Dogs Bark

A Legal Smile - - The Wizard Of Oz (1939, USA, Color & B/W, 102 min) - - 28 January 2019

An essential.  In celebration of its 80^th birthday, TCM and Fathom Events have been big screening this across the country Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week (1/28/19). I first saw it in a theater in the 70’s at the beautiful Varsity Theater in downtown Palo Alto. At the time, certain chemical amendments to my system made the Munchkins almost impossibly amusing and the colors and details I’d missed on the TV versions were extraordinary. Forty years later, in a mall cineplex, my sober mind was re-blown on nothing other than these same visual delights. Joe Campbell says that the story is timeless because it’s an archetype, symbolizing personal individuation (the little dog, too); however, the movie works because of the fast-paced loony nature of the dialog, the art direction, and the songs (What puts the ape in apricot?). If you need a grandchild to enjoy it, please . . . take mine! 

Whole Sight - - Roma (2018, Mexico, B/W, 135 min) - - 20 January 2019

Strongly recommended.  Slowly, meticulously we have seen Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón build to this moment. He composed his method making spectacular movies of wide-ranging vision (Gravity), leaving the comfortable shore behind. In Roma he returns home and to his life with the maturity to see it as a landscape. Roma was the 1970's Mexico City neighborhood in which Cuarón came of age, the times described here in Proustan detail, all essential to the composition.  I wondered if the title was also meant to echo the neorealist films of Rosselini or De Sica, leading with a non-actress, Yalitza Aparicio, as the Oaxacan maidservant of Cuarón’s movie-mom, accomplished Mexican actress, Marina de Tavira. Roma is a languid, voluptuous movie impossibly long takes (Cuarón photographed it) punctuated by moments of horrific tension and actual events of the day. It deserves both of its Golden Globes and the Oscar nominations it just received.

The Way Home - - The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946, USA, B/W, 170 min) - - 28 December 2018

An essential - - The Best Years Of Our Lives was the most personal movie in the distinguished resume of director William Wyler (Ben Hur). Although Sam Goldwyn (The Pride of the Yankees) bought the rights to the story of three veterans returning from World War II, it was Wyler who jumped at the chance to helm it and convinced Robert Sherwood (The Petrified Forest) to write the script. All three won Oscars, as did Fredric March (Inherit The Wind) and Harold Russell, who had never acted before. Russell had lost his hands in the conflict and Wyler . . . his hearing. Both also suffered further in  returning from the war. Because of Wyler’s flying experiences, he identified strongest with the pilot (Dana Andrews, Laura); the punch Andrews throws near the end of the story was a real event. This is a marvelous movie and still sadly relevant for our returning troops.