1930's Movie Project: "Little Miss Broadway"

For the in-class 1935 movie project, we decided to put the movie in context of the period and, considering the Great Depression occurring at the time, made the decision to make our film one geared to the general populous, an escapist, feel good melodrama and musical directed by none other than the (rather unknown, at this time) Frank Capra.

In this all-ages feel good Christmas movie, Shirley Temple plays young Ruthie, a bright eyed curly-haired optimist who has a love of singing and dancing. The movie begins in 1935, during the Great Depression and right after Ruthie's father Floyd,played by Tracey, has been laid off from his job. A hint is dropped that implies that Ruthie's mother had died over a year ago, and they are forced to move to New York to stay with their late mother's sister. While walking in the street one day, Ruthie attempts to cheer her father up by singing and dancing for him--which is when a local Broadway Producer, Mr. Anderson, played by Fox's Joel McCrea, notices her and decides to make her a big star, bringing her to be the star of his show. While performing in the show, Ruthie meets a fellow dancer, Sherri (played by Vivien Leigh) who she takes a liking to. Floyd soon meets Sherri and falls in love with her. At the end of the movie, Ruthie is a huge hit in New York and the family is brought out of their financial and emotional depression. Floyd and Sherri are married, and it all ends very happily.

We chose Fox as our production company, mainly because the real star we were after here was Shirley Temple. Although at this time Frank Capra was directing with Colombia pictures, we took initiative to make a trade off with Colombia, and gave them John Ford fora short time to direct a Western they were interested in, while we took Capra for our feel good family special. We also got Fox's very own Spencer Tracy to play Shirley's father, and the spunky new face of Vivien Leigh, who was visiting the US and decided to take the role in this movie during her short visit.

This is a big scale and expensive Blockbuster movie, with all the stars that will appeal to people of this time, mainly the explosive Shirley Temple. Fox makes sense for this because they were, at this time, they were signed with Shirley Temple and produced all of her big movies at this time--and knew how expensive she was. We chose to make this film in black and white, although color was coming out at this time, simply because it was more popular at the time and the focus of Fox for the film was to please audiences and, in all honesty, make money. For our technological focus, we decided to really make it about the sound and sound editing, as it is a musical. For this,we used Fox's very own sound editor W.D. flick, who worked with Temple before on her movie "Our Little Girl" and did a number of movie for Fox and other production companies during the 30s and beyond.

As this movie does take place in 1935, the Hays code made big influences on the storyline and direction this movie was able to take. For example, we were unable to show the death of the mother, and so all we were able to do was imply that she had died, and begin the movie a year after this occurred. As well, the kiss shared by Floyd and Sherri was limited to only 3 seconds, following directly the Hays Code, and we were unable to show Sherri in a sexy or seductive light. Connecting to this, we unfortunately had to make the costumes of the Broadway dancers excessively modest instead of true to fact or even glamorous and fun as we had wished, in order not to violate the Hays code's rules of on-screen sexuality or promiscuity.

Were I alone in doing this project, I would probably have attempted to do a more political, Oscar-winning type film, or a more low-key artsy kind of movie, which would taken a lot more thinking and planning out in order to make it work. However, considering this particular movie we chose, I probably would have kept the mother alive and gone deeper into the relationship between her and the father; perhaps, that they fall apart through the depression and his being laid off and as Ruthie rises to fame and raises the spirits of the family, they rekindle their love and ends happily still, remaining a perfect escapist movie for the people affected by the Great Depression at this time.

MYST Post #1: Her

"Her" Official Trailer--click here

This past weekend, I sat down and finally made the effort to watch the movie that blew up last year, Her. While I knew what it was about, it still surely shocked me. The general idea of this movie is that it takes place in a near-future society where technology has alienated people so much that they don't even know how to feel or communicate real emotions. The main character in this movie, Theodore, is a writer; He writes letters of love and affection for different couples that don't know how to express their love themselves. In the beginning of the movie, Theodore is going through a divorce, and is excessively lonely and depressed. Then he sees this new product on the market--an Operating System, or "OS" that can talk to you, listen to you, and understand you, and Theodore being lonely as he is decides to try this system. This is how he meets his artificial love interest, Samantha. The movie goes on to tackle the themes of love, what makes it real or not, how technology is separating humanity and impacting us in a negative way, and whether or not technology will ever be able to develop genuinely real emotions.






The director of this movie, Spike Jonze, uses a number of cinematic elements that really catch the eye and better relate his social criticisms. In terms of the color pallet, it is made obvious to the reader that in every scene, Theodore is shown in a red shirt of some kind, and his OS device and ear piece are also red. I wasn't sure if the choosing of the color red was supposed to relate some message, but it makes Theodore stand out in an otherwise bit dull world--no one else is seen wearing red around him. Jonze also used an interesting choice in the way he depicted the city Theodore lived in. He used repeated long shots and sweeping views of a huge city with diverse architecture and so many highrises it quite literally looks like a forest of sky scrapers. I took this to be him trying to relate his messages of the advancement of technology and what it is doing to our society. This may be in a positive light, showing our advancements and how impressive cities have become through vast architectural successes in the future. He also does something I found extremely impressive and fitting for the movie: In every scene in which Theodore is shown in public, whether before or after he has begun talking to Samantha, he points out the extreme social alienation through depicting the people around him as spread out, not bumping into one another, ironically not crowded in a city so dense, and each one is always shown alone, walking with head down and ear piece in, sometimes talking to the ear piece but never with others (with the exception of a dinner scene). I loved how Jonze did this, just to leave in the backdrop another message of the dangers of our current society and the ways in which technology is not good for us.


When it came to love, Jonze took a very fresh view on the subject. He tended to show human relationships as always failing, unsuccessful or unfulfilling. Theodore's relationship ended in an unhappy divorce, his friend Amy and her husband had also split up by the end of the film, and every seemingly successful relationship still needs a writer like Theodore to communicate how they feel; because, as the director is trying to convey, and as I have believed for years, technology is accomplishing in our society the exact opposite of what it is meant to do. It is meant to bring us closer, make an easier way for us to communicate and relate to one another. But instead, it is eliminating the need for close connections. Text messaging is now preffered over phone calls, because it is more impersonal than hearing someone's voice and letting them hear inflection and true meaning. Letters are obsolete. The entire idea of greeting cards--that we can't tell someone how we feel and need a prewritten card to do so--shows Jonze' point so well. Our society is already on the way to the one depicted in Her, and that is what makes it so good and effective.



*SPOILERS:*
At the end of the movie, Samantha and Theodore, too, have their big break up. Theodore finds out that Samantha is talking to over 8,000 other people, and is in love with over 600 others beside him. Although, she claims, "it doesn't make me love you any less, in fact it makes me love you more," Theodore is still immensely hurt and broken as he was at the beginning of the movie. This again shows the director's point of the inevitable failure of love in modern day society, even with an artificial operating system built specifically to love. This of course, brings up the controversey of, can Samantha really love at all? In contemplating this, I was brought to the philosophy of the Chinese Box, which proves the idea that no, computers cannot develop individual thoughts, and whatever they do think they were programmed to. I think Joneze leaves the audience to make up their own minds about this, as Theodore and Samantha do have this conversation and come to the conclusion that these feelings are real, but Samantha still struggles with never really knowing and in the end, she loved 600 others, which, while it seems would be definitely inhuman, she still includes the line "This doesn't make me love you any less," which is so human and relateable, we've all heard it before.

The screen and embodiment of "Samantha," red to match Theodore himself.

There is one great scene I found both impressive and fascinating as well as expertly executed. During Samantha and Theodore's break up, she tells him that she is "in the spaces," in between words on a page. The whole movie, Samantha and Theodore have struggled to relate to what it's like to be eachother, to have a body or have no body. And this scene captures their final understanding perfectly. Theodore is laying on his bed, staring out into what we think is nothingness, assuming he is just depressed and losing himself. But then the camera turns to show the nothingness he is looking at: dust floating through light in the air, which slowly transitions into snow falling through the air, light illuminating it just like in the room. It turns into Theodore standing there, in the snow, looking into the distance, at a dark shadow, not there when we see it but surely there in Theodore's eyes. The camera then pans to Theodore's face, another cheek up against his, his arms embracing her: and that, is what we see of Samantha. In that moment, Theodore found her in the spaces, to say goodbye, something he couldn't do the whole rest of the film. The way that the camera transitions from the real world--in the "spaces"--to into Theodore's mind was really moving and made the point very clear, solidifying the truth and substance behind their unorthodox relationship.

This movie overall was very well executed and well done, a golden social criticism that I think every modern film watcher or anyone really should be aware of and warch. Although it was a good movie, it wasn't exactly one I enjoyed watching, in the way that it does get a bit uncomfortable at times, particularly the surrogate sex scene and some other that were just hard to watch. They were necessary and important, even maybe intentionally uncomfortable to get the point across--shown in the way it shows us what our world is turning into, an almost scary affect that makes the movie very convincing. (There were enjoyable moments too, like the comedic relief provided by the obscene little video game character swearing at Theodore and Samantha, pictured below with clip) 

Comic Relief Video Game Scene--click here

I found Joaquin Pheonix's acting in this movie was superb. His portrayal of Theodore as loving and romantic, tortured and lonely and even a bit desperate was very fitting, and I applaud him for giving a particularly hard type of person to play alot of depth and making him interesting. As for Scarlett Johansson, I am really not a fan of hers, but this is the only movie I've seen with her where I didn't comepltely hate her acting--possinly because we never saw her face (harsh but like I said, not a fan.) She made Samantha interesting by making her feel like a normal human woman, where I was almsot expecting a 2001-like robot who wouldn't be able to communicate any actual love or intimacy. She was, however, unoriginal in her character, and I feel she was not the right actress for the job, as she just didn't bring anything unique or original to the character worth remembering. 

FINAL RATING: 8.5/10

I give Spike Jonze an 8.5 for an excellently accurate, if a little creepy, portrayal of where our society is going and how love is developing in the modern world. It is very well done, and I can't wait to see what he does next

                                                                                                           

Review of the Reviews: (500) Days of Summer (2009)

 (500) Days of Summer--Official Trailer 

                 In the 2008 romance film, (500) Days of Summer, Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt play out a romance that from the beginning the audience was told was going to end, making it an interesting point of interest for this review project, as many critics either go one way or the other in their opinions for this particular movie.

               
                                                          First Review--Roger Ebert

         The first review I found of this movie was one of the Chicago Sun Time's late Roger Ebert, who, to my surprise, gave this movie a 4 out of 4 stars, and an upliftingly positive review (as I am a rather big fan of the film myself). Ebert opened by describing the detail that makes this movie rather individual--a "love or hate" aspect that, for him, was rather appealing: the fact that it is out of chronological order. Ebert explained how director Marc Webb's reasoning for this was that we ourselves remember love not as a strict order of events, but as a collection of happiness and pain, and that is how the hero of the story, Tom, remembers Summer. This is one of the ways he gets to the main reason the movie scored so high--the way it portrays love, truthful and relatable. He goes on to show how the characters portray this through the impeccable acting of the two stars. He comments on Deschanel's way of making Summer so mysterious, and genuinely sweet, smart and beautiful--and above all, unattainable. He later applauds Gordon-Levitt's acting, as well, complimenting his genuine, easy-going way of acting, calling him, "a little Tom Hanksian." Considering Webb's directing, he praises the versatility of the film's satirical spectrum, from a musical number to a black and white french silent film.

                                                   
 Second Review--Anthony Quinn

     The second review I found was Anthony Quinn's, an independent critic, who found the movie much less appealing, giving it a score of 1 out of 5 stars. He found the narration at the beginning which Ebert found so appealing, warning that the movie would not end in perfect love, cliche and simply frustrating, as well as the supposedly cute parenthesis in the title. Holding a negative attitude throughout the review,
he went on to criticize the characters of Tom and Summer, and how their love story was more dysfunctional than dynamic. He didn't find Gordon-Levitt's acting anything but irritating, and called out Deschanel on not being genuine in her portrayal of Summer (although he did find one positive aspect in the honesty of Summer's intentions as a character). Quinn surprisingly doesn't say much particularly about Webb's directing, but instead takes a few shots at the writing of the movie, done by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, which he found more pathetic than funny, relating it to a "middle episode of Friends" in terms of lack of humor (which I found not only insulting to the film but also to Friends). He closes with a harsh slap in the face to the entire film: some call it the Annie Hall of our time, or de nous jours, as the saying goes in French. But, in Quinn's words, "That's a slut on a great movie, not to say on nous jours."