what was the last 'classic film' you watched and were knocked out by?

Pickup On South Street is amazing. "Are you wavin' the flag at me?"

I watched Out Of The Past — a 1947 noir starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, with Jane Greer as the (mild spoiler) female villain — this weekend. Really, really good, with some surprisingly funny dialogue. I had seen the "remake" (Against All Odds, with Jeff Bridges in the Mitchum part and James Woods in the Douglas part) before, but the original was much better, unsurprisingly.

"Out of the Past" is awesome, Jane Greer is something else in that film.

[Kathie is playing roulette]

Jeff : That's not the way to win.

Kathie : Is there a way to win?

Jeff : There's a way to lose more slowly.

Also watched Buster Keaton's College recently; I bought several Keaton Blu-Rays a couple of years ago and tossed them on the shelf without watching them. I wouldn't say I was "knocked out" by it compared to, say, Steamboat Bill Jr. College is pretty funny, but once you pick up the structure — basically, Keaton tries out for a bunch of different athletic events, and you gradually realize that at the end he's going to use all those skills to foil the villain — you're just kind of waiting for the pieces to fall into place. Also, there's a blackface scene (he's playing a waiter at a restaurant with an otherwise all-black staff), so be warned about that.

I love how Kirk Douglas can't stop grinning at Mitchum, i.e. "I can't believe you're getting away with this."

You are aware that Mitchum hated, hated, hated Kirk Douglas and his brand of acting.

I meant their characters.

Kirk Douglas is really good in this.

Greer, Douglas and Mitchum all equally amazing in it imo. Probably Mitchum's best.

Mitchum was no great respecter of "acting" as craft iirc?

His hair in OOTP = fabulous

The cinematography's by Nicholas Musuraca. Jacques Tourneur had an excellent visual sense.

Mitchum was no great respecter of "acting" as craft iirc?

Typical old school approach - "say your lines and don't bump into the furniture". Used to really love that attitude when contrasted with self-indulgent artistes who go on about themselves forever, but in retrospect I also think it shows a certain level of insecurity, not wanting to be seen as doing a job that involves gurly FEELINGS and EMOTIONS.

i was gonna say it's an assumed pose because he certainly can act, but it's part of the game of Robert Mitchum, film star, and i definitely don't care much about the methods (small m) actors use to create a role so i'm kind of with him up to a point

TS Out Of The Past vs. Night Of The Hunter

Robert Mitchum C/D, S/D

Typical old school approach - "say your lines and don't bump into the furniture". Used to really love that attitude when contrasted with self-indulgent artistes who go on about themselves forever, but in retrospect I also think it shows a certain level of insecurity, not wanting to be seen as doing a job that involves gurly FEELINGS and EMOTIONS.

― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, October 11, 2022 9:22 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was gonna say it's an assumed pose because he certainly can act, but it's part of the game of Robert Mitchum, film star, and i definitely don't care much about the methods (small m) actors use to create a role so i'm kind of with him up to a point

― saigo no ice cream (Noodle Vague),

both of you otm

In my film class we had a cool discussion on the history of film acting a couple weeks ago. When we reached Method acting, a student shrewdly asked, "Who cares what they used? How would you know what's Method vs old school acting when watching them?" She's right.

I also pointed out that male American actors, forever insecure about perceived effeminacy and indulging themselves in a wasted career choice, love to drone on talk shows about how much weight they lost and gained and how much "research" they put into their parts as if to expiate their sins.

yeah a good point. and of course there are film actors who i enjoy for the sheer pleasure of their perfomances, whether said performances are "realistic" or "deep in character" or whatever

iirc Mitchum had to be dragged to his first-ever acting audition by his sister, who was an aspiring actress he followed out to Los Angeles. Everyone could tell he was interested in show business but he feigned disinterest as much as possible while still getting his foot in the door.

Can't believe there's no discussion of The Friends Of Eddie Coyle in that Mitchum thread. What a late career performance that is. Not just the gangster stuff, but his interactions with his wife almost more than anything.

Of course, it's not easy to tell. James Cagney comes off like a Method student in stuff like White Heat, while Paul Newman glided through the 1980s and 1990s on star power (though he needed twenty years of prefatory Method exertions imo).

XP: The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973, Peter Yates)

Also watched Buster Keaton's College recently; I bought several Keaton Blu-Rays a couple of years ago and tossed them on the shelf without watching them. I wouldn't say I was "knocked out" by it compared to, say, Steamboat Bill Jr. College is pretty funny, but once you pick up the structure — basically, Keaton tries out for a bunch of different athletic events, and you gradually realize that at the end he's going to use all those skills to foil the villain — you're just kind of waiting for the pieces to fall into place. Also, there's a blackface scene (he's playing a waiter at a restaurant with an otherwise all-black staff), so be warned about that.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, October 11, 2022 8:19 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

The ending of College is a knockout.

Mitchum in his youth wrote a sympathetic play about a union leader, which he later claimed got praise from Eugene O'Neill. This tidbit courtesy of Lee Server's amazing biography which just drops nuggets like that every other page.

^That book is amazing. Ava Gardner book too.

Panique by Duvivier is a banger, great perf by Michel Simon as the arrogant, anti-social patsy in a gallic take on the old film noir love triangle plot. Amazing sets.

I already knew that French directors who stayed in the industry during Vichy got a rough time afterwards even if their work didn't have any propaganda elements, but have now learned that those who escaped to the US were also derided as cowards who abandoned their country. Can't win!

― Daniel_Rf, Friday,

Will watch tonight.

vampyr d. carl theodor dreyer, 1932

i didn't actually love it tbh but was still knocked out by the gloomy atmosphere. the extended and numerous shots of pages of a book somehow made it creepier.

I saw Vampyr at the cinema earlier in the year. One of the few films I would genuinely consider "dreamlike".

xpost my thoughts as well.

Herzog's Nosferatu is great but not even close to the heights of Murnau's.

I love both.

not wanting to be seen as doing a job that involves gurly FEELINGS and EMOTIONS

I've read that Humphrey Bogart always thought acting was kind of a sissy career

It’s a feeling
You never outgrow

Murnau's Nosferatu is the ultimate classic vampire film but Herzog's version is great too.

I loved William Wyler's The Heiress with Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Clift, a 1949 reimagination of Henry James' novel Washington Square. It was romantic but ultimately very hard-bitten and cynical like a lot of 40's films

Murnau’s is a horror film; Herzog’s is a tragedy.

The Heiress, Wyler's best film after The Letter, handles the melodrama of James' novel so well that by the time Dr. Sloper's realizing what he's done to his daughter it's a horror film.

"how could you be so cruel?"

"I've learned from the best"

In the novel Dr. Sloper is always right until he's wrong.

Wyler's use of deep focus = A+. And the period interior design doesn't stifle the picture.

I loved seeing Agnieszka Holland's Europa Europa again

It still seems contemporary 32 years later.

Herzog’s is a tragedy

I'm a Herzog fan, but I think what I disliked about his Nosferatu is that the unhappy ending felt arbitrary; not in a "senseless whims of an uncaring universe" way, but a twist into nihilism that I didn't feel the earlier part of the film had earned.

The film shows his slow deterioration such that the ending to me is an inevitability, and Adjani's character, thanks to her performance, is just ripe for suffering.

Now, I don't think these elements make tragedy.

What do they make … a milkshake?

Eric, dear, will you check about the hors d'oeuvres? The caterer forgot them, the varnish wasn't dry or something.

you two

if I remember right, at least a few early Dreyer films show images of creepy pages from a book

for example The Parson's Widow, Leaves From Satan's Book

rewatching the Human Condition Trilogy and the 3rd one is the best I think.

(^ this is one of the things in the arrow sale, £15 for the ~9hr trilogy)