Weekend update

I felt like starting the weekend with a touch of class in Hitchcock's adaptation of Frederick Knott's Dial M For Murder (#199). The film is very much like a play, playing out almost entirely on a single set, and is apparently largely unchanged from the theatre version. It's quite an intricate murder mystery and I'm glad I paid attention all the way through because the resolution is really ingenious. It continues to amaze me how I've enjoyed many of these less-known Hitchcock movies more than the obvious ones like The Birds.

I'm trying as far as possible to prioritise movies I'm less enthusiastic about, so that the project gets more fun as it goes on. Near the bottom of my personal preference is any kind of musical, so I really didn't expect much from Singin' In The Rain (#77). But actually the spontaneous bursting-into-song moments weren't as jarring as I normally find them, and I enjoyed most of it. My interest started to wane in the last half-hour or so, which I watched with Katie, but certainly it was less painful than I expected. That was it for Saturday, because I was distracted by an extended evening barbecue, so I resolved to be more focused on the Sunday.

After the success of Modern Times a few days ago, I embarked on another Charlie Chaplin classic in City Lights (#61). This one seemed more sentimental and largely less funny than Modern Times, but it did nevertheless have some classic clowning moments which have aged well. It's remarkable that Chaplin continued making silent films well into the '30s even when, after their introduction in 1929, almost all other movies were talkies, and that they were still enormously popular despite that. I believe those are the only two Chaplin creations to make the top 250, but I might seek out a few more after this whole debacle is over.

Another genre that I'm generally not enthusiastic about is children's movies, which definitely includes WALL-E (#43), but again this really exceeded my expectations. I was never a big fan of Toy Story or Shrek, and WALL-E isn't as technically ambitious as those (or even as the godawful Final Fantasy film), and the slightly confused eco-warrior theme starts to grate after a while. But it must be said that the characters are very cute, and much of the film is genuinely funny and completely without dialogue, which made a neat parallel with the previous film.

While I was on a CGI children's film theme, I thought I'd watch Ratatouille (#163), which may now have displaced The Incredibles as my favourite example of the genre. The plot evolves in quite a complex way for a children's film, and (as one would expect from Pixar) the characterisation and animation is top-notch. My only regret is not watching this with some actual kids, but I'll no doubt end up rewatching it at some family gathering. Really good stuff.

Oscar joined me for a bit of Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (#74), a film which I have been meaning to watch for several years but somehow never got round to. As murder mysteries go, it's one of the less mysterious, and we spent quite a lot of it giggling at the mild language used by these supposed crooks and hardmen, such as "Horsefeathers!" and "PDQ", as presumably they couldn't get an explicit 'Damn' past the Production Code enforcers. Nevertheless it was less soppy than most Bogart vehicles, and has some great lines like, "Keep on eying me and they're gonna be picking iron out of your liver." Also it was refreshing to see a film without a clear divide between heroes and villians, although this is becoming a cliché in itself in modern films; and Bogart's Sam Spade is, as Oscar observed, "clearly a complete bastard".

I always think it's remarkable when a film's director also acts in the same movie (as Chaplin did, in addition to writing, producing, scoring and choreographing them), so seeing Orson Welles do just that in Touch of Evil (#99) was an appealing prospect. The film is certainly gripping, with every scene adding further layers to the pile of murder and corruption, and Charlton Heston works surprisingly well as a not-very-Mexican-sounding Mexican. Despite that I just didn't take to it that much, and the choppy editing may (as I discovered afterwards) be the result of Welles' battle with Universal Studios over the film's production. But maybe it's evidence that watching five films in one day is just too many. I will try to pace myself better in the coming week.

Tally: 111 (9 days 13 hours)