The Gulf of Mexico

From J.F. Letenneur: "Exceptional onboard document of this rare and fabulous maritime atlas, a masterpiece by the greatest French hydrographer of the 18th century, with maps of all the coastlines known at the time."

Source: The David Rumsey Map Collection
https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~284155~90056663:Carte-Reduite-du-Golphe-du-Mexique-?sort=pub_list_no_initialsort%2Cpub_date%2Cpub_list_no%2Cseries_no&qvq=q:Golphe%20du%20Mexique;sort:pub_list_no_initialsort%2Cpub_date%2Cpub_list_no%2Cseries_no;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=0&trs=20 

 It’s Love I’m After (1937)

It’s Love I’m After sounds like it would be more interesting than it turns out to be. There's nothing wrong with the leads or the supporting actors—Eric Blore is almost the fourth lead—but it never achieves takeoff velocity. Whether because of the studio—Warner Bros. instead of Paramount, the director—Archie Mayo instead of Ernest Lubitsch, the year it was made—1937 instead of 1933, or the high society setting, it is a curiosity and not a classic.

     Basil Underwood (Leslie Howard) and Janet Arden (Bette Davis) are two stars of the The-a-tuh who are (we’re told) madly in love but can’t stand each other for longer than it takes to play a scene before the claws come out and they fight like two cats in a sack. Marcia West (Olivia de Havilland) is a besotted fan of Underwood, engaged to Henry Grant Jr. (Patric Knowles), and Digges, no first name (Eric Blore), is Underwood’s dresser and Man Friday. To show Marcia that Underwood is unworthy of her infatuation, Grant inveigles him to turn up at the West family estate and play the cad. He agrees, despite having promised Arden that they will be married that very night. Naturally, nothing goes according to plan. 

     At the West estate, keyholes are peeped through, doors are slammed, signals get crossed, and people turn up when they are least expected by the characters if not the audience. It’s funny enough but it isn’t My Man Godfrey. Still, with Howard, Davis, Blore, and the impossibly young Olivia de Havilland doing their best, 90 minutes pass pleasantly enough. Also in the cast are Spring Byington as de Havilland’s aunt, George Barbier as her father, and Bonita Granville as an annoying girl who might be believable as a nine-year-old but looks like the 14-year old she was.

     You can watch It’s Love I’m After on a Warner Archive Collection DVD. TCM screens it from time to time and there are less legitimate sources for those who care to look for them.

As I was saying...

As Facebook becomes less inviting and Meta more obsequious, it's a good time to start posting again.

To begin, here's a short piece on The Brutalist. 

Wednesday’s movie at the Regal UA Kaufman 14-Plex was The Brutalist (2024, dir. Brady Corbet) starring Adrien Brody as László Tóth, a Hungarian architect who has reached the United States after World War II. He left his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) behind, thinking they had died at the hands of the Nazis.

Interlocutor: And how did you find The Brutalist, Mr. Jerry?

Jerry: It was brutal, and yes, I'll be here all week.

I stuck with the movie past the halfway mark/intermission, right up to the scene where it jumped the shark. No spoilers, but the action was so implausible and out of character that I walked out. After a few minutes and a chance to reconsider I went back, only to find that there was a new implausible scene, with Tóth berating Gordon (Isaach De Bankolé), his oldest friend in America, someone who’d stuck with him through good times and bad, for no good reason. There was about 15 minutes left, but I’d had enough. You can let me know what I missed in the comments.

There some good things in "The Brutalist," though I can’t remember what they were, but they were outweighed by the problems: slow, almost languorous, pace; multiple implausibilities and plot holes; headache-inducing editing, and peculiar music choices. One that bothered me was a scene in a Black club where the musicians are playing something like free jazz, which as far as I know wasn’t widely heard until the late 1950s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_jazz).

If I had to offer an opinion on why Adrien Brody received a Golden Globe and is nominated for an Oscar, I’d guess it’s because he maintains a Hungarian accent for more than three hours, he has a scene where he loses his temper and throws things, because Tóth has a heroin habit, and it’s a Serious Movie about a creative person who's misunderstood. The heroin is particularly confusing because it doesn’t affect his work or his appearance, it shows up and then disappears, and he keeps it a secret from everyone except Gordon for decades.

As always, your experience will vary and I’ll be interested to hear what you thought.

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