| Author | Message | ||
     Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.72 |
http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/l/Letter-From-an-Unknown-Woman-1948/index-75792.html | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.242.189 |
Are there explosions? And side-splitting wisecracks from lovable smart-aleck side-kicks? | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.72 |
So, you've seen it then. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Are there nubile scandinavian lesbian milkmaids wearing leather? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
'Letter From An Unknown Woman' is one of those classic tear-jerker melodramas that cinema can't do anymore. Once seen never forgotten. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.72 |
Steve - mate, LFAUW, is more than a melodrama. It's one the greats.  | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
The trailer seems to be for a film that's got more hokum and romantic clap-trap than Carter's got little pills. What's wrong with your eye-sight, Frankie, my boy? | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.72 |
Ian - either you are toying with me, or you really haven't seen the film?  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.1.0 |
Is it better than Brief Encounter? | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
Frank: I've not only not seen it, I've never even heard of it! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Frank is right, 'Letter From An Unknown Woman' is like 'Random Harvest', 'Waterloo Bridge' & 'Brief Encounter' all rolled into one and is just as marvellous as that implies. It's Max Ophüls masterpiece. I've watched it several times over the years and it never gets dull - but it is a melodrama, Frank, one of the best ever made. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.72 |
Steve - I'll have to quibble there, matey. It appears for all intents and purpose a melodrama, but I think it's much more than the films you listed. Though the films you listed are great also. Letter From An Unknown Woman goes beyond the tear-jerker status of the others. Much much deeper. It's one of the films that you'll find film course tutors raving about, and rightly so. Though I'm not suggesting for a moment that that should make it worthwhile. Ian - you should watch it, pal. It's a masterpiece. Craig - is it better than Brief Encounter? That's like asking is Star Wars better than 2001? Or is The Godfather better than Goodfellas. Or is Donnie Darko better than The Mist. Get my point? BTW: Craig, are you rooting for your soccer boys, or are you completely uninterested...like most of the population of your country...see, I'm reinforcing cultural and national stereotypes...see (: | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.254.172 |
Alright, Frank, I'll check out the film.... No need for you to reinforce the stereotypical American - I will for you: I couldn't care a shred of a whit of a speck of a bit about the World Cup. But that's just me. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I just don't get Brief Encounter. I'm a romantic soul through and through and I enjoy tragic love stories and melodrama. But Brief Encounter feels like anti-romance to me. Honour over love? Blegh. Doesn't work for me. I haven't seen Letter from an Unknown Woman but any comparison with Brief Encounter makes me wary.  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.1.45 |
Kate - it is, what its title is - a "brief encounter" - it's not Dr. Zhivago-epical. But, I hear it's been ridiculed and defamed for many years in Britain as it is.... Hey, ever see The Heiress, Kate? Now THAT is "anti-romance." Olivia DeHavilland gave one of maybe the top 5 performances of the century in that film... there's a romance that is chilling to the bone.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Kate, you have to take these films at face value as representative of the times in which they were made and the values that society then held high. Of course those values were crass and wrong-headed but people, especially married women, were forced to live by them and that is what makes the tragedy of 'Brief Encounter' so resonant and, if anything, even more affecting now than when it was first made. We can see, with the eyes of enlightenment, how pathetically ignoble their decision to part was and yet still feel how painful and noble and right it seemed for them... 'Brief Encounter' is a magical movie for its stark realism (yes, stark) but 'Letter From An Unknown Woman' has a similar effect by going to the other extreme as gloriously outrageous fantasy melodrama (think 'Madame X') that still paints an equally devastating picture of the sacrifice of happiness women were expected to make, in the name of probity, in those less enlightened times. Their sacrifice should not be mocked but instead understood and lamented imo. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.180.134 |
I like Brief Encounter. I've been thinking lately how astonishingly dreamlike these old movies are, that they have more flavour than anything current. They lodge in the mind and haunt it, like memories of real places. It's funny but a lot of my recent story ideas are like this sort of thing, eerie relationship things. Characters encountering one another can be like worlds meeting, sending up all sorts of resonances. Anyone seen The Double Life of Veronique? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.180.134 |
King's Row? One of my favourite films, that, unseen in over twenty years by me due to not being on video or telly since then. Ronald Reagan is in it, which probably explains it. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.180.134 |
Craig - I've lost your email address. Could you send me an email so I can get it? I know I never do anything with them, but I have another movie idea...  | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
I've heard a lot of good things about 'King's Row', Tony, so let me know if you see it coming on. 'The Double Life Of Veronique' is another one that's passed me by... old movies rock!! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Letter from an Unknown Woman I'd say is considerably finer than Brief Encounter. Along with The Reckless Moment I think it's Ophuls' greatest film, and one of my list of ten favourite films of all time. After many viewings I still find it inexhaustible. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
It is one of the great ones, with that touch of pure magic that marks out the finest cinema. 'The Reckless Moment' is one of my favourite noir thrillers of the 40s. Only saw it for the first time a year or two ago and was completely bowled over by its originality and subversion of the genre. James Mason was heartbreaking in it. Wonderful movies! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.253.193 |
Tony - check your email. Well, I guess I'll go look for Letter at the lieberry today.... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Incidentally, the third episode of Rossellini's Paisą uses a central conceit very similar to that of Letter from an Unknown Woman. I wouldn't call Ophuls' film any more melodramatic than Vertigo (and I'd place it on the same elevated level). | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
"King's Row? One of my favourite films, that, unseen in over twenty years by me due to not being on video or telly since then. Ronald Reagan is in it, which probably explains it." I don't think Reagan has anything to do with its unavailability, Tony - for instance, Siegel's Killers is readily available. You can get Kings Row on Spanish DVD or Region 1, both available from amazon.co.uk. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
People assume I use the word "melodrama" disparagingly but nothing could be further from the truth. I love nothing more than a good far-fetched, full-throttle, emotionally draining melodrama. It's probably the genre that is most difficult to do convincingly (and cinema has long lost the knack) but when it works, when it forces you to suspend your disbelief despite knowing how irrational your emotional response is, that's when cinema creates true magic imo. Some of my favourite Melodramas: 'The Champ' (1931) 'Angels With Dirty Faces' (1938) 'Jezebel' (1938) 'Dark Victory' (1939) 'The Letter' (1940) 'Waterloo Bridge' (1940) 'Casablanca' (1942) - again, compare with the more realist 'Brief Encounter' (1946) 'Random Harvest' (1942) 'Mildred Pierce' (1945) 'Letter From An Unknown Woman' (1948) 'The Reckless Moment' (1949) 'An Affair To Remember' (1957) 'Imitation Of Life' (1959) - or anything by Douglas Sirk, king of the irresistible melodrama ...and loads more. Cinema is all about playing on the audience's heightened emotions and no genre does that better than a well crafted tear-jerking melodrama! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
I might also add that last week's Vincent Van Gogh episode of 'Doctor Who' was pure melodrama at its best! | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I shall check out both Letter and The Heiress - thanks for the recommendations! @ Stevie: I know what you mean about Brief Encounter being a product of the values of its time. I'm just puzzled by its constant citing as one of the most romantic movies of all time. It's certainly tragic (and I do love tragic!), but I can't help but feel that their love can't have been that "real" or they'd have done anything for it. Naturally, if they'd left their respective families to be together, it would have been a completely different film and far too radical for a postwar audience. An alternative would be to shift gears with the unhappy ending and have them make the choice, then be killed (one or both) on the way to "happily ever after". But again, given its time, that would become moralistic rather than tragic. I suppose it's just too firmly set in a world I can't relate to for it to work for me. Plus Celia Johnson's accent is annoying. Mr Stevens in Remains of the Day has the same misguided "honour before love" values and the tragedy is that he doesn't learn that they're misguided until it's too late. But he does eventually learn. The book is of course "better" as a whole, but the film is a masterpiece of suppressed desire and the "Let me see your book" scene always makes me misty-eyed. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
What's your reading of the "honourable" decision made in 'Casablanca', Kate? I think it's great to get discussing these old movies as still relevant. Haven't seen 'Remains Of The Day' but you make me want to... | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Casablanca works for me in the same way A Tale of Two Cities does. Rick makes the "right" sacrifice for love whereas the pair in Brief Encounter throw their love away in favour of societal expectations. It's not a worthy sacrifice. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Yep, that's how I read it too... you can see that Rick know's how stupid he's being and feel his struggle to sound convincing because he knows he would be selfishly risking her life for his own happiness were he to allow her to stay. His sacrifice is truly noble but the tragedy of 'Brief Encounter' works, for me, through the wonderfully underplayed incidental details that paint a vivid picture of the strait-jacketed world those people lived in and makes their ridiculously po-faced, passionless decision understandable and ultimately heartbreaking. It more than deserves its reputation, whether as classic romamce or classic anti-romance the effect is still emotionally powerful in my view. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
Kate, I think THE REMAINS OF THE DAY is a more powerful film than the excellent book, partly because of the scene you mentioned but also because of the scene where Hopkins sleeps overnight in a B&B, in the room of a young man who was killed in the war. I don't think that scene is in the book. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Based on a novel by one of the great unsung heroes of homespun British sci-fi at its most convincing and calmly apocalyptic: D.F. Jones - author of the utterly brilliant 'Xeno' (1979), which I consider one of the best, and most subtly disturbing, British alien invasion novels ever written. He wrote works of outstanding excellence, in the manner of Wells & Wyndham, but just a decade or two too late to make a lasting impact... still, I remember him. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Oops... wrong thread lol. |