FRIENDLY PERSUASION (1956)

In 1957, William Wyler's comedy-drama FRIENDLY PERSUASION won the Palm d'Or, one of those inexplicable lapses of judgement that help to demonstrate the true worthlessness of movie awards. (That it beat out Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL only helps to make this point starker still.) It's a film that I'm fascinated with in large part because of my undying love of its star, Gary Cooper, but the film itself is a muddled mess. It is of interest today to Cooper fans like myself, but in most other respects it has aged poorly. For its director, it is a long, long way from the triumph of THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES in 1946.

Watching it again recently (because it was included in a new set of Cooper films I got for Christmas), I'm struck by the film's lack of a point-of-view. The film tells the story of the Birdwell family, a 1800s Indiana Quaker clan led by a stern-if-loving mother, Eliza (Dorothy McGuire) and a taciturn-if-mischievous father, Jess, played by Cooper. They have three children, the eldest of which is a son, Josh (Anthony Perkins) who longs to go fight in the Civil War. Eventually, the war comes to Indiana and the Birdwells have to decide what to do. 

I use the word "eventually" advisedly because FRIENDLY PERSUASION takes a long leisurely amble to get to its central conflict. The war doesn't come home to the Birdwells until the final thirty minutes of the film, which means that the better part of an hour and a half is spent focusing on things like the light comedy of Cooper's attempt to get to church faster than his neighbor and an uninvolving romance for the Birdwells' teenaged daughter. These scenes are meant to establish the Quaker idyll that will soon (or eventually) be shattered by the war.

Here's the problem, though: even in these scenes of gentle pastoral comedy, Wyler and his writer Michael Wilson (whose name was taken off the picture after he was blacklisted) struggle to figure out how to present the Birdwells. The problem, as one might expect, is religious. Wyler and Wilson just don't know what to do with Quakerism. For example, one subplot involves Jess buying an organ to play in the house despite Eliza's stern opposition, in keeping with the doctrine of their faith, to the instrument. After much to do, the Birdwells end up keeping the organ, and then have to hide it in the attic to keep it from the eyes of their church. At the end of the film, the organ's been moved downstairs. What are we to make of this? Are the Birdwells ready to tell the church that the doctrine is wrong? If so, why? The truth is that the filmmakers don't care about the religious implications. The whole subplot is one extended joke, a comedy that springs from the bemusement of the filmmakers. 

This disconnect carries over to the main conflict of the film once it finally arrives. Perkins wants to go fight, though his reasons for wanting to fight and the way he relates to the conflict don't seem to have any practical foundation in the life the character would have lived up to that point. Likewise, his younger brother regards the war the way a kid who's seen a lot of TV westerns might regard the war. Neither of them seem to have grown up in Quaker house their whole lives.

FRIENDLY PERSUASION is an excellent example of what we mean when we say a film is dated. Though it purports to unfold in 1862, it feels always and in all ways like something created in 1956. It's reflexively pro-war despite the fact it takes place among lifelong pacifists. Perkins goes to war, his little brother is casually bloodthirsty, and Cooper rides off with a gun to save his son -- all against Eliza's wishes and reprimands. By the end of the film, in fact, the concept of pacifism seems like little more than Eliza's annoying pet project. Eventually, she rejects it herself when she beats a rebel soldier for trying to kill the family goose, a moment that is played for laughs. The staunchest pacifist portrayed in the picture is a member of their church who is presented as a self-righteous hypocrite who throws off the constraints of his faith as soon as the Confederates show up.

I've been interested in how religion is portrayed onscreen for a long time, and it's been on my mind even more of late. FRIENDLY PERSUASION is something of a companion piece to 1941's SERGEANT YORK, which also presented Cooper as pacifist during a time of war. YORK is pure war propaganda, but at least it goes about its task more or less directly. FRIENDLY PERSUASION, on the other hand, wants to have things both ways. It is a film of gentle contempt for its subject.

PS: A quick word about Coop. He's easily the best thing about the picture. While Perkins (in his first leading role in a movie) is too Method for his own good here, Cooper controls the screen with quiet authority. The film came at an odd time in his career when, despite the fact he was in his mid-fifties, he was still resistant to, you know, acting like it. He didn't want to play a father onscreen, and although McGuire was 15 years his junior, by this point he was used to playing with even younger leading ladies. (His next film was the romance LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON in which he played opposite Audrey Hepburn, who was 30 years his junior--younger than the actress who played his daughter in FRIENDLY PERSUASION.) He also didn't like that his character wasn't roused to action sooner, and roused to much more forceful action. Despite all of this, the film gives us an unmistakable hint at the kind of performance Cooper could have given in a good movie dealing with the same subject matter. He's not dated so much as he seems to have come from a previous era, which, indeed, he had. 

A Foreign Affair (1948)

I think I'm in love with this movie. A Foreign Affair, director Billy Wilder's dark comedy about a romantic triangle between a US serviceman, an ex-Nazi, and a Republican congresswoman from Iowa, is a wonder of a film. Jean Arthur stars as Phoebe Frost, an uptight representative from the Hawkeye State, who travels with a congressional delegation to rubble strewn, post-war Berlin in order to investigate morale among the troops. She's offended by the physical and moral squalor that greets her until she meets a fellow Iowan, a captain named John Pringle (John Lund) whom she mistakes as a stalwart Midwesterner like herself. In truth, Pringle is a unscrupulous slickster who peddles merchandise on the black market and keeps the heat off of his German girlfriend, Erika Von Schluetow (Marlene Dietrich), the ex-lover of one of Hitler's top lieutenants. When Congresswoman Frost accidentally stumbles across Von Schluetow singing for American servicemen in an underground nightclub, she sets out to bring down the ex-Nazi with the help of...Captain Pringle. In order to shield his girlfriend, Pringle starts to romance the congresswoman. His plan works well enough--until the stuffy legislator blossoms into a lovesick girl intent on taking him back to Iowa.

The screenplay was chiefly the work of Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Richard Breen, and even by Wilder's usual standards it's a wickedly funny piece of work. Observing Von Schluetow in a sexy dress, Congresswoman Frost asks Pringle, "I wonder what's holding up that dress?"

He replies, "Must be that German willpower."

When he asks her, "And how is good old Iowa?" she tells him, "Sixty-two percent Republican, thank you very much."

As with much of Wilder's work, however, there is more going on here than a steady stream of one-liners. Wilder was Hollywood's most pungent misanthrope, an artist committed to the discrediting of myths and exposing of hypocrisies. A Foreign Affair is hardly an anti-American film--one of its most likable characters is the gruff Army colonel played with crusty charm by veteran character actor Millard Mitchell--but it is not the kind of self-congratulatory fluff that one might expect from a Hollywood film of the time. It paints a picture of people surviving and adapting to their surroundings--no matter if those people are American, German, or Russian.


Wilder always sees people's faults, but he also keeps a close eye on their humanity as well. This helps explain why the film is so much more than a dark comedy about the moral fluidity that exists among the ruins of a defeated country. For one thing, it is a genuinely touching romance. This owes a lot to the three performers at the center of the film.

John Lund was never a big star, and he failed to ever find a suitable screen persona (he's noticeably stiff in something like John Farrow's Night Has a Thousand Eyes), yet here he's terrific. He's at ease with the snappy one-liners, and he creates a believable rapport with both of his leading ladies, not a easy feat given the vast differences in their style and energy.

But what style and energy they had! The one-two punch of Dietrich and Arthur might seem an odd pairing at first glance: one was the personification of European sexual sophistication, while the other seemed like the kind of girl who probably knew a good apple pie recipe.

Neither of these impressions was strictly true about the real woman, of course. Dietrich had a strong nurturing side--Wilder said she was always looking for a sick crew member for whom she could make chicken soup--and Arthur was one of the most headstrong, eccentric actresses in Hollywood. Each, however, possessed a distinct movie star aura.

They were also two of the best actors of their time, and in this film each gave one of her best performances. Dietrich has the flashier role in some ways--and since she's by far the bigger icon, her face looms largest on the posters and DVD cases. She's pitch-perfect as the morally ambiguous Erika Von Schluetow. Who else could get away with answering the question, "Hey, how big a Nazi were you, anyway?" with "Oh, what does it matter about a woman's politics?" More than any other actress, Dietrich was able to look a man (or woman) in the eye and tell the unvarnished truth about human nature. Von Schluetow is a survivor who survives by sex and wit. She's too smart not to know that Pringle is half in love with her, half repelled by her--and their scenes together have a fascinating undertone of violence. But as Von Schluetow might say, a girl has got to eat. Her last scene here--in which she assesses her dire situation and immediately seizes on the best way to make the most of it--owes a lot to Dietrich's onscreen ethos. When it came to the subject of sex, Dietrich was the most self-actualized actress in the history of cinema.

If Dietrich held out the promise of carnal pleasure without pesky emotional entanglements, then Jean Arthur was like the prettiest tomboy in the neighborhood. She'd become a star as the street smart girl in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but she hated acting. Suffering from a crippling stage fright, she lived in terror of the camera and became, over the years, increasing difficult to work with (even nice guys like Jimmy Stewart and Frank Capra tended to be circumspect in their descriptions of her work habits, though not her talent). In fact, although she was a huge star, she'd given up acting when A Foreign Affair was made. She had to be dragged out of retirement to do the film, but the instincts of Wilder and his producers proved correct. As Phoebe Frost, Arthur gives one of her funniest, and most endearing, performances. With her squeaky voice and lopsided grin (whenever she gets determined she talks out of one side of her mouth), she's comic from the outset. The more prim and proper she gets, the funnier she gets. But when she falls in love, Arthur creates the emotional center of the movie. Watch the scene where Lund puts the moves on her in a darkened file room--"Don't tell me it's subversive to kiss a Republican," he coos--and you can almost watch her heart race. After he kisses her, she grabs his hair and yanks his head back, her mouth open in sudden sexual hunger, and then pulls him back for more. That's the point at which, without knowing it, Captain Pringle is in over his head. A later scene of a drunken Ms. Frost, in a beautiful blackmarket night gown, jumping to the front of a Berlin nightclub to strike up a singalong version of "The Iowa Corn Song" is one of the most effervescent moments I've ever seen in a movie.

The genius of this movie is that even though everyone in it is flawed--they're either a cynic, an ex-Nazi, or a Republican--you love them all. It's a juggling act that Wilder, his co-writers, his crew, and his remarkable cast pull off with grace and style.

***

For more on Arthur read here. And here. And here's a brief bio. And watch her singing the Iowa Corn Song here.

Dietrich has one of the best websites of any classic star, Marlene.com.

Finally, here's an overview of Wilder's career.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

What we tend to remember about the films of Frank Capra is the sentimentality of their belief in distinctly American values, what Orson Welles once called Capra's "sweet Saturday Evening Post" quality. What we often forget, however, is that at the center of most of his major work (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, It's a Wonderful Life, Meet John Doe) there is an ineradicable tension between those values and the darker forces of American society. In fact, that tension is the very subject of most of his best films.

This is certainly true of Capra's signature film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Starring Jimmy Stewart as Jefferson Smith, a small town youth leader unexpectedly appointed to a vacant Senate seat by an opportunistic governor, the film is Capra's take on the Washington establishment. Smith comes to DC only to find it overrun with crooked political hacks like his mentor, Senator Paine (Claude Rains), and alcoholic reporters like the cynical Diz Moore (Thomas Mitchell). His only real friend in town is his assistant, Ms. Saunders (Jean Arthur), and even she thinks he's a bowlegged doofus when he first shows up. Gradually, though, his good-natured honesty wins her over even while it's raising the ire of his state's main power broker, Mr. Taylor (Edward Arnold). With all of Washington's power leveled against him, Smith sets out to expose the corruption he's uncovered. The film ends in a justly famous sequence in which Smith takes to the floor of the Senate and, with the insider coaching of Ms. Saunders and some sympathetic gaveling from the Senate Majority Leader (Harry Carey), he essentially saves democracy.

To watch the film again is to be reminded once more what a powerful screen presence we had in Jimmy Stewart. There was something innately humorous about him, of course, but there was something fragile, as well. After the war, that fragility would grow dark and paranoid in films like Vertigo and The Naked Spur, but in either a comedy or a drama something about Stewart pulls you in. He seems normal--an odd quality, actually, for a movie star--and because of that he seems vulnerable to all the things which we the audience are vulnerable to. He's joined by the glorious Jean Arthur as the world weary Ms. Saunders. Capra's favorite actress, Arthur played a similar role opposite Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Blonde and beautiful, she nevertheless had a perfect just-us-boys quality, a kind of spunky, wised-up tomboyishness that stood in contrast to the wide-eyed virgin aura of her male leads.


The film is every inch a fable, and since it came out it's been co-opted by Democrats and Republicans alike. Most American mythology surrounds great men doing great things--Washington defeating the British, Lincoln abolishing slavery, Roosevelt shepherding us through the Depression and WWII, Martin Luther King leading his people in the most successful civil protest in history--but we don't have many tales of Senators launching into heroic filibusters. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington creates a hero out of the procedural workings of Congress, not an easy feat, and it's clear why the film is a favorite of the very Washington establishment it skewers. Everyone likes to think he's the underdog outsider against the powers that be, and every politician tries to sell himself that way, no matter how absurd the claim may be.

If nothing else, this shows the limits, and even the inherent dangers, of democratic mythology. If everyone runs as an outsider, then who is on the inside? If every candidate for office claims the title of Mr. Smith, then how are we to know the real Mr. Smith when he shows up?

This is exactly the point, however, on which Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has something valuable to say, because if we think of Capra as a gullible sentimentalist then we overlook the very essence of his work. His sentimentality is always singing a counterpoint to a deep suspicion of American financial and political institutions. It's not simply that he gives us a behind-the-scenes power broker in the figure of Mr. Taylor, it's that Mr. Taylor is a wholly believable creation. This owes a lot to the flawless performance of Edward Arnold, one of the best actors in our cinema and a man who exuded cold intelligence. His performance here goes hand in hand with his work in what was perhaps Capra's darkest film, Meet John Doe with Gary Cooper. Arnold is joined by the invaluable Claude Rains as the corrupt Senator Paine. Together these two men head a vast and seemingly all-powerful combination of private wealth and political muscle. This film cannot be fully appreciated without acknowledging that it was created during rise of the fascist era--and it is always worth remembering that fascism at the time was a completely legitimized political option. Capra's portrait of a rich media tycoon bamboozling a credulous public into crucifying a well-meaning everyman remains a sobering image.

It was an image he had already mined in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and one he would return to, for its starkest expression, in Meet John Doe. It is Capra's vision of the American people, in fact, that remains the most potent aspect of his cinema. Yes, he enjoys our good humor and our love of family and faith. Yes, he paints an affectionate view of our culture. But more than any other director of his period--even more than Welles--Capra painted a scary picture of society. In a Capra film, a crowd is always a potentially dangerous entity, its enthusiastic support or violent opposition being wholly fungible. Capra's vision of the American people as simple, decent folks is nearly always balanced by an anxiety about their susceptibility to rhetoric and political grandstanding. Simplicity has a dark side, he seems to be telling us, and we should never forget it. (The current media landscape, in which information is controlled by bigger and bigger corporations while at the same time being more easily disseminated, probably would have scared Capra to death.)

So Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a fable, yes, but it's more in keeping with the fables of seventy years ago when parents didn't flinch from telling their children horror stories before bed. Just as fairy tells used to be violent and scary, Capra's fable has rough edges. It has a happy ending, but its big bad wolves are very big and very bad, indeed.

***

Here's an fascinating look at the film's impact in Washington since its controversial premier in 1939.

And you can watch the movie here.

In Theaters Now

Here are some thoughts on current movies out right now.

1. "Up"-The older I get, the more interested I am in the raw materials of cinema. Contrasts of light, color combinations, movement and stillness, sounds and silence--these things are the component parts of cinema but we rarely stop to consider them as such. A good place to stop and observe them at work is in the new Pixar movie, Up, directed by Pete Docter. Now, I'm not normally an animation enthusiast, but something about Up caught my eye. I am here to report that it is a complete delight, a hugely entertaining movie with big laughs, eye-candy visuals of thrilling scope and accomplishment, and a few scenes of real emotional impact (there's a death near the beginning of the film that is as touching as anything I've seen at a movie in a while). The story of an elderly man and small boy who float to South America in a house hoisted by hundreds of balloons, Up is a capital-G Great film. Here's the trailer.

2. "Public Enemies"-I've waited a few days to write about this film because my feelings about it are unresolved. The story of John Dillinger as told by director Michael Mann, Public Enemies is well acted (for the most part) and sharply made, but I feel like there's something of an emotional disconnect at the center of it. Johnny Depp is charismatic as Dillinger but the character remains an enigma. Who is this guy? I'm not sure if Mann and Depp want us to think of him as a master thief or a self-deluded idiot. Maybe both. The cast around Depp is mostly effective--Marion Cotillard and Billy Crudup are particularly good--but I do not know what has happened to Christian Bale. His emotional intensity seems to have imploded, sucking in all his personality as an actor. He plays Melvin Purvis, a fascinating figure who was eventually double-crossed by J. Edgar Hoover and took his own life, but Bale's take on the character baffled me. He mostly scowls. Bale's a talented performer, but he needs...something. I could say the same thing about the movie. Here's the trailer.

3. "Whatever Works"-I remain an unreconstructed Woody Allen fanatic. It's become fashionable to flog the old boy, but he remains one of my favorite filmmakers. He's turned out a film every year--more or less--since 1969. Some of them are numbered among my favorite movies. Some of them are excellent, some are strong, some are weak, some are terrible. I'll concede some things: Allen has made a higher percentage of poor films in the last fifteen years than at anytime in his career, and two of these films--Hollywood Ending and Scoop--are the two worst films he's ever made. God, I hate Scoop. Having said that, Sweet and Lowdown ranks among his best work, Melinda and Melinda is an interesting film, and Match Point is a terrific neonoir, the best non-comedy he's made. To this list of good films, I would add Whatever Works, a comedy starring Larry David. The film has gotten mixed reviews, but, in America anyway, Woody Allen always gets mixed reviews. Critics often break down three ways: those who love Allen, those who think he's just repeating himself, those who think he's just repeating himself and hate him for it (this last group tends to strongly overlap with those who hate him for marrying his adoptive daughter). I'm an Allen lover, a fanatic really. I look forward to his yearly releases the same way I eagerly await the yearly release of a Robert B. Parker Spenser novel. So, granted, I'm inclined to like this movie. And I laughed all the way through it--and so did the audience I saw it with. When it was over, we walked out of the theater with silly smiles on our faces. It's a happy film about a nihilist, and I love nothing so much as happy films about nihilists. Here's the trailer.

4. "The Thin Man"-In the retrospective category of current releases, the AFI in Silver Spring (one of the greatest movie theaters in the world) is showing all six Thin Man films. The comedy/mystery series starred William Powell and Myrna Loy as the wisecracking alcoholic duo, Nick and Nora Charles. It's the 75th (!!!) anniversary of the first film and it is extraordinary how well it holds up. The charm of the film is the pairing of Powell and Loy. Powell delivered one-liners better than anyone in movies, and Myrna Loy is so damn adorable I don't have words for it. The series stayed strong through the second, third, and forth films, started to flag with the fifth, and puttered out with the sixth. Still, Powell and Loy never lost their chemistry. Here's the AFI's page on the series.

Things I Might See:

"The Hangover"-It's doubtful I'll commit a trip to the theater to see this film, but I've only heard it's hilarious from people whose definition of hilarious conforms to my own. So maybe it's a Netflix.

"The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3"-I'll be honest, if someone else had played the bad guy here I might have gone to see this movie. Denzel Washington is one of our most consistently effective actors, but Travolta is a long way from Pulp Fiction has his credits aren't pretty.


Things I'd Rather Drink Vomit Than Watch:

"Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen"-Michael Bay should be put on trial for crimes against humanity. It depresses me to think that parents might take their kids to see this shit when they could take them to see Up, instead.

"Bruno"-I don't know. I thought Borat was funny, very funny actually, but something about Sasha Baron Cohen feels one-trick pony to me. This new film looks awful.



Coming Up:

"500 Days Of Summer"-I'm in love with Zooey Deschanel. If you know her, tell her. The trailer to this is terrific. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of my favorite up and coming actors (if you haven't see Brick, you should), and waching Zooey charm him and then break his heart seems like a good way to spend a hot July afternoon.

"GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra"- Joseph Gordon-Levitt is also in this. Hey, a man has to eat. I understand. But I can't give my money to this thing.

"Inglourious Basterds"-It's a funny thing: I never like Tarantino's trailers, and I always like his films. This spaghetti western meets the Dirty Dozen flick is thus far holding true to form. The trailer is less than appetizing, but I can't wait to see the film. Part of my enthusiasm comes from having read the first few pages of the script, which are pretty damn great.

And Looking Forward:

"Shutter Island"-This new Scorsese flick looks like a maybe. It has a tense trailer, but DiCaprio looks...goofy, like a kid playing dress up. I haven't been a big fan of his work with Scorsese, either. The Departed was a good thriller (though Scorsese should have reined in Jack), but Gangs of New York was saved only by Daniel Day-Lewis. The Aviator is a film that becomes worse and worse the more you know about what a misogynistic asshole Howard Hughes was in real life. That film is a glorification of a real world-class shithead.

"Surrogates"-Another maybe. This sci-fi mystery stars Bruce Willis and has a neonoir feel to it. The trailer has a lot of explosions--a bad sign--but it also has a intriguing set-up: a future world in which no one leaves their homes is unbalanced when the first murder in years occurs and a cop must force himself to go out into the world. Agoraphobia meets 12 Monkeys?

"The Road"-Cormac McCarthy's novel is a masterpiece of coming-Apocalypse paranoia and father-son love story, but I'm skeptical about this adaptation. The trailer looks like a fundamental misunderstanding of McCarthy's text. Normally, I wouldn't lodge such a complaint--movies are not novels, after all, and filmmakers don't owe the author any fidelity--but this has "the book is a lot better" written all over it.

"Sherlock Holmes"-Nothing can ever match Jeremy Brett's interpretation of Sherlock Holmes. The BBC show in which he starred remains one of televisions authentic triumphs. The new movie from Guy Ritchie, alas, is a big budget action flick with lots of shit exploding. I'm more of a "quiet charms" man than a fan of kinetic action, but the film might find its own kind of charm. Here's the trailer for the movie.

Dishonored (1931)

The other night I went to the Smithsonian for the last installment of their series on the work of Josef von Sternberg. I’m disappointed I didn’t make it to any of the other films in the series, but I was lucky in one respect: the night I went they were showing an extremely rare print of von Sternberg’s wonderful romantic comedy Dishonored.

This was von Sternberg’s third film with Marlene Dietrich, and in some ways it’s the most fun. The Blue Angel (1930) was iconic and set the Marlene myth in place, and Morocco (1930) was a good follow up (with Marlene at her most androgynously beautiful in a tux and top hat), but with Dishonored von Sternberg created opulent goof, a film as silly as it is beautiful. The Scarlet Empress (1934) might be von Sternberg’s best—and most baroque—film, but Dishonored is his most entertaining.

The film begins with Marlene in the rain pulling up her stockings. She’s doing what she has to get by in WWI Austria, and we infer that what’s she doing involves befriending gentlemen for the night. She befriends just such a man (Gustav von Seyffertitz), but it turns out he’s not after sex. He wants to recruit her to spy on the Russians. Marlene figures “why not?” and starts befriending Russian spies for the night. Her assignment eventually involves her getting mixed up with Russia’s top spy, Col. Kranau (Victor McLaglen, in a fun performance). The two carry on an affair—stretching back and forth between their countries—while trying to have the other thrown into jail or shot of espionage. Ah, love.

Josef von Sternberg was an odd man, a control freak and famous misanthrope who alienated many of the people he worked with. His control of Dietrich was legendary, but Dietrich herself never seemed too disturbed by it. She knew that von Sternberg had molded her into an international star, and she further knew that having this brilliant director obsess over crafting sumptuous visual feasts with her at the center was a good thing. As von Sternberg once said, “The thing you have to understand is that Marlene is not Marlene. I’m Marlene. No one understands that better than her.”

This film is in love with her. The camera and light caress her—von Sternberg essentially worked as his own cinematographer—but the story allows her moments of unadorned goofiness. Watching Marlene get a Russian officer drunk is a joy to behold. Dishonored also keeps the tragic element of the Marlene persona in place—she will, of course, sacrifice all for her one true love—but this movie contains hands down the funniest execution ever put on film. How could anyone resist that?