Don't miss Brad DeLong's strident defense of The Devil Wears Prada.
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DeLong and the Devil
04 Feb 2008 10:28 am
Comments (20)
That's not a "strident defense" of The Devil Wears Prada. It is using The Devil Wears Prada as an example of why A.O. Scott wrote a bad article. Indeed, DeLong is saying that The Devil Wears Prada is irrelevant to the argument that Scott was making: Scott was writing about whether the still make romantic comedies like they used to, and The Devil Wears Prada is just not a romantic comedy. And DeLong is right about that.
It's encouraging to see Brad DeLong noticing that the trend of Times writers producing embarrassingly half-assed work isn't limited to the op-ed pages.
I'm not sure, though, why DeLong was especially piqued by this particular example. It's hardly news that the Times's "Arts & Leisure" section is mostly written by people who have absolutely no f*cking idea what they're talking about.
DeLong loses all credibility when he compares The Lady Eve unfavorably to his list of modern films (some of them good, some not). The Lady Eve is as good a romantic comedy as anyone ever made.
What Al said. I wouldn't be reading through links today if I wasn't home on vacation, but Matt couldn't have read the whole piece and characterized it that way (ironic, since it was all about A. O. Scott not having watched the movie and using it in his article).
Sleazoid BdL later gratuitously links to Anne Hathaway's Wiki page, where her favourite book is Atlas Shrugged
I'm shattered.
I'm friends with Anne Hathaway's roommmate from Vassar. I don't know if this is better than the oft-cited "went to Harvard at the same time as Natalie Portman" relationship.
Delong's real defense of The Devil Wears Prada is here:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/07/after_watching_.html
"The Lady Eve is as good a romantic comedy as anyone ever made."
It may simply be the best comedy ever made period (and Stanwyck and Fonda in Barbara's stateroom is the sexiest scene in movies). It's so good that I am convinced it would bore Matt. The credible competition is pretty small--probably just Sturges's own Hail the Conquering Hero and Miracle of Morgans Creek (I prefer all three to The Palm Beach Story, great as it is), Bringing Up Baby and Some Like It Hot. (And IMO, the final line of The Lady Eve-- by William Demarest, Uncle Charlie to you young'ns--is even finer than "Nobody's perfect" in Some Like It Hot, though you need to watch the entire film to understand it.) God, is there a greater cultutal tragedy than the fact that the name Preston Sturges is known only to a relatively few film buffs?
While I am no particular fan of Scott, and his article is flawed, he is a whole lot righter than DeLong. I noticed the flub concerning Prade when I read the Scott piece, but his basic premise is spot on: contemporary comedies are far inferior (on average) to those of the Golden Age. He misses the point by quickly dismissing the most important and obvious reason--lack of good writing in general and dialogue in particular. (Scott's dismissal is odd, since he says there is plenty of good writing on TV. Although this is debatable since there is no Joss Whedon show atm, TV is a very different medium than film.) Hollywood thinks--and tragically they are probably correct--that there is little market today for the wonderful dialogue driven comedies of Sturges and Hawks and Wilder.
Marlowe, it's been 25 years since I saw it, but my candidate for the sexiest movie scene ever has always been the pillow fight between Judy Davis and Sam Neill in My Brilliant Career. If I'm wrong about that, then yes, I would have to throw my vote to the stateroom scene in TLE. (What the two scenes have in common is that the participants are fully clothed throughout.)
Added candidates for your short list: The Awful Truth, and the best movie William Powell and Myrna Loy made together, I Love You Again..
I'm not dissing The Lady Eve! I *like* The Lady Eve! I like The Lady Eve a lot! I just like some of the moderns more.
And to say, as A.O. Scott does, that all modern romances are teh suck because the average modern pales in comparison to the best of the ancients is just wrong...
And to say, as A.O. Scott does, that The Devil Wears Prada is a *romance* is just wrong...
But Brad, there is not a single "modern" comedy that is as good (let alone better) than The Lady Eve. To even find a debatable choice you have to go back to 1982 and Tootsie (a film you failed to mention in your original post, or is 1982 ancient?). Yes, I know that taste is subjective, but when you declare that films that are just good (When Harry Met Sally), enjoyably OK (Four Weddings and a Funeral) or poor (Moonstruck) are as good or better than the greatest Golden Age comedies, I just can't take your opinion seriously. Moreover, as I mentioned in my coomment on your site, for every one of the good/great comedies of the last 20-30 years, you can find multiple Golden Age comedies as good. The only real contemporary classics I can think of are Tootsie, Groundhog Day and A Fish Called Wanda. (If Wanda counts, since it is British, I'll counter without leaving Ealing Studios: Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, and The Man in the White Suit.)
Roac, I can't comment on the scene from My Brilliant Career. I can't remember a thing about that movie other than that I saw it in its initial US run. The Awful Truth is a great film; it would not make my personal very short list, but I would not quarrel with it (shame that Irene Dunne is virtually unknwon today). Unfortunately (as a Powell/Loy fan) I have not seen I Love You Again, but it would need to be awfully good to beat out the best of the Thin Man movies or Libeled Lady, which really should be better known.
It occurs to me that, surprisingly when the subject is romantic comedy, none of us have mentioned Woody Allen. Mybe his declining quality has had a retroactive effect. But at the least, I'd say Annie Hall and Manhattan (from the probably ancient '70s) and Hannah and Her Sisters, from the mid-80s, are great films.
Tootsie is very good. A Fish Called Wanda is very very good. Groundhog Day is very good. I like all three of them better than I like The Lady Eve. But I can see how you might not.
A.O. Scott, on the other hand, thinks that The Devil Wears Prada is a comedy--which it is not. A.O. Scott thinks that modern romances are teh suck--but Tootsie isn't, Groundhog Day isn't, Fish isn't, Juno isn't, Pride and Prejudice isn't, Moonstruck isn't, Four Weddings and a Funeral isn't...
Tootsie is very good. A Fish Called Wanda is very very good. Groundhog Day is very good. I like all three of them better than I like The Lady Eve. But I can see how you might not.
A.O. Scott, on the other hand, thinks that The Devil Wears Prada is a comedy--which it is not. A.O. Scott thinks that modern romances are teh suck--but Tootsie isn't, Groundhog Day isn't, Fish isn't, Juno isn't, Pride and Prejudice isn't, Moonstruck isn't, Four Weddings and a Funeral isn't...
BTW, with respect to the main question in the DeLong post, while he is right that we ought to compare the best films of each era (rather than the best of one era against the mediocre of another), I question the qualifications of a person, like DeLong, who thinks that two of the top three romantic comedies of all time are Moonstruck and Four Weddings. That's insane. I don't see how any rational person over the age of, say 16, could possibly say those are better than Bringing Up Baby or The Philadelphia Story. Or even, say, Roman Holiday.
Why, oh why, can't we get movie reviewers with better taste?!
Since we have expanded our scope from Hollywood to Ealing, let me put in a word for Tight Little Island/Whisky Galore.
(Minute for minute I know nothing funnier than the Anthony Asquith film of The Importance of Being Earnest. I have to admit it hardly qualifies as a movie, but what a cast!)
Brad, I was slightly confused by our post. I thought we were maing the fine distinction between romantic comedies (which was Scott's theme and which Prada is not) and the more general category of comedy (which, sorry, Prada basically is; you want to call it a coming of age story, fine--many such are comedies). Or are we talking romances--which seems to explain you bringing in Pride and Prejudice, which is neither a film nor a comedy in the sense I think we are talking about (it is a comedy of manners, though, hehe). But even if we put aside our diagreement on the qualities of particular movies (and I still think you need to spend a year up the Amazon if you think those movies suprass The Lady Eve), I don't think you have disproved Scott's point, which I pretty much agree with. Are there good/great modern comedies? Sure, but (to paraphase Humphrey Bogart from The Maltese Falcon) look at the lack of number of them. A dozen? I can easily name several dozen classics (not an enjoyable 90 minutes, but enduring classics) from the Golden Age.
It's unclear what you are talking about. I am talking about A.O. Scott, who does not know what he is talking about: that's his big problem. One of his first examples of whatever he is talking about is The Devil Wears Prada, which is neither a romance nor a romantic comedy. Nevertheless, Scott classifies it as one of those movies in which "some pretty, plucky actress will be traipsing around some glamorous and photogenic American city (or its Canadian double) in search of the dimple-chinned fellow who embodies her one true love..."
How Scott is "a lot righter than DeLong" in his classification of The Devil Wears Prada or in his assertion of deep meaning in the fact that the average romance in modern times is worse than the best of ancient times I leave as an exercise.
Re: "I question the qualifications of a person, like DeLong, who thinks that two of the top three romantic comedies of all time are Moonstruck and Four Weddings. That's insane. I don't see how any rational person over the age of, say 16, could possibly say those are better than Bringing Up Baby or The Philadelphia Story."
Oh, I have no qualifications whatsoever. I simply observe that The Devil Wears Prada is not a romance of any kind--not farcical, not comedic, not serious, not tragic. And I observe that I laugh more and deeper at "Four Weddings and a Funeral" than at "Moonstruck" than "The Philadelphia Story." All better than fine, as movies--all masterworks.
Comments closed February 18, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
WTF, Brad Delong ? If I want to read a ridiculously pedantic spittle-flecked attack on the NYT every other day, I'll just read Kaus...
Posted by boonie | February 4, 2008 10:50 AM