The Great Movie Conquest of 2022: May

Welcome back to The Professor's desperate campaign to watch every film he should have seen in film school. As I mentioned last time, we'll be looking specially at James Stewart this month.

Your Intro to James Stewart

Back when I was teaching labs for TMA 102, I would introduce James Stewart to my students as "basically the Tom Hanks of the 1940s and 50s," and they instantly knew what I meant. Indeed, Stewart made his mark playing characters who were extraordinarily likeable and extraordinarily virtuous. Many of his most iconic roles come through his films with Frank Capra, including It's a Wonderful Life, You Can't Take it With You, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But he was also a favorite of directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Mann, both of whom would sometimes lean into this aspect of his star persona and sometimes subvert it.

Stewart collected two Oscars during his career. One for his performance in The Philadelphia Story (1940) and an honorary Oscar in 1984 "For his fifty years of memorable performances, for his high ideals both on and off the screen, with respect and affection of his colleagues."

One of Stewart's signature strengths was making idealism and gentility look like the most reasonable characteristics a person could possess. His contemporaries, like Cary Grant or John Wayne, valorized a more roguish leading man quality, which makes the soft-spoken politeness seem all the more striking. Stewart would have the chance to play opposite both Grant and Wayne, and they, like many of his coworkers, spoke highly of Stewart's character.

Films I Watched With James Stewart

Of the films I caught this month, the film that probably most floated on Stewart's persona was 1950's Broken Arrow, a fascinating glimpse into the 1950s brand of combatting racism. I think that when most modern viewers think about Native Americans and Westerns, they mostly think of the Cowboy vs Indian story. While you definitely had a lot of those, even classical Hollywood would sometimes use the Western genre to tell stories that were sympathetic to Native Americans. Mind you, they weren't necessarily perfect pictures of social equality. Even here most of the Apache characters were in fact portrayed by white actors. But they were trying, I guess ...

This is relevant because Broken Arrow presents Stewart's character as an advocate for peace between the warring Apache tribe and the white settlers. His first notable action is treating the wounds of an injured Apache boy, and he spends the reminder of the film learning the customs and language of the tribe while trying to curb the aggression of the white settlers. James Stewart is exactly the kind of person one would cast for an apostle of peace.

No Highway in the Sky saw Stewart bring a certain insecurity that I don't generally associate with him. Most the time he's quiet and unassuming, yes, but not necessarily lacking in confidence or borderline awkward, which makes this film's portrait of Stewart at once novel and familiar. The story saw him as a scientist who anticipates that the unique design of the airplane on which he is boarded will cause it to malfunction midflight. His claim is a little out there, but he gradually finds allies who are willing to trust him. I don't know. Probably because he's James Stewart.

Stewart started to age out of Hollywood around the 1970s, when the cinematic anti-hero was on the rise and films started to revel in moral ambiguity. As I dig further into Stewart's filmography, I find myself more and more grateful that film has icons like him, people who make moral rightness seem like an aspiration. I'm certain the real James Stewart had his character flaws, but they were for him to wrestle with. The James Stewart who lit up the screen with his idealism and courage, we owe him a lot.

Films I Watched that Didn't Necessarily Have James Stewart

You won't find my one review this month among this month's harvest. While Stranger Things is a force of nature in the pop culture world, as a television series it doesn't technically meet the conditions of this challenge. But I reviewed the first set of season 4 episodes anyways.

I was a bit late to the game with both of my theater trips this month, so I opted to not put in the time to formally review them, but while we're here ...

I almost felt obligated to give The Bad Guys a viewing after coming off my Megamind essay, an essay in which I highlighted the uphill battle animated films face. That said, I considered it a worthwhile investment. Heist films aren't really my forte (though I did recently discover that I like Baby Driver), but I liked the film taking a Zootopia-esque approach to the genre. And I've said it before (no, really, I said it in my review of The One and Only Ivan), but Sam Rockwell really has a talent for voice-acting.

I was totally here for Marvel making a horror film, but no part of me found Wanda's storyline in "Multiverse of Madness" a logical progression of her character, and for that I can't feel anything for the film but irritation. Maybe I'll get into it some other time ...

I actually recently had a conversation with a friend about Captains Courageous, the 1937 version, which I saw this month. That's Spencer Tracy you see in the picture teaching Freddie Bartholemew's "Harvey" how to man the fishing boat which takes him on after falling overboard from his own boat. The two of them build a relationship that moved me deeply. Anyone who's read my essay on A Perfect World and its presentation of intergenerational male affection will likely see a throughline between the two films.

The film is based on a novel by Rudyard Kipling and even saw Tracy win an Oscar for actor in a leading role, yet my friend and I both remarked on a how this film, and many others like, fly completely under the radar. In a world where a film from the 1990s is considered vintage, what chance does a movie like this have at being discovered or celebrated? A lot of what I want to do with this blog is give coverage to films that deserve attention but feel out of reach toward mainstream audiences. It's admittedly an uphill battle, and I can't even say for certain I'm doing enough in that regard, but there are just way too many gems out there for me to feel comfortable writing only about Disney remakes.

A couple of other films deserve mention, I suppose. I really enjoyed Ben-Hur and Sliding Doors, and I'm haunted by the borderline necrophilia that plagued Branagh's "Frankenstein" adaptation.

Looking Forward

The verdict is out, and this month I will be centering my studies on the works of the irreplaceable Amy Adams. (Watch this be the month I finally watch Justice League.) I've always admired Adams for the way she demonstrates how light and intellect can coexist in one space at the same time so effortlessly, and I look forward to exploring her filmography even further.

Meanwhile I'll confess I have yet to select options for a theme for July, but I'll try to get on that. Check back on my blog's Facebook page for updates.

As always, thanks for reading, and congratulations on making it almost halfway through the year.

---The Professor

May we all aspire to have the class of Shirley MacLaine telling Meryl Streep she is good enough to play Carrie Fisher

May's Harvest

Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

The Bad Guys (2022)

Broken Arrow (1950)

The Hollars (2016)

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Love Affair (1936)

St. Vincent (2014)

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Blinded by the Light (2019)

Ben-Hur (1959)

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Sliding Doors (1998)

Take Her, She's Mine (1963)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

No Highway in the Sky (1951)

Clouds (2020)

Captains Courageous (1937)

How to Murder Your Wife (1965)

Winchester '73 (1950)

Corpse Bride (2005)

Breaking Away (1979)

Without Love (1945)

Girl, Interrupted (1999)

The Glen Miller Story (1954)

Yojimbo (1961)

Postcards from the Edge (1990)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

Bell, Book, and Candle (1958)

Libeled Lady (1936)

Monster's Ball (2001)

Raging Bull (1980)

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