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Underwhelmed By Greatness?
Have you ever had this experience? Have you ever sat down with a book, a film, an album, what have you, that you’ve heard from time immemorial was a classic and thought…eh? Maybe you would have liked it if you had come to it cold, but it just couldn’t bear the weight of its own legacy.
I’ve always been a big Alfred Hitchcock fan. Vertigo is one of my favorite films of all time. The episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents entitled “Breakdown” is one of the most gripping 30 minutes of television I’ve ever seen (you can find it on Netflix or Amazon). While I’ve worked my way through most of the Hitchcock corpus, I had, until recently, somehow failed to make the time for Rear Window, considered one of the director’s all-time classics. Finding myself with some unexpected free time on a recent Sunday, I popped it up on Netflix. And, well…eh.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid film. The acting is stellar, confining the action primarily to Jimmy Stewart’s apartment was clever (it’s essentially the movie equivalent of a bottle episode), and there are some moments of genuine suspense. Overall, however, I came away underwhelmed. Without giving too much away (although, to be fair, the film is 60 years old, so a spoiler alert is an act of charity), the tension in the plot runs as follows: one of the main characters either did A or did B. In the end, it turns out he did B. Not exactly white-knuckle stuff.
Now, to be fair to the film, I probably would have had a much different reaction had I seen it in a cinema in 1954. In 2015, however, when thrillers go to baroque lengths to hide the ball on plot twists, Rear Window seemed almost pedestrian by comparison. Had it been some obscure little film, I probably would have delighted in it. As a movie that’s so deeply engrained in pop culture, however, that my first consciousness of it came through a childhood viewing of a Simpsons episode, it had a higher bar to clear.
And, honestly, that feels, at some level, like a disservice to the film. But there’s simply no way to decouple my reaction from the expectations created by decades worth of hype.
What “masterpieces” have you come to late, only to discover that your expectations were disappointed?
Published in Entertainment, Literature
That’s part of it. But there’s also the scene with Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, where the director was apparently trying to bring two budding legends together for comedy gold, but just told them to make it up. It’s obvious they did, for a swing and a miss.
And then there’s the throw away love(?) story between two young characters, who find out she’s not pregnant, which is great, because then they won’t have to get an abortion. It’s not just culturally off kilter, it’s blah.
And yet, even the good stuff wasn’t that good. Compare with The Blues Brothers, also from 1980. It’s in the Probable Cause video library even today.
The Blues Brothers is actually one that I “don’t get”.
I watch that movie saying to myself, “where’s the jokes? Shouldn’t a comedy have jokes?”
Are you French or of French ancestry by any chance? ;-)
But it’s not. Because runaway hits with a conservative bent always catches Hollywood unaware.
And it’s a matter of choice and splitting audiences, you know, divide and conquer. Thirty films aimed at liberals and/or hormonal teenagers (but I repeat myself) will divide that audience, where conservatives unite behind that one and turn it into a hit.
Hollywood is clueless. Hollywood thought Noah would be another Passion on the Christ – right up until word of mouth killed it in the cradle.
They’re just hard to read–so many of them give you a sense of how a kind of man would think of love, but it’s so many different types of lovers speaking, & it’s not even always a matter of love, sometimes it’s other things. I think you can get to learn a lot about people if you figure out what he’s trying to get you to see by all these impersonations. In an understated way, & with the help of all sorts of writing tricks, they might attempt to say everything worth saying, so to speak. Then again, there is no obvious order among them–there is no plan announced–so you’ve got almost no guide, which makes it impossible to say he at least made a claim for his sonnets. Probably, it’s just better to start wherever you can, whichever one strikes you. We should do that–try to write on whichever sonnets we like. I’ve tried this out on a few & I read a few notes on others & I am astounded by the things you find in the hundred or so words that make up one of his sonnets…
Jerry Lewis could be pretty obnoxious but I find myself pulling up his “strut-down-the-stairs” clip again and again. Great bit of physical comedy combined with awesome music.
Notice this was not amongst my complaints ;)
In fact, this led to an intellectual digression during the film. You look at Grace Kelly from 60 years ago and she’s still beautiful by modern standards. You can say the same of vintage footage of the young Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, etc…
Film is still in its infancy in historical terms. It will be interesting as centuries go by to see how these standards hold up. Imagine someone in the year 2154 watching Rear Window and admiring Ms. Kelly’s pulchritude. Totally conceivable, but it’d be the equivalent of us today fawning over someone filmed during the administration of James Madison. Kind of a mind-bender.
100% agree about The Catcher in the Rye. I did like Citizen Kane (the cinematography is really cool and I did enjoy Welles’ performance), but the story was too cold for me to love it. Part 1 of A Tale of Two Cities is boring as dirt, and the middle section is pretty slow too, but I loved the ending of the book (“the good bits”) so much it redeemed itself. Probably would not have made it through the book if it hadn’t been assigned in High School, though.
I’ll add this one for good measure. Music by Count Basie.
Yes, but it is often a man’s perspective on love – or lust. Less so about ambition, filial duty, revenge, or any number of the fascinating non-amorous insights he had in his plays.
Someone once told me to read Shakespeare’s sonnets while I was young and lustful, and save the “poets of old age” for when I was, well, older. But some of us are just premature curmudgeons, and would prefer to read poems about old age (which tend to be my more favorite sonnets, too) from the get-go.
A very, very good point. To pick up on the example you used, I’ve never bothered investing the time in Citizen Kane precisely because the “rosebud” reveal was practically the first thing I ever learned about the film. (Come to think of it, The Simpsons may have ruined a lot of the pop culture it was satirizing).
I wonder if this will be as common in the future given the fracturing of media. After all, the on-demand revolution has already taken us to the point where it’s considered gauche to spoil a TV show for, what, five years after it ends? You never know who’s just about to finally bump a series to the top of their Netflix queue. And the more product there is — and the more niche it all becomes — the more I suspect that pop culture will transition from being centripetal to centrifugal. We’ll likely still have common cultural touchstones, but they’ll probably be a lot fewer and further between.
Some of the most powerful words ever written in the English language come out of Ahab’s mouth. Unfortunately, you have to wade through a turgid treatise on cetology to get there.
I’m not sure he’s as interested in the perspective of a man as that of a lover. You’re right that he does not touch on everything decent people might like, but put it this way–there is no education more needful, at least compared with what is on offer, than education concerning love & what it awakes in people. I think he gets how people work, or how they are, so I think the things he wants to point out are important. The different speakers might be different in important ways–they might help to see what kinds of people are there, how they think on love, & what that says about people–aside from whether they’re men or women…
Is this where we digress into Stones vs. Beatles territory? For what it’s worth, I’d take the Fab Four, but no love whatsoever for Mick, Keith, and co.? Wow, FG, that’s hardcore.
I’ve only seen a few clips of the much lauded sitcom Arrested Development, so I can’t fairly judge it, but the bits I saw underwhelmed me.
Neil Young- I like the instrumental parts of his songs and then he starts singing. Ugh.
After reading others’ praise of it, I intend to read Death Comes for Archbishop again, but as a high school student I considered it the most boring book I’d ever read.
Madame Bovary- I just don’t enjoy reading about unlikeable, shallow people ruining their lives through affairs (see also, The Great Gatsby).
A Farewell to Arms- I’ll let Bradley Cooper explain my feelings (warning- does contain a few F-words)
I might be a constituency of one on this, but I’ve always found HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (starring Seinfeld co-creator Larry David) to be a much better execution of the same style of comedy they were going for in the original Seinfeld.
I commented to a woman once that her ranunculus had great pulchritude and then was slapped in the face.
a) I think most of the top-grossing movies of the past decade can be interpreted in a right-of-centre way, even when not overtly “conservative”.
b) Clint Eastwood says that American Sniper is an “anti-war movie”.
My experience with movies (in particular) is that a lot of ti has to do with expectations going in. If you’ve been told over and over and over that X is the greatest thing since before sliced bread, it has to be pretty good to live up to it.
To go with some non-classic examples, when “Home Alone” came out I had several friends tell me what a hysterically funny movie it was. When I finally got to see it, I think I laughed twice. Same with Dumb and Dumber (I laughed exactly once, and to this day I can tell you when – the scene on the chairlift when the one character says “look, frost” and sticks his tongue to the metal poll.)
On the other hand, if you go into a movie with low or no expectations, you’re much more likely to be wowed by it.
The first time I saw “A Christmas Story” (in the theater), I’d never heard of it or anything about it. That was probably the most laughter I have ever heard from a crowd in a theater.
Ulysses is a classic critic’s pick, privileging novelty of style over quality of substance. It was on my to-read list too until I picked up Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. I suspect my biggest regret on my deathbed will be the hours of my life I mortgaged to that book.
It relies heavily on running gags, so it often doesn’t work for people who’ve only seen one episode.
It also relies heavily on pop culture references, so if you don’t get the references it might not work for you.
Remember, it was cancelled. There are reasons for that, but also reasons why it works with a Netflix/DVD audience. It’s the kinda show that’s tailor-made for marathoning.
I simply couldn’t buy teeny-tiny Emma Watson and Jennifer Connelly as strong, robust women from prehistoric times.
Even Year One had more realistic casting.
(Underrated movie, by the way.)
Well, Mr. Senik, I owe you thanks–you got me to put in the effort & write down what I think is so good about Rear window. I do not love Hitchcock, but some of his movies are really good. But not on politics, which is the stuff I like. But this one is an exception–a lot of post-war movies show–& maybe prepare…–the social revolution of the sixties, but this one is special because of its protagonist.
It has a great set-up: A manly glory-chasing guy is stuck in a pretty bad neighborhood, where you have only domesticity, & little happiness. A lovely woman who has to get out of high society to be able to use her not insignificant powers gets her chance. They both are American, but not quite. They both have aristocratic qualities, for one.
& the setting is the opposite of that–it is America starting to democratize as a society in a way that leaves people alone, scared, unable to live with other people, trying to make something of themselves & at the same time worried that there’s no way for them to be happy. This is not just humanity as it’s always been: There is a restlessness, a need to achieve something in one’s life that’s both American & democratic. In this story, there is not a lot of success.
What the guy does in spying on the neighborhood, if you think about it enough, is not just illegal & shameless, but might make perfect sense if what he really wants is to play king–or tyrant. The story really suggests he might be able to run these people’s lives & make them happy, or at any rate, he is the only guy who is going to stand up for the common good & justice, & the privacy of private life or the very democratic American opinion about individual freedom are not going to stop him.
As for the woman, there is something about how she tries to charm him into domesticity & use refinement to soften his edges all the time recognizing his manly superiority that is fine to watch, but really intriguing as a teaching about marriage, She alone shows a taste for understatement, which is funny, being as showy as she is. I think there is a suggestion that people should not be free to ignore such beauty–that one danger in democracy is a kind of contempt for such elegance…
I’ll stop here–I don’t want to say everything I’ve noticed over the years, because the day’s not long enough, but I hope some of these scattered notes get you to see the movie anew, because it is very arresting in its quiet way. If you like a more thematic take, you can find it on my website.
This isn’t a movie, but I think the whole giraffe thing has run its course and isn’t all that funny anymore.
In the case of Beatles v. Stones, I always side with The Who.
Dylan’s real accomplishment was how dramatically he changed popular songwriting. Why that’s never been differentiated from Dylan the recording artist has always been a bit of a puzzle to me, as I, like you, TGA, find him hard to listen to with only a few exceptions.
I think I get Springsteen’s appeal, though he generally leaves me pretty cold. Yeah, you wear blue jeans in Jersey and get really worked up about factory towns. We get it.
I’ll disagree with you about Rod Stewart. Before he decided to pay the mortgages on his third and fourth homes with half-hearted cover albums (which are utterly tolerable as background music), he did a pretty good Sam Cooke impersonation for a white boy from North London. (Some of the stuff from The Faces era is especially good).
Rosebud is merely a macguffin. The real story is about the characters and the very thinly veiled references to William Randolph Hearst.
In fact, it’s a fair bet that “Rosebud” was always an inside joke that even audiences at the time didn’t really get. (It was reportedly Hearst’s nickname for Marion Davies’ genitalia.)
It’s less the indecency (the seduction scene in Richard III is truly inappropriate, indecent – and hysterical!) than it is the… boredom. Men are a supremely fascinating sex, but less so when they’re attempting to take lust seriously.
You know how a lot of people object to porn on the grounds that it’s boring? You could make the same complaint about much love poetry, even when it’s written by the greats.
John Wayne. He had his own distinct style and was probably the last of the real men but his acting left a lot to be desired.
Perhaps, but, as I said in the OP, I generally love Hitchcock and have no intrinsic bias against older films. Moreover, the kind of modern pabulum you’re describing up top tends to repulse me as much as you. It can’t really be that a truly great work of art is inaccessible to someone simply because of age, can it? (Excepting children, of course)