...and they all go to the seashore!

Melina Mercouri as Ilya, followed by my attempt to channel her finesse....it's a small life I lead.

Never on Sunday (1960) is a Greek and English language film directed by Jules Dassin, starring Melina Mercouri and himself. Melina Mercouri was nominated for an Oscar and won the Cannes Film Festival prize for best actress for her role as Ilya, "the prostitute with no price." I never fully understood what was meant by "no price." I assume it meant that she does get paid for her work, but only by the men she chooses to...uh...work for/with. Ilya is a charming character. Everyone loves her and probably because she loves everyone. Her spirit is joyful, she's beautiful inside and out and her only enemy is the man who forces the other "working girls" to pay ludicrously high rent. I like this story more than the story found in Pretty Woman (1990), because in this story, the woman isn't rescued from her life. I don't know how to feel about the whole prostitution bit. Generally, I don't think of a prostitute as a happy person with a full life, good friends and a good roof over her head, but in this story, that is exactly what this...fille de joie is. When an American man named Homer (played by Dassin) comes along in the hopes of "saving" her from immorality, he tries to play Pygmalion. What I like here is that the woman wins. She's a powerful person, and truly grabs life by the jugular, living it and seeing it the way she wants to. She loves going to the theatre to see the Greek tragedies but in retelling the stories later, she twists them from her perspective so that they all end happily with the line, "and they all went to the seashore!" This woman is optimism, and love embodied and though she expresses it in ways that some would be incapable of understanding, one important line explains the message perfectly. "If anyone will save Ilya, it's Tonio." "Why Tonio?" "Because with love, it is possible."

I hate to give the movie away, but this scene is priceless. Here, Ilya discovers that Homer has been playing the Taming of the Shrew card with her. There's a man or two in the world I would LOVE to chase around a room with a broomstick whilst raising hell. In other words: I like this scene a lot.

shirt: Kohls, skirt: Nordies, belt: Goodwill

Ghost of yesterday

I've always been a nerd about anything to do with the past. I've always loved old movies, old fashioned style, old fashioned anything. For example, I started listening to Billie Holiday when I was eleven for absolutely no reason save the fact that Fred Meyer's exceptionally meager jazz section contained some of her cds. I'm a weirdo for things that happened long before my birth. This can also be seen in my love of photos of my paternal grandmother. She died before I could meet her and I know very little about her except that her name was Audree and she was a loving soul with great style. I can't remember where she grew up (Missouri?), but I feel she moved around a little (much as I did when I was a kid). After she married my grandfather, she lived in Virginia for the remainder of her life. I always love looking at her photos, especially when I'm feeling a bit down, and today I took it upon myself to finally scan all my favorites. Here's the link to all of them on flickr, if you'd like to see more.

Crime doesn't pay, but Hollywood does!

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty vs. the real Bonnie and Clyde.

A couple weeks ago I watched Bonnie and Clyde (1967), directed by Arthur Penn, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. I saw this film when I was a wee prepubescent (I'm guessing about ten or eleven) and had forgotten most of it. I mean, I didn't even remember that Gene Hackman had a substantial role (who doesn't love that guy?). I've been on a massive 1930s kick for the past year or more, and I put this movie on (thanks, Netflix) while I cleaned my bedroom. It's not one of my top favorites but it's another sinking ship story and I have a special place in my heart for those. I think the tragic criminal hero is one that draws people because we all feel like that a little bit, deep deep down. We make mistakes, we crave an escape from a world that isn't easy. Most of us don't go risking our necks for some idealized freedom, and we don't go ballistic when we get the urge. Movies about bank robbers during the Great Depression are very romantic in a sense. Desperate people doing horribly desperate things. It's like watching an addiction from the beginning to the end, a web that can't be un-spun. There's something I love about that. The characters are nutty, but you care about them, and when they die, it's more of a good feeling, like how I assume I was supposed to feel at the end of Thelma and Louise (1991). In conclusion, Bonnie and Clyde is a film I can get behind (at least once a decade).

In other Great Depression gangster movie news, I managed to see the new film about John Dillinger, Public Enemies (2009) directed by Michael Mann, starring Johnny Depp, Marion Cotillard and Christian Bale. I feel this film loses some of the 1960s warm and fuzziness of say, a Paul Newman-type criminal hero film. The only glamour can be found in the gorgeous costumes (oh baby those suits and hats and SUNGLASSES). The film lacks something, and I can't even tell you what. I felt it was well acted but maybe the more modern, attempted realism of the film made it lose a little heart. I read about John Dillinger here and it seems like the older ladies sitting behind me in the theatre were quite correct in whispering that the film was getting some facts wrong (as it happens, I read a little on the Barrow Gang, and there are many details missing from Bonnie and Clyde as well). The film was interesting, and very violent, and maybe the fact that I didn't care quite as much for it simply proves that it reminds the audiencethat (most?) people who kill other people are scary and dangerous....

Look at his SUNGLASSES! Oh, and there's the real Dillinger.

I also have to include the following picture for one reason and one reason alone: Look at the expression on this adorable man's face. There he is on set with his gigantic pretend killing machine and he has the face of a person who wouldn't hurt a fly. Le sigh....oh and that suit.

P.S. Here's the link to some Bonnie Parker poems. There's even a picture of a page from her notebook with her handwriting.

The Inspiring Raquel Welch...

My favorite Australian, Tom posted this on his facebook. It's.....indescribable.

Window shopping

I'm in love

...with these songs.

il fait chaud

It is so hot. It is so very hot that the only thing I can do is sit inside with the air conditioning going and think.... Lately, all I've been up to is looking at pretty things online, watching 1930s movies, doing yoga and listening to music. In regards to the 1930s, I am extremely drawn to the styles, looks and sounds of those days. I know I tend to be the type to romanticize the past, but I find it hard to stop myself. Sometimes I even wish I could know what it would be like to live in an America where there weren't gigantic supermarkets every couple of miles, where a Coca Cola was a novelty, never something you'd buy in bulk from Costco....where I'd really suffer a bit...not be so insulated, cushioned and sheltered. I watch way too many films for my own good. The Great Depression was no joke, and I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy it, nor would I enjoy WWII rationing. But people were in better shape because they didn't spend so much money on things they didn't need. They cooked for themselves, and they had to make most things from scratch. I feel that life was harder, life took time, but in a way, the simplicity, the joy that comes with a little hard work, a little DIY, can be somehow blissful. I put off cleaning sometimes, but cooking and cleaning is very therapeutic. I'm not saying I want to do it every day, and be a full-time house maid to a husband whose slippers I bring out at five till six o'clock every night. However, I wish the world could have slowed WAY down seventy years ago. I wish we could've paused a little longer, there. I wish my senses weren't constantly overloaded.

The latest 1930s film I've seen!

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) is the first Busby Berkeley musical I have seen. It seems ridiculous that this is so, since I consider myself if not a queen of old movies, at the very least a viscountess. The film is dripping with the era. It's a delicious morsel of 1930s Hollywood glamour mixed with strong, comical female characters, silly music, lavishly rich production numbers and costumes. The film stars Aline MacMahon, RubyKeeler, Joan Blondell, Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers. There is some (how do I put this? ah yes) bad acting from certain souls here and there (though, I think the main ladies are spot on). I don't care for Dick Powell. His character was bland, sweet and snore-inducing, but he's really only there to play Romeo and sing, anyway. What's great about this film is that it talks about the Great Depression. While most films I see from this era might hint at it, none of them (especially not the glamorous musicals) really delves into it.

Fun fact: Ruby Keeler's career was launched by Florenz Ziegfeld and she was married to Al Jolson for a time.

Here's a great number from the movie, the only number that has a serious note. Joan Blondell sings/speaks.


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