Notorious, and Rebel Without a Cause

I finally uploaded a few photos from the digicam I'm borrowing from Trish to my computer. Here are a couple of recent photos of my kitties, first Newton, then Jefferson:

They're not great pictures, but after looking at them I think their expressions capture the cats pretty well: Newton's always-eager look, and Jefferson's slightly-lazy look.

Subrata had taped a couple of old movies from TV, and invited us over to watch them tonight.

He'd had grand plans of people sending him orders for Chinese food and he'd pick them up on the way home. Well, it turned out that only I sent him an order, and other people got there late, so he didn't pick up food on the way home, but instead we ordered when people showed up, and he went out to pick it up. It ended up that only he and I ordered food anyway. So, whatever.

In the meantime, the other folks turned on a really bad Patrick Stewart movie called Safe House where he plays a man who may or may not have been a government agent (or is simply a raving paranoid), and who lives in a house full of high-tech security. We only watched a little of it; that was all I could stand, anyway. (Maybe it gets better later on. I somehow doubt it, from what we saw, though.) I must admit I am not much of a Patrick Stewart fan. While he's by no means a bad actor, I've never felt he has a whole lot of range. He mostly seems to succeed based on his accent, and a certain forceful earnestness.

Anyway, we finally cued (or is that queued?) up the two movies we'd come to see, the first being Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946), with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Just after World War II, Bergman's father is convicted as a traitor, and Grant's agency in the government (presumably the CIA, but it's never stated) recruits her to travel to Rio de Janiero to get involved with a former Nazi agent (Claude Rains) who's set up shop down there. Meanwhile, she and her contact - Grant - fall in love, which is a bit of a problem when Rains asks her to marry him.

The film is interesting for its other-worldly feeling, with long pauses in conversations, sometimes bizarre observations (Bergman: "My car is outside." Grant: "Naturally."), and frequent lack of any incidental music, emphasizing the silences. It's a far more serious role for Grant than I've yet seen him in, but he carries it off well (although I think he's much more fun when he's playing the ham, at least a little).

This style tends to make the story drag a little bit, and there's a bit of feeling that Bergman's recruitment into the affair is a little implausible. But things come to a boil during a memorable party in the middle, and things move fairly quickly from there, with a couple of very suspenseful scenes. Overall, it's a decent film, but hard to keep focused on during the first half.

The second film was Rebel Without a Cause (1955), the famous James Dean vehicle. Dean plays Jim Stark, a 16-year-old whose parents have just moved to a new town. He hates to be called chicken and tends to explode when that happens, though he's pretty cool otherwise. The movie opens with a scene in a police station where Jim has been arrested for public (and underage) drunkenness. In the station at the same time are Judy (Natalie Wood) who's having trouble relating to her father, and Plato (Sal Mineo, who I'm entirely unfamiliar with, but who puts on a stellar performance) whose father lives in New York City and who is a complete outcast.

The rest of the movie is about a single fateful day, Jim's first at his new high school. He gets mixed up with a leather-jacketed gang whose leader, Buzz, challenges him to a race in stolen cars off a cliff at midnight, the goal being to jump from the car last. Tragedy ensues, resulting in Jim trying to figure out what the right thing to do is, and Buzz' gang trying to chase down Jim for revenge, with the unstable Plato getting mixed up in the middle.

It occurs to me that this film is not at all a generic film about being a teenager, but is fairly specific to its characters, their situation, and the era in which they live. Jim and Buzz have a certain sense of honor which would seem out of place any time after the 1950s. Jim looks to his father for guidance on how to handle things "like a man", but his father is short on the qualities (assertiveness, a strong moral sense) which Jim expects from him. And Plato is just so completely an outcast; I think every teenager feels alone sometimes, but I think few truly are as totally isolated as Plato is. All of these characters - plus Judy - are pushed on largely due to their particular failings or just plain inexperience with dealing with the world, in this single day in which so much happens, and it's interesting - and sometimes painful - to see what they do.

As I said, I was very impressed with Sal Mineo's portrayal of Plato. James Dean I was somewhat less impressed with, though largely only by contrast with Mineo. He does do a good job of running between being cool, controlled and detached, and being strong and forceful. But when he needs to be wild or distraught, he still feels perhaps a little too controlled, like his rages are planned. Natalie Wood doesn't really have much more than a supporting role, though she does fine in it.

Rebel is an interesting film. At the end, I felt like perhaps there were some things left unsaid or undone, directions the story could have gone which it didn't. I guess I wish it had had more of a denouement. But overall I enjoyed it.