Dr. Pseudonym Blows Off The Dust

Tonight, LYRC is proud to present another fantastically successful installment in our ongoing series: “Dr. Pseudonym Reviews A DVD From Under A Rock Someplace”. Enjoy.

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Somewhere in Philadelphia

If you were to describe President Bush's appointment of Henry Kissinger to head the 9/11 Commission as a farce, your description would be incomplete, for there are good farces and bad farces. A bad farce is one which involves a bunch of hilariously self-centered pillow-biters flapping their hands and dashing madly in and out of all the wrong cabins on every deck of the cruise ship. This is not amusing, but it is probably the sort of farce you intended to conjure. A good farce, on the other hand, is one which involves Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart elegantly twisted up into, and then untied from, a romantic-comedic knot of a plot. If you haven't seen the movie I am obliquely referring to, The Philadelphia Story, I've got great news for you: it's now out on video! In addition to the high education value associated with seeing what a good movie looks like, there are many other things that make watching The Philadelphia Story such an intensely aesthetically satisfying experience from beginning to end. Among them:

- Effective and spare framing and beautiful colorless photography.

- There are close-ups of Hepburn, but they are soft-focus.

- Airtight and efficient storytelling. Everything aids in and nothing interferes with your involvement in the story. It is seemingly effortlessly engineered. Almost as though you are understood to be smart audience. You really don't need to get brain-crushingly drunk in order to enjoy this particular movie, but hey it couldn't hurt.

- It's fun to pretend that there was a time when American popular culture was something other than a rather straightforward expression of a mean-spirited, gluttonous and anally-fixated moral retardation. Okay, pretend-time is over.

- Intensely intelligent dialogue. And fast, fast, fast. Don't leave the room at any point or you'll miss everything. In fact, be prepared to rewind quite a bit as your laughing will overrun post-gag dialogue.

- Watching actors that know their props. Handling props has got to be one of the great lost arts of screen acting, and here you get to see a great number of uninterrupted shots of many people deftly and expressively handling all manner of hats, chairs, silverware, flowers, china, cigarettes and lighters and so much more. Compared to the people who live in my world who define physical grace as squeezing out of their car door to pick up dropped change in the drive-thru lane, and struggling endlessly with their fanny-packs, these actors provide two hours of evidence that we can all do better.

- The film opens with a wordless scene of Grant grabbing Hepburn by the face and shoving her to the ground. Sound hot? You bet it is. Hot and ill-mannered.

- The movie is deeply and genuinely warm and funny, yet contains several moments of thoughtful dialogue such as this:

KATE: Think it'll hold together long enough to get us home?
HOLLAND: (grins) How can you have any doubts with Super-pilot at the controls?
KATE: Humility is one of your most endearing qualities.
HOLLAND: After eighteen months, I'm glad you've found some. (beat) I'll be sorry to see this Mission end.
KATE: Don't give up so easily. There'll be others. And I'll charm the powers that be into assigning you and Vincent to the team.

Oh wait, I'm sorry. That's actually from the 1979 Disney live action classic The Black Hole, a fine film I'm sure. In conclusion I cannot recommend The Philadelphia Story strongly enough. It's good farce. Absolutely on my list of favorite movies.