Entry tags:
Knitting and watching old British films
I've knitted the body of my new merino turtleneck and am working on the pocket linings (sleeves next, and the turtleneck last). This has meant finding things to put on to watch while I'm knitting.
Well, at first I was doing a lot of scrolling through the main pages of streaming services discontentedly, fuming because none of them have working genre categories anymore and there aren't even any search terms you can put into any of them to reliably pull up old movies or classic movies or even black and white movies.
But after I watched the newest videos from channels I follow on YouTube last week, the algorithm there unexpectedly suggested Laurence Olivier's Hamlet - and I watched it on a whim. Cinematographically speaking it's absolutely divine, really. In terms of visual design, I think the only flaw is the female costumes - the male costumes do a good job of looking medievalish but nothing too specific, but the female ones come out rather like those paperback gothic romance novel covers instead - you know, improbable and glamorous nightgown effects with odd hair. Anyway, that was the most fun I'd had in a while, so I started typing "Shakespeare" into the search boxes of all our streaming services, not getting anything - of course you can subscribe to five streaming services and none of them has a single Shakespeare film, because enshittification! - , except that Netflix, bless its evil little algorithm, noticed what I was typing and suggested a whole list of "Did you mean?" with about fifteen options, and ten of them were things like "Shakespeare tragedies: Hamlet" and "Shakespeare tragedies: Macbeth"; and I clicked on each of them in turn, learning in turn that they didn't have this one or that one, being offered random shit instead, the way they do when they don't have anything featuring the same stars or director as the thing you searched for...
Except then I clicked on "Shakespeare comedies: the Tempest", and as usual Netflix didn't have it, but what it offered me instead was an entire screen full of 1930s-60s British (mostly) comedies that I'd never heard of. (I don't mean that they were obscure or anything - I have seen the original St Trinian's films, and that's about it.)
After all, why not?, I thought. These can't be as badly written as the last two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I had to turn up to 1.5x speed in order to get through! (Rewatching all the Treks in order is a longterm background project.) (The offending episodes are 107 Justice, in which aliens on a utopian planet want to execute Wesley, a child, for failing to obey a Keep off the Grass sign; and 108 The Battle, in which a Ferengi bent on revenge uses a programmable short-range mind control orb to attempt to have Picard blow himself up, and when Riker discovers this plot and tells the other Ferengi, a second one is like "Oh shit, he told you guys about the mind control orb? That's not allowed", and at the end of the episode we're just left to assume that the Ferengi have had short-range mind control technology all this time, and apparently they all know about it, but somehow nobody else knows about it and they haven't used it to take over the galaxy or anything. Both of these have a strong early sf short story vibe - distinctly EARLIER and less sophisticated than the wave of SF that was published ten years before they aired. They all have that pulpy 30s-50s vibe, like the original Foundation trilogy, sort of... My Idea Is Super Conceptual and Exists in a Vacuum Where I Don't Have to Think About Practical Details or Check It Against Real World Counterparts, and Also Modern Psychology, Which Would Disprove All This, Doesn't Exist Yet.)
What was I saying? Right. So, midcentury British comedies (mostly)! I like British comedy a fair bit of the time, so it was worth a try. And everything is fairly sexist of course, just as in American films of the period, but I have managed to watch a few! Here's the score so far:
DNF/ sexism: Maytime in Mayfair (1949), The Big Job (1965), All the Way Up (1970)
DNF/ boredom: Treasure Hunt (1952), Sally in our Alley (1931)
DNF/ the premise was too stupid: No Kidding (1960), The Duke Wore Jeans (1958), Let's Be Happy (1957)
DNF/ Soviet Russia jokes: Friends and Neighbours (1959)
DNF/ the whole thing was a vehicle for one guy's extremely unfunny hapless idiot character: Keep Your Seats Please (1936)
DNF/ POV of an extremely stupid little boy who doesn't deserve what's happening to him, but it wouldn't've happened if he'd had two braincells to rub together to tell him to not play recklessly in half-demolished bombed-out shells of buildings: The Yellow Balloon (1953), The Weapon (1956) (If I had a nickel... etc... but it's funny that it happened twice) (Neither of these are comedies)
I had a great time and am kind of obsessed with this even though it is obviously still sexist and probably has at least one other glaring issue: An Inspector Calls (1954)(drama), Winslow Boy (1948)(drama biopic), The Extra Day (1956), The House Across the Lake (1954)(noir), Young Wives' Tale (1951), The Green Man (1956)
Really enjoyed, but it's still sexist and also the script could use a strong beta: The Iron Maiden (1963), Some Will, Some Won't (1970), The Key Man (1957), Raising the Wind (1961), Twice Round the Daffodils (1962)
Enjoyed in spite of all the sexism, but it was a bit stupid: Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951), Folly to be Wise (1952), Please Turn Over (1959)
Number of times that one of these movies mentions a strong risk of someone being sued for libel even if the thing they're publishing has changed all the names: two (so I guess it must be true??? But that's absolutely insane, and I knew British libel laws were insane, but - what do things even mean then???)
Number of films where American characters are played with a flawless accent but saying obviously British stuff that no American would say unless a British person wrote the script and was too dumb to hire an American picker: two
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waxjism warned me off of the Carry On films, which I had never heard of before, but I read about them on Wikipedia and quite agree that they are not to my taste. It seems I may therefore have exhausted most of Netflix's supply of comedies, but part of the issue I'm having is just finding more of them. From watching them, it seems clear that Netflix have just bought an entire back catalog of some old distribution companies, but Netflix search does not recognize the names of distributors, film companies, producers, etc, so after getting through that first page I've found further results by searching for further work by the actors in the ones I've already seen.
Well, at first I was doing a lot of scrolling through the main pages of streaming services discontentedly, fuming because none of them have working genre categories anymore and there aren't even any search terms you can put into any of them to reliably pull up old movies or classic movies or even black and white movies.
But after I watched the newest videos from channels I follow on YouTube last week, the algorithm there unexpectedly suggested Laurence Olivier's Hamlet - and I watched it on a whim. Cinematographically speaking it's absolutely divine, really. In terms of visual design, I think the only flaw is the female costumes - the male costumes do a good job of looking medievalish but nothing too specific, but the female ones come out rather like those paperback gothic romance novel covers instead - you know, improbable and glamorous nightgown effects with odd hair. Anyway, that was the most fun I'd had in a while, so I started typing "Shakespeare" into the search boxes of all our streaming services, not getting anything - of course you can subscribe to five streaming services and none of them has a single Shakespeare film, because enshittification! - , except that Netflix, bless its evil little algorithm, noticed what I was typing and suggested a whole list of "Did you mean?" with about fifteen options, and ten of them were things like "Shakespeare tragedies: Hamlet" and "Shakespeare tragedies: Macbeth"; and I clicked on each of them in turn, learning in turn that they didn't have this one or that one, being offered random shit instead, the way they do when they don't have anything featuring the same stars or director as the thing you searched for...
Except then I clicked on "Shakespeare comedies: the Tempest", and as usual Netflix didn't have it, but what it offered me instead was an entire screen full of 1930s-60s British (mostly) comedies that I'd never heard of. (I don't mean that they were obscure or anything - I have seen the original St Trinian's films, and that's about it.)
After all, why not?, I thought. These can't be as badly written as the last two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I had to turn up to 1.5x speed in order to get through! (Rewatching all the Treks in order is a longterm background project.) (The offending episodes are 107 Justice, in which aliens on a utopian planet want to execute Wesley, a child, for failing to obey a Keep off the Grass sign; and 108 The Battle, in which a Ferengi bent on revenge uses a programmable short-range mind control orb to attempt to have Picard blow himself up, and when Riker discovers this plot and tells the other Ferengi, a second one is like "Oh shit, he told you guys about the mind control orb? That's not allowed", and at the end of the episode we're just left to assume that the Ferengi have had short-range mind control technology all this time, and apparently they all know about it, but somehow nobody else knows about it and they haven't used it to take over the galaxy or anything. Both of these have a strong early sf short story vibe - distinctly EARLIER and less sophisticated than the wave of SF that was published ten years before they aired. They all have that pulpy 30s-50s vibe, like the original Foundation trilogy, sort of... My Idea Is Super Conceptual and Exists in a Vacuum Where I Don't Have to Think About Practical Details or Check It Against Real World Counterparts, and Also Modern Psychology, Which Would Disprove All This, Doesn't Exist Yet.)
What was I saying? Right. So, midcentury British comedies (mostly)! I like British comedy a fair bit of the time, so it was worth a try. And everything is fairly sexist of course, just as in American films of the period, but I have managed to watch a few! Here's the score so far:
DNF/ sexism: Maytime in Mayfair (1949), The Big Job (1965), All the Way Up (1970)
DNF/ boredom: Treasure Hunt (1952), Sally in our Alley (1931)
DNF/ the premise was too stupid: No Kidding (1960), The Duke Wore Jeans (1958), Let's Be Happy (1957)
DNF/ Soviet Russia jokes: Friends and Neighbours (1959)
DNF/ the whole thing was a vehicle for one guy's extremely unfunny hapless idiot character: Keep Your Seats Please (1936)
DNF/ POV of an extremely stupid little boy who doesn't deserve what's happening to him, but it wouldn't've happened if he'd had two braincells to rub together to tell him to not play recklessly in half-demolished bombed-out shells of buildings: The Yellow Balloon (1953), The Weapon (1956) (If I had a nickel... etc... but it's funny that it happened twice) (Neither of these are comedies)
I had a great time and am kind of obsessed with this even though it is obviously still sexist and probably has at least one other glaring issue: An Inspector Calls (1954)(drama), Winslow Boy (1948)(drama biopic), The Extra Day (1956), The House Across the Lake (1954)(noir), Young Wives' Tale (1951), The Green Man (1956)
Really enjoyed, but it's still sexist and also the script could use a strong beta: The Iron Maiden (1963), Some Will, Some Won't (1970), The Key Man (1957), Raising the Wind (1961), Twice Round the Daffodils (1962)
Enjoyed in spite of all the sexism, but it was a bit stupid: Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951), Folly to be Wise (1952), Please Turn Over (1959)
Number of times that one of these movies mentions a strong risk of someone being sued for libel even if the thing they're publishing has changed all the names: two (so I guess it must be true??? But that's absolutely insane, and I knew British libel laws were insane, but - what do things even mean then???)
Number of films where American characters are played with a flawless accent but saying obviously British stuff that no American would say unless a British person wrote the script and was too dumb to hire an American picker: two
waxjism warned me off of the Carry On films, which I had never heard of before, but I read about them on Wikipedia and quite agree that they are not to my taste. It seems I may therefore have exhausted most of Netflix's supply of comedies, but part of the issue I'm having is just finding more of them. From watching them, it seems clear that Netflix have just bought an entire back catalog of some old distribution companies, but Netflix search does not recognize the names of distributors, film companies, producers, etc, so after getting through that first page I've found further results by searching for further work by the actors in the ones I've already seen.