quiet trickster

You can probably tell that I’m flagging, right? I couldn’t think of anything to write about the World Animation 2 selection, and by the time I got through today’s four films, I was only able to write about two of them. Oops…

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: More pure Hollywood froth from Anita Loos - ably aided, this time, by Hawks (always my favourite Hollywood golden age director - responsible for just about all my favourite Hollywood films, in any genre).

It’s quintessential Marilyn, of course, with sterling support from Jane Russell (Hawks actually appears to have preferred brunettes, himself, over the years). It’s also the second film in as many days to feature Olympic hopefuls in swimming trunks - entirely improbable set dressing as Russell sings ‘Ain’t Anyone Here For Love?’

Tekkonkinkreet: Being anime, I came away full of remarkable visions and very little clue as to what’s going on. Being anime, perhaps knowing what’s going on is not quite the point.

It’s a softer visual style than I’m familiar with from things like Studio Ghibli’s work - but with the same riotous detail. It’s a fully realised world, although whether it’s on Earth, or somewhere else entirely, is never quite defined.

It starts with a relatively low key story - street urchins, street thugs, yakuza, slum power struggles, with orphans Black and White at the centre. It gets stranger with the arrival of creepy Mr Snake and his apparent supermen assassins, but… you really want me to attempt to explain it?

The names of the central character kind of clues you into what the story’s about - simple, eccentric White is seemingly oblivious to the hardships they’re experiencing, and troubled, violent Black is torn between protecting White and establishing his supremacy in the squabbles with rivals over the slum they live in. As the various elements of criminality are taken out, the film becomes a dream-world battle between Black’s darker side, the Minotaur (astrology and the zodiac are a theme touched upon but never fully developed w.r.t. this bull…), and the balancing force of White.

There are nice touches along the way - each level of thug or criminal is revealed as more human - the thrusting young yakusa worried for his pregnant girlfriend, the aging yakusa resigned to being out of step with the times.

Weirdsville and The Counterfeiters have kinda gotten a rough deal here, as the last two films I saw: Weirdsville deserves it, but The Counterfeiters is pretty good, for, y’know, a depressing film about barely surviving the Holocaust…

Why doesn’t anybody say “swell” any more? Somebody should start a campaign.

I’d be interested to know how Hold Your Man ended before the morality crowd kicked in - but to be honest, we’re so used to watching films that have been subject to mid-shoot rewrites, re-shoots and changes in director/direction that the halfway point switch from caper to redemption movie doesn’t jar as much as it might.

This film has Jean Harlow’s improbable eyebrows joined by Clark Gable’s improbable grin - both working overtime in the first half, but given less work in the second. And even with the imposed inconsistencies, it’s a damn shame nobody’s writing like that these days - the first half zips along, every line counting, none of the excess that so often sinks modern, that great feeling of cinematic energy. (You know, it’s like Aaron Sorkin’s great walk, talk, quip, repeat sequences in The West Wing, only in the thirties they could keep it up for whole movies.)

As frothy as the outfits Jean Harlow wears in it, Red-Headed Woman is the sort of film (well, one sort of film) they don’t make like that any more. Indeed, as they keep stressing, the sort of film they had to stop making like that, for fear of being censored.

It’s actually odd to watch, as you don’t see so many pre-Hay’s Code talkies. Much is similar, but all the sex is implied and cut away from, rather than hinted at for those in the know - but the characters still get married, rather than live in sin. And no doubt the scene where Harlow reclaims her silk pajamas from her flatmate must have had the Hay’s Code commitee’s eyes bugging…

Jean Harlow really does have the most improbable eyebrows…