Snubbed
With high hopes and heart-a-flutter I sent this
little bottle over the ocean to Bright
Lights .
Came back the reply: "We've read your Desk Set submission and, while it does have charm, we don't feel it quite works with what we're after at the moment in Bright Lights, so will have to pass on it for publication."
I'm obviously just too heterosexual, dammit.
Still, the beauty of a blog is that you can indulge yourself. So come with me down the glittery road of self-publication. And if I tickle your curiosity, the disc is on Amazon .
Came back the reply: "We've read your Desk Set submission and, while it does have charm, we don't feel it quite works with what we're after at the moment in Bright Lights, so will have to pass on it for publication."
I'm obviously just too heterosexual, dammit.
Still, the beauty of a blog is that you can indulge yourself. So come with me down the glittery road of self-publication. And if I tickle your curiosity, the disc is on Amazon .
Desk
Set
An excoriating critique of the depersonalisation of the workplace by computers, and a study in sapphism between the book stacks.
The very slender hook on which Nora Ephron's parents1 hang this intriguing confection (an adaptation of William Marchant's play) is the introduction of an "efficiency expert” whose covert task is to assess how the research department of the "Federal" broadcasting corporation2 can be enhanced by an "electronic brain" called EMMARAC3.
Billed as "acknowledging the co-operation and assistance of IBM corporation"4, when the blinking, beeping behemoth lumbers in during the final act, you have to wonder what the suits were thinking of putting their name to such an unflattering depiction of the wonders of technology.
An excoriating critique of the depersonalisation of the workplace by computers, and a study in sapphism between the book stacks.
The very slender hook on which Nora Ephron's parents1 hang this intriguing confection (an adaptation of William Marchant's play) is the introduction of an "efficiency expert” whose covert task is to assess how the research department of the "Federal" broadcasting corporation2 can be enhanced by an "electronic brain" called EMMARAC3.
Billed as "acknowledging the co-operation and assistance of IBM corporation"4, when the blinking, beeping behemoth lumbers in during the final act, you have to wonder what the suits were thinking of putting their name to such an unflattering depiction of the wonders of technology.
Four things make this a remarkable
watch.
A love story with older
actors
The first thing that struck me was that a mainstream Hollywood romantic comedy with a female lead (Katharine Hepburn, "Bunny Watson") aged 50 and a male lead (Spencer Tracy, "Richard Sumner") aged 57 is almost inconceivable these days.
The first thing that struck me was that a mainstream Hollywood romantic comedy with a female lead (Katharine Hepburn, "Bunny Watson") aged 50 and a male lead (Spencer Tracy, "Richard Sumner") aged 57 is almost inconceivable these days.
Strong female
characters
The whole thrust of the film is that Hepburn ("I'm the old-fashioned type") is brighter and faster at calculating than the "thinking machine". Abundant examples are given in her responses to calls for information; recitations of Longfellow and the extended scene of brainteasers posed by the less-eccentric-than-he-seems Sumner.
Not only that, her superiority is acknowledged by her CEO5: "she runs it, but he's her boss", and her staff are "very smart".
The putative love interest is the forever delayed romance between Hepburn and ambitious executive Gig Young ("Mike Cutler"). It is made clear that Cutler has only attained his position with Hepburn doing the thinking, while he plays the golf: looked at through modern eyes, this is the glass-ceiling writ large. When the facile Cutler comes out with a gem like; "Everyone knows you don't have a brain in your head. You only keep your job through being nice to me." one resists the urge to throw bricks at the screen.
Hepburn's response is "Well, a girl has to work". It turns out "I was gonna take a PhD, but I ran out of money". The treatment of working women and their search for economic self-sufficiency and personal fulfilment is more extensive and subtle than mere quotes can do justice to. It must have been remarkable at the time of release and, sadly, appears just as noteworthy now6. In the UK, there is still under-representation of women at board level, and alarming salary disparities.
The whole thrust of the film is that Hepburn ("I'm the old-fashioned type") is brighter and faster at calculating than the "thinking machine". Abundant examples are given in her responses to calls for information; recitations of Longfellow and the extended scene of brainteasers posed by the less-eccentric-than-he-seems Sumner.
Not only that, her superiority is acknowledged by her CEO5: "she runs it, but he's her boss", and her staff are "very smart".
The putative love interest is the forever delayed romance between Hepburn and ambitious executive Gig Young ("Mike Cutler"). It is made clear that Cutler has only attained his position with Hepburn doing the thinking, while he plays the golf: looked at through modern eyes, this is the glass-ceiling writ large. When the facile Cutler comes out with a gem like; "Everyone knows you don't have a brain in your head. You only keep your job through being nice to me." one resists the urge to throw bricks at the screen.
Hepburn's response is "Well, a girl has to work". It turns out "I was gonna take a PhD, but I ran out of money". The treatment of working women and their search for economic self-sufficiency and personal fulfilment is more extensive and subtle than mere quotes can do justice to. It must have been remarkable at the time of release and, sadly, appears just as noteworthy now6. In the UK, there is still under-representation of women at board level, and alarming salary disparities.
Spot the real love
affair
What really leaps off the screen as the real relationship among the characters is the interplay between Joan Blondell ("Peg Costello") and Hepburn. There is far more warmth in their embraces (and bottom smack!) than the perfunctory kiss with Cutler.
What else to make of a line like; "Well, when that day comes [when finally Cutler leaves Bunny on the shelf], we'll move in together and keep cats."
A rain shower provides the deus ex machina to putting Hepburn and Tracy in Hepburn's apartment in their dressing gowns ("we're a couple of adults") with Cutler calling in when his plane is cancelled so that his po-faced jealousy can be piqued and rivalry set up between the two men. One wonders, though, why Peg calls late at night? No explanation is offered, her coat is left in the kitchen and, of the three visitors, she is the one who remains in the apartment as we fade out. The next scene is another day.
Now I admit that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when a film is viewed through the prism of queer studies one might fall prey to a tendency to over-analyse, but when Peg and Bunny are in their cups and Peg comes out with the line: "Here was this brand-new Coupe de Ville, with the most attractive looking, grey-haired man in it. And he slowly drove around the block three times. And I could tell by the way he was looking at me that if I had been any other kind of a girl [emphasis mine] it would have been the start of a very beautiful romance", what else is a boy liable to think but that men are not to Peg's taste? Especially as this line is underscored by a cut to Sumner coughing pointedly and Bunny then responding, "More power to you. You may be lonely, but more power to you."
What really leaps off the screen as the real relationship among the characters is the interplay between Joan Blondell ("Peg Costello") and Hepburn. There is far more warmth in their embraces (and bottom smack!) than the perfunctory kiss with Cutler.
What else to make of a line like; "Well, when that day comes [when finally Cutler leaves Bunny on the shelf], we'll move in together and keep cats."
A rain shower provides the deus ex machina to putting Hepburn and Tracy in Hepburn's apartment in their dressing gowns ("we're a couple of adults") with Cutler calling in when his plane is cancelled so that his po-faced jealousy can be piqued and rivalry set up between the two men. One wonders, though, why Peg calls late at night? No explanation is offered, her coat is left in the kitchen and, of the three visitors, she is the one who remains in the apartment as we fade out. The next scene is another day.
Now I admit that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when a film is viewed through the prism of queer studies one might fall prey to a tendency to over-analyse, but when Peg and Bunny are in their cups and Peg comes out with the line: "Here was this brand-new Coupe de Ville, with the most attractive looking, grey-haired man in it. And he slowly drove around the block three times. And I could tell by the way he was looking at me that if I had been any other kind of a girl [emphasis mine] it would have been the start of a very beautiful romance", what else is a boy liable to think but that men are not to Peg's taste? Especially as this line is underscored by a cut to Sumner coughing pointedly and Bunny then responding, "More power to you. You may be lonely, but more power to you."
The impact of new technology on
working practices
"I understand thousands of people are being replaced by these electronic brains" is a key premise of the film; the assumption being that when automation comes in, head-count is reduced. Not, I have to say, a theme widely explored in cinema.
In fact, preponderance of steel office furniture aside, not a great deal has changed in office life in half a century: gossip still arrives via internal telephone (cutely rendered using split-screen) faster than the actual person can make it down in the lift. Nothing much gets done at Christmas. Water cooler technology has stayed static in fifty years.
In the last act, EMMARAC not only proves to be sensitive to dust, as "It can only repeat the information fed into it by the human elements" the workers retain their jobs. Just with more noise and less room to do them in because of the machinery. Sound familiar?
Some of the lines raise a knowing smirk ("Did you invent some kind of a machine that carries mail?") but what makes the film most uncannily prescient is the department that was picked for automation: research ("It's here merely to free your time for research”). In 1957 the idea that a machine could tell you the names of Santa's reindeer (if nothing else, you will know this by the time the credits roll) must have seemed wholly absurd: now Google and Wikipedia are indeed the default destination for homework assignments.
If none of the above has piqued your interest7, there is one last reason for watching Fox's decent Cinemascope transfer of this overlooked gem: the fifties frocks ("35-24-35, if you're asking") are to die for.
1 Written by them both, and produced by Henry
2 Given the single establishing exterior shot of Rockefeller Plaza, I'd say most of my American cousins would immediately recognise this as NBC.
3 "Electro-Magnetic Memory Research and Research Arithmetical Calculator”, for the curious. With my gender studies hat on, the cast refers to “Emmy” as “she” as sailors do their ships and sad sacks their cars.
4 Even the credit sequence is bold and inventive. The opening crane shot descends over machinery on a Mondrian-coloured floor to home in on an IBM teletype whose sprocket-feed churns out the credits - albeit on a pre-prepared roll with a repeated animation of key strikes.
5 Azae must be the only CEO of a broadcasting corporation with three televisions in his office - all turned off.
6 Granted, Working Girl and 9 to 5 deal with similar themes, but with a lot less subtlety
7 Simpsons fans might enjoy wondering whether the unctuous, annoying, bespectacled character named Smithers inspired anyone...
"I understand thousands of people are being replaced by these electronic brains" is a key premise of the film; the assumption being that when automation comes in, head-count is reduced. Not, I have to say, a theme widely explored in cinema.
In fact, preponderance of steel office furniture aside, not a great deal has changed in office life in half a century: gossip still arrives via internal telephone (cutely rendered using split-screen) faster than the actual person can make it down in the lift. Nothing much gets done at Christmas. Water cooler technology has stayed static in fifty years.
In the last act, EMMARAC not only proves to be sensitive to dust, as "It can only repeat the information fed into it by the human elements" the workers retain their jobs. Just with more noise and less room to do them in because of the machinery. Sound familiar?
Some of the lines raise a knowing smirk ("Did you invent some kind of a machine that carries mail?") but what makes the film most uncannily prescient is the department that was picked for automation: research ("It's here merely to free your time for research”). In 1957 the idea that a machine could tell you the names of Santa's reindeer (if nothing else, you will know this by the time the credits roll) must have seemed wholly absurd: now Google and Wikipedia are indeed the default destination for homework assignments.
If none of the above has piqued your interest7, there is one last reason for watching Fox's decent Cinemascope transfer of this overlooked gem: the fifties frocks ("35-24-35, if you're asking") are to die for.
1 Written by them both, and produced by Henry
2 Given the single establishing exterior shot of Rockefeller Plaza, I'd say most of my American cousins would immediately recognise this as NBC.
3 "Electro-Magnetic Memory Research and Research Arithmetical Calculator”, for the curious. With my gender studies hat on, the cast refers to “Emmy” as “she” as sailors do their ships and sad sacks their cars.
4 Even the credit sequence is bold and inventive. The opening crane shot descends over machinery on a Mondrian-coloured floor to home in on an IBM teletype whose sprocket-feed churns out the credits - albeit on a pre-prepared roll with a repeated animation of key strikes.
5 Azae must be the only CEO of a broadcasting corporation with three televisions in his office - all turned off.
6 Granted, Working Girl and 9 to 5 deal with similar themes, but with a lot less subtlety
7 Simpsons fans might enjoy wondering whether the unctuous, annoying, bespectacled character named Smithers inspired anyone...
Posted: Mon - October 1, 2007 at 09:01 PM
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Published On: Oct 01, 2007 09:04 PM
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Published On: Oct 01, 2007 09:04 PM