Great Films vs. Favorite Ones

The 12 "great" films show a consistent and imaginative vision, an incredible use of the camera, magnificent performances, and shifting or unusual perspectives. With the exception of The Third Man, they tend to be slow or at least studied; all of them end sadly and are frequently moody. When Citizen Kane comes on television, there are no longer any surprises for me--even Everett Sloane no longer surprises, and the innovative camera angles, the dizzying camera angles, the sharp dialogue ("[Are you] A sentimental fellow?" "Yes and no")--are taken for granted.  We are locked into the path to "Rosebud" just as Kane is locked up in his own hell known as Xanadu and the movie's frames are locked in by the ceilings that Welles and his cameraman Gregg took the pains to show us.

My favorite films tend to be adventures or musicals. They have large casts of characters or, in the case of the musicals, a lot of musical numbers. When Casablanca comes on, I can find myself appreciating the subtleties of Peter Lorre's brief appearance, or Conrad Veidt's unabashed Nazi, or S.Z. Sakall's Jiminy Cricket-like conscience for Rick, or I can notice little moments such as the scene where Victor Laszlo, played by Paul Henried, instructs the band at Rick's cafe to play "Le Marseillaise" in defiance of the Nazis and the bandleader turns to the I-stick-my-neck-out-for-nobody Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart, who takes a second and then nods for the bandleader to start the band playing, silently joining in the act defiance. When The Magnificent Seven comes on, I can discover moments such as when the then-six, who have agreed to help a Mexican town against bandits, tire of keeping track of the young Mexican who wants to join them and is following them. Chris Adams, played by Yul Brynner, says, "It's a free country." Bernardo O'Reilly, played by Charles Bronson, adds, "And it's his."

White Christmas is a big musical. It has older songs by Irving Berlin that are reprised--the title song, "Mandy," "Abraham," "Heat Wave," "Blue Skies"--and new ones by Berlin, including "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep," "Snow," which was actually a "trunk" song of Berlin's to which he added new lyrics, "Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army," "The Best Things Happen When You're Dancing," "(We'll Follow) The Old Man," and "What Do You Do With a General?," which was another Berlin trunk song written for an abandoned musical about a general and which the film writer Leonard Maltin dubbed the worst song Irving Berlin ever wrote." Again, I can dip in the middle and discover something. Most recently, it was "Abraham," for which the instrumental only from Holiday Inn was reused and danced to by Vera-Ellen and John Bascia. I knew Vera-Ellen had danced with and kept up with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, but I amazed at her dancing in this, so fast and limber and yet so natural. Like two other film master dancers Cyd Charisse and Rita Hayworth, Vera-Ellen's singing was always dubbed, and yet she sings, briefly, for the only time on screen in this film. She's dubbed when her character, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Rosemary Clooney sing "Snow." But when the four of them get off the train in Vermont and find no snow, Crosby and Kaye, a capella, start the number which begins with each of the four singing the word "snow," Vera-Ellen sings her one note clearly and on key, suggesting, as has been suggested about Charisse and Hayworth, that she could have sung her songs if she had been given the training and the chance. A Washington Post writer this month stated that Vera-Ellen and Kaye's dancing to "The Best Things Happen When You're Dancing" is the best musical number ever filmed. I re-watched the number with this in mind. While I wouldn't say it's better than Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire's "Begin the Beguine" in Broadway Melody of 1940 or several Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' dances from their movies together, Kaye and Vera-Ellen's dancing is athletic, captures a variety of styles, and is prolonged. Kaye, who was a last minute substitution for an ailing Donald O'Connor, proved himself a surprisingly adept dance partner for Vera-Ellen. He is reported to have had a camera-like memory, and he accordingly captures all the different styles in the number easily. In his own movies, in which, with the exception of The Court Jester (1956) and Merry Andrew (1958) he often comes across as a more sophisticated Jerry Lewis, his musical numbers tend to the frenetic. White Christmas was, I believe, his most successful, although an atypical, film.

In re-watching, "What Do You Do with a General?", I felt Matlin was probably right, although Berlin wrote so many songs there might be competition. I re-watched "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me," after I heard Clooney say on the DVD special track that it was "her" song in that it was her only solo. It's a catchy melody, and she sings this torch song well. The number also has a young George Chakiris, seven years before he won the Academy Award for West Side Story, as one of the male dancers. The lyrics of the song amused me. She sings, "My one love affair didn't get anywhere from the start./To send me a Joe with winter and snow in his heart wasn't smart." I said to my wife, making believe I was Clooney's addressee, Love, "Oh, my gosh, he had winter and snow in his heart! And I missed that! I'll have to look at hearts more carefully. It'll never happen again." Berlin was 66 at the time, and White Christmas was his last movie or stage musical until Mr. President in 1962, of which I have written in these blogs. Most of the new songs for White Christmas were pretty good. "Count Your Blessings" was a big hit. And Berlin could pull off rhymes that were worthy of Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim. I've always been fond of one in "Shaking the Blues Away": "Telling the blues to go/They may refuse to go/But as a rule they'll go/If you'll shake 'em away." In White Christmas, there's "A soldier out of luck/Was never really stuck/There's always someone higher up/Where you can pass the buck/Oh gee, I wish I was back in the army." I especially like Crosby's jazz riff in "Snow": "I'd love to stay up with ya but I recommend a little shuteye/Go to sleep/And dream/ Of snow." 

White Christmas may have been Berlin's last successful effort. It has lots of different moments that bear re-watching. And those types of movies are my favorites.