PLAGUE DIARY 16: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

You Can’t Get Away with Murder (1937)
I’m not so sure about that. But this is a melodrama pure and simple, so right means right, and wrong goes to solitary. It’s interesting that Humphrey Bogart was quite young and attractive in 1937.  He was always a ‘real man' (come on, we all know what that means!) but quite a pretty one. Apparently he was very cultured and sophisticated, nothing at all like the thugs he routinely portrays. Bogart brings to his thugs the opposite of a Marlon Brandoish realism; you can feel his intelligence looming over his impersonations. It doesn’t feel right for thugs to be so intelligent; they are supposed to be merely bad. Henry Travers — the angel from It’s A Wonderful Life — is back again, pretty much playing another angel, and he says of Bogart’s character: “I know your sort, a man who’s so crooked he would crack if he was straightened out.” Bogart races through lines like -- “Let this sink in, once you start going, you to got to keep going. It’s a one way street, no turns. So don’t try anything — because if you do, the screws will drill ya. And if they don’t, I will.” But to race through such film noir drivel is absolutely right; if such lines were said slowly, and too wildly or vehemently, they would be unconvincing. By the time he’s done spilling his guts in one of those bad guy tantrums you’re just left gasping for air; you want to go back and watch it again. His criminal partner in You Can’t Get Away with Murder is Billy Halop, who plays a very handsome, slender and confused young man (my favourite kind). The two of them together are somewhat sexually arousing. This isn’t just my idea— the sexual innuendo is in the film — when a cop hauls in Bogart in front of Halop to arrest the two of them for a robbery, he leers: “Here’s your boyfriend.” Ergo, the cop noticed also that Bogart is too old to be hanging out with such a kid (Halop was 17 when he played this role — much later he went on to play Archie Bunker’s cab driver friend in All in the Family). Halop looks up to Bogart, and who wouldn’t? When Halop is crying in the prison yard and Bogart puts his arm around him —“Okay, I’ll help you, leave it to me, kid” — one can’t stop recalling Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca — ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.” (I nurture the impossible fantasy that Humphrey Bogart might someday call me, ‘kid.') The plot of this movie is so complex, and comes at you so quickly (and preposterously) -- that there’s little point in recounting it. One moment Bogart and Halop are robbing a gas station, Bogart shoots somebody, switches guns — he’s framing Halop's brother-in-law (yes, I know, TMI already) — the next thing you know they’re all in Sing Sing (this movie was based on a play by Lewis E. Laws, a warden at Sing Sing) and let’s just say complications ensue. The penultimate conflict is between Bogart and Travers, and it’s over Halop’s soul. Henry Travers knows Halop is a good kid “You ain't the kind that can dodge things so easy. You still got to live with yourself the rest of your life.” Will he save his brother-in-law from the electric chair, and betray his mentor(/lover) Humphrey Bogart? Of course Halop does finally betray Bogart, when dying, and it’s the very pinnacle of bathos. Bogart protests: “He’s crazy Warden, he’s dying, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” (What a play this must have been — I say with tongue firmly in cheek!) But we do need these good guys and bad guys, don’t we? Why? I’m particularly addicted for making up stories about people, and by that I mean — imagining their stories, concocting for them a dark past, present, and future. I was obsessed with this guy at the gym once - I was soooooo jealous of him. He looked like a kind of skinny, slimy, older predator and yet despite this he was always chatting happily with all these beautiful young guys who  seemed to idolise him. How did this grizzled greasy coot manage to get these young studs under his spell? I was gossiping away nastily about him and someone said — 'No no, he’s a nice guy, he’s the nicest guy in the world. He’s straight and he’s an ex-drug addict, and he wants to start working as a trainer, and he’s just a sweet person trying to change his life." Oh. Sorry about that. But I don’t think I’m the only one. We are all more than ready to demonise our neighbours. My friend was talking with two other friends on the street and standing, I guess, too close together in a time of social distancing, An uncalled, for, unwanted, unofficial member of the new volunteer police force (now dedicated to enforcing social distancing at any cost)  i.e. a woman in a car — leaned out of the window and waved her finger at them in a scolding way. My friend was livid. People are reporting their neighbours for having  parties. What is this, communist Russia? Is Anne Frank going to end up in the attic? Am I exaggerating? No. It’s exactly the same impulse. It’s called the greed of self-righteousness, the hypnotic sensuality, the orgasmic thrill of knowing for sure that you are better than someone else. The thrill of self righteousness is way better than sex; and since it’s getting a lot harder for people to have sex these days — when you have to stay six feet away from everyone (although let me tell you there are some innovative ways to do that!)  — I feel obligated to participate in this frenzied, judgemental orgy in order to get myself off. I hate to bring him up — but let me tell you, Shakespeare would not have approved. Shakespeare had a soul (as Billy Halop finally proves he has also). Shakespeare made Shylock into the first unreliable narrator, the first anti-hero, i.e. the first character we have deeply mixed feelings about. Shylock moans “Hath not a Jew eyes?” — and at the same time he wants his pound of flesh. Is Shylock a good character or a bad character? Oh, you think he’s a anti-semitic stereotype? No, sorry, he’s simply human. Because that’s what human beings are. A consistent mess. We need melodrama, because we are allowed to judge people harshly in a way that should not be allowed to in real life. It’s kind of hard to hate Bogart — because he’s Bogart — but that’s what this film wants you to do. And that’s the goal of every melodrama. When will we look into our souls and figure out why we so desperately need to feel that we are better than other people? So much so that we will not only stop gossiping  about them (I won’t ever be capable of that!) but also stop wagging our fingers at them for not social distancing, and putting them in jail for having a party, or killing them for being a Jew? Because we all love doing this -- just to congratulate ourselves on what good people we are for ridding the world of Jews and social distancers, because we love believing -- in our heart of hearts -- that we are oh so much better than them. Social distance all you want. But please stop taking so much pleasure in it --  and in how much more virtuous you are than I. And if you say all this virtue signalling doesn’t  give you pleasure you’re lying. I’m admitting everything here. Everything. I think it’s about time you admitted something too.