Woman of the Year

For Christmas I received the TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Romantic Comedies DVD, which features four Katherine Hepburn movies. I found it interesting that TCM apparently believes Katherine Hepburn has some sort of monopoly on classic romantic comedies (No Doris Day??), but they're all great movies so I was pretty excited to add it to my collection. The DVD features The Philadelphia Story, Bringing Up Baby, Adam's Rib, and Woman of the Year, all films I've seen before but expect to watch many more times.

I've always really enjoyed Katherine Hepburn's movies with Spencer Tracy. They're kind of a strange couple when you think about it, but they manage to make it work, maybe because of their off screen, slightly scandalous romance. But they're mostly interesting because they almost always try to carry some sort of forties-feminist message. Not really a surprising role for Katherine Hepburn, an independent, strong, pants-wearing woman in real life.

In Woman of the Year, she plays ... woman of the year, Tess Harding, a serious journalist who runs all over the country, rubbing elbows with countless important political and world leaders. Her life is ridiculously busy and work-focused until she meets Spencer Tracy who plays Sam Craig, an average joe sports writer. He's instantly smitten with her and they begin a somewhat abnormal romance, consisting of him escorting her to her various engagements and attending her crowded parties.

The relationship is clearly strained by her crazy schedule and his obvious desire for a conservative housewife, but they marry nevertheless. It doesn't take long for things to start coming between them and just when Tess is named Woman of the Year, Sam decides to move out. She soon realizes that all her success isn't as sweet without him and she comedically attempts to be the housewife she thinks he wants.

I would love to hear a 1940s audience's take on this film. By today's standards, the only thing that seems extreme is Sam's desire for a stereotypical housewife--someone to make him dinner and wait on him when he gets home from work. But I would guess that quite the opposite was true 70 years ago.

In the end they both learn to compromise. He no longer wants just a housewife. He respects her for her work, and she learns that some of her career may need to be put on the back burner if she wants a good marriage.

This seems like a perfectly fair compromise and it's exactly why I like these films. They're sort of feminist--the woman works, she's important and well respected. But she also respects her husband enough to make some sacrifices in order to build a strong marriage. It's a message that's often lost today in a world where women are encouraged to do anything they want to, even at the expense of their marriage or family.

I'm not sure these films had a particularly grand effect on the feminist movement, but certainly Katherine Hepburn paved the way for many women and brought in a new way of thinking. They may not be exactly cutting-edge feminism, but they bring up some issues that many classic comedies gloss over. And all that mixed with some great comedy and two legendary stars make for some really fun movies.

Christmas in Connecticut

Over the weekend, I showed Christmas in Connecticut for our December Old Movie Night. I'd not yet seen this movie, but it had been recommend to me on several occasions and in the interest of not having to watch yet another Christmas movie I've seen thousands of times, I decided to give it a shot.

Remember how I said that young people take kindly to innuendo in old movies? Well this movie is no exception. It's not as blatantly skanky as Some Like it Hot but the implications of some of the dialogue is pretty questionable for a 1945 film.

It goes like this: Barbara Stanwyck plays Elizabeth Lane, a Martha Stuart type who runs a very popular column in a magazine for housewives. The problem is she's far from a housewife. She's single and living a wild life in the city. That's all fine until a dreamy sailor just back from the war wants to visit her farm for Christmas. Her publisher, who's in the dark about her many lies, approves the visit and lands her in quite a pickle.

Enter John Sloan, Elizabeth's special "friend," a mediocre-looking architect who's been proposing to her for years with no success. When she realizes John has a farm in Connecticut, she quickly promises to marry him if he allows her to use his farm to pull off her charade for the holiday and keep her job.

Needless to say, things get sticky and awkward when the dreamy sailor shows up, and still thinking she's married, proceeds to hit on her on more than one occasion. And she, a sort of married woman, can't keep her hands off him. It's a moral dilemma, but it isn't. The whole concept outraged us even though in reality none of it was that shadey. But the characters don't know the reality, so they are a little shadey. It's a deep philosophical question that I'm not going to explore here.

Anyway, you can imagine what kind of insanity ensues when Elizabeth tries to keep up with her lies and the rest of the characters learn more and more of the truth.

By far the best part of the film was Elizabeth's Uncle Felix, played by S.Z. Sakall, everyone's favorite crazy, roly poly actor. He accompanies Elizabeth to Connecticut to help her cook and basically ends up messing with everyone's heads and orchestrating complicated conspiracies. He also comes with his own special catch phrases that don't make sense and provides multiple laugh-out-loud moments.

This film is definitely going on my annual Christmas movie viewing list!

William Castle + Joan Crawford = Insanity. Literally.

My weekend of holiday happiness and Christmas decorating was punctuated with possibly the most disturbing Joan Crawford movie I've ever seen. I think the poster says it all.

In Straight-Jacket, Joan Crawford plays Lucy, a wife and mother who brutally axes her cheating husband and his girlfriend to death. The problem his, her young daughter sees it all. Lucy is quickly whisked away to the loony bin.

Fast forward 20 years and Lucy's getting out of the asylum on good behavior, and she's sent to live with her daughter, Carol, now in her twenties and engaged to a nice young man.

Carol and Lucy attempt to repair their relationship by getting Lucy a makeover, but pretty soon Lucy starts going crazy again, hearing voices and having disturbing hallucinations. Then, of course, people start getting mysteriously axed to death.

I won't spoil the rest of the movie for you. But rest assured, it's disturbing and surprisingly graphic, and everything you'd want from a William Castle film starring Joan Crawford in her 60's "I'll do anything" period.

Highlights of the film include:

Joan Crawford looking crazy

Joan lighting her match on a spinning record in a moment of drunken insanity:

Needless to say, Straight-Jacket has further cemented my love for all Joan Crawford movies.

Confessions

I have some confessions to make. Old movie related ones:

1. I don't really like Breakfast at Tiffany's. Everyone talks about how great this movie is, but I can't say I've ever enjoyed it that much. I especially hate the end with the cat and the rain. It upsets me.

2. I fast forward over musical numbers in non-musical movies. This mostly applies to every Doris Day movie in which she sings a pre-sex song. Also, every song in The Parent Trap.

3. The Wizard of Oz - not my favorite. I'm not saying I don't like it, it's just not my favorite Judy movie. Or my favorite in any category, really. But I have to act like I'm a big fan since I'm a big Judy fan and usually nobody's heard of any other Judy movies. Plus it's fun to collect the memorabilia.

4. I haven't seen any of Judy Garland's movies from the 60's. I'm pretty sure I've seen all of her films except these ones. They just seem weird and sad.

5. I don't get TCM. I'm not made of money, people! Meanwhile, Netflix more than makes up for it.

6. I don't really like watching new movies. And by "new" I mean old movies that I haven't seen before. I'd much rather just watch the same movies that I know I love over and over again. But I know the new ones are usually worth watching, so I make myself do it.

7. I don't think the Marx Brothers are that funny. I don't hate their movies and certainly I've had some good times while watching them, I just wouldn't do it on a regular basis.

8. I like the new Sabrina better than the old Sabrina. This one's easy because I just wrote about it.

9. It's possible that I've never watched the entire Climb Every Mountain scene in The Sound of Music. I hate the song and avoid it at all costs.

10. I've never seen Citizen Kane. And I don't have plans to. I'm pretty sure I won't like it.

The Fly and The Scream

Warning: This post will contain spoilers, because they're the interesting parts.

Great Halloween at my house last night. Old Movie Night featured two ... interesting Vincent Price films, The Fly and The Last Man on Earth.

The Last Man on Earth is about just that. After a terrible disease plagues the entire earth, Vincent Price is the last man standing, having gained immunity to the terrible disease through a bat bite years earlier. So for three years he lives alone, fending off the zombie-vampires that the disease has created. This film wasn't particularly scary (and I'm a jumpy one), but if you enjoy watching Vincent Price talk to himself, it's definitely the movie for you!

That brings us to The Fly. Basically the perfect 50's horror film, The Fly offers up screaming women, sexist children, scientist men, big machines that make futuristic noises, and insects.

Half the film is presented in flashback form as Helene Delambre tries to explain to her brother-in-law (Vincent Price, who's conveniently in love with her) and the inspector why she killed her husband. He turned into a fly, that's why. He got a little over-zealous with his "matter transporting" equipment and some of his "matter" gets a little mixed up. Now he's got a fly head and hand and somewhere out there buzzing around is a white-headed fly-man.

The second half of the film involves Vincent Price searching high and low for the white-headed fly that will prove Helene's insane story and get her off the hook for her husband's murder. His search finally leads him and the inspector to a spider web where a tiny little fly-man, yelling "help me!" a million times in a little fly voice, is about to get eaten by a spider.

This is the point in the movie at which the entire group at my house screamed. For an excessively long time. I can't really explain this scream and why it went on for so long. After all, this is a not-so-scary 50's horror movie. But seeing a fly-man get eaten by a spider is slightly disturbing. Plus, the special effects were basically horrific. So the scream went on for some time, laughing, screaming, confusion, general noise. It was exciting and an old movie night first. I'm not sure what to make of it.

But after all the screaming stopped and we calmed down, emotions were mixed. The premise was disturbing. But there were some sweet, touching moments like when the man-fly wrote "love you" to his wife on the chalkboard before getting squashed to death like any fly should. And who couldn't be happy when Vincent finally ends up with Helene whom he loved all along now that his sexy, smart fly-brother is squashed? And how can you not be appalled at their dumb little sexist son, spouting zingers like, "you know how women are"? This movie has it all. We laughed, we cried, we cringed, and we screamed.

The Sound of Music Reunion

Well I do love The Sound of Music so I was very excited to discover that the cast reunion on Oprah is now on Youtube.

It's not a Time Traveler, People

It's clearly an alien.

I'm not sure why we're so desperate to have time travelers show up in old movies. There are lots of reasons this person could be doing what they're doing:

1. The actual feasible explanation of the hearing aid.

2. Itchy ear

3. Insanity

4. Hiding

5. Alien

Also, for the record, I think it's a man dressed as a woman. Or an alien dressed as a man dressed as a woman.