Documental sobre Blake Edwards: 

1.

2.

3

Blake Edwards:
by June Werrett

It would be easy to dismiss Blake Edwards as a director of light entertainment. He has made many highly commercial films, many hilarious comedies and has employed some of the most outrageous sexual metaphors and offensive stereotypes in his films. His contribution to film culture, however, is enormous, diverse and unique. He is a great director, but not in the restrictive ‘high’ art sense of the term; his films blend both high and low by delving into the depths of the sordid while executing that depth with meticulous film artistry. Even though Edwards is particularly expert at comedy, and takes old forms such as slapstick well into the modern era, not all of his films are comedies, for instance Days of Wine and Roses (1962), Wild Rovers (1971), and The Tamarind Seed (1974). He is both a writer and a director of many film genres and whether the films are westerns, detective stories, musicals or comedies, there is a sensitivity, a bleak view, that is unique to Edwards: an insecure world of tense relationships and pain.

Edwards is from an era of filmmakers who are not film-school educated. He learnt his craft through immersion in the industry. His mother married his stepfather, a veteran production manager, when he was three years old and they moved to Los Angeles. Edwards wrote, produced and had small acting roles before directing his first feature Bring Your Smile Along (1955). He is as much a writer as he is a director, having created works for radio and television. These early creations demonstrate an interest in detectives, a subject he would stick with throughout his career. Some of his ‘detective’ works include the radio series, “Richard Diamond: Private Detective” for Dick Powell (1949) and the television series “Peter Gunn” (1958). His film Gunn (1967) and his television film Peter Gunn (1989) are based on the initial Gunn creation. Edwards has written many films for and with others, especially for Richard Quine in the ’50s, and he has written or co-written most of his own screenplays. Edwards attributes his special technique of “Topping the Topper”, compounding one joke with another, to working as a writer with Leo McCarey. (1)

The Pink Panther

The Edwards canon includes highly commercial and popular successes as well as drastic failures. From 1955 until The Son of the Pink Panther (1993), Edwards directed 39 films. Six of these, mainly the earlier ones, I have not been able to see. Edwards has both benefited from the commercial side of Hollywood and suffered from its artistic restraints. Some of the most successful and best known of his films are Operation Petticoat (1959), The Pink Panther series of films of the ’60s and ’70s and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). The lesser-known and less successful works, although no less worthy of merit, are What Did You Do In the War Daddy? (1966) and That’s Life (1986). The lowest ebb in Edwards’ career, a time of deep hurt and conflict with major studios, was in the early ’70s. At this time, his films – Darling Lili (1970), Wild Rovers and The Carey Treatment (1972) – were severely cut and altered. It was following The Carey Treatment that Edwards left America to work in Europe. There he wrote the script for his profound satire on Hollywood, S.O.B. – not to be made into a film until 1981. He returned to America to make“10” (1979) which was a box office success: this film marks a turning point towards his more personal films of the ’80s. Many of these later films present as cheap sex comedies, and yet they explore tender themes, particularly those of diminishing artistic creativity and a concern with virility, death and ageing. Some of the most prominent films to explore these themes are, The Man Who Loved Women (1983), That’s Life! and Skin Deep (1989).

The later films are autobiographical and Edwards’ adverse experiences with the studios reverberate at many different levels of dialogue and manner. Both S.O.B. and Sunset (1988) are explicit in the way they expose deceit and malice within the film industry. The callous ring of the line “You’ll never work in Hollywood again” finds variation in both of these films. Edwards’ convictions are transparently masked in comedy and fantasy: film stories exist within film stories, and personal truths exist within fairy tales. Sunset, set in Hollywood 1929, is the search for film-truth and that truth manifests in the running joke, “And that’s the way it really happened – give or take a lie or two.”

S.O.B. is about a film producer who dies trying to retrieve his negatives from a major studio. It is introduced in the manner of a fairy tale and is concluded as one. The films that are not explicitly concerned with the film industry project an equally harsh world in which to survive. The male is often treated unfairly by his boss and fired from his job: Walter (Jimmy Smits) in Switch (1991), Walter (Bruce Willis) in Blind Date (1987) and Dennis (Howie Mandel) in A Fine Mess (1986) all suffer this fate.

No matter how lucid or obscure the autobiographical may be, filmmaking is Edwards’ ultimate topic and deep affection. For him, the processes of filmmaking are a way of uncovering truths. At first unknown to a viewer, Sunset and The Party (1968) begin as films being filmed on location: their surface peels away and finds another surface world, another film world beneath them. Affection dwells in the creative ways different eras and types of film tradition are incorporated into the films: cartoon, silent, western, screwball and romantic. The Pink Panther films not only begin with a lengthy cartoon sequence, but they themselves are cartoon-like, featuring destruction, return-to life situations and characters larger than life. The Great Race (1965) is more or less a series of slapstick episodes and it is dedicated to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. A Fine Mess is in part a re-make of the Laurel and Hardy short, The Music Box (James Parrott, 1932), and does not simply duplicate the comic pair; rather, it multiplies them and gives form to all kinds of male comic partnerships – smart and dumb, fat and thin, mean and dupe. Sunset ends in the manner of an early film-strip: Wyatt Earp (James Garner) looks out of a moving railway carriage window as the young cowboy/showman, Tom Mix (Bruce Willis) performs his horse tricks by the side of the track.

That’s Life!
Of course, an audience need not know about an author’s life in order to enjoy the work or to sense that it is personal. The odd thing about Edwards’ films is that the more one studies them and the more one knows about his life, the more complex and intense the autobiographical becomes. Edwards’ films involve his family and friends, in all sorts of curious ways and at different levels of production. His son Geoffrey Edwards is sometimes credited as co-screenwriter, co-editor and some of the films are Geoffrey productions. Daughter Jennifer Edwards acts in many of the later films and Julie Andrews, who he married in 1969, often plays lead roles. Moreover, Andrews’ parts often go against type. She plays sexually mature roles, and she does not always sing, see for example her roles in The Tamarind Seed and The Man Who Loved Women. More intriguingly, Andrews often plays the wife or partner of the middle-aged male who is in sexual and artistic crises. This male character is usually an artist of some kind: a music composer in “10”, a sculptor in The Man Who Loved Women, an architect in That’s Life!. Sometimes the personal is so intense that it is bizarre, almost to the point of embarrassment. At the end of The Man Who Loved Women, Andrews and Jennifer Edwards embrace each other in sadness at the funeral of the main character, David Fowler (Burt Reynolds) – as two of the many women in his life who truly and deeply loved him.

As a post-war Hollywood director, Edwards occupies a somewhat unique position. He has continued to work in the style of Hollywood classicism despite industrial and aesthetic changes. He is not considered part of the New Hollywood, (2) and he is noted for his “Hollywood professionalism.” (3) Nevertheless Edwards is, in a sense, also modern; he, the creator of these comedies of manners, is seen not simply as another Ernst Lubitsch, but as an extension of him. For Myron Meisel, Edwards “projects the philosophy of Lubitsch forward in time, rather than backward, and his distinctively different visual style represents an appropriately modern response to the very different world to which he applies his wiles.” (4) The films seem to have the lavish quality of the studio days: palatial homes, expensive cars and ‘highly’ dressed women. At the same time, they have a sense of the modern in the abstract way they splash colour and evoke mood: strokes of red for sexual passion, strokes of blue for male malaise. The films involve both light romance and the sexually vulgar. Moreover, this classic/modern visual style is in unison with its music: the sound of classic, jazz, pop. Henry Mancini’s musical scores, in particular, Peter Gunn, The Pink Panther, and “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s are as indelible to the popular mind as is Edwards’ distinct vision. The Edwards/Mancini collaboration exemplifies this beautifully executed, high/low confident style.

Despite Edwards’ enormous contribution to film culture, he has had very little attention given to him by critics. Peter Lehman and William Luhr’s two volumes are the only book length writing on him currently in existence. Andrew Sarris is early to give Edwards recognition by including him in The American Cinema, Directors and Directions, 1929-1968. Sarris marks 1963 as the time when Edwards began to deserve more than cult recognition: “Since 1963, Edwards has emerged from the ranks of commissioned directors with such personal works as The Pink Panther [1964], Shot in the Dark [1964], The Great Race, What Did You Do in the War Daddy? and Gunn.” (5) French critics write about Edwards’ films with exceptional sensitivity. (6) Adrian Martin not only writes lovingly of the films, but he also shows the value of Edwards’ work for film criticism – especially for a criticism that is constrained by purism, by a “recourse to the high moral ground.” (7) Martin’s 1980 appraisal of “10” in Cinema Papers is an important article for offering another way to read the later films. He not only identifies two different readings for “10”, one humanist the other reactionary, but also a third: one that implicates the viewer in their relationship with the cinema.

Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria
Implicating the viewer in the cinematic process occurs by way of looking at others looking: looking through doorways, opposite apartments, frames, mirror reflections and telescopes. This method of looking involves complex moralities: outward appearances can be deceptive and situations can be viewed from many different perspectives. In A Shot in the Dark a chain of different perspectives occurs: a servant watches another servant, watching another servant who is watching another servant listening to a conversation behind a door. The essence of Victor/Victoria (1982) is a complex exercise in seeing and believing: a female (Andrews) acts as a man who is impersonating a female performer. King Marchand (James Garner) doubts what he sees and needs to see Victor/Victoria naked in order to confirm his beliefs. A key line in the film is “People believe what they see.” In both Switch and Victor/Victoria a neighbour will peep from a doorway and make false conclusions about what they see; the viewer, however, knows that what the neighbour sees is untrue and that the values the neighbour makes are based on outward appearances. This also happens with disguise in dress, and it is a particularly elaborate and complex affair with the swapping of military uniforms in What Did You Do in the War Daddy? In Gunn cross-dressing implicates the viewer in making false assumptions: the film’s suspense rests on these false assumptions, the truth revealed to the viewer at the end.

While Edwards offers these rich engagements, I must admit that it has taken me a long time to warm to his films, especially some of the later ones. I have learnt, however, that it is useless to either defend or to criticize the racism and sexism in them. That kind of discussion misses the contradictions that exist in the humanity and the humour of these films; it also fails to appreciate much of his artistry which is less concerned with the obvious, the gender issues, than it is with the tortuous passing of an era. Stuart Byron identifies a common Edwards theme: gallantry. For Byron, Edwards is “the last classicist, which means the last traditional sexist.” (8) In many of the later films, the male hero is forever coming to terms with his sexual urges, and this can be difficult to watch. At the same time, women can be extremely cruel to the men, and the men are often punished for their desires. Gunn (Craig Stevens) is of a bygone era, the ultimate gentleman out to save women. Whether one takes the films to be misogynist or patronizing towards women, Edwards’ world is one of ideological contradiction. One looks through his vision, and it is his vision that kills him (or his alter-ego rather, in the guise of Burt Reynolds) at the end of The Man Who Loved Women. In the last spasm of Hollywood classicism, Reynolds’ character falls out of his hospital bed and dies groping at his vision of the night nurse’s legs, rendered in silhouette by the light through her dress.

Operation Petticoat
Another feature of Edwards’ films that can cause resistance, and yet is so special to the director, is their obscenity, their violation of social codes: the old woman farting in “10”, the garlic breath of the Italians in Daddy, and the gross Japanese stereotype (Mickey Rooney) in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Edwards’ comedy is in part that of an old tradition, one that stretches back to Aristophanes and is typified by farce, obscenity and sexual metaphor. (9) Edwards executes this humour as a fine art, and it can often indicate painful male experiences. Space is one method: the narrow passage of the submarine in Operation Petticoat is both a sexual metaphor and a venue for embarrassing sexual encounters between male and female. Moreover, the submarine is in the shape of a phallus, painted pink – a further embarrassment for the Caucasian male. Images of castration and anality are also ways of indicating pain for the male: in A Fine Mess, a statue is shot in the genitals, and in The Party a billiard cue is repeatedly jabbed into Hrundi V. Bakshi’s (Peter Sellers) behind. The toilet humour in The Party reaches nightmare proportion when Bakshi, in excruciating pain, desperately wants to urinate and is unable to access a toilet. In this long sequence the pain intensifies through the imagery of a spurting fountain, a cat in its litter-box and the eventual turning on of the sprinkler system. These are just some of the events that taunt the protagonist before he finally finds a toilet.

Edwards’ professionalism involves a meticulous use of timing. His films are acutely measured and his protagonists attempt to survive in a world that breaks apart and turns into chaos. Just when a character needs to get out through a door, a door handle comes off and leaves him useless or trapped. Dialogue and actions are timed to meet with precision. Gunn’s line, “May God strike me dead if it isn’t the Gospel truth”, is followed by a massive explosion. Car chases are timed to either collide or miss vital connections. Telephones ring at either opportune or inopportune times and often in bedrooms, exposing private lives. The synchronizing of watches in A Shot in the Dark is plagued with watches stopping, thus creating a massive play with tension. The opening sequence of this film is an exquisite exercise in timing: no sooner does one person enter a door or leave through a door, another enters – just missing the other. This sequence is a miniature piece of orchestration in itself as it plays to, and lasts for the length of, Mancini’s musical number “Shadows of Paris.”

The films are like poems in the way they repeat scenes and themes with variance. Sunset repeats the moving relationship of two cowboys in Wild Rovers. Blind Date repeats the theme of alcoholism from Days of Wine and Roses: all with another twist. The patterns are intricate, and like the best of all art, one could search endlessly to discover them. Edwards’ films may seem as if they belong to another era, but what makes them so passionate and different is that Edwards is acutely aware of his position and is prepared to take the past forward into another time no matter what the consequences.

© June Werrett, September 2002

50 Best High School Movies: 

This is the latest list comprised of the 50 best high school movies of all time, polled in the US. The source is found at official Entertainment Weekly website. Details for each movie are listed online.

1. The Breakfast Club – 1985

We see it as we want to see it — in the simplest terms, the most convenient definition: The Breakfast Club is the best high school movie of all time. It may lack the scope of its peers — the drinking, the driving, the listless loitering in parking lots — as well as any scenes that actually take place during school. But if hell is other people — and high school is hell — then John Hughes is the genre’s Sartre, and this is his No Exit. The concept is simple: one Saturday detention, five unhappy teens, and their scramble to prove they’re each something more than a brain (Anthony Michael Hall), an athlete (Emilio Estevez), a basket case (Ally Sheedy), a princess (Molly Ringwald), and a criminal (Judd Nelson). Following the farcical fluff of Sixteen Candles, the issues Hughes explored — sex, drugs, abuse, suicide, the need to belong to something — were surprisingly subversive and handled with bracing, R-rated honesty. ”’Kids movie’ was a derogatory term,” recalls Nelson, ”and Hughes was definitely not making that.” Thus, 21 years later, the film still sparks intense debates about the trials of teen life. (Sheedy’s goth freak gets a makeover, then gets the guy: well-earned happy ending or antifeminist propaganda? Discuss!). Never mind the serious sociological stuff. The Breakfast Club rules because watching the group dismantle/ignore the authority of Principal ”Dick” Vernon (Paul Gleason) is a vicarious thrill at any age. It rules because Simple Minds’ ”Don’t You Forget About Me” is a kick-ass theme. Mostly it rules because, as Hall puts it: ”In the end, you learn maybe we’re more alike than we realize, and that’s kind of cool.” Leave it to the neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie to get all cheesy.

2. Fast Times at Ridgemont High – 1982

When screenwriter Cameron Crowe went undercover to observe the species Teenagerus americanus, he returned with more than the usual grab-bag of anecdotes about horny, apple-pie-humping guys and the popularity-obsessed girls who must fight them off with a stick. He returned with 24-karat truth. To watch Fast Times today is to know exactly what it felt like to be fixated on sex, drugs, and rock & roll in Southern California circa 1982. It also launched careers and dished out still-relevant life lessons: Jennifer Jason Leigh (relax your throat muscles when fellating a carrot), Phoebe Cates (always knock before entering a bathroom), and Judge Reinhold. And Sean Penn’s Jeff Spicoli, with his checkerboard Vans and bong-hit grin, was a geyser of catchphrases (”Aloha, Mr. Hand!”). The film never strains for coming-of-age treacle. Maybe that’s why it still feels so…right. Especially Damone’s sage advice: ”When it comes down to making out, whenever possible put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.”

3. Dazed and Confused – 1993

Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson likes high school girls because even though he gets older, they stay the same age. We feel the same way about Richard Linklater’s minutiae-filled comedic epic about the last day of school in 1976 — we may get older, but Dazed is ageless. And for a movie featuring so many stoners, Dazed is mammothly ambitious: Few other films say as much about starting, sticking around in, and leaving high school.

4. Rebel Without a Cause – 1955

”You’re tearing me apart,” Jim Stark (James Dean) howls at his parents. For the new kid in school, it doesn’t get any easier. Though he finds a friend in the extremely troubled Plato (Sam Mineo), Stark gets into it on his first day with a gang of bullies, in a knife fight and later in a chickie run. Dean was a refreshing change from the well-scrubbed teens of earlier Hollywood films. Here was a character young audiences could finally recognize.

5. Heathers – 1989

For those who dream about offing an obnoxious classmate, Heathers is the ultimate fantasy. Full of mordant wit, shocking violence, and savvy performances by Christian Slater and Winona Ryder, the flick was the antithesis of the earnest ’80s John Hughes films — you’d never see Molly Ringwald serving up a kitchen-cleaner cocktail for Ally Sheedy. Even today, Heathers’ spin on cliques, teen suicide, and homosexuality still has bite.

6. American Graffiti – 1973

Graffiti’s cast of teens — including Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard — has serious decisions to make on a late-summer night filled with rock music and hot rods, the kind that can only be made if they stay up ’til dawn. Should they ditch town for college? Should they stay with their gals? Whatever the choice, it infuses this most innocently joyous eve-of-adulthood film with that bittersweet feeling of leaving one’s childhood behind.

7. Clueless – 1995

It’s a rare movie that makes you want to befriend the prettiest, most popular girl in school. But not all girls are Cher (Alicia Silverstone), who gets as many killer lines as fashion ensembles, learns that seeing the best in others is a way to better yourself, and discovers the joy of shopping with a well-dressed gay man — all at the ripe age of 15. Credit writer-director Amy Heckerling for making this modern-day Emma consistently smart and funny.

8. Boys N the Hood – 1991

Set in South Central Los Angeles, John Singleton’s Oscar-nominated directorial debut revealed what it’s like to come of age — and cram for the SATs — in a community plagued by crime, violence, and gang warfare. By contrasting the collegiate aspirations of bookworm Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and football star Ricky Baker (Morris Chestnut) with the self-destructive lifestyle of dropout/drug dealer Doughboy (Ice Cube), Boyz effectively pimped for education.

9. Election – 1999

Before taking on geezers (About Schmidt) and oenophiles (Sideways), director Alexander Payne in Election scabrously exposed the most embarrassing shortcomings of high schoolers in an artful, hilarious way. He doesn’t go easy on anybody — not Matthew Broderick’s weak, meddling teacher, nor Reese Witherspoon’s Fargo-accented student-council-president candidate. In fact, Election is as mean as high school at its worst.

10. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – 1986

Who didn’t want to be Ferris in 12th grade? Who wouldn’t want school to be a magical place where you could wake up and call in sick (with an awesome hacking-cough keyboard) and then see your name in a get-well-soon message painted on the side of a water tower by lunch, all while you were cruising through Chicago in a red Ferrari? Thanks to Matthew Broderick as Ferris, teenagerdom has never felt more fun or mythic.

11. Say Anything... – 1989

Go on: Hoist that boom box above your head and turn up ”In Your Eyes.” Stand motionless with a fixed expression of unrequited but determined love. And watch Cameron Crowe’s ode to young passion, which made John Cusack the thinking teen’s heartthrob and should have done the same for Ione Skye. If the postgraduation romance between an earnest kickboxer and a sheltered valedictorian doesn’t win you over, repeat steps one and two and listen closer.

12. Mean Girls – 2004

There was a time when Lindsay Lohan was best known for her acting rather than her party-hopping. Showcasing La Lohan in arguably her best role to date, this Tina Fey-scripted film also boasts a breakout turn by Rachel McAdams as evil queen bee Regina George (”Gretchen, stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen! It’s not going to happen!”). While Mean Girls is technically a comedy, its depiction of girl-on-girl cattiness stings incredibly true.

13. High School – 1968

Although it was added to the elite National Film Registry the same year as 2001 and Chinatown, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary is — like many of his fly-on-the-wall nonfiction films — extremely difficult to find on video. But it is essential. Thirty years before reality TV, Wiseman took his camera to Philadelphia’s Northeast High School and shot what was there, editing it, without narration, into a devastating indictment of bureaucracy and enforced conformity

14. Donnie Darko - 2001

There are funnier high school movies, and ones with better soundtracks and more nostalgic value, but how many of those deal with time travel, alternate universes, fate, God, free will, therapy, censorship, teenage angst, falling airplane engines, pedophilia, and a scary freaking bunny? Point made. And while we still don’t necessarily understand it all, few films deal so matter-of-factly with the sheer dread (both literal and metaphoric) of teen life.

15. Carrie – 1976

School can be terrifying, especially when you’re an awkward telekinetic teen whose mother is a loony religious zealot. Poor Carrie White can’t even get through P.E. class without being viciously mocked by her peers. But in this Brian De Palma classic, the wallflower eventually gets her revenge in the spectacularly gory prom climax (even disposing of a Kotter-era John Travolta). Sissy Spacek’s Oscar-nominated turn in the title role is pure, silent rage.

16. Lucas - 1986

Sure, sensitive jock Charlie Sheen ends up shirtless for seven minutes due to a freak blender accident in Home Ec. But we remember Lucas for its smart scrawny hero (an affecting Corey Haim), who showed that the strongest kid is the one who walks through the halls knowing he’ll be teased. And that the most interesting person finds beauty where he can — even in the sewer system, sitting beneath a manhole cover, listening to a live symphony above.

17. Peggy Sue Got Married – 1986

Would you change anything if you could relive high school? Possibly hook up with that beatnik of a guy you always wondered about? Until Chevrolet makes an actual plutonium-powered time machine, we’ll have to live vicariously through this humorously goofy Francis Ford Coppola flick, in which Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) goes back in time to figure out whether pompadoured heartthrob Charlie (Nicolas Cage) is her one and only.

18. Rock ‘n’ Roll High School – 1979

Producer Roger Corman’s comedy is a jiggly love affair set at Vince Lombardi High and centered on matchmaker Eaglebauer (Clint Howard), whose office is a men’s room stall, and ”Riff Randell, rock & roller” (pre-Stripes hottie P.J. Soles), who must rebel against Principal Togar (Mary Woronov) to see a forbidden — and very excellent — Ramones show. Think Spinal Tap and Dazed and Confused skipping study hall together to get stoned.

19. The Last Picture Show - 1971

Peter Bogdanovich’s black-and-white film takes us to the tumbleweed burg of Anarene, Tex., where Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, and Randy Quaid vie for Cybill Shepherd, the town’s No. 2 seductress. (Her mom’s No. 1.) These horny, angst-ridden teens deal with sex, mortality, money, and a li’l Texas football by being themselves: subconsciously callous. But the witty banter, mostly by the grown-ups, makes it all less bleak.

20. Dead Poets Society – 1989

Perhaps the finest movie in a shockingly sparse mini-genre: the high school weepie. (After all, high school makes you cry sometimes.) Here, if Robert Sean Leonard’s suicide doesn’t get you (”My son! My son!”), then the ending — Ethan Hawke’s stirring ”O Captain! My Captain!,” Maurice Jarre’s blaring bagpipes, and teacher Robin Williams’ ”Thank you, boys, thank you” — will. Only somebody too cool for school could resist.

21. Grease – 1978

Still the top-grossing film musical ever, Grease may look too pure to be ”pink,” but listen to those lyrics (and watch John Travolta ogle Olivia Newton-John in ”You’re the One That I Want”) and you may find yourself blushing. Beneath the karaoke-heaven soundtrack lies a story with teen pregnancy, ”pussy wagons,” and a TV personality trying to put an aspirin in a girl’s Coke. Naughty but harmless, it’s just like high school should be.

22. American Pie – 1999

A frivolous teen comedy that left its mark: Jason Biggs taught us the dangers of webcam misuse (and baked-goods abuse), while the guy who’d become Harold — or was it Kumar? — popularized the term MILF. Pie was both funnier and bawdier than Porky’s, though that 1981 romp gets points for Kim Cattrall’s outrageous orgasm scene. But even she can’t top Alyson Hannigan’s perfect delivery of the line (all together now): ”This one time? At band camp?”

23. Cooley High – 1975

Written by Good Times co-creator Eric Monte and directed by Michael Schultz, this tearjerker provided the blueprint for Boyz N the Hood. In mid-’60s Chicago, geek Leroy ”Preach” Jackson (Glynn Turman) and hoop star Richard ”Cochise” Morris (Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs) struggle to stay out of trouble while prepping for graduation. The soundtrack, featuring G.C. Cameron’s ballad ”It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” remains as beloved as the film.

24. Rushmore - 1998

For some reason, Rushmore doesn’t quite feel like a high school movie. Maybe that’s because director/co-writer Wes Anderson’s wonderful comedy doesn’t feel like any other movie ever made. But it’s about school days: Just the fact that Jason Schwartzman’s tirelessly enterprising Max Fischer is a student at all becomes palpably bittersweet, since he’s too young to ever win Olivia Williams, the teacher of his (and anyone’s) dreams.

25. Hoosiers – 1986

Most school movie jocks are belligerent bullies. But Jimmy Chitwood (Maris Valainis) is part Larry Bird, part Rain Man, letting the swish of the basketball net do his talking. Hoops-crazed Hickory, Ind., adores him for it. His support of embattled Coach Dale (Gene Hackman) sways the town, and his skill transforms Dale from goat to genius. In the championship game, the Brylcreemed god overrules Dale’s last-second strategy with three words: ”I’ll make it.” Definitely.

26. Pretty in Pink – 1986

Perhaps the most controversial ending to a teen romance ever. (Behind Romeo and Juliet? Fine.) Should Andie (Molly Ringwald) have chased after rich, repentant Blane (Andrew McCarthy), or stayed at the prom with poor, devoted Duckie (Jon Cryer)? That we, women now in our 30s, still care is a testament to John Hughes’ script about love across class lines (point for Blane); the meaning of friendship and individuality (point for Duckie); and the evil nature of wealthy high schoolers in crisp, white clothing (point for James Spader).

27. To Sir, With Love – 1967

Way before Mr. Holland began teaching his opus and Michelle Pfeiffer was molding dangerous minds, Sidney Poitier was taming a room of unruly British teens with his real-life lessons and tough-love tactics (a boxing glove to the stomach, anyone?). Having himself played an insubordinate kid in 1955’s Blackboard Jungle, the student masterfully becomes the teacher in this sappy but never maudlin tale of inspiration and tolerance.

28. Back to the Future – 1985

A.K.A. the coolest movie ever to feature a Huey Lewis and the News song. The film ingeniously literalizes high school’s sexual frustration and disdain for one’s parents by having Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly getting hit on over and over again by Lea Thompson as his young, future mother (thanks to that time-traveling DeLorean). It just goes to prove that the parental units were just as horny back in the day as we were.

29. Gregory’s Girl - 1982

Gregory’s Girl is short on stars, long on soccer, and it sounds like a Weird Al Yankovic parody of Rick Springfield. But it is also sweetly hilarious as gangly Scottish teen Gregory (Gordon John Sinclair) falls for an out-of-his-league girl. The result is guaranteed to make viewers feel much better about their own post-pubescent awkwardness — unless they, too, ever tried to romance someone with the information that ”When you sneeze, it comes out your nose 180 miles an hour.”

30. Bring It On - 2000

They’re sexy, they’re cute, they’re popular to boot! Kirsten Dunst plays Torrance, the bright-eyed cheerleading captain who must save her high school’s squad from a major cheeragedy: going down as the team who stole routines. In the end, we learn there’s more to cheerleading than loads of hairspray, teeny halter tops, and back-stabbing: These are athletes who know how to really bring it. We give this comedy five spirit fingers up!

31. The Karate Kid – 1984

We practiced ”the crane” and wasted money on a Bonsai tree. But the real reason this movie makes the cut: Rocky director John G. Avildsen understood that Mr. Miyagi (late Oscar nominee Pat Morita) had a lot to say — about finding balance, about choosing mentors wisely, about disguising defensive martial-arts techniques in home improvement (and yourself in a shower curtain, if it meant you could attend your high school Halloween dance undetected by Cobra Kai bullies). Perhaps that explains why only one of Daniel-san’s training sessions is set to music: When Miyagi talked, we, like outsider Ralph Macchio, listened.

32. Scream – 1996

Aside from the awesomeness of seeing Henry ”The Fonz” Winkler as a square principal, Scream is the supreme teen horror movie specifically because it is so self-aware of how ridiculous and formulaic teen horror movies can be — even those that are set outside of high school, in college dorms or summer camps. And if sex equals death, as fright flicks and parents alike have tried to warn us, then how cool is it (spoiler alert!) for Scream to make the killer Neve Campbell’s boyfriend — the one trying to get in her pants? Scary cool, we say.

33. Hoop Dreams - 1994

This documentary follows William Gates and Arthur Agee, two kids who avoid the pitfalls of growing up in the Chicago slums by living, breathing, and playing basketball. As with any kid who plays ball, Gates and Agee fantasize about one thing: making it to the NBA. For all audiences, this is a purely inspirational tale. For some, it’s nostalgic, bringing back dreams you once had of making it to the pros.

34. Get Real – 1999

A typical first-love-with-the-school-jock story, but with a twist. ”Sex on legs” track star John Dixon (Brad Gorton) really does fall for Steven Carter (Ben Silverstone), the bright, gawky student journalist who’s lusted after Dixon while tiptoeing around female classmates on platonic dates. Of course, Dixon also has an official girlfriend. But when our hero yearns for a romance that’s a little more public, the baton gets dropped in a way that’s touchingly, poignantly real.

35. Brick – 2006

”Nah, bulls gum it. They’d flash their dusty standards at the wide-eyes, probably find some yeg to pin.” The high school kids in Brick talk like this for the entire movie. With a femme fatale, a dead girlfriend, and a mysterious cape-wearing drug lord, Brick gives you a teen flick in the guise of a noir thriller where everything is all very life-and-death. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what high school is like.

36. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – 2005

No, we haven’t lost our minds. One of J.K. Rowling’s ingenious ideas was to blend two literary traditions, fantasy and coming-through-school fiction (à la Tom Brown’s School Days). That’s particularly true in Goblet, which depicts 14-year-old Harry’s heightened state of adolescent anxiety, about the big (Quidditch) game, about finding a date for the big dance, and about juggling homework while saving the wizard world from evil Lord Voldemort.

37. Friday Night Lights – 2004

Is there a sight more wonderful than kids playing a sport just for the sheer love of the game? That’s a vision entirely absent from Peter Berg’s superbly unsparing, based-on-real-events examination of the diamond-forming pressure present in small-town-Texas high school football. A great teen movie and a great sports movie, albeit one that may prompt more than one young ballplayer to switch to darts.

38. Bye Bye Birdie – 1963

High school is definitely more fun when you add a little song and dance. Ann-Margret is all big hair and energy as a lucky small-town teen who wins the chance to be kissed on television by Conrad Birdie, a thinly veiled Elvis copy. Unfortunately, her boyfriend is a tad jealous of her swapping spit with a celeb. What follows is a gleeful parade, perfect for viewers who always wanted to meet the high school star crush whose posters adorned their bedroom walls.

39. The Virgin Suicides – 2000

This one deserves to be on the list if only for the one terrific shot in which Josh Harnett, as heartthrob Trip Fontaine, glides down the locker-lined hall, with his leather jacket hung over one shoulder and Heart’s ”Magic Man” blaring on the soundtrack as all the girls turn their heads. If guys in high school don’t actually walk like that, they should. The rest of the movie, about gorgeous sisters in a death pact, is shot by debut director Sofia Coppola as teenage iconography at its dreamiest and most weirdly entrancing.

40. Risky Business – 1983

Long before Tom Cruise became a couch-jumping Scientologist, he came to prominence in this sharp satire of privileged suburban teens. The socks-and-undies dance scene is what everyone remembers, but this Reagan-era hit isn’t just another teensploitation flick. It’s about the soul-crushing pressure to be perfect, and the primal urges to rebel against a manicured, pre-programmed future — even if that means turning your parents’ house into a brothel.

41. Can’t Buy Me Love – 1987

Before he was Dr. McDreamy on Grey’s Anatomy, Patrick Dempsey won us over as the lovable lawn-mowing nerd Ronald Miller. After a failed attempt to buy his way into the cool clique, Ronny goes from totally chic right back to a total geek. Lesson learned: Sometimes performing the ”African Ant Eater Ritual” at the school dance isn’t enough to get you a spot at the right lunch table.

42. Fame – 1980

By today’s standards, this Oscar-winning musical is downright gritty, with its frank and often bleak depiction of arts-inclined teenagers. Sure, they sing and act and turn lunchtime into a funk jam, but they also have abortions, fend off predatory pornographers, experiment with drugs, and contemplate suicide. High School Musical, it isn’t. The potent shot of authenticity is sweetened by the memorable, soul-drenched musical numbers, which inspired millions to try and pirouette on a taxi.

43. Stand and Deliver – 1988

Any grandiose ”O Captain! My Captain!” speech would only invite a Dead Teacher’s Society beatdown at dilapidated Garfield High in East L.A. Instead, Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos) teaches in a fast-food-worker uniform and inspires with math problems about gigolos. He gives extra textbooks to a studious gangbanger (Lou Diamond Phillips) in exchange for protection, and turns a mathematical truth, ”A negative times a negative equals a positive,” into a social one. That’s ganas, jefe.

44. Can’t Hardly Wait – 1998

It’s the last night of high school and the only thing left to do is party — and face the skeletons in the closet. By the end of this crazy bash, everyone succeeds: The nerd gets revenge on the jock, the nice guy snags his prom-queen crush, and a pair of unlikely old friends reunite. It may be a typical teen comedy, but the underlying message always rings true: Don’t let fate pass you by.

45. My Bodyguard - 1980

There’s something timeless for everyone when new kid Clifford ”Peachy” Peache (Chris Makepeace) enlists the mysterious, tortured class psycho (Adam Baldwin) to protect him from the school bully (Matt Dillon). Lifelong scapegoats will cheer the underdogs’ triumph, while former home-room villains of all generations will shed a nostalgic tear at Dillon’s showcase of evergreen bully tactics: the locker prison, the wet toilet-paper bomb, the bathroom surprise attack. Ahhh, high school: good times, good times.

46. Flirting – 1992

She’s a Ugandan beauty in a prep school populated by blond Aussies (including young Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts); he’s a gawky stutterer obsessed with Camus. Given their shared outsider status at their respective institutions, is there any doubt that Danny (Noah Taylor) and Thandiwe (Thandie Newton) end up falling for each other? Wryly tender and respectfully told, director John Duigan’s coming-of-age romance is a warm and fuzzy confection that stops short of being icky.

47. Napoleon Dynamite – 2004

The plot is insignificant, the lead character (Jon Heder) is a petulant spaz, and the pace creeps along just barely faster than a John Deere. Still, this sleeper hit succeeds because it manages to mock and celebrate high school geekdom with a bone-dry, unsentimental tone. The inane one-liners, absurd non sequiturs, and sheer stupidity of the characters don’t just bring back memories of adolescence, they make you feel like a teenager again, giggling at something idiotic without knowing exactly why.

48. Just One of the Guys – 1985

Every generation has its variant on the girl-dresses-as-boy, girl-as-boy-falls-for-boy, boy-freaks-out tale. And this immensely fun, if minor, romp from the ’80s perfectly captures the decade’s raunch-lite spirit and funky fashion sense. As the cross-dresser caught in the middle, Joyce Hyser’s aspiring journalist learns the hard way that there’s more to being a dude than just stuffing a tube sock down your pants.

49. Sixteen Candles – 1984

It’s tough to turn 16. But when your entire family forgets your birthday, it only makes that day worse. Molly Ringwald puts on a brave face as her character endures basically the worst week of her life, whether it’s having her panties taken by Anthony Michael Hall or getting groped by her grandma (”Fred, she’s gotten her boobies!”). The awkwardness is all hilarious, though, especially watching a young Joan Cusack attempt to use the water fountain in orthodontic head gear.

50. Splendor in the Grass – 1961

Young love — especially when it’s with the star of the football team — can make a girl crazy. Literally. In pre-Depression, small-town Kansas, good-girl Natalie Wood is so tortured by her sexual urges for beau Warren Beatty and conflicting pressure to be moral that she attempts suicide after a school dance and ends up in a sanitarium. It’s the ultimate depiction of overwhelming first love, and — sorry, religious right — a chilling PSA against the dangers of teen abstinence.

El Guionista Hastiado:

Cuando la comedia de situación televisiva dio sus primeros pasos, a comienzos de los 50, recogió parte del legado de muchos de los mejores cómicos del cine mudo. Sin embargo, poco a poco la comedia verbal fue ganando peso debido a las dificultades que entraña el humor visual, que exige siempre:

- Tiempo. Para preparar el gag, para rodar las tomas necesarias hasta conseguir la perfecta (Chaplin era capaz de rodar hasta 70 veces un mismo gag).

- Buenos actores. El slapstick exige habilidades interpretativas que van más allá de lo narrativo. Dominio del cuerpo y la gestualidad y una agilidad que bordea lo circense. Muy pocos actores hoy en día están a la altura.

- Infraestuctura. Objetos, vehículos o incluso casas que se estropean, que explotan, que se vuelven contra el hombre. Colchonetas, arneses, artefactos mecánicos, fuego, agua, maquillaje, vestuario repetido que debe mojarse/mancharse/estropearse… Todo esto incide en el tiempo y, por supuesto, en el dinero necesario para rodar…

-Un buen director. Que sepa, sobre todo, imprimir el tempo correcto al gag y ajustar el tono de la interpretación para exagerar sin excesos. La contención interpretativa -recordemos a Keaton- es parte del secreto del éxito. Una realización poco acertada puede, además, hacer que el gag fracase. Por lo general la comedia física exige planos amplios y poco montaje, algo que parece contradecir algunos estándares televisivos.

Todas estas complicaciones hicieron que poco a poco la comedia visual fuera desapareciendo de las pantallas cinematográficas y, por supuesto, de las televisivas. Uno de los pocos reductos de supervivencia del slapstick fue la animación. Los Picapiedra, Tom & Jerry, Tex Avery… mantuvieron el legado de los maestros del cine mudo gracias a un formato que, por una parte, facilita la creación de escenarios, accidentes y acontecimientos violentos, y que, sobre todo, permite la afinación exacta en la ejecución de los gags. La comedia visual es una cuestión de ritmo, de tempo, y el animador tiene un absoluto control sobre él, con lo que su único impedimento es el límite de su talento para acertar con la plasmación de los movimientos de sus personajes.

Todo esto viene a cuento de que ayer pude ver Wall-e, film de Pixar recién estrenado y del que seguro ya han oído hablar suficiente como para que yo les cuente nada demasiado nuevo. Solo les diré que a mí (y a un par de compañeros con los que coincidí en la misma sesión), me gustó más que los huevos con chorizo, y me hizo disfrutar como sólo el buen cine puede hacerlo.

Wall-e tiene la peculiar circunstancia de ser una película prácticamente muda (en una industria como la cinematográfica estadounidense, estoy seguro de que a más de un ejecutivo se le fundieron los plomos al oírlo), lo que implica que casi toda la información que se le ofrece al espectador está contada cinematograficamente -en el mejor sentido del término-, es decir, por medio de la imagen,la elipsis, el montaje, los -ingeniosos- recursos visuales y la interpretación de los personajes. Porque no por ser virtuales, dejan de interpretar. Muy al contrario, la emoción y la personalidad que consigue transmitir el robotito de marras es fruto de una dirección maravillosa que ha sabido canalizar el talento de los animadores para que todo repercuta en beneficio de la historia.

Andrew Staton,el director (que ya me convenció con la divertida aunque algo más infantil “Buscando a Nemo”) dice que se pegó un año viendo películas de Chaplin y Keaton. Habitualmente este trabajo de “inspiración” suele suponer una excusa para tocarse las pelotas (no me pregunten sobre qué series se visionaron durante meses antes de pergeñar “Aída”), pero en este caso se nota el resultado, y además para bien. Cuando vean al pequeño Wall-e tropezándose nervioso sin saber cómo comportarse ante el objeto de su amor, piensen para sus adentros “Buster Keaton”, y acertarán.

No se trata sólo de que los trompazos y las caídas estén perfectamente ejecutadas (e incluso más justificados, al tratarse de un robot que, se supone, es más duro que un ser vivo), sino que las reacciones, los sentimientos y los impulsos del personaje son humanos y reconocibles a pesar de estar planteados por medio de gestos “mecánicos” y leves ruiditos subrayadores.

Pese a un inevitable tono algo infantil del que desgraciadamente las producciones de animación no consiguen desprenderse, las películas de Pixar han conseguido que sea la historia, y no la animación, la protagonista de sus largometrajes. Y eso a pesar de que la puesta en escena, la realización y la dirección artística son brillantes (huyendo, aunque no totalmente, del mundo colorinchi y pastelón y del tono aleccionador de su mucho más pobre antecesora “Robots”), con lo que estoy seguro de que podría volver a ver la película y disfrutar aún más fijándome en millones de detalles que me pasaron desapercibidos.

En resumidas cuentas, que se la recomiendo, pero por favor vayan a verla en versión original. Según tengo entendido, en el doblaje al español han destrozado todos los ingeniosos sonidos creados por Ben Burtt (responsable del lenguaje de nuestro entrañable R2D2), introduciendo un lenguaje claro y poco robótico en los protagonistas. Qué chapuzas se hacen en este país eurocopero, ¿no?

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Adjunto algunos Slapstick encontrados en slapstick-comedy.com (mp4)

Laurel & Hardy

Chaplin

Buster Keaton

Harry Langdon

Roscoe Arbuckle

Max Linder

Sergio Díez de Pedro Personal Page-La Comedia-Introducción:

Desde que surgió el Cine, los hombre filmaron comedias. Ahí está El regador regado. Antes de la llegada del sonoro, un hambriento buscador de oro se comió su propio zapato, un tipo muy serio luchó por el Sur con la ayuda de su locomotora, los polis de la Keystone sembraban el caos por doquier y pocos salían indemnes de una guerra de tartas de Mack Sennett.

Mabel Normand, Harry Langdon, Harold El Hombre-Mosca Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle, el elegante Max Linder, Ben Turpin. Grandes nombres que hicieron reír sin necesidad de palabras. Y llegó el sonoro. Con él, una nueva arma para burlarse del Poder, de las convenciones, del absurdo del statu quo, del orden de los bienpensantes: la Palabra. La Comedia estalló, expandió sus límites, exploró todos los recovecos de la ilógica, para mostrar que el anverso lógico no era tan inocuo. La Comedia Americana vivió un Periodo Dorado en los 30′ y primeros 40′, hasta que la maquinaria propagandística obligó a solemnizar el gesto. Más madera, es la guerra.

De aquella época gloriosa recordamos mujeres bellas, inteligentes y dominadoras: Irene Dunne, Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Miriam Hopkins, Katharine Hepburn, Jean Arthur. Galanes sofisticados, hombres de mundo con un toque canalla, que a menudo eran zarandeados y maltratados por aquéllas: Cary Grant, Joel McCrea, Gary Cooper, Fredric March, Herbert Marshall, Fred MacMurray, Melvyn Douglas, James Stewart. Secundarios robaplanos, que apoyaban los titubeos de las estrellas: Edward Everett Horton, Sig Ruman, Margaret Dumont, Felix Bressart, Mary Astor, William Demarest, Alice Brady, Mischa Auer, Eugene Pallette, Charles Ruggles, Walter Connolly, Charles Coburn. Guionistas venenosos de pluma afilada: Charles Brackett, Ben Hecht, Samson Raphaelson, Dudley Nichols, Charles Lederer, Robert Riskin, Donald Ogden Stewart, Garson Kanin, Morrie Ryskind, los después realizadores Preston Sturges y Billy Wilder. Directores de mirada indirecta y artera: Leo McCarey, Mitchell Leisen,Gregory La Cava, Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, George Cukor, H.C. Potter. Una gran concentración de talento, que no se desperdició.

Preston Sturges formuló Las reglas de oro para una comedia de éxito. Algunos pensarán que sólo sirven para películas de una determinada época. Yo opino que siguen vigentes. O que deberían estarlo. La fórmula no es muy complicada:

Una chica bonita es mejor que una fea.

Una pierna, mejor que un brazo.

Un dormitorio, mejor que una sala de estar.

Una llegada, mejor que una partida.

Un nacimiento, mejor que una muerte.

Una persecución, mejor que una charla.

Un perro, mejor que un gatito.

Un beso, mejor que un bebé.

Y una buena caída, mejor que ninguna otra cosa.

Ethan Mordden, en su muy recomendable libro Los Estudios de Hollywood (Ultramar), define la comedia de enredo de los 30′ como un “cuento contemporáneo sobre un galanteo, con un guión ingenioso, que favorece a las clases altas y nos instruye a disfrutar de la vida a nuestra propia manera, antes que observar las reglas en el amor y en el trabajo presentadas por los demás”. Son los años de la Depresión. El público busca en el Cine lujo, sofisticación, romance, diversión.

Recuerden al personaje interpretado por Mia Farrow en La rosa púrpura de El Cairo. Reírse de/con los ricos es una excelente terapia para olvidar las miserias cotidianas. Muchas de estas películas muestran a las clases altas como una pandillas de lunáticos, frívolos, caprichosos y descerebrados. Sus únicas preocupaciones son el placer, la seducción. Smokings, joyas, sedas, yates, la Riviera, champagne, casas de campo, abrigos de pieles, el Morocco. Un desfile arrebatador deglamour para audiencias amargadas por la Crisis. Escapismo para el lumpen (a veces no tan escapista). Ahora bien, como repite Edward Everett Horton en Una mujer para dos (1933, Paramount, Lubitsch), “la inmoralidad puede ser divertida, pero no lo suficiente para sustituir a un cien por cien de virtud y tres comidas al día”.

Mordden señala en el libro citado que la comedia sofisticada es una representación irreverente de las convenciones sociales del pueblo americano, vistas con una mirada insolente, reprobatoria, pero también resignada. Éstos son los defectos, dice el cineasta. Vedlos, querido pueblo americano, pero yo no puedo cambiaros. No es casual que algunos de los motores de la Comedia Americana sean de origen europeo (Leisen, Wilder, Lubitsch).

Estas comedias no eran un mal negocio para las productoras. Su presupuesto era reducido, por lo que recuperar la inversión no era difícil. Un presupuesto reducido obliga a recurrir al talento. Por ello, la labor de los guionistas y del director eran vitales para levantar estas comedias. Y como se ha dicho antes, el talento no escaseaba. Talento de origen teatral, en su gran mayoría.

Tres fueron los Estudios que se dedicaron con especial atención a la comedia: Paramount, RKO y Columbia. Paramount, uno de los Grandes, el Reino del Glamour desde los 20′, con aquellos vehículos desaforados y asfixiados en lujo de Cecil B. de Mille y Gloria Swanson, conocido como el Estudio de los Directores. RKO, aquella gente rara de Nueva York, siempre con problemas de dinero, pero con ese toque intelectual y descreído de la Gran Ciudad. La Columbia, un estudio pequeño, barato, sucio, el Rey de los Rápidos, dirigido con puño de hierro por Harry Cohn (ruin entre ruines, tramposo entre tramposos), cuyo lema era “simplemente hazlo. Si deja dinero podrás hacer otro, y si pierde dinero quedas despedido” (¿recuerdan al productor que contrata a Barton Fink en el film homónimo de los hermanos Cohen? Así debió de ser Harry Cohn).

Los Directores.

El toque sensual/sexual de Lubitsch, sus elipsis, esas puertas de dormitorio que se cierran… hasta la mañana siguiente.

Howard Hawks, el rey del estilo invisible, capaz de imprimir un ritmo de montaña rusa a sus comedias, diálogos como tableteos de una thompson. Hawks, el misógino que ridiculizaba a su propio sexo. Mitchell Leisen, sofisticado, en sus filas reina el equívoco (nada es lo que parece) y los malentendidos (a veces sobreentendidos), capaz de explicar cómo un abrigo de pieles que vuela desde una ventana y aterriza sobre una mecanógrafa provoca el hundimiento de Wall Street (Una chica afortunada, 1937, Paramount).

Leo McCarey, un viejo zorro curtido, capaz de meter en cintura a Laurel y Hardy, W.C. Fields y los Hermanos Marx y sobrevivir, un alquimista dotado para combinar satisfactoriamente comedia y melodrama romántico.

Gregoy La Cava, un francotirador de Broadway, enloquecido, distinto, original, que da un giro de tuerca más a la screwball comedy.

Preston Sturges, un deslumbrante y tardío fogonazo, el gigante de las grandes farsas, el maestro marionetista del Grand Guignol americano.

Frank Capra, el Campeón del New Deal, muestra cómo el amor es capaz de saltar todas las barreras sociales y unir a ricos y pobres, el candor democrático capriano.

George Cukor, el inteligente bisturí que disecciona los especímenes de la clase alta y descubre tumores malignos en las copetudas familas patricias de Nueva Inglaterra.

Las comedias románticas. Las comedias sexuales. La seducción como arte, un juego galante practicado por hombre y mujeres de mundo. La seducción como robo. Lucha entre los sexos. Comedias de hombres -y fundamentalmente- mujeres. Sí, mujeres. Es curioso. En aquellos lejanos años son las actrices las protagonistas destacadas de las comedias. Alrededor de ellas giran las tramas. Mejor dicho, ellas dirigen, controlan a su antojo los acontecimientos. Mujeres coquetas, algo frívolas, hermosas (aunque ninguna de las comediantas se ajusta al Sagrado Canon de la Belleza. Su atractivo irradia desde el interior), pero que saben lo que quieren y no se arredran, aunque llegue un galán de anchos hombros. Al final, se casan con el chico, sí, pero cuando y como ellas quieren. Si son capaces de domar a un leopardo, qué no harán con un hombre…

La Guerra Mundial acabó con este periodo de esplendor. La seriedad, la tragedia, el realismo del conflicto endurecieron el paladar del espectador. El patetismo bélico liga muy mal con el lujo, el glamour y la disipación. Es tiempo de arrimar el hombro, empezar a sudar y poner otra vez en marcha la maquinaria nacional. No hay tiempo para juegos galantes.

La Comedia, naturalmente, no desaparece, simplemente se adapta. Quedan los chispazos geniales de Hawks. Y la carrera de uno de los grandes pilares del género: Billy Wilder, el vitriolo vienés, el cínico descreído. Como guionista, firmó, junto a Brackett, títulos míticos de la comedia de los 30′: Medianoche, La octava mujer de Barba Azul, Ninotchka, Bola de fuego. Aprendió el oficio de director viendo a los grandes, y eso se nota. Con él, con Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Shirley Maclaine, James Cagney reiremos de nuevo. Blake Edwards, otro ex-guionista, respetuoso y aventajado alumno, diestro en la comedia sofisticada y en el slapstick caótico y acelerado.

Frank Tashlin, que empezó en los dibujos animados, y llevó el espíritu transgresor de Tex Avery a las imágenes reales, que jugó con objetos y actores como si fuesen elementos de cómic.

Y Peter Bogdanovich, y Richard Quine, y Jerry Lewis, y Woody Allen, y… La Comedia nunca morirá. La risa -más o menos transgresora- nos redime, nos desmarca del reino animal, nos permite escapar momentáneamente de la náusea cotidiana. Como dijo el viejo Sullivan, la Comedia debe existir, porque “la risa es todo lo que tienen algunas personas”.

En otras páginas analizo una lista (imposible) de comedias (más o menos locas). Hay muchos más títulos, claro que sí. Pero, como dijo el clásico, ésa es otra historia. Sigan los links. Si desean datos técnicos, fichas de las películas, intérpretes, etc. , busquen en IMDB (www.imdb.com), la base de datos de cine más completa de toda la WWW. Hay un único problema, al ser una página americana, los títulos de las películas deben ser los originales de estreno en inglés, y las traducciones al español de algunas películas son muy imaginativas y poco tienen que ver con los originales. Espero que con su talento (y alguna ayuda) superen esta pequeña traba.

La comedia, remedio infalible

RICARDO GARCIA OLIVERI

Ahora con Nanni Moretti y Roberto Benigni, como antes con Tognazzi, Mastroianni, Gassman y Manfredi, el cine italiano tiene esa facultad de hacer y decir aquello a lo que pocos parecen atreverse.

El cine italiano se hizo fuerte gracias a las divas y los teléfonos blancos, antes de la guerra, y después de ésta impuso en todo el mundo un estilo de exasperado dramatismo, el neorrealismo.Pero ni en los peores momentos los italianos dejaron de reír. Hacerlo hubiera sido renunciar a buena parte de su propia esencia y privar a la comedia de varios componentes esenciales: el costado político, la inquietud social y esa facultad de hacer y decir aquello a lo que nadie puede atreverse sin parecer ridículo o grosero. Si aquella comedia de los 50, 60 y 70 fue un suceso porque, como todos los sucesos, vino a llenar una necesidad, cabe decir otro tanto de los actuales, escasos pero importantes, éxitos del cine italiano. La vida es bella, que en la Argentina está por llegar al millón de espectadores, es la referencia más estentórea; pero no la única. Dos son los representantes italianos más conocidos dentro del género. Con muy diferentes preocupaciones y objetivos, se parecen en algo: ambos han delineado un personaje que se repite en todos sus filmes y que ellos mismos interpretan.

El de Benigni es de una inocencia total, que no se modifica demasiado cuando lo convocan otros realizadores, como Fellini en su despedida, La voz de la luna. Estas películas dieron a conocer al actor en nuestro país; en las totalmente suyas, Benigni es víctima de constantes malentendidos (Johnny Stechino, El monstruo, Sólo nos falta llorar) que ahora genera en beneficio de su hijo, con el cual incursiona en un campo de concentración, nada menos.

Lo de Nanni Moretti, de quien hoy se estrena Aprile, es una cosa muy distinta. Su composición de un político corrupto en La investigación, de Daniele Luchetti, hace suponer una gama interpretativa más amplia, pero en sus propios filmes es básicamente un personaje inmutable, así llegue disimulado bajo la sotana de un cura (en Basta de sermones) o el slip de un waterpolista, en la más notable Palomita roja.

Pero su carrera empezó mucho antes, como cortometrajista: Io sono un autarchico (un joven izquierdista durante el mayo del 68) y Ecce bombo, que analiza la caída de los mitos de una generación. Actualmente el cine de Moretti se volvió totalmente autorreferencial. Lo prueban el éxito de Caro diario en la Argentina y la repercusión que tuvo Aprile en el reciente festival de cine independiente. Haciendo gala de su innato sentido del cine y de su capacidad para el armado de bellas secuencias -generalmente estructuradas sobre la música-, a Moretti se le ocurre la película porque abril es un mes clave en la política peninsular. Pero termina hablando del nacimiento de su hijo, con apariciones de esposa, familiares y amigos. Si el giro indica un orden de prioridades, y si éste permite, en todo caso, generalizar, será cuestión que cada espectador deberá determinar por su cuenta.

Buceando en la comedia italiana, casi simultáneamente con el sonoro, Mario Camerini factura Los hombres, qué sinvergüenzas! (1932) -que impuso la canción Parlami damore Marió- y más tarde Daría un millón (1935), ambas con un Vittorio De Sica que aún no había comenzado a dirigir: lo hará en plena guerra, con exponentes del género como Magdalena, cero en conducta y Teresa Venerd, ésta con la inconmensurable Anna Magnani.

Pero la mejor comedia del fascismo es la que más cuestiona, hasta donde era posible, al régimen: Cuatro pasos en las nubes (1942), de Alessandro Blasetti.

Todas estas películas italianas llegaron al país y tuvieron éxito. Pero sucedió después de que el cine que hacían aquellos perdedores de la guerra se ganara la buena voluntad de los espectadores del mundo ofreciéndoles dosis de autenticidad y humanidad hasta entonces desconocidas.¿En qué momento los grandes del neorrealismo advirtieron que también podían provocar sonrisas, risas y carcajadas?

Pudo haber sido con el enorme suceso de Pan, amor y fantasía, con Gina Lollobrigida y De Sica; o antes, cuando Toto y Aldo Fabrizi se encontraron en Mi amigo el ladrón (1951) codirigida por Steno y Monicelli, quien luego se convertiría en figura capitular de la mejor comedia italiana, la de trasfondo social, que encumbraría a Gassman, Mastroianni, Sordi, Tognazzi…Cierta vez el gran Toto explicó las diferencias entre esa variante y las restantes. Las comedias italianas tenían chistes y gags; tenían bellas y empulpadas mujeres, desde Gina y Sofía hasta Laura Antonelli, la que cabalgaba junto a Giancarlo Giannini en Sexo loco; sus protagonistas sufrían los mismos problemas y atravesaban los mismos conflictos que la gente común.

Antihéroes de medida para la segunda mitad del siglo, estos protagonistas se hacían mala sangre por su bajo sueldo, como Alberto Sordi en Una vida difícil (de Risi); eran infieles como Ugo Tognazzi en Venga a tomar café a casa (de Alberto Lattuada) o, peor aún, promiscuos como Nino Manfredi en La Betía (de Gianfranco De Bosio); u operarios de la primera huelga italiana, adoctrinados por Mastroianni en Los compañeros (de Monicelli).

Personajes que no dejaban de ser sal de la tierra así marcharan al frente, como Sordi y Vittorio Gassman en La gran guerra (de Monicelli), o a las Cruzadas, como Gassman, Gian Maria VolontŠ y Enrico Maria Salerno en La armada Brancaleone.

Hay más títulos insoslayables, como Los desconocidos de siempre, con Gassman y Mastroianni; Divorcio a la italiana, de Pietro Germi, con Mastroianni; Il sorpasso, de Risi. Y, desde luego, todo Nino Manfredi: al margen de Feos, sucios y malos, de Scola, Pan y chocolate.

A partir de los 80 la comedia italiana, si no desaparece, se desacelera. Cambia, con el resto del mundo. En la actualidad, con otros nombres de un lado y otro de la cámara, debe luchar por reconquistar su espacio. No lo está haciendo mal, a juzgar por resultados recientes.