Diehl's Film Journal

Another awkward film moment
I was attending seminary from about 1987-1989. I remember that I had just watched Blue Velvet for the first time and I told my roommate that I thought it was a powerful movie and I would like to watch it him sometime. (I was planning to tell him that it was intense and would probably be somewhat shocking and then watch it together so I could explain why I thought it was a good film. Fast-forward about a week and he comes back from his friends, and he is very angry with me because he had suggested the film to some other seminary students, who to say the least, were not entertained. He said they had decided that I was warped. I don't even know who the other students were, but I'm sure they knew who I was. This is why I try to walk a fine line between letting people know if the movie may offend without spoiling the film. I still do that on this site.



Would this make a good thread Awkward film moments

for horror and suspense fans

1987
Angel Heart
Director: Allen Parker
Screenplay: Alan Parker and William Hjortsberg
Source: Novel by William Hjortsburg
Featured Cast: Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet, Charlotte Rampling, Brownie Mcghee, and Stocker Fontelieu


This is one of those movies that you need to guard against spoilers. The film is excellent, and in my case I did not anticipate the twist until the director chose to reveal everything. Parker and Hjortsburg do not cheat either. When you re-watch it, all the clues are there to figure it out, but I suspect most people are surprised. Harry Angel is hired by a mysterious man who is interested in finding a singer who disappeared after the War (WW II). As he investigates, it is apparent that he is being framed for a series of murders that involve the occult in one way or another, but who is framing him.

Alan Parker is a unique director. His subject matter spans popular music, Civil Rights, Horror, Historical Drama, etc.. You get the point; he dabbles in a lot of genres. He does have several movies that deal with music including: Pink Floyd: The Wall, The Commitments, Evita, Fame (music and dance), but this movie is not one of them. This movie deals mainly with Horror and Suspense. Rourke and De Niro do an exceptional job with the acting. I thought Charlotte Rampling and Brownie Mc Ghee were excellent casting choices as Margaret Cruismark and Toots Sweet respectively. I thought Lisa Bonet was out of her element. It is a huge distinction between being featured in the Cosby Show and performing along side some of these great actors. In fact it is my understanding that Bonet went to Cosby and asked his advice about taking the part, and Cosby advised against it. He felt that the movie portrayed a stereotype about African-Americans that was backward. She took the part anyway and the story is she lost her part on the Cosby Show for not taking his advice. The film has a lot of dark scenes, in terms of the lighting and the mood. The film was one of the first movies to have an NR rating before it was trimmed to qualify as an R movie.

As well as recommending the film I would also like to recommend the book the movie is based on. It is entitled Falling
Angel, and was written by the screenplay's co-author William Hjortsburg. I have read the book and recommend i to fans of the film. There are significant differences between the book and the film, which I assume were related to the cost of filming the entire movie in New York City vs shooting in Louisiana. The story is different enough to warrant reading if you like to read. Overall I highly recommend this film to suspense and horror buffs. Especially if you like stories with a twist.

To Be or Not to Be- Ernst Lubitsch 1942




Black comedy, also known as black humor, dark comedy or gallows humor, is a comic style that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss.
The term black humor (from the French humour noir) was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift.[9][10] Breton's preference was to identify some of Swift's writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire[11][12] in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism,[9][13] often relying on topics such as death.[14][15]
Black comedy has the social effect of strengthening the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors.[20][21] According to Wylie Sypher, "to be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them."[22]
Black comedy is a natural human instinct and examples of it can be found in stories from antiquity. Its use was widespread in middle Europe, from where it was imported to the United States.[23] It is rendered with the German expression Galgenhumor. The concept of gallows humor is comparable to the French expression rire jaune (lit. yellow laughing),[24][25][26] which also has a Germanic equivalent in the Belgian Dutch expression groen lachen (lit. green laughing).[27][28][29][30]
Italian comedian Daniele Luttazzi discussed gallows humour focusing on the particular type of laughter that it arouses (risata verde or groen lachen), and said that grotesque satire, as opposed to ironic satire, is the one that most often arouses this kind of laughter.[31][32][33] In the Weimar era Kabaretts, this genre was particularly common, and according to Luttazzi, Karl Valentin and Karl Kraus were the major masters of it.[33]
A 2017 study published in the journal Cognitive Processing[34] concludes that people who appreciate dark humor "may have higher IQs, show lower aggression, and resist negative feelings more effectively than people who turn up their noses at it."[35]
If the definition of Black humor found in the dictionary was accompanied by a see also note or a picture, it could easily be see To Be or Not to Be (by Lubitsch not the one by Mel Brooks) There are many fine examples of Black humor in the movies. Films such as “The Life of Brian” by Monty Python or” Brazil” by Terry Gilliam other examples might include “Dr. Strangelove” or many scenes in the TV Series “Twin Peaks”. The reason I believe that “To Be or Not to Be” is the best example is because of when it was released. Lubitsch was an expatriate living in the United States before it entered the war.
What’s even more astonishing is that “To Be or Not to Be” was released only three months after Pearl Harbor. It was a precarious time in the world, with uncertainty and terror dominating the national sentiment, and it wasn’t exactly the “appropriate” time to poke fun at the great evil lurking right around the corner. But Lubitsch and screenwriter Edwin Justus Mayer (adapting a story by Melchior Lengyel) realized something profound: The best time to mock the most ruthless, vile force the world had ever seen was when it seemed the least appropriate. Lubitsch designed “To Be or Not to Be” to be shocking, but only because the best satire is meant to shake you to your core. It’s not in poor taste, but rather necessary, powerful, and hilarious over 70 years later.
Lubitsch and Jack Benny faced fierce criticism for making the film. Many thought it was the most inappropriate time to create a farce of the Reich, especially when what was happening was very serious. (remember the definition of black comedy). It is now 2019, and the movie has had the honor of being included in the Criterion Film collection.
The film is set in Poland where a small theatre is rehearsing a comedy that roasts the Nazi’s. The play is postponed, but the actors find that they have a use for their well-rehearsed farce. They have discovered a spy and they must thwart his plans or face the retribution of the Nazi’s against the families of the Polish Air squadron who have been bombing Nazi targets. The film is much more than a comedy, and in the end I believe most people would agree that the play was more of an act of defiance against the Nazi’s than making light of a terrible situation. I recommend this film for all audiences.
Last edited by Diehl40; 20 hours ago at 08:03 PM.

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His Girl Friday: The Perfect Remarriage

A feast of whip-smart banter, Howard Hawks’s proto-feminist take on newsroom politics is the most grown-up of all remarriage comedies.


Howard Hawks
His Girl Friday


"One of the fastest, funniest, and most quotable films ever made", His Girl Friday stars Rosalind Russell as reporter Hildy Johnson. Hildy is matched in force only by her conniving but charismatic editor and ex-husband, Walter Burns (played by Cary Grant). Hildy has told Burns that she is planning on leaving town and leaving the news business to get remarried. In order to keep Hildy from leaving town to remarry, Burns has a brainstorm on the spot and offers Hildy the chance for her to scoop her fellow news writers with the story of an impending execution. Hawks revised the script for The Front Page (which he had worked on). He changed Hildy's character from a man and the result is an immortal mix of hard-boiled newsroom setting with the story of a romance that moves at the pace of a jack rabbit. They say the dialog was two to three times faster than average. "If you were not paying attention you might miss half the story." Hildy became the prototype of the hard-boiled, fast talking female reporter that has been redone many times over the years, fed back to us in such performances as that of Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy to name one. The comedy has become one of the most successful ever, and we have Howard Hawks, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell to thank for that.

Camille Claudel

I do not know Isabella Adjani's standing as an actress. I have only seen three of her movies and they were so different that it is impossible to decide if her performance in Camille Claudel was an exception or the rule. One other film i saw her in was Subway which starred Christopher Lambert and could have been played by any woman who was strikingly beautiful. I know she once starred in a movie about demon possession and i know she starred in Queen Margot which seems more along the lines of Camille Claudel as far as talent required. I have also seen her play Victor Hugo's daughter in Adele H. (interesting since she is playing Hugo's mistress in Camille Claudel). At this point I would have to guess that she is truly talented, while having to settle for some lesser roles along the way..
Depardieu plays Hugo who takes Camille as his mistress only to throw her away when she becomes a competitor rather than just a student who was willing to sleep with him. When he realizes that she is not willing to be satisfied with helping him with his career, and wishes to be recognized for her own work, he turns on her and does all he can to see that her art is not recognized and that her career is sabotaged.

Over a period of time she has what today would probably be called a nervous or mental breakdown that could be treated in today's treatments, but resulted in her spending the rest of her life in a mental institution against her will (Hugo and her family made sure that she was left there). . I need to find out how accurate the movie was, but the only way to do tat is to find a biography on her and take time I do not currently have to read it. If the movie was faithful to her life at all, it would be a tragedy. Highly recommended.