Every month, A Place for Film brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | The Great Silence (1968)
While I have seen a lot of American westerns — mostly films directed by John Ford — my knowledge of spaghetti westerns is limited. I’ve seen all of the spaghetti westerns directed by Sergio Leone (except for Duck, You Sucker) but I haven’t seen any other films in that sub-genre. So I watched The Great Silence, which is directed by Sergio Corbucci and features the excellent cinematography and often bleak worldview which distinguishes this type of western from ones made in America.
The Great Silence takes place in the Utah Territory in 1898, shortly before the Great Blizzard of 1899. Silence, a mute gunfighter, gets hired by a widow named Pauline to kill Loco, a vicious bounty killer who murdered her husband. Silence sets out to kill Loco, but nothing is easy in this film’s violent and brutal world.
But what a beautiful world it can be, especially when Corbucci and director of photography Silvano Ippoliti are capturing shots of their snow-swept exterior locations. The snowy mountains are so visually interesting that even simple sequences, such as Loco riding to meet up with his gang, are fascinating to watch just so you can take in the majesty of the landscapes. The snow-drenched quality of these settings also gives the film its own unique visual identity, especially when you contrast it with the Monument Valley of John Ford’s Westerns, or even the Spanish locations where Sergio Leone shot many of his films.
The Great Silence is also distinguished from other westerns because of its ultra pessimistic worldview. Characters kill each other, shoot the thumbs off of people, and even steal a horse for food. The “law of survival,” as Loco calls it, dictates the actions of even supposedly respectable characters such as the Governor of Utah. It all leads up to an ending that, 52 years after this movie was released, still retains its full power to shock.
The Great Silence should not be the first western that you see. Much of its effectiveness comes from how it riffs off of and subverts the tropes of the genre. In addition, it can be strange, especially if you’re American, to watch a film that takes place in the United States featuring characters who only speak Italian. But if you want to experience the mixture of beautiful images and bleak perspective that distinguish the spaghetti western from other films, then you should seek this one out.
Jack Miller, contributor | Good-bye, My Lady (1956)
The current practice of social distancing has given me an opportunity to have my first taste of the bountiful offerings available on Criterion Channel, a streaming service that presents an array of canonical arthouse classics by the likes of Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, as well as a selection of more obscure items from throughout film history. Falling decidedly into the latter category is the underseen gem Good-bye, My Lady, one of the last films done by the prolific American filmmaker William “Wild Bill” Wellman, and which he directed for Batjac, John Wayne’s production company. Good-bye, My Lady is Wellman’s pastoral, black-and-white vision of Americana: set in and around the southeastern Mississippi swamps, the film deals with the relationship between a prepubescent boy (Brandon de Wilde) and his uncle (Walter Brennan), and with how this relationship changes due to their experiences with a strange dog, which is said to be able to “laugh and cry, but not bark,” that they find and adopt.
Though it remains a modest production, Good-bye, My Lady becomes a special work due to the sincerity of emotion between its characters, which, in the words of the late critic and programmer Peter von Bagh, is “the kind of relationship that most films fake or miss.” Walter Brennan has always been a particular favorite of mine, and here he shines in a rare lead part. The vision of nature here also rings true in its concrete beauty, and it connects this film with other great classical works done in a kind of pastoral mode, such as Jacques Tourneur’s Stars in My Crown (1950) and Howard Hawks’ The Big Sky (1952). Those who enjoy films about childhood, or films that display a kind of poetic feeling for the wilderness, may find Good-bye, My Lady to be as special as I do.
Michaela Owens, Editor | The Nutty Professor (1963)
One of cinema’s most polarizing figures is Jerry Lewis. I get it: he can be loud, obnoxious, and annoyingly dimwitted, normally qualities I would hate. And yet I love so many of his films. The music, performed by the likes of Les Brown and Count Basie, is obscenely good; the colors are bold and bright; the jokes, while sometimes stretched a bit too long, are often inventive; and there is unexpected heart to be found in his characters, who are typically loners with an innocence that makes them especially vulnerable to the bullies that surround them. All of these aspects, and more, can be found in my favorite Lewis flick, The Nutty Professor.
An incarnation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the film exploits the audience’s expectations for the story throughout the film, allowing for areas of predictability and moments of divergence. The Nutty Professor is the tale of Julius Kelp, a nerdy science professor with a heart of gold. Nothing goes right for him — his lab experiments keep blowing up the classroom, infuriating the college dean (a delightfully uptight Del Moore); he is bullied by students and strangers alike; his crush on student Stella Purdy (Stella Stevens, a criminally underrated actress) goes unnoticed. Finally deciding he’s had enough, Kelp invents a formula that allows him to be Buddy Love, a handsome, stylish, and smooth-talking jerk.
There is a lot that can be said about this movie. Co-written and directed by Lewis, it is filled to the brim with incredible sight gags, delicious slow camera reveals, superb musical moments, and plenty of weird, silly characters. If you had to see just one movie from Lewis’s (post-Dean Martin) filmography — although I really do recommend The Bellboy, Cinderfella, The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, and The Patsy — I think The Nutty Professor is not to be missed.
P.S. If you have Amazon Prime, you can currently watch a handful of great Lewis titles, including The Nutty Professor!