I’m still trying to figure out why I’ve largely missed Edinburgh International Film Festival this year — it has risen phoenixlike from the ashes of the Centre for the Moving Image, and I ought to be supporting it. We did make it to SAFETY LAST! and I paid more than the minimum (very unScottish of me) and now I’ve seen Kelly Reichardt’s SHOWING UP which was LOVELY so I guess I’ve done more than the absolute minimum. With a bit more push I might have gotten a press pass and seen everything…
Anyway, it’s late, I’ll write about this one tomorrow.
In the magnificent quad of Old College, Edinburgh, for an outdoor screening of SAFETY LAST!, courtesy of the reinvigorated Edinburgh International Film Festival. Accompaniment by Mike Nolan on piano and a crow on a rooftop, who was obviously enjoying the score and the reverb, if not the movie.
My snaps don’t do justice to the projection. It was pin-sharp and bright enough to cope against the sunshine.
Harold Lloyd’s hi-rise adventure proved a near-perfect comedy. The only tricks they missed were with Mildred Davis’s character. Her obsession with Harold’s success in the big city needed to be mitigated by more sympathetic qualities (Keaton would have got this) and at the end, she needs to learn the truth. There’s a suggestion that she does, but titles writer H.M Walker (the man credited with “writing” all Laurel & Hardy’s best shorts, when he did nothing of the kind) fails to supply a title spelling this out. (His other titles are very witty and effective.)
It would be tricky to do — you need something very brisk, and if you could do it visually, that would be even better. In the movie as it stands, all we know is that she finds out it’s Harold up there on the building’s facade. So far as we know, his pretence that he’s running the department store is never actually debunked. We might infer that contained in the single sentence uttered at the storefront, she learns everything the plot has withheld, but to redeem the slightly annoying character, a little more is needed. It’d be a classical Hollywood move to have her rush to the rooftop, determined that Harold’s quest for success at any price must be called off, only for him to succeed anyway.
But that’s a quibble. Literally the only fault I could find (apart from the brief racist moments, which were awkward but not as awful as some). I couldn’t remember anything about what happens BEFORE the climb, but that’s a magnificent bit of comic structure too. The gags are not only funny, they advance the story, and they not only advance the story, they’re funny.
Continuing my summer of actually going to see films. Edinburgh currently lacks a real art cinema — Filmhouse closed but will reopen, YAY! — Cameo is mainly showing multiplex stuff — so I’m booking a visit to “that other, much darker city,” (per Anna Karena) where I will see THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD and SERPICO on Saturday (Glaswegian Shadowplayers, hit me up!), and am planning a couple of trips to Edinburgh International Film Festival, which, despite being rendered homeless by the Filmhouse closure, is striding boldly forth under the able direction of Kate Taylor. Please consider going to see something — it’s a reduced programme this year but a strong one, I think.
But meanwhile, I strolled over to my local, Vue Ocean Terminal (don’t like the name — why pick something that doesn’t sound like a cinema — what’s wrong with Roxy, Ritz, Odeon, Regal?) and saw SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE. Which was plenty of fun.
I tried to wean myself off Marvel and DC movies. Succeeded pretty well with DC, except for lapsing into SUICIDE SQUAD. I generally enjoy Lord-Miller stuff though, and the first of these animated mixed-media romps was very enjoyable. The second one suffers a bit from series bloat and repetition — they strim off the less appealing elements of the last one (gone is the cartoon Spider-Pig, a relief) and add a few new wrinkles on the concept (I liked Hammerspace — where cartoon characters like Bugs produce their big hammers from) and the combination of cinematic and comic book language is still remarkably successful.
You see in things like CREEPSHOW an attempt to combine the comic book with film — you see it in occasional TV experiments like the wretched Jane. But these always seemed gimmicky, half-assed and totally unsuccessful. Romero was a smart guy, but the formal elements he ported over from EC Comics always just seemed pasted on, and they screwed up the pace.
The team here (three writers, three directors, an army of others) use captions as footnotes, and make it a rule never to allow any of them to delay the action — you’re either quick enough to catch them or you aren’t. If you struggle, that’s good, it forces you to sit up. Rather than changing screen ratio to simulate comic panels, as Edgar Wright did in SCOTT PILGRIM, or inserting shots into actual panels, as Romero did, intermittently and laboriously, they use occasional splitscreen effects, always at key moments when they’re useful. The whole gorgeous stylisation of the thing means such moments never stand out as particularly contrived. You’re never yanked out of the film because you have a one-foot-in, one-foot-out relationship to it anyway, enjoying the story and characters (I hope) and admiring the sheen and brushstrokes and futziness and show-off energy.
The vocal performances are lovely, distinctive without being overly cartoony. I particularly admire Hailee Steinfeld’s ability to sound like she’s constantly on the verge of tears without wearing out the empathic response or getting tiresome. The teen angst of the original strip was its best innovation: this whole movie strikes me as a coming-out story, which is cool. Although it would be nice to have some actual gay characters. If you have an infinite number of Spider-Man universes, would he not be gay in at least some?
My other gripe about the movie, which I mostly found dazzling and even moving, is the nightmare the animators have been put through: we know it must have been really awful because word has gotten out. Despite all the professional pressures in place to prevent anyone complaining. The movie already looks like ten times the work of any normal film, and if sequences had to be fully-rendered four times, with complete returns to the virtual drawing board each time, because the producers couldn’t make up their minds or couldn’t imagine what something would look like without seeing it complete, that sounds like a nightmare. Being able to previsualize is part of the job, or ought to be if you involve yourself in the visuals at all. Personally, I always try to avoid changing my mind and I certainly feel bad if I’m forced to do it because something hasn’t worked.
“If something doesn’t work first time, you’re an asshole.” — Mario Bava. “That’s how it is in this business: you’re either God the father or you’re an asshole.”
This movie had been and gone but Vue seem to now have a habit of bringing stuff back for single showings, a policy I approve of. Maybe we can turn our multiplexes into rep cinemas. Get the Vue bit by a radioactive arthouse.
shadowplay 