Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Mary Poppins

I had never seen Mary Poppins before today. This somewhat startling fact had become more or less a running gag with certain friends since they just could not fathom why I hadn't seen it and why I had no desire to do so. I was the same with The Sound of Music until I came across it one day on television and figured "it's now or never." My experience with watching that famous 1965 Julie Andrews musical only made my desire to not watch Mary Poppins from one year earlier even stronger. Still, bite the bullet I did and I watched Robert Stevenson's 1964 musical for the first time for The Film Experience's ongoing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series.

I'll admit that for as much as I struggled to watch the movie its seemingly interminable series of pantomime and cloying wide-eyed quirkiness, I struggled even more to find a shot that I liked enough. I don't feel Mary Poppins is a particularly well-photographed film. Oh, sure, the sets and the costumes and the animation and the visual effects are all working overtime to make this a lively and energetic picture (there is always a lot going on in nearly every frame), but I don't think the cinematography do it any favours with its unimaginative set-ups and framing. I didn't find many of the musical sequences all that involving and only when they really ramped up the artificiality did I actually get invested in them, which is a curious thing to admit but there you go.

I guess that brings me back to why I just flat out did not like this movie. It feels so crushingly old-fashioned. Consider that West Side Story had come out just three years prior and maybe you can see what I mean. That one is so vibrantly constructed and beats with a modern heart. Mary Poppins, for all of its technological advances, just reeks of mothballs. I know many consider the film to be a lighter than air confection, but I found its dottering and fluttering to be nigh on insufferable. I mean, it certainly doesn't help that Julie Andrews is the only one I could stand to listen to - it's undeniable that she has a pretty voice, yes - but I really struggled to watch this movie without sighing every time an unnecessary song that goes on far too long came on. Cutesy kids alert at red, folks. Eep!

The one aspect other than Andrews that I enjoyed was just how very odd the whole enterprise is. I don't just mean in that characters go about doing odd things, but that the film itself finds itself throwing some truly odd stuff out there in what was probably conceived as a rather innocuous children's flick (upcoming Saving Mr Banks will certainly show us what's what, right? Ummm... maybe not). When it came to selecting a shot I considered the moment the flowers become butterflies in the famous animated sequence (above), or something from Dick Van Dyke's rooftop dancing sequence with the fireworks since there was some beautiful matte work there, or his foggy exit, or even one of the ridiculous shots of nanny's flying away down the street (did nobody find that odd?) No, my "best shot" is one actually from the very beginning of the movie as the camera pans across the London skies and spots Mary Poppins sitting atop the clouds. I found it quite odd, but that's a good thing.

It's a moment that genuinely surprised me. And for a film that didn't do all that much surprising to me in its following two hours and twenty minutes, I figured that was worth celebrating. It's just a supremely strange moment that comes unexpectedly and comes rather peacefully, uncluttered by everything including the kitchen sink that the rest of the film seems determined to throw at the screen. Looking at it just now and it's a rather beautiful image in its own right, and one that looks as if it carries a certain sadness without its cheerful chim-chim-cheree on the soundtrack. I wish the rest of the film was able to make me actually feel something other than painful contempt. I am not surprised in the least that the creator of the Mary Poppins character hated the film.

If you ask me, the best thing this film wrought was the infamous "Scary Mary" recut trailer that reposits the film as an suspenceful horror flick about a vengeful nanny with mystical powers. I'd long enjoyed the video, but now having seen the movie it's based on I can guarantee that it'd be a helluva lot more interesting. Especially since, as the video suggests as well as the aforementioned odd moments, there's a completely different movie going on in there and I want to see it.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: American Graffiti

George Lucas has been saying he's going to leave big budget movies behind and refocus on the small ones that began his career in the 1970s. Anybody who has paid any attention knows that that is never going to happen, even if he has decided to sell his LucasFilm brand and potentially leave the Star Wars (and Indiana Jones, I guess) franchise behind him. He'll surely never truly leave it behind. I mean, he's hung on to that thing for dear life for decades and even against his better judgement has kept spinning it off into new incarnations at the drop of a hat.

Still, even if Lucas' career is one of unfulfilled promise, derailed by the unparalleled success of a genre flipped space opera, that initial promise will always be unforgettable. His 1973 nostalgic ode to the teenage dream of his early life was his second feature after the stripped down science fiction of THX 1138. He was nominated for writing and directing Oscars, winning neither. It was still a huge deal given its origin as a small-budget virtually independent production. It's hard to imagine teenagers today flocking to a film such as this, although I guess Gary Ross' Pleasantville is the closest I can think of off the top of my head.

The film, a sprawling look at a group of graduating seniors on the verge of a tumultuous world. It's one of my favourite movies. A good looking one, however, is not how I've ever particularly seen it. This series at The Film Experience, that asks readers to select their favourite shot from within a given film, proves otherwise. Furthering how much I adore this film, every time I watch it it reveals something new and rich. The visuals, as I said, have never been something I have gravitated towards, but looking at it now it seems silly to have not noticed them earlier. There are some really vivid colours and beautifully crafted images on display here. 

See? Absolutely gorgeous. I particularly love the film's use of shadow and tightness. So many movies are filmed in close shots these days, but here it truly serves a purpose. The shot I chose - sadly after only a skim, I didn't have time to rewatch the entire film as much as I would love to (also: my blu-ray is back home in Australia) - is this moment, which I think sums up the film really rather nicely. These people occupy a sort of limbo land where they want to be adults - smoking, drinking - but knowing full well that the passing of time means the things they take for granted will fall away. 

This beautiful shot of Oscar-nominated Candy Clark, I feel, echoes those sentiments entirely. An almost mournful pose as the cool purple light of the night sky beams down - they won't have moments like this for much longer, and the melancholy nature of the lighting here adds pangs of sadness to this already thick layer of morose that lingers over the characters. It's a gorgeous shot from a gorgeous moment in a gorgeous film. Just gorgeous. Drink up!

San Francisco FIPRESCI Review: Nights with Théodore

Nights with Théodore

Dir. Sebastien Betbeder

Country: France

Running Time: 67mins 

Aus Rating: N/A 

At only 67 minutes long, Sébastien Betbeder's captivating genre mash-up Nights with Théodore (Les nuits avec Theodore) could be seen as skimping on the drama. However, it turns out that that is in fact the perfect length, and perhaps more filmmakers could take a lesson or two when it comes to the old-fashioned way of thinking that length equals importance and worth. It is certainly a way of thinking that has taken hold amongst Hollywood with Oscar-winners and box office hit comedies alike stretching their rather innocuous storylines to absurd lengths, diluting their product in the process. The short running time is only one of the strengths of Betbeder's film, but perhaps one of the most noteworthy in a festival scenario. It certainly doesn't outstay its welcome and that is something to be thankful for.

Read the rest at FIPRESCI
Apologies for getting this review up so late, but it's been sitting on the FIPRESCI website since I returned from sitting on the San Francisco jury. You can read about my experiences on the jury at Quickflix as well as a look at all the films in competition at The Film Experience if didn't get to read them at the time.