Film clips

Watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks 1953) and the ditzy character Lorelei Lee played by Marilyn Monroe with her absurdist lines (“I won't let myself fall in love with a man who won't trust me, no matter what I might do.”) I started wondering if this character was the source of the forevermore ubiquitous “dumb blonde” jokes. 

Watching British actor Ronald Coleman in Random Harvest  (Mervyn LeRoy 1942) about a war veteran suffering amnesia, Coleman is the quintessential sophisticated debonair male. Mustached and his hair swept back he epitomizes a certain mid-century – indeed classic – masculine persona, whether dressed in rugged field jacket or in a tuxedo – with qualities of handsomeness, charm and integrity.

Everyone laughs at the line from The Graduate (Mike Nichols 1967) where the recently graduated – and alienated - Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is given advice about career choices from his family neighbor, Mr. McGuire. “I want to say one word to you. Just one word…. Plastics.” Of course, the comment was a big put down of the modern plastics industry. But it wasn’t the first-time plastics was ridiculed by Hollywood, as many think. The execrable character Helen Jorgenson (Constance Ford) in A Summer Place (Delmer Daves 1959) has just bought a plastic Christmas tree – of course. “This should last 10 years, it’s solid plastic,” she boasts. The tree shortly after is knocked down when Helen slaps daughter Molly (Sandra Dee) for meeting her boyfriend (Troy Donahue) illicitly. The camera zooms in on the broken down forlorn looking tree. So much for durability.

If you want to see a consummate film, watch The Entertainer (Tony Richardson 1960), featuring one of Britain’s all-time greatest actors Laurence Olivier as a third-rate music hall vaudevillian who is past his prime. Richardson puts on a master class performance as Archie Rice, who is at turns charismatic, volatile, sensitive and scurrilous. You can't take your eyes off him.

I finally got to see Eating Raoul (Paul Bartel 1982), a black comedy starring Bartel and the famous underground film cult actress Mary Woronov. They play a Los Angeles couple trying to lead a decent life amidst the debauched moral decline of southern California, with cheap and exploitative sex all around them. Trying to raise money to open a restaurant, they latch onto an idea of .... murdering swingers. Bartel is almost identical looking to contemporary actor Paul Giametti, complete with bald head and beard. Woronov was a mainstay of Andy Warhol’s films including in his famous 1966 Chelsea Girls. 

And, recently in Salzburg, Austria and unbeknownst to me, I had booked into a hotel that had one of Europe’s oldest movie theatres. This was the Mozartkino (Mozart Cinema) in the Altstadthotel Kasererbräu in the city’s old town, close to the famous castle. Opened in 1905 and circular in design it’s actually one of the oldest theatres in the world (photo above). And every night it features a different currently-released film. During our single night stay in May, Downton Abbey: A New Era (Simon Curtis) was screening. “That’s great!” said my partner, a huge Downton Abbey fan. Only problem: it was dubbed in German. English films in German-speaking countries are overwhelmingly dubbed, not given sub-titles. Presumably this keeps the large film dubbing industry alive.