Beauty Break: Smoking Kills (Glamorously)
Saturday, January 11, 2014 at 9:40PM Confessions, multiple: I have never been a smoker, I've been thrilled and proud of my friends whenever they've kicked the habit, I have never once missed the days when bars / restaurants allowed smoking...
... but I miss smoking in the movies.
Rock Hudson blowing smoke rings
Fifty years ago this very day the Surgeon General first deemed it hazardous to your health and over the next fifty years it's slowly faded from the movies. Nowadays when you see smoking onscreen, it's nearly always to signify "rebellious character" or "villain" or is shot through some sharp retro-commentary filters: see everything about everyone in Mad Men or David Straitharn's whole act in Goodnight, and Good Luck.
I know smoking is wrong. I know it kills. I hate the way it smells. But those tendrils of smoke on screen or a movie star's lips around a cigarette look so damn sexy. Here's proof...
Bogie & Bacall shared more than cigarettes
Even without the cig, you'd know Angelina Jolie was a bad girl
Good girl gone bad: Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club
Carole Lombard, such an original
Gary Cooper knew how to work the camera
smoking as accessory to sadness, via miserable Kiki
Seductive smoking in A Single Man - rare in movies now
Kathleen Turner
Hollywood's Greatest Chain Smoker
Brando
Angela Bassett knows how to kick bad habits in Waiting to Exhale
None of this ever made me want to take up the habit but apparently that isn't true for others so for the greater good of all we have to be okay with the No Smoking zone that is modern cinema. movies. But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes gaze rapt when I catch it onscreen in an old movie or appreciate it when a modern filmmaker fetishizes it like Wong Kar Wai or Ang Lee when they catch Tony Leung Chiu Wai smoldering. Smolder on, Tony, smolder on.
I'm only human.
Reader Comments (20)
There was a promo poster for Schindler's List with Neeson in a cigarette haze. It looked like a Hurrell. Beautiful shot.
Heh. Yeah, smoking is actually disgusting, but the movies make it look soo gooood.
It's gotten so that smoking was one of the reasons cited for The Wind Rises to get a PG-13 rating, forget that many of his previous films feature smoking!
woody allen approves this post
The sexiest shot of smoking on film has got to be Marla Singer in those sunglasses in Fight Club. If I knew how to gif things I would gif it here.
Jennifer Jones and William Holden in Love Is A Many Splendored Thing. Dayum.
yes Brookesboy! I agree completely about Holden and Jones
Dirk Bogarde smoking in The Servant could shift many people's Kinsey scales. Ditto Garrett Hedlund in Inside Llewyn Davis.
But yes, HBC in Fight Club made me question everything I saw for an ideal woman.
I also like how it can be character-building. Like when Jim Stark gives Buzz his cigarette and when Buzz returns it he throws the bud away in Rebel Without a Cause. Everything about that relationship is underlined due to a cigarette.
But you cannot do a cigarette in film post without Marlene Dietrich.
smoking is not wrong. that would be a moral judgement.
Bette Davis in Now Voyager when her French lover says "Let's have a cigarette on it" and they go out on the balcony on a beautiful starry night, and he lights two cigarettes at the same time and passes her one. Very very sexy. I got so mad when they issued a Bette Davis stamp, and they airbrushed out the cigarette. We can't pretend that people never smoked. It was a different time then. It used to be fun. I quit two years ago, but still miss it.
I quit this past April, and do not miss the health effects or the smell or the weight gain or the cost (about $5.50 / pack here in Los Angeles), but they are fun and sexy and rebellious. I miss that part. Thelma and Louise bond over a cigarette. That's one I thought of.
I'm a smoker and I miss smoking in movies too.
Great collection, Nat! Tony Leung should be forced to have a cigarette at all times, health be damned.
My sixth anniversary for quitting smoking is coming up in a couple of months - every year I do this same sort of thing, posting pictures of actors (always actors) making the dirty habit look good, here's a link to last year's, with links to all the rest therein. If anybody needs more pictures of this sort! Lots and lots and lots.
At the movies smoking will always be sexy...just look at "Now Voyager"
Where's your top 10 list for 2013
I'm in love with this montage of people smoking in German film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TRZYOh86Xo
lavon -- i suck. i'm still writing it. (sigh) i need the world to stop spinning for like 72 hours. I think i could sorta catch up in 72 hours.
MATCH POINT has one of the most remarkable "smoking scenes" in recent years: when Woody introduces Nola during the ping-pong scene...
Are we that wise to actually stop smoking? Or not ..
Friends, smoking is bad and disgusting. Not only is it not aesthetically pleasing, but it's very harmful. I don't smoke cigarettes or cannabis. I understand I want to relax sometimes and then www.shrooms-online.org/shop/magic-mushroom-chocolate/ comes to my rescue. It's magic chocolate with magic mushrooms, which I like very much. I'm in a great mood afterwards and I love it.