A brief rumination on manipulation, & back to getting off on Code films. |
Reign Over Me 2007, MIKE BINDER So superficial, convenient, lazily manipulative.
However, rewatching A Guy Named Joe last night, I realize I don’t mind being manipulated in the least. Movies are, in part, meant to manipulate, to persuade, to convince. And I love the emotional ride. The difference is in a film’s ability to pull the manipulation off without tipping its hand, without showing the gears turning, without breaking the spell for a moment. The difference is also in my willingness. “If you feel something, it’s true,” so says my darling and best manipulator, John Cassavetes. Something like Reign Over Me is so transparent, so mechanical. But I’ll follow something like A Guy Named Joe anywhere it wants to take me — realizing certainly there are many who will roll their eyes with one look at the set design and one instance of snappy dialogue and for them the spell will be broken and permanently.
Also re: A Guy Named Joe. It can only be attributed to her unimpeachable moral conduct in “real life” that Irene Dunne ever gained a reputation for being wholesome and ladylike. Onscreen, she infuses every vaguely flirtatious line with a stark and playful sexuality, and plainly she revels in it. There’s this exchange — this, after she tries gigglingly to nibble at Spence’s ear! :
Dorinda You’re jealous!
Pete No, I just don’t want you to give the guy the wrong impression.
Dorinda Pete, did I ever give you the wrong impression?
Pete Why?
Dorinda Well, don’t watch me blush, but… I tried to once or twice.
after which she flashes him this devilish smile and emits a positively racy growl. Here is your so-called First Lady of Hollywood. Well, it’s so funny that Irene and Spence didn’t get along at all on set, supposedly because he couldn’t abide the straightlaced goody two-shoes. Boy, to watch them in one another’s arms, they crackle and spark to the point of obscenity. Their friend Al must be their permanent chaperone just to keep this on the Hays Office’s good side; otherwise there’d just be an instant fade to black if they ever found themselves properly alone in a room together. Is there ever chemistry between those two, nevermind if it sprung from a deep and mutual disdain. In effect, it doesn’t get any sexier than that.
More:
“Pete, you realize something? We’ve never been up in a plane alone together.” The mind reels.
“Dorinda, Dorinda — you’re dancing too close, you know that?” 
Too close for what!?
All right. I’ve made my case. It’s on TCM tomorrow so bet me bucko this isn’t the sexiest film you ever saw! (I really don’t mind being out alone on this limb, though. It’s nice over here. :))
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I watched A Guy Named Joe. Unfrotunately, I cannot join your limb. Irene flying a plane = sexy. Cocky Spencer Tracy = not sexy. I think you’re a nut to think the two sparkle. Spence is painfully unsexy here. And he makes Irene painfully unsexy at parts, too.
Old Spence = cool. Young Spence = watch out!
P.S. I’m beginning to realize Dunne was forced to sing in EVERY movie she did, even in something as sappy and unworthy of song as this.
Comment by Mango — 30 December 2007 @ 30 December 2007P.P.S. Don’t mind my trampling this film. Go on loving it!
Haha, yeah I noticed the singing thing when I first started on Dunne and at first it made me make this face: :|. But I’ve grown to expect and even be charmed by it. It’s awfully forced in at least half her movies, though.
Oh man. I really do love it out on my limb but can’t substantiate a thing like that. It just really gets me every time. I swoon! I sob!
Comment by lauren.bray — 1 January 2008 @ 1 January 2008