Atlas Shrugged, the Movie - A Review by Michael Moeller

Atlas Shrugged: The Movie -- Draining the Motive Power from the Novel

by

Michael Moeller

Over fifty years after Atlas Shrugged was published, and more then thirty years since work began on the first film script, I felt Etta James’ song “At Last” playing in my head as I drove to the theater. I was abuzz with excitement at the possibility of finding a “thrill to press my cheek to.” But alas, as the movie unfolded, my cheek felt an icy touch as the lifeblood drained from its dramatic body.

On the philosophical level, the moral outlook of the book was not comprised in any significant way. Hank Rearden states, unapologetically, that his “only goal is to make money”. The filmmakers did not turn the movie into a utilitarian apologia that self-interest also serves the common good. Or worse, with Oliver Stone once-rumored as expressing interest in making the film, one could imagine the protagonists serving up paeans to the “public welfare”. I came away satisfied that the philosophy was not corrupted.

On the artistic level, however, the film fails substantially as a drama. As Rand wrote in The Art of Fiction, a plot is a “purposeful progression of events” where each event is logically connected to the preceding event leading up to the climax. The events are not mere exposition, but ideas dramatized in action where the actions leave the reader wondering what will happen next. I.e., they create suspense.

Unfortunately, the movie’s progression of events lacks purpose and a coherent direction. The choice of scenes appears scattershot, thus draining the drama and suspense from the novel.

For instance, the screenwriters decided to include the subplot involving John Galt’s motor. Here, though, Rearden discovers the mysterious motor through (off-screen) investigation, in advance of his car trip with Dagny. Later in the film Rearden and Dagny examine the factory and the motor in-person. This is followed by scenes of them meeting with Ivy Starnes, Eugene Lawson, and William Hastings’ wife, which include multiple superfluous scenes of car traveling back-and-forth on desolate valley roads.

Not only has the fortuitous discovery of the motor been preempted by Rearden’s preliminary investigation, but the scenes tracking down the motor’s owner add nothing to the back-story of the motor. The viewer knows as much about the motor at the end of their trip as he does after Rearden’s initial investigation. Those scenes simply fill precious screen time.

Instead, those scenes could have been cut. The dramatic struggle to get the John Galt Line built could have been given more emphasis, which was purportedly the focus of this movie. Instead, the effects of the looters’ polices on the John Galt Line, and the protagonists’ struggles to overcome them, are imbibed along with exposition while critical scenes to the main storyline are cut.

For instance, as Rearden and Dagny are standing before the tattered old bridge, Dagny states she could use a new one, but doesn’t have the time to build one with only six months left. Rearden responds that she could build a new one with Rearden Metal in only 3 months, and she responds: “Let me check my budget.” She needed it, Rearden says he can do it, and then it appears during the run of the John Galt Line. That’s it.

This is merely one example of including superfluous scenes while shortchanging the supposed focus of the film: the struggle to build the John Galt Line. We have the Reardens’ anniversary party with no clue as to why it is important, and the bracelet exchange was drained of emotive impact. The viewer gets a brief glimpse of characters before they disappear, such as Owen Kellogg and Robert McNamara, with no background (besides brief narrative) as to why they are important, nor does one see the impact their loss has on the operations of Taggart Transcontinental.

No Dan Conway and his refusal to sell the rail to James Taggart. No dramatization of Dagny’s struggles to find signals, railroad spikes, locomotives, her work crew abandoning her, etc. No effect of Ben Nealy replacing Robert McNamara. No Eureka! moment from Rearden when he makes the bridge feasible with a radical new innovation – right when his business is being destroyed by the passage of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill, and yet still able to provide a beacon of strength for Dagny. Just to name of few.

Thus, the prudence, foresight, and ingenuity of Rearden and Dagny are sucked dry from the building of the John Galt Line, and from their characters.

Many have probably seen the trailer of Dagny’s confrontation with the union boss who refuses to let his members work on the John Galt Line. After this scene, the movie then cuts to Rearden and Dagny boarding the train and the running of the John Galt Line. The emotive impact of Dagny’s success is lessened by not showing her small triumph when all the Taggart workers volunteer against the wishes of the union boss, so much so that they need a lottery to pick the train crew.

Imagine signing up for a sightseeing tour of New York City, and being sped through the city on a train running at two hundred miles an hour while the window shades move up-and-down at random. That’s the feel of the pace and one’s grasp of what is happening and why. In this excellent review, the author provides a much more logical and cogent progression of events that develops the main plot and subplots within a reasonable timeframe, and in a manner that adds drama and suspense.

In The Art of Fiction, Rand also emphasizes bringing the abstraction that is a character to life via concrete actions and dialogue. The characters motives are teased out by these means. And, since art is selectivity, everything said and done denotes something significant about that character that the author thinks is important to convey.

Now consider the first brush with Ellis Wyatt in the movie, which shows him in Dagny’s office with his feet up on the desk while reading a newspaper. As Dagny enters, he throws the newspaper aside, waves his arms awkwardly as if trying to balance himself on a beam, and then begins to rail against the demise of Dan Conway and this “Anti-dog-eat-dog bullshit.”

Is this dynamic entrepreneur from the novel — who had a look of “violence” and such a ruthless integrity that he would rather burn down his empire than let it be taken over by the looters? No, his mannerisms and dialogue have all the attributes of a petulant middle-manager who has not gotten his way and feels the need to ream out an underling — right after his coffee break.

Or consider the filmmakers’ portrayal of James Taggart. He appears in the movie as young, handsome, and well-dressed. In the novel, we first see Taggart with a contorted posture, balding, and the look of middle-age while in his mid-thirties. Miscasting a character based on physical appearance is not a game-breaker and can be redeemed if the essence of the character is skillfully concretized in words and action.

In the novel, however, Rand portrays Taggart as fundamentally weak, constantly evading the necessity to think, and helpless in the face of looming crises, especially when confronted by Dagny. In the movie, the viewer sees a rather poised Taggart that often overshadows a soft-spoken Dagny, played by Taylor Schilling. Dagny’s lack of onscreen presence, of gravitas, does not help the contrast. (If there's a doubt about Schilling’s performance, I urge the viewer to consider whether this Dagny would say as a young woman at a ball: “What men? There wasn’t a man there I couldn’t squash ten of.”)

But more so than the actor’s onscreen presence, the depth of Taggart’s character is victimized by scene selection. The movie shows the boardroom scene where Taggart takes credit for Dagny pulling all assets from the San Sebastian Line before the Mexican government nationalizes it. However, the movie cut the prior scene with Taggart and his girlfriend, Betty Pope. In that scene, Taggart and Pope express mutual contempt for each other after just having had sex. Taggart begins that scene lethargic and mentally unfocused, but comes to life at the prospect of undermining his sister before the Board. His self-satisfaction is quickly deflated when he receives a phone call telling him the San Sebastian Railroad has been nationalized, and then we next see him praising his own foresight before the Board.

This scene also provides a stark contrast to the sex scene with Rearden and Dagny after the John Galt Line run. Sex expressing the celebration of life, as opposed to mutual contempt and futility.

Instead of the Betty Pope scene, the movie depicts the nationalization of the San Sebastian Railroad in a news clip stating that the line has been nationalized and showing soldiers marching under some building with a Mexican flag on top of it. A scene that powerfully conveys Taggart’s motives and goals is replaced with cheap narrative. The net effect on the character of James Taggart is that he is transformed from metaphysically impotent man into a simple Hollywood cutout of a conniving backroom dealer.

By the same methods, the movie trims down the depth of each character, including the two protagonists. The greatest loss, perhaps, is to Francisco d’Anconia, whom I regard as one of the most compelling characters in all literature.

The viewer first catches glimpses of Francisco appearing at bars/parties surrounded by an entourage of beautiful women, sometimes with cameras flashing. He has a scruffy three-day beard and semi-shaggy hair down to his eyebrows — the “cool” look one sees displayed on the cover of GQ. In his first encounter with Dagny after the nationalization of the San Sebastian mines, Dagny begins the scene by throwing a drink in his face. Francisco chuckles and flippantly says: “That’s refreshing”.

This is how the audience is introduced to the aristocratic-looking character described as “the climax of the d’Anconia’s” who’s talents had been “sifted through a fine mesh” from generations of mastery of production. Does this properly capture the man to whom it is impossible “to stand still or move aimlessly?” Is this the man who, as a twelve year old boy, used rudimentary calculus to erect a system of pulleys to hoist an elevator to the top of a rock? Or the man who began as a furnace boy at the age of sixteen and ended owning the factory by age twenty, while educating himself on the stock market to finance the venture?

Without any of Francisco’s back-story in the movie, nor any display of his unmatched ability, the viewer doesn't experience the disconnect between the productive genius and the playboy now throwing extravagant parties for the brain dead. The air of mystery surrounding his conversion has vanquished. The movie version of Francisco really could be a pop star from the cover of GQ. He certainly looks the part.

When Francisco confronts Rearden at his anniversary party, one gets the impression he was transported from another film. Not only is the dialogue awkward and stilted, as if parts were pieced together with Scotch tape after the novel’s conversation was put through a paper shredder, but his character appears jarring and incongruous because there has been no buildup illustrating his intellectual perspicacity.

Amateurism permeates even small touches of detail. The car crisscrossing the country in search of the motor’s mystery is a…Toyota Camry? In the book, it's a sleek Hammond coupe. The producers couldn't rent something like a Bentley Azure or Maserati Gran Tourismo to illustrate the heights Dagny and Rearden have reached?

Sadly, this encapsulates the movie versus the book. Under Rand’s artistic guidance, one feels the dramatic motor roar to life on each page, yet the progression is expertly controlled. Hairpin plot turns on the cliff’s edge are skillfully navigated, yet invite challenge, thrill, and a suspenseful outcome. In the hands of the filmmakers, the viewer is taken on an ordinary ride from point A to point B, often getting lost along the way.

My song had changed on the ride home from the theater. Resonating in my soul were B.B. King’s words: “The thrill is gone, the thrill is gone away.”

Take This Culture and Shove It

Peter Cresswell at Not PC tripped one of my AMAWG (Angry Middle-Aged White Guy) switches today, so buckle your seat belt and prepare for a rant on one of my favorite sore spots: modern culture vs the '50s.

Peter posted a series of ads from days gone by.

Here's a sample, a Chesterfield ad featuring none other than Ronald Reagan enjoying a smoke.

Peter then asked "[B]ut would you really want to live there again?"

My [expanded] answer:

Absolutely. For all its imperfections, by comparison to the moral and aesthetic sewer of today, it was nirvana.

Want a useful mental image to concretize the comparison? See the trailer for the original (1950) "Cheaper By the Dozen," a very mediocre film with Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy, then see the trailer for the 2003 version with Steve Martin.

There's no better example of my point.

The original is treacly and dull. But it's filled with kids who are smart, made so by their father's insistence on developing their minds. (He uses every opportunity to teach them science, history, etc., even going so far as to put a map of the solar system on the dining room wall).

The house is always spotless, kept that way by parents who required their children to behave like civilized human beings. The wife is as smart as the husband, but not depicted as morally superior with a lunkhead husband, as in every sitcom today. She is a professional industrial psychologist like Frank. (The movie is based on a true story about Frank Gilbreth, a time-and-motion studies expert of the early 20th century, and his wife and 12 kids, as written by two of the kids as adults.)

The 21st century version is po-mo vicious, featuring kids who are future drug addicts and muggers-in-training. The Steve Martin trailer opens with a shot of his house in absolute disarray, complete with food and paint splattered everywhere. Steve, as he always does, behaves in a completely irrational manner and is clearly overwhelmed (yet loving it!). His wife is as dull as it's possible for a woman to get. How cute.

Here's another piece of evidence. [Spoilers ahead, which I think are ok here, since the film is two years old.]

I saw the 2008 Iron Man film recently, starring the cow-eyed and perpetually whiny Robert Downey Jr., whom — oddly — many conservatives on Big Hollywood chose to defend. (An actor who projects a more consistently clinically depressed air would be hard to find. To make him the hero tells you something already about the mind of a modern director.)

The movie itself, from the perspectives of plot, production values, and even performance was actually quite good by contemporary standards. Still, it was utterly amoral despite the main character's alleged seeing of the light after a horrific experience in Afghanistan.

It opens with Tony Stark joking it up with a bunch of soldiers in Afghanistan riding in a Humvee, which is shortly blown to smithereens. The film goes downhill from there, with ultra-hedonist Stark ultimately escaping his warlord captors (note they are not jihadists but our 'allies') then manically working in his lab, partying in Dubai, and mostly experimenting with his suit.

A few minutes of plot emerge in the final sequence when we discover, surprise!, that Jeff Bridges' Daddy Warbucks lookalike character ordered him killed in order to take over the company, pissed even before Stark announced he was getting out of the weapons business. (Shades of liberal guilt-ridden foreign policy!)

By contrast, a very stark contrast if you'll pardon the pun, the Iron Man comics, which I read avidly as a teen, portrayed a real hero, one dedicated to fighting injustice, like most superheroes. He was a rich playboy, but that had a somewhat different meaning two generations ago. He didn't whine neurotically about his inner moral conflict. He didn't joke around in every frame. He didn't treat life as if it were a perpetual frat party that happened to include inventing astonishing technology from time to time.

My point is this: even the stuff that was bad (i.e. dull, mediocre, poorly executed) 50 years ago was lightyears ahead morally and artistically of all but the absolute best work of today.

Rose colored glasses? Selection bias? Watch and study enough of the period — apart from living consciously through the past 50 years, I've seen approximately 3,000 American films (90% of them pre-1965) — and any decent, honest person will come to the same inductive conclusion.

There are those who claim, with some justification, that life wasn't really like the movies of 80-40 years ago. Perhaps that's true in many ways. They were movies, after all. But the fact that filmmakers chose to portray those characters in that way, doing those things, signifies a very different ethic and esthetic all by itself.

False alternative? Certainly. There's nothing in reality, including our own nature, that prevents us choosing a future better than anything in the past 2,000 years.

But the '40s and '50s, not to mention the 19th century, actually happened, so we know a relatively clean culture is possible. Rising above that level is a matter of inventing that which has never been seen, a daunting task at minimum. I'd bet it'll be a hundred years before the culture catches up to it again.

Patricia Neal, Supernovae

Patricia Neal, classic-cinema era actress, has died at 84.



She made very few good movies, but even in the bad ones she was terrific. Her debut in John Loves Mary, a pleasant but forgettable outing with Ronald Reagan, showed what usually goes by the term "promise." The 1949 production of The Fountainhead showed what she was promising: vibrance, dynamism, and intelligent sex appeal. Poor choices by Warner Bros. executives, a rare misstep where a major talent was concerned, caused that promise to be squandered.

She wandered through various mediocre to bad films — The Hasty Heart, Bright Leaf, a couple of others — until being cast in what was expected to be a not-much sci-fi flick: The Day the Earth Stood Still. It turned out to be a classic that holds up well today, despite a lot of ribbing about some unfortunate alien dialogue. She was marvelous throughout — tense, determined, and an anchor of sanity in a paranoid world.

Then it was back to mostly so-so productions for a few more years. (An exception: the surprisingly good Washington Story, a love story set against a background of D.C. politics with more than usual depth.) Finally, she landed the superlative A Face in the Crowd. Her semi-cynical, semi-idealist offset to Andy Griffith's loathsome Lonesome Rhodes was a tour de force.

Even so, despite good reviews, great roles never materialized after that. Her small part in Breakfast at Tiffany's was another stunning piece of work, showing her considerable range, but the movie is mostly silly, worthwhile chiefly for the outstanding cast.

As with many no-longer very young actresses of the period, good roles were increasingly fewer and farther between. So, it was off to TV for a forgettable string of parts that paid the bills until the postmodern Hud. Her reputation rose considerably now, not surprisingly since this is one of the Anti(s) all-time favorites. (Depressed, empty people placed in a hopeless world always get that crowd excited, since that's how they see life.)

Next came In Harm's Way with John Wayne, an interesting character-driven war film made too long after the war to be great, and one in which Neal had too little to do. But what she does wows, particularly in the steamy, but underplayed, love scene.

With her next starring vehicle, The Subject Was Roses, another depressing piece of trash the Anti(s) drool over, her reputation as an actress was assured. In part, her comeback after a stroke was partly responsible. Anti(s) love it when someone beautiful and clean suffers, and everyone loves it when an individual finds the fortitude to overcome such a tragedy.


Every Golden Era Hollywood actress appeared in films that were less than stellar, but it was Patricia Neal's lot to suffer that rollercoaster more than most. Still, she always shone brightly, whether the material was poor or excellent.

Part of that was, no doubt, the result of her amazing resilience, that traditional American "never say die" grit. For giving us those few hours of a vision that reflects that spirit, Patricia Neal deserves all the praise she'll get.

Classic Film Review: In Love and War

In Love and War is a 1958 Jerry Wald production starring Jeffrey Hunter, Robert Wagner, and Bradford Dillman, co-starring France Nguyen, Hope Lange, and Dana Wynter.

Superb performances, fine direction, and outstanding production values raise a generally weak script to classic status. Similar in some respects to 1956's D-Day, The Sixth of June, starring Robert Taylor and Dana Wynter - split between a love story and a war movie – In Love and War is more equally divided than that slightly earlier film.

The first half follows three WWII-era Marines on a brief leave in San Francisco just prior to shipping out overseas. Bradford Dillman portrays a rich, educated 'idealist' at odds with his wealthy father. Robert Wagner is a poor Irish kid emulating his drunken dead father's ways. Jeffrey Hunter is a true-blue jarhead who marries his pregnant girlfriend during his stay. All three will be changed by the war, mostly for the better.

Like the men, the women they meet and love are all stereotypes but played with such excellence one doesn't mind. It's a Jerry Wald picture, after all, and one expects, even cheers, the soap opera quality he perfected in the late 50s.

The second half shows the men before and during battle on a Japanese held Pacific island, with scenes interjected at random of the girls they left behind.

Bradford Dillman is dull as always, but the character would make him so regardless. France Nguyen shines as his love interest in a small part full of pathos and tenderness. Dana Wynter delivers in a character quite unlike most she played, here as a needy, self-pitying, rich wastrel trying to reform (but not very hard). Robert Wagner shows that even as a very young man he had true star quality. Jeffrey Hunter is solid and intense, showing just what a loss his early demise was to the history of films. Hope Lange tears at the heart with every line and look in a letter perfect performance as his young bride.

The heartrending nature of the last scene in particular is alone worth the whole movie combined, but there are many good moments beforehand. For fans of late 50s/early 60s soap opera films (see below) there are few better.

The production values are first rate, as was typical with Jerry Wald productions during this period. The saturated colors are rich, oozing with that unique period's Technicolor values. The sets and costumes are stellar. If you've seen Peyton Place, The Long, Hot Summer, or The Best of Everything you know the look. Everything has that brand-new look, even when the scene is one of a dilapidated house or a foxhole.

A bit long at 1 hr 46 min, the look and the performers nonetheless hold you the entire time without becoming bored. The story lacks forward motion, so the pleasure comes chiefly from the scenery, the actors, and the heart-on-a-sleeve style common to the genre. To paraphrase Yogi Berra: if you like this sort of movie, this is the sort of movie you'll like.

Lost on Lost

While scanning through some TV show recordings that have piled up the past few months, I happened to catch stretches of the Lost finale. I was reminded of why I never watched this show. I had, like the characters themselves apparently, no clue what was going on, despite the highly distracting running commentary along the bottom of the screen.

I can't really criticize the show effectively, since I never watched more than a few minutes of any episode. But it certainly appears at a casual glance to have been an agglomeration of nonsensical purple prose and over-the-top acting.

Worse, I can't escape the feeling that the whole thing was an outgrowth of that most dreadful of aesthetic principles: muddy the waters to make them appear deep. In this case, they appear to have been stirred up thoroughly and mixed with large helpings of too-pretty and too-ugly people combined with a dollop of weepy alternated with lots of teeth gnashing.

Not my kind of show, for sure.

Fiesta with Esther Williams, A Short Review

I'm a big fan of Esther Williams movies. I don't get a thrill from the Busby Berkeley-like swim routines. I don't even get much of a thrill from Miss Williams. But, she was often given fine scripts and paired with outstanding leading men. One good example was Fiesta (1947), which I saw for the umpteenth time again recently.

Here's a short review...

Esther Williams shines in one of her better vehicles here. She's ably co-starred with a very young and stunningly talented Ricardo Montalban. In this American cinema debut film he acts well, plays a piano concerto with gusto, and dances superlatively. The evidence for the last is on display in a couple of outstanding numbers with the best female dancer in film history, Cyd Charisse, who has a minor supporting role.

The story is an echo of a romantic Renaissance tale adapted to then-modern Mexico. A proud father and famous ex-bullfighter pressures his son, Montalban, into becoming a bullfighter. But the son's real love is composing music (supplied behind the scenes by the American genius Aaron Copland). Complications ensue, including Esther secretly taking his place in the ring after a family argument. All is resolved to everyone's satisfaction at the end, including stoic Mother, played by Mary Astor in one of her best roles.

Along the way there's a superb rendition of Copland's El Salón México. We're also treated to one of MGM's finest dance duets with Montalban and Charisse, choreographed by the ABT ballet master Eugene Loring.

All of the supporting cast do a fine job as well — with Akim Tamiroff the standout as loyal sidekick and second father figure to Esther. There are also a few bloodless bullfights (displaying some fine balletic moves all their own) to flesh out the entertainment.

More than the usual '40s MGM musical froth, there's some real substance here - the importance of family bonds, the value of honor, pursuing a life's passion - topped off with some extraordinary music and dance.

Woody Allen Touts Obama For Dictator

I've never heard Woody Allen make a political statement before. I've been lucky, until now. He's reported to have said this to a Spanish newspaper recently:

I am pleased with Obama. I think he’s brilliant. The Republican Party should get out of his way and stop trying to hurt him.... [I]t would be good…if he could be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly.

An attempt at humor? Maybe, but I doubt it. Apart from a clever line here and there, Woody Allen isn't funny. I wrote in December, 2008:

Woody Allen released a new film a few months ago, Vicky Christine Barcelona. I haven't seen it and don't intend to; every Woody Allen film I have seen — about a half dozen or so, more in parts — has been pointless, plotless, and not particularly funny or interesting. But I have to give the filmmaker credit where it's due. He is one of the cleverest guys around.

He's made a healthy living doing what he wants for more than 40 years now by producing pointless, plotless, and not particularly funny or interesting films. They usually star very dishy damsels, too. Not bad for a guy who's not insightful, handsome, or talented. (Except as a musician. He does play a mean clarinet.)

This latest incarnation, an unadmitted rip-off of Henry James' Wings of the Dove, shows every sign of being more of the same. That is no doubt why he's the darling of the Anti crowd. Since anything with a hint of moral or mental health (not to mention a movie with an actual story) is anathema to them, Allen is their perfect artist.

And that was the complimentary part. [Read the rest here.]

So, I'm not really surprised to read that he loves Obama and wants him to be dictator in order to "do a lot of good things quickly." Maybe he and NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, who says pretty much the same thing about the Chinese government, can discuss it over brie and cappuccino at a tony bistro in Paris.

[Hat tip Jonah Goldberg at NRO.]

MGM Near Bankruptcy, A Morality Tale

A sad, sad outcome for a once-mighty studio. The amount and variety of entertaining films produced by MGM over the decades easily numbers in the thousands.

Everything from musicals with Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor to dramatic films like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Madame Bovary were grist for its mill. It distributed intense westerns like Naked Spur and the Russian melodrama Doctor Zhivago. Then, of course, there were the many Bond films.

Even a borderline case like Gone With the Wind — by some measures the largest box office generator ever — might not have been possible without MGM. Not only did the studio loan Clark Gable for the lead, but producer David O. Selznick learned his trade under the oft-chafing thumb of father-in-law Louis B. Mayer.

It was without question the largest 'star factory' in Hollywood for at least three decades. And that fact points to an important element missing from today's incarnation of film production: the producer.

There are still superb writers (most of whom work for television shows). There are fine actors. There are even a few good directors. But there is no Harry Cohn, Darryl Zanuck, or Samuel Goldwyn anywhere in view. And, before anyone mentions Steven Spielberg or George Lucas (or even the Weinstein Brothers), I'll hasten to borrow a line from one of MGM's greatest films, The Big Country: They're "not fit to shine the Major's boots."

Hollywood won't be even a shadow of its former self until another like them arises. When that may be, or even if it's possible in today's cultural climate, no one can say. That last, after all, is the basic reason the movies are what they are today. And that is perhaps the saddest outcome of all.

Jean Simmons, Dead a 100 Years Too Soon

Jean Simmons has died, a week shy of her 81st birthday. One of the most beautiful, most talented, sexiest, and classiest film actresses in the history of cinema is now gone.

In movies as different as Black Narcissus (Indian servant girl), Angel Face (spoiled femme fatale), The Big Country (school teacher/rancher's granddaughter), Spartacus (slave), and The Grass Is Greener (wealthy gadabout), Jean Simmons showed that she could do it all and do it all superlatively. (She was also the female lead in the original version of The Blue Lagoon.)

She demonstrates as well as any film actress in the business ever did why they used to be called screen goddesses.


[Black Narcissus, 1947]



[1950s publicity photo, Screen Cave]


[From Big Hollywood, circa 1954]


[From Point de Vue magazin, January 1959, two years after filming The Big Country.]

"Thank you, Jean Simmons" is a pitifully inadequate phrase for the decades of glorious hours spent in your divine presence.

Joke of the Day, 67 Years Ago, Explains Why We're Losing the War Today

From the film Stage Door Canteen, 1943:

In the film, a series of famous actors and actresses (and a few unknowns) entertain troops about to be sent overseas. (The action takes place at the Stage Door Canteen, a real-world venue similar to the Hollywood Canteen, in which entertainers of all political persuasions gladly participated.)

One of the hosts plays a little game with the audience, offering a prize for the best answer to a question.

She asks the ladies: "If you could be any woman in the world, who it would it be?"

One claims first prize right away by shouting out this gem:

"Hitler's widow!"

Not surprisingly, the Stage Door Canteen audience erupts in hardy cheers.

Kind of hard to picture any film today showing something similar, at least without a disapproving finger wag. If they did, and did it regularly, the war against the jihadis would be over inside a year.

FDR, Obama, and Congress - Fascism Then and Now

Despite the continual calls from Progressives for fundamentally changing American culture, there's nothing new about the type of Fascism they're trying to bring to America.

If you watch enough WWII-era films on DVD you'll soon become exposed to a great many film shorts that played in the theaters at the time. Many of them are inspiring. Hollywood could considerably raise its dreadful reputation by emulating a few with regard to America's current military efforts. But some of them are instructional in another way.

A percentage of those documentaries and mini-dramas are decidedly Fascist in nature, showing how the FDR administration tried mightily to urge citizens to "sacrifice for the nation." It sounds scarier in the original German ("Du bist nicht! Dein Volk ist alles!") but the meaning is the same in any language. ("You are nothing. Your people is all!")

Shorts on the WWII: Homefront DVD and others like them did much more than ask Americans to work hard and support the war effort morally and materially. They tried, with obtuse economic explanations and blatant collectivist propaganda, to get individuals to surrender their own well being for the sake of the group.

One particularly egregious example, Skirmish on the Home Front, has Alan Ladd and Susan Hayward arguing over whether they should buy a better house. Ladd puts his foot down and refuses, arguing that the war effort will be better served by them continuing to live in what the man and wife agree is a dump.

His argument is too silly to bother repeating, a complete line of non-sequiturs, ending with a post-war fantasy of the couple living in a 1950s version of a high-tech dream house because they held their war bonds to maturity.

Another, almost as bad, is Letter From Bataan, in which the ghost of a recently dead soldier writes home to his wife and family, unaware at that point of his demise. He declares "no other young soldier should die because the folks at home don't want to do without."

He then goes on to demonstrate how not screeching the family auto's tires (a sin performed in the opening by the teen son) saves rubber that can be used to build a battleship, along with other, equally myopic assertions. He makes no mention, no surprise, of how it was coercive war-time rationing (not to mention a decade of prior Progressive-inspired economic controls) that led to the need to make such trade-offs in the first place.

Both these moral and logical absurdities are closely paralleled in the arguments of today's Green fascists. They assert that if we all collectively sacrifice — use less gasoline, pay over-free-market prices for solar panels and hybrid cars, destroy dams for the sake of salmon, hobble coal-consuming power plants, convert useful agricultural land to producing material for ethanol, etc., etc. (the list of hectoring is endless) — we will in the future all be better off.

All this should sound very familiar, and depressingly so. Good people are as individual as there are individuals. Evil people are all the same. That is, after all, why the villain in romanticized dramas always has to be given a few heroic virtues, like extreme cleverness and flair. Otherwise, he would be as dull as dishwater, like all real-life villains. Not for nothing have several journalists, even those in love with Obama, candidly reported, "He's very boring." Henry Waxman is worse.

It could hardly be otherwise. A dictator is hardly the sort of man who develops his creativity. It he did, he would run from being a dictator as fast as the bullet trains we might actually have if we lived in a free country. That's a lesson it's worthwhile to keep in mind as Congress debates the Waxman-Malarky Cap and Trade (otherwise known as Hobble and Dictate) legislation, along with the panoply of fascist regulation Obama and his fellow thugs are pushing.

Film Review: Persuasion (2007)

How to Ruin Classic Literature in 3 Easy Steps

Hire mediocre actors and give them a dull script, then put in charge the most pretentious director in the history of cinema. The net result is the ruin of a powerful novel by one of literature's greatest writers.

Most Austen adaptations are quite good; this version is dreadful in every respect. The camera work is awful, full of long, swirling shots to no purpose. The acting suffers the same problem with pauses long enough to squeeze in another scene between. The music is incessant and badly chosen, like spending an evening at a Wyndham Hill piano concert. The pace is as if the director tried to make a film not of the early 19th century but in it. He also seems to have confused Austen's Persuasion with Dicken's Bleak House and the mix-up is no benefit to the audience. The combination creates a funeral dirge devoid of Austen's wit, insight, humor, and drama.

We can only be thankful that the planned production of A Passage to India, scheduled to be directed by the same amateur and starring the same lead actress, has been canceled due to lack of funds. Pity it wasn't owing to the producers having screened this film and come to their senses.

If you like Austen, or simply want to avoid being bored and irritated by unending narcissism for nearly two hours, pass. Pick up the 1995 version with Ciaran Hinds instead, which is excellent in every respect.

Oscar Winners, Yawn

This list of Oscar winners is the best evidence one could provide for why contemporary films are irrelevant, morally and artistically.

Compare to this list of Oscar winners from 1939. Or any other year prior to 1965 pulled out of a hat.

The Captive Heart

Full review sometime in the future. In the meantime...

If you're in the mood for a quiet, sometimes even slow in parts, but intensely dramatic WWII POW film, watch The Captive Heart (1946).

In order to avoid being taken by the Gestapo, who are hunting him after his escape from Dachau, a Czech captain takes the identity of a killed British officer just before he's re-captured and sent to a prison camp. To keep up the charade and throw the Gestapo off his scent he begins to exchange letters with the man's wife back in England, who is unaware of the switch.

The dramatic interest is intensified as we learn that the dead man was callous to his wife before the war and they had fallen out. Gradually, the letters rekindle her love for him, while the captain finds himself falling in love with her as well.

This, along with several other intertwined sub-plots of prisoners and their loved ones back in Britain (seen in short flashbacks), forms the core of the story.

Plotwise, there are no rocket flares. But the way the story unfolds is compelling and there's no finer acting in any film than Michael Redgrave's performance as Captain Hasek. Many of the supporting cast are also superb, though few are well known even to film buffs. This buff ranks it in the top 25 films ever made, possibly, but unquestionably in the top 100.

There are many films which show courage in action. But to show the greater kind of courage required merely to endure the unendurable, day after day with no end in sight, and to never lose one's thirst for life and freedom, is a rare cinematic achievement. The Captive Heart does that with supreme skill.

Woody Allen, The Anti's Darling

Woody Allen released a new film a few months ago, Vicky Christine Barcelona. I haven't seen it and don't intend to; every Woody Allen film I have seen — about a half dozen or so, more in parts — has been pointless, plotless, and not particularly funny or interesting. But I have to give the filmmaker credit where it's due. He is one of the cleverest guys around.

He's made a healthy living doing what he wants for more than 40 years now by producing pointless, plotless, and not particularly funny or interesting films. They usually star very dishy damsels, too. Not bad for a guy who's not insightful, handsome, or talented. (Except as a musician. He does play a mean clarinet.)

This latest incarnation, an unadmitted rip-off of Henry James' Wings of the Dove, shows every sign of being more of the same. That is no doubt why he's the darling of the Anti crowd. Since anything with a hint of moral or mental health (not to mention a movie with an actual story) is anathema to them, Allen is their perfect artist.

That's the only possible explanation for why he continues to get the funds to make films. They've never made much money. (I used to work for Orion Pictures, his long-time distributor before they folded; I know first hand.) They make even less now. Yet, he continues every couple of years to make another. He's 72. If the gravy train stopped now he could still call his career a big success.

He's not likely to have to worry. Producers have demonstrated for decades now that they're willing to finance a film that a moment's thought would make obvious will certainly bomb. They will, provided it projects their putrid view of life, of course. Allen's dove-tails nicely with their own.

As an LA Times reporter put it: "This is, after all, Woody Allen's universe, no matter what continent it takes place on, or how many laughs are to be had. Nobody gets what he or she wants."

So, he continues to get the cash, year in year out. And why not? His philosophy is perfect for the Anti(s). "There is no plan or agenda to it or anything. It's luck. It's random. ... My way of coping with the horrors of existence is to put my nose to the grindstone and work and not look up."

Well, everyone has his method, I suppose. The backers' one consists of financing Allen's work. A rich Anti has to do something with all that dough, after all. Where better to park it for a nice tax loss than in "biting nihilistic satire-dramas that examine whether evil ever gets punished."

Apparently evil doesn't, not often enough since the world continues to be inflicted with Woody Allen films.

The Two Titanics, Hollywood Then and Now

Films ain't what they used to be.

I recently watched the 1953 tragic film Titanic with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck. It was superior to the 1997 version in one important respect. It briefly soared, rather than merely sank.

I enjoyed the more recent blockbuster. It was made at a time when I could still stand to listen to Leo DiCaprio, before he advertised his Green-ness 24/7. Also, Kate Winslet was fresh off the stunning Sense and Sensibility and a fine Hamlet, two standouts from a career that favors the kind of murk passing for a serious film these days. It also had an engaging, albeit lightweight, love story. Of course, the special effects were spectacular, ground-breaking.

Technically, the 1953 version couldn't come close (although, for the time, it wasn't bad). The acting, it'll come as no surprise, was head and shoulders above the newer model, though. No one ever did arrogance better than Mr. Webb or Miss Stanwyck.

But what's most notable is how different are the approaches of the two screenplays during the sinking. The earlier film focuses on the heroism, the contemporary one, the horror. That difference encapsulates the contrast between the two eras, and points up starkly everything wrong with our current one.

In the 1953 Titanic, for example, the cold-hearted Webb melts as the ice nears and the young lover (Robert Wagner) survives while the male passengers stand calmly on deck singing a hymn. In the newer film, DiCaprio's character dies needlessly as thousands of panicked passengers jump to their icy doom like fleeing rats.

Saving Private Ryan is another good example. Even though it had some good aspects, the focus of the opening is on the horror, the bloodshed, the chaos, and the overwhelming fear of the D-Day landings. By contrast, very sharp contrast, the ending of D-Day the Sixth of June (1956, with Robert Taylor and Joan Collins) focused on the extraordinary achievement (tacked on to what is otherwise a pleasant period love story).

Perhaps the best example is The End of the Affair, 1955 and 1999. Both are faithful adaptations of Graeham Greene's dreary novel of the same title. Both star superbly talented actors. Both are well directed. Yet, the earlier one manages, even while dolling out plenty of the frustration inherent in the story, to give you something to cheer. The newer one is pure depression from start to finish.

In each case, the filmmakers convey their contrasting views of life. It's much more than just the difference between a happy ending or not. None of these three have happy endings (nor beginnings, nor middles). It's the difference between projecting a world in which happiness is possible through pluck, versus a temporary escape from pain as a lucky accident. In the case of the older films, we see a world where, even in tragic circumstances, people strive for dignity and important values. In the newer versions, the struggle is for sheer animal survival in a world set against us, or where we have little choice or reason to hope.

Hollywood today is different night and day, or more accurately sunshine and muck; that's been pointed out many times before. There's no such thing as Tinsletown anymore -- even in rusted form. The problem is the philosophy, or lack of it, of the anti-human producers and filmmakers who wield authority there now. Daryl Zanuck (20th Century Fox), Harry Cohn (Columbia), and Jack Warner (Warner Brothers) all had a taste for darker films, many of them outstanding. But nothing they ever green lighted comes close to the senseless grim or silly dreck given a hundred million bucks without thinking about the odds of a return nowadays.

That's more than a sad ending. It's tragic.