Shiver me timbers

Young director Robert Eggers impressed many with his directorial debut The Witch. But while his penchant for historical accuracy and extreme attention to detail was intact on his follow-up feature, The Lighthouse, the latter film was a different kind of dark cinema than his first foray. Layered with fascinating psychological subtexts and propelled by two powerhouse performances, The Lighthouse is a movie that practically begs for deeper analysis and scrutiny. Our CineVerse group took a stab at it last week and discussed several aspects and interpretations, including the following.

What did you find interesting, unexpected, or memorable about The Lighthouse?

• It’s a decidedly different modern movie: The canvas is black and white, there are only two actors in the entire film, and the aspect ratio is 1.19:1, called Movietone, which was more prominent in the silent film days and which helps better depict vertical compositions, especially the tall, vertical lighthouse structure and its interiors.
• The film is sexually candid, depicts various bodily functions, and has homoerotic tones. The characters engage in private or embarrassing acts, including flatulence, masturbation, and potentially homosexual urges; additionally, the lighthouse itself serves as a giant phallic symbol, and we are shown a graphic depiction of intimate relations with a mermaid.
• Both men are unreliable narrators whom we cannot trust. Both are revealed as liars who distort the truth to suit their needs.

Themes on display in The Lighthouse

• Greek mythology: Winslow is written as a modern metaphor for Prometheus, who yearned to dwell among the gods and tried to trick them by stealing their fire but was punished cruelly by having an eagle peck at his liver for eternity. Wake is a representation of Proteus, a sea-dwelling God who serves Triton/Poseidon, is personified by tentacles, and is known for his prophecies and curses. And the lighthouse symbolizes Mount Olympus.
• Moral shades of gray. It’s appropriate that the filmmakers use black and white in this movie, which signifies morally monochrome characters, whose ethics and virtues cannot be trusted.
• The dangers of toxic masculinity and two men being cut off from civilization and women.
• Gaslighting, as evidenced by each character playing mind games with and trying to assert dominance over the other, particularly Wake, who forces Winslow to question if he’s experiencing reality or fantasy.
• Guilt and shame. Winslow experiences extreme feelings of guilt, shame, and anxiety over his logging co-worker’s death, which could be impacting his mental health.
• Consider that we witness Winslow seeing images of a third man – presumably the dead logger. He’s likely suffering a psychological breakdown due to this guilt. Recall, as well, that we observe the seagull he kills has only one eye, similar to the severed head he discovers later; both one-eyed figures remind Winslow of the man he either killed or whose death he didn’t prevent.
• A descent into madness. The Lighthouse suggests that Winslow, whose point of view we are shown, is quickly devolving and losing his grip on reality – likely due to the extreme circumstances, including captive isolation with a domineering and critical boss, increasing reliance on alcohol, sexual frustration, physical exhaustion, and severe feelings of alienation and isolation.
• It has been theorized that Winslow is homosexual and possibly had a homosexual relationship with a logger back in Canada who ended up dead. Now that he’s in an isolated environment with Wake, he experiences sexual impulses toward this new man, but instead of thinking about Wake sexually, he envisions having animal-like sex with a mermaid creature, possibly out of shame, guilt, or the inability to accept a homosexual relationship.
• Another reading of the film is that, as Wake insidiously suggests, Winslow isn’t even on the lighthouse property – instead, he’s imagining this coexistence with Wake while he still back at the logging site in Canada.
• Even though we see imagery of mermaids, Wake as a Poseidon-like God, and tentacled creatures, these things don’t exist except in Winslow’s mind.

Other movies and works of literature that The Lighthouse makes us think of

• The writings of Herman Melville, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Louis Stevenson
• Night Tide, a 1961 supernatural film noir
• Pulp Fiction and Kiss Me Deadly, both of which also feature strange objects that are unexplained to the audience
• The Shining, which also features characters in isolation and threatened by an ax, an alcoholic caretaker, and mysterious or potentially supernatural phenomena.
• The Fog
• Black Swan
• A Field in England 
• Sleuth, another mystery yarn that features and involves only two characters

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Don't squeeze the shaman

Part adventure/odyssey, part documentary, part road trip (with a boat and a river substituting for a car and a highway), and part psychedelic head trip, Embrace of the Serpent works as several films in one, creating an unforgettable cinematic experience aimed to stir your emotions and your social conscience. After watching the movie last week, our CineVerse group had many observations. Here's a summary.

Other movies or works of literature that spring to mind after watching Embrace of the Serpent

• Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote
• Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
• 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially for the similarities to the Stargate sequence at the end of the film
• Apocalypse Now, which also depicts a power-mad and megalomaniacal dictator
• Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God, two historical epics by Werner Herzog set in the Amazon
• Dances With Wolves

What did you find memorable, distinctive, surprising, or puzzling about this film?

• It’s shot in glorious black and white, on location in the jungles of Vuapes, Columbia, with the filmmakers opting for a monochromatic palette over what many would consider the obvious choice: dazzling color. The latter would have showcased the Amazon jungle beautifully, but arguably would have distracted viewers from the central messages of the film. Black and white is often the appropriate template for movies about a bygone place and era, and it creates a classic, timeless patina and resonance that’s appropriate for a film like this.
• Interestingly, the picture bursts into resplendent color once Evan takes his hallucinogenic trip, zooming out celestially with each subsequent image until we see universe become multiverse.
• This is the first Colombian movie ever to earn an Academy Award nomination, in this case for Best Foreign Language Film.
• This is a road trip movie of sorts that traces two different timelines, but with the shaman serving as the bridge between both tales.
• This movie “aims to speak for the untold hundreds of thousands whose cultures and language were wiped out by invading rubber profiteers,” wrote Slant Magazine reviewer Steve Macfarlane, who added “the paralleled trajectories allow the screenplay to trace the Domino -like effects of this violence across generations. In the face of such historical vastness, no mere three-act screenplay would suffice for encapsulation.”

Themes evident in Embrace of the Serpent

• The dark and destructive legacy of colonialism and the rape of the natural world. White men have been exploiting South America and the Amazon rain forest for hundreds of years, with countless conquistadors, missionaries, rubber barons, and modern capitalistic entities destroying indigenous tribes and cultures and stealing its natural resources.
• The loss and reclamation of identity, and the redemption of a lost soul. The shaman Karamakate is shown in two separate stories and time periods, with his older self lamenting his loss of memory and devolution into a chullachaqui, a deflated spirit roaming the land without purpose or past to motivate him. Yet, we see the older shaman remember his way back to old haunts and places containing the rare and elusive yakruna plant. Karamakate can impart his wisdom upon a second white man, despite his diminished status.
• We also witness how the orphans of the native tribes and those enslaved have been stripped of their identities, beliefs, and practices by the invading white men, including the missionary and rubber barons.
• Man versus nature, as exemplified, respectively, by the serpent – which the indigenous peoples believed brought mankind to the earth in the form of an anaconda – and a jaguar, which could represent the untamed jungle, natural world, and/or Mother Nature. Later, we see a night vision-illuminated battle between the two animals, with the jaguar emerging victorious. This perhaps suggests that nature, or planet Earth, will ultimately prevail in its long struggle against the encroachment of man.
• The circularity and constant flow of life. The filmmakers use the river, and some clever editing, to connect the two storylines, which feature two intelligent and relatively respectful white men, Theo and Evan, each seeking the mysterious yakruna plant. This plant serves as a kind of fountain of youth or holy Grail for each of these men.

Other films directed by Ciro Guerra

• The Wandering Shadows
• The Wind Journeys
• Birds of Passage
• Waiting for the Barbarians

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Romantic fluency is hard to master

Romantic couples struggling through a second act of their relationship have been well depicted in several films over the past few decades. One of the most recent worthy outings in this subset of the rom-com subgenre is 2 Days in Paris, written, directed, produced, edited and scored by Julie Delpy, who also stars alongside Adam Goldberg. CineVerse engaged in a group therapy of sorts recently to get to the bottom of this movie's strengths and flaws. Here's a recap:

Movies that come to mind after screening 2 Days in Paris

• Annie Hall and Manhattan
• When Harry Met Sally
• The Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight trilogy starring Delpy
• Meet the Parents
• Lost in Translation
• The sequel 2 Days in New York

What surprised, intrigued, frustrated, or enthralled you about 2 Days in Paris?

• It felt authentic and believable, thanks in large part to it being written, directed, edited, produced, and scored by Julie Delpy, whose costars include a past boyfriend (Adam Goldbert) and her real-life mom and dad playing this character’s parents Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet.
• While it was derivative to an extent of some early Wood Allen films—particularly the sexually liberated characters played by Diane Keaton and the neurotic and often irritating analytical personalities portrayed by Allen in Annie Hall and Manhattan—as well as Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, and it milked the running gag of Marion’s promiscuous past and the offputting nature of some Parisians perhaps too long, the film was entertaining and insightful about the pitfalls of relationships that have survived beyond act one.
• Refreshingly, the picture didn’t rely on clichés or stereotypes (Roger Ebert wrote that he didn’t think he “heard a single accordion in the whole film”) or famous landmarks like the Louvre or Eiffel Tower in which to rekindle Cupid’s passions. Actually, this film isn’t very romantic at all for a romantic comedy; the emphasis is more on laughs, plenty of them of the uncomfortable sort, and its sexual frankness gives it an edgy cache that sets it apart from a conventional rom-com.
• However, the ending was abrupt and ambiguous, suggesting either a reconciliation or a breakup softened by happy recollections of better earlier times. Either way, this conclusion has a wobbly, tacked-on, rushed feel.

Themes examined in 2 Days in Paris

• Skeletons in the closet: Past relationships and proclivities that can haunt a current romance.
• A stranger in a strange land. This is a fish out of water tale of sorts depicting a foreigner who feels out of place and consistently confused in another country.
• Relationship incompatibilities that can break up a good thing.
• Honesty and trust, two virtues that can be elusive in a relationship where each party is culturally, ethnically, and politically different from the other.
• The impossibility of completely knowing or understanding a significant other, despite intimacy.

Other films directed by Julie Delpy

• The Countess
• 2 Days in New York
• Lolo
• My Zoe

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A film about lies that speaks the truth turns 70

For Cineversary podcast episode #26, host Erik Martin treks back 1,000 years to Japan, accompanied by Akira Kurosawa expert Stephen Prince, a film professor at Virginia Tech; together, they honor the 70th birthday of a milestone work of world cinema, "Rashomon," directed by Kurosawa. Erik and Stephen explore why this movie is worth honoring all these years later, its cultural impact and legacy, what we can learn from the film today, how it has stood the test of time, and more.

Stephen Prince

To listen to this episode, click here or click the "play" button on the embedded streaming player below. Or, you can stream, download or subscribe to the Cineversary podcast using Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Castbox, Pocket Casts, Google Play Music, PodBean, RadioPublic, and Overcast.

Learn more about the Cineversary podcast at tinyurl.com/cineversarypodcast and email show comments or suggestions to cineversegroup@gmail.com.

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"If men don't trust each other, this Earth might as well be hell."

Any film that has introduced an oft-used term and well-understood concept in the pop culture and legal lexicon must be innovative and important. And that's certainly true of Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa's 1950 treasure of world cinema, which marks a 70th birthday this month. CineVerse celebrated by spotlighting the film last week and probing deeper into the profound mysteries woven into its intricate tapestry. Our discussion covered many salient points, including the following.

Why is Rashomon worth celebrating all these years later? How has it stood the test of time, and why does it still matter?

• It’s debatably the most philosophical film ever made. Rashomon poses serious moral, ethical, psychological, and even spiritual questions; not only is it a gripping story supported by virtually flawless filmmaking, but this picture challenges you to ponder philosophically difficult questions and existential ramifications.
• The nonlinear narrative employed creates a complex story that forces you to pay attention and think, not just sit back and be a passive viewer.
• It’s also smart that we don’t see or hear the judge or judges presiding over the bandit’s trial in court; instead, the witnesses each face the camera and speak directly to the viewer, as if we are the magistrates of this moral dilemma.
• Rashomon often plays like a silent movie, with few words and many expressive unspoken gestures, actions, and reactions; the filmmakers aren’t aiming for realism here, but rather the honesty of emotion prevalent in silent films.
• Also, in its minimalist sets, it invokes the spirit of silent cinema as well as contemporary art: there are only three settings: the woods, the Rashomon gate, and the court.

In what ways do you think Rashomon set trends or was influential on cinema and popular culture?

• It was the primary film that introduced Japanese cinema to many viewers in the West.
• Arguably, this may have been the first deeply philosophical film many viewers had seen in 1950.
• The reliance on non-linear storytelling via conflicting flashbacks and multiple points of view was a radical but refreshing notion for many viewers.
• Taking a cue from a few predecessors like Citizen Kane, this would have been one of the first uses in the cinema of contradictory flashbacks that disagree with the action and suggest unreliable narrators: You’re not sure what to believe.
• What’s brilliant is that all the flashbacks are both true and false—true because each testimony is portrayed as accurate by that particular witness, and false because they contradict each other and reflect a point of view that could be or definitely is wrong.
• It’s been suggested that Kurosawa attempted to illustrate the despair and confusion of a devastated post-WWII Japan by depicting tales of personal heroism that proposed models for social recovery.
• The ending may have also been uncommon for this period in film history. We are shown four testimonies that dispute each other and a conclusion in which there is no clear resolution about what truly happened. Moviegoers at this time were used to more definitive denouements in which the mystery gets solved, crimes are punished, and justice is served. Before the woodcutter offers to take the abandoned baby, this was, in fact, a decidedly pessimistic, perplexing, and disturbing film due to its ambiguity and ethical quandaries.
• Kurosawa breaks a lot of rules in making this picture, too.
• First, he defied the 180-degree rule, thus confusing spatial relationships: The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.
• He had the camera shoot directly into the sun, one of the first known examples of this in cinema.
• He sometimes used a diverse array of shots back-to-back, juxtaposing close-ups, long shots, and contrary motion shots. Kurosawa and his collaborators additionally created interesting triangular compositions that emphasized the spatial and emotional relationships between the three main characters.
• The term “the Rashomon effect,” which describes the problem of contradictory testimony from witnesses, has become a catch-phrase in the popular vernacular, kind of like “Catch-22.”
• Films that would have likely been inspired by Rashomon are plentiful, with examples including The Usual Suspects, JFK, Courage Under Fire, Hero, Reversal of Fortune, Gone Girl, Wonderland, Blow-Up, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and the Hollywood remake of this film, The Outrage.

What’s the moral of the story here? What messages or themes are explored in Rashomon?

• This film asks profound questions, like what is the nature of reality, and what is the relativity of truth?
• Kurosawa himself said the truth of what happened in the woods that day isn’t the point of the story; if that’s the case, the lesson here is that truth can be interpreted differently by different people, and that truth is subjective.
• Ultimately, the movie posits, perhaps there is no truth: only a subjective assessment of events.
• Kurosawa summed up the essence of the story as such: “Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings—the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are.”
• The unreliability and partiality of experience and memory.
• The first words we hear are: “I just don’t understand,” and later, the commoner says “In the end, you cannot understand the things that men do.” We also hear the commoner say “Men just want to forget the bad stuff and believe in the made-up good stuff; it’s easier that way.”
• The characters, like the audience, can’t trust what they’ve seen or heard.
• This movie reminds us that the human heart and mind is complex and can be impossible to understand. It also reminds us that human beings are capable of extreme behavior. Human beings can easily succumb to dishonesty, duplicity, weakness, self-centeredness, greed, and corruption. But to buck that trend and be a force for good in this world, you have to demonstrate selflessness, empathy, and benevolence—as the woodcutter does at the finale by agreeing to father the orphaned infant.
• Experts like Stephen Prince suggest that the film can be seen as a metaphor for the defeat of Japan in World War II and the erosion of Japanese culture throughout history. The baby appearing at the end can be interpreted as a ray of hope for the future of Japan, a theory bolstered by the use of traditional Japanese music at the film’s conclusions after western-influenced music is heard throughout most of the movie.
• The word “Rashomon” means “gate of the dragon”; this is a fitting title because, as viewers, we are each gatekeepers of the truth.
• A gate also signals a demarcation of boundaries and territories: Once we enter into the woods, we enter into foreign territory.
• Also, the gatehouse stands as a visual symbol for a passage into the tale; it’s interesting to see the men pull pieces of the gate apart and use it for kindling, insinuating perhaps that honesty and truth are crumbling and disposable in our modern world.

What elements from this movie have aged well, and what elements are showing some wrinkles?

• Although this is a period piece and culturally different from the expectations and values of modern westerners, perhaps it’s difficult in 2020 to see a lead woman character with so little agency and acting so subserviently. But how much power and autonomy did a woman in 11th century Japan actually have anyway, and in that period what would have been the fate of a wife who was sexually assaulted?
• On the other hand, Rashomon speaks a universal and eternal certainty: that the nature of truth and honesty is elusive, and human beings can deceive others as well as themselves. Those messages never go out of style, unfortunately.

What is this movie’s greatest gift to viewers?

• This is probably the greatest film featuring and about unreliable narrators ever made. When you consider how many filmmakers today use lead and secondary characters who prove untrustworthy and inconsistent to throw the viewer off track and keep you guessing, that’s a testament to the power and immense reach of Rashomon. Not only do the four conflicting witnesses make for a compelling study in human behavior and an enthralling story, but they and the three men taking shelter in the rain who are parsing this tale conjure immense questions about what we choose to believe as gospel and who and what we can trust. Real life is complex and often morally convoluted, and unlike so many other movies, Rashomon forces us to grapple with those complications, faults, and ethical predicaments.

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Old blue eyes strikes gold―in glorious black and white

It's interesting to wonder what The Man With the Golden Arm would have been like if Marlon Brando, the other actor considered for the role of Frankie Machine (which ultimately went to Frank Sinatra), got the part, considering how this movie feels like a distant relative to the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire. Both films feature claustrophobic urban environments where women are pressured by domineering or flawed men, and both movies feel like stage play adaptations, even though Golden Arm was sourced from a controversial novel and never saw the light of Broadway. We gave this film the CineVerse treatment last Wednesday and arrived at the following conclusions (to hear our group discussion of this picture, click here).

What was interesting, unexpected, surprising, or rewarding about this picture?

• This was a groundbreaking film on several fronts. Research suggests it was the first major motion picture to seriously tackle the topic of narcotic addiction (The Lost Weekend first addressed alcoholism 10 years earlier). Also, it helped diminish the power of Hollywood censorship by weakening the Production Code Administration and taking on the Catholic Legion of Decency. Director Otto Preminger and the film’s distributor, United Artists, took a chance on adapting this controversial novel for the screen and releasing it theatrically before receiving a PCA seal of approval. Note that the Hays Office and PCA prohibited even a mention of drug use in movies at this time. The PCA and MPAA banned the film, but no theaters that booked it stopped its exhibition. Lots of people paid for tickets, thanks in large part to the publicity generated from all this controversy. These collective factors helped weaken the censorship powers in the movie industry.
• Frank Sinatra appears well cast, earning an Academy Award nomination for this role. The film was also nominated for best art direction/set decoration, and best music.
• Sinatra is convincing as a man suffering through cold turkey hell and constantly besieged by marital, career, and societal pressures.
• The opening titles, by Saul Bass, proved innovative; Bass later designed many memorable stylized film titles for Hitchcock, Preminger again, and Martin Scorsese.
• The ending feels very Hollywood tacked-on; the original novel concludes with Frankie killing a man and committing suicide, his wife going insane, and Molly becoming a prostitute.
• Also, it defies belief that this drug addict with few career prospects or cash would be so coveted by two highly attractive women, one of whom maintains a charade of being crippled for years and the other who risks personal safety and humiliation to befriend Frankie.

Themes explored in this film

• Loss and redemption. Frankie was redeemed earlier when he was released, clean and sober, from a prison hospital. By the end of the film, he kicks the habit again and ditches his old life of card dealing for two-bit hustlers.
• The consequences of addiction. Not only is Frankie hooked on heroin, but he easily falls into old habits, too, like going back to his old job dealing cards for shady characters. He finds it hard to shake his past and his proclivities for risky behavior.
• Taking a chance on love. Molly, the matchstick girl with a heart of gold, has been burned time and again by wounded strays like Frankie and her new lowlife boyfriend. But even after skipping town to get away from it all, she returns and, with the prospect of little reward, allows Frankie to sober up in her apartment. Her faith in him pays off by the film’s conclusion, as we see the two, now both free from past entanglements, able to assumedly live a romantic life together.
• We are a product of our environment. Frankie returns to familiar territory once released from rehabilitation, only to be infected again by the crooked characters and malignant milieu of the Chicago neighborhood he calls home.

Other films that The Man With the Golden Arm conjures up

• The Lost Weekend
• Days of Wine and Roses
• Clean and Sober
• Rush
• Trainspotting
• 28 Days

Other films by Otto Preminger

• Laura
• Anatomy of a Murder
• Carmen Jones
• Advise & Consent
• Bunny Lake is Missing
• Fallen Angel
• Angel Face

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From Springsteen to Payne, "Nebraska" is a state of mind

By several measures, Alexander Payne's Nebraska is a throwback film: It's shot in melancholy black-and-white; it's a meandering road film that focuses more on characters than plot or narrative payoff; and it's not afraid to spotlight the existential plight of people middle-aged and older. CineVerse explored Nebraska last Wednesday. Here are our takeaways (to listen to our group discussion of this movie, click here):

Films and other works that come to mind after watching Nebraska

• I Never Sang for My Father
• The Last Picture Show
• Harry and Tonto
• Fargo
• Nobody’s Fool
• The Straight Story
• About Schmidt
• The Thing About My Folks
• Don Quixote: Woody and David represent a kind of modern windmill chaser and his sidekick
• Various American artists, including folksinger Woody Guthrie (possibly our lead character is named after him), writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (the fictional town of Hawthorne could cheer his name), and Bruce Springsteen, whose album Nebraska, also features black-and-white imagery (on the cover) and simple, reflective, and melancholy music

What did you find interesting, distinctive, unexpected, or surprising about Nebraska?

• It’s refreshing to see a late-career turn by an aged actor known from another era – in this case, Bruce Dern, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance and won the Best Actor Award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Rarely are seniors given the top spotlight in a major motion picture these days.
• The choice to shoot in black and white is spot on. Draining the film of color adds a tinge of melancholy, regret, and loss to the story and heightens the realism. Considering that this is filmed in and around America’s heartland, which particularly suffered during and after the Great Recession, monochrome is ideal here.
• You could make a case that director Alexander Payne is being condescending to or critical of simplistic Midwesterners and hicks. But there’s an obvious subjective focus on, love for, and reverence toward Woody and his son, whom we follow around on their road trip. And we grow to care about and root for these characters, even if some of the rural personalities around them aren't shown in such a favorable light.
• The movie eschews overt sentimentality because the past these older characters have left behind doesn’t seem worthy of wistfulness. We aren’t given any “come-to-Jesus” moments, no grand reuniting events, mushy reconciliations, healing hugs, or speechifying from characters, either. This film makes broad statements through small gestures and minimal words.
• Film critic James Berardinelli wrote: “(Payne is) making a statement about the stagnation of those ‘old-time’ values and the misapprehension that just because something about a bygone epoch that it’s necessarily ‘better.’”
• New York Times critic A.O. Scott wrote: “The chilling implication of this film is not that the old values of hard work, family and community have fallen away, but that they were never really there to begin with. Yet somehow the feeling that lingers after the last shot is the opposite of despair.”

What themes can be mined from Nebraska?

• The dying or death of the American dream. We see how Woody believes he’s the beneficiary of a large jackpot, almost as if it’s an end-of-life reward for all his suffering, regrets, and hard work. But we quickly learn that this prize is a sham – much as the dream of prosperity and success for many Americans proves to be a fallacy.
• Supporting this theme are the desolate and ramshackle landscape images the filmmakers provide and the aged and/or down-on-their-luck characters we meet, many of whom are out of work or bereft of motivation or meaningful endeavors due to long-standing poor economic conditions.
• Reckoning with mortality. This picture reminds us that we are all fated to age and pass away, most of us into relative obscurity except for the degree to which our descendants remember us. At middle age, and again near life’s end, it’s natural to take stock of your wins, losses, regrets, missed opportunities, and legacy.
• Hereditary existentialism. Taking a road trip with his father, David confronts the truth about his father’s complicated life and the secrets that were withheld from him as a child. We also sense that David is worried about following in his father’s footsteps of futility and frustration and seeks to avoid making many of the same mistakes. But we can be encouraged by the assumption that David is possibly living a better life than his father did. Consider how we hear that Woody would have been whipped if he stepped into his parents’ room, and we know that Woody suffered during and after his service in the Korean War; by contrast, David didn’t have to fight in any war or endure the same hardscrabble upbringing. The takeaway? Each succeeding generation hopefully improves upon the last. This is a movie about what we can learn from our parents and older generations, both good and bad, and using that knowledge to hopefully lead a better life. We, like David, need to put ourselves in our parents’ shoes and appreciate who they are and what they want – warts and all.
• The corrupting influence of money. Even simple, down-home folk – far removed from the vices of the big city – can reveal their avaricious true colors once the hint of profit and monetary opportunity is sniffed.

Other films by Alexander Payne

• Citizen Ruth
• Election
• About Schmidt
• Sideways
• The Descendents

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The greatest yarn in journalism since Livingstone discovered Stanley

Stripped free of sentimentality, untethered from the temporal constraints of normally paced life, and existing in its own bubble of bygone journalistic profligacy, His Girl Friday is more than a screwball comedy with one of the strongest pedigrees from Hollywood's golden era. It's also a gift that keeps on giving with its caustic wit, zippy one-liners, and rat-a-tat repartee. Our CineVerse pack parsed through this picture carefully; here's what we discovered:

Why is this movie worth celebrating all these years later? Why does it still matter, and how has it stood the test of time?

• It still matters because it’s one of the finest and most representational of screwball comedies—that subgenre in which romances and love stories are satirized and a comedic battle of the sexes is depicted, often using witty banter, physical humor, a funny plot centered on courtship and marriage or remarriage.
• His Girl Friday is worth celebrating for its ultra-fast pacing in the humor and repartee, direction, editing, and dialogue delivery.
• In fact, it could be the fastest-spoken film ever made. The director, Howard Hawks, was actually trying to break the record at the time for the speediest dialogue ever filmed.
• This is also one of the very best remakes of all time; its first iteration was The Front Page, released in 1931 and based on the 1928 stage play. A Hollywood remake rarely bests the original, but this picture is the exception to that rule.
• This is also, arguably, the finest version of this story adapted to the big screen. The Front Page story has been made into a movie at least four times: in 1931, in 1940, in 1974, and, loosely, as Switching Channels in 1988.
• What’s more, His Girl Friday features, debatably, the finest performances in the careers of both Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. Their comedic timing, cadence, physical gesticulations, and sheer ability to deliver lines at a practically impossible pace create truly unforgettable characters that exemplify the very best that screwball comedy can offer.

In what ways do you think this film was influential on cinema and popular culture or set trends?

• This movie is famous for its innovative use of rapid and overlapping dialogue. Often, the actors are speaking at a frenetic pace, and two or more characters sometimes talk simultaneously. This forces the viewer to try to keep up with what is said and helps to cram in a lot of jokes and content in a short amount of time, making the film more rewarding on repeat viewings.
• In an interview, Hawks explained why he opted for speedy and concurrent dialogue: “I had noticed that when people talk, they talk over one another, especially people who talk fast or who are arguing or describing something. So we wrote the dialog in a way that made the beginnings and ends of sentences unnecessary; they were there for overlapping."
• Reportedly, the average word per minute pace in this picture is 240, compared to the typical speed of approximately 140 words per minute in a normal conversation. I found in my research that His Girl Friday has nine scenes containing a minimum of four words each second and two or more scenes paced at over five words per second. Consider that the final screenplay tallied 191 pages; usually, each page equates to 60 to 90 seconds of screen time. Yet this movie’s run time is merely 92 minutes.
• Instead of the common practice at the time of relying on a single boom mike, the filmmakers chose to employ several microphones; technical limitations of the day forced the sound technician to turn microphones on and off as needed on cue to capture the sound, with certain scenes calling for switching up to 35 microphones on and off as needed.
• Additionally, Hawks allowed his actors to use ad-libbing and improvisation to generate more realistic discourse.
• This would have been a groundbreaking portrayal of a smart, autonomous, resourceful, strong-willed female lead—a woman character who was treated as a professional equal by her male counterpart, a rarity for a Hollywood film up to this time.
• This picture deserves credit, as well, for exploring and bending gender politics. Danny Peary, author of Guide for the Film Fanatic, wrote that the movie “is not so much about the traditional battle of the sexes as it is about sexual differentiation. Hawks repeatedly shows that when characters put their guards down, they take on characteristics of the opposite sex and stop paying attention to others' genders. When no one's looking, the tough-talking male reporters become as gossipy as a women's bridge group.”
• His Girl Friday also marked an evolutionary milestone for the screwball comedy. According to Lauren Rabinovitz, author of The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers: “His Girl Friday was the first screwball comedy to depart from the money-marriage-ego conflicts of Holiday [1938], My Man Godfrey [1936], and The Philadelphia Story [1940], inserting into the same comic structure and pattern of action a conflict between career and marriage."
• His Girl Friday helped solidify the newspaper story subgenre, as well. It’s been cited by many as one of the most important and beloved films ever made about journalism, and one that, upon its release, supposedly inspired many to pursue a career in the press. Ponder the many films about the newspaper biz that immediately followed in His Girl Friday’s wake, including Foreign Correspondent, The Philadelphia Story, Citizen Kane, Meet John Doe, and Penny Serenade.
• It’s also an early example of a meta-movie: one that slyly comments on the motion picture biz by providing amusing references to Archie Leach (Grant’s real name) and Ralph Bellamy, who plays Bruce and who portrayed a similar third wheel suitor in The Awful Truth three years earlier.

How and why is Hildy Johnson an important female character, especially compared to typical female characters in Hollywood films of this time?

• Hildy is a sharp tack with agency to spare. She can hold her own with the ultra-clever uber-conniver Walter. Witness how the boys in the newsroom treat her with more respect and admiration than virtually everyone else they encounter, including other females like Mollie Malloy or Mrs. Baldwin and most male characters, too.
• At this time, women in films, and real life, were expected to get married at a young age, have children, tend house, cook the meals and put career aspirations on hold in deference to patriarchal pressures. Hildy proves that a determined and skilled female can defy those expectations and live a fulfilling and exciting life—even in a profession dominated by men.

What’s the moral of the story here? What themes or messages are explored in His Girl Friday?

• Stay true to yourself and your talents. We see how, by the denouement, Hildy is relieved that she has reunited with Walter, will continue as an in-demand journalist, and has avoided the temptation to settle down and live a life of likely spousal subservience in the ’burbs with someone who is not her intellectual and emotional equal.
• The importance of adapting to a chaotic and rapidly changing world. Viewers observe how Hildy rolls with the changes thrown at her—how she impressively multitasks and quickly pivots to situations as they abruptly shift. There’s a value to thinking quickly on your feet, talking faster than the other person, and doing what it takes to “get the story,” as this intrepid female reporter does.
• Opposites don’t attract after all. Hildy and Bruce are kind and courteous to each other, at least in the beginning. But they just aren’t cut from the same cloth, and they aren’t destined to make each other happy. Walter and Hildy, by contrast, seem made for and deserving of each other.

What elements from this movie have aged well, and what elements are showing some wrinkles?

• The headstrong, intelligent, and thick-skinned character of Hildy is refreshing to see in a film from 1940, preventing the movie from standing as a dated relic of antiquated gender politics.
• The material here isn’t dumbed down for the audience; you still have to pay close attention to the dialogue and character interplays to understand and appreciate His Girl Friday.
• Some things can make a modern viewer wince, including the murder of a black police officer and use of the word “pickaninny” (referring to a small black child).
• There are some anachronisms to parse, including the concept of “production for use” and some topical and political references that 1940 audiences may have picked up on.

How are we supposed to think and feel about Walter and Hildy, considering their amorality, yellow journalism tactics, and unlawful behavior?

• The bygone context helps. We see a sort of disclaimer at the start of the film that this story occurred years ago and tries to briefly explain that this is how the journalism profession used to operate.
• Moreover, I believe we can abide their behavior thanks to Hawks’ unique style. Hawks is known for often focusing on skilled professionals within an insular environment—experts who are driven by a love of their work and a code of professionalism and camaraderie without being encumbered by sentimentality. We are meant to believe that Hildy and Walter are the best at what they do, even if what they do is create sensationalistic journalism without ethics. There’s something to be admired in that kind of talent.
• Also, despite the cramped milieu of basically three or four main sets, Hawks—known for being a director of action pictures—keeps things kinetic and moving by having speedily-spoken words and sudden dramatic and comedic twists function as the action elements in what would otherwise be essentially the prosaic filming of a stage play. In other words, the medium-tight compositions, masterful editing, and intense focus on verbiage help distract us from any moral dilemmas we may feel. This is ultimately an action movie, only it uses words and abrupt plot twists instead of car chases, combat, or explosions to keep us riveted.

What is this film’s greatest gift to viewers?

• Besides the impeccable casting—including the brilliance of using Ralph Bellamy as yet another comical love interest who loses the girl to Cary Grant and the use of so many great character actors, from Porter Hall and Gene Lockhart to Roscoe Karns, Billy Gilbert and Abner Biberman—this movie’s greatest gift is its snappy discourse—the astounding verbal gymnastics aced by the actors and the characters they portray. Many films impress with their masterful visuals and compositions; His Girl Friday stands out instead for its words and their breakneck tempo and rhythm. It’s probably less funny than it is fascinating for its wordplay and the dynamism of its two leads. 

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His girl Molly spills screwball secrets on Cineversary

In Cineversary podcast episode #25, host Erik Martin journeys back to the newsroom, circa 1940, with feminist film critic extraordinaire Molly Haskell, author of the groundbreaking cinema text "From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies," to celebrate the 80th anniversary of quite possibly the best screwball comedy ever made, "His Girl Friday," directed by Howard Hawks. Erik and Molly examine why this film is worth honoring all these years later, its cultural impact and legacy, what we can learn from the picture today, how it has stood the test of time, and more.

Molly Haskell

To listen to this episode, click here or click the "play" button on the embedded streaming player below. Or, you can stream, download or subscribe to the Cineversary podcast using Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Castbox, Pocket Casts, Google Play Music, PodBean, RadioPublic, and Overcast.

Learn more about the Cineversary podcast at tinyurl.com/cineversarypodcast and email show comments or suggestions to cineversegroup@gmail.com.

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