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IN A LONELY PLACE
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Elaine
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Oct 19, 2009 05:45PM
I got clued into this 1950 gem by Matt, although Tom was underwhelmed. I wasn't overwhelmed, but found it decidedly watchable. The writers then were severely hampered by censorship, so they couldn't use any of the "dirty" f, s, or c words. Therefore, they had to come up with really witty lines throughout the film. They couldn't show sex, so they had to figure out a way to suggest it in many other ways. Maybe it's time to bring back movie censorship!!
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Don't even joke about bringing back movie censorship! Horrors!
Well, something to make comedy writers realize that using 'fuck' & 'fuckin' isn't wit, it's boring & so are sex scenes except in a good erotic movie, but the plop on bang bang of most movies is about as erotic as seeng someone take a shit. But maybe I'm just an old lady
no no no no Elaine - I simply don't accept it ... a lady yes - but not old ... and I get your point gosh you said fuck ;o)
i thought older women were the ones with all the wisdom on sex??????damn elaine, now you've gone and dismantled my entire heirarchy...
;)
i think i'm confusing in a lonely place with desperate hours. both are late career humphrey bogart films, right? desperate hours is the one where he holds a family captive in their house...right? that's a pretty lame movie. but remind about in a lonely place...is it bogart?
Yes, Bogart. Directed by Nicholas Ray. Gloria Grahame as the female lead.
hmmmmm, it's possible i've never seen that one.anyone like the petrified forest? (with ida lupino)?
There's a version of PETRIFIED FOREST with Ida Lupino?I wasn't crazy about IN A LONELY PLACE. As I remember, Bogart plays a screenwriter who finds himself the main suspect in a woman's murder, and as the film progresses it becomes clear that he seems to have some anger management issues, and if he didn't kill her he certainly seems capable of it...
It's with Bette Davis, Phillip.There were live television versions of PETRIFIED FOREST, evidently. One with Bogart, Davis, and Tom's favorite actor, Henry Fonda!
i thought ida lupino directed petrified forest.i was watching the adventures of sherlock holmes the other night and there was a young ida lupino....totally forgot she was in it. that was actually a pretty good entry in the sherlock series (it was the first in the series, if i'm not mistaken?)
The Mayo version is the one with Bogart and Davis and Leslie Howard. Pretty badly dated, but Bogart is really something in it.
didn't bogart do a film with ida lupino? i thought he did....i'll look it up.
Phillip wrote: "i thought older women were the ones with all the wisdom on sex??????damn elaine, now you've gone and dismantled my entire heirarchy...
That's just it. I'm old enough to know that hop on bang bang is about as sexy as saying fuck. Did you ever see L'ES ENFANTS DU PARADIS? that has erotic scenes. Your hierarchy is accurate.
;)"
Phillip wrote: "i think i'm confusing in a lonely place with desperate hours. both are late career humphrey bogart films, right? desperate hours is the one where he holds a family captive in their house...right? t..."Yes. It is Bogart & Gloria Grahame.
BTW erotic scenes are Caludette Colbert slinking downstairs to Gable in It Happened One Night, Phyllis' leg withankle bracelet walking downstairs in DI, Walter's constantreferences to said bracelet, Clark Gable's blowing down the walls of Jericho, & his gathering upScarlett & carrying her up the stairs.
Elaine, what are some examples of modern sex/erotic scenes that you dislike?
can't think of a specific flick off the top of my head, because there ar so many banal, just hop on-hop off, usually stand up against a wall bang-bang sort of thing. michael douglas pops into mind, but even he gives a second of erotic determination that gives a little thrill of anticipation. the under-the-cover humps are the worst, about like my horny Maltese trying to screw a spayed female (but even he drapes a paw over her neck in a seductive way.) Better yet, what erotic (not sex) scenes can you think of in films from the past 20 years or so? I know there are a few -- there must be. Oh, the eating scene in Richardson's Tom Jones. Reminds me of a steak dinner I .. well, we won't go there.
DON'T LOOK NOW often gets plaudits. I rather enjoyed the on-the-stairs scene in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE...
watch sex and lucia, which has some really playful erotic moments...but that is spanish cinema, not american. in film, what is suggested is usually more sexy than the hop on hop off traditions elaine notes. it's the same with suspense: most directors are just so terrified that audiences are going to walk out of the theater with questions looming that they over explain everything and obliterate the possibility of mystery. as uma thurman once said to me: "proust is the only one that got sex right"- he knows we desire what we can't have, and the art of creating desire in the audience and then suspending the satisfaction of that desire is the way to create really satisfying sex scenes.
Steve-O wrote: "DON'T LOOK NOW often gets plaudits. I rather enjoyed the on-the-stairs scene in A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE..."Yup,, that's a pretty good one. I said I couldn't remember any, that doesn't mean there are none, just an awful few.
Phillip wrote: "watch sex and lucia, which has some really playful erotic moments...but that is spanish cinema, not american. in film, what is suggested is usually more sexy than the hop on hop off traditions el..."
I am going on netflix immediately. I love Spanish films and often they do have genuinely erotic scenes. I'm glad you see that it's not sex I'm objecting to. It's boring, mechanical sex. I always found sex too beautiful to treat that way.
read my posts on Incendiary....a decent film with an awkward sex scene. i "rewrote" the scene in one of my posts, and i think this illustrates this point as well as i possibly can. if you have to put sex in your film, make sure you know why you're putting it in the film and make sure the scene communicates what it needs to communicate. in short, resist turning your actors into porn models and tell the damn story!!!
Phillip wrote: "read my posts on Incendiary....a decent film with an awkward sex scene. i "rewrote" the scene in one of my posts, and i think this illustrates this point as well as i possibly make can. if you have..."We are in total agreement. In GWTF Rhett taking Scarlett upstairs & her smiling and stretching the next morning told reams that dialogue couldn't & we were spared the frenetic humping, but, boy can we imagine it
I know this is an old thread, but I have to throw my $.02 in on a couple of topics touched on here...TOPIC ONE -- IN A LONELY PLACE
This is one of my favorite Bogey films. He plays a really nasty character this time around, much different from the flawed hero with the noble cause I was used to. The ending -- different from the book, I'm told -- I thought was fantastic. Even though it's technically a happy ending, it's also a downer because the information you learn about the characters doesn't really matter anymore by then. Love it.
TOPIC TWO -- Sex scenes in movies
Usually I'm very uncomfortable with them...not because I'm a prude (trust me, I'm NOT) but because stuff like that to me is private. I mostly look away during those scenes just like I do when I see a couple kissing on the street. Well, I do MOST of the time. Some of the times I didn't, and was glad for it --
My favorite -- the chain link fence scene in THE LAST SEDUCTION. Yeah, it was skanky alley sex, but there was something memorable about Linda Fiorentino using that chain link fence for leverage while she was riding Peter Berg. Woohoo!
WOMAN IN THE DUNES had a couple of really great erotic scenes. More foreplay or sensual massage than actual sex, but I found the scenes to be pretty hot.
EXCALIBUR -- the idea of being ravished by a knight in shining armor in front of a fireplace is quite the turn-on, and the scene with Gabriel Byrne and -- forgive me, but I don't know the actress who played Ygraine -- is a good one. In reality, sex in body armor is silly and unrealistic, but it's a fantasy movie with fantasy sex, and I dug it. Plus it wasn't entirely gratuitous, in that it shows how Uther betrayed both the Duke of Tintagel and Ygraine in order to lay with Ygraine and conceive Arthur.
I completely understand Elaine's comments about wham-bam-thank you ma'am sex scenes. Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek -- both GORGEOUS people -- had a pretty graphic (although artsy-fartsy) sex scene in DESPERADO, and yet the scene where he sweeps her up and kisses her on the roof of the building during the shoot-out was WAY hotter. More isn't always better.
woman in the dunes is definitely a sexy film, but not in any predictable or normal way.
