Movies at Home: On the Waterfront, Steel Magnolias and Monolith

 

Directed by Elia Kazan, written by Budd Schulb and starring Marlon Brando, the 1954 film On the Waterfront won eight Academy Awards (including those above) and was nominated in the other four categories. I'm amazed I have never seen it before. Set in the dockyards of New Jersey, and filmed in black and white, it starts with someone being pushed off a high roof. Joey, played by Brando, was the "only longshoreman to talk to the investigators", and the dead man's sister Edie Doyle (the wonderful Eva Marie Saint, winning the Oscar for best supporting actress in her very first role) wants to know who was responsible. Her first conversation with Joey is outstanding. But it's all corrupt at the docks, except for Joey, who prefers his pigeons. (He was a top boxer but was forced to throw a fight.  With the immortal words "I could have been a contender". 

What I did like was the moving camera, especially the scenes at the docks. I also have to mention other members of the cast. Carl Malden is excellent as the priest Father Barry. I liked the ambiguity of the relationship between Joey and Edie. Is she just using him to find out about her brother? She is off to train as a teacher at a college way out of town. For me, that was the best thing about the film.

You could not get such a different film from the above as Steel Magnolias. A formidable cast of female stars are preparing for a wedding in small-town America. All these families in smart, colourful houses led by hairdresser Truvy Jones, played by the effervescent Dolly Parton. She has a brand new assistant, Annelle, an unrecognisable Daryl Hannah. What a brilliant piece of casting that was. But, for me, it's Sally Field who makes the movie, oozing class as the bride's mother. How she is torn between happy and sad. Her daughter Shelby is played by Julia Roberts in one of her early roles. 

Directed by Herbert Ross, the film's success is all down to writer Robert Harling, who adapted his successful play for the big screen. There is so much wonderful dialogue. I wonder how I had never seen the film before. It's now famous for the number of brilliant one-liners. "She's a troubled twisted soul; her life has been an experiment in fear. " Whoever made the cake explains she can do anything except snakes. "I don't have the counter space." In the end it's Dolly Parton who I will remember. The glue that holds the thing together.

Another completely different movie. Monolith has just one person on the screen. I thought back to films such as Buried with Ryan Reynolds and Tom Hardy's Locke. Also Searching (2018) and Missing (2022) are mainly characters and their computers. In this Australian science fiction drama, Lucy Sullivan plays a disgraced online journalist who is trying to gain fame for her podcast. The story of a strange black brick is brought to her attention, but is this fact or fiction? The whole film involves Lucy trying to find out the answer.

So a lot of the time we hear the people she interviews telling their strange stories. At first (obviously) Lucy (only known as the interviewer) does not believe a word, but gradually (obviously) she begins to believe in some truth. That seems to be when her mental health starts to crumble. I do like films with lots of dialogue, and this one (obviously) is one of those. Directed by Matt Vesely from a story by Lucy Campbell. Hmmm.