TORN CURTAIN (1966)

One-by-one, Alfred Hitchcock’s late films have been undergoing critical reclamation . . . except for TORN CURTAIN. Made as the old studio-system was in fast collapse, Hitch was being squeezed by a deal with the devil (Universal’s super-mogul Lew Wasserman) and by his two expensive, but ill-suited stars (Paul Newman, Julie Andrews). Then, he made a bad situation worse, pinching pennies with tv-sourced replacements after his long-time lenser & editor both died unexpectedly; he even accepted John Addison’s clueless musical score after a final blow-up with the irascible Bernard Herrmann. Hitch was down-and-out before you even factor in Universal’s typically sub-par tech work which reached its nadir on a soundstage hill in East Berlin, Hollywood. Here, on an appallingly artificial set (and its equally awful cyclorama), Paul & Julie get their big romantic moment. But wait!, the studio managed to make things worse, sending out prints with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1, but meant to be ‘masked’ down to 1.85:1. Screw up the framing, Mister Projectionist, and you can see all the lovely studio lights & electrical rigging hanging above. (Many of these problems were swiftly addressed in TOPAZ/’69, an atypical tale for Hitch, the best-selling book another ‘gift’ from the WasserMan, but with vastly improved tech work and class-A lensing, scoring & editing. And its latest DVD edition redeems a lot by using the best of the three endings Hitch shot.) So, is this Cold War thriller worth a look? Sure. It’s kind of fun seeing Hitch’s technique laid bare, unencumbered by too much involvement in plot, place or character, and being always a couple beats ahead of the story makes for easy study. (PLOT: Newman feigns defection behind the Iron Curtain to steal research; Andrews tags along; they sneak back.) The last two acts have a fair share of quality set pieces (plus more shoddy tech work at odd moments) and it's instructional to guess where Hitch simply took over editing chores. Anyway, there’s something subversive & deeply Hitchcockian in a Cold War thriller that makes our American hero pick the superior brain of a Commie scientist.

DOUBLE-BILL: Fritz Lang didn’t do much better sending Gary Cooper in & out of Nazi-occupied Italy for a nuclear scientist in CLOAK AND DAGGER/’46.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: If Universal really wants to give TORN CURTAIN a shot at critical reclamation, it needs to finish synching up the original Bernard Herrmann score. There’s about a reel and a half of it in the Extras, all Herrmann finished recording before getting the heave-ho from Hitch. But you can hear the more-or-less complete score on a brilliant recording from Joel McNeely & The National Philharmonic Orchestra on Varèse Sarabande.

KÖRKARLEN / THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (1921)

Victor Sjöström wrote, directed & starred in this silent film adaptation of Nobel-laureate Selma Lagerlöf’s once-famous novel. The latest Criterion DVD (2011) from a Swedish restoration, has come up well, a full 107 minute cut, with fine grain & handsome tints, plus a choice of music tracks (slightly weird & very weird). Yet, the film only partially meets its classic status, too careful by half, too weighed down by literary prestige; quite the opposite of Sjöström’s Hollywood work which soars regardless of its source material. The story plays out over a series of New Year’s Eves, a day when the last man to die takes the reins of the ghostly Phantom Carriage and becomes Death’s teamster. Sjöström’s wastrel is the man on deck. But before he can begin, he’s shown how he got there in a series of visions from his New Year’s Eves past. Watching his own life spiral out of control, chasing away his wife, kids, friends, anyone who would help him break the cycle of disease & drunkenness, seems to have little effect . . . until it’s probably too late. Visually, this is often powerful stuff (best at its darkest moments like one with a raggedy coat or when a father attempts to infect his own children), and the double-exposures are rightly acclaimed. But on film it grows uncomfortably close to Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL, with Scrooge & Cratchit merged as one. And, with the dour Swedish sensibility squeezing out Dickens’ liveliness & variety, the tread of despair & predestination also squeezes out his humanity, and makes the ending suspect.

UNKNOWN (2011)

Nothing becomes this twisty thriller as much as its end. No villain reanimates for a final flourish; no triple-reverse plot revelation makes mincemeat of things; no shadowy figure edges into view to signal a possible sequel. Narrative dignity, at last! If only the preceding two hours were equally accomplished. The story, a funhouse of political & corporate skullduggery, gives good weight, as does solid Liam Neeson, who must be surprised to find himself, in his late-50s, taking the action-figure baton from Steve McQueen & Charles Bronson. But megger Jaume Collet-Serra shows little affinity or gamesmanship for the form. He does well enough when he sticks us in the driver’s seat, but the rest of the action set pieces don’t ‘read’ properly. Even a simple fight scene is beyond him, and the mix-master editing more of a cover-up than anything in the plot. Still, there’s reasonable fun watching a gaggle of genres getting mashed-up as we hop from amoral spy rings to identity theft & amnesia; there’s even an old East German STASI spy to sympathize with. That’s new!* And nicely played by Bruno Ganz. Which is more than can be said for the cold-blooded perf from January Jones or the decision to hold back on the Big Reveal until halfway thru the third act.

DOUBLE-BILL: The screenwriters may have had Harrison Ford’s THE FUGITIVE/’93 meets THE BOURNE IDENTITY/’02 in mind as a suspense-thriller template. But MIRAGE/’65, a lesser-known Gregory Peck pic from a Howard Fast novel (helmed by Edward Dmytryk/scripted by Peter Stone), has lots of similar elements in it.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Actually, it’s not new, it’s the lead character in the superb THE LIVES OF OTHERS/’06. But that’s not a piece of Pop entertainment.

UNTIL THEY SAIL (1957)

WWII tale from James Michener centers on four lonely sisters in Christchurch, New Zealand, where the local men have all gone to war and the Yanks are here to play . . . until they sail. In Robert Anderson’s smart, economical script, it’s a superior soaper with a big black mark against it, a Scandal-Sheet worthy trial that bookends what’s otherwise an unusually grown-up look at love & sex in the pressure-cooker environment of wartime. (And now, the film also serves as a living scrapbook to the city & Cathedral before the recent earthquake.) At first meeting, the sisters function like the Three Bears: eldest Joan Fontaine is Too Cold; Piper Laurie is Too Hot; Jean Simmons is Just Right; and Sandra Dee, a previously unknown Fourth Bear, is the kid. (She’s sweet, but too American-teen to pass for Kiwi.) They each have their own rite-of-romantic-passage, but the emphasis is largely on Simmons, a recent war-widow, and Paul Newman, cold & cynical from a quickie divorce (and still showing a touch of baby-fat in his face). Robert Wise, who groomed Newman’s screen acting chops in SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME/’56, keeps things from turning sticky. And under Joseph Ruttenberg’s glamorizing WideScreen b&w lensing, 40 yr-old Fontaine easily passes as sister to 15 yr-old Dee.

CONTEST: Ruttenberg got Oscar’d the year before & the year after this one. Without looking it up, name the two films and the likely reason this one was ignored to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of a NetFlix DVD.

HURRY SUNDOWN (1967)

Otto Preminger’s remarkable, if hardly unblemished, run of CinemaScope pics from CARMEN JONES/’54 to IN HARM’S WAY/65, never recovered from this deep-fried Southern meller. It’s a three-pronged look at upward mobility in post-WWII rural Georgia with the gentrified Michael Caine making a land grab for the farmlands of neighboring White & Black sharecroppers John Phillip Law & Robert Hooks. But Preminger, with his eyes firmly on the late-‘60s social/political scene, works too hard to keep up, stay relevant, controversial, commercial; and he winds up miscalculating just about every effect. He still revels in those sweeping (and economical) all-in-one takes, and gets an unusually vivid ‘southern’ palette from lensers Milton Krasner & Loyal Griggs. Plus, the tricky, inter-cut opening exposition scenes show him near his best, as does an OTT third-act trial which manages to be both broadly comic & menacing. But the storyline wanders all over the place while the starry cast, which also includes Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, Burgess Meredith, Beah Richards, George Kennedy & Diane Carroll, thrash away at Horton Foote’s atypically gaudy dialogue. Kennedy & Meredith are positively fermented! (NOTE: Family-Friendly pic? Sure, a great pic for bringing up the changing face of Stateside racial attitudes back in 1946, when the story takes place; in '67 when the film was made; and now.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Don’t be surprised by the overblown, faux-Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY had come out in ‘66 and it must have made a big impression on composer Hugo Montenegro who had a hit in 1968 ‘covering’ that film’s memorable theme.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY II: It was a breakthru year for Fonda, Richards, Kennedy & Dunaway . . . but in other pics! BAREFOOT IN THE PARK; GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER; COOL HAND LUKE and BONNIE & CLYDE.

DOUBLE-BILL: Fonda & Foote were still trying to recover from THE CHASE/’66, another deep-fried Southern fiasco with a big starry cast. Shows how far good intentions will get you.

THE TRIP (2011)

Brit helmer Michael Winterbottom makes a point of alternating heavy dramatics (JUDE/’96; A MIGHTY HEART/’06) with Pirandello-flavored goofs like TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY/’05 & this buddy-buddy ‘Two-Actors-in-Search-of-a-Meal’ road-pic. Goof it may be, but it’s a goof with conviction in its cheery pointlessness. Steve Coogan, playing himself as an amusing, if dour, comic actor, accepts a fluke fine-dining writing assignment in the North Country, and asks his insistently chipper pal Rob Brydon to come along since his current girlfriend has just bailed. The boys are a lot more fun for us then they seem to be for each other, jealously parsing the other’s life & career choices by indirectly teasing out old inequities via competitive voice impersonations (Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, David Frost, Michael Caine, Woody Allen &, of course, Michael Caine); vocal ranges; wine tasting technique (alas, only in the deleted scenes); even coveting the better looking entree. At night, Steve hunts up a proper shag while Rob goes for phone sex with the missed missus. Some of this improvised stuff goes nowhere, some is just too British to travel, some is too inside show-bizzy, but more than enough hits. And, slowly, you start noticing that a living breathing, slightly testy (and testing) relationship is coming alive on screen in a manner that scripted buddy/buddy road-trip pics (SIDEWAYS/’04) or indie-art-house fare (OLD JOY/’06) never seem to. Too bad the over-groomed high-end cuisine looks so joyless on those large artfully arranged plates. Such a relief to watch the boys finally dig into a traditional, if rather up-scale, ‘fried’ British breakfast. NOTE: Be sure to catch the hilarious ‘Cunt’ Song in the Deleted Scenes.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: For those who keep score, Brydon’s impressive three-octave singing range and his spot-on Hugh Grant impression probably bests Coogan on points. His Grant gets a boost from a faint facial resemblance, but both men . . . ignore Jim Dale’s . . . famous Michael Caine . . . dictum of always . . .speaking three words . . . at a time. It makes all . . . the difference.

RAPT (2009)

Loosely ‘suggested’ by the 1978 kidnapping of a French Corporate CEO, Lucas Blevaux’s slickly-made thriller only received a token release in the States, but is apparently getting an English-language remake under the translated title ABDUCTION(2013?). Yvan Attal stars as a morally compromised exec whose business & home life come unraveled while he’s being held for ransom. Not too surprising as press & police revelations uncover a secret life of debts, sex & high stakes gambling, the usual Upper-Crust entitlement vices. The crisscross action between the brutal kidnappers, the chilly home life, corporate in-fighting & police investigators puts more narrative & character balls in the air than Blevaux can comfortably handle at once, and the really interesting stuff, the motivations & consequences that only get sorted out after the crime is resolved, are largely shortchanged. But just at the moment, the film gains some unearned resonance from the messy sex scandal currently undoing the life & political career of monetary-fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Though, without a kidnapping element, how sleazy & unsympathetic these economic Masters-of-the-Universe look under tabloid scrutiny.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Watch Akira Kurosawa work his way thru similar elements (corporate exec, company cash, kidnapping, police procedure) in his masterful HIGH AND LOW/’63.

SORROWFUL JONES (1949)

This version of Damon Runyon’s LITTLE MISS MARKER (the second of four) holds up better than its so-so rep would have you think. The story is just about foolproof: Single dad on a losing streak leaves his little girl as a ‘mark’ with Sorrowful Jones, Gotham’s cheapest bookmaker. When Dad fails to show, the bookie gets stuck with the kid. It was a big early hit for Shirley Temple back in ‘34, and little Mary Jane Saunders doesn’t give Shirley much competition. But the script keeps saving itself with some good wisecracks, and Bob Hope expands nicely from his usual cowardly braggart into Sorrowful’s miserly ways. The role brings a dour tone & a harsh edge out of Hope that scruffs up the sentiment in a good way. (Watch Bob plow his way to the gag lines in a sticky prayer scene; and even little Mary Jane gets off a zinger right at the end.) Lucille Ball is just about perfect as the nightclub singer who’d like to get in on the act; too bad they didn’t let her do her own vocals. And the usual Runyon suspects, the ‘Guys & Dolls’ types, add lots of color without overstaying their welcome. If only megger Sidney Lanfield showed a little moxie behind the camera. Dull, dull, dull. But the film survives his sleepwalking, 'cause the plot is . . . like we said, foolproof.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Hope & Ball both played with a natural stylization that lets them take on these Damon Runyon mugs without having to overdo things. See Ball in THE BIG STREET/’42 or Hope in THE LEMON DROP KID/’52. What a team they’d have made as Nathan Detroit & Miss Adelaide in the unhappy film version of GUYS AND DOLLS/’55.

CONTEST: This film’s opening gag is lifted from a famous silent comedy. Name the gag, the silent comic & the film it’s lifted from to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of any NetFlix pic.

BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE (1958)

This film is the odd-man-out in the run of seven Western Moral Fables Randolph Scott made under Budd Boetticher’s steady hand. In general, the films are remarkably well-balanced little dramas that set the broad Western landscape & Scott’s laconic acting style against a festering personal loss he’s riding away from and an unforeseen violent crisis he accidentally rides into. Working out the acute situation helps the chronic one . . . Fade Out. But here, Scott plays, of all things, a happy-go-lucky fellow who rides into Agry City, the West’s least friendly town, owned & operated by the corrupt & corpulent Agry Brothers. Befriending a young Mexican (Manuel Rojas) who claims a revenge for his outraged sister by shooting the youngest of the loathsome Agry clan, Scott finds himself thrown in jail with his new bud on a murder charge. It’s a fine set-up, but the dark, bleakly comic tone the story asks for, seems to be outside Boetticher's range; and the switch from the great outdoors to city streets & stark interiors (along with some seriously sub-par acting) emphasizes a budget that’s two sizes too small for the job. Still, the storyline is a neat bit of work and there’s a tremendous sick gag ending where a series of bad guys can’t stop themselves from trying to grab a bag of loot that’s landed in No-Man’s-Land between warring parties. A decidedly venal construct worthy of early Sergio Leone.

DOUBLE-BILL: This plays much better if you’ve already seen a couple of the stronger entries in the series; try THE TALL T/’57 or RIDE LONESOME/’59.