Camille’s secret life

 

Camille (1936)

Marguerite Gautier (Greta Garbo) uses her femininity to rise from humble beginnings to a preeminent position in French society as Dame Camille, but complications arise when she falls in love with Armand (Robert Taylor).

Armand’s father (Lionel Barrymore) convinces Camille her sordid past will ruin his future, so she leaves him.  A heartbroken Armand finds her just before she dies from tuberculosis, which the film suggests is punishment for her promiscuous past.

When thirty-five year old Garbo retired in 1941, her career consisted of fewer than forty films, less than twenty in the sound era, but her work was so transcendent it ensured her a place in the Hollywood pantheon. Years after her death, her name still has a cultural cache and her public image as a mysterious, beautiful recluse impacts how we view her films, forcing us to see sadness behind every smile.

Robert Taylor was one of the brightest lights in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s, but since his death, the luster has faded.   In a sort of reverse blacklist, he’s been systematically diminished because he identified communists in Hollywood before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

George Cukor was at his best directing strong women, from Judy Holliday to Audrey Hpeburn and his close friend, Katharine Hepburn.  His affinity for women-centric films reached its apex with The Women (1939), a film with no male roles.

Excerpts from this film appear in Annie (1982) when Daddy Warbucks takes his orphan charge to the movies, and my love Annie make me like this more than I might have otherwise.

This is a good introduction to Garbo, but it’s a little too melodramatic.  If you want to see vintage Garbo, watch Ninotchka (1939).

 

 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Daydreamer Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) has a steady, boring job at Life, where he’s developed a correspondence and pseudo-friendship with renowned photojournalist Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn).

The magazine is sold to a conglomerate and will become an exclusively digital publication.  Its last traditional cover will be one last photo by O’Connell which Walter loses because of his persistent daydreaming. To rectify his mistake, he embarks on a series of adventures to track down O’Connell and retrieve another copy of the photo.

As Mitty’s love interest, Cheryl Melhoff, Kristen Wiig shows a welcome ability to reign in her performance, something unexpected from her work on Saturday Night Live.

Shirley Maclaine sparkles as Mitty’s mother, Edna.  Her output has slowed considerably as she enters her ninth decade, but her recent work in Richard Linklater’s Bernie (2011) and Downton Abbey proves she’s still an engaging screen presence.

Sean Penn’s tough guy image, carefully crafted him in films like Dead Man Walking (1995), Mystic River (2003) and Gangster Squad (2013) adds to his performance as the aloof and taciturn Sean O’Connell.

I love Patton Oswalt, but Todd Maher, an eager eHarmony technician, feels like unnecessary padding, written just so they could justify having Oswalt in the film.

Adam Scott’s great as Ben Wyatt but his work as Ted Hendricks, the asshole new boss, is the biggest misstep of the film.

It’s not Ben Stiller’s funniest film, but it may be the most satisfying, and is a major step forward for his directorial career. Wildly different from the 1947 film adaptation of James Thurber’s short story, many dismissed it as a feature-length “Just Do It” commercial, but not every movie can be a detached, irony filled statement on the pointlessness of existence.  There’s still a need for positive, life affirming movies, and I liked this straightforward celebration of the countless possibilities of life.

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