Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Damn, what a funny movie. Seriously, one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Not only that, but bloody entertaining and well-plotted to boot. I've only seen The Lady Eve, which disappointed me slightly, and Sullivan's Travels which I really liked, but now I can really see why Sturges is so well-loved.

In Unfaithfully Yours, Rex Harrison plays a symphony conductor who begins to suspect his wife is cheating on him. While conducting, he begins to have elaborate fantasies of how he'll get his revenge after the concert. Heck, I don't think murder has ever been so hilarious. The dialogue, especially early on, is quick-witted and really funny. Rex Harrison is awesome in the role, he really plays the smarmy prick to perfection. My Fair Lady was decent, but THIS is the Rex Harrison I remembered playing Caesar in Cleopatra.

What really impressed me was the use of sound in the film. As he imagines getting his revenge, the music he conducts underscores his fantasies, and does so brilliantly. The music rises and falls in accordance to the onscreen action, and crescendoes at just the right moments. Even outside of the symphony, there are little audio touches, exaggerated sound effects that serve just to get a little chuckle out of the audience at moments where it's needed most.

Towards the end, of course, things don't go as planned for the poor conductor, as he pretty much becomes a Disney-style buffoon. What follows is a great scene of slapstick in which Murphy's Law applies, hilariously. Harrison plays it really well, because all along you realize what a jerk he's being, and he reveals himself to be the fool you thought he was. Nothing can top the scene where the woman he's planning to kill has to put a band-aid on his finger while he pleads with her to "be gentle".

Blood of a Poet (1930)

A looong time ago, I bought Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy set and am just not getting around to watching it. I'm always surprised at how small Cocteau's body of work is for such an influential director, much like Leone or Tarkovsky. In fact, Cocteau didn't even think of himself as a filmmaker foremost, as I understand.

I can't try to make sense of Blood of a Poet, at least not after a single viewing. An artist is painting a self-portrait and notices the mouth is moving, so he rubs it off with his hand. Now, the mouth is on his hand. He rubs it off onto a statue and the statue tells him to go into his mirror. He does this and finds himself in a hotel hallway, where he peers into the keyholes and sees bizarre images. He ends up shooting himself. Then, we witness a snowball fight involving young schoolboys. One hits another with a couple of snowballs and kills him, promting them to run off. Blood spills out of his mouth, and a young couple plays cards on a table above his corpse. A black angel with a limp comes down and places a sheet over him, making him seemingly disappear. The man playing cards is revealed to be the poet from earlier.

It's a surreal film, much like Bunuel's stuff, or to a lesser degree, Lynch's. Although, it doesn't seem to have the same striking effect that Bunuel's work does, simply because Bunuel's work is much more of an attack than Cocteau's. Cocteau is merely exploring the cinematic medium, and wonderfully at that. Blood of a Poet seems kind of like a grand fever dream, a journey into a fantastic world full of unforgettable, deeply affecting images. I assume that there's a rhyme and reason behind it all, but I'm at a complete loss for what it could be. I definitely have to watch it again soon, to study it, to try to figure it all out. But, taken at face value, it's an incredible cinematic work, exploring dreams, images, poetry, death, and film itself.