Film Diary: What's Up Doc?: (Peter Bogdanovich, 1972)

[enitharmon]

Take some Top Secret documents, a fortune in diamonds, some rock samples (not diamonds), a headstrong and resourceful young woman and a scatty professor. Throw in four identical tartan holdalls and you have the oldest formula of them all for a farcical romantic comedy. It might have been trite, but Peter Bogdanovich has a way of paying homage to old silent films while adding something fresh to the mix. Fresh, that is, for 1972, but that by comparison with today was an age of innocence. It's hard to see anybody getting away with What's Up Doc in our hard-bitten market-oriented times, but this was as delightful as it was when I first saw it in my first term as a student. Bogdanovich even manages to get Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal to pay tribute to Humphrey Bogart and Dooley Wilson on the roof of a San Francisco skyscraper. I'd forgotten about that, for some reason. Lovely stuff, anyway, and very funny.

Other films I have seen recently, but not journalled so far:

Chinatown: (Roman Polanski, 1974)
Attempts to recreate the film noir of the 1940 seldom succeed - as witness the execrable remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice with Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson. Jack Nicholson stars in this one too, but it works a treat - largely, I think, because Polanski takes on the genre with real affection and respect.

Duck Soup: (Leo McCarey, 1933)
Nothing I can say about this one-off classic would be original, so I won't say anything except that I loved it the umpteenth time every bit as much as I loved it the first time.


La Règle du Jeu: (Jean Renoir, 1939)
A combination of gentle farce and an incisive critique of the morality of bourgeois French society in the years before the Second World War. It's one of those films often cited as one of the best ever, and although it's beautifully filmed and eminently watchable, and the French style knocks spots of Hollywood, but I can't help feeling Les Enfants du Paradis did more for me.

Comments

[skyring.livejournal.com]

I've seen every one of those movies - blame it on my life as a film student in the late 1970s. La Règle du Jeu was a bit forced in parts, but there's one great line in it, where the master orders the butler, during the middle of a particularly frenzied series of escapades, "Stop this farce!", and he replies "Which one, sir?"

What's Up Doc is one of my very favorites. OK, a lot of it is slapstick, but pairing Ryan O'Neal and Babs was an inspired choice. I saw it twice when it came out on the big screen and a number of times since.

[mrsdanvers63.livejournal.com]

What's Up Doc is gentle comedy - I loved it when I first saw it at the cinema and numerous TV viewings since. Slapstick comedy as depicted now seems to have to include vulgarity and toilet humour.

I'm also a big fan of Chinatown as I think it gets the homage right.