Some time back, I took it upon myself to binge watch a lot of old, and maybe not-so-old, movies. It was a thrill to see movies that were made from a differnt era when they knew how to make movies. Still, as well-made as the movies were, some of them just didn’t make sense.
William Powell is always a delight to watch, even as an older gentleman in How to Marry a Millionaire, but one of my favorites, if I were forced to pick one, would be My Man Godfrey. Wonderful movie, which includes the always entertaining Misha Auer, but the ending simply makes no sense.
Mr. Bullock announces that he is ruined and has lost everything, but as the Deus Ex Machina, Godrey arrives and hands him his stock and told him that he sold short.
I have never been able to understand how that worked. If Godfrey sold short, then that means that he does not have the stock, So how does he have the stock to give to Mr. Bullock? Did he had two different accounts where he sold short in one account and then purchased the reduced price stock in the other? I have never been able to figure out how selling short saves a company.
Although the perplexity of the financial dilemna doesn’t prevent me from loving My Man Godfrey, it does, however, cause me to abhor a film that is declared to be loved by all, which is Mister Smith Goes to Washington.
This film starts out as being, more or less, a Valentine to the nation’s capitol and the essense of Americana and if it remained that way, it would have been a fine film. Not a masterpiece, but a fine film. The filibuster scene, which is praised by many, I found distrubing and contempible.
Smith wanted to secure the land of WIllet Creek as a scout campground, while the power brokers of Washington wanted to exploit the same land by building a dam. In order to circumvent Smith’s plans, a scandal was invented by making claims that Smith had purchased the land of Willett Creek for himself to profit off of the Scouts. Which begs the question: if Smith already “owned” the land, it seemed that the simplest way to resolve the matter would be to sign a Quit-Claim deed and just give the land to the Scouts. That way, he would get what he wanted and the people who were trying to manipulate Smith would be forced to explain why they would be in opposition to such a proposal.
Granted, when someone is falsely accused of such ridiculous allegations, one does not always have the mental wherewithal to be able to think of a solution such as this, but I would imagine that Jean Arthur would have been level headed enough to have come up with such a clever plan.
And I never understood, how, if they were successful in outing Smith from the Senate, they would be able to explain how they wrested the land from Smith to build the dam.
One important lesson that can be taken from this movie is that the pile of letters in the Senate asking him to resign shows how easily the public can be manipulated by the media into thinking what the people who control the media wants them to think and that the general public does not have the full information on any story.
SInce we are on the topic of Jimmy Stewrart films, this leades me to bring up Vertigo, another “beloved” film that I thoroughly despise. As I am watching this, I see him walking up the stairs of the bell tower and we hear a woman scream and a body fall past the window of the bell tower. Immediately, I think how stupid this is When a person screams, it is because they encounter something that they don’t expect. If they turn the corner and they see a bear or they go into the bathroom and they see a man with a knife.. But if someone is going to jump and they know that they are going to jump, unless they are jumping out of an airplane and shouting “Geromino!” or as they are jumping off a rope swing into a swimming hole, they aren’t going to emit such a blood curdling scream. I was just disgusted at the bad acting or writing or directions that brought that scene.
And then, as I continued to watch, I came to find out that I was right. The woman who screamed was not the woman who fell from the top of the bell tower. So then, it wasn’t bad writing or direction. It was an accurate description of how such an event would take place. However, if I, as a casual movie watcher, would be able to pick up on something as subtle as this, why wouldn’t a seasoned San Francisco detective be able to pick up on the same?
Now, if you think that I am unnecessarily picking on Jimmy Stewart, allow me to point out movies of his that I do enjoy such as Destry Rides Again, Anatomy of a Murder and Rear Window (where we can get an eyeful of Grace Kelly). Plus, the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much gives us an interesting discussion regarding medical billing and the doctor/patient relationship during a time where it actually worked and demenostates that there is no need for any king of universal healthcare.
Not lastly, let me discuss a film that would be forgettable, if not for its starring cast, I was a Male War Bride. Trying to being a screwball comedy after screwball comedies had lost it luster, it completely misses the mark. However, there is one thing about this movie that makes it stand out.
Other than Mister Roberts, which was set in the Pacific theatre, I cannot recall any other World War II movie that takes place after V-E Day. So, as far as I know, this is the only example of cinema that gives us a glance of what happens in a war zone after a war has ended.
And what do we see? We see military check points, soldiers keeping an eye out to keep the piece. Der Fuerer has assumed room temperature, Germany has surrendered, and there are still Allied troops on the ground controlling the movement of traffic at strategic locations.
But the war was over.
No one argues that the war was over.
There were US troops in the country, but the war was over.
Contrast that to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Germany, Hitler was dead and Germany surrendered and the war was over. But in Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s statue was toppled. Saddam Hussein was captured. He was tried. He was executed. Iraq had election and elected a new government. But even though the person that we were fighting had been killed and his sons too, the Iraq War was considered to be on-going until every last American troop had left Iraqi soil.
By that measure, World War II has never ended because we still have troops stationed in Germany to this day.
That is why this country cannot heal because we cannot even have a clear definition of what it means for a war to “be over”
As Rush would always say, a person’s sense of history begins with the day that they were born. This older movies can give us a glimpse into an earlier time where we can see how people would think in the past and it wouldn’t hurt to think that way today.