PRINCE POPPYCOCK

And you thought they only had kiddie rides at Disney World! Looks like they might have something mama could ride, too!
Sheeving!

No matter where I travel to, it's always good to return home. Arrived back late last night and spent almost two hours digging through piled up e-mails and assuring the cats I was home to stay... at least for a month. This was the first trip I've taken in years where I didn't check my e-mail once! It was quite liberating. The AlphaSmart performed like a champ and I got lots of writing done. Will report more on my journey south tomorrow.Meanwhile, back at the law firm ... it's cloudy and chilly here in LA with a smattering of rain, but we were rewarded with not one but two rainbows this afternoon. The photo above was taken with my cell phone from my very own office windows.

When it comes to Internet squabbles, the Siren has been on the wagon for a while, give or take an occasional flare-up.

And then she comes across something like this, where the inimitable Jeffrey Wells does a "respectful takedown" of Douglas Sirk using, of all things, the director's masterpiece, Imitation of Life.

Now the proper thing to do is make like Clark Gable: "I apologize again for my shortcomings," and for being a "film dweeb" who appreciates Douglas Sirk.

Then again, screw propriety, when someone is waving a bloody-fire-engine-red cape like this in my face.

Sirk is generally regarded as a pantheon-level guy because the film dweebs have been telling us for years that the dreadfully banal soap-opera acting, grandiose emotionalism and conservative suburban milieus in his films are all of an operatic pitch-perfect piece and are meant as ironic social criticism. (Or something like that.)...

Now why, I wonder, have people been doing that? Just to irritate Wells? Come on Glenn, fess up. You too, Filmbrain.

Wells illustrates his post with a scene from Imitation of Life. Trouble is, the scene is enthralling, and it isn't even a high point of the movie. It's a relatively simple sequence wherein ultra-blonde Susie (Sandra Dee) finds out that mixed-race Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner) is seeing a white boy in the town. Wells says this is bad acting. The Siren raises the point, once again, that there are different styles of acting that are appropriate to different movies. Sirk films work with artificiality; they show how people play roles. Kohner is just beginning to grasp the power of her beauty. Watch her take off her shirtwaist almost like the stripper she will later become, turning to give Dee a good look and sashaying over to the bed as if to say, "I'm better-looking than you, white girl, and I always have been." See the flick of hatred, rising up and quickly suppressed, as Sarah Jane looks at her privileged friend. And look at Susie's clueless reaction to Sarah Jane's secret, the hasty way she tries to cover up her gaffe about the "colored boy," the platitudes she mouths while knowing on some level that Sarah Jane has a point. There's nothing wrong with the acting; it isn't naturalistic, and nor should it be. It's perfectly in keeping with the style and themes of the movie.

And the visuals--how in the name of Lana Turner's hair dye can anyone who loves movies not love the visuals? The angle through the railings as Dee knocks on Kohner's door. The shot through the window of Kohner hiding from her mother. Kohner taking off her dress. The impeccable framing. The way the conversation is blocked, the camera moving at just the right moments and the two girls positioned in just the right way to convey their relationship.

Mr. Wells flatters himself when he styles this as a takedown. Rather, it is the lament of a schoolboy--a dweeb, if you will--forced to watch icky girl stuff instead of the manly men doing manly things in manly ways who form the proper study of all serious critics. Sirk's subject matter, it seems, is a large part of the rap against him:

Sirk was mostly dismissed by critics of the '50s and early '60s for making films that were no more and no less than what they seemed to be -- i.e., emotionally dreary, visually lush melodramas about repressed women suffering greatly through crises of the heart as they struggled to maintain tidy, ultra-proper appearances.

Four assumptions lurk here. One, that contemporary critics are a good yardstick by which to measure a film's worth. Because if you want to know how time is gonna judge a director, the first place to look is Bosley Crowther. Second, that the sufferings of tidy, proper women are somehow a lousy subject for a filmmaker. Surely this argument was put out of its misery by Virginia Woolf all the way back in 1929. Three, that "visually lush" is a negligible quality. The Siren has nothing to say to that; it's on the level of the Emperor complaining to Mozart about "too many notes." Four, that there is nothing below the visually lush surface of a Sirk film. That is the shakiest assertion by far.

You see, when we film snobs have the secret clubhouse meetings wherein we plot ways to force people to watch movies about boring girls and their poky old mothers, we come armed with the words of Douglas Sirk, who gave some long interviews late in life after he went blind, a fate he bore patiently. And in those interviews he shows, repeatedly, that he knew precisely what he was doing:

The stories that I got were, without exception, very trite, without any element of life to them. But still the content of the trite novel could be vivified--you could wake it up--you could put something into it.

It isn't particularly difficult to grasp what is going on in a Sirk movie. Just because there is depth to the movie doesn't mean you need the secret decoder ring they hand out in film studies to find it. In fact, the Siren could introduce Mr. Wells to a whole flock of people who get teary over this movie; it still plays to the emotions, if you watch it with an open mind. Imitation of Life is a shattering statement on American attitudes about race, about working women and their relationships with their children, about how children and mothers are often fated to bring one another agony. It's all right there on screen. You just have to get past the fact that the movie is done in a style that has disappeared--much to our loss, I'd say.

As the Siren has always said, the only rule at her own place is "No dissing Citizen Kane." Some of her commenters dislike Sirk. And (here the Siren adopts her Stuart Smalley voice) that's okay. But please, Mr. Wells, don't try to make your case by pretending a filmmaker was all surface, when even a cursory glance at the films and the words of the filmmaker shows otherwise. Most of all, please don't insult those of us who do like him.

And now I really need that ice pack.

The Siren has just one link today, to a piece by Kim Morgan about her stint at the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival. This year Kim presented, among other things, He Ran All the Way, the final film of the great John Garfield, and spoke with Garfield's fabulous daughter Julie. The Siren shares Kim's evangelical fervor on the subject of Garfield's greatness, and since Kim admits to repeating herself on the topic, the Siren will too: Garfield is the actor who truly divides it all into Before and After.

And the Siren echos Kim's question: Where's HIS damn box set?

In small tribute, a brief, piercing passage from Hildegard Knef, the actress who spent some of Garfield's last hours on earth with him.

Garfield's deep-set eyes over the flame of a match.

'How long are you staying?' (he asks).

'I'm flying to Germany in the morning.'

'I'd like to go along! I don't have a passport.'

'To Germany?'

'You still got a lot of Nazis? I'm a Jew.'

'Don't know, they're quiet for the moment.'

'Ours are deafening. It evens things out.'

The Siren has long had a mutual admiration society going with Dennis Cozzalio of the most excellent Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, despite such obstacles as living on opposite coasts and the Siren's lack of affinity for, well, you know. But even though we reside in a Web world when it's easy to ignite a blog war over, say, whether a movie about a weedy-looking twentysomething vanquishing exes is too hip for the room, or whether a movie about dreams should include nekkid people, Dennis and I find our differences amusing and stimulating and always have. We're also very similar in ways that count.

Some time ago he came up with the idea of talking to one another via Skype about movies and blogging and (reckless soul) he volunteered to transcribe it. Part I of our epic yakfest is up at his blog, covering, as his title promises, origins, childhood visions, writing philosophy and the Beetlejuice of film bloggers. Part II is due later this week.

As she's mentioned approximately 1,348 times in various social media, the Siren is off to Paris today for a visit with the in-laws. The Siren hates air travel--how heretical of her--but comforts herself with the notion that she could have in-laws in, say, Phenix City, Ala., a town where her father used to try cases and come back muttering that the movie flattered the place. (The Siren hastens to add for any readers in Phenix City that this was 25 years ago and Daddy may have missed the renaissance.)

The Siren always tries to do some shopping in Paris, however small, so here is a small anecdote regarding the perils of that pastime, from Billy Wilder in Hollywood by Maurice Zolotow.

Much of Love in the Afternoon was filmed on location in Paris. While Billy was over there, Audrey [Wilder] suddenly got the most irresistible craving for...a bidet! She had to have a bidet. She could not live without her very own bidet in the master bedroom. She cabled Billy to purchase a bidet and ship it to their Westwood apartment. Unable to locate a French plumbing supply firm which exported bidets, Wilder replied: IMPOSSIBLE TO OBTAIN BIDET STOP SUGGEST YOU DO HANDSTANDS IN SHOWER.

Over at Awards Daily, there is a poll about the Most Influential Film Critics. What struck the Siren about this poll is that there are only about a half-dozen, give or take, critics on the list whose good opinion is enough to get her watching. She won't tell you who they are, with two exceptions. Obviously the Siren's TCM tovarich Lou Lumenick carries much weight with her.

And then there is Glenn Kenny, the only critic named for an individual blog. The Siren suggests you go over and take the poll for the sake of voting for Glenn. The honor of the blogosphere compels you.

The poll, of course, is looking at which critics carry weight with the largest number of people (and in Oscar balloting, which to the Siren is like Kremlinology, only less transparent). But applying it to your own reading is an interesting exercise, and it made the Siren realize most of the critics left off the poll who wield substantial influence over her are either Web-based or have a large Web presence. Her own list would include (but is by no means limited to) Kim Morgan, Dennis Cozzalio, David Cairns, Dan Callahan, Peter Nelhaus, Tony Dayoub, Vadim Rizov, Dan Sallitt, Keith Uhlich, Jim Emerson, David Ehrenstein, Flickhead, Tom Shone and Girish Shambu. There are also wider-ranging bloggers whose film forays the Siren loves, such as James Wolcott (yes, I know he's primarily Vanity Fair, but he's a primo blogger so we like to claim him), Lance Mannion and Sheila O'Malley. And there's a few who've gone silent of late, but still make the Siren snap to attention when they do say something, like Filmbrain and Michael Phillips. These critics often share the Siren's tastes, but a lot of them also tend to like all sorts of things the Siren most definitely does not. They're all a pleasure to read, though, and often that's all it takes. Don't you think?

By that standard, the Siren could also name a lot of her commenters for that poll.

The Siren must now return to staring at her suitcases and waiting for them to speak up and tell her what she forgot. Before she leaves, one more critic who belonged on that poll had anyone consulted the Siren: Stephen Whitty. Please check out Stephen's marvelous exchange with Joan Lowell Smith, who once shared Hollywood digs with goddess-in-the-making Kim Novak.

That's all from Brooklyn for now. The Siren will be posting from Paris at her usual erratic rate. See you soon.

Just yesterday, before either one of us had heard of 84-year-old Patricia Neal's death in Martha's Vineyard, the Siren was having an email exchange with a friend about Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the new book about it by Sam Wasson. And the Siren mentioned that one of her several problems with the film is the treatment of Neal's character, a rich woman paying George Peppard's every bill while he works, theoretically, on a novel. She's given a nickname that shows what she means to him--an apartment number, 2E--and we're meant to see Neal as an obstacle to his destiny as an artist, not as someone trying to make things easier for a lover and getting barely concealed contempt in return. She leaves him money, the harpy! How's he supposed to write if she's doing things like that?

But, as always with Neal, there are more things in that face and that voice than the lines or blocking are meant to suggest--a pained vulnerability, the idea that she feels Peppard's shameless use of her as a wound she covers with brittle chatter and a sophisticated attitude.

In her films, as well as in her life, Patricia Neal always seemed to be giving more than she got.

In Bright Leaf, the 1950 Michael Curtiz epic about tobacco farming, Neal is the one character simmering with emotion, attracted to Gary Cooper but determined to destroy him. The scene where she turns on Cooper is the most dramatic in the movie, their sexual chemistry roiling even as she confesses how much she has hated him. When he rides out alone in the end, it seems wholly fitting, not just because he couldn't keep faith with truehearted Lauren Bacall, but also because he wasn't man enough to do anything with the passion that had been flying off Neal the entire time. He didn't deserve either one of them.

She made one earlier film with Cooper, The Fountainhead. The Siren feels obligated to mention that one, but much as she loves Neal, in truth the Siren cannot bear that movie, King Vidor or no King Vidor. Ayn Rand's fans sometimes complain the film strays too far from her novel; the Siren thinks it's a visual match for Rand's writing style, and that is no compliment. Even so, the Siren still sees Neal's warmth and intelligence glimmering behind her risible lines and motivations.

During the filming of The Fountainhead, and continuing through and after Bright Leaf, Neal had an affair with Cooper that brought her agony, as Cooper's Catholic wife refused a divorce. Cooper was Catholic too, but not so much so that he didn't urge Neal to have an abortion when she became pregnant, a decision Neal grieved over for the rest of her life. Her later marriage to Roald Dahl was marked by a horrifying taxi accident involving her four-month-old son. Theo survived, but Neal's seven-year-old daughter Olivia later died of complications from measles. In 1965, as she was in the early stages of shooting John Ford's Seven Women (a part that might have been perfect for her), she suffered a catastrophic series of strokes while she was pregnant with daughter Lucy. The effects on her speech, her body and her memory were devastating, but Dahl, with savage dedication, nursed her back to life and to acting.

Less than twenty years later, they divorced when Neal discovered Dahl's longstanding affair with her best friend. Betrayal haunted Patricia Neal off-screen as much as it did on.

Her misfortunes, her philanthropy and her courage became perhaps even more famous than her work, and tinge the perception of something like The Subject Was Roses, her first major role after the strokes and a beautiful performance. But simple nobility is almost never enough on screen. Neal always showed you the struggle, how damn hard everything was--but in a way that told you pity would be an insult to such a woman. It's evident even in an earlier role, such as her magnificent work in A Face in the Crowd, where you feel her revenge on Lonesome Rhodes as a blow for every woman who ever wasted time, intelligence and love on a worthless egomaniac.

She was one of those actresses whose beauty became softer and more inviting, not less, with age. In Hud, her housekeeper character Alma fends off Paul Newman's advances with the torment of loving him emphasizing every line on her face, and yet it only adds to her magnetism. Later parts became more like Alma, such as warm, gentle Olivia Walton in The Homecoming.

Always there was that voice, its timbre joining the Tennessee accent to create a sound you anticipate the way you might yearn for a close-up of another actor. The Siren has spent this morning collecting the adjectives. Corncrake, said David Shipman (a bird, evidently--the Siren had to look that one up). Molasses, says the Times. Throaty, husky, sandpaper. And the Siren can hear all that even just reading a printed interview with Neal, like the one where she explained the fears of a young contract player at the old Warner Brothers: "Bette Davis was queen of the studio, and you couldn't just go up to her and ask her to solve your problems.

"They were real stars in those days, babe."

(Postscript: You will most definitely want to read Sheila O'Malley's tribute.)

Historical movies fall into one of three categories. Some strive for meticulous accuracy, some leaven accuracy with a few liberties. Then there are those that frankly don't give a damn beyond costumes and sets--and so it was with Affairs of Cellini, the 1934 Gregory La Cava film. This odd comedic swashbuckler sits right near the start of the director's great run of films up to 1941's Unfinished Business. Despite the 16th-century trappings it does fit with the later films, if you figure that instead of monkey imitations, you're getting little bursts of swordplay. It's based on a play by Edwin Justus Mayer, "The Firebrand," about which the Siren knows nothing. Presumably it drew from the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, which the Siren read in abridged form years ago. And the movie is somewhat less weird than the book, which as the Siren recalls had Cellini swearing he saw halos and had clairvoyant visions and conjured up a bunch of devils in the Colosseum in order to get back a mistress who had gone home to mother.

The movie was still pretty weird, though. Supporting player Fay Wray recalled years later, "It had a certain amount of charm, even though it was a little wacky." The Siren couldn't have said it better herself. The rather murky plot doesn't reward much summary, involving as it does Cellini's need to maim and murder various Florentines whom he finds annoying, the Duke de Medici's need to punish Cellini for doing so, and everybody's need to find someone wholly inappropriate to sleep with.



So what was so wacky? Well, the supporting players obliterate the lead, for one thing. Fredric March was a longtime scene-stealer himself, but he doesn't seem comfortable with this character. Instead he glowers from underneath masses of dark curls and moves like he's trying to convince himself the doublet is an English-drape suit. Which is a shame, because March's legs looked great in tights, something that can be said of very few actors. Maybe (here the Siren indulges in idle speculation) maybe March, one of Hollywood's staunchest liberals, had a bit of trouble finding a way into playing an artist, even a great artist, who wrote with perfect sang-froid about beating the hell out of his mistresses and was also a viperous court intriguer, (possible) political assassin and plain old murderer. But the problem is less with March, a fine actor, and more that the script marginalizes its own title character. Cellini's art is confined to one scene in his workshop where he's making his assistant do all the labor. He's reacting to the plots of others as much as he's doing his own scheming, and Cellini's lines aren't as funny, either. And that's also a shame, because March could time a joke to the millisecond, as he showed in Design for Living and Nothing Sacred.

One of the few lines March really gets to tear off is "For your own sake, don't be any dumber than is absolutely necessary"--spoken to Fay Wray, who's playing Angela, an artist's model of wondrous stupidity. Wray, to whom the Siren had never given much thought one way or another, is unexpectedly funny in this simple part. She doesn't have snappy lines; instead she gets laughs just by sticking to the unflappable demeanor of a person who seldom gets upset about anything because she never understands what the hell is going on. Angela sucks the crumbs off a finger or picks at her sleeve, stares off into the middle distance, finally tunes into the conversation, listens patiently and then, having visibly decided that the man isn't saying one thing worth hearing, goes back to whatever constitutes her inner life. The longer Angela stuck around, the more the Siren enjoyed her, and she was often more interesting than Cellini.

The movie's primary flaw, though, was the Duke de Medici. Frank Morgan's Best Actor nomination for Affairs is often cited as a reason why the Academy needed a supporting category, proving that this unavailable-on-home-anything movie hasn't been seen much. Morgan's got almost as much screen time as March, and his performance dominates the movie. Which is not a good thing, or at least the Siren didn't think so. Understand, the Siren finds the actor delightful in many things, including The Shop Around the Corner (easily his best work), Bombshell and The Wizard of Oz. But if you saw Oz (and hasn't everyone?) you will immediately recognize Morgan as de Medici. It's the same performance. The stammering, the stop-and-start motion, the furtive looks, even the humbug. There are some places where the tricks are still funny, particularly in his dinner scene with Angela. The Duke tries to slide one raddled hand up Angela's arm and Wray looks at him like he's picking his teeth with his fork: "What are you doing that for?" Great line delivery by Wray. Angela really does want to know why his hand is on her arm. She really is that stupid. Responds Morgan, as baffled as his seduction target: "Doesn't that make you, ah, burn and tingle?" And then, later, from Morgan: "Would you like some more peacock tongue?" (Technically this was post-Code. Not sure how that line made it in there.) "Yes, milord." Responds Morgan, like a lecherous Santa Claus: "Don't call me milord. I'd prefer that you call me Bumpy."

Mostly, however, Morgan is just tiresome, fluttering everywhere and being such a ninny that you never have a moment's suspense thinking he's any threat to anyone. Louis Calhern (miles from The Asphalt Jungle, but you'd know that nose anywhere) has some Rathbone-esque bite as the Duke's cousin, Ottaviano, but he isn't around enough to build up a sense of menace.




Thank god for Constance Bennett. The other characters may be dumber than one of Cellini's plates, but Constance is smart enough for the entire movie. The usual routine for swashbucklers, even semi-sorta-swashbucklers like this one, is a fiery heroine with a nice line in flashing eyes and snappy comebacks, who spends the first part of the movie telling the hero he's a common pirate, thief, musketeer, ruffian, whatever. Here, however, we have coolly adulterous Miss Bennett as the Duchess de Medici, more Snow Queen than spitfire. As usual, Constance is the most wised-up person in the picture, going after Cellini and manipulating everyone in sight. Also as usual, Constance was the Siren's favorite, giving just the right cynical touch to the picture's best lines: "The tragedy of all great ladies is to discover that the men with the most exaggerated reputations make the poorest lovers. That is the reason we probably marry half-wits." Bennett always seemed ineffably early 1930s, no matter what decade the movie was filmed or set in, and here her silky walk and line deliveries would fit nicely in a later La Cava picture. She's delightful, sweeping into the apartment that the Duke has set up for his adulterous tryst with Angela, pretending to think it's all for her and maliciously complimenting him on every detail.

Constance, along with March's tights, also provides the dose of sex the movie needs. Watch her sink onto a couch as the slinky dress fabric outlines her legs all the way to her ass. The movie looks good, if not great, with sumptuous sets and a few fight scenes that show La Cava's ability to film chaos and make it coherent. Overall, however, if the Siren watched it again, it would be for Constance, sashaying off at the end, ready to keep out-conniving one of the Renaissance's greatest heels.