Classics Are Classic for a Reason, Weekly Reel #35
I got around to some films on my HBO Max and Prime Video watchlists, which included some Criterion-released classics and a cool indie flick, but boos for Bros.
News of the Week: ever have that satisfaction of finishing all the films in your watchlist? I climaxed twice, with Hulu and Netflix, and am now going through Prime Video and HBO Max. I’ll edge with Prime a little longer while I marathon through all the Max-Criterion crossovers.
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L’Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy) is about a third wheel, Claudia (Monica Vitti), tagging along with her friend Anna (Lea Massari) and Anna’s boyfriend, Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), on a small Mediterranean cruise. The next day when they reach the Aeolian Islands, they disembark to explore one of the smaller rocky islands. Anna and Sandro have a short argument about their relationship, she’s unhappy he works too often. He takes a short nap and then Anna disappears. She vanished without a trace. Claudia and Sandro, along with everyone else, begin searching for her, but fail. After some time, Sandro becomes interested in Claudia—and she does in return. They know it’s wrong, which is why it becomes better. As their search for Anna takes them across Italy chasing false leads, their fresh relationship contains the prospect of Anna returning, which they once hoped for but now fear. And in the last moments, their relationship reaches a nadir that reveals the truth, if any, of their union.
L'Avventura is the first in Antonioni’s trilogy of “modernity and its discontents,” followed by La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962). Antonioni, who won the Palme d’Or (Blow-Up), Golden Bear (La Notte), and Golden Lion (Il Deserto Rosso), was one of the most influential directors in film history through his modernist images and ambiguous, ennui-infested characters. In other words, he provided the artistic language to depict mid-century modernism, which were adventures into being and nothingness. He was one of the progenitors of the European art film, which flourished in the nineteen-sixties.
The production of L'Avventura is a great, shit-going-wrong-during-production story: the island shoot was supposed to last a few weeks but took four months. The large ship to carry the crew of fifty to and from the island never showed up, so they made make-shift rafts and pulled them by ropes to the island every day. The production company funding the film went bankrupt a week into filming, leaving the cast and crew on a deserted island without food or water in cold, Autumnal weather conditions. And when ships arrived and could transport them, the rough seas wouldn’t allow them to pick up the crew every day. For several weeks, the crew went on strike because nobody was paying them, so Antonioni and his assistant director shot everything themselves. Eventually, another studio agreed to fund the film after those three weeks of hell. But even when they wrapped on the island, all their mainland shoots went over-schedule. Simple three hour shoots for B-roll footage would take two days.
None of these struggles made their way into the film’s quality, which contains some of the best imagery and shots of film history—credits to cinematographer Aldo Scavarda. The long, one-hundred and forty-three minute runtime is packed so tight with emotions and personal expression that it couldv’e played for another thirty without notice—credits to editor Eraldo Da Roma, who was the “neorealist editor” of postwar Italy working for Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. When the film premiered at Cannes in 1960, laughter and boos filled the auditorium during the entire screening, which caused Vitti, the main star, to leave sobbing with Antonioni. The film screened a second time soon after but earned the Jury Prize before smashing at the international box-office. Why that initial reaction? I think they weren’t ready to be confronted with the film’s message: that, according to Ebert, at any given moment, any one of the audience members could vanish without a trace in modern society, they were all “on the brink of disappearance,” standing too close to the cliffed coast.
L'Avventura and other foreign classics, as always, are streaming on HBO Max via a licensing deal with Criterion/Janus.
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Black Bear (2020, Lawrence Michael Levine, USA) is a small independent film starring Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Abbott, and Sarah Gadon in multiple roles. In part one, Allison (Plaza), a young filmmaker, is taking an inspirational trip to a cabin in the mountains run by a married couple, Blair (Gadon), who is pregnant, and Gabe (Abbott). Gabe likes Allison in a more-than-friends way because he's stuck at this remote house with a pregnant wife. The married couple argues constantly, brought to you by passive aggressiveness. Allison involuntary involves herself in one of their arguments; Blair is drinking a few too many glasses for being pregnant and is upset that her husband fancies the young woman. Allison, since it’s Plaza, plays the character sarcastically bleak, which makes it worse. When Blair goes off to bed, Allison goes for a lake swim and Gabe joins, who then start making out and take off their clothes. Blair finds them in the lake house, they fight a little, then he pushes her down, causing a possible miscarriage. Allison gets the car, they zoom off, then crash.
Part two begins the day and story anew, this time with Allison and Blair as actors in a film directed by Gabe. Here, Gabe and Allison are married, and Blair is the temptuous third. I won’t describe anything further plot-wise. It’s a fun mid-film twist that disorients one’s perspective, and the end doesn’t solve the dilemma either. Plaza and Abbott are excellent in part two, especially Plaza playing drunk for almost forty minutes. This film reminds me of Assayas and all the other European films that I love, which feature a bunch of people, usually artists, talking, solving minor dramas through slightly aggressive conversations, and playing scenes as natural as possible to enhance the plot, rather than using genre conventions and vfx to save actors from acting. And that’s something one can only find in the mid- to low-budget independent films that are today, like Black Bear, premiering at festivals like Sundance and then immediately distributed on a big streamer after a micro-theatrical release. This one happens to be on Prime Video.
The Philadelphia Story (1940, George Cukor, USA) is an interwar studio comedy featuring James Stewart, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and Ruth Hussey. Adapted from the popular stage play that premiered the year before, it’s about a divorced Philadelphia socialite (Hepburn) on the eve of her second wedding visited by journalists (Stewart and Hussey, who are in an unlabeled relationship) from an invite by her ex-husband (Grant). But over time, Stewart also becomes infatuated with Hepburn, which creates a spider-web of comedic interactions that comes to a climax at the wedding after-party.
The best parts of the film are Hepburn’s performance, which she used to get out of her box-office slump, and the drunken/hangover scenes. The first act is standard comedic build-up, which tries too hard at Wildean flourishes, then swerves into drama in the second act. Although the three main actors can do comedy well, their strengths are in drama—Grant is half-half. So, when acts two and three reveal the main dramatic personae, that of Hepburn’s scorned position as divorced socialite with interests outside of that world, it becomes much better. Doing a comedy of manners, entangling of relationships plot can only take a story so far. Hepburn is clearly the driving force here, which she used as her vehicle, with the backing of bf Howard Hughes, to become a star again. Nowadays, the film is a good reminder of how good she was, especially paired up against the giants of Stewart and Grant and making them look like B-players. You can stream it on HBO Max, along with many other HW classics.
Bottle Rocket (1996, Wes Anderson, USA) is Wes Anderson’s first feature film and immediately set in motion the tone and story he would use to define his quirky style—the “Wes Anderson look” wouldn’t bloom until The Royal Tenenbaums. Two friends, Dignan and Anthony (Owen and Luke Wilson, whose careers were launched by this film), decide to start a career in crime according to Dignan’s seventy-five year plan. They would begin by performing a couple heists, then team up with part-time landscaper, part-time criminal Abe Henry (James Caan). After their first heist at a local bookstore, they lay low at an out of town motel, where Anthony falls in love with a Paraguayan housekeeper with A2-level English skills. They then emerge from hiding and try to perform a heist with Henry’s crew, which goes chaotically and hilariously wrong.
The Wilson brothers, Owen co-wrote the script with Anderson, have as much to do with Anderson’s style as Anderson. Their sensitive, victim-of-bullies attitude gives them the underdog edge that would influence every other Anderson protagonist. At the University of Texas, Anderson and Owen met at a play-writing class, became quick friends and then roommates hoping to make a film together. They were inspired to create Bottle Rocket when they attempted to stage a break-in so that their stingy landlord would repair a broken window. The plan failed but gave them a great premise for a couple of young guys failing to become break-in criminals. The film has the now-typical highs and lows of an Anderson film, as if he has a timeless sensibility towards uncommon romance, fighting bullies (who in this film is played by the third Wilson brother, Andrew), and resilience in the face of failed plans. This film, as well as other Anderson films, is available on HBO Max.
Pass
Bros (2022, Nicholas Stoller, USA) was marketed as the first gay romcom from a big studio, so it shouldn’t be shocking that it gathered little money at the box-office. Look at this graph, the romcom has been the least or second least popular box office draw among the major genres. And even if a quarter of all gay Americans went to see the film opening weekend, it would’ve outperformed everything else instead of getting sub five million USD—in comparison, Smile, a horror film released the same weekend, received twenty-two million. Which brings me to, although there was certainly some homophobia in its box-office disappointment, word-of-mouth is way more powerful. And if you’re a lackluster romcom coming out (NPI) in an era where these kinds of films hit streaming immediately, that’s the more obvious reason. Although there are many, many, many exceptions, a film that isn’t vfx-porn action or adventure still needs to be good to make money.
It stars hairy-concave-chest Billy Eichner as a gay New Yorker who runs a successful gay podcast and is sitting on the board of America’s first LGBTQ museum. Living a life of Grindr hookups, he’s steadfast in his commitment to a single life, citing being gay as the biggest reason. But genre conventions forces him to fall in love with Hallmark Channel actor Luke Macfarlane. Parts of the film are funny, there’s quite a few gay sex scenes, and Eichner’s Jewish neuroticism carries the film from beginning to end. If you’re a huge fan of romcoms, this could be for you. But for others, there isn’t much.
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