SCFZ poll: Leo McCarey

[rischka]

on my tv. i can send it along but be warned, it's a multi-generation vhs tv rip complete with station breaks



just like old times!

[Searchlike]

If you're not too busy... yeah, I'd appreciate it.

[rischka]

yup yup nothin but time, find it at the place (in like 5 mins)

we are the champions, we are the champions!

[Searchlike]

Uh, it's been some time, I don't remember the password...

[john ryan]

seen 11

1. The Awful Truth
2. Duck Soup
3. Ruggles of Red Gap
4. Make Way for Tomorrow
5. Love Affair

[Searchlike]

Got it! Thanks, rischka and Curtis!

[wba]

Haven't seen much by this guy, and he directed the godawful DUCK SOUP (surely one of the worst films of all time), so I'm not too interested.
Am way more interested in watching stuff by his brother Ray McCarey, who has done some wonderful stuff (though I've also seen only few by him as well).

01. Big Business (1929)
02. Liberty (1929)

McCarey seen: 6

[Searchlike]

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I think it's worth repeating that dismissing McCarey because of Duck Soup is like watching Bambi and coming to the conclusion that you hate cinema.

I mean, I'm perfectly ok with somebody hating Duck Soup, not a big fan myself, or McCarey, just not for the wrong reasons.

[Holymanm]

^ duly noted

and as always, almost everyone on my lbd seems to love duck soup while wba says it's one of the worst movies ever made... good stuff!

[Umbugbene]

I removed Duck Soup and Going My Way from my ballot. To be fair I don't remember them well enough. I've forgotten The Awful Truth almost entirely, but at least I feel sure of my last remaining vote - for Love Happy, one of the Marx Brothers' best.

Just finished watching The Bells of St. Mary's, and it's full of problems. First of all it's odd for a movie that includes a reasonably good boxing lesson (taught by Ingrid Bergman!) to spend so much time telegraphing its punches. The movie consists of a few sub-plots: Will Fr. O'Malley be able to get along with the nuns? Will they persuade Mr. Bogardus to endow a new school building? Will Patricia pass and graduate? Will Luther deal with the bully? How will Sister Benedict handle her transfer to Arizona for tuberculosis? Not only are all these plot points unimaginative, but they're introduced in a way that burdens the viewer with waiting for their predictable resolution.

The actors make a valiant effort to bring conviction to the movie - Bing Crosby fits his role, though it has to be the least musical bunch of songs he ever had to sing, and his Latin diction is awful; Ingrid Bergman smiles her way through the movie as graciously as she can, but her sweetness makes the housekeeper's warning in the opening scene sound silly in retrospect; and you just know Henry Travers' reputedly hard-nosed businessman will be a pushover. Several scenes are painfully sentimental, like Bogardus carrying a stray dog across the street. Any script that includes a line like: "You know, there's great beauty in this world if you just have the eyes to see it, isn't there Father?" needs serious work - that's telling, not showing. The ending is as sentimental as you'd expect, but it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't set up by the absurdly wrongheaded idea of hiding her TB diagnosis from Sister Benedict.

[...]

Wrong Again
Love Affair
The Bells of St Mary's
The Awful Truth
Bad Boy

[flip]

Seen 10:

st gloede, you can pick our next director if you like!

[flip]

and i think i'll wait til friday to start a new poll to avoid overload, it feels like we have a lot of stuff going on in the forum right now... so no rush to pick someone

[Searchlike]

I watched the McCarey cut of Good Sam and I like it better, if only marginally so. The film remains largely the same and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the more widely available version to anyone.

Revisiting Good Sam and An Affair to Remember has put me in the camp of preferring late McCarey to his earlier more fast-paced works, those of the 30's and 20's. The longer runtimes make us spent that much more time with his characters and this allows him to inject so many of these small observational moments, sometimes funny, sometimes touching, often both, which, however inconsequential they may be to the main plot, are
what define his films for me.

Bells is absolutely filled with sequences like that. Think of Father O'Malley being constantly interrupted in the simple act of sitting down by having to greet the nuns one by one when he first arrives to the school, or the way he's unable to utter a word to Sister Benedict because of her never-ending song.

I do admit that you have to take off your logic hat when watching Bells or the "Love Affairs" for the first time, but, as I said, McCarey's art lays somewhere else IMO and plot is of little importance when there are so many other joys to experience each and every time I decide to rewatch one of his films.

[St. Gloede]

Cheers, Flip!

I'll try my luck with Karel Kachyna again.

If not:

Istvan Szabo
Zoltan Fabri

And if not, did we ever do Peter Greenaway?

[Umbugbene]

Good choices. But I only have 2 Kachyna, 5 Szabo, and 6 Fabri. Greenaway's been done already: https://boxd.it/1XCs6

[flip]

I'm only at 1, 1 and 3 for those directors. If anyone has seen several Szabo, Kachyna or Fabri films, please post here!

[Curtis, baby]

There was supposed to be a Szabo retrospective here last April, which I planned on seeing in entirety, but covid had to go and fuck around, so no help from me

[RogerTheMovieManiac]

I've only seen three from Kachyna, two from Szabó, and one from Fábri.

[brian d]

5 kachyna
3 szabo
4 fabri

[wba]

1 Kachyna
3 Szabo
2 Fabri

[niminy-piminy]

many Kachyňa's (10+ for sure).
subtitled 1 Kachyňa — A Ridiculous Gentleman (1969)

[St. Gloede]

Was about to give in there, Jiri - thanks for jumping in.

[flip]

we'd still need one other person who had seen several kachyna, or several fabri, to make either of those work, but i'm happy to wait another day to see if we get more replies. i'm not too optimistic about szabo at this point

[St. Gloede]

If we get stuck we can do Jan Svankmajer.

[niminy-piminy]

i really hope there will be one more kachyňophile.
to most of his oeuvre, i am rather indifferent.
but a few of his films i like a lot.
and i expect if we do the poll i might start liking a few more — due to Gloede's pov & inputs.
(as was the case with Věra's late oeuvre in the other poll.)

[flip]

svankmajer will definitely work, so i'll wait until friday morning to see what kachyna and fabri replies we get, and start a poll of one of those directors depending on what happens!

[Searchlike]

Seen 18

1. An Affair to Remember
2. Love Affair
3. My Son John
4. The Awful Truth
5. Good Sam

[oscarwerner]

Sorry for late reply.
I have:
3 Kachyna
11 Sabo
6 Fabri

[flip]

i'm not familiar enough with the general opinion of mccarey to be sure, but i think we might have a somewhat unconventional ranking (for example, our #1 film doesn't appear on any of the afi lists as far as i can tell, but several other mccarey films do). and the bells of st mary's outranks going my way, so scfz shares nrh's opinion overall about those two films:

results

1. Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) — 23 pts
2. The Awful Truth (1937) — 20 pts
3. Duck Soup (1933) — 18 pts
4. Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) — 17 pts
5. Love Affair (1939) — 14 pts
6. The Bells of St Mary’s (1945) — 9 pts
6. An Affair to Remember (1957) — 9 pts
8. Liberty (1929) — 8 pts
9. Big Business (1929) — 7 pts
10. My Son John (1952) — 6 pts
10. Going My Way (1944) — 6 pts
12. Wrong Again (1929) — 5 pts
12. The Milky Way (1936) — 5 pts
14. Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942) — 3 pts
14. Mighty Like a Moose (1926) — 3 pts
16. Indiscreet (1931) — 2 pts
17. The Battle of the Century (1927) — 1 pt
17. Habeas Corpus (1928) — 1 pt
17. Good Sam (1948) — 1 pt
17. Bad Boy (1925) — 1 pt
17. Love Happy (1949) — 1 pt