The single greatest movie scene, ever

All right, perhaps it's not the absolute greatest. Professional movie connoisseurs will gasp in derision and point to the Odessa steps scene in Battleship Potemkin, or the chariot race in Ben Hur, or anything from Citizen Kane, or the burning of Atlanta or who knows what else.

But I pick this one, so we'll just call it my favorite movie scene, ever. It's from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Tippi Hedren, as the impossibly blond and rather too smirky Melanie Daniels, climbs into a little rowboat fitted with an outboard motor and chugs across Bodega Bay to drop off, all in secret, a cage of lovebirds at Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor)'s house. She is dressed in her best traveling-to-the-boondocks-from-San-Francisco clothes: pencil skirt suit, hose, high heeled pumps, scarf, fur coat -- three quarter length, mind you -- bag, and gloves. And of course she must carry the ultimate whimsical accessory, the birdcage.

The scene begins when she writes, left-handedly, "To Cathy" on the envelope that she will drop off along with the birdcage. (The birds are a putative gift for his little sister.) She pops the envelope into her handbag, jumps into her adorable roadster, and roars down from Bodega Bay proper to the pier where her hired skiff is waiting. She climbs down the rickety ladder tacked to the dock, heels, skirt, fur, bag, scarf, gloves, and all, and steps in. It rocks alarmingly. The man in charge of the thing helps with the cage, gets in too, starts the motor for her, then climbs out. She is on her own.

Off she putts across the bay, a well dressed little figure who would drown in a moment if the slightest mishap should occur on the water. ("Can you -- handle an outboard motor?" the nice man asks at the general store before he reserves this conveyance for her. "Of course," she says.)

When she gets close to "the Brenner dock" she cuts the motor and paddles her way in. What I like about the rest of the scene is the way Tippi Hedren has been trained to look proficient at handling the boat. Who knows, maybe she knew how anyway. She does things in all the right order, things that I certainly wouldn't know how to do. You see, you pull up to the dock, lay the paddle on the floor of the boat, and loop a rope from the boat around a post on the pier first; then you step out to the pier. In heels, skirt, hose, gloves, bag, scarf, and three-quarter length fur. Plus birdcage.

She trips along smilingly up the pier, across the muddy yard, and into the empty house. Mitch is in the barn, and so as she delivers her surprise and the explanatory envelope and then leaves the way she came, all is suspense and tiptoeing and a dozen looks over the shoulder, as the camera's eye -- her own -- pans farther and farther away from the terrifying but exciting open barn doors. Then, it's back to the skiff, and all the correct actions in reverse. You step in, pick up the paddle, steady yourself on nothing but your own strong legs and those stiletto heels, and use the paddle to push and turn the boat's nose out toward open water. The actress is willing herself to stay upright and yet look natural and excited about her practical joke -- which helps make the scene natural, in its way. Lastly she sits down, pulls the securing rope off the big wooden post, and heads out. I'd be the landlubber type who would frantically try to push off with the rope still stupidly looped to the pier, or before that, the type to try to emerge from the boat without tying it up first.

And all in that skirt, hose, heels, bag, gloves, scarf, and gorgeous but not too ostentatious and wintry fur. The greatest movie scene, ever. It was 1963. Don't tell me feminism came after this, and made things better. This woman could outclass just about anybody, thank you so much. 

Image from moviediva.com

The most beautiful movie costume ever

Of course I haven't seen every movie, though I have seen quite a few. And I haven't seen or been properly struck by the glories of every costume ever designed, but in all those movies I have noted my share.

This one made my jaw drop.



It may look ho-hum Tudor, but you must imagine it in color: pink and silver brocade over vivid cranberry-colored underskirt, the cranberry bands on the sleeves all individually hemmed in small, perfect rows of seed pearls. White ruff and lace fan collar. Jewels, of course, though they hardly matter beside the color.

Bette Davis inhabits a gown by the legendary Orry-Kelly, in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Oh yes, there's Errol Flynn too, but somehow one forgets him.

Hands, lips

I've just come back from the movies, and I swear I don't know how they do it, but I am sure they are trained to do it.



Image from Al tejo, October 2006

It's the hands and the lips. Actors, and especially actresses -- in this alone, in the hands and the lips, there is a difference, so the new affectation of calling women "actors" is peculiarly dishonest -- actresses must be trained to handle their hands and lips in a certain, arresting way, in a way that looks sweetly self-conscious but also seductive, busy, lovely. They don't gnaw or bite or purse their lips as real people do. Actresses' faces are never disfigured by their little gracious tics, but they also never stay still. Their lips are always animated, under their control but always moving, trembling, nearly smiling, half opened, half closing, half finishing a swallow, readying for or recovering from a hesitation in speech, or a chew. Always an attractive, discreet, perfect one.

People don't do this in real life. It's trained. Take up a digital camera some afternoon, and at a party or family gathering, quietly snap candid shots. You'll be surprised by the number of pictures you have to erase, because the photos are so unflattering, and why? Because in normal life, people hold their faces so awkwardly. Even when they keep their faces as active as actresses do, it's never in a nice way to look at. Ordinary people are either eating, or unconsciously scowling, or unconsciously maneuvering their tongues or jutting out their chins in some ugly way. For whole minutes at a stretch.

And the hands. Actresses are trained to use their hands, too. They must be. Even if she has rather beefy, gnarled hands -- Meryl Streep in It's Complicated -- she poses them beautifully. Her hands always look warm and blunt, alive and capable, open and softly poised for action but never aggressive or clawlike. Never stiff. When she pats her hair or gathers up her robe around her collarbone, her hands are like living, pulsing sculptures, looking as if she could speak to them and tell them what to do and they would think, and then obey her. Ordinary people's hands are cold joints, and sagging chilly skin. Of course, in the movies a manicure helps, as do, in today's movie, the choice of thick, tall gold and silver rings for her fine thick strong fingers. Perhaps the rings alone just shout "personality," which little in an ordinary woman's wardrobe ever does. Most women, trying to wear the rings Meryl Streep's character wore in the movie, would suffer the problem a famed fashion designer once rather cattily described when observing a woman too chic-ly dressed: the rings would wear her.



Try, for even an hour, to hold your lips and hands as actresses do. Be aware of them, without seeming to, and without seeming, what? Theatrical, kittenish. Fidgety. Actressy.

And then wonder. Who trains them to know this? And by the way, how long does it take to perfect?

My Pond's cold cream saga

Update, January 1, 2015: thanks to all who continue to visit and comment on this "little" post. If you want to see what else I do, by all means come visit me at Pluot. 

James Boswell once fretted to Samuel Johnson about whether or not he should think of wasting his time reading or writing on some small topic he had in mind. Johnson said, "there can be nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we have as little misery and as much happiness as possible."

I hope that is true, because amid all the awful and serious news in the world, I do have a small subject that frets and interests me. Everyone must promise not to laugh, or be disgusted.

Wonderful Pond's cold cream has lost its wonderful old scent, and now smells like just nothing at all. Chemicals, perhaps, or some kind of locker-room hygienic cream.

Really. That's what is on my mind, as all the micro-blogging platforms ask. What have they done to it? It used to have a fragrance that, now, I'm afraid I can't remember well enough to describe. It was very fresh, flowery but not fussy, a little powdery, fruity but not in the typical melon-and-cucumber style that any cosmetics company can do well and then call pear or kiwi anyway. It was unique.

And now it's gone. I'm sure they have changed the formula, because ever since I noticed the loss well over a year ago, I have continued to buy the product in small sizes and large, in grocery stores and drugstores, reasoning that perhaps that store got a bad shipment, or this one's supply is old and faded. Alas, each jar is now the same. Even my family agree, when I thrust the jar under their noses and demand their opinion that I'm not crazy, that classic Pond's doesn't smell as strong as it once did. The problem has to lie in the factory, and in the decisions made by the nice chemists there. It's become scentless and dull, and even the creamy feel of the stuff is different. I used to be able to catch up a dollop of it on a fingertip, and it sat there white, cool, plump, and perfect, crowned with a little gay curl. Now it is thin, greasy, and tacky. I plunge my fingertip into the jar and I pull away nothing. I have to dig into it with some fierceness, and do my best with a clump instead of a dollop.

I was actually disappointed enough to write to the Pond's company, outlining my complaints and asking why they had changed the formula. Some one from Quality Control wrote me back, apologizing for my experience and insisting that it did not reflect the standards that Pond's is determined to maintain. And wouldn't I please accept a coupon for a free jar, which I would soon find in my mail, while my letter was forwarded through proper channels, etc. I can imagine the person writing this thinking, "get a life, you no doubt ninety-year-old relic."

In a few weeks an entire package of coupons arrived, for all sorts of products. I had no idea that the Pond's people either own or are owned by all sorts of other people -- the people who make Suave shampoo, and Dove soap, too, if memory serves. I didn't use any of the coupons because I don't want two dollars off a soap or a shampoo. I want, at the least, Pond's to confide in me that they have changed the formula, and at best I want them to go back to the old one.

Let me tell you why I love Pond's. (Do I sound as if I am dunning for more coupons? I am not.) Of course every family with women in it is likely to keep a jar in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. It takes off makeup beautifully, and is safe to use even around the eyes. When I was growing up we always had a jar on hand, which seemed to sit half used for years, with the same black swipe plunged into it, from some already mascara-laden fingertip that some woman hadn't bothered to clean off before dipping in for her second helping you might say. Since I don't wear makeup, however, I thought no more about Pond's until it was time to buy a jar, in adulthood, to have on hand to remove my own children's Halloween makeup. And then I opened it and smelled again that scent.

And I was instantly transported back, in the powerful and ridiculous way that scents can do this, to the bathroom of my childhood home. Summertime, the open bathroom window, the heights of the green trees outside, and even the sound of bird calls returned to me in one split second sensation. Because of Pond's. Ridiculous.

So now I, too, kept a jar on hand. Still, apart from Halloween, I had no particular use for it -- tried makeup, found it aging on me -- until I happened to receive a book for a present, called Letters of the Century: America 1900 to 1999. It's a collection heavy on left-wing canonic documents, everybody eyewitnessing civil rights, Vietnam, and so on, but in the middle of it (pp. 368-371) is the best letter in the book. It was written in 1951 by a lady named Myrna Chase to another lady simply named Mary. Miss Chase had no grand national agenda to discuss. She was a medical secretary who was leaving her doctor's practice in order to get married, and her letter was one of instruction to her replacement. Miss Chase obviously loved her job and was very good at it, but she was also a fine writer. Her style is simple, delicate, just verging on the waspish but so intensely ladylike that it remains great fun to read. "I'm sure," she warned Mary, "I don't need to caution you against the horror of a dark slip under a white uniform." "Remember that white in a doctor's office must always be just a little whiter than white." "I know you will not feel it beneath you to supplement the efforts of the overworked janitress with a good dust cloth of your own." "When the doctor is ready to leave, usher him out and tell him good night as if he were the guest of honor. Your respect and admiration can never be too great for a man who is following the finest profession in the world."

And this, at the beginning of the letter: "Your day really begins the night before, when you take a warm bath, brush your hair, cream your face, and relax in bed for at least eight hours' sound sleep."

Now doesn't that sound delicious? It takes us right back to 1951, when -- so we fancy -- women relaxed in the evening in fur-trimmed peignoirs and low-heeled mules, gave their hair a hundred strokes before bed, and laid out a soignée uniform of dress, hose, gloves, hat, stole, and who knows maybe a fresh orchid, for the next day. And "creamed" their faces above all. Fran Dodsworth (Ruth Chatterton), in the old movie Dodsworth, creams her face and wipes it all off savagely while having an argument with her husband Sam (Walter Huston) in a European hotel room. She's forty, and about to become a grandmother.

Ah hah. What is the point of cold cream, anyway, and where does it come from? I imagined it as somehow a product of nineteenth century Victorian leisure and chemistry, or as another brilliant invention of one of those hardscrabble ladies of the early twentieth century, who simply created whole cosmetics and fashion industries from scratch and sheer brainpower -- Estée Lauder was one, Chanel another. Not so, it seems. Cold cream, so named "because it leaves the skin feeling cool and refreshed" (a bit pat, no?) is credited to the classical Greek physician Galen. He stirred together the simple ingredients olive oil, beeswax, water, and rose petals, and arrived at what the French still call le cérat de Galien, Galen's wax. Modern formulas eschew olive oil, because it spoils too quickly. Its replacement is mineral oil.

Do we trust Wikipedia on this important little issue? My French dictionary includes no such word as "cérat"; the word for wax is la cire. That same dictionary also translates cold cream forthrightly as le cold-cream (masculine, oddly). However, my French dictionary is not the only source of information on skin care on the planet. A French website called Huiles & Sens Aromathérapie agrees that, with this invention Claude Galien, "un médecin grec de l'Antiquité," did indeed give us one of the oldest of all cosmetic recipes. And they call it le cérat de Galien.

I was so charmed by Miss Chase's retro advice to cream your face each night, and so pleased by the rediscovery of Pond's at about the same time I was given that book, that I have been cleansing with "the cool classic" religiously every night since. Letters of the Century came out in 1999, so that makes a good ten years of the ritual. And now they've changed the formula, the fragrance is gone or almost gone, and I continue to use it though half the pleasure of it is also gone.

If you wish to follow up on this little, this positively Lilliputian (Boswellian?) matter, if you want to achieve true cold cream geekiness, you may do so by surfing the net for websites which actually are devoted to makeup and makeup reviews -- and reviews of products that remove makeup. While embarked on this sub-project I found someone who knows more about the nice chemists at Pond's than I do, but whose information confirms my suspicions, and frightens me a bit, too. Hear this, dated 9/11/09 from Makeupalley.com:

"However, I am disappointed that Pond's reformulated the product by adding toxic ingredients like the preservative DMDM Hydantoin. The upside of this change is that the original Pond's cold cream is still manufactured [update, as of at least 2014, no it isn't]. You just have to look harder. My local drugstore has it while one major drugstore carried the new reformulated one. Good luck!"

I can't tell what is more extraordinary, this confirmation that I'm not crazy, or the news of toxicity in my Pond's, -- or other reviewers' complaints about the cold cream's intense, "been around for decades," "granny" smell. "I despise the smell of roses," one woman huffed.

Really? It still contains Galen's roses? I almost think I'm better off not noticing them, rather than being such a poor soul as to dislike them. Meanwhile, it's almost time for my nightly ritual. Bring on the DMDM Hydantoin.

Shatner's Star Trek cameo (if only they had consulted me)

Okay. I saw the movie. It was good. The time travel/double reality plot struck me as a little bit weak (is Spock's mother dead or isn't she?), and the snow planet monsters a little bit gratuitous. But it was a lot of fun, and the young folks playing the classic characters acquitted themselves well. One thing though -- why couldn't they give the kid playing Kirk brown contact lenses? Not that anyone asked me.

I do wish they had asked me, about that, and about other things. Why no tribbles, for example? And I'm glad Kirk at least ate an apple during the Kobyashi Maru training session, but that didn't seem quite sufficient a tribute to the fact that one of the charms of the old series was that these people were people who were, after all, at work, and who took breaks, had leisure pursuits, and ate actual food. Remember the old episode where Kirk's yeoman -- a girl -- serves him greens because he is on a diet?

And then there's the question of the movie's cameo appearance. Leonard Nimoy's "Spock Prime" was all right, but too extensive for a cameo. I recall reading somewhere recently that the producers wanted to work William Shatner into the story line in a cameo also, but just couldn't do it. Perhaps that's a polite way of saying "the dude wanted millions." If, on the other hand, they just couldn't think of a way to work him in -- well. That's ridiculous. Of course they could. They should have thought harder. If only they had consulted me.

I'm assuming, of course, that they could have written him into the script as an actor playing anybody, not necessarily playing "Kirk Prime" from the future. Why not? Shatner would have been huge fun as a janitor at Starfleet. As an instructor. As an ambassador.

Or this. To beef up the weakest section of the film, in which the preteen Kirk drives a car, really fast, as far as he can down an Iowa road and that's all.

*************

Iowa, ca. 2240. A blazing hot summer day.

A preteen blond boy races an antique 20th century red sports car at 80 m.p.h. along a dusty road. He is scolded by a furious voice coming over the car's intercom system, shuts it off and keeps racing.

A police officer on a personal motorcycle/hovercraft catches up with him and orders him to pull him over. While the boy is distracted, a vintage 20th century pickup truck approaches his path from a farm in the distance. The boy and the cop both swerve and stop at the last minute to avoid a crash.

The dust settles. Doors slam as the three drivers emerge from their vehicles. The driver of the pickup is a good-looking woman in her mid fifties. She takes in the situation.

Woman: Well, at least you're in one piece. And so is the car.

Officer: You know him, ma'am?

Woman: A little better than I'd care to, sometimes, officer. Of course he was speeding?

Officer: Excessively. Driving far under age. In a stolen vehicle, I assume.

Woman: Not stolen. Borrowed, sir. That should get him some time off, almost like for good behavior (she glares at the boy).

Officer: What's his name?

Boy (quickly): James Kirk.

Woman: My nephew. My sister could never handle him.

Officer (to Kirk): You got a license and registrations, kid?

Kirk: What's registration?

Officer (reading a hand held computer): According to this, the owner is --

Woman: If you'll allow him to drive, you can both follow me back to my property and see that he stays there until my sister comes to get him and claims the car. (Quietly) She's had a rough time, officer. If we could get back before her husband -- before the car owner knows it's gone, that would be good.

Officer (hesitates, glances at the distance, then at his computer. Hands the computer to the woman): Punch in your name, address, and sign it. When I file the report, you will be on record as the responsible party. That's an expensive antique, ma'am. And I don't know your brother-in- law.

Woman (smiling, works the computer and hands it back): Actually you probably do. Apples don't fall far from trees. But I can handle him. Thank you, sir.

The policeman roars off in a cloud of dust. Kirk and the woman face each other.

Kirk: Why did you do that?

Woman: I think it's kind of stupid to drive off cliffs. How about you? And because ... you remind me of someone. (Businesslike.) Get in the car and follow me.

Kirk: Why should I? (Woman whirls on him.) Okay, okay.

They drive to a farm, get out of their cars, and Kirk follows the woman across a dusty open space, rutted with tire tracks, to a stables.

Woman (peering in): Hey?

In the shadows and shafts of light, an old but imposing looking man is brushing a horse.

Man (still working): You're back early.

Woman: Have we got a spare charger?

Man: The device, or the animal?

Woman: The device. I met a ... motorist in distress.

Man (turning slowly to face the woman and Kirk. Does he recognize the young son of the dead hero, George Kirk of the USS Kelvin? Possibly. Do we recognize William Shatner? Definitely): He's a little young to be a motorist, isn't he?

Kirk: That's why I'm in distress. (Glances at the woman.) The cops caught me.

Man: Evidently not.

Kirk: I mean, they did until ... she .... (Turning to the woman.) Thank you.

Man (still working): I see. That's better.

Woman: I kind of signed off for him -- on his good behavior, the car, everything. It's all going to be in the nice officer's report.

Man: Is it.

Woman: I thought you could look over his vehicle. It's a real antique. You'd have a lot to talk about. And then you could see that he gets home? I've got some things to do.

Man: I can do that.

Kirk: It's okay. I mean, I'm not that far from my house. I don't need any help. Thanks.

Man (putting down his brushes): I'm not sure you'll get too far in Starfleet with that attitude, sir.

Kirk: What do you know about Starfleet?

The camera lingers on lifetimes of experience in the old man's face. Who is he? We don't know. The next time we see the preteen Kirk, he'll be the young man in the bar ten years on.

***********

Now I ask you. A brief cameo, a thrilling mystic jolt for the audience, no time-travel "Kirk Prime" problems, and surely no jillion-dollar fee for these few minutes for Shatner. I even throw in a good looking woman as a reference to, well, all Kirk's good looking women. Is she daughter, niece, wife? I throw in horses as a nod to the actor's hobby.

Now I ask you. Couldn't this have been fun? Why in the world didn't they consult me?

If they make Kirk a frat boy ...

Tomorrow the new Star Trek movie premieres, the prequel of all prequels, in which the crew of the original series are seen in youth and all played by new young actors. I have seen the trailers on television and I'm concerned. Of course the special effects look good, but that was never the point of the show. And the young man playing Kirk seems to do a lot of jumping and screaming.

Please no. I quote my text. Dr. McCoy and Captain Kirk discuss, briefly, his time at Starfleet in the episode "Shore Leave."

McCoy: ... and you were a serious young cadet.
Kirk: Serious? Bones, I was positively grim.

There. Let us, please, see the young Kirk as a slowly evolving, almost monkish martinet, talented, proud, and yes grim, as young heroes are. They soften with maturity, and are able to crack a smile perhaps by their mid-thirties, just when they're out exploring the universe with the responsibility of a starship crew of 430 on their shoulders.

Let us not, please, see him as what I suspect the scriptwriters have already created. Barracks frat boy suddenly sobered up by -- let me guess -- some unexpected tragedy or betrayal which he sees as "his fault." No, no, no. In fiction heroes really are born (hello, Riverside, Iowa!), not transformed into such by some after-school-special plot twist.

... please. I'll be upset. And no one wants that.


(Photo, New York Post blog)