Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XIII

Almost everyone living in Minneapolis and the burbs is familiar with the Convention Grill, located on Sunnyside Avenue a half-block west of France.  That establishment sets the gold standard for burgers and malts.  That section of Edina used to be called Morningside, which was a separate village created in 1920 when its residents elected to secede from neighboring Edina.  Morningside remained autonomous until 1966 when, for economic and political reasons, the denizens changed their collective minds and rejoined Edina. Nevertheless, the name "Morningside" has stuck as a neighborhood designation.

Across the street from the Convention Grill was Morningside's second famous institution, the Westgate Theater, which opened in 1937 and successfully competed with more modern, cushier, multi-screen movie houses until its owner conceded defeat in 1977 by selling the building to Edina Cleaners & Launderers.  Ask almost anyone old enough to remember the Westgate and she'll tell you that the most amazing element of its history was the unheard of one hundred fourteen consecutive weeks' run of the dark comedy, Harold & Maude.  That movie, staring the kooky Ruth Gordon and B-list actor Bud Cort, opened at the Westgate on March 22, 1972, and stayed uninterrupted at that venue for one thousand nine hundred fifty-seven showings (!) until it was finally replaced in June 1974.  I saw that movie twice at the Westgate, and remember chuckling at the main characters' hobby of crashing strangers' funerals for the sole purpose of eating the free food.  Gordon actually showed up in March 1973 to help the Westgate celebrate the one year anniversary of the movie's continuous run, and both she and Cort arrived a year later for the second year party.  Several months thereafter, the neighbors staged a good-natured protest to plead with the theater owners to bring in a different movie "for variety's sake."

You might ask, why is the old coot writing about Harold & Maude now, when it does not appear in the list below.  That is an excellent question.  The setting of the stage for the long run of Harold & Maude was accomplished by a less heralded movie which played at the Westgate from November 1970 to March 1972, The Twelve Chairs.  Prior to that movie's arrival at the Westgate, it would have been unheard of for a movie to remain at the same theater for more than, say, a month or so.  But just as was subsequently the case with Harold & Maude, many folks who attended The Twelve Chairs enjoyed it to such an extent that they were willing to pay to see it again.  Without video rental stores and boxes, Netflix or On Demand cable TV like we have today, if you missed seeing a movie in the theater (or missed seeing it more than once, if so inclined), you had no way of knowing when you'd ever see it again.  Both The Twelve Chairs and Harold & Maude benefitted from strong word-of-mouth advertising, and their respective fans made both films cult classics. (By the way, these phenomena were repeated in the same decade with Rocky Horror Picture Show.)

The Twelve Chairs stars Ron Moody (as the deposed Russian nobleman, Vorobyaninov), whose most famous career role was the lovable villain Fagin in 1968's Oliver!, and Dom DeLuise (as the unethical Father Fyodor), one of the most famous TV and movie comedians over the latter half of the twentieth century. When Vorobyaninov's mother makes a deathbed revelation that she has hidden her precious jewels in one of the twelve identical chairs of her dining room set, the impoverished Vorobyaninov immediately sets out to track down the booty.  Unfortunately for him, Father Fyodor acquires the same information while hearing the mother's confession, whereupon he attempts to beat Vorobyaninov to the prize.  Both men find out that the twelve chairs comprising the dining room set have not stayed together; they are spread all over Russia. Craziness and laughs ensue.     

Here are the movies I've watched on the idiot lantern at the Quentin Estates over the past three months.

1. Georgy Girl (1966 comedy; Lynn Redgrave is a  plain Jane with a roommate from hell, Charlotte Rampling, a geriatric suitor, James Mason, and a philandering friend, Alan Bates)  B+

2. 42 (2012 sports bio; Chadwick Boseman is Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League baseball, and Harrison Ford is Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers' President who signed him to a contract) B

3. Middle Of The Night (1959 drama; Fifty-six year old widower Fredrick March, a small business owner, falls in love with twenty-four year old divorcee Kim Novak, his receptionist) C+

4. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1969 drama; Maggie Smith is an independent-minded teacher in a girls' middle school who does things her own way, to the chagrin of principal Celia Johnson) A-

5. Ride The High Country (1962 western; Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott are retired law men who are hired to transport gold from a mountain mining camp to the bank, two days' journey through the mountains) B+

6. Shoot The Piano Player (1960 drama; Charles Aznavour, a shy world class pianist employed in a saloon, has an older brother who involves him in serious trouble with gangsters) B+

7. Town Without Pity (1961 drama; Kirk Douglas defends four GIs accused of rape in post-war Germany) C+

8. The Twelve Chairs (1970 comedy; Deposed Russian nobleman Ron Moody goes on a frantic search to find the one chair in a twelve chair set in which his mother has hidden a fortune in jewels from the revolutionaries) B