THE 12TH MAN (2017)

With such unlikely films behind him as PINK PANTHER 2 (the regrettable sequel to Steve Martin’s regrettable PINK PANTHER) and a failed KARATE KID reboot, director Harald Zwart does a U-turn in this nearly adequate WWII survival thriller, a classic tru-tale of heroism on the run in Norway. Jan Baalsrud’s story has been told before*, but receives a larger, more traditional treatment here that feels (particularly in its English-language version) like a forgotten early ‘60s WWII adventure pic. Not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case, so over-loaded with story beats that its remarkable series of events & near misses don’t always ring true. 12 Norwegian partisans, snuck into Nazi-occupied Norway for sabotage ‘Ops’ are quickly captured, tortured & executed after a failed mission with only one getting away. Injured & on the run against Nazi troops, mountains & the frigid elements in trying to reach the Swedish border, the film sets up a sort of LES MIZ pursuit with Jonathan Rhys Meyers as a Gestapo Insp. Javert (morphing into over-cooked villainous mid-career Malcolm McDowell before our very eyes) and untested actor Thomas Gullestad’s Baalsrud (shedding weight and a toe or two before our very eyes.) And if you think the film won’t stoop to having Baalsrud ski right past Meyers, even have his hat handed back to him before realization sinks in . . . think again.) Barely released Stateside, the film has its adherents (it did very well in Norway!), but does go on a needless 45 minutes longer than the earlier, more straightforward Norwegian docudrama NI LIV (NINE LIVE)/’57.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Here’s a fine youtube stream of NI LIV, with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVAlTIEkO3I

NO TIME FOR COMEDY (1940)

After 1939 saw James Stewart’s career kick into gear everywhere but his home studio (MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON; MADE FOR EACH OTHER; DESTRY RIDES AGAIN), M-G-M finally got the memo, coming up with PHILADELPHIA STORY, MORTAL STORM and SHOP AROUND THE CORNER in 1940, plus a lend out to Warner Brothers on this neglected prestige item. Adapted from S. N. Behrman’s upper-middlebrow B’way success (with Katharine Cornell & Laurence Olivier), the play was ‘opened up’ for the screen with a reasonably effective new first act setting up hayseed playwright Stewart and sophisticated actress Rosalind Russell for marriage & a run of fashionable comic hits. But with the world’s political scene darkening, surely this is ‘no time for comedy,’ and Stewart’s eye wanders to new muse Genevieve Tobin who sees great stage tragedies (and herself) in his future*; much to the dismay of patient husband Charles Ruggles who's seen these enthusiasms play out before. Unusually smart and literate, even grown up, especially once Behrman’s writing takes over, a talent not so much dated as currently out of fashion. The cast, largely non-contract players, is unusually fine, unusually specific; so too William Keighley’s discreet direction, avoiding the pushy quality of so many Warners comedies. Same holds for Russell, warm & unfussy. Even Ruggles cuts down on his usual quota of character tics & attention drawing tricks. While Louise Beavers, in her typical household black domestic spot, finds some new twists. First because she also plays the domestic part in Russell’s plays (yep, a maid on and off-stage) and second with some decidedly sharp elbows in lines you’d never get away with today. Listen for one about ‘dark innuendo.’ Yikes!  

(Note this oddly retitled re-release poster hoping to catch a draft off Stewart’s THE GLENN MILLER STORY/’54.)

DOUBLE-BILL: The basic comic/serious dilemma isn’t so far off from the one Joel McCrea faces in Preston Sturges’s SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS/’41. Inspired from the play?

THE RESTLESS YEARS (1958)

Sandra Dee & John Saxon, fresh off secondary leads against Rex Harrison & Kay Kendall in THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE, jump from High British Society to High School Peyton Place in this typical ‘50 tale of angst-ridden, hormone-addled teens. Misfits in a conformist MidWest town (where everyone is secretly neurasthenic), Dee is snubbed as illegitimate by her peers & held on an extra-tight leash by over-protective/hysterical mom Teresa Wright; and Saxon sticks out as the new kid in town with mismatched parents James Whitmore & Margaret Lindsey (bottled beer & demitasse). Looking like it was made for a price by German director Helmut Kautner*, the b&w WideScreen image is a missed opportunity for KodaChrome hues, and Edward Anhalt’s script skips the implied third act (no legal showdown in court?; no comeuppance for those spoiled classmates?), while still managing to goose things up with alcoholism, school play backstabbings, false friends and on-the-hour mental collapses. Get thru some heavy lifting in the opening and it’s a pretty tasty show even without a single unwanted pregnancy in the whole student body. Plus, dialogue that seriously perks up whenever they rehearse the school play: Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN, natch.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *After his success with German emigré Douglas Sirk, producer Ross Hunter must have hoped lightning would strike twice with German director Helmut Käutner.

BRIGHTON ROCK (1948)

After Richard Widmark gave a new post-war edge to Hollywood psychotic villains, giggling as he pushed a wheelchair-bound grannie down a flight of tenement stairs in KISS OF DEATH/’47, Britain found an urban sociopath to call its own in Richard Attenborough’s ‘Pinkie,’ vicious young head of a failing protection racket working the back alleys of Brighton. Lashing out under pressure, he’ll kill to protect his shrinking territory. Even marry a friendless waitress to keep her from testifying against him. But does he love or despise her? Graham Greene, adapting his own novel (with Terence Rattigan), doesn’t always clarify some underlying action, but the pace, threat of violence and scummy seaside atmosphere (those amusement piers!) are wonderfully captured by the Brothers Boulting (producer Roy; director John) with Harry Waxman’s lensing serving up heightened realism with ‘stolen’ location shots of fun-seeking crowds. Attenborough’s star-making turn got all the attention at the time, but Carol Marsh does amazingly well as the innocent lovestruck girl (a nearly impossible part) and Hermione Baddeley is a vulgarian for the ages as a performer in a third-rate beach-side tent show making a nuisance of herself. Greene apparently had misgivings about his own ‘tweaked’ ending, but who else could have come up with such a ridiculous Catholic miracle to tie things up?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Rowan Joffe’s 2010 remake, updated to the early ‘60s, doesn’t come off in spite of a good supporting cast.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/09/brighton-rock-2010.html

A SCANDAL IN PARIS (1946)

An 18th Century IT TAKES A THIEF, based on the real-life character François-Eugène Vidocq, if not so much on his real life. And why not? After all, his own (ghost-written?) memoirs can’t be verified though the outlines of his life story prove irresistible: Service in the army; three escapes from the galleys; jailed for theft; an unlikely advance to top detective in the Paris police force solving crimes using his own wrong-side-of-the-law experiences. He even hires a band of ex-convicts to work under him. Famous & honored, he retires to go into business, quickly goes broke and rejoins the force, this time to secretly set up The Crime of the Century! A great movie hiding in plain sight there! Unfortunately, this early Stateside effort from Douglas Sirk, recently emigrated from Germany to Hollywood, drops most of that juicy outline & comes across as ten-ton whimsy on what it does keeps. With George Sanders, as Vidocq (along with sidekick Akim Tamroff), pulling off scams when he’s not on the lam or wooing elegant ladies (Signe Hasso; Carole Landis) for cover. As a production, the film manages the trick of feeling both over-stuffed and threadbare, with a poorly constructed script that shortchanges Vidocq’s tri-part focus on crime, romance & detective work. Disappointing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Sirk was on much firmer ground in his previous film, SUMMER STORM/’44, also with Sanders and based on Chekhov’s THE SHOOTING PARTY. (see below)

THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF (1950)

Cinematographer Russell Harlan gives this modest film noir the requisite dark, glistening look, but can’t raise it much past mediocre. A decent setup finds senior police detective Lee J. Cobb covering up a murder when his mistress (rich heiress Jane Wyatt) shoots her husband, only to see his new detective partner, kid brother John Dall, methodically home in on the guilty parties. Yikes! Felix E. Feist moves things along nicely, tossing in a fair share of striking angles, but neither the plotting or dialogue really snaps together. Worse, all three leads are strikingly miscast. Dall supercilious in a role William Holden might have played. Cobb too dour to be blindsided by romantic passion. (How ‘bout Paul Douglas?) And wholesome Jane Wyatt missing the siren call & glamorous danger a Rita Hayworth might have brought to it. Casting against type is one thing; Playing against type another; Doing both at the same time . . . tricky.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Phil Karlson’s superb SCANDAL SHEET/’52, from Sam Fuller’s novel, has John Derek & Broderick Crawford as newspaper guys (in the Dall/Cobb spots) on a similar storyline.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/04/scandal-sheet-1952.html

THE PROUD REBEL (1958)

After leaving Warners, home studio for nearly three decades, and struggling to find his old compositional dynamism in the new WideScreen formats just as he hit his 70s, director Michael Curtiz had largely returned to form by the time he made this heartwarming family drama. Long available in horrific cropped editions, with mistimed color and grainy texture obliterating Ted McCord’s panoramic lensing, it’s now out in a fine remastering. (Streaming free via KANOPY thru many libraries.) Alan Ladd (at his most Gary Cooper-ish) is quietly compelling in this post-Civil War story as a Southern soldier gone North in hopes of finding treatment for his boy (played by David Ladd), unable to speak from war trauma. But Ladd gets into trouble passing thru one town when sheep baron Dean Jaggar tries to steal the boy’s dog (a natural sheep herder of championship caliber) and only keeps out of jail when Olivia de Havilland, a single farm woman feuding with Jaggar & his sons over land, covers the thirty dollar fine. She gets Ladd as hired hand for her trouble, but it’s the boy who first grabs her attention. The rest plays out as expected, but lovingly so, with a real emotional kick to it. Here’s the great, if unsung Curtiz, Hollywood’s ultimate pro, working full out after looking somewhat hobbled for a few years. Back with a generous use of shadows, silhouettes, camera movement, and showing a new feel for landscape & scale away from studio confines. Listen up for Jerome Moross’s stunning score, kissin’ cousin/precursor to his masterpiece, THE BIG COUNTRY/’58 which came out next.

DOUBLE-BILL: No doubt, echoes of Ladd’s SHANE/’53 weren’t unintentional. But like so much George Stevens work, there’s a detrimental sense of self-regard to it's myth-making. Curtiz, far more instinctual & spontaneous than the ever dutiful Stevens.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: De Havilland first worked for Curtiz in CAPTAIN BLOOD back in 1935 when she was 19 yrs-old. Now 42, and without a speck of makeup, still the lovely ingenue.

NO MORE ORCHIDS (1932)

Carole Lombard delivers the goods in this modest romantic-dramedy from Columbia Pictures that takes an uncomfortably dark turn in its third act, unbalancing the tone even as it adds interest. Carole’s your standard-issue rich spoiled heiress, a Depression Era favorite, who meets-cute with Lyle Talbot’s self-made man on her way back from scandalizing Europe. He disapproves/she’s intrigued. (Talbot at his most appealing in one of 11 features he made in 1932.*) Technically engaged to some minor Euro-Prince, she drops all plans, and dissolute ways, to pursue real love with this regular guy. But hits a bump back home when banker dad Walter Connolly needs a bailout from Grandpa C. Aubrey Smith, the guy who’s really pining for that royal title. Elegantly shot by Joseph August and smartly paced by director Walter Lang, it never quite hangs together. (Presumably, Lombard’s early comic action added late in the game.) But the film finds some unusually delicate atmosphere on the rich & mighty while generating plenty of heat between Talbot (normally a bit faceless) and Lombard, showing yet again that she was a force to be reckoned with years before Howard Hawks claimed to have taught her how to act in TWENTIETH CENTURY/’34.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Like Talbot, character actor Walter Connolly made his feature debut this year. This is only his third film and he’d work again with Lombard in two classics: TWENTIETH CENTURY/’34 and NOTHING SACRED/’37.

PORT OF NEW YORK (1949)

Gritty police procedural teams up Treasury Agent Scott Brady and Customs Officer Richard Rober against Yul Brynner’s Mr. Big narcotics smuggler in some tasty Manhattan locations (High & Low), neatly handled film noir style by director Laslo Benedek & adventurous lenser George E. Diskant. The standout elements are Brynner, still with hair on his head in his film debut (a riveting, exotic presence, wooing or disposing of ladies & associates as necessary) and those real locations, especially on the docks & seedier parts of town, many now gone. The rest is a good enough, if fairly standard cop meller. A bit tougher than usual, it’s helped by a restricted budget that reduces gloss in the semi-documentary style popularized over @ 20th/Fox by producer Louis De Rochemont.* Extra nice touch from composer Sol Kaplan who picks up the opening theme of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto (Brynner even puts a 78rpm side on the turntable) to use as a leitmotif whenever Brynner shows on the scene with evil intent. Very effective! So too this neat indie pic.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Compare with De Rochemont/Henry Hathaway’s THE HOUSE ON 92nd STREET/’45.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Baby boomers will recognize Chet Huntley’s voice doing the over-generous narration.

THEY CALL ME TRINITY (1970)

Enzo Barboni, writing & directing as E. B. Clucher, had a huge international success with this cockeyed Spaghetti Western starring a very dusty Terence Hill (ne’er-do-well/bounty hunter) and bull-like Bud Spencer (horse thief/accidental sheriff) as wary half-brothers who unexpectedly come together to save a Mormon farming community from Farley Granger’s land-grabbing baron, his army of ranch-hands & a ragtag outfit of Mexican marauders. The trick to pulling this off comes in how Barboni plays ‘straight’ Spaghetti Western plot beats against the comedy, generating his laughs out of attitude. Things go flat when he stages comic donnybrooks (the finale is endless) or runs obvious slapstick routines, but work like a charm when he holds to the slow & deliberate pace of Laurel & Hardy while staying inside the storylines. Burly Spencer proves a gifted comic actor and Hill gets by with an audience-pleasing lack of vanity that makes his handsome blue-eyed looker funny. Hen’s Tooth Video probably has the best DVD edition.

DOUBLE-BILL: A sequel, TRINITY IS STILL MY NAME/’71 (not seen here) apparently forces the comedy, upsetting the relaxed style & laughs.

MEARI TO MAJO NO HANA / MARY AND THE WITCHES FLOWER (2017)

With Japan’s Studio Ghibli in animated abeyance, director Hiromasa Yonebayashi (see below for ARRIETTY/’10 and WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE/’14*) decamped for the new Studio Ponoc and this over-stuffed would-be dazzler. Frankly, it’s a mess, with bits & pieces out of THE WIZARD OF OZ; HARRY POTTER; PETER PAN; HANSEL & GRETEL; various Studio Ghibli classics; and a whopping slice of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. It plays as if Yonebayashi thought he’d have just the one chance to show his stuff and had to get everything out there all at once. The story finds red-headed Mary, living with her Grand Aunt while the folks are away, following a pair of cats into the enchanted woods she’s been warned to stay out of, especially on a misty day. Soon, with new friend Peter, she’s gotten into trouble with some wizards who first think she’s a natural witch, a once in a lifetime prodigy, but soon discover her powers stem from a special flower that only blooms once in seven years, a blossom the evil wizards covet for themselves. Some of the hyperventilating animated sequences are impressively organized, but nothing really builds or makes much narrative sense. Worse, other than Peter, the characters never develop an aura of magic or charm, running around to little emotional effect. (But listen up in the English language version to hear Kate Winslet vocally imitate Elsa Lancaster as one of the villains.) Perhaps now that he’s displayed his wares, Yonebayashi will tone it down and stop pushing so hard. Hopefully on a story that doesn’t feel like ‘70s Disney animation with a plucky little girl in jeopardy, pumped up anime style.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Neither of Yonebayashi’s two previous films as director quite work, but as ‘Key Animator’ on his last two Ghibli projects (Gorô Miyazaki’s FROM UP ON POPPY HILL/’11 and Hayao Miyazaki’s THE WIND RISES/’13), he shows what he’s capable of on less fantastic, more down-to-earth material.

THE WILD ANGELS (1966)

Defacto celebration of the Hell’s Angels’ lifestyle posing as vicious exposé, Roger Corman’s smash low-budget/high return film plays even more oddly today than it must have on release. The first thing to note is how much better directed it is than your typical cobbled Corman-directed production, though close action stuff remains dicey. (Having Peter Bogdanovich & Monte Hellman as assistants helps.) The second is the dramatic gulf between the horrific behavior of its demon bikers and its tone of nodding approval as they proclaim their freedom-loving ways while tearing up towns, bashing Mexican-American ‘taco-benders,’ wrecking church interiors, even gang-raping the widow of one of their own behind a Swastika-bearing altar as his funeral service collapses into a free-for-all orgy of violence & screwing. No doubt, the basis of the film’s commercial appeal, especially as Drive-In fare. With Peter Fonda, deep-think bike-riding nihilist to a gang of bike-riding anarchists (he’s theoretically redeemed thru his blunt demeanor and bitter/honest-to-a-fault truth telling), and Nancy Sinatra as his intensely inexpressive main squeeze. Fonda pal Bruce Dern gets the big showy death scene along with a slice of morbid corpse comedy when he dies after being ‘rescued’ from his hospital bed. (The hospital abduction featuring the film’s most repulsive moment when a biker bud stops to rape a nurse. One of the few atrocities we’re not meant to cheer on.) Plus Diane Ladd, Dern’s wife at the time, playing his wife in Methody Actor manner before she too gets raped, or rather, gang-raped at his funeral service. Altogether, one peculiar pic, and with major historical curiosity value.

THE HIGH COST OF LOVING (1958)

Though he had more than four busy decades as a character actor in parts large & small, José Ferrer’s traditional leading man days in movies (i.e. the guy who gets the girl) came to a premature end in this odd dramedy, a ‘serious’ farce about a corporate takeover and the longtime assistant executive who misreads the signals on his future at the company. Cold, charmless & unable to modulate his voice from a theatrical base, Ferrer was always a tough fit in ‘Regular Joe’ roles. In any event, by the late ‘50s the baton for suburban middle-class company man was being passed to Jack Lemmon. (See Billy Wilder’s infinitely sharper, warmer, funnier, tougher THE APARTMENT/’60 for confirmation.) Ferrer also directs here, faking a bit of showy style in a wordless one-reel opening bit as he & the wife (a debuting, if not up to much, Gena Rowlands) go thru the morning routine: Wake-Up; Ablutions; Breakfast; Car Honk Goodbye. Meant to be witty, it’s as flat as the compressed grey-scale in George Folsey’s WideScreen/b&w lensing. And when he’s not actively trying for clever, he vamps on farcical plot misunderstandings for 90 contrived minutes.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned above, THE APARTMENT.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Instead of a poster, here’s the ‘sexy’ paperback cover of the film’s tie-in novelization. Looks provocative, but it’s just Rowlands handing a glass of O.J. to her showering husband. The film itself holds firmly to the old Production Code with the couple sleeping in twin beds.

THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL (1939)

Not to be confused with THEY MADE ME A KILLER/’46 (see right below) or THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE/’47 (see far below), THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL was rushed out by Warners in the wake of John Garfield’s star-making debut in FOUR DAUGHTERS/’38, and it shows. Pure (not to say puerile) cornball hoke, about newly crowned boxing champ Garfield going on the lam after wrongly thinking he’s killed a reporter. Claude Rains, brought along from the earlier film, is hopelessly miscast as the one ‘Noo Yawk’ detective who doesn’t think Garfield died in a car crash. (That crash, just a reel & a half into the pic, does take out fourth-billed above-the-title star Ann Sheridan, beating Janet Leigh in PSYCHO for famous early star departures.) Garfield ends up going West, picking up work on a date farm with The Dead End Kids where he falls for proprietor Gloria Dickson and holds his own in a local boxing challenge-bout to help save the farm. As long as nosy Claude Rains doesn’t spot his left jab! The whole ridiculous package might have overcome all absurdities if only those Dead Enders hadn’t started to outgrow their comic shtick; if Dickson & Garfield had some chemistry; or if director Busby Berkeley brought some of the eccentric brilliance of his dance routines to his dramatic work. Not just out of his element, he’s inept. A surprising stinker.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hiding from Rains, Garfield briefly ducks his big boxing match citing ‘a bum ticker.’ No gag! Garfield died of exactly that in 1952 only 39.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Listen in the opening credits to hear composer Max Steiner sample a bit of what would become his famous ‘Tara Theme’ from GONE WITH THE WIND out later this year.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Garfield would reteam with this pic’s cinematographer James Wong Howe (and redeem himself) with some of the best boxing scenes ever shot in BODY AND SOUL/’47.

THEY MADE ME A KILLER (1946)

Journeyman actor Robert Lowery thinks he’s showing off his speedy roadster to Lola Lane, her boyfriend & brother, but it's no test drive! This trio is conning him into acting as unwitting getaway driver in a daring daytime bank robbery. Yikes! And tack on a pair of murder charges when a cop & a bystander are killed during the escape. Double Yikes!! It makes a dandy opening story arc to this Poverty-Row/ Pine-Thomas indie production, directed by William Thomas and, more to the point, scripted by Daniel Mainwaring (aka Geoffrey Homes) who’d breakthru next year on the film noir classic OUT OF THE PAST/’47. Lowery, caught after he’s knocked-out in a car crash, soon escapes to go innocent-man-on-the-run, joining forces with skeptical Barbara Britton, eager to prove her brother (the dead bystander) was also innocent. Mainwaring keeps this up & running for about half the film’s short length (losing it after a neat surprise ‘reveal’ about the gang), as the second half gets by on lazy plot turns and a last act so dark & murky in all available prints, you can’t really see what’s going on. Too bad, a low-budget specialist like Edgar G. Ulmer or Joseph Lewis might have made a nasty little gem out of this. But Pine doesn’t know how to hide the cracks of his semi-precious stone with a clever setting.

LINK: Here’s a youtube link you can stream. Decent most of the way, but so dim in the last act, it might be a radio play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyh5slCCNDM

GREEN BOOK (2018)

Fact-suggested* story about classically-trained ‘Pop’/Jazz pianist Don Shirley and his tough-guy chauffeur on a two-month tour down South. The gimmick: Shirley/Black; Driver/Italian WiseGuy; and ‘Jim Crow’ attitudes alive & well in 1962. (A computer program could have fleshed this out.) So . . . A Road Movie (No Problem); A Buddy Pic (No Problem); an Odd Couple knock-off (No Problem) . . . or would be, if script & direction didn’t make this pair not just A Odd Couple, but THE Odd Couple. As in Neil Simon’s THE ODD COUPLE; with Mahershala Ali’s pianist a prissy, prickly Felix Unger type who needs to warm up to regular people (especially ‘his own kind’) and Viggo Mortensen’s vulgarian driver offering street wisdom while acquiring a bit of class & polish as their wary relationship evolves, via crises overcome, into real friendship; a race/relationship story that congratulates its audience on their tolerance. Not really much to ask fifty years after the fact, even less when you add in a distancing period look that, under director Peter Farrelly, feels more ‘curated’ than lived in. Mortensen suffers under a bad dye job for much of the film (his hair turns noticeably lighter in the last act), but has an infectiously good time displaying an extra 30 pounds in white underwear. And Ali gets to shift into Award Mode on his showy ‘Where do I fit in, anyway?’ arioso. They’re both fine, the movie’s fine, the sentiments fine, but the film may be most useful as a mnemonic for ‘anodyne.’

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Apparently, relatives of the late Don Shirley have taken issue with . . . well, with just about everything. But that’s the way with Bio-Pics, they're fictional. And typical of the form, the one thing that always turns out to be 100% true is the most unlikely moment. Here, the severe Christmas snowstorm that blankets the NorthEast as they try to drive home for the holidays. Turns out, this really happened; half a foot on the ground of NYC in 1962. Sweet.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Right before the drive North, Shirley shows off his stuff (and new-found humanity) in a New Orleans Jazz Club/Restaurant where he first wows the crowd with a spontaneous (if abridged) performance of Chopin’s ‘Winter Winds’ Etude before joining the house-band to display some serious ‘jazz chops.’ For a change, the filmmakers don’t make some ratty old upright sound like a Steinway Grand, but let us hear Shirley's impressive technique do battle with a crummy instrument. Just the sort of attention to detail & verisimilitude generally missing here.

FORT APACHE, THE BRONX (1981)

Other than SLAP SHOT/’77, his Let-It-All-Hang-Out, feel-good, middle-age breakthru, Paul Newman was drawing blanks in the late ‘70s: two high-visibility flops for Robert Altman and a deeply embarrassing second-drawer Irwin Allen disaster pic. So this straightforward cop meller came at just the right time, setting up Newman’s impressive late-career run even if it felt more like a pilot for some tv series than a stand-alone movie.* More character study then police procedural, Daniel Petrie’s faceless direction, working hand-in-glove with John Alcott’s grubby South Bronx location lensing, is better at interpersonal relationships than action. The dramatic motor is Pam Grier’s cop-killing, drug-addled prostitute, but the main interest follows Newman and partner Ken Wahl (the handsomest pair of cops ever to share a patrol car) thru girlfriends & station-house loyalties as Edward Asner’s precinct commander is transferred in with a ‘new broom’ approach to corruption & SNAFU practices. The film cops outs at the end with a big explanation/apologia from Asner and a freeze-frame back-in-action shot of Newman, pretty phony stuff. Elsewise worth a look for tasty acting, time-capsule attitudes and vivid locations.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Sure enough, about eight months after this opened, HILL ST. BLUES debuted on NBC, with many similar ensemble cop shows to follow.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Someone should reboot GOING IN STYLE (that senior citizen bank robbery tale recently remade with Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine & Alan Arkin in roles first handled by George Burns, Art Carney & Lee Strasberg) as a tv series for reclusive cult-actors Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver), Jan-Michael Vincent (Airwolf) and this film’s Ken Wahl (Wiseguy).

SHOCK (1946)

Half-baked film noir with many a nod toward Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND/’45 (itself on the undercooked side): Freudian nightmares as artsy cinematic dreams; a violent madman roaming sanatorium halls; and a top shrink with murder on his C.V. Made on the cheap by director Alfred Werker, with co-lensers Joseph MacDonald & Glen MacWilliams using legerdemain camera tricks to keep the general silliness at bay. In truth, they generate more suspense having their unusually tall cast work on sets with improbably low ceilings & tight door frames. Look out! You’ll bump your head! The plot has returning war vet/POW Frank Latimore finding wife Anabel Shaw in catatonic shock after witnessing a murder in the neighboring flat. Fortunately, there’s a psychiatrist right in the building, Vincent Price. Unfortunately, he’s the murderer. Yikes! Now, he and his mistress (evil Lynn Bari who apparently borrowed Claudette Colbert’s stylists) are planning to drive the girl mad to keep her quiet, even kill her if necessary. Lots of fun in demented low-budget fashion (some of the laughs must have been intentional), with top-billed Price in clover and Bari, often something of an also-ran choice, a standout as an amoral villain.

DOUBLE-BILL: Naturally, SPELLBOUND, though it hardly lives up to the hype. OR: See director Werker on better form in a pair of the docu-flavored dramas favored @ 20th/Fox: HE WALKED BY NIGHT/’48; LOST BOUNDARIES/’49. (both covered below)

LINK: Here’s another Public Domain pic, long out on various subfusc DVDs, now available as an excellent youtube freebie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrmhiS5L2Rk

STOLEN HOLIDAY (1937)

Loosely suggested by the recent ‘Stavisky Affair’ in France*, where an investment swindler’s collapse brought down government & financial institutions, this became a not so atypical Kay Francis vehicle by emphasizing the romantic angle over a very sketchy bond scam. And that’d be fine if either the romance or the scam were filled in better. Alas, Casey Robinson’s script never connects the dots as Francis’s chic clothes model strikes a platonic chord with Claude Rains’ shady investor: He funds her line of clothing stores/She gets him entry into high society. But then real romance comes her way via British attaché Ian Hunter just as Rains' money juggling act starts breaking down. Dramatically, this goes nowhere, with financial machinations left unexplained/unexamined, and romance forced & unconvincing. Even Michael Curtiz, a director who could handle just about anything, is left twisting in the wind on this one. A shame, as Rains is exceptional while Francis shows more bare back and expansive decolletage in a formal gown than most women did in swimsuits of the day.

DOUBLE-BILL: *This story, loaded with political fights of the '30s, gets covered, if hardly explained, in Alain Resnais’s mega-confusing STAVISKY/’74 with Jean-Paul Belmondo & Charles Boyer.

A QUIET PLACE (2018)

'Thinking Man’s' Horror for people who don’t think. This surprise hit for John Krasinski (writer/producer/director/star) takes your standard post-apocalyptic/War of the Worlds dystopian set-up into the countryside where Farmer John and stalwart family (wife, three kids, one on the way) live in near silence (plus sign language) to survive destructive blind, sound-seeking monsters. It’s the sort of story just made for a scary 15-minute Camp Fire tale, but tricky to sustain at 90 minutes. Little surprise then to find Krasinski stretching this out with the usual Fright Flick tropes, shock cuts, back-of-the-frame monster sightings, and dumb choices from a small cast to bring on troubles. Somehow they all stay safe for a year and a half without a snore, burp or fart giving them away. The film holds more interest quietly working thru various family dynamic issues: sulking teens, burn-out, fear of the known & unknown, closure after a needless, but perhaps not blameless, death in the family. Plus young Noah Jupe as the son, scoring with a face of near-perpetual anxiety.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: More (and rather better) art-house horror in THE BABADOOK/’14.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-babadook-2014.html

GOLDEN DAWN (1930)

Less than a month before Oscar Hammerstein II opened his B’way musical about a white performer cut down by a drop of Negro blood in her past, he opened this B’way operetta about a ‘white’ African Princess cut down for not having a drop of Negro blood in her past! The first was legendary: SHOW BOAT; the latter was bizarre: this Emmerich Kálmán operetta*, with a cast of 108 (plus chorus), snapped up by Warner Brothers for a 2-strip TechniColor adaptation. Alas, no TechniColor survives for the VOD in this otherwise well-preserved Early Talkie, but the soundtrack quality is quite striking for the period, and Kálmán’s score (with jazzy comic additions presumably from Herbert Stothart) is not without interest. But what an insane, Political Incorrect piece of work! A tale of British East Africa where Brits and Germans trade prisoners & territory while keeping an eye on those restless natives. B’way musical star Vivienne Segal (Rodgers & Hart’s ‘go-to’ gal*) shows off her considerable upper register as the ‘White Princess’ who causes all the trouble; Walter Woolf King the handsome Brit who comes back to rescue her; and Noah Beery in dusky makeup (not traditional BlackFace) is the conniving overseer with dreams of grandeur. (All singing ‘live,’ as was customary at the time.) While it’s too odd to be objectionable (well, maybe not), the film does include some standout comic perfs, a farcical S & M love number and a brief eccentric-dance/acrobatic number from Music Hall star Lupino Lane of the famous Lupino family (which includes Ida Lupino), on stage going back to commedia dell’arte days. Sometimes history is jaw-droppingly weird.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Though less well known Stateside, post-Johann Strauss Jr., Franz Lehár and Kálmán were tops in Viennese operetta.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Vivienne Segal, who only made about five films, mostly stiff Early Talkies, got her best shot in 1934's THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE against Jeanette MacDonald and Ramon Novarro (his best sound film).

NIGHT WATCH (1973)

If you can be satisfied with merely a finale (clever, vicious, two scenes & out), this late Elizabeth Taylor vehicle just might pass. Only 41 at the time, but near the end of her run as a regular working actress, La Liz goes thru the (e)motions as Lady in Distress while husband Laurence Harvey & BFF Billie Whitelaw (his secret mistress) try driving her mad and into a posh sanatorium, ‘Gaslighting’ with visions of bloody murder behind the shutters of that vacant house across from her bedroom window. GASLIGHT/’44, the movie with Ingrid Bergman & Charles Boyer, set the standard on these things, and more recently, Doris Day pulled the same stunt at about the same age with Rex Harrison in MIDNIGHT LACE/’60. Based on a play by SORRY, WRONG NUMBER author Lucille Fletcher (five months on B’way with Joan Hackett & Len Cariou), it’s tiresome stuff under Brian Hutton’s dogged direction. But you can amuse yourself waiting for the big explosion/confrontation by watching Taylor’s hair & makeup change from scene to scene (even shot to shot) depending on what kind of night she’d had. The Grand Guignol, when it comes, is half-hearted, but a followup telephone routine finds Liz in excelsis, masterfully switching character between puffs on her cigarette. Barely lasting a minute, it’s the happiest piece of acting she‘d done in years.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, the slightly ludicrous MIDNIGHT LACE (see below), creating its fantasy London nabe on the Universal backlot to risible effect.

IMPACT (1949)

Dandy low-budget noir, extra twisty, with ‘borrowed’ elements from more expensive forerunners you might expect (DOUBLE INDEMNITY/’44; LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN/’45) and some you might not (RANDOM HARVEST/’42). Working for indie producer Harry Popkin, journeyman Jack-of-All-Genres Arthur Lubin gets tip-top perfs from Brian Donlevy, Ella Raines, Charles Coburn, Helen Walker, Anna May Wong & Mae Marsh in this murder-gone-wrong tale of unfaithful wife, duped husband, and the country lass who knows a good thing when she sees it. Or at least a good mechanic! Cinematographer Ernst Laszlo does well on some real small-town locations, and even better with some downright weird soundstage exteriors out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.* But what really sticks with you is the last act flip-flop murder indictments and the way Donlevy brings a touch of real anguish to the mix.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *One thing Laszlo didn’t get right was figuring out how best to shoot long-faced Ella Raines. And someone watching ‘dailies’ took note, changing her hair style four or five times over the course of the film. (I’ll make her look like Lauren Bacall if it kills me!) One particular horror rolls her hair into buns by each ear, like Carrie Fisher’s infamous STAR WARS ‘do.’

LINK: Available for years in the usual subfusc Public Domain options, there are now better choices on youtube. Here (while it lasts) is a pretty smooth one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu0pCB_gtgM

WONDER WHEEL (2017)

In what may prove to be the last wide theatrical release of his career (what with age, declining commercial results, changing distribution models and #Metoo), Woody Allen goes out, not with a bang, but with the proverbial whimper. A physically beautiful whimper, with a stunning recreation of 1950s Coney Island & Boardwalk, if only the attempt at up-dated Greek Tragedy had the same rejuvenating effect on Allen's writing, and didn't feel forced on the material. Or is it resigned? In his script, Allen refers to playwright Eugene O’Neill, an enthusiastic borrower from the Greeks, but we’re closer to the Arthur Miller of A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE: tin-ear dialogue, family sexual dynamics & Psych. 101 storylines. At heart, a love triangle with step-daughter Juno Temple & step-mom Kate Winslet at first unknowingly falling for the same hunky lifeguard (Justin Timberlake*), complicated by Temple’s Mob Boss Ex; Winslet’s gruff husband (Jim Belushi) & pyromaniac kid. Winslet gets the worst of it, her clam-house waitress breaking down from Nervous Nellie to Mad Martha, all in a localized accent so perfect, you never believe it. (Like a forged signature that’s too exact a copy.) Once past an off-putting intro, Belushi is the film’s main surprise, leaning hard on a Ralph Kramden mold stripped of comic veneer for ballast, and finding a living character. But then Woody reels in a pair of WiseGuys from THE SOPRANOS as threatening mob men, pulling us entirely out of the show while, mercifully, providing the film’s sole comic leavening.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Allen did better mixing up genres & gags in this territory with BROADWAY DANNY ROSE/‘84 , an underappreciated gem.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Relative to Eugene O’Neill, Winslet mentions a Summer Stock gig in THE ICEMAN COMETH. (Really?, that four & a half hour barroom slog in summer stock?) HAMLET and ORPHEUS are also touched upon. Maybe that’s why Winslet’s overripe work brings Anna Magnani's attempt at Tennessee Williams to mind, especially THE FUGITIVE KIND/’60, taken from the play ORPHEUS DESCENDING. And as for the Belushi/Ralph Kramden connection, Jackie Gleason did indeed play O’Neill, winning a Tony Award as Uncle Sid in the musical TAKE ME ALONG, based on AH, WILDERNESS. And, to follow the line to its conclusion, Uncle Sid is an early sketch for Hickey in . . . THE ICEMAN COMETH.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Meanwhile, check out Justin Timberlake in profile as he shares a birthday pizza with Temple. Suddenly, with careful lighting & angles from great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, he’s a ringer for late (post-accident) Montgomery Clift. Who'da thunk?

RED DUST (1932)

1932 saw director Victor Fleming, and to some extent M-G-M, shed Early Talkie stiffness in films like this exotic/erotic Pre-Code romantic adventure for Clark Gable & Jean Harlow, pawing each other at his Indo-China Rubber Plantation. But when new assistant Gene Raymond shows up with tony wife Mary Astor (and tennis rackets!), Harlow’s good-time gal fears she’s out-classed, out-maneuvered & on her way out. Fleming keeps the construction tight, relationships hot, and laughs & hormonal impulses lively, bringing the film in at a concise 83 minutes on some superbly faked studio sets. (John Ford’s equally fine African-set remake, MOGAMBO, still with Gable twenty years later, and shot on real locations, adds 30+ minutes.*) Gable, always at his best under Fleming, displays his early glamorous peak in the sweaty tropics (no mustache/no shirt). And Fleming, a vastly underrated director of women, gets more than just sex & fun out of Harlow, just as he had with Clara Bow back in the silents. He makes these gals legit!*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *In Ford’s remake (MOGAMBO/’53 - see below), they reverse the good girl/bad girl hair color dichotomy with blonde Grace Kelly taking over from brunette Mary Astor and brunette Ava Gardner in for platinum blonde Harlow. Tempus fugit . . . in fashion, anyway.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Try the next Fleming/Harlow, BOMBSHELL/’33, one of the funniest Hollywood satires.

ANNAPOLIS SALUTE (1937)

Modest R.K.O. programmer, neatly handled by workhorse director Christy Cabanne (at the helm since the ‘teens), about a motley quartet of Naval Academy Cadets who fall out over one of the guys’ good-lookin’ sister. That’d be Marsha Hunt, while the roomies are James Ellison (girl-averse son of Navy lifer Harry Carey); Van Heflin (rich kid, trying to bust out of the joint thru bad behavior); bland Dick Hogan; and goofy Arthur Lake. Pretty tame drama, but helped by real Annapolis locations and by a young, largely untested cast all in their twenties. Fun to see Van Heflin trying out James Cagney stylings before M-G-M took him on, adding glasses & pipe to groom him as their in-house intellectual leading man. And the sexual politics are also of interest, in a depressing way, confirming that good gals can shake an ambitious man off-course just as easily as a bad one. Yikes! When’s the last time a red-blooded fellow could be complimented for being ‘a woman hater.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Spatting & sparring early in the film over class issues, Ellison and Heflin settle things in an unusually convincing little boxing match that’s neither laughably fake nor OTT brutal. No small achievement then or now.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (1956)

Polished up to something near its original gloss from 24-fps elements (the 30-fps RoadShow special engagement version too damaged for resuscitation?), producer Mike Todd’s crap-shoot extravaganza is again able to make its mark after decades of neglect and degraded presentation (grainy third-generation copies, cut prints, pan-and-scan framing), not so much as a great movie but as a great show . . . as in showmanship. (In spite of its Best Pic Oscar®, the only thing in it approaching film artistry is Saul Bass’s animated credit sequence at the end; and Victor Young’s sumptuous score, a big bestseller for Decca Records. Director Michael Anderson’s efforts no more than dutiful, meant to serve the spectacle.) David Niven & Cantinflas make an endearing one-off partnership as punctilious gentleman Phileas Fogg and flighty but resourceful servant Passepartout, barely getting thru some adventure at every port of call as they (circum)navigate dangers to win a bet; hounded each step of the journey by Robert Newton’s Inspector Fix and briefly bumping into half the well-known personalities of the day. (Many, no doubt, a complete mystery to modern audiences.) In her first film role (third to be released), Shirley MacLaine is wildly miscast as an Indian Princess, but still charming. All in all, the film makes for politely humorous, if pointedly leisurely fun*, offering its wisp of a story on a huge canvas meant to out-dazzle Cinerama as visual spectacular. Note the ‘You Are There’ POV shots popping up every reel or so to amaze the child traveler in us all.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The leisurely quality quite intended; audiences wanted to get their money’s-worth on those pricey RoadShow advance-ticketed reserved seats.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Half of Oscar’s Best Pic winners in the ‘50s Commie Witch-Hunt Era were Big/Safe choices like 80 DAYS, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, BEN-HUR and GIGI.   (Two of these, legit choices as the year’s best.)