You're Much Too Modest

It is a complicated business, and we are very insecure, we actors. We all feel--and fear--we are going to be found out at any moment. Someone is going to point and say, 'You are really not very good, are you?'
--Julie Christie

The Siren, as she's often said, likes and admires actors, more perhaps than some of the profession's members like themselves. Like all artists, the good ones usually have an accurate sense of their own work. But over her years of obsessive reading, the Siren has seen cases where something throws off the radar.

Not always, of course. Katharine Hepburn rued the reception of Sylvia Scarlet but was clear-headed enough to tell people, much later, that the film was simply ahead of its time. Peter Ustinov acknowledged the reverence accorded Lola Montes, but added in Dear Me that "there were precious few signs of this destiny during filming." Joan Fontaine had a lousy time making Rebecca but has said more than once that she knows it will always be her most celebrated role. Others, like Barbara Stanwyck, were too coolly professional to run down their own work.

Now and again, though, you'll come across an actor dismissing something that was good to great. The Siren is fascinated by these instances, not from smug hindsight, but because it goes against the common perception of stars as egomaniacs. You can speculate about the reasons, beyond genuine variance in taste, why an actor might be too hard on his own work. Maybe the actor hated making the movie. Maybe the movie was a box-office bomb, and the actor figured the public and the critics at the time were the best judge. Maybe the movie didn't fit with the image the actor wanted to project. Some, like Norma Shearer, never warmed to a great film (in her case, The Women, an unhappy experience for her) and instead venerated a lesser one; Shearer was fond of her performance in Romeo and Juliet, an opinion not widely shared these days.

And sometimes the actor just had, or learned to have, contempt for the entire business.

Here's a small collection, then, of actors being more critical of themselves and their movies than the Siren, and in most cases plenty of others, would say is warranted.

According to the reference books which consider it worthwhile collating such trivia, I have made about seventy films. Glancing down the list, I find I made things like Action in Arabia, Lured, and The Scarlet Coat. I can only assume that I was paid handsomely for them, but I am at a complete loss as to what action there was in Arabia, or who was lured where, and why. As to the scarlet coat, did I wear it, and if not who did?

George Sanders, in Memoirs of a Professional Cad, shrugging off Lured, an excellent thriller from the great Douglas Sirk that features our man George at his rakish best. The other two the Siren hasn't seen. The Scarlet Coat--a drama about Benedict Arnold in which Sanders, by some dreadful misjudgment, was NOT cast as the infamous traitor--was directed by John Sturges, and the Siren is willing to bet it's better than the actor says. Action in Arabia--well, he may have us there, but look at the synopsis and tell me you're not intrigued.

The worst picture, bar none, that I ever made.

Mary Pickford's tribute to Rosita in Sunshine and Shadow. While the collaboration with Ernst Lubitsch seems to have been happy at the time, Pickford later claimed the film gave her no end of trouble. She carried a grudge against Rosita for the rest of her life, not including it in the films she later handed over for preservation. It was extremely well-reviewed, however, and Scott Eyman has good words for it in his Lubitsch bio. The Siren hasn't seen Rosita (hard to track down) but come on, it's Lubitsch. How bad can it be?

She was in the middle of complaining about what a piece of crap the film was, and how lucky Rita Hayworth was because she turned it down…

Ava Gardner encounters Farley Granger in Rome during the filming of The Barefoot Contessa, as told in Granger's Include Me Out. Gardner, bless her, had little good to say about her entire career, as can be seen in her famous interview with Rex Reed. True, not everyone feels the love for The Barefoot Contessa, but the Siren has some heavyweights on her side.

You liked that?

Bette Davis' incredulous response to Whitney Stine's praise for Beyond the Forest. Davis spent years telling everyone the picture stank. The Siren says this King Vidor is a lot better than Duel in the Sun. Molly Haskell called it Davis' "wildest and most uncompromising film;' Kim Morgan admires it, too.

Kitsch.

In Maximilian Schell's documentary, that's Marlene Dietrich's word for most of her Hollywood work, including the glorious execution scene in Josef von Sternberg's Dishonored and, if memory serves, The Blue Angel. Whether or not Dietrich, at that point in her life, truly believed it was all mostly kitsch is an open question, but say it she did, with the full force of the German pronunciation.

Movies bore me, especially my own.

Robert Mitchum discusses his career. In contrast to Dietrich, the Siren believes Mitchum meant this, to the extent that he ever meant anything he said. Although Mitchum always did have good things to say about The Night of the Hunter. Which brings us to...

I played in the movie, which was about the battle between good and evil. Parts of the film were excellent, but it was not fully sustained because Mr. Laughton did not want to 'ruin' Robert Mitchum's image by having him a play a thoroughly wicked man. In the earlier days of films, it would have been considered a triumph to play evil convincingly.

That, along with a terse paragraph about Charles Laughton's admiration for D.W. Griffith, constitutes Lillian Gish's entire tribute to The Night of the Hunter in The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me. She did express similar thoughts to her director during filming, but Laughton biographer Simon Callow maintains that Laughton's allusion to Mitchum's image was basically a joke. Gish's curt assessment, and weird critique of Mitchum's seductively chilling work, may have owed something to dissatisfaction with her billing. The Bad and the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties quotes her agent as saying that when Gish saw the movie poster, with only Mitchum and Shelley Winters advertised, she "blew her top."

Ridiculous. I made the picture because I couldn't afford a suspension--not with a daughter, a husband and a household to support.

Maureen O'Hara's verdict on Sinbad the Sailor, maybe not a pinnacle of art but an absolutely corking movie the Siren has adored since childhood. For the record, O'Hara is delightful in it. O'Hara also disliked Forbidden Street, another one the Siren thought quite fine. This Land Is Mine gets passing reference in two sentences, neither of which mention the director. Then again, good movies that actors neglect in their memoirs could be a whole different post. E.g.…

The four pictures I made at Warner Brothers were not great pictures, but they were very good pictures and excellent entertainment. In their category I do not see their like being as well made today.

The Siren's perennial crush, Basil Rathbone, gives backhanded praise to Tovarich, Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Dawn Patrol. Those four movies, all of them lovable and three of them eternal classics, take up just under two (2) pages of Rathbone's charmingly off-topic autobiography. Rathbone allows as how Errol Flynn was "monstrously lazy and self-indulgent," albeit genial, and Olivia de Havilland was very pretty. On the other hand, you do get quite a bit about Rathbone's dogs.

For its time, Side Street was a good-looking, well-made film that was not able to rise above the banality of its story.

Farley Granger again. The Siren says Granger, a smart man, underrated this excellent Anthony Mann noir. At least Granger gave himself credit for Strangers on a Train and Senso. Another actor with the same last name was much more cutting about his own career.

I've never done a film that I'm proud of.

Stewart Granger's oft-quoted line wasn't strictly true, as he did admit liking a few roles, such as Saraband for Dead Lovers, but he never thought much of his own abilities.

I don't want to be a silly temptress. I cannot see any sense in getting dressed up and doing nothing but tempting men in pictures.

Greta Garbo. Of course. When the Siren first encountered that remark she thought Garbo kind of had a point, until she found out the star was talking about the splendid Flesh and the Devil.

Mediocre.

Montgomery Clift's summation of his work as Matt Garth in Red River. He was no huge fan of the overall film, either, particularly the end, and on that aspect he has some critical company. But when Clift watched it in a cinema, he knew Red River would make him a star. And so, according to biographer Patricia Bosworth, Clift went on one last pre-fame drinking binge, applying himself to the task with such intensity that he wound up in a New Orleans jail.

A crock of shit.

Humphrey Bogart offers his opinion of Billy Wilder's beloved Sabrina to a reporter on set. If he ever revised that evaluation, the Siren has not located where.

I did things like Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait. I don't know what those films were about. The women I played in them were not very empowered.

Julie Christie. We can debate Heaven Can Wait--the Siren enjoys it--but surely most of us hope she's changed her mind about Shampoo.

The picture was a big hit in spite of my wooden performance. I have only kept one review during my life. It is of Dodsworth and appeared in the Detroit Free Press. 'In this picture we were privileged to see the great Samuel Goldwyn's latest discovery--all we can say about this actor? Is that he is tall, dark and not the slightest bit handsome.' It has the place of honor in my lavatory.

Thanks to William Wyler's unvarnished manner and multiple takes, David Niven hated making Dodsworth. But he's very good, better than he was as Edgar Linton in Wuthering Heights, during which shoot William Wyler made Niven equally miserable a few years later.

There was the first of several visits to Italy to act for various aspiring Fellinis and Antonionis, among them Dario Argento, in Profondo Rosso, a.k.a. Deep Red; Deep Red Hatchet Murders; Dripping Deep Red; The Hatchet Murders and (why?) The Sabre Tooth Tiger. It could be said that there is often a connection between the absence of quality in a film and the number of its aliases.

David Hemmings on one of his more famous movies, from his 2004 memoirs. The Siren adds that when Glenn Kenny encountered Hemmings in Toronto just after 9/11, the actor was not so harsh.

Well, that wasn't much.

Joan Bennett, overheard as she left a 1981 tribute screening of The Reckless Moment. Given the present-day reputation of Max Ophuls' film, and Bennett's superlative performance, this is probably the biggest jaw-dropper of the bunch. It was not an opinion Bennett reached only in crotchety old age; Brian Kellow's biography records her saying years before that The Reckless Moment was "nothing exceptional…not like The Woman in the Window or Scarlet Street." Argento fans can also take note of Kellow's observation, about Suspiria's later cult status, that "it is unlikely that Joan knew or cared."

Out of Line

Prompted by Letter From an Unknown Woman, below, the Siren has been thinking about line delivery. In that column the Siren talks about the way Joan Fontaine as Lisa tells her soldier suitor that she has someone else. Fontaine doesn’t play that as a lie, which would be the obvious choice. She plays it as truth, which to Lisa it is.

One thing that defines a talented actor is the ability to take a line in a script, recognize the straightforward way to play it, then pull the words in a direction that the audience doesn’t expect or that reveals something hidden about the action. A perfect line delivery transfixes the Siren, causes her to go back later and say, “What is this actor doing here?” This no minor skill. It’s crushingly hard. Those critics who talk about actors primarily as vessels of the film director’s vision--like Bishop Berkeley who said, as Martin Gardner put it, that we are all just “ ‘sorts of things’ in the mind of God”--have they ever sat for hours watching an actor struggle to put something under a line, even if the director is standing there repeating the words exactly as he wants them? The Siren has not only watched that, she’s been that actor on a couple of long-past occasions. That’s a big part of why she writes about acting the way she does.

The Siren isn’t necessarily talking about simple negation, where the line is angry, so you play it cool, or the line is sweet, so you say it like an insult. The Siren is thinking about layer and nuance that are so full and so natural that once the actor speaks, it becomes hard to conceive of the line being said any other way.

Take Rhett Butler’s kiss-off, probably the most famous line in the history of cinema. The way Clark Gable utters that sentiment isn’t the way Margaret Mitchell describes it at all. In the novel, during the long speech where Rhett tells Scarlett that his feelings for her are dead, he shrugs, sighs, and then: “He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly, ‘My dear, I don’t give a damn.’ ” Mitchell had no “frankly”--that was David O. Selznick’s contribution. Gable still could have played it Mitchell’s way, but he didn’t.

The Siren always thought the novel Gone With the Wind made it clear that Scarlett wasn’t getting Rhett back. You can fight to keep a man who’s angry at you. You will never, ever, ever have a chance in this world with one who has grown indifferent. Now look at Gable, above. That isn’t indifference. There’s only a little anger, mostly from the way his eyes snap. But the touch of venom in Gable’s voice, and the twist of his mouth, and his stance, show a man who’s trying to wound. And when a man cares enough to want his words to hurt, he presents a possibility. A faint, feeble one, but a possibility nonetheless. Whether it was because the director(s) and Selznick didn’t want the door to slam forever, or because Gable himself didn’t want to play love extinguished, the line as Gable says it gives Scarlett a chance.

So, for her own amusement, and she hopes yours, too, the Siren came up with an off-the-cuff list of lines--some famous, some that the Siren just happens to like--that exemplify what she's talking about. This isn’t meant to be definitive in any way; it’s just a start. The Siren feels certain her patient readers have their own entries.

Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce: “You might as well get this straight. Those kids come first in this house. Before either one of us. Maybe that's right and maybe it's wrong. But that's the way it is.” The whole movie turns on this admission. It could be said angrily, defensively, self-righteously or apologetically, especially since this marks the climax of a nasty fight with her husband. Crawford, so often accused of overplaying, opts for blunt resignation, as though Mildred’s reminding Bert Pierce that the rent is due.

Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man: “But--that was just by way of being a good Christian act.” Mary Kate Danaher has, to this point, shown a harridan streak you could measure in square acres. She’s made her attraction to John Wayne’s character obvious--as a matter of fact, he just kissed her, and she gave him a “wallop”--but this line shows the heart that we’ve been hoping would turn up. Sean Thornton tells Mary Kate that he appreciates her cleaning his cottage, and O’Hara responds with gentle sincerity, suddenly becoming the woman he saw all along.

John Wayne in The Searchers: “That’ll be the day.” Of course, he says that at least three times, often enough to pique Buddy Holly’s interest. The Siren particularly likes the line as Wayne’s rejoinder to Jeffrey Hunter’s half-strangled, furious “I hope you die.” There isn’t a crumb of machismo or even warning. It’s the factual declaration of a man who knows a boy hasn’t a prayer of besting him, or even waiting him out. Ethan Edwards has torments and raging neuroses aplenty. Fear of someone else’s anger isn’t one of them.

Cary Grant in His Girl Friday: “What were you thinking with?” This endlessly funny movie, so wise about journalists and what makes a man and a woman right for each other, turns that throwaway remark into a shimmering romantic gem, a love declaration that ranks well up in the Siren’s pantheon. “I thought you didn’t love me,” sobs Rosalind Russell. And Grant replies with a mixture of irritation, tenderness, reproach and a bit of hurt--he's hurt that Hildy thought he was going to be noble. He loves her, and nobility is for chumps, and come on Hildy, what did you think he was, a chump?





James Cagney in White Heat: “Oh, stuffy, huh? I’ll give ya a little air.” Whereupon Cody Jarrett fires about four or five shots into the car trunk that holds the man who was complaining he couldn’t breathe. The Siren includes this because it’s such a template for all the merrily psychopathic gangsters to come: gunfire as self-amusement. Cagney doesn’t telegraph the joke, he just makes it, and he speaks with his mouth still full of chicken, so off-hand that you know the decision was made just that fast.

Joan Bennett in The Reckless Moment: “Everyone has a mother like me. You probably had one, too.” Lucia Harper says that to the blackmailer, Donnelly (James Mason), who could destroy her life. He is already half in love with her, this woman who deploys all her intelligence and courage to protect her feckless daughter and absent husband. Donnelly tells Lucia that her daughter is lucky to have a mother like her, something the audience has been thinking for quite some time, and she doesn't respond with indignation or rebuke--it isn’t ”would you treat your own mother this way?”--or confusion or modesty at the compliment. Instead, it’s almost like she’s blurting it to herself, because she’s annoyed with Donnelly for forcing her to point out the obvious.

Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise: “And let me say this, with love in my heart: Countess, you are a thief. The wallet of the gentleman in 253, 5, 7 and 9 is in your possession. I knew it very well when you took it out of my pocket. In fact, you tickled me. But your embrace was so sweet.” The Siren could have filled her entire list with lines from Lubitsch movies, where a huge part of the humor comes from playing around with expectations. (Like Jack Benny, dead serious in To Be or Not to Be: “Maybe he’s dead already! Oh darling, you’re so comforting.”) An actor could easily take this line toward dry, ironic or mocking. Marshall tells the Countess she’s a thief like he’s the Dueling Cavalier telling Lina Lamont, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday: “Would you do me a favor, Harry?...Drop dead.” No nastiness, no anger, not even triumph--it’s childlike glee at her own daring.

Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate: “Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?” A serenely maternal suggestion. Any line, and the Siren means that literally, any single line of Mrs. Iselin’s could be included here, Lansbury is that good. This one, though, sums up the performance as a supreme example of underplaying. Give the ornate speeches of this megalomaniac even a touch of the cartoon villain, and the whole movie collapses like--OK, the Siren will resist that one.

Orson Welles in The Third Man: “Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Like the fellow said, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly.” A deservedly immortal speech, as fine a summation of a cynical outlook as exists in any medium. And how does Welles speak it? With boundless good cheer. Harry Lime does not consider himself to be delivering bad news. That’s why you learn more about Lime’s utter amorality from this little pep talk than you did only a minute or two earlier, when Harry points out that he could easily throw his old friend off the top of the Ferris wheel.

Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)

(Ahead of Turner Classic Movies's Max Ophuls in Hollywood night, the Siren is posting the first column she did for the now-defunct Nomad Wide Screen. The Siren posted an excerpt last year, but this is the original column in its entirety. It concerns Joan Fontaine's performance in Letter From an Unknown Woman, which airs at 11:15 pm EST. Our old friend Lee Tsiantis popped into comments to mention, if you did not see it, that immediately after the 1 am screening of The Exile, TCM will show the alternate, "European" ending to that film, straight from the vaults of the Library of Congress. Lee is too modest to mention, so the Siren will do it for him, that TCM's first screening of Caught came about because he chose it for their Employee Picks series. All this, plus The Reckless Moment. And exactly one week from tonight is Joan Fontaine night, which includes the just-rescued-from-rights-hell-by-TCM treasure, The Constant Nymph. The Siren suggests a tagline: "TCM takes the sting out of Monday.")



I date my abiding passion for Joan Fontaine to my first viewing of Letter from an Unknown Woman, Max Ophuls' 1948 masterpiece, as pure an example of a woman's picture as exists. Women's pictures--that romantic subset of golden-age melodrama where, as Molly Haskell said, "the swirling river of a woman's emotions is as important as anything on earth"--have always been my favorite genre. One reason for my partiality is that these films stand or fall on the female star as much as on the director. And so it was Fontaine who caught my imagination playing a character, Lisa Berndl, who endures unrequited love from beginning to end. Pain is a key element in women's pictures--the pain of abandonment, of losing men, children, society's respect--but Fontaine recognized that the script and Ophuls' direction would show that for her. She couldn't play pure suffering, a passive course for an actor that risks the audience becoming restive or even contemptuous. Fontaine had to play reckless, willful determination, and she had to play it based on something more than physical or emotional yearning.

I'm always amazed when I read discussions of this famous movie that don't mention a crucial point--when Lisa falls in love with pianist Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan, also giving his best performance), she falls in love with his art. Her first appearance is as a 14-year-old clambering around a moving cart piled with his books, his scores, his instruments, all the paraphenalia of an artist's life. "I wondered who owned such beautiful things," she says. Fontaine was 30 years old when she made the movie, and while she doesn't look that age, she doesn't look 14, either. But Fontaine has a girl's energy down perfectly, the way movement comes in spurts, awkward one moment and graceful the next. Lisa doesn't yet have the ability to conceal fascination, she doesn't even have the desire to do so. She stops and gives her whole focus. When she sneaks into Stefan's rooms, her face shows a fleeting sense of wrongdoing only at the beginning and when she flees at the end; while looking around she is too thrilled to care.



Lisa has been living in this shabby-genteel boarding house with her mother, a woman who seems nice enough but as ordinary as a bar of soap. We get glimpses of the girl's routine: shapeless clothes, drab furniture, dimwitted playmates, a whole day set aside each week to beat the dust out of the rugs. Lisa is one of those creatures who sometimes arise in such an environment, intelligent and sensitive in a way wholly unsuited to the life laid out for her. And so she falls in love, not with a face or a voice, but with the sound of a piano. Lisa listens to Stefan's practicing with an expression as ardent as any she shows later. When Lisa finally sees Stefan and pulls the door open for him--which Fontaine does not tenderly, but with a swift jerk--she isn't enamored for the first time. She is already in love, her feelings bound up with his music. His handsome face is just the fulfillment.

Her mother finds a fat, affable husband, and Lisa leaves Vienna for Linz. Before she goes, she makes one last humiliating attempt to see Stefan, who comes reeling home with another woman and never sees Lisa waiting for him on the landing above. She is far from resigned, however. In Linz, Lisa is courted by an impossibly stiff, good-looking lieutenant. And again art comes into play--she strolls around the town square with the soldier, listening to a proficient but uninspired military band. They play an amiable tune with none of the febrile emotion of "Il Sospiro," the Liszt piece played by Stefan and heard on the soundtrack again and again. Fontaine moves her eyes between the lieutenant and the band, and her boredom becomes almost frantic. She heads off the officer's proposal by telling him she is already engaged, a scene Fontaine plays not as telling a lie, but revealing a secret truth, relief uncoiling her body as she finally blurts it out.

Later, when she works as a model in a dressmaker's shop, Fontaine again flips expectations. She is ill at ease walking in the elegant clothes, she is tremulous when waiting in the snow to catch Stefan's eye, but she is no stammering wreck when he finally begins his seduction. Of course not, why would she be? These are conversations she has already played out in her head. In the train car at the carnival, she isn't tongue-tied. She wants desperately to hear Stefan, but when she does talk the words pour out like the painted scenery unspooling behind them. Like all great Romantics, Lisa hurtles toward the fate she's chosen. Jourdan kisses her, and Ophuls' camera shows the actor's head blotting out that of Fontaine--but it isn't obliteration, it's apotheosis.

Lisa's later life finds her trapped in a more golden version of the boarding house at the beginning, with a kind but severe husband and a house decked not with pictures and musical scores, but with swords and guns. Fontaine's movements are more assured, but she talks to her husband with the polite distance you might use for a father-in-law. Even when she addresses her son, whom she clearly loves, she seems to talk to herself: "Can't you call him father?" Later, after Lisa encounters Stefan and her husband knows she is going to leave, he tells her she has free will and she replies, "I can't help it." Fontaine won't look at him during this exchange, but her face shows deception, not shame. Lisa claims she has no choice, but she has chosen every step, and she knows it.



When David Thomson wrote about this movie in the Guardian in January, he claimed (after faulting Fontaine's acting, which is crazy talk) that the movie is not Lisa's story, but that of Stefan. This is only half-right. Letter is Lisa's story, but the tragedy is Stefan's. When she goes to see him for the last time, Lisa immediately asks him to play, a request that echos a moment years earlier when she knelt and to hear him play on a creaky, ill-tuned piano, and listened with a face more rapt than when he kissed her later. Now, when she finds his piano locked, Fontaine's face already registers the betrayal that's coming. She's lost him, but he has lost his art to hedonism. Lisa pursues her Romantic ideal; he does not.

There are many great women's pictures about unrequited love, such as The Old Maid, or thankless devotion, such as the 1941 Back Street. The key difference between the female characters in those movies and Letter from an Unknown Woman is Fontaine. She helps turn Ophuls' film into a tale of obsessive love not as masochism, but a heretical, even noble pursuit.

TCM Alert: Renoir and Ophuls

Two films on TCM this month demand that you record them or, if you aren't equipped to do that, that you find someone with a DVR who is willing to take bribes.

The Siren's sole viewing of the 1946 Diary of a Chambermaid, directed by Jean Renoir, happened years ago via a VHS tape that was in crappy shape even by the crappy standards of VHS rentals at the time. For the life of her the Siren does not understand why this movie is so elusive these days. When she saw it, the Siren thought it was the best of Renoir's American films and, she hastens to tell you, she likes the others plenty. Anyway, TCM is screening it at 1:30 am EST on the morning of Jan. 18, so the Siren will have an opportunity to see if she still feels the same way.



The second film comes as part of a complete "Max Ophuls in America" night on Jan. 23, and kudos to the good souls at TCM for programming this one. The evening begins at 8 pm EST with The Reckless Moment and continues via Caught and Letter from an Unknown Woman, which the Siren won't ramble on about here at the moment, although she may later. But for the Siren, the real rarity is The Exile (1947) at 1 am EST on the morning of Jan. 24. She missed that one at the BAM retrospective a while back and she plans to pounce now. The Exile is, of the four, the most ridiculously hard to see at the moment and to the Siren's knowledge this will mark its TCM debut.

Also noted: Monday Jan. 30 is Joan Fontaine night--five movies, including Born to Be Bad and The Constant Nymph. We addicts have possibly seen all these but, still--Joan!


(The top still comes from the site Notes on Cinema, which has an interesting screen-cap essay about the use of doors in Diary of a Chambermaid.)

Nomad Widescreen: Letter from an Unknown Woman

For Nomad Widescreen, the Siren fulfills her longstanding threat to write up one of her all-time favorite performances from any actress in any movie: Joan Fontaine in Letter from an Unknown Woman. Nothing but the best for Glenn.

Lisa has been living in this shabby-genteel boarding house with her mother, a woman who seems nice enough but as ordinary as a bar of soap. We get glimpses of the girl’s routine: shapeless clothes, drab furniture, dim-witted playmates, a whole day set aside each week to beat the dust out of the rugs. Lisa is one of those creatures who sometimes arise in such an environment, intelligent and sensitive in a way wholly unsuited to the life laid out for her. And so she falls in love, not with a face or a voice, but with the sound of a piano. Lisa listens to Stefan’s practicing with an expression as ardent as any she shows later. When Lisa finally sees Stefan and pulls the door open for him — which Fontaine does not tenderly, but with a swift jerk — she isn't enamored for the first time. She is already in love, her feelings bound up with his music. His handsome face is just the fulfillment.

*****

Elsewhere, at the New York Times the mighty Dave Kehr comes through with a beautiful piece on Hideko Takamine. The Los Angeles Times chimes in. And DJW at the consistently marvelous Lawyers, Guns and Money also gives the lady her due. Consider the Siren's heart warmed.

Adultery at the Movies; Or, How to Get Rielle Photos Out of Your Head

The Siren is obsessing over a news story again. Briefly distracted by news that Bernie Madoff got the living hell stomped out of him in prison, she found herself confronted by John Edwards. I've been avoiding the Edwards saga because, frankly, I really liked the jerk's health-care proposals. So once it became obvious that I had thrown my support behind a self-regarding horse's ass, I sort of checked out. Tea Parties, Oscars, the bond market, the Finnish dock workers' strike--I would read anything that got me away from John & Elizabeth & Rielle & Andrew.

This week, however, I tore myself away from the fed-funds rate and read that GQ interview with Rielle Hunter, the one where she proves her dedication to the image of women everywhere by stripping to her scanties and plopping down next to Dora the Explorer. I can explain my madness only by comparing it to the impulse that had me watching The Oscar, although in all fairness The Oscar had better photography and Eleanor Parker looks better half-naked. My brain froze, my eyelids drooped, I started to wonder what was for dinner, and still I read on in search of one sentence that would show some form of self-awareness. There are no words for this woman's vacuity, only images--it's the Pyramids, it's the steppes of Russia, it's the pants on a Roxy usher. And I kept muttering to myself, over and over again, "Jesus wept, John, YOUR TASTE."

So, in order to clear her brain of the stuffed-animal clutter that is "Hello America, My Name Is Rielle Hunter," the Siren started to think about Adultery at the Movies, where love is set to Rachmaninoff, "Un Sospiro" or Max Steiner and not the Dave Matthews Band. Here are images from ten movies where people lie and sneak and cheat on their spouses, but by god, they do it with someone worthy and they do it with style.



1. The Earrings of Madame de...


2. Letter From an Unknown Woman


3. Children of Paradise


4. Brief Encounter


5. Now, Voyager


6. The Postman Always Rings Twice


7. A Summer Place


8. That Hamilton Woman


9. Strangers When We Meet


10. Deception

Tis the Season for Re-Viewing

For the longest time the Siren refused to look up anything about the New York Times' Verlyn Klinkenborg because she preferred her imaginings of the man--essentially, Uncle Henry in Understood Betsy. There's Verlyn is in the parlor of a 200-year-old farmhouse in Vermont, having his niece or nephew read Sir Walter Scott by an oil lamp while he mends some tack (whatever tack is).

Well, Verlyn is actually a rather trim fellow and much younger than Uncle Henry, and his farm is apparently in upstate New York. The Siren is happy to report, however, that his taste in reading material isn't too far from Uncle Henry's. Verlyn's a Dickens man, something which always makes the Siren feel comradeship with a writer. And he loves Eliot, and he likes to re-read his favorites:

Part of the fun of re-reading is that you are no longer bothered by the business of finding out what happens. Re-reading “Middlemarch,” for instance, or even “The Great Gatsby,” I’m able to pay attention to what’s really happening in the language itself — a pleasure surely as great as discovering who marries whom, and who dies and who does not.

The real secret of re-reading is simply this: It is impossible. The characters remain the same, and the words never change, but the reader always does. Pip is always there to be revisited, but you, the reader, are a little like the convict who surprises him in the graveyard — always a stranger.

The Siren was struck, when reading these paragraphs months ago, at how you could easily substitute re-watching movies for re-reading books. The Siren wants to see some of the Oscar bait out this month (Up in the Air) and some of it she does not. (The Road--are you bloody well kidding me? I don't care how good it is, I am not doing cannibals for Christmas. And that goes double for Precious.) Well, the Siren would love to be one of those encyclopedic cinephiles who has seen everything, new and old (howdy, Glenn, Peter, Andrew, David and the whole sidebar gang) but she keeps running into the same secret, shameful vice:

She re-watches movies. A lot.

One of life's great pleasures for the Siren comes when, like a dolled-up old broad hitting the jackpot at the slots, she flips over to Turner Classic Movies and hits a well-loved film. Somehow it's better when it's random, and not the process of careful selection at the DVD shelves. There's a particular thrill to turning on a TV and finding a movie that suits your life or week or mood precisely, like Mr. Blandings coming on last week as the Siren unpacked, or White Heat popping up just when the Siren needed a shot of Cagney. And when you tune in to a scene you adore, it's like running into a well-loved friend on the street.

The holiday season is a good time for re-viewing, as you naturally hunger for familiarity and warmth. So, in the spirit both of confession and renewal, the Siren is naming, strictly in the order in which they pop into her head, 10 films she's seen about 10 times, and a favorite scene (or two or three). Some I've mentioned before, some I haven't, but you aren't going to find surprises on here. This isn't a list made to impress. It's made to make the Siren happy.

1. The Maltese Falcon: Chipping away at lead. "Well sir, what do you suggest? We stand here and shed tears and call each other names, or shall we go to Istanbul?"

2. The Thin Man: Myrna: You asleep?
Bill: Yes!
Myrna: Good... I want to talk to you.



(Not only does the Siren cherish this scene, she's played it.)

3. Citizen Kane: "A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl."

4. Rules of the Game: The hunt. Octave and Christine in the greenhouse.

5. Letter from an Unknown Woman: Joan, suddenly come back to life in Jourdan's memory, holding the gate for him once more. The Siren has probably seen this movie only about six times because it kills her but she's listing it anyway.

6. The Band Wagon. All of it, but I particularly love trying to figure out what "Louisiana Hayride" is supposed to be doing in the show within the movie. The most utterly incongruous number in the history of American musicals, if you ask the Siren, and that is some accomplishment.



7. Footlight Parade: My favorite 30s musical. Any scene with Cagney makes me happy.

8. Now, Voyager: Claude Rains. Bonita Granville at her bitchiest. "My mother. My mother! MY MOTHER!"

9. Twentieth Century: "I close the iron door..." (A catchphrase with an old boss of the Siren's.)

10. The Pirate: The "Nina" number. Such perfect Gene Kelly, in so many ways.


Oh, what the heck. It's the season of generosity. Here's 10 more.

11. My Favorite Wife: Cary Grant in the elevator. Irene Dunne laughing over the shoe salesman, with one little hand gesture to indicate the guy's height, and another for Cary.

12. A Night at the Opera: When the orchestra strikes up "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" the Siren falls over, every time.

13. Stagecoach: "Looks like I got the plague, don't it?"

14. Captain Blood: Some of the 1930s' most amazing eye candy, but the Siren's favorite is Basil Rathbone, lounging around that prison. Ah, Basil.


15. Shadow of a Doubt: Joe and Herb, discussing the perfect murder. The most obvious counterpoint in the world ("on the nose," in a popular phrase the Siren can't stand for some reason) but Hitchcock makes it perfect, building on their innocent chatter until you find it as unbearable as Charlie does.

16. Stage Door: Any time Eve Arden or Lucille Ball is on screen. "A pleasant little foursome. I predict a hatchet murder before the night is over."

17. All About Eve: Not mentioned much, because it isn't one of those famous barbs, but Sanders, purring to Barbara Bates: "Tell me, Phoebe, do you want someday to have an award like that of your own?...Then you must ask Miss Harrington how to get one. Miss Harrington knows all about it."

18. Mildred Pierce: "Not too much ice in that drink you're about to make for me."

19. To Be Or Not to Be: The Siren's favorite part of the running gag: "So they call me Concentration Camp Erhardt." "I thought you'd react like that."

20. Singin' in the Rain: Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont is a desert-island performance if ever there was one. "What do they think I am, dumb or something? Why, I make more money than Calvin Coolidge--PUT TOGETHER!"



That's all the Siren will allow herself, but if anyone wants to chime in with a few of their own, that would make her happy too. Consider it a gift.