Sirk x 2; Sturges x 2; Praise; oh yeah, and Muriel's Wedding

I'm watching a lot of films for school, hence repeat viewings that I'd otherwise put off, or, in the case of Muriel's Wedding, happily do away with altogether.

Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956) [2nd viewing]

Usually I'm not a screen-cap kinda guy, as I suspect were Andre Bazin to blog, neither would he be. But check out the above composition, expressive of everything that's great about Sirk: nostalgic pleasure (i.e. the etching), sorrowful defeat (i.e. Dorothy Malone hunched over), the evocative location (i.e. water), all quiet, all together, all simultaneous. Earlier on, we have Lauren Bacall's introduction to the suite: gaudy, lush production design fills the frame, swelling music fills the soundtrack, and Bacall looks downright nonplussed, at a standstill between the surrounding beauty and the knowledge that she's being duped. Even minor characterizations are really satisfying, like the bartender who persistently sides with Robert Stack in action, but never in emotion, suspended in dubious loyalty. The "happy" ending, a bit of a lift from Notorious in my opinion, significantly shifts emphasis away from the few who prevail back to Malone. A quibble: the camera ominously rests on Stack's dad's portrait, shortly before [SPOILER]. Sirk is too good for superfluous foreshadowing.

Muriel's Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1994) [2nd viewing]

Just godawful, but it presented a challenge to my descriptive abilities when trying to slam it in a class discussion. (Yes, apparently this is more representative of quality Australian cinema than Praise or any film by John Duigan.) I was tempted to write: "Hogan reduces adult interaction to middle-school terms"--but s/he (sorry, too lazy) fails to even capture the social repercussions of the latter. Yes, the social persecution of Muriel is exaggerated. BUT, yes, Muriel is herself a pitifully inept outcast. That said, I'm not seeing any graceful attempt to juggle levels of heightened realism here, just a disengaged wash of cartoon and soap opera impulses.

Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) [2nd viewing]

It's no Written on the Wind, but it has its pleasures. Liked how Annie is intrusive but well-meaning; liked how, a la the above image, Sirk gives us at least one striking composition in which latent ugliness underlies catharsis. (I'm referring to Annie's deathbed speech to Lora, in which Sarah Jane's smiling photograph is sandwiched in between the two. This drew audible laughter from my audience, and it is funny in the sense that no other director would dare draw such sharp attention to the thorny contradictions of melodrama, for fear of falling into camp.) Didn't like boyfriend's sudden, unnatural transition from lover to oppressor, which is inexplicable apart from giving the audience a cheap jolt; didn't like Sirk's deficient understanding of the typical ego of a teenage girl, or perhaps people in general. (E.g. Sarah Jane's earnest admission of "you've been wonderful" after humiliating her white friends.) I have subdued affection for this: Sirk's mastery is evident throughout, but he can't quite find a satisfying way into the material.

The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges, 1940)

Sturges's debut, but it seems he'd had everything figured out. There's a dialectic here between McGinty's laconic pragmatism and his wife's admiring intellectualization that nearly functions as an allegory for the relationship between early Hollywood auteurs and auteurists, even if the latter had yet to come along. McGinty has vague aspirations to greatness, but he also laughs incredulously when earnestly called decent. (Hawks, anyone?) Sturges derives a lot of humor from the way motivations are naturally obscured in real life: loved the way McGinty's future wife shyly disguises an earnest marriage proposal as a business transaction; also loved the way McGinty shamelessly glances at her legs and she weakly retorts with the barely credible, “What’s that got to do with it?” And I laughed very hard at the chauffeur's vague, boring, and rather endearing one-sided conversation.

The Great Moment (Preston Sturges, 1944)

Lesser Sturges, but a singularly dry biopic all the same. Token romance is played so casually it barely exists; Morton, the ennobled discoverer of ether as an anaesthetic, is also a belligerent psychopath who orders his patients to open their mouths and abruptly begins smashing glasses at a store. The crudity of 19th century dentistry, rather than merely representative of past blunders, is played for derisive comedy, and Sturges doesn't fail to temper exaggerated tributes demanded by friends (“every hospital should be named after him!”) with low-key ones made by others ("maybe one or two hospitals...") A lesser film might have portrayed Charles T. Jackson as a "sarcastic drunkard" and an incompetent failure alongside our hero Morton, who in Sturges's film merely looks humorless next to Jackson's funny, credible resignation. And then there's this film's equivalent of the chauffeur's platitudes: a hilariously mundane series of intertitles detailing every stop Morton makes while thumbing through a medical encyclopedia. Why? Why not! It seems the running theme I'm getting from this Sturges double-header is an analysis of the ways in which essentially noble men are dangerous and immature...

Praise (John Curran, 1998)

As embarrassed as I am to link here, I guess I just did.