Comments on Nick's Flick Picks: The Blog: All Racist on the Western Coast

Heck yes! As an Oscar buff whose seen every Best P...

2008-12-17T19:13:00.000-06:00

Heck yes! As an Oscar buff whose seen every Best Picture winner, I find this to be a very compelling series, as the pairings take the analysis of the movies to a whole new level.

Anyways, I first saw All Quiet on the Western Front almost ten years ago, and I was impressed not only by its technical qualities but also by the solid storytelling. Yes, the talking parts can drag on a little bit (for me the biggest culprit was the soldiers' rendezvous with the French girls), but it doesn't detract from the film's strength. I felt the film improved on the novel in a few ways. One that stood out for me was Kantorek the schoolmaster's fate. In the book, he gets his just reward by agonizing through training as a soldier, but in the movie he's still there, brainwashing new students. The scenes couldn't be more different, but I felt that the film's version is much more powerful.

As for Crash...I actually enjoyed it, although not as high-brow cinema but as a mindless summer popcorn movie.

Were any of you able to read this whole boring exc...

2008-11-18T09:52:00.000-06:00

Were any of you able to read this whole boring excerpt of rambling and dull commentary?

I suppose that is true about WWII having more iden...

2008-07-06T23:17:00.000-05:00

I suppose that is true about WWII having more identifiable landmarks (people, events, etc) and it sort of confuses me because WWI is such an important moment in my country's history (Gallipoli examplifying that). But a quick search of the keyword "wwi" at IMDb shows how less noteworthy they are (no matter the quality, a lot of them seem like obscure titles)

Here's a quote from the article (found in the Nove...

2008-07-04T21:47:00.000-05:00

Here's a quote from the article (found in the November 1995 issue of History Today): "In 1983, after four years of painstaking efforts to reconstruct the 1930 original, Jurgen Labenski, an editor with the West German television network ZDF, unveiled a 139 minute version. While eleven minutes short of the 150 minutes Milestone claimed he made, this may be the closest we will get to the original creation."

@Sean: Interesting rankings. Glad to see someone ...

2008-07-04T21:02:00.000-05:00

@Sean: Interesting rankings. Glad to see someone else put off by GN&GL as I was, both times I saw it. And nice to see that very high mark for Munich.

@John: Totally agreed. I have to screen The Gathering Storm soon for a book chapter I have contracted about Vanessa Redgrave, and I'm curious to see how those figures are all evoked, especially since Vanessa is so sharply critical of Churchill in her (riveting if somewhat baffling) memoir. And thanks so much for your note about TDL on Aug. 4... I'll reply separately, but any chance you'll be taping this??

@OVG: Thanks for the enthusiastic response - and it's always great to see some new names mixed in here.

@Brian: Fascinating. Does the article imply that the 150-minute version still survives anywhere?

All Quiet on the Western Front was the last...

2008-07-04T19:56:00.000-05:00

All Quiet on the Western Front was the last Best Picture winner to have been prepared in a silent version as well as a sound version. It seems fitting, since, as goatdog points out, the technique feels grounded in late-silent-era storytelling.

The film kicks off a hefty list of Best Picture winners in which English-speaking actors portray historical figures or other characters that "should" be speaking another language.

The discussion here inspired me to look at a 1995 article on the film by Modris Eksteins. According to Eksteins, the version we see today is not the same as the version that won the Academy Award, which was supposedly 150 minutes long. That version caused considerable consternation in the increasingly right-wing Germany, where opponents argued that the film besmirched the German military's honor. Universal, with an eye on the lucrative German film export market, recut a somewhat shorter version of the film which circulated in Europe and elsewhere; it seems that this is the version that is still seen today.

This is a super great awesome series. Look forward...

2008-07-03T21:16:00.000-05:00

This is a super great awesome series. Look forward to the next installment.

I actually have been holding off on All Quiet on t...

2008-07-03T20:24:00.000-05:00

I actually have been holding off on All Quiet on the Western Front. I've actually been toying with pulling a Nick/Goatdog here and waiting to have this be my final Best Picture nominee (though I doubt it will be as good as Judy or Gone with the Wind).

Of the nominees of Oscar's third show, I have yet to be impressed by the others-The Big House is too simplistic, The Divorcee is utterly forgettable, and Disraeli is just ridiculously bad. In 2005, I am on the side of the cowboys, followed by the journalists.

I agree with Nick on the WWII films, and I'd go a step further with the iconography by pointing out the key players themselves-you'd be hard-pressed to find Americans who could name the American President during WWI, but during WWII you have Churchill, Hitler, FDR, Mussolini, de Gaulle-all larger than life icons that people can easily know the story behind when telling their WWII film.

2008-07-03T20:23:00.000-05:00

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I agree with you Sean, because Crash is bet...

2008-07-03T19:31:00.000-05:00

I agree with you Sean, because Crash is better than Brokeback Mountain.

My Rankings:

1929-30
1. All Quiet on th...

2008-07-03T18:16:00.000-05:00

My Rankings:

1929-30
1. All Quiet on the Western Front - A+
2. The Big House - A
3. The Divorcee - B+
4. The Love Parade - B
5. Disraeli - C+

2005
1. Crash - A-
2. Munich - A-
3. Brokeback Mountain - B
4. Capote - B
5. Good Night, and Good Luck. - C-

y'all are worrying me with all these comments abou...

2008-07-03T16:57:00.000-05:00

y'all are worrying me with all these comments about the 30s having bad winners.

Nick... I love what you're saying there about external versus internal messaging and I agree to an extent but it also thoroughly depresses me. It just goes to show you how tough it is for people to see outside of their own experiences. Even when the "other" as it were is represented astoundingly well and in accessible and moving ways.

@Tim and @KC: I think the Academy loves ext...

2008-07-03T14:14:00.000-05:00

@Tim and @KC: I think the Academy loves extroversion and sort of hates introversion. There is no question that homophobia and/or avowed reluctance to watch BBM on the part of some Academy members hurt its chances, but I've always thought the bigger reasons it lost are that a) Crash hustles all of its messages, themes, and "repressions" up to its very loud surface, whereas BBM stays much more internal, and b) Crash surveys a problem/promulgates a message that encompasses all audiences in a very overt way, whereas BBM asks that the experience of a very small and rarefied cast of characters stand in for a larger problem, but also carry some particular weight. Crash has a message for Society. BBM does, too, but its people are less generic than the surrogates and voiceboxes that populate Crash, and it expects its audience to be less generic and more personal in the way they relate to the movie.

Put another way:
Crash: "Here is a problem we all have, amplified to a level that you can hear without necessarily seeing yourself." (agitates some critics, but makes voters comfortable)
BBM: "Here is a problem (the closet) that some peole have - which is really a problem (repression and ostracism) that all people have - made so intimate that you may be forced, one way or another, to see yourself." (critics love it, but voters may be uncomfortable)

@KC: I actually think the issue is related. Part of this is xenophobia: the USA tells more stories about WWII because we were involved earlier and longer, and with greater fanfare and reward. But also, the Nazis sort of handed filmmakers this really condensed villain and this pre-packaged visual iconography (swastikas, yellow stars, camps, lockstep, Reich architecture, whatever) that works perfectly on film. WW1 doesn't reduce as easily to a single guilty party (which is part of why we wind up with a furiously scapegoated Germany, and eventually WW2), and it doesn't strike me as implicitly "visual" in the same way... maybe because WW2 was also so much more heavily engaged in the war (propaganda films, newsreels, the flourishing studio system, actors in the service, hyper-production and massive ticket sales for Hollywood product), so the war and the cinema developed in conjunction and built this lasting relationship.

I'm just talking off the top of my head. I know I'm being superficial and careless.

@BGK: Thanks for commenting! Of course you're right about the prevailing standards for using sound and dialogue in H'wood films of that moment, though what's odd in All Quiet (as we tried to touch on) is how dissimilar to those customary approaches the film is for the first hour, only really gliding into monologues, dialogues, and voiceovers in its second half. So my (very small) reservation is more about the film's own change of character, opting for techniques it has previously and gloriously transcended. But no question, it's still a masterpiece. I agree that it's the first "right" verdict, and certainly in marked contrast to a lot of the 30s winners!

It's great to see you throwing love at "All Quiet....

2008-07-03T12:57:00.000-05:00

It's great to see you throwing love at "All Quiet." It's an exceptional film. Ironically, nearly 80 years later, it still can pack a punch, while "Crash," a mere two years later, seems outdated already. As for the sound issue, I know "All Quiet" can be talky, but I accept it as most films made at that time were talking. It's only two years removed from the sound revolution, and most every filmmaker was under the impression that if you have sound, you use it in every frame. And that meant dialogue. However, what's amazing about "All Quiet" is how it merges both sound and imagery to create its power, something most films were not doing at that time. In my humble opinion, "All Quiet" is the first time that Oscar got the selection for best picture right.

Americans were involved in WWI, but only toward th...

2008-07-03T10:11:00.000-05:00

Americans were involved in WWI, but only toward the end. But Oscar, at least in the beginning, was really interested in that war--two of their first three winners dealt with it. And as WWII came closer, they took a renewed interest: The Grand Illusion, Sergeant York, Yankee Doodle Dandy. Since then, there haven't been that many, you're right. It's probably because WWII was the defining event of the 20th century for Americans, and it seems to have pretty much wiped out our collective memories of the earlier war, which seemed more minor, at least to us. Sort of like how there haven't been very many movies about the American Revolution, but the Civil War is a hugely popular setting.

Expanding on what Nathaniel just said, All Quiet takes pains to be a universal message about war: sometimes the reminders that these characters are Germans are jarring, because they really could be anyone.

I'm not sure WW2 was exactly "brewing" by this time--it was still three years until Hitler seized power in Germany. Which makes this film interesting, because it didn't have a "trigger" like many other antiwar films have, aside from the publication of the novel and its worldwide popularity.

good question. it's also interesting to note that ...

2008-07-03T09:44:00.000-05:00

good question. it's also interesting to note that it's Germany that's viewed sympathetically here and would never be again in the war genre.

although the setting of ALL QUIET is probably irrelevant. You could dub over any reference to any particular country with any other particular country and the movie would be the same statement.

I find it interesting to note that the Academy was...

2008-07-03T03:54:00.000-05:00

I find it interesting to note that the Academy was awarding films about world wars before WWII came along. Perhaps it's because films about WWI rarely come about these days, and when they do and when they're great - such as Weir's Gallipoli from 1981, or Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement from 2004 - they don't seem to cause much of a fuss.

Is there something about the second world war that is not only more iteresting to Oscar, but also to filmmakers in general. Surely the ratio is about 10:1 of films dealing with WWII to films dealing with WWI. I'm not that knowledgable about the world wars, especially I - I blame the lack of movies :p - but were Americans not involved in WWI? And if they weren't then how did Western Front win considering they - in the future, granted - haven't been exactly supportive of non-US related war films - What was it about this film dealing with German soldiers (hmmm) that piqued the Academy's interest so much? It sort of makes me think that this win was indeed a mix of the "message" and the "technique".

And on a frightening, yet similar note, it's so strange to think that there was a time when the Academy awarded a movie such as Western Front and people had no idea that a second world war was brewing.

haha... Million Dollar Baby and (shudder) Cimarron...

2008-07-02T15:13:00.000-05:00

haha... Million Dollar Baby and (shudder) Cimarron. This ought to be interesting.

I'm so glad you guys decided not to discuss the Cr...

2008-07-02T15:11:00.000-05:00

I'm so glad you guys decided not to discuss the Crash v. Brokeback controversy. Frankly, that conversation is played out. This was far more interesting. I applaud you for the decision.

I know i was a champion of Brokeback from the begi...

2008-07-02T13:23:00.000-05:00

I know i was a champion of Brokeback from the beginning but even I, who loved it TONS when it came out... think it has only gotten stronger over the past two years. Every time i see it actually i think it's better than the time before.

you might be right about the oscar loss helping its eventual rep. I can see people listing it with the other GARGANTUAN classics that didn't win no...

but anyway. i was really impressed with ALL QUIET even if i didn't love it in a personal way the way I do, say, WINGS... but that might have to do with when i saw the latter. This was my first time watching ALL QUIET. This series has already blessed me ;)

I just added All Quiet to my lovefilm queue...

2008-07-02T11:02:00.000-05:00

I just added All Quiet to my lovefilm queue, as it's much too long since I've seen it. On the "issue" question, and straining as best I can not to rehash old arguments, it's legitimate to throw Brokeback into the mix here, right, by way of footnote? I doubt anyone would argue that it's a "message movie" in the way that Crash is, but I'm interested to know why you guys think sexuality/homophobia as themes, shall we say, are less grabby for AMPAS than race and racism. (Or at least less grabby on a Best Picture level, since there are plenty of Hankses and Hurts and Therons and Swanks to prove that it's catnip in the lead acting categories.) So what's the problem? If Oscar likes to congratulate herself for moving with the times, wouldn't Brokeback have been a more significant breakthrough? Was it too much about repressed desire, and not enough about overcoming and acceptance? Was it simply too sad? And I'm wondering: what version of the movie might have won out over Crash -- something more all-gay-issue-movie, all the time? I don't doubt it would have been a film we'd all have liked less. As you touch on in your discussion, there's an air of hindsight inevitability now to why Crash won -- ie, it won because it's cruder, more obvious, and more button-pushy, of course it won -- which we certainly didn't feel at the time. I guess I'd also like to posit that in terms of its reputation, not winning the Best Picture Oscar might have been the best thing that ever happened to Brokeback. If it had won, I bet it would be widely considered an "issue movie" now, and kind of a straight movie, in all the ways we don't really want it to be.