. There was a haunted house thang that I am too adult (i.e. even more scared than a child) to patronize. And countless memorabilia shops that, as with Graceland, start to blend into one another very quickly.

One shop, though, had a nifty little Spacewalk, a short glow-in-the-dark exhibit that cost two bucks and provided a mildly trippy divergence for about three minutes, maybe four. I told Stuart to get the hell out of the way in the last pic but it turned out to be kinda spooky. Ooooh.












































































Around town, there is no poverty of attempts to exploit the UFO connection. Aliens are welcome at Arby's, says a sign advertising Beef & Cheddar prices. Keep your junk at Alien Storage. An accountant sprinkled his office windows with those beach ball green aliens you can buy at the state fair.

The streetlights are alien.















The sidewalks are alien.















The soda machines are alien.















Even the failed restaurants are alien.















In sum, an peculiar, slightly lame vacation. Megatons better than Niagara Falls, though.

Stuart got hideously ill the morning we left (tons of alien infestation jokes so far from friends; but no govt. infestation jokes yet). So I sped him back to Austin during which time I noticed this sign: Melodrama at Granny's Opera House. I know Christine Gledhill, Linda WIlliams, et al. consider melodrama to be the central mode of western media. But this sign advertised melodrama as a genre. Which suggests that Granny's Opera House might not exist anymore. Sadly, the puking gentleman in the back seat prevented further exploration.