Alternative Oscars - 'City Lights' (1932)

'City Lights' was, and remains, a wonderful anachronism. 

By 1931 talkies were the established norm. 'Grand Hotel' picked up the actual Best Picture award for that year and was surely one of the most talky of talkies - focusing on the day-to-day lives of the different guests in a huge hotel, it was the first of the multiple narrative films that have become so popular.

By contrast, in narrative terms, 'City Lights' is a very simple film.

Chaplin once more plays the tramp character. He spends most of the film courting a flower-seller (Virginia Cherrill), who happens to be blind. Consequently she judges him only on his actions rather than his appearance. He takes on any job (street sweeper, prize fighter) to earn money to pay for an operation that will restore the girl's sight.

Most of the comic strands of the film come through The Tramp's unlikely relationship with a wealthy drunkard, played by Harry Myers. 

                                             

This millionaire is The Tramp's best friend during their night-time revelries but disowns him in the sober, cold light of day. This cycle continues over the course of the film, much to The Tramp's bewilderment. It reaches a crisis point when the millionaire lends The Tramp the money to pay for the girl's operation, only to accuse him of stealing it when they next meet.

Consequently the Tramp is imprisoned. The girl, now cured, searches for her saviour in vain. 

A year later, blind (ahem) chance once more throws them together.

Will she recognise him? Will love prevail when she sees his true appearance? 

C'mon, this is a Chaplin movie...

Chaplin was a notorious perfectionist.  'City Lights' was shot over 500 days -  an extraordinary amount of time (and expense) during the depression.  Yet it was a rioutous success. The clash between rich and poor was a favourite theme of Chaplin's, and here, he was playing to the gallery. And of course, it's also a film about the transcendental, all-conquering power of  love.

Is 'City Lights' Chaplin's best film? 'The Kid' tugs at the heart strings more,  'Modern Times' (the film he made after this) may be technically more brilliant but 'City Lights' combines the sentimental and comedic strands of his ouevre brilliantly. 

Chaplin didn't make a true 'talkie' until  'The Great Dictator'  in 1940. 'City Lights' was an act of glorious defiance. Like King Canute he stood stubbornly, refusing to accept the oncoming tide.  

Alternative Oscars: 'Le Jour Se Leve' (1940) - The greatest Film Noir you've (probably) never seen

'Le Jour Se Leve', or 'Daybreak', was the fourth film in the film-making partnership of director Marcel Carne and screen-writer/poet Jacques Prevert; a partnership that came to commercial fruition with 'Les Enfants Du Paradis' in 1945, a sort of French 'Gone With The Wind', often heralded as the greatest ever French movie.

       

Well, as great as Les Enfants... is, I prefer 'Le Jour Se Leve'.   

'Le Jour Se Leve' may well be the definitive film in the 'poetic realism' movement, a sort of forerunner to film noir, and something I've written about elsewhere on this blog.
 http://armpitofpopularculture.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/bad-backs-and-long-memories.html 

This loose movement tended to feature a working-class protagonist, often on the margins of society, doomed to failure. Naturally it reflected the wider real-life context of contemporary France; the dissolution of the Popular Front, and, of course, the looming war. In fact, 'Le Jour Se Leve' itself was deemed so pessimistic that the Vichy government banned it, on the grounds that it was demoralising and had contributed the nation's defeat.

More than any of the brilliant directors associated with the poetic realist movement (Carne, Jean Renoir), for me, its pivotal figure is the actor, Jean Gabin. 

Gabin starred in  'La Bete Humaine', 'Pepe Le Moko', 'La Grande Illusion', 'Le Quai Des Brumes' - all key films in this movement. 

Gabin's great skill as an actor is to somehow simultaneously exude toughness and vulnerability. He's Bogart with a heart. 

In a cinematic sense 'Le Jour Se Leve' works much better than Carne's earlier 'Quai Des Brumes'. It feels very much like a modern film, principally because of its use of dissolves and flashback.                
                                         

It begins with a murder, or more accurately, a manslaughter. A fight between Francois (Gabin) and his love rival, Valentin, gets out of hand when the latter arrives at Francois' bedsit with a gun.
                      

Francois accidentally kills Valentin and quickly realises his own fate. He barricades himself in, awaiting the police. As onlookers gather Francois contemplates the events that led to this and the film proceeds in flashback.

We witness the grinding monotony of Francois' existence. He ruminates, "The jobs I've had, all different yet all the same. It's like waiting in the rain for a tram. Eventually it arrives but... there's no room. The same with the next one. And the next one. They all go by and you stand there, waiting in the rain like a fool." 

Until a chance encounter with Francoise (Jacqueline Laurent) provides a brief moment of happiness, and an opportunity for a different life. Possibly. Unfortunately, for Francois he is already involved with Clara (played by the wonderful Arletty), who has reluctantly settled for the shady Valentin. Clara sees Francois as a kindred spirit and a way out of her meaningless relationship. "I'm sick of men talking about love. They talk about love and forget to make love," she complains. 

Valentin isn't too concerned at the prosepct of losing Clara as he also has designs on Francoise. It swiftly becomes a menage a quatre. In a sense there is another layer of tragedy to Francoise/Francoise's doomed romance; namely that everyone else, but Francois, can see that he and the world-weary Clara are far better suited. 

Yet in forsaking Clara and committing to Francoise, he seals his own fate, and the chain of events is set in action.

Back in the present, day breaks and Francoise snaps out of his daydream. The police decide it's time to act but, at the last moment, Francoise arrives to try and talk her lover into coming down quietly.                             
                                             

I won't completely spoil the ending for you, though you can probably work it out for yourself.   

'Le Jour Se Leve' was remade in Hollywood in 1947 with Henry Fonda in the Gabin role.  I haven't seen it, but, suffice to say, it has a very different ending.

Alternative Oscars (1936) - Top Hat

As a self-confessed admirer of Hollywood's Golden Age, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I don't generally like musicals. 'Singing In The Rain' is the obvious exception to this, but even that I admire less for its songs than the picture it paints of early Hollywood itself.

However, even I can't deny Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had something special. 

'Top Hat' was the fourth of ten feature films Fred and Ginger made together and is probably the best illustration of their particular blend of screwball comedy and musical.

The characteristically daft plot need not detain us too much (and is perhaps the reason I don't generally get on with musicals?) Astaire's character, Jerry Travers, is in London to meet theatre impressario Horace Hardwick, with a view to working together. Fred's impromptu tap routine in Hardwicke's appartment disturbs Dale Tremont (Rogers) in the apartment downstairs. 

Jerry is immediately smitten and begins a relentless pursuit of the frosty Dale across Europe, one that would certainly merit a restraining order if happening today. It's not quite as awkward as it sounds, as Dale likes him really - she's just playing hard to get. There is the added complication that, thanks to the mistaken identity above, she spends most of the film thinking Jerry is actually Hardwick, who happens to be already married.

So far, so Fred and Ginger. Of course, it's the chemistry between the two actors that elevates the film to another level. 

It was often said that he gave her class and she gave him sex (or sexiness). Certainly this sexuality makes Ginger seem a very modern screen siren, compared to many of her guileless contemporaries. Astaire has always struck me as the most unlikely romatic lead. There is something odd-looking, almost cadaverous about him. But with those dancing feet, no one was looking at his face. 

The film isn't without it's humour. Much of it centres around Horace Hardwick, whether his Jeeves & Wooster-like dynamic with butler Bates, or his relationship with his long-suffering wife, Madge, who, at the mention of divorce, memorably quips, "he'll probably want me to pay myself alimony."

Bates and Hardwick

There are moments of unintentional comedy too, such as Astaire's imitation of a Cockney cabbie that would put even Dick Van Dyke to shame.

But essentially a musical is only as good as its music and Top Hat has songs by the great Irving Berlin.  And then there's the dancing... 

                                                                                                

                                             

And while we're mentioning the dancing we should once more acknowledge Ginger Rogers, who, as Bob Thaves remarked, did (almost) everything Fred did. But backwards. And in high heels.