PASSPORT TO DESTINY (1944)

As long as she's carrying the ‘magic eye’ talisman that once saved the life of her late husband*, charwoman Elsa Lancaster feels protected from all harm. Especially after a series near misses from Nazi bombs during a WWII London blitz attack. Damn that Hitler! She’ll show him! Certain that she’s safe with the ‘magic eye’ on her person, she starts off on a journey (by boat, by train, by foot), jobbing her way all the way to Berlin as a ‘deaf & dumb’ cleaning lady; carrying a wash bucket proudly labeled ‘Made In England’ on it’s bottom & picking up all sorts of tips as she listens in on conversations no one bothers to keep her from 'harmlessly' overhearing. Deaf, ya know. (Finally reaching Berlin, she heads straight to a phone booth so she can look up Hitler’s address in the book. Of course!) Lancaster’s just the eccentric actress to pull this one off, a goofball programmer from journeyman director Ray McCarey who makes sure it’s quick paced & good-natured, winningly absurd. A sui generis oddity for 65 grin-filled minutes.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Naturally, the snapshot Lancaster carries of her late husband is real life mate Charles Laughton, at the time filming THE CANTERBURY GHOST/’44, heavy-handed prestigious whimsy against this Dada-esque whimsy. OR: For a serious/pretentious look at an immortality complex, Peter Weir’s FEARLESS/’93 with a truly fearless perf from Jeff Bridges.

ADAM AND EVELINE (1949)

Pleasant little romance between an orphan girl and her unlikely ward starts like DADDY LONG LEGS before settling down as SABRINA, with Jean Simmons going from wide-eyed gamine to sophisticated minx under the protective gaze of high society gambling proprietor Stewart Granger.* Made about year before they married, and had their Hollywood debuts, their sixteen year age difference plays right into the storyline. So too the mutual admiration! If only it were a bit more polished and glamorous. Maybe like DADDY LONG LEGS/’55 (Fred Astaire; Leslie Caron) or SABRINA/’54 (Humphrey Bogart/Audrey Hepburn). It’s a case where a bit of cash flaunting Hollywood posh would have helped. Points to director Harold French for a brisk pace and not too much forced silliness & dopey misunderstandings; debits for a brusque/flat ending. But in general, a fun, sensible romance.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The Stateside release nipped a couple of reels off the running time (from 92 to 70 minutes) and used the eccentric spelling EVALINE. Those wild & crazy advertizing execs!

DOUBLE-BILL: *A good excuse to revisit Mary Pickford’s wonderful 1919 version of DADDY LONG LEGS, with witty touches from director Marshall Neilan (dig those Cupids), strong Dickensian flavor in the orphanage section, and the usual stickiness in having a ‘benefactor’ take a romantic interest in his ‘child.’

DEVIL'S DOORWAY (1950)

A year before QUO VADIS gave Robert Taylor his greatest commercial success, he made this barely released flop playing a full-bloodied Shoshone Indian on an unwelcome homecoming after decorated Civil War service. (Parallels to post WWII Black experience noted.) Taylor, hair slicked straight back/‘tawny’ makeup, emotionally opaque as ever, is only slightly less convincing than he was as a Roman general, but the casting is naturally more objectionable. A shame because the film is surprisingly tough & uncompromising, a tragedy continuing in the socially conscious vein of BORDER INCIDENT/’49, the previous collaboration of producer Nicholas Nayfack, director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton. Certainly an odd spot to find the politically reactionary, artistically stolid Taylor! Paula Raymond as Taylor's legal rep/love interest against a government mandated land grab doesn’t bring much with her, but the rest of the cast is strikingly fine. Louis Calhern’s racist nemesis exceptional, much helped by extreme camera placements & lighting choices by Alton & Mann. Hard to see how this one got past M-G-M production head Louis B. Mayer. Even in his weakened position at the studio with Dore Schary now sharing top duties, soon to take over. Ironically, Mayer’s last hurrah would come in QUO VADIS. No wonder Taylor stayed loyal to the old guard.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, BORDER INCIDENT, with a commanding perf from Ricardo Montalban and a surprisingly good one from George Murphy on a still timely topic.

CITY BENEATH THE SEA (1953)

Even with a decent budget from Universal, director Budd Boetticher can’t do much with this C-Grade material about palsy-walsy deep-sea divers Robert Ryan & Anthony Quinn taking their ‘Ugly American’ act (they're meant to be irrepressible) to Kingston, Jamaica on an underwater search for a million bucks in sunken gold bullion. The trick of the thing, and it’s not a bad setup, has them unaware they’re being sent to the wrong location on purpose to satisfy an insurance claim. Behind the scenes, both the company man and the ship’s captain who supposedly sunk with his ship separately know the correct coordinates and soon have Quinn & Ryan working against each other to find it first. TechniColor and some unusually well-handled backscreen projection out at sea only add to the frustration of a lousy script, a lack of sex appeal or chemistry with boat owner Mala Powers (imagine Georgia Engel of the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, but brunette), and half-baked voodoo worshipers threatening to revolt against divers defiling their sacred underwater city. The only likeable people around are local go-fer Calypso, nicely played by Lalo Rios (familiar from good roles in THE LAWLESS/’50*; THE RING/’52; TOUCH OF EVIL/’58) and Woody Strode, awesome as ever even if his Boss does call him 'Boy.'

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *To help make up for the casual racism seen here: As mentioned above, Joseph Losey’s little seen/underappreciated THE LAWLESS, strong stuff on SouthWest bordertown racial prejudice.

ONE FALSE MOVE (1992)

Close only counts in horseshoes . . . and genre movies! This one’s a laid-back thriller that pits L.A. detectives against a small town cop excited to play with the big boys on a dangerous case that’s coming his way. Director Carl Franklin, better at atmosphere than suspense or action, can’t paper over some major script flaws, but the story holds you anyway thanks largely to Bill Paxton’s star turn as top cop in a small Southern town. He brings so much generosity to it, especially once he realizes he may be in over his head, we can see right thru his skin. He knows he should be deferring to those two vet L.A. detectives waiting to nab a trio of murdering drug dealers before they unload the stash they stole back in California. They've already killed the occupants of two houses. But pride goeth before a fall as one of the killers, the drug addled girl in the trio (Cynda Williams), has a past with Paxton which is leading them there and exposing personal complications for Paxton. Billy Bob Thornton’s first produced script (he also plays one of the bad guys*), he makes plenty of beginner mistakes: hitting too many points on the nose, asking unearned sympathy for Williams’ character (in a way, she’s the worst of the bunch) and crucially misreading Paxton’s behavior patterns to make his action climax work. Fortunately, Franklin, Paxton & crew have built up enough good will by then to get us thru. It may not ring the iron post, but close enough for points.

DOUBLE-BILL: A late entry in the series of Neo-Noirs kickstarted by BLOOD SIMPLE/’84, the film was unhappily released by IRS Media (who they?) and largely ignored at the time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *As the third bad guy, Michael Beach easily outacts his two accomplices.

TAKE ONE FALSE STEP (1949)

This innocent-man-on-the-run film noir (half serious suspener/half comic put-on) diligently ticks every box in the formula and still gets every genre trope wrong. (They should make it mandatory viewing at UCLA Film School.) Chester Erskine who directed (and co-wrote with Irwin Shaw) over-eggs a decent enough mystery with corkscrew twisty narrative baggage and illogical character behavior as Professor William Powell (out of sorts for the only time in his long career) reconnects over drinks with pre-war flame Shelley Winters before meeting up for a late night get-together. Big mistake as Shelley (thin & glam) pushes her unwanted attentions on Powell at the home of gal pal Marsha Hunt. Finding out that Shelley’s mixed up with some mysterious lowlifes, Powell, now even more eager to clear out, drops Shelley off at home; picks up an injured crook; is knocked out in a car accident; becomes a ‘wanted man’ when Winters goes missing (presumed dead); breaks into her home to seek clues; gets bitten by her rabid dog; rushes to a lecture hall to give a speech; nods briefly at his wife just in from the East Coast; finds the cops back on his tail; keeps a rendezvous with Shelley’s likely killer only to watch as cops chase the guy into an on-coming train . . . Yikes! And that’s just the half of it. The film starts nicely, teasing us with a witty credit sequence showcasing ‘false step’ accidents waiting to happen. But Erskine won't settle on a tone; and even if he did, hasn’t the technical chops to carry it off.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: A last film for character actor Felix Bressart, visibly dying of leukemia. A favorite of Ernst Lubitsch, see him shine in NINOTCHKA/’39; SHOP AROUND THE CORNER/’40 and TO BE OR NOT TO BE/’42. OR: See Powell deal with another sham murder in a neat little 1933 Warners programmer, PRIVATE DETECTIVE 62.

CLAUDIA AND DAVID (1946)

Having transferred her big B’way success into a hit movie debut, Dorothy McGuire double-dipped on CLAUDIA/’43 with a sequel continuing the modest bumps & bruises of upper-middle-class marriage to solid, sensible, self-centered David, her dependable architect husband (again played by Robert Young). Alas, the debatable charm of an innocent, inexperienced, ill-prepared ‘child-bride’ has curdled with the passing years into an off-putting patronizing manner & attitude (from David and the movie). Three years after the first film, we’ve jumped ahead about seven to judge by their son, but Claudia has, if anything, regressed socially & intellectually. In a way, it’s rather fascinating, not dissimilar to what millions of women were experiencing with the end of the war economy & the resurgence of gender definitions that had collapsed for the war effort. And, of course, social & medical ideas of the day stand out in stark relief. People certainly were laid-back about measles back in the day! But for non-social-historians, mainly worth a peek to see Mary Astor in a decent role wipe the floor in star wattage with everyone else on screen.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For a better snapshot of the means, manners & comforts of post-WWII suburban boom, try Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A LETTER TO THREE WIVES/’49 which also provides proof that Jeanne Crain & Dorothy McGuire weren’t the same person.

THE STUDENT PRINCE IN OLD HEIDELBERG (1927)

Even for a late silent (1924-‘29), when it seemed everyone was making masterpieces, this is something special. Funny, heartfelt & heartbreaking, a Ruritanian Royal/Commoner Romance for Ramon Novarro’s Crown Prince (cosseted, cloistered, emotionally corseted) and Norma Shearer’s inn-keeping barmaid (free-spirited & lovely) whom he meets and instantly falls in love with during his all-too-brief college sojourn, the only taste of common life he’ll ever know. ‘Golden Days’ to treasure during what’s likely to be a long lonely reign in a politically arranged marriage. Brought to life with all the expected wit, human comedy & knowingly naughty ‘touches’ you expect from Ernest Lubitsch*, here given without ironic distancing or quotation marks for heart-on-sleeve emotions; plus a truly gasp-inducing rhapsodic lyricism perhaps only possible on the silent screen. Loaded with unforgettable character turns and visual shorthand that sets up, comments on and resolves issues at a single stroke . . . with laughs tossed in as bonus. Novarro, good as he often was, never did anything better. But Shearer is the true revelation. Transformed by Lubitsch’s prodding into the natural warm-blooded actress she so desperately wanted to be and never quite managed elsewhere. An enchantment, her & the pic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The official M-G-M DVD comes with a flat soundtrack, a real drawback on a silent pic! Instead, look for the superb Thames edition, produced by David Gill & Kevin Brownlow with a gorgeous original Carl Davis score. M-G-M’s ‘54 remake uses the Sigmund Romberg operetta score, but has little else to recommend it.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *It comes up very dark in available prints, but look sharp during the Novarro/Shearer courting scene for a little dachshund who makes a decidedly phallic appearance.

DOUBLE-BILL: Billy Wilder & William Wyler at Lubitsch’s funeral. Wilder: Well, no more Lubitsch. Wyler: Worse, no more Lubitsch pictures. Yet, Wyler got closer than most with the Royal/Commoner romance of ROMAN HOLIDAY/’53. Wilder’s Lubitsch tribute is his uneven, emotionally charged LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON/’57.

PAYMENT ON DEMAND (1951)

Bette Davis comes on like some junior league Regina Giddens from THE LITTLE FOXES/’41 in this one, an ambitious, win-at-all-costs, social climbing horror to her go-along lawyer/hubby Barry Sullivan. We start at the finish when he’s had 25 years of it and asks for a divorce, then dip in & out of the past to see the moral shortcuts that got them here. Davis plays the opening too hard, as if the film was traditionally structured, but it pays off soon enough; a cubist portrait. With one of her two daughters, Betty Lynn, a truly believable physical match, a smart, well-centered kid who knows how to get the best out of each parent. Director Curtis Bernhardt uses tricky stage-like transitions (lighting cues instead of dissolves) for the time shifts, but elsewhere tends to sit on scenes. Shot shortly after Davis left Warners, RKO head Howard Hughes’ habitual dithering paid off when ALL ABOUT EVE came out first to set this up commercially. Too bad he weakened the film with a reshot, soft-soap tag ending.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: That’s stage giant Jane Cowl, in a rare film perf, playing a cautionary divorcée in this, her last role, living in sin with an effeminate poet she ‘supports.’ Obviously a fate worse than death! Earlier in her fabled B’way career, Cowl played the role Davis took against Miriam Hopkins in John Van Druten’s OLD ACQUAINTANCE/’43. Later updated & played by Jacqueline Bisset & Candice Bergen in George Cukor’s RICH AND FAMOUS/’81.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Look fast to catch a pregnant Davis with a mighty big baby bump.  A rare sight in ‘51 when such frankness was still being censored on the big screen.

QUAI DES ORFÈVRES (1947) (1947)

Having pissed off Occupying Nazis and Free French forces with LE CORBEAU (this masterful poison-pen thriller can be read many ways), Henri-Georges Cluozot had to wait four years to resurrect his rep with this only slightly less vicious murder-mystery/policier. Suzy Delair (who just died at 103) is a sexy flirt for professional purposes, anything to move her singing career forward, but really cares only for dour musician husband Bernard Blier. Not that he believes her, stoking a growing rage when he might with a bit more justification be jealous of Delair’s gal pal, photographer Simone Renant, currently earning a nice piece of change taking nudes of teenage girls for the same rich decrepit pervert offering to take charge of Delair’s career. But then the old creep turns up dead with too many suspects for the murder, all of them lying to each other and to shabby chief inspector Louis Jouvet, who proceeds to shuffle off with the pic. With enough twists for a season’s-worth of COLUMBOs, Clouzot, joined at the hip to regular cinematographer Armand Thirard (such compositions!, such moves!; such lighting!), keeps his balls in the air without making it look like an empty party trick. Great work from the whole cast; and a nice surprise in spotlighting the loving relationship between widowed Jouvet and a son who just happens to be black, an unusual touch at the time.

DOUBLE-BILL: While you’ve likely seen WAGES OF FEAR/'53 and DIABOLIQUE, take a step back for Clouzot's LE CORBEAU/’43.

100 MEN AND A GIRL (1937)

Modern audiences are often surprised at first hearing the high, fluttery lite-classical soprano voice Walt Disney picked for SNOW WHITE. An elitist, rather than popular choice? Not really. Mainstream in 1937. Vying for the top box-office spot that year, MAYTIME, with high-flying songbird Jeanette MacDonald at a commercial peak. And not far behind, savior of Universal Studios, 16-yr-old coloratura Deanna Durbin in her second and best film. Vocally, Durbin was the real deal, with an exceptionally well-produced voice, warm where others were wiry, without excessive vibrato or iffy intonation. But if the voice never let her down, her studio often did. Not here, though. In what might be called the Frank Capra Durbin film, she’s a determined little minx, fighting to give her instrumentalist father, and 100 unemployed symphonic friends of his, a shot at a radio broadcast contract. If only they had a ‘name’ conductor to kickstart their pickup orchestra. Enter Leopold Stokowski, three years before FANTASIA. Too bad he’s already got a band of his own!* Luckily, he gets doubly caught: first by the singing of this young girl; second by her sob story. (Silly as it is, the reality of the situation behind the fantasy helps keep the film grounded.) Cleverly plotted and just believable enough, the Joe Pasternak production is darn swanky for Universal, imaginatively directed by Henry Koster before he became something of a dullard, and given a far stronger supporting cast than Universal was known to muster. Top players Alice Brady, Eugene Pallette and a wonderful Mischa Auer still on call after last year’s MY MAN GODFREY, along with Adolphe Menjou channeling honest emotion as Durbin’s protective father. It’s a paradigm of a certain kind of touching/uplifting Depression fable and certainly the best place to start with Durbin.

DOUBLE-BILL: After going thru a chubby phase, Durbin dieted down for a late pic, SOMETHING IN THE WIND/’47, largely worth a look for the chemistry between her and young Donald O’Connor. The plot doesn’t seem to notice the rapport, but you do get to see O’Connor in something of a proto-‘Make ‘Em Laugh’ musical-comedy ‘numbo’ that’s worth the price of admission.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Sure enough, the ad-hoc/pickup orchestras Stokowski recorded with between symphonic directorships were often as not labeled ‘His Orchestra.’

THE BRAVE ONE (1956)

Hiding as ‘Robert Rich,’ BlackListed scripter Dalton Trumbo won a stealth Best Story Oscar® (over the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and UMBERTO D.’s Cesare Zavattini!) for this sentimental treacle, a boy-and-his-dog story with a cow subbing for the dog. Yikes! Handsomely shot in Mexico, we see the cow grow into an arena-worthy bull fit for slaughter, but not before a lot of back-and-forth social-class struggle between el patrone and the boy’s poor landworking family. Stunningly lensed in hyper-realistic/ultra-saturated TechniColor & CinemaScope by Jack Hilyard, the South-of-the-Border verisimilitude compromised by English dialogue (a perfectly acceptable convention) and a lead kid with a cultured British uppercrust accent & big blue eyes (perhaps less acceptable). But suddenly, in the third act, everything comes into thrilling focus as the pic shifts from rural pastorale to urban verities and Death In The Afternoon as the boy (having aged maybe a month or two in four years) tries to roust up a presidential pardon for his beloved bull with visits to a series of magnificent palaces & government buildings before returning to the ring to witness the fatal blow. The sweep and grandeur of these last three reels (playing out like a modern silent film much as the first act of THE BLACK STALLION/’79 does) presumably handled not by director Irving Rapper (we’re way out of his fach*), but by some unnamed second-unit crew. Tremendous stuff, the bullfighting some of the best ever captured which makes an otherwise natural family picture a difficult watch . . . for kids or grownups. (Even with much of the worst hidden.) The pic cumulatively emotional; downright weird.

DOUBLE-BILL: *More bullfighting, well, faux bullfighting, in Rapper’s next, MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR/’58, with comedian Ed Wynn kidding around until the parody takes a tragic turn.

FAST WORKERS (1933)

Belying their doomed Hollywood careers, fast-fading silent film super-star John Gilbert and disinterested silent horror-specialist director Tod Browning make a good job of this funny, tough-minded programmer. The setup, a favorite of Raoul Walsh & Howard Hawks, has two competitive pals driven apart by a gold-digging floozy when the real love match is between the fellas. Swap in a new profession/backdrop and just run the template. Here, it’s rivet men on a new skyscraper, Gilbert the hot-tempered sharpie/Robert Armstrong the soft-touch sap. Mae Clarke does a nice job suppressing her honest romantic inclinations to grab what she can out of a man’s saving account, but the main reason to have a look is for the unexpectedly strong work from Gilbert (looking & sounding well) and especially from Browning who elsewhere seemed largely determined not to adjust to the Talkies. His best known sound films (DRACULA/’31; FREAKS/’32) hopelessly draggy for all their fame. Right up to date on a technical level, you can feel the studio shorting the film on a few missing transitional passages which now have the advantage of forcing a modern pace. Plus an extra tasty supporting turn from Sterling Holloway, adding one more (high pitched) voice to the film’s remarkably nasty level of misogyny.

DOUBLE-BILL: While this film ended Gilbert’s pricey, long-running M-G-M contract, he returned later in the year at Greta Garbo’s request as co-star for QUEEN CHRISTINA. There, under far more pressure, he pushes too hard. He’s much more relaxed, more natural in this tossaway, the only sound film that makes you think he might have had a future if booze hadn’t finished him off in 1936 at only 38.

THE BISCUIT EATER (1940)

Unusual & surprising; that it got made and that it got a major studio release. Pretty good, too, a charming proto-Neo-Realist fable, a boy²-and-his-dog story filmed entirely on location in race segregated 1940s Georgia. Actor Fred Toones, billed as ‘Snowflake,’ does say ‘Yowsa’ a lot, but embarrassing racial stereotypes kept to a minimum for the period. The story concerns his son, poor black kid Cordell Hickman, and his more comfortable white pal Billy Lee, BFFs at six (both very non-actorish), and how they save the runt from a litter of bird dogs trained by their dads only to wind up competing for the state championship, fathers against sons.* If only they can get their naturally talented, but obstreperous dog to Point; Hold; and Clean Retrieve. (A ‘biscuit eater’ a dog who steals food.) With stakes raised by the estate owner the fathers work for who’s thinking of switching to horse breeding. Director Stuart Heisler, a journeyman studio director with an unusually broad & interesting CV, handles his small budget with imagination and lots of atmosphere helped by cinematographer Leo Tover who went on to work with Wyler, Ford, Wilder & Renoir. A treasurable find.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Some tough parenting choices will now startle. The boys both get smacked around by their dads, no doubt accurate for the time. And no flinching at a tragic ending. Avoid a brightly colored ‘70s Disney remake. Phony & insufferable, reduced to flavorless kiddie fare even with Godfrey Cambridge in the cast.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Friendly as they are, the white kid is most definitely First Among Non-Equals and the one who owns the dog they share.

THE SEVEN-UPS (1973)

Where Gene Hackman got the official FRENCH CONNECTION/’71 sequel in the misadvised FRENCH CONNECTION II/’75 (Popeye gets hooked/Popeye gets clean), partner Roy Scheider made do with this unofficial follow up from CONNECTION producer Philip D’Antoni in a misadvised one-shot as writer/director. Another gritty NYC cop drama, Schneider leads an elite gang of rule-breaking detectives working a series of mob kidnapings. Not by the mob; of the mob. Most likely suspects? Schneider & Co. Yikes! A vanity project for D’Antoni who shows little control over self-indulgent acting (Scheider plays a couple of scenes sucking on a jawbreaker) or bad dubbing, while letting confusing plot structure and corny wiseguy dialogue pass. Presumably, what sold this was the big copy-cat car chase, designed to outdo ones D’Antoni oversaw as producer in CONNECTION and before that BULLITT/’68. It’s the best thing in the pic, but hardly matters; impressive but pointless. D’Antoni never wrote, directed or produced another feature.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Stick with THE FRENCH CONNECTION.

THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1934)

With Leslie Howard in this Alexander Korda production and Robert Donat in Rowland V. Lee’s COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, 1934 was a stellar year for Brits to gentlemanly swashbuckle in smart pics on tight budgets. Journeyman megger Harold Young does a solid job, though the pace goes stiff now & then (Miklôs Rôzsa not yet on the scene to musically help out), but between Vincent Korda’s fabulous sets, Harold Rosson’s imaginative lensing and plus-perfect leads in heroic fop Leslie Howard, glamorously distraught wife Merle Oberon, sneeringly powerful villain Raymond Massey all showing tremendous panache working thru the story of British aristo Sir Percy (and confederates) as they jump the border in & out of Revolutionary France to rescue nobility from Madame Guillotine, with Howard’s Pimpernel too much the jester to come under suspicion. (Does ZORRO came out of this; or vice versa?) Technically, the film holds up quite well for the period (beware of subfusc Public Domain copies!) and there’s tasty character support, but it’s Howard who really makes the film. Broadly comic, noble, fey, athletic & romantically dreamy all at once. His finesse & sense of fun showing a star power & command rarely seen even from him. The over-produced Powell/Pressburger TechniColor remake (THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL/’50) with David Niven shows just how much goes missing. And Powell knew it, dubbing his version a ‘super-turnip’ flop.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Oberon was tricky to shoot with that high, high, high forehead, but a piece of cake for Rosson who’d not only shot, but married the equally tricky to shoot Jean Harlow.

DOUBLE-BILL: Stakes were raised in all directions the following year when Warners took a chance on unknown Aussie Errol Flynn for CAPTAIN BLOOD/’35.

WHEN IN ROME (1952)

Piffle. While unlikely middle-aged leading man Paul Douglas (a real Life-Begins-at-Forty movie star) is always worth watching, this modest fable about a con-man on the run & a young priest in Rome for Holy Year is just too cute for words. Budding up on a ship from the States to Genoa, Douglas ‘borrows’ Van Johnson’s priestly vestments to slip past the local police, then stays ‘in character’ till they meet up in a Rome monastery/hostel.* Reluctant to turn him in, Johnson takes his wayward pal on a sightseeing adventure that leads to mutual understanding and possible redemption. Director Clarence Brown, on his penultimate directing gig, enjoys his tour of the city (on-location shooting with stars in tow still new & exciting at the time), and it’s fun to see all the top sites, beautifully shot by William Daniels, nearly empty. But the script only makes the faintest of stabs tying the boys' pilgrimage to the drama. Yawn.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *That monastery interior dissolving in Douglas’s mind into a prison ward the only decent visual gag in the pic.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Hard to believe scripter Charles Schnee had the backstage Hollywood dramatics of THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL out the same year. No wonder he (or some co-writer) stole this film's ending from Edward G. Robinson’s lighthearted reformed gangster pic BROTHER ORCHID/’40. OR: if you’re looking for early ‘50s Hollywood-goes-to-Rome, try the non-touristy locations of William Wyler’s enchanting ROMAN HOLIDAY/’53 (with Greg Peck & Audrey Hepburn in defining perfs) or stick with postcard-worthy stops (in CinemaScope & Deluxe color) along with odder than expected storyline & characters in THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN/’54.

MONSIEUR KLEIN (1976)

Le Froid is overwhelming in this, the chilliest film of director Joseph Losey’s chilly career. Alain Delon is M. Klein, a profiteering art dealer in Nazi Occupied France, buying at bargain rates from Jewish collectors desperate to raise cash, suddenly confronted with a paper-trail doppelgänger, a second M. Klein. Worse, a Jewish M. Klein. With family documents stuck in the country, he must find the elusive ‘other’ Klein or lose everything. And so many comfortable things to lose! Paintings, apartment, mistress, maybe even friends . . . if he had one. A Kafkaesque tale, but Kafka with logical explanations. Something that could land in intellectual No-Man’s Land were it not for Losey's consistently distanced style, one that refuses to warm up to any characters: friend, foe or administrator. This leads to trouble in the last two reels when the script pivots to suspense/thriller tropes as we get close to the second M. Klein. Even a race against the clock/last minute rescue opportunity, traditional narrative beats that don’t fit Losey’s impersonal tone. So a tragic ending feels wrong, comeuppance on a story that demands resurrected routine and no lessons learned.*  Still, what is here is accomplished, with Delon’s unblemished amorality a match for his Mr. Ripley in PLEIN SOLEIL/PURPLE NOON/’60.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, René Clément’s PLEIN SOLEIL/PURPLE NOON/’60 (from Patricia Highsmith’s ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’), overrated apart from Delon and the EastmanColor cinematography of Henri Decaë. OR: Luchino Visconti’s underrated THE STRANGER/’68, Kafka by way of Camus, with Marcello Mastroianni in a role Visconti wanted Delon to play. Alas, no good video source as of yet on the only film to ever properly capture Matisse Mediterranean blue.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Losey lets us (the viewers) off the hook, by not letting Klein off the hook.

THUNDER ROCK (1942)

The ambitions of Roy & John Boulting exceed their talent in this tricky time-traveling saga that finds Michael Redgrave hiding from a world on the cusp of war to tend lonely Thunder Rock lighthouse in Lake Michigan, content to fill his downtime conjuring up fantasy lives peopled from an old passenger log of a ship that sunk 100 years ago. And thru their lives, or rather thru his imagination of their possible lives, he eventually finds a path back to the troubled modern world. A dizzyingly fine idea, if only the Boultings had the poetic gifts & technical chops to pull it off.* Along with Redgrave, Lilli Palmer, Finlay Currie, a young & striking James Mason and the little known Frederick Valk (like a thicker Conrad Veidt) are all good enough to pull off some of the deep-dish ideas, and the production has its moments, especially in miniatures & set design that capture a fanciful tone too often missing. But the story foundation won’t hold. Watch for a telltale shift that finds ghostly Ship Captain Currie flipping the conceit to sample Redgrave’s modern life as an international reporter before he retreated to his lighthouse life to see what's missing from the conversation.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger pull this sort of thing off with sophisticated brio in A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN/’46.

HIGH WALL (1947)

Tough little suspense/ thriller from M-G-M, a near reworking of Alfred Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND/’45 (and SPELLBOUND could use some reworking!), it works pretty well until falling apart in the third act. (A too convenient drunk and a drug-induced confession needed to move the plot along.) At first, violent, brain-injured vet Robert Taylor is certain he murdered his wife, then blacked out. But after successful surgery relieves the pressure on his brain, he’s not so sure. Audrey Totter, his sanatorium psychiatrist, slowly comes to believe him. Or is she just falling for the guy? Nope, turns out Herbert Marshall’s the actual killer. The wife had been his secretary (and then some!) and now Marshall’s willing to kill again, setting up Taylor to take the fall on both murders. Producer Robert Lord, fresh from prestige pics at Warners, and about to head to Columbia for a series with Humphrey Bogart (including IN A LONELY PLACE/’50), gives this one some nice polish (atmospheric, pacey megging from Curtis Bernhardt; strong noirish chiaroscuro lensing from Paul Vogel). Or does up to the last couple of reels, as if he was already heading out the door. Too bad. For a change, Taylor uses his usual opaque quality for character development, and Totter, soon to find her niche as a dangerous glamorpuss in dark-edged mid-range B-vehicles, plays well against his impassivity. And, as bonus, a disturbingly casual killing from the always immaculate Mr. Marshall.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, Hitchcock’s slightly ridiculous SPELLBOUND, with Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman & Leo G. Carroll in the Taylor, Totter & Marshall spots. Key diff: Peck’s not a patient at the clinic but the new head doc.

DOWNTON ABBEY (2019)

Comfort food for the comfortable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Worse than you think?  Yes.   Does it matter?  Not much.

DOUBLE-BILL: DOWNTON creator Julian Fellows wrote something of a gloves-off evil twin in Robert Altman’s GOSFORD PARK/’01. Like a pilot episode with Maggie Smith already in character.

THE SYSTEM (1953)

He’s top man in a mid-sized MidWestern city, country clubber, pal to reporters, politicos & the police force, a respectable chamber-of-commerce type. So what if his income stems from gaming rackets: backroom horse betting parlors, fancy gambling dens, the local ‘numbers’ runners. But when a teenage kid is shot by the police while robbing a store to cover his out-of-control gambling debts, town favorite becomes town pariah. Worse, the big boys from Chicago & New York, the guys who run the wire service from the race tracks, are putting the squeeze on just as his straight-arrow son comes home from college. Easy to imagine Warners tackling this in ‘33*, a slick study in hubris laid low for Warren William, Eddie G. Robinson or Paul Muni, depending on the budget. With plenty of suspense, action, courtroom drama and loads of contract players in stylish support. Twenty years on, the old Warners moxie is in short supply. Frank Lovejoy makes an honest, but unexciting lead and, with few exceptions, the rest of the acting miserable, with journeyman director Lewis Seiler phoning it in. The only system on display in THE SYSTEM, is the Hollywood System in post-WWII free fall.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Over @ M-G-M, producer Arthur Freed, scripter Richard Brooks & director Mervyn LeRoy (just the guy for this in his 1933 Warner Bros. prime) brought off something awfully similar, still showing some pride in the craft, in ANY NUMBER CAN PLAY/’49.

YOU AND ME (1938)

Writer Norman Krasna came up with the story for this genre mash-up where a Department Store acts as common ground for Criminal Proletariat to meet Benevolent Capitalism. An audacious, possibly intractable idea that mixes mobsters, romance, class conflict & social commentary to the musical beat of 3-PENNY OPERA’s Kurt Weill under director Fritz Lang, both Weimar Germany ex-pats. Interesting in concept, if only it worked better. Harry Carey plays a big city department store owner known for hiring ex-cons on his staff, including lovebird parolees George Raft & Sylvia Sidney. But there’s double-trouble: Sidney hasn’t told Raft about her past or that she legally can’t marry before finishing parole. Worse, Raft’s old mob pal Barton MacLane is getting his gang back together for an inside job at Carey’s shop. The first half of the pic, largely courting action for Sidney & Raft, hangs fire. (Though listen for a nightclub song - ‘The Right Guy for Me’ - that’s a bit like Weill’s great ballad ‘Surabaya Johnny.’) But the film only shows a pulse midway thru with a clever montage ‘beat’ number for the ex-cons, ‘Knocking Song,’ which leads into the robbery, and then into Sidney’s little Mob/Marxist Econ 101 blackboard lecture. A big improvement from the opening half, this last act is also uneven, but does let you see what they must have been aiming at. Shot-by-shot, Lang does some fine things, but the project refuses to come together.

DOUBLE-BILL: Kurt Weill had rotten Hollywood luck. At Paramount, after tossing out most of the music he wrote for this, they did much the same on his great B’way hit LADY IN THE DARK/’44, then botched the release on the delightful original WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?/’45, still the best of the bunch. OR: Just as the Nazis were taking over, a mob masterpiece from Lang before he left Germany: THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE/’33.

THE LONG MEMORY (1953)

A forgotten gem from the sadly abbreviated career (alcohol, early death) of British director Robert Hamer. Known for the classic black comedy KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS/’49, Hamer was equally at home in kitchen-sink drama (IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY/’47) and spooky morbidity (DEAD OF NIGHT/45).* Here, he takes on film noir, or rather Brit noir, to superb effect with big assists from Harry Waxman’s glistening high contrast lensing & from some kind of genius location scout. Marshy fields and barges on river-front sites really make this one. John Mills, in near unrecognizable tough-guy form, is fresh out of prison after 12 years on a murder frame-up, and looking to punish the three lying witnesses who put him there; even with cops on his tail, assigned to stop him. Some of the plotting strains credulity (one of the lying witnesses now wife of the detective running the case). But this is noir territory, where even in a city of millions, only eight people matter, and you’re sure to bump into no one but those eight. Time is somehow made for a tricky/touching romance to break thru, while plotting in the last act is exceptional, with a truly shocking ‘reveal’ and a perfect wrap to deliver some long delayed justice. More, please.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Assuming you’ve seen KIND HEARTS, try IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY (mentioned above) with the great Googie Withers, married 62 years to this film’s detective, John McCallum.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/01/it-always-rans-on-sundey-1947.html

AH-GA-SSI / THE HANDMAIDEN (2016)

Over-cooked and over-praised, Chan-wook Park (of OLDBOY fame) takes a pretty standard film noir setup: Conning the Con Man, and camouflages with artsy presentation and double-helix plot structure, pulling the rug out from under us not once, but twice. The problem is that characterizations have to perform backflips as a topsy-turvy plot shifts victim into 'perp,' revealing who the true master player really is. Same inconsistencies needed for the sick jokes Park likes to use for shock value. (And very sick/very funny they are, too!) The eponymous handmaiden has come to care for (and act as companion to) a wealthy, near cloistered heiress. No ordinary servant, the new girl is something of a Korean Artful Dodger, trained from youth as petty thief & pickpocket, now working the bigtime with a handsome confederate posing as a Japanese Count to woo fair heiress. So much money for the taking! Together, they hope to steal the docile heiress’s affections & bank account from infatuated Uncle (and erotic book collector), her longtime intended. But since no one is quite what they appear to be, things play out as a series of switchbacks & reverses. And sex, lots of sex. On the athletic side, a climatic lesbian session finds use for a vagina P.O.V. shot, producing more giggles than erotic heat. While the fooled me once/fooled me twice storyline runs out of steam (and surprises) long before the film wraps.

DOUBLE-BILL: Over @ 20th/Fox, John Stahl had Gene Tierney, Jeanne Crain & delirious TechniColor for this sort of thing in the infinitely superior (and 40 minute shorter) LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN/’44.

HOW I WON THE WAR (1967)

Bertolt Brecht ‘Epic’ Theater meets British New Wave Cinema meets Anti-War Counter-Culture meets The Beatles (make that Beatle) in the non-linear narrative structure of Richard Lester’s regrettably toothless WWII satire. Michael Crawford, grave, glib & gangly, is the inept Lieutenant with orders to build a cricket field/pitch in not yet secure North Africa with his motley, undisciplined unit of misfits & malcontents. Using multiple perspectives, and jumping in time & space, the film pauses to break the fourth wall with small confidences from players; stops at a movie theater where this very film is playing as a pair of old biddies offer critical commentary; drop naturalistic color for tinted b&w film stock & surreal painted players; black up for a nighttime raid with Jack MacGowran putting on full Minstrel Show BlackFace; and mix in bits of Crawford’s P.O.W. days willy-nilly all thru the pic. It's too good-natured to be despised; too arbitrary to make much of an effect. As for that solitary Beatle, John Lennon, stiff Liverpool accent intact, wisely thought better about pursuing an acting career after this. Billed larger than his role as ‘batman’ to Crawford deserves, he did find his signature eye-glasses in the regulation period frames seen here. While in this third film for director Richard Lester, and budding up with Crawford on set, Lennon rarely looked so sunny & comfortable again.

DOUBLE-BILL: Out the previous year, Blake Edwards’ WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY? takes a while to find its footing (a common Edwardian fault), but is ultimately more farcical and more serious at finding absurdity & meaning in WWII. Perhaps Edward's actual war service helped. (Note poster copy line worried over confusion with the earlier film.)

MUSIC IN THE AIR (1934)

‘American Songbook’ composer Jerome Kern had three films out in 1934 (plus ROBERTA playing on B’way).  But it was no annus mirabilis as the films (SWEET ADELINE and THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE were the other two), all looking back to old-fashioned operetta, were modestly received.  With help from Rogers & Astaire, he’d adjust his tempo in ‘35 & ‘36 on the film version of ROBERTA and then in SWING TIME.  But go in knowing what you’re getting, and these unfashionable three have their charms.   ADELINE mostly for original cast member Helen Morgan on three classic Kern songs; CAT for director William K. Howard’s technical dazzle and frisson between stars Ramon Novarro & Jeanette MacDonald; and AIR for the chance to see Gloria Swanson shine in a last appearance as a youngish star (she’s 35).   Befitting its Mittel-Europa setting and operetta leanings, the film is loaded with exiled UFA talent in Hollywood: producer Erich Pommer; director Joe May; scripter ‘Billie’ Wilder; Franz Waxman on music.  Swanson & John Boles play one of those tiresome, bickering theatrical couples, constantly fighting only to fall back into each others’ arms, overplaying for supposed comic effect.  Still, Swanson’s awfully good at it, with an unexpectedly strong, well-produced mezzo-soprano.   (Much of the score recorded live.)  If only she were playing, say, Kate in KISS ME, KATE.*  As it is, the pair must flirt with cute country couple Douglass Montgomery (quite good) & June Lang (not so good), as well as Papa Al Shean (a holdover from B’way) who’s got a sure song hit for the new show.   (‘I’ve Told Every Little Star,’ a charmer incessantly reprised as was norm at the time.*)  Joe May, a major figure in Germany who sank in Hollywood, does what he can with the corny material, but fails to rise to its best moments when the theater pros finally tell off these country-bumpkin amateurs.   Worth a peek for the one good song and for Swanson’s mainstream farewell almost two decades before her SUNSET BOULEVARD comeback, but little else.

DOUBLE-BILL:  As mentioned above, the undervalued CAT AND THE FIDDLE.   OR: May’s top Hollywood credit, CONFESSION/’37, best of Kay Francis’s later pics.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Despite Swanson’s obvious ease in handling anything The Talkies threw at her, like most of the great silent stars, after public curiosity from longtime fans led to a smash Talkie debut, a fast decline once they’d been seen-and-heard, then mid-1930s oblivion. John Gilbert, poster boy for silent-to-sound career arc debacle, was Rule not Exception.  (He was also on the way down before the dawn of sound.)   So what did cause the fast fade?   Age?  A bit.  Style?  Could be.  Hemlines?   Nah.  Mostly different times and immense social changes from The Depression.  'Roaring Twenties' holdovers finding themselves lost in the FDR generational shift. Depression audiences wanted their own set of stars, new ones.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In a boneheaded move, the other big hit from the show, ‘The Song Is You,’ a true Kern/Hammerstein American Songbook classic, goes entirely missing!

DESERT FURY (1947)

Come for the super saturated TechniColor & round-shouldered late ‘40s cars; stay for the OTT melodrama & gender-blind psycho-sexual love triangles in this modern film noir Western. Whatever producer Hal Wallis & scripter Robert Rossen were shooting for, they sure as hell weren’t shooting blanks. Returning home early from finishing school, Lizabeth Scott hasn’t even said hello to hardened casino proprietress mom Mary Astor before she’s started playing straight-arrow town sheriff Burt Lancaster against crooked racketeer/man-with-a-past John Hodiak. What does she care about rumors on the long unexplained death of Hodiak's first wife? She’s too resentful of Mom’s romantic manipulations to notice. You’d think Astor was jealous of her 19-yr-old daughter. And Mom’s not the only jealous character around. There’s Hodiak’s longtime sideman Wendell Corey (in his debut pic), so possessive of his boss, as if he’s trying to break up any serious new romantic relationship. It goes back to when Corey first spotted a broke/lonely Hodiak at a Times Square automat, paid for his ham & eggs at two a.m., then took him back to his place for the night. Yikes! Even for 1947, this isn’t gay subtext, it’s gay pickup action. Directed in regrettably faceless fashion by Lewis Allen, the story begs for the late ‘50s stylings of Minnelli or Douglas Sirk. But Lancaster, freshly contracted by Wallis at Paramount after two tough-guy leads at Universal for Mark Hellinger, calls on his blistering physical charisma to pull it all together even as he plays straight man (in so many ways) to all the craziness. Ridiculous & astounding in equal measure, this fever dream of a film might prove too much on the big screen (a fest of ‘bad’ laughs), but can get inside your head in a one-on-one viewing.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Third-billed when first released, Burt moves to top position on the re-release trailer included on an excellent Kino-Lorber DVD. And check out the 3-strip TechniColor resolution on Scott’s intro close-up . . . to say nothing of the wood-paneled gloss of her sporty sedan.

THE ACCOUNTANT (2016)

Far-fetched actioner is pretty good trash until an overloaded third act sinks from facile explanations, dovetailed family revelations & conveyor-belt shoot-outs. Hard to shake the feeling this one started as something a bit less scattered.* As it stands, megger Gavin O’Connor & writer Bill Dubuque got BOURNE on the brain during development, THE BOURNE AUTISTIC ACCOUNTANT? With Ben Affleck as a high-functioning autistic genius, a super-secret superstar CPA who finds missing funds & cash channels for corporations, mobsters, high-tech entrepreneurs, even middle-class home owners when not honing his martial arts & sharpshooting skills. (But can he cook?) No ‘idiot savant,’ he’s picked up enough social niceties to pass as a nearly regular guy while digesting years of financial reports in a single bound. But with great success comes great enemies: hit squads and Fed Agents on his tail. And not just for him, the nice gal in accounting who first spotted ‘irregularities’ is also in danger and needs his protection. Now he’s the ‘Gallant’ Autistic Accountant. Affleck, who hasn’t had a lot of good innings lately, is just right here, physically massive/believably smart; coming off better than girl-in-trouble Anna Kendrick whose actorly pauses & detailed approach to character don’t really fit this kind of film. Best to phone it in (see Fed Agent J.K. Simmons & corporate baddie John Lithgow) or stick with stock poses & reaction shot clichés (see everyone else).

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Years before this got made, Dubuque’s original script hit the so-called Hollywood ‘BlackList’ of top-rated unsold scripts. Was it originally more of a RAINMAN meets THE FIRM kind of thing? Did Affleck push it into a ‘Bourne’ mold? Or was it always designed as action franchise fodder? (The inevitable sequel already in the works.)

FLESH AND FANTASY (1943)

French director Julien Duvivier’s WWII Hollywood exile saw TALES OF MANHATTAN/’42 (his linked omnibus story of six tales/six A-list stars) followed by this lesser return engagement (three tales/ three A-list stars). But if cast & narrative are downsized, Duvivier was, if anything, even more impressive in sheer facility, with jaw-dropping mise-en-scène that goes from a multi-plane Mardi Gras to a vertiginous Big Top. A stupendous display of technical command that makes his famous (and famously goofy) ‘Blue Danube’ set piece in THE GREAT WALTZ/’38 look like a warmup. Robert Benchley drinks his way thru framing scenes that take us to ‘ugly’ dressmaker Betty Field, given a ‘mask of beauty’ that catches Robert Cummings’ eye. Then Thomas Mitchell’s fortuneteller refuses to tell wealthy sceptic Edward G. Robinson what he sees written in his palm. It’s MURDER! With Eddie G. fated not to play victim, but killer. Yikes! Finally, tightrope artiste Charles Boyer dreams he will fall during his act. Instead, he falls for Barbara Stanwyck, unaware she’s also up for a fall. Nothing in here quite equals Robinson’s laid-low Ivy League man or Charles Laughton’s pathetic classical musician in TALES, but no duds, either. And that stylish physical production. All aboard this omnibus!

DOUBLE-BILL: A drowning victim in the opening story is left unexplained. No surprise, since it was part of a dropped fourth segment. See how other hands expanded the brief footage shot for it by Duvivier in DESTINY/’44 with Gloria Jean & Alan Curtis (not seen here). OR: As mentioned above: TALES OF MANHATTAN.