Do The Right Thing (1989)

Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" begins with slow, slightly jazzy, bittersweet music and then jolts into the opening credits with Rosie Perez's violent dancing to Public Enemy's "Fight the Power." It ends with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. condemning violence followed by one from Malcolm X allowing for the use of force. By bookending his film with two juxtapositions of seeming black and white, Lee creates in between the greatest movie ever made about America and all the grays in the middle. "Do The Right Thing," about the hottest day of the summer on one block of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, is a film that can be easily understood but never figured out. It does not take sides but reveals sides. It is not interested in creating a problem and then solving it, it is interested only in bringing attention to the labyrinthian problem that already exists. It's not meant to be a message film, it doesn't provide answers. It provides empathy. There is no mastery of "Do The Right Thing," the way one can get to the bottom of all the mysteries of "Last Year At Marienbad," or "The Double Life of Veronique." To "master" this movie would be to fix the race issue in America. And if there's someone out there who can do that, I'd like to meet them.

Consider the central plot point in the film. Sal (Danny Aiello) who owns a Pizzeria on the block is being hassled by one of his many black customers, Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito). Buggin' Out is upset that Sal's "Wall of Fame" is filled with Italian Americans and wants to know why there aren't any black people on the wall. Sal, correctly, tells Buggin' that it's his place and that he can put whatever he wants on the wall and he wants Italians only. Buggin' responds, just as correctly, that the great majority of Sal's customers are black and that this "Wall of Fame" should reflect that. Black people buy the pizza and it's doubtful that Wall of Famer Frank Sinatra has ever stepped foot into Sal's place. They're both right so who's wrong? You could say that Buggin' Out should drop it (and, when he tries to organize a boycott, most of his friends do tell him just that), but shouldn't the business reflect it's customers? But Sal has the right to honor who he wants to honor, doesn't he? It's a free country (this phrase is used twice in "Do The Right Thing" and both times the person who says it is roundly mocked for his naivete). Sal shouldn't have to change his place and Buggin' Out shouldn't have to stand for it. This is the territory in which "Do The Right Thing" resides.

The movies stars Lee, who also also wrote the screenplay, as Mookie who delivers pizzas for Sal. Sal's Pizzaria has been in Bed-Stuy for twenty five years and Sal boasts that the people of the block grew up on his pies. Sal's son Pino (John Turturro) wants him to move the store to their neighborhood in Bensonhurst. Two cops, one white, one Latino, ask him what he's still doing in the rundown district where Sal can't even get the air conditioning repairman to come to him "without a police escort." Sal likes it here. He feels he's part of a community. And what a community it is. This block in Bed-Stuy feels as real as any place in the movies (it was shot on a real Brooklyn block). People work here, they live here, they gossip and walk around here. It's filled with characters like Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), the old, drunk, vizier of the neighborhood. There's the three middle-aged street cornermen, acting like a Greek chorus, except instead of commenting on the plot, they shoot the breeze, complain about the heat, and threaten to beat up Mike Tyson. There's the quartet of young black people, out to have fun and get into trouble. There's a group of Latinos, the matriarch of the block Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), and Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), who's ever-present boom box blasts Public Enemy while he wears brass knuckles with the words "Love" and "Hate" on them a la Robert Mitchum in "Night of the Hunter." Then there's Smiley, who is mentally disabled, and sells pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. All of this is presided over by Mister Senor Love Daddy, the radio DJ at We Love Radio which seems to broadcast exclusively to and about this block. These characters can be seen or heard almost at all times. Characters will walk together but in the background we'll see Da Mayor or Smiley or we'll hear one of the cornermen talking about the Koreans across the street. Lee creates on his soundtrack and he and his cinematographer Ernest Dickenson create in their compositions a tapestry of familiar characters, some of whom are seen before they are introduced so that by the time we do meet them we feel like we know them.

Watching this film again it reminds me how much stronger and more complete it is than Paul Haggis's more acclaimed "Crash" (2005), a film that also had race at its center. The people in "Do The Right Thing" are real, they make decisions based on their personalities and their circumstances, they aren't types making choices to make a point or to create a plot twist. Nothing in "Do The Right Thing" seems contrived, all of the action occurs naturally, every piece fits. That's the power of it. It's easy to watch it and feel remorse for some of the decisions that are made but it's impossible to suggest an alternative action each particular character would make. Comparatively, "Crash" depends on coincidence and its characters rely on stereotypes to be profound. It wants to make a statement because there's a black guy in it who likes country music. The ideas in "Do The Right Thing" are a little more complicated than that. Lee's film does not preach the way Haggis's does. "Do The Right Thing" is not a sanctimonious pillar of great moral art. It is a fun movie. For all it's misery and sadness, there just as many moments of humor and joy. It's about real people.

The "Wall of Fame" story line dominates my memory of the plot and I'd forgotten just how rich it is with other details. So accustomed are we to movies that barrel through their stories it's jarring to watch a movie that takes its time and doesn't mind veering from the plot to create a richer image. Mookie's girlfriend Tina (Perez) shares a bittersweet love scene late in the movie that sums up their relationship. Tina, who is the mother of Mookie's son, orders a pizza just so she can see her man. Its been a week since the two have been together and we are made to understand that Mookie is not a very eager participant in the young life of his child. He don't like that about him and neither does Tina but he charms her by rubbing ice cubes all over her body ("Thank God for lips. Thank God for necks. Thank God for kneecaps"). She, and we, are reminded why we like Mookie in the first place; he's funny, and sweet, and has a good heart. But then he leaves.

Another subplot involves the best visual sequence of the film. Mookie's sister Jade (played by Spike's sister Joie Lee) visits the Pizzeria to the obvious joy of Sal. Sal chats her up. The words are innocent but the tone suggests something else and while Sal talks we are presented a slow-motion shot of Mookie and then Sal's angry son Pino sizing up what they both dread. The relationship between Jade and Sal is never fully looked into and it doesn't need to be. It reveals a little about Sal and a lot about Mookie.

The heartbreaking end of the film begins with Sal closing the shop up. It's been a good day. Some kids want more pizza and even though it's after hours and his employees don't want to, Sal let's them in. Soon after, like the very beginning of the film, the tranquility is broken with the sound of Public Enemy. Radio Raheem, recruited by Buggin' Out, bursts into Sal's declaring the boycott. An argument starts. It escalates. And escalates. It escalates until Sal has destroyed the Radio with a baseball bat, a fight breaks out, Radio Raheem lies dead at the hands of the police, Mookie throws a trash can through Sal's window, a riot commences, and Sal's Pizzeria is burnt down. The devastation power of the scene is derived by the work Lee has done to get us to know these characters, to understand why they are doing what they are doing, and why there's nothing they can do but destroy everything around them. There is no justice and in its vacuum there is anger. There is no blame because no one is blameless. It is the way it could only have happened. During the riot the police hose down the rioters in both a chilling reminder of both the 1960's Civil Rights struggles and a jarring juxtaposition to the scene earlier when some of these same people sprayed themselves with an open fire hydrant to cool themselves down. In the rubble, Smiley pins one of the his pictures of Dr. King and Malcolm X to the charred "Wall of Fame." There is no progress without pain.

What's the message? That we are all doomed to the curse of racism? That we'll never figure it out? I'm not sure. I don't feel that way at the end of film, though I certainly don't feel hopeful. I don't see a message and I don't miss one. Lee is showing, not telling. He wants us to consider our own thoughts on race and it's hard not to while watching "Do The Right Thing." Empathy is the main weapon the movie employs and it does so as well as any movie ever made. If you want a message look no further than the title. But "Do The Right Thing" spends its running time dealing with just how difficult and complicated that proposition really is.

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

I do not have the answers to Alain Resnais's film "Last Year at Marienbad." I cannot tell you what is real and what's not, what's going on and what's imagined, or even who's who and who really was at Marienbad last year. If someone tells you they can, be suspicious of this person. Alain Resnais cannot. Watching the movie and applying the logic we bring into other movies and certainly in our lives can be a frustrating experience. Madness lies in trying to "figure it out." Searching for meaning is fruitless. The movie works only when you forget logic or story and give in to the artistry of the filmmaking. Let the images wash over you, submit to the free association of the narrative. If ever a film was inspired by a Jackson Pollock painting, "Last Year at Marienbad" would be it. Except in black and white.

Describing the plot seems a little silly because for anything I express as happening in this movie a case can be made to prove that it didn't. The film certainly takes place in a ornate European chateau. Where that chateau is located is up in the air. One would assume Marienbad in Central Europe but that isn't clear. A man (X, played by Giorgio Albertazzi) tells a woman (A, played by Delphine Seyrig) he knows her, that they had an affair a year ago and that she broke it off and made him wait until now. She says she doesn't know him, that he is mistaken. There is another character, M (Sascha Pitoeff), a card shark and guest of the hotel that may be A's husband.

X tells A about their relationship trying to remind her of what happened between them. He narrates the film and as he describes scenes we will be seeing something clearly different happening on screen. We must remember what he says, however, because the episodes he describes invariably end up being shown later. In a drawing room in the hotel he tells A about how they met in a garden underneath large, Greek statues. Later, under those statues he is telling her of an incident in her bedroom. Then we see the bedroom with narration about the statues or somewhere else.

A continually denies knowing X and implore him to leave her alone, albeit not very convincingly. She listens to X's tales and is interested. She never expresses any inkling of belief in his tale even in scenes that are hinted at being "last year" she is always listening to him as if he were guide in a strange dream. Is the whole movie a dream? It could be. That's one theory and it's as valid as any other. It follows the logic of dream or of someone trying to remember a dream. Black and white always creates a dreamlike quality anyway. The editing pulls us in so many directions. X will ask A a question in a courtyard and she will answer in a salon. There is really only one scene that would qualify as "straight." Towards the end of the film M comes into A's bedroom and they talk. They seem like a married couple but it's never directly expressed. She is nervous because she thinks someone is coming, someone she doesn't want M to meet. It is shot straightforwardly and everything in this tiny, little scene makes sense and after an hour of cerebral assault we welcome it. Alas, it doesn't last long, minutes later she is shot and dead but she isn't really. Or is she? Or was she? We're back in the land of confusion.

Images and lines of dialogue are repeated endlessly. The film opens on a ghostly tour of the chateau as X recites a monologue describing it over and over again with minute differences. The words are inconsequential (other than to announce we are about to see a very different kind of movie) but they train us to pick up little things that are repeated. There is a painting of a garden that I always try to catch, "Was that the person looking at it the last time I saw it?" "Has the painting always been there?" There are little clues like this all over "Last Year at Marienbad" but if you find them all you'll be no closer to figuring out the riddle. There is a scene that is repeated showing M testing the guest in a game. It involves four rows of cards or matches and the players are allowed to remove items in turn. The last player to remove something is the loser. M always wins. He doesn't cheat and there is no trick other than M's experience in playing. Is this another clue? Yes, but who cares. The movie is like the game. You can't figure it out. Maybe, if M's opponents had a little more time with the game, they could beat M and maybe if there was just one more scene in "Last Year of Marienbad," just one more clue, it would all make sense. I wouldn't count on either.

Maybe the hotel is Hell and X is a sinner forced to relive the same cold existence in this chateau forever where no one knows him and he can't get his own memories right. Or maybe he is the devil playing with the minds around him like a puppet master. The theory that I take into the film is that X is an author and that he's come to the chateau to write his book. He toys with the opening monologue like he's trying to get the right words. When he tells A of her own murder, she stops and says "No, I must have you alive," searching for the way to finish his story. He's telling a tale throughout the movie, anyway. Some of the action is really happening but most of it is in his book or his notes. Perhaps in his mind he has blurred the line between his own story and reality and that's why he remembers A when she doesn't know him.

All of these theories and clues are irrelevant, however. None of them are "right," and none of them lead to the "truth" of the film because movie prevents it. Theories are simply sugar to help swallow the pill of "We don't know everything." When we stop trying to put all the clues together and think about how difficult it would have been to make a film like this we begin to enjoy the experience. It may seem like the filmmakers got shot so many yards of footage cut it all up, threw the pieces all and the air and then edited it together as they picked them up but that isn't the case. Each cut is connected to a piece of dialogue or image from earlier or later in the movie. The camerawork by Sacha Vierny behaves like a guest in the hotel, slow moving and looking around. The constant movement reinforces the editing which is also rarely still. The film is beautiful, the costume design is flawless, the continual music by Francis Seyrig is appropriately eerie and unnatural. "Last Year at Marienbad" is elegant but it is empty, unreliable as a used car salesman, and it denies us our greatest comfort which is that we can believe what we see.

Pickpocket (1959)

"The style of this film is not that of a thriller," claims the wordy announcement that precedes Robert Bresson's "Pickpocket," and so it is not. What style the film is in, however, is a difficult question. I don't believe the film's style has a name because it is so rarely seen and so few have the skill to pull it off but one thing's for sure, it's not a thriller. "Pickpocket" the thriller would have been a fine movie. The plot is given to that style; cobs and robbers. But "Pickpocket" the something else is transcendent, and quite unlike any thief movie ever made, and that's very much because it's not a thriller in the traditional sense.

This movie can be thrilling. It is nerve racking and suspenseful. But Hitchcock would not have cared to make this film. The performances given in "Pickpocket" are deliberately wooden and cold. The actors are simply vehicles through which the words are said aloud and the actions are carried out. They are mannequins. The performances aren't bad, as they might seem at first or by someone not paying much attention, they are designed for a particular effect. Characters say they are scared or sad, but they are stone faced. A character reveals he was so nervous the newspaper shook in his hand, yet we see the newspaper still as a grave. There are no smiles in "Pickpocket." Why? It is one part of Bresson's multi-layered scheme to make us think, feel, and see like a pickpocket. Bresson achieves a minor miracle in this film; by noticeably rejecting every known forms of manipulation he manipulates us even more. He denies us any emotion in his film by doing so we are only too happy to supply it for him.

"Pickpocket" is about a thief named Michel (Martin LaSalle). We meet him at a racetrack where he first tries his hand at robbery, snatching some money from a women's purse. By the end of the film, he is a seasoned pro. "Pickpocket" is often compared to Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (Bresson was a fan of the Russian's work) and Michel is like Raskolnikov in many ways, none more important than this; it is never explained why Michel is a thief just as reasons are never given for the murder that begins Dostoyevsky's novel. Throughout the movie, we are given clues that suggest Michel could make an honest living and could probably do so easier than to learning to steal. Michel is caught the first time at the racetrack and is later confronted by victim on a subway. Only after he meets another grifter (Kassagi) and learns from him does he prove to be deft at it. So why does he do it? He explains he believes that some of society's elite should not be fenced in by its laws and that these supermen are actually doing society a favor by stealing for their own superior gains. It isn't clear that Michel thinks of himself this way, he may be rationalizing his actions but for a superman he can't even face his dying mother because of the shame he feels for stealing. All of this, of course, is not shown on his face or expressed in dialogue but Bresson allows it to be inferred through his actions (he also allows it to be inferred in countless other ways).

Everything must be inferred in "Pickpocket" as so little that matters is given away for free. The movie becomes the ultimate thief, stealing our attention and even the comfort of the way we usually watch movies. As every character wears a permanent poker face, we are forced to really look at them for any tells they are invariably not giving just as a pickpocket would his victim. "Is he on to me?" "Is he paying attention to his breast pocket?" "Is it safe for me to go now?" Bresson places his camera so that hands and pockets are constantly racing by it. We screw up are eyes to look at them, look into them, look through them. Consider the second scene in the subway. Michel, through narration, has already announced he has stolen something. He exits the subway car and we watch him walk up the stairs out of the tunnel. There is a crowd but we can just see his right hand pop out against the dark gray and black suits around him. His hand seems to be in a fist. Is he clutching something? Has he got a wallet? Bresson holds the shot for some time and just as we have seen the hand long enough to be sure it is empty a man behind Michel moves to expose the other hand and we do it all again. Because we are seeing a thief on the make and Bresson's script let's us in on little moves and tricks of the wallet snatching trade as well as exercises and disciplines a pilferer can do while not on duty, we are drawn into the world and begin to think like pickpockets. L.H. Burel's camera moves the way a scanning eye would and that further reinforces this idea.

Also look at the way "Pickpocket" is edited. The film comes in at a brisk seventy five minutes and if it were edited traditionally it would be under an hour. The movie lingers on seemingly inconsequential material. When people leave a room they shut the door, instead of cutting to the next scene as soon as the door closes as in a traditional edit, "Pickpocket" lingers for a beat or two. We see hallways for seconds before any one enters them or we watch characters exit behind buildings or walls but the camera loiters there for a while after they're gone. Scenes of high tension, where fast editing is traditionally used, are shown in long unbroken pieces. Only the shots of the actual theft are cut quickly. These grifters only live in those fractions of seconds in which they are lifting money. The rest of their time is waiting for that moment. These mundane editing choices reflect that. The quick, breathless moments when money is changing hands become much more stirring because they come out of boring, long edits, like lightning. We are used to being manipulated by editing and when that traditional manipulation isn't there we are stirred to discomfort. We can't really relax during the commonplace shots because we don't have any of the queues we're used to from other movies and have no idea when or whether trouble will come about. The effect is a sort of paranoia.

Along with editing, music is one of the filmmakers great tools of manipulation. "Pickpocket" has a wonderful, lush score by J.B. Lulli but it is rarely used in the movie. Music is used to pump up emotional scenes, to let the audience know how to feel, to underline the action. Bresson primarily uses his score as transition filler. There is a montage where Michel learns new skills as a pickpocket that has music but every other significant part of the film is silent. During Michel's nerve-racking first attempt as a thief on a subway, there is an eerie lack of music. Especially during the breathtaking sequence where Michel and two accomplices seem to relieve every other man in a turnstile of a little money there is no music, really no sound at all. This creates another wave of discomfort. In a lesser movie the music that would invariably accompany this scene would fill us in on its outcome. Upbeat, triumphant music would make us relax, we'd know our heroes will get away with their crimes. Tense, hard-driving music would worry us, our guard would be up for the police. With no music we can neither relax or be totally worried. The scene is fun because of the skill of thieves but without any music to guide we can never be sure if the fuzz isn't right around the next corner. We share that with the thieves themselves. If they can't be sure what's going to happen in the world of the film, why should we be so lucky here on the outside?

Bresson has turned us into pickpockets with his film. While Michel skulks through the movie without the slightest hint of a smile or a frown, we are nervous, panicked, and suspicious for him. But we are also exhilarated. We feel the rush he gets from stealing, he does not show it but we understand. The unusual thing about "Pickpocket" is that we are never really given a reason to like Michel, he is introduced as a thief, he remains committed to being a thief for the whole movie, LaSalle's performance is purposely characterless and anything but charming, and yet we never question him as the hero of the movie. We don't particularly care that he steals and we want him to get away with it. Why is that? Most of us would never steal like Michel but many of us understand compulsion or envy the feeling that thievery causes Michel. And with LaSalle and his emotionless performance, we supply the feelings. Even though he never shows it, we understand what he gets out of stealing, and it's more than money. Bresson is able to make us provide the passion to his outwardly passionless movie. Every movie is different to every audience member but "Pickpocket" stakes its claim on that fact. Each person provides the film with his or her own perspective because the film provides so little of its own. Bresson provides the raw material and each viewer is expected to create whatever movie "Pickpocket" is to them. It's quite an experience. And as Michel says at the end, in one of the rare scenes of raw emotion the film affords, "What a strange way I had to take to meet you." He may well be speaking for us, as we've spent the last hour or so feeling for him.

La Dolce Vita (1960)

Many great movies are like old sweaters on a chilly November day, you pull it on from time to time and you like it because it's familiar, it's comforting because it's familiar. Sure, there might be a new loose thread or an interesting stain you missed the last time you put it on, but half of it's comfort comes from remembering how good it felt to put it on last time and how you know it's going to feel just like that this time. But a few great movies, none more so than Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," mean something very different to you every time you watch it, it reflects upon a truth about the world or yourself that is unique to that viewing that may not be all that pleasant and is rarely comforting, but it's important because it makes you think about yourself.

"La Dolce Vita" achieves this by being so exact and general at the same time. It is about a very specific man, a reporter named Marcello Rubini played my Marcello Mastroianni. He has very specific adventures, ones that are unique to him and are not very universal. He is not an everyman and yet I have never watched "La Dolce Vita" and not thought of myself in relation to this character. I compare myself to him positively, sometimes I despair that I am too much like him, or I tell myself to avoid being like him at all. Most movie characters remain movie characters, they are people separated from you by the unbreakable and unpassable screen. But Marcello Rubini is an allegory for you and the movie forces you to ask yourself, "What is the sweet life and am I living it?"

The film begins with a shot of a helicopter, carrying Marcello, flying over Rome hauling a statue of Jesus. "La Dolce Vita" is covered in Christian religious symbols but none of its characters are very religious. Besides the Christ statue, there is a gathering of the devout to visit children who are telling people they have seen the Virgin Mary but Marcello and his girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) are not among the members of the faithful, Marcello is covering it for his paper. He stands outside of religion. Overt Christian regalia is constantly swirling around him (he lives in Rome where the Vatican is always looming) but he ignores it, turning to his own idols; sex, booze, and partying. And when the last Christ symbol, an ugly giant fish that is caught and dragged on the beach at the end of the movie, is presented to him, Marcello considers it for a moment and then wanders off and has an awkward encounter with a woman he met briefly before who remembers him but he has forgotten. Miscommunication seems to happen at all the religious incidents; he can't speak with sunbathers from the helicopter because of the noise and at the children's sighting of the Virgin, he loses his girlfriend in the crowd. What is Fellini saying, that Marcello can't see what is right in front of him? That the emptiness of his life could be filled if he let Christ enter it?

It is hard to say. Marcello's life is certainly empty but I'm not sure Fellini is suggesting that religion is the answer. All the symbols are false. The statue is a beautiful representation of Jesus, not the man Himself. The children who've seen the Virgin are doubted by a priest and certainly, by the way they point about and scream "She's there. Now she's there," we doubt them too. And the fish has been caught, exposed and gasping, dragged on shore and poked and gaped at. Perhaps this is Fellini's example of the man's perversion of religion but it doesn't appear to be the antidote for Marcello's problems. He could probably stand to believe in something, Marcello, but he won't find the happiness he seeks in a pew.

Nor will he, the film points out, find it in women. Marcello juggles three women in "La Dolce Vita," two of which could lead to something meaningful, one which is pure lust, and all three he makes a mess of for his fear of choosing wrong. He has a steady girlfriend, Emma, who we first meet as she is trying to kill herself. She's crazy about Marcello in a way that is not reciprocated. He likes her enough but she's more of a convenience, his go-to girl for upscale parties and social events. He keeps her around because he doesn't have anything else steady going for him. Late in the film they fight in his car out in the middle of nowhere. He tells her she makes him miserable. She storms out of the car and yells at him to go. He backs of a little and begs her to get back in the car. She finally does and then he becomes more angry than before and barks at her to get out again. She refuses. He tries to physically remove her and actually strikes her. She gets out and he takes off. She's stranded. We see the next dawn and she's there shaking and windswept. He drives back. She gets in. The next shot is of them in bed holding each other. We get the sense that this has happened before and will certainly happen again.

Marcello also has a long standing flirtation and affair with the socialite Maddalena (Anouk Aimee). She's the first of his women we meet. She comes into a club and is waiting for somebody else. She reveals a black eye under her chic sunglasses. Marcello approaches her and they take off they spend the night together. Marcello thinks he wants Maddalena because of her society glamour but when he's around her circle, he finds them spiritless and boring. They are certainly attracted to each other, he more than her for a change, and she even announces her love for him at a party. However, she's drunk and is necking with another man moments after. Being with her would being resigned to public empty splendor and private faithlessness.

Then there is the American actress Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) who's arrival in Rome Marcello covers. She is all sex and he is quickly put under her spell. We think he has a relationship with her but when we think back on it, he really doesn't. She breezes through Rome and his hounded by so many reporters and fans that Marcello spends very little time with her. They dance closely but her boyfriend is just yards away watching. She leads him all over the city and Marcello comes close to kissing her but it never happens. She is the elusive perfect woman, and when she leaves, that complicates his relationships for the rest of the movie. He honestly believes he could have a meaningful relationship with this woman despite the fact that they shared no meaningful moments between them. Even the famous scene in the Trevi fountain is simply a lark for her, probably forgotten before she dries off. But for him, it was like wading in the waters of female heaven and Emma or Maddalena can never stack up.

The movie doesn't reveal who Marcello "should" end up with, we aren't rooting for one particular romance because all three are flawed. Emma is probably best for Marcello but Fellini makes it clear that these women and, to be sure, having lots of women, are not the answer. Many of Marcello's trysts go late into the night so late that he's still clothed when the sun goes up. The promise of the night is always gone with the dawn and Marcello is left emptier than ever. Nor can he find solace in his male relationships. There are two. One with a friend named Steiner (Alain Cuny) and the other with his father (Annibale Ninchi) who comes to visit from the country. Steiner is successful and Marcello idolizes him. He wants what Steiner has. He and Emma go to a party at Steiner's and are more than impressed by his wife, their children and the collection of intellilectuals and artists in attendance. Steiner reveals to Marcello that he's not very happy and it disturbs Marcello. Later, when Steiner really loses it an illusion has been destroyed. Marcello takes his father out to dinner and spends the evening smirking at him bemusedly, a little longingly. The father charms everyone around him, he is joyful and happy content in his life. But later, in those horrible dawns, the father is seen as a tired old man. His life is empty too and Marcello looks at him as if he's looking into his own dark future.

Does this man sound like you? Probably not. But Fellini writes the character in such a way and Mastroianni plays the character in such a way that you forced to apply the questions asked in the film to yourself. What do I want out of life? Am I happy? Will I be if I continue this way? Mastroianni is so passive that the audience is constantly putting themselves in his shoes. He gives a performance that is at once a stunning depiction of a uniquely desperate man and at the same time he can easily disappear into the movie and allow the viewer to inhabit it. Marcello is not an unhappy man, he seems like most people, getting by and living a fine life. Towards the end he gets a little despaired but we get the feeling that this is a bad day and that the frustration of his private hollowness has reached the surface and become momentarily public. And the film is not a sad one, well not in the way "Sophie's Choice" is sad, for example. Fellini provides no answer to obtaining happiness and Marcello is certainly just as lost at the end as he was at the beginning but the effect is not depressing. It is illuminating. Depending on where you are in your life the movie can be a validation of the choices you've made, a cautionary tale for the paths you will take, or a scathing review of the life you've led so far, no matter how much you have in common with Marcello on the surface. "La Dolce Vita" doesn't know what the sweet life is or how to get it but it calls to mind that neither do you. The film is not an instruction manual but a benchmark to measure your own life against and you stack up differently every time you see it.

Some Like It Hot (1959)

"Well, nobody's perfect."

In all of Bergman, Ozu, or Renoir are there any words more true than those three? Any more true in all of Shakespeare? There's certainly nobody perfect in Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot." In fact, none of the characters are even very good. At the end of the film we have two couples, both as doomed as a snowball in Hell, but we like both and we applaud the movie for ending before reality sets in and it gets sticky. Endless discussions have been had about whether or not the characters played by Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross stay together after the end of "The Graduate," but there can be no discussion about "Some Like It Hot." One couple is a homosexual pair in which neither party is gay and the other relationship is built on so much deception that neither one really knows the other. Maybe once they do they'll find they're perfect together. But, as we all know, nobody's perfect.

The film stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as Chicago musicians, Jerry and Joe, in 1929 who, because of prohibition, can only find work in mob run speakeasies, which is difficult to come by. Desperate for cash and on the run from mobsters who are after them since they witnessed the St. Valentine's Day massacre, the pair impersonate women (Daphne and Josephine) to join a girl band en route to Florida. But the plot is secondary to what the movie is really about; sex. And that becomes abundantly clear with the entrance of the movie's female lead, Marilyn Monroe, playing Sugar Kowalcyzk, a hard-drinking, unlucky, ukulele-playing singer, who falls in love with the wrong men (saxophonists, naturally), wants only money and moves around, as Lemmon's character so flawlessly puts it, "like Jell-O on springs." When the band reaches Florida, Sugar is on the look-out for millionaires but one finds Daphne/Jerry instead. Osgood Fielding III, played by Joe E. Brown, is so eager to add a seven or eight wife to his record (he's not really sure, but his mother keeps score) that he could hardly care that Daphne, for obvious reasons, is initially unresponsive and, for that matter, a rather ugly girl. Curtis, as Josephine, learns all of Sugar's tragic past loves ("Story of my life-I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop) and he learns of all her male ideals ("I don't care how rich he is, as long as he has a yacht, his own private railroad car, and his own toothpaste."). Then, now pretending to be a rich millionaire (giving a wicked Cary Grant impression), Curtis uses this information to charm and seduce Sugar and finally brilliantly connives her into thinking that his heartbroken millionaire is so emotionally dead from a previous relationship that maybe some intense necking from the sexiest actress of all time might snap him out of it. And while Curtis pulls all the strings and makes all the moves, poor Lemmon, as Daphne, is stuck wooing a ever more forward Osgood. The fuzzy end of the lollipop, indeed.

In the end, all is revealed and exposed and the foursome take off in Osgood's boat. Sugar, who already announced that she's not too bright, accepts the liar Curtis despite the fact that he's exactly the thing she complained to him about earlier, a cad who loves and leaves 'em. And he'll probably leave Sugar too. Osgood, after finding out that his precious Daphne is actually Jack Lemmon in lipstick, shrugs it off because after seven or eight turns on the matrimony wheel, why not try something new? They all have as much chance of making it last as bucket of candy on Halloween. The romance in "Some Like It Hot" is of the sprint variety not the marathon.

And that's precisely why "Some Like It Hot" endures. Where the couples in it won't go on, the film does because it's cynicism makes us forget it's borderline idiotic plot. This is the film whose grandchildren are "Sorority Boys" and "White Chicks" but where those films were very badly trying to convince something that no on could believe, Billy Wilder's film tries to simply convince us that people like sex and that the line between it and love can get blurred sometimes. Now that's an easier argument. And also note that the most ridiculous plots can hold water behind great writing and fine performances. Wilder's and I.A.L. Diamond's screenplay launches up so many terrific one-liners that we spend the time we would normally use to pick apart the ludicrousness of the story trying to listen the next zinger. Genuine emotion is never dealt with because no one in the film is familiar with it and when it threatens to come up, they wisely change the subject to stick with what they know.

Curtis is terrific as the smooth operator who will never say what he's up to because it's so painlessly obvious to everyone except for the person he's working on. Lemmon is exuberant as the long-suffering clown who doesn't actually spend that much time suffering because he truly believes that if he only toes the line a little longer his luck will turn around. Plus, he revels in the fuzzy end. Joe E. Brown joins a great collection of supporting character's including George Raft as the silky gangster, and Dave Barry as the female band's befuddled chaperone.

And then, of course, there's Monroe. What's to say about her that hasn't been said. And besides, descriptions of Monroe are so inadequate as she was a creature that can only be appreciated when seen and, in the case of "Some Like It Hot," heard. Monroe gives three great singing performances in the film, none greater than the centerpiece; "I Wanna Be Loved By You." Monroe, under Wilder's direction, creates one of the sexiest scene in the movies. Wilder puts a spotlight on Monroe, who is wearing an impossible dress, and seductively widens and narrows the light at her upper chest, lifting it and swaying it, while the audience cranes their next to get a better look at the dress's neckline (if it can be called that, the dress is designed in such a way that it almost looks like Monroe isn't wearing a top at all). All the while, Monroe, who was the greatest at being a purely sexual being while being completely unaware of this, moves and sings in that innocently erotic way only she could do. Without even touching her clothes, Wilder and Monroe perform a striptease.

Billy Wilder (1906-2002) is one of the cinema's greatest artists, directing a glut of the greatest movies of all time. In a list of a hundred or so greatest films, few director's have been lucky enough to have two guaranteed titles on that list and most are household names. Hitchcock has "Pyscho" and "Vertigo." Scorcese has "Raging Bull" and "Taxi Driver." Spielberg has "Schindler's List" and "E.T." or any one of a number of his great entertainments. Wilder has a ridiculous three or four of the greatest movies, each very different. "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) presents show-biz horror and the unbeatable forces of time. "Double Indemnity" (1944) is one of the greatest in the rife noir genre. "The Apartment" (1960) is a sophisticated, black, sex comedy and with "Some Like It Hot," he tries his hand at broad sex comedy and succeeds mightily. And that's without mentioning other classics like "Ace in the Hole" (1951), "Sabrina" (1954) and the movie the Academy deemed the greatest film of 1945, "The Lost Weekend."

Despite the different genres and styles that Wilder so successfully disappeared in, the common theme is cynicism. Wilder was born in Eastern Europe, that most cynical of regions, and that dark pessimism is noticeable, and often essential in his work. All of Wilder's movies exude the idea that nobody's perfect and we are wasting time thinking some are, "Some Like It Hot" was the only one to state that explicitly. Nobody's perfect, but that line and this movie are.

Peeping Tom (1960)

The movies of 1960 gave us two stories about disturbed, young men who stab people. England's Michael Powell gave us Mark Lewis in "Peeping Tom," and another Englishmen, Alfred Hitchcock, gave us Norman Bates in "Psycho." In "Peeping Tom," Lewis (Karl Bohn) is a camera man for British movies. He's the focus puller. His profession, however, is murdering women while filming them on a hand-held camera with a knife he's implanted into one of the legs of his tripod. He watches the last moments of their lives over and over again in his home film laboratory.

Watching "Peeping Tom," I couldn't help but notice the similarities between Lewis and Bates. Both kill women, though Bates is not gender exclusive. Both are dealing with crippling disturbances brought one by their parents, Norman by his overbearing mother, and Mark by his father, a psychologist of fear who was constantly filming Mark. They are both landlords, Norman has his mother's hotel and Mark has his father's house that he now rents out rooms as apartments. And both are more than a little voyeuristic. True, Lewis doesn't dress up in women's clothes, but when he kills with his camera he's impersonating his father just as Bates is impersonating his mother. Even the first scene between Mark and Helen (Anna Massey) in "Peeping Tom" is eerily similar to the first scene between Norman and Janet Leigh's character in "Psycho."

These are all coincidences, of course. The two movies came out only month's apart ("Peeping Tom" premiered first), they couldn't have been homages to each other, although there are moments in "Tom" that Hitchcock would have envied. But, when watching "Peeping Tom" as a companion piece to "Psycho," we learn a little something about why the latter has become one of the world's most treasured and recognizable movies and why the former was a critical disaster that ruined the career of one of England's greatest filmmakers.

Michael Powell, along with his writer and longtime collaborator, Emeric Pressburger had huge success in the 1940's and 50's with films such as "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus," "The Tales of Hoffman," and "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," but when Powell (working with writer Leo Marks, not Pressburger) released "Peeping Tom," it all came crashing down. The film was pulled from theaters and reduced its director to making TV programs in between rare features for the rest of his career. Why, when they are both skillfully made, did "Psycho" further elevate its famous director while "Tom" destroyed Powell?

Mark Lewis, the murderer in "Peeping Tom," is a film director. And that is the central element of the movie. While carrying around his camera he tells people he's working on a documentary. He watches his killings in his lab as if he's looking at dailies. He enjoys them, the frightened, horrible looks on the women's faces, because he's gotten a good performance. True, to elicit that performance he had to stab them, but those are details. The first scene between Lewis and Helen, the sweet girl from downstairs that Lewis falls in love with ("I'll never film her," he swears) is telling in many ways; Lewis shows Helen home movies of himself as a young boy, taken by his father, of course. In the films he is being frightened by the man behind the camera. His father throws lizards in his bed, shines a flashlight on his eyes while he's sleeping, terrorizing him to obtain the response he's after; fear (in a sick turn, the father is played by Powell himself and young Mark by Powell's son). Then he shows her films taken of him at his mother's deathbed, her funeral and her burial, and when the next film starts of his father's wedding to his new wife (whom Lewis labels the "successor") Lewis tells Helen, "He married her six weeks after...the previous sequence." Director talk. As a present at the wedding, young Lewis receives a camera.

The best of the murder sequences brings all these elements into focus. Lewis, the cameraman, after a day on set at the studio, convinces a pretty stand-in (Moira Shearer) to stay after hours so he can work on his "documentary." Completely clueless, but plenty pleased to be the star in front of a camera for a change, the stand-in dances around the set while Lewis, the director, gets the lighting right. When it's time for business he tells her to look frightened. When she complains that she doesn't feel scared he describes to her the exact predicament she's in but doesn't realize ("Imagine someone coming towards you, who wants to kill you, regardless of the circumstances." "A madman?" "Yes, but he knows it and you don't.") The scene is perfect in its timing and the little in-jokes that writer Leo Marks has peppered the script with. And when the murder occurs and the body is dumped in a prop trunk on the set, its sets up a later scene. The real director of the real film needs to reshoot a scene because "We must have some comedy in it." The actress in the film (aptly titled "The Walls Are Closing In,") who has struggled to faint throughout the production is looking through trunks on the set, which is made to be a department store. When she finds the trunk with the body in it, her stand-in no less, she faints for real and sets up the film's funniest line.

What distinguishes "Psycho" from "Peeping Tom" is that with Hitchcock's films as with most great scary movies, the audience is let off the hook. Yes, Norman Bates frightens us and we get scared when he murders people, but it's just a story, right? A rogue murderer, isolated out in the middle of nowhere. True, we might lock the door the next time we take a shower in a small motel but for the most part we leave the theater with a little sweat on our brow and a silly grin on our face. We've enjoyed it. Oh, we enjoy "Peeping Tom," too, but Powell reminds us why we like scary movies. For the same reason Lewis enjoys his own movies. To see that look of terror on other people's faces, to share that most private of moments with them. Powell implicates us, throws us all in the same boat with his murderer. Think of yourself in a movie theater, the place is dark and you're watching people, people who aren't aware of you as they lead their private lives. Aren't you a peeping tom? Aren't we all? Powell's film broke the rules by stating that a theater seat is no more than a comfortable tree branch looking into the bedroom window that is the movie screen. That was an extremely uncomfortable idea in 1960 and it still disturbs today. With "Psycho," we get to distance ourselves, "Boy, I'm glad I'm nothing like THATguy!" But, if you enjoy movies, you can't completely separate yourself from Mark Lewis. When the victim of a movie goes down into the dark basement or the spooky attic, and you've ever smiled a little or thought "This is going to be good," then you have something in common with Mark Lewis.

Powell reinforces this idea by making his camera an active observer. It's always looking, peering, peeping, from behind shelves or pillars, from corners or staircases. Many of the shots are of Marks viewfinder on his camera, which gives the feel that the viewer walking is towards the victim. The vivid technicolor, a staple of Powell's films, has extra resonance here. It's not dreamlike, like black and white, or stylized, like other uses of color. The shots, especially through the viewfinder, are colored for realism. We are supposed to be aware that we are looking at something not just watching. All great scary movies horrify us, but "Peeping Tom" doesn't let us forget that they also fascinate us, which is maybe a little scarier than the stuff on the screen in the first place.

Being a Film Cricket

Aw. You know something, Marge? It's not that tough being a film cricket. -Homer Simpson

Movies are essentially three things; an art, a business, and an entertainment. There is no question that they are art. Like any art they can make us think and feel. Movies, when they're good, make us question the lives we lead, the beliefs we hold, the feelings we feel. They, for example, are the best form of art to makes us empathetic. Paintings and sculptures, while given to empathy, are only so successful. We are too actively aware that what we're seeing is static, a representation of one second in the life of the subject, frozen forever. Movies have life to them and that's what makes us empathetic. They move, so they move us. True, when not watching a documentary, it's still only an illusion. When we watch "Raging Bull" we know we are not watching Jake LaMotta punish himself, we are watching Robert DeNiro pretending to be Jake LaMotta punishing himself. But because DeNiro has earned it through his performance, and because Scorcese has deceived us in his direction, and because Paul Schrader has convinced us in his screenwriting, we care about this person. We don't like him, but we don't hate him or pity him. We empathize with him. Great art can do that to its audience. Movies, even once that aren't that great, do that with regularity.

Sometimes it's done cheaply. "Old Yeller" doesn't have to reach very far to gain our empathy. But consider "Silence of the Lambs." How do we feel about Hannibal Lector? He's established as a cannibal before we ever meet him but by the end, well, it's complicated. I don't think anyone who has seen that movie would want to spend any time with the man in real life but we have strange feelings towards that character. He's a monster and should be locked up forever, but, we almost like him. Think also of "Grand Illusion," a war picture. War movies are usually the best for creating good guys and bad guys, but the deathbed scene between the French and German officer is so poignantly sad we see through the visor of nationalism. Nothing is better than putting one into another's shoes than the movies.

Movies, of course, are a business as well. I don't have to go far outside the door of my central Los Angeles apartment to get constant reminders of this. Billions of dollars are spent to ensure you the consumer know what your options are at the marketplace that is the cinemaplex. Millions of dollars have been spent to hire the star that has been proven to make millions more back if he's in a new film this summer. At times, this aspect of the movies is at odds with the artistic side. "Awards are nice," the moneymen say, "but will it sell?" "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen," will most likely end as the year's highest grosser but will it receive anyone's nod as the best film of the year? Michael Bay's perhaps. But this is rather unique in the art world. If I walked into a McDonald's and asked them to sell me one of those paintings of sail boats or trains they often hang in fast food restaurants (to bring a touch of class, you see), how much do you think I'd have to offer for them to part with it? Thirty bucks? Five, if I let them keep the frame? And if I waltzed into the Sotheby's and asked them how much it would take to walk out with a Picasso I'd better be prepared to pay more than thirty bucks and not expect a frame. This is, of course, because one is considered great and the other crap. Obviously, one is also very rare and the other common place but the point is, in most forms of art, popularity and quality often come hand in hand. The most famous painting in the world is so valuable it cannot be purchased. Tiger Woods is the planet's most popular athlete because he is the greatest at his sport. The biggest and most lucrative rock band of all time is also that young art's finest, The Beatles. Students across America are required to read "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," "Invisible Man," and "The Great Gatsby," because they are some of this country's greatest contributions to the art of fiction. But how many students are required to see "Citizen Kane?" Or "Network?" Or "McCabe and Mrs. Miller?" Explosion-laden trash like "Transformers" will sell out retailers when it hits DVD, while great films like last year's "Ballast" are impossible to find. But that's business. For all the throngs that lined up to see this summer's pedestrian, dime a dozen "Star Trek," how many have the patience for an original idea like the one's shown in 1998's "Dark City," a box office flop?

But because they are a business, and because business is so good, movies are also an entertainment. Am I discouraged by the numbers that "Transformers" is putting up? Would I think less of someone who went and enjoyed it? No, of course not. Movies are meant to be enjoyed and for all my talk about the seriousness and artistic value of them, most people use them for their primary purpose; diversionary escapism. Do I thumb my nose at those who want to kill a few hours at "Transformers?" No, it's their right, plus, I have a feeling they knew what they were getting into when they bought the ticket. In fact, if your aim is to leave your brain at the door and give in to loud pointlessness, you could hardly do better than "Transformers." But not only are movies the great art of empathy, the are the most accessible. It doesn't take a film education to understand a great film. While as technical and complicated as a car engine, because films deal primarily with feelings they can be understood by children and adults. And that fact doesn't diminish the quality of a great film. The films that are national treasures are that way because they touch a nerve we all share; the difficult choice that right and wrong so often is ("Casablanca"), the importance of home ("The Wizard of Oz"), doing your best to be a good man ("It's a Wonderful Life"), and the irrepressible coolness of frankly not giving a damn ("Gone With the Wind"). So, as an addendum to the thesis of my previous paragraph; while the top earning films from week to week are a caravan of forgettable and sometimes regrettable entries into the film ether, the art of film has it's own priceless valuables that are as great and rare as any Picasso. Take away all the technical jargon, all the shop talk about weekend grossers, and the artistic obscuration, a great film is a great film because it's enjoyable to watch. It's a better use of two hours than doing nearly anything else. They're fun, dammit. And everybody likes fun. Even "Sophie's Choice" is a little fun.

So movies; art, industry, entertainment. And I become even more interested in those that are all three at once, like "Raiders of the Lost Art," or "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" This blog is dedicated to great films like those two and many others that fulfill at least one of the tree things movies can be. On a pace of about a film a week there will be a new essay about some of the greatest films of all time. They won't be ranked, although I intend on selecting the first one hundred from a personal list I've made with rankings. There might be odd essays on film topics or particulars peppered in but the purpose of this blog is to honor this pieces of art. I don't have the resources to give timely or comprehensive reviews of current films but I'll be sure to write something up on whatever I happen to see. I'd like this to be an interactive experience with suggestions from readers on what films I should write about and see because if there's a fourth thing movies are, they are conversation pieces. That of course depends mostly on me being a quality and productive writer. I'll do my best. Enjoy.