ASK MICK LASALLE
Hello Mick: Someone wrote about a movie audience snickering all the way through “I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.” Do you think part of the problem might be that Paul Muni is largely and unjustly forgotten? After all, not every Humphrey Bogart line is a gem (I personally find “The Germans wore gray, you wore blue” eye-roll inducing), but his mystique spares him ridicule.
Ann Winters, Santa Cruz Hello Ann: I suppose that a familiar actor might be less subject to laughs, especially one like Bogart, whose aura was cynical enough to seem modern. But the real problem, or challenge, is the fact that almost everything dramatically and seriously great is on the edge of funny anyway. The most beautiful clothing — suits, shirts, dresses — is often one step away from being too much. The dancing of Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson, in their respective eras, went right up to the line of laughable without crossing over. You could say the same for the most moving moments in opera. And just think of the laughs that heavy metal singers will evoke from future generations, with their falsetto voices.
What happens with certain audiences at old movies is that they start to feel something, some emotion, but they’re not familiar with an earlier era’s conventions. And so they laugh, not out of amusement, but discomfort. In a way, it’s almost like a fear reaction, or at least a nervous reaction. As for the line, “The Germans wore gray, you wore blue,” from “Casablanca,” that’s Rick’s acknowledging his own lack of perspective. One of the worst cataclysms of the 20th century was taking place — the Nazi takeover of Paris — and all he could think about was his love life. It’s a nice way of saying that he knows that in the grand scheme he’s being ridiculous, but that knowing it doesn’t change things. Dear Mick: Is it my imagination, or are long reviews more often pans?
Wayne Salo, Sacramento Dear Wayne: It’s your imagination. Popular movies get more space than unpopular movies, but, if anything, pans tend to be shorter than raves. With a pan, a certain amount of shorthand is possible, for the simple reason that bad movies tend to be bad in similar ways. Also, there’s less at stake. The worst thing that will happen, if readers don’t listen to you, is that they will spend two hours watching a bad movie, something they probably do two or three times a week, anyway. Raves take longer, because great movies tend to be great in original ways, so there’s the task of describing something that has never before existed. And there is more at stake, because the worst that will happen is that a serious work of art will never find its audience, a calamity akin to two people, meant for each other, who never, ever meet. Dear Mick: You get quoted in trailers and other movie publicity. Does this help your marketability? And are your books on film history and criticism cited by other critics in their own endeavors?
Jerry Thornhill, San Francisco Dear Jerry: Getting quoted in movie trailers and advertisements does nothing for me, but it pleases my bosses and amuses my mother, and anything that accomplishes both things can’t be all bad. But in the end, nobody notices who wrote the quote. Nobody says, “Ooh, what a line, I love this guy,” and why should they? As for my books, I sometimes see them referenced in other books, but I also sometimes see ideas taken from them without attribution. I mind it when I can tell it’s an outright lift. On the other hand, if you write a book to get ideas into the world, and the ideas actually get into the world and enter the atmosphere, it would be stupid to mind that. But none of this is helpful or exciting, just mildly pleasing in a contemplative, melancholic yet vaguely selfsatisfied sort of way.