Hello, all,
before I get to this week’s movie talk–The In-laws–I’ll make a short stop over to The Americanization of Emily. This was mentioned last week by someone–you know how we get from movie to movie when we talk… It’s Julie Andrews in-between Mary Poppins & The sound of music, James Garner when not doing his poor man’s Cary Grant romantic comedy or poor man’s John Wayne Western comedy, James Coburn not doing, well, whatever, & Melvyn Douglas in one of his later roles, doing rather well as a funny, serious, crazy, crazy, & sometimes humane admiral. I showed it to my folks a few days back. They were not pleasantly impressed overall, although they did like some parts. I concur in their judgments.
For one, I guess we take D-Day far more seriously than the people who made that movie. Kidding around with it was marginally tolerable but making the whole movie about the good of cowardice felt almost sacrilegious. The men who died there deserved better. Their cause was better than anything such movies could conceive. There is something essentially wrong here. I like vulgar comedies that are patriotic & anti-war–love them when they’re written by Aristophanes! But this sort of comedy, now the war is over & won let’s make fun of our side for fighting it!–terrible, just terrible.
For another, the speeches & moralism in the movie I thought were quite sickening. Behind the anti-patriotic comedy–some of the criticism is true, patriotism does have problems with understanding people & politics & is quite moralistic!–there is always that progressive blindness to nobility. Everyone involved in the war has to be evil, ugly, & petty.
Especially the cruel treatment of the widows seemed sick. It reminded me of a scene in The stranger by Camus–the guy, waiting to be executed for a senseless murder, recalls that at his mother’s funeral people expected him to cry: That’s what really revolts him, that people think there is a human nature, & that love between mother & children is the most obvious part of that nature. That people expect nature to gentle us & make us more human is a terrible thing, apparently! In this movie, the awful, strange situation of a woman who loses a husband or son for her country’s cause–where justice robs women of what nature have given them–this terrible loss turns out to be a joke on women who accept the requirements of justice. It’s their own damned fault, don’cha see!
This brings me to the central problem. Comedy is always & everywhere about individuality. Some guy find out he is who he is & he needs to figure out how to get what will make him happy. Describing the world as we know it to be while contriving a way to get a guy from where he is to where he’ll be happy is the most difficult thing a story-teller can write. It requires great plotting & a masterful balancing of passions. You have to make the guy into a kind of a hero, but not be serious–that leads to tragedy, as the requirements of heroism get to force a man to take on divine powers… Comedy is essentially conservative: It requires that I as a writer reconcile people to their politics & the facts of life, & try to show the way to a more reasonable happiness within those boundaries.
This movie steps out of these bounds. It is openly declaring for revolution. The war-machine is insane from general to presidents & Annapolis graduates! It is also completely separating rationality–which advertises cowardice: Stay alive, death is not rational!–from justice–which requires risk to one’s life for the common good. The man has to face the woman’s contempt, but he says, sure, I’d die for you, but that’s personal, not political. Well, how about her mother? How about a kid you see attacked in the streets? Where would a man live with a woman, outside of a lonely island, without incurring political duties?
I disliked the title the moment I saw it–that says something about knowing our age–Americanization could mean anything good in this modern age, I bet. I won. Much of its criticism & witticisms could have been put into good service. But there is no reasonable peace with Nazi Germany, ultimately, so you have to justify the invasion or lie about the most serious political action of the time. The writers chose the wrong way–sort of like Catch-22, I guess. Some people do not see nobility in comic vulgarity & they instead betray political nobility…
Finally, the setting. The dog-robbers are a great subject for comedy & drama. I’ve never seen anything really good done on the matter. These creatures bask in luxury, at least scraps from the brass tables, but they do also serve a purpose in the war. It’s a strange thing to show in movies, war profiteering, but it’s not impossible to say something worthwhile…
(The guy who wrote Shogun also wrote King rat, a novel about American & British prisoners of war in Southeast Asia, where a rather sound British captain learns to love & pity an American sergeant–the former is conventional nobility, suffering quietly, stiff upper lip & all that, the latter unconventional knowhow, he’s rich & influential, enjoying the POW camp more than the war, suddenly he’s more important than the brass!, & they become friends & show a kind of loyalty that is rare in such situations… But that’s a kind of profiteering & a vulgar rationality, but it’s not dog robbers… I remember liking the novel, but I was a youth…)
By the way, it just dawned on me recently, the girl in The princess bride is Robin Wright! Was she a beaut’! I saw her a few years back in House of Cards: What a contemptible mess, what ugly people…



TT: My joy in seeing some of my favorite actors/actresses in this one pulled me back a bit from its too-clever-by half writing. There are real questions here that deserved asking in a more thoughtful, if not less comic, way. I was struck by Emily’s macabre delight in widowhood, myself…Thanks for this! Hope “The In-Laws” makes you laugh…
I liked the actors, too, & I especially had not seen Garner in a long time. I used to even like his silly comedies with Doris Day, about whom Bette Davis, I believe, said, I knew here before she was a virgin.
That’s a whole different story. Any Garner movies people might like to talk about?
As for the trouble with grieving & how the woman character in the movie is really weird, yeah, that’s all true. As a criticism of prigs, however, it fails. The one thing it gets right is that a kind of protective affection typical of women does quickly move to eroticism. Like in action movies, when the woman bandages the hero. Like the scene in the Indiana Jones movie, on the boat, where Indy shows his childish side–where does it hurt?
That was Oscar Levant that made the quote about Doris Day, not Bette Davis.
“But this sort of comedy, now the war is over & won let’s make fun of our side for fighting it!–terrible, just terrible.”
“Everyone involved in the war has to be evil, ugly, & petty.”
So was this the first Vietnam war movie. . .?
I guess you can call it prophetic in a way–it came out just before America’s involvement in Vietnam got serious, in ’65. Prophetic in a disturbing kind of way.
Disturbing, yes.
Perhaps we can take a look at Seven Days in May?
Heh. I think I never saw that one: A few of these movies, I just looked up the story & thought, probably not something I’d like, & why get angry about things…
But if you could write a few notes on how the movie struck you, the good & the bad, I could look up a synopsis–& there’s another chat!
I was thinking it fits the concept of this blog: domestic enemy. I’ll re-watch it and b]put together some sort of synopsis.
Yeah, it just might. You might find a useful enough synopsis on wiki or imdb. Looking forward to reading your notes-
And what about the Guacamole Act of 1917?
Patience–patience–we’ll get to Peter Falk…
But you want to talk about “just one more thing” first, right, TT (Grin)
I’m wondering whether it [the Act] extends to ceviche? If not, I’m in big trouble!