A Film For March: What’s Up Doc

What a perfect film for Spring, just bursting with joy and viv! Absent minded professor, Dr Howard Bannister (Ryan O’Neal) has travelled to San Francisco with his uptight fiancee Eunice (Madeline Kahn), for a musicologists conference where he hopes to get a research grant for his work on igneous rocks. Rocks he keeps in his plaid case, as the opening credits tell us:

‘Once upon a time, there was a plaid overnight case. . . ‘

or possibly 4 identical ones, all belonging to guests staying at the Hotel Bristol. Howard’s is full of igneous rocks, Mrs van Hoskins, a wealthy socialite, uses hers for jewels, ‘Mr. Smith’ has some secret government papers in his and the fourth belongs to Judy (Barbra Streisand), a university drop out who’s case is full of clothes and a dictionary. But Mr. Smith is being followed by Mr. Jones (trying to retrieve the documents); a bunch of thieves are after Mrs Van Hoskins’ jewels; and Judy, who is instantly smitten with Howard, follows him everywhere as she tries to insert herself into his life.

Two Short Stories

Two very short and vague reviews because I wanted to take part in Daphne du Maurier Reading Week, hosted by HeavenAli and it ends tomorrow. Not After Midnight and The Way of the Cross are both set during holidays taken at Easter time and are included in the Don’t Look Now collection of short stories and both were unsurprisingly excellent.

In Not After Midnight, Mr Timothy Grey takes a painting holiday in Crete. He’s pompous and stuffy and very funny while cringingly embarrassing – he’s a teacher at a boys prep school but puts ‘professor’ on his passport. Chalet 62 takes his fancy at the resort and he stomps about until he gets it – but why are they so against letting that particular chalet and who was the last person to stay there? While at the bar ordering a lemonade he notices an American couple, the loud obnoxious man is very drunk and beside him his deaf wife sits silently. They are staying at No.38 just across the bay and go out all day everyday An hotel, a small group of people, and a body, what is going on?

‘Then silence. No more rattling of the shutters. No more breathing.’

There’s a tension that runs just under the surface and a point where the story becomes genuinely thrilling. He’s still the same self important twit but now I was caught up in his adventure and rooting for him!

The Female Man

Four women in four intersecting time lines. Jeannine is a 29 year old librarian living with her cat in 1969 but the Great Depression is still going on, hers is still a world where her goal is to marry and have a home; Janet is a police-officer from the future utopian planet of Whileaway, where only women have survived a plague and Joanna is the author Joanna Russ, a fired up angry feminist in 1969.

When Janet arrives on Broadway at two o’clock in the afternoon in her underwear she becomes an instant celebrity and Joanna who is fascinated by her goes to a parade given in her honour – picked out of the crowd she gets into Janet’s car. Sitting in the back seat is Jeannine, having been found at a Chinese new year festival, terrified she puts her hands over her ears repeating to herself ‘I’m not here, I’m not here’ but she is there and then the three find themselves on Whileaway.

And then Jael arrives, the shadowy dark side of the future. She comes from a future where the battle between the sexes has divided into two armed camps – Womanland and Manland. Manland constructs its own women from weakling men and Womenland has pretty mindless men who are wired into their high tech houses, objectified males. A ‘rosy, wholesome, single-minded assassin’ it’s she who has got them together because she needs their help to win the war.

A Film For May: Don’t Look Now

John and Laura are in Venice a city they’ve visited before to try and escape the pain of their young daughters death. One lunchtime they become aware of a couple of elderly women watching them intently. They find out that one of the women has second sight and can see their daughter. As Laura becomes increasingly friendly with the sisters, John becomes increasingly worried.

When a telephone call comes through from their son’s school in England saying that he is ill, Laura takes the first flight to be with him leaving John to follow with the car the next day. But going along the Grand Canal he notices a vaporetto going back to Venice and on board are the elderly sisters and Laura.

He returns to Venice, but Laura is nowhere to be found and John finds himself getting caught up in a train of strange and violent events.