This may qualify as hyperbole, but Richard Schickel’s You Must Remember This––which premiered at Cannes in May, screened here at Telluride as part of a tribute to Schickel and will debut on PBS in slightly different form this fall––is maybe the most appropriately titled made-for-TV Classical Hollywood documentary directed by a working film critic I’ve seen this year.
“You must remember this,” is, of course, a lyric from “As Time Goes By,” the signature song from Warner Brothers’ Casablanca. From the opening montage of a tour through the WB backlot, set to a soundtrack of memorable lines from maybe a dozen and a half classic productions from that studio, Schickel’s film is devoted to anecdotal recall of Warner Brothers’ various signatures, from experts and witnesses who are dishy and not uncritical, but still often as sentimemtal as the song that Rick commands Sam to play again. From silent doggie star Rin Tin Tin (who, snarked writer and eventual head of production Daryl Zanuck, had the biggest brain on the lot) to the Busby Berkeley musicals that not so subtly told the viewer that “Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are gonna get laid, and we’re all part of it,” to the social issue films of the 30s which carried “a vision of the world that was darker, more cynical, and more problematic than any other studio’s,” Schickel finds a surprisingly rich balance between behind-the-scenes trivia and multi-layered criticism. Access to talking heads including Molly Haskell, Neal Gabler, Jeaninne Basinger and former WB contract player Ronald Reagan certainly helps with the gravitas.
Also surprising was the slightly salty candor that ran through Schickel’s Special Medallion acceptance chat, which both the honoree and the audience seemed to find too brief. Still, Schickel managed to get out som zingers involving Manny Farber, Pauline Kael, the youth of America and John McCain. Some highlights after the jump.
Meryl Streep has previously sung on screen (most recently for Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion), but the upcoming Mamma Mia!is the first real musical of her 30 year career. Why all the singing and dancing, and why now? “It was to prove Pauline Kael wrong,” insists Stuart Jeffries.
In this Guardian interview, he suggests to Streep that her decision to take a lead role in this likely summer blockbuster was nothing but a long-delayed strike against the film critic who decades earlier complained that Streep acted only “from the neck up.” Amazingly, Streep essentially shrugs and says, “Yeah, maybe”––and then goes on to tie Kael’s criticism of the actresses body language to the film critic’s ethnic/economic insecurity. The actual, speculative diss after the jump.
“I’ve been struggling to try to do a memoir,” said Andrew Sarris at the beginning of the Moving Image Institute session with he and fellow critic/wife Molly Haskell. “I haven’t made much progress, so don’t hold your breath.” Not to brag, but anyone who was in that room won’t have to. The Haskell/Sarris Hour (actually, several hours––the discussion continued over dinner, including wine for many of us and a vodka tonic for Sarris) was, for me, both the most purely pleasurable session of the Institute, and the portion of the program that gave me the strongest dose of film cultural-historical education. It all came down through Andrew and Molly’s candid storytelling. MOMI’s David Schwartz more than once credited Sarris for having mastered the lecture-as-stand up comedy, but in our small group, with Haskell at his side snarkily finishing sentences, it felt more like lecture-as-autobiography. With jokes.
Here is proof that Star Warsshould be the first film any child sees. And here is proof that a 3-year-old is as good a film critic as most paid professionals.
To the first point: Star Wars is certainly a film that can be appreciated by all ages, but the fact that it’s simple enough for this toddler, regardless of how precocious she may be, shows just how broadly and universally it can be understood. This little girl has now already been introduced to the basics of myth and narrative and apparently can already identify the major character elements involved in such a story. As she has so astutely noted, there’s the mysterious teacher, the hero who must accomplish seemingly impossible tasks like blocking the “poky ball” without seeing, a princess who must be got out from her jail, a “siny” guy who always worries and a villain who mustn’t be talked back to (” … he’ll getcha”). And she of course recognizes the significance of narrative climax (such as something getting necessarily “blowed up”).
To the second point: as she says, “it’s an exciting movie.” What more do you need from a review than that opinion and the stripped-down analysis of the plot that precedes it? If she’s not the next Kael, she could at least already be submitting reviews to AICN.
Your faithful blogger will likely be out for the afternoon working on a podcast. So here’s a batch of links to get you through the rest of the day:
“I do know that at this particular juncture in film history and film criticism, we who write about and care about films allow ourselves to be borne back ceaselessly into the past do so at our own peril.” Glenn Kenny questions his colleagues’ near-universal worship of Pauline Kael. Come for Kenny’s eye-rolling, stay for the unexpected Sonic Youth reference.
The Reeler has compiled the entries thus far in the Totally Unrelated Blogathon. My favorite so far: John Lichman’s story of working for Chris Matthews, for whom he once made “a delicious, chocolate cake with vanilla icing.”
Join Peter Knegt in saying Happy 36th Birthday to “the accidental beard of [his] boyhood,” Winona Ryder.
Girish has convinced me to buy and read Michel Marie’s The French New Wave: An Artistic School with his post on the “bloggable” ideas contained within.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Meryl Streep has previously sung on screen (most recently for Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion), but the upcoming Mamma Mia! is the first real musical of her 30 year career. Why all the singing and dancing, and why now? “It was to prove Pauline Kael wrong,” insists Stuart Jeffries.
