The post about the new Hemingway story also contains a recommendation from Jason E. He suggests “The Philadelphia Story”, starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart as a good movie to see.
Jennifer and I have a on-again, off-again project going to see all the movies starring Grant and/or Hepburn. I think that Grant/Hepburn are one of the best movies duos ever, and “Bringing Up Baby” is one of my favorite movies- it is funny, hilarious actually, even today. It is a sign of excellence that a dated movie can provide entertainment in more than just the nostalgic vein.
Progress in this movie watching project, which in itself grew out of check-listing the AFI top 100 movies, was fueled mainly by my local library branch back in Norfolk, VA. Since moving to Little Rock, I haven’t really checked out any movies from the library. There was a British TV mystery/thriller series that we tried the first few episodes, but I couldn’t take much interest in it.
I use the AFI list as a launch pad for re/discovering movies, for me it is a curiousity and a good checklist. There will always be people who get quite passionate over lists of all sorts. I remember when the list first came out and there was all the predictable hullabaloo over what movies made it and what movies didn’t and what movie placed where. I remember a chief complaint being the time frame of the selected movies. Anybody think any of the Lord of the Ring movies would have made the list had they been around at selection time?
Yeah, Cary Grant is pretty awesome and I agree with Jake that The Philadelphia Story is a good one. (Grant was a LSD advocate, btw – at the time it was prescribed for his depression and I believe he claimed to have gotten great benefits from its use.) I also like old movies where it takes a little while to get in the right mindset and then something clicks and you can really enjoy it. Duck Soup is on that list, and I found that movie to be like that. I could understand someone watching the Marx Bros. and just thinking it was the dumbest thing they ever saw with no humor at all. But if you get in the right mindset, which is kind of like a trip through a time machine, something clicks and it’s funny as crap.
Other random thoughts about the list:
I’m impressed Fargo made it. I always thought that was an underrated movie with an actual message about how to balance life with absurdly tragic events that 99% of the people that saw it probably never noticed. The Cohen Bros. are the bomb. Barton Fink is another of their underrated efforts and a movie in which John Goodman is actually perfectly cast (and I generally can’t stand the guy).
Dr. Strangelove is a good one, and could open the whole Kubrick can of worms. A Clockwork Orange and 2001 are of course his too. That guy was in a zone for a while.
I’m not a big Hitchcock fan, but I really liked Vertigo. Generally speaking he seems to me like an example of “it was probably revolutionary at the time” but unless I keep that thought in my conscious and try to keep it in context, I can’t stay interested in some of his movies.
Cary Grant on LSD. I forgot about that one, but I vouche for Tom’s almost unbelivable statement that it was a prescribed drug for his depression. I was a Grant fan back at old Bayside high. I think he died in 87/88. His original name is Archibald Leach, and ran away from home around age 14 to be a trapeeze artist, hence some screwball comedies with him doing lots of acrobatics. I totally dig the dialogue in Philadelphia Story. It’s fast and sharp as hell, a characteristic of that period. Another that falls in to these categories is Adam’s Rib. This is a Hepburn / Tracy match up, which was pretty popular. They play lawyers married to each other. The plot is them battling each other in court over the emerging Womens’ Rights movement, so you get courtroom facts and drama about that issue, mixed up into a marriage scene. Some jackass stole my video tape of it. Worth a rental. Left wing recommendation here would be Charade, the movie with the all time coolest, trippiest intro credits. Grant and Audrey Hepburn (not Katherine). Lee Couburn, Walter Mattheau and some others round out a cool cast in this subtle spy thriller. Music by Henri Mancini.. And did I mention those cool intro titles? Marky Mark did a remake that sucked ass “the truthh about Charlie”. The original succeeds because of that subtle grace that Grant and Audrey and the general film crew bring to the production, much like To Catch a Thief with Grant in a Hitchcock thriller, replete with gorgeous French vistas. I think Tom’s got a good point with slipping into the right mindset. I do this easily with crappy genres like action flics, kung fu, etc. Actually all genres. One just has to make a slightly larger shift for the time period context. Maybe I’ll try some of that Duck Soup afterall.
+ Jason