George Marshall | Destry Rides Again / 1939

the end of evil

by Douglas Messerli

 

Felix Jackson, Henry Myers, and Gertrude Purcell (screenplay, based on the novel by Max Brand), George Marshall (director) Destry Rides Again / 1939

 

The western town of Bottleneck is a corrupt town, ruled over by saloon owner Kent (Brian Donlevy), his lover, singer and swindler Frenchy (Marlene Dietrich), and the tobacco-chewing mayor, Judge Slade (Samuel S. Hinds).

 

     Forget the fact that the former New Orleans-born “Frenchy” speaks with Dietrich’s heavy German accent and sings songs such as “See What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have” (with wonderful lyrics by Frank Loesser) that might be more at home in a cabaret skit, or that Kent’s huge saloon is, as film critic Daniel Eagan describes it, “filled with more customers than most frontier towns had as residents”; forget that one of the regular gamblers is a henpecked Russian named Boris Callahan (Mischa Auer), or that the Sheriff (Joe King) disappears “on vacation” immediately after his very first scene. The evil trio is right out of the kind of two-reelers (including episodes of The Perils of Pauline) that director George Marshall had filmed in the past, and this is a 1939 feature that was intended, in part, to save Dietrich’s career: it wasn’t ever intended to be “believable.”

     And what a lark the mythical movie tale truly is, although it begins with a serious swindle, wherein, by spilling coffee over a winning gambler, Dietrich helps to make sure he loses, granting Kent the rights to a farm through which nearly all the cattleman and their cows must cross. Kent plans to charge a fee for every head and make a fortune. Drinks are on the house!

   To replace Sherriff Keogh, the Mayor appoints the town drunk, “Wash” Dimsdale (Charles Winninger), believing that by simply threatening to withhold a shot of whiskey, they can control him.

    What he doesn’t know is that Dimsdale used to be the deputy for the noted gunman Destry, and when the drunk wakes up to the fact that he has actually been named the new sheriff, he immediately goes sober without a tremor, calling in Destry’s son, Thomas Jefferson Destry (James Stewart) to be his assistant.

 

     It takes nearly half the movie for Destry’s coach to reach Bottleneck, and in the meantime Marshall and his writers show off Dietrich’s singing and yodeling talents and create a number of backstories, including the Claggett’s standoff with Kent and his gang and the strange relationship between Callahan and Lily Belle (Una Merkel), his wife, who, after Callahan loses his pants by gambling, has a down-and-out dirty cat fight with Frenchy.

      By the time the coach reaches this isolated village, Destry has already won us over with this easy story-telling and aphorisms, and Stewart waltzes into his genial role with all the ease of his later character Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey. Although he’s evidently a master gun shooter, it turns the new deputy is also a pacifist (how I wish he might have been married to the Quaker wife of the High Noon sheriff played by Gary Cooper), and the townsfolk first glimpse of him is with a parasol and birdcage as he helps visitor Janice Tyndall (Irene Hervey) alight [the accompanying picture is of Andy Griffith in the 1959 Broadway musical version of the film].

     At the saloon later that afternoon he even has the temerity to order up a glass of milk! If you’ve seen that comic trope before, this is where it all began.

     Yet, hardly a day has passed and Destry has out-talked and out-witted half of the town, promised real justice to the Claggetts (having secretly called in a district judge instead of the local mayor to hear their case), and peaked the romantic interest of Frenchy by half-complementing her face: “I'll bet you've got kind of a lovely face under all that paint, huh? Why don't you wipe it off someday and have a good look—and figure out how you can live up to it.” As Frenchy’s black maid comments, “That man has personality.”

     Told to get out town, Destry blithely responds:

              

 “Oh, I think I'll stick around. Y'know, I had a friend once used to collect postage stamps. He always said the one good thing about a postage stamp: it always sticks to one thing 'til it gets there, y'know? I'm sorta like that too.”

      

       Of course, we all know it’s not going to be quite that easy, and when, enlisting the help of Callahan, they track down Keogh’s dead body, Kent and his gang threaten to endanger nearly all of the town’s citizens. And we just know that Destry will be forced to put on his holster and pop out those guns.

     In the inevitable shootout with the bad guys, Frenchy gets killed in the crossfire, dying in the arms of her new would-be lover. Yet order has been maintained, and the audience can go home knowing that like Tombstone, Bottleneck has now been civilized—even if we wince a little on our way with the knowledge that, without those gilded saloon hall and its singing wonder, it will be an awfully boring place.

      What Marshall’s comic treatment of the Western on the verge of World War II reveals— particularly by his so delaying his “tonic”—is that good and civilized men and women really have very little to do with the genre. The real excitement of Westerns has everything to do with the evil geniuses and their lusty women as they plot their way to rake in the money or just plain bollix up the plans of those who might desire equality and fairness. High Noon’s Hadleyville would never have been heard of if the evil gunman Frank Miller hadn’t been determined to kill those good folk’s sheriff.

     Destry may certainly be said to have personality, but I fear, if he truly sticks to this community, he may end up a bit like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry sheriff, mostly fishing and whittling. This wonderful film did, in fact, revert Dietrich’s “poison pill” reputation, and she went on to perform in numerous films, whereas the far more romantic and ethereal Greta Garbo, disappeared from the screen forever. The same year as Destry James Stewart went on to Washington. Perhaps, given the predilections of our new national leaders, even Westerns will suddenly come back into vogue, just as film musicals have.

 

Los Angeles, January 16, 2017 | Reprinted from World Cinema Review.

Bob Mizer | Space Mutiny / 1950

pulling rank

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bob Mizer (director) Space Mutiny / 1950

 

In physique director Bob Mizer’s 1950 black-and-white space epic, the commander of a space ship, dressed only in a posing strap, calls in two of his space-traveling assistants to demonstrate on the controls just what the problem seems to be.

     Both boys, who in these early scenes quickly appear to sprout erections, look on as the commander explains the situation, but apparently they don’t at all agree with his directions, and when in the midst of argument, he strips from their posing jocks what appear to be small decorative tinsel tassels as if they were military bars and stripes, they turn on him in full mutiny.

     Most of the short consists of the trio in full wrestling mode as they undergo the typical Mizer twists and turns of nearly full-naked bodies, filled with sweat, muscular ambition, and erotic evidence. The mutineers win the match and with their leader now passed out, they re-correct their apparent course of action, pleased with their ability to switch the situation.

 

      The lovely last moments of this cute pre-porno cinema, made in the very same year as the important gay classics, Un chant d’amour by Jean Genet and Orpheus by Jean Cocteau, the American boys proudly reveal their names. In those significant treasures of Europe, men surreptitiously meet up through tiny holes in the wall through which they share the erotic touch of rolled paper or in the case of the latter film, when they crash through mirrored realities. In the American version they just immediately get down to business with a good bodily workout of flesh-on-flesh. As brilliantly symbolic as Genet’s and Cocteau’s fables are, Mizer’s sweaty body workouts are far more to the point and say so very much about crass, in-the-mud USA culture—despite its far more intense fear of sexuality—that it’s hilariously profound as well as being just plain campy long before that word was even in the LGBTQ+ lexicon.

     Although it appears there were only three boys involved in the mutiny, Ronnie Wallace, Gerald Sullivan, and Dave Haupert, the naked boys keep appearing, suggesting that either in numerous intercuts or behind the scenes, Jim Lassiter, Chuck Davis, Rocky Ridge, and Louis La Venture were also involved, turning it truly into a Mizer epic.

 

Los Angeles, June 30, 2024 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog

Richard Day | Girls Will Be Girls / 2003

asteroids

by Douglas Messerli

 

Richard Day (screenwriter and director) Girls Will Be Girls / 2003

 

In the first decade of the 21st century, gay films were not yet embarrassed by being truly funny or complexly dramatic, a sensibility that in the third decade I am increasingly feeling we have lost.

    Parodying a wide range of campy Hollywood films such All About Eve, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Mommie Dearest, and Valley of the Dolls, director Richard Day uses drag performances not to mock and imitate themselves, but to imitate the heterosexual versions of the genre. Despite the wonderful performances of Jack Plotnick as Evie Harris, a washed-up alcoholic C-list actress of various films, Christmas specials, and the disaster epic Asteroid; the near ridiculous love affair between Dr. Perfect (Chad Linsey) and Evie’s mannish, plainish, spinsterish roommate Coco Peru (Clinton Leupp); and the seemingly dingbat but actually all-too-knowing enthusiast characterized by their new roommate Varla Simonds (Jeffery Robinson), these men basically play their female counterparts without winks, nods, and lavish costumes, pretty much convincing us they are simply unhappy over-the-top everyday women like, you know, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Susan Hayward, and Patty Duke—without really trying imitate the drag versions to which we have grown accustomed.

     For at least the first third of this film, we enter a world of quick quips that spin by so fast that sometimes the laughter washes away the next line. Girls Will Be Girls leans instead toward Richard Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatre as, particularly the bitchy Evie puts down nearly everyone she encounters, past and present. How anyone can stay in the same room with her for more than 5 minutes is a wonder.

 

      Coco: What do you think about the idea of having a dog in the house?

      Evie: I’m sorry, have I been staring?

      Coco: I’m think of getting one. I mean, let’s face it, at this point I’m probably

                never going to have kids.

      Evie: Oh, Coco it’s not too late. [She waits for a sympathetic moment] I’m kidding.

      [a few minutes later]

      Evie: This new roommate will cheer you right up.

      Coco: I just hope she’s not too loud, or happy. Happy people always makes such

                A racket.

      Evie: Coco, she came by and she was a peach.

      Coco: Were you drunk?

      Evie: It was 12 noon. Course I was drunk.

      Coco: I’m surprised anyone would want to rent that awful bicentennial room.

      Evie: [laughing] I rented Varla your room.

     And that verbal ping-pong match is just for starters. Varla, we soon discover, is not only incredibly “happy,” but claims she wants to be a movie star and singing sensation.

 

      Varla: I know how tough it can be. That’s why I have a plan. I’m gonna spend

                 every afternoon at Swab’s Drugstore. You know, where Tina Turner was

                 discovered.

      Coco: Except it’s a Virgin Megastore now.

      Varla: Are people still discovered there?

      Coco: Yes, but mainly in the men’s room by undercover cops.

   Turns out, of course, that Varla isn’t quite as innocent as she seems. Within moments of meeting a man who describes himself as a movie producer, she’s busy on the street performing sexual tricks and selling drugs at the same moment. Yet she’s shocked when she discovers he’s not really at all what he claims to have been. But then, neither is she. Actually, the daughter of the woman Evie has beaten out and probably killed in order to get the role in her Asteroid movie, Varla traveled to Hollywood from Arkansas just to get her revenge.

     In the meantime, Evie picks up a man so desperate for porn that he’s willing even to watch Evie’s ex-husband’s man-on-man videos.

     Coco, still in love with the doctor who performed her first abortion—she got pregnant again soon after just so that she might meet up with him again—is raped by a doctor who drugs her with morphine, “The pizza of drugs,” who she soon discovers if Dr. Perfect, now an old, overweight, man with whom she falls in love with all over again.

    There are dozens of good moments such as the ones I’ve hinted at, but gradually, things grind down into not such funny one-liners, mean attempts on the two central character’s lives, and a truly series of unhumorous confessions of Evie’s cruel behavior to others throughout her life. In this soap opera it’s all about having to say you are sorry.

     Yet nearly everyone finally finds her man, particularly Varla, who falls in love with Evie’s microscopically endowed but truly handsome son (Ron Mathews).

      This film was funny enough that resulted in a 2007 web spin-off staring Plotnick, Leupp, and Roberson on YouTube.

 

Los Angeles, June 30, 2024 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog.

 

Hirokazu Kore-eda | 海街diary (Our Little Sister) / 2015, USA 2016

family matters

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hirokazu Kore-eda (screenplay, based on Akimi Yoshida’s Umimachi Diary, and director)海街diary (Our Little Sister) / 2015, USA 2016

 

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister, based on the Japanese manga series, Umimachi Diary, is a slow-moving, yet highly touching film about a family of three sisters, Sachi (Haruka Ayase), Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa), and Chika (Kaho) who live together in a large dilapidated house in Kamakura, south-west of Tokyo. Since their father ran off with another woman in their early childhoods, and their mother, unable to live with the shame, also left, the girls have pretty much had to survive on their own, led by the eldest of them Sachi, who as a colleague observes, lost her childhood in the process.

       Still acting much as the mother to the group, Sachi works as a nurse; Yoshino works in a bank; and Chika in a sports goods store. Like any family unit, they often argue over important and unimportant matters, but generally, despite their personality differences, they get on quite wonderfully.

       As the film begins, they hear that their father, who had moved far away with yet a third woman, has died, and when they attend the funeral they discover that their father has had yet another daughter, Suzu (Suzu Hirose), now 14 years of age. At the funeral it becomes apparent that the stepmother is a selfish woman, and that Suzu has been the true nurse to her father during his long illness. For Sachi it seems, perhaps, that their half-sister may not even be wanted by the step-mother, who has a younger son from her previous relationship. In what almost seems like a whimsical decision, Sachi and her two sisters invite the young girl to come live with them.

      So begins a long series of rather episodic events that present the process of assimilation of the new family member into the life they have created for themselves. Trials and tribulations, large and small, occur, the most serious being the temporary return of their absent mother who briefly and selfishly ponders selling the house in which they live. Sachi, dating a married pediatrician, is asked to consider going away with him to the US, which would only repeat what the “other woman” had done to her family. Sachi, who hates her father for his actions, at moments is at odds with Suzu, who loved and cared for the same man. But generally, the family embraces their new “little sister” and is strengthened by the love they grow to feel for her.

      It helps, of course, that this young girl has an infectious smile, is a good soccer player, and seems generally well-adjusted, allowing her to fit into family and school life equally. But, in a sense, that’s beside the point. For Kore-eda’s film is not about “events” as much as it is about a sort of Chekov-like spirit, an acceptance of what life offers and a determination of the survivors to make the best of it they can. This theme is repeated again and again throughout the film as Sachi and her mother make up over a jar of plum wine, as Yoshino helps a restaurateur friend to write a will before she dies, and Sachi accepts a position in the intensive care unit of the hospital, where it becomes her job to help people to die.

     Through Suzu, Chika even gets the opportunity to get to know something about the father she can hardly remember. If their father has been worthless, they conclude, at least he did one thing that was meaningful, bringing a little sister into their lives.

     Like the great Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, this director has long focused his films on family life, subtly exploring how outsiders alter or help to break-down that important unit. For many looser-knit Americans, the seeming uneventfulness of Kore-eda’s film may suggest that, even if emotionally rich, the film is somewhat meaningless.

 

    But that would be to misunderstand what we are actually being shown in this work.  Tensions and small rifts temporarily set them each adrift; they simply do not advertise those hurts the way strangers or outsiders would. Family members may even fight, but as a unit they must equally forgive and forget. Time and again these sisters point out the traits of one another, comparing and linking them to the new sister. Knowing that family is all they truly have, that it is a way of embracing what they do not quite know, and a way to include that world outside. Little acts—cooking, gardening, dressing, eating, and even praying—become major events in such a closed world, yet it is these seeming non-events that help to make a family cohere and survive. And Kore-eda rightfully celebrates them as something more than insignificant moments. This is a film that takes a patient gaze—in its ebb and flow, the movie might have come to an end at several junctures before it finally does—and a viewer that can transcend his or her own cultural perspectives.

 

Los Angeles, July 11, 2016 | Reprinted from World Cinema Review.