WILD WILD WEST (1999)

After MEN IN BLACK/’97 hit, star Will Smith & director Barry Sonnenfeld must have received the proverbial blank check (twice the budget*; End Credits song for Smith) to make this long aborning/franchise-ready project, an over-stuffed reboot of the Old West meets MISSION IMPOSSIBLE ‘60s tv series.  It got a bad rap from young ‘Boomers,’ unwilling to accept any change in tone (and in color?), hating its ADHD plotting and can-you-top-this stunts, earning a mere third MiB’s revenue and bearing no sequel.  Just results, but also something of a shame since you can see the film this might have been in a pleasingly meandering reel midway along that finds leads Smith and quick-change brainiac partner Kevin Kline, Special Agents to President Grant, lost in the desert and trying to get back in the action.  Momentarily, the film drops the snark, the relentless pace & elaborate effects for bromantic bonding that advances the plot while adding character notes.  Then, it’s back to mad scientist Kenneth Branagh (almost as short as ‘little person’ Michael Dunn was in these roles on tv) and his noisy power grab for the whole U.S. of A.  The film swept two of those Worst Film Award Shows, yet except for some misconceived race/lynching gags, it’s not nearly as bad as rumored.  For that, there’s Johnny Depp’s LONE RANGER/’13 which is also 40 minutes longer.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Good looking/good sounding thanks to cinematographer Michael Ballhaus on his one & only Western and composer Elmer Bernstein on his umpteenth.   Cool professionalism (in a good way) in the midst of chaos.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Here's another film that would have almost certainly have been better with one-fifth the budget.

RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945)

Rule-of-thumb on Hollywood bio-pics, Great American Songbook division: the better the composer, the worse the film.  Passable tunesmiths Kalmar & Ruby delight in THREE LITTLE WORDS/’50 and Sigmund Romberg’s lush corn thrives on the vaudeville polish of Stanley Donen’s DEEP IN MY HEART/’54.  Conversely, musical luminaries Cole Porter & Jerome Kern dealt stinkers in ‘46, NIGHT AND DAY and TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY.  (Porter slammed again with IT’S DE-LOVELY/’04.*)  Might this big George Gershwin bio be the exception that proves the rule?  Not quite.  But, just as his composing life was divided between Pop & Classical (both great, of course), so too this film, good on family matters & that split career track (reasonably factual by Hollywood bio standards, too), and bad on the fictional romantic crap with loyal B’way wren Joan Leslie vs Alexis Smith’s chilly American-in-Paris sophisticate.  Happily, the musical side of things is very good throughout with real-life pal Oscar Levant on piano as himself and dubbing for bland, debuting Robert Alda (Alan’s pop) as Gershwin.  Plus half a set from jazz stylist Hazel Scott; a witty balletic montage to accompany ‘An American in Paris’; and a chance to see original Bess Anne Brown sing ‘Summertime’ from PORGY AND BESS on a recreation of the original stage set.*  All told, nearly an hour of music; good stuff, most with LeRoy Prinz calling the shots, upstaging Irving Rapper’s handling of the drama.  And while no one was able to finesse the sad ending, Warners’ effects department sends us all the way up to heaven via matte shots, angles & nifty optical printing tricks.

DOUBLE-BILL: Clifford Odets’ rejected first-script for RHAPSODY got repurposed as HUMORESQUE/’46 with John Garfield & Joan Crawford picking up the relationship between Alda & Smith.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Irving Berlin, the song writer with the most dramatic personal story, wouldn’t let anyone touch it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Brown doesn’t sing the ‘Summertime’ reprise she had on stage as Bess, but does its first statement in the opera, as written for Clara.  ALSO: BlackFace Warning!!  It comes when Al Jolson (who else?) intros ‘Swanee.’  Note that someone @ Warners ordered Jolie to tone down his traditional ‘darky’ makeup; no ‘nappy’ hairpiece and a less exaggerated white mouth.  The times were a’changin’ . . . just not enough.

DR. COOK'S GARDEN (1971)

For Ira Levin, 1967 meant a hit pop novel in ROSEMARY’S BABY and a one week run of DR. COOK’S GARDEN on B’way with Burl Ives & Keir Dullea.  (see poster)  The novel famously filmed in ’68; the play, significantly improved, made into this unjustly forgotten TV Movie-of-the-Week.  Bing Crosby, in his last acting role, has an alarming change of pace as the ‘good’ doctor of a small New England town where bad folk & hopeless cases tend to quickly/quietly die after a house call or two.  In spite of his skills . . . or because of them?  Enter Frank Converse, a young doctor Cook helped put thru med school, now called back to town, possibly to take over the practice from his aging, overworked mentor.  Blythe Danner’s there, too, in an early role as a local nurse whose father has recently, and unexpectedly, died.  A suspicious death to Converse who quickly and uncomfortably starts seeing Dr. Cook’s hand in a lot of convenient deaths.  You’ll guess the rest, and even if you don’t, the revelations & plot are largely telegraphed.  Yet this turns out not to matter, since the real conflict isn’t in discovery, but in philosophy & intent, with a doctor who believes he’s doing good with this human ‘culling,’ tending his town as if it were his garden.  And there’s something deeply upsetting seeing Der Bingle going in for this Dr. Kervorkian routine. (It's really worse, euthanasia on steroids, since it’s Doc who's making life-or-death decisions for his patients.)  And once Converse lets him know it’s got to stop, the ‘good’ doctor sees only one way out.  Neatly handled to fit an hour-and-a-half time slot, director Mike Post brings exceptional control to almost everything he touches.  (Though he's unable to do much with the generic music score or Bing’s unfortunate toupée.*)  Ending with a devious antithetical twist from Levin nearly as jarring as Rosemary 'accepting' her devil baby.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Post spent much of his career in series tv, but also had a couple of Clint Eastwood features and his remarkably fine early Vietnam War drama, GO TELL THE SPARTANS/’78 with Burt Lancaster, to his credit.

ONE MORE RIVER (1934)

Ex-pat Brit-in-Hollywood director James Whale, best known for horror straight & off-kilter (FRANKENSTEIN; INVISIBLE MAN; BRIDE OF . . . ), here shows a depth of feeling & sincerity rare in his output.  (Other than JOURNEY’S END/’30 and THE ROAD BACK/’37.)  Adapted from John Galsworthy’s last novel (part of his FORSYTHE Saga), its narrative an excuse to advocate liberalization of England’s ludicrous divorce laws.  Diana Wynyard, remarkably unfussy & modern at the end of her prestigious three year/seven film Hollywood run, is sued by physically abusive husband Colin Clive whom she refuses to live with while insisting on her right to see (on strict platonic terms) charming new man in her life Frank Lawton.  One of the first films made under newly strict Hollywood Production Code enforcement, Whale & scripter R.C. Sheriff still infer all that’s needed to make their case (even spousal rape, a concept barely admitted to at the time - inadmissable in court?), put over with exceptionally strong support for Universal: debuting Jane Wyatt, Reginald Denny, C. Aubrey Smith, Henry Stephenson, E. E. Clive and in a superb courtroom sequence, opposing barristers Lionel Atwill & Alan Mowbray.  Plus, the infamous Mrs. Patrick Campbell, G.B. Shaw stage favorite & correspondent.  (Terrible, BTW.  Everyone else, superb.)  An all but lost film, it did little biz, and still shows Whale fighting shy of Hollywood’s evolving editing techniques.  But, perhaps because the draconian U.K. divorce laws of the time mirrored his own experience with U.K. criminal law as an all but open homosexual, he brings a heightened emotional commitment which carries the film well past expectations.

DOUBLE-BILL: Colin Clive revisited this characterization, against Jean Arthur & Charles Boyer, in Frank Borzage’s slightly batty romance HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT/’37.

WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART (1990)

When a non-fatal heart attack kept James Agee from completing the script he and John Huston were adapting from C.S. Forester’s THE AFRICAN QUEEN/’51, Peter Viertel (a child of Hollywood Huston had worked with on WE WERE STRANGERS/’49 and would work with again) came on to polish as necessary and rework the hasty ending Huston had made a stab at.  Hard to know just how much of the final script was Viertel’s (only Agee is credited), but probably a fair amount.  On the other hand, Viertel’s lightly fictionalized behind-the-scenes novel of his experience, largely during pre-production with Huston avoiding prep & rewrites to go off on safari in Africa, specifically to ‘bag’ an elephant, became a minor classic of cinema literature.  Obsessed like some modern day Captain Ahab on pursuing this ill-advised/inauspicious hunt, Viertel’s portrait of Huston (here called John Wilson) is one-third admirable, one third bewildering, one-third self-centered, terrifying stubbornness and one-third glory-seeking despicable.  (Correct, for a man of Huston’s size & self-destructive fever you need four thirds . . . as long as others are paying, and not just in time & money.)  A great theme for a Hollywood-on-location story, but Clint Eastwood’s film, a major flop in its day, can’t get a handle on the man.  In spite of solid directoral craftsmanship, Eastwood’s acting misses the expansive quality Huston played on to get away with bad behavior, and it consistently stops the film cold.  Eastwood's effectiveness with a minimalist approach & narrowed focus lost when he tries to play large.  Not that he doesn’t try, he does . . . that’s the problem.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *You only have to imagine 1990 Sean Connery in the part.  He wouldn’t have had to try.

DOUBLE-BILL/READ ALL ABOUT IT: For a grand portrait of Huston at the time (irreplaceable filmmaker/impossible man) try Katharine Hepburn’s charmingly eccentric memoir THE MAKING OF THE AFRICAN QUEEN.  Then watch the movie.

THREE CASES OF MURDER (1955)

The British omnibus film, commercially goosed when DEAD OF NIGHT/’45 and Somerset Maugham’s QUARTET/’48 hit big Stateside, was still a going concern when this modestly budgeted trio of spooky tales came out.  With two of the three leaning toward the fantastic, ‘In The Picture’ comes with a proto-TWILIGHT ZONE vibe as an incorrigible museum painting keeps busting its glass-fronted frame to entice guards & visitors in for a one-way tour.  Twee stuff, though technically, the move from 2D to 3D upon entering, handled with imaginative understatement.  Then, it’s tit-for-tat murder accusations between frenemies in love & business, with a double-twist ending that plays like a medium-good Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode as written by Agatha Christie.  But the third story, Somerset Maugham in wraithful mode, disrupts the genteel tone & proper manners for Parliamentarian revenge after Alan Badel’s hapless member of the opposition is publically crucified in the House thru a cruel, lacerating speech by Cabinet Member Lord Mountdrago, Orson Welles in barnstorming form, complete with posher-than-thou British accent.  Badel’s political career may have been destroyed by the ridicule, but the man has gotten into Mountdrago’s head, planting nightmare seeds of humiliation & loss that show up for real the next day.  Soon, Mountdrago is unable to function, face party members, his wife or even the psychiatrist he reluctantly seeks out.  If only he could murder Badel in one of those ghastly dreams, mightn’t he wake up to find it’s all over?  A major work from Welles, totally unknown, unsubtle & terrifying, shaking up an orderly little film.  Jobber director George More O’Ferrall credited, but Welles’ hand is all over this, in direction and in (re)writing.  Hiding in plain sight for 65 years, long past time to bring it out in the open!

DOUBLE-BILL: No doubt, the Welles paycheck went directly into production costs on his troubled CONFIDENTIAL AGENT/MR. ARKADIN/’55, write-up below.

THE IRON PETTICOAT (1956)

After three years touring on stage (Shakespeare & Shaw), Katharine Hepburn returned to the screen in four overwrought spinster roles, banking on continuing the success of THE AFRICAN QUEEN/’52.  David Lean kept her on form in SUMMERTIME, but desperation seeped into her playing under journeyman Ralph Thomas’s coarse direction here, and under novice helmer Joseph Anthony in THE RAINMAKER before long time co-star Spencer Tracy clamped down, saving the ultra-conventional DESK SET/’57.  A lumpy, none too funny Cold War farce, PETTICOAT was a Bob Hope indie production (his Paramount days all but over), a late original screenplay from the great Ben Hecht, hoping to improve on his NINOTCHKA rip-off, COMRADE X/’40.  And it does . . . a little bit, in spite of its dreadful reputation modestly coming to life about halfway thru, largely on its solid farce structure.  (Though incessantly broad playing & lame jokes may keep you from getting that far; Hepburn in particular playing to the back of the house as if still on tour.)  The plot has disappointed Soviet pilot Hepburn defecting (or not) to ‘our side,’ with U.S. flyer Hope ordered to win her over.  A Red, White & Blue convert and a propaganda victory . . . or vice versa if Hepburn gets her way.  But the main laughs come in seeing how much Hecht’s script plays like JET PILOT meets ONE, TWO, THREE, a pair of Cold War items not yet released, placing Janet Leigh & John Wayne from JET and Horst Buchholz & James Cagney in Billy Wilder’s 1,2,3, in the Hepburn/Hope spots, respectively.  Things don’t get much weirder than that.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, Josef von Sternberg’s vaguely ridiculous JET PILOT/’57, held back till it was an anachronism by over-controlling producer Howard Hughes, and ONE, TWO, THREE/’61 which, like PETTICOAT, finds comedy behind stale gags largely in pace & structure.

MURDER IN A SMALL TOWN / THE LADY IN QUESTION (1991)

Still impish and good company at 66, Gene Wilder called it a day after writing & starring in this pair of not-quite-good-enough murder mysteries.*  Director/manager of a modest Rep Co in late-1930s Connecticut (he left a big B’way career after his wife was murdered), his unusual knack for spotting TRUTH in his actors make him invaluable to local homicide dick Mike Starr, the two a sort of Odd Couple investigating team.  A nifty setup, no doubt meant to serve a longer series of cable movies.  (Hence holding the unsolved murder of Wilder’s wife in reserve.)  Easy going to a fault, we haphazardly bump into clues & relationships till Wilder randomly pulls everything together with the big revelation.  TOWN has one of those richest-guy-in-town bastards as victim, everyone wants to bump him off; LADY (better of the two) poisons Claire Bloom before she can give her fortune to an anti-Nazi fund.  In both, director Joyce Chopra keeps too steady a pace, smoothing out any chance for tension or suspense, but does get decent perfs from her cast, other than portly co-star Mike Starr whose ‘gumba-goodfella’ cop act is tired & overplayed, his buddy/buddy working routine with Wilder never adequately explained.  It’s watchable, and looks pretty good for a cable pic of the day (classy cinematographer Bruce Surtees shot both), but Wilder mostly unable to correct the long-running descent from his mid-‘70s prime.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Excluding two guest turns on the WILL & GRACE sit-com.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: In the second film, Wilder must have gotten a request to stick in one of his signature audience-pleasing panic attacks.  It certainly perks things up!

THE TAILOR OF PANAMA (2001)

After a decade off the screen (big or little), spymaster novelist John le Carré reactivated the brand using the comically off-kilter template of Graham Greene’s OUR MAN IN HAVANA/’59 only to find similar problems balancing the funny against the serious.*  Again, an ex-pat Brit businessman settled in a Latin country is pressured into working as a spy for the home team.  But finding little info to peddle, he starts making up conspiracies to have something to sell.  Hey, it's a business, give the customer what they want.  In both cases, it’s news on the revolution, and in both cases, things grow out of hand and people start dying for real.  In PANAMA, the tone is considerably darker which does make it easier to pull off, though nothing in here hits the comic heights of watching Alec Guinness get recruited by Noël Coward between stalls in ‘The Gents.’  But with Geoffrey Rush, Pierce Brosnan, Brendan Gleeson & Jamie Lee Curtis, there’s little to complain about in the acting department.  And if director Jon Boorman can’t quite make all the details clear, the basic arc of selling a non-existent coup to force the U.S. into ordering a takeover of the Canal comes across well enough between suit alterations.  (Rush’s tailoring skills a Chaplinesque tour de force even a bit of undercranking can't kill; while Brosnan’s slightly past-prime form defangs any nasty edge from his constant womanizing.)  Exceptionally well shot by Phillipe Rousselot and amusingly scored (with borrowed Spanish flair) by Shaun Davey, it’s a kind of ironic civilized entertainment not much encountered these days.  Even with shortcomings, worth the trip.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, OUR MAN IN HAVANA.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Le Carré jealous of Greene’s rep & range as writer & film enthusiast?

INSPIRATION (1931)

While hardly Greta Garbo’s worst film (her Early Talkies loaded with stinkers) this is surely her most unnecessary.  An uncredited adaptation of Alphonse Daudet’s SAPHO ('dialogued' by Gene Markey), it mostly scrambles plot points, story beats & characters from CAMILLE, properly filmed by Garbo with George Cukor in 1936.  Here, our oddly coifed divinity has favored director Clarence Brown, never at his best in his early Garbo Talkers.*  He tries out a snappier pace and slips in visual flourishes with cameraman William Daniels (a tricky First-Person P.O.V. apartment tour; a one-take walk up three parabolic flights of stairs for Garbo and inexperienced lover Robert Montgomery), but such fancy efforts merely point up what’s lacking elsewhere.  With the story updated, the old Paris demi-monde lifestyle settles for having Garbo play muse (‘with benefits’) to a quartet of middle-aged artists (poet, painter, composer, sculptor) only to fall hard for dewy, young Montgomery.  And while he’d leave family & fiancé to follow her to ruin, he’s too jealous to let her get paid as an inspiration to those older men; while she’s too generous to let him throw away his future on her.  Thank goodness an ex-lover about to get out of jail is the forgiving type!   Tripe, but Garbo was at her commercial peak in a period of low expectations, so it hardly mattered.  And she’d soon start getting better projects: GRAND HOTEL and QUEEN CHRISTINA over the next two years.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT As mentioned, CAMILLE, with a similar story and period setting to make sense of it.  Only this film’s male ingenue is missed, Robert Montgomery having aged out, replaced by glossy Robert Taylor.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Brown’s critical rep long held down by these stiff Early Garbo Talkies.  Compare with his superior handling of two other M-G-M divas the same year: Norma Shearer in A FREE SOUL and Joan Crawford, a youthful revelation in POSSESSION.  But he could also bring out Garbo’s best, in silents like FLESH AND THE DEVIL/’26 and A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS/’28, or in their last collaboration, ANNA KARENINA/’35.

THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR (1973)

Politically provocative, cinematically challenged, actor-turned-director Ivan Dixon’s underground intellectual Blaxploitation pic quickly disappeared from theaters before gaining a niche cult over the decades.*  Once only available on rare subfusc VHS copies, it was saved in the ‘90s and is now getting a refurb look at this year’s ‘virtual’ New York Film Fest.  The set up, co-scripted by Sam Greenlee from his novel, is a promising stab at a sort of INVISIBLE MAN @ the C.I.A.  (Ralph Ellison not  H.G. Wells.)  Trying for some belated racial diversity, the C.I.A. digs up ten finalists to compete for a position as the first Black agent, secretly counting on none making the cut.  But when one does, acing tests & acting the ‘Uncle Tom’ to curry favor as necessary, they’ve no choice but to find a slot for their upstanding Afro-American token.  Unfortunately for the film, the choice is little-known/charisma-free Lawrence Cook, a deadweight the film never recovers from.  And the film was already in the doldrums with Dixon unable to make the training sessions & personality clashes register: service comedy, group talks on Black identity issues, budding up to ‘The Man’ or holding a distance, a myriad of missed opportunities for social commentary & satire.  (Though nice to have Cook end up as receptionist where this ‘invisible man’ will be on constant display.)  Then the film reboots when Cook abruptly quits the service and heads home to Chicago where he hopes to finally get some use out of his Langley education pulling together a ragtag corp of Black Power anarchists to overthrow the entrenched 'White Authority'; organizing a city for/of/by the Blacks; using their special powers of hiding in plain sight as Black custodians, the ultimate Invisible Men . . . no one will know what hit them.  Take that, Ralph Ellison!  Finally, Dixon starts to deliver some clever low-budget set pieces as riots start up; the undertrained, inadequate National Guard shows up (target practice for Cook’s men); even a police shooting of a kid and some proto-Black Lives Matter protests.  It’s not great guerilla filmmaking, Dixon is no Costa-Gavras, with fighting tactics & goals left hopelessly vague (Dixon soon shifted to tv series work), but much in here remains timely.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Something of an ‘arthouse’ Blaxploitation pic, along with PUTNEY SWOPE/’69 and SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG/’71.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: With so few opportunities for Black actors in starring roles, why the weak cast?  Were qualified actors warned off by mainstream agents?  Was there an informal ban?  Or just too financially iffy?

CEILING ZERO (1936)

Pity the artist revisiting a theme, finding BEST enemy to GOOD . . . even to nearly as great.  Everyone knows Leonardo’s ‘Mona Lisa’ while his ‘Madonna of the Rocks’ (once a mere two paintings to the left at The Louvre and featuring the same model) would have nary a tourist blocking your view.  Shakespeare’s HAMLET; a hundred performances for every staging of soulmate TIMON OF ATHENS.  Operatically, the same four lead voice types fit Verdi’s ERNANI and IL TROVATORE to a ‘T,’ but the Marx Brothers knew which to poke fun at.*  So too this undervalued (and regrettably hard to find) Howard Hawks airline drama (adapted by Frank Wead from his play) vs. Hawks' ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS/’39, arguably his key work, from an original Jules Furthman screenplay.  Each dealing with a series of crises involving pilots, weather, equipment, love affairs & character (group & individual) largely taking place inside a flight command center.  And if the later is clearly the superior piece, that’s no reason not to give CEILING its due.  Pat O’Brien is now a solid citizen type running the ground game for a growing mail & passenger line, a tough but fair taskmaster to his staff . . . when not blowing his top.  But he’s got a soft spot for his old bud from roughhouse days before aviation became an industry, wildcat pilot James Cagney, suddenly back in the mix and ruffling fathers with his cocky style, go-it-alone attitude & womanizing ways (including O’Brien’s missus) in what is now a respectable business.  Cagney unusually physical with the ladies here (lots of full on kissing!), especially young June Travis, a ripening 19 to Cagney’s ‘old man’ 34.  Trampling over everyone, then charming or fast-talking his way out of jams, Cagney is just starting to realize his skills in the sky no longer suffice.  And when he goes too far and gets others in trouble, even killed, he finds a heroic (or is it easy/cowardly?) way out.  Technically, this Warners pic suffers from penny-plain model work, and occasionally betrays its stage origins, but is swell enough on its own merits, even if it can’t match WINGS’ all-star power or elaborate crisscross narrative design.  On its own, a must for any self-respecting Hawksian.  (And better than TIMON OF ATHENS.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Otto Preminger’s WWII naval epic IN HARM’S WAY/’65, has Kirk Douglas in a role much like Cagney’s.  Right down to the finish.  Here too, BEST is enemy to GOOD.  OR: As mentioned, ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Not to raise Hawks as artistic equal to these guys, auterist acolytes be damned.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Todd McCarthy’s HOWARD HAWKS bio exceptionally good on this film.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: That unfortunate little mustache on Cagney?  A signal of contract rebellion.  Sure enough, Cagney went AWOL on Warners for a couple of years after this.

MEPHISTO (1981)

Pretty disappointing.  The core idea of the Klaus Mann novel this film comes from charts the irresistible rise in Nazi Germany of Klaus Maria Brandauer’s ambitious German actor.  The twist is that while he sells his soul to the Nazis to gain power, like some erstwhile Faust, his signature role is the Devil.  Ironic to a fault, but workable.  (The Faust/Mephistopheles legend something of a Mann family touchstone with Papa Thomas Mann using it in DR. FAUSTUS to posit a link between syphilis & serial music theory.  Yikes!)  Alas, this once admired film now seems no better than many others from Hungary’s István Szabó, a man whose putative grasp tends to exceed his reach.  As a big fish in Hamburg’s small theatrical pond, Klaus Maria Brandauer opportunistically shifts from left-wing to right-wing when Berlin comes a’knocking, gaining a repertory company appointment and eventually his own theater with help from the alternately encouraging & threatening Nazi Prime Minister (presumably a stand-in for Hermann Göring).  Picking up and dropping friends, associates, wives & lovers as the political wind blows (along with the occasional principled stand), Brandauer works like the devil to always be the most compelling person on screen, but merely exhausts.  (Him and us.)  So too Szabó, overbearing & long-winded as the alpha-male Nazi officials & intellectuals he’s come not to praise, but to bury.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Theater, vanity & the Nazi mind-set, all brilliantly hoist on their own petard by Ernst Lubitsch in his triumphantly daring black comedy TO BE OR NOT TO BE/’42.

SAILOR OF THE KING (aka SINGLE-HANDED) (1953)

Usually, you can only count on not counting on a film from the Boutling brothers, Roy & John; never quite delivering on their promise.*  But this WWII adventure, updated from C.S. Forester's WWI novel, finds Roy working on his own as hired-hand director and gives little cause for complaint.  An off-center structure by Hollywood scripter Valentine Davies also helps.  Known for lighter things (MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET; IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING; ON THE RIVIERA), Davies crams a whole woman’s weepie in as prologue, one of those classic wartime encounters with an out-of-wedlock result, before he gets to the main storyline 20 years on with Michael Rennie (never knowing he fathered a child) now in command of a group of mid-sized vessels in the next war hunting a far more powerful Nazi ship.  He's unaware that the heroic Canadian sailor (an exceptionally buff Jeffrey Hunter) who has single-handedly waylaid that damaged German boat just long enough for Rennie to reach it, is his own out-of-wedlock son.  Yikes!  Far-fetched as this is, it plays in strong believable dramatic arcs thanks to Boulting’s reserve & calm efficiency, moving smoothly from unlikely homefront WWI romance between painfully regressive strangers/turned passionate one-night lovers (Rennie and an irreplaceable Wendy Hiller, turning a spinsterish cliché into breathing presence) to WWII naval chase.  An impressive piece of work from Boulting.  An earlier version with John Mills (not seen here), BORN FOR GLORY/FOREVER ENGLAND/’35, also has a good rep.

DOUBLE-BILL: *An exception is BRIGHTON ROCK/’48, directed by twin brother John, Roy producing, script by Graham Greene & Terence Rattigan.  OR: A similar WWI night of passion . . . out-of-wedlock result . . . WWII meet up (unacknowledged by Mom) gets a more traditional outing in Olivia de Havilland’s Oscar-winner TO EACH HIS OWN/’46.

THE BOYS (1962)

With a leading role in this modest British film instead of the comic sidebars he usually had in big Hollywood projects at the time*, Robert Morley, portly, eccentric, richly entertaining and funny by default, makes this grimly determined courtroom drama watchable.  Or does till forced to deliver a socially enlightened plea at the end.  With courtroom testimony broken up by extended flashbacks to scenes described in the witness box, director Sidney J. Furie etches in a sort of fraudulent realism, detailing a charge of robbery/murder against four lads, ‘Teddy Boys’ by the look of them, though more probably harmless teens, goof-offs rather than toughs.  It’s all circumstantial evidence, loads of it presented by prosecutor Richard Todd in the first act; refuted in Act Two as out-of-context misunderstandings by Morley on defense.  But having flipped expectations, scripter Stuart Douglas, flips again, none too believably, working against too much character development for his ‘got’cha’ gasp.  Just the sort of cheap dramatics Furie would be drawn to again & again over his long, busy career.  (Apparently, still up & running in his 87th year.)

DOUBLE-BILL: *Morley was soon back to supporting roles, but once again above-the-title for WHO IS KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS OF EUROPE?/’78; the film regrettably coarse, but there he is.

HEAVEN WITH A BARBED WIRE FENCE (1939)

Hard to imagine how this little left-leaning proletariat idyll got past cigar-chomping Sol M. Wurtzel, gruff head of 20th/Fox’s B-Unit, home to Western & Musical programmers, Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto.  A blip on his production slate (15 pics in ‘39), it’s one of a series of quickies helmed by that smiling villain of a supporting player Ricardo Cortez.*  He’s good, too!  A handful of films in ‘39 & ‘40, then back to acting.  (No doubt, it paid better.)  Here, with A-list cinematographer Edward Cronjager, he smoothly handles debuts for Glenn Ford, a department store stiff heading West to claim the small farm he’s spent six years working for, and Richard Conte, wanderlust hobo he meets at a diner.  A grown up Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn on the road, or rather the rail, since they opt to travel by hopping freight cars, meeting up with cute Jean Rogers (a Spanish Civil War orphan without papers . . . or believable accent) & con man Raymond Walburn, ex-professor of Paleontology/near brother to Frank Morgan’s Prof. Marvel from another 1939 pic.  Adventures along the way, many felonious, leave Ford on his own to discover his farm is nothing but scrub land.  Yet, some crops thrive in scrub, no?   Running just over an hour and very telling of what passed for Left-Wing political messaging in Hollywood (what a great classroom assignment it would make!), we’re left with a supposed ‘Party Line’ scenario that ends up celebrating a guy saving up to buy personal property & independently start a family.  At heart, nothing ‘collectivistic’ here at all, instead a dream of pure American capitalism with a Red, White & Blue moral to aspire to.  Sure enough, story & co-scripter ‘Hollywood Ten’ poster boy Dalton Trumbo.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Cortez, né Morris Krantz, got his ‘Latin’ moniker for looking a bit like Rudolph Valentino.  Good enough for kid brother Jacob to also take it on as cinematographer Stanley Cortez, famous for MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS/’42; NIGHT OF THE HUNTER/’55.

LA VIE DE BOHÈME (1992)

Doleful & amused, the deadpan style of Finland’s Aki Kaurismäki is only partially successful at catching the proper spirit in this free adaptation of Henri Murger’s story collection, the source of Puccini’s evergreen opera.  Updated from 1830s Paris to ‘Timeless Contemporary’ (1950s details, but period unspecific), with its four artistic bohemians reduced to three, and their skills swapped.  (Writer Rodolfo now painter, etc.)  Shot in a harshly beautiful b&w, the film works best as a series of still-life compositions from poverty-row:  tenements, hole-in-the-wall bars, a train platform conjured of shadow, silhouette & moving light.  (A technique that sends us back to Chaplin’s A WOMAN OF PARIS/’23.)  The core story remains: starving artist friends (painter, writer, playwright), less than faithful girlfriends, visa trouble; wistful separation, love renewed too late.  But here, working in French with local & Finnish players (plus Samuel Fuller speaking a bit of phonetic French), Kaurismäki can’t find a working rhythm when he needs to play it straight.  Even the jokes, hit and miss.  But with its strong visuals (production design John Ebden; cinematography Timo Salminen) and time-tested narrative, it pulls you in anyway.

DOUBLE-BILL: Dozens of adaptations, most hewing closely to Puccini, but crediting out-of-copyright novelist Murger.  King Vidor’s traditional version of 1926 surprisingly little known, but unsurprisingly fine.  With Lillian Gish (almost too realistic for comfort in her first M-G-M pic), John Gilbert & Renée Adorée (playing Musette but in real life, like poor Mimi, actually dying of T.B.).  Bonus: since it’s a silent film, you can listen to Puccini while you watch.

STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997)

Dutifully, if none too successfully, sold as a Cowboys and Indians Space Opera for the Gung-Ho/Gonzo crowd, this Paul Verhoeven film found second life as subversive fascist allegory hiding-in-plain-sight .  An achievement perhaps clearer now than at the time.*  With its co-ed army of chiseled perfection (strong of jaw, high of cheek, tight of ab, orgy-free group showers) dressed in Nazi-inspired insignia & uniforms and outfitted with ultra-advanced weaponry, they take to the universe to challenge indigenous Arachnids (aliens bugs) on their own extraterrestrial turf fighting with nothing but natural powers of destruction as they attack the humanoid lifestyle.  So, who you gonna root for?  Heck yeah, the attractive humans with the big guns.  Generally good fun, with a funny/nasty cutting edge, the film might have been even better if Verhoeven hadn’t let the actors in on what he was up to.  Playing with their beautiful tongues in their beautiful cheeks, they tend to give the game away instead of blankly going thru their duties to the MotherLand.  The winking holds things down, dulling (though not killing) the meta-joke mocking of Top Gun patriotism.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Maybe the film simply plays better in home viewing where the political allegory isn’t submerged by deafening audio and busy visual design elements.  Also, the smaller scale helps tamp down the brain blinding effects of gross out war fluids.

DOUBLE-BILL: Neil Blomkamp’s DISTRICT 9/’09 was built on similar alien vs human conflict, but wore its humanism on its sleeve so you couldn’t miss it.  Sure enough, critics picked right up on the theme.  Much as the hip anti-nuclear comic warning of DR. STRANGELOVE was to the earnest/square nuclear endgame of FAIL SAFE, so too STARSHIP TROOPERS to DISTRICT 9.

THEATER OF BLOOD (1973)

High Concept trumps below-par execution in this comic gore-athon, its can’t-miss idea covering a multitude of filmmaking inadequacies.  On the plus side: Hammy Shakespearean actor Vincent Price seeks revenge for a lifetime of bad notices by murdering a cadre of critics with death scenarios plucked from the Bard’s plays.  Helped by equally resentful daughter Diana Rigg, they stage a series of murders assisted by a gang of homeless hangers-on who applaud while Price throttles, slices, dismembers or force-feeds a ripe all-star supporting cast (Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Jack Hawkins, Robert Morley, etc.).  Minuses would be just about everything else.  In a film that needs to carefully finesse tone (from the playfully gory to the broadly comic), Douglas Hickox megs away with no tone at all, indulging in catch-as-catch-can hand-held camera work that defeats any chance for comic timing and even less organization in the action sequences.  (One car chase a lesson in ineptitude and most of Price’s dramatic entrances botched.)  All while its script settles for the bare minimum out of infinite possibilities in morbid over-the-top comic villainy.  Cheating on Shakespeare when it runs out of ideas (this Shylock takes his pound of flesh), then tossing in flat punchlines.  Not too hot technically, either.  Was the soundtrack this bad originally?  Worth a look anyway for Rigg, always divine, and for a few giggles (the idea really is a beaut), but what might it have been with a more talented creative team?

DOUBLE-BILL: Price was just off a pair of his DR. PHIBES horror pics, both far more stylishly directed by Robert Fuest though missing this film’s underlying wit.

THE VIRGINIAN (1929)

Silent in 1914 & 1923, third time proved the charm for Owen Wister’s classic Western novel.  A first or second Talkie for nearly all involved with director Victor Fleming finessing Early Talkie technical limitations by ignoring them, the film remarkably fluid & pacey for 1929, made largely on location, feeling not so much primitive as unfiltered, even a bit raw.  And not a stage trained voice in the lot, though main villain Walter Huston has to watch it now & then.  (You have to envy 1929 audiences hearing the gruff, gravelly voice of Eugene Pallette for the first time.)  Gary Cooper, rugged & impossibly glamorous without trying, is the young cattleman, out West from Virginia, roughhousing with his irresponsible best pal Richard Arlen, each vying for the affections of new schoolmarm Mary Brian.  The drama centers around cattle rustling, with Huston’s black-hatted villain leading easy-going Arlen down the path to ruin.  Coop will have to face both of them, dealing out justice to friend & foe in the film’s two most remarkable scenes: a quick-justice hanging and a final shootout.*  Most prints are a little ‘dupey,’ but you can see how extraordinary they must have seemed at the time, especially in comparison with the stiff, stagebound films flooding the market.  This one, still a natural.

DOUBLE-BILL: The famous catch phrase from the novel, ‘When you call me that, SMILE!’ used to great comic effect in Buster Keaton’s sweet, funny, still too little known GO WEST/’25.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The shootout not the expected quick-draw duel on Main Street, but a strategic cat-and-mouse death hunt thru emptied streets, back-alleys, walkways & porches.  Fleming & cameraman J. Roy Hunt beautifully flowing with and catching/anticipating the action.

CARVE HER NAME WITH PRIDE (1958)

Fact-inspired, consistently involving, underappreciated WWII spy story from British director Lewis Gilbert.*  (Himself underappreciated: ALFIE; SINK THE BISMARCK!; two of the better James Bonds.)  Virginia McKenna stars as a British wartime bride who becomes a wartime widow (with kid) after her very French soldier-husband is killed fighting in North Africa.  That, and the French background on her mother’s side, is what pulls her into the espionage service, parachuting into Occupied France as Resistence liaison.  Paul Scofield, even with his cover previously blown, runs the mission while falling for McKenna.  And while they get away with the danger once, a return trip lands them both in big trouble.  Trouble for the film as well, as little in these assignments match the intense feelings & love-struck rush of the prologue, an all too brief romance for McKenna and French soldier-boy Alain Saury leading to a speedy marriage, and a few days leave in a pastoral Britain before Saury gets called to the front.  Compared to this sexual chemistry, daring espionage and suspense in France, even with guns ablaze on a botched mission or with Scofield longing at her side, can’t compete.  And somehow, McKenna, whether in rural Normandy or chic Paris, always seems the British rose no matter how they distress her looks.

DOUBLE-BILL: A similar story in ODETTE/’50 (not seen here: w/ Anna Neagle, Trevor Howard, Marius Goring, Peter Ustinov, Bernard Lee), the same Odette (Odette Hallows) credited here as Technical Adviser.  OR: As mentioned, Gilbert’s best WWII pic, SINK THE BISMARCK!/’60.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Maybe the title kept Stateside audiences off.  Sounds vaguely horrific.

CENTRAL AIRPORT (1933)

In a switch from the social-issue dramas Richard Barthelmess specialized in at Warner Brothers in the early ‘30s, this airborne meller is all romantic triangle as two ace pilots (brothers Barthelmess & young Tom Brown, sporting a wispy mustache) competitively woo sky daredevil Sally Eilers.  The boys take to the air in backscreen projection, but thanks to director William Wellman (WINGS/’27; the Lafayette Escadrille in WWI), special effects work is intercut with plenty of hair-raising sky-jinks stunts.  Who else would fade-out on a plane zipping along upside down?  The storyline has Barthelmess banned from commercial flying after going down in a storm, but finding a way back with Eilers on the Flying Circus circuit.  Always on the move, lovers via connecting hotel rooms*, it’s enough for Barthelmess who doesn’t believe pilots should try for family life, but not enough for Eilers.  And that paves the way for kid brother Brown to move in, causing a major split.  Estranged for years, ex-lovers bump into each other just as Barthelmess, now a world-famous, oft-injured combat/test pilot is needed when kid brother Brown, plane & passengers go missing in a storm at sea.  If only Barthelmess hadn’t just found out that Eilers’ still carried a major torch for him, he'd fly to the rescue without a second thought!  No doubt, this implausible romantic melodrama would have defeated most directors, though not Tay Garnett whose ONE WAY PASSAGE managed just this sort of thwarted romance at Warners the year before. Hard to imagine Wellman ever finding his way in.

DOUBLE-BILL: Largely forgotten today, in spite of silent classics BROKEN BLOSSOMS/’19, WAY DOWN EAST/’20 and TOL’ABLE DAVID/’21, Richard Barthelmess has Howard Hawks’ ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS/’39, again as a pilot with a past to live down, to keep his name fitfully alive.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *With Pre-Code attitudes pretty much taken for granted in 1933, this lobby card is able to show kid brother Tom Brown and gal-in-the-middle Sally Eilers comfortably sharing the same bed . . . and no foot on the floor.

YEAR OF THE DRAGON (1985)

Still licking his wounds after the disastrous release of HEAVEN’S GATE/’80*, writer/director Michael Cimino took five years to get his next project out.  The wait proved fatal, not because the film was lousy, it’s an acceptable policier (Next Generation Chinatown Mob Boss meets Next Generation Chinatown Top Cop), but from pent up expectations after Cimino’s hubristic fall from his Oscar-winning DEER HUNTER.  A miscast thirty-three yr-old Mickey Rourke, with his up-front Ring-A-Ding attitude (cocked Sinatra chapeau included) and varying amounts of gray at the temples, is the Police Captain vowing to sweep out old Tong War Hostilities & protection rackets in Chinatown , yin to John Lone’s yang as new broom for the Chinese Mafia, shaking up Chinatown’s old guard by pushing to control rather than merely facilitate local drug trafficking.  Matching ambitions gets the both of them after suitable bloodshed & suspense, leading to the inevitable mano-a-mano death match.  Nothing wrong there, with Lone the best thing in here along with some nicely gauged perversities on the way (a doomed undercover baby cop; a nun who specializes in Chinese dialects; revenge hits in sludgy tofu pits as well as nice suburban homes; overseas negotiations with a jungle drug lord), all of it undercut by stilted dialogue (Oliver Stone co-wrote) and some truly terrible acting.  None worse then debuting love interest Ariane, who barely worked again.  On the other hand, where else are you going to see a Polish funeral accompanied by Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Quickly pulled after opening at 219 minutes, HEAVEN’S GATE was defensively reduced (to 149"), then dumped again after brief return engagements.   Now restored to more or less the original cut, rep much improved . . . by some.  Cimino never recovered (3 flop films post-DRAGON in 40 years).  But did the deserved catastrophe of GATE or the undeserved critical & commercial triumph of THE DEER HUNTER/’78 do him in?

DOUBLE-BILL: Under the watchful eye of star/producer Clint Eastwood, lots of promise on display in Cimino debut THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT/’74 (with Jeff Bridges stealing the pic).  OR: For cinema’s greatest (and funniest) Chinatown Tong War, Buster Keaton’s THE CAMERAMAN/’28.

MULAN (1998)

The recent crop of Live-Action (or Life-like) remakes of ‘classic’ Disney animated films can’t win for trying.  From CINDERELLA/’15 to DUMBO/’19, they’re either too close to the original (what’s the point?) or not close enough (what’s the point?).  On the other hand, they also can’t lose since non-partisans couldn’t care less, the title is pre-sold and the films usually make gobs of money.  (Heck, even PETE’S DRAGON/’16 and DUMBO will probably earn out.)  Now, it’s MULAN, a very pricey 2020 proposition getting dissed by fans of the animated version.  (5.4 to 7.6 on IMDb.)  The 1998 version, a late entry in the post-BEAUTY AND THE BEAST hand-drawn Disney animation renaissance*, umpteenth telling of a Chinese cross-dressing fable (girl in the family goes to war for her ailing father disguised as a young man), is simply spectacular to look at, often thrillingly respectful of traditional Asian land & seascape art.  The story, with East-is-East restraint, beauty & æsthetics (plus grab-bag jokes for the kids), opens with Mulan, the rare animated Disney child with two living parents, proving just how ill-suited she is for the happy homemaker life her family has mapped out for her.  But after two reels, there’s an abrupt shift (too much Disney story development?) that sees Mulan visiting the family ancestral monuments to find ancient spirits rising out of stone memorials . . . and seeming to turn into Jewish aunts & uncles kvetching at Sabbath Seder.  (Chinese Take-Out tonight?)  Eddie Murphy also shows as a sassy mini-dragon mentor for Mulan (joining a lucky cricket).  He’s funny, but mostly there for that Robin Williams/ALADDIN vibe.  Then it’s off for comic  Military Training tropes; mediocre work-out songs (one a near cousin to SOUTH PACIFIC’s ‘Nothing Like A Dame’); a little hide-the-bosom cosplay; and finally war maneuvers against a stunningly conceived Hun Army.  Brilliantly executed design, with visual character development equal to the spectacular backgrounds & action set pieces.  But the specific Middle Kingdom tone promised in the early scenes has slipped away.  Still, enough left to see where the fierce fan loyalty comes from.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Disney had one more hand-drawn animated winner in LILO AND STITCH/’02, also with a largely non-Caucasian cast of characters.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Last feature film credit for voice-double champ Marni Nixon, doing the singing for June Foray’s Grandma as she’d previously done for Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood, Audrey Hepburn and even Marilyn Monroe on high notes.

THE BARONESS AND THE BUTLER (1938)

Custom-tailored as a Hollywood debut for French film star Annabella (gorgeous, charming, hard to understand), she’s a Budapest Baroness, daughter to Henry Stephenson’s Prime Minister, shocked when perfect butler William Powell is elected to Parliament as part of the Liberal opposition!  No need to worry, Powell may attack as principled politician, but will still run manse, staff & family affairs.  This high concept rom-com, loaded with political potential & socially awkward comic possibilities, largely misses the target (hell, it barely takes aim!) even with seven credited writers.  Maybe they needed eight.  Two good ideas in the whole film: the Prime Minister’s delight watching Powell bash away at him & the Conservatives; and a Lubitschian fake-out opening that leads us to believe Powell is master of the house and not head butler.  Alas, under Walter Lang’s functional direction, nothing else nearly as witty.  With Joseph Schildkraut, Nigel Bruce & Helen Westley circling about but given little to do, while Annabella’s Stateside launch feels over-manicured.  Very beautiful (with English that would quickly improve), but you can see how clever David O. Selznick was reacting to this next year, having his new European discovery, Ingrid Bergman, make her first appearance all but make-up free in INTERMEZZO/’39.  That really was a sensation!

DOUBLE-BILL: Though usually lawyer or detective, Powell was also Hollywood’s butler of choice after MY MAN GODFREY/’36.

MADIGAN (1968)

After three decades in various directorial capacities (from Warners montage department to studio programmers, indie ‘Bs’ and tv), Don Siegel made his long delayed move to A-list status on this gritty, multi-layered NYC police procedural (believably faked on L.A. locations).  With Hollywood Ten writer Abraham Polonsky, off the BlackList after 17 years, rewriting Howard Rodman’s script, no surprise to see compromised character traits for all the major players as tough detective Richard Widmark, with partner Harry Guardino, lose their man and their guns screwing up a simple arrest.   Turns out, the guy isn’t just any pick-up, but wanted for murder, landing the partners in deep shit with higher ups straight to the top, Police Commissioner Henry Fonda.  Loaded with tasty character turns for trusted public figures and personal street snitches (Raymond St. Jacques, Don Stroud, Michael Dunn), along with gal pals, wives & hookers (Inger Stevens, Sheree North, Susan Clark), Siegel struggles against low work ethic & throwback housestyle at Lew Wasserman ‘60s Universal (cinematographer Russell Metty phoning it in with ‘blanket lighting’ on hideous standing set interiors; below par art direction & process work; second-rate background scores, grudge-holding antagonist producer Frank Rosenberg), but largely gets his effects across; a marvel of bluff narrative efficiency and blunt styleless style.

DOUBLE-BILL: Siegel’s solidified his late rise on his next, Clint Eastwood in COOGAN’S BLUFF/’68.

THE BRASHER DOUBLOON (1947)

Trim detective yarn suffers from high expectations it can’t meet since the trim detective at hand is Philip Marlowe and the story Raymond Chandler’s THE HIGH WINDOW.*  But taken on its own, this John Brahm programmer is smooth & striking as George Montgomery’s youngish Marlowe (sounding like Clark Gable) wisecracks thru a case when widowed matron Florence Bates calls him in to retrieve a rare coin (the doubloon) gone missing from her collection.  She claims to know who took it, but won’t tell.  Just bring it back.  Suspects include Conrad Janis’s disrespectful son; personal secretary Nancy Guild (working a Gene Tierney meets Veronica Lake act); and a mob loan shark, a coin dealer, a newsreel cameraman, plus various cops working a step and a half behind Marlowe.  Stumbling over murder victims, Marlowe barely has time to get beat up in this one; instead, every other character pulls a gun on him . . . earning a laugh each time.  And what impeccable technique Brahm brings to the zippy, easy-to-read action sequences.  Textbook worthy stuff even if cinematographer Lloyd Ahearn can’t match the noir textures Lucien Ballard & Joseph LaShelle gave Brahm in HANGOVER SQUARE/’45 and THE LODGER/’44.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Filmed before, as TIME TO KILL/’42, last of the Lloyd Nolan MICHAEL SHAYNE P.I. programmers (not seen here).  OR: For more Brahm, HANGOVER SQUARE with Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, George Sanders & Bernard Herrmann's piano concerto climax.

FOUR MEN AND A PRAYER (1938)

Uncharacteristic John Ford film gets off to good start with a double prologue that promises a neat variation on THE FOUR FEATHERS, the oft-filmed tale of a ‘cowards’ revenge in British India.  Here, the disgraced soldier is Dad (court-marshalled Colonel C. Aubrey Smith*) and avenging angels his four gallant sons (debuting Richard Greene; George Sanders; David Niven in a breakthru perf; William Henry).  Dropping everything to come home upon hearing that Dad has been dishonorably discharged, they’re greeted by the Colonel and all the exculpatory documents needed to prove his innocence.  But only briefly as Dad suicides . . . or is it murder?  And with all the evidence stolen, it’s up to the boys to find the missing papers and clear Dad’s name (their name, too!), globe-hopping to get to the bottom of things.  So far, so good.  Unfortunately, this is also where the film proper begins with the tone abruptly switching from tall tale & derring-do to comic roughhouse & romantic folderol as Greene’s girlfriend, Washingtonian adventuress Loretta Young, joins the hunt. And while George Stevens pulled off just this sort of Screwball Adventure in GUNGA DIN/’39, he had the solid base of a Hecht/MacArthur story to work with.  Here, the tone wobbles with Young toggling between larky courtship and deadly serious South American Revolution massacres.  With a big, shiny supporting cast even in small roles and strong production values, you have to wonder what producer Darryl F. Zanuck thought he had here.  For Ford, a ‘job of work.’  For Niven, a chance to be dapper, brave, flirtatious, and show off his Donald Duck quacking.  And for hunky Richard Greene, a showcase for his smooth chest.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Next year, C. Aubrey Smith would star as the doubting Granddad in the best of all possible FOUR FEATHERS/’39.  OR: A late Ford silent, similar in name only, FOUR SONS/’28, a brotherly WWI saga that aims for tears.  (see below)