Sam Cooke's 1964 masterpiece is the most appropriate title I can come up with for my post on "Mad Men"'s second season premiere. The other choice was Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'". Either way, things are changing on "Mad Men, at the Sterling-Cooper ad agency, and most especially for Don Draper. Events are starting to chip away at his world.
I DVR'd Sunday's premier and watched it last night and while I can't say I enjoyed it as much as many of last season's episodes I think, after much thought, that this is the direction the show is going. The entire show portrays a world in the midst of change. I mention the two songs above due to their change theme but they are also appropriate to the show in that they're more or less contemporary to the period the show is set. It's February of 1962. About fifteen months have passed since Kennedy's election and the end of season one. Chubby Checker's "Let's Twist Again" is playing as we are reintroduced to the characters going about their day. The opening recalled the first episode of "The Sopranos" second season - or was it the third season? - when we catch up with the characters with Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year", and it reminded me immediately that Matthew Weiner, "Mad Men"'s creator, is a "Sopranos" alum - he was a writer and producer over there. The change theme is hit on immediately: new technology has invaded the Sterling-Cooper offices in the form of a Xerox machine; Paul Kinsey now sports a beatnik beard; Peggy, in her new position of copywriter, now sits in with the men in meetings instead of waiting on them.
But, as I mentioned, the biggest changes are occurring for Don Draper. Last season's supremely confident Draper first appears this year (spoilers ahead) in a doctor's office, where he's told he has high blood pressure and is prescribed phenobarbital. Later, he is unable to perform sexually with his wife Betty. He sits in a bar and sees a young bohemian reading Frank O'Hara's poetry. Last season the show took shots at the bohemians; when one of them contemptuously asked Draper, "How do you sleep at night?" without missing a beat he answered "On a bed made of money." This season he goes out and buys the O'Hara book. At work he is pressured by Roger Sterling to higher younger copywriters, a move he disagrees with. At home, his sexually frustrated wife Betty is flattered when a younger man shows interest in her at her riding lesson. She runs into an old roommate who she discovers is now a prostitute, and she is intrigued. When her car breaks down, she brazenly flirts with the mechanic when she realizes she doesn't have enough money to pay him to fix her car. Now, we'd been aware of Betty's sexual fantasies in season one; she imagined having sex with a door-to-door salesman, and she actually had sex, or foreplay at least, with a balky washing machine (don't ask, go rent season one's DVDs). But her actions this season show a woman on the brink, a woman longing for sexual attention. Trouble is brewing.
Besides the actual events, the change theme seemed palpable in other ways. The entire episode seemed a little off-key. The scenes set in the Sterling-Cooper ad agency were somewhat muted, the scenes in Don's home were downright dark, and the entire atmosphere seemed a bit claustrophobic. Much of this was probably deliberate; if you're going to portray a man's downfall it's better done in the subdued atmosphere of the other night's show than with the bright colored confidence of last season. Sunday night's episode lacked the smart sheen, the confidence and glamour, of last season. And Don Draper seemed hesitant, shaken. In the show's final sequence we get a hint about why. We see Don reading the O'Hara book and then slipping it into an envelope with a note - "Made me think of you - D". He mails it that night while walking the dog. Now there are two possibilities here: Draper mailed the book to Midge, his Greenwich Village lover from last season, who seems the obvious choice given her bohemian lifestyle; or he sent it to Rachel Menken, the rich Jewish department store owner. My guess is that he sent it to Rachel. She was the one who moved him; the one who broke through his defenses, the one he opened up to. She broke off with him when he wanted her to drop everything and run away with him, and we found out later she'd left on a three-month world tour in order to get away from him. Now, Don is in despair. At least that's my guess. We'll find out soon I'm sure.
The change theme is reflected even in this final sequence. The show that started with "Let's Twist Again" ends with Don reciting one of O'Hara's poems. That's a pretty jarring juxtaposition and I'm sure it was deliberate.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Mad about "Mad Men"
In this morning's Washington Post, Robin Givhan has a highly ambivalent appraisal of Mad Men, who's second season begins tonight at 10:00 on AMC. While nailing some of the most compelling aspects of the show, it is according to her, "racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic" and I agree that it is, if judged by today's standards. The people of the time who held the attitudes presented in "Mad Men" certainly didn't consider themselves so - they simply held the prevailing attitudes of the time. Ms. Givhan understands this, though she still wishes it were not so; she says it "would be good for the soul to see a black woman in the secretarial pool or to see a black actor getting to have one of those three-martini lunches." Two points. First, if you're aim is to improve your soul than I'd suggest you visit your local priest or minister, say a prayer, or open the Bible. You'll get much better results than by watching a television program. Second, if "Mad Men" were to make such accommodations to modern-day opinion than it wouldn't be "Mad Men" anymore but some other show - a normal television show. It would lose part of what makes it so compelling. As I suggested in my Friday morning post about the show, one of its strengths is the way it conveys the prevailing attitudes of the day in context without judgement or comment - it's just the way things were. Ms. Givhan gets this:
Just so. We, in our supposed enlightened age, have the nagging tendency to judge other eras by the standards of our own. We think we're the be-all-and-end-all, that we've arrived at some universal truths that other eras were blind to. Nonsense. Fifty years from now people will look back on our own age and chuckle, or be outraged, that we behaved and believed as we do - perhaps not about race, or sex, but they'll find something. I myself am fairly certain future generations will look back on us as a silly and frivolous people, who allowed their national identity to be diluted, and their standing in the world to be diminished, due to their acceptance of the doctrines of political correctness. But that's a story for another day. The makers of "Mad Men" reject the kind of thinking that says we must judge previous eras through the prism of modern opinion. Ms. Givhan understands this but it still seems to stick in her craw.
Look, I have no problem if "Mad Men" decides to take up the subject of race, to add, as Ms. Givhan suggests, a black secretary or a black man as one of the advertising men. We're dealing with the 1960's here, not the 1860's - it's not like these things were unheard of at the time. The statistics show that blacks made tremendous strides within middle-class America in the 1950's. Even in the pre-civil rights era and without the government's help, many if not most Americans had already come to the conclusion that the treatment of blacks in America was an outrage and must be changed; that blacks were as American as the rest of us (more so than most if judged by the time their ancestors arrived in this country) and deserved an equal place at the table. For "Mad Men" to acknowledge this reality with a black character would be historically accurate and would not go against the grain of the show; after all, they acknowledged the advancement of women in the workplace with the promotion of Peggy, Don Draper's secretary, to junior copywriter in season one's final episode. But, like the promotion of Peggy, the advancement of blacks in this white man's world would need to be done in the context of the show and in the same spirit the rest of the show operates. Otherwise it would fail. If it does becomes satire, or irony, or (even worse) a morality play, I'm done. I've seen it before and I've had enough of it. The day "Mad Men" starts asking forgiveness for its era's perceived sins is the day I stop watching.
As for you, watch it tonight. If season two can live up to the entertainment standards set in season one, you're in for a refreshing treat.
"Mad Men" isn't satire. You don't get the feeling that the show, in its willingness to relegate black characters to elevator operators and lunch cart attendants, is attempting to self-consciously ridicule this historic truth but merely to represent it accurately. When the men call the secretaries "girls" and the women respond, the moments aren't played for irony. Instead it's meant to be a glimpse of life through a time machine.
The show's depiction of this sort of prejudice isn't unique. But the tone is striking. Typically, popular culture depicts racists and sexists as evil characters in need of redemption: red-faced men with hick accents, pinch-faced women with cruel mouths, or sleazy lotharios who exude the hygiene of a petri dish. These men are handsome and charming.
Just so. We, in our supposed enlightened age, have the nagging tendency to judge other eras by the standards of our own. We think we're the be-all-and-end-all, that we've arrived at some universal truths that other eras were blind to. Nonsense. Fifty years from now people will look back on our own age and chuckle, or be outraged, that we behaved and believed as we do - perhaps not about race, or sex, but they'll find something. I myself am fairly certain future generations will look back on us as a silly and frivolous people, who allowed their national identity to be diluted, and their standing in the world to be diminished, due to their acceptance of the doctrines of political correctness. But that's a story for another day. The makers of "Mad Men" reject the kind of thinking that says we must judge previous eras through the prism of modern opinion. Ms. Givhan understands this but it still seems to stick in her craw.
Look, I have no problem if "Mad Men" decides to take up the subject of race, to add, as Ms. Givhan suggests, a black secretary or a black man as one of the advertising men. We're dealing with the 1960's here, not the 1860's - it's not like these things were unheard of at the time. The statistics show that blacks made tremendous strides within middle-class America in the 1950's. Even in the pre-civil rights era and without the government's help, many if not most Americans had already come to the conclusion that the treatment of blacks in America was an outrage and must be changed; that blacks were as American as the rest of us (more so than most if judged by the time their ancestors arrived in this country) and deserved an equal place at the table. For "Mad Men" to acknowledge this reality with a black character would be historically accurate and would not go against the grain of the show; after all, they acknowledged the advancement of women in the workplace with the promotion of Peggy, Don Draper's secretary, to junior copywriter in season one's final episode. But, like the promotion of Peggy, the advancement of blacks in this white man's world would need to be done in the context of the show and in the same spirit the rest of the show operates. Otherwise it would fail. If it does becomes satire, or irony, or (even worse) a morality play, I'm done. I've seen it before and I've had enough of it. The day "Mad Men" starts asking forgiveness for its era's perceived sins is the day I stop watching.
As for you, watch it tonight. If season two can live up to the entertainment standards set in season one, you're in for a refreshing treat.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Notes on the News of the Day
- I've just finished Victor Davis Hanson's excellent column on Obama's speech yesterday, in which he points out that it was not "the world" that saved Berlin during the airlift, nor did "the world" save the Muslims in the Balkans. It was, rather, the United States of America. For the historically and/or morally confused, it's a must read.
- Appalling. That's how Derb describes both presidential candidates this year and it is hard to disagree with him. You know my views on Obama but I've said little about McCain. I tried to address McCain and his campaign last week but I just didn't have the energy, or the interest. Suffice to say that the main point of the aborted post was that McCain, rather than being any sort of 'maverick', perfectly reflects the current Republican party - a tired old man at the head of a tired old party. He has big openings - drilling, nuclear energy, secure borders, judges who follow the law and the constitution rather than make their own laws, lower business and capital gains taxes to get the economy going, foreign policy expertise - but he's only paying lips service to any of these issues. I understand the mainstream media's strategy is to ignore him as they fall humbly at the feet of the Obamassiah but there are ways to get your message across if you want. I think he'd be a disaster as president and the only reason to vote for him would be that he'd be only slightly less disastrous than Saint Barack.
- Regular readers of this blog may think I'm too hard on politicians. Yes, I do subscribe to Mark Twain's famous remark that "there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." On previous occasions in this space I've called them cowards, boobs, and idiots. You may disagree but before you take me to task please open up the Wall Street Journal editorial page this morning and read its top two editorials: Housing Bill Hammers Taxpayers and Democrats Against Drilling. Done? I rest my case.
Obama's Sermon to the Germans
Obama's Berlin speech apparently is not going down as well as he and his campaign expected. Peter Kirsanow mentions this this morning on The Corner:
Scott Johnson over at Powerline alerts us to Rush Limbaugh's comments regarding Obama's criticisms of the United States in front of a foreign audience (something Bill Clinton also makes a habit of; apparently these two megalomaniacs can't resist applause lines no matter who the audience and they know the best way to get it in front of a European crowd is to criticize the United States). Read the whole thing but here are Rush's comments, which I agree with completely:
"Citizen of the world,", criticizing America on foreign soil, and snubbing American soldiers is probably not the message the Obama campaign wanted this trip to convey. But it seems to be what people are focusing on these past few days.
Judging from the local drive time radio shows, we bitter, religious pistol-packers here in flyover country remembered only two things from Obama's Berlin visit: the phrase "citizen of the world" and Obama's failure to visit wounded troops at Landstuhl and Ramstein.
This morning the radio fairly crackled with callers incensed at what they perceive as Obama's snub of American warriors while ingratiating himself with people who refuse to send any combat troops to Afghanistan. This was not conservative radio but your typical morning traffic and weather blowtorch. And it was in the bluest part of the state (although callers come from much of northern Ohio).
Last evening on a different station, people were put off by Obama proclaiming himself to be a citizen of the world when — according to several callers — he regularly gives indications he's not particularly enthused about being a citizen of the United States. The litany was recited: Obama's making a show of not wearing the American flag lapel pin; his wife's claim that America is a "downright mean" country; Obama's association with Bill Ayers, photographed stomping on the American flag; Rev. Wright damning America; Obama's embarrassment that Americans can't speak German and French; his wife's being proud of America for the first time only because of her husband's candidacy; his condescension toward the purportedly bitter folks clinging to religion; Obama's delegation to the U.N. of the right to tell Americans how much we can eat and how far we can drive, etc — all the greatest hits.
Scott Johnson over at Powerline alerts us to Rush Limbaugh's comments regarding Obama's criticisms of the United States in front of a foreign audience (something Bill Clinton also makes a habit of; apparently these two megalomaniacs can't resist applause lines no matter who the audience and they know the best way to get it in front of a European crowd is to criticize the United States). Read the whole thing but here are Rush's comments, which I agree with completely:
So now he has to go apologize for the United States of America. What is it? He's black, he's running for President of the United States, "We haven't perfected ourselves." You know, that's a key phrase, by the way, is one of the things that drives liberalism is the fact that they think people and institutions can be perfected. They think they can be perfect. And when nothing is perfect, then everything's wrong. But this is just beyond the pale. He's talking to Germans and making excuses for the United States of America, which to this day defends and protects Germany? (interruption) Exactly right. This is insulting. It is demeaning. "We have made our share of mistakes. There are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions." This is Iraq. But he's not a candidate, folks. He's just a guy strolling through the forest there who happened to see a microphone and a podium.
He says, "Oh, there's about 100,000 people out there. I think I'll go make a speech." This is change. But ladies and gentlemen, if you are wondering when you hear Obama talk about change, this is it. The change is: America sucks, America's deficient, America's guilty, but America is now willing to pay the price because we have a Messiah who understands the faults, the egregious errors made by the United States and her people. We are racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes. We discriminate against people who worship differently than we do, have skin color different from ours, and we have not always behaved properly in the world. And we torture. And we, of course, are biased against people who want to get into our country illegally. We have a lot to pay for. Not to mention that we are primarily the country responsible for climate change, shrinking the Atlantic coastline, melting the Arctic ice. This is the change. You want change? This is the change.
"Citizen of the world,", criticizing America on foreign soil, and snubbing American soldiers is probably not the message the Obama campaign wanted this trip to convey. But it seems to be what people are focusing on these past few days.
Mad Men
The second season of Mad Men starts on Sunday on AMC at 10:00. I didn't mention it in my year-end best-of 2007 post but I should have - it's one of the best things going on television. AMC played all 13 season one episodes back-to-back last Sunday so I recorded them all and have been re-watching a couple of episodes per evening over the past week. I've got two more to go and I'll be ready for season two.
Mad Men is set in the world of Madison Avenue advertising circa 1960. Season one ends with the election of JFK and the Thanksgiving that followed so I expect season two will pick up from there. While they aren't explicit about it, one of the aims of the makers of Mad Men is to contrast that world with our own PC-drenched, so-called enlightened era. The attitudes then in place - towards women, marriage, divorce, drinking, smoking, psychiatry, and more - are presented here with little editorializing; things are simply portrayed as they were without comment or judgement. When one of the advertising executives calls a secretary "honey" or "sweetheart", or comments on the way she walks, there are no pauses in the action. The camera doesn't stop to show the woman's reaction. We only notice the moment because it contrasts so sharply with our current attitudes. The same is true when Roger Sterling, one of the firms partners, gets into his car to drive home blind drunk. Don Draper, the advertising whiz who is the show's main focus, doesn't try to stop Sterling, or take his keys, or call him a cab; he simply closes his front door. During another episode, one of the other ad men buys a rifle and playfully aims it at people in the office. In virtually every episode, the men sit in meetings, each with a drink and cigarette in hand. Draper keeps cleaned and pressed shirts in the bottom drawer of his desk so he can change into a fresh one before going home to his wife; he doesn't want her to smell the scent of his lover. Inter-office affairs are conducted, sometime in the office behind closed doors. Never does the show stop to announce, "See how bad things were back then? See how much we've progressed?" Nor does it take the other side, claiming things were better in the old days. Mad Men simply portrays the world as it was, a world in which women married young, had babies, raised a family, and had dinner waiting in the evening when their husbands arrived home; if they were ambitious they became secretaries. Men worked, smoked, drank, and had affairs.
And boy did they smoke. The screens becomes almost claustrophobic with cigarette smoke at times. Everyone smoked back in those days, or nearly everyone. My buddy who first told me about the show was from a military background and apparently his parents were non-smokers. He told me he found the amount of cigarette smoking done on the show to be off-putting - it was simply too much. It doesn't bother me because I come from a world in which everyone smoked. I grew up in that world. My mother didn't smoke but she was the only one - I remember my mother's uncle (Uncle Fred, long gone now, and one of my favorite people) once telling me that she was the only person in the entire extended family who didn't smoke. Same on my father's side. We all smoked. So the world of Mad Men does not seem far-fetched or exaggerated to me in that aspect whatsoever. Smoking was cool; it was glamorous. Take the cigarettes out of Mad Men and it loses that glamour.
Mad Men is much more than an anthropology lesson though - I hope I haven't given that impression. The acting is marvelous, the story lines are quirky and surprising, and it has lots of excellent characters. Don Draper is clearly the most interesting; the man with a past he's trying to escape. I think of The Great Gatsby when I think of Draper - the American story of escaping the world you were born into, remaking yourself into what you want to be, limited only by your own ability and imagination. And Draper is a man of immense ability and large imagination. As portrayed by Jon Hamm, he's a riveting presence on the screen, the kind of man other men want to be like, and women want to be with. I'm looking forward to season two of this excellent series with great anticipation.
Mad Men is set in the world of Madison Avenue advertising circa 1960. Season one ends with the election of JFK and the Thanksgiving that followed so I expect season two will pick up from there. While they aren't explicit about it, one of the aims of the makers of Mad Men is to contrast that world with our own PC-drenched, so-called enlightened era. The attitudes then in place - towards women, marriage, divorce, drinking, smoking, psychiatry, and more - are presented here with little editorializing; things are simply portrayed as they were without comment or judgement. When one of the advertising executives calls a secretary "honey" or "sweetheart", or comments on the way she walks, there are no pauses in the action. The camera doesn't stop to show the woman's reaction. We only notice the moment because it contrasts so sharply with our current attitudes. The same is true when Roger Sterling, one of the firms partners, gets into his car to drive home blind drunk. Don Draper, the advertising whiz who is the show's main focus, doesn't try to stop Sterling, or take his keys, or call him a cab; he simply closes his front door. During another episode, one of the other ad men buys a rifle and playfully aims it at people in the office. In virtually every episode, the men sit in meetings, each with a drink and cigarette in hand. Draper keeps cleaned and pressed shirts in the bottom drawer of his desk so he can change into a fresh one before going home to his wife; he doesn't want her to smell the scent of his lover. Inter-office affairs are conducted, sometime in the office behind closed doors. Never does the show stop to announce, "See how bad things were back then? See how much we've progressed?" Nor does it take the other side, claiming things were better in the old days. Mad Men simply portrays the world as it was, a world in which women married young, had babies, raised a family, and had dinner waiting in the evening when their husbands arrived home; if they were ambitious they became secretaries. Men worked, smoked, drank, and had affairs.
And boy did they smoke. The screens becomes almost claustrophobic with cigarette smoke at times. Everyone smoked back in those days, or nearly everyone. My buddy who first told me about the show was from a military background and apparently his parents were non-smokers. He told me he found the amount of cigarette smoking done on the show to be off-putting - it was simply too much. It doesn't bother me because I come from a world in which everyone smoked. I grew up in that world. My mother didn't smoke but she was the only one - I remember my mother's uncle (Uncle Fred, long gone now, and one of my favorite people) once telling me that she was the only person in the entire extended family who didn't smoke. Same on my father's side. We all smoked. So the world of Mad Men does not seem far-fetched or exaggerated to me in that aspect whatsoever. Smoking was cool; it was glamorous. Take the cigarettes out of Mad Men and it loses that glamour.
Mad Men is much more than an anthropology lesson though - I hope I haven't given that impression. The acting is marvelous, the story lines are quirky and surprising, and it has lots of excellent characters. Don Draper is clearly the most interesting; the man with a past he's trying to escape. I think of The Great Gatsby when I think of Draper - the American story of escaping the world you were born into, remaking yourself into what you want to be, limited only by your own ability and imagination. And Draper is a man of immense ability and large imagination. As portrayed by Jon Hamm, he's a riveting presence on the screen, the kind of man other men want to be like, and women want to be with. I'm looking forward to season two of this excellent series with great anticipation.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Dial M for Murder
I was just about to hit the hay last night when I flipped through the channels and stumbled upon Dial M for Murder, which had just started. I've seen lots of Hitchcock but somehow this one had eluded me. I prefer his early stuff - the films he made in England before he came to Hollywood. I find The 39 Steps,The Lady Vanishes, or Foreign Correspondent much more fun than say, Psycho, or Spellbound. Still, he did a number of excellent Hollywood movies; Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, and North by Northwest.
Dial M doesn't measure up to the best of Hitch but it will do. I was intrigued by (spoiler alert!) the plot the Ray Milland character devises to kill his unfaithful wife, Grace Kelly, and even more intrigued by how, after she kills the intruder who is supposed to kill her, he sets her up to make it seem like premeditated murder. And, of course, the Milland character almost get away with it. You know all along he won't, just as you know Grace Kelly won't end up in the gas chamber. What you don't know is what will trip him up in the end. It's fun - not hugely entertaining like the best of Hitchcock, but well worth staying up late for.
The question that kept nagging me the whole way through was this: why would Grace Kelly cheat on Ray Milland with so bland a fellow as Robert Cummings? Milland was suave, debonair, witty, charming. A bit of a cad perhaps, but a lot of woman like cads, just as, as a moviegoer, a lot of us like woman who like cads. Anyhow, Robert Cummings is such a zero that it is hard to believe she'd find something appealing about this guy. We lose respect for her. The movie would have worked much better if Cummings were the cuckolded husband and Milland were the lover. We could understand Grace Kelly making a mistake of marriage to a nonentity, and as a result we could much better understand an affair with the sophisticated Milland. Furthermore, the smallness, the nothingness, of Cummings would have made his getting caught in the end much more satisfying; we would feel he got what was coming to him and the two people who belonged together - the ravishingly beautiful Grace Kelly and the charmer Milland - were now free to do so. Instead, we're almost sorry Milland doesn't get away with it.
Grace Kelly is beautiful here but the script doesn't allow her to show off her full sensuality. She is dressed in a lovely nightgown during the murder scene and immediately afterwards; we're aware of her beauty. But the character she plays and the plot direction don't allow for anything more than this. We don't get the playful flirtations from her as in To Catch a Thief, nor the more overtly sexual longings of an adult woman as in Rear Window. This is another reason why the movie could have been better with the male roles switched. As it is, Grace Kelly is an adulteress but one without guilt or shame. If the male roles had been switched and she were shown enjoying her sensuality during a tryst with Milland, she'd be more of a fallen woman, and more interesting. As it always is in the movies, the bad girls are much more interesting than the good ones. Grace Kelly is too good here.
Dial M doesn't measure up to the best of Hitch but it will do. I was intrigued by (spoiler alert!) the plot the Ray Milland character devises to kill his unfaithful wife, Grace Kelly, and even more intrigued by how, after she kills the intruder who is supposed to kill her, he sets her up to make it seem like premeditated murder. And, of course, the Milland character almost get away with it. You know all along he won't, just as you know Grace Kelly won't end up in the gas chamber. What you don't know is what will trip him up in the end. It's fun - not hugely entertaining like the best of Hitchcock, but well worth staying up late for.
The question that kept nagging me the whole way through was this: why would Grace Kelly cheat on Ray Milland with so bland a fellow as Robert Cummings? Milland was suave, debonair, witty, charming. A bit of a cad perhaps, but a lot of woman like cads, just as, as a moviegoer, a lot of us like woman who like cads. Anyhow, Robert Cummings is such a zero that it is hard to believe she'd find something appealing about this guy. We lose respect for her. The movie would have worked much better if Cummings were the cuckolded husband and Milland were the lover. We could understand Grace Kelly making a mistake of marriage to a nonentity, and as a result we could much better understand an affair with the sophisticated Milland. Furthermore, the smallness, the nothingness, of Cummings would have made his getting caught in the end much more satisfying; we would feel he got what was coming to him and the two people who belonged together - the ravishingly beautiful Grace Kelly and the charmer Milland - were now free to do so. Instead, we're almost sorry Milland doesn't get away with it.
Grace Kelly is beautiful here but the script doesn't allow her to show off her full sensuality. She is dressed in a lovely nightgown during the murder scene and immediately afterwards; we're aware of her beauty. But the character she plays and the plot direction don't allow for anything more than this. We don't get the playful flirtations from her as in To Catch a Thief, nor the more overtly sexual longings of an adult woman as in Rear Window. This is another reason why the movie could have been better with the male roles switched. As it is, Grace Kelly is an adulteress but one without guilt or shame. If the male roles had been switched and she were shown enjoying her sensuality during a tryst with Milland, she'd be more of a fallen woman, and more interesting. As it always is in the movies, the bad girls are much more interesting than the good ones. Grace Kelly is too good here.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
The Open
Wow. Greg Norman? David Duval? And we thought this British Open would be a dud due to the absence of Tiger. This is really the best possible scenario for a Tiger-less Open, even better than if Phil, or Sergio, or Vijay, or Ernie, or any of the games other top guns were vying for the lead. If either Norman or Duval win, this tournament will enter golfing lore immediately and be forever remembered by lovers of the game. For Norman it will be equivalent to Nicklaus at the Masters in 1986. For Duval, well, I can't come up with any scenario off the top of my head to compare it to. It would be simply stunning, and deeply satisfying, if either of them win. Everyone in golf is hoping that on Sunday afternoon one of them will be walking up towards the 18th green with the tournament in hand, surrounded by exultant British fans, emerging from the tumult and chaos, transformed from tragic figure into inspirational hero. The tears that will flow around golf could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. And a few of them might be mine.
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