Nitpicking the Masters: Tiny Flaws in Great Masterpieces

[Michael Kerpan]

> Then again, Herzog says that he considers his films almost as
> children, and when they are complete, they are complete
> defects and all.

Interesting. Shostakovich said sometrhing similar about his musical compositions.

[Napoleon]

Another one - in Aguirre, you can clearly see a hand (Herzog's) push the sedan chair when it is about to topple over early in the film.

Not sure that one is bad. It comes across that one of the procession stopping the chair going over. Its not like he's got a digital watch on and a filtered cigarette propped between his fingers. Though it would be pretty good if he had.

[Christian]

I never noticed the plasticky weapons used in Braveheart until Gibson mentioned them in the commentary. Now I can't help but see them each and every time. Perhaps you're talking about aesthetic choices that take you out of the film, but those flapping weapons, man...

I thought we were suppose to nitpick masterpieces.

[skuhn8]

Another one - in Aguirre, you can clearly see a hand (Herzog's) push the sedan chair when it is about to topple over early in the film.

Not sure that one is bad. It comes across that one of the procession stopping the chair going over. Its not like he's got a digital watch on and a filtered cigarette propped between his fingers. Though it would be pretty good if he had.

That one is pretty much only a "distraction" after watching the commentary where he tells you it's his hand. Yeah, a digital watch would have been good. Reminds me of one of the special features on the kino DVD for Lang's Nibelungen where he confronts one of the extras for having a wrist watch on during the making--staged I believe to further his own mythmaking.

[lord_clyde]

After watching the trivia track on Mad Max I am endlessly annoyed by the Toe Cutters death scene. As Max is chasing him he runs into a semi truck, but to protect the truck the filmmakers mounted a metal plate to the grill and painted it (crudely, might I add) to look like the front of a semi truck.

In Robocop, when Murphy and Lewis are chasing Clarence there is a shot on the side of the car where Murphy is loading his gun when somebody's (presumably the cameraman) sweater sleeve drifts in and out of the frame.

And yes, I consider both films masterpieces.

[Andre Jurieu]

I live in the neighborhood they shot the movie in, and in all the scenes when they are driving, everytime it cuts away ,it doesn't sync up. Every driving scene loses my attention as the background changes, it just bothers me.

I know we are supposed to be nit-picking, but does it really matter if driving scenes don't make sense in reality, so long as they make sense within the context of the movie itself? The majority of technical errors being brought up so far make some sense to me since they break the reality within the film. However, backgrounds during driving scenes don't really break the reality within the film itself. It's not the same as a Yeti wearing a digital watch.

[exte]

That's, like, your opinion, man...

[devlinnn]

There's also of course, Chaplin's closing speech in Great Dictator, which I haven't seen, but is generally regarded as really didactic and overly sentimental.

Please try and see the film before making negative statments against it. However, I'm still amazed people find this passage hard to take. There was a friggin' war going on against fascist invasion! At the time the film was released there was a very real chance of Germany winning, so however naive and sentimental Chaplin may appear today, no doubt his input into the proceedings (large or small) was worth every ounce of passion and ego.

[Sloper]

I know this is a desperately old thread, but it got me thinking. It was so cathartic to hear someone else express their annoyance at that 'let's go to the window' line in Kane - I shrivel inside every time I hear it.

Other moments I can think of include that shot in the nightmare sequence in Vertigo (possibly my favourite film) when the wind is blowing into James Stewart's face and his hair gets thrown back in a sort of Tin-Tin like quiff. It just looks really naff. And the body flying past the window like a sack of potatoes has drawn a laugh every time I've seen this film with someone else.

And then there's that bit in Brief Encounter when they're in the cinema and they discuss Donald Duck: 'I do love him so,' twitters Celia Johnson, 'his dreadful energy and his blind frustrated rages.' Bleurgh!

Or the bit in Double Indemnity when Keyes explains to Garlopas, step by step, how to open the door - just not funny. The kind of moment that makes you scream, 'Why Billy, WHY?' at the screen. (No need to mention Richard Gaines' screamingly bad performance as Mr Norton in that film...)

Now I love all these films (I REALLY love Celia Johnson) - but when I show them to other people I try to talk over these bits.

There. I said it. This has been very therapeutic.

[essrog]

I know this is a desperately old thread, but it got me thinking. It was so cathartic to hear someone else express their annoyance at that 'let's go to the window' line in Kane - I shrivel inside every time I hear it.

Other moments I can think of include that shot in the nightmare sequence in Vertigo (possibly my favourite film) when the wind is blowing into James Stewart's face and his hair gets thrown back in a sort of Tin-Tin like quiff. It just looks really naff. And the body flying past the window like a sack of potatoes has drawn a laugh every time I've seen this film with someone else.

You and I are similarly aggrieved, Sloper. I wrote about the Citizen Kane line earlier and I agree with your complaints about Vertigo, which is one of my favorite films as well. I'd like to add the painful expository dialogue between Scottie and Midge right after the opening scene. I would've preferred a Star Wars-esque scrawl during the credits filling in the background of the characters to the dialogue. I think it's even more jarring to me because the rest of the film is filled with such hypnotic wordless sequences.

[Sloper]

Oh God yes - especially when they reminisce about their past relationship: 'You were the one that broke off the engagement, remember.' To which Midge's only reply could be, 'Yes Scottie. I know. I was kind of there.'

The funny thing about these moments, which has just occurred to me, is that they almost make me love the films more - they're like tiny blemishes in a loved one's face, and you'd miss them if they weren't there. Oh I'm getting all emotional about this now...

[Sanjuro]

And again in Aguirre, there they are in the middle of the jungle thousands of miles from civilization without a soul in sight.....except for the small fleet of large covered rafts to house the cast and crew which appears very briefly. Too briefly to notice of course until Herzog gleefully points them out in the commentary...

[mmacklem]

If we're nitpicking Vertigo for the conversations at the beginning, we might as well do that for all of his movies. The first ten minutes of Notorious, for example, are painfully bad, just painfully awful, for a similar reason. And the entire opening three scenes in Rear Window are awful dialogue. The entire reason they are there is because Hitchcock wants to get the set-up out of the way as fast as possible to start the real action, so what would be a more comfortable 2-3 additional conversations becomes one quick annoying conversation.

Although now that you mention it about Vertigo, did the fact that they were engaged have anything at all to do with the rest of the movie? Could we not have deduced some strange romantic hangover without that piece of information?

(OK, so apparently that did annoy me after all.)

[Sloper]

That's always been my defence of the conversation in Vertigo - that it has no bearing on the plot, only on the relationship between the characters. But as you say, it would have been better without the dialogue. Bel Geddes' performance is more than good enough to convey the tension without dialogue.

Maybe the explanation lies in Hitchcock's belief that 'actors should be treated like cattle' - there's a kind of artificiality to his characters and the way they're developed, though of course they're anything but shallow.

As I said before we have to accept that this is part of what made him a great director. For instance, set against this disregard for verisimilitude his peerless eye for tiny, revealing gestures - I wouldn't knock Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright, but to a great extent their performances in Shadow of a Doubt are constructed through the way Hitchcock juxtaposes their gestures and exchanged glances. In a way (and this applies to the opening of Notorious too, though I always cringe a little when Grant plays that record) the bad dialogue throws the editing, camerawork etc into sharper relief.

[Napoleon]

In The Searchers there is the famous shot of the US Cavalry going through the icy river?

Ruined by a car blasting along a road in the top right corner.

Plus. Ethan was going to kill Debbie because she'd gone comanche. But when he does find her, her character hasn't been altered by living with the Indians. At all. In fact she comes back more 'American Pie' than when she left. Kind of negates the idea that Ethan has learned the error of his ways.
Natalie Woods wooden performance doesn't help.

Still love the film though.

[ltfontaine]

In Ozu films, when an unhappy child slowly squints his eyes and rubs them rhythmically with his fists, elbows out, mouth open, to signify that he is crying, this bit of excruciating vaudeville is sufficiently false to momentarily disrupt the whole emotional flow of the movie. It is so out of character for an artist whose direction of actors is otherwise so exquisitely restrained and finely nuanced. What was he thinking?

[colinr0380]

In The Searchers there is the famous shot of the US Cavalry going through the icy river?

Ruined by a car blasting along a road in the top right corner.

The commentators for Major Dundee similarly point out cars driving past in the distance of the scene that introduces Senta Berger's character.

Now I love all these films (I REALLY love Celia Johnson) - but when I show them to other people I try to talk over these bits.

There. I said it. This has been very therapeutic.

That is where a well-placed cough or rustle of sweet papers comes in handy!

I don't know if this is the right thread, but I was wondering if anyone else has had one experience watching a film alone and then a completely different one watching it in company. It seems an accepted wisdom that films are a communal experience, coming from watching them in the cinema, but on a couple of occasions I've seen films that I've thought were fantastic watching it on my own fall apart when I've watched them with others. Perhaps it is knowing I'm the one responsible for choosing the film that the other person is seeing that makes me feel embarassed when I see a flaw that I had previously overlooked as I'm looking at it much more critically. Perhaps it reflects more on my wanting the other people I'm with to have a fun time than on the film itself, as I can often watch the same film on my own later and enjoy it without noticing problems again!

So do some films work better when it is just you watching them, just as some films benefit from the experience of seeing them with a lot of other people? Or does it, like a lot of other things, depend more on the people you see the films with and the way you are feeling at the time?

[tryavna]

I don't know if this is the right thread, but I was wondering if anyone else has had one experience watching a film alone and then a completely different one watching it in company.

This probably does deserve a thread unto itself, since it's an interesting topic, but here's my answer:

All the time! Comedies, in particular, I much prefer to watch with other people. For instance, I never really "got" Some Like It Hot until I saw it in a theater with a very appreciative audience. Likewise, I didn't see all the humor in The Ruling Class until I watched it with my brother.

On the other hand, I much prefer to watch horror films alone. It's always been hard for a movie (as opposed to a story or novel) to really scare me, but it certainly helps if I'm alone in a house with all the lights off.

[whaleallright]

//

[lord_clyde]

So do some films work better when it is just you watching them, just as some films benefit from the experience of seeing them with a lot of other people? Or does it, like a lot of other things, depend more on the people you see the films with?

Brazil is better to watch alone I have noticed, but Flesh for Frankenstein demands a group viewing. The last group I showed it to declared that Arno Juerning deserved an academy award for 'eyebrow raising'. And the scene where Otto clubs the stableboy? We looped that scene for the remainder of the evening while we played pool. Tideland is also one to watch alone, simply because you will have someone asking 'Why do you own this movie?' to which I reply 'I bought it before I knew about the framing issues.' Awkward.

[Sloper]

on a couple of occasions I've seen films that I've thought were fantastic watching it on my own fall apart when I've watched them with others

This happened to me with the Leopard - I watched it with someone who thought the battle scene was ridiculous because the soldiers don't really seem that intent on killing each other (the head of 20th Century Fox at the time felt the same way about it). Now whenever I watch it I just feel embarrassed during that scene. To be fair, it wasn't in the book and the film could survive without it. Oh, and some of the music cues in that film are seriously incompetent - Nino Rota's great, but his music wells up at the most inappropriate moments. I think someone wanted it to sound like Gone With the Wind.

Another example is that scene in Sunset Boulevard when the heavies threaten Joe Gillis and then carefully close the door behind them as they leave - 'very polite of them' sneered my friend. It was like he'd made fun of my child.

And I've shown Annie Hall to so many people who didn't like it that I no longer associate the film with pleasurable sensations.

[tartarlamb]

There is a woman in Cassavettes' Faces (Darlene Conley? I can't remember which actress it is) that has the most awful, affected acting-school Southern accent. It ruins the whole film for me.

[stroszeck]

How about a more recent one? I didn't really like the Departed that much, but what about Martin Scorsese's WAY overwrought "virtuoso" camera movements??? Particularly in a scene where Alec Baldwin's character is first introduced and we learn about those microprocessors? As Mark Wahlberg is talking, there is a swift tracking shot across the room from the right to the left - followed a split second later when the camera starts on Alec Baldwin and then swiftly tracks towards the right -- and for NO apparent reason. I've noticed things like this with Scorsese as of late -- its almost as if he isn't confident in his storytelling or the characters enough to just let them sit in a confined space and just TALK without him throwing in one of his uber annoying camera moves.

[colinr0380]

but Flesh for Frankenstein demands a group viewing. The last group I showed it to declared that Arno Juerning deserved an academy award for 'eyebrow raising'. And the scene where Otto clubs the stableboy? We looped that scene for the remainder of the evening while we played pool.

I wish someone had given Udo Keir and Arno Jeurging a 'best comic double act' award at the time - they play off of each other so well!

[Matt]

To return to Vertigo for a second, I've always been able to overlook the flaws in the dream sequence, but Stewart's line reading of "You were a very apt pupil, weren't you? You were a very apt pupil," sets my teeth on edge every time. It's particularly the repetition of the phrase and his distinct enunciation of every consonant and vowel--APTT PEEYOUPIL--that does it.

But I could stare at Kim Novak's (blonde) hairdo forever.