Blogagaard Watches Black & White Film, Feels Chatty
I watched amusing film "His Girl Friday" last night, a 1940 piece co-staring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, adapted from an earlier Charles MacArthur play "The Front Page". From an excerpt on the back of the video case (rented at my local library): "Much has been said about the breakneck dialogue pacing, which captures the delirious quality of a bustling newsroom. One archivist actually timed the hurricane delivery of the actors at 240 words per minute--about 100-140 wpm faster than the average speaking rate!"
Yes, the dialogue was fast, but somehow I was able to understand almost everything said. I believe I owe this to my friend Febey, who talks this fast in her day to day life and trained my ear to listen to every other verbal machine gun who came along. Speaking of machine guns, I saw the Sopranos for the first time ever yesterday, and was also impressed by the first four addictive-as-crack episodes I saw. Welcome to six years ago, Dave Oppegaard!
Almost everything worth watching seems to live and die on good dialogue, or at least passable dialogue. Even Star Wars/Indiana Jones action pics are much improved by the witty banter between Indy and his lady friends, Han and Leia. Which do you prefer? The romantic interest scenes in Empire Strikes Back or Attack of the Clones (when the princess and Anakin are lazing about in some obviously fake computer world).
Keep talking, people. Keep things interesting.
Blogagaard Loves to Ponder
About Me
- David Oppegaard
- St. Paul, Minnesota
- I am the author of And the Hills Opened Up, The Suicide Collectors, and Wormwood, Nevada.
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16 comments:
Leia and Hans. There is no competion. The dialogue isn't great between them, but the energy is... really beautifully human. Just saw the new movies recently. They are fun to watch, but the heartbreaking humanity (I actually cry watching Empire Strikes Back) is not there and it really makes the new stuff flat by comparison.
I've liked Karen Allen since A Small Circle of Friends, a movie involving college coming-of-age, the 60s, and ménage-à-trois, although I expect if I saw it again I would find it maudlin.
So, Indy #1 all the way. George Lucas hates acting.
It has to Empire. Not simply because of the dialogue, but the whole mood of the thing. If the Captian cries from Han gettding frozen and the truth about Luke's lineage then I would suggest watching Episode III (the hell with I and II) and IV, V and VI consecutlively. What you find is even more powerfull and heartbreaking; the conflict raging inside Vader. Indiana, while good, is more or less a mild satire of mid-twentieth century action flicks...Spy Smasher, Dick Tracy etc. Steroetypical Nazis and third world profiling. Oh yeah! I like the big Godzila type dinosaurs that swam the ocean; the ones that could eat ocean liners. At the tale end of the Triassic period I think.
That SW question was more rhetorical than anything. I found the dialogue so stilted in the new films I thought my ear were going to shrivel up and die. It made the original 3 SWs seem Ray Carver good in comparison.
Star Wars and rhetorical in the same sentence! Blasphemy! Blasphemy!
um, I don't get it. Why? And technically, SW could have stood for anything.
Also, Kelly, I'm starting to think George Lucas is really, really messed up in the brain area. At least he is now, as opposed to when the first SW came out.
Dialogue Schmialogue. There was no dialogue in the first twenty minutes of 2001: Space Odyssey, and what was that? Fucking genius.
There was no dialogue, of note, in Attack of the Clones, and what was that? A nightmare.
All good film is predicated on suspension of disbelief - which is made with strong acting and quick, solid pacing.
You could write a movie where the main character has tourette's and a speech impediment and lives in a giant green bean with his abusive grandmother, and as long as it... well, whatever. You get the point. I've got to go write a screenplay!
It was only a joke!
oh. Sorry, Anon.
App., Space Odyssesy bored the crap out of me. But the first 20 minutes were beautiful, I'll give you that. It was the rest of the movie, pretty much.
Honestly, I've never seen the whole thing. I was just trying to sound jaded and intellectual.
But I have decided, largely as a result of Star Wars (Harrison Ford, specifically), that the fine line between good and bad dialogue is even finer with uber-charismatic actors.
And, in the words of David St. Hubbins, "such a fine line, really, between clever and stupid."
I believe even Natalie Portman commented on the atrocity of the romantic dialogue in SW#3: as the world is crashing down and Darth Vader is about to be created Padme says, "Hold me . . . like you did by the lake on Naboo, so long ago"
You never talk like that to me.
Do I need to talk you away from the dark side? I didn't think so.
Natalie should have get while she was ahead, right after filming "The Professional".
when she was 12 or something? poor thing.
I love Cary Grant & Rosalind Russell, especially in this movie. You can see what an asshole he is and how much she digs that. I can't help imagining ten years down the line, when they're still not married and she leaves him again, but that's not very romantic...
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