My favourite film: Readers' comments – week three
Who was Harvey Pekar? He was a grouch, a slouch, a miserablist. He griped and bitched about everything. But he did it in style. And he did it publicly, through American Splendor – a series of autobiographical comic books and the subsequent movie adaptation, which Amy Fleming chose to open the third week of our My favourite film series.
"Harvey didn't do happy," wrote Amy. "But he did funny and truth, and so does this movie – beautifully." Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman's film was a cinematic holiday from Hollywood's gloss and fantasy, she said. Trudging around, observing Cleveland life with movie Harvey (Paul Giamatti) and real Harvey both took her deep into Pekar's hilarious, sad world, with the blend of drama and documentary reminding her that "the story is about genuine, flesh-and-blood people with human frailties". This "adds tenderness; it makes the film feel as pathologically honest as Pekar himself".
This clarity made and broke the movie, according to many of you. "I found the characters both irritating and compelling at the same time," said Lasereyedcorgis. "Which is what people are like I suppose." The film was a "perfect vehicle for Giamatti's world-weary schtick", said IfThen, while zoskia welcomed the film-makers' intention to show us "an America that we do not always see", even it was full of "poor people, low-paid jobs, car-boot sales, sadness and frustration". Nobby73 found Harvey's message therapeutic: "Another predictable disappointment," they said, quoting a Pekar staple. "Whenever I get a shock looking in the mirror, I think of the line and it cheers me up ..."
Harvey died of cancer last year, his outlook gloomy to the end. "Life's a war of attrition," he said. "You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another."
On to the next thing then, which was Charlotte Higgins's passionate appraisal of The Red Shoes. A Powell and Pressburger (melo)drama that sees young ballet dancer Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) driven to insanity by her need for perfection in her art. The film, set in "a half-destroyed yet intellectually alive postwar London", attempted to "capture the 'out-of-body', fugitive experience of an artist in performance", said Charlotte. "When the conscious mind is suppressed and the body and pure instinct take over."
"The sheer living one's art and being consumed by it are expressed brilliantly," agreed imsotired. The sincerity of Page's ambition is the key, said Chike6: "It's absolutely assumed that this art business is important. To see people composing, dancing and creating as if their lives depended on it. I hadn't seen that expressed quite so powerfully before, and I haven't since."
The grace and composure of the ballet was underwritten with something much darker and primal, said Charlotte. She picked up on Powell's use of sexual imagery, particularly in his depiction of the titular footwear, which were "absolutely dripping with dark imagery about female sexuality (menstruation, loss of virginity) and creativity". "It's as much a film about repressed sexuality and sexual manipulation as it is about dance," said insomniac506, while BrerRabbit2 held Powell's frenetic film up as a progenitor of (theatrical) things to come: "Some might say the whole film is camp before camp was camp."
As ever we hadn't made enough of the film's behind-the-scenes corps de ballet, so director of photography Jack Cardiff, art director Hein Heckroth, matte artist Peter Ellenshaw and cameraman Chris Challis all got their own round of applause. Elsewhere a discussion on where The Red Shoes placed in the P&P catalogue (it was better than Black Narcissus; no, it was better than Blimp but not a patch on … etc etc etc) pirouetted itself to exhaustion, while the prima ballerina of comments (from MsDWrites) took centre stage:
"I first saw this film when I was a ballet-mad five-year-old," they said. "As the final credits rolled, I turned, wide-eyed, to my father and said, 'But, she's all right, isn't she?' He blithely replied, 'Oh yes, but she broke both her legs.' For years I was convinced that afterwards Vicky went on to found a great school for disabled dancers. It was probably 15 years before I saw it again, my father had died in the interim, and I still remember staring at the screen and saying out loud, 'Hang on … !'"
From the mildly misguided to the full-on bonkers, as Jonathan Haynes came out fighting (left-handed) for The Princess Bride. Rob Reiner's adventure story has Cary Elwes's humble farmhand/swashbuckling swordsman battle through shrieking eels and fire swamps to save his "twoo wuv" Buttercup from a fate worse than rodents of unusual size: marriage to the wrong man. William Goldman's screenplay sends up fairytale tropes quicker than Jack climbed the beanstalk. It delighted Jonathan ("It tells a very sweet story without ever straying into mawkishness or sickliness") but was a little too knowing for some of you. "A film for wise-cracking, smartarse kids," said jamie12. "Along with The Goonies, it seems to be one of the films people in my age group rave about as a childhood favourite, but it really leaves me cold," agreed PeachFizz.
The rest of you were into it (A quick sampler: "A Sunday teatime classic" – magick; "A masterpiece of just-tell-us-what-we-need-to-know minimalism" – jeromeknewton) and one of you was IN it. Long hair and a beard were all that were required of SouthCoastOwl and his mates to get a bit of screen time alongside Fezzik, Inigo Montoya and the six-fingered man. Stranger still was SouthCoastOwl and co's appearance at the first screening in his part of Sheffield for what was, superficially, a children's film: "The cinema staff were a bit surprised to see that the expected half-term audience of kids and their parents appeared to have morphed into a crowd of hippies and metalheads," he says. Rest well and dream of large women, SouthCoastOwl. They might need you on the convention circuit yet …
If, as magick says, The Princess Bride was for Sunday teatime, Rio Bravo was for Sunday teatime, dinner and much of the evening, according to Tony Paley, who rode into town with Howard Hawks's epic western in tow. Hawks's two-and-a-half-hour movie "demands a particular frame of mind" and sees "the tumbleweed lazily roll across the main street from one character to another", wrote Tony. The ensemble cast, which included John Wayne, Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson, were strong enough to carry a film with precious little plot. And their tight-knit gang (gloriously given monikers such as Chance, Dude and Feathers) have so much affection for each other that you lot couldn't help rooting for them in their fight against the lawless Burdette clan.
"This film is so good that it finally made me abandon my political objections and begin to love John Wayne," said LlivracNhoJ, a view that many of you could posse up with. "Wayne's work with John Ford is more interesting, deeper, and darker," said ollienorthern. "But Hawks could definitely do the lighthearted stuff brilliantly and I don't think there's any western that's as much fun as Rio Bravo." monders remembers the film fondly for less innocent reasons: "This film was the first time I saw a lady in stockings. And lo, at age 8, a pervert was born."
On a totally unrelated note ... Christian Bennett was on the spot next. He took a shot at explaining why Steve James's documentary Hoop Dreams is his all-star movie. The film focuses on two promising young athletes, Arthur Agee and William Gates, who are battling it out in the highly competitive world of high-school basketball. "Through the microcosm of Arthur and William's lives, Steve James tears into American society, looking at its systematic failure to value the two main protagonists as anything other than a commodity," said Christian. "The boys' future education and ticket out of the ghetto [are] played out in front of their whole community, reliant on the bounce of a basketball."
Years in the making and edited down from 250 hours of footage, James's masterpiece "splays open the American dream and reveals a country riven with social and cultural stratas", said dondi – but was "criminally overlooked at Oscar time", added canukbound. At the time many of America's influential critics agreed – Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert even took the unusual step of campaigning for the film to be included in the documentary nominations. Hoop Dreams remained off the list, eventually sinking an editing nom but no gong. Poor play the academy.
Marquest1 took a late run with a heartwarming comment and a very nice compliment. "Saw it again a couple of years ago with my fiance (who was in tears throughout parts of it) and it was every bit as moving and powerful as I remember," they said. "I'm really enjoying this series – particularly since Guardian writers for the most part haven't felt the need to pretend to like unwatchable, pretentious arthouse rubbish."
We have a fair few weeks before the bell, Marquest1. Give us enough open nets ...