Swing Time (1936)

Dir. George Stevens
Writ. Erwin S. Gelsey, Howard Lindsay, and Allan Scott
w/ Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore, and Helen Broderick

"I just pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again..."

With song lyrics that have wound their way into the national psyche over the decades, Swing Time possesses an unforgettable slice of Americana. The magic created by their sweet naiveté perhaps the most lasting quality of the pairing of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the real pyrotechnics show best when they dance. Although he would go on to partner with Lucille Bremer, Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, and Cyd Charisse, none would ever please the eye so much as Ginger. She moved in and out of his arms without hesitation, light as breath and lovely as wine.

One of the most novel pastimes of apple pie American theatre seems to be the sporting, good old boy sense of fair play in foul. Conned out of money and a wedding by his dance troup, Lucky hops a train with nothing but the tuxedo on his back, a lucky quarter, and aging sleight-of-hand magician, Pop. When he asks a girl on the street for change, he almost loses the lucky coin. He follows her to the dance hall where she gives lessons, and before you can say "jitterbug" they're dancing as though they were meant for each other.

So is it all that surprising when the charming Lucky, a gambler who doesn't like to give up on a good thing, finds himself in a fix when he falls for the graceful Penny? Not really, but in a film created around a dancing couple, the love story will evolve no more straightforwardly than the dance steps. He still has a fiancee back home, waiting for him to cough up $25,000 so that they can marry; but, of course, she can't dance. In a great scene where he's hoping that they don't have to fall in love, that they can just ignore the problem and it will go away, just the opposite happens. Never underestimate the power of nagging your lover over some missing kisses by singing in the midst of winter's white delight.

Some notable numbers surface, including a somewhat disturbing blackface "Beau Jangles" dance sequence. Its inclusion in theory rather than in practice sends a haunting echo of both political and showbusiness history, but watching Fred dance a much more agressive jig with those chilling silhouettes makes for great cinematography, the kind that can send tingles down one's spine at nearly any age. A stark reminder that his was a different world, it's important to peel away the layers, because what we're getting when he performs for a fictional audience is a look at a look, removed from the easier to watch foreground. Whether or not audiences in 1936 felt the same pulse remains questionable.

In strict terms of film value, the "Beau Jangles" number acts as an exciting bridge, filled with all of Lucky's darkest thoughts that couldn't have been spoken aloud and are better expressed through dance. The rest of the time, judging from the way he and Ginger cut a rug, we have a pretty good idea what's on his mind.

Out of the Past (1947)

Dir. Jacques Tourneur
Writ. Daniel Mainwaring, James M. Cain, and Frank Fenton, based on the novel by Mainwaring
w/ Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, and Paul Valentine

Robert Mitchum operates tepidly as private investigator Jeff Bailey, hired by a muddled Kirk Douglas to retrieve the sultry Jane Greer who has shot him and taken $40,000 from him, adding insult to injury. Bailey tracks down the lone gunwoman only to end up trysting with her on a secluded beach, in a beach house, and at other hideaways. Everything goes swimmingly until the boss shows up, expecting results, and things turn convoluted and considerably less than thrilling.

Crisp pictures and nicely varied settings provide more writing than the writer felt obligated to; the plot - even with the narrative aid - is so disjointed that the story's just not compelling. Depending upon the viewer's school of cinematic thought, it seems likely that a more linear approach to the events would have at least given Out of the Past the advantage of common sense. Ironically, though, its use of flashback also serves as one of the few aspects keeping the viewer awake.

As backstory, Bailey had already retired at the opening of the film, running an independent garage in the middle of nowhere with nobody besides a deaf and dumb sidekick to help him. His relationship with "the Kid", as he was dubbed, holds some endearment. They trust each other and, when needed most, the Kid proves instrumental in saving Bailey's life. For several moments, it almost feels like you're watching a real crime drama instead of a stab at one.

The combination of Mitchum's relaxed, almost limpid approach to acting, a strangled storyline, and some pretty poor directing create a general atmosphere of ennui. Despite lots of sex it isn't very sexy, and more like film blah than film noir. If for one moment, the awol lovers had been convincing; or, the bad guys had been truly bad instead of mildly annoying; or, the sets hadn't been more interesting than anything going on inside of them, this could've been a watchable film. Instead, it exists as a fully edited, intact relic to what should have been a vaguely noticeable crunchy sound on the cutting room floor.

Probably only for hardcore Greer, Mitchum, or Douglas fans (although it will help unspeakably if you happen to like all three), this remains a question mark on Time magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Films" of all time. After turning Out of the Past off, you may breathe a sigh of relief that you can return to normal, exciting life. It begs the question of whether the list's compiler somehow momentarily forgot the title of his assignment. An obscure entry into the noir genre, it stands out in neither its own class nor in the wider sphere of the fim universe as anything beyond a passing fancy...view at your own risk.

Olympia, Parts I & II (1938)

The daughter of a wealthy Jewish businessman, Leni Riefenstahl had undergone a classical education in both dance and fine art before she made her first film, The Blue Light, under the auspices of her own production company, Leni Riefenstahl Studio-Film. After the rise of the Nazi empire, Hitler, who had always fancied himself an artist and at least knew something about it, took a liking to her work and employed her. One can only surmise she took the job not only because it was in her chosen field, but also to spare her life. [1]

Shooting the 1936 Berlin Olympics must have felt like an overwhelming undertaking. She deployed forty-five cameras in various places around the coloseum and outergrounds of the city, some at earth-level, some underwater, and some even by balloon. All in all, she captured two hundred hours of footage which she then undertook to compile into four hours of screen time, a very copious prospect. Using rhythmic editing and God only knows what fossillzed equipment, she created something enjoyable on the whole, even if some of the games are a bit tedious and boring at times.

The essence of the film delineates the physical form and its versatile strength and appeal. An athlete herself, she doesn't hesitate to emphasize the glory of the naked human body, male or female. She takes us back to the ancient ruins of the Olympics' origins to open part I and compares a team of strutting, eager men in part II to wild animals.

Her lean but effective use of spectator shots makes for greatly understated social commentary on the time. All around Adolf Hitler, who presides over the proceedings in full military uniform, sit the champions of other races and their various color-coordinated peanut galleries. African Americans, Asians, and even those of the inferior race incognito represent their country without fear of the concentration camps only miles away. Leni practically winks at the world with the camera. While she does not deny the purpose of the film nor its focus on physical beauty and precision, she tells a tale about her Kaiser. At one point, a female German runner drops the baton in the middle of the 1600 meter relay, costing her team its first place position. Hitler immediately slaps his hands on his knees, moves as if to stand up, and then speaks with the man on his left. You can almost hear him say, "Find the woman's home address and send her and her family to Auschwitz. She has disgraced Deutschland...no, wait. Just have them all killed."

[1] I am by no means a historian. For a full understanding of her plight, might I suggest reading Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir, published in 1993.

Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

Dir. Dziga Vertov
Writ. Dziga Vertov
w/Mikhail Kaufman

Participant/observers seek to study their environments without affecting them, a nearly impossible task. Film theoretician and KinoEye patriarch Dzigo Vertov believed the human eye inferior to the camera's perfect lens but his films very rarely ended up in the untainted form of cinema verite. In order to achieve a certain symmetry, he shapedThe Man With The Movie Camera in the cutting room.

Vertov lauds his experiment's independence of theatrical language and accoutrements and then gives immediate visual conflict to counteract his point. The opening sequence consists of an indoor stage in which the chairs fold and unfold, lights are adjusted, the projectionist prepares his mechanisms. The man with the camera - no larger than the human eye itself in a clever establishing shot - then sets about the task of filming, beginning just after dawn. An entire world is evoked in an hour, one full day in the life of a blossoming socialist Russia. [1]

Many of the people don't know they're being filmed. The man with the camera walks in and out of random frames as though he had been spliced in, not a part of the same world. The music, written by Vertov with explicit instructions to the musicians, energizes the visual tongue, lending it urgency and seamless buoyancy. Deft hands scrub a girl's hair in a salon basin one moment; the next, lace curtains get plunged into a washtub. The man with a camera rides atop a car, behind his tripod, capturing the occupants of a horse-drawn carriage in what seems like an exercise in silliness. The frames freeze. Stills of people and settings and still more stills and a woman cutting negatives of those bits of time in a shop with the stilled machines of industry.

Interesting, dissolute split screens imply a juxtaposition of purpose and results. The man with the camera knows he's not getting pure verite; more important is his conscious intent. The shots are sped up and otherwise manipulated as proof of the power of the camera's eye. A woman screens her face from the camera as she registers for divorce; covers her face in grief at a cemetery; lies wreathed in flowers at a funeral procession; shudders in labor.

Through the eyes of the camera, no difference exists between the woman who holds her purse in front of her face at the divorce registry and the one who rocks to and fro over a burial stone.
Achieving climax when the camera man appears on the big screen, the audience in the theatre holds no barrier for the audience of the larger film. The two are inseparable. In an attempt to show reality with a given margin for error, the man allows his instrument to speak for itself and denudes the barrier between camera eye and subject - both within the context of the film and without - by including us in the relationship. The filmmaker thus successfully demonstrates the superiority of even a slightly adulterated KinoEye. Instead of being voyeuristic or somehow removed by the taint of fiction, the audience shares in the innocent simplicity of his vision.

[1] When all artistic endeavors became the domain of the Central Committee in Stalin's Soviet Union in the 30s, individual style was suddenly interpreted as lying outside the best interests of the people. Kuleshov and Eisenstein, among other directors, were ostracized outright. Vertov simply faded into relative obscurity, working mostly on Novosti Dnia ("The News of the Day") in a limited role. His younger brother, Boris Kaufman, moved to the U.S., where he won an Oscar for his cinematography in On the Waterfront.