About This Same Time of Night
Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965)
directed by Robert Mulligan
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library
I don't look at the top of my Netflix list too often; I like to be surprised. But I'm also forgetful. Only yesterday, I received a DVD in the mail that featured, as best I could tell, two completely unrelated movies: Man Friday, a role-reversal take on Robinson Crusoe, and Raise the Titanic, an adaptation of a Clive Cussler novel. Uncertain about the state of mind that compelled me to request either title, I couldn't for the life of me remember which of these two films I at some point wanted to see. I took a gamble on Man Friday and lost.
So what do I do today? Walk right into the same wall, this time an adaptation of a play from the 1960s instead of the 1970s. Ugh. There ought to be a law. Robert Mulligan directed To Kill a Mockingbird, of course, but also The Other, a "creepy kid" horror film that I watched in October. It was a colorful movie but an eerie one, and that's not usually my favorite subgenre. Maybe that got me here.
I will say that Mulligan (via Ernest Laszlo) shoots nighttime well. He gives the impression that other people are out and about after dark, in a neighborly way - that the streets aren't quiet, but full of folks sitting on porches or walking home. These nights are still warm even after the sun sets, because it's hot in small-town Texas.
Baby the Rain Must Fall was filmed there. The opening credits are great, and we should all be lucky enough to sit beside Lee Remick on a bus out of Tyler. But as soon as someone talks, it doesn't sound like a movie or real life at all. It sounds like something on a stage, and Mulligan's interest in the downfall of a "string band" singer is purely intellectual, which is why the Billy Strange dubs of Steve McQueen's voice look so bad.
I like Horton Foote in theory more than in practice, but he understood the openness and defensiveness of rural conversation. He didn't trust old-timers, either. The moment when the little girl says "yes ma'am" to the sheriff and gets corrected by her mom is a funny little-kid thing to show.
On a related note, how many times am I going to order Sorcerer from Netflix, only to realize, when the disc is in the tray, that the only available DVD is pan-and-scan? Two, so far.
directed by Robert Mulligan
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library
I don't look at the top of my Netflix list too often; I like to be surprised. But I'm also forgetful. Only yesterday, I received a DVD in the mail that featured, as best I could tell, two completely unrelated movies: Man Friday, a role-reversal take on Robinson Crusoe, and Raise the Titanic, an adaptation of a Clive Cussler novel. Uncertain about the state of mind that compelled me to request either title, I couldn't for the life of me remember which of these two films I at some point wanted to see. I took a gamble on Man Friday and lost.
So what do I do today? Walk right into the same wall, this time an adaptation of a play from the 1960s instead of the 1970s. Ugh. There ought to be a law. Robert Mulligan directed To Kill a Mockingbird, of course, but also The Other, a "creepy kid" horror film that I watched in October. It was a colorful movie but an eerie one, and that's not usually my favorite subgenre. Maybe that got me here.
I will say that Mulligan (via Ernest Laszlo) shoots nighttime well. He gives the impression that other people are out and about after dark, in a neighborly way - that the streets aren't quiet, but full of folks sitting on porches or walking home. These nights are still warm even after the sun sets, because it's hot in small-town Texas.
Baby the Rain Must Fall was filmed there. The opening credits are great, and we should all be lucky enough to sit beside Lee Remick on a bus out of Tyler. But as soon as someone talks, it doesn't sound like a movie or real life at all. It sounds like something on a stage, and Mulligan's interest in the downfall of a "string band" singer is purely intellectual, which is why the Billy Strange dubs of Steve McQueen's voice look so bad.
I like Horton Foote in theory more than in practice, but he understood the openness and defensiveness of rural conversation. He didn't trust old-timers, either. The moment when the little girl says "yes ma'am" to the sheriff and gets corrected by her mom is a funny little-kid thing to show.
On a related note, how many times am I going to order Sorcerer from Netflix, only to realize, when the disc is in the tray, that the only available DVD is pan-and-scan? Two, so far.
posted by NPK at 1:24 PM
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