Euphoria #2
Thanks for the suggestions I’ve already had for future editions of Cinema Euphoria. I’ll get to them over the coming weeks. Here’s my own first nomination.
I’ve written before about my love of William Wyler’s work. Here’s an offshoot of it, a piece of informal, or unofficial cinema that gives me great pleasure whenever I see it.
Audrey Hepburn’s screen test:
Partly it’s the human thing of responding to a smile with a smile. But what I like most is…
Wyler told Thorold Dickinson, who was shooting this test, to let the cameras roll on after the test was supposed to be over, and just talk to Hepburn, to get an unaffected, natural look at her. Audrey at first is quite stiff — like most intelligent kids, she tries to make a good impression by being Very Serious. And she’s probably getting further and further from landing the part the more that goes on. Then an emotive memory surfaces, and she appears vulnerable, and I would think Wyler’s interest would perk up at that point. And then, at the end, the grown-up asks a silly question and like all smart kids Audrey can’t help laughing at the silly grown-up, and also delights in having got one over on the Germans. And that smile has to be the moment when she got the part.
It might be interesting to blog on a few more examples of informal cinema, stuff that isn’t quite a film, but isn’t anything else. I have a newsreel I’d like to show you all, for instance. And suggestions are, as always, gratefully received.
shadowplay 
December 30, 2007 at 5:57 pm
[…] Today, I’ve found out that Richard Widmark is still alive, seen Audrey Hepburn’s screentest and found out who Henri Alekan is. I can’t wait to see what’s […]
June 2, 2009 at 3:59 pm
This is astonishing. When Hepburn smiles her little smile and says the Germans didn’t know, she’s not just charming, she’s powerful. I’ve been collecting my own little movie moments and am adding this one. Thank you!
June 2, 2009 at 4:46 pm
You’re welcome. Have been thinking about restarting the Euphoria theme here, have you any moments you’d like to share?
June 2, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Ah, well, I just blogged about the euphoric film moment that popped into my mind in response to Audrey’s smile–Bud Cort’s sly smile at us, breaking the fourth wall, in “Harold and Maude.” It’s not a movie that ages well, I don’t think, but the first time I saw this when I was about thirteen, I thought it–and especially that glance at the viewers–was very full of pudding indeed!
June 3, 2009 at 12:12 am
I think I featured a clip of Harold and Maude in Euphoria quite late on… maybe around number 50.
I show the film to students and they still dig in a lot. Cort’s smile sends them wild.
June 3, 2009 at 3:22 am
I feel so tenderly toward that movie and the younger self to whom it meant so much, I’ve been afraid to watch it again, at midlife, having made the mistake of watching “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” (which I loved at the same young age) and almost dying of embarrassment a couple years ago.
I am delighted to know your students love it.
Whatever else ages badly, I stand by that smile.
If I think of other cinema euphoric moments, I shall search your blog first before mentioning them. I do love the series.
(Oh, btw, a blog pal recommended your post to me yesterday–that’s why I’ve popped out of nowhere all of a sudden. Great stuff!)
June 3, 2009 at 7:56 am
Fresca, I too have a special fondness for the memory of Harold and Maude. Back in 1972 I had a girlfriend named Tanya, I was 17, she was two years younger than me. The two of us had met while we were both in a psychiatric hospital, and continued to see each other for a short time after we’d been released. She was the one who took me to see the film, this was after she’d seen it ten times at least. One of the things that makes the film so special to me is Cat Stevens’ songs, I hear them and I’m transported back to 1972 again. I can’t help but think that Wes Anderson’s been highly influenced by this Hal Ashby film. I was watching SIX FEET UNDER recently and found myself thinking of Harold and Maude, there’s a May/December romance in the series that takes place between Ruth, the matriarch of the show, and a young intern who’s working at her funeral home.
June 3, 2009 at 11:41 am
Brother Sun, Sister Moon is indeed overripe and overdone in every department, proof that something can be “beautiful” without achieving dignity. But there’s no shame in liking that kind of thing! Certainly as a teen.
Oddly, I just saw a Donovan interview where he talked about scoring it for a few medieval instruments. They started recording, and Zefferelli said, “Don, I think perhaps a string quartet.”
They ended up with a philharmonic orchestra.
Harold and Maude stands up way better than that — it finds beauty in less obvious places, the songs aren’t as gigantic, and it has far more interesting performances. And a sense of humour, which is always helpful.
Guy, I expect you’re right about Anderson. Even the Kubrickian symmetry of many of his shots is prefigured in H&M.
June 3, 2009 at 2:05 pm
GUY: Talk about astonishing: your film noir woodcuts! I especially admire the way you caught Robert Mitchum’s beat up trenchcoat, with its twisted belt. Out of the Past is my favorite noir and I can’t even think of a euphoric moment from it because I hold my breath through the entire thing. Though maybe one of the moments when he lights a cigarette…
(I have an uncle dying of emphysema, and seeing him gasp for air, I’m glad, in a real-life way, that movies don’t romanticize smoking anymore, but I can’t help regretting its loss of it as a …what would you call it? more than a prop, a signifier? a whole language in itself.)
I haven’t watched H&M in years, but I do still listen to the songs–you’re right, they’re special, though personally I’m not too eager to revisit the 1970s.
Wes Anderson—that makes sense!
DAVID: “Overripe”–now there’s a perfect word.
That gives me an idea to blog about the worst movie moments, the ones that make you want to sink through the floor.
But thanks for the reminder that of course teenagers almost ought to like that sort of thing–if we start out overripe maybe there’ll be enough juice to carry us through the drier years. :)
Or, start out with an orchestra and hope to be left with a few medieval instruments.
Did Zefferelli make any really good movies?
I shall screw up my courage and watch Harold and Maude again.
I thought of a euphoric cinema moment that has been bothering me because all I remember is the moment, not the movie it’s from.
Perhaps you can place it? I’m not sure of any of the details but the gesture itself is like nothing else (that I’ve ever seen anyway).
It’s from a b&w Japanese samurai film. The hero is going to fight some group of baddies. It is winter, and he is or just has been outside, and his sword hand is stiff with cold. His wife opens her kimono front and places his freezing hand under her armpit.
June 3, 2009 at 4:15 pm
I think back then cigarettes were an aesthetic accessory, a key accessory in the making of films, the dreaminess of cigarette smoke accentuated the sensuousness of black and white cinema. Peter Lorre was a chain smoker, heavy-duty, which I’m sure played a part in hastening the end of his life, that and heroin and melancholy perhaps. My mother was a heavy smoker, she died in 1995 at the age of sixty, I recall how she once sent me an afghan she’d knitted, mailed it to me from Louisiana where she lived toward the end of her life, and when I opened the box the thing reeked of cigarette smoke, no doubt she was puffing away the whole time she was making it. But she was born in 1934, it was a way of life for many, many people who came up back then.
June 3, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Wow, the Japanese movie moment sounds grand! But I have no idea what it’s from. We need to advertise it.
I’m not sure if anything by Zefferelli fits the term “good”, but don’t let my friend David Wingrove hear me say that. If we embrace his stuff as camp it’s probably worth a giggle.
As for cigarettes, they’re so useful visually and dramatically! But it would be ethically questionable even to ask an actor to smoke for a role now. I guess herbal cigarettes could be used…
Two of my favourite movie smokers are Telly Savalas and George C Soctt — they were very creative with a cigarette. And weirdly, the above-mentioned John Travolta is rather handy with a smoke too.
June 3, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Travolta, absolutely. He comes across as someone who may have had a smoke dangling from his mouth the instant he exited the womb (unlit of course). Those overly fleshy lips of his are practically a billboard advertisement for the illicit joys of tobacco.
June 3, 2009 at 7:55 pm
He also holds the ciggie in his fingers in a bizarre way, as seen in Face/Off and Broken Arrow. Some of his moves betray the influence of Savalas. You can’t beat Savalas. But while filming Lisa and the Devil, Telly quit the demon weed, following the advice of director Mario Bava that he should find something else to occupy his hands and lips — and so Kojak’s lollypop was born.
June 4, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Well, darn. I think the Japanese movie that moment came from is not a big famous one in the West (not “Seven Samurai”, in other words).
Brother Sun would work as camp, yes! But if you start out loving something sincerely, it’s not so fun to revision it as camp–better, maybe, just to move on…
Mitchum smokes very nicely in “Out of the Past.” I’ll have to rewatch that too–I seem to recall the cigarette lighter itself being potent.
June 4, 2009 at 5:44 pm
I’ve seen plenty of obscure samurai films, but it’s a huge field. But your film might be out on Criterion, they helpfully released some very good non-Kurosawa heroic bloodshed flicks.
Out of the Past is one smoky movie. “I’ll wear my earrings.”
June 4, 2009 at 11:15 pm
LOL
“…of jade and pure silver.”
[No, I can’t quote scripture–I looked it up.]
June 4, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Can never get over how scary Kirk Douglas is in that movie, even early on where he totally plays it light and charming on the surface. But the menace!