A week later, I ran across an interesting short movie video-essay on YouTube on a movie I've liked on multiple viewings - The Trouble With Angels.
The Trouble With Angels doesn't show up on any top-10 lists. It's a 1966 comedy that follows Mary Clancy (Haley Mills), a teen girl
It's held my attention on repeated viewings because it's a well-crafted film - like a well-made play, diverse characters are presented ins sequence, protagonists and antagonists align, there are highs and lows and tension and surprises. The music is a catchy theme (by a major film composer) that's reprised in a variety of orchestrations. The film has been criticized for Mary's sudden and (to some) unsupported decision to stay as a novice; but I have two takes on that. First, Mary is clearly a developing character and grows emotionally through her experiences in the film, and develops both insight and affection for the nuns' lives and personalities as the year moves along. The movie, on second viewing, has a series of very carefully woven set-pieces that expose Mary to puzzlement, insights, and development. Second, it IS intended to be a surprise that Mary makes that decision, the author intends to make the point that life is an unexpected and mysterious thing, and we should be open to sudden change and new experiences and directions. Indeed, on second viewing, Trouble With Angels delivers us with a radical challenge: What events and relationships are going on in our lives, earlier today, tomorrow, this year, which if fully understood, would bring us to a radical new insight and new plan, for next year?
Laura Ivins' Film Essay
Somehow, I stumbled across a four-minute film essay on YouTube, "The Female Gaze in Ida Lupino's The Trouble With Angels." It's by Laura Ivins of the film program at Indiana University (and there's a blog that complements the video here). She draws from a feminist viewpoint that's been written about regarding Trouble. trouble is based on a book written by a woman, the screenplay is by a woman, the director is a woman, nearly all the characters are women. A to Z, it's about women with diverse ages and personalities learning about each other, building relationships, and navigating largely in a world without men. Mary's decision to stay as a novice can be seen as her creative and bold escape from a grim vision of the disappointments and limits of classical daughter/mother/wife roles that fail, by far, to live up to their promised stereotypes of happiness.
The film is available for a few dollars rental from major VOD venders.
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Core Creative Team for Trouble
Trouble is based on a book by Jane Trahey; a script by Blanche Hanalis; directed by Ida Lupino; music by Jerry Goldsmith. All four were remarkable people. Jane Trahey was both a writer and also very successful in advertising. Blanche Hanalis contributed to many scripts and was the creator of Little House on the Prairie. Ida Lupino was a successful actress before she became a success director and one of the very few women directors of the 50s and 60s. Jerry Goldsmith was a very productive film composer with many well-known credits. They were 42, 50, 47, and 39 in 1965 when the film was made. Speaking of ages, the lead Haley Mills was 19 in 1965, but her co-star June Harding was 28. In 2019, Mills is alive at 73; Harding died in 2019 at 81.
More About Craft
Ivins' video notes a moving scene where the normally stiff Mother Superior breaks down alone in the chapel with the casket of another nun. There is an earlier scene (it takes place at midnight by a fireplace) where there is a 1:1 set piece between Mother Superior and the nun who'll die, carefully placed to provide a backdrop for what the girls see when the Mother Superior responds, publicly and privately, to the death. This is one of many examples of how carefully crafted the arc of the film is; most every scene is there for a reason playing back to earlier, or forward to later, scenes. (The scene of a student field trip to a nursing home shows very old women from the secular world abandoned after husbands die and children movie away, one of the things that makes the social life of the convent a little more attractive to Mary.) I'm the first to say I'd miss 80% of this on a cold first viewing, which helps to explain why (as Ivins quotes) first-run reviewers for NYT and Washington Post usually felt the movie lacked enough motivation for Mary's character development. It's one of those movies that is even better to watch for the storytelling when you know what's going to happen in the end.
The Social Clock
It's important to wind back the social clock to take in Trouble With Angels. Today, the setting of a convent and the plot twist of a bright young girl becoming a nun is frankly bizarre, like having a character having three heads. In the 1950s and early 1960s, entering training as a priest or nun was an unusual choice, and a head-turning one, but in a strongly Catholic community it wouldn't be bizarre.
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Sequel
The nuns appear in a 1968 sequel, Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows. "Trouble" is essentially a 1950s film, probably conceived around '64. "Where Angels Go" has definite allusions to a changing culture, if embryonic, and there are two versions of the "Where Angels Go" poster, one old-fashioned and one in a "mod" 1968 style. (1968 is same year as "Yellow Submarine" and just one year before 1969's "Easy Rider.")
Humor
YouTube has a recut of the Trouble With Angels in the format of the trailer for a horror film - here.
A Few More Actresses
The cast. Some of the background actors had interesting stories. Camilla Sparv, a Swedish actress who plays the "young beautiful sexy nun," was married to Herbert Hoover III, of the Hoover vacuum fortune, then Robert Evans, a very successful film producer. Another young background nun, Dolores Sutton, had a long film and stage career. Portia Nelson, known as a nun both in Troubles and in Sound of Music, had a long cabaret career, was a prolific songwriter, and composed a poem often quoted in 12-step programs. Rosalind Russell, of course, had a long acting career ranging from His Girl Friday in 1940 to Auntie Mame and Gypsy in 1958 and 1962. She was a devoted Catholic and won a special Humanitarian Academy Award for her work with medical and social causes. Russell also uses a classic mid-Atlantic accent, more familiar from the 1930s and 1940s.
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I had remembered Mary's guardian as her father, but he's her uncle, so it's implied she's an orphan. Maybe the hands-off detachment he exhibits toward her is too grim or upsetting to attribute to a father, and it's more survivable that an uncle would treat her so off-handedly. If her father was the awful one, it would attract too much emotional attention from the viewer, whereas the uncle can appear on stage once or twice briefly and we just brush him off and focus on Mary.
For a TCM Robert Osborne intro to Trouble, here.
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I don't think I could ever make a best-5 or best-10 movie list, but on a plane recently I jotted down some favorite movies of mine.
- Smashed (2012) LA-set movie about a Gen-X couple with alcoholism, sort of an updated Days of Wine and Roses; with Mary Kate Winstead.
- Trouble with Angels (1966)
- Children of a Lesser God (1986) From a play; about a young deaf woman and a teacher who falls in love with her; from a play. With Marlee Matlin and William Hurt.
- Cinema Paradiso (1988) Set in Italy in the 1980s and 1940s; this one does make some best-10 lists.
- Being There (1979) A slow-moving and surreal film; for me, it's engrossing to watch for development and detail from beginning to end. Peter Sellers' last film; Shirley MacLaine.
- Mary Poppins (1964) and Sound of Music (1965). The Julie Andrews fan club? Surprisingly, I find I can watch both of these beginning to end every year without a moment's loss of attention. There's a school of thought that the main character in Mary Poppins is actually the father - he has the most challenges and the biggest character development, and it's interesting to watch from that viewpoint.
- Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) Seven independent short films bundled together. By the Coen Brothers (I also loved the very different Fargo); in Buster, the first and last chapters are my favorites.
- Celluloid Closet (1995) This is a documentary about the history of gays portrayed in film. I've felt it's one of the best documentaries I know, and it is not only a history of 100 years of film, but also a 90 minute tour of 100 years of American history and visual and social change.
- Beautiful Mind (2001) Award-winning movie of John Nash, a Nobel Laureate burdened by schizophrenia. It swept Best Picture, Best Director, Best screenplay, Best Actress, and nominated for Best Actor.
- Threepenny Opera. I love this originally German musical or operetta by Brecht and Weill, 1929. There are three filmed versions, 1931 (original German with English subtitles); as "Mack the Knife," a 1989 US version with Raul Julia; and finally, there was a stunningly well done 2018 German version released as "Mackie Messer: Dreigroschenfilm" only in German and I've seen the DVD which sadly lacks English subtitles. This last version brilliantly cuts back and forth between Brecht and his colleagues and a filmed version of the play and ends with characters marching out of the play and into present-day London. (E.g. breaking the fourth wall, as Brecht did). Really well done; ought to be released on Netflix with subtitles.
- Nothing in Common (1986) Not-well-known film about Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason in a difficult but evolving father-son relatinoship.
- Downfall (2004) Famous modern drama about the last ten days of Berlin before the Russian military victory; most of it set in Hitler's bunker.
- Casino Jack (2010) and Miss Sloane (2016). Two very different movies about Washington behind-the-scenes and lobbyists. Casino Jack is a hoot to watch (Kevin Spacey stars), while Miss Sloane has one of the best surprise endings of any movie, for my money.
- Chicago (2002) and Cabaret (1972). Two all-time successful musicals.
- Love Actually (2003) and Magnolia (199). Not usually placed together, both are famous for being big-cast, extra-complicated but slickly-moving films with a half-dozen or more major subplots going on at once.
- The Expert (YouTube, 2014, 7 minutes). Incredibly funny and para-realistic view of strategy consulting and working with clients. Every character represents a real-world role. 23M views on YouTube.
