Viewing posts written by: Eloise Ross
Andre can, we are told, “make love” anywhere. Now, in this film the antiquated term “make love” is at its most innocently darling. So he is allowed to kiss his wife, Colette (Jeanette MacDonald), in the park. This is of course made possible because the Hays Code had not yet been fully thrust onto the Hollywood ranks (the Code itself was written by Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America president Will H. Hays in 1930, but much of what was written was not enforced until Joseph L. Breen was appointed head of the Production Code Administration in 1934) ; Lubitsch was clearly having fun flaunting his violation of the agreement. Doherty documents some commentary from the time: in 1933, Variety declared that “producers have reduced the Hays Production Code to sieve-like proportions and are deliberately out-smarting their own document.” While such behaviour of course continued into the depths of the darkest Hays Code years, the pre-1934 years allowed filmmakers to most gloriously disregard it.
Aside from Jake Gyllenhaal’s chiselled abs and cheeky grin, Prince of Persia really has nothing at all on Aladdin.
Like Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy, 45365 is driven not so much by dialogue or plot but by a desire to capture a sense of place.
Tim Burton’s latest marries the director’s trademark fantastical imagery with a narrative that is tediously by-the-numbers. Is this the fault of Burton or the fault of Disney, the film’s distributor?
“The world sees Rome the way you invented it,” Sophia Loren tells Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine. This is the power that a director has when he makes intelligent, affecting films. And from the way he is depicted, it seems that director Guido Contini (Day-Lewis) has achieved such splendour. Emphasising the control that films have over their spectators, declaring that they are indeed not modest, director Rob Marshall is more paying respects to Federico Fellini (from whose 8 1/2 the musical…
With the release of Roland Emmerich’s 2012 this month, the film industry’s (and society’s) fascination with destruction becomes ever more pertinent. Not to mention depressing. Margaret Pomeranz was on to something when she criticized 2012 for glorifying the end of the world, and for making it seem less-bad that thousands of people were dying as long as the hero survives. Guy Debord labelled the modern world a ’showbiz society’, and this is expressed without a doubt in Emmerich’s film. Everything…
