Monday Minute
No. 162 | September 20, 2010

On a First-Name Basis

The movies featured last week were men’s pictures.  In three of them, in fact, the cumulative screen time with women in the frame was no more than a few minutes.  This week will be different.

Let’s take a look at names.  Most folks have a first name and a last, though when we talk about people we don’t always use both.  Sometimes one is enough.  Which we use is often a matter of how we know a person (or how we’d like to know them).  First names are intimate and inviting, commonly used with family and friends.  Last names are more formal and functional, often employed in our societal roles.

Men and women, as with many things, don’t get equal treatment when it comes to names.  The most obvious difference is that men usually keep their surnames through life.  Women who marry often do not.  Yet another difference, one I’ve observed over the years, women are called by their first names more often than men, whatever the context may be.  Perhaps that is changing somewhat, but it still happens, at work, in sports, in politics, what have you.  For instance, some famous women we know:  Oprah, Venus, Hillary; some men:  Leno, Federer, Obama.  I realize there are plenty of exceptions; the difference is subtle.  But when we know both names, we often choose one, and one factor affecting the choice is a person’s sex.

Movie titles offer some good examples.  Many films are named for their lead characters.  Among the men, there’s a host of single-surnamed biopics:  Milk, Capote, Kinsey, Chaplin, Ali, Gandhi, Patton, Nixon, Becket, Disraeli, among others.  On the roster of films named for fictional men:  Arrowsmith, Dodsworth, Bullitt, Goldfinger, Greenberg, Hancock, Hook, Maverick, Rambo, Zelig, and Zoolander, to name a few.  Of course, some pics named for men use first names—Marty, Charly, Alfie, Arthur, Dave, et al.—but it’s a shorter list.

For women’s films, it’s very much the opposite.  For single-named titles with women’s surnames, Salt and Silkwood come to mind.  I almost added Klute, but then remembered Klute is the cop played by Donald Sutherland, not the prostitute played by Jane Fonda.  Gigli?  Had to look that one up:  named for a guy.  I’m sure there are others, but you get the point.

The supply of titles with women’s first names, however, could stock your shelves.  Amélie, Elizabeth, Gigi, Julia, Nell, Rebecca, Roxanne, Sabrina, Salome, Tess, Yentl.  There are dozens.

Why the difference?  Movies more often are made by men, and that may have an effect, but I’d guess the movies generally are reflecting something about the way we relate to men and women in society.

Whatever the case, we’ll look at five of the films named for women in this week’s theme.

Our theme this week
Film titles that are first names of women

Laura (1944)

Laura is Laura Hunt.  She’s dead.  That’s what we learn the first line of the movie:  “I shall never forget the weekend Laura died.”  The voice is Waldo Lydecker’s.  Played by Clifton Webb, he’s an influential newspaper columnist.  We meet him sitting in the bathtub where he greets Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), who makes a call while investigating Laura’s murder.

Nevertheless, we get to know something about Laura, the inevitable star of the show (Gene Tierney).  We see her portrait on the wall of her apartment.  We meet her in flashback, when she met Lydecker, who became her mentor, and when she was engaged to the well-off Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price).  McPherson questions all the relevant parties, and the men at least all appear to have been enamored of the beautiful young woman.  The more the detective learns, the more obsessed he becomes with the case, and with Laura herself.  Midway through, the mystery takes a surprising—even shocking—turn. 

The story involves a fair dose of Hollywood hokum.  However it may have played in 1944, there’s more than a little disbelief asking to be suspended, for my taste.  That said, the film has some worthy merits.  The direction by Otto Preminger is first-rate.  An unsettling mood pervades the film, for which the theme song by David Raksin is partly responsible (Johnny Mercer added lyrics, and the song went on to become a jazz standard).  The acting also is unnerving, particularly from Webb, who gave Lydecker a highly mannered, effete edge that is more than a little creepy (not to mention, Lydecker has thirty years on Laura, for whom he has an unwelcome interest).  Price and Judith Anderson played society types, and the only characters for the audience to warm to are the roles of Andrews as the quiet, steady cop, and Tierney, who shines.

Laura is one of those films that may divide people (which is to say, I’m not with the consensus).  It’s a film highly regarded by many people:  Rotten Tomatoes’ critics rate it 100% fresh; voters at IMDb give it an 8.1 rating.  I’ve heard and read raves.  (At the Hollywood Bowl this month, TCM host Robert Osborne made a very strong pitch for it.)  I think it’s a fine film, yet I don’t see it as an enduring classic.  It’s a well-done murder mystery that settles for being a murder mystery, nothing more.  (In contrast, another ’40s film, The Third Man, starts as a mystery but goes much deeper and darker.)  Laura is often listed among the canon of film noir, but I’d say that’s not the best label for the movie.  It has noirish elements, certainly, but in the end it takes a turn that’s melodramatic, not noir.  I may be less enthusiastic than some others, but I’d say it’s a film still worth seeing, if for nothing else then to find out what all the fuss is about.

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Laura (1944)
Otto Preminger, director
Vera Caspary (novel); Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt (screenplay); writers
Joseph LaShelle, cinematographer
Trailer

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Laura (1944)
Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price

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Quote of note
“I can afford a blemish on my character, but not on my clothes.”
—Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), Laura (1944)

…58…59…60.

Wednesday Minute
No. 44 | March 3, 2010

Oscar Déjà Vu

Our theme this week (theme introduction)
Film titles with two Oscar nominations for Best Picture

Featured this week
Monday         —   Moulin Rouge (1952, 2001)
Tuesday         —   Cleopatra (1934, 1963)

Heaven Can Wait (1943, 1978)

Heaven Can Wait (1943)
Director:  Ernst Lubitsch
Writer:  Samson Raphaelson; based on the play Birthday by Leslie Bush-Fekete
Cast:  Don Ameche (Henry Van Cleve), Gene Tierney (Martha), Charles Coburn (Hugo Van Cleve), His Excellency (Laird Cregar)
Oscar Summary:  3 nominations, including Picture, Director; no wins

 

 

 

The essentials
Of all the twice-nominated titles this week, the Heaven Can Wait connection is the loopiest.  The Warren Beatty-Buck Henry comedy is a remake of an early-1940s movie, but not the 1943 Ernst Lubitsch comedy of the same name.  The 1976 film is a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, of 1941, which is based on a play called Heaven Can Wait.  The 1943 film is based a play called Birthday.  So the two films are not related, except this:  the plot hooks for the two stories are nearly flip sides of each other.  The earlier film has a dead man petitioning Satan to be admitted into hell.  The later one has a dead man who wants to go back to his life on Earth.

Ernst Lubitsch was a master of Hollywood’s golden age, and Heaven Can Wait was one of his later films.  Don Ameche is a playboy who expects to go to hell on the day that he dies.  Greeted by the always-courteous His Excellency (i.e., Satan), he must recount his sins to gain admission.  The film is a look back at the events of his life, especially the trouble he caused for his wife.  Across the decades he had his share of flirtations and indulgences, though they were mostly harmless.  The question is whether he was bad enough for Hades.  The film may not rank with Ninotchka or The Shop Around the Corner or Trouble in Paradise as the best of Lubitsch, but that’s a high standard to meet.  Lubitsch didn’t know how to make a bad film, and as always, this one’s a classy production, delivering some good laughs along the way.

The later Heaven Can Wait is an enjoyable movie from Warren Beatty and company.  It’s one of two films (along with Reds) for which Beatty received four Oscar nominations (as actor, director, writer, and producer).  He plays L.A. Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton, who dies before the Super Bowl.  Joe gets a reprieve, however, when his angel fumbles the assignment, and he returns to the living in the body of a murdered millionaire.  Getting back in the game is no easy task, as he faces skeptics about his identity and a wife who tries to kill him again.  Meanwhile, he falls for a British ecologist played by Julie Christie.  The movie’s got charm, mischief, satire, and one funny cast.

Beyond the final credits
Here Comes Mr. Jordan, the 1941 film, was about a boxer who’s taken to heaven before his time.  Warren Beatty first wanted the remake to be about a boxer, starring Muhammed Ali.  Those plans didn’t work out, so the boxer was changed to a football player and Beatty played the role himself.  Another remake of the story, Down to Earth (2001), starred Chris Rock as a comedian who dies before his time.

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Heaven Can Wait (1943)
Ernst Lubitsch, director

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Heaven Can Wait (1978)
Warren Beatty, Buck Henry, James Mason

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Quote of Note
Daniel Miller:  Is this heaven?
Bob Diamond:  No, it isn’t heaven.
Daniel Miller:  Is it hell?
Bob Diamond:  Nope, it isn’t hell either.  Actually, there is no hell.  Although I hear Los Angeles is getting pretty close.
—Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks), Bob Diamond (Rip Torn), Defending Your Life(1991)

…58…59…60.