I'm gonna dance with you, pal you're gonna dance with me!
January 4, 2017 9:21 AM   Subscribe

“It was so much fun to go through all those archives and retrace the steps that the production designers of the era took to achieve the look of their movies,” says [production designer Jess Gonchor]. Here, in GIF form, we’ve assembled a handful of classic films that directly inspired Hail, Caesar!
posted by griphus (26 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
That movie would have been so much better if it was just an anthology of the period genre parodies and ditched the whole framing narrative.
posted by octothorpe at 9:24 AM on January 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


That movie would have been so much better if it was just an anthology of the period genre parodies and ditched the whole framing narrative.

Would that it were so simple.
posted by figurant at 9:28 AM on January 4, 2017 [37 favorites]


I find narrative parodies essential for framing imperial politics.
posted by clavdivs at 9:44 AM on January 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


Came for the gifs, stayed to learn that Dear Abby and Ann Landers were identical twins as well as feuding rivals.
posted by figurant at 9:46 AM on January 4, 2017


Hah! I finally watched this movie last weekend, and I loved it.

I was watching late at night, but the "game" of trying to spot all the references and all the small touches that made the period look made me want the movie to go on longer.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:49 AM on January 4, 2017


Is Barton Fink streaming on anything bc I desperately want to watch them consecutively now.
posted by griphus at 9:51 AM on January 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


The No Dames dance sequence made me appreciate Channing Tatum since I'm that person who missed all his previous career.
posted by beaning at 9:54 AM on January 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


I saw it when it first came out and was supremely underwhelmed by all but a few scenes ("would that it were so simple," "No Dames," every scene with Scarlett Johansson). It struck me as a handful of great moments scattered throughout a picture that needed a little bit more effort to make it an actual story. At the time I thought if I had a greater familiarity with these films (I only know the archetypes, really), I would have enjoyed it more. But if this is really all there is....?
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:58 AM on January 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Unabashed love letter" seems like they didnt really watch the rest of the film, which is very critical of the studio system, and maybe even movies in general. It was an abashed love letter, for sure.

Anyway, it is neat to see the influences laid out side by side. Regardless of the bashedness the Coens do a wonderful job at the recreation aspect.
posted by codacorolla at 10:05 AM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


The saddest part about this movie for me was David Krumholtz looking like he had aged three decades in the space of two years. Maybe it was all makeup, but man.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:09 AM on January 4, 2017


At the time I thought if I had a greater familiarity with these films (I only know the archetypes, really), I would have enjoyed it more.

Less the actual films and more of the industry, practices, scandals, etc. It wasn't he most cohesive of their movies and the framing device did feel a little tacked-on, but that being said I'm not sure there could be a better framing device for this series of vignettes as a Day In The (Sanitized-For-Hollywood) Life Of Eddie Mannix.

I spent the entire movie with a smile on my face being like "hey they're talking about..." or "that's an allusion to..." and so on, but it was all seamlessly integrated into the dialogue so if you're not listening to it/aware of it/fond of it, much of it might sound like the barely-coherent stuff they replace tech dialogue TKs in Star Trek scripts with.

A huge chunk of Inglorious Basterds is that way as well. In fact there's a certain sense in them being bookends to one another.
posted by griphus at 10:12 AM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


What. We just gonna pretend that the submarine transfer scene that was ripped straight out of an Eisenstein film didn't happen?
posted by NoMich at 10:28 AM on January 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


It did have probably the best and funniest scene about Christology in modern cinema, so there will always been a soft spot in my heart for that.
posted by Copronymus at 11:15 AM on January 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


This is special? Who isn't who is?
posted by griphus at 11:31 AM on January 4, 2017


My quick bean-plated reading of the film: the contrast of Mannix' struggle with the lure of industrial capitalism set next to actors/writers seduction by communism is the big flashing light that caught my attention. There *is* a beautiful activity at the center of Hollywood but it's embedded in a wide mix of concerns and tensions that can pull it off track: the foibles of individuals, overconcern with money, underconcern with the practical, overobsession with a specific artistic vision ("it's... complicated"). Dealing with it is shoveling an unending pile of shit to take care of, and for people who can do that, there's certainly other places where you reap great economic rewards and more status with Serious People. Is it worth it? Is the output really just a bunch of silly distractions -- or is it beauty and truth? Mannix is constantly interrogated about that by the columnist sisters trying to get at the "real truth", while he's constantly asking himself the same question.

I like it. It's not super direct, but I like it. I have a bit of trouble with the difference as I understand it between real life Eddie Mannix and HC Eddie Mannix, but I can still separate the two characters.
posted by wildblueyonder at 11:44 AM on January 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


I appreciated the Eisenstein bit, NoMich. But then submarine movies are a favorite genre of mine. Also I love patriotic anthems of the Soviet Union, so I was quite happy at that moment.
posted by Orlop at 11:47 AM on January 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


There's a You Must Remember This episode about Eddie Mannix, but fair warning it's much, much darker than anything HC even hints at. I don't think I even finished it just because it got so brutally exhausting.
posted by griphus at 11:48 AM on January 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


I saw it this weekend and posted my theory in FanFare (forgive that last bit of drunken hyperbole), but in short, I think this movie conceals a dark heart. I really enjoyed it after sitting with it for a bit.
posted by invitapriore at 2:03 PM on January 4, 2017


I loved the framing of this movie. When I read The Yiddish Policemen's Union, I loved how it felt like Cohen Brothers movie. Starting within one genre, and winding down an increasingly absurd tangent that felt like a scattered unpacking of being Jewish with all the mysticism and conspiracies of being all powerful with the realities of being marginalized and almost wiped from existence. (but I am a non-Jewish reader, so I stay agnostic in how universal it feels to that culture)

And then they let the rights lapse. But Hail Caesar was the secular version of that. The anxieties of socialist Hollywood, the absurdity of actually overthrowing capitalism clashing with the realities of communist panic and the marginalization that spread through Hollywood as a result.
posted by politikitty at 2:26 PM on January 4, 2017


griphus, Barton Fink is indeed currently streaming on Netflix.
posted by pasici at 4:18 PM on January 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah, that movie was basically a visual accompaniment to being obsessed with golden-age studio movies.

I mean, I really enjoyed it, but that's in my wheelhouse and I could recognize it's flaws as a self-contained piece of art, which were numerous.
posted by lumpenprole at 5:10 PM on January 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm a zealot. I dismiss any criticism of a supposed lack of coherence as POVs invested in what they believe a Coen movie should be versus what it is and HC is satire to be relished because the legends and mythology of Hollywood's "fixers" are darkly twisted Grimm Tales. Mannix, who never swears, could shame Capra's George fuckin' Bailey. The near absence of swearing (except for Clooney's flubbing lines the director claimed were essential and beyond a double) is a fabric missed by many.

Many have said they would watch hours of Goodman's Sobchak (including Goodman) and I'll say the same of Johansson's DeeAnna.

There are few directors with as much creative control and appreciation of the grammar of story telling-- its traditions, conventions, limits and possibilities...

One's expectations? Surrender them and gain a greater comprehension of what's possible. The Coen's are a gift of sensibilities cohering generations.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 2:39 AM on January 5, 2017


Speaking of sunny versions of the true darkly-twisted Grimm tales, the adoption baby-laundering scheme that Jonah Hill proposes was probably based on movie star Loretta Young, who found herself in that troubling situation after being date-raped by Clark Gable. Makes me wonder what other seedy Hollywood stories they were painting over.
posted by WhackyparseThis at 5:07 AM on January 5, 2017


I don't read satire as either sunny or a paint job, but then I'll qualify the prevalent critique of a "Hollywood love letter" as cursory and superficial. And it is what it is to you and you're as correct as myself to take what you do from their work.

I don't point out the absence of swears to imply a morality. I note it because their use of it is precise and purposeful. It is legend by terms of Lebowski and several reviewers seemed perplexed by its abundance with Inside Llewyn Davis. With Caesar, my interpretation is it plays with the pretenses of a specific time and culture and its sanitation/filtering...its lies.

The "morality" of Caesar is a landscape/motif-- Lockheed's atom bomb contracts being the "devil"(that several reviews noted).
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:39 AM on January 5, 2017


I love Hail, Caesar! As I love all the old movies it nods to. My husband is not a fan though and not coincidentally he is not a fan of old Hollywood movies.
I do think there is a darkness to the movie; for good and for ill the studio system was dictatorial.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 9:29 AM on January 5, 2017


I'll qualify the prevalent critique of a "Hollywood love letter" as cursory and superficial

Well, it's superficial which is fine because it's generally an opening to begin discussion. I think the important thing here is that it's both a love letter to the Hollywood Movies of the era, and to the behind-the-scenes Holywood scandals and stories of the era a la Holywood Babylon or You Must Remember This.

I don't think anything previous has walked that line quite so successfully. I think the biggest flaw with the movie is that if you don't come into it with a tremendous amount of foreknowledge in both areas, it's going to seem needlessly weird and all over the place.
posted by lumpenprole at 11:53 AM on January 5, 2017


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