You Can't Take It with You When the Boat Sinks

MIKE: The 11th episode of Best Pictures from the Outside In takes us sailing through treacherous waters, filled with icebergs and taxmen, animated eyebrows and accidental explosions, and (I'm guessing) finally some serious disagreement among our panel members. In 1938, four years after It Happened One Night, Best Picture went to another Frank Capra film, You Can't Take It With You, the overly madcap tale of love in the midst of Capra's traditional battle between free spirits and hidebound plutocrats. In 1997, maritime disaster struck when Titanic, the fraught tale of love aboard the world's largest metaphor raked in a kadillion dollars and won a kadillion Oscars, including Best Picture.

Both films are focused on inter-class love stories, in each case threatened by interference from one-dimensional rich people who treat the poor like dirt. In Titanic, Billy Zane, with the help of his sentient eyebrows and his man Friday, is willing to risk his own life and fortune to punish his fiancee (Kate Winslet) for cuckolding him with someone from steerage (Leonardo DiCaprio); in YCTIWY, heartless businessman Edward Arnold attempts to steamroll the eccentric Vanderhof/Sycamore clan (Lionel Barrymore et al.), who stand in the way of his plans for world domination or something. Both films present pretty simplistic pictures of class relations, one in the service of social satire, the other in the service of melodrama; does one or the other strike you as either more objectionable or more believable? What might Frank Capra and James Cameron have to say to each other about American society?

Or, we could talk about Titanic's, um, screenplay.

NATHANIEL: You know, when I put Titanic into my player I accidentally activated the closed captioning. Almost immediately I'm seeing Bill Paxton spelunking for treasure in the cavernous buried ship during the 20 minute prologue. He's got all of these deep sea cameras and gadgets and the subtitles kept saying "[mechanical whirring]". I found myself meta-giggling. Doesn't that describe James Cameron's plot, character arcs and dialogue more to a T? This movie is a machine, a gargantuan whirring chugging multi-geared behemoth. It might not be as sentient as Zane's eyebrows (good god but that performance is a stinker!) but Titanic is closer to a WALL•E than a Transformer—don't let the size fool you. The feelings may be expressed awkwardly but the machine has soul.

In other words... if you're looking for someone who hates Titanic you'll have to look elsewhere. I'm sitting there watching it and I'm thinking... "why on Earth do you love this?" After all, the dialogue is pitched to kindergarten level, the performances are clumsy (sorry Kate) if not outright awful (Billy Zane), plus it's super long and I'm (generally) impatient. I answer myself with a shrug and a 'go away' and I get lost in it. I saw it three times in the theater. By the time Rose gets that closeup after reading Jack's notes to "make it count" or "carpe diem" or somesuch, I have essentially forgotten that the boat is going to sink.

But yes it does annoyingly pander to the uneducated masses in terms of its "boo! hiss!!!" views of the upper crust. That crosscut to all of the men in the parlor room smoking and having mind numbing conversations juxtaposed into the middle of Jack's lively rowdy courting of Rose in steerage is particularly embarrassing. It's a stacked deck (no pun intended). But I'd argue that Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You is less simplistic or at least not too hateful of folks with big bank. Capra wants the very rich to be happy, too. He just doesn't think that they are.

MIKE: It occurs to me that now is a good time to state my problems with Titanic, as an unpleasant interlude between you two enthusiasts. I agree with most of what you said, Nathaniel, except the part where you love it and I don't. The dialogue is truly, mind-bogglingly horrendous at times, the performances range from barely adequate to cringe-worthy (although I actually like Winslet here, and, um... Billy Zane shares one of the few well-acted scenes before the iceberg, when he yells about how he basically owns Winslet, although he's generally a Silly Symphony-level bad guy), and even the much-lauded visual effects looked pretty chintzy to me—the comical Nerf-berg, the worse-than-rear-projection "look at me hanging over footage of icy water!" scenes, the visible line in long shots between the boat effects and the sky effects. Yes, I will admit that once the boat starts sinking, Cameron's peerless instincts for directing action kick in, and the last half is an utterly captivating, super-duper thrill ride, even despite some of the really stupid plot machinations ("I am rich and love only myself, but I will forgo a chance to save myself so I can chase you around this boat! And my evil hired man is also going to risk his life for me!"). But that awful, awful, awful first half drags the rest of the film down like a solid steel life preserver, and I can't forgive a three-hour-plus movie for being half dead weight.

NICK: It's so weird, because even when we disagree, we agree: I would concur with everything Mike says here, except the part where he dislikes Titanic, because I love it. I'll grant that a lot of the rear-projection scenes are Reptilicus-quality, with the caveat that most of them looked better on the silver screen. Winslet has an awful time relating to an upper-crust character, and it's interesting that she hasn't really tried it since—surely the only English actor of note who can make that claim for a ten-year period amid a thriving career? DiCaprio is abrasive, Gloria Stuart barely pushes, and even Kathy Bates seems pretty adrift (sorry) playing a kind of whiteface Hattie McDaniel. This has got to be the only movie I can think of where Frances Fisher sort of walks off with the acting laurels, if only for that persuasively distressed, truly creepy "Do you want to see me working as a seamstress? Is that what you want?"

I'm sure I've been too indulgent of Titanic in the past and am probably still too indulgent of it, but I'm sticking to my old argument that romantic cliché is the only right way to go with this story. Repulsive as this episode was for the people who died this way, it's such a minor event compared to the cultural currency that's accrued around it: it's a romantic cliché in and of itself, like the Alamo, or the golden-hearted hooker, or reaching across the aisle. That's why it sat so awfully when Jim Cameron wanted a moment of silence at the Oscars for the people who died. (Well, that plus he didn't ask for it till the second time he made it to the podium.) By this point, it's a pop calamity more than a real one. Thousands of simultaneous deaths is clearly nothing to sniffle at, and our global fascination with the tale is allegorical in fairly obvious ways that Cameron drives home and home again, but it's also in some ways deeply unserious. I'm not saying that these particular clichés always work. Bill Paxton saying "I never let it in!" while dry-crying is as kitsch as kitsch gets. But they're somehow of a piece with this material. And there's plenty of earnest horror elsewhere in the picture.

Plus, aside from a cheesy preoccupation with Really! Huge! Hats!, the film looks smashing. And it uses film space and the architecture of the ship as foundational elements in building suspense as well as emotion. And if we're underestimating how much those things matter, just look at You Can't Take It with You. Even if you haven't seen other, better Capra films or other, better films from 1938, simply looking at You Can't Take It with You feels like looking at Jan Brady. Not pretty, not cute. Fine, but unmistakably dullsville.

NATHANIEL: Unmistakably dull? Even when Jimmy & Jean spend most of the picture all believably googoo eyed for each other? Even though the silliness is undergirded with genuine sociopolitical ideology? Even with the great Ann Miller playing a bad dancer—though maybe you're right as that hilarious-in-concept bit isn't all that funny in repetitive execution. It's certainly not funny like it could be. Like Julianne Moore as bad actress Amber Waves comedy.

But speaking of actresses in over their heads, I think Nick has nailed what's wrong with Kate in Titanic but my earlier "clumsy" and clumsier comment doesn't give Winslet credit for what she does bring to the picture. Titanic works best as pop cinema (once the action gets going and as Nick perceptively states within the realm of cliché) and what I've always found fascinating about our English Rose is that her face is a remarkable vessel for distilled emotion. There's such pure cinema in it. And in key closeups in this movie, specifically when she isn't speaking, Winslet's a force as elemental as the water that's going to kill thousands. She slays me.

Which brings me to another point in favor of Titanic. In some ways the two dimensional characters are an ideal setup for the horror of the film's second half. I'm willing to forgive these two callow kids (and the actors playing them) anything once they're half frozen and doomed. Their youth comes into such sharp focus just when their performances do. The enormity of what's being stolen from them jerks the tears.

NICK: ...whereas the reverse is sort of true for me in You Can't Take It with You. That is, Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur feel more comfortable in these roles—possibly too comfortable?—than Leo and Kate are in theirs, but I have virtually no investment in their winding up together during the long, cacophonous end of the story. Edward Arnold's not-quite-believable but still engaging change of heart is more of a hook for me through that finale. I also like studying Lionel Barrymore for those moments when he suddenly looks like he's feeling BAD for surrounding his granddaughter with so many kooks and maladjustees. But Jimmy and Jean? I feel huge affection, but it's all imported from other roles. And they're not tied into my favorite aspects of You Can't Take It with You, which are all the bustling crowds and a few of the deep-space shots where various Vanderhofs and Sycamores are making various forms of mischief in foregrounds, middle-grounds, and backgrounds. (Though even some of these are embarrassing: Ed just standing over a marimba for minutes on end, miming that he's playing without really doing it, etc.)

Maybe it would help if Jimmy or Jean EVER looked so suffused with emotion and sudden, solemn conviction as Kate does when she's being pulleyed down in a lifeboat, but then hops back onto the big, sinking ship. This is always, always, ALWAYS when I enjoy my massive, snivelly, hiccuping bawl. Pity me if you must.

MIKE: Again, I can't find much fault with anything you two said in favor of Titanic, except that you like it and I don't. And I admit that I do get misty-eyed when Popsicle Leo sinks. I guess we'll have to save strenuous, "what kind of person are you?" disagreement for later.

Changing gears to YCTIWY, this feels like one of the oddest Best Picture winners in history. To elaborate (probably unnecessarily) on what Nick said, it's not great Capra comedy (they nailed that back in '34 with It Happened One Night), it's not great Capra politics (surely a fuzzier, less strident but also less cohesive political statement than, say, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or any number of Capracorn films that followed), it's not great for 1938 (although among the nine other nominees, the only one that screams Best Picture is Renoir's amazing The Grand Illusion)... it was basically a lot of energy and noise expended to no significant effect. I can't hate it, or even dislike it, but it's a trifle. I like things around the periphery quite a bit: the folks in the basement, the sight of Mischa Auer springing into his dance, Spring Byington's amusing distractedness. But overall it feels like a rest stop between funny Capra and crusading Capra. It is interesting that it's not as unforgiving of opposition as his films sometimes got—there's room for the rich in Grandpa Vanderhof's happy household, whereas there's no room for compromisers in Mr. Smith's version of Washington.

NATHANIEL: I'm so glad you're here to provide context. I really am. [Note to self: Must see all Best Picture nominees as Mike has done—What an achievement!] You Can't Take It With You IS an odd example of a winner. There's no size. There's quite a bit of silliness. But I love that in these first 11 episodes of the series we've seen that the Academy has been trying different personas on for size. Eventually they settle into their somewhat predictable Sober/Epic/Important groove but the first decade is kind of all over the place and I love it for that.

If you anthropomorphize AMPAS the institution into a cast member of You Can't Take It With You it's like this: Eventually Oscar becomes Lionel Barrymore's platitude friendly Grandpa Vanderhof (patriarchal, speechifying, big-hearted) but in the 30s Oscar was totally Spring Byington's busybee Mama Sycamore. She's always buzzing about from one identity the next. She paints for a while. She becomes a writer as soon as a typewriter lands on her desk. She'd become a vet next if a sick animal stumbled through the door. Oscar's persona is just as fluid and flighty early on. Anyway the wind blows...

How about you, longsuffering readers: Does Titanic sink or swim? Is You Can't Take It with You prime Capracorn, or does it seem a bit stale?

Previously: #10: The Life of Emile Zola and Shakespeare in Love, #9: The Great Ziegfeld and American Beauty, #8: Mutiny on the Bounty and Gladiator, #7: It Happened One Night and A Beautiful Mind, #6: Cavalcade and Chicago, #5: Grand Hotel and LOTR: ROTK, #4: Cimarron and Million Dollar Baby, #3: All Quiet on the Western Front and Crash, #2: The Broadway Melody and The Departed, #1: Wings and No Country for Old Men