The Darlings and the Duds: GipsieGirl's Cinema Screed

The awesome, the awkward, the epic, and the appalling: all seared into my memory for good or for bad. And yes, screed is a real word. Look it up.

12 Angry Men (1957): A cast of great dramatic actors, including Henry Fonda and a young Jack Klugman, portray a jury's struggle over the fate of a young teenager accused of murdering his father. Evocative of a stage play, virtually the entire film takes place in the juror's room, resulting in an intense film that focuses on human nature, ulterior motives, prejudice, and dangerous preconceptions. 
Verdict: Darling

The Big Country (1958): Sweeping landscapes and intriguing characters surround the story of an seasoned Baltimore sea captain (Gregory Peck) whose unflappable poise and peaceful ideals brush his new neighbors in the American West a little bit the wrong way. By the way, I practically grew up on The Rifleman reruns, so seeing the gorgeous Chuck Connors as the villain really shook me.
Verdict: Darling

Citizen Kane (1941). Often called the greatest film ever made, I have tried twice - count that, twice - to watch it, and both times couldn't make it to the end. Aside from its truly breakthrough cinematography, it's just boring. (Please don't hurt me.)
Verdict: Dud


Clear and Present Danger (1994): With suspense, action, political intrigue, and espionage, the film centers on one of my favorite themes: appearance versus reality. It features my favorite actor, Harrison Ford, plus it is worth watching just to see Darth Vader and Han Solo together again. My only complaint is the film's claim that Panamanian food is the same as Mexican food. If I ever said that, my abuelita would hit me over the head with a plátano.
Verdict: Darling

The Empire Strikes Back (1980): Must I really explain why this is awesome? Fine. Imaginative, epic, never a dull moment, and visually striking, especially considering the limitations in special effects at the time. It is everything that the new prequels aren't. Oh yeah, I went there.
Verdict: Darling

First Wives Club (1996): A few funny moments crushed by crassness and tedium. Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler are just too talented for this film's unimaginative writing and shallow intelligence. It made me want to run screaming back to my collection of great classic films.
Verdict: Dud

The Fugitive (1993): Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones give great performances (surprise, surprise) in a well-written story full of suspense and adventure. Despite the modern setting, I also recommend the film for its surprising similarities to what 19th-century heroes went through on the Underground Railroad.

Compared to fugitive slaves, Richard had it super super easy, but the similarities are still there. The hounds, the freezing water, the danger of looking up just at the sound of your name, the dumb luck, the improvisations and disguises, and the man who's a fugitive for no fault of his own.
Verdict: Darling


Gaslight (1944). A sweet young woman marries the suave Frenchman who has swept her off her feet. What could possibly go wrong? Don't gaslights always flicker inexplicably in old houses? It also features a seventeen-year-old Angela Lansbury (wearing padding to make her slight frame more wench-ish) in a role as distinctly snarky maid. Oh yeah, and the suave leading man, Charles Boyer, was the inspiration for Looney Tune's Pepe Le Pew.
Verdict: Darling

The Haunted Mansion (2003): The opening montage of this film, portraying tragic events at a gilded, lavish ball, is the best part of the film. It set me up to expect a film more along the lines of Phantom of the Opera, and then gave me Scooby Doo. Well, Scooby Doo without the dog... or the laughs... or anything interesting at all, for that matter. Excuse me while I block this all out of my memory. My childhood memories of the Haunted Mansion ride deserve better.
Verdict: Dud.

The High and the Mighty (1954). This film started the whole craze for disaster films,* but I love its witty, gripping story. It should be the feature film on every long flight, I think that would be just lovely.
Verdict: Darling

A Holiday Affair (1949). One of my favorite Christmas movies - a sweet romantic comedy involving an unpredictable freewheeler who meets a young war widow and her little boy. Woven into the lighthearted comedy is a dark reminder of the recent World War II through the widow's inability to move on from her husband's death.
Verdict: Darling

Hugo (2011): This work of art by Martin Scorsese has gorgeous visuals, excellent acting, and a beautiful soundtrack, plus a wonderful homage to silent film and the dangers of losing these treasures without preservation. A great watch for steampunk fans, classic film buffs, and art lovers everywhere.
Verdict: Darling

The Hunt for Red October (1990): A gripping Cold War thriller. The best part: Sean Connery keeps his sexy Scottish accent even as a Russian sea captain. The sad part: Harrison Ford had not yet taken on the role of Jack Ryan.
Verdict: Darling

It Happened One Night (1934). The story of a worldly reporter pursuing a runaway heiress for the story that could regain his job provides the backdrop for a timeless comedy. It also serves as an interesting time capsule, with vintage cars, Colbert's boyish bob, and striking black and white cinematography showing an era long gone. Yet Clark Gable, my dear, is always in style.
Verdict: Darling

It's a Wonderful Life (1946). A film I'm supposed to like. Great cast, and I usually love Frank Capra films, but in this case... ugh. It's cheesy and overly saccharine, and since I was force-fed it every Christmas of my childhood I know every stinkin' line by heart.
Verdict: Dud

The Kid (1921): Charlie Chaplin's tale of a Little Vagabond and the tiny orphan he adopts is full of fun, slapstick, surprises, and tragedy. Proof that a silent film can be just as entertaining and poignant as any of those newfangled talkies.
Verdict: Darling

Ladyhawke (1985): A medieval tale filmed on gorgeous locations in Italy, and featuring a magnificent Friesian war horse. Just don't judge the anachronistic '80s music, it's a sign of the times.
Verdict: Darling

Left Behind (2000): Having read the book of Revelations, I found this film to have a total lack of imagination. The apocalyptic, otherworldly descriptions in the book of Revelations have so much potential for epic action and fantastic special effects, but all I remember was one lousy car explosion. If you can't do it well, just don't do it at all.
Verdict: Dud

Macau (1952): Witty dialogue and effortless comedy make this light-hearted film noir a keeper. The film stars Robert Mitchum as a rudderless expat and Jane Russell as a tough nightclub singer, as well as one of my favorite supporting actresses, Gloria Graham.
Verdict: Darling

Maverick (1994): A fun, light-hearted Western with refreshing humor, a well-paced story, great costumes, and settings that really make me miss what I've seen of the West. I love how it features a stunt inspired by Yakima Canutt's breakthrough stunt on Stagecoach (1939), which also inspired a famous stunt in Raiders. And going back to settings, the film includes a gorgeous riverboat. Sigh. I want one.
Verdict: Darling

The Monster that Challenged the World (1957). Bad, just bad. The good guy fights off the giant mutated mollusk in a chemistry lab by throwing little test tubes and beakers, all while an emergency axe hangs unused on the wall. It's that sorta intelligent film making the whole way through.
Verdict: Dud

On the Waterfront  (1954). A young and very handsome Marlon Brando plays a longshoreman entwined in a corrupt and brutal union led by tough guy Lee J. Cobb. Brando won an Oscar for his performance, as did Eva Marie Saint as the sister of one of the men murdered by the union. Academy-award winning actor Karl Malden portrays the gritty Father Berry. My all-time favorite movie ever.
Verdict: Darling

North by Northwest (1959): Cary Grant (be still my heart) and Eva Marie Saint exude smart fashion sense in this thriller featuring mistaken identity, espionage, a rather spontaneous road trip, and a scene that will send you into a panic anytime you seen a small, low-flying plane. Or a corn field. Or a dirt road. Thanks a lot, Hitchcock. By the way, James Mason, with his beautifully cultured, sardonic voice, plays a delightful villain.
Verdict: Darling




Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Miles to Earth): Turns out we're the product of genetic mutations of super apes masterminded by the Martians... who resemble gigantic grasshoppers... who control our brainwaves. Help, help, is there a writer in the house?
Verdict: Dud



Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) A tip of the hat to 1940s and 50s adventure films, Raiders is one of my all time favorites, with its exotic locales, classic bad guys, archaeological themes, and John Williams score. No matter how dangerous that Cairo Street market is, it's still one of my favorite film settings with the exotic clothing,
Though I admit I still hide behind my hands when the bad guys open the Ark. Eww. They more than had it coming but, eww.
Verdict: Darling

The Return of the Pink Panther (1975). An exotic dish heavily seasoned with deliberate camp, Christopher Plummer's charm, and Peter Sellers' brilliant insanity.
Verdict: Darling

Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). Acclaimed British actor Charles Laughton portrays a veddy, veddy propah butler who, due to his employer's losing hand in a poker game, ends up working for some quite improper roughs in the American West. I loved stumbling across this forgotten comedy, which is both funny and fresh for all its years.
Verdict: Darling

The Runaway (1962): This beautiful film is all but forgotten as well. In this tale of a young urchin who runs away with his only friend at the time, a stray mutt, Cesar Romero's endearing performance as the priest he encounters makes this a real gem. Rather than detracting, the small (yet strong) cast and small budget give this film a sweet simplicity that compliments the heartfelt storytelling.
Verdict: Darling

Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956): This unforgettably powerful film stars Paul Newman as lovable tough guy and rising boxing champ Rocky Graziano. The beautiful Pier Angeli stars as his shy, resilient sweetheart. Hmm... this sounds familiar... Wait, you all thought Rocky was original? Aw, how cute. 
Note: Look for Steve McQueen in his first film role one of Rocky's shadier friends.
Verdict: Darling

Star Wars (1977): Perhaps one of the reasons I love the film is because it's basically western meets sci-fi. Small-town boy meets eccentric old hermit, bad guy in black acts like he owns the territory, bad guy's goons burn a remote farm but pin it on the local indigenous tribe, boy and hermit meet hot-headed gunslinger, who meets snobby city girl...
Verdict: Darling

The Third Man (1949): Unlike Citizen Kane, here is an Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten film I can get my teeth into! Strikingly filmed on location in the post World War II ruins of Vienna, the film reeks of mystery, suspense, and quite a few twists and turns.
Verdict: Darling

The Ten Commandments (1956). When I was a child, I wanted to look just like the glamorous Nefirtiri - the sultry eyeshadow, the ethereal gowns - so sublime, though perhaps not the best role model out there. Yet, like the Ancient Egyptians used to say, c'est la vie. While not exactly historically or archaeologically accurate, the film is a tribute to Cecil B. De Mille's incredible talent for the epic film. And neither Charlton Heston nor Yul Brenner are hard on the eyes in this film.
Verdict: Darling

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)" Produced as a collaboration between American and Japanese filmmakers, this critically acclaimed film depicts the events surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The portrayals of the men on both sides are powerful, human, and riveting.
Verdict: Darling (if you can call a war movie that)

*As a rule, I do not like disaster films at all, since they tend to make a spectacle of human suffering. However, the High and the Mighty is more a story of humanity, courage, cowardice, and, well, all-around gumption.

Favorite First Line.... EVER

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."

 

Cannery Row (1945)
John Steinbeck

Featured Quote: The House Haunted

"The room itself might have been full of secrets. They seemed to be piling themselves up, as evening fell, like the layers and layers of velvet shadow dropping from the low ceiling, the rows of books, the smoke-blurred sculpture of the hearth." 

 "Afterward" (1909)

Edith Wharton

When Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Behaved Badly

The thing about the oral history in my family is that I never know where fact ends and all tales begin. Most of us have always been adept at crafting good stories, with a few embroideries thrown in for emphasis (often without realizing we're doing it). However, you can see oral history as a problem, or if you're like me, you can see it as a psychedelic splash in the already colorful painting that I call family.

Oral history is about all we have when it comes to our family's past. Descended from farmers, ranchers, soldiers, gangster's molls, sheriffs, and moonshiners, the clan survived hardships like the Great Depression by picking up roots, packing light, and going wherever the work took us, whether Iowa, Nebraska, California, Maryland, etc. Coats of arms, family documents, and ancestral tomes have never exactly been a part of the family vault. Nor has a family vault. Now, a varnished wooden Nebraska Cornhuskers clock, a pair of dusty black cowboy boots belonging to my great-grandfather... those are our kinds of heirlooms.

Anyhoo, oral history says we are descended from Robert Frazer, one of the members of the Corps of Discovery a.k.a the Lewis & Clark Expedition. My dad knows way more about this than I do, but I think he was only supposed to accompany the expedition until it was time for the keel boats to turn back. However, Grampa Bob soon won a permanent place with the Corps. Also, he drew a map of the expedition's trek, which can be viewed online through the Library of Congress's website. Our oral history had erroneously told me that both his map and a journal were lost - so seeing it in the LOC's online collections was exciting, once I'd recovered from my heart attack.

Robert Frazer (d. 1837). “A Map of the discoveries of Capt. Lewis & Clark from the Rocky Mountain and the River Lewis to the Cap of Disappointment Or the Columbia River At the North Pacific Ocean By observation of Robert Frazer” 1807. Manuscript map. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, G4126.S12 1807 .F5, 2004626119

What? No it's not Middle Earth, it's America! Yeah, well, historians think it was a bit fanciful too. 

Anyway, our oral history was right in that Frazer's journal really was lost, which he had even intended to publish. As the Library of Congress summarizes in its online exhibit "Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America,"

Private Robert Frazer was the first member of the Lewis and Clark party to announce publication of an expedition journal. His account never reached print, and the original journal was lost. This manuscript map is the only remnant of that initial publishing attempt. Since Frazer had little or no knowledge of surveying or natural sciences, the map is a strange piece of cartography. He traces the expedition's route, but continues to depict older views of the Rocky Mountains and western rivers. Sometimes ignored, the Frazer map was one of the first to reveal the course of the journey and some of its geographic findings.

What did this lost journal contain? There have always been rumors among my family members that the journal was not lost, but in fact silenced for some unknown reason. 

And it seems Frazer didn't always have the best relationship with the Corps' leaders.

Here is an interesting article from "We Proceeded On," a publication by the Lewis & Clark Heritage Trail Foundation that I found while browsing History Quest: "Frazer's Mutiny" by Arlen J. Large. Wait, Frazer's what? If you scroll down to page 24 of the PDF, you'll see that on January 10, 1806, Clark wrote in his diary that "Frasure behaved very badly, and mutonous" during a trip to view a stranded whale on the Columbia River near Fort Clatsop. However, rather than receiving punishment, Grampa Bob was simply sent back to find a knife he had lost during the trip, and then told to return to the party. (Hmmm... he had a tendency to lose things and to create fanciful drawings - I'm thinking we really are related). If history ever shows that he "behaved very badly" due to an emotional breakdown at the sight of the whale dying on the beach, then I'll know for an absolute fact we're related. 

Large's article goes on to quote Lewis & Clark historian Gary Moulton, editor of the University of Nebraska Press's printing of their thirteen-volume set of The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, as saying:

Evidently Clark, perhaps after consultation with Lewis, decided that Frazer's behavior during the difficult and trying trip to and from the whale site was not serious enough to warrant disciplinary action.

A far different response, as Large points out, from the leaders' reaction to John Newman, who was court martialed, sentenced to seventy-five lashes (ouch), and booted from the expedition for "repeated expressions of a highly criminal and mutinous nature."

Apparently, at the end of the day, the hot-headed Robert Frazer was still a valuable member of the Corps. We may never know what his lost journal contained, but the writer in me enjoys imagining some of the possibilities. And, since most of my theories involve Doctor Who showing up to aid in their adventures, I am sure any respected historical journal would jump at publishing them.