McCarey vs Leigh

[Damien]

Johnny G, loved your comments. They point out how one can be dismissive of a director for two distinct reasons (although the two sometimes overlap). The first is because the filmmaker is simply inept in fundamentals of film language, characterization, narrative, etc. People that come within these parameters include Lesley Selander, Adam Shankman and Sidney Lumet. And then there are those whom one hates because their sensibility is so contradictory to their own -- and this is where Mike Leigh comes in, along with Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coen siblings.

Marco, I, of course, couldn't disagree with you more on McCarey, who's in my pantheon of directors. And I think he doesn't have an American sensibility at all -- his compassion towards, and embrace of, very flawed characters strikes me as being a very European sensibility. (And there's a reason why, as Big pointed out, Renoir adored McCarey.) To me, to understand McCarey, all you need is to be able to appreciate Laurel & Hardy, for these comedic geniuses whose personae McCarey helped establish are the quintessential exasperating-but-lovable characters, which is how the director viewed humankind.

[ITALIANO]

Comparing filmmakers is a good exercise indeed, but McCarey and Leigh have less things in common than any two other directors one can randomly choose (and what they may have in common is just by chance).
I think Leigh is a more interesting director; I always found McCarey a good, professional - especially in his early works (his later movies are unbearably conventional, in more ways than one) - but never very exciting filmmaker. And VERY American (not only in the good sense). But they really can't be compared, they belong to different universes - historically, geographically, politically, intellectually, emotionally even.



Edited By ITALIANO on 1269296740

[Big Magilla]

While I like Damien's succinct response, I think B.J.'s is more on the mark - McCarey was a humane optimist whereas Leigh is a pure cynic.

I agree with J.G. that we should do more of these filmmaker comparisons, but I don't see a connection between McCarey and Leigh at all.

Two of McCarey's great admirers were Ford and Renoir. All three had in common that they could move from comedy to tragedy and back again on a dime. McCarey's characters were not plastic saints. There was often something annoying about them - Dunne's willfulness in The Awful Truth, Bondi's interfering in Make Way for Tomorrow, but in the end they were full bodied human beings we loved in spite of their flaws. Leigh's characters are often just annoying, at least to me.

[Johnny Guitar]

This topic is like a red cape waved in Damien's face.

I know!, this whole question is so incredibly random and beautiful and seems somehow slightly indecent. That said, while I like McCarey much more than Leigh, I do like Leigh more than Damien does (though I've many viewing gaps), and let me go ahead and say 'bravo' to OscarGuy - despite the weirdness of this pairing, and despite the fact that McCarey and Leigh are worlds apart in so many aspects of their filmmaker, I'd encourage you to keep making unorthodox connections.

You can probably come up with some interesting insights just by comparing any two filmmakers; and sometimes, more than just interesting, the things we learn or see anew can be penetrating. And there's an interesting path to be traveled here between McCarey and and Leigh in how they approach their characters. Both of these filmmakers may be very free with their actors and stories, probably because it's easier (and more productive) to capture & organize actors' own (hence characters' own) behavioral tics than it is to plan them all out in advance, over and over, film after film.

I don't know if I agree that McCarey is a humanist and Leigh is a misanthrope; and even if that's true, I don't think either is a criterion of artistic accomplishment. It's more like an indicator of how one might want to spend one's time. But I do think that Leigh's vision of the world is fatalistic, or more accurately, resigned to life's ultimate, cumulative, slowly crushing string of disappointments (where the greatest personal triumph, at least for smart folks, is to finally achieve an everyday stoicism). McCarey, like Ozu, assumes life's disappointments and people's shortcomings as well. But the necessity of some measure of stoicism is presumed right away, rather than hard-won (if won at all), and the sentiment in McCarey (not mere sentimentality, but the deep reservoirs of feeling) is precisely what imbues our existence with meaning. It's not a religious or spiritual wordlview but it is much more deeply compatible with religion or other antimaterialist views of the natural world than is Leigh.

I guess now that I think about it in these terms, I'd say Leigh and McCarey both care very much about people, and are concerned about all the pain and loss that surround them (us?), but have almost diametrically opposed philosophies as to what helps us get through the days regardless ... as well as what art should do to help get us through these days, if anything.

In this scene from The Awful Truth, for instance, you have an instance of Dunne's character being grating and willful, but the scene is experienced (I would hope) as delightful because the connective elements & through-lines have to do with romantic reunion, of the persistence of necessary relationships against those inevitable onslaughts of 'everything else.' But in this hilarious segment from Leigh's Nuts in May, the grating willfulness of the performance isn't happy or cheerful ... Leigh's target is the authoritarianism of bourgeois hippies and the localized helplessness a working class bloke feels in their net. The tender human relationships in Leigh's film may be happy, loving, supportive on occasion, but that's usually background (as opposed to motivating force) to the other human interrelations in his films, usually ones having to do with class, bureaucracy, everyday things.

This brings us to my favorite TV comedy, the BBC Office, which - I'd never thought of it this way before, but - appears to represent a weird hybrid of McCarey and Leigh, in terms of how it presents these characters just beaten down by the minor horrors and major absurdities of contemporary life. (Except that as I understand it, Gervais' shows are very heavily scripted and planned, and intentionally just give the impression of spontaneity and ad-libbing.) See here. The dwindling dreams, the merely aspirational feel-good liberalism (counteracted by nervous emissions of homophobia or racism), among these Slough folk are in some respects a thriving integration of Leigh's exhausted but dogged stoicism and McCarey's profound imagination of love.

[Precious Doll]

Someone (other than Damien), please explain to me how Mike Leigh hates people. He seems a modern-styled humanist. He presents people warts and all and helps you feel compassion for them even if they are a bit quirky at times.

Though I am a fan of Mike Leigh he does use some of his characters for comically effect by putting them down and allowing the audience to feel superior to them. His films often leave a bad taste in the mouth for this reason.

The is particularly evident in his TV work from the 1970's and 1980's.



Edited By Precious Doll on 1269290787

[The Original BJ]

I don't think Mike Leigh hates people.

But I DO think Mike Leigh is a very cynical filmmaker, whereas McCarey is the exact opposite, a humane optimist.

[OscarGuy]

Someone (other than Damien), please explain to me how Mike Leigh hates people. He seems a modern-styled humanist. He presents people warts and all and helps you feel compassion for them even if they are a bit quirky at times.

[Mister Tee]

This topic is like a red cape waved in Damien's face.

[Damien]

To put it succinctly, Leo McCarey loves people. Mike Leigh hates them.

A humanist vs. a misanthrope.

A great filmmaker vs. a sour, petty hack.

[Big Magilla]

I'm speechless.

I'm entertaining out of town guests so I don't have time to go into a lengthy response at the moment, so suffice for now to say Italiano is right on this one. More when I have time.

And I'm sure Damien would have quite a bit to say on this as well.

[OscarGuy]

Expound, please.

I mean, I recognize their differences, though I see similarities, I'd just like to know what people see as their biggest differences. And, more specifically, what about Leigh's still is so off-putting compared to McCarey's.

[ITALIANO]

Difficult to find two directors who are more different.

[OscarGuy]

I'm moving my question from the 2004 Actress thread here so it isn't distracting from that discussion.



You know, I was struck by something last night while watching the documentary on the Make Way for Tomorrow disc with Peter Bogdanovich discussion Leo McCarey's directorial style, citing him as perhaps one of the first auteurs, but it stuck me immediately how his style sounds almost identical to that of Mike Leigh.

Leigh lets the actors create their own dialogue and turns that into a screenplay. That was one of the reasons why Cary Grant didn't like working with McCarey at first. So, Peter, I know they are different filmmakers, that it seems Leigh's style is what you find so off-putting, yet you love Leo McCarey. Maybe it's just his themes, but I see a lot of McCarey in Leigh in terms of style, methodology and yes, perhaps even themes. So, I'm curious where you see the two directors as diverging so strongly.