Old films are disintegrating, and we risk losing forever indispensable works of art and cultural artifacts. In an article in the New York Times, movie critic Manola Dargis describes another challenge: there were different versions of some earlier films, so detective work is required along with preservation of the fragile nitrate prints.
Preservationists seek out both the best-preserved prints and elements from different film copies, and often work with outside technicians. (Some handle the visuals, others the audio; some work with photochemical elements, others with digital.) It’s like assembling a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from many copies of that puzzle — pieces that sometimes need to be shipped from France and spruced up in Los Angeles. Flaws remain because, Mr. Pogorzelski said, he has “to stretch dollars as far as they can go.” Carrying out a “100 percent frame-by-frame cleaning” and focusing all of the archive’s resources on one film might mean ignoring dozens of others.
And she reminds us why it is so important.
All movies are time machines, and restoration helps bring the moving-image present together with a past that is always — as prints decay, labs close and money ebbs — moving further away.
#8 Nora Charles (Myrna Loy in the “Thin Man” series)
Movies love to tell us stories about falling in love: the rush of emotion, the fear of intimacy, the exquisite romantic thrill. And it is not hard to find a movie about the agony of love, the anguish of betrayal, the pain of loss. But it is very rare to see a movie about being in love, and almost impossible to find a single film, much less a series, where the lead characters are a married couple who do not just love each other and support each other – they get a genuine kick out of each other. They make marriage seem sexy and fun.
Only one couple in movie history fits that category: the witty, glamorous, but down-to-earth Nick and Nora Charles in the “Thin Man” series of six films about a debonair detective and his society wife. Myrna Loy played Nora opposite her 14-time co-star William Powell, and there has never been a better on-screen match for impeccable comic timing and romantic chemistry.
As the first film begins, they are near-newlyweds. After marrying the wealthy Nora, Nick has retired from detecting and they seem to be living a life of champagne and caviar. Nick is asked to help an old friend find her missing father (the “thin man” of the title, not Nick). Nora is a game girl, whatever is up, whether it is matching Nick by downing a half-dozen martinis or hosting an elegant party for low-lifes and crooks. “Oh, Nicky. I love you because you know such lovely people,” she says, and she means it. She is confident in herself and their marriage. When she sees him hugging the girl he is helping, she is not at all jealous – they make faces at each other over the girl’s shoulder, communicating to themselves and to us their instinctive understanding. Their relationship is never in question.
Dashiell Hammett based the character in part on his long-time love, playwright Lillian Hellman. She described Nick and Nora as “maybe one of the few marriages in modern literature where the man and woman like each other and have a fine time together.” And we have a fine time watching them.
#33 Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday)
Ann (Audrey Hepburn) is the princess of a small, highly civilized country on a diplomatic tour. She is to be unfailingly polite and gracious, promoting trade relations with her always-uncontroversial elegance. Her activities are limited to receptions, photo ops, various ceremonies and speeches like “youth and progress.” “Everything we do is so wholesome,” she sighs.
She is a Cinderella-in-reverse, losing her shoe at the beginning of the story. She has been standing so long in a receiving line, greeting an endless line of dignitaries, that she discreetly takes her sore foot out of her high heel to stretch it, and accidentally knocks it over so she cannot find it again without revealing her indiscretion. That night, she rebels and is given medicine to help her sleep and advice to so “exactly what you wish for a while.” While under the power of the drug, she runs away and ends up falling asleep in the apartment of an American journalist (Gregory Peck).
Ann seems to have everything and so she is an unlikely heroine. But she gets our sympathy because of her wish for the simplest of pleasures – to sleep in pajamas, to get her hair bobbed, to buy an ice cream, to walk around without handlers or photographers, to talk to someone who does not know she is a princess. Hepburn, who would win an Oscar for her first lead role, is enchanting as the princess who longs for the joys of a commoner. Seeing her discover them for the first time makes us rediscover them for ourselves.
#48 Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith in “Working Girl”)
Tess (Melanie Griffith) wants to believe that being smart and working hard will make it possible for her to realize her dream of becoming an investment banker. But the sexist jerks she works for as a secretary will not take her seriously. And her new boss, a woman (Sigourney Weaver), pretends to support her but steals her idea. A boyfriend betrayal and a Valium later, she is stealing her boss’s dress, cutting off her Staten Island poof hairdo (“You want to be taken seriously, you need serious hair”), and pretending to be in the job she wishes she had.
Way too many movie heroines have destiny-changing makeovers. But there is no trying-on-outfits montage here. Yes, she looks ravishing in her boss’s glamorous cocktail dress. But it turns out she has made a mistake. Dress for the event is business attire. She is still out of place.
And yet, looking different brings her to the attention of Jack (Harrison Ford, terrific in a highly unusual supporting role). When they meet in “her” office the next day, he is as won over by her “head for business” as by her “body for sin.”
In a crucial moment, Tess is able to show that the business idea her boss has stolen is hers by owning her intelligence, hard work, judgment – and her roots, acknowledging that it was reading one of the “lower class” newspapers led her to the idea that is going to be worth a great deal of money to her company and its client. She shows us and herself that it is her Staten Island savvy as well as her Wall Street ambition that make her indispensible to Jack, to her new employer, and to us.
Wloszczyna wrote:
*Among the most popular types of characters, based on how they are primarily portrayed onscreen, few are mainly defined by their relationship to a man or a child. There are six action heroes; five journalists/writers/editors; five girls in their teens and younger; four upper-class/socialite/royalty types; two housewives, one mother and one mail-order bride and mother; two office workers; two waitresses; two teachers; two business owners; and two law enforcers.
*18 of the characters resulted in acting Oscars for the actresses who played them, with many more leading to Academy Award nominations. In other words, if you build great female characters, they will likely be noticed and rewarded.
*Only three films that produced worthy Wonder Women had female directors—the 1994 version of “Little Women,” “Whale Rider” and “Winter’s Bone.” However, 18 out of the 55 characters—almost a third—were conceived wholly or in part by women screenwriters and/or authors. “I don’t think men can’t write great parts for women, since we have many on our list,” Ferdinand says. “However, the insight that women can bring to these characters and their lives is self-evident in the results. We know when something feels true and right to us.”
We will let AWFJ’s own Wonder Woman, founder Merin, have the last word. “These characters represent our good friends,” she says. “This is a list of films that every mother will want their daughters (and their sons) to see. It could serve as a primer for a course on women’s images in film through the years.”
Be sure to check out the whole list and watch all the movies! Let me know of any you think we left out. Remember, these are fictional characters — we hope to do a list based on real-life characters like Helen Keller, Tina Turner, and Erin Brockovich next.
Disney foolishly forced legendary animator Floyd Norman to retire at age 65, but he was not foolish enough to stop coming to work. Every day, he brings his wife Adrienne to her job at Disney, and then he spends the day wandering around, asking questions, talking to people, and generally, to use the portmanteau word Adrienne came up with, “floitering.” “The whole Disney campus is Floyd’s office,” says one colleague. Eventually, Disney realized they could not do without him and they gave up and just hired him again.
This delightful documentary about the very “animated life” of Floyd Norman is a must-see for fans of animation, movie history, and stories of lives filled with creativity, courage, and a sense of adventure. His career extends from the classic “nine old men” era at Disney, where he worked for Walt Disney himself animating the prince, the horse, and the three fairy godmothers in “Cinderella” and Kaa the snake in “The Jungle Book” and the “Jolly Holiday” musical number in “Mary Poppins” to animating, writing, and directing for Hanna-Barbera, Pixar, and for his own company. He used Roy Disney’s camera to go into Watts and shoot footage of the riots that was broadcast on the NBC news, and he worked on iconic Saturday morning cartoon shows like “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids,” “Johnny Quest,” and “Scooby-Doo.” (The only negative comment the sunny-tempered Norman makes in the whole documentary is a good-natured aside on Scooby — “I hate that dog!”) He even animated the opening logo for “Soul Train.”
Copyright Disney 1968
More characteristic is his description of his childhood in Santa Barbara as “incredibly pleasant.” It was there he saw his first Disney animated film — “Dumbo” and knew that making cartoons would be his life’s work. It didn’t matter that Disney had no black animators. He was “just another kid who wanted to work for Disney,” and when they saw what he could do, they hired him as an “assistant in-betweener” on “Sleeping Beauty,” where he was expected to turn out eight “dead-on precise” completed drawings a day.
One of the highlights of the film is seeing Floyd Norman at San Diego Comic-Con’s Quick Draw, with MAD Magazine artist Sergio Aragonés. But every moment is pure pleasure, as we see the man who is still “in touch with his inner 20-year-old” demonstrate the skill, imagination, and dedication that has been central to much of the most creative entertainment of the past 60 years.
Parents should know that this movie has a bleeped bad word, a sexual reference, and references to drinking and divorce.
Family discussion: Which is your favorite Floyd Norman animation and why? How did he show flexibility and “shape-shifting?”
If you like this, try: “Waking Sleeping Beauty,” “Walt and El Groupo,” and, of course, “The Jungle Book,” and Norman’s other animated classics
