The Blue Lagoon

I recall my very first experience in film analysis and explication. It occurred during the summer of 1969, or thereabouts, which means I was about nine years old. School was out and my brother Leo and I were hanging around the house watching the early morning movie. In those days, there wasn't a lot of programming on TV, so there was always a movie or two playing on most regular channels. Remember, youngsters, this was in the pre-cable era, so all the TV at our disposal was 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and a few UHF channels, namely 31 and 47 that looked like a blizzard was raging on the screen and were mostly in Espanol.

The most popularly known of these regular movie presentations was "Million Dollar Movie" on Channel nine. It began with a cool introduction that showed some evocative scenes of New York set to the musical score from Gone with the Wind. In the late 70's, they updated the images and the song, much to my regret. You can see the newer version on YouTube, but the older version was really worth watching. The "4:30 Movie" on Channel 7 was also popular. It ran until 6pm, with loads of commericals, so every film was cut to ribbons. Ask one of your parents if they can hum the theme song to that one. Ten bucks says they can. In the background was a swirling abstract image of a guy in a camera crane turning round and round.

Anyway, back to my story. If you can believe how cheap the networks were back then, they showed the same movie every day from Monday to Friday at 10:00am. I forget which channel. On this particular week, the repeating feature was "The Blue Lagoon." It's the story of a two children who get stranded on a deserted island. They grow up and become romantically attached, have a child experience all sorts of inconveniences and are eventually rescued. The film was remade in the 70's with Brook Shield playing the girl. It is not what one would call a masterpiece of cinema. Anyway, my brother and i watched it five times. (I don't proclaim this with pride, mind you.)

Now, (finally) I get to the point. There is a scene where the boy, now aged around 15 or so, notices a scar or birthmark or something on the girl's arm (she's perhaps 13). She responds that she has always had it. He says that he hadn't noticed it before. Scene ends. Now, my brother and I could not figure out what the significance of that scene was. Being scientifically minded, we figured at first that she was developing some form of malignant melanoma, and a grim amputation scene was about to commence. Or, perhaps she had been bitten by a poisonous spider and a plague of insects was about to make their lives interesting. But, nothing of the kind happened. In fact, the birthmark was never mentioned again, either on that first day, or (obviously) on each succeeding re-viewing.

It was not until many years later that I recalled that episode and realized immediately what the scene signified. I won't give it away. You may comment below if you can figure out what it was.

Midnight Cowby?

I'm trying to decide what to do about our next film. For years, I showed "Midnight Cowboy", which is not only a great film, but also a film that has entered into the pantheon, (if you will) of American cultural icons. It's one of those films that everyone has to see. Add to that the fact that it is uber-teachable, and you have a sure thing. Oh, and let's not forget that the characters of Ratso Rizzo and Joe Buck are among cinema's most memorable, AND add to that the fact that the film we see after that, Runaway Train also features Jon Voigt, but in a totally different role and.... well, let's put it this way, I am very much inclined to show it again.

The problem is that it has several scenes that are rather "adult" in nature, though hardly pornographic, and the story itself is also rather sophisticated. You might ask why I never hesitated before. The answer is that I was younger and I didn't give a damn. The movie is a work of art, and it deserves to be shown. Nowadays, I'm not as willing to suffer for great art.

You might be interested to hear that a good friend of mine, a Catholic priest who teaches film at St. John's University in Queens has told me that he considers this film to be among the best examples of the Christian ideal portrayed in film. And to think it was rated X when it came out in 1969, though soon changed to R. I won't give the ending away, but his reasoning stems from the fact that redemption can only occur if one is saved from sin. To illustrate this process, one much show both. Hence the Supreme Court's insistence that any work be judged in its entirety before it be branded "obscene."

The last time I showed it, I skipped a scene. I am loathe to do that sort of thing, but I'm leaning toward that solution to the problem. It's a worthwhile film and you youngsters can rent it yourselves anytime and watch it in its entirety. I'd only need to cut about 5 minutes out of the 120 minute total.

... And the winner is, ... Apathy.

I've never cared much for the Academy Awards, and I certainly never watch them. Well, that's not true. I did watch in 1969. I was disappointed because Butch Cassidy lost to Midnight Cowboy. My older brother assured me that the better film had won, but, being only nine years old, I was not allowed to see movies rated R, let alone ones rated X, as Midnight Cowboy was upon its release.

Recent outrages have soured me even further on the Oscars. The most recent atrocity had to be Million Dollar Baby, a film so trite and platitudinous that I stayed almost to the end just to see if it wasn't actually a parody. Alas, they were serious. Gladiator was another film that didn't seem to deserve that kind of praise, and years earlier, Dances with Wolves scored a bullseye for stupidity. So, let's recall that the whole things is just a popularity contest voted upon by those in the business.

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," Slumdog Millionaire","Milk," "The Reader," are this year's nominees for best picture. I saw the first three. Curious Case was very boring, and I walked out about half way through. The next two were very entertaining, and Plummer's (oops, make that Frank Langella... why did I confuse him with Christopher Plummer?) Nixon is really something to see. I heard Milk was worth seeing, but the Reader doesn't move me. I'm kind of holocausted out. Not that I deny it happened, mind you, (quite the contrary), I'll leave that to schismatic French Bishops, it just depresses me to think about it. More so to watch movies about it.

How I spent my Winter Vacation

We spent a few days relaxing in Puerto Rico, and the hotel that we stayed at had Cable TV, which, you may be amused to learn, we have not yet availed ourselves of. The contents of most of the channels consoled me in this decision, but one did not. It was TCM, the movie channel, and, indeed, I spent many enjoyable hours watching all or parts of 29 films during my five-day stay. Since I urged the class to write a few words on the films they see over the course of our 5 months together, I suppose it would not be fair to fail to do so myself. But, I won't mention all 29 films.

Moulin Rouge,195?. with Jose Ferrer as the deformed artist, Toulouse-Latrec was interesting, if only because Matt Pinho mentioned Absinthe in class last week. Apparently, the government has decided that wormwood is not so bad for us after all, and it is legal again after a century on the taboo list. Unfortunately, all teh film did was make me thirsty for a drink of that stuff in spite of the hero dying from its overuse.

They Shall Have Music 1939. A saccharine tear jerker about a music school for poor kids. I only watched a few scenes, but the ending is remarkable only because the great violinist Jascha Haifetz makes an appearance to save the day and he plays the most extraordinary violin solo I've ever heard. I have to look it up and find out what it was he played.

Boomerang 1947. Cool semi-documentary film noir. Unfortunately, I couldn't watch much of it, but I figured I'd get it on NetFLix, but they don't have it. Dana Andrews plays a DA who believes a man is innocent. How rare.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969. It's fun to watch any movie from 1967 to 1975 for one reason. They are always about the individual trying to free himself from the constraints of a repressive society. There is one scene that really doesn't work today at all. Robert Redford, as Sundance breaks into the house of a young woman and surprises her, then makes her undress at gun-point. This apparent rape scene ends with the girl exclaiming "don't be late next time" or something to that effect, so it was all a game, but the sensitivity of today makes it un-funny. I suppose it may have been un-funny then, too, but I don't think so.

Anatomy of a Murder 1957. This is a very superior film, and I encourage you to watch this one. The main character is a lover of Jazz, in particular Be-bop, a kind of improvisational Jazz that became popular in the 50's. You might want to ask yourself what the Jazz background has to do with the plot of the film, which is a murder trial of a man accused of killing the man who raped his wife. Directed by Otto Preminger, one of the biggest names among directors back in the day. Starring James Stewart and Lee Remick. Ben Gazarra is the defendant. Oh, and George C. Scott steals the show as always.

The Caine Mutiny 1954. I had forgotten how good this one is. Humphrey Bogart's performance as the crazy skipper is the reason to watch this one. But, the side plot involving a young ensign and his girlfriend makes for interesting social history, as well. In movies made before 1968 or so, if I girl sleeps with a guy, she usually has to be killed by the end of the film, or punished in some horrible way. This film seems to go along with that to a degree, but it's not unambiguous, and you all know how much I admire ambiguity.

Evolution of the Class

I started teaching the Film class in the fall of '91 when the school needed an elective class for seniors. It was not truly elective since the seniors were dumped into it to fill out their schedule. This was in the old days when all students had a full schedule.

For whatever reason, the idea of only teaching film seemed somehow not kosher to me, so I taught a combination of film, poetry, literature and media stuff all dumped into general humanities course. The students were pretty tolerant of the whole affair, but there were one or two sour pusses I had to deal with. After all, their friends at New Dorp were going home at 11 and they were explicating Eliot's The Waste Land at 1:15, or reading Kafka's The Trial later that night. In year two, i decided to kick the other stuff to the curb and stick to film, but the films were going to have a historical component. Thus, All Quiet on the Western Front corresponded to the earlist period covered in American history part two, which we taugtht at the same time. In other words, I was teaching WW1 in my Am. His class and All Quiet in Film, to the same group of students.

It Happened One Night reveals some of the ideas and attitudes of the Great Depression, so I showed that. A unit on the Cold War included Dr. Strangelove, Atomic Cafe. Later on, I'd show Apocalypse Now as a Vietnam War movie, though it is really not about that in any meaningful way.

Over the years, though, the history imperative fell away, and I dropped the poetry, and just concentrated on great films, with great themes and showed them and analyzed them. I became interested in Existentialism around this time, probably because I had to teach it in a meaningful way in an AP European History class I was teaching. So, I started seeing existential themes in the films that I was already showing. I sometimes wonder if we can see whatever we want in a film, should our minds me leaning in that direction. Anyway, the idea of alienation, and finding meaning in a disordered universe started to jump out at me more and more from teh films I showed, and the ones that I saw and liked outside the class.

Here's the film list from the last time i taught the course. We may see most of these again, depending.

All Quiet
Citizen Kane
Midnight Cowboy
Runaway Train
Top Hat
The Seventh Seal
Unforgiven
Asphalt Jungle
Dark City
Memento
A Siimple Plan
Signs
Dr. Strangelove
Atomic Cafe

Other films that I've shown over the years:

Ed Wood
Apocalypse Now
Hearts of Darkness
It Happened one Night
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Truman Show
A Clockwork Orange
Full M etal Jacket
Battleship Potemkin

Ground rules.

Ok. I'm so relieved to see that all of you were born in the year of the Horse. I hope that you all know me well enough to be able to hear the scorn and sarcasm with which I utter that last sentence. Before we go on, some ground rules must be obeyed. First of all, notice that I wrote my first post BEFORE I added a ridiculous photograph of myself. Again, I added my first post BEFORE I made up all sorts of nonsense about myself in my Profile. Let us get our priorities straight. Content comes before style. Posts before profiles.

Now, on to our second set of ground rules. We are watching films that are concretely grounded in Post-Modernism. I know you don't know what that is, and I would gladly explain it to you, but it is not so easy to explain at great length, and impossible to do pithily. (I trust you all recognize that I am trying to disguise the fact that I don't know what it is myself) Nevertheless, a Post-Modernist blog must, by it's very nature, be subversive and ironic, always sneering, never taking anything too seriously, especially itself. Therefore, any blogs that contain references to the Zodiac will be instantly destroyed. I simply will not associate with anyone who even allows that they even know what sign they are born under, (I certainly don't) let alone allow such drivel to be attached to their blog.

Ok, so let's sum up, shall we?

1. Profiles follows posts
2. Posts should be Post Modern. Profiles must be Post-Modern
3. No Zodiac references or their functional equivalent. I'll let you know.

Lousy Timing

One of the few inconveniences of the film class involves making sure that the period does not end right as some critically dramatic moment is unfolding on screeen. Such happened today. Among the most powerful scenes in AQotWF (and certainly the famous) occurs when Paul spends a day and two nights sitting in a shell hole in No Man's Land accompanied by a French poilu whom he has stabbed. The scene dramatizes the madness of war with little subtlety. At one point, Paul extracts the dead man's papers and gazes at a photograph of his wife and small child. He promises that when the war ends, he will search out the family in France and take care of them.

The scene ends with Paul escaping (at last) from the hole during a lull and returning to his own lines. He has a short conversation with Kat, explaining to him what happened, how he killed a Frenchman, with a knife, up close and personal. Their conversation takes place in a trench, while a sniper stands close by them, working his deadly game, killing several French soldiers at long range, and laughing giddily at his success. I won't give any more away. I want you to see it tomorrow. The question for the class is this: Will Paul write to the French soldier's widow? The sniper gives us the answer.

Unfortunately, the bell rang just as Paul killed the man in teh hole. The emotive power of that scene, like so many in the film, builds slowly. So, tomorrow,we begin in the middle. And then I learn that all the seniors will be absent on Friday, so we have to finish it all tomorrow. Oh well.

Film Class Redux

What bliss for me to return to my old film class. I taught it for many years, starting in 1991, usually in the Fall Semester. Alas, it was cancelled for various reasons after Fall of '04. And now, as I enter into my dotage, sentience slipping away, a memory from the distant past becomes a reality. I want to thank all the students who had some hand in this. You asked the Principal to fund the class, and he did. Now, let's see if I can avoid screwing it up.

Our first film, All Quiet on the Western Front, by Lewis Milestone, has been my perennial entree into the class. Though it has some definite negatives, namely it is rather primitive, B&W, dated acting (I won't say bad acting) slow pacing, pacifist left-wing message, it suits my purpose to a tee. And the purpose is to introduce the class to the elements of film. It's all there, and in a simple and direct style that is easy to identify and understand. The fact that the film is unquestionably an existential work just adds to the fun. (Did you notice that Paul prayed fervently to God that he not let Hans Kemmerich die? And Hans promptly dies. Oh dear. It may be a sobering semester)