Best Shot: Sherlock Jr.

This week over at The Film Experience, the Hit Me With Your Best Shot series is doing old Stoneface's dazzling Sherlock Jr.

Not that there are really any slow bits in this 44-minute film but the opening is fairly pedestrian considering where the film heads. Buster Keaton plays a film projectionist who dreams of being a detective. He gets his chance when his romantic rival frames him for the crime of stealing his girl's father's pocket watch.

The film heats up when Keaton falls asleep on the job and imagines himself transposed into the movie he's projecting. It becomes a surreal experiment in slapstick and visual imagery. There are some beautiful and creative shots during the sequence but I've selected as a best shot the shot below, which was very hard to capture. Essentially it's car chase where Keaton and his girl pull up to a house, duck into it through one window, then escape from another window when their pursuers arrive in another car. They steal their pursuer's car and the chase resumes. 

Why this shot? I picked it because it demonstrates how much action you can put in a single frame, and how this has become a lost art. So much happens here that as a viewer you don't even know where to look. As you're watching the bad guys dart into the house, Keaton and his girl are escaping out another window and into a different car. It's only one scene of many dynamic frames in this film but watching the movie last night I was really struck by how little we see action composed this way anymore. In The Dark Knight Rises for example every shot seems there to relate one piece of information. One punch. One leap. And it makes for very flat viewing.

Here are a few more shots I particularly liked.

Best Shot: How To Marry a Millionaire

My second entry in The Film Experience's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series. I have mixed feelings about this comedy from 1953. The three leads are terrific: Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable play three single models in New York City who decide to lease a swanky apartment and focus their sites on only rich men. Monroe is, as always, a terrific comedienne and she really only gets one joke: she's blind but won't wear her glasses in front of men. Grable is sweet and kind of dumb and gets the least interesting storyline. Bacall is a no-nonsense millionaire-seeking missile and her line readings are great. She can also move across a movie screen just about as well as any actress ever could.

My problem with the film is the men. There was really no way they were ever going to live up to the ladies in this one but they don't even come close. There are really six men in total: the rich ones that the women aim for and the less-rich ones they fall for. Of that group only William Powell, as an elderly widow who becomes involved with Bacall, makes any kind of impression. In fact, I think she picks the wrong man in not winding up with him. They have a kind of gentle chemistry that really works.

For that reason I'm picking as my favorite shot the one in which Bacall comes across the frame to kiss William Powell. It's so natural and it's a great kiss, despite the years of difference in their age. I love the look on her face and her hands and the spare apartment behind them (the furniture has been hocked). Most movies kisses are framed in the center of the frame so I like how director Jean Negulesco switches this up. Maybe I'll pretend this is the happy ending of the film.

Here are some more of my screenshots I took while watching this.

Okay, maybe this is really my favorite shot.

The winning couples.

Upside down book. Blank stare.

I love all their expressions and how much the audience can read them.

The girls hatch their plan over hot dogs and champagne.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: The Royal Tenenbaums

I was very pleased to be asked to participate in The Film Experience's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series, in which various bloggers all pick their favorite shot from a specific film. This week, Wes Anderson's almost-perfect The Royal Tenenbaums, a film that has grown on me throughout the years. When I first saw it I fell in love with the elder characters, Royal and Etheline Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman and Anjelica Huston), plus Etheline's suitor Henry (Danny Glover), but I was less pleased with their moody off-spring, Richie, Chas, and Margot (Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, and Gwyneth Paltrow). But, like families maybe, they've all grown on me, and one day maybe I'll even grow to appreciate Eli Cash, the annoying wannabe Tenenbaum played by Owen Wilson.

But it's still Gene Hackman as the disgraced patriarch Royal that I love the most. He is the heart and soul of the film and Hackman's performance, for my money, is one of the best of his career (no small accomplishment). So I'm going with my gut on this one, and instead of one of Anderson's beautifully composed intricately designed filmic dioramas I have picked the shot that moves me the most. Royal in the ambulance, dying and being comforted by Chas, the son he was most at odds with.

It's still a beautifully composed shot, of course. Anderson excels at the dynamic frame, filling it with meaningful details. In this case note the presence of Sparkplug, the dog that Royal purchases from the fire department to replace his grandchildren's dead pooch Buckley. (Note to Wes Anderson: Please stop killing dogs in movies.) There is also the nicely laid-out pin-stripe jacket to balance the frame.

But I picked this frame because it's about forgiveness and redemption, which is what The Royal Tenenbaums is ultimately about, among other things, of course. Cheeseburgers, dalmatian mice, tennis meltdowns, wooden fingers, etcetera.

The screenshot is mine. Below are a few more I took while re-watching the film. I have to say that I was sorely tempted to select the one of Royal laughing at Margot's play while everyone else frowns.

"Is that a tic tac?"