Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

“Bye Bye Birdie I’m gonna miss you so; Bye Bye Birdie, why’d ya have to do? No more sunshine, It’s followed you away; I’ll cry Birdie, Till you’re home to stay.”

            If there has ever been a film that speaks to me in the deepest of fangirl feels it is Bye Bye Birdie. At twenty-seven, I fangirl over things like I am a damn teenager. If it is something I like I will get super into it and become obsessed and want every piece of merchandise that accompanies it (shout out to Orphan Black and YouTube’s Holy Trinity). I was doing so well for a few years with keeping the fangirl feels at bay until I got back into watching TV shows last winter. It started with Leverage and Orphan Black and now I am full blown fangirl about everything I get into lately. When I was younger if there was a hot guy on a TV show I liked or was a member in a boy band I listened to forget it I would beyond fangirl over them. I related a little too much to the girls’ obsession with the character of Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie and me relating to them made the musical so much more enjoyable and funny to watch.

            Singer Conrad Birdie has been drafted to fight in Vietnam. Girls all across America and the world are in mourning. In Washington DC girls even get together to picket the White House with signs saying to take them and leave Conrad alone.

            In New York City, a failed songwriter named Albert Peterson (Dick van Dyke) may be the only male in the country that is upset to see Conrad go off to war. He was hoping to give his management a new song of his. Albert is also really upset because his mother’s dreams of him becoming a famous songwriter have come crashing down. First of all songwriter was his mother’s dream not really his. Albert has a degree in science. He is also upset because his secretary and fiancé Rose DeLeon (Janet Leigh) has gone off to the Ed Sullivan Show. He thinks she is jumping ship since his business tanked. Rose is really over at Ed Sullivan to make a deal. She pitches the idea to have Conrad on the show to do a farewell segment to a new song that Albert will write and after he sings the son Conrad will kiss a girl who will represent all his fans. Ed and his show runner love the idea and let her set up the whole thing.

            Rose and Ed decide that a girl from Ohio will be the perfect choice to be the one to get a kiss from Conrad. Rose goes to the Conrad Birdie fan club and picks out a file on a girl named Kim McAfee (Ann-Margaret). Rose tries calling Kim but the line is busy. Kim is on the phone with her friend to tell her that her boyfriend Hugo has given her a pin as a symbol that they are going to steady. She feels like now that she has a steady boyfriend and she is sixteen she is becoming a real woman and is ready to do grown-up things. Kim sings her feelings about being a woman in a little number all the while she changes into jeans, a baggy sweater and a baseball cap. When she goes downstairs there is a call from her from Rose about Conrad. Kim is in total shock that she has been chosen to receive a kiss from her number one crush.

            Back in New York City, Rose tries to explain to Albert her plan but he just keeps going on and on in such a negative way she cannot get a word in for a little bit. When she is finally able to reveal her plan Albert loves her all the more. Their tender moment is interrupted by his pushy, annoying, coddling mother. Next to the definition of “Mama’s Boy” there would be a picture of Albert and his mother. Albert and Rose have been engaged for six years and have never told his told his drama queen mother and it is starting to bother Rose that her fiancé chooses his mother over her.

            On the day Conrad is come to her hometown, Kim’s boyfriend Hugo and all the boys in town become insanely jealous. Hugo is worried that Kim will not want him anymore and no matter how many times Kim explains to him that he is the only one for her Hugo does not really listen. When Conrad rides into town on his motorcycle the girls lose their freaking minds and literally fall to the ground when he points at them. Kim’s father comes home in an uproar over Conrad being in town. Mr. McAfee and some of the other townspeople want Conrad and Albert and Rose out immediately. Mr. McAfee’s routine has been thrown off a bit and his home has been slightly taken over which makes him mad. Rose and Albert hear all this and decide to play to Mr. McAfee who runs a fertilizing plant. Albert realizes that the McAfee son has created a concoction with his chemistry set. The concoction can speed things up such as animals and plant growth. He tells McAfee is that if the concoction works on animals and they can market and sell the product they can go into business together but just as long as Kim can get into the show. The father agrees to go along with the plan only if he can get on the Ed Sullivan Show to which Albert agrees to do.

            Other things happen to Kim and Hugo and Albert and Rose that I will spare you the details on. Just know that Albert and Rose end up happily ever after and his mother is taken out of the picture and Kim and Hugo make up when she realizes that Conrad is not all he is cracked up to be.

            I am not a Janet Leigh fan normally I find her so annoying but I cannot even tell you how much I LOVED her in the film! Oh my goodness she was fantastic! First of all, where did her acting come from? I usually think she is quite crap but in this she was acting so well! Second, she had black hair instead of her insanely bleached hair and she looked amazing. Third, she was singing and sounded great. Fourth, and final, she was dancing and did a great job! Seriously, it was like watching a totally different Janet Leigh. She made the film for me. Ann-Margaret I believe I have only seen in the movie Tommy up to this point. She will forever be Tommy’s mom singing “Tommy can you hear me?”. She was good I liked her. There was this big dance number for all the young kids in it and her dancing skills were incredible. Dick van Dyke usually drives me nuts too but I really liked him in this. I loved his number “Put on a Happy Face”.

            Bye Bye Birdie was so much to watch. If I had to pick who I am hardcore crushing on at the moment it is Arthur Darvill who played Rory Williams on Doctor Who. If he were to come to my town and had to plant a kiss on me for a TV show I would faint just like all the girls in the film did! Actually the one actor who if he were to come by and just say hey let’s go, would be Carmine Giovinazzo (Formerly Danny Messer from CSI:NY). I am not even going to go into detail about my love for that man because I would sound like a pathetic lovesick girl. The musical numbers were a great time. I will now most likely have Ann-Margaret singing “Bye Bye Birdie” stuck in my head for the rest of the week along with “Put on a Happy Face”. You do not have to know what it feels like to be a fangirl to enjoy Bye Bye Birdie. Everything about it is entertaining and silly and fun making it a definite watch.

Holiday Affair (1949)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

            Hope you are all having (or had) a wonderful Christmas Eve with your families. For the past few Christmases it has just me, my parents, my three brothers, and my grandparents instead of several extended family members. I come from a pretty big Italian family but unfortunately several of them have moved far away and my ninety-seven year old great-grandmother does not like to travel anymore so no more big Christmas get togethers. I have to say though the smaller crowd has been very nice. Christmas has been more laid back and fun. We play board games and watch movies. The movies are usually not Christmas movies though. My brothers are obsessed with superhero movies and my grandparents like action movies.

            Instead of sitting through a non-Christmas, I have taken it upon myself to watch one. I have chosen to watch Holiday Affair from 1949.

            Steve Mason (Robert Mitchum) is a salesman in a department store. He has been given the task of selling a toy train set during the holidays. A large group of children have gathered around the display to hear him talk about the latest model train. A young woman named Connie Ennis (Janet Leigh) breaks through the crowd of children demanding to be waited on. She is in a hurry and pressures Steve to write up that she will be buying the train. She has the exact amount of money the train costs including tax. After she buys the train, Connie calls the company she works for. She is a comparison shopper and tells the person on the other end she will bring the train to the office the following day.

            At the end of her hectic day of shopping for other people, Connie returns to her apartment where son Timmy is waiting for her. Connie placed the wrapped box with the train on her bed. Timmy being a curious little boy, takes a peek inside the box when his mother is out of the room. He becomes very excited believing his mother has bought the train for him.

            That night Connie’s boyfriend Carl comes over. He wants to marry her but she feels like she still needs time. Timmy’s father died in the War and she is still not completely over him. Connie tells Carl that when she is ready she will ask him to marry her.

            No longer needing the train, Connie goes back to the department store to return it. Steve tells her he knew she was a comparison shopper and he could get her in a lot of trouble for what she did. He becomes sarcastic with her and asks her what her story is thinking she has made up a fake one. When Steve realizes Connie is telling the truth about her son and her dead husband, he feels bad and lets her return the train. Connie then goes downstairs to buy a pair of men’s undergarments. Steve comes down at that moment and pretends to be her husband. When she asks why he is not upstairs working, he responds that he has gotten fired because of her. To make up for what has happened Connie agrees to take him to lunch where he likes to go. Where Steve likes to eat for lunch is a few vendors near the Central Park Zoo. They have a nice lunch and walk around the park. Steve asks Connie how she has gotten him to talk so much.

After their lunch and walk Steve helps Connie carry some packages from another department store where she has to buy things for her job. The crowd becomes too much and they get separated. He manages to find out where Connie lives and brings her packages over. Carl is also there and the atmosphere becomes a little tense between the two men. Things also become a little awkward when Timmy gets an attitude about Carl being there. He knows Carl wants to marry his mother and he does not like that because he likes the way their lives are at the moments. And also because he was not getting the train set he wanted. Timmy gets sent to his room after he yells at Carl. Carl gets mad at Connie for yelling at him for the way he spoke to Timmy. Steve goes into Timmy’s room to talk to him and make him feel better. When their talk is through, Steve goes to Connie in the kitchen, kisses her, and leaves.

            The next morning is Christmas. Timmy runs into Connie’s room all exited. She goes into the living room to find the toy train Timmy was upset over. She knows the train is from Steve. She is upset with him for spending the money on it. Connie goes to his hotel that morning and finds Steve has checked out. She figures out he has gone to their place at the zoo. Before heading to the zoo she had stopped home to get a tie she had planned on giving to Carl to give to Steve. When she sees him, Connie asks Steve why he is leaving. He tells her he is saving to get on the cheapest train to California so he can go into the boat making business like he has always wanted to do.

            Connie goes home to Timmy and her in-laws. Carl comes over and just in time. A detective comes to the house saying she needs to come down to police headquarters. Steve has been wrongfully arrested over an incident that occurred at that the Park that morning. The police believe he beat someone up and tied him up with a tie and stole a gift of salt and pepper shakers. That morning in the Park Steve had given a man his old tie when Connie had given him his new one. A few moments after that, a little girl came over to him and gave him the box with the shakers in it. Connie tells the police chief the whole truth and Steve is let go. Timmy was there as well and invites Steve to come over for dinner since he does not know anyone else in the city. Dinner goes well until Steve is asked to give a speech. At the end of his speech he asks Connie to marry him.

            Timmy is sad about Steve leaving the night before. He feels bad that Steve spent money he does not have on the train set. He takes it upon himself to go to the department store to return it. At first Timmy has no luck until he hears two women discussing how someone wanted to return something and they went to see the owner of the store who took the item back. Timmy goes up to the owner’s office with the train and tells the owner the whole story. Connie and Carl had been worried sick over Timmy all day. She looks out the window and sees Timmy has gotten a ride home with the store owner. He tells them that he got the money back to give to Steve. Connie and Carl drive over to where Steve is now living. Carl knows she does not really love him. He knows she loves Steve and tells her so. He waits for her while she goes in to give the money to Steve just in case. Steve lets her know that he loves her but he is not going to ask her to marry him again. He tells her that she is still hung up on her husband and cannot move forward. This makes her a bit angry and she leaves.

            On New Year’s Eve, Connie gets a telegram from Steve that he is leaving for California. Connie is going out for the night with two of her friends. Timmy mentions that when he is older and leaves the house she will be all alone. She thinks of Steve.

            Connie, along with Timmy, manages to make it onto the same train Steve is on.

            The story of Holiday Affair was not very Christmas-y. It is one of those films that is just centered around the holiday. I liked it, I thought it was cute. Janet Leigh was actually really good. I am not a fan of her acting in the few other films I have seen her in but in this film she was adorable and her acting was not bad at all. Robert Mitchum it was weird not seeing him as this really tough guy like he is in most of his film, or at least the ones I have seen him in. He and Leigh, surprisingly, made a good pair. Holiday Affair is a decent film worth seeing at least once. At least I got to sit through something that deals with Christmas! Right now I think everyone in my family is downstairs watching James Bond!

 

            Have a very Merry Christmas. I hope you all get at least one gift you wanted be it a toy, money, food, or getting to spend time with your family. 

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

“His brain has not only been washed, as they say... It has been dry cleaned.” 

            Politics and I are not friends. Whenever it is an election year I die because I hate hearing about who promises what and all the lying bull that comes out their mouths. Since I do not pay attention to politics I am not a registered voter… I hear it all the time that it is my right as an American citizen to vote and how I should feel ashamed that I do not but I am not ashamed so if you are upset reading this fume over it on your side of the computer and leave the comments to yourself not at the bottom.

            The above being said hopefully it is obvious that political thrillers are not a film genre I am fond of. Ever since I started watching classic films my grandparents have been telling me that I need to see the original Manchurian Candidate. I figured they were just telling me this because both of them really like this film so I dragged my heels to see it. I finally got around to seeing The Manchurian Candidate and I really liked it. The plot, to me, was not so much political it was definitely a thriller and thrillers are one of my favorite genres.

            Major Ben Marco (Frank Sinatra) served in a squadron with Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) during the Korean War. Shaw was given the Medal of Honor for rescuing his men from enemy lines. Now home Marco has a recurring nightmare where he, Shaw and their squadron have been captured by the Koreans and are put on display in front of other communists. In the dream they are all being brain washed beyond brain washed. Raymond has been given the order to shoot one of his men and does so without thinking twice and the man he shoots does not move nor is he afraid. He is ordered to kill another man by chocking him and the man who is about to be killed is ordered to relax. Ben works in Washington as an intelligence officer for the US Army. He lets his superiors know about his dream. Ben now believes that his dream is not a dream at all but a memory. 

            Raymond returns home to a hero’s welcome. He did not want to come to anything like this. As soon as he sees his mother Eleanor (Angela Lansbury) and her husband John Iselin he knows they are the ones to throw the fanfare. Raymond hates his mother and his step-father more than any two people on earth. John is an ineffectual politician. Eleanor is the one who puts all the power behind John and tells him what to do and what to say. She is very anti-communist and does everything in her power to make sure that anyone who is suspected of being a communist is punished. To make his mother angry and to go his own way Raymond takes a job for a newspaper in New York City who constantly slams John.

            On the day Raymond arrives in New York he receives a letter from one of the men in his squadron. The letter is about the dream he keeps having where they are sitting in a room with a Korean man and they are surrounded by communists. Before Raymond can react to the letter his phone rings. On the other man is the Korean man from the dreams calling to activate him as a communist killer. He tells Raymond to play a game of solitaire. When Raymond sees the Queen of Diamonds it becomes his activation for the service of the communists.

            Meanwhile, Ben has been given leave. He cannot concentrate which is affecting his work. Ben was moved over to military publicist and that did not work out too well. He was to have been advising on a hearing where John Iselin was put on the stand. John kept giving different number for how many communists may have been placed high in the American government. Ben decides to see Raymond so they can figure out what is going on between them.

            Things slowly but excellently begin to unravel. We see that the one person being driven mad is not Ben but Raymond by people he thought he knew.

            The cast besides Janet Leigh was phenomenal. Frank Sinatra was great the man had so much talent. Laurence Harvey not enough words can be said about how amazing he was. You can see how tormented the character was Harvey made him so believable. The film truly belongs to Angel Lansbury. She played a truly wicked character and blew it out of the water. I kept saying “oh my god how am I ever going to watch Beauty and the Beast again she was so sweet as Mrs. Pots” haha. Amazing character played by an amazing actress. Because of Lansbury Eleanor Iselin is one of my favorite film characters and I do not care that she is bad. Janet Leigh was a waste of film. I am so made she got top billing over Angela Lansbury. Leigh was barely in the film and worst of all she was what Hitchcock called a MacGuffin. Her character had nothing to do with the story she was just a love interest for Ben.

            The Manchurian Candidate is such a great film. The twists and turns do not end until the film ends. I love films that make say “wait what on earth just happened?!” and I was saying that most of the time. I have to say I was shocked some things happened in this film because I was totally not expecting them to happen. It is always nice to still be able to feel a little shocked and awed with a film. I liked seeing a Cold War film plot that took place in the actual time period. Today we do not have fears that the communists are going to take over or they are going to brainwash people but back in the sixties that was a real and frightening threat. My grandparents were young in the sixties they said this film freaked them out when they first saw it. The Manchurian Candidate is a political thriller I was happy to have watched because it was suspenseful and I could not guess what was going to happen next.

 

Psycho (1960)



“I think I must have one of those faces you can't help believing.”

Ever since I first watched Psycho I have always asked myself the question of why this film is so great. After seeing several Hitchcock films such as Rebecca, Notorious, Spellbound, To Catch a Thief, and several others I still could not understand the big deal with Psycho. Then I realized for the most part that like any classic movie to truly appreciate it you need to look at the time period it was made in… and do a little bit of research along the way.

            One of the big questions about Psycho is what makes this film so scary? We look today at what is considered “horror” often with half naked women running around as a crazed guy in a mask runs through the woods chasing them with a blade. Modern horror movies do not grip us psychologically. The bad guys are scary to look but that is about all they are not real and we know that. Psycho is what makes Alfred Hitchcock a genius he made a genuine horror movie that was realistic in its subject. What unnerves us as the viewers so much is knowing that men like Norman Bates exist in the real world and that what happens to Marion Crane could happen to anyone.

            Paranoia plays a major role in the film. All the main characters go through a state of paranoia. The point when Marion steals the money the characters and the audience are put into a constant state of paranoia. It is a great device and feeling that other “thrillers” severely lack. We get into Marion’s paranoia over the simplest things. As she drives away from Phoenix after she has seen her boss she starts to imagine what everyone must be saying about her. We see her squirming in her seat and fear in her eyes. Marion feels paranoid believing someone besides her coworkers know what she has done and this feeling intensifies when the cop knocks on her car window. Even Norman becomes paranoid when his sinks Marion’s car with her body in it and it stops a bit before it submerges completely. The killer starts to unravel with paranoia when Detective Arbogast and Lila Crane and Sam start coming around asking questions.  We are lead to feel for Marion we want her to get away. Even though Norman is a bad guy we take a deep breath in anxiety hoping the car will go down so he will not be caught. To me the best example of paranoia and fear is when Lila is walking through Norman's mother's room and she catches her reflection in the mirror really quick and scares herself. That was awesome it shows how on edge she was and also broke the tension somewhat. 

            No analysis of Psycho would be complete without talking of the most famous scene in cinematic history: the shower scene. If you can look at this scene deeply it is truly terrifying and genius. Hitchcock played on the fact that we are at our most vulnerable when we are naked alone in the shower. Marion’s privacy and vulnerability has been brutally invaded. This is what shocked and disturbed so many movie goers when the film premiered. Hitchcock also used the idea that what you do not see is scarier than what you do see. We never see the knife plunge into Marion the camera quickly cuts away before we see contact. At the end of the brutal commotion is a great transition from the water flowing down the drain to Marion’s open dead eye. Truffaut asked Hitchcock what attracted him to turn the novel Psycho is based off of into a movie to which the director replied “the suddenness of the murder in the shower, coming as it were, out of the blue. That was about all.”

            Another aspect that shocked audience members is the killing of Janet Leigh half way through the film. This was never done before no one was expecting to see her die. This was part of Hitchcock trying to direct the viewers away from what they were so used to doing when they went to movies. As viewers we try to think we are clever and know what will happen next, he was deliberately playing on the fact that he could control the audiences’ thoughts. It is always a shock when something happens that we do not see coming.

            Adding as much of the tension and shock is the incredible score by Bernard Herrmann. The music does not move us it is cold and sterile only played by strings. The music does not allow for any attachment emotionally to the characters which we are not truly meant to. Herrmann made the score a bit twisted; the strings are soft while being played on a high note. Hitchcock did not want a lot of music being played throughout the film, he did not even want music in the shower scene mostly because there is not instrumental music playing all around someone in real life. Once he heard the score for the scene Hitchcock changed his mind.

            Now I do appreciate Psycho more than I used to once I read about it and watched in a film class I took but I will have to disagree that this is Hitchcock’s greatest film. Yes it has left a very long and fantastic legacy on film making but I just do not see it as the director’s best. It is a very good story because it strikes a nerve it is something that could happen it could be real. I will say the film making is the best I have ever seen I will always be amazed by the cinematography and the direction. To me Psycho is just not as good as Hitchcock’s early American films.

            When Hitchcock was interviewed by François Truffaut about Psycho, the director said that he did not care about the subject matter or about the acting what he really cared about was getting to the audience through filmmaking and making them scream. He made this thriller for the audience. Even after its release fifty-one years ago audiences are still left amazed and terrified.