NOUS AMERICAN

A Movie Heralds an Era: The Misfits

In some ways, I have been delaying writing about western movies reflecting the cultural deterioration of the mid and latter 20th century.  It just is not pleasant to think of, yet I think the changing western movies reflected the awful cultural deterioration with great precision.

Absolutely the single best movie that heralded the era of the 1960s, down even to its name, was The Misfits, released in January of 1961.  I saw it first run, when I was 22 years old.  I have never forgotten that movie because I detested it so much.  I had grown up on western movies, mostly B westerns, radio, and some television westerns, and I had loved them.  The Misfits revolted me because it tore at that which I loved, only it took me many years and a lot of philosophical growth to appreciate what my brain had summed up during one movie viewing.

I cannot fail to acknowledge that Rebel Without a Cause (1955)  signaled that life and art were in serious decline in America, but neither it nor the overpraised and undertalented James Dean had the visceral impact of The Misfits on me.

When The Misfits was made, in 1960, B westerns had been gone from movie theaters about a half a decade.  Even B western heroes who had made it to television were gone, people like Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy.  We were left with the A westerns, and they were quite banal.  B westerns had truly been fast-moving "morality plays," while A westerns were just long slice-of-life stories.  As a result, most A westerns were "ho hum" at best.

Ennui Voice

"Ennui voice" is both a hoot and an annoyance when encountered.

Oh, yes, this is our term.  It won't be found in scientific and medical publications.  However, you probably hear it every day.

It is solely found in younger women, from teens through early adulthood.  It will be detected whenever some younger woman tries to make herself have more gravitas than she really does.  You will hear her manipulating her speech and voice to sound more mature, more authoritative, and more take-me-very-seriously.  Its use makes us laugh, rather than take the ennui vocalizer seriously.

"Ennui" is a French word, meaning "boredom," denotatively.  Connotative meaning adds considerably to the meaning and richness of "ennui," by suggesting the addition of "bored with the world" and "too seasoned from carrying the weight of the world to be concerned with the little people and little things of life."

Memories come back of working not long ago in a huge corporation where "diversity" was all the rage.  Part of that diversity included scads of young women trying to climb the corporate ladder.  At least 80% of them talked with "ennui voice."  They sound like they were putting on airs because they wanted to make listeners think they were so very, very "up" in this prestigious corporation.  They would have been genuine if, instead, they had spoken with their natural speech and voice, and worn "I am insecure" buttons.

Not long ago, some reporter-ette with National Public Radio sounded like she had a nearly terminal case of "ennui voice." Despite her real, somewhat pipingly high pitched and nasal. very young female voice, she put her report on full "ennui voice."  With every emphasis, every phrase, and every sentence, she dropped her voice in pitch and added that characteristic gravelly-ness.  When she wasn't doing that, she kept am obvious gravelly-ness in her usual speech flow. It all sounded like a latter day "valley girl" voice.  No matter how hard she tried, her tiny female voice would not pitch into basso-profundo.

"Ennui voice" is almost epidemic now among upwardly mobile young women.  If you have not yet encountered it, it will be coming to a workplace near you any day now.

A Versus B Westerns

After watching Duel in the Sun (1946) recently, I had a mini-epiphany.  My mini-epiphany consisted of seeing the real, root, i.e., fundamental, differences between "A western" movies and "B western" movies.

By "A westerns," I mean feature films.  They are longer, more expensive, have big named casts and directors, which "B westerns" did not.  One went to the movie theater to see the feature film, but there were smaller "fillers," so to speak, such as cartoons, serials, and shorts.  One of these extras was the "B western," a much shorter film, much less expensively produced, and having no real marquee names as actors and directors, although the actors were quite popular among "B western" fans.

Duel in the Sun was a typical A western.  David O. Selznick wrote, produced, and directed it--he of Gone With The Wind fame.  The film runs about two hours, compared to about one hour for a B.  Not a dollar was skimped to create this film.  It was a lavish production, including being filmed in very expensive Technicolor.  Its cinematography was breathtakingly beautiful.  The cast must have cost a fortune:  Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotton, Gregory Peck, Lillian Gish, Herbert Marshall, and Lionel Barrymore--all as principals.

By contrast, B westerns came about in the Great Depression, from about 1929 or 1930, in order to pad the experience of waning movie-goers.  They could now get the A feature and for the same price get a smaller film.  Movie attendance picked up.