The Vulnerable Throne: capsule on The Bitter Tea of General Yen + brief reflections on Knights of the Round Table, Land of the Pharaohs & Rasputin and the Empress (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #47)

For the second time in this "Hollywood Classic"-themed season, I'm rounding up several films in a single podcast (in the first of those episodes I covered seventeen rather than just four). In this case, the coverage is lopsided; though not a full review, The Bitter Tea of General Yen is the focus for about seven minutes whereas the other three receive brief reflections lasting about a minute or two - touching on aspects of Knights of the Round Table, Land of the Pharaohs, and Rasputin and the Empress that I found noteworthy or compelling. I wanted to gather all four films in one public episode (they were initially watched and capsuled on my Patreon podcasts at different times) because they are so obviously linked in their stories. All four films depict the downfall of a ruler, usually due to romantic or sexual intrigue. General Yen slips from power by listening to a beautiful Christian missionary, King Arthur loses his wife to his best friend, Pharaoh Khufu is bewitched by a foreign princess determined to avenge her people's oppression, and the Tsarina Alexandria allows the diabolical Rasputin into her inner circle to soothe her son's illness. As has been the case all season, this podcast serves as a bridge on both sides; the previous month's episode on The Shanghai Gesture dealt, like Bitter Tea, with pre-World War II China while next month's episode on Marie Antoinette will conclude the series by focusing, like Rasputin, on a female monarch who falls to popular revolution.

Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts

You can also listen on Pinecast and Spotify

(and most places podcasts are found)

THE LINE-UP

Patreon update #51: Before Sunset (+ Twin Peaks season 3 blu-ray special features, It's a Wonderful Life, 2000s politics: Bush administration/Obama campaign & more)

At the end of Before Sunrise, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) hatch a plan to meet on the six-month anniversary of their rendezvous. Well, six months ago I cross-posted my podcast review of Before Sunrise on this site so here we are: the characters are reunited! Of course, it took them a bit longer than it took us - nine years to be exact. Choosing Before Sunset as my last film in focus for 2018 not only serves as a sequel to my earlier episode but also a continuation of my month-to-month Ethan Hawke series, which began with him as Dead Poets Society's shy young prep school student in early autumn and will conclude with him as First Reformed's fanatical pastor in the dead of winter. By the way, it won't take nearly as long for us to reach the next chapter in Jesse's and Celine's ongoing relationship; my plan for January is to review a Hawke/Richard Linklater double feature of Before Midnight and Boyhood.

Indeed, this is my last weekly episode of Lost in the Movies for the forseeable future; from now on, a somewhat beefed-up podcast will drop once a month for all patron tiers. I will also be debuting a Twin Peaks rewatch/introcast podcast for the second tier (the first tier will get access to each episode six months after they premiere, and eventually - years later - I will publish the episodes as a weekly public podcast). I'll have more information in upcoming Patreon updates, because I still plan to write about what I've been up to and link what's available every week on this site. This will include some form of wrap-up/look back at the past year, which not only saw extensive work on Patreon and in-depth retrospective activity for my tenth anniversary, but also my busiest year ever on this site, with over two hundred posts.

For now, in addition to the Before Sunset review and a more detailed announcement about 2019, I (finally!) dive into the blu-ray special features for Twin Peaks: The Return (er, Twin Peaks season 3, er, Twin Peaks: The Limited Event Series); finish my viewing of the CNN documentary series The 2000s, which leads to some thoughts on the previous decade's political landscape; catch up with the last batch of Twin Peaks feedback from the past few months; and conclude with an Opening the Archive entry on the Christmas movie, although of course it's much more than just that.

Thanks for following along this year, and see you again soon.

Episode 50: Before Sunset (+ Twin Peaks season 3 blu-ray special features, It's a Wonderful Life, 2000s politics: Bush administration/Obama campaign & more)

Line-up for Episode 50

INTRO

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR 2019

TWIN PEAKS REFLECTIONS: Twin Peaks season 3 blu-ray special features

FILM IN FOCUS: Before Sunset

OTHER TOPICS: CNN's 2000s documentary - Mission Accomplished/Quagmire/Yes We Can, NY Times Magazine Afghanistan article, podcast recommendation

LISTENER FEEDBACK: Hands in Twin Peaks, Fire Walk With Me book interview, is the Evolution of the Arm a good guy?, The Return's connections to seasons 1 & 2, Maddy's murder and Laura's spirit, podcast recommendation, Red

OPENING THE ARCHIVE: It's a Wonderful Life

OUTRO

BECOME A PATRON

The Favorites - It's a Wonderful Life (#10)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. It's a Wonderful Life (1946/USA/dir. Frank Capra) appeared at #10 on my original list.

What it is • You may know this one: George Bailey (James Stewart) dreams of escaping his small town in upstate New York. Family crises, business troubles, and true love (however he might try to resist it) foil his plans for college, world travel, and a grand career. Threatened with financial catastrophe and public humiliation on Christmas Eve just after World War II, George contemplates suicide but an angel named Clarence (Henry Travers), who has been told George's life story in a series of "flashbacks," intervenes to show him what life in Bedford Falls would be like if he'd never been born, teaching him to be thankful for what he has and proud of what he's accomplished. Well...my Favorites list has hopefully been a healthy mix of under-the-radar recommendations and familiar classics. Few are more familiar than It's a Wonderful Life, certainly as celebrated a movie as Gone With the Wind or The Wizard of Oz though its trajectory is closer to the latter than the former - forgotten for years before television gave it second life. In fact, more than almost any other film in the history of Hollywood, It's a Wonderful Life has become synonymous with a particular ritual - and not just any ritual, but one of the most important in American culture. This has become the Christmas movie since PBS began airing it as holiday counter-programming in the seventies. In the process, attention settled on the "see what life is like if you'd never been born" high concept and especially the exuberant setpiece closing the movie with a joyous bang, all "Auld Lang Syne" and bells ringing on Christmas trees. It goes so well with eggnog and heapings of Christmas dinner crowding the coffee table in front of the TV, carols competing for attention from nearby stereos, and relatives gathered together in a living room, their chatter overwhelming the dialogue onscreen. Perhaps because of this taken-for-granted familiarity, or the fact that the Greatest Generation who experienced its timeline is now in its nineties, or simply because the black-and-white studio style can no longer claim the universality it once held, It's a Wonderful Life's dominance has become more precarious in recent years. More purely light-hearted fare like A Christmas Story (also set in the forties, but shot in color in the eighties) have threatened its perch, as have hundreds of other Christmas films aired on hundreds of other channels (and thousands available on platforms like Netflix) - long gone are the days when families had to select from only a few options for holiday party TV. I think it would be a pity if It's a Wonderful Life did slide back into quasi-obscurity, a favorite among cineastes but unappreciated by the wider public. It's much more than just a feel-good Christmas movie, but that status allows it to slip a deeper perspective and more ambitious approach into a diet of December fluff.

Why I like it •

It's a Wonderful Life

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.

If there's a more American film than It's a Wonderful Life, and a more American hero than George Bailey, I don't know it. No other film more comprehensively or powerfully captures the common American experience between the wars - that is to say, between Armistice Day and V-J Day - and no other film creates a richer dialogue between the dreams and ambitions that motivate us (then and now), the comforts and camaraderie that soothe us (perhaps then more than now), and the responsibilities and burdens we feel toward our families and communities (now more essentially than ever). It is timeless but it is also very, very much focused on its own time (or rather, a time just passed), a quality that gives It's a Wonderful Life tremendous strength rather than dating it. By featuring popular songs and political references, by tying the daily life of Bedford Falls into the greater drama of the nation, it provides us with a moving portrait of our parents' or grandparents' experience; by not being afraid to situate itself in a particular moment in history, the movie shows us the universal in the particular. Besides, It's a Wonderful Life has never been timelier, maybe not even when it was released, amidst a postwar era waving goodbye (and good riddance - no wonder the film struggled at the box office) to the years depicted onscreen.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

When I selected a still from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to accompany my introduction to this series, I halfway-apologized for picking such an idealistic, and presumably naive, image to accompany talk of the presidential election. I shouldn't have, because a) I (and hopefully you as well) still have some of that idealism, which Capra is the king of tapping into, and b) Mr. Smith, while idealistic about its hero and (ultimately) his crusade, is remarkably cynical and critical towards the Washington establishment, essentially painting the Capitol as a grandly-designed speakeasy inhabited by slimy crooks. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington posits idealism as something that has to stand up to the harsh realities that infringe upon it, or as Jean Arthur's hardbitten secretary tells the crestfallen Jefferson Smith, gesturing towards the imposing figure of Abraham Lincoln ensconced in his memorial: "All the good that ever came into this world came from fools with faith like that!"