r/classicfilms

Another movie that left a great impression, when I was a young girl.

People keep calling The Bride! “Joker coded” or a ripoff of Joker: Folie à Deux, and it’s driving me insane, because the movie is pulling from a completely different tradition. If anything, it’s way closer to Frankenstein movies and The Man Who Laughs (1928) than it is to anything Todd Phillips is doing.

The obvious thing: The Man Who Laughs (1928) is based on Victor Hugo’s novel(yeah, the same guy who wrote Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame), and that film is what directly inspired the Joker’s face in the first place. Conrad Veidt’s carved grin becomes the visual template that the comics basically took and turned into a completely different kind of monster.(see picture)

What The Bride! is doing with Frank feels way more in line with Hugo/Shelley/German expressionism than with Folie à Deux’s whole “jukebox musical of shared delusion” thing. Frank and Gwynplaine are both made into monsters by other people and then forced to live inside a body that exists for other people’s entertainment or control. Both have to cover or manage their faces/identities just to move through the world without being treated as a threat or a spectacle. (Down to the scarf/handkerchief thing, which feels like a deliberate echo.)

Christian Bale’s Frank has some Karloff Frankenstein “misunderstood outcast” energy, but the loneliness and the very physical, awkward sadness of him reminded me a lot of Veidt too. It feels very German Expressionist: the distorted body as a mirror of a distorted world.Meanwhile, Joker: Folie à Deux is a New Hollywood inspired comic book musical about shared psychosis, abusive fantasy, staged musical numbers inside Arthur’s head. Whatever you think of it, its whole project is about turning Joker and Harley into this toxic, jukebox musical nightmare.

The Bride! isn’t interested in making a “cool villain origin” or a “broken couple we stan.” It’s more of a tragic monster story about bodies that have been used up, mutilated, stitched together, and then expected to perform romance and revolution for other people. Frank is not giving Arthur Fleck with scars vibe at all. He is someone who knows he was built as a thing and is still desperate for an actual life.

So yeah, The Bride! isn’t trying to chase Joker at all. The film lives in that sad, literary monster space (Mary Shelley’s creature, Victor Hugo’s Gwynplaine, Karloff’s misunderstood brute, Veidt’s mutilated performer). Frank and the Bride feel like a pair of walking wounds who are finally, maybe, allowed to want something for themselves.

If any two families were more intertwined than ever, it was the Marx and Horwitz families, aka the 1930s icons Marx Brothers and Three Stooges. These two Jewish New York genealogies are forebodingly similar in terms of the history of cinema.

First, each had 5 siblings in the 1890s. The Marx Brothers were [Manfred; 1886] Leonard (1887), Adolph (1889), Julius (1895), Milton (1897) and Herbert (1901). The Horwitz/Howard family was Irving (1891), Benjamin Jacob "Jack" (1893), Samuel "Shmuel" (1895), Moses Harry (1897), and Jerome Lester (1903). Much like how it ended up, Only 3 of those brothers stayed in show business. Shmuel (Shemp), Moses (Moe), and Jerome (Curly) would form iterations of the Three Stooges. Harpo, Chico and Groucho would form the memorable Marx Brothers. Interestingly, to the extent Zeppo was involved in films, Moe and Larry considered hiring Jacob Horwitz after Shemp died!

I think it goes without saying it's strikingly similar how the Marxes AND Howards both had only one child born in the early 1900s...

I can't forget the striking although probably normal naming standard of the time; one name, two name, one name, two name...; [Manfred, Leonard Joseph, Adolph, Julius Henry, Milton, Herbert Manfred] and [Irving, Benjamin Jacob, Shmuel, Moses Harry, Jerome Lester].

A fascinating look at the early days of the Westwood Village neighborhood of Los Angeles in this one. From the Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly comedy movie Beauty and the Bus. 1933 vs Today. More then and now filming locations photos at https://chrisbungostudios.com/photo-gallery-sampler

Earlier tonight, I saw the film THE HOUSE ACROSS THE BAY. It’s about this gangster Steve who ends up falling in love with Brenda, a nightclub singer. He ends up doing 10 years in Alcatraz due to his criminal activity.

Devastated, she moves to California to be near Alcatraz. Steve’s lawyer, Slant, ends up tricking them both and was instrumental in putting Steve away (and partially because he also is in love with Brenda), leaving them nearly broke.

Brenda ends up befriending some of the other “prison wives” who regularly visit their men. Long story short, she’s back to singing to make ends meet and she ends up falling for another man, an engineer named Tim. However, she’s still in love with Steve.

Slant is so pissed at Brenda rejecting his advances and falling for Tim that, out of jealousy, he ends up telling Steve. And so Steve ends up breaking out of prison to confront his wife and her new lover…

There’s so much more to the story, but this is one messy criminal drama from start to finish. And I was hooked the whole time.

For those who saw this film, what did you think?

Hey there, as a movie nerd I wondered how many free classic movies are out there, turns out there are ten thousands of them. But nobody seemed to have created a really good site where you can discover and watch them as easily as on Netflix. I shied away from the project for years since it felt overwhelming to sort and match them all, but this Christmas I took the time to create Movies Deluxe: https://mdlx.org

For me this was also technical challenge that I love to talk about (I'm not just a movie nerd :P) but may not be the right place here.

The project is a passion project and is completely open source https://github.com/select/movies-deluxe

Let me know if you have ideas for improvements or other question!

It's in bad quality. The letter says

"Dear Marty:

I want you to give the utmost concentration to the building of Humphrey Bogart to stardom in as quick a time as possible.

Bogart has been typed through publicity as a gangster character. We want to undo this. For Bogart is one of the greatest actors on the screen today and has demonstrated this with his parts in "Petrified Forest," "Dark Victory," "It All Came True," and "They Drive By Night." The fellow is a master of technique and can do anything. In "Dark Victory" he showed a type of sex appeal that was unusual and different from that of any other actor on the screen today.

Sell Bogart romantically. Sell him as a great actor. Let us see if within the next two or three months we cannot have the country flooded with Bogart art, --and column breaks lauding Warner Bros. for their recognition of Bogart's talent, and predicting great success for him as a star."

This is one of the most important jobs you have before you in the next few months. I know I can count on you and please let me know how you fare."

Sincerely yours,

S. Charles Einfeld

Director of Advertising and Publicity

I actually watch the film to make sure I didn’t dream it - Eli Wallach is at the ready to kill nuns, kids, even physically challenged folks in wheelchairs, and the worst (best?) thing about it is that it makes him happy! What is your almost over-the-top villain with a sense of (very dark) humor..???