Day #51 - Jezebel

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Ah, yes. My first Bette Davis experience :) Jezebel was recommended to me by my Mother-in-Law and I'm so glad I took her up on it - I had never heard of Jezebel before she mentioned it. Released in 1938 by Warner Brothers, Jezebel was oddly similar to Gone with the Wind which would come out the following year. Bette Davis and Fay Bainter both won Oscars for it - this essentially took Bette Davis out of the running to play Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind as she had basically already played the role in Jezebel. I found Bette Davis to be FAR more beautiful than I thought she would be. In picture she always looked a bit bug eyed, haha, but I thought she was really pretty - and BOY she has the evil look down pat. She even puts it to Vivien Leigh.

Jezebel is about Julie Marsden (Bette Davis), a southern Belle in New Orleans before the Civil War. Very headstrong and fearless, Julie gets angry at her banker fiance, Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda), when he won't leave a meeting to go dress shopping with her. She gets back at him by choosing a red dress for the upcoming ball (scandal!) - a ball where every unmarried woman wears white. Wanting to teach Julie a lesson, Preston makes her dance in front of the whole crowd, even after Julie realizes her mistake and begs him to let her leave, humiliated. Preston then leaves her, thus breaking their engagement. Julie was convinced he would return immediately, but when he doesn't come back for a whole year, she is desperate to apologize and humble herself to him upon his return. She holds a ball to celebrate his return and even wears her white dress to greet him - however, it was too late - Preston was married to a woman from New York. Eager to get back at him, Julie uses her persuasive ways with her friend Buck, hoping he will challenge Preston to a fight. He ends up challenging Preston's brother and in a turn of expectations, Buck ends up killed. Preston then comes down with yellow fever which was sweeping the city. In a last minute move of redemption, Julie offers to accompany Preston to the isolated island, knowing that she is sure to contract the fever herself and die.

I like Henry Fonda a lot, but not in this role - partly because I just don't think he fits the part well but also because with the movie being so close to Gone with the Wind, he just can't compete with Clark Gable and Leslie Howard! As I said, I really liked Bette Davis - very evil and perfect. I would really like to see her in more movies!

Here's a good video from the movie - this is where Julie first meets Preston's wife at the ball. You can see her BEAUTIFUL white dress :)

Day #47 - La Vie en Rose

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Wow. I knew that Marion Cotillard was going to be good in this movie, but she truly blew me away. I'm trying to think of when I have seen a better performance by a woman in ANY movie, and I am coming up with very little - perhaps Charlize Theron in Monster. Cotillard really impressed me, I had no idea how talented she was/is. She won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal.

La Vie en Rose follows the life and career of Edith Piaf, a French singer and cultural icon - abandoned many times as a young child, she grew up in poverty and started her career by singing on the streets as a teenager - which is essentially where she was discovered. Her career and life had many ups and downs and Cotillard portrayed the emotions of these ups and downs beautifully. Edith Piaf's voice is really unlike anything I've ever heard - not only because she sings in French but her voice is unique. I found it interesting that when Piaf came to America she felt like the people here didn't understand her and vice versa. She always missed Paris and felt most at home there. As far as the way the movie was made, my only complaint really is that I was confused about her illness - I read online that she died of lung cancer but how well was that explained? I didn't pick up on it at all - she seemed to take injections for serious (perhaps debilitating) arthritis? I understood also that she was into hard drugs at least for a small period of time - but I'm not 100% sure of any of this. In fact, Ebert's review said she was addicted to morphine - how was I to know this? Oh well.

Roger Ebert had this to say...

"This mosaic storytelling style has been criticized in some quarters as obscuring facts (quick: how many times was she married?). But think of it this way: Since there are, in fact, no wedding scenes in the movie, isn't it more accurate to see husbands, lovers, friends, admirers, employees and everyone else as whirling around her small, still center? Nothing in her early life taught her to count on permanence or loyalty. What she counted on was singing, champagne, infatuation and morphine."

I couldn't find a good video from the film, but here are a couple of clips of the real Edith Piaf singing...La Vie en Rose and Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.

Day #32 - The Reader

IMDB Link

I didn't realize how far behind I was! Last night we watched The Reader which I really, really enjoyed. My expectations originally were so high because of the Oscar buzz but I heard from a few people that they were disappointed - so I put it off and put it off, which is surprising not only because I like to watch Oscar-worthy movies but I also love Kate Winslet!

Kate plays Hannah Shmitz, a German woman who works on what I assume is the city bus - one day she meets a young boy named Michael, who was sick with scarlet fever and had throwin up outside of her apartment. She helps him home, and months later after recovering, he goes back to thank her. Thus begins their love affair - although she was much older than he was, he fell in love with her, at one point telling her he couldn't possibly live without her. Hannah asks him to read to her, and this becomes a major component of their relationship. She seems really secretive, and I couldn't quite figure out what her story was - she was a rather unpleasant and unlikable character, which surprised me. After arriving late a couple of nights in a row, Hannah and Michael get in a fight and she leaves town, not telling him goodbye or leaving him with any information. My thought was that she felt that he was too young for her and that for him to be happy she needed to be out of his life.

Michael continued through law school and about 10 years later he, along with a few fellow students and his professor, went to view a trial that was taking place in Berlin. There he found Hannah Shmitz - after all those years, he found her on trial along with 5 other women. As it turns out, Hannah was an SS officer, allegedly responsible for the lives of hundreds of women at Nazi camps during WWII. Michael was devastated. What I found really interesting about Hannah was that she never apologized for anything she did. She openly admitted her involvement in the selection of women to be killed at Auschwitz, but not once did she ever say she felt remorse. On the contrary, she seemed to still feel like she did her job and that was that. She was a guard. End of story. So that, coupled with her treatment of Michael years earlier, really left the audience with little pity for her.

I don't want to say anything more as I have already said too much for those of you who haven't seen the movie - but I really did enjoy it. I was impressed with David Kross who played the young Michael. To play such graphic love scenes would be hard enough but with Kate Winslet? It must have been very intimidating. Ralph Fiennes played the older Michael and I must say, he has got a stare to pierce your soul. If I ever saw him in real life I would be scared to death of him!!

At the Oscars this past year, Kate Winslet won the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar for this movie and it was nominated for 4 others. I really like the first picture above because at this point, I realized that I had never seen Kate like this before - hardened, mean. She's so talented.

Day #13 - It Happened One Night

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025316/

It Happened One Night, a 1934 Frank Capra movie starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, was the first movie to ever sweep Oscars' "Big Five" - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Screenplay :) So naturally, it had to be on my list :)

It Happened One Night is about Ellie Andrews, a socialite who runs away from her life of people telling her "what to do and how to do it" and on her way to New York City meets Peter Warren, a newspaper man looking for a good story. Like any good romantic comedy, they can't stand each other at first - he's just in for the good story and she just doesn't want him to tell her Dad where she is. By the time the end rolls around, they discover they are in love! It Happened One Night was one of the first romantic "screwball" comedies ever filmed - paving the way for all the Sleepless in Seattles and When Harry Met Sallys of the world :) I love all the old sets and lighting, so classic. Clark Gable is witty and handsome, of course - and I was very curious about Claudette Colbert. She has a kind of manly (?) voice...or maybe just deeper, kind of sultry. I thought she was really cute (not pretty though, actually kind of odd looking haha) until I read that she demanded double her usual salary to do this movie for a guarantee that it would only last four weeks - AND, she hated the movie so much she didn't even attend the Oscars where she won Best Actress! Clark Gable himself walked on the set first day and said, "Let's get this over with." Hahaha! Back to the movie though....I really enjoyed watching it and am glad to be able to check it off my list :)

Turner Classic Movies named It Happened One Night as one of their top 15 most influential films of all time - see below for excerpt:
(http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/tcm-unveils-their-list-of-top-15-most-influential-films-of-all-time)

"The surprise success of It Happened One Night made Frank Capra one of the screen’s top directors and provided the prototype for a decade of screwball comedies. Romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally and The Sure Thing draw on the rapid banter, outrageous comic situations and sexy road trip of It Happened One Night. The movie even provided inspiration for one of the screen’s most enduring characters, Bugs Bunny."

I love learning about "old" Hollywood during the days of the studios contracting out and "owning" actors...here is a tidbit about it from IMDB....

"Columbia Pictures was considered a Poverty Row studio at the time of the film's release. Both MGM and Warner Brothers would loan out temperamental actors to Columbia as a 'humbling experience.' Studio boss 'Harry Cohn', who was loathe to pay for his own roster of contract stars during the early 30's, would invariably assign them to work on Frank Capra's films. Although the studio had received Oscar nominations prior to this picture, it's success virtually single-handedly lifted Columbia out of the ranks of poverty row."