Well, dear readers, for whatever reasons, sometimes you hear a line of dialogue and it can just send you into paroxysms of laughter, uncontrollable laughter and when you try to analyze why there is simply no answer. That happened to me when finishing viewing Ruggles of Red Gap. I occurs near the end of the film, in the restaurant that Ruggles has opened. Charlie Ruggles speaks it or throws it away, really. And the line – well, it’s not even a line, it’s the beginning of a line – “Oh, you big bowl of soup,” he says to Ruggles (Ruggles saying it to Ruggles – how fun is that). That is just a brilliant line and I could not stop laughing. I had to pause the movie, actually. On paper it doesn’t look so funny, but spoken it just put me away, my favorite kind of line. There’s one of those in Woody Allen’s Bananas that gets me every time, where he says to visiting Louise Lasser – “Are you hungry? I could open a can of ribs.” Brilliant. I don’t know why, I don’t care why, it just reduces me to a laughing mound of Jell-O. Ruggles of Red Gap is filled with such lines. What a wonderful movie with the kind of comedy nobody and I mean nobody knows how to do anymore. A wonderful premise, great performances by all, and filled with actors whose like we will never see again. Aside from Laughton, who is strange and wonderful (and brilliant in the film’s most famous scene – his recitation of the Gettysburg Address) and absolutely hilarious, Charlie Ruggles is as you’ve never seen him and it’s a gem of a turn. Mary Boland is very much of her time, but it’s wonderful to watch. And I cannot say enough about Roland Young, who, for that time, was one of the most subtle actors ever, underplaying his lines brilliantly and making each of them more memorable for it. His scene with the absolutely gorgeous and wonderful Leila Hyams, an actress completely new to me and one I will now have to seek out in everything else she did, is so funny and charming I had to replay it – she’s singing the song Pretty Baby and he’s trying to play the drums and it’s just one of the most wonderful scenes in the history of film. Leo McCarey is practically forgotten these days, and he was terrific – his camera direction is simple and straightforward – he steps back, it’s never about him, and he just lets the actors and script do the work and I’m sure he brought all sorts of touches to it. A master director and a great, great comedy, which is highly recommended by the likes of me. Sadly, only available on Blu and Ray in the United Kingdom but if you happen to own a multi-region player, get it.
Prior to that it was a very strange day yesterday. I slept until almost eleven because I really needed to. I got up, answered e-mails, some of which were a little baffling to me, then I went for an omelet and a bagel. After that, I picked up several packages, took clothes to the dry cleaners (a huge amount of clothing), then came back home and did some writing and a few other things, had some telephonic conversations, and finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
After finishing Ruggles of Red Gap (oh, you big bowl of soup), I watched a Swedish motion picture from Sweden on DVD, entitled Man on the Roof, based on a novel by the famous Swedish crime novelists, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. It features their detective, Beck. There was a whole series of films made in the 1990s from their Beck novels, and those are supposed to be great and I have them on their way to me. This one was made in 1976 and was a huge hit in Sweden. It was directed by Bo Widerberg, the man who gave the world Elvira Madigan. Truth be told, the story is good, but the execution and script isn’t that interesting. It’s not especially well directed, but the performances are good and it was really fun to see the actor who thirty years later would play Van Veeteren (when in his mid-70s) here as a thin and very good looking forty-something year old, complete with a full-frontal nude scene, which happens a lot in Swedish films. I’m glad I saw it, but I’m quite looking forward to the films from the 1990s, and then I have a season of the TV show coming (same actors as the films), which are based only on the characters and not the actual novels.
I then watched a crime thriller show that has gotten raves from all, a French TV show called Spiral. It’s one of these where each season is one storyline – the season lasts eight episodes. I watched episode one – I was actually ready to turn it off after twenty minutes, but I’m glad I didn’t as I began to finally enjoy it, after just ignoring the awful “direction,” which is like every American cop show – shaky cam, show-off crap, with loud whooshes every time the camera moves. That’s the difference with these Swedish and Danish shows – for the most part they do not succumb to that crap. But once you look past that, the story is interesting, and the justice system in France is so different to ours that that becomes as interesting as the story being told. I like the leading lady and I’ll be interested to see where it goes. One thing: It’s brutally graphic – I don’t know if American shows like this are that graphic, but man, I had to look away a couple of times.
Then I listened to some music whilst I did some more work. And then the person from whom I got the original script from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window e-mailed me and asked if I’d be interested in a 77-page treatment for that film by the screenwriter, John Michael Hayes. Of course I said yes, and I also asked him what else he might have around. He wrote back and said he had an original script of Vertigo and To Catch a Thief. Well, it took a little time, but we made a deal that involves no cash and I will soon have these amazingly rare items. The Vertigo script is especially interesting – it has the original title, From Among the Dead (the literal translation of the original French book’s title), and no screenwriter listed on the title page. About thirty pages of the script have typed pages attached to the back of them, with explicit camera set-ups for those sequences. Nothing like this has ever come on the market. The To Catch a Thief script is a first draft. I saw samples of each thing and it all just looks great. I know he also has a Psycho script, which I may try to get at some point. So, that was all very exciting.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below whilst saying, “Oh, you big bowl of soup.”
Today, the day will mostly be devoted to trying to finalize the cast for the next Kritzerland show, finalizing and assigning songs, hopefully picking up some packages, doing errands and whatnot, and hopefully hearing our new master.
Tomorrow is, of course, the Nudie Musical screening and I’m really hoping we have a decent-sized crowd there. There’s no way of really knowing, though. The weekend is not that busy, which is nice – prepping the new release announcement, and our annual Tony Awards Bash, which no one will want to miss.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, finalize a cast, assign songs, hopefully pick up packages, eat, and hopefully listen to our new master, along with watching another episode of Spiral. Today’s topic of discussion: What are you favorite comic films from the 1930s? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, still giggling at, “Oh, you big bowl of soup.”