Going back to movie theaters these past couple of weeks has made me feel excited for the impending summer heat, because I will actually get to decide whether I want to engage with it or not. Last summer was stressful for many reasons, but the inability to escape my inadequately air conditioned apartment by ducking into a freezing theater added to my claustrophobia and anxiety. This summer, regardless of what else happens, we’ll be able to freeze at the movies again.
A lot of my friends were saddened by the news that the Arclight might permanently close. I’m confident that at least the Cinerama Dome will return in some form — there are too many rich Hollywood types with an emotional investment to let it die — but I also realized that I have much less goodwill towards that theater than a lot of other people. The tickets were too expensive, the seats were uncomfortable, the popcorn wasn’t that good, you had to pay for parking. Anything I could see at the Arclight I could see for cheaper at either an AMC or a Laemmle (the local LA chain playing indie and international movies). Plus, no one can rationally say that the screen and sound quality at the Arclight was better than the magnificent Dolby screen at the AMC 16 in Burbank. To argue otherwise is snobbish and, frankly, classist. If you’re skeeved out by 30 minutes of shitty trailers, packs of drunk teenagers or errant phone calls, you might have a problem with humanity itself.
I love the whole disgusting multiplex experience: toddlers screaming during hard-R slasher films, old ladies unwrapping hard candies and narrating the action to their practically deaf husbands, a universally loathed film blogger going to town on an ice cream sandwich during A Hidden Life. Of course the most important part of the cinema-going experience is the movie itself, and the quality of films released post reopening has been rough. So far I’ve seen a morally reprehensible action thriller, a treacly indie “comedy”, and Mortal Kombat. Thankfully, the trailers for the new Leos Carax and Paul Verhoeven movies just came out, so there’s hope on the horizon.
I’m not breaking any news by saying the Criterion Channel has been absolutely mandatory for anyone who loves movies and hasn’t been able to see them in a theater for over a year. When the Criterion Channel debuted a couple years ago, I was a bit frustrated and confused by the interface. It was impossible to search by director or genre, and unless you knew the exact title you were looking for, you had to browse the specific collections they put together, which seemed limited. I’ve done a complete 180 since then, learning to trust the programming, which introduced me to so many films I never would have sought out on my own. Now, even their homepage is overwhelming, a rotating carousel of dozens of movies I know I will never make time to watch. Part of me wishes they would just show one movie a day, eliminating choice completely. You’re either watching Andrei Rublev or nothing at all.
I started following Penelope Bartlett (@Boittyboo), Criterion’s director of programming, on Twitter. She’s heeded my wish, highlighting exactly ONE movie currently streaming on the channel each day. It’s nice to occasionally not make a choice, to do as I’m told, to submit to someone wiser and more qualified than I am. The other day, Ms. Bartlett tweeted about a 1939 screwball comedy called Midnight, part of a Mitchell Leisen retrospective she put together. Mitchell Leisen, who I’d never heard of a week ago and now completely obsessed with, was one of the only gay guys working as an A-list studio director during the 30s and 40s. He directed scripts by young Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges, and worked with all the leading ladies at Paramount before transitioning to television and nightclubs.
Midnight was written by Wilder and full of his caustic, cynical wit. It’s also unambiguously queer, which must come from Leisen’s directorial voice. Some of Wilder’s movies have become part of the queer canon (Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot) but that might be more to do with their subject matter than their point of view. Queerness is still “othered” in those movies, seen as something deviant or grotesque, as it was in almost all studio films of the time. In Midnight, though only one of the main characters is coded as gay, an explicitly queer sensibility runs through the whole thing. The institution of marriage is shown as ridiculous and campy, a way for women to gain financial security and social status. Monogamous heterosexual love is something to be scoffed at.
In this very loose modernization of Cinderella, Claudette Colbert plays a down-on-her-luck party girl who finds herself in Paris without any money or even a change of clothes. A cute taxi driver played by Don Ameche offers to let her crash at his place, but Claudette sneaks into a high society concert, disguises herself as a Hungarian Baroness and befriends a pair of socialites (cattily played by Mary Astor and theater actor Rex O’Malley). Astor’s having an affair with European playboy Francis Lederer, but she’s married to (a completely soused) John Barrymore, who offers to pay Colbert in gowns and a Ritz hotel suite if she seduces Lederer and forces him to break it off with his wife. Ameche eventually finds the gang chilling in Versailles and pretends to be the mentally ill Baron Czerny, Colbert’s pretend husband. Hijinks absolutely ensue. Apparently Barrymore was so drunk during filming he had to read all his lines off of cue cards.
This is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Colbert’s as great as she always is, baby-faced Ameche is her equal in charm and comic timing, Barrymore looks like he’s about to fall over, God bless him, and Mary Astor’s bitch face is unparalleled in film history. O’Malley, as the effeminate, conspicuously single hanger-on named Marcel, constantly jokes about loving to swallow large objects. And this is five years after the Hays Code kicked in.
I’m constantly amazed at how little I know about the things I love. 1930s screwball comedy is one of my favorite genres of movies, and I had never even heard of one of the greats until a couple of days ago. Midnight should be talked about in the same breath as It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey and Bringing Up Baby. Maybe, because of the platform Criterion is giving it and Penelope Bartlett’s tweet, it will start to gain the reputation it deserves.
Things I read this week:
I recently learned that Vanity Fair was published over a period of eighteen months, so I don’t feel bad that it might take me that long to read it. I got through three more chapters this week.
Emma Green, in The Atlantic, wrote about a certain type of person who insists on wearing their mask outside even after the CDC said it’s safe to stop. This article got a lot of people angry, but I mostly agree with her. If you believe in science, believe in science. Continuing to wear masks as some sort of political statement will only fuel the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers who claimed the whole thing was political to begin with.
Bon Appetit (the magazine, NOT the videos) has been great in the post-Rapoport era, including lots of regional African, Caribbean, and Latin recipes that would have never been published a year ago. Here’s a recipe from Zaynab Issa for Kuku Paka, an East African-Indian chicken curry.
Things I watched this week: (If you’re on Letterboxd, respond to this email with your handle - I want to follow more people)
35 Shots of Rum - This movie is so perfect I don’t have much to say about it. Watch it if you can. Claire Denis is the best.
Mortal Kombat - I had a good time.
Cast A Dark Shadow - A nasty British noir starring the sexy Dirk Bogarde.
Midnight
Deadwood season 3 ep 8-12 + The Movie - I’m finally free.
Mare of Easttown ep 3 - This is the best prestige whodunnit in a long time. On the same level as Broadchurch and Happy Valley. Kate’s accent keeps getting better. Evan Peters has a hall of fame drunk scene in this episode.
Pose season 3 ep 1 - Yikes?
Drag Race Down Under ep 1 - It never ends.
Real Housewives (ATL and D reunions, NJ, and NYC!!) What do we think of Eboni?