The Towering Inferno

When we hear such a dramatic name like The Towering Inferno we can instinctively do two things in the year 2011:  jokingly scream Oh the humanity! and grab a strong drink.  That is not a bad way to approach this film, but that is also stereotyping.  Sure it’s one of those 1970’s disaster films, but it is the best of them.  While the story lacks and is based on a whole lot of what-ifs, the action, suspense and cinematography are so well done you can’t just toss the film aside.

Paul Newman plays Doug Roberts, the architect of the new tallest building in the world, The Glass Tower.  But the building’s owner, Jim Duncan (William Holden) has decided to cut corners and employed his son-in-law Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain) to find ways to cut costs.  Unfortunately, he decided to swap out Doug’s electrical plans and put in cheap wiring that is sparking random fires all over the building during the grand opening party.  The party is on the top floor, and because of the spreading fire and lack of exits, they are trapped up there.  It’s up to the fire departments Chief O’Hallorhan, (Steve McQueen) to find a way to save the people and put out fires that are far beyond the fire fighter’s reach.

The film becomes a cautionary tale of epic proportions.  In the opening credits, the film is dedicated to all firefighters and they become the real heroes.  The overall lessons we’re supposed to learn from the film is that fire fighters deserve more respect and architects need to work with firefighters to build safer buildings.  I hope architects were scared straight.

There are a lot of great action scenes, full of fire, explosions and tense moments.  Most of the action was directed by Irwin Allen, not the credited director John Guillermin.  These great moments range from fire raging down hallways, stairwells crumbling away in an explosion, a failed attempt to run through a blazing room, an elevator full of women and children hanging by one cable and an amazing climatic explosion in an attempt to save the day.  It’s all a lot of fun, these scenes can feel like mini adventures that keep you on the edge of your seat.  One of my favorites, that I remember watching as a kid, is when Newman, two kids and Liselotte (Jennifer Jones) are trapped in a destroyed stairwell.  Below them is just a long pit and they have to shimmy down to the next floor on a twisted stair rail.  All the action scenes have a wonderful element of danger that is always shown visually in a way that really pulls the tension.

Alright, back to the Oh the humanity! side of the film.  While most of the action is done well with enough suspense to keep me semi-serious, there was one moment that left me rolling and probably pushed the feminist movement back ten years.  At a point in the film, a helicopter is sent to land on the building to rescue the trapped party goers.  Paul Newman takes ten women (ladies first) up to the roof and tells them to stay back so the helicopter can land.  Well they don’t seem to grasp this concept and the two stupidest women run past Newman and head for the chopper, right in the way of its landing.  Because estrogen and high heels are a helicopter’s natural enemy, it crashes, in a magnificent fireball.  That whole ridiculous scenario seems like a bad joke that just ends with the reasons women were confined to a kitchen.  Thanks ladies, you just killed the rescue crew.

Let me not completely encourage this idea, but if you’re looking for a decent film to pair a drinking game to, this may be your winner.  Now I have seen the horrible products of drinking to a film that was not thought out while sober.  Never decide that it’s a good idea to watch Pirates of the Caribbean and take a shot every time you hear pirates, matey, savvy and Captain Jack Sparrow.  Picking just one is a better idea, but everyone has already seen POTC a million times.  So, here is my proposed game to The Towering Inferno: a drink every time someone is on fire.  Exciting, eye-catching and only gets funnier as you play.  By my calculations, there are only six of these moments throughout the 2 ¾ hour film.  No one (off screen) should die and your designated driver still has a good film to watch.  This isn’t exactly Mystery Science Theater 3000 material, but who really wants to be subject to the quality of films like ‘Manos’ the Hands of Fate?  There’s not game in the world that can make that film enjoyable.

But seriously, The Towering Inferno is a good, film.  Whether you want to seriously contemplate the intelligent visual aspects, daring stunts or just kick back and enjoy the best of what the 1970’s disaster genera has to offer, I highly recommend it.  And the best part, it’s on Netflix Instant right now, available whenever you want it.

“Did you leave a cigarette burning?”

Sunset Boulevard

“She was the greatest of them all. You wouldn’t know, you’re too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it!”

Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is a wonderfully dark and cynical film about the relationship between a struggling hack screenwriter and a faded silent film star delusionally anticipating her return to the silver screen.  Joe Gilles (William Holden) is becoming more and more desperate to sell his stories.  He’s behind on car payments and in an effort to run from the bill collectors, he turns into the driveway of a decaying mansion and finds an empty garage perfect for hiding his car.  Inside, a woman calls to him, “You there, why have you kept me waiting so long?”  Having nowhere else to be, Joe goes inside and meets Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and her faithful butler Max (Erich von Stroheim).

I’ve always interpreted the events in Sunset Boulevard to be wonderfully simple.  Joe was mistaken to be the funeral director for Norma’s pet chimp who has just died.  We don’t realize it yet, but Norma’s new pet has just walked in the door.  Throughout the film, Joe becomes Norma’s boy toy, she lets him live there while he works on an excessive screenplay Norma has written for her return.  Norma gladly towels him off as he exits the pool, buys him the clothes she wants him to wear and holds a grand New Years ball just for the two of them.  The mansion is his cage, all Joe is missing is a leash.

The film won the Oscar for art direction easily.  All the sets in or around the mansion are beautifully creepy with lavish detail.  As Joe describes, “The whole place seemed to have been stricken with a kind of creeping paralysis – out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion.”  Inside the mansion is a grand staircase, a projection screen hidden behind an oil painting and beautiful classic furniture.  There are dozens, perhaps near a hundred pictures of Norma all over the house.  One of my favorite sets is Norma’s bedroom full of satin veils and ruffles hanging from the ceiling and her bed looks like a viking ship.

Joe provides the perfect narration for this film about the dark side of cinema.  When we first hear his voice, it’s the cynical, ironic perspective of a man floating dead in a pool.  Somewhere along the story set in the past, the perspective changes from dead-floating Joe of the present to Joe in the shown scene.  The change isn’t that important and nearly impossible to detect because Joe’s style of speech is so consistent.  He’s obviously a writer, and some of his descriptions do teeter on the verge of hack (“She sat coiled up like a watch spring.”), but with this macabre style of story it fits.  He’s the perfect candidate to be thrown a story that feels like Edgar Allan Poe resurrected to write about Hollywood.

Nominated for best actress, Gloria Swanson steals the film with her oh so creepy Norma Desmond.  I always get a little shiver when she puts her fingers she moves like claws on Holden.  Her over expressive facial expressions of a silent film star, make it seem like she’s never left the screen.  Her eyes are so fierce, her painted mouth never has a real smile, but twists into sneers of repressed rage.  I love the way Norma gives me the creeps,  “Stars are ageless aren’t they?”

There have been some complaints about me ranking Sunset over the official Best Picture winner, All About Eve.  I do so thinking about what most of today’s viewers would appreciate more and relate to better.  Sunset has the more striking visual elements and more iconic characters.  The cynical and ironic narration by Holden is more understood by our modern age.  I’m not knocking Eve at all, that film does it’s own thing wonderfully, I just see more people loving Sunset and simply liking Eve.

And I do love Sunset Boulevard.  I love Norma’s desperate attempts to keep Joe, the scene at Paramount studios and Cecil B. DeMille’s cameo.  That shot with Joe floating in the pool blew me away and when he said, “Shh, you’re going to wake the monkey” I couldn’t get enough.  For this film to survive so well after sixty years, there must be more out there who also deeply love Sunset Boulevard.

“You don’t yell at a sleepwalker – he may fall and break his neck. That’s it: she was still sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career.”

Born Yesterday

Harry (Broderick Crawford), a junkyard tycoon, and his fiancé, Billie (Judy Holliday) are both less than refined.  They shout to each other from across halls and through open windows.  While in Washington D.C., Harry is trying to “make new business connections” and realizes Billie’s rough behavior and ignorance will only drive him backwards.  So, he hires Paul (William Holden), a man initially hired to interview Harry, to teach her some etiquette, but he teaches her more important things and soon she’s able to see her life in a whole new way.

Judy Holliday’s performance as Billie won the Oscar for Best Actress.  It’s a joy to watch Billie learn and grow with Paul’s help.  She always keeps that rough and slightly dumb edge to her voice, but when we begin to see her as more than some loudmouth broad we rejoice along with her.  She’s a strong character too, even when she’s brought down so low by Harry, she’s never out and can conjure up the courage to tell him to “Drop dead.”

Of course, there has to be a little romance, and it’s true that dumb blondes love the nerdy guys.  There have been films where I don’t care for William Holden, usually when he’s playing the strapping, troublesome love interest that can’t keep his shirt on.  Thankfully, Paul is the opposite, he’s helpful, smart, charming and witty.  Many times, Holden’s lines become the perfect springboard for Judy’s punchline and the chemistry works perfectly.

Most of Billie’s lessons revolve around the Washington D.C. setting.  Through it we see different monuments, building and important documents.  We see Billie’s first encounters with them and see how earnestly she wants to expand her mind.  Later, it’s fun to see her use her new knowledge of the founding fathers to help herself.

For those who can’t face seeing an old black and white movie, let me compare it to something you’re probably more familiar with.  The plot is similar to the ever popular, Legally Blonde.  Now, come on, even my husband enjoys Legally Blonde, and to put things just a little backwards, Born Yesterday is it’s 1950’s equivalent.  It’s charming, funny and heartwarming.  This is a witty delight that I encourage everyone to seek out.

“-Nobody’s born smart, Billie.  Do you know what the stupidest thing on Earth is?  An infant!
–Whadaya got against babies all of a sudden?”

The Bridge on the River Kwai

In a Japanese POW camp, prisoners are overworked and the death rate is extremely high.  We first meet Shears (William Holden) as he’s digging a grave, by the time he’s finished he can’t even remember who he just buried.  He has seen so many men arrive and die in this camp his spirit is nearly broken and  he’s thinking about trying to escape.  There are no fences or barbed wire to hold him back, but the armed guards and jungle have proven too much for all who have tried.

One day a troop of British soldiers come marching and whistling into the camp, still keeping their head up and back straight under their leader Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness).  At first, Nicholson seems stupidly defiant against his Japanese captors, insisting that they do things by certain codes and that he lead his men on their project; to build a bridge over the Kwai River.  This lands Nicholson in “the oven,” a metal box that heats up in the sun, but once the Japanese realize how badly they need someone to lead the men efficiently, Nicholson is put in charge of building the bridge.

Nicholson turns what could be a laborious task and turns it into a moral exercise for his troops.  He believes that doing something constructive with their time will help the men cope with their capture and keep them good soldiers.  That all sounds perfectly fine, but soon Nicholson takes so much pride in the work he and his men put into the bridge, he believes it to be a testament to British foreign relations.  He seems to forget that they are at war with their captors, that the bridge they are building could be seen as treason to his country.

Meanwhile, Shears (who is assumed dead by the whole camp) has narrowly escaped the and is part of a plan to blow up the bridge.  This part of the story shows us jungles, cliff sides and beautiful waterfalls to bathe in.  These beautiful shots are just a preview for the amazing things director David Lean is capable of showing.  As the team journeys to take down the bridge, Nicholson is becoming more attached to his work.  Up to the very end, tension is pulled tighter and everything comes down to one moment.

Alec Guinness is so convincing in his portrayal of Colonel Nicholas.  He fiercely believes in his principals to near stubbornness and that sort of conviction is what rallies his troops behind him.  When he agrees to build the bridge, and build it well, his ideas behind making solid structure he and his men could be proud of is compelling.  He believes so much that what he was doing was right that I started to believe as well.  And that’s what makes an Oscar winning performance.

One of the things most people remember about The Bridge on the River Kwai is the whistling melody.  That played a big role in winning the award for best musical score.  Believe me, you’ll recognize it once you hear it and will probably find yourself whistling along within the first fifteen minutes.

I do believe that The Bridge on the River Kwai is a fantastic film that everyone should see.  It won a slew of awards including best picture and David Lean’s first win for best director.  In the end though, 1957 gave us three amazing films.  There is still one left that I’d like to consider at the top, by just a small margin.  More tomorrow.

“As I’ve told you before, in a job like yours, even when it’s finished, there’s always one more thing to do.”

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing

Here’s another love story where William Holden can’t keep his shirt on.  Set in Hong Kong towards the end of the Chinese Civil War, Suyin (Jennifer Jones) is a Eurasian doctor and a widow.  At a party she meets Mark (Holden), a foreign correspondent from America reporting on the War.  Despite the fact that Mark is married and Suyin is happy with her life as it is, they fall in love.  It seems there could be no greater happiness for them, but Mark’s job pulling him all over the world could spoil everything.

What makes this more interesting than just a love story is the conflict between Eastern and Western cultures.  Suyin is a perfect example of the divide, being half European and half Chinese.  She’s a doctor, a respected intellectual, yet she will still keep faith in old Chinese superstitions.  There’s a fun scene where people make noise to scare clouds away from the moon and she might have too much faith in a later fortune teller scene.  When she’s faced with the idea of romance with Mark, there is conflict between a reserved life alone in memory of her late husband or to start over with new passion.

We see other Eurasians who have assimilated so deeply into their European side, you can hardly see their Chinese heritage.  Suzanne has dyed her hair blonde and takes pride in being mistaken for European.  Suyin is a little heartbroken that someone can just do away with a whole half of their culture.

When Suyin goes back home to China for a family emergency, we see just how different the cultures are.  She must ask her uncle, the head of the household, permission to do anything.  And every little detail is done with such reserved tradition, we can tell Suyin is not quite used to it after so much time in Hong Kong.

When Mark and Suyin decide to tell marry and tell everyone about their love, the reception isn’t exactly joyous.  Suyin’s Chinese family is not happy about bringing a foreigner into their family, but decide not to hold her back.  Their European friends in Hong Kong also give Suyin fair warning about their cross-cultural relationship.

The romantic scenes between Holden and Jones are layered with cheesy mush.  They lay out all these mushy lines, but they hardly feel real.  It’s like they’re talking to a plank of wood, rather than a lover.  Perhaps the rumors about their strained relationship off set contributed to this.  There are stories about Jones chewing garlic before her romantic scenes with Holden.  Trying to act in love through garlic breath might have put a damper on his lines.

In the end, this is an interesting story of culture and an eye-rolling romance.  My biggest complaint isn’t about Holden’s shirtless strutting, but the fact that he shaved his chest for that beach scene and made us look at his hairy thigh in the foreground the whole time.

“Where’s your pride Suyin?”

Picnic

The image of this DVD looked like the cover of a cheesy romance novel.  There was Holden, his shirt ripped and all muscle and there was Novak, all beauty and innocence.  The girl can’t help but find this man attractive and this guy just can’t keep his shirt on for an hour.  Thus is the rough set up of Picnic.

William Holden plays Hal, a drifter who rides the rails into a small Kansas town looking for an old fraternity friend, Alan (Cliff Robertson).  He just so happens to turn up on Labor Day morning, where that evening this town will hold a huge celebration picnic.  He stumbles upon the yard of the Owen family.  There’s mama Owen (Betty Field), eldest beauty Madge (Kim Novak), younger tomboy Millie (Susan Strasberg) and a schoolteacher who rents a room, Rosemary (Rosalind Russell).  Madge is dating Alan, who’s wealthy and runs a mill with his father.  But that morning when Madge sees Hal all sweaty and shirtless in the neighbor’s yard- well, you can guess.

Anyway, in the afternoon just before the picnic, everything seems to be perfectly in order: Alan’s going to get Hal a job, Madge might let Alan get past first base and mama’s proud of her girls.  But when Rosemary’s boyfriend, Howard (Arthur O’Connell) starts passing around a bottle of whiskey, tensions rise, and reputations are ruined.

The dynamic between the sisters is intriguing and shocking, at least to a 21st century viewer.  You see, Millie spends her time reading and not primping herself and therefore is considered the ugly one.  She is ugly the same way Tina Fey is, as in not at all.  But this is the 1950s where women were just to be looked at.  If Millie likes to play basketball in blue jeans and read with glasses on, that is enough to dismiss her as a simply ugly girl.  What a shame.

So, we’ve got sisters of brains and beauty, each secretly longing for what the other has.  But only Millie can really voice this longing because it’s expected of her  Every girl should long to be pretty, right?  When Madge realizes she wants to be more than a beauty queen, well, I don’t think she has the intelligence to understand she wants instead.  So when Hal notices her, and he’s not like the other guys, maybe that makes her feel like she’s not like the other pretty girls.  I say Madge is just a dumb pretty girl in need of constant attention and validation.

But how much more attention could a girl want?  When she’s crowned Queen at the Picnic, they literally put her in the swan boat, with a huge bunch of roses and a paper crown and float her down the river where everyone waits and tosses rose pedals.  They even do a weird bow/chant thing that made me feel like they were worshiping this girl.  Yet, she’s seeking more attention.  She wants the bad boy.  Those pecks or something made her feel different and now she sees that as a way to be different and special.  “I’m so tired of just being told I’m pretty.”

What is the moral of this film?  Don’t be afraid to be different?  There’s more to life than being pretty?  Real satisfaction comes from doing things on your own?  I have no idea, but today I interpreted it as let your girls be “ugly” and smart so they can accomplish something in their lives without relying on their beauty like a crutch and then they will not run after trouble making guys in order to validate themselves.  What girl watched this movie in 1955 and wanted to be just like Madge?

By the end of this film, I honestly wondered what the rate of unmarried women committing suicide in the 1950s was.  In a world where intelligent women don’t have much merit and there were no boob jobs available, I wonder how many mothers really said this:

– “She’ll lose her chance when she’s young. She might as well throw all her prettiness away.”
— “I’m only 19.”
– “And next summer you’ll be 20, then 21. and then 40.”
— “You don’t have to be morbid.”

Network

“We could make a series of it. “Suicide of the Week.” Aw, hell, why limit ourselves? “Execution of the Week.” “Terrorist of the Week.” I love it. Suicides, assassinations, mad bombers, Mafia hitmen, automobile smash-ups: “The Death Hour.” A great Sunday night show for the whole family. It’d wipe that fuckin’ Disney right off the air.”

With that bit of dialogue, I fell in love with this film.  Network tells the story of people working within a television network, how ratings rule their lives and how they try to reflect the world’s views by the shows they decide to air.  The film is full of interesting, fleshed out characters that make us believe that they can be this eccentric and so ruled by their television lives.

First there’s Howard Beale (Peter Finch), an aging news anchorman who announces his retirement and his suicide to take place at the end of next Tuesday’s program.  With the network going into damage control over Beale’s inappropriate newscast, they decide to let him go on the next day to apologize.  Instead, he tells the world that he “just ran out of bullshit.”  The ratings for his blunt honesty are through the roof and soon Beale has his own show as a prophet, rambling and getting people to shout out their windows all over the country.  Together they yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Dianne Christensen (Faye Dunaway) is the young vice-president for UBS and has been looking for some edgy programming to reflect the anger that Americans are feeling.  When Howard yells bullshit, she finds her goldmine.  Dianne is part of the first generation to have television all their lives, and therefore has much different views that her older coworkers, like Max Schumacher (William Holden), a long time friend of Howard’s.  Max and Dianne start a relationship, even though Max is married, but he sees that Dianne is a sub level of human who has been too heavily influenced and desensitized by television.

I believe that is the main point of the film: television has defined how we live our lives.  It’s how we learn to deliver snarky one-liners with perfect timing, how to enter a room with the right presence, how to pause for dramatic effect.  Television shows us what’s in style, how to wear it right and how to walk in it.  It even shows us definitions for love, joy, anger and happiness.  How would we know these emotions if we had not grown up with defining images being flashed before us?

In the end, Network is too dark to be satire, I don’t believe it was meant to be interpreted in a satiric manner.  It seems to serve more as a warning for what television could (and has) become.  Channel surf on a Sunday morning and the images of some television preachers are very similar to Howard Beale’s raving rants just before he collapses into thunderous applause.  We now watch and vote for the next musical sensation and watch young people try to find their true love out of a hand full of contestants.

Network is full of strong language and the ideas that we’re becoming less genuinely human because of television may not be what everyone wants to think about.  But it’s a great movie, the acting is superb and worthy of the three Oscar wins by Beatrice Straight, Dunnaway, and the late Finch.  I strongly recommend Network.

“I’m not sure she’s capable of any real feelings. She’s television generation. She learned life from Bugs Bunny.”

Our Town

This film is the most welcoming breath of fresh air to open the 1940’s.  Based on the play by Thornton Wilder, it’s so charming that the narrator even welcomes you in and shows you around town.

The film is broken into three parts: The Daily Life, Love and Marriage, and (though our narrator didn’t name it, I will) Something Eternal.  The story focuses on a young couple,  played by William Holden and Martha Scott.  They’re not star crossed lovers or forbidden by their families, just good ol’ small town kids with nothing too special going on.  The town shows the beautiful cycles of life every day.  The paperboy and milk man make their morning deliveries, mothers prepare meals and kids go to school.  Lives change with marriage, babies and the departure of loved ones.

Throughout the story, it seems that we’re reminded of everyone’s short lives.  At the very start, twins have been born and we’re told that the paperboy will die in WWI.  But life keeps rolling, blissfully unaware at how little time they have.  I don’t want to dwell on the obvious, but it’s in these things that bring out the beauty of the story.

Now, once you pop that DVD in, you’ll cringe.  The film is grainy, a bit fuzzy and sometimes the camera seems to be cutting off someone’s head.  Frankly, it’s a miracle that it even evolved to DVD.  There were a few pops and out of tune whining at times, but remember, this is a humble film.  The way this message is told makes a few technological set backs worth the ride.

Besides the few techno geeks who can’t stand anything out of HD, Our Town can be enjoyed by anyone.  The story is told in a relaxed and engaging way and its level of complexity is only as far as you want to make the ending.  It’s probably better as a play, it’s meant to engage the viewer.  So, if you do get a chance, see the play live, if that’s not an option, the film is worth a look over.

“It goes so fast, we don’t even have time to look at each other.”