The Favorites - Lawrence of Arabia (#2)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Lawrence of Arabia (1962/UK/dir. David Lean) appeared at #2 on my original list.

What it is • T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) is an outsider long before he arrives in Arabia. Born from a liaison between a noble father and a servant mother (herself born out of wedlock), Lawrence is still at odds with his surroundings when we meet him: an intelligence officer stationed in Cairo, perpetually bored but bemused. So he is assigned a mission which, however fleeting, should entertain him for a few weeks and produce effective results for the British Empire. Lawrence is to journey into the Arabian Desert to link up with Prince Faisal (Alec Guinness), leader of the earnest but unsuccessful Arab Revolt against the Ottomon Empire. Despite his simple mission - assess the situation - Lawrence decides to go much further. When he finally returns to Cairo, he is caked in dust and accompanied by an Arab boy (Michel Ray) who has experienced hardship, battle, and loss alongside the British officer: they are fresh from the daring conquest of Aqaba from its unprotected desert flank. Overnight, Lawrence is deemed a hero - and his journey has only just begun. As with many epic films from the thirties to the sixties (and perhaps beyond), Lawrence's first half (actually a bit more than half) is divided from its second by an intermission. Some have praised the tight, focused, cohesive early section at the expense of the more scattered approach post-intermission. But in fact the film's greatness, deeply rooted and established in the first part, is fully realized in the more uncertain, sprawling second part. Lawrence's story isn't simply one of military success. It's a tale of cultural disorientation, in which a British officer attempts to subvert colonial policy but - unlike similar situations in Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, or Avatar - can never fully assimilate. This is also a story of humiliation, of hubris, and of Lawrence's psychosexual kinks applied on the battlefield as well as within his own mind. Lawrence of Arabia has been celebrated throughout history, placing highly on "greatest ever" lists and winning Best Picture in 1962 (maybe the most deserving Oscar winner of all time, with the Godfathers, On the Waterfront, Casablanca, and Gone With the Wind its only rivals, and even they probably fall short). Yet I can't help but feel the film is misunderstood, especially when celebrated as eyecandy without substance.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - The Last of the Mohicans (#56)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Last of the Mohicans (1992/USA/dir. Michael Mann) appeared at #56 on my original list.

What it is • Michael Mann, best known for his cool contemporary urban crime masterworks, stepped out of character in 1992 to adapt a 1936 film based on an 1826 novel set during a 1757 war. Sometimes a fish out of water just flops, but Last of the Mohicans shows that Mann can soar as well as swim. In the film, Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his adopted Mohican family guide Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe) and several other English subjects through the wilderness in the midst of the French-Indian War - but the plot is essentially a framework for several stunning setpieces, none more astonishing than the climactic chase up a hill. That sequence begins with a noble self-sacrifice of a normally not very likable character, and ends with deadly combat between one of the heroes (but not the main one) and the main villain. More importantly, it is as good a primer on the use of montage, music, and movement in cinema as anything I know. The whole film is excellent, with explosive battles, smoldering romantic embraces, quiet moments of human connection, and breathtaking landscapes, but that particular moment - a moment that extends for nine tense, throbbing minutes - is sublime. Writing this entry, I paused to watch a clip online and had to stop myself before watching the whole thing again (I'm trying to be economical at present, and am no longer watching extended clips, let alone whole movies, before writing about my Favorites). No matter how many times I've seen The Last of the Mohicans, that ending always carries an incredible punch.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Casablanca (#57)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Casablanca (1942/USA/dir. Michael Curtiz) appeared at #57 on my original list.

What it is • Do I really need to tell you? The legend of Casablanca is well-established by now, although I also have to wonder if its star hasn't dimmed a little in recent years. Even for very young viewers in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, its zeitgeist seemed within reach - the World War II generation was still very much among us and this film belonged to our grandparents' generation; with constant TV and film references, black-and-white classic Hollywood felt a stone's throw away, culturally, even as it was a half-century or more in the past; and Casablanca was one of the most accessible titles at a time when classics were not so easy to see. Today, the youngest WWII veteran is eighty-nine, a teenager has grandparents who grew up with Saturday morning cartoons not Hollywood double features at the local movie palace, and most new releases reflect video-game or comic-book aesthetics rather than Old Hollywood. So, then, a quick explanation: Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is an American in North Africa early in World War II, after France had fallen to the Nazis and before his own home country, neutral like him, had committed to the fight for freedom. Rick lived in Paris before the German invasion, romancing a young widow who, as it turns out, was not as widowed as they both thought she was. Now the lady Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) shows up at Rick's fashionable cafe/casino with husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a member of the Resistance. Rick must decide between helping or punishing her old lover, honoring a worthy cause or maintaining his steadfast, above-it-all cynicism. Romantic heartbreak, but also commitment to political action, are the subjects of Casablanca.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Jaws (#71)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Jaws (1975/USA/dir. Steven Spielberg) appeared at #71 on my original list.

What it is • The body of a young woman washes up on the beach; a little boy is butchered on a sunny day; a man is devoured in what should be a safe inlet while everyone else is distracted by a hoax down the beach. A new cop discovers that the tourist trade is more important than public safety; a knowledgeable oceanographer clashes with the ingrained ignorance of a small town; a physically and psychologically scarred veteran of war and seafaring is consumed by his obsession with bagging the fish of the century. Is this movie about a giant killer shark or is it about a group of men clashing with one another and challenging themselves? For much of its runtime, Jaws plays like a well-executed slice of seventies New Hollywood cinema. The dialogue overlaps and overflows while the camera captures the action with a documentary sense of realism (which doesn't mean handheld shakey-cam but rather patient, fascinated observation of domestic routine). When action and suspense arrive, they are handled with Hitchcockian suggestion rather than roller-coaster revelation, and the screenplay ensures that our focus is on the very adult relationships among the townspeople, colored by economic need, political maneuver, class jealousy, and personal history (you can't beat Quint's Indianapolis speech, penned by John Milius - unless you have the alternate take in which Robert Shaw was actually drunk, which Spielberg himself owns and occasionally shows to lucky visitors). Yet as the film draws toward its conclusion, we see more and more of the shark itself. Bloody death, final showdown, and the film's only explosion ensure a crowd-pleasing conclusion to the picture. We can witness the birth of the modern blockbuster onscreen as the film journeys from Altmanesque social drama to action-packed showdown with a fantastical creature.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - The Adventures of Robin Hood (#80)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938/USA/dir. Michael Curtiz & William Keighley) appeared at #80 on my original list.

What it is • Welcome to Sherwood Forest, cloaked in lush green and lit by brilliant sunlight. Through these trees parade Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn) and his merry men, fomenting unrest and having a jolly time of it. Many Robin Hood adaptations, especially today, look to darken the story or give it a more naturalistic texture, but Adventures revels in its heightened artifice and sense of fun, with the emphasis on swashbuckling, colorful costumes, and the cheerful romance between Robin and Marian (Flynn's frequent onscreen partner Olivia de Havilland, who is simply luminous here). Similarly, the structure is casually episodic, collecting famous moments from the Robin legend rather than forcing everything into a streamlined narrative structure. This is a proudly traditional take on the classic story, and as such it may be the most archetypal Robin Hood. However, the film does contain several elements that mark it as a film of its time, displaying a concern for social/historical context that even many of the more "realistic" latter-day interpretations avoid. The Adventures of Robin Hood very much emphasizes the importance of ethnic strife and state persecution, continually hammering home the idea that the aristocratic Normans are oppressing the common, salt-of-the-earth Saxons (Robin, himself a nobleman but also a Saxon, sides with clan over class). The film even offers Robin Hood a solemn refugee camp to run amidst all the derring-do! As such, it's hard not to see the looming war in Europe casting a shadow over the sunny swashbuckler of 1938.

Why I like it •

Ben-Hur

Around 1991, when I kicked off ;my video collection in earnest (the few kids' films I owned up to that point didn't really count towards a self-conscious canon), Ben-Hur was one of the first VHS tapes I purchased - or that my father purchased for me anyway; at 7, I didn't have much in the way of a disposable income. I remember seeing the case in a video store somewhere in Boston - around Easter, I think. I was impressed by the grandeur of that iconic poster on the cover, with the title chiseled out of the hard rock of a canyon face, against which a Roman statue leaned while tiny chariots raced around the huge letters. I was spurred on too by the bulk of the video package - remember that at this time, long films got two cassettes, creating a hefty physical size to match the scope of the movie within.

Casablanca

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

* Today I learned that a fellow blogger, who was an enthusiastic commenter on The Dancing Image, passed away. Ironically, his final post references Casablanca as does the name of his website (though I didn't realize it until now). I encourage you to visit Laszlo's at Lex, and I now dedicate this piece to Gerald Stewart. *

What are the fundamental things in life? A kiss? A sigh? So the Casablanca cult would have you believe - after all, we are told, the film is a romance first and foremost, a gauzy Hollywood myth full of larger-than-life themes, iconic close-ups of glamorous stars, and an exotic locale and wartime backdrop that serve to heighten the emotional tenor and raise the narrative stakes, though only window dressing for the main attraction: a love story to end all love stories. Everyone knows that the film was meant to be nothing special, just another Warners release, that it even shifted into B territory with Ronald Reagan considered for Rick. We've heard how, miraculously, the elements all clicked into place: ideal stars, a perfect supporting cast, the right writers and crew behind the camera, last-minute rewrites to ensure that the film ended on its memorable, ever-more romantic bittersweet note. Love lost is that much easier to savor.

I've felt this way about Casablanca before - watching the movie several years ago, the World War II trappings seemed almost surrealistically artificial. I think I had been watching later, more hard-hitting films on the war, so it felt bizarre to see these actors roaming around an elaborately decorated soundstage in sunny Los Angeles, pretending to be struggling in life or death with the Nazis who were half a world away. True, America had joined the war by this point, but this also served to make the heightened stakes of the films' German dominance and American neutrality seem safely past. No, Casablanca might be many things but a true reflection of the war and the wartime mentality, it was not - just a fun, exciting, romantic slice of Hollywood mythology, right? Wrong.

Jaws

Jaws, 1975, directed by Steven Spielberg

The Story: “Sharkkkkkkkk!!!!!!”

And yet it’s so much more than that. At its heart, of course, Jaws is a fantastic monster movie, a film that plays on fears – that employs Hitchcockian suspense and haunted house surprise to hold us in the grip of masterful entertainment. It has been blamed for a dumbing-down of movie audiences, an onslaught of blockbusters concerned only with reeling in adolescents, and a retreat from the edginess and depth of 70s cinema. Yet Jaws consistently holds human figures at its center – and not only because the mechanical creature malfunctioned through much of the production, while a 27-year-old newbie filmmaker, one Steven Spielberg, had to improvise shooting around it. At heart, Jaws is a story about people more than about a shark.

Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia, 1962, directed by David Lean

The Story: T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), a minor British officer stationed in Cairo during World War I, is sent into the Arabian desert to “assess” the state of the Arabs’ revolt against the Turks. The revolt is a mess, but instead of reporting back, Lawrence himself leads a band of Arabs through the harshest sectors of the desert into victory against the Turks. Astonished and delighted, his superiors give him free reign and so T.E. becomes “Lawrence of Arabia,” an enigmatic, brilliant, and narcissistic guerrilla leader whose genius and bravado is matched only by his eccentricity and insecurity.

Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur, 1925 incarnation, is an enjoyable adventure film, somewhat overburdened by a sense of dutiful religiosity and a letdown after its climactic chariot race. That race, however, is still exciting 80 years later and many of its moments equal those of the more famous remake. One shot in particular, of the horses' hooves pounding into the camera from a low angle, is as dynamic as anything I can recall from the 1959 Ben-Hur. Indeed, given the limitations (read, frequent strengths) of silent cinema, this Ben-Hur is more visually spry and inventive than the later film, unburdened as it is by stirringly grandiose but also intimately inappropriate widescreen and Technicolor.

If I find it hard to speak of 1925's Ben-Hur in isolation, that's not just because the Charlton Heston version is more famous, but because I've always had a special regard for it. Yes, despite my sniping at '59 Ben-Hur's pretensions, my feelings towards it are generally warm. I can't quite defend the film objectively, and can understand how some would find it wooden, overbearing, and pretentious. But it reminds me of a boyish sort of Catholicism, one as taken with the desert vistas and adventure stories and architectural grandeur as with any more subtle spiritual or ethical elements of the Christian story. I've always had a weakness for epics, for films you can get lost in; the experience is something like losing your way in a cavernous museum, wandering from room to room calling out your friends' names but half-hoping you don't find them. (The sense of adventure within comfortable bounds is the same - while you can get lost in epics, they're peculiarly nonthreatening.)