Every once in a while, someone asks: "Are the movies dead?" Which brings to mind the old Groucho line: "Either the movies are dead or my watch has stopped." That, of course, isn't exactly the line, but we're not exactly an authority on anything, so we're all square.
Take a jog with us (the Heart Association recommends light aerobic exercise, which is why we're not merely strolling) over the last 100 years or so to examine a representative sampler of films -- representative in the sense that they don't seem to be on anybody else's list, and so, at least have that in common -- with each other. If, when reading the following list, you find yourself grumbling that "this or that film should have been on the list," we say: "We haven't seen This or That Film. "Is it any good?" We also say: "Go make your own list if you don't like ours. This is our list. Nobody's forcing you to read it. Go watch a cellphone video or something, and leave us alone."
Here is our list.
Le Voyage Dans la Lune Cockamamie (A Trip to the Wild and Nutty Moon) (1904) (Director: Georgie Porgie Mélièsorgie) is the most famous work of this pioneer and visionary. In the infancy of commercial silent cinema, its signature image of a croissant-shaped rocket carrying a payload of frolicking peasant women in a wicker basket both scandalized and thrilled audiences of the day. While most marveled at such special effects as slow motion, dissolves, and superimpositions, some skeptics complained that the verisimilitude of the presentation was marred by the improbability of women ever participating in space flight. Curiously, no one seemed to notice the seemingly more obvious incongruity of people wearing fin de siecle costume prancing to and fro effortlessly in an oxygen-free atmosphere, or the fact that a lunar surface, utterly devoid of life, was, nonetheless, already plastered with advertisements for such household products as liver pills, face soap, and bitters by the time the visitors from Earth arrived.
Cesarean Birth of a Nation (1916) (Director: D.U.I. Griffiths) has sparked somnolence since the date of first release, and perhaps earlier. The film tells the story of two actuaries, one African-American, and the other, not, drafted by their respective governments to calculate statistics about boll weevil populations in food supplies during the waning days of the Civil War. Because the prognostications of the African-American Union actuary (Cederic) were more scientifically rigorous than those of the white (albeit with a healthy South Carolina tan) Confederate actuary (Virgil), the North was able to avoid decimation of its wheat flour stores, giving it the fighting edge it needed for victory. Hailed by critics as a realistic portrayal of actuaries and not much else, the producers' hoped-for audience uproar over the treatment of race never materialized, perhaps due to the over-reliance on mind-numbing flow charts and bar graphs. The film tripped and fell into an obscurity from whence it would not emerge until the early 1990s, when a colorized power-point version briefly made the rounds of late night cable television.
The Jazz Singer's Booking Agent (1927) (Whiner Bros.) One of the earliest full-length features with scratchy sound, this "Scratchie" tells its story through the clever use of song, dance, and paid actors speaking lines drafted for them by professional scriptwriters. Its plot is simple: a cantor's son abandons his religious heritage to go into the business side of the entertainment industry, while dabbling in bond trading on the side. Audiences thrilled to the scene where the agent (Al Nosloj) negotiates a ten per cent royalty for himself during the song: "Blue Sky Laws." A huge gamble for a studio teetering on the edge of bankruptcy when it was released, this production decidedly pushed it into receivership, and Nosloj never worked in film again.
The Wize Ard of Oy (1939) (Director: Victor Flanken) In the heyday of the Hollywood studio system, well-endowed adolescent female beauties were box office gold, as, in fact, they are today. It didn't hurt that the star of this movie (Judith Flowers) also happened to be blessed with an angelic singing voice. Thus, audiences could care less about an improbable plot concerning a midwestern farm girl, a smart-alecky crow, a fat, orange house cat, and a man wrapped in aluminum foil journeying together to Oy "The Onyx Suburb" to obtain a supply of deli meats at wholesale prices from the Commissioner of Weights and Measures (the Ard); they just couldn't get enough of the musical numbers, especially: "Somewhere Under the Larder" "If I Only Ate Less Brains (I Wouldn't Have Gout)," and "We're Off to Pilpel with the Wize Ard."
Casablanca Airport Duty-Free Shop (1942) (Director: Michael Curtsey) Made in the months just prior to America's entry into World War II, the film was shot entirely on location at the duty-free shop of the Casablanca International Airport. It depicts several economy class refugees unable to find a direct flight on layover en route to Lisbon. Somehow, the characters make do with a limited supply of decent reading-material, all the while cutting in line in front of Nazi officials trying, haplessly, to buy lip balm and nail clippers, items in short supply thanks to rationing. Its use of light and shadow to accentuate light and shadow is considered masterful, particularly by aficionados of shadow, as well as by those who favor light. Claims that this film was the single deciding factor in the country's decision to go to war have now been supplanted by overwhelming evidence pointing, instead, to the bombing of Pearl Harbor
Trying to Get a Parking Space On the Waterfront (1954) (Director: Elia Shazam) This film opened the public's eyes to a harsh and gritty reality long ignored in polite dinner table conversation -- finding a decent parking space near the docks is well nigh impossible for the politically unconnected mass of decent taxpayers, a club to which no small number belong. Many saw the story, with its collection of unionized parking attendants shaking down middle class drivers, as an allegory for the wave of McCarthyite hysteria about communist influence sweeping the nation at the time, but the director, Shazam, denied that the movie was about anything other than parking. In fact, its working title, "Trying to Find a Parking Space," was lengthened only after the House UnAmerican Activities Committee put its foot down. Whatever his motives, Shazam's work lost him many friends, and he was unable to valet his vehicle at Sardi's for years afterward.
The Dropout (1967) (Director: Mike Dimes) Every so often, a film comes along that speaks to and defines an entire generation; this is not one of them. Its protagonist, &Jerry, having become disenchanted with formal education after an embarrassing episode in a college survey course about surveying, returns to his parents' home directionless, confused, and with no interest other than schtupping the wife of his father's law partner, who seduces him one afternoon while he is taking out the garbage, because she finds the ampersand in his name beguiling. When the woman's husband discovers the affair, &Jerry tries to lose himself in a new interest -- frozen yogurt, but he is twenty years too early; it is the era of T.V. dinners and half the population hasn't even heard of yogurt yet.
The Godstepfather (1972) (Director: Germancis Chevrolet Koppula) Vita Cornonthecobleon, a Sicilian immigrant, who by the 1940s has built a bicycle empire by greasing gears and palms alike, must confront dissension in his ranks when one of his top lieutenants, Lucky Brazen, announces his plan to break with the family business, move to Florida, and open a theme park where tourists can swim with dolphins. Notable for its graphic depiction of nudging, the film shows Cornonthecobleon's underlings annoying Brazen relentlessly by talking to him in baby talk: "Lucky Brazen swims with the dolphins. Lucky Brazen swims with the dolphins." Even decades later, some of the taunting scenes are shocking and difficult to watch.
E.T.A. (Estimated Time of Arrival) (1982) (Director: Stevie Iceberg) Sensitive, young Elliot, lives in a homogeneous subdivision in Southern California. One day, he comes home from school and finds a letter telling him to expect a visit from an extraterrestial alien. Luckily, the letter has a return address, so Elliot writes back asking when, approximately, he should expect the visit. This commences a thrilling correspondence about timetables told ingeniously by the filmmaker in voice overs and stunning closeups of aerogrammes. Due to the paucity of quality roles for girls, critics expressed concerns that the character of Elliot's sister, Gertrude, seemed to be in the movie only to interfere with Elliot's plans through incautious use of a letter opener and prodigious screaming. However, whereas the actor who played Elliot seems to have faded into obscurity, Gertrude's actress has had a mega-career.
Schindler's To-Do List (1993) (Director: Stevie Iceberg) Iceberg strikes again, this time with ne'r do well, Oscar (the "Grouch") Schindler, a German whose sojourn in war-torn Poland becomes consumed with his effort to complete all the items on his to-do list. Tempers flare when Schindler can't find an appropriate bolt for a table leg, but through cunning, ingenuity, and luck, he is able to complete the list, in spite of the chaos swirling around him. In the genre of "list" movies, this is considered to be one of the most detailed.
Human Actor-atar (2009) (Director: "Come Back to the 5&Dime" Jimmy Cameron) Bucking the trend of computer-generated action, Cameron went out on a limb and made a film that had real actors in it. Real people, however, voted with their feet, mostly by going to see other movies, starring computers. Even though movies starring computer graphics appeared to recycle the same deadening plot over and over, filmgoers just couldn't seem to get enough of them, and Cameron's film (which coincidentally, also had a plot that seemed mostly cut and paste from productions spanning the past Century) walked off with one of the lowest grosses ever.
What will the next 100 years of film bring us? We have no clue.
But we know one thing: It's time to eat.
Are the Milk Duds all gone?
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