Sabrina (1954)

Sabrina (1954)
seen @ Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, Bryant Park, New York NY

I had always thought of Sabrina as a romantic comedy, but there's not a lot of comedy in the movie. For the most part, it plays like a straight love triangle story: very wistful, very angsty. Audrey pines for Holden, Bogey pines for Audrey. Why was it that Audrey's romantic leads were always so much older: Bogey, Peck, Cooper, Grant? I would've liked to have seen her with someone like Monty Clift, or Warren Beatty - but so it goes.

I find it a little hard to believe Audrey could be so dead set against going to Paris in the beginning, although it's not so much Paris as what it represents: two years away from Holden, living a life she didn't ask for. When she comes back, though, she's a changed woman, in looks and spirit. Old movies were fond of mystifying the City of Lights in this way. 

Andi talks about Paris, and Europe in general, so much. I know she had a boyfriend over there, learned the language, absorbed the culture, but try as I might, it's kinda tricky for me to imagine her as having undergone a Sabrina-like transformation. Maybe it's because I met her later in life, after she had readjusted to living in America again; maybe it's because she strikes me as more of a traditional, working class Noo Yawker than Sabrina - who for all of the class differences espoused in the movie between her and the Larrabee brothers, still can't help being Audrey Hepburn!

I was about the same age as Sabrina when I went to Barcelona, but that was for only a month. If I had spent two years there, I imagine I'd be quite different. The one year I spent in Ohio changed me enough! Europe, though... We Americans fought a revolution to liberate ourselves from it and in a way, we've been longing to return to it ever since, in one form or another.

I went to Bryant Park to see Sabrina, although watching an outdoor movie there is not the best experience in the world, because I really wanted to watch this movie again. As before, I noticed a number of people videotaping scenes on their cell phones. Why? Is it only because it's an outdoor movie? If they were inside a theater, it would be a crime (I'm not entirely sure this is all that legal, either). What do they do with these recordings, besides post them on social media?

I can understand using your cell to record a minute or two of a concert. While that's probably illegal too, I get that it's a live, unique experience that can never be perfectly duplicated and some people want to preserve that moment. A movie isn't live, though. Granted, the novelty of a movie shown outdoors is special, but the movie itself is no different than if you were watching it on DVD at home. I could even get behind taking a photo of the outdoor screen to show that, y'know, you were there - but recording a minute or two of the film on video makes no sense to me.

I watched it on the rear perimeter of the lawn, standing up. I had a seat on the left-hand side of the perimeter, but by the time the movie started, too many people were standing in my line of sight; plus, too many others were coming and going in front of me. I think I may opt to stand at Bryant Park for a movie from now on. I had no obstructed views, and it kept me awake.

A Foreign Affair

A Foreign Affair
seen at Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, Bryant Park, New York NY
7.29.13

I've always had a bit of a hard time with Marlene Dietrich as a sex symbol. Was she beautiful? Of course. Her beauty, however, was quite different from that of a Rita Hayworth or an Elizabeth Taylor. I've read the stories about how much she managed her looks, to the point of even advising her directors on how to light her properly. She was way ahead of her time in many ways, and you have to respect that.

She never really struck me as being that sexy, though. She reminds me of Mae West in that they were actresses with unconventional looks who made themselves sex symbols through careful cultivation of their image. Of course, it helped that they worked during a time when definitions of feminine beauty were not quite as rigid as they are now.

I dunno. Maybe I haven't seen enough of her films. A few months ago, I had the privilege of seeing The Blue Angel in 16mm. I thought about writing about it, but I honestly was not sure what to make of it, it was such a strange movie. I've seen Witness For the Prosecution, of course, and she's awesome in that. While I have no problem watching her in a movie, I can't quite buy into the idea of her as a sexy siren. Maybe it's the cheekbones. Maybe it's that perpetually languid look in her eyes.

It's definitely not the singing. In A Foreign Affair, Dietrich gets to sing three songs, but, as was typical of her, she didn't sing so much as sing-talk, which can often be really annoying (see Harrison, Rex). Maybe German audiences found that alluring, but I can't say I do. And besides, Madeline Kahn kinda ruined any possibility of me taking it seriously. It sounds like I'm putting Dietrich down, I know, and I'm totally not. Like I said, I respect her for being a true Hollywood original and a cross-cultural icon. I probably just need to see her in other stuff.

Affair centers around a US congresswoman sent to post-war Berlin to assess the morale of American troops, only to discover that an officer may be having a secret relationship with an ex-Nazi. The film is special in that we get to see images of Berlin only a few years removed from the war's end. Jacqueline goes into more detail about the movie, and she makes it sound so much better than my impression of it...

... because of where I saw it. The volume at Bryant Park was quite loud, as it needs to be to accommodate such a large crowd, but loud doesn't always equal clear. As a result, I found I had to focus more. Failing that, I relied on the close-caption screen to my left. This was the first time I had sat near this screen at a Bryant Park screening, and I was surprised to see that the captioning was being done live. A real person was typing the dialogue as it happens. Then I realized why: this was an actual 35mm print being shown. I'd gotten so used to seeing DVDs at outdoor screenings, where one can turn on the subtitles, that it was a bit of a shock to see that we were watching actual celluloid. Kudos to the Bryant Park Film Festival people, I guess.

Affair is a comedy, but I didn't find it that funny, and I suspect the reason why had to do with the sound. As usual, I was at the back end of the lawn, although I was closer to the gate than I was for Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. This is a Billy Wilder film, so that means dialogue is vitally important, and while I was able to follow the plot, I wanted to do more than that. You'll note that in Jacqueline's post she touches upon aspects of the dialogue that I either missed or that I didn't get the full impact of. 

And of course, there were people talking. In this case there was a family to the right and behind of me, complete with little brats kids having a pizza dinner and not caring about the film at all. They weren't there at the beginning and they didn't stay that long, but they forced me to move my seat anyway.

I thought about the differences between Bryant Park's film series and that of Brooklyn Bridge Park, another highly popular venue - besides the obvious one of classic films versus modern ones - and I think an important one is that of location. Bryant Park is nestled right in the heart of midtown Manhattan, a stone's throw from Times Square itself. One can hear the traffic from all sides, and more importantly, it's easily accessible, meaning anyone can wander in from off the street: homeless people, tourists, families eating dinner who don't give a damn about the movie being played, etc. By contrast, the lawn where the films play at BBP is more isolated. It requires you to come to it, as opposed to it just being there, so there's a greater likelihood that everyone who's there is there for the movie and not anything else.

Of course, if I sat within the lawn again, this might not be an issue, but like BBP, I'm slightly uncomfortable being surrounded by so many people at such close range. Especially when I'm by myself! This is something I'll have to re-consider for next summer, I think.

Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte
seen @ Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, Bryant Park, New York NY
7.15.13

I don't go see movies at Bryant Park as much as I used to. That's likely because things have changed. For one thing, entrance to the lawn area is more regimented; park security checks all bags before you go in. The bigger reason, I think, though, is the general unpleasantness of people. In general, the smaller an outdoor movie crowd in New York is, the easier it is to tolerate, and the Bryant Park crowd is huge.

I remember going there a year or two ago with Reid to see High Sierra, a movie I had never seen and was looking forward to, but it was spoiled by assholes around us (I forget exactly how). We ended up leaving early. This year, there are two films that I had my eye on, and last night's film, Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte was the first. I figured it was worth giving Bryant Park a try again.

As it turned out, the worst part about last night was the weather. It was hot like you wouldn't believe! I got to the park sometime between seven and seven-thirty. I was walking east from Eighth Avenue, just a few blocks, but by the time I got to the park, I was sweaty and tired and uncomfortable in my clothes. Free ice cream bars were being given away at the south entrance, so I happily grabbed one, and that helped for a little while. I sat down in a lounge area just outside the east end of the lawn, with chairs and tables with beach umbrellas, so I was in the shade, but the shade didn't help. It was sweltering hot, and it stayed that way all night. 

The heat made me sleepy and unwilling to move, and it didn't help that I was losing interest in the movie. The sound system was plenty loud, even way in the back where I was, but bits of dialogue still sounded slightly muffled, so while I was just barely able to follow the story, it didn't strike me as anything more than three old harpies - Bette Davis, Olivia DeHavilland and Agnes Moorehead - shrieking at each other in Southern accents. In fact, I was prepared to leave at one point. But then bodies started dropping. And Bette has a weird dream sequence... and Olivia started slapping Bette around... and that flower pot...

Still, there were other problems. Early in the film, a bunch of Eurotrash teens gathered at the ramp underneath my position and chattered for awhile, not loudly, but loud enough to be a distraction... and some of them were smoking. So I had to chase them off. They looked at me like I was the crazy one. Maybe it was the language barrier.

The ubiquitous glow of cellphones lit up across the lawn here and there, and some people stood on the ramp taking pictures of the screen with their cells. They didn't block my view, but they were an irritating distraction. Last week when I saw Dracula in Prospect Park, I saw people taking pictures, but they were mostly interested in shots of Philip Glass and his orchestra performing alongside the film, and I was willing to cut them some slack for that. Hell, I was tempted to take a few quick shots myself. Here, it was different. It felt more like a tourist-y thing.

There was one old-timer near me who was eagerly talking old movies with his friend, but beyond that, I didn't feel like I was watching this with a crowd that appreciates movies in general, much less old movies. True, the crowd did applaud when Bette does something important in the climax, but it was an almost perfunctory bit of applause and not a HELL YEAH kind, which is what it should have been. Maybe I imagined all of this though. I dunno. Perhaps I'll be able to tell the next time I come to Bryant Park.

As for the movie itself, well, I'd probably need to see it again to get a better feel of it, but for all the horror movie-style imagery and campy diva duels, there's something to this. It's well shot, for one thing - not just Bette's dream sequence, but the long prologue in the beginning where we see young Charlotte at the party, deep in shadow, dominated by the large figure of her father.  Plus, the language pushes the barriers, for 1964, anyway: it's a bit of a shock to see Bette Davis use the word bitch. Grade this one incomplete for now, I guess.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
seen @ Tony Dapolito Recreation Center (rooftop), New York NY
8.13.10

Sometimes it bothers me when people laugh at stuff in old movies that isn't supposed to be funny. I realize modern audiences don't look at them the same way as they did back then. The style of acting, the writing, the music and the way it's used, the general look - practically nobody makes movies the same way anymore. I get that. But sometimes, if it's a good enough film, I just wanna get caught up in the story and not think too much about that. I hadn't seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers in a long time. It still holds up - and the small audience I saw it with loved it as well. But there were a few moments in this 1956 film that were meant to be serious that this 2010 audience laughed at, and it bugged me after awhile because I was so into the story.

This was the second time I'd seen a movie at this venue. The first time was last month when I saw All About Eve. Watching a movie on the roof of a building sounds awesome until you realize that you're only three stories up. Still, as outdoor movie watching goes, it beats contending with the unwashed masses at Bryant Park in the summer. I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail there this year. I hadn't realized that they now close off the center lawn and make you wait in line to get inside (while checking your bags, natch - this being the new paranoid New York), so I watched the movie from the walkway at the "rear" end, the side closest to the library, heading towards Fifth Avenue. Too many people on top of each other scrambling for the tiniest space. I don't think I'm claustrophobic but maybe I am a little. I dunno.

All I know is that outdoor venues like this are hard for me to be completely comfortable in. That's why I liked watching Body Snatchers here: fewer people, plus actual chairs! I brought my own chair to Bryant Park for Grail, but that had padding. The chairs here were regular metal ones without padding, which meant a lot of adjusting back and forth in order to stay comfortable. At one point some dude arrived almost a half hour into the film (and why do that if you've already missed such a big chunk?) and sat in front of me, but fortunately the seat next to him was empty, so I just leaned to my right and that turned out to be more comfortable.

This was also the first night that felt noticeably chilly to me. Summer's almost over.