Distant Relatives: Metropolis and District 9

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through a common theme and ask what their similarities and differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.

Upstairs/Downstairs

They tell bird owners to avoid putting your new pet in one of those high hanging Tweety-bird cages.  See, if the bird spends most of his time positioned above you, he'll develop a sense of superiority and will be impossible to teach and train.  Just in case the overworld/underworld concept started to seem like a common and cliched metaphor, it doesn't hurt to remember that it's a fact of nature. Those who are above see themselves as greater than those who are below.  And if it transcends animal species here on Earth then why not throughout the universe?  Which is why it makes so much sense that the aliens of District 9 couldn't be allowed to live in their space ship towering high in the sky but had to be moved onto the ground and given the nickname "prawn" after an animal that mucks about far below us humans.  Metropolis classically uses the conceit and creates a reality where the workers live below the ground while the aristocracy lives in skyscrapers high above, and extends it to Biblical dimension, with workers being gobbled up in fantasy by the demon Moloch, rich people cavorting around overworld places called the "Eternal Gardens" and the central skyscraper the "New Tower of Babel."

Like much science fiction that comments on social justice issues, we're presented in both films with evil corporatedom.  In Metropolis, Joh Frederson is the founder and autocratic force behind the city.  In District 9 the wonderfully generically named Multinational United is the military company tasked with relocating the slum based aliens (because surely no government wants to do it).  In both cases, someone from deep within this corporate atmosphere will penetrate the "underworld" and come to an understanding, and in both cases it's a privileged son (or son-in-law).  At the front, Freder and Wikus van de Merwe seem like they couldn't be more different.  Frederson is a playboy and van de Merwe is a schlub (who hasn't even the decency to have been born into his luck) but both men are fated to bridge the gap between two very different worlds.  It's no surprise given their strength or weakness of personality that Freder ventures down into the unknown because of passion and cunning.  Van der Merwe goes because he's told.

Hero/Villain

Both District 9 and Metropolis are burdened with heroes that we, the audience, aren't likely to want to identify with.  Metropolis gets around this by making its protagonist display the heroism and moral fortitude that we'd all like to believe we'd have given his situation.  He acts out of love and then out of common decency.  Van der Merwe is a stooge and when he grows a conscience it's only in the most extreme of situations, when he is forced to literally live in the skin of the "prawns" and witness the inhumanity toward them.  Perhaps because in modern times we simply can't believe a man of business would become a moral champion without being dragged into it kicking or screaming.  Perhaps it's because audiences no longer identify with unapologetic heroes (even superheros these days are painted with serious amounts of pathos and self-doubt).  However, no one wants to identify with a racist.  District 9 director Blomkamp cleverly provides us with a tough road to tolerance, making his aliens disgusting, unsettling, and violent creatures.  Van der Merwe does eventually capture our sympathies because we see in him, not immediate heroism, but the capacity to learn and change.  Our standards for heroism have changed in eighty years, or just gotten more realistic.  And eventually, Van der Merwe too acts out of love.

The original bio-technology

 It's interesting that while both men are eventually compelled by the injustices they see, there is always that underlying compulsion to attain or re-attain the woman they love.  Whether that's selfishness or not - well neither film is exactly a lesson in Ayn Rand Objectivisim.   Then again, the lesson of Metropolis isn't exactly "Comrades Unite!" either, though the juxtaposition of the workers and aristocrats isn't far from the Soviet revolution silents of that same period.  Instead the message is "The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart," a somewhat muddled and sentimental cry toward empathy all around.  Not so for District 9.  While our "good guy" situation may be murky, there are certainly bad guys and they must be defeated, through destruction if necessary.  In Metropolis the only villain set for destruction is the evil scientist Rotwang.  Even Frederson gets inexplicably redeemed.  In the time between the two films, one-dimensional heroes have made way for one-dimensional villains.  This makes it easier when the good guys win, if they win.  Unfortunately in that same amount of time, that conclusion has gotten much less inevitable.


Hope/Uncertainty

Metropolis ends on a pretty high note.  Foes are vanquished.  Love is founds.  Mutual respects are earned.  Societal breakdown is avoided.  At the end of District 9, what we're left with is hope.  We're presented with the possibility of an eventual happy ending.  When you think of the characters of District 9 in five or ten years, do you see a happy ending?  Chances are you haven't filled one in yet, and are hesitant to doing so.  This is because the filmmakers have us exactly where they want us.  For a movie influenced so strongly and apparently by the recent history of Apartheid in South Africa, it could never in good conscience end by the hands and the head meeting with the heart.  All is well.  Intolerance is defeated.  It has to present the struggle for equality as one with no end, just ongoing hope.  Curiously in this particularly pessimistic fable, the only real solution is the permanent separation of the human and alien class.  Metropolis certainly wasn't errant to suggest peaceful protest, but nearly a century later after war, corruption, holocaust and unending civil rights struggle, the idea may not play as well at the multiplex.  Even Fritz Lang eventually said "You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale."

Metropolis is indeed a fairy tale.  That's one of the major differences between the two films and indicative of how the science fiction genre has evolved.  Metropolis is a big intentionally artificial stylized production with expressionist sets, wild dream sequences and eventually the Whore of Babylon running about.  It's not set in our reality but is a parable. District 9 is presented in a semi-documentary style, heavy on realism, going to lengths to redefine our history in a way we'll accept.  It thrives on its believability. It's worth noting that the high-concept of District 9 propelled it to surprise independent film success, although the backing Peter Jackson didn't hurt, nor did the action movie finale (which is why one must wonder if the film promotes just revolution as a social philosophy or a reason to get some explosions into the picture).  Metropolis's high concept on the other hand lead to political and critical controversy (enjoy this take down by dissenter H.G. Welles), highly edited, nearly incoherent versions.  Therein perhaps lies the main lesson in the comparison of these two films.  Anyone looking to stir up controversy today should tackle a subject other than the eternal, unresolvable struggle between the haves and have-nots.  Which may not necessarily be such a good sign of progress.  Because while we almost all now agree with the triumphantness of the statement, we've also accepted the inevitability of the premise.

Yes, No, Maybe So: "Green Lantern"

Another round of insta-judgments. Just add trailer. Suddenly we know if...

• yes) we're buying tickets
• no) we're shunning the movie, or...
• maybe so) withholding the judgments until we have more info.

Maybe so is usually the correct answer. Sometimes great trailers lead to disappointing movies. And sometimes virtually every piece of marketing for a movie will practically beg you not to see it when you might actually like it if you do  (*cough* TANGLED... more on that soon).

But it's hard not to pre-judge. Commercials invite you to do just that.

In brightest day... in blackest night... 

Ryan "Sexiest Man Alive" Reynolds stars as the Hal Jordan incarnation of Green Lantern. There have been many Green Lanterns, both before and after him but Hal is the most famous.

Yes. For those of you who are unaware, Green Lantern is actually not just any old superhero. He's powerless. The power is in his ring, a mystical device, and though he's superheroic, he's but one of many. In a way he's like an anonymous everyman worker-bee hero. It's an interesting twist on the typical one-of-a-kind hero concept if you stop to think over it. Which is why I was hoping some really crafty creative type would've pitched this as Green Lantern Corps to some cable station, and made it a really intelligent sci-fi multiple worlds series using something complex/multi-dimensional like Battlestar Galactica as inspirational role model rather than IronDevilSpiderBatSuperHulkMan. Instead it looks like we got...

No. ...just another Superhero Origin Flick. You've got your boyman who is suddenly given the gift of great power and he has to learn adult responsibility and heroism while some bland but beautiful girl encourages him from the sidelines. Sound familiar? It should. And: YAWN. I get that we need our hero myths. But do they have to be so similar every time? Also I laughed so hard this afternoon when @MediaObsessed said on twitter

Blake Lively as a fighter pilot? Oh Hollywood, sometimes penises should not be allowed in casting decisions.

HEE. So so true. I was worried about the casting from the get go. Ryan Reynolds is somewhat talented but there is something a touch blande/assembly line about him... like he's the photograph of a star rather than the flesh and blood actuality (though we totally thank him for the approximation of flesh part). When you add the Hot Girl of the Moment as the love interest it starts to just seem really... generic, like no one had a vision other than a Hulk-like grunted directive "Make Tentpole. Smash Puny Box Office Records."

Maybe So. Er... uh... I got nothing this time. It just looks so generic. It doesn't even look like good eye candy. The visual effects are generic too. It's hard to imagine this even being in contention for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars for 2011. Unless it's a really weak year. They do have 5 visual effects slot now. My point is this: I curse the day that CGI made filmmakers so lazy about the aesthetics of power. Why do all spells, mutations, powers, mystical or scientific equal gaseous colorful swirls?

I'm not interested. I'm a no. I know I complain about superhero movies a lot but I actually love superheroes. Like most boys and some girls, I grew up adoring them. I just want their movie doppelgangers to have more individualized personalities and to be made with real care for the big screen.

You?

Yes, No, Maybe So: "Sucker Punch"

This goes out to anyone who caught the Sucker Punch trailer and anyone who cares about women as action heroes. Which, as you know, The Film Experience does. Unfortunately caring about something and enjoying it in practice are two different things. In practice there are so many things that can go wrong...

The trailer begins with an abused girl fights back set-up (a blouse ripped off and a  button flying in slo-mo. Suggested rape as your opening gambit? Distasteful). Emily Browning is playing the lead role of "Baby Doll" and reading the summaries, I see something about a lobotomy? Is that why the performance looks so sleepy/blank? Not promising. But soon enough Abbie Cornish and Jena Malone appear and seem to be channeling the kind of badass bitch energy that films like this need as life blood. They're both good actresses and I'm especially curious to see Abbie let loose given that I've mostly seen her in heavy dramas, corseted or otherwise.

There's some sort of Matrix like plot where reality is not reality... but we're in Baby Doll's imagination instead which, as it turns out, is like a parodic version of the imagination of a teenage boy: in her alternate reality, she's a master swordswoman / hooker who fights giant samurais, robots, zombies, aircraft, and dragons. She's backed up by a whole army of interchangeable blonde sex workers with machine guns.

Who knew that hookers were criminally insane, that their imaginations were so similar to teen boys, or that their favorite movies were Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Beowulf and 300?

On the other hand...

You wants us to watch the über watchable CARLA GUGINO doing a funky accent while ruling over a posse of criminally insane burlesque backup dancers? I mean... hells yeah. Count me in... as long as the movie is so bad it's good and knows how absolutely stoopid it is. (Past history suggests, unfortunately, that Zach Snyder is way too earnest a filmmaker to do justice to the ridiculous content of his movies. And Dawn of the Dead showed such promise, damnit.)

Summaries of Sucker Punch's confusing "girl retreats into imaginary universe to escape her wicked father" storyline, suggest that Carla is one of the villains. But in the trailer, she seems to be playing Laurence Fishburne's "Morpheus"" to Browning's idiot cousin version of "Neo." I have a loftier film icon in mind for Carla's gifts: Can't someone give her her own Cristal (Showgirls) level "Goddess" role soon. Time is running out.  'She's gettin a little old for that whorey look.'

Are you a yes, no or maybe so? 

I'm leaning hell no unless I hear that the lively cast of supporting actresses are fun enough to redeem the non-entity central role -- if this trailer is indication (let's hope it's not) Browning has only three expressions in her arsenal: scared, constipated, braindead. Can the fun cast make any kind of impression amongst the visual chaos/violent excess of Zach Snyder's sexual fantasies Baby Doll's imagination?

Related articles: Watchmen review
Action Heroine blog-a-thon
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First and Last, Eye

first and last images from a film.
 

first and last lines of dialogue for another clue.

first ~"Some call _______ the perfect society."
last ~ "To live only once... but with hope."

Can you guess the movie?

Yes, it's the sci-fi adaptation [Highlight for the answer] AEON FLUX (2005) starring Charlize Theron... who probably needs to get back to work in some major surprising way that reinvigorates audience interest, don't you think?

more first and last puzzles here... challenge your friends! All the past quizzes have the answers in highlightable text for easy access.

* *

Cast This: Gravity (Without Angelina Jolie)

It occurred to me a few weeks ago that I'd never mentioned Alfonso Cuarón's upcoming sci-fi epic Gravity. And here's a worrisome opportunity to do so. According to CHUD Angelina Jolie has passed on the big budget project for a second time. That type of a "no" can often doom an expensive project.

Gravity sans Jolie. What will they do?

Who will Alfonso Cuarón find to handle the heavy duty film-carrying demands of the role? The film concerns a man and a woman who are stranded in a space station. Or at least the woman iss (details are kind of unclear) The rest of the crew is dead. Robert Downey Jr has the principal male role but for whatever reason, it's a supporting gig. Gravity will rest on the female lead's shoulders. Most exciting from a filmmaking perspective is not, for me, the abundant groundbreaking CGI (as much as in Avatar) but that Cuarón wants to include long unbroken shots... one of them 20 minutes long.

Long unbroken shots are just about my favorite cinematic thing in the world after actresses so I should have mentioned this project long ago. This movie gives both. And Cuarón's already given plenty just by making Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children of Men. (Speaking of unbroken shots...)

Anyway, this has got to be a tough role to cast... and not just because of bankability issues. Not every actor would understand the shift in performance style required to carry huge metaphysical but also action-tinged sci-fi epics all by their lonesomes. Who were the last actors to do so? I guess Jodie Foster (Contact), Hugh Jackman (The Fountain), and George Clooney (Solaris) have all given that a go in their respective ways. Carrying a survival epic on your own? Tom Hanks in Castaway pops into mind... though that's decidedly earthbound. But we'll allow for him since he's also got the stranded in space thing with Apollo 13. Obviously you have to have a star people love to look at if they have to spend 90-120 minutes with primarily one face.


I always find it amusing/annoying that when big roles for women that don't seem to require a specific age range are being cast, studios always seem willing to consider any currently hot A list star of any age and virtually every 20something in town with any heat that month even though there's usually no proven bankability (which is how so many people end up starring in like 10 movies simultaneously and are never heard from again. Remember Kate Bosworth?). Studios will almost never bank on someone who once had heat and lost it despite the cold hard fact that showbiz is nothing if not a random chaotic collection of people who are walking embodiments of the cyclical nature of heat.

"Interested" lists always make me realize how rare and lucky we are as moviegoers when something accidental happens like when someone gives someone great a real shot even though they aren't perceived as "hot right now" or bankable or on every shortlist in town. Like Marisa Tomei in all of her Oscar nominated roles. She was never on the top of every list but she's so damn talented and reliably watchable. Or like Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham in '88. She had to fight to get that and then was magnificent obliterating any notions that she had already peaked. Many people even thought Streep was over in the early 90s, you know?

Who would you cast? Bear in mind we know virtually nothing about the role other than that it's a solo and the character has a daughter back on earth (so you can't skew as young as Ellen Page, or at least you probably shouldn't because why would someone leave a baby on Earth while they were space travelling?) They'll have to have chemistry with RDJ if he stays on, and they'll need to be comfortable in an effects heavy film (which is why I worry about the studio's interest in Natalie Portman. When exactly is she good in those situations even though she's often good elsewhere?). I'd be considering Gwyneth Paltrow first (I'm serious) and then probably Nicole Kidman. Hell, I'd even test Christina Ricci on account of the curveball aspect of it. There's a familiar interesting face that nobody would be expecting but that many people would enjoy and if she ever delivers big somewhere a million people are going to say "I knew she had it in her all along!". But as much as it surprises me to hear myself type it, the studio's rumored interest in Sandra Bullock makes total sense to me artistically even if they're probably only interested due to the monetary heat. Still, I can imagine her being a good match with RDJ and her uncomplicated but highly watchable acting style might actually be an assett to an effects heavy film. She's never tried one and maybe she'll want to stretch a little post-Oscar?

The possibilities are endless... aren't they?

I'll shut up now. I do go on. Your turn. Which actress would you love to see carrying a sci-fi epic for Alfonso Cuarón.
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This is Happening Right Now in Johannesburg!

Okay, not *right now* but a half hour ago. I woke up late. It's 10:00 AM here in NYC but apparently parties are still raging even as I type over in Johannesburg where it's 4 PM now. The alien ship that's been hovering over the city forever actually seemed to wake up and fly away. It's unclear what happened to Wikus.

I'd like to say this story is over. It appears to be. But I'm not sure why Johannesburg is celebrating. There's still a ton of alien prawns on the ground and the evictions and the new district to settle. And what if the mother ship returns? Someone should check in with this man to see if they will. Won't they be angry if they do?

two hours before that...
We hadn't heard any Wikus alien STD new for almost two days. But there was a terrorist bombing shortly after the last hospital security footage of Wikus Van Der Merwe was captured. Then lost of commotion under the ship in District 9. I'm sure we'll hear more.


Approximately 42/43 hours before that?


He doesn't seem to getting any worse. There's something so calming about sunsets (outside of say vampire movies) and Wikus needed a good night's sleep most of all. Coming right up I'm sure. It looks like he's had a meal and found a coat and stolen a phone. One of these calls his wife will pick up. Everything will be fine. I feel safe in turning of the South African news for awhile. Good luck, Wikus!

about 5 hours ago...
I'm sorry I'm laughing.


It's a nervous reaction. How Humiliating! We thought something was wrong with his arm but over the television they're saying that the MNU employee has contracted a dangerous alien STD. Boy did he clear that restaurant fast. Günters must be located right next to the hospital.

4 minutes before that embarrassment...
This just in from Johannesburg [It's 4:09 PM there, six hours earlier here in NYC]. Reports confirm that this IS the newly promoted MNU man Wikus Van Der Merwe. They sounded the alarm 43 minutes ago and he's still running through the hospital corridors as you can see on this monitor. 43 minutes of running. This place must be fooking huge.

The escapee

[a time stamp detail]

33 minutes before that...
OK. Something's definitely happening now. RIGHT NOW in this hospital in Johannesburg. 3:26 PM, August 11th ...it's six hours later there.


There appears to have been a scuffle and someone --on the floor, what -- has hit an alarm? Wait. This can't be Wikus?!?

previous entry, 17 hours ago...

Wikus's wife still hasn't heard from him. The random images we've been receiving suddenly aren't dated. We don't know if they're current or from hours ago at this point. The time on the internal cameras -- well who can make sense of the numbers. They seem to be in conflict. But one things certain: This man hasn't slept.


Why are MNU officers torturing one of their own? He's bleeding.

thirteen hours before that
This is not going well...

What is this? What are they doing to these prawns?

I don't think this hospital is treating this man very well. Something is seriously wrong with his arm. I'm about to go to bed but it's 7 AM in South Africa. They've kept him awake all night sticking things in his arm, wheeling him around and even hosing him down. Now they're talking about "pain threshold tests". WTF? He has no idea where he is anymore. Nobody has told his wife anything. For Christ sakes, where are they taking him?

7 or 8 hours before that. I may have lost an hour. Exhaustion settling in.


It's 10:00 PM in Johannesburg at this very second. I'm sure they'll see her husband soon. Everything's going to be all right!

a short time before that
Crap. That surprise party was ill-timed. I hope no one was really looking forward to eating cake. Maybe they should take him to the hospital?


an hour or so before that...


After the day he's had, we bet Wikus Van De Merwe is glad to be home... Home, Quiet Home. He's just pulling into his driveway now.

5 hours and 23 minutes before that...

His days of flouting the law are over

[a time stamp detail of the incident]

We read over the wire that MNU officers have started handing out evacuation notices in District 9. Things aren't going so smoothly.

roughly half an hour before that...

This has got the markings there of some--something, it's definitely alien. But it's not a weapon. But I don't trust it. No, I don't trust anyt---

Uh-oh.
District 9
* Sharlto Copley

Send in the (Green) Clowns

I'm off to a slow start this morning. Sometimes it can't be helped. Enjoy this first photo of Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern while I hook up my coffee IV, finish Oscar page revisions, and write about Inception... all while humming Sondheim's brilliant A Little Night Music score. What a mashup that will be.

BTW, loved the Broadway show last night. Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch are theater legends for a reason. Peters was exceptionally moving during "Send in the Clowns" -- I've never heard a Broadway audience go that quiet, basking in every nuance of that spectacular inimitable voice of hers -- and very funny hamming up the comedic portions of the show. There's this line in the second act about watching the summer sky smile, where Elaine Stritch says "That smile was particularly broad tonight." That line reading just killed. It felt like an affectionate elbow to the cast surrounding her that evening. Stritch was so funny that the young actress playing her granddaughter regularly had to wait a few extra beats to be heard above the laughter. Since this 1973 Stephen Sondheim musical is based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) and the film version of the musical in 1977 starring Elizabeth Taylor isn't definitive by any measure, I wonder why it doesn't get a second cinematic go? It couldn't be that expensive to mount since it basically only involves a few locations: mostly people's bedrooms and the grounds of a country estate.

"Desiree" via Eva Dahlbeck (55), La Liz (77), CZJ (09) and Bernadette (10)

All you need is a great actress of a certain age with a killer voice and a good comedic supporting cast. Plus beautiful costumes and careful outdoor cinematography. You're good to go. Do justice to the show's humor and the actress-playing-an-actress theatrical pathos and you've got Oscar nominations for Actress, Supporting Actress and a few tech categories at least.

[Trivia Tangent: Because we've been talking about the EGOT and the triple crown lately due to the upcoming Emmy awards, here's how that shakes out. As you know Catherine Zeta-Jones just won the Tony for this role so she only has to win an Emmy to get a triple crown. Bernadette, replacing her, has multiple Grammys -- or does she? -- and Tonys. She's been nominated for Emmys but hasn't won and the Oscar (let alone a nomination) eluded her even at the heighth of her fame in the late 70s / early 80s when she was in the mix at the Golden Globes winning for Pennies From Heaven and nominated for Mel Brooks' Silent Movie. Elaine has a Tony and multiple Emmys. No Grammy or Oscar.]

Switching gears*, to say the least...

I'm still sad there's going to be a Green Lantern movie instead of a Green Lantern Corps cable series. That could have been the next great complex and fascinating sci-fi television series to follow Battlestar Galactica with the right team. Instead I fear it will be a generic superhero movie franchise. It certainly looks generic. We need another great sci-fi series on television way more than we need another superhero movie.

If you had a power ring, what kind of things would you make it do? I mean, besides conjuring up free Broadway tickets.

*I apologize for the schizophrenia of this post. Everyone knows that superheroes and musicals don't go together.
*

She Who Must Be Obeyed!

Have you ever seen SHE (1935)? The brief title is appropriate even though the film is ostensibly a voyage film about a youngish man Leo Vincey (Randolph Scott) who sets out to find the Fountain of Youth. That fabled myth switches elements here to become the Flame of Life. Stepping into it will grant you immortality, see. But what SHE is really about is what men want and fear in women.

The film is available on Instant Watch at Netflix and today being its 75th anniversary, why not give it a look? It's an interesting snapshot of both cinema's male gaze (more on that later) and the 1930s. Genre films, even ones that take place in realms of the fantastical are often great snapshots of the time they sprang from. Luke Skywalker screams 1970s does he not? They only made faces and hair like that in the 1970s. And I think they only made square jawed men like Randolph Scott and his "roommate" Cary Grant back in the 1930s.

Mmmm. Randoph & Cary...

Scott ♥ Grant at their '30s beach home. (They lived together for 12 years.)
Every photo they took together -- and there are quite a few --amazes.

Sorry to distract!

Try not to think about Randolph & Cary while watching SHE. The film isn't about whether or not Randolph loved Cary but what kind of woman his character Vincey will choose to love. But we're jumping too far ahead.

First comes exposition.

And quite a lot of it at that. I'm working on a theory that older films feel slow to modern viewers because they put all their exposition and backstory in at the very beginning instead of bogging the narrative down with it intermittently as modern movies do. It takes SHE forever to get going.

The unfortunate side effect of too much exposition and that still regularly employed device of the protagonist as audience proxy, the character that needs everything explained to them, is that the protagonist often comes across as quite dimwitted. In the first thirteen minute scene (all exposition) we hear the story of Vincey's great great great great grandfather or some such -- they look exactly alike --and the legend of the Flame of Life. Vincey is shown an artifact with the inscription "Here burns the flame of life". He actually thinks they mean that that object is the immortality device. "But this is gold, a known element!" Dumb-dee-dumb-dumb... DUMB.

Apparently Vincey is unfamiliar with the concept of symbols.

The Flame of Life | Tanya the Young & Beautiful

Scientist: Don't you understand?
Vincey: I'm afraid I don't.

Once Vincey is on his journey, he travels in the blink of a title card to the utmost part of the world where he meets Tanya (Helen Mack), the young beautiful daughter of his guide through the treacherous arctic. Somehow the arctic guide is the only character who doesn't understand the basic principles of snow and avalanches but let's not nitpick. (It's not real snow anyway. The tracks suggest they poured sand on the studio floor.) Tanya tells him Vincey more about this legend. It involves a woman.

"What kind of woman?" he asks. It's the smartest question he'll ask in the entire movie, since the movie is about just that. Which kind of woman will a good man choose?

The adventurers discover a secret tropical world inside the snowy mountains they've been climbing. Beset upon by savages, Vincey is injured whilst performing heroics. Just when things look incredibly dire, they're suddenly rescued by the command of SHE (Helen Galaghan in her only film appearance) who rules this hidden world inside the mountains.

Her kingdom is a Lost Horizon/Brigadoon/Shangri-La sort of deal. Her interior decorator has a fondness for mixing up German expressionism, Roman and Greek influences and then tossing it all in an Art Deco blender. In other words, it's very 1930s... on steroids to make it seem otherworldly. The queen's full name is actually "She Who Must Be Obeyed" and/or "She Who Must Immediately Serve As Character Design For Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves".

SHE seems quite benevolent but for the troubling dictatorial implications of her full name. Soon it becomes apparent that Vincey's dead relative was her lover 500 years ago. She'd like to repeat that carnal experience with Randolph Scott if she can pry him away from Tanya and Cary Grant.

Who can blame her?

Her plan to do so is mucho theatrical and involves a huge human sacrifice ceremony, expensive costume parade and elaborate modern dance that won the movie its sole Oscar nomination for Best Dance Direction (in the first of only three years that AMPAS had such a category). Benjamin Zemach is the choreographer but I hope he dedicated the honor to Martha Graham because that legendary dance icon's influence is ALL over the number. It's rather as bald a steal as Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" was with Bob Fosse's work.

The most fascinating thing about SHE is how baldly it reveals all the screwy dichotomies of both cinema's male gaze and Hollywood's youth worship. Movies always want to eroticize women and then punish them for being erotic. And the movies are also always reinforcing America's youth worship while simultaneously reinforcing heteronormative ideals "Let's grow old together!"

In two consecutive scenes Tanya works both sides of this schizo view. She offers up her love to Vincey and talks about what she has to offer. Her words are flowery but they amount to 'Let's grow old together.' He rejects her. "You're not tempted as I am." In the next scene (catfight!) Tanya, having been rejected, storms into SHE's royal suite and wields "old" like an insult.

Tanya believes that this evil queen's magical age is a weakness.

Tanya: Why are you afraid of me?
SHE: (Incredulous) Afraid?
Tanya: You are afraid of me and now I see why. Because I'm young and you know love belongs to the young. Your magic makes you seem young but in your heart you're old, OLD. You were young once like me but now you're old and it's too late for love ever.

Oh, Tanya. If being old means you can't love then you'll lose Vincey anyway. You can't grow old together and stay young. Duh!

<-- evil spooky unnatural youth ritual

Aren't both women making the same argument?

SHE: 'I'm better because I'm young... forever.'
TANYA: 'I'm better because I'm younger... at the moment.'
BOTH LADIES: 'Being old is gross!'

It's no spoiler to tell you that Vincey is going to choose Tanya's helplessness and her home cooking. Literally. He's continually rescuing her and she cooks for him throughout the movie! The hero is never going to choose the alpha female because that's how movies do. But the Quest for Youth story blankets this traditional fear of powerful women with a hypocritical ageism. Randolph Scott was 37 and Helen Galaghan 35 when the film was released but Helen Mack, playing Tanya, was 21. In the scene where Vincey and Tanya first meet, the romantic kindling for her fire is when this older man tells her how he'd treat her if she were his... daughter. Ewww.

Vincey will reject that Flame of Life but isn't he still chasing that fountain of youth by choosing a young bride?

Note the positioning: Scott, submissive, in the traditional "slave girl"
pose. Can't have that! Later, the reverse corrective: Scott throned in
his own home. The woman dethroned and in submissive position.

Maybe not that much has changed at the movies in the past 75 years. We've still got big special effects extravaganzas (which this is... and fairly impressive for its time, too) praised for their sheer spectacle and imagination, their other flaws (stilted acting, massive plotholes) ignored. And we've still got plentiful storylines wherein powerful women are vilified and damsels in distress are placed on pedestals. Now, today's damsels do have a little more fire in them than quivery crying Tanya... but if they get too fiery, watch out! They'll end up as terrifying as emasculating as dangerous as SHE!
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