Hit Me: Natalie Wood and "Rebel Without a Cause"

It's time to wrap up the Hit Me With Your Best Shot season with a 1955 classic. Why this one? Well, today would've been Natalie Wood's 73rd birthday and we love ourselves some Natalie Wood. She was, in fact, Nathaniel's first actress obsession, an obsession formed in the late 70s while watching TV airings of various 50s & 60s movies (with an emphasis on West Side Story which has its 50th anniversary this fall!).

Natalie suddenly died in 1981, drowning as you know, after falling from a yacht during a break from filming her last picture Brainstorm (which was later released in 1983). Wee Nathaniel was heartbroken. Enough with the third person but I needed the distance; this one hits so close to home. Let it suffice to say that it was the first time I'd ever lost anyone I loved, virtual or otherwise. I hadn't even lost a pet at that point in life! The heartache maybe felt as formative as Natalie's in Splendor in the Grass; a first love never to be forgotten if you will.

Today we're talking about Rebel Without a Cause (1955) because it gave Natalie her first of three Oscar nominations and because we've been thinking about "first love" and high school lately. (See, we've recently started rewatching Angela Chase falling for Jordan Catalano on Netflix.)

The Nicholas Ray movie -- part of that unassailable James Dean Trinity -- is a spectacularly enduring piece of teen angst. It's as mesmerizing and febrile with feeling today as we assume it was in 1955 even though it's now most decidedly a period piece. But this happens to all contemporary entertainments... the period part I mean. (The enduring part only happens to the lucky or the brilliant. Have you seen My So Called Life lately? It's just as great 17 years later only now it's as much a period piece as Rebel -- it's soooo '90s.) Time marches on.

Best Shot

This beautifully sustained shot (it lasts for over a minute) captures two era-defining icons of youth in what can accurately be described as langurous mutual auto-eroticism. Judy (Wood) and Jim (Dean) barely ever look at each other in this sequence, letting their bodies and their voices do all the communicating. But aren't they still in their own little worlds, only dreaming of colliding?

Directors rarely hold the camera on two faces simultaneously anymore and that's nothing but one of the greatest losses for the cinema. All great movie stars are auto-erotic, their principal love affair being with the camera rather than co-stars, but when they share a frame the power can feel infinite. (For a comic counterpoint example of this same face-pressing double whammy magic, see The Lady Eve with that sensationally funny scene where Barbara Stanwyck babbles incessantly while rubbing her face against an overheated Henry Fonda.) In this case the dual star magnetism doubles as youthful dreaming, disconnected from reality, though Judy and Jim are, in fact, speaking about connection. Judy is philosophizing about friendship, character, and love. She's about to launch into her famous "I love somebody" speech, the "somebody" is telling as she's caressing a man who is still more of an abstraction than a reality to her. Jimmy interjects.

We're not going to be lonely anymore. Ever ever. Not you or me.

The scene is heartbreaking for any number of reasons both for what precedes it and for what follows (poor Plato!), but mostly because you recognize it as a false prophecy, born of the loneliness it's trying to banish. Judy & Jim have long long lives ahead of them even if Dean and Wood didn't. Loneliness never stays away for good.

Rebels of the 'Best Shot' Cause

• Film Actually sees Rebel for the first time and contemplates that issue-heavy love triangle.
• Movies Kick Ass "Let's not ask the moon" is there a world larger than teenage problems?
  
• Clearly Up To No Good --- this is really cool. It's four themed photo folders. I love "Plato's Closet" and "Living on the Edge". Lovely
• Awww the Movies the looks.
• Stale Popcorn a dynamic shift in "family"

The Academy's Production Design Database

Did any of you catch that AMPAS has opened up a Production Design Database? It's just got two sample searches right now "Science Fiction" and "Wedding Clothes" and many of the items you still have to make appointments to actually see but what they do have up gives you a taste of their rich history. (It's better to search more generally -- like say by picking a year -- than to search for a specific film). Since I didn't do as much as I intended for the June Wedding theme here at the blog, I thought I'd share a couple of their illustrations for one last walk down an aisle (and to give you a taste of the type of stuff they have.)

The wedding search is more Costume Design than Production Design but those two departments are usually tight. In the picture above you see illustrations of stars Elizabeth Taylor and Olivia De Havilland in gowns they wore in real life (Liz's wedding to Nicky Hilton) or on film (that's Olivia's gown from My Cousin Rachel).

My favorite thing in their "wedding" database was this: a storyboard of one of the most hilarious scenes from Funny Girl (1968)

Fanny: I ask my looking glass what-is-it? That makes me so exquisite?
Chorus: The answer to your query, is come back dearie.
His love makes me beautiful, so beautiful. You are so beautiful
Fanny: I am so byootiful.

That scene makes me LOL every time, how about you? Barbra Streisand totes deserved that Best Actress statue. 

Reader Spotlight: John from Boston

Continuing the Reader Appreciation Series, here's a conversation with John (pictured left) from Boston. He's been reading the site ever since it launched and hearing that warms the cockles of my heart. Loyalty is definite top ten top three material as character traits go, don't you think?

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first movie?
JOHN: I think my first movie was Cinderella.  I was so frightened of the evil stepmother that we had to leave early.  When I was young, every movie scared me.  I didn’t sleep for years after E.T.  (yet somehow/somewhere I became obsessed with this medium).

First movie obsession?
Probably Clue.  I remember renting it when I was home from school with chicken pox in fifth grade.  I probably watched it 10 times in one weekend.  It is so campy, but so utterly entertaining.  …and what a cast!!!  Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock and Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White are classic!  I still bust that one out every once and a while.

I love that one, too. Mrs. White is the best in the movie but when I play the game though I am always Professor Plum or Miss Scarlet.

Mrs Peacock and Mrs. White

 Okay, you're suddenly in charge of the cinema for a year. How do you wield this awesome power?

• Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore have to make at least 2 movies together
• Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock are put on one year hiatus (Meg Ryan would be too, but what the hell has she done lately)
• No sequels
• No Oscar campaigns
• I decide all Oscar nominees and winners

Heh. Okay. Who are your three favorite actresses?
JULIANNE MOORE is the God to whom I pray.  I saw her receive the Hasty Pudding award in February.  She cannot be more awesome.  There are too many awe-inspiring performances to name.  JUDI DENCH continues to amaze me.  I thought she could only be the strong, comic matriarch until she blew me away in Notes on a Scandal.  MERYL STREEP is a given.  She is so perfect every time out that I take her for granted.  If she doesn’t win a third Oscar sometime soon there is no justice.  Katharine Hepburn, Cate Blanchett, Julie Christie and Angela Bassett get special recognition.

Take one Oscar away from someone. Give it to someone else.
I can’t only do one here.  I have to take advantage of the moment.  I would go back to 1958 and give Susan Hayward’s Oscar for I Want to Live! to Rosalind Russell for Auntie Mame. Auntie Mame is my all time favorite and Russell is so spot-on.  One of the best comic performances ever!  Second, in 2005, I would take Reese Witherspoon’s Oscar for Walk the Line and give it to Joan Allen in The Upside of Anger.  It is a major travesty that this performance was not even nominated (Keira Knightley in Pride & Prejudice…what was the Academy thinking?). That was definitely Allen’s best--better than her three Oscar-nominated, which are all fantastic. 

2005's Film Bitch Gold Medalist Joan Allen has other fans. She shoulda won the Oscar.

Finally, I would take Kim Basinger’s 1997 Supporting Actress win for L.A. Confidential and give it to Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights.  This is my third choice because I still have faith that Juli will win one day.

Have you ever dressed up as a film character for Halloween? Has a film character ever dressed as you?
Like so many others in the past, I was tighty whitey clad Tom Cruise in Risky Business two years ago for Halloween.  I had the right hair at the moment .  He’s not a film character, but Matthew Morrison’s Will Schuester definitely raided my tie/cardigan collection.

Okay John. Let's wrap up. The movie of your life. Tell us about it.
Stephen Daldry would direct the movie of my life starring James Franco (I am not scarred enough by the Oscar gig to not cast him).  The movie is part Seasons 1-3 of Brothers and Sisters, part Mean Girls, part Into the Wild, part Latter Days, part The Devil Wears Prada, part…

So many parts!

Previous Spotlights

April Showers: South Pacific

waterworks weeknights at 11

Tonight I thought we'd cover one of the most famous showers in entertainment history. It's not famous for the showering but for the singing. Raise your hands if you've ever sung this song in the shower.

I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair
I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair
I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair
and send him on his way.

Nellie talks herself out of love "before i go any further i better not get started."

It's so catchy it's like a commercial jingle. (Didn't it get coopted for actual commercial jingles at some point?) The strangest thing about the sequence in South Pacific (1958) is that it's not actually sung IN the shower. I had totally forgotten this. Maybe "Billis Bath Club" charged extra for singing? I mean even "use of soap" is an extra there, an extra 5¢.

No, constantly fretful Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor) actually waits until AFTER she's out of the shower to shampoo her hair. And to sing.

Isn't that nuts?

Early Don't Ask Don't Tell signage (?) and Mitzi's backwards shower activities after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Cast This: "From Here To Eternity" Redux

By now you may have heard the news that an uncensored version of the famous novel From Here To Eternity, a "director's cut" to speak in film parlance, is being released on e-books next month? It will restore profanity and some homosexual content to the military epic; In the 1950s, you didn't ask and they certainly didn't want any telling (or cussing).

"THE BOLDEST BOOK OF OUR TIME... HONESTLY, FEARLESSLY ON THE SCREEN!"

It's maybe a bit corrupt of me to play a casting game with a remake I've never rooted for -- it's a terrific movie as is -- but "Cast This" is fun, isn't it? And in the case of a this new author's cut, why not? Movies have been remade for far stupider reasons. And I don't feel too bad at proposing a remake of 1955's Best Picture From Here To Eternity because it's already been remade once as a television miniseries in the late 70s.

The reinserted homosexual content would be mostly in reference to offscreen events but it got me to thinking about the movie and the fact that Frank Sinatra, an able actor and massively popular singer won an Oscar for the role that contains the content. (Basically it amounts to him being gay for pay, a hustler.)

Monty & Sinatra in From Here To Eternity | Sinatra's Oscar Win

Meanwhile Montgomery Clift, an actual homosexual and one of the defining actors of the 20th century, never won one. What a world. I don't know how close Monty ever came to winning in his four times at bat, but it would make sense that he had a reasonable shot with From Here to Eternity. It was a wildly popular film and won eight other Oscars. It's also one of those rare films where every principle member of the cast was nominated.

CAST THIS
So who would you place in the five main roles?

Prewitt & Lurene, bickering loversPrewitt (The Monty part) is a stubborn principled transfer from the Bugle corps who used to box but refuses to fight anymore... even when provoked violently. He takes up with a nightclub girl and keeps getting dragged into Maggio's troubles, some violent. This actor should be handsome and believable as a former fighter and be a bit of an enigma.

Lurene (the Donna Reed part) is a girl of somewhat shady reputation -- and conflicted about it -- who works at the nightclub where all the soldiers go for entertainment. She wants to be something other than what she is and return to the mainland (if I remember correctly?)

Maggio (the Sinatra part) is the undisciplined volatile Private and loyal friend to Prewitt, who has a hustling past and gets in bar fights and is later violently abused by a superior officer.

Karen (The Deborah Kerr part) is the Base Commandes's neglected and unfaithful wife. She takes up with the Sergeant under her husband and is eager for him to become ambitious so she can divorce her husband and marry him without, one presumes, losing her way of life. She has a great line I've never fully understood which I've written about before when she's flirting with the Sergeant and invites him in.

You're doing fine sergeant. My husband is off somewhere and it's raining outside and we're both drinking now. You probably only got one thing wrong: the lady herself. The lady is not what she seems. She's a washout if you know what I mean. And I'm sure you know what I mean.

Sgt Warden and his Captain's WifeI don't!

Like every other character in the story, she's pretty conflicted about her own desires and action.

Sgt. Warden (The Burt Lancaster part) is a man who's conflicted about cheating on his Commanding officer by bedding his wife. This actor should be masculine, confident someone you'd take orders from but who is complacent about being a cog in the machine. So a leader but not too much of one.

Obviously Sgt. Warden and Karen have to have sizzling chemistry for their legendary beach sex scene.

GO!