Everybody now loves it, but before it was shown a million times on TBS every year, as a kid I was all about A Christmas Story! I can remember being three or four and watching it constantly, even when it wasn't Christmas!

A Christmas Story trailer

I usually don't like people who say things like "Oh, I knew about The White Stripes before they became a soulless corporate band," but I have to say it now: I watched A Christmas Story religiously before everybody else watched it religiously! Just ask my parents-- they'll guarantee it!

Anyway- Happy Ha-idays everybody!

Or: Have Yourerf a Merry Rittle Christmas!

For Lack of a Better Word returns with guest-host Alexis Adkins.

What's on the podcast this week?

A SHOCKER REVELATION! (Or: A DELIBERATE PLOY FOR HIGHER RATINGS!)

THE MIXED-FEELINGS BOX!

PYLON!

THE OLD CENTURY THEATERS POLICY AD vs. THE CINEMARK THEATERS POLICY AD!

Things discussed: the missing b-side, FLOABW ratings, Alexis steals my thunder, top-ten lists/awards, paper toilet-bowl covers, British peoples' obsession with accents, culottes, the old Century Theaters policy-ad, Cinemark's Front Row Joe.

And an outtake.

Interstital songs: "Cool" and "Stop It" by Pylon

The Old Century Theaters Policy Ad- Click Here (You Won't Regret It!)

Tags: Podcasts, Culture, Pylon, Mixed Feelings, Top Ten Lists, Paper Toilet Seat Covers, British People, accents, Culottes, Century Theaters.

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I'm posting this to participate in a blog-a-thon. It's a 're-print' of a term paper that I wrote while in college:

Britain: 1939-1946

On September 3, 1939, two days after the Nazi’s invasion of Poland, Britain, as well as France, Australia and New Zealand, declared war on Germany. In the months that followed, British society changed drastically. Air-raid sirens, mass evacuations, life in bomb shelters and shortages due to conscription acts all became part of the collective lives of the British.

Yet, despite these hindrances, paradoxically this period was a prosperous time for British Cinema. Film culture managed to thrive due to a mass desire for escapism, according to Antonia Lant:

Cinema has never been as popular in Britain as it was by the end of the Second World War; audiences seemed to thrive on the visual luxury and seeming daring of luminous screen display, which contrasted so powerfully with the blackout conditions outside. (367)

In 1939, national movie theater attendance in Britain was at 19 million; by 1945, attendance has risen to 39 million. The Wartime Social Survey, entitled The Cinema Audience, found that 70% of adults in Britain claimed they sometimes went to the cinema and 32% went at least once a week. Historians note one key reason for this increase: going to the movie theatre provided an easy and accessible form of relaxation, whereas other amusements and activities were either restricted or denied due to wartime zoning-laws.

Despite many difficulties, including a higher taxation on film production and a government acquisition of film-studio space, the private-run British studio system reached a peak in production due to the increase in movie going. The most important figure within the U.K. film industry during this period was J. Arthur Rank, who with his company, British National, acquired the Elstree-Amalgamated Studios, while also acquiring Alexander Korda’s Denham Studio and buying the Odeon and Guamont-British theater chains, all before 1942.

Rank produced all of his films through the umbrella group Independent Producers Ltd. This Rank-supported group was comprised of four influential director/producer units: Individual Pictures (Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat); Wessex (Ian Dalrymple); Cineguild (David Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Ronald Neame); and the Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.) Rank’s ambition was to make “entertainment films… that would not merely please the eye and stimulate the imagination but would also become a help in the serious matter of the daily lives of filmgoers.�

Another important player in the U.K. Film Industry was Michael Balcon, the then head of Ealing Studios. A champion of documentaries, Balcon called for a new form of realism within his productions that would represent contemporary British life more truthfully on-screen. In many ways, this credo of Bacon’s was an extension of a new trend that was emerging in British cinema: the synthesis of feature filmmaking with documentary filmmaking. This was due in part to the frequent exchange of personnel between the feature film branch and the documentary branch of the industry and a rise in the production of wartime newsreels.

Yet the most influential and important “player� in British Cinema during World War II was not an individual but rather a government committee. Understanding the significant influence cinema had on mass audiences, Parliament decided to establish a Films Division within the Ministry of Information. Throughout World War II, this Films Division reviewed every British film for security censorship, produced hundreds of newsreel shorts and even went as far as prosecuting cinemas if ‘improper’ films were ever shown. The Film Division’s mission was simple: to boost public morale through means of controlling the thematic material of several film productions. As a result, many movies of the time were war-related and featured determined Britons who managed to overcome great obstacles through means of sheer stoicism. Examples include Anthony Asquith’s The Way to the Stars, Powell and Pressburger’s The 49TH Parallel and Noel Coward’s In Which We Serve. Yet, according to Robert Murphy, these wartime movies weren’t just one-dimensional representations of patriotism but something more:

For many people the war was a highpoint of intensity and excitement when things seemed possible which wouldn’t normally be possible… War-time films are something more than empty propaganda: the characters wrestle with difficult moral and physical problems and when they win… it is at some cost.� (71)

Due to a unified national consciousness, a blending of different classes and a spirit of mutual interdependence, British society during World War II was full of optimism. Many believed in social progressiveness and saw the end of the war as the beginning of a new era for the U.K.

By the latter half of 1946, World War II had been over for a year and the transition from wartime to peacetime affected British society greatly. The influx of returning military personnel created a larger middle-class, which resulted in a new political status-quo: the Labour Party, which during the 1945 election won the majority away from the Conservative Party in Parliament. Furthermore, this growth of the middle class gave many a chance to relocate from the city into suburban areas (which was also motivated by the slow reconstruction of metropolitan areas.) Yet despite these progressions, the war had not yet removed itself from the popular consciousness. The extended threat of Nazi Germany had drastically altered the nation, and certain matters, like mortality and love, were predominant in the nation’s psyche. Additionally, due to a latent anxiety that was induced by the war years, British society was plagued with uncertainty. Both of these factors resulted in a national preoccupation with eschatology and mysticism.

Additionally, as a result of the industrial dialogue between documentary filmmaking and feature filmmaking, as well as the influence of Michael Balcon, ‘realism’ was now the dominant approach to film-form and content. For many, films that relied on artifice and spectacle were seen as ‘socially irresponsible’ because they removed people away from their daily lives, which resulted in a disavowal of the real world. For many, escapism was unacceptable, and the only movies that could be considered meritorious had to be serious, instructional and ‘based in reality.’

A Matter of Life and Death

Within this historical context, The Archer’s film A Matter of Life and Death was released in the U.K. during the winter of 1946. It tells the story of Peter D. Carter (David Niven), a Royal Air Force pilot who, after an unsuccessful bombing-run over Germany, bails out of his plane without a parachute. However, due to a ‘celestial error,’ Peter survives the jump. When the authorities in Heaven realize a mistake has been made and that Peter should be in Eternity, Conductor 71 (Marius Goring) comes from Heaven to retrieve Peter, who in turn pleads for his life on account of his newly found love for June (Kim Hunter), a member of the United States Women’s Army Corp. This sets in motion an otherworldly trial (literally) that will decide whether Peter will live or die during a critical brain surgery.

Despite its seemingly fantastical elements, by no means is A Matter of Life and Death lightweight entertainment. As a result of its thematic content and its bold, cinematic style, A Matter of Life and Death is a paradox—it is a Post-War British film that reflects upon societal concerns and desires while simultaneously being a highly-stylized fantasy.

The Archers made A Matter of Life and Death and The Archers is the alias for the filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Powell and Pressburger first met at Alexander Korda’s London Films in 1938. Powell at that point was an up-and-coming director who, after years of making low-budget ‘Quota Quickies,’ had great success with his most recent film, The Edge of the World. Eager to work with Powell was Pressburger, a Hungarian refugee who had previously worked as a screenwriter at UFA in Germany. Pressburger approached Powell with the idea of a possible collaboration and, knowing and liking Pressburger’s work, Powell responded positively to the idea. Soon the two began working with each other as a writer/director duo. In the wake of the success of their third collaboration, the 1941 film The 49th Parallel, Powell and Pressburger received an invitation by J. Arthur Rank to join his umbrella group Independent Producers Ltd. The two accepted the offer and through Rank’s financial support they established their own production company, named The Archers. Between 1942 and 1945 Powell and Pressburger made such films as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944) and I Know Where I’m Going! (1945.)

One day in the spring of 1944, director Michael Powell had lunch with Jack Beddington, the head of the Films Division at the Ministry of Information. It was over this meal that Beddington, an admirer of the Archer’s wartime films, suggested to Powell that he and Pressburger should make a film that would help to improve relations between Great Britain and the United States. Powell accepted this de-facto commission and soon The Archers began work on a brand-new script that would meet the de-facto demands of the Ministry of Information. It was also around this time that Pressburger became inspired by an account in the German newspapers of a British airman who had fallen from his airplane without a parachute and survived. Pressburger used this true-life incident as a basis for The Archer’s new script, and A Matter of Life and Death was soon born.

However, due to the wartime rationing of Technicolor film stock, the production of A Matter of Life and Death was put on a temporary hiatus. In the interim, The Archers made the black and white I Know Where I’m Going! and didn’t begin production on A Matter of Life and Death until August 14, 1945, almost a year later than first expected. The production soon proved to be, up to that point, the largest ever attempted in British Cinema— for instance, 46 detailed sketches were prepared and 24 series of architectural drawings were drawn up and then turn into individual models. The largest set piece for the film was an enormous escalator in heaven that weighed 85 tons and had 266 steps.

After a yearlong production and post-production period, A Matter of Life and Death premiered on November 1, 1946 as a Royal Command Film Performance, the first of its kind, at Leicester Square. Despite a long-standing hostility that British critics had towards Powell and Pressburger’s films, A Matter of Life and Death’s critical response in the main trade papers was generally positive: Today’s Cinema commended the film’s “brilliant production qualities… masterly use of color, and remarkable blend of inventiveness and artistry� (November 6, 1946) and Kinematograph Weekly deemed it as a “brilliantly conceived modern phantasmagoria, deftly executed in Technicolor… its blend of ethereal fantasy and down-to-earth pathology and romance is superb� (November 7, 1946.) But among periodical reviewers, A Matter of Life and Death was lambasted for its rejection of realism. Dilys Powell of the London Times stated, “A Matter of Life and Death remains an audacious, sometimes beautiful, but basically sensational film about nothing� (November 3, 1946.) Richard Winnington of the News Chronicle wrote that A Matter of Life and Death “is even farther away from the essential realism and the true business of the British movie than their (Powell and Pressburger’s) two recent films, I Know Where I’m Going! and A Canterbury Tale� (November 8, 1946.)

Because of its fantastical story, its mixture of Technicolor and black and white cinematography, and its predominant uses of studio sets, this negative critical response in towards A Matter of Life and Death in Britain was not unexpected. But what critics like Powell and Winnington take for granted in their arguments was that ‘realism’ in the British cinema of the 40s was never truly or purely realistic. Many ‘truthful’ films of the time relied on a blending of on-location and studio shooting and a juxtaposition of documentary filmmaking with expressionistic mise-en-scene. An excellent example of this is David Lean’s British film Brief Encounter (1945), which tells the story of a doomed love affair between a middle-aged married doctor (Leslie Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson). Upon its release, Brief Encounter was critically acclaimed for its ‘truthful’ representation of British life and its use of on-location shooting (many scenes in the film take place on actual city streets, train stations, restaurants and city parks.) Yet despite this, the film has a lush and artificial technique: there is a utilization of voice-over narration and a significant amount of scenes that were filmed in the studio with evocative lighting. Another example of the verisimilitude of British realism is in Powell and Pressburger’s own I Know Where I’m Going! Set in the Scottish Hebrides, it tells the story of Joan Webster (Wendy Hillier), a materialistic young woman who, after becoming stranded in a seacoast town, learns about the finer qualities of life from a young, insouciant naval officer (Roger Livesey). The bulk of I Know Where I’m Going! was filmed on-location, but one key sequence, in which Joan attempts to man a boat through a sea-storm, was filmed in a studio with the use of rear-projection.

Yet despite their different approaches to ‘realism,’ A Matter of Life and Death, Brief Encounter, and I Know Where I’m Going! are all thematically similar in that they feature characters that wrestle with difficult moral and physical problems. This common characteristic can be seen as a reflection of the collective psyche of Britain during and immediately after World War II. In the words of Siegfired Kracauer, “the films of a nation reflect its mentality in a more direct way than (any) other artistic media… films are never the product of an individual (and) they address themselves, and appeal, to the anonymous multitude� (5.) In this regard, A Matter of Life and Death is a telling film because its central dilemma (will Peter live or will he die?) Due to the sociological and psychological effects of World War II, for British audiences in 1946, Peter’s quandary had an intense appeal. For years, Britons had to acknowledge death on a daily basis and, as a result of conscription-acts, many individuals were given a one-way ticket overseas. British audiences of the time could relate to Peter’s situation because for almost an entire decade they too had to wonder if ‘higher forces’ would let them live or die.

Despites the high-stakes premise of its story, A Matter of Life and Death is ultimately a therapeutic film in that it has a happy ending. Because of evidence that proves June’s love for Peter, Peter wins his celestial legal case in heaven and a result, he survives his surgery. When he awakes in his hospital bed the morning after to see June, he looks at her and utters two words: “we won,� words that almost-blatantly reference both the resolution of the film’s narrative as well as the resolution of World War II.

When it was conceived as a project, A Matter of Life and Death was intended to be a wartime film with propagandistic undertones, but its yearlong production delay rendered the first version of the screenplay out-of-date because the war was over. To resolve this problem, Powell and Pressburger added several topical references to the script, de-emphasized the propagandistic aims of the story (i.e. acknowledge the antagonistic relationship between U.S. and British soldiers and try to improve this relationship) and, most importantly, rewrote the final scenes of the film to address the post-war zeitgeist. Likewise, not only did the final version of the film remind British audiences of the sacrifices of war, as well as the mass anxiety that WWII incited, but it also represented the nation’s relief at the war’s denouement.

A Matter of Life and Death is important because it is an exciting and entertaining film that also addresses the uncertain yet hopeful nature of post-war British culture. It is not a mere piece of escapism nor is it a “sensation film about nothing� but rather, in the words of Ian Christie, a “magical and profound fantasy and a moving evocation of the wartime experience.� Furthermore, the critical reputation of the film has remained strong—it now ranks #23 in the British Film Institute’s poll of the Top 100 British Films and along with The Red Shoes (1948), it is considered by many to be the Archer’s crowning achievement as filmmakers. Ultimately, A Matter of Life and Death demonstrates that a film does not have to be based in reality in order for it to provide insight about this world, or others.

Nowadays, it must be hard to be an up-and-coming screenwriter in Hollywood. If you want your script to get any attention from developers/agents/producers/directors, you have to make the first fifteen or twenty pages of your first script as distinctive as possible. In H-town, movers and shakers just don't have enough time to develop sufficient attention spans, so if you get the chance, right away you have to get their attention. With this in mind, this is how I imagine how Diablo Cody wrote the first 15 or 20 pages of her original screenplay for JUNO, because right from the start, you have the elements needed to make a memorable movie-- implicit teen sex, pregnancy, blog-speak dialogue that just too cool for school or your full comprehension. Yet, this go-for-broke approach quickly becomes inundating-- after a while, you want to exclaim, "I get it! Juno is a quirky, unique, fast-talking teenager! Now get on with it!" Or, you think "is this just going to be like GHOST WORLD, only shallow and pregnant?" (Furthermore, considering how twee-rific the movie's look is, you wonder if JUNO's production designer's previous career was being a cool-hunter for marketing companies.)

Yet, as the movie progresses, it becomes less concerned with "sticking out from the crowd" and more concerned with becoming a movie that has an engrossing story and interesting characters. Along those lines, the issue in JUNO isn't "how is Juno (Ellen Paige) going to be a normal teenager and pregnant at the same time?" because Diablo Cody obviously didn't want JUNO to be a revisionist take on the Movie-of-the-Week-Teenage-Pregnancy sub-genre (see FIFTEEN AND PREGNANT starring Kirsten Dunst.) What JUNO is concerned with is representing the mindset of a know-it-all teen and charting her development as she goes through an extraordinary life-situation, as well as how her relationships with her step-mom Bren (Alison Janney,) her dad Mac (J.K. Simmons, in a endearing turn as an understanding patriarch,) the married couple who plan to adopt Juno's baby (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), and her baby-daddy "friend" Paulie (Michael Cera) develop. And in regards to those things, JUNO succeeds.

So (thankfully) JUNO is a comedy that gets better as it progresses. But, when I was finished I thought, "This movie isn't what I really wanted it to be." Maybe I was mislead by the ad-campaign for JUNO, but I was under the impression that it was going to primarily be about Ellen Paige and Michael Cera's forbidden-teenage-love, which it is, only in part. As I learned from listening to Terry Gross's interview with Diablo Cody and JUNO's director Jason Reitman on FRESH AIR, Cody was inspired to write the script because she wanted to tell a story about adoption (which is what motivated Reitman to sign-on as director of JUNO.) And, as JUNO demonstrates, the crux of the story is Juno's complicated relationship with Vanessa (Garner) and Mark (Batemen,), which I wasn't that interested in. Quite frankly, I found that plot to be predictable and obvious, as well as less-than-insightful.

Maybe I'm just biased because I like Michael Cera as an actor, but I was more interested in Paulie (Cera) and how Juno and Paulie were going to make the transition from 'just friends who are secretly in love with each other' to actual boyfriend and girlfriend. The movie eventually focuses more on Juno and Paulie's relationship, but it comes too little, too late. I don't fault Cody for this-- she didn't cast Cera, Reitman did. But I have a feeling that as his career progresses, Cera won't always be cast as second fiddle because I think Cera has the potential to become the next Jack Lemmon.

But, despite my prerogatives, I enjoyed JUNO. I give it ***1/2 out of *****.

Tags: JUNO, Diablo Cody

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No--sorry, that was a bad joke. I've just been waiting for a certain somebody to be available to come back onto my podcast. Also, I've been pre-occupied with that day-to-day crap. You know: X-Mas presents, job-hunting, apartment-hunting, slowly putting an application to Grad-School together, watching movies I should see, reading Crime and Punishment, pestering other podcast hosts, ecetera, ecetera. And since I pretty much do this podcast by myself, with no demand from nobody, I get to set my own production schedule and decide my own hours! I spoil myself.

But, if you're paying attention, look out for my next coming-soon installment of For Lack of a Better Word.

Tags: Click here to find out