{"id":19390,"date":"2010-12-13T00:10:40","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T05:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=19390"},"modified":"2010-12-13T00:10:40","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T05:10:40","slug":"frye-and-the-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/12\/13\/frye-and-the-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Frye and the Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This article is cross-posted in the Denham Library here<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he movie is capable of the greatest concentration of any art form in human history.\u00a0 The possibilities of combining photographic, musical, and dramatic rhythms leave all preceding arts behind in their infinity\u201d <\/em>[Northrop Frye on Modern Culture, 99]<\/p>\n

\u201cThe film is the one real major art-form of our time: it has, with its greatest directors, solved the problem of the balance of eye and ear. It has taught a whole generation of people to use visual symbols, to think with them sequentially instead of merely staring at one after the other, and to follow visual programming that is not on the simplest and most na\u00efve levels of realism.\u00a0 As such, it affords a model for television, which is still limping along on the old staring principle.<\/em>\u201d [Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 272]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Michael Happy asked me if I had a list of the movies Frye had either seen or referred to in his writings.\u00a0 I said that I didn\u2019t but that I could probably construct one.\u00a0 What follows is such a list.\u00a0 The movie titles are in italics, and untitled movies in Roman.\u00a0 Following the list are the sources.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Alexander Nevsky<\/em><\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

Amos and Andy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Barretts of Wimpole Street<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Becky Sharp<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Berkeley Square<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Blockade<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Blossoms in the Dust<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Boris Karloff<\/strong><\/p>\n

Canadian Documentaries<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ceiling Zero<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chiltern Hundreds<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Citizen Kane<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

City Lights<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Come Live with Me<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Confirm or Deny<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Count of Monte Cristo<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dead of Night<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

La Derni\u00e8r Etape<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Detective Story<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Emperor\u2019s Nightingale<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fantasia<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ferdinand the Bull<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

42nd<\/sup> Street<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ghost Train<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Glass Key<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Goddess of Spring<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Gold Diggers<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Gold Rush<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gone with the Wind<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Grapes of Wrath<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Great Dictator<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Great McGinty<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gunga Din<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Hamlet<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Harold Lloyd<\/strong><\/p>\n

Henry V<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

High Noon<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Informer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Julie Misbehaves<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Kamouraska<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Le Kermesse H\u00e9roique<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Keystone Cops<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Little Foxes<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Loon\u2019s Necklace<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Magnificent Ambersons<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Male Animal<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Man of Aran<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Modern Times<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Monsieur Verdoux<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Monsieur Vincent<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mrs. Miniver<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

My Brilliant Career<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

My Father\u2019s House<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

My Man Godfrey<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Newsreel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Newsreel and Animated Cartoon<\/strong><\/p>\n

Newsreel and [Atlantropa Debate Film]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Night Life of the Gods<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Open City<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Phantom of the Opera<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Poison Pen<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Le Puritain<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Quai des Brumes<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Quo Vadis<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Reluctant Dragon<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Rings on Her Fingers<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The River<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Romeo and Juliet<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Royal Journey<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Saints and Sinners<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Scoundrel<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Seasons<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Shoeshine<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Slapstick<\/strong><\/p>\n

Snow White<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So This Is College<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sous les Toits de Paris<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Star Wars<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Third Man<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

This above All<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Through Different Eyes<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Tight Little Island<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ti\u2011Coq<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

2001<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

TV Films<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unnamed Movie<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wife vs. Secretary<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Woman of the Year<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Sources<\/p>\n

The Gold Diggers<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

42nd<\/sup> Street<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWent to a show the night before.\u00a0 \u201cThe Gold Diggers of 1933.\u201d\u00a0 Not bad\u2011\u2011another 42nd Street.\u00a0 Their last number called \u201cforgotten men\u201d was rather fine.\u00a0 For once, jazz singing was put to its right use.\u00a0 It was about soldiers returned from the war, standing in breadlines, widows, and so on.\u00a0 The solo singing was a long wail, and when the chorus came in it swelled to almost an animal howl.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know whether they altogether intended the effect or not,\u2013\u2013\u2011it seemed to come out in spite of them.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 136.\u00a0 The two films were both 1933 productions by Warner Brothers; the first starred Warren William, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, and Dick Powell; the large cast of the second included Warner Baxter, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, and Bebe Daniels.]<\/p>\n

Goddess of Spring<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Barretts of Wimpole Street<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Count of Monte Cristo<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOne or two shows with Daniells on Saturdays, which rest my eyes, I think, the highlight of them being a gorgeous Walt Disney called \u201cGoddess of Spring,\u201d a treatment of the Proserpine story.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 375.\u00a0 The Disney film\u2013\u2013a revival of the Pluto and Proserpine myth\u2014was released in March 1934.\u00a0 Roy Daniells journal also indicates that he and Frye went to see The Barretts of Wimpole Street<\/em> and The Count of Monte Cristo<\/em>.]<\/p>\n

Night Life of the Gods<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c. . . <\/strong>a riotously funny Thorne Smith movie I\u2019d like to see again. . . . It\u2019s a story of a man with two magic rings, one of which turns live people into statues and the other statues into live people. So the hero turns all his relatives into statues and brings to life a bunch of Greek gods and goddesses in a museum, introducing them to New York. It\u2019s called \u201cNight Life of the Gods\u201d\u2014see it if you get a chance).\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 438.\u00a0 The film, starring Richard Montgomery played throughout June 1935 in Toronto.]<\/p>\n

The Scoundrel<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the most curious movie the other night: \u201cThe Scoundrel,\u201d5<\/sup> with Noel Coward in the lead and probably the author as well. Coward does two things competently, the intellectualized clacking of Huxley, Wilde, Shaw, Maugham and Co., and fairy-tale fantasy. But to mix them in one play is rather grotesque. The scoundrel is a Nietzschean publisher who ruins a pure woman. You know he is sophisticated because he refers to Proust, probably for the first time in the history of the cinema, and you know he is superficial because he refers derisively to Shelley, possibly for the second or third time in the said history. He gets drowned in an aeroplane trip, and is informed by someone unspecified, presumably Jehovah, that an unmourned person can\u2019t rest, and that he has a month to squeeze a tear out of somebody. So he goes charging around town looking for his tear, realizing that the only person he can find it in is his pure woman. He comes back to the office apparently as well as ever, but clutching a handful of seaweed to titillate the atmosphere. He finally gets his tear, but under circumstances abysmally fatuous. It\u2019s one of the most grotesque failures I\u2019ve ever seen, even on the cinema, as it flies so much higher than a routine flop.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 444.\u00a0 The screenplay of this 1935 film was by B en Hecht and Charles MacArthur.]<\/p>\n

Duck Soup<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The other night in the lodge our only sprig of nobility, the Honourable David St. Clair Erskine (one of our tame homosexuals as well) came in from the Dramatic Society\u2019s performance of Macbeth and met Baine, who had just come in from seeing the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.\u00a0 The Honourable David St. Clair Erskine was tanked up just enough to be affable to anybody–when he woke up the next morning and realized that he had spoken to an American Freshman Rhodes Scholar to whom he hadn\u2019t been introduced he probably went on the water wagon for life.\u00a0 He said: \u201cI enjoyed the show (meaning Macbeth) very much, didn\u2019t you?\u201d\u00a0 Baine: \u201cVery much (meaning Duck Soup).\u00a0 \u201cI remembered that I had seen it before, but I enjoyed it very well the second time anyway.\u201d The Honourable D. St. C.E. (somewhat staggered): \u201cI \u2014 I understand they didn\u2019t get it all rehearsed in time, and are adding a few scenes at each performance.\u201d\u00a0 Baine: \u201cYes, I noticed it had been cut a good deal, but thought it had been censored.\u201d\u00a0 The Honourable Et Cetera: \u201cI like the leading lady \u2014 she\u2019s new to Oxford, but she did very well.\u201d\u00a0 By this time, there being no leading lady in the Marx Brothers picture, the first faint roseate blush of dawn began to appear in Baine\u2019s mind, but he wisely decided the situation would be too much for the H. D. St. C. E.\u2019s\u00a0 bewildered brain to cope with at that point.\u00a0 ( <\/em>Frye-Kemp Correspondence, <\/em> 702-3.)<\/p>\n

Becky Sharp<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNothing has happened during the past week except Blake fever. I went to one show\u2014Vanity Fair. Or maybe it\u2019s called Becky Sharp or Nuts to Thackeray.\u00a0 Anyway, that\u2019s it.\u00a0 Or rather, it isn\u2019t it.\u00a0 Cold Hollywood tripe served up with color and costumes and the name of a great book is cold Hollywood tripe.\u00a0 I suppose we\u2019re in for colored pictures now.\u00a0 Hysterically over-colored pictures.\u00a0 However, it might bring more color back into the life outside the cinema, especially if it went in much for costume pieces, as it would almost have to do.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 467.\u00a0 The film NF saw was a 1935 production entitled Becky Sharp<\/em>, an adaptation of Thackeray\u2019s Vanity Fair<\/em>, starring Miriam Hopkins, Frances Dee, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke.]<\/p>\n

Ceiling Zero<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wife vs. Secretary<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cLast night Baine dragged me to the first cinema I\u2019d been to in England, except for the one I wrote up for the Isis.\u00a0 \u201cCeiling Zero,\u201d all about flying aeroplanes\u2014quite interesting except that it was full of officers rushing around bawling orders at the top of their voices so fast they were quite unintelligible. The behavior of Oxford cinema audiences is most remarkably unpleasant\u2014a constant succession of derisively imitative noises when anything except comedy is being shown. The English public schoolboy seems to take a long time over being an English public schoolboy. Also another film based on the usual hermaphroditic theory of love\u2014that the most decent man in the world will make you miserable if he isn\u2019t the one you reely luluv.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, \u00a0637.\u00a0 This 1936 film, directed by Howard Hawkes, starred James Cagney as a womanizing, devil\u2011may\u2011care pilot whose fate catches up with him.\u00a0 \u201cThe one I wrote up for the Isis\u201d refers to a review, \u2018Three\u2011Cornered Revival at Headington,\u2019 published in Isis<\/em>, 28 October 1936, 14.\u00a0 It is signed \u201cJ.R.,\u201d the Canadian Rhodes scholar Joseph Reid haven taken credit for writing the review.\u00a0 The film in question was Wife vs. Secretary<\/em>, a 1936 movie starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Myrna Loy.\u00a0 It\u2019s about a publishing tycoon whose wife (Loy) believes he\u2019s having an affair with his secretary (Harlow).]<\/p>\n

My Man Godfrey<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOther events equally trivial. One cinema, with Baine\u2014\u201dMy Man Godfrey\u201d\u2014really very amusing. The main plot was hopeless, but it looked as though someone who was a bit of a genius at dialogue and characterization had been handed the world\u2019s worst plot and told to make something of it, and had succeeded. As well\u2011sustained a comedy as I\u2019ve seen since the Chaplin picture.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 645.\u00a0 This was a 1936 Universal Pictures film starring William Powell and Carole Lombard.]<\/p>\n

Le Kermesse H\u00e9roique<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEdith [Burnett] and Elizabeth [Fraser] and I went to see a French film called Le Kermesse H\u00e9roique<\/em> which had some rather good Breughelesque scenes, though the plot was the same dreary triangle with the fat cuckold.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 664\u20135.\u00a0 This 1935 French film, directed by Jacques Feyder, satirized the daring and resourcefulness of wartime citizens threatened by invaders.]<\/p>\n

Romeo and Juliet<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the evening [in Brussels] we went to see Romeo and Juliet\u2014in English, with French subtitles. Scene Verona, in front of the church of San Zeno we had just been in. Very good show\u2014Barrymore as Mercutio superb, though it\u2019s an obvious part to steal, and the dialogue was in places surprisingly intact\u2014more so than the stupid little texts my freshies use. The female end sagged a bit\u2014the Nurse wasn\u2019t too good and Norma Shearer was a pretty elephantine Juliet, but it\u2019s definitely two or three up for Hollywood. Against an orchestra of sentimental nose\u2011blowing Belgians it was quite refreshing. The newsreel gave us another curious reminder of Italy\u2014the King and Queen of Italy in some ceremony or other. The King is a bewildered, meek little man of about five feet four; the Queen a huge Montegrin Amazon of at least five feet ten. The Belgians roared.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 742.\u00a0 A 1936 MGM film starring, in addition to those noted by Frye, Leslie Howard as Romeo.]<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t see a movie of Romeo and Juliet<\/em> until I was of college age, and then, I remember, Juliet was played by Norma Shearer, who of course was quite old enough and strong enough to have thrown Romeo over her shoulder and walked to Mantua with him. If I had seen this at a very impressionable age, I perhaps might have never have got that Juliet out of my head whenever I read the play.\u201d\u00a0 [Interview with Johan Aitken] <\/em><\/p>\n

Le Puritain<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Informer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen one cinema which wasn\u2019t bad: Le Puritain\u2014all about a Roman Catholic, however, and you know how I dislike calling prudes Puritans. It\u2019s a Liam O\u2019Flaherty picture. He didn\u2019t like the way Hollywood did The Informer, so he went off to France to get this one done to his liking. A fanatical young prude, member of a vice society, murders a girl in his boarding\u2011house because he thinks she\u2019s been immoral and deserves to be punished. Then he tries to punish her lover by foisting the crime on him. Then he feels he\u2019s done wrong and should make amends by giving another prostitute a good time. As he gets drunk, he debates the question, whether God rules everything or has man (i.e. himself) a divine destiny. He\u2019s caught in the end. Good & brilliantly acted, but duller than The Informer.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 804.\u00a0 A 1938 Les Films Derby movie, starring Jean Louis Barrault, with story and dialogues by O\u2019Flaherty.\u00a0 The Informer<\/em> was a 1935 film based on an O\u2019Flaherty story; it won three Academy Awards, including best screenplay.]<\/p>\n

Newsreel and [Atlantropa Debate Film]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is our first day in Paris. We got in last night, and couldn\u2019t think of much to do except drop into a newsreel. One of the features was one in a series of debates on various subjects. The proposer had an idea of building dams at Gibraltar and the Dardanelles and drying up half the Mediterranean. This would give more land for excess population, and the surplus water could be turned south to make the Sahara blossom like a rose. An objector pointed out that not only would the displacement of water put the earth off its axis, but the dams would be very vulnerable in the event of war. All beautifully illustrated with maps and diagrams, and apparently intended to be serious.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 828.\u00a0 The debate\u2011film was based on Herman S\u00f6rgel\u2019s Atlantropa scheme.]<\/p>\n

Snow White<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cRodney [Baine] and Mike [Joseph] are fond of movies and drag me around to a lot of them. I\u2019ve seen the French version of Snow White, which gave her a better voice. The thing that\u2019s wrong with that show is the 19th c. music: it\u2019s expert, but Offenbach\u2011Sullivan\u2011Herbert\u2011Gounod stuff.\u201d\u00a0 [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 832.\u00a0 This was Walt Disney\u2019s 1937 film, the first full\u2011length animated feature ever produced.]<\/p>\n

Quai des Brumes<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>I went to London the other day with Mike [Joseph]. We saw some surrealist shows: nothing particularly good. One of them had an umbrella made of sponges and a chair covered with ivy, called \u201cNature takes the chair.\u201d And a French movie, called Quai des Brumes, very good.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 864.\u00a0 A 1938 film, based on a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan and directed by Marcel Carn\u00e9 and Jacques Pr\u00e9vert.]<\/p>\n

Newsreel and Animated Cartoon<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMike [Joseph] stays here, and we went out to a newsreel theatre last night and saw some Mickey Mice. Not as good a lot as usual.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 881.]<\/p>\n

Sous les Toits de Paris<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Blockade<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ferdinand the Bull<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gunga Din<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a few movies: a lovely ballet\u2011like French thing, with hardly a word spoken, called Sous les Toits de Paris.\u00a0 Blockade, which was pretty hard to take, was on the same programme. Then we saw Disney\u2019s Ferdinand, swell but too short, and a grand piece of Hollywood hokum, so obvious it was really funny: Gunga Din.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 885.\u00a0 Sous les Toits<\/em> de Paris: a 1930 French film, directed by Ren\u00e9 Clair and starring Albert Pr\u00e9jean and Pola Illery.\u00a0 Blockade<\/em>: a 1938 United Artists film on the Spanish Civil War, directed by William Dieterle and starring Madeleine Carroll and Henry Fonda.\u00a0 Ferdinand the Bull<\/em>, a 1938 animated short directed by Walt Disney. Gunga Din<\/em>: a 1939 RKO film, directed by George Stevens and starring Cary Grant and Sam Jaffe.]<\/p>\n

Newsreel<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA news reel is advertising a March of Time film called Europe in Review<\/em> as \u201cthe best gangster film since Scarface<\/em>.\u201d [Frye\u2013Kemp Correspondence<\/em>, 890]<\/p>\n

The Magnificent Ambersons<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cCalled for Helen & took her to see \u2018The Magnificent Ambersons,\u2019 highly recommended by some people including Eleanor [Godfrey], but I found it a blowsy and turgid piece of Byrony.\u201d\u00a0 [Diaries<\/em>, 15 September 1942.\u00a0 An RKO film, with screen-play by Orson Welles, based on a novel by Booth Tarkington and starring Joseph Cotten and Anne Baxter.]<\/p>\n

Ghost Train<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHot weather.\u00a0 Went to show, an English mystery, \u201cGhost Train.\u201d\u00a0 Swell.\u00a0 One of the things that interested me about it was the way the English can put the most typically English frozen-faced sourpussed jerks into a picture and preserve intact all their stupid social stereotypes, & then when you\u2019re just about to curse them for being such god-damned English jerks you suddenly realize the English have put them there.\u00a0 It\u2019s known, well-known in fact, as the \u2018English Ability to Laugh at Themselves.\u2019\u00a0 I only hope it doesn\u2019t breed a self-conscious paralysis the way the discovery of their ability to muddle through did.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 28 July 1942.\u00a0 A 1933 film directed by Walter Forde and based upon Arnold Ridley\u2019s Ghost Train: A Play in Three Acts<\/em> (1931).]<\/p>\n

This above All<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Come Live with Me<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Blossoms in the Dust<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Grapes of Wrath<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Little Foxes<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019ll ask my kids in the fall how many movie titles they can get: This Above All<\/em> (Hamlet); Come Live with Me;<\/em> We Who Are Young<\/em> (with Lana Turner); Blossoms in the Dust<\/em> (with Greer Garson); The Grapes of Wrath; The Little Foxes<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 [Diaries<\/em>, 29 July 1942. This Above All<\/em> was a 1942 film starring Tyrone Power, Joan Fontaine, and Thomas Mitchell.\u00a0 Come Live with Me<\/em> was a 1941 film starring James Stewart, Hedy Lamarr, and Frank Faylen.\u00a0 Blossoms in the Dust<\/em> was a 1941 film starring Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, and Marsha Hunt.\u00a0 The Grapes of Wrath <\/em>was a 1940 film directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, and John Carradine.\u00a0 The Little Foxes <\/em>was a 1941 film directed by William Wyler and starring Bette Davis, Teresa Wright, and Herbert Marshall]<\/p>\n

The Male Animal<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Poison Pen<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBitched the day, celebrating because Ned [Pratt] liked the Blake.\u00a0 Show at night.\u00a0 Thurber\u2019s \u2018Male Animal.\u2019\u00a0 Not bad: but Henry James was a bad dramatist and a master of Thurber\u2019s.\u00a0 The main theme,\u2014a hot-headed undergraduate editor turning a piece of ordinary teaching routine into a crusade, is sound.\u00a0 The episodic clowning with his wife was a bit weak.\u00a0 But the Chairman of Trustees was too crude: one never gets them like that.\u00a0 They always turn up quoting Holy Scripture and John Stuart Mill on Liberty.\u00a0 A novel about a similar situation with the weakling\u2019s endlessly rationalizing would be all right.\u00a0 The other show was a bad English thriller based on fake \u2018psychology\u2019: Flora Robson writing poison-pen letters because she was a spinster & her maternal impulse was frustrated.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 10 August 1952.\u00a0 The Male Animal <\/em>was a 1942 film based upon a play by James Thurber and Elliott Nugent (who directed the film) and starring Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland. The movie playing on a double bill with The Male Animal<\/em> was Poison Pen. <\/em>Frye saw the movies at the Alhambra Theatre at Bloor and Bathurst Streets.]<\/p>\n

Woman of the Year<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Confirm or Deny<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Was told by someone that Woman of the Year<\/em> with Katherine Hepburn was good, & went down to see it.\u00a0 It was with a quite good propaganda film, Confirm or Deny<\/em>.\u00a0 Our propaganda films are surprisingly adult.\u00a0 The other show was about a quasi-Dorothy Thompson, who gave up a brilliant public career for the man she really luhved.\u00a0 She could speak every language in Europe but she couldn\u2019t cook, & all the housewives in the audience gurgled.\u00a0 There was one good line, the moral of the picture, that women should be illiterate and clean, like canaries.\u00a0 All foreigners are funny.\u00a0 For small-town Midwestern isolationist consumption.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 19 August 1942.\u00a0 Woman of the Year <\/em>was a 1942 film with screen-play by Ring Lardner, Jr., directed by George Stevens and starring, in addition to Hepburn, Spencer Tracy. Confirm or Deny<\/em> was <\/em>a 1941 20th Century Fox film directed by Archie Mayo, starring Don Ameche, Joan Bennett, and Roddy McDowall.]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Through Different Eyes<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Rings on Her Fingers<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOur fifth wedding anniversary but even so an irritating day.\u00a0 Discovered at Britnells that Freud has been banned in Canada.\u00a0 Helen was restless & we went to the show: two irritating pictures.\u00a0 In one a D.A. accused the wrong man of a murder: his wife, the accused\u2019s aunt, nagged & bullied her husband, plundered his office and lied extensively about it, seized her suspect and tortured him to exact a confession, which he gave finally in the usual slapdash way of a sloppy movie.\u00a0 I suppose this woman, who, instead of being well strapped and locked in her room, was finally justified on the ground that \u201cfeminine intuition\u201d is infallible, is more escape for housewives.\u00a0 There\u2019d be more point to it if women were not so spoiled already.\u00a0 \u2018Intuition\u2019 as generally understood is a mental short cut employed by the unintelligent, who are no doubt pleased to be told that it\u2019s superior to intelligence. . . . . The other show, about a man who scrimped on his tiny salary (half as much again as I get) to buy a yacht while he was young enough to enjoy it, was a good illustration of a muddle inferior writers often get into, of being able to work out a plot.\u00a0 That is, push the characters around within certain complications only by making the characters so stupid that they cease to become interesting as characters.\u00a0 It\u2019s a dreary but frequently encountered dilemma.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 24 August 1942.\u00a0 The film, playing at the Eglinton Theatre, starred Frank Craven, Mary Howard, June Walker, Donald Woods, and Vivian Blake.]\u00a0 The other film, on a double bill with Through Different Eyes<\/em>, was Rings on Her Fingers<\/em>, starring Henry Fonda and Gene Tierney.]<\/p>\n

The Glass Key<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe hay fever seems to have passed its meridian: maybe I\u2019m just getting asthma & I shall regret ever having given up hay fever.\u00a0 Got check today, the incredible sum of $165.11: I thought with the new tax it would be far less.\u00a0 So we went to the Eglinton . . . to see a new Dashiell Hammett, \u2018The Glass Key.\u2019\u00a0 Beautifully paced, very well acted, directed & photographed: a swell tough and utterly amoral movie about a successful, ruthless & quite likeable Tammany gangster.\u00a0 A curious color-cartoon, on the invasion of Holland, done in puppets.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 10 September 1942.\u00a0 A 1935 Paramount film adapted from Dashiell Hammet\u2019s novel of that title and directed by Frank Tuttle.]<\/p>\n

The Great McGinty<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Citizen Kane<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been brooding about that movie [The Glass Key<\/em>]: I have to do more under the Sept. 6 title [\u201cReflections at a Movie\u201d].\u00a0 Friends of democracy are seldom frank about its failings & I don\u2019t know if anyone has researched the persistence in it of the Aristides complex.\u00a0 The great heart of the people can put up with conscientious, honest, efficient government just so long and then they arise in their wrath and demand some form of picturesque graft or colorful tyranny.\u00a0 Recently the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, who had served his city faithfully for years, was defeated by an obviously incompetent crooner.\u00a0 Now that \u2018Glass Key\u2019 picture showed that it\u2019s gangsters, not saints, who attract fanatical loyalty and are impossible finally to crush.\u00a0 Cf. the frank support of child labour in \u2018The Great McGinty\u2019: another film along much the same lines.\u00a0 As compared with the intellectualized & comparatively superficial analysis of a Fascist type in Citizen Kane, I think that\u2019s an important thing for the films to do.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 12 September 1942. The Great McGinty <\/em>was a 1940 Paramount film written and directed by Preston Sturges and starring Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angelus, and William Demarest.\u00a0 Citizen Kane<\/em> was the highly acclaimed 1941 film, directed by and starring Orson Welles.]<\/p>\n

The Reluctant Dragon<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf chromatic harmony is played out the movie is the place for new experiments, not the concert hall.\u00a0 Of course there is a good deal going on, the train-boat sequence in The Reluctant Dragon<\/em>.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 16 September 1942.\u00a0 The Reluctant Dragon <\/em>was a 1941 film starring Alan Ladd, Robert Benchley, and Frances Gifford.]<\/p>\n

Hamlet<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWent to see the Laurence Olivier Hamlet<\/em> this afternoon\u2014its eleventh filming, according to the program.\u00a0 As Olivier directed the film & played Hamlet too, it was still the subjective fallacy, the conception of the play which derives from the accident that Hamlet is a fat actor\u2019s role, not in the least scant of breath.\u00a0 In any production the actor who takes Hamlet\u2019s part has a lot to say about the production, and in fact he is usually in charge of the production, & his first care is usually to ensure that if any part is cut it won\u2019t be his.\u00a0 Olivier wasn\u2019t crude about it: he slashed the soliloquies to ribbons & turned it into a play of action.\u00a0 The subjective fallacy showed up chiefly in his treatment of Ophelia\u2014he manipulated her part to make her just the \u2018anima\u2019 of Hamlet, & deliberately cut out her mature intensity of feeling & her sharp sly humor.\u00a0 Consistently with this he made her death pure accident, thus making all the references to her \u2018doubtful\u2019 death in the fifth act entirely pointless.\u00a0 The foils to Hamlet were also weakened\u2014Laertes of course has a very badly written part, but the stability of Horatio was hardly in evidence & Fortinbras was abolished altogether, along with those dismal robot clowns Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.\u00a0 On the other hand, the king & queen were fully & excellently treated.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 1 January 1949.\u00a0 Olivier\u2019s 1948 film won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor.]<\/p>\n

My Father\u2019s House<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

La Derni\u00e8r Etape<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEleanor Coutts dropped in to say goodbye.\u00a0 She tells me of a good movie (British) about Palestine: \u2018My Father\u2019s House.\u2019\u00a0 The New Yorker speaks of a French one on the Auschwitz camp, \u2018La Derni\u00e8re Etape.\u2019\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 3 January 1949.\u00a0 My Father\u2019s House<\/em> was a 1947 film directed by Herbert Kline; made with amateur actors in Palestine and partially financed by the Jewish National Fund.\u00a0 La Dernier Etape<\/em> was a 1948 Polish film by Wanda Jakubowska.]<\/p>\n

Monsieur Vincent<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMargaret [Newton] was in when I got home but Helen was out with the Hebbs at a show\u2014a French movie on the life of St. Vincent de Paul.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 27 April 1949.\u00a0 A film directed by Maurice Cloche and starring Pierre Fresnay; the movie won an Oscar for the best foreign film in 1947.]<\/p>\n

Julie Misbehaves<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHelen proved to be feeling restless, so we went to the Park Plaza & had cocktails\u2014I had far too many\u2014then dinner at the Brass Rail, obviously an American speculation, & a movie\u2014the main feature, a very poor hash of Margery Sharp\u2019s Nutmeg Tree<\/em>, was a washout, but an incidental account of South Pole exploration was admirable.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 10 May 1949.\u00a0 The movie of Margery Sharp\u2019s Nutmeg Tree<\/em> (London: Collins, 1937) was Julie Misbehaves<\/em>, a 1948 MGM production starring Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Cesar Romero, and Elizabeth Taylor.]<\/p>\n

The Chiltern Hundreds<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the afternoon the three of them went off to an English movie called \u201cThe Chiltern Hundreds,\u201d evidently a very easy-going and good-tempered picture, and a big success for all concerned.\u00a0 I might just as well have gone, for all the work I did.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 7 January 1950.\u00a0 A 1949 comedy directed by John Paddy Carstairs and based on a play by William Douglas Home.]<\/p>\n

Saints and Sinners<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I left there was a string of six or seven proposals, all of which had still to be voted on.\u00a0 I was so bored when I got home that I let Helen take me out to a movie, called \u2018Saints and Sinners.\u2019\u00a0 It was the same old plot that\u2019s been worn out on ten thousand other movies already, but it was in a new setting (Irish village) with some good acting (Abbey players) & fair characterization.\u00a0 The plot turned on a fear of the end of the world: I suppose there would be a strong apocalyptic sense in a country that felt oppressed, as well as a strong will toward private revelation (in this case an old woman\u2019s prophecy) in a country that is Catholic.\u00a0 Yeats & Joyce both show how strong this is, in different ways.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 23 January 1950.\u00a0 A 1949 comedy, directed by Leslie Arliss and starring Kieron Moore and Christina Norden.]<\/p>\n

Tight Little Island<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the evening we went out to a show: there was quite a line up, being a holiday & still a Nonconformist town, and in the lineup were the Connors, who had the apartment next to us on Bathurst St. many years ago\u2014we\u2019d forgotten about them, & about the party there we took Harold [Kemp] & his girl to (I think at that stage Dottie). \u00a0The show itself was pleasant: \u2018Tight Little Island,\u2019 about a small Hebridean community & how it dealt with a wreck bearing fifty thousand cases of whisky.\u00a0 An immemorial theme, but pleasantly handled.\u00a0 As I was looking for comic archetypes, I noted that the Saturnalia is an upsetting of an existing social order which recalls a Golden Age before that order was established, & which is therefore the Saturnalia\u2019s grandfather, so to speak.\u00a0 Hence the existing social order is a kind of deputy rule, a vicegerent custom, like the rule of Angelo in MM [Measure for Measure<\/em>].\u00a0 In this movie the only antagonist, a Malvolio churl, was captain of the home guard, & tried, like Malvolio, to act like a steward locking up the drinks.\u00a0 One of the most unsympathetic people was his own colonel.\u00a0 This, of course, was as corny as Plautus himself really: the drunks weren\u2019t slaves, but they were poor people, & there was a restive agin-the-government tone to the whole picture.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 7 April 1950.\u00a0 A 1949 British comedy, directed by Alexander MacKendrick.]<\/p>\n

The Third Man<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>We went & had an outrageously bad dinner at a Coles dump on Eglinton Avenue.\u00a0 I can\u2019t understand why all the restaurants here are so bad once you get off the beaten track\u2014it\u2019s nearly as bad as England.\u00a0 Well, anyway, the movie was very good: Graham Greene & Orson Welles collaborating in a thriller: \u2018The Third Man.\u2019 The musical accompaniment\u2014a zither playing the same series of chords over & over\u2014was very effective, & the whole atmosphere of post-war Vienna, its spirit broken by occupation & its poverty grinding everyone down to a squalid sort of mutual prostitution, was horribly convincing.\u00a0 The villain, done by Orson Welles himself, was the type Hollywood movies generally idealize\u2014a cheerful, handsome, appealing boy who was a complete psychopath, & the curiously empty & helpless horror that such a character inspires came through in a magnificent scene\u2014the only one where he said anything\u2014on a Ferris wheel with the American hero, whose inept honesty made just the right foil.\u00a0 The ferocity of the heroine\u2019s devotion to the man whom she knew had betrayed her tied up what was really a pretty grim story, for all the melodramatic chase-through-sewers touches that made it more reassuring for the young women behind us.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 26 April 1950.\u00a0 A 1949 film based on a novel by Graham Greene, directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard.]<\/p>\n

The River<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was another hard day for Helen: she\u2019d got everyone\u2014Vera, Dad, her mother and Aunt Lily [Maidment]\u2014to go to see The River<\/em>, a big Jean Renoir job in technicolor about India.\u00a0 Aunt Lily gets up every morning at 5:30 and works hard until after ten at night, so when she relaxes on her day off she just goes to sleep.\u00a0 They came home for dinner & she fell asleep once or twice at the table.\u00a0 I gather that the movie was pretty sophisticated for most of the audience, and Helen was worried about her party going off properly.\u00a0 She may give the impression outwardly of being a sort of Mrs. Ramsey, but actually she is like me, an introvert for whom social occasions are a conscious effort and not a means of relaxation.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 3 January 1952.\u00a0 A 1951 United Artists film, starring Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Thomas E. Breen, Arthur Shields, and Patricia Walters; adapted by Renoir from a novel by Rumer Godden.]<\/p>\n

Royal Journey<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ti\u2011Coq<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI started to walk down, but R.A. Daly picked me up.\u00a0 His son Tom produced the Royal Journey<\/em> film.\u00a0 He\u2019s very impressed by Ti-Coq<\/em>\u2014I think he said he\u2019d seen it four times, twice in French & twice in English.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 19 January 1952 .\u00a0 Royal Journey <\/em>was a documentary film on the visit of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh to Canada and the U.S. in the fall of 1951.\u00a0 Ti-Coq<\/em> (L\u2019il Rooster) was a 1948 play by the Canadian actor and playwright Gratien G\u00e9linas.\u00a0 Daly had seen the stage version: it was not made into a film until 1953.]<\/p>\n

Detective Story<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAnn Carnwath was in in the morning: I wonder why the only really interesting people in fourth year aren\u2019t in English.\u00a0 Neither is Donald Urquhart.\u00a0 I enjoy very much talking to that girl: she told me about the movie \u2018Detective Story\u2019 which sounds like a sardonic masterpiece, and we discussed Marxism.\u201d\u00a0 [Diaries,<\/em> 18 February 1952.\u00a0 A 1951 film directed by William Wyler and starring Kirk Douglas, Joseph Wiseman, and Lee Grant.]<\/p>\n

The Emperor\u2019s Nightingale<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe then saw that the theatre next door, which I think is called the Towne, was running something we tried to see in New York & missed: \u2018The Emperor\u2019s Nightingale.\u2019\u00a0 It turned out to be a Czech film with puppets, telling the Anderson fairy tale.\u00a0 I quite liked it, and the color was good, but it was very slow-moving and sentimental and heavily moralizing, in a romantic way (nature vs. artifice) that didn\u2019t seem very convincing.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t<\/em> see any point in close-ups of puppets, which were a painfully frequent feature.\u00a0 The supporting programme was quite good\u2014a National Film Board short on the Canadian Ballet festival of 1949, which I hadn\u2019t seen, an account of an island near Puerto Rico where psychologists study six hundred monkeys, and, most interesting of all, a documentary on life in a small Chinese hamlet in the far south among the rice paddies.\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 25 April 1952. \u00a0A 1949 Czech animated film directed by Ji\u0159\u00ed Trnka and Milo\u0161 Makovec.]<\/p>\n

The Seasons<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that we found out what the trouble was yesterday\u2014the Blodwen Davies visit was for today.\u00a0 So Yvonne came just as Peter left & drove us out.\u00a0 Christopher Chapman\u2019s movie \u2018The Seasons,\u2019 was the feature.\u00a0 He was there, with Peter Stokes, people called Lovens (sp?)\u2014he\u2019s a big shot in Maclean-Hunter, & a brigadier in the war, the [?Reesors], & another girl who\u2019s name I didn\u2019t get.\u00a0 There were two movies, & I found the second more interesting.\u00a0 Chris has a theory which interests me, that parasites accompany poor soil.\u00a0 Restore the organic balance of the soil, he says, and the parasites go away.\u00a0 This doctrine conflicts with commercial interests that sell poison sprays, & that\u2019s big business because it\u2019s an important peace-time sideline of armaments concerns.\u00a0 Almost too good to be true\u2014parasites, waste land soil and armaments concerns all linked together.\u00a0 (Nothing much happened today anyway.)\u201d [Diaries<\/em>, 4 February 1955.\u00a0 A 1954 cin\u00e9-poem in which Vivaldi\u2019s symphony The Seasons<\/em> is given visual form through the pageantry of the passing year; filmed at Lake Simcoe, Ont., by Christopher Chapman, The Seasons<\/em> was voted film of the year by the Canadian Film Awards.]<\/p>\n

Charlie Chaplin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Films by Chaplin referred to in Frye\u2019s \u201cThe Great Charlie,\u201d CW 11, 98\u2013102: The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Harold Lloyd<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>Years ago, in a very indifferent Harold Lloyd picture, the hero undertook to bounce a spoon into a glass with another spoon. As long as he was unsuccessful in the story he failed to do this trick: when his enterprises worked out to a happy ending he did it with a flourish. That was, of course, a pure if somewhat crude piece of symbolism, and it would have been impossible without a camera. The more intelligent the moviegoer, the more he appreciates this kind of thing, and the more he will be attracted, not by the name of the star, but by that of a witty and resourceful director.\u201d [\u201cReflections at a Movie,\u201d CW 11, 110]<\/p>\n

Man of Aran<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOften a director will develop a plot through a long sequence of symbolic shots known as \u2018montage,\u2019 which nearly always has a musical accompaniment. This technique is capable of almost indefinite expansion: one thinks of documentaries, like O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s Man of Aran<\/em>, in which there are long descriptive scenes without a word of dialogue. These point the way to a mixed musical and pictorial art of a kind heretofore impossible. When human beings are used in such scenes, the emphasis thrown on pantomime is so strong that the picture becomes a kind of ballet: a beautiful example is a Ren\u00e9 Clair called Sous les Toits de Paris<\/em>. [\u201cReflections at a Movie,\u201d CW 11, 110\u201311.\u00a0 Man of Aran<\/em> (1934) is a documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty, a fictional documentary on life on the Aran Islands.]<\/p>\n

Monsieur Verdoux<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Frye\u2019s \u201cThe Eternal Tramp\u201d (CW 11, 116\u201322) <\/em>is about this film and other Chaplin films.<\/p>\n

High Noon<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI must go see a Western movie called High Noon<\/em>. [Anatomy Notebooks<\/em>, CW 23, 207. <\/em>A 1952 United Artists film, starring Gary Cooper.]<\/p>\n

2001<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe international airport, completely insulated even from the country it is in, is perhaps the most eloquent symbol of this, and is parodied in Stanley Kubrick\u2019s movie 2001<\/em>, where the hero lands on the moon, dependent on human processing even for the air he breathes, and finds nothing to do there except to phone his wife back on earth, who is out.\u201d\u00a0 [\u201cCanada: New World without Revolution,\u201d CW 12, 439.]<\/p>\n

Boris Karloff<\/strong><\/p>\n

His movies mentioned in \u201cHaunted by Lack of Ghosts,\u201d CW 12, 491.<\/p>\n

Amos and Andy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Keystone Cops<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mentioned in \u201cAcross the River and Out of the Trees,\u201d CW 12, 562.<\/p>\n

Canadian Documentaries<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>Canadian film has always been remarkable for its sensitive documentary feeling, applied to everything from Eskimo and Indian life to the urban cultures of Toronto and Montreal.\u201d [\u201cCanada: New World without Revolution,\u201d CW 12, 447]<\/p>\n

My Brilliant Career<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere were many counterparts to such attacks in English Canada: they are part of a typical response of a provincial culture to an external view of it. Its insecurity takes the form of resentment at being thrust on a larger stage before it has had time to put on its best clothes. One is reminded of the Irish reaction to Synge\u2019s Playboy<\/em>. It is not the genuineness of the heroine’s decision to remain on Quebec soil that is in question: the same type of resolution recently appeared in the film My Brilliant Career<\/em>, which was based on an Australian story. It is rather the ambiguity of a vision of a certain limited area of life that looks like the exposures of realism to those within it and like the concealments of literary convention to those outside it.\u201d [\u201cCriticism and Environment,\u201d CW 12, 573.\u00a0 My Brilliant Career <\/em>was a 1979 film starring Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Wendy Hughes.]<\/p>\n

Star Wars<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c. . . there are movies like Star Wars<\/em> which suggest that we can learn to visit distant galaxies and smash them up too; but I\u2019d prefer not to think of that as our future. [\u201cRoyal Bank Award Address,\u201d CW 7, 511]<\/p>\n

So This Is College<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember a movie of my childhood called So This Is College<\/em>, the theme of which was the rivalry of two football players for the same girl. There was one academic reference in it: one of the heroes arranged to meet the girl in front of the English building. This put him one up on his rival, who apparently didn\u2019t know where the English building was. Two minor characters were inserted for comic relief, a professor and a dean. It has taken the public a long time to outgrow this vulgar notion of \u201ccollege\u201d as a playground for spoiled children.\u201d [\u201cConvocation Address, University of British Columbia,\u201d CW 7, 183\u20134]<\/p>\n

Henry V<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we call classics are works of literature that show an ability to communicate with other ages over the widest barriers of time, space, and language.\u00a0 This ability depends on the inclusion of some element of insight into the human situation that escapes from the limits of ideology.\u00a0 Thus Shakespeare\u2019s Henry V<\/em>, just referred to, contains the kind of ideology that his audience would want, and shows a heroic English king victorious over a swarm of foreigners.\u00a0 It was still exploiting that ideology in the Laurence Olivier film version in the Second World War, where the invasion of France became an allegory for a second front against Nazi Germany.\u201d [\u201cThe Expanding World of Metaphor,\u201d CW 18, 353\u20134.\u00a0 The film Henry V <\/em>(UK, 1944) was directed by Sir Laurence Olivier.]<\/p>\n

TV Films<\/strong><\/p>\n

Frye\u2019s \u201cReviews of Television Programs for the Canadian Radio-Television Commission\u201d in Northrop Frye on Literature and Society<\/em> has reviews of several TV documentaries, experimental films, TV dramas, includingVTR St Jacques<\/em><\/strong>, Monty Python<\/em><\/strong>, The Tenth Decade<\/em><\/strong>, The Bold Ones<\/em><\/strong>, and L\u2019Acadie<\/em>. <\/strong>In his review of The Carole Burnett Show<\/em> he writes, \u201cIt has always seemed to me that the old silent movies developed an extremely distinctive form of comedy around such figures as Mack Sennett <\/em><\/strong>and Larry Semon<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d [CW 10, 273\u2013301<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Quo Vadis<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA few years ago some little boys in Brooklyn were found playing the old game of guessing how many fingers someone is holding up.\u00a0 The formula ran: \u2018Buck, buck, you lousy muck, how many fingers have I got up?\u2019\u00a0 Not very polite, perhaps; but why did they say \u2018buck\u2019?\u00a0 If you\u2019ve seen the movie Quo Vadis<\/em>, you\u2019ll remember the poet Petronius who lived in Nero\u2019s time, and Petronius says that little boys in his day played the same game to the words \u2018Bucca, bucca, quot sunt hic?\u2019\u2014<\/em>how many are there?\u00a0 Bucca<\/em> means fatty, so the little Roman boys didn\u2019t need an extra insult.\u201d [Review of The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes<\/em>, CW 10, 315]<\/p>\n

Kamouraska<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAnn H\u00e9bert\u2019s book Kamouraska<\/em>, which made a very successful film. . . .\u201d [Northrop Frye\u2019s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings<\/em>, CW 25, 228. <\/em> Kamouraska<\/em> was a 1973 Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois film<\/em> <\/em>directed by Claude Jutra.]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fantasia<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI finally got around to seeing Fantasia<\/em> and, as I expected, disliked it, though not in the way I had anticipated.\u00a0 I thought I should be bored, but not actively bored, bored with a dentist\u2019s drill, so to speak, & a jittery nervous wreck after the experience.\u00a0 But it proved two things.\u00a0 One is, that whatever I do when I listen to music, I don\u2019t do that or anything like it.\u00a0 A great many people, I know, think of music as something diaphanous and amorphous, and as therefore the aural equivalent of shutting one\u2019s eyes in a strong light and then pressing on the lids.\u00a0 But what music communicates is completely real, and has no relation whatever to a \u201cfantasia\u201d of any kind.\u00a0 The other is, that place<\/em> is established by sight, not sound, and that if the visual pattern comes first one can both see it and hear the music, whereas if the visual pattern follows the music one either doesn\u2019t see what\u2019s going on or doesn\u2019t hear the music.\u00a0 The Stravinsky dinosaurs had enough reality to keep me looking at it with about the same amount of interest one has in turning over the colored pages of the Book of Knowledge.\u00a0 But as a result I didn\u2019t hear a note of the Stravinsky.\u00a0 Again, there was enough going on in the Beethoven to enable one to forget the music, which was fine, though occasionally one would wake up to it and what was merely silly at once became actively nauseating.\u00a0 It was very curious to see how inexorably the process brought out every weakness in the music; how the comic ostriches rubbed in the dullness of the dance of the Hours and Hours; how the latent hamminess of the Moussorgski-Schubert thing emerged in all its greasiness; how one could really taste the sugar-plums in the Nutcracker Suite.\u00a0 On the other hand, the Bach fugue does rise to a climax of great sublimity, & to have that sublimity represented by a series of Gothic arches is not only corny allegory in itself, but does everything humanly possible to vulgarize the music. [Northrop Frye\u2019s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings<\/em>, CW 25, 17\u201318.\u00a0 Fantasia<\/em>, one of the most highly regarded of the Disney animated films, had been released in November 1940.]<\/p>\n

The Loon\u2019s Necklace<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe gods are back: the mask on The Loon\u2019s Necklace which has become practically a Canadian logo.\u201d\u00a0 [Northrop Frye\u2019s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings<\/em>, CW 25, 231. <\/em> Radford Crawley directed The Loon\u2019s Necklace<\/em> in 1948 for the Canadian Educational Association.]<\/p>\n

Slapstick<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve lived through several media revolutions.\u00a0 In my childhood were the silent movies, which were lineally descended from the puppet show.\u00a0 The comedies of Larry Seton, Harold Lloyd, Mack Sennett, were funny in a way that no spoken comedy can possibly be: naturally the spoken lines, which had to be printed, were kept to a minimum in any case.\u00a0 I remember seeing a movie, colored and talking, which was a comedy, and being bored by it: but at the beginning there was a reference to the early knockabout silent comedies of the pie-throwing kind, with a brief illustration, and I laughed until I nearly fell out of my seat.\u00a0 Similarly with children at a Punch and Judy show.\u00a0 Some types of movie, notably the Disney and other animated cartoons, continued this totally disembodied puppet convention: in television it survives only in things like Sesame Street, which are addressed to small children.\u201d [Northrop Frye\u2019s Fiction and Miscellaneous Writings<\/em>, CW 25, 197]<\/p>\n

Alexander Nevsky<\/em><\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt may be instructive to compare this story [Ernst J\u00fcnger\u2019s On the Marble Cliffs<\/em>] <\/em>with another allegory that resembles it in some respects: Rex Warner\u2019s The Aerodrome<\/em>. There the conflict really is one of freedom and tyranny, represented by an English village and an air force commanded by a maniacal dictator. The villagers are disorganized, ignorant, sensual, and helpless, the air force ruthless, efficient, and fanatical; yet in the very disorganization of the village there is a free spirit that liberates and triumphs, and in the very efficiency of the air force there is a central vacuum of despair into which the whole structure collapses. The same pattern is to be found, I think, in Eisenstein\u2019s film Alexander Nevsky<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 [Northrop Frye on Modern Culture<\/em>, CW 11, 213 <\/em>]<\/p>\n

Unnamed Movie<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis combination of the erotic and the prudish can only be understood if we realize that the function of prudery is not to suppress the libidinous feeling, but to enable it to achieve a socially acceptable expression. The result is that \u2018innocent\u2019 relationships in popular fiction often require a sultry and morbid passion that in my opinion really is \u2018prejudicial to public morals.\u2019 I remember a prattling gooey movie with a fifteen-year\u2011old girl as heroine, and the way the film presented the relation of that girl to her father made my back hair prickle. But then the producer had aimed it at children who had not yet learned to disentangle their filial and sexual feelings, and at childish parents who had continued to slobber over their children and give them fixations of a type that is now being called \u2018momism.\u2019\u201d [Dr. Kinsey and the Dream Censor,\u201d Northrop Frye on Modern Culture<\/em>, CW 11, 218\u201319]<\/p>\n

Shoeshine<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Open City<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDrama must confine itself to the energy and devotion of small groups with little money for elaborate staging, sometimes (one thinks for the third time of France) restricted to a front parlour. Among films it is almost a rule that the less money a film has cost, the better it is likely to be, the Italian films Shoe Shine<\/em> and Open City<\/em> being done under conditions which approach those of the commedia dell arte.<\/em>\u201d [\u201cThe Church and Modern Culture,\u201d Northrop Frye on Modern Culture<\/em>, CW 11, 241.\u00a0 Shoeshine<\/em> was a 1946 film, the first major work of Vittorio De Sica.\u00a0 Open City <\/em>was <\/em>a 1945 Italian war\u2011drama film<\/em>, directed by Roberto Rossellini.]<\/p>\n

Gone with the Wind<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAmong Shakespeare\u2019s first plays are a series of three on the period of the reign of Henry V1, the period of the War of the Roses. We may find these plays rather dull reading, because we don\u2019t have the Elizabethan fascination with the period, the sort of fascination an American audience watching a film of Gone with the Wind<\/em> would feel for their Civil War.\u201d [Northrop Frye on Shakespeare<\/em>, 5]<\/p>\n

Dead of Night<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, in Finnegans Wake I think the cycle, borrowed from Vico, certainly has its negative and ironic side\u2014the side explored in that funny movie, Dead of Night. [Romance Notebooks, <\/em>CW 15, 297.\u00a0 Dead of Night<\/em> was a British omnibus from Ealing Studios in 1945, consisting of four stories by four directors.\u00a0 The linking story is of an architect caught in a series of recurring dreams.]<\/p>\n

Berkeley Square<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sense of the Past<\/em> utterly fascinated me (around the same time I saw a vulgarization of it, a movie called Berkeley Square<\/em>, with Leslie Howard.)\u00a0 [Romance Notebooks<\/em>, CW 15, 344.\u00a0 Berkeley Square<\/em> was a 1933 film directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Leslie Howard, Heather Angel, Valerie Taylor and Colin Keith-Johnston.]<\/p>\n

Phantom of the Opera<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe movie that hit me hardest as a child was the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera.\u201d [The \u201cThird Book\u201d Notebooks<\/em>, CW 9, 76]<\/p>\n

Mrs. Miniver<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cG.W. Stonier regards Mrs. Miniver<\/em> and its like as products of a kind of nostalgic snobbery which mental resistance to a war is apt to engender, but which is not the less dangerous.\u201d [Northrop Frye on Twentieth\u2011Century Literature<\/em>, CW 29, 26.\u00a0 Mrs. Miniver<\/em> was a 1942 film<\/em> <\/em>directed by William Wyler and starring Greer Garson.]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article is cross-posted in the Denham Library here \u201c[T]he movie is capable of the greatest concentration of any art form in human history.\u00a0 The possibilities of combining photographic, musical, and dramatic rhythms leave all preceding arts behind in their infinity\u201d [Northrop Frye on Modern Culture, 99] \u201cThe film is the one real major art-form […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,101,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bob-denham","category-movies","category-popular-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nFrye and the Movies - 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