Jimmy Fucking Stewart

what in the world

jimmy stewart: actor, war hero, yeti-smuggler

the other dude mustve seen Harvey and been like “now THERES a dude I can entrust with the protection of this mythical beast”

Harvey is the kind of dazed whimsy that I more often than not cannot stand; I spent most of the time feeling uncomfortably reminded of 90s schmaltz like Forrest Gump, Powder, or any of those movies where John Travolta played someone magical. That Stewart manages an effective scene or two anyway is a testament to something, I guess.

Saw the restored version of this and it was staggeringly gorgeous. Looked like it was made yesterday, i was astonished.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jB4Vsi1UUM

First vintage B&W film to be released on 4K Disc domestically.

I have never understood what the scene with them falling through the dancefloor into the swimming pool is doing there, it seems to have been imported from another, very different film. why would Bedford Falls even have such a thing?

it is odd, I have literally never seen a swimming pool underneath a gym or dancefloor or any kind of floor really. It seems like the hydraulics required to move the floor back and forth would be unnecessarily expensive/complicated to maintain

huh

The place actually exists. It's called, fittingly, the Swim Gym, and belongs to Beverly Hills High School in Los Angeles. Here's how it works: The court is divided along the centerline, and each half is anchored to rows of two-by-fours atop steel I-beams. The court "opens" at the turn of a key—motors roll the platforms underneath the arena bleachers, where huge exhaust fans mitigate moisture. Then, 5 feet below, a 25-yard swimming pool appears. The floor in the movie has been lost to time, but recently Pacific Floor installed a new maple court in the space. Because the gym hovers around 60 percent humidity, Pacific Floor acclimated the flooring material longer than usual and installed it with a moisture content around 9%, says Sales Manager Mark Herthel. With the court "closed," the crews installed a 15-mm-thick vapor barrier, 9⁄16-inch-thick resilient padding and ¾-inch-thick plywood anchored into the retractable platform using steel channels. Then 1½-inch-wide maple flooring chosen for its stable vertical grain was installed. Pacific Floor closed off the sides of the subfloor using stop blocks and closed cell foam underlayment to prevent moisture from creeping up the side of the court. Before the flooring was sanded and finished, the crew sawed the court in half along the centerline and installed a 4-inch stair riser as nosing on both halves. For durability, they also placed an aluminum plate on the face of each platform where they meet.

i imagine it doesn't exist anywhere else other than at beverly hills high school where that scene was filmed

you are not correct

I have never understood what the scene with them falling through the dancefloor into the swimming pool is doing there

First, it is very cinematic. I've no doubt Capra liked it because it had so much visual and emotional appeal. Next, it is well-incorporated into the plot, allowing Stewart and Donna Reed to have a bonding moment. Sure, there were lots of ways to accomplish that plot point, but this one was visually energetic, unusual and highly memorable.

you are not correct

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 20, 2019 3:14 PM (eight minutes ago)

how?

why would Bedford Falls even have such a thing?

This question is not supposed to enter your mind. You see they have one, therefore they do. Wondering what went on in the meeting of the school board planning committee where they finalized their report to the full board in favor of placing a swimming pool under the gym floor should not be an issue for the audience.

loads of companies specializing in installing these, judging from a few minutes of googling. Granted it looks like more of a rich person's thing (as opposed to a high school)

xps

Was it super-well-known before the clip/s of it in Gremlins? I know it fell off the radar for a coupla decades but was it doing-the-rounds on tv in the 80s? It was the first i'd ever heard of it.

I had a Christmas Eve tradition at my grandmother’s house, every year they’d show It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol back-to-back on the local pbs station and we’d watch them both every time. Probably did that for about 12 years in a row. That probably started for us in ‘79?

yeah the film was always an Xmas staple at my grandfather's house growing up, so it must have been regularly broadcast on some LA station from the mid-70s onward

i think it was in the public domain for a while, so TV stations could show it all the time

start watching Sadistic Jimmy in those Mann westerns

watched Bend of the River a few weeks back. The violence isn’t particularly gruesome but the situations are pretty bleak and it’s just shy of the not-dissimilar Ride the High Country in terms of being a dark tale of a gunman with a past and a duplicitous partner guarding loot (though there’s no redemption for the latter in BotR).

Stewart is marvelously tough in those Mann westerns.

PBS stations started showing it around Xmas in the early 70s iirc

Winchester '73

This is a really exceptional and tough western. Jimmy comes into Dodge City to participate in a shooting contest, the prize being the titular rifle, one of his opponents being a real sadistic prick from his past played by Stephen McNally. It's very easy to make shooting contest scenes, easier still to make them boring, this one is actually tense and crisply edited.

It's no spoiler to say the film ends in a showdown between these two guys, but it's what's in-between that really makes it even more interesting. A tense and bloodless card game showdown in a desolate roadhouse tavern which puts Hateful Eight to shame, a quick and brutal battle between calvarymen and one of those '50s western Native American tribes which are today problematic (but at least the film does nod slightly via dialogue from their warrior chief Rock Hudson(!) to the atrocities committed against them), and Dan Duryea pops up near the end as a cackling villain in league w/McNally.

For a fairly thin story on paper, there's a lot going on: several narrative threads being followed at once, some complex characterizations in minor roles, and that final shootout seems de rigueur at first but it's craftily directed, and as the gunfire grows more rapid you get the sense of two guys who have stopped taking potshots and instead want to blow the other guy's brains out. A key shot involves Stewart pinning down McNally between two rocks in a narrow outcropping, bullets ricocheting around and preventing him from moving.

It's hard to choose between that one and The Naked Spur.

Mann was an excellent director.

That final shootout in Winchester ‘73 is A++++. Never seen Bend of the River, looking forward to checking it out this weekend.

I've been wanting to see that one for a while. TCM never seems to air it, and it's not on any of my streaming services.

The Naked Spur is very good, yes.

from the local library along w/Winchester '73 I also checked out THE FAR COUNTRY, which is another gem. Beautiful location shooting in Alberta, though it takes place in Skagway, AK and Dawson City, in the Yukon. Jimmy is a deeply unsentimental cattle driver who has been moving a herd up north with partner Walter Brennan, and despite his best intentions he finds himself making friends (and just as many enemies) along the way, the former including Ruth Roman, Jay C. Flippen, Corinne Calvet, etc, latter including a bunch of fine Western stock actors like John McIntire, Jack Elam, and others. He doesn't want to have anything to do with either his new friends or new enemies, but eventually circumstances dictate he has to choose a side.

Like other Mann westerns it's got a lot more going on than the back of the DVD would suggest, and a leisurely pace that allows for most of the supporting characters to reveal themselves without rushing it and without relying on stock traits. Lots of standouts there.

It's also being released in the UK soon via Arrow, which has me hoping it will follow suit in the U.S.; this DVD looked decent enough but the scope of the film deserves a better treatment on blu-ray.

https://images.arrowfilms.com/Images/3e9d2414-7773-45a2-b94b-71422f3b81a3.jpg

I binged a lot of his Westerns a year or 2 ago thru the library. Reading the reactions here makes me think that's not a good way to view movies, cause these all blur together in my mind now. But I thiiiink Winchester 73 was my fav. (I was thinking the shootout in the rocks was from Bend of the River!)

Mann's films are so good that I can only assume his status relative to other filmmakers from his era is simply due to him being a director whose personality was not front-and-center, a guy whose reputation was perhaps that of a workmanlike craftsman rather than someone who chose interesting projects and elevated them seemingly every single time. I've yet to see one of his films that wasn't at least very good and most have been great.

yeah Bend of the River has a climactic gunfight at a river, near some rapids.

ok now I remember Far Country, really liked that one. Stewart + Brennan, how can you go wrong. Plus the judge was a good villian.
I don't think I've ever seen The Man From Laramie...

Anthony Mann, master director of noirs and westerns in the '40s and '50s

Bend of the River was filmed entirely on location in Oregon. I can recognize a fair number of the places it was shot.

Just seen The Naked Spur and I'm surprised by just how much he still moves me when he has fear in his eyes or just looks anxious. I seen Vertigo a long time ago and I almost can't believe that he had a similar effect on me.

Hard to prove but I think that there's just a bit of James Stewart in so many American comics with mystery/suspense plots.

From the 50s/60s

he's the embodiment of the noble good dude in a lot of ways, but when he's unhinged in his performances (which is pretty frequently), it's believable and often frightening. he shows a deep fury in some of the roles which seems impossible to rein in.

even in it's a wonderful life, as things start to fall apart and he starts to lash out, he starts to act more like a family annihilator than a family man.

I had "vertigo" on a computerized Scrabble rack today (I think the letters were even in order) with nowhere to play it. Found an open 'n' on the board and laid "revoting."

stewart is so great in conflict with himself, those flawed human moments, his reactions are really nuanced & true to life

He's more frightening than John Wayne.

stewart is so great in conflict with himself

hell, yes. his best moments on film are sublimely nuanced and calibrated bits of facial expression or physical tension. there are various close-ups in It's a Wonderful Life that are just killer.

I think Ebert said something about how Stewart's combat experience really shown through in most of his post-war performances.

Oh, good point!

I didn’t really know anything about his military service until I just now read up in his Wikipedia page. Seems to me other guys worked on USO-type stuff and propaganda films but he was flying Bomber missions to Germany.

yeah his access to that idk “extra gear” that he can shift into must come from that experience for sure, or at least adds to it… he’s not afraid to explore the darker psychological stuff

It really came out with Hitchcock and Anthony Mann, but seems to have always been there to some degree.

He's more frightening than John Wayne.

ts: crazy-eyed menace vs cold-eyed menace