Master Gardener (Paul Schrader, 2022)

Paul Schrader's cinema is nothing if not frustrating. For 3/4, even 15/16 of their running times, his films hypnotize. But then, often in the very last scene, he defaults to the most mechanical trope in mainstream movie history - the formation of the heterosexual couple. As with First Reformed (2017) and, to a lesser extent, The Card Counter (2021), all of which he wrote as well as directed, he sees nowhere else to go after his dénouements. You have to wrestle with this trope unless you're going to forsake even remotely mainstream cinema altogether. But you're free to rage when it's part of the unthinking mechanics of the film, especially given the age disparities between the older men in First Reformed and Master Gardener and their younger objects of desire. 

From the perspective of waiving this particular bee from my bonnet, it's of little use to differentiate the story of this film from any of Schrader's others. Besides, narrative is not my strong point and the imperative of rehashing synopses on what is essentially my film diary deflates me. So, you should absolutely check this out - terrific performances, palpable hothouse atmosphere, savvy pre-dénouement story construction that keeps you hooked, even a précis on getting in deeper touch with the earth (see pic below). But Paul, pretty please - go somewhere different with your preoccupations next time! Maybe work on not getting so preoccupied!

Grade: B+

My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964)

Pros:

1. Those gorgeous, eternal songs and the fecund musical universe it engendered. Read Tim J. Anderson's two chapters about the myriad recordings of the numbers and how they trained America in a new form aesthetic discernment in his terrific Making Easy Listening: Material Culture and Postwar American Recording (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). For one such spirited-and-then-some version, check out Lypsinka's take on Marilyn Maye's take on "Get Me to the Church on Time" here.  

2. The sick, gay-ass costumes and art direction of Cecil Beaton. I want never to leave the "Ascot Gavotte."

Cons:

1. The godawful, received, arbitrary, compulsorily heterosexual ending which George Bernard Shaw would've hated.

2. The length. Gawd, post-1960 Hollywood cinema makes my ass itch!

3. The direction. Cukor pulls off some elegant swirls. And I appreciate the perversity of rendering this a de facto inscription of the Broadway show. But lawd, is the camera heavy in that tumescent, Oscar-pandering, post-1960s Hollywood way! Cut! Track! Show me one (1!) fourth wall!

4. Audrey Hepburn. To state the obvious, she acquits herself admirably but Julie Andrews would've smoked her. 

Grade: B

Appointment with Danger (Lewis Allen, 1950)

I wasn't expecting much from Appointment with Danger since two of Lewis Allen's well-loved vehicles, The Uninvited (1944) and Desert Fury (1947), convinced me that Andrew Sarris was right to ignore the director in The American Cinema. But this solid-plus noir suggests that Allen had a feel for beefing up certain moments, perfect for someone like me whose mind drifts off most narratives. As it is, I can barely recall the specifics of the story, something about postal inspector Al Goddard (Alan Ladd) protecting nun Phyllis Calvert who witnessed a murder committed by Jack Webb and Harry Morgan. Ladd looks luscious. Here he is during a nasty game of hand ball with Webb.

 

He gets to peep in on postal workers. I had no clue there was (is?) so complex an operation.

He drops in on a suspect, Paul (Stacy Harris), at one of the smokiest bars in noirdom. 

 

You could tell cigarettes were a dime a two dozen for how quickly they were discarded. Ladd lights a cigarette as soon as he enters (note the cigarette machine on the left).

 

They're both smoking as Ladd approaches the suspect and pulls him away from the pool table.

The suspect discards his cigarette (on the barroom floor!) as he walks over. 

 

Ladd puts out the cigarette even though he just lit the damn thing!

Then the suspect lights a cigarette even though he just threw one away! 

Jan Sterling of Female on the Beach renown is on board as Dodie, a moll with a love for bop. She runs into Ladd at a drug store where she's come to purchase some records. "Do you like bop?" she asks him. 

Al: "Bop? Is that where everybody plays a different tune at the same time?" 

Dodie: "You just haven't heard enough of it. Have you heard Joe Lily's "Only Mine"? Come up to my place and hear it."  

Al: "As a favor to Joe." 

Dodie: "What he can do with a horn. He belts it, melts it, and rides it all over the ceiling." 

Al: "Can he play it?" 

 

Up at her place, Ladd tries to pump her for information but she'd rather get into the music.

 

I love how the scene reverses the typical polarities of music fandom. Here, the woman performs some close textual analysis while the man sits confused on the sidelines. Although I always itch when people don't hold records on their sides.

Best of all, it does NOT end with the formation of a heterosexual couple. Can't, really, with Calvert as a nun. Here's Ladd with Dan Riss as he, what else, lights a cigarette for him. And we know what cigarettes meant before a fade in classical Hollywood - SEX! Good show. 

Grade: A-minus

The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)

SPOILERS but who could possibly care?

I've written about the tendency of 1970s Hollywood filmmakers to inflate their genre pics into white elephant art. But I didn't anticipate I'd be throwing The Sting, a film I hadn't seen in probably 40 years, onto the pile. What a slog! It starts out as a promising example of the gambling film, a favorite genre probably because gambling has always seemed so butch and beyond me. All the proper nouns, especially names like Horse Face Lee and Suitcase Murphy, and card terms (slice it to the side, horizontal ponies*) announce themselves as standards of traditional masculinity that I will never attain. It's a turn on, in a way. But lawd, why did this thing have to be 129 minutes? The pace slows in the last third to accommodate, you guessed it, compulsory heterosexuality, a waste of time in a film that couldn't care less about women. The entire Loretta (Dimitra Arliss) subplot could be excised. Hooker (Robert Redford) pining for her serves only to postpone the sting to the last ten minutes of the film. And could the sting be any lamer? The earlier card game on the train is far more intense. We know Hooker and Gondorff (Paul Newman, with inhuman eyes) can't die. So when we see them get shot, the "sting" is blunted. This was the best picture of the year according to Oscar? Come back, The Exorcist, all is forgiven.

Grade: C+

*I made those up. 

The Cincinnati Kid (Norman Jewison, 1965)

It's easy to figure out what went wrong here. Despite the wattage in front of the camera (Steve McQueen as the titular kid, Edward G. Robinson as a well-manicured poker genius, Karl Malden as a put-upon card dealer, Joan Blondell as the brassy Lady Fingers, Ann-Margret and Tuesday Weld as arm candy, Cab Calloway surprisingly effective as a fellow player, and Rip Torn on board for sleaze) and behind it (Sam Peckinpah fired early in production, screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr. and Terry Southern, music by Lalo Schifrin, edited by Hal Ashby), no one knew what to do with a story in which a mammoth poker game is its sole raison d'être. The poker scenes are fantastic. Even if you don't understand every filigree of the game, Jewison revs up the tension so that the stakes are never in doubt. But it takes about an hour to get there. Before then, it's deathly dull despite a gnarly chicken fight scene. Most of the screen time dwells on romantic foibles that Jewison et al. should have breezed through if not ignored altogether. And the prodcution design offers no compensations. The only way to tell the story takes place in the 1930s is by the cars and a National Recovery Administration poster in the background. Does the film end when the poker game ends? Of course not because you need the Formation of the Heterosexual Couple stamp to bring the thing to its quick, clockwork conclusion. 

Grade: B-minus

Sheesh! Way to make it plain!

For those who refuse to believe that the endings of most classical Hollywood films (contemporary too, as an unlucky screening of The Green Lantern didn't need to remind me) are contingent upon the formation of the heterosexual couple, we now have incontrovertible proof that it is so. Take that, evidence queens!