Kathy Shaidle is away this week, enduring, as most of you know, a pretty awful time. She and Arnie launched a fundraiser on Wednesday, which I'd planned to link to today, but they've reached their goal and shut up shop. I'm sure, however, that if you wanted to go full Wayne County and sneak something in after the deadline they would be pleased to accept. I had the privilege of spending a couple of afternoons with Kathy this week, and it was simultaneously unbearably sad and hugely enjoyable - because she is always great company, even in the worst of times.
As for our Saturday-night movie beat, it gives me no pleasure to fill in for Kathy in such circumstances, as you can probably tell from the following sentence:
Love Actually is crap actually. I say that in the spirit of the movie, which begins with clapped out rock geezer Bill Nighy recording his new single, a seasonal remake of "Love Is All Around" that doesn't even scan: "ChristMAS Is All Around". It is a cynical exercise on his part: he cheerfully tells his manager it's "crap", the disc-jockey of Radio Watford it's "crap", the listeners it's crap, Ant & Dec on the yoof TV show it's "crap", and everybody else that its' total crap. But the great British public takes the crapness to heart, and the cynical crap touches a chord.
If only the film were that good. Made in 2003, it is a cynical confection and, unlike Nighy and his Yuletide single, never transcends its cynicism - at least not for me: million of others love this picture and watch it every Yuletide. The framing device is droll - will Nighy's "ChristMAS Is All Around" be this year's Christmas Number One? (Which has been a big deal in the United Kingdom for half-a-century, as Tim Rice briefly touches on in this weekend's Mark Steyn Show). Mr Nighy, a great actor who's done Shakespeare and Chaucer, Chekhov and Rimbaud, manages to turn this thin gimmick into the part of a lifetime, and a splendid turn that is truly beloved. His is also the performance that vindicates the title, as Nighy abandons Elton's Christmas party to spend the night getting rat-arsed with his Scots manager.
That aside, the one thing this movie doesn't believe in is love. Or, at any rate, it doesn't trust love. The title comes from a speech by the incoming Prime Minister Hugh Grant. His line is that, for all the apparent hatred in the world, all you have to do is go to the arrivals hall at Heathrow and you'll see all kinds of people hugging each other: "Love actually is all around." He adds that, on the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers, he didn't think a lot of those final cellphone calls were about hate. Only love.
The dubious taste of a reference not just to 9/11 but to one of the most intimate details of 9/11 would be forgiven if the ensuing two-and-then-some hours justified Grant's thesis and the appropriation of the image. But love is not enough for writer/director Richard Curtis. He's constructed this film as a roundelay punctuated by Nighy's progress up the pop charts: lots of different characters, lots of different stories, all loosely connected. Usually that means some folks are young, some old, some rich, some poor, some worldly, some naïve, etc. But not in Curtisland. Boy-meets-girl won't do unless it's in some freakish novelty situation: the Prime Minister's in love with his below-stairs tea-lady; an English writer who can't speak Portuguese is in love with his Portuguese maid who can't speak English; two nude body-doubles on a movie set make chit-chat about the traffic as they mime oral sex, and then on their first proper date shyly end the evening with a peck on the cheek. This last couple (Martin Freeman and Joanna Page) are one of the more engaging romances, but the film accords them only a very bare minimum of screen time.
After Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones' Diary, this film makes you wonder whether Richard Curtis is fresh out of tricks. It plays like (to put in Curtis terms) a K-Tel greatest-hits compilation album. It's got one wedding, one funeral; one office party, one school concert; the usual glamourised London landscape, lit like Manhattan and traffic free; Hugh Grant being self-deprecatingly charming, Colin Firth being tentative; naff pop songs – Donny Osmond for the wedding, the Bay City Rollers for the funeral; a disquisition by Firth on "Silence Is Golden" by the Tremeloes to match Grant's evocation of "I Think I Love You" by the Partridge Family in Four Weddings...
One accepts the codes and conventions of Curtisland: the slightly snobbish classlessness, the compression of London into one hip village – here, everybody has a child, sibling, nephew or cousin at the same Wandsworth school. As is his wont, it's all moments and nothing to connect them, an endless parade of big set-pieces – the Portuguese maid strips off to retrieve the English writer's scattered manuscript from the pond – without the necessary building up to or unwinding therefrom. The wedding is a good example: up in the choir loft a chorus of "All You Need Is Love" begins, down below a full orchestra pops up from various sections of the congregation, the vicar high-fives the best man. It's cute in a generic way – we don't know the bride, groom or anybody else – but, when a film piles up this sort of stuff every five minutes, you mainly notice the excessive calculation and manipulation. Love Actually works so hard to be loveable, it's actually quite repellent.
By the time we get to the finales – the Prime Minister's unexpected appearance at the climax of the school concert, a ten-year old boy's frantic dash through Heathrow to the departure gate, a vast extended family of earthy Portuguese types accompanying the English writer through the streets to his wedding proposal – you can't help noticing that, at least professionally, Curtis has intimacy issues: for these characters, love is a performance that has to be played out in front of a vast audience of south London parents, airport security teams and South of France diners, and all to a horribly banal orchestral score by Craig Armstrong.
But, amazingly, as crude as these scenes are, they're not as bad as the requisite Curtisian leavening of the sweet with the bitter: mumsy Emma Thompson confronting straying hubby Alan Rickman. Miss Thompson is an actress of great subtlety, but Curtis is so unconfident of her skips he sticks her in frumpy baggy brown cardigans and floor-length shapeless grey skirts that practically scream "Go on, cheat on me!" It's as if he's forgotten how to write anything but the coarsest shorthand. Love Actually isn't in love with anyone except itself: it's like watching a practiced lounge lizard go through his repertoire. That's why Bill Nighy's wrinkly old rocker steals the picture: although he's just about the only member of the dramatis personae not actively looking for love, in a forest of over-mannered love scenes Nighy lurches through the movie with a cheerful indifference that makes his the only really honest character.
What I mainly remember as the years go by is the power imbalance: Almost every one of the alleged romances on which the film lingers is between a powerful man and his underling - Rickman and his sexpot secretary, Hugh Grant and the lowliest staffer, Colin Firth and his housekeeper. Even at the time, Curtis's view seemed a weirdly narrow view of human relations. With the benefit of hindsight, I checked to see whether Love Actually was one of Harvey Weinstein's masterpieces, but he was apparently busy with more obvious chick-flick Oscar bait that Christmas. In the Me-Too era we now know that beloved network anchormen have under-desk buttons to lock you in their offices, that PBS hosts think 25-year old interns at meetings enjoy seeing penises three times their age, that fashionable Manhattan restaurants have rape rooms, and that, when you clear out the sex fiends from NPR, there isn't a lot left on the schedule.
In the old days, successful men did marry their secretaries and housemaids, but not so much now, at least in America, when power-lawyers and political consultants contract intermarriage like medieval ducal houses. So I thought I'd round things out with a Christmas picture about sex and power in the workplace from an era with very different cultural mores (although certain aspects of the scene remain entirely unchanged over six decades: "everybody knew"). It was made by the ultimate Hollywood cynic Billy Wilder, but he's a piker compared to Richard Curtis. I'm not the biggest Billy Wilder fan, nor the biggest Jack Lemmon fan, nor Shirley MacLaine fan. But all three did some of their best work here. By the way, I am a huge Fred MacMurray fan and he is terrific in this.
The Apartment is a sad but true urban Christmas fable: there's no snow, just flu all month long; the office-party booze makes everyone mean and sour; the only sighting of le Père Noel is an aggressive off-duty department-store Santa chugging it down at a midtown bar; and the Christmas Eve climax is an attempted suicide. But that's what I love about The Apartment: its Wilderian cynicism is redeemed by one of the sweetest Christmas Day scenes in any movie. In his review of Rodgers & Hart's amoral Pal Joey, Brooks Atkinson wrote: "How can you draw sweet water from a foul well?" Well, The Apartment pulls it off, wonderfully.
Wilder got the idea after seeing Noël Coward and David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) and finding himself wondering about the fellow who lends his flat to Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard for their illicit trysts. "The interesting character is the friend," Wilder said, "who returns to his home and finds the bed still warm, he who has no mistress." So Wilder and his screenwriting partner I A L Diamond came up with CC Baxter, a lowly cog in the corporate machine who advances to the heights of the 27th floor and a key to the executive washroom of his Madison Avenue office building - not by hard work but by loaning his apartment to various adulterous superiors.
Distracted by the traffic in the stairway, the clink of cocktail glasses, and the make-out music, Baxter's neighbors assume he's the swingingest cat in town. In fact, he's a lonely schlub freezing to death on a bench in Central Park waiting for that night's executive vice-president and whichever gal from the typing pool he's picked out for the evening to exhaust themselves and call it a day. Baxter has no moral qualms about facilitating adultery. He assumes it's what a go-getting guy has to do to get going. His misgivings arise only when he discovers that his boss, the predatory Mr Sheldrake, has turned his attention to Fran Kubelik. Miss Kubelik is an elevator operator in the building and the girl Baxter loves, although he hasn't told her yet, as their relationship to date has consisted of a few pleasantries exchanged as he rides her car up to the office each morning.
Fran is Shirley MacLaine at her early best: a rare American gamine in a Euro-dominated field (Leslie Caron, Audrey Hepburn), she's full of moon-faced vulnerability and unable to accept that her boss's interest is strictly carnal. As Sheldrake, Fred MacMurray is the apotheosis of Fifties corporate man, smooth, assured and ruthless as he exercises his droit du senior exec. As Baxter, Jack Lemmon's likeable nebbish shtick is captured in embryo, before it got out of control and degenerated into a collection of exhibitionist mannerisms. But Wilder put together one of the most perfectly cast ensembles in film history and it goes way beyond the leads: there's Edie Adams as Sheldrake's secretary, sitting in the outer office and watching this season's "new models pass by", and David White as Sheldrake's fellow corporate swordsman Eichelberger. (White's most memorable turn as corporate exec would come a couple of years later, as Darren's boss in "Bewitched". He died in 1990, two years after his son was killed in the terrorist takedown of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.)
Wilder and Diamond's script catches the argot of the day beautifully, not least in Mr Kirkeby's inability to get through a sentence without using the suffix "-wise" — situation-wise, business-wise, etc. The screenplay makes it a kind of corporate code — the Masonic handshake of the 27th floor — that the ambitious Baxter lapses into almost subconsciously. When Kirkeby thinks CC Baxter has actually snared the elevator operator, he congratulates him: "So you hit the jackpot, eh, kid? I mean, Kubelik-wise?"
But, Kubelik-wise, the jackpot is a long way off, and how loser boy gets there is forlorn and funny all at the same time. The Apartment is a comedy, but it catches the desperation of inconsequential people passed over by the holiday season. And so it is that Christmas-wise CC gets to spend the day with the recuperating Fran, who's dumped at his apartment after Sheldrake goes home for the holidays with the wife and kids. In Fran and CC's bedsit Christmas, there are no chestnuts roasting, but they do play gin rummy. Baxter's face is never happier than when he's straining spaghetti through his tennis racket and never more loving than when he innocently tucks in his sleeping elevator gal and heads away from the bed (with no Al Franken slumber-grabs). It may not be much of a Christmas, but it beats the previous year when he went to the zoo and had Christmas dinner at the automat.
A lot of it's the script, a lot of it's the chemistry between Lemmon and MacLaine. But, for whatever reason, The Apartment is one of the best, both Yuletide-wise and masterpiece-wise — oh, and uniforms-wise. I've never been much of a dress-up fetishist, but I do think Shirley MacLaine's elevator get-up is awfully cute. If anyone's minded to send me a specialty strippergram next birthday, that's my choice. (Last year there was a booking error and I wound up with the open-bathrobed Charlie Rose-alike Chippendale.)
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26 Member Comments
My daughter, she's 24, & loves Love Actually. I think it's the actors rather than the situations. Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant & Martin Freeman are all from movies she likes & transferred the like to this movie. I cringe when I watch it. And she's not a fan of Shirley so she wouldn't like the apartment.
I loved Love Actually when I saw it at the theater. I haven't watched it since, so I guess it wasn't as pleasant as I remember. Maybe I'll give Jack Lemmon and The Apartment another chance instead.
Curtis' contempt for Thompson's character is over the top: "Joni Mitchell taught your closed off English wife how to love" or some such dreck. What, when she was 10? The character was a pretentious doormat.
Mr. Bean's performance in the middle of the movie makes the movie worth watching, though.
My wife loves Love Actually. I acknowledge that certain parts are good, but the bad parts overwhelm the good ones. Good: Bill Nighy; Alan Rickman (always good); Emma Thompson's performance as the wife who realizes her husband is cheating on her; the over-the-top tale of the young man who goes to America to find beautiful women who can't keep their hands off him, and it happens in not-to-be-taken-seriously fashion. Bad: everything involving that precocious 10 year-old and tough-guy-turned-wimp-for-this-movie Liam Neeson; the lovestruck guy who turns up at his newlywed friend's door to with cue cards telling the wife how much he loves her (this is actually meant to be serious); the too-cute-for-words interaction of Hugh Grant and his slightly chunky tea gal; the Bill Clinton-George W. caricature by Billy Bob Thornton, which I almost took as a personal insult on behalf of the USA; the Laura Linney melodrama. Neutral: the Colin Firth romance with the play-it-for-laughs finale, but I can actually see such a romance happening.
I agree 100% on The Apartment. A minor item I particularly loved was the good-hearted Jewish doctor next door who tries to reform "playboy" Lemmon by exhorting him to be a mensch, and then defining the term for him.
This is one Hugh Grant movie I missed and never knew existed. So, I watched a 2 1/2-minute trailer of the film.
I could have pretended to have seen the entire film and provided an opinion but that would be dishonest to Mark. It reminds me of the time I wrote a book essay in school on "Stone Angel" after only reading the novel's synopsis from the book's cover. The teacher must have pitied me when giving me a C + for the essay or she didn't read my essay and guessed a C + would be reasonable.
From the trailer, "Love Actually," the movie looks like the kind of film I would either not enjoy or one I would definitely enjoy depending on my mood, my relaxation level and especially if I was watching it with my favorite life time movie partner.
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I "had the privilege" of receiving a brief e-mail reply and thanks from Kathy a couple of days ago. If anyone would like to see how clever, courageous, articulate and unique Kathy is you can type in her name on You Tube and watch one of her many interviews etc. (Her videos are not on Rumble yet.)
Mark,
Your above reference to the Me-Too poster child Matt Lauer's iconic remote desk-mounted door lock caught my attention. I've always been curious to ask how many media/celebrity types have similar remote door locks? You don't think Katie Couric has one? I mean, I suppose such a device might actually be useful and common for employees who often change outfits in their office or wish to talk on the phone without being disturbed, etc. However, in Lauer's case, we are led to believe he personally arranged for the installation of a shockingly unique lock as an indication of his premeditation, need to trap his victims like prey and conceal his activities. So, if Lauer's lock is evidence of guilt, why does no one ask who else has secret remote office-lock buttons hidden under their desks?
There is a local mid morning radio guy in NYC who knows everyone & does lots of MC work. So for ppl in the metro area when he tells a story we all know who he's talking abt. Before Matt had his fall from Grace they had a roast at the Friars club, Trump was there (before 16 election) & they were going to film it for showing on tv at a later time. It was so vulgar & dirty that they couldn't air it. A few days later the Trump tape (grab them by..) came out but the response had more to do what he saw & heard at Matt's roast.
"One accepts the codes and conventions of Curtisland" as when every singleton secretary can live in a spacious traditional flat in Central London. Rupert Everett described Richard Curtis as "New Labour's Leni Reifenstahl". - apt!
My favorite Christmas moment in a movie: "Christmas is canceled!"
Sheriff Alan Rickman, in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood
I am very sorry to hear about Kathy's hardship. I really enjoy her writing, not only but especially the stuff on films, which are much more than reviews.
I am a fan of Mark's movie dissecting too and the above is particularly good. It reminds me of the work of Pauline Kael.
Mark,
Thank you for your kind words about Kathy. So glad you two got some lovely time together this week. Keeping her in my daily prayers.
Now on to the rest of your post:
I have to say, I'm still trying to process your review of Love Actually. I think I'm in a bit of shock at your harsh take down of one of my favorite films in my Christmas movie trifecta (Love Actually, The Holiday and Die Hard).
I read your review, stepped away from my computer and thought to myself, "What the heck just happened here!?!" As if my world hasn't been rocked enough with this stolen election, the Texas SCOTUS case Friday and so many other things we're all reeling from... here I am now disagreeing with our beloved Mark Steyn!! This world has truly gone mad!
But, disagree I must. I adore so much about Love Actually. Every time I watch it, I laugh, I cry. Emma Thompson's scene with Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now". The cue card scene with Keira Knightley and Andrew Lincoln. Mr. Bean's (as Rufus) cinnamon stick gift wrapping perfection. The end with the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows"... oh my heart - so much to love!
I know 2020's been a rough year and you've been having hair issues and stuff, so I'll cut you some slack on your Love Actually hating. But, in the words of the handsy, old sniffer in the basement, "C'mon Man!"
Nicely written Mark. I share your utter contempt for Love Actually and Curtis's nauseating schtick. So sad to see even the great Alan Rickman resigning himself to the dross he was given to work with. Still Curtis obviously rated his abomination as he pretty much repeated the never-ending ending in the equally treacly The Boat that Rocked. Anyway the bloke is one of the worst luvvie remainers so I'd despise him anyway merely on principal.
The Apartment is a slam dunk but, being even more old-fashioned, I like to sip my Christmas alcohol watching The Shop around the Corner. Possibly followed by The Great Race although this year won't be quite the same without my family members word-perfect voice-overs of the entire script.
Love to Kathy. If she's up to it I'm sure she'll be reading this piece and maybe even the idiotic comments (well mine anyway!).
Great review Mark, I have to watch the Apartment sometime, maybe when things brighten up a bit in 20 years.
One of my favourite Christmas movies is Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I am not sure where you stand on this one, please let me know if you have ever reviewed it.
"it's all moments and nothing to connect them, an endless parade of big set-pieces."
Sort of Mission Impossible without the action but with equally irritating actors playing the same role (Simon Pegg)
I get confused with those Hugh Grant movies. SWMBO has been doing a contrast between book and film for About a Boy, which (I think) also has a music concert. Or is each Grant movie compiled from a bunch of outtakes from some movie that never made it our of pre-production?
I bet Grant is rooting for Harris, who takes his favored position on most topics.
Droit de senior - a gem.
The fundraising will be a relief to Kathy & Arnie. TBFTGOGGI.
I thought About a Boy was much better than the usual Grant movie with his almost seeming like a real person but maybe it's been too long since I saw it. He's quite good in the new miniseries "The Undoing" playing a character both similar to but also very different than his usual... Won't say too much so as not to give away spoilers.
How about his role in Paddington Bear Two where he keeps disguising himself. One of the funnier films I have seen in a long time, especially with the Bear in prison.
OMG, Mark! After all these years supporting you in every way possible, finally you have presented me with something to totally disagree with about - Love Actually!! I love the movie, first saw it at a crowded movie theater (yes, there were such things back in the day), and have watched it more times than I can remember. Can't wait to watch it again on Christmas Eve which is the only time now that my wife will allow me to watch it. That said, she will be next to me on the couch watching it yet again. Love the Actors, Love the Characters, Love it All, Actually! P.S. Thanks for being here for all of us during this hellish, despicable year!
"As Sheldrake, Fred MacMurray is the apotheosis of Fifties corporate man, smooth, assured and ruthless as he exercises his droit du senior exec."
This line alone is worth the price of a SteynOnline subscription! Wonderful review of The Apartment, Mark.
So sorry to hear about Kathy.
Thanks for both of these reviews.
Now I know why I didn't really like Love, Actually. Empty and shallow.
Although I did like the Welsh tenor who, as a security guy, helped Hugh Grant sing a carol for the little kid while they were looking for the tea lady.
Mark replies:
Agreed, Elizabeth. That's a great scene.
Is it true that Fred MacMurray got so much negative feedback from the public due to how effective he was as the heavy Mr. Sheldrake, that he refused to take on similar roles in the future?
Yes that is true! As I've heard it tell, he was actually accosted at Disneyland by a woman with a purse, who said she'd never see another Fred movie. He turned to his wife, June Haver, and said, "Never again, Junie."
LOL, thank you, Mark! My cousin came over a week ago to watch a Christmas movie, and she brought "Love Actually." Even though I hadn't seen it in probably 17 years, I was instinctively repelled and suggested something else. Thank heavens I have a bit of a library. We ended up with "Holiday Affair," a sleeper favorite. However, I'm afraid I may be subject to Love before the season is over. Thanks for reminding me why I hated it ... I'll be better prepared to keep from crying, "What crap."
On the other hand, thank you for so perfectly describing why I adore "The Apartment." (Adore is an important word, Apartment-wise.) As you say, it portrays one of the sweetest Christmas Day scenes in any movie ever. And Fred was perfect ... hats off to Wilder for convincing him to play it. Who knew the most unlikely of Christmas movies would turn out to capture it perfectly, season-wise.
When I was growing up, I associated Fred MacMurray strictly with his "Flubber" movies and "My Three Sons." It wasn't until I got into my 20's and started watching classic Hollywood movies from the 30's and 40's that I appreciated what a terrific actor he was. His easy-going masculinity made him the perfect co-star for the leading ladies of the era - one even believes his character is falling in love with Katharine Hepburn's intensely irritating Alice Adams. But that same quality also worked brilliantly when portraying morally corrupt characters in "Double Indemnity," "The Caine Mutiny" and "The Apartment." Sort of a smoother Robert Mitchum, I guess. Circling back to "Love, Actually," I don't share Mark's loathing of it but I found it formulaic - just another of the many rom-coms with loosely inter-connected subplots on the ups-and-downs of love. But I have come to find that Hugh Grant really grates on my nerves.
I've always wondered why Katherine Hepburn is considered a great actress. Bogey should have drowned her in the African Queen. The boat was more interesting in that movie m
The Caine Mutiny, imo, was Fred's greatest movie.
A bundle of mannerisms. I think it was Joe Mankiewicz who called her America's best amateur actress. Actually, that's probably unfair to a lot of amateur actresses. Many women seem to like her. The best I can say about her is that in a good movie with a good cast in a role that is suited to her bag of vocal and physical tricks, she is watchable - especially in movies where strong male co-stars like Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant keep her under control. But when one considers that she won three Best Actress Oscars - and Barbara Stanwyck and Deborah Kerr, to name two, were nominated multiple times without winning - and, for that matter, Fred MacMurray never won an Oscar either, in fact wasn't even nominated - one realizes that the ones who make it look easy are often overlooked.