Aww.

I bought this bluray because I watched the Tina Fey TV series remake of this movie some months ago. The first season (hah!) of the remake was fantastic. The second one was like… “why?”

But I got curious to see what the original movie was like, so here we are.

Directed by Alan Alda!

Oh, there’s whats-her-name… I had a command to look up actors from the screenshots, but it bitrotted because imdb changed stuff. I gotta get that working again.

Oh yeah! Carol Burnett!

I don’t really remember the TV series plot in detail, but I think it’s pretty faithful to the movie? At least so far?

That German twitter account would love this movie — Die Workwear, ja? Very cardiganney.

Oh right. Now I remember the plot… Yeah, Tina Fey’s remake was more leisurely — it was four hours long and this is about two hours — so when this reveal came it came as more of a shock, because we’d become more involved with the characters.

I don’t wanna say that her version was better… but it kinda was!?

I mean, all the performances here are good, but it’s like the pacing is slightly off?

This movie is from 1981, and one usually says that the 70s lasted until like 83… but this movie really doesn’t have the typical 70s aesthetic. It’s not quite 80s, either, but it’s doing something new at the time… I really like the way it looks.

And that’s odd, because the cinematographer is, like, 70s Movies Patient One.

Oh, and:

Yeah, OK, he really moved with the times. Makes more sense now.

The jokes could definitely be funnier.

One of the problems this movie has — apart from the jokes often not totally landing — is this guy: We’re not shown a single reason why he’s a part of this friend group. He’s totally insufferable and that just throws things off.

But I mean — I like the movie. It’s like if Alan Alda was thinking “I’m making a John Cassavetes movie, but for TV”. He cast himself and Carol Burnett as the central couple, and then avoided casting compelling actors in the other roles.

This is pretty good — there’s some scenes that totally click: Middle aged friends hanging around is fun. But then they try to go way Too Much Drama and that doesn’t really work as well.

I was surprised by how the plot diverged in the Tina Fey version… for the better, I think.

The Four Seasons. Alan Alda. 1981. ⚃

Oh, Olive Films… If I remember correctly, they’re not as ambitious with restorations like, say, Cohen Films or Criterion…

Well, this looks nice — there are scratches and dust, but it’s been stabilised and colour corrected. I mean — normalised.

This is very noir.

The director here is Robert Siodmak, which is a very familiar name, of course. But! Looking at his list of movies, I find that I’ve probably seen none of his movies? Except People on Sunday?

That has to be wrong, but… Oh, he only worked in the US for about a decade before returning to Germany. And he seems to have done mostly noirs while he was in the US, and mostly B movies?

Uhm uhm uhm

I don’t quite understand this movie. All that’s happened so far is that these two people (both married) have started an affair… but… we haven’t really been told anything about them, or given a reason to care.

Except that it’s Barbara Stanwyck, so we should care automatically.

I guess they’re slowly working their way towards the actual plot — is she going to con him into killing her husband or something?

OK, I didn’t quite guess what the plot was, but … almost!

The problem with her plan is that it turns out that the guy is a complete moron who totally fucked things up.

Or… is that the plot? That he did all that to set her up? And he’s the killer!? He certainly seems like an asshole.

The guy’s name is “Cleve”… which surely is the least attractive name ever in a Hollywood movie.

No… this movie just doesn’t quite work. It takes so long to get started… and then Cleve (trying to help) is the only one who creates the case against Barbara, really. So he’s a dumbass. And a drunk. So it’s like… hard to care about the shenanigans (which turn out to be less interesting than you’d think).

Much of the problem the film has is that Wendell Corey plays the guy, and he’s just not very interesting on the screen. Stanwyck tries to act really hard to make up for his deficiencies, and almost succeeds.

The File on Thelma Jordon. Robert Siodmak. 1949. ⚂