Review: The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Written and directed by Preston Sturges, it's even more subversive of the genre than Waitress and much funnier.

Claudette Colbert plays Gerry Jeffers, a frustrated wife with a financial failure of a husband (Joel McCrea) who's on the brink of bankruptcy. Ever practical, she decides to  dump Joel's ass, despite still being  in love with him, and run away to seek a richer partner.

Informed by a cab driver that Palm Beach is the best place to get a divorce, she sets off immediately by train, only to get entangled with a drunken hunting club. Mayhem and gunfire ensues, and in the aftermath she steps on the face of one of the world's richest men, John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee), who is promptly enraptured by the foot of her feminine wiles. First impressions count, and kink has a long history.

Petulant Tom, however, is in hot pursuit, but when he catches up, Gerry passes him off as her brother, to his great consternation. To top it off, Gerry presents him to John's sex hungry sister, Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor).

Despite being a stiff stick in the mud, Tom still has Claudette's heart, and she must now decide between true love and financial security with a charming and affable millionaire.

The ending has a fun last minute twist that resolves everything in a suitably ridiculous but satisfying manner.

A surprisingly fresh film for being over seventy, Sturges weaves together a light hearted tale whose only real villain is poverty. It's a refreshing change from the romantic comedies of today, when there's always one male suitor who's revealed as a despicable slime.

The only character presented as a complete joke here is poor Toto (Sig Arno), a bumbling and inept lothario presumably there to represent French surrender-monkeys.

A real classic. Five silkscreens out of five, taking into account its great age.
 

Review: Waitress (2007)

An unconventional romantic comedy, Waitress follows Jenna (Keri Russell), of the title, in her attempts to find happiness, or at least a level of misery she can live with. After a drunken night of conjugal relations with her control freak husband Earl (Jeremy Sisto), she finds herself, ba-da-boom ba-da-bing, unintentionally pregnant and more trapped than ever.

Fortunately she has one stand out ability: she can make magically delicious pies, and stands a good chance of winning a pie contest that will transport her into a new life. Her culinary wizardry also attracts the attention of her earnest and affable doctor (Nathan Fillion).

In film, unlike life, everything happens for a reason. The trick is to make it look natural. Unfortunately, with Waitress you can frequently see the gears of the narrative turning.

It aspires towards the quirkiness of Like Water for Chocolate, but the direction lacks the necessary light touch. The staging is often awkward, musical cues far too heavy handed, and dialogue on the nose.

Russell's performance is uncharacteristically stiff and passionless. Worse, she lacks chemistry with Nathan Fillion. Yet events occur because they must: Russell and Nathan get involved because a romance is necessary, not because they're believably attracted to each other. For a romantic comedy, that's a critical weakness.

The problems Jenna faces, being trapped in a life she doesn't want and forced to make soul crushing compromises, are compelling. In fact, compromise and suffering is something all the characters share in common. There is a bleakness that underlies the film, and characters thrash about emotionally, desperately trying to find some way to quiet their inner torment. Crushed and frustrated dreams abound, and even tip over into areas not often openly explored in cinema.

The ending, however, is a day dream of a cop out, with Andy Griffith fulfilling the role of a Deus Ex Machina.

Hamstrung by a low budget, rough script, and tight filming schedule, the film never quite gels together, which is a pity. It's like a half-formed piano concerto being played by an overly enthusiastic monkey. It needed more time to be smoothed out, refined, then played with a more delicate touch. Despite all that, I still enjoyed the film, particularly Andy Griffith's speech while dancing (shuffling?). It did make me ponder.

Writer/director Adrienne Shelly, in her last performance before her brutal murder, is quite good as Dawn, Jenna's mousy co-worker. I think she understood the material better than Russell and wish Shelly'd taken on the lead role herself. It would have done the film good.

Two and a half MarilyMaos out of five.

Watercolours of Debra Tate-Sears

 

Stunning work, mostly focused on architecture. From South Eastern Ontario, she's entirely self taught. Her somber paintings have a wonderful solidity to them. Textures so real you'd only see them in an idealized dream. Remind me of some sumptuously illustrated European children's books from when I was little. Lovely stuff.

Toronto Outdoor Art Show

Took a quick look on the weekend. It's Canada's largest annual juried outdoor art exhibition, but smaller than I've ever seen it before. The front lawn section just north of Queen was mostly empty, even while artists were placed in remote, narrow areas along the sides of city hall. There's construction going on so that may have complicated the layout.

There was a wonderful array of talent on view, in the usual, bewildering variety of mediums. I wanted to call out some of the work I that caught my eye.

First up is the wonderful George A. Walker, who does stark, graphic wood engravings. His body of work is enormous, and ranges from fine art to illustration and graphic novels. 

He's done a good deal of work with The Porcupine's Quill, including the marvelous Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson, about one of Canada's celebrated Group of Seven artists (well, posthumously) who drowned in a canoeing accident in 1917.

He printed me up a business card on the spot with a little hand press.

Classy!

Max Zing on the Drunk Duck

Have a series up at Drunk Duck called Max Zing, and they did a little callout for it yesterday here.

It's about a spoiled kid who inherits a planet and becomes an evil pacifist conqueror. Of sorts.

Well, I thought it was funny at any rate.

Takes the characters from my graphic novel, Warlord of Io, and puts them in a full colour gag strip format.

Isle of the Dead Number Three

This is my favourite of the five versions painted by Arnold Bocklin.

Establishes a fabulous, somber mood. Very representative of the Symbolists.

Took the picture in Alte museum.