Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the screwball romantic comedy, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, starring Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, Focus Features, 2008
I have spent no little “cyberspace” ink in the recent past swearing off femme fatales in crime noirs, mainly crime noirs from its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s. I grew tired, very tired, of two-timing dames who saw nothing wrong, nothing in the world wrong, with off-handedly putting a couple of slugs in the likes of a prince valiant like Robert Mitchum as Jane Greer did in Out Of The Past just for trying to help her out of a jam, or seven. Fortunately after successful completion of the twelve –step femme fatale withdrawal program I am now cured, cured forever and a day, of those bad femmes.
But what of “good” femme fatales, or wannabes (from Pittsburg no less), who maybe are just a little screwy (okay, okay a lot screwy) and don’t even know, how to handle a rod, or want to. Just men. Well then Miss Delysia LaFosse (played, fetchingly and every other which way played by Ms. Amy Adams) is just the type for you (and me, especially sans those pistols) featured in the film under review, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.
And what if all any femme fatale really needed to stay away from hard guys, hard liquor, hard grifts, and mean streets was a sort of “fairy godmother” posing as a “social secretary” (the Miss Pettigrew of the title played, every wise and wishful way by Ms. Frances McDormand of Fargo fame). Then, my friends, you would have the substance of the plot of this little romantic comedy/social commentary/ nostalgia piece (1939 just before the war, World War II in Europe when all hell will break loose, but there is just this minute reprieve for bread and circuses).
No need to get heavily entwined in the romantic triangle here, Ms. Adams and three beautiful young men who came of age after the war, the First World War that is, and who have “designs” on her free-wheeling spirit. Only one will win out in the end but not before Miss Pettigrew and Miss LaFosse light up the screen with their antics (and Ms. McDormand and Ms. Adams with their solid older woman/younger woman bonding). That is what drives this film. That and a rather nice tribute to old-time Hollywood screwball comedies a la Preston Sturgis and that crowd. With no off-hand femme fatale gun play to “resolve” the fickle lifestyle dilemmas.
And if all else fails to dignify the spirit of this film then let me end with this. View this for the torch singer (Ms. Adams) segment at the nightclub where the emotional distraught Miss LaFosse sings the old-time Inkspots classic, If I Didn’t Care. Even they would have had their handkerchiefs out on that one.
Showing posts with label The Ink Spots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Ink Spots. Show all posts
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Monday, July 18, 2011
His Father’s Uniform- “The Songs That Got Us Through World War II”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Ink Spots performing I'll Get By.
CD Review
The Songs That Got Us Through World War II, various artists, Rhino Records, 1990
Rick Roberts was curious. Not curious about everything in the world just this minute, although more than one teacher had noted on his early childhood reports cards that little characteristic, but curious about his father’s military uniform, his faded, drab, slightly moth-eaten army dress uniform, World War II version, of course. That curiousness came not from, like the usual, some daydream curiosity but the result, the this minute result, of having come across the suit in an attic closet as he was preparing to store his own not used, not much used, or merely out-of-fashion, excess clothing against time. And that time was, or rather is the time of his imminent departure for State University and his first extended time away from home.
Funny Rick knew that his father had been in World War II, had gotten some medals for his service as was apparent from the fruit salad on the uniform, and had spent a little time, he was not exactly sure on the time but his mother had told him 1950 when he asked, in the Veterans Hospital for an undisclosed aliment. But he had not heard anything beyond those bare facts from his father. Never. And his mother had insistently shh-ed him away when ever he tried to bring it up.
Oh sure Rick had been sick unto death back in the 1950s when the kitchen radio, tuned into WNAC exclusively to old-time World War II Roberts’ parent music. To the exclusion of any serious rock music like Elvis, Chuck, Little Richard and Jerry Lee, but that was parents just being parents and kicking up old torches. Especially when Frank Sinatra sang I’ll Be Seeing You, or his mother would laugh whimsically when The Andrew Sisters performed Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy or The Mills Brothers would croon Till Then. But they, Rick’s parents, never were overheard discussing that war, nor was it discussed when his father’s cronies, and fellow veterans, came over to play their weekly card games until dawn. What happened back then, what went wrong?
After having spied the uniform Rick decided it was time to ask those questions, those curiosity questions. Later it would be too late, he would be too busy raising a family of his own, or he would be doing his own military service, although he hoped not on that count. It just didn’t figure into his plans, and that was that. So with a deep breathe one evening, one Friday evening after dinner, when his father would not be distracted by thoughts of next day work, or Saturday night card games, his asked the big question. And his father’s answer- “I did what a lot of guys did, not more not less, I did it the best way I could, I saw some things, some tough things, I survived and that’s all that there is to say.” And Rick’s father said it in such a way that there was no torture too severe, no hole too deep, and no hell too hot to get more than that out of him.
Later that evening, still shell-shocked at his father’s response, as he prepared to go out with his boys for one last North Adamsville fling before heading to State, he could hear his mother softy sobbing while the pair listened on the living room phonograph to Martha Tilton warble I’ll Walk Alone, The Ink Spots heavenly harmonize on I’ll Get By, Doris Day songbird Sentimental Journey, Vaughn Monroe sentimentally stir When The Lights Go on Again, and Harry James orchestrate through It’s Been A Long, Long Time. Then Rick understood, understood as well as an eighteen year old boy could understand such things, that it was those songs that had gotten them through the war, and its aftermath. And that was all he had to know.
CD Review
The Songs That Got Us Through World War II, various artists, Rhino Records, 1990
Rick Roberts was curious. Not curious about everything in the world just this minute, although more than one teacher had noted on his early childhood reports cards that little characteristic, but curious about his father’s military uniform, his faded, drab, slightly moth-eaten army dress uniform, World War II version, of course. That curiousness came not from, like the usual, some daydream curiosity but the result, the this minute result, of having come across the suit in an attic closet as he was preparing to store his own not used, not much used, or merely out-of-fashion, excess clothing against time. And that time was, or rather is the time of his imminent departure for State University and his first extended time away from home.
Funny Rick knew that his father had been in World War II, had gotten some medals for his service as was apparent from the fruit salad on the uniform, and had spent a little time, he was not exactly sure on the time but his mother had told him 1950 when he asked, in the Veterans Hospital for an undisclosed aliment. But he had not heard anything beyond those bare facts from his father. Never. And his mother had insistently shh-ed him away when ever he tried to bring it up.
Oh sure Rick had been sick unto death back in the 1950s when the kitchen radio, tuned into WNAC exclusively to old-time World War II Roberts’ parent music. To the exclusion of any serious rock music like Elvis, Chuck, Little Richard and Jerry Lee, but that was parents just being parents and kicking up old torches. Especially when Frank Sinatra sang I’ll Be Seeing You, or his mother would laugh whimsically when The Andrew Sisters performed Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy or The Mills Brothers would croon Till Then. But they, Rick’s parents, never were overheard discussing that war, nor was it discussed when his father’s cronies, and fellow veterans, came over to play their weekly card games until dawn. What happened back then, what went wrong?
After having spied the uniform Rick decided it was time to ask those questions, those curiosity questions. Later it would be too late, he would be too busy raising a family of his own, or he would be doing his own military service, although he hoped not on that count. It just didn’t figure into his plans, and that was that. So with a deep breathe one evening, one Friday evening after dinner, when his father would not be distracted by thoughts of next day work, or Saturday night card games, his asked the big question. And his father’s answer- “I did what a lot of guys did, not more not less, I did it the best way I could, I saw some things, some tough things, I survived and that’s all that there is to say.” And Rick’s father said it in such a way that there was no torture too severe, no hole too deep, and no hell too hot to get more than that out of him.
Later that evening, still shell-shocked at his father’s response, as he prepared to go out with his boys for one last North Adamsville fling before heading to State, he could hear his mother softy sobbing while the pair listened on the living room phonograph to Martha Tilton warble I’ll Walk Alone, The Ink Spots heavenly harmonize on I’ll Get By, Doris Day songbird Sentimental Journey, Vaughn Monroe sentimentally stir When The Lights Go on Again, and Harry James orchestrate through It’s Been A Long, Long Time. Then Rick understood, understood as well as an eighteen year old boy could understand such things, that it was those songs that had gotten them through the war, and its aftermath. And that was all he had to know.
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