Lambie Reviews Other Films He Watched in 2012

With my longer style reviews, there were films I watched throughout the year that don't need such a long discussion for one reason or another. Sometimes there's just not all that much to say about a film, whether it be good or bad. However, I always find that even if there's not much to say about a film, there's still always something worth saying about it. Rather than leave these films out altogether, I thought I'd put together a collection of my thoughts on the other stuff I watched in 2012.


Easy Virtue (1928)

One of Hitchcock's early silent films that essentially spends an hour and a half showing us how a woman's life ends up in ruins. The film is based on a Noel Coward play, but unfortunately struggles to escape it's wordy roots. There's something lost with the lack of dialogue. Yes, we get some of it from title cards, but you get the sense that there should be much more going on. With a story like this you need dialogue to be able to get in amongst all the nuances of how people are reacting to one another. Hitchcock does his best by trying to use other means to convey the emotion of dialogue that we can't hear, such as focusing on facial expressions and reactions, but it doesn't feel like enough.


A Farewell To Arms (1932)

Nominated for an Oscar for best film, and winner of best cinematography, I struggled to stay interested in this film based on the novel of the same name. It's basically a love story, but it's so slow paced that even at well under 90 minutes it still feels like nothing is happening.


Cat Ballou (1965)

The film that earned Lee Marvin an Oscar for best actor, and has subsequently ended up on many "Best Comedies" and "Best Western" lists. I found it too colourful to be a true western, and not funny enough to be a true comedy. In fact, I was so confused by the tone of the film that I didn't know what it was meant to be. It's a little too violent for a family film, but not dramatic enough for a serious western. It's got musical numbers, but they only serve as narration and don't make it a musical. It's a product of the many incarnations it was at some point meant to be (it is in fact based on a serious novel and was meant to be a musical at one point).


The Great Gabbo (1929)

The Great Gabbo of the title is a ventriloquist who has the amazing ability to ventriloquise (apparently that's actually a word) whilst smoking, eating, drinking, and otherwise shoving stuff into his mouth. Pity he's also a jerk who takes the puppet everywhere he goes and has conversations with it. He pretty much fires his on-stage assistant after she drops a plate on the stage after delivering a glass of water perfectly well. She leaves, they meet up again, he gets rejected and pretty much ruins his career by going mad over it.

Even though this happens in the space of just over an hour, not a great deal seems to happen. Yet despite all of that, it's still an oddly compelling film.

And in case you are wondering, yes, this is where The Simpsons Gabbo episode comes from.


His Girl Friday (1940)

You know those fast talking 1930's & 1940s newspaper reporters that show up in the occasional spoof, screwball comedy, or pop culture reference? Imagine an entire film that's nothing but those characters and you have this film. Everyone's constantly on the phone jabbering away, and they won't shut up. It's difficult to keep up at times and follow who's said what in order to get the joke.

You can certainly tell that it's based on a stage play, but the film doesn't try to steer away form its roots. If it had, I think it would have been a messy result. There are some refreshingly long takes that we rarely see in films these days, and combined with the fast dialogue it injects a bit of natural energy into the film. However, at the same time it occasionally feels like the film is getting bogged down in the dialogue, and parts of the film feel very slow.


Intolerance (1916)

D.W. Griffith's three hour silent epic about the repercussions of intolerance against others. Many have theorised that this film is a response to the criticism that The Birth of a Nation received. There are three hour long films that don't feel like three hours. This one did. Four stories intercut makes things difficult to follow, particularly when we lose stories for over half an hour at a time. Two of the stories hardly feature at all, while the other two dominate the feature.

The film was not a huge financial success, to the point where Griffith recut the two larger stories into two separate films in order to try and recoup some of the loses. It was a struggle for audiences of the time to sit through this film, and not a lot has changed.


Jamaica Inn (1939)

One of Hitchcock's least favourite films that he directed, and it's not hard to see why. It's pretty dull, restricted to a few locations, and has an incredibly weak script. The film tries to generate tension by letting us know what the heroine does not know (which is the staple of all Hitchcock films, essentially), but it just doesn't work, because the villains just aren't threatening, even the ones with double identities.

It eventually culminates in the main villain just throwing himself to his death, which is incredibly anticlimactic, given that until that point he was in control of just about everything going on. I really sruggled to pay attention throughout the film, and felt as though I wasn't missing out on much.