The Cary Grant List

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swo17
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#76 Post by swo17 » Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:53 pm

knives wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:42 pm
There’s a Milligan box?
Happy birthday

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senseabove
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#77 Post by senseabove » Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:55 pm

I didn't think I can rate Grant as particularly bad or particularly good—it seemed like both he and Arthur were as at-sea as I was most of the time, except when a longer scene settled into a given register. I was excited by the opening, since it was setting up Grant for a more serious, Crisis-like role, but then watching him and Arthur try to modulate that first scene from tense, on-the-run thriller down to screwball shenanigans was like watching bad improv where somebody's just throwing nonsense and everybody else is trying very hard to make it work, and that's a feeling I had all too often.

Toward the end, Grant manages to convey all three of those different motivations I mentioned just fine—it's just Stevens that can't seem to decide which motivation should be played, as the motivation changes basically every time the scene setting does with no corollary cause. In light of that, I don't know how I could "rank" Grant's performance, because the film is trying to create a coherent world where they're all consistent motivations. For comparison, Sylvia Scarlett completely sacrifices any idea of a coherent world, while also providing in-universe impetus for the radical changes in tone and genre: they're fleeing in secrecy and smuggling stolen goods, so it's all shadows and low angles; they're conniving con-artists, so it's broad comedy and tight reaction shots; they're squabbling over love quadrangles, so it's melodrama with dramatic depth compositions; they're chasing someone, so it's fast cuts and fast movement. That generic and formal lability echoes the characters' developing relationships, though. This feels like Stevens was choosing how a scene should play by dice roll!

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knives
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#78 Post by knives » Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:06 pm

swo17 wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:53 pm
knives wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:42 pm
There’s a Milligan box?
Happy birthday
And they say it only comes once a year.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#79 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 01, 2021 3:09 pm

Well, I'm pleased to report that I apparently love cinema because I liked The Talk of the Town, though my interpretation of the film is admittedly different than what appears to be the consensus here. The comedy is rooted in the dissonance between the fact that these people are taking themselves too seriously and Stevens disrupting any full-dive alignment into that world by continuously breaking the narrative apart into revealing stitches that even the characters can't ignore. The result is a mess but a mess that self-reflexively works as a study on self-delusion.

The black chauffeur (Rex Ingram) says it well in the car, that they’ve lived sheltered lives, and thus cannot begin to imagine how to exercise an act of spy-like deception with any grace, with Lightcap's immediate reaction being one of blind interest, as if he’s escaping into a solipsistic game, playing make-believe on an adventure that winds up being rather pathetic (shaving a beard and manipulating a woman through flattery are his self-gratifying "skills" at wearing this new hat, a half-measure of a cinematic covert op if I've ever seen one). The entire thing felt like a joke about what it might be like if common citizens actualized their sociopolitical desires exactly like they've seen ‘in the movies’. And when viewed like that, I think this wild question-mark of a film works well- a narrative that is about silly people pretending to star in their own movie-version of a wrong-man adventure thriller to champion self-serious ethics. The satire was effective, even if it wasn’t intended to be read as such.

I fail to see what you mean, senseabove, regarding the treatment of the audience between this film and, say, Sylvia Scarlett. If anything I think the earlier film is less intentionally diverse in tone and thus the audience wouldn’t be involved in something that wasn’t planted there to be “in” on in the first place, outside of the gender flexing. Don’t get me wrong, I like that film more, but this one strikes me as a more self-conscious mixture that invites its audience into laughing at the situations while taking the core cause of them earnestly, a tricky balance to strike that isn’t pulled off in a straight way, but admirably attempted nonetheless. Oh, and Ingram's crying scene had me laughing harder than any in the film, which only sold the above analysis harder. Given that he never has a non-comic moment in the film, and the mood preceding his closeup is one of lighthearted indifference on the part of Lightcap who is shaving, I don’t see how it could signify anything but an example of the chauffeur’s subsequent monologue about existing in bubbles and so indirectly skewering the practice of taking small things like a beard seriously while the world suffers greater pains beyond them. It’s a cushioned yet cutting self-exposure of ignorance, and one that I think Stevens is laughing at rather than endorsing the traumas of such a trivial sacrifice.

To answer your question, along the lines of how I read the film, Grant's character's late-film motivation (though I'm not quite sure which one you're referring to) is likely intended to be "thrillingly risky conspiracy" that becomes "dramatically severe self-doubt," and then breaks apart as "screwbally facetious mockery," because he's taking himself far too seriously and existing in the world of his own movie until he can't do it any longer. I love the instant where Grant can be seen breaking character and authentically laughing to the side as he holds the chair aggressively in mid-air after the courtroom fight stops in a moment of big-speech didacticism, which really sells how ridiculous this entire thing is. Grant's character can't even delude himself any longer, and as a cherry on top, neither can Grant allow him to!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#80 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 01, 2021 9:56 pm

I haven't been going in order, but Wedding Present is the best mid-30s depiction I've seen yet of the Grant that was to come (well, breaking through a year later in now-popular pics). He's charming, fast-talking, funny, and even has an amusing scene playing drunk (opposite William Demarest!) that plants the seed for the best comic drunk perf ever in North by Northwest a few decades later. Unfortunately the picture is ultimately a missed opportunity at screwball, but I'll be curious to hear how others feel about it and might revisit to see if my opinion changes before submission. As far as Grant performances go, it's list-worthy for the back half of 20, but I have now seen 65 Grant films and when there are this many dogs it's not exactly a high bar to welcome in a 2-star film to the club..

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senseabove
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#81 Post by senseabove » Tue Feb 02, 2021 1:47 am

I just rewatched those bits in Talk of the Town, because the idea that we're supposed to be laughing at Ingram as he cries is not something I'd even remotely considered, and I just can't buy that's how Stevens wants that to read. Firstly, each shot is held for a very long time for something that should be read as funny—each close-up runs for more than 10 seconds! That would pretty much make it the 1942 version of the Peter Griffin holding his knee and wincing for thirty seconds gag. Secondly, the score is completely incongruous with that reading. It does seem to be amused with Colman, as it repeats a gently ribbing "sad trombone"-like effect as Colman sets up to shave and begins to do so, but the strings swell with strong, discordant emotion steadily throughout each extended close-up on Ingram, and if we're supposed to be laughing at him during that, it represents a kind of formal generic irony that is extremely uncharacteristic for an Oscar-nominated major studio production from 1942 in general, and for Stevens' work in particular, whose comedy, to put it politely, does not strike me as warranting admiration for its conceptual complexity, so far as I've seen.

It seems to me that, much more simply, Ingram is representing the fear (which the film treats throughout with a preposterous credulousness) that Colman is sacrificing his long-held, noble principles after being corrupted and led to embark on a zany, duplicitous caper. Not only is that a much more typical comedic beat for the era and genre—the stuffed shirt finally realizing he needs to loosen up and the black servant more invested in white propriety than the white master—it also seems indicative that Stevens took a straight screwball script—where that reaction shot would've been a two-second, bug-eyed caricature—and tried to inject some serious morality into it. So sure, the script might think it's funny, but Stevens doesn't—he's trying to paint a servant role with a liberal brush and give the role and actor some dignity. Which, good on 'im, I guess, but admirable intentions do not a good movie make.

And the moment when Grant "breaks character" and grins at Colman doesn't read to me as him laughing, in or out of character, at how ridiculous it all is, either: it's his character's pleased reaction as he realizes Colman is paraphrasing the ideas he argued to him earlier, about the law not being something you get to pontificate about from on high while ignoring how it's enacted on the ground, that somtimes you have to come down and get dirty fighting to preserve justice after you theorize how it should work.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#82 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:09 am

Fair points, but I think similarly to why Sylvia Scarlett works for partly intentional and partly accidental reasons, so does this for me. That incongruous relationship between the script and Stevens, or even Stevens v Stevens trying to take moments seriously i.e. Ingram's cry and negating them immediately before and after in a sloppy sandwich, still feeds the reading that this is a film breaking at the seams to divulge the futility at cementing this facade of trying to capture drama or take a coalesced stand in absolute earnestness. I don't think Stevens or anyone in this film is intentionally making a self-reflexive movie, but it works precisely because it fails, laughs at its characters precisely because they're scattered about when to be serious or let loose. This is a portrait of America at a time of confusion and self-consciousness in how artists at home can appropriately react to real-world horrors with their impotence buried under theatrics, and the insecurities of everyone involved bleed through to the final print and create something far more interesting than intended.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#83 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Feb 03, 2021 9:10 pm

Mr. Lucky was a pleasant surprise watching Grant play a suave yet rough-around-the-edges streetsmart hustler. I don't think he's ever fully committed this hard to the smarmy aspects of the gangster part, even in other 'criminal' roles. It's a blast to watch, and his own self-owning challenges of masculinity re: the running gag of men finding passion in knitting, is another example of his screwball flexibility in exercising the bounds of gender norms with confidence. The first half is much funnier than it needs to be, and the back half is a pretty decent drama, departing into a brief star-crossed lover romance and moralized self-actualization. The class-conscious reversal of perspective that redeems his pov, and also compromises his character for expected romantic/self-bettering development, has its cake and eats it too but with the decency to make each moment of growth rather quick and painless, refraining from dragging out the shifts to overblown melodrama while mostly keeping in the same tonal rhythm of quick wit (Grant gets some great lines even when his heart grows three sizes: "You don't mind if I double-cross myself, do you?"). I don't expect this one to necessarily bowl over the forum, but it'll make my list for the Grant perf alone. Although, with only six Grant films left to go, it would probably make a top 20 based on the film's merits in general. Good lord this man was in a lot of awful movies.

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Matt
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#84 Post by Matt » Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:22 pm

I agree, Mr. Lucky is an underrated Grant film. It will be on my list for sure.

(In prioritizing my rewatching, I misplaced my remembered affection for this onto Every Girl Should Be Married and watched the latter first. Now there’s a Grant film which is not in any way underrated. It has a pleasant meet-cute at a magazine stand, but it’s all downhill from there.)

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#85 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:49 pm

Yeah that one's rough, though probably still sits somewhere in the middle of the quality of his work because it's at least not memorably bad. Unless at least half of the six I have left are solid, I probably won't be able to muster up a list of 20 (which is fine but kinda sad)

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#86 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Feb 04, 2021 12:59 pm

Big Brown Eyes: Raoul Walsh directs Grant in a crime comedy-drama that is a lot weirder than it thinks it is. We get some things we didn’t ask for in a movie: an opening and recurring montage of people speaking snappy and serious through surreal close-up angles while getting treated in silly detail in a barbershop- mixing a piercing noirish vibe with farce, Grant acting as a soprano ventriloquist (including sometimes when he’s alone…) as the film’s prime “jokes”, and a plot wrapped around a baby getting shot and killed (and yes, we see the bullet hit the carriage). Grant and Bennett are both fast-talking information-grifters like a His Girl Friday test run, and the film has strange situational comedy, including animating the killers as they discuss the baby-killing (but also Bennett and Grant mentioning the incident without any emotion into the case!) which is very ambiguous in its tonal intention. It’s not a particularly good movie, but it's an interesting one- and a late scene where Grant 'distracts' another character by peering at a body covered in flowers, causing the camera to do the same, is unsettling and ominous without dictating why- it feels like something out of late-period Lynch in staring at, and having some kind of inner existential reaction to, an image that's a non-signifer. If only it was cued up to an ambient electronic noise score.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#87 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 08, 2021 4:56 pm

The Grass is Greener is okay but suffers from the unevenness of the Mitchum/Kerr interactions compared to the Grant/Simmons pairing. I have to recommend the film if only for Jean Simmons as a walking contradiction in behavior vs status, so impulsively eccentric as a perplexing heiress that she feels like a lone screwball character in a movie full of austere gargoyles by contrast, and forces that genre's energy on the atmosphere of every scene she's in.

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Matt
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#88 Post by Matt » Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:27 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Feb 08, 2021 4:56 pm
a lone screwball character in a movie full of austere gargoyles
Perfect assessment of Simmons in this movie. I saw this for the first time recently thanks to Criterion Channel's "Cary Grant Comedies" series. It was a real disappointment, just having watched the very pleasurable previous Grant/Donen collaboration, Indiscreet. I would even go so far as to say both the male leads are miscast. It makes sense that Rex Harrison was originally cast in the Grant role. David Niven might have been a better replacement. The Mitchum role seems to call for a slightly more urbane actor, so it's another missed opportunity that Rock Hudson turned it down. Kerr is Kerr doing her prim, bloodless, always-slightly-offended Lady of the Manor act. Thus while Simmons' three costars sleepwalk through this set-bound movie, she herself arrives in the second act as an explosion of life in an tangerine-colored Dior ensemble, seemingly a refugee from a different movie (and genre of comedy).

These 1960s widescreen filmed plays where everyone stands around in gaudy interiors declaiming in static two-shots are among the kind of cinema I have the least affection for, and even Stanley Donen (who made magic with studio-bound MGM musicals) had a hard time making them work. It must have been around this time that Grant really lost his drive for acting. To follow up North by Northwest and Operation Petticoat with this seems like an excuse for a paid vacation. He made just four films afterward, Charade being the only one where he really fires up the old charm engine.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#89 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:59 pm

I hated Indiscreet far more than I disliked this, but I can certainly get behind a reading where Grant achieved his zenith in North by Northwest, which will certainly come in at #1 for me, and after that cathartic perfection was exhausted of motivation to develop his skills elsewhere. Not only is it my favorite film starring Grant, but it's the film where Grant exercises his full range of strong characteristics in a performance of diversity destined for a star like him (if Jimmy Stewart needled his way in, would the film be nearly as engrossing?) I love Charade though, but it's definitely Grant-lite with him essentially switching roles with Eva Marie Saint and Hepburn getting to chew up the Grant role from NbN

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Matt
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#90 Post by Matt » Mon Feb 08, 2021 9:19 pm

Have you recorded your thoughts on Indiscreet here? (Are they upthread and I missed them?) I’d be interested to know more about why you disliked it. For me, its pleasures come mostly from watching two old pros—good friends—just hanging out. The plot itself, or maybe more the premise, is so puerile as to border on offensive, but I like the relaxed feel of the first 80 or so minutes and the slight awkwardness of these middle-aged characters finding themselves falling in love.

And in this case, I actually love the apartment set. It feels like an actual dwelling. I’m extremely envious of those framed prints with the multicolored mats and that little kitchen breakfast nook!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#91 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 08, 2021 9:45 pm

No I haven't.. I went on a binge of unseen Grants (with only two left now) and I don't have the energy to write about what I disliked about many of them. In general I don't enjoy writing about films I don't like unless I'm passionate about my distaste for them, or unless there are specific areas that stand out to critique otherwise preventing a good film from blossoming. I generally don't find these pieces are interesting to write or to read, though some posters here are better about trashing films and making those thoughts amusing than I am. My thoughts on Indiscreet are simply that it bored me (and I hate using that "b" word), Bergman was irritating, and those long, drawn-out love-talking scenes reminded me of the much-better Elizabethtown (only with the lovers talking on the phone across different apartments) but with all the life sucked out of them. I do recall liking David Kossoff's perf a bit in the last act, and the end was gesturing toward the right kind of loony without fully getting there, but I found myself annoyed while watching almost the whole thing. I wish I could be more insightful than citing dullness, but that's my response for better or worse.

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Matt
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#92 Post by Matt » Mon Feb 08, 2021 10:55 pm

That’s a very fair critique. The manufactured boudoir drama that Kossoff’s character gets pressed into is indeed nearly like a bit from a Lubitsch film:

“Carl, you’re a coward!”
“It’s true. I am a coward. I’ve been a coward all my life.”
“You ought to be ashamed.”
“I am ashamed!”


and yet at the same time I think, “This manipulative scheming is beneath the dignity of Bergman’s character, and Grant’s character has absolutely no right to be jealous or make demands of her.” The lack of maturity in the otherwise worldly and sophisticated main characters is annoying. Maybe that’s meant to be a theme of the play/film, that even mature adults act like overemotional teenagers when in love, but that’s nothing new or interesting.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#93 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:47 pm

Matt wrote:
Mon Feb 08, 2021 10:55 pm
“Carl, you’re a coward!”
“It’s true. I am a coward. I’ve been a coward all my life.”
“You ought to be ashamed.”
“I am ashamed!”
This is the exact exchange that I enjoyed- though it's no surprise since it's the only funny part of the movie! Yeah Bergman's character felt like such a deflation of her image, as if Mariano Llinás' allegory of the accumulation of her star power climbing the volcano in Stromboli as inspiration was reversed to falling into the lava

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#94 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Feb 10, 2021 4:05 pm

It turns out that the last film on my Grant list, Destination Tokyo, was one I had already seen before [*kicks self for not creating Letterboxd account earlier in life*] and one of those terrific films that I inexplicably forgot existed. Grant is perfectly cast as the natural-born leader of a submarine crew, but it's the supporting players of Garfield et al. that persuade one to accept this cinematic invitation into Greatest-generation camaraderie, sitting alongside the same year's Air Force as a brilliant depiction of systems at work. Daves exercises poised control over all aspects of the production: intense action scenes, drama of both shared interpersonal support and individualized yearning, respectfully-pitched didactic challenges to blind jingoism (while remaining a nationalist propaganda film in collectivist spirit), comical and empathic crew engagement, and thrilling man-on-mission strategic plotting. An easy list-contender, though its specific placement will depend on whether my list ranks works based on the vitality of the performance to the success of the films vs the films themselves. Of course Grant's terrific here, so it's likely a Top Ten film either way.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#95 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Feb 10, 2021 8:58 pm

Well revisits started off on a pretty depressing note.. I never understood the acclaim of Arsenic and Old Lace but I recalled enjoying the situational dark comedy bits intermittently. However a viewing this afternoon proved to be completely laugh-less, giving Monkey Business the edge amongst lowbrow one-star Grant comedies because at least that film has Coburn emerging from a stale perf at the end to deliver a single solid laugh. I half-smiled as Grant carried his bride out of the house mid-sustained-kiss in the final minutes of the Capra, but otherwise it was a grating two hours of vapid farce.

Gunga Din, on the other hand, still holds up for me- even if not quite as much as it once did. I love Grant's introduction mid-fight and then his blunt delivery of lines to his superiors, which doesn't 'develop' his character (none of these guys are exactly multidimensional) so much as seal his personality in the group dynamic. I don't know, it's pointless to try to sell this film as a great movie because it's not, but it's a lot of fun and I think it transfers its tone breezily enough from lazy screwball to the soft dramatic allure of fellowship against the backdrop of wartime action- though this is more of a B-swashbuckler utilizing the iconography and artillery of Victorian-era British army life. This is definitely an uneven film in that regard, but it's not trying to take itself so seriously and while viewing I find myself recognizing how Spielberg borrowed this amalgamation of rhythms for the Indiana Jones films (beyond the obvious emulation of setpieces for The Temple of Doom), even if those tonal shifts were built around a stronger character, narrative, ideas, and, well, everything by a country mile. I feel like those who appreciate the eclectic messiness of Sylvia Scarlett should at least understand the level this film is operating on, even if it's doing so from a less thematically interesting angle. You can also tell this is an abandoned Hawks project in both its strengths and curious imperfections, though I imagine its detractors struggle to see beyond the latter, which I can appreciate even if I'm not personally bogged down by them.

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Matt
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#96 Post by Matt » Thu Feb 11, 2021 12:12 pm

Monkey Business is a film I eventually wrote off as a lost cause. It will just never be funny, but what's worse is that by all rights it should be. With that cast, that director, those writers, and that premise, it ought to be one of the funniest movies ever made.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#97 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Feb 11, 2021 9:02 pm

Good timing, Criterion's On the Current article today is The Acrobatic Grace of Cary Grant

It's a terrific read, especially the connections made between his physical expressiveness and personal history as demonstrated in Holiday. Fans of that film should especially find a lot to appreciate here

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soundchaser
Leave Her to Beaver
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#98 Post by soundchaser » Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:27 am

I’ve resigned myself to watching nowhere near enough by project’s end for a list of 20, but I think I can safely say that Bringing Up Baby is likely going to be close to the top for me. Grant is absolutely note-perfect alongside Hepburn here, and their interplay is so attention-grabbing that the titular leopard feels almost incidental. I’d like to contrast it with Sylvia Scarlett, where Grant and Hepburn feel like they’re operating in two totally different filmic worlds. My ignorance is showing, because I always thought Grant was better at the smarmy philanderer roles, but here it’s exactly the opposite. He soars as an ineffectual professor and flounders as a showman.

My Favorite Wife was decidedly...ok. Grant himself was great, a lot more comfortable even when on the back foot, but the film itself never quite hit the laughs it was going for.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#99 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:40 am

I watched all his films and am still struggling to concoct a list of 20. So in the event that anybody wants to use me as a sacrificial stop sign, here are 19 films worth watching, in rough order of film/Grant perf (I need to revisit Blonde Venus to see where Grant stands there):

North by Northwest
Only Angels Have Wings
To Catch a Thief
Holiday
Bringing Up Baby
His Girl Friday
Notorious
Destination Tokyo
The Bishop’s Wife
The Awful Truth
I Was a Male War Bride
Suspicion
Mr. Lucky
Kiss Them For Me
Charade
Sylvia Scarlett
Gunga Din
Blonde Venus
In Name Only

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senseabove
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#100 Post by senseabove » Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:20 pm

Well, I can't say I begrudge anyone's disdain for it, because it is as frivolous as cotton candy, but damn if Indiscreet doesn't have a bead on my sweet tooth. Supposedly Grant and Bergman each agreed to play their roles only on the condition of the other's participation, and I'd believe it, because this is a meta-hang out movie—everyone here, including me, is just having a good time watching Grant and Bergman have a good time being Grant and Bergman playing inane, Rip van Winkled middle-age teenagers. That's all. There's more thought put into set design than characterization. It's insufferable. I love it.

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