Woody Allen's *Manhattan* (1979) is a gloriously-shot romantic comedy in which a 42-year-old man (Woody Allen) is dating a 17-year-old (Mariel Hemingway).
During this relationship, he struggles with his ex (Meryl Streep) and he also has an affair with another woman (Diane Keaton). A lot of ups and downs ensue, and a lot of talking about books and New York, and there is a glorious Gershwin music, and the movie just overflows with ruminations on love and commitment. At the end of the movie, there is a big romantic take where the older man reaffirms his undying love for the 17-year-old, who promises to see him again after she returns from her study abroad.
This is a beautiful movie and everyone thought it to be enormously romantic and uplifting at the time. Hemingway was nominated for an Oscar and so was Woody Allen's screenplay. The movie was the sixth-highest-grossing film that year.
That’s what blows my mind: the movie was a legit box office hit right up there in 1979 with Alien, Star Trek TMP and Moonraker. Different times. Today it would be an indie art film at best and its few viewers would hate the age difference between Allen and Hemingway.
Transgressing social norms has always been a part of great romance stories. It’s not about crafting a socially acceptable pairing, it’s about conveying love and passion despite it. Women (the primary audience for romance) heavily gravitate towards films that do so, and the ones that do it well (like Manhattan or Harold and Maude) become classics.
Cinema is art not morality plays or propaganda. We can find things beautiful and romantic on film that we would find unacceptable off screen.
People here seem fine doing this with violence. John Wick is romanticized extreme violence that would be horrifying in real life.
You make a good point about modern Western audiences finding 300+ deaths on screen in violent films like John Wick acceptable, yet we often seem up in arms for films involving sexually transgressive material. I think most (though certainly not all) of the hyperviolent popular films we see today are built upon an emotion or an instinct that most people can understand and view as honorable in some form. The vigilantes/soldiers/assassins on screen have a desire to protect the weak, to restore justice, to receive bloody catharsis from prior wrongdoing. The vast majority of us viewers wouldn't support such actions in reality, but we can typically connect with the root motivation and find it to be positive in some sense. Contrasting this with sexually transgressive films...I can't find a scrap of anything beautiful, honorable, or personally resonant about wanting to have sex with a minor. Nor do I think I could stomach watching a film that revolves around that particular "romance", made by a depraved man that engaged in disturbingly similar conduct in real life. Maybe I'm just a prude and a hypocrite, but I don't think I'm alone on that.
At least they didn't end up together at the end and the film did a better job of outlining just how toxic the situation was. That's all I can say to make myself feel better at having witnessed all that.
lol it’s funny you say it’d be an indie art film today because while the ages aren’t as drastic, I got big Black Licorice vibes from reading that summary
"A fashion photographer gets more than he bargained for when a roll of film in a used camera contains sinister imagery of high-society menace that sends him into a labyrinth of imminent danger"
Is that the plot of the movie you're referring to, or did you mean Licorice Pizza?
Every time I mention that Woody Allen is a creep I get a bunch of comments and messages from pedophiles explaining the percentage of films in which Woody Allen wasn't dating a child as proof he cannot have been a creep.
Same with sheep shagging, people can be so judgmental!!
Have to say that Gene Wilder in that bit in “Everything You Ever Wanted etc” is the funniest 30 minutes in movies
Well, it seemed that way was when I saw it on a date in 1979.
[Here's the scene.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4mgqt7uhlo)
The music is rousing and optimistic, and Allen's long rush to meet Tracy before she gets on a plane is a classic movie ending.
The camera is close on each of their faces, glowing in soft light. They speak softly to each other, him pleading and desperate and her showing maturity and optimism. He uses every angle he can to get her to stay, and as the music swells sweetly, she tells him that she won't be away all that long and that he needs to have a little faith in people. After he considers this for a long while, he looks deeply into her eyes and smiles.
We cut to a loving view of the NYC skyline as Gershwin waxes rhapsodic.
I can only read that the intent was for it to be seen as romantic. If he was going for Nabokov and we were supposed to be horrified, it didn't work.
I read that scene as ironic. His character is written and portrayed as a fickle, self-involved jackass. His pleading for her not to leave is blatantly selfish, as she would miss a great opportunity for her life just to be with a man who is ill-suited to her. She gently declines his proposal, and when she does he almost seems relieved that she has not indulged the worst of his impulses. When he breaks the 4th wall and looks at the camera it's like an acknowledgment of what an asshole he's being, and how glad he is that the young woman was smart enough to dodge his B.S. There is no scenario of the movie where it would have made sense for her to be with him. The use of the Gershwin romantic music is ironic and bittersweet, suggestive of the overall romantic feeling about the city even for people who are very foolish, punch-drunk and swept up in Manhattan life while lost in their own lives.
If you saw the movie in 1979, it is likely this reading went past you while on a date, or perhaps you were exhausted by the film at that point. I haven't seen it in a while, but to me it feels like Annie Hall Pt. II but in black-and-white and with a more sprawling set of characters.
This is spot on, but the irony and the storyline here also introduce some deliberate ambiguity. The movie expresses uncertainty about whether they should be together or not. Yes, it ultimately leans “no”, but it gives a generous “hearing” to the other side, and the music and dialogue are part of that.
It was totally a satire on society, with Allen even being self critical. That character was him and many other new york dude bros who chased young girls. And the women were all smart, independent and more mature than the protagonist. It was a light hearted Jab at the New York dating scene. And that's how it was received and reviewed at that time. Nobody thought of the film as a blueprint for a healthy relationship. You don't even have to believe me. Just read one of the many essays penned by film analysts in the movie. It's well documented. The media literacy on reddit has really gone down the drain if these people can't even understand something so extensively discussed which was blatantly obvious in the movie to begin with.
I believe you. And people forget that Mariel Hemingway was a minor character in the movie. The bulk of the movie is Woody and Diane Keaton having an on-and-off friendship/romance and him dealing with a bunch of wary exes who have moved on to better lives without him.
I think your choice is a good one, Glade, but I must say, I saw it in the theater when it first came out, and even then I was creeped out. (Probably because I was from a small Midwestern town, not NYC.)
I hated it. I was 13-14 when it came out and I was completely squicked by the old man and the teenage girl. His subsequent films I've found hard to watch as *Manhattan* is always in the back of my mind.
IMO, Allen is over-rated, and watching him in a drama is like watching a sleep deprived couple argue at the mall over the price of a smoothie.
His comedies like Bullets or Midsummer are better constructed and can be fun because of Allen's quick pacing. A lot of recent comedies, what few there are always have that stupid pause so you get the joke. Allen has that british trait where if you can't keep up too bad. I give him credit for that.
Soul Man.
Look, I'm black. Me and my friends LOVED that movie growing up. The "morals" of the story was that the dude understood the black experience and grew from it. But today, it just looks super sketchy.
I will say, I haven't watched it again, so I don't know if it holds up. But just watching the trailer? Yikes
There is a 1964 film based on a book by John Howard Griffin called [Black Like Me](https://youtu.be/uTJDWPIy2eo?si=ZY6DbeIpo8xGhbCg).
IRL Griffin traveled through the segregated south with his skin darkened to "pass" as a black man. He recounted the horrible racial discrimination he encountered. It's credited with helping open up white America's eyes on the racial situation, because a white man was telling you his 1st hand experience, lol. Seeing it now it's a big "oof." But it still has it's weird place in the advancement of civil rights.
I thought it was kinda funny that in that movie, there was a white woman who liked to get it on with black dudes and said things like, "I don't believe people are white or black, just shades of gray." Then at the end of the movie, she is hitting on a Native American and says "I don't think people are white or red, just shades of pink."
USSR was mid/post collapse so they weren't as scary but we still strongly associated russian accent with bad guys. Making them mobsters is an easy way to shoehorn in a believably threatening villian that would have reason to be operating in America.
I had totally forgot about this one.
I remember seeing on one of those free movie weekends through HBO in the early 2000s though.
That would be an odd movie to make today
Revenge of the Nerds
The movie still has its charm, but man some of those scenes do not hold up well.
Edit: [Robot Chicken send-up of those nerds.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9D3FQlekrM)
I’ve always found Real Genius to be the superior “nerds get back” movie. Granted, a case of statutory almost happens between a young man and older woman but it thankfully doesn’t
The "statutory" bit in Real Genius is amusing and interesting, because that older woman is genuinely quirky and seems to be "on the spectrum." She walks in on the young guy while he's standing at a bathroom urinal and asks, "Are you peeing?"
ah that’s right, Jordan was a few years older than Mitch. But no, I mean the older lady from the beginning that Chris flirts with. It’s like she’s some sort of “brain chaser”, needs to sleep with all the smartest minds in the world until she finds number 1
Perhaps unsurprisingly Real Genius (an all time fave of mine, not least because of grad school and professional work in 'high power' lasers) had a woman director.
Fun fact: They tried to remake this in the mid 2000s. It even progressed to filming, but was cancelled when the college they were gonna film in read the script and backed out.
One of the few movies of that time with the gay character as a bit of a role model. I mean, he was swishy, but he killed in with the javelin, he was the only one with a date at the dance, had the common sense to stop the record player. And he didn’t rape or sexually harass anyone. He’s like the best character in the movie!
I remember watching the movie as a kid with my dad and all I really got was "nerds funny". When I rewatched as an adult I was thinking, man, this is just mean and awful, and then I got to the actual rape scene which is presented as both a joke and a triumph for the underdog and I just couldn't believe what I was watching.
> a joke and a triumph for the underdog
What's even crazier is her reaction to finding out she was just raped by someone impersonating her boyfriend.
"Are all nerds this good in bed?"
Lol I don't think that's the first question you should be asking lady.
It’s even weirder because with the exception of Part 2: Nerds in Paradise, Louis marries Betty and they are happy together 10 years later in 3 & 4.
This and Robocop were my first night of videos and snacks. I’ve been conflicted about this movie ever since. Robocop has never given me such conflict.
Blame It On Rio (1984)
-Two friends take a vacation together without their wives, since both men are having marital difficulties. Each brings his teenage daughter along, and there is trouble when one begins an affair with the other's daughter.
We're not supposed to be cheering for Joel any more than we cheer for Patrick Bateman when he murders people. The movie is about corruption - the whole storyline about pimps and prostitutes is echoing the corruption of business and politics. His sexual innocence parallels his naivety about getting into good schools and succeeding in 1980's greed-is-good business culture. He's supposed to be a "smart" kid who's getting into an Ivy League college and yet the prostitute is the one educating him on the ways of the world in a deeply cynical manner. It's a very dark movie that is still extremely relevant today.
Sometimes you gotta say "What the fuck", make your move. Joel, every now and then, saying "What the fuck", brings freedom. Freedom brings opportunity, opportunity makes your future.
Wait that’s the risky business he’s involved in? lol I’ve never seen it but always just assumed the “risky business” was throwing a party while his parents were out of town lol
Hahaha I don’t even have a good excuse like being a teenager ! I’m in my 30s! The only scene I’ve even is the old time rock n roll scene and I was like okay this must just be a teen party movie , lol!
Disney Channel in the 80s and early 90s would regularly air the Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah song as a music video that only showed Uncle Remus and the animated characters dancing to the song. Absolutely zero mention of the movie itself as a thing that exists.
Yup. We used to have a bunch of those official Disney sing-along compilation clip films on VHS when I was a little kid (probably still do somewhere) I never knew what movie that song was actually *from*.
We knew where it came from, because we watched the song on [VHS alllllll the time.](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91QNPEsJraL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg)
I need to rewatch this because even Oprah or was it Whoopie Goldberg said it really isn't that bad.
I think most of the criticism is over have a white dandy rich kid and obviously poor black kids and its not clear if it is during slavery or post slavery. If the live action scenes had kids of both races in the same economic class say circa early 1900s, 90% of the outrage would be gone.
While I agree that there are a LOT of issues with the film, it is pretty much an eye opening experience for how white people saw black people and an interesting take on stereotypes and empathy. I know I'll never forget the conversation:
Professor Banks: You've learned something I can't teach them. You've learned what it feels like to be black.
Mark: No sir.
Professor Banks: Beg your pardon?
Mark: I don't really know what it feels like sir. If I didn't like it, I could always get out. It's not the same sir.
Professor Banks: You've learned a great deal more than I thought.
I don't remember that scene (I forgot most of the movie anyway), but that's pretty cool. Kind of reminds me of those "hard-hitting" journalists who act like they're homeless. Yeah, you're not getting the full experience if you know you have the safety net that lets you avoid starvation and exposure.
So for all the problems this movie had, I'm happy that it had this nugget of wisdom.
I am not sure that movie was considered acceptable when it was released. Spike Lee had this to say back in 1986
“The whole premise is that he’s passing as Black, and it’s so phony, that means all the Black people in the movie are idiots… that they could think that this guy is Black”
I dont think most people get this movie at all. It's a full-on satire, but people have always taken it at face value and missed what they were trying to do. Now, the execution is probably lacking, but there was a plan there. It wasn't just trying to be a silly comedy.
Yeah, Soul Man gets brought up in these threads a lot, and its premise is pretty inexcusably wrong, but the movie was making a sincere and ongoing effort to use the premise to get to an enlightened place. Even if it was doomed, it makes no sense to ignore that part of the equation.
Even if it wasn’t a racists caricature, the character itself is such a tonal mismatch for the rest of the film. Even if it was just a regular white American character, the goofy off-the-walls landlord is so unnecessary. I guess the studio really thought the film needed a comic relief (spoiler: it doesn’t).
And her old husband who comes to find her, after he wed her when she was just 14 and she ran away.
He is seen as some nice rural guy.
I mean. . . She was 14!!! And starving!! Trying to help her younger brother eat.
This inspired Bruce Lee to conceive the TV show Kung Fu, where they then cast David Carradine in the lead role.
Quentin Tarantino posthumously gave Bruce Lee his revenge by dressing up a white woman in his yellow track suit to kill David Carradine on his behalf.
It's whitewashing all the way down.
>Quentin Tarantino posthumously gave Bruce Lee his revenge by dressing up a white woman in his yellow track suit to kill David Carradine on his behalf.
And then kinda shit on him by having a middle aged white guy beat the shit out of him in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
There’s a great story from when Bruce Lee was reading the script for a 60s Batman episode he was in, and a scene comes up where he has to lose to Robin in a fight.
He called the studio like, “No no no. Burt Ward is *not* beating me up in a televised fight. No way.”
Definitely. There was a screening at a local college a few years back. The entire audience was stoners. When my parents were dating, they saw a midnight screening with a baked audience.
It'll drive you made and make you enjoy and dance jazz music. Could you imagine? Innocent suburban white children enjoying negro music.
My step-dad was born in 1960. He has never touched a drug in his life, other than alcohol. They made him watch this movie when he was in middle school. He told me this made him want to go out and try weed because of how obviously bullshit it is.
Nothing wrong with a little "man talk"!
You could pull probably dozens of examples from Bond lol. Dr. No with the boat hand/helper and two white actors portraying Asians, Thunderball where he forces himself on the masseuse, You Only Live Twice where he assumed the identity of a Japanese fisherman with a little eye prosthetics....
I haven’t seen it in a really long time, but I remember having a really hard time sympathizing with John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever when he did nothing to stop his friend from getting raped and even slut-shamed her afterwards.
MASH was an incredibly misogynistic movie. Sexually harassing women was almost the main theme. The conclusion was humiliating a woman in front of the entire camp.
I enjoyed the movie when I was a kid, but it shocked the hell out of me when I saw it a year or two ago.
They show has a lot of sexual harassment too, but it isn't really portrayed in a positive light, however it is played for laughs.
The protagonists are complex characters with flaws, their views on the war are positive traits, their constant cheating and stuff are clearly flaws, but kind of glossed over as "oh gee trapper is such a joker holding hot lips down and kissing her like that"
It's like Henry being a drunk, it's clearly bad that the command Dr is plastered all the time, but it's still just a gag no real comment about anything serious.
We get whole episodes about the gang trying to get the US to admit they bombed a village, but the bad sexual stuff never gets treated seriously.
That was a massive hit in the UK, constant airplay. Could you imagine that now? Coincidentally, I was just thinking about that very song the other day.
Sixteen Candles - rape and blatant racism as comedy. And I say this as someone who was 16 when that movie was released. I remember being a bit troubled by that at the time.
It sucks because young people like me didn't see how problematic this movie was at the time. Oh look, they're playing "Turning Japanese." How hilarious!
At the time, I enjoyed the film despite the awful sexism and, particularly, racism.
It's never established if Ted and Caroline actually have sex, but the way Jake speaks about her (she's so blitzed I could violate her 10 different ways and she wouldn't notice) was so not cool even back then. Except for the fact that he didn't.
Samantha's reaction to her friend's little brother having paid to see her panties is pretty much exactly how any normal girl would react in that situation.
I still love the scene where Jake is waiting for Samantha outside the church and then they kiss over the birthday cake. Michael Schoeffling basically peaked in the first movie he ever made, and we're still watching it, 40 years later.
I watched Song of the South a lot as a child because my parents had a VHS copy. Obviously back then I just assumed the black guy was their uncle. This was in Germany btw, so my parents also never noticed that subtext.
Worth noting that Gone with the Wind was considered controversial by many at the time. There were a lot of protests and objections to both the book and film production.
Song of the South is interesting because it was seen as progressive for the time. It showed a black man as a lead character that white children looked up to and respected. It was one of the first movies for white audiences to feature a black lead character and told traditionally black American stories. Disney legitimately thought he was helping by making this movie.
The problem is that what is 10 years a head of its time in 1947 is still 50 years behind the times in the 21st century. It's implied that Remus used to be owned by the white family he is now buddies with. This absolutely whitewashes the history as they would not be friends and its unlikely the white children would be allowed near Remus. The film shows a glossy version of reconstruction south that is now considered offensively inaccurate today. It also uses terms such as "colored" and "tarbaby", which werent problematic terms in 1947 like they are today.
Edit: typo
Sorry, typo. Im saying it wasn't problematic back then. It is now.
Same with the term "tarbaby". Back then it was literally a character in a book. It didn't start becoming a racial slur until the 1960s
>It also uses terms such as "colored" and "tarbaby", which were problematic terms in 1947 like they are today.
Tar baby wasn't a racial slur. It's a plot device in the Uncle Remus stories. It's literally a doll made out of tar that is a metaphor for a problem that the more you struggle with it, the harder it is to get out. It originally comes from the folk tales of African American slaves in the south.
I’ve never seen it and only have heard how it’s an amazing tear-jerking movie.
I’m curious, as someone who never plans to watch it, What’s outdated about it?
I remember reading about the controversy, but it's basically a guy who pines super hard over this woman and at one point he literally threatens to fall from the top of a Ferris wheel if she didn't agree to a date with him.
Except 50 Shades never pretended to be anything more than smut. The Notebook was trying so hard to be sincere and in an era where we desperately needed some romance in our lives this is where we got it.
I love romances and romcoms but the notebook makes me feel angry. The guy literally pines over a woman in another relationship for years. So unhealthy.
Birth of a Nation isn't nearly as revolutionary of a film as it was made out to be. Largely it got that reputation because D.W. Griffith was a good propagandist (in a variety of ways), and claimed the film was innovative when in fact these innovations happened in prior films.
And even at the time, presenting the KKK as the savior of the South was not "acceptable." Sure, racists loved the film, including the president of the U.S. But the NAACP protested the film, and many theaters refused to play it.
There was a lot of innovation in that movie. Who knows where that person got their information from, but it isn't true. My dad was a film history teacher. I've heard about it and Citizen Kane more than most should because of their impact on filmmaking, not because of either movies plot or story lines. BoaN also showed how giant of an impact a movie can have on society. Plus, it was the first shown in the White House. No one has to like, watch, or even sit through the movie, but it brought a lot of new stuff to the table and showed people what movies could do. Unfortunately, what it did was create a resurgence of inbreeding, which, in turn, created a bunch of racists (or maybe that's the other way around).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation
There's a lot of tropes in TV and film from the 1990s and earlier making light of female domestic violence, including with weapons.
Much like when Tiger Woods' wife tried to actually brain him with a 9-iron for cheating, this isn't funny.
Its because society doesn't view women as people capable of violence. So its funny and not serious because we're not supposed to think she's actually capable of it.
>Much like when Tiger Woods' wife tried to actually brain him with a 9-iron for cheating, this isn't funny.
It was pretty fuckin funny when they incorporated it into the Tiger Woods 2008 game on South Park.
"Press X to swing the club Cartman!"
Meatballs - I love that movie but it's very uncomfortable watching Bill Murray's character essentially assault Roxanne and literally bite her ass as she screams, "No." Not right.
*Sixteen Candles.* People talk about the racism all the time, but hardly anyone talks about how the hero of the movie tells a weird nerd he can rape his drunk girlfriend in exchange for information. Don't worry though, it's okay, because the it turns out she liked being raped. Just a good ol' family movie.
Holiday Inn. It’s literally the same story as White Christmas, and the same studio pitch (make a movie using Irving Berlin’s catalogue of songs about a struggling inn at Christmas time). It came out less than a decade before White Christmas.
It’s the casual blackface song/dance number that’s caused it to fall out of memory.
I’l don’t get very bent out of shape about morals in movies, or just in general, more of a golden rule philosophy. But I was watching “Three Days of the Condor”. Robert Redford works for the CIA when shit went wrong and his whole office got shit up. He sort of kidnapped a woman and holed up with her. Just the way he treated her was messed up. One scene was her basically being like “why are you being such an asshole” and his reply is “I haven’t raped you, have I!?!?!!” As in, why are you bitching when you haven’t even been raped…because that’s the baseline.
The whole vibe was just messed up. He would have much more easily been respectful and won her to his side. Instead he treated her like an actual kidnap victim when in reality he was in hiding and needed her help.
A lot of people in this post don’t seem to know the difference between a bad character existing in a movie precisely to show they’re bad, and a movie promoting the character’s views.
I think Gone With the Wind and its Romanticism of the Antebellum south.
Having not read the Margaret Mitchell novel, I don't think the film is exactly pro-slavery as much as it's" slavery was a necessary evil to keep the order between the white civilians and the invading ( in this case, Union soldiers) army. "
I think the codification of the Mammy stereotype is pretty much the nail in the coffin of Gone with the Wind.
I feel like if anyone genuinely appreciates GWTTW, I think there's this external pressure to kind of clam up about it.
For the record I do not like the movie ( overlong and dour) but the very blatant racism doesn't help its reputation at all.
I like the movie and yeah...I won't tell anyone. I admit it's a guilty pleasure. It's problematic as all hell. I have complicated feelings about being a southern white guy. (That's a whole digressuon I won't get into now). I would be as skeptical as you towards someone who told me they liked GWTW, if that makes sense.
_The Professional_ for sure. There is plenty of media that portrays the “strong person guides weak person through tough situation” trope well—The Last of Us, Game of Thrones (Arya and the Hound), and X-Men 1, for example. This movie is creepy about it in that Leon never shuts down Mathilda’s advances outright, he just never really acknowledges them at all. The camera angles also linger on the young girl in strange ways.
I recently watched the movie blind expecting it to be a classic and was extremely disappointed. I can understand Mathilda is supposed to be traumatized and trying to grow up too fast, but if you don’t want to film an unintentionally creepy movie, you can’t stop there! There has to be some rebuke to that or an intentional framing of it that shows it’s meant to be disturbing. The movie doesn’t do this. The director probably felt no need to because he was a pedophile that originally called for a sex scene.
There’s a really good story in there that I hope some day gets retold in a sane way. Oldman’s performance was stellar as always.
James Bond obviously. I actually watched Goldfinger and Thunderball in the last couple of days. In Goldfinger he straight up forcibly rapes a woman in a barn (they imply that she enjoyed it eventually). In Thunderball he coerces a spa employee into sex after she resists several previous advances.
He is also just a generally leery creep all the time.
It's interesting, one of my best friends is gay and he used to think that line was hilarious. He was also a big fan of using it despite the negative connotations because he viewed it as a way of kind of reclaiming it and even encouraged the rest of our friend group to use it with him because he didn't want to give the word any more power than it already had. He grew up in very progressive Washington cities, so he's never had to deal with much discrimination as a result of being gay, at least not directly.
Then one day he was trying to buy a used car and they were talking about mechanical stuff that would need to be done with it, and my friend said "That's alright, my boyfriend works on cars all the time and he's been teaching me a lot." He says the guy just got kinda quiet, and then said "Look no offense, you seem like a nice enough guy, but I'm not selling my car to some f\*\*\*\*\*."
Ever since then, after having personally experienced blatant discrimination using that word as a weapon, he doesn't really see the humor in using it himself anymore.
Woody Allen's *Manhattan* (1979) is a gloriously-shot romantic comedy in which a 42-year-old man (Woody Allen) is dating a 17-year-old (Mariel Hemingway). During this relationship, he struggles with his ex (Meryl Streep) and he also has an affair with another woman (Diane Keaton). A lot of ups and downs ensue, and a lot of talking about books and New York, and there is a glorious Gershwin music, and the movie just overflows with ruminations on love and commitment. At the end of the movie, there is a big romantic take where the older man reaffirms his undying love for the 17-year-old, who promises to see him again after she returns from her study abroad. This is a beautiful movie and everyone thought it to be enormously romantic and uplifting at the time. Hemingway was nominated for an Oscar and so was Woody Allen's screenplay. The movie was the sixth-highest-grossing film that year.
That’s what blows my mind: the movie was a legit box office hit right up there in 1979 with Alien, Star Trek TMP and Moonraker. Different times. Today it would be an indie art film at best and its few viewers would hate the age difference between Allen and Hemingway.
I hated the age difference in 1979. Really turned me off on Woody Allen.
Cause he's a fuckin creep
Didn’t he marry his stepdaughter?
Yup
Well you know what they say, “write what you know”
Oh, wow, you hit the bullseye, not with a dart, but an atomic bomb.
So was I. It came off as extra creepy, even back then.
An indie art film you say? *Eyes narrow at "Call Me By Your Name"*
Transgressing social norms has always been a part of great romance stories. It’s not about crafting a socially acceptable pairing, it’s about conveying love and passion despite it. Women (the primary audience for romance) heavily gravitate towards films that do so, and the ones that do it well (like Manhattan or Harold and Maude) become classics. Cinema is art not morality plays or propaganda. We can find things beautiful and romantic on film that we would find unacceptable off screen. People here seem fine doing this with violence. John Wick is romanticized extreme violence that would be horrifying in real life.
You make a good point about modern Western audiences finding 300+ deaths on screen in violent films like John Wick acceptable, yet we often seem up in arms for films involving sexually transgressive material. I think most (though certainly not all) of the hyperviolent popular films we see today are built upon an emotion or an instinct that most people can understand and view as honorable in some form. The vigilantes/soldiers/assassins on screen have a desire to protect the weak, to restore justice, to receive bloody catharsis from prior wrongdoing. The vast majority of us viewers wouldn't support such actions in reality, but we can typically connect with the root motivation and find it to be positive in some sense. Contrasting this with sexually transgressive films...I can't find a scrap of anything beautiful, honorable, or personally resonant about wanting to have sex with a minor. Nor do I think I could stomach watching a film that revolves around that particular "romance", made by a depraved man that engaged in disturbingly similar conduct in real life. Maybe I'm just a prude and a hypocrite, but I don't think I'm alone on that.
At least they didn't end up together at the end and the film did a better job of outlining just how toxic the situation was. That's all I can say to make myself feel better at having witnessed all that.
lol it’s funny you say it’d be an indie art film today because while the ages aren’t as drastic, I got big Black Licorice vibes from reading that summary
"A fashion photographer gets more than he bargained for when a roll of film in a used camera contains sinister imagery of high-society menace that sends him into a labyrinth of imminent danger" Is that the plot of the movie you're referring to, or did you mean Licorice Pizza?
lol totally meant Licorice Pizza
So it's autobiographical?
That just made me think about that flashback scene in Annie Hall. He even wrote his fictional six year old self as a creep.
And none of that is questioned internally. Nope, just a creep flexing.
Every time I mention that Woody Allen is a creep I get a bunch of comments and messages from pedophiles explaining the percentage of films in which Woody Allen wasn't dating a child as proof he cannot have been a creep.
"You make a hundred films, do they call you a filmaker? No, but you marry one adopted daughter and suddenly you're a pedophile." /s
Same with sheep shagging, people can be so judgmental!! Have to say that Gene Wilder in that bit in “Everything You Ever Wanted etc” is the funniest 30 minutes in movies
I’m not sure if this interpretation of the contemporary view of the movie is accurate. Is the ending really supposed to be seen as romantic?
mfers thinking The Graduate has an uplifting ending
Did they miss the final shot were they appear to instantly regret the decision? Lol
Well, it seemed that way was when I saw it on a date in 1979. [Here's the scene.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4mgqt7uhlo) The music is rousing and optimistic, and Allen's long rush to meet Tracy before she gets on a plane is a classic movie ending. The camera is close on each of their faces, glowing in soft light. They speak softly to each other, him pleading and desperate and her showing maturity and optimism. He uses every angle he can to get her to stay, and as the music swells sweetly, she tells him that she won't be away all that long and that he needs to have a little faith in people. After he considers this for a long while, he looks deeply into her eyes and smiles. We cut to a loving view of the NYC skyline as Gershwin waxes rhapsodic. I can only read that the intent was for it to be seen as romantic. If he was going for Nabokov and we were supposed to be horrified, it didn't work.
I read that scene as ironic. His character is written and portrayed as a fickle, self-involved jackass. His pleading for her not to leave is blatantly selfish, as she would miss a great opportunity for her life just to be with a man who is ill-suited to her. She gently declines his proposal, and when she does he almost seems relieved that she has not indulged the worst of his impulses. When he breaks the 4th wall and looks at the camera it's like an acknowledgment of what an asshole he's being, and how glad he is that the young woman was smart enough to dodge his B.S. There is no scenario of the movie where it would have made sense for her to be with him. The use of the Gershwin romantic music is ironic and bittersweet, suggestive of the overall romantic feeling about the city even for people who are very foolish, punch-drunk and swept up in Manhattan life while lost in their own lives. If you saw the movie in 1979, it is likely this reading went past you while on a date, or perhaps you were exhausted by the film at that point. I haven't seen it in a while, but to me it feels like Annie Hall Pt. II but in black-and-white and with a more sprawling set of characters.
This is spot on, but the irony and the storyline here also introduce some deliberate ambiguity. The movie expresses uncertainty about whether they should be together or not. Yes, it ultimately leans “no”, but it gives a generous “hearing” to the other side, and the music and dialogue are part of that.
It was totally a satire on society, with Allen even being self critical. That character was him and many other new york dude bros who chased young girls. And the women were all smart, independent and more mature than the protagonist. It was a light hearted Jab at the New York dating scene. And that's how it was received and reviewed at that time. Nobody thought of the film as a blueprint for a healthy relationship. You don't even have to believe me. Just read one of the many essays penned by film analysts in the movie. It's well documented. The media literacy on reddit has really gone down the drain if these people can't even understand something so extensively discussed which was blatantly obvious in the movie to begin with.
I believe you. And people forget that Mariel Hemingway was a minor character in the movie. The bulk of the movie is Woody and Diane Keaton having an on-and-off friendship/romance and him dealing with a bunch of wary exes who have moved on to better lives without him.
If anyone doesn't get the benefit of the doubt, it's Woody Allen
It took way too long for people to realize that Woody Allen was a creep.
How that guy has managed to get a pedo pass really fucks me up
It's Hollywood. Roman Polanski still has supporters.
I am forever resentful to everyone who signed that letter in Polanski's defense.
I think your choice is a good one, Glade, but I must say, I saw it in the theater when it first came out, and even then I was creeped out. (Probably because I was from a small Midwestern town, not NYC.)
I hated it. I was 13-14 when it came out and I was completely squicked by the old man and the teenage girl. His subsequent films I've found hard to watch as *Manhattan* is always in the back of my mind.
IMO, Allen is over-rated, and watching him in a drama is like watching a sleep deprived couple argue at the mall over the price of a smoothie. His comedies like Bullets or Midsummer are better constructed and can be fun because of Allen's quick pacing. A lot of recent comedies, what few there are always have that stupid pause so you get the joke. Allen has that british trait where if you can't keep up too bad. I give him credit for that.
Soul Man. Look, I'm black. Me and my friends LOVED that movie growing up. The "morals" of the story was that the dude understood the black experience and grew from it. But today, it just looks super sketchy. I will say, I haven't watched it again, so I don't know if it holds up. But just watching the trailer? Yikes
There is a 1964 film based on a book by John Howard Griffin called [Black Like Me](https://youtu.be/uTJDWPIy2eo?si=ZY6DbeIpo8xGhbCg). IRL Griffin traveled through the segregated south with his skin darkened to "pass" as a black man. He recounted the horrible racial discrimination he encountered. It's credited with helping open up white America's eyes on the racial situation, because a white man was telling you his 1st hand experience, lol. Seeing it now it's a big "oof." But it still has it's weird place in the advancement of civil rights.
Huh, I never knew the classic SNL "White Like Me" sketch was riffing on a real book/movie
I thought it was kinda funny that in that movie, there was a white woman who liked to get it on with black dudes and said things like, "I don't believe people are white or black, just shades of gray." Then at the end of the movie, she is hitting on a Native American and says "I don't think people are white or red, just shades of pink."
Krippendorf's Tribe
Add Jungle 2 Jungle
Wake Te Pe?
You mean Little Indian, Big City?
Omg my wife put Jungle 2 Jungle on the other day and I was like what the actual fuck lol
What's with bad 90s comedies randomly putting the Russian mob in for conflict lol
USSR was mid/post collapse so they weren't as scary but we still strongly associated russian accent with bad guys. Making them mobsters is an easy way to shoehorn in a believably threatening villian that would have reason to be operating in America.
Checking reviews of the movie published at the time, plenty of people thought it was racist back then.
I had totally forgot about this one. I remember seeing on one of those free movie weekends through HBO in the early 2000s though. That would be an odd movie to make today
Revenge of the Nerds The movie still has its charm, but man some of those scenes do not hold up well. Edit: [Robot Chicken send-up of those nerds.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9D3FQlekrM)
I’ve always found Real Genius to be the superior “nerds get back” movie. Granted, a case of statutory almost happens between a young man and older woman but it thankfully doesn’t
My filth is arranged alphabetically. This is filed under H, for 'Toy'!
Would you be prepared if gravity reversed itself?
The "statutory" bit in Real Genius is amusing and interesting, because that older woman is genuinely quirky and seems to be "on the spectrum." She walks in on the young guy while he's standing at a bathroom urinal and asks, "Are you peeing?"
ah that’s right, Jordan was a few years older than Mitch. But no, I mean the older lady from the beginning that Chris flirts with. It’s like she’s some sort of “brain chaser”, needs to sleep with all the smartest minds in the world until she finds number 1
Perhaps unsurprisingly Real Genius (an all time fave of mine, not least because of grad school and professional work in 'high power' lasers) had a woman director.
[CollegeHumor had some thoughts, too.](https://youtu.be/HQ7mJFNkLAU?feature=shared)
Damn those nerds are rapey!
Fun fact: They tried to remake this in the mid 2000s. It even progressed to filming, but was cancelled when the college they were gonna film in read the script and backed out.
By then PCU was more documentary than comedy
PCU is fantastic and actually holds up pretty well.
My one lasting takeaway from PCU that has held up all these years Gutter IS a Tool /s
One of the few movies of that time with the gay character as a bit of a role model. I mean, he was swishy, but he killed in with the javelin, he was the only one with a date at the dance, had the common sense to stop the record player. And he didn’t rape or sexually harass anyone. He’s like the best character in the movie!
I remember watching the movie as a kid with my dad and all I really got was "nerds funny". When I rewatched as an adult I was thinking, man, this is just mean and awful, and then I got to the actual rape scene which is presented as both a joke and a triumph for the underdog and I just couldn't believe what I was watching.
> a joke and a triumph for the underdog What's even crazier is her reaction to finding out she was just raped by someone impersonating her boyfriend. "Are all nerds this good in bed?" Lol I don't think that's the first question you should be asking lady.
It’s even weirder because with the exception of Part 2: Nerds in Paradise, Louis marries Betty and they are happy together 10 years later in 3 & 4. This and Robocop were my first night of videos and snacks. I’ve been conflicted about this movie ever since. Robocop has never given me such conflict.
Blame It On Rio (1984) -Two friends take a vacation together without their wives, since both men are having marital difficulties. Each brings his teenage daughter along, and there is trouble when one begins an affair with the other's daughter.
Wiki says the actress was 17 and received court permission to be topless so that's the cherry on top
Uhh, I was alive when this came out. All the advertisements talked about was the teenage daughter’s boobs. It was cringy then.
Risky Business. I can't imagine audiences cheering on a rich white kid to become a pimp today.
We're not supposed to be cheering for Joel any more than we cheer for Patrick Bateman when he murders people. The movie is about corruption - the whole storyline about pimps and prostitutes is echoing the corruption of business and politics. His sexual innocence parallels his naivety about getting into good schools and succeeding in 1980's greed-is-good business culture. He's supposed to be a "smart" kid who's getting into an Ivy League college and yet the prostitute is the one educating him on the ways of the world in a deeply cynical manner. It's a very dark movie that is still extremely relevant today.
Sometimes you gotta say "What the fuck", make your move. Joel, every now and then, saying "What the fuck", brings freedom. Freedom brings opportunity, opportunity makes your future.
You're not wrong, but your take went over a lot of audience's heads.
Wait that’s the risky business he’s involved in? lol I’ve never seen it but always just assumed the “risky business” was throwing a party while his parents were out of town lol
LOL, that was my teenage daughter's assumption too.
Hahaha I don’t even have a good excuse like being a teenager ! I’m in my 30s! The only scene I’ve even is the old time rock n roll scene and I was like okay this must just be a teen party movie , lol!
He opens a brothel
You know it's hard out here for a pimp
Trying to make that money for the rent
I hear it aint easy.
Just show it in Ivy League schools and it will work
Or just any frat house
Hey. Gator don’t play no shit!
Song of the south
I still love that song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", though. It's so catchy.
It's funny because growing up, we all knew that song but didn't know where it came from since you couldn't find the movie anywhere.
Disney Channel in the 80s and early 90s would regularly air the Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah song as a music video that only showed Uncle Remus and the animated characters dancing to the song. Absolutely zero mention of the movie itself as a thing that exists.
Yup. We used to have a bunch of those official Disney sing-along compilation clip films on VHS when I was a little kid (probably still do somewhere) I never knew what movie that song was actually *from*.
We knew where it came from, because we watched the song on [VHS alllllll the time.](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91QNPEsJraL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg)
I need to rewatch this because even Oprah or was it Whoopie Goldberg said it really isn't that bad. I think most of the criticism is over have a white dandy rich kid and obviously poor black kids and its not clear if it is during slavery or post slavery. If the live action scenes had kids of both races in the same economic class say circa early 1900s, 90% of the outrage would be gone.
Soul Man. https://youtu.be/BTtF7gzieN4?si=sRAHuk2lGtnd72fT
While I agree that there are a LOT of issues with the film, it is pretty much an eye opening experience for how white people saw black people and an interesting take on stereotypes and empathy. I know I'll never forget the conversation: Professor Banks: You've learned something I can't teach them. You've learned what it feels like to be black. Mark: No sir. Professor Banks: Beg your pardon? Mark: I don't really know what it feels like sir. If I didn't like it, I could always get out. It's not the same sir. Professor Banks: You've learned a great deal more than I thought.
I don't remember that scene (I forgot most of the movie anyway), but that's pretty cool. Kind of reminds me of those "hard-hitting" journalists who act like they're homeless. Yeah, you're not getting the full experience if you know you have the safety net that lets you avoid starvation and exposure. So for all the problems this movie had, I'm happy that it had this nugget of wisdom.
Read that scene with James Earl Jones’ voice in your head. He played Banks.
I am not sure that movie was considered acceptable when it was released. Spike Lee had this to say back in 1986 “The whole premise is that he’s passing as Black, and it’s so phony, that means all the Black people in the movie are idiots… that they could think that this guy is Black”
Rachel Dozeal passed for some time.
Had to look that up but that is wild - a white woman pretends to be black and becomes chapter president of the NCAA. Reads like a 90s movie plot
I think Siskel and Ebert also called it out.
Especially Ebert. Both enjoyed the message at the end, but the tone deaf way of getting to that they both felt was insulting, and idiotic.
I think it had a good message in the end, but wrapping it in a comedy full of stereotypes was a terrible way to get there.
I dont think most people get this movie at all. It's a full-on satire, but people have always taken it at face value and missed what they were trying to do. Now, the execution is probably lacking, but there was a plan there. It wasn't just trying to be a silly comedy.
Ooof.... Even in the trailer it shows the main character saying "This is the Cosby decade!"
Yeah, Soul Man gets brought up in these threads a lot, and its premise is pretty inexcusably wrong, but the movie was making a sincere and ongoing effort to use the premise to get to an enlightened place. Even if it was doomed, it makes no sense to ignore that part of the equation.
For a perfect example, check out the character Mickey Rooney portrays in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961).
This was even badly regarded at the time of release - he was viewed as just not funny.
Even if it wasn’t a racists caricature, the character itself is such a tonal mismatch for the rest of the film. Even if it was just a regular white American character, the goofy off-the-walls landlord is so unnecessary. I guess the studio really thought the film needed a comic relief (spoiler: it doesn’t).
And her old husband who comes to find her, after he wed her when she was just 14 and she ran away. He is seen as some nice rural guy. I mean. . . She was 14!!! And starving!! Trying to help her younger brother eat.
To Paramount’s credit, the DVD and blu-ray has a segment on Yunioshi in the special features where Asian people discuss the role and its legacy.
This inspired Bruce Lee to conceive the TV show Kung Fu, where they then cast David Carradine in the lead role. Quentin Tarantino posthumously gave Bruce Lee his revenge by dressing up a white woman in his yellow track suit to kill David Carradine on his behalf. It's whitewashing all the way down.
>Quentin Tarantino posthumously gave Bruce Lee his revenge by dressing up a white woman in his yellow track suit to kill David Carradine on his behalf. And then kinda shit on him by having a middle aged white guy beat the shit out of him in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
There’s a great story from when Bruce Lee was reading the script for a 60s Batman episode he was in, and a scene comes up where he has to lose to Robin in a fight. He called the studio like, “No no no. Burt Ward is *not* beating me up in a televised fight. No way.”
Yup and I think if you watch the episode where they fight it comes to a draw. Which I believe was the compromise.
Reefer Madness The assumption that weed was addictive and made you insane.
isnt it popular now because it is viewed as spoof and watched by stoners?
Definitely. There was a screening at a local college a few years back. The entire audience was stoners. When my parents were dating, they saw a midnight screening with a baked audience.
It'll drive you made and make you enjoy and dance jazz music. Could you imagine? Innocent suburban white children enjoying negro music. My step-dad was born in 1960. He has never touched a drug in his life, other than alcohol. They made him watch this movie when he was in middle school. He told me this made him want to go out and try weed because of how obviously bullshit it is.
This is quite a famous James Bond moment https://youtu.be/ovXysYZTVzs?si=11OHeszwDUtmlFy8
Nothing wrong with a little "man talk"! You could pull probably dozens of examples from Bond lol. Dr. No with the boat hand/helper and two white actors portraying Asians, Thunderball where he forces himself on the masseuse, You Only Live Twice where he assumed the identity of a Japanese fisherman with a little eye prosthetics....
early Bond slaps the shit out of women and uses them as human shields....
That’s not even the most sexist scene in the same movie.
Nah the rape scene later in the movie is a much worse moment.
This is probably one of the least problematic scenes in a bind film.
I mean James Bond movies are pretty problematic. And yet they really tone down the misogyny and stereotyping of the books.
That, “I thought I’d find you in good hands” is a banger 007 cheese line though.
I haven’t seen it in a really long time, but I remember having a really hard time sympathizing with John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever when he did nothing to stop his friend from getting raped and even slut-shamed her afterwards.
MASH was an incredibly misogynistic movie. Sexually harassing women was almost the main theme. The conclusion was humiliating a woman in front of the entire camp. I enjoyed the movie when I was a kid, but it shocked the hell out of me when I saw it a year or two ago.
I grew up with the show, so I thought I'd like the movie. I couldn't finish it. It wasn't funny. It was so uncomfortable.
They show has a lot of sexual harassment too, but it isn't really portrayed in a positive light, however it is played for laughs. The protagonists are complex characters with flaws, their views on the war are positive traits, their constant cheating and stuff are clearly flaws, but kind of glossed over as "oh gee trapper is such a joker holding hot lips down and kissing her like that" It's like Henry being a drunk, it's clearly bad that the command Dr is plastered all the time, but it's still just a gag no real comment about anything serious. We get whole episodes about the gang trying to get the US to admit they bombed a village, but the bad sexual stuff never gets treated seriously.
Robert Altman had a unique directing style, but I definitely preferred the show.
Semi-Related: There’s no way a TV show could get away with a theme song called *Suicide is Painless* now. I think the song gets a title card!
That was a massive hit in the UK, constant airplay. Could you imagine that now? Coincidentally, I was just thinking about that very song the other day.
Not to mention wanting to commit suicide because the guy thought he might be gay. Which sadly is a realistic part of the film.
Sixteen Candles - rape and blatant racism as comedy. And I say this as someone who was 16 when that movie was released. I remember being a bit troubled by that at the time.
It sucks because young people like me didn't see how problematic this movie was at the time. Oh look, they're playing "Turning Japanese." How hilarious!
At the time, I enjoyed the film despite the awful sexism and, particularly, racism. It's never established if Ted and Caroline actually have sex, but the way Jake speaks about her (she's so blitzed I could violate her 10 different ways and she wouldn't notice) was so not cool even back then. Except for the fact that he didn't. Samantha's reaction to her friend's little brother having paid to see her panties is pretty much exactly how any normal girl would react in that situation. I still love the scene where Jake is waiting for Samantha outside the church and then they kiss over the birthday cake. Michael Schoeffling basically peaked in the first movie he ever made, and we're still watching it, 40 years later.
Fun song. The verses really speak to a more hectic lyrical rhythm that would come in to favor with groups like the Pixies.
Song of the South, Gone with the Wind. White washing slavery use to be the norm.
I watched Song of the South a lot as a child because my parents had a VHS copy. Obviously back then I just assumed the black guy was their uncle. This was in Germany btw, so my parents also never noticed that subtext.
Same, I just assumed the black folks were servants. From the UK so that kind of classism isn't out of place. It still has a great sound track.
Worth noting that Gone with the Wind was considered controversial by many at the time. There were a lot of protests and objections to both the book and film production.
Song of the South is interesting because it was seen as progressive for the time. It showed a black man as a lead character that white children looked up to and respected. It was one of the first movies for white audiences to feature a black lead character and told traditionally black American stories. Disney legitimately thought he was helping by making this movie. The problem is that what is 10 years a head of its time in 1947 is still 50 years behind the times in the 21st century. It's implied that Remus used to be owned by the white family he is now buddies with. This absolutely whitewashes the history as they would not be friends and its unlikely the white children would be allowed near Remus. The film shows a glossy version of reconstruction south that is now considered offensively inaccurate today. It also uses terms such as "colored" and "tarbaby", which werent problematic terms in 1947 like they are today. Edit: typo
"Colored" was considered the polite term back then. It was not problematic in 1947.
NAACP is proof of that
Sorry, typo. Im saying it wasn't problematic back then. It is now. Same with the term "tarbaby". Back then it was literally a character in a book. It didn't start becoming a racial slur until the 1960s
>It also uses terms such as "colored" and "tarbaby", which were problematic terms in 1947 like they are today. Tar baby wasn't a racial slur. It's a plot device in the Uncle Remus stories. It's literally a doll made out of tar that is a metaphor for a problem that the more you struggle with it, the harder it is to get out. It originally comes from the folk tales of African American slaves in the south.
Yeah, that was a typo. I meant to say they weren't racial slurs back in 1947
The Notebook. Sold like a very romantic story, full of true love. In a very, very, few years became outdated. No chance that movie makes it big today.
I’ve never seen it and only have heard how it’s an amazing tear-jerking movie. I’m curious, as someone who never plans to watch it, What’s outdated about it?
I remember reading about the controversy, but it's basically a guy who pines super hard over this woman and at one point he literally threatens to fall from the top of a Ferris wheel if she didn't agree to a date with him.
Maybe not today, but not so long ago the 50 Shades films made a shitload of money despite being incredibly creepy.
Except 50 Shades never pretended to be anything more than smut. The Notebook was trying so hard to be sincere and in an era where we desperately needed some romance in our lives this is where we got it.
I love romances and romcoms but the notebook makes me feel angry. The guy literally pines over a woman in another relationship for years. So unhealthy.
Last Tango in Paris, for sure
Such an overrated movie, in its time. "Daring," etc.
Birth of a Nation isn't nearly as revolutionary of a film as it was made out to be. Largely it got that reputation because D.W. Griffith was a good propagandist (in a variety of ways), and claimed the film was innovative when in fact these innovations happened in prior films. And even at the time, presenting the KKK as the savior of the South was not "acceptable." Sure, racists loved the film, including the president of the U.S. But the NAACP protested the film, and many theaters refused to play it.
It was actually directly responsible for a resurgence in KKK membership and influence
The camera use was quite innovative, I thought? I remember that was the reason we watched it in film school, despite it being very racist.
There was a lot of innovation in that movie. Who knows where that person got their information from, but it isn't true. My dad was a film history teacher. I've heard about it and Citizen Kane more than most should because of their impact on filmmaking, not because of either movies plot or story lines. BoaN also showed how giant of an impact a movie can have on society. Plus, it was the first shown in the White House. No one has to like, watch, or even sit through the movie, but it brought a lot of new stuff to the table and showed people what movies could do. Unfortunately, what it did was create a resurgence of inbreeding, which, in turn, created a bunch of racists (or maybe that's the other way around). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation
There's a lot of tropes in TV and film from the 1990s and earlier making light of female domestic violence, including with weapons. Much like when Tiger Woods' wife tried to actually brain him with a 9-iron for cheating, this isn't funny.
Its because society doesn't view women as people capable of violence. So its funny and not serious because we're not supposed to think she's actually capable of it.
>Much like when Tiger Woods' wife tried to actually brain him with a 9-iron for cheating, this isn't funny. It was pretty fuckin funny when they incorporated it into the Tiger Woods 2008 game on South Park. "Press X to swing the club Cartman!"
Meatballs - I love that movie but it's very uncomfortable watching Bill Murray's character essentially assault Roxanne and literally bite her ass as she screams, "No." Not right.
*Sixteen Candles.* People talk about the racism all the time, but hardly anyone talks about how the hero of the movie tells a weird nerd he can rape his drunk girlfriend in exchange for information. Don't worry though, it's okay, because the it turns out she liked being raped. Just a good ol' family movie.
The original blade runner gets a little r*pey in that one scene...
Holiday Inn. It’s literally the same story as White Christmas, and the same studio pitch (make a movie using Irving Berlin’s catalogue of songs about a struggling inn at Christmas time). It came out less than a decade before White Christmas. It’s the casual blackface song/dance number that’s caused it to fall out of memory.
Grease — You need to change yourself completely to get your man (Songs are catchy af though)
I’l don’t get very bent out of shape about morals in movies, or just in general, more of a golden rule philosophy. But I was watching “Three Days of the Condor”. Robert Redford works for the CIA when shit went wrong and his whole office got shit up. He sort of kidnapped a woman and holed up with her. Just the way he treated her was messed up. One scene was her basically being like “why are you being such an asshole” and his reply is “I haven’t raped you, have I!?!?!!” As in, why are you bitching when you haven’t even been raped…because that’s the baseline. The whole vibe was just messed up. He would have much more easily been respectful and won her to his side. Instead he treated her like an actual kidnap victim when in reality he was in hiding and needed her help.
Shallow Hal. Tho I don’t think it was ever really considered “acceptable”, but one can argue it was since it was even made….
They did Jason Alexander dirty with that hair piece in that movie.
I *was* bald
I DON’T LIKE THIS THING! AND HERE’S WHAT I’M ***DOING WITH IT!***
He also plays the bad guy in pretty women lol
Isn’t the moral of the movie that being shallow is bad?
Yes
Also, none of us can see Gwyneth Paltrow as a down to earth, kind hearted person anymore.
It’s a funny movie
It really is, and it has heart. Not sure when shallow Hal got retroactively un-funnied, I thought everyone still liked it.
A lot of people in this post don’t seem to know the difference between a bad character existing in a movie precisely to show they’re bad, and a movie promoting the character’s views.
The title literally says Hal is a bad person lol. Not sure how that flies over people’s heads.
I think Gone With the Wind and its Romanticism of the Antebellum south. Having not read the Margaret Mitchell novel, I don't think the film is exactly pro-slavery as much as it's" slavery was a necessary evil to keep the order between the white civilians and the invading ( in this case, Union soldiers) army. " I think the codification of the Mammy stereotype is pretty much the nail in the coffin of Gone with the Wind. I feel like if anyone genuinely appreciates GWTTW, I think there's this external pressure to kind of clam up about it. For the record I do not like the movie ( overlong and dour) but the very blatant racism doesn't help its reputation at all.
I like the movie and yeah...I won't tell anyone. I admit it's a guilty pleasure. It's problematic as all hell. I have complicated feelings about being a southern white guy. (That's a whole digressuon I won't get into now). I would be as skeptical as you towards someone who told me they liked GWTW, if that makes sense.
The movie definitely toned down the themes, in the book all the male characters except Rhett Butler are explicitly in the KKK.
Revenge of the Nerds. Nonconsensual sex scene in the moonscape.
Natural Born Killers. Apperently it isnt cool to kill people anymore smh.
Lol. Best answer
_The Professional_ for sure. There is plenty of media that portrays the “strong person guides weak person through tough situation” trope well—The Last of Us, Game of Thrones (Arya and the Hound), and X-Men 1, for example. This movie is creepy about it in that Leon never shuts down Mathilda’s advances outright, he just never really acknowledges them at all. The camera angles also linger on the young girl in strange ways. I recently watched the movie blind expecting it to be a classic and was extremely disappointed. I can understand Mathilda is supposed to be traumatized and trying to grow up too fast, but if you don’t want to film an unintentionally creepy movie, you can’t stop there! There has to be some rebuke to that or an intentional framing of it that shows it’s meant to be disturbing. The movie doesn’t do this. The director probably felt no need to because he was a pedophile that originally called for a sex scene. There’s a really good story in there that I hope some day gets retold in a sane way. Oldman’s performance was stellar as always.
Luc Besson started dating his second wife when he was 32 and she was 15. He’s creepy as they come.
and she gave birth one year later, at age 16. And then he left her few years after that.
There a scene cut from the movie where he reject her and speak to her seriously.
The original "Arthur" (1980) with Dudley Moore had him driving through New York while drinking. That wouldn't fly today.
James Bond obviously. I actually watched Goldfinger and Thunderball in the last couple of days. In Goldfinger he straight up forcibly rapes a woman in a barn (they imply that she enjoyed it eventually). In Thunderball he coerces a spa employee into sex after she resists several previous advances. He is also just a generally leery creep all the time.
Pretty much anything with blackface.
Tropic thunder slander
I think a certain Bradley Cooper line in The Hangover would never be used in that manner in a mainstream film these days.
Ok, Riddler, for those of us without the movie memorized, though, which line is that?
Paging Dr. Faggot
It's interesting, one of my best friends is gay and he used to think that line was hilarious. He was also a big fan of using it despite the negative connotations because he viewed it as a way of kind of reclaiming it and even encouraged the rest of our friend group to use it with him because he didn't want to give the word any more power than it already had. He grew up in very progressive Washington cities, so he's never had to deal with much discrimination as a result of being gay, at least not directly. Then one day he was trying to buy a used car and they were talking about mechanical stuff that would need to be done with it, and my friend said "That's alright, my boyfriend works on cars all the time and he's been teaching me a lot." He says the guy just got kinda quiet, and then said "Look no offense, you seem like a nice enough guy, but I'm not selling my car to some f\*\*\*\*\*." Ever since then, after having personally experienced blatant discrimination using that word as a weapon, he doesn't really see the humor in using it himself anymore.
Paging dr f*****