LADY SINGS THE BLUES (1972)

On release considered inauthentic but effective; now just inauthentic.  Diana Ross, sans Supremes, made a splashy film debut in this MOTOWN produced Billie Holiday bio-pic meant to set up a big movie career that didn’t happened.*  Instead, co-stars Billy Dee Williams as glam consort (off the big screen since his 1959 debut) and a barely known Richard Pryor as Billie’s piano man/drug pal, saw theirs take off.*  The film has a weird vibe to it, trying to be tough-minded about Holiday’s drug addiction & self-destructive personality while also vamping as star-making vehicle along the lines of Barbra Streisand’s FUNNY GIRL.  A trick the film’s three newbie scripters (none ever wrote again) are at a loss to pull off.  (No doubt why Billie Holiday [Billie Holiday!!] ends the film belting out [Billie Holiday belting out??] the Fanny Brice/Barbra Streisand standard ‘My Man.’)  Director Sidney J. Furie goes all in on ‘truthiness’ and insincerity (shameless even by Hollywood bio-pics standards) and gets a response out of Ross during big out-of-control moments.  But given nothing to chew on, she bops & weaves to beat the band.  (Faults laid bare next to Pryor’s ability to jive with ants-in-his-pants believability.)  Occasionally, when a song fits, like ‘Good Morning Heartache,’ Furie lets John Alonzo’s camera simply watch and things improve considerably.  But mostly no more than facsimile Holiday.  Then Billy Dee shows up for more tempest-tossed romance and we drop the jazz for Michel Legrand's schlurpy Woman’s-Weepie score, accurately reflecting the film's priorities.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Ross follow-ups MAHOGANY/’75 and THE WIZ/’78 put the kibosh on that idea.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-wiz-1978.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Williams & Pryor’s underrated next big period piece BINGO LONG STARS/’76.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-bingo-long-traveling-all-stars-and.html

NGHTMARE ALLEY (2021)

Guillermo del Toro’s remake of the superb Tyrone Power/Edmund Goulding cautionary Carny-World creep-out gets off to a roaring start charting the swift rise of on-the-lam drifter Bradley Cooper, down on his luck, but knowing opportunity when he sees it.  (Twelve years older than Power, he's in even more of a hurry.*)  Budding up people who can help him succeed in this outfit of misfits (the better to get out), he takes what he can: a mind-reading con act from mentor-with-benefits Toni Collette & older/alcoholic spouse David Strathairn, advice from seen-it-all barker Willem Dafoe, a mate in lonely Rooney Mara’s Electrified Side-Show gal.  In the expected del Toro manner, art direction leans more baroque than needed (the 1947 original used a contemporary setting and let the carny milieu provide distancing), here, in 2021, the early ‘40s settings make sense and have their charms.  But an hour in, Mara & Cooper split for fame and fortune in Chicago, high society success with a classed up act, and the film all but shuts down.  Over-reaching on millionaires and slinky psychiatrist Cate Blanchett (very Faye Dunaway untouchable) with psychic cons, the film hits a structural wall solved in ‘47, but fumbled this time out.   That opening hour wasn’t a First Act, but a Prologue.  (Strictly speaking a second prologue.)  So we don’t so much stop as never get started on the weaker second half.  Worse, because del Toro so obviously doesn't know/understand these old-money people, nothing holds.  The original film foreshortened structure (probably the work of scripter extraordinare Jules Furthman) so the prologue functioned as a traditional first act and the rest fell into place.)  And while this may not explain the film’s distressingly weak commercial performance (it also flopped badly in ‘47), it may keep the remake from earning the earlier film’s strong cult following.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The original NIGHTMARE ALLEY.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/nightmare-alley-1947.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Sobering to realize that when Tyrone Power was Bradley Cooper’s age, he’d been dead a year.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Del Toro has released an alternate version in glistening b&w, initiated by seeing Cate Blanchett in a lighting check with the color removed.  Revelatory, according to Del Toro, who immediately noticed the advantage of monochrome in dramatic stylization and a powerful natural distancing effect (the face all planes & abstraction, yet paradoxically more realistic) bringing out echoes of Barbara Stanwyck/Lauren Bacall not seen in color.  Does it ‘fix’ the second half problems?  Perhaps another look?  Orson Welles didn’t call b&w photography ‘the actor’s friend,’ for nothing.

BEYOND MOMBASA (1956)

Middling, mid-list, mid-‘50s African Adventure has just enough quirks to make it worth a look.  Cornel Wilde, enjoyably lowdown, sneaks into Kenya to find his brother murdered and his opportunity for riches from a reclaimed gold mine unsecured.  Does anyone even know where it is?  Lucky for him, missionary Leo Genn and anthropologist niece Donna Reed are headed to Mombasa, near the played out mine, along with safari guide Christopher Lee, while field man Ron Randell is already in the area.  But this ad-hoc team sees a dangerous journey made tougher still by so-called Leopard Men, a secret cult of native tribesmen out to stop all White interlopers, particularly ones carrying Geiger Counters.  So that’s what his brother was hoping to find in the dead mine: uranium.  Lenser Freddie Young gives the location work a far more sophisticated look & palette than journeyman Hollywood director George Marshall was probably used to, and some casting agent found dozens of fresh young locals as bearers.  (In shoots like these, fit young non-union guys didn’t just play bearers, but doubled up to work as bearers.)  Meanwhile, one of the White characters secretly sides with those Leopard Men, believing Africa should be for Africans: Land, Waterways, Mineral Deposits, the works; Stop plundering Black Africa’s heritage & wealth for the White Man’s gain.  Here’s the kicker, he’s the villain.  Yikes!  Along with Wilde’s loosey-goosey perf (he makes a very funny, very fit drunk) and Young’s lensing (can’t blame him for some of the studio sets), it’s this retrograde political angle that makes you sit up & take notice.  Maybe next time, this villain might also imagine having one of the African characters figure into the plot.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Wilde returned to Africa, and to his stiff persona, in the intriguing, self-directed THE NAKED PREY/’65.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-naked-prey-1965.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: More like Attention Must Be Mislaid.  Here, someone had the ghastly idea of using a novelty score with a loud, jazzy trumpeter cutting up, even walking on for a spot.  Fortunately, him & his mouthpiece disappear once we hit the jungle.

È STATA LA MANO DI DIO / THE HAND OF GOD (2021)

When your family story is something like a Federico Fellini movie (think AMARCORD/’73; I VITELLONI/’53), you’d be crazy not to make something like a Federico Fellini movie out of it.  Yet in filming his own alternately hilarious & tragic ‘80s coming-of-age story (his first Naples shoot in twenty years), writer/director Paolo Sorrentino proves his own man as much by what he avoids from his elder master as by what he keeps.  And unlike late Fellini, never in thrall to his mannerisms, but servant & master as needed.  Taming his lush manner, especially on domestic interiors, Sorrentino shows a side of Naples rarely seen by outsiders, the well-to-do, upper-middle class where alter-ego Fabietto (Filippo Scotti, exceptional) indulges in his two main obsessions, voluptuous Aunt Patrizia (unable to have children, her magnificent unused breasts have driven her crazy), and soccer great Diego Maradona, rumored to be coming to Naples.  Over the course of his 17th year, Fabietto and siblings will all face life altering changes: will his older brother get that movie role; will Fabietto find friends outside the extended family circle & figure out what he wants to do after high school; will his sister ever come out of the apartment bathroom?  The first half is broad and riotous, though never as broad and riotous as half the females in the family (Yikes!), while the more sobersided second half, filled with unexpected consequences, is unforgettably moving.  Occasionally wise, too, on subjects ranging from death to friendship to deflowering.  Immaculate filmmaking on this grand a scale pretty rare.  Perfectly cast, too, with Sorrentino regular Toni Servillo, a perfect font of equivocal advise as the father, and Luisa Ranieri going full Anita Ekberg as Aunt Patrizia.  (NOTE: A lot of sex & nudity for our Family Friendly Label, so be aware.  It's certainly no Kiddie Pic.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, Fellini’s I VITELLONI or AMARCORD.  OR: The film Sorrentino says gave him the key to dare something this personal, ROMA/’18.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/roma-2018.html

NO TIME TO DIE (2021)

For Daniel Craig’s last tour of 007 duty, long-standing James Bond handlers Barbara Broccoli & Michael Wilson (still running the family business with one basic product) go back to first in the series DR. NO, released when Ms. Broccoli was but two years old.  And they let us know right from the credit sequence, sticking in the odd undulating dots used for the DR. NO credits, and never again till now.  Later, they’ll rebuild/expand DR. NO’s watery lab (now a chemical weapons factory*), and while stopping short of a YellowFace villain, they do slick down Rami Malek’s hair and give him Dr. No’s halting vocal cadence.  Plus exploding island finale.  There doesn’t seem to be a point to all this, nor to the many other self-referential moments with other films in the long-running series.  Perhaps an attempt to add personal connection to a typically impersonal 007 story that sees Bond not bonding at all to Lady Love Léa Seydoux.  So out of synch, their love-making session is accompanied by an old 78rpm record, the ones that played four minutes, tops.  (Bond’s aging libido winding down like that hand-cranked Victrola.)  Best to get to the over-extended action sequences, state-of-the-art motor vehicle chases to get us thru nearly three hours.  Things do pick up in the middle, mostly in Cuba, when Craig’s Bond finds a worthy partner in fellow spy Ana de Armas (rekindling fun from KNIVES OUT/’19).  But then Christoph Waltz shows up as imprisoned Spectre head Blofeld for a Hannibal Lecter routine.  Time for a change of the guard . . . and not only in the cast.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Said weapon designed for good, but now being used for evil!  Where do they come up with this original stuff?  (And how much are they playing for it?)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: Bloat also part of the James Bond tradition, going all the way back to #4 THUNDERBALL/’65.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/09/thunderball-1965.html

SPOILER: The shock ending less unprecedented than claimed.  Roger Moore ‘died’ in his last three Bonds, it’s just that nobody told him.

LICORICE PIZZA (2021)

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has gone soft on us.  And, after some increasingly cold-blooded films, it turns out to be a good thing.  His third helping of ‘70s L.A. (born 1970, PTA too young to bring personal memories to BOOGIE NIGHTS/’97; INHERENT VICE/’14 or this), the new film is, comparatively, a walk in the park.  Make that a run in the park as dashing either to or away from wanted or unwanted connections the main visual motif in charting the youthful blossoming of a mismatched couple who just ‘fit.’  HIM: 15, growing past professional acting in kid roles, if still unable to get that ‘flip’ out of his hair; HER: 25, looking for a way out at home and nearly as self-motivated/entrepreneurial as he is.  (Vocational tries include acting; pioneer waterbed salesman/installation; political organizer; pinball arcade operator/owner.)  Together and separately, many close calls and capers, some tinged with Hollywood celebrity backgrounds (featuring current Hollywood celebrities Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, all out for comic blood).  The film takes a reel or two (shot on 35mm so it really is a reel) to hit its stride, but it soon sneaks up on you.  (Like indigestion after eating an Oki’s Dog pastrami burrito . . . only pleasant.)  Tone, texture & period details just right.*  Stylistically, very California New Wave, with a deceptively loose feel to what's actually tight & tidy construction (subliminal rather than overt), a melding of Leo McCarey & Hal Ashby, two sui generis L.A. players miles apart in attitude & generation.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Well, not all the details.  The grown up who’s roughhousing the pinball machine would have immediately hit TILT.

DOUBLE-BILL: The film is set in 1973, the year AMERICAN GRAFFITI asked ‘Where Were You ‘62?’  It’s the movie everyone in here would be lining up to see. 

ENCANTO (2021)

Above, four character posters from Disney’s latest animated feature.  There could have been two dozen.  So many characters tossed at us!  (A ploy so you’ll buy a DVD in hope of finding a scorecard?)   This made-from-scratch Columbian fable, if not quite the enchantment it’s meant to be, still ‘gives good weight’ following an enchanted family where each member is blessed with some special talent: strength; shape-shifting; weather.  A gift from the earth gods after the family matriarch suffered a tragic loss a couple of generations back.  Now, fruitful and much multiplied, something’s gone wrong with the miracle and ironically the only one able to track down the cause and save the day, is the one child in the family whose Gift Day came up empty in the special powers department.  Why the poor girl even wears glasses!  (A first for a Disney heroine.)  Between the vivid South America color, spirited Lin-Manuel Miranda score and affectionately mismatched characters (what a range of types from a single bloodline!), there’s plenty to enjoy.  Maybe too much.  Aiming for inclusive, they wind up with busy, busy, busy; exhausting just to keep up with everyone.  A bit more quiet time might have made the difference.  (Hard to believe writer/directors Jared Bush & Byron Howard were in charge of the slow-paced comic burns that were the highlight of ZOOTOPIA/’16.)  No doubt, multiple viewings and more familiarity with the dozens of characters would help.  It’s how kids watch these things anyway.  And superb vocal characterizations help.  But grownups may feel once is enough.  Likable & touching by the end, but too agitato and too colorful for its own good.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Disney first went to South America as part of the ‘Good Neighbor’ war effort for SALUDOS AMIGOS/’42, then visually let loose in its followup, THE THREE CABALLEROS/’44.  An uneven ride (some live-action segments date it), but with blissed-out animated sequences between Donald Duck and his new S.A. pals.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/three-caballeros-1945.html

ARISE MY LOVE (1940)

The interregnum between the start of WWII in Europe and America’s post-Pearl Harbor entry begat just about the oddest genre subset in Hollywood history: Prelude-to-War Romantic Comedy.   A queasy combination, it outlasted its moment, but initially did allow the studios to take sides in the conflict.  (In Congress, D.C. isolationists were denouncing anti-German Hollywood sentiment right up to December 7th.)  Many top female stars took up the call*, but this one (dir-Mitchell Leisen; script Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett), awkward & confused as it is, was almost certainly the best.  Claudette Colbert is the news reporter scheming to get out of Women’s Features flying into the Spanish Civil War to save Flyboy Ray Milland from execution by posing as the loyal little wife.  (The wild tonal shift from  death by firing squad to romantic patter & flight to freedom anticipating Wilder using the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre to set up comedy in SOME LIKE IT HOT/’59.)  Romance blooms (how could it not with Colbert looking indescribably lovely in a Paris hack under Charles Lang’s lensing), though Milland still hopes to fly for Poland and Claudette has a new assignment in Berlin.  But when war suddenly breaks out, they ditch Freedom Fighting for safety in America till a torpedo torpedoes those plans.  Love will have to wait; there’s a war to be won!  Fascinating to imagine how this must have played to nervous audiences at the time.  (You can feel how personal it was to French-born Colbert and Welsh-born Milland.)  And just as fascinating to see how studio artifice in sets & effects (those toy planes!), helps rather than hurts the conceit & conflicting dramatic angles.  Imagine this working at all with more realistic production values.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *With cachet borrowed from The Lunts on B’way, Norma Shearer started the Prelude-to-War/Rom-Com cycle in IDIOT’S DELIGHT/’39; Joan Bennet took it to a dark place in THE MAN I MARRIED/’40 (while sister Constance answered on PARIS UNDERGROUND/’45); Joan Crawford came late via REUNION IN FRANCE/’42; and Ginger Rogers took the Booby Prize for ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON/’42; many more. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/02/idiots-delight-1939.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-man-i-married-1940.html     https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/madame-pimpernelaka-paris-underground.html      https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/reunion-in-france-1942.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/once-upon-honeymoon-1942.html

BEING THE RICARDOS (2021)

Very slick, very entertaining, Aaron Sorkin eavesdrops behind-the-scenes of a crisis-fueled week at pioneering ‘50s sit-com I LOVE LUCY.  With four fires to put out and larded with nonlinear backstory, not to mention a few anachronistic gender-woke issues, there's never a dull moment at the Ricardos . . . er . . . the Arnaz's.  And while Sorkin’s direction proves as alarmingly facile as his infamous buzz-saw dialogue, he’s certainly got the dream cast to pull it off.  Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, Nina Arianda and most especially J.K. Simmons playing Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance & William Frawley, all superb as they deal with two chronic problems (getting the weekly show in shape; ignoring/confronting Desi’s infidelities) along with two acute public relation eruptions (Lucy’s pregnancy; Lucy’s purported Communist Party past).  As to what’s true and what’s not, Sorkin doesn’t exactly breed confidence with gaffes like RKO’s canning Lucy after a dramatic breakthru with THE BIG STREET/’42.*  Lucy not the stated 39 at the time, but 31; supposedly fighting Judy Holliday for the role years before Holliday even made a film let alone a name in Hollywood; and Lucy’s misery at leaving RKO when she was almost immediately picked up by top M-G-M producer Arthur Freed  for DUBARRY WAS A LADY/’43.  (In '40s Hollywood, that’s like checking OUT of Motel 6 and checking IN at the Waldorf.)  In spite of such things, satisfying & fun.  (Love to know if the big finish with Desi saving the day was true.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Odd not to mention that Desilu Studios took over what had been the old RKO lot.   Or that Arnaz’s groundbreaking 3-camera sit-com filming technique was actually created by cinematographer Karl Freund, a stylist who journeyed all the way from the heights of ‘20s UFA German Expressionism to I LOVE LUCY.  And where’s Lucy’s mom, owner of Hollywood’s loudest, most easily recognizable laugh?  So contagious, later sit-coms used real laughter from old I LOVE LUCY shows on laugh tracks for decades.

DB: *Ball is good in STREET.  But even better in her other Damon Runyon film, SORROWFUL JONES/’49.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/big-street-1942.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/sorrowful-jones-1949.html

IT'S IN THE BAG (1945)

Comedian Fred Allen had what’s known in the biz as a face made for radio.  Never catching on in tv or film, he’s now mainly remembered, if at all, for his long-running faux feud with fellow comic Jack Benny.  (Matt Damon & Jimmy Kimmel keep up a similar tradition today.)  At his peak on the air in the late ‘40s, Allen was considered the comedian’s comedian, deft & topical, he railed only half in jest against small annoyances & petty absurdities. 

Fred Allen/Time Cover

Catholic rather than Jewish, but not so far removed from Jerry Seinfeld or Larry David.  Here, he refers to someone as a goniff; twice!  (Yiddish for crook, has it been heard on screen before or since?)  The story is a darn funny adaptation of the classic Russian comedy about greed THE TWELVE CHAIRS*, with the treasure hunt for a lost inheritance reduced to Five Chairs.  Long disparaged, the film turns out to be a great way to discover the pleasures of Allen’s lost voice.  Sure, plenty of jokes miss, it’s the nature of these things, but plenty hit.  It’s also a chance to see some great radio regulars (Jack Benny, Rudy Vallee, Don Ameche, Victor Moore, William Bendix, goofy Jerry Colonna, John Carradine), plus a sprinkling of the Allen radio cast in support.  Journeyman helmer Richard Wallace keeps the pace brisk, the relationships clear (Allen’s young son is hilarious, with HUGE bags under his eyes), and a better structure than usual for these things.  Maybe it came from Alma Reville, doing story clean up here as she often did - with & without credit - for husband Alfred Hitchcock.  (Producer, Jack Skirball must have brought her in having worked with the Hitchcocks at Universal on SHADOW OF A DOUBT/’43 and SABOTEUR/’42.)   Lots of fun.  Long available in miserable Public Domain issues, now looking great on an Olive DVD.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Mel Brooks’ take on the original in THE TWELVE CHAIRS/’70.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/10/twelve-chairs-1970.html

CONTEST: The film shares a joke with THUNDERBALL/’65.  Indeed, Allen and Sean Connery’s James Bond deliver the same gag nearly word for word and with the exact same setup.  Name the joke to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.

VERDENS VERSTE MENNESKE / THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (2021)

Well received (and you’ll see why) thirty/forty-something relationship dramedy directed & co-written by Joachim Trier follows the zig-zag love & professional life of Oslovian Renate Reinsve (Cannes award-winner), switching college majors & career paths (surgeon to psychiatry/writing to photography) along with romantic partners, fully investing in each succeeding choice only to find them . . . what?  Growing stale?  Moving beyond the person she was (or thought she was) at the start of each relationship?  Thinking something’s better around the corner?  (Peggy Lee’s ‘Is That All There Is’ might be her theme song.)  Two main ‘live-ins’ accompany her most on the way: Anders Danielsen Lie (somewhat older/artistic), then Herbert Nordrum (sturdy/unambitious).  Both actors as good as Reinsve, with the best film ‘chapter’ going to a sexy meet-cute where Nordrum & Reinsve seriously flirt over what is and what isn’t ‘cheating’ on significant others.  The whole film nearly as good, with Trier, a real detail kind of guy, loading in telling moments like a bit about ‘man-splaining,’ done via ‘man-splaining.’  Yet ultimately, isn't it too familiar?   Even Reinsve's preference for avocation over vocation which may lie at the heart of things.  Shot in 35 mm, largely under Scandinavian ‘DOGME’ protocol, Trier livens up his palette with stylistic flourishes for a drug-induced sequence, tosses in a bit of animation and a jazzy American Songbook cut like ‘70s Woody Allen.   (Call it DOGME With Benefits.)  But hasn’t Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s FLEABAG /’16 (especially the remarkable second season) revised the rulebook for these modern seekers of love & personal fulfillment?

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, FLEABAG, strikingly fresh & original.  Season Two is best, but One sets it up.

THE CRIMINAL / THE CONCRETE JUNGLE (1960)

Working in Europe, and now under his own name, BlackListed U.S. director Joseph Losey had one more pulpy effort in him before moving to art house films via scripts from Harold Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Mozart, et al.  It's this tough crime drama split between Inside Prison Actioner and Outside Mob Caper.  Stanley Baker (The Man Who Would Be Sean Connery . . . if there hadn’t been a Sean Connery) is at the end of a three-year stint with plans for a Race Track Heist once he gets out. But first, an old score to settle with a new inmate before his release and hook up with well-connected mob man Sam Wanamaker (also BlackListed in the U.S.) to set the track robbery in motion.  All goes well . . . at first.  But Baker has a plan for that, too, a devilishly good one.  Working with film noir D.P. Robert (THIRD MAN) Krasker, Losey shows more interest working inside prison than out.  Gates, corridors, violent-tinged assemblies, twisty staircases, cages: a threatening muscular world well matched to inmates in their spiffy, well-tended, prison outfits, little wool uniforms with tapered white shirts &  skinny black ties.  The guards should be as well turned out.  A shame it’s 1960 and the ending has to be a downbeat fait accompli since even not-so-bad guys couldn’t get away with something like this at the time.  Instead, the expected nihilistic ending, though neatly handled.  Something definitely lost when Losey stopped making genre pics.

DOUBLE-BILL: Pre-exile, Losey is at his best mixing suspense and social commentary in his early, undervalued Southern Border Thriller THE LAWLESS/’50.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1984)

Acclaimed made-for-tv version of the Dickens perennial disappoints.  You see what they were aiming for; a nastier, more realistic Scrooge in gravel-voiced George C. Scott setting up a bigger spiritual comeuppance, reclamation in sharp relief.  Fine as theory; in practice, not so effective.  Perhaps with a less generic production and more specific direction than Clive Donner is able to muster.  Here, Yuletide-crowded London streets & Christmas Carolers look fit for a catalog.  (The overly bright look necessitated by tv picture resolution standards of the day also no help.)  The simple special effects aren’t a deal breaker, but why so many miscast principals?  David Warner too assertive as Bob Cratchit, his family as tidy & neatly turned out as the Von Trapps; Frank Finlay missing every laugh & fright as Jacob Marley’s Specter; and a .333 batting average on the Three Ghosts.  Things improve for the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Scott attuned to Fear Factor elements after shortchanging the pleasures & regrets he samples in the first two rounds.  It pays off anyway; Dickens always does.  But this Christmas Pudding is both over and under-cooked.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Top recommendations remain with Alastair Sim in 1951, finally restored to do it justice; and John Gielgud’s remarkable 70" audio abridgement, released in 1987.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/11/christmas-carol-scrooge-1935-1938-1951.html

THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO (1944)

No longer a Warner Brothers Young-Man-In-A Hurry, but now M-G-M producer/director corporate animal, Mervyn LeRoy could still make something out of congenial material.  Stately hooey like RANDOM HARVEST/’42 and MADAME CURIE/’43, so ‘of-a-piece,’ not even Greer Garson able to knock them off track.  And here, in this big WWII epic, released soon after D-Day, he proves just the man for the job . . . on about half the film.  Trouble is, what’s good and what’s bad come tumbling our way higgledy-piggledy, making it all but impossible to mentally sort out the wheat from the chaff.  Generally though, things work best in the first half as Spencer Tracy’s Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle preps an all but logistically impossible surprise raid on Tokyo amid post Pearl Harbor hysteria & defeatism.  Under Dalton Trumbo’s script, this comes across as a bit corny (no surprise), but well structured and involving.  (If only those Texas Fly Boys would stop singing.)  Much of the cast (Van Johnson, Don DeFore, Stephen McNally, Phyllis Thaxter* - a depressingly twinkly film debut after Robert Sherwood on B’way with The Lunts, Montgomery Clift, Sydney Greenstreet), all as fully corporate & efficient as LeRoy, but with useful irritants like Robert Walker & Robert Mitchum showing a different way to do things.  (Tracy only around fitfully for dour background  & briefings.)  The actual raid, with very cleverly handled effects for the period, accurately zips by not much past the halfway mark, while the rest of the film (a long rescue) proves less conducive to LeRoy’s amusement.  Lots of failed soundstage exterior sets and unconvincing cyclorama background paintings.  Plus a truly appalling symbolic moment when an amputation is represented in a dream sequence with a large tree getting sawed in the background.  Yikes!  Long enough for a prestige release (the film could easily lose half an hour), it certainly worked for audiences at the time, and to some extent still does.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Thaxter, rarely used properly in film, seen at her best as John Garfield’s wife in THE BREAKING POINT/’50, exhibiting a healthy sex drive in Michael Curtiz’s fine Hemingway adaptation.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-breaking-point-1950.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Could Van Johnson’s post-crash facial scars after downing his plane in the movie be the real thing, leftover from a near fatal motorbike accident he had in the middle of shooting A GUY NAMED JOE/’43?  Usually covered by thick makeup, it now would have come in handy.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As usual, front-line M-G-M composer Herbert Stothart relies as much as possible on existing music for his cues.  And while he typically raids the Classical Music closet, here he’s managed to fold in a famous riff from the Rodgers & Hammerstein 1943 musical sensation OKLAHOMA!  The title track!  It’s the music that goes along with ‘When the wind comes right behind the rain.'

TRAPEZE (1956)

Having earned serious bona fides as a ‘serious’ filmmaker thru consecutive Graham Greene collaborations (THE FALLEN IDOL/’48; THE THIRD MAN/’49), British director Carol Reed was critically dinged on this release, slammed for slumming on impersonal entertainment.  But if critics, especially in England, where Reed was considered second only to David Lean, showed snobbery, the public took no notice, making this an enormous international hit, the biggest commercial success of Reed’s career.  Freely developed from its source novel, the story now as simple and direct as a circus act: talented young trapeze flier (Tony Curtis) goes to Paris looking for Burt Lancaster, the one man who can teach him The Triple, the dangerous stunt that ended Lancaster’s career in his prime, leaving him with a bum leg.  (He now works as head rigger in a Paris circus run by Thomas Gomez.)  This budding mentorship soon threatened by ambitious beauty Gina Lollobrigida, attaching herself to a series of partners: a team of acrobats; Burt; now Curtis.  (Her role the one that might have profited with fleshing out.)  Will the act hold as a double?  Will the triple be accomplished?  Will the contract get signed before an American circus moves in?  And what happens when love (as opposed to sex) comes into play?  With less process work than you’ve got toes on one foot, our three leads incredibly game/incredibly fit, seamlessly merged with stunt doubles.  Lancaster a natural with his early circus background; Curtis overcoming a fear of heights; Gina overcoming the centrifugal issues of a curvy figure.  Yikes!  The whole show orchestrated by Reed (and lenser Robert Krasker on their initial CinemaScope/Deluxe Color assignment) for maximum impact.  You can count the spins on The Triple.  All shot in a real 4000 seat one-ring circus.  (Look for the HD remaster, significantly improving on earlier DVD editions.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: It's the centennial of film & classical composer Malcolm Arnold (Oscar’d next year for THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI), here with one of the most imaginative of nearly 100 film scores.  A good time to catch up on this fascinating & difficult (bipolar?) man.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZsuYbn8DaE

THE ART OF LOVE (1965)

Building his technique as he transitioned from tv to feature film, director Norman Jewison was content to borrow a personality on early projects.  (Later ones, too, did he ever develop one of his own?)  Assured in craft by his fifth film, he’d been Capra-esque in 40 POUNDS OF TROUBLE/’62; squire to Doris Day on her last two watchable pics (THE THRILL OF IT ALL/63; SEND ME NO FLOWERS/’64); Blake Edwards wannabee here (THE PINK PANTHER written all over it, right from the DePatie-Freleng animated credits) before finding something that passed as a personal voice aping Robert Rossen’s THE HUSTLER in THE CINCINNATI KID/’65.  That leaves this one with the Booby Prize, Edwards’ brand of comedy inimitable even for a chameleon like Jewison.  Not much helped by Carl Reiner’s tapped out script* (struggling artist feigns suicide to goose sales only to see his co-conspirator grab his girl and get blamed for his ‘death’); by backlot Universal Studios Paris; and by a cast giving either too much or too little.  (Only James Garner as the self-enriching pal finding the right balance.)  If nothing else, it does show just how hard the unique talent & personal voice of Blake Edwards was to pull off.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *‘Tapped out’ as in overused ideas and ‘tapped out’ as in facile.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As the ‘Not Dead’ artist, Dick Van Dyke, placing clowning before character, as usual, does get a knockout gag on a bit lifted straight out of DIABOLIQUE/’55.  Then loses any advantage by reprising his doddering Old Man shtick from MARY POPPINS/’64.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Jewison & Reiner (now only as actor) redeemed themselves as collaborators on THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING/’66.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/russians-are-coming-russians-are-coming.html

ESCAPE FROM ZAHRAIN (1962)

Forgotten Middle East race-to-freedom pic; minor-league stuff/neatly handled.  Directed by Ronald Neame as if practicing story beats for his THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE/’72, with mismatched escapees & one hostage navigating close calls not in a capsized ship, but in a topsy-turvy Ship-of-State, outrunning armed forces rather than rising water.  Yul Brynner leads the way as the Nationalist Opposition Leader, hunted down by the corrupt King of Zahrain after he’s rescued from a rushed execution; his prison van ‘liberated’ by local Arab Confederates.  Now racing to the border in a stolen ambulance along with teen-acolyte Sal Mineo, embezzling oil man Jack Warden, a few low-life prisoners, and Western-educated hospital nurse Madlyn Rhue, losing someone with every obstacle overcome.  The film’s main obstacle may be Lyn Murray’s hackneyed score, but other tech credits belie a tight budget & lack of studio interest, including cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks, snatching MidEast flavor from California locations when not stuck on soundstage exteriors.   With Sal Mineo underplaying his patented sacrificial lamb routine and Jack Warden turning his ‘regular guy’ embezzler into something of a real person.  There’s even an uncredited appearance from James Mason as a world-weary character out of Somerset Maugham . . . or is it Joseph Conrad?  No great shakes, but worth a look.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Brynner’s signature shaved-head and stiff posture limited him to arrogant types.  Yet wigs never convinced.  But here, problem solved using a simple Arab ‘gutrah’ (headdress).  A great look for him, it adds a touch of suppleness to his personality.

SANTIAGO (1956)

With revolution just then in the air (and on the front pages) as the ultra-corrupt Cuba of Presidente Batista began to implode (Castro taking over in ‘59), the time must have seemed ripe for a throwback pic about two rival mercenary gunrunners carting their wares thru the tropical wilds of late 19th century Florida & Haiti on their way to a big payoff from the Cuban resistance.  With Alan Ladd & Lloyd Nolan joined against their will till the cash comes thru, tasty support from ship captain Chill Wills and ex-army pal Paul Fix, fresh imported leading lady Rossana Posesta, and unprecedented levels of graphic violence from director Gordon Douglas, this ought to be more involving then it is.  (Maybe if the US showed up at the end to start the Spanish-American War?!)  And while it’s hard to put a finger on just what went wrong (other than Ladd’s obvious disinterest in Ms. Podesta, he’d do better against a very tall Sophia Loren in her Stateside intro in BOY ON A DOLPHIN/’57), they join a long line of  talent who came to grief over one Cuban revolution or another (so many to choose from!).  A-lister high-profile types like Richard Lester & Sean Connery (CUBA/’79); Sydney Pollack & Robert Redford (HAVANA/’90) and the top clunker of the bunch, Johns Huston & Garfield (WE WERE STRANGERS/’49). LINK:  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/we-were-strangers-1949.html

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Though only a small piece of a very big picture, THE GODFATHER: PART II/’74 gets its sample of the Cuban Revolution just right.

tick, tick . . . BOOM! (2021)

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Lin-Manuel Miranda, the most likable ‘creative’ on B’way, makes his directing debut with the most likable musical theater adaptation seen in years.  Easily besting recent duds from far more acclaimed shows (DEAR EVAN HANSEN; CATS; ironically Manuel’s own stage breakthru IN THE HEIGHTS) with this small personal calling-card of a show written by Jonathan Larson a few years before his breakthru in RENT; recast by writer Steven Levenson to make it as proto-RENT as possible.  And while it misses the solid super-structure RENT lifted from Puccini’s LA BOHÈME, the combination of Larson’s fast-approaching 30th birthday, health & romantic crises, and countdown to his make-or-break musical workshop carries us along on a series of set pieces for his propulsive, if not always memorable tunes.  Miranda doesn’t fully trust the material, pushing too hard in the early going, but warms to the task and pulls back just enough so you can too.  Same goes for leading man Andrew Garfield, boasting an improbably fast learning-curve as multi-talented showman, his occasional weak spot (movement a thing of practice rather than aptitude) explained by his position as writer/composer.  Loaded with inside casting ‘Easter Eggs’ by B’way stars doing bits in song numbers that few non-theater nerds will pick up on, it probably does help to know the characters as later repurposed by Larson in RENT.  That, and knowing his personal history, touched on right at the start, adds a touching mood of triumph over sadness beautifully played by Garfield & Miranda once they stop pressing; best seen in a lovers’ quarrel that starts to become a new song inside Larson’s head while still in the moment.*  Beautifully handled by everyone.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, more enjoyable if you know RENT.  Alas, after three tries at getting it right on film or video, nothing’s come close to the effect it made on stage.  Probably best served by its Original Cast Album.

CONTEST:  *Another highlight is a mash-up by Larson of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Sunday’ anthem from the first act (the good part) of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE during Sunday Brunch at the diner he works at.  But Larson also throws an uncredited bone toward B’way’s unofficial anti-Sondheim composer, Jerry Herman, quoting a theme from a song in Herman’s cult flop MACK & MABEL.  Name the linked songs to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice.

ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST (1948)

Proving you can’t go home again . . . but might make second base, Lillian Hellman tried another helping of Southern Fried melodrama in this modestly successful prequel to her big hit play THE LITTLE FOXES.  Rapturously received in her B’way debut, Patricia Neal (already under lock-and-key at Warners?) lost her breakout role as the young, but already scheming Regina Hubbard (Tallulah Bankhead on stage/Bette Davis in the film) to Ann Blyth, less brittle than later, but still wholly inadequate as bitchy enchantress.  But for those who know LITTLE FOXES/’41, there’s fun to had parsing out who’s who (or rather who would become who), even Dan Duryea back in harness from the earlier film to play his own Uncle.  The story, with even more exposition than usual for Hellman, all about profiteering shop-owner Fredric March starting the family fortune by openly ‘cornering’ the salt market 15 years ago, during the Civil War, while hiding a secret still worse.*  Ambitious son Edmund O’Brien sniffs a chance at blackmail; doltish son Duryea needs a loan to marry a floozy; Blyth trying to stop a business start-up that leaves her out of the picture and losing handsome vet John Dall (who doesn’t particularly want her); and health-challenged wife Florence Eldridge (March’s real wife*) finally noticing how awful they all are.  This time, Hellman’s typically airless ‘well-made’ play not quite so well-made.  Sometimes a good thing when a crack or two lets in a bit of fresh air.  But here, under the stolid direction of Michael Gordon who gets wonderful lighting from cinematographer Hal Mohr, staged & shot as if in practice for live ‘50s tv anthology.  Odd for 1948; a cost-cutting strategy?  Not a patch on William Wyler’s FOXES, but tasty in its own backstabbing way.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Florence Eldridge rarely came across on film, but here you can see what her Mary Tyrone might have been in ‘56, playing against March in the original B’way production of Eugene O’Neill’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *Civil War salt speculation no exaggeration!  Here’s Mark Twain in LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI: ‘ . . . when the war broke out the proprietor went to bed one night leaving (his warehouses) packed with thousands of sacks of vulgar salt, worth a couple of dollars a sack, and got up in the morning and found his mountains of salt turned into a mountain of gold, so to speak, so suddenly and so dizzy a height had the war sent up the price of the article.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE LITTLE FOXES.  Best watched first.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-little-foxes-1941.html

THREE COMRADES (1938)

Fatalistic romance with pedigree: post-WWI set bestseller by ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT author Erich Maria Remarque; adaptation F. Scott Fitzgerald on his sole accredited Hollywood screenplay.  (Kudos to producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz for not only making this happen, but in allowing Fitzgerald’s rueful Lost Generation voice to register even as the script went thru various hands.)  With Robert Taylor, Robert Young & Franchot Tone (all in top form) as army vets, a German Band-of-Brothers in a garage/taxi start-up, their lives brightened by the frail beauty of tuberculosis-doomed Margaret Sullavan.  (Taylor, that most opaque of star actors, responding sensitively to a second TB case, after Garbo in CAMILLE/’36, once again helped by his yet to harden youthful beauty and by playing without his usual emotion concealing mustache.  Even rising to some powerful acting moments.)  Frank Borzage, a specialist directing these sort of sticky things, close to his silent film peak during an uneven run of films at M-G-M.*  Personalizing the volatile German ‘20s as Young moves into dangerous Communist circles amid the rising tide of right-wing street violence; Taylor happily lost in his affair with Sullavan though fully aware it’s Tone who’s truly her soul-mate.  Tone, extraordinary here (the Nick Carraway of your dreams), stealing the pic with this intriguing/unusual relationship.  (Claiming to be dead inside, he’s able to pull off a Christmastime revenge killing with a clean conscience as Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus plays on the soundtrack.)  Today, his loyal, valiant, sacrificing character would likely be closeted  gay, a bit in love with Taylor and sublimating via Sullavan.  (Is this intimated in the novel?  Is it read anymore?  ALL QUIET currently being filmed yet again, but is even that read today?  COMRADES popular enough at the time for its jacket to be used as background to the film's opening credits . . . and as our poster.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Though not specifically banned by the Hollywood Production Code, both TB and Communism all but unmentionable in big-budget M-G-M pics at the time.  Though audiences had little trouble inferring (or not) as they wished.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Largely at M-G-M from ‘37 to ‘43, Borzage was even better two years on, again with Sullavan and Robert Young, now joined by James Stewart, in THE MORTAL STORM/’40.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-mortal-storm-1940.html

THE SUMMIT OF THE GODS / LE SOMMET DES DIEUX (2021)

First a Manga, then a Live-Action film, now this mountaineering tale well served via French animation.  The problem is its story.  A double prologue sees sports photo-journalist Fukamachi hooked on the possibility of getting hands on a Mount Everest relic, the compact camera lost when climbing pioneer George Mallory went up and never came down.  Prologue Number Two reveals the backstory of current world-class climber Habu, holding onto that 1924 relic for years as he deals with waves of uncontrollable self-reproach long after the death of a young acolyte during a climb, and now prepares for a solo assault on Everest.  So, when climber & journalist finally come together, they make a wary team, while you may find yourself less involved in these activities (and in the curlicues of mountaineering philosophy) than in the mystery of what may still be on that 1924 roll of film left in the camera.  That said, Patrick Imbert’s feature debut (earlier work includes the very different watercolor look of ERNEST & CELESTINE/’12) often makes spectacular pictures with a spare hand-drawn technique; not only in sky-grazing peaks, but also in atmospheric cityscapes and around simple tabletop conversations.  Maybe he’ll eventually show us those Mallory pics.*

DOUBLE-BILL: Imbert’s work on ERNEST & CELESTINE/’12 shows quite a range.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/10/ernest-and-celestine-2012.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Mallory did bring a camera up; not found when his body was discovered in 2017.  But was he on the way up . . . or coming down?  Just what the camera might have told us.

BELFAST (2021)

A theater adage for the kind of actor who's always busy being busy (it's really a reversed adage) goes: ‘Don’t just do something, stand there!’  Guidance Kenneth Branagh, writing & directing, would have been wise to consider on this crowd-pleasing/award-winning disappointment.  Call it THE WONDER YEARS: BELFAST (or is it NORTHERN IRISH-ish?), a look back without anger at his 10-yr-old self as sectarian violence breaks out in his mixed Protestant/Catholic row-house neighborhood and the family argues over a move to England.  A fine idea to hang a sentimental education on*, but as director, Branagh, like our busy actor, is unable to just ‘stand there’ . . . ever.  Addicted to attention grabbing stylistics that smother shot after shot in showy lens choices (fish-eye distortion a fave), off-beat camera angles & positions (not just the expected kid-level POV), shiny soft-reflective surfaces and constant gauzy foreground distraction.  Even his opting for b&w, emphasized by occasional blasts of color, an easy cheat into the past.  (Why not, for once, give the past its due as more vivid, more color-saturated than the present?)   With the idealized blinders of a loving son’s 10-yr-old eyes, parents are strong, beautiful, brave & honest (Dad’s climactic ‘shoot-out’ plays to the soundtrack of HIGH NOON, compromised by Branagh’s technical limitations that see him fumble the coup de grâce), and Grandparents are Old Dears with the wisdom of a Hallmark Anniversary card.  Thought Ciarán Hinds & Judi Dench were incapable of slobbery generic perfs?  Think again.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Clear out the cobwebs & mush with John Boorman’s tartly hilarious WWII childhood memoir HOPE AND GLORY/’87.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/hope-and-glory-1987.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Speaking of education, a rare moment of appalling truth shows when a school teacher reassigns seating so that low performing students are in the back (to assure failure) and the smartest kids in the front row.  Other than outdoor toilets, it’s the most believably Irish thing in here.

VICE SQUAD (1953)

Here’s Edward G. Robinson during his ‘Pinko’ Purgatory days, surviving Hollywood’s ‘Grey List’ making third-tier progammers.  (Hardly a Communist Radical, Robinson ticked enough boxes to look suspicious: New Deal supporting Liberal Jew, New York theater background; Premature Anti-Fascist, yes, a real term of the time, as in being against Hitler pre-Pearl Harbor or supporting Spanish Civil War Republicans); and as a cultural intellectual.*)  Directed by Arnold Laven, his second feature before life in serial tv, it’s a modest police procedural, less bad than dull.  And forget that Vice Squad come-on title, instead one very full day in the life of Chief Detective Eddie G., solving a fistful of cases.  Murdered cop; Kidnapping, Marriage bunko; Mental case; Drunk tipster; it might be a pilot for a tv series:  Edward G. Robinson is KOJAK!  I’d watch.  With flat overlit mastershots indoors (for economy) and a bit of dark menace on exteriors, cinematographer Joseph Biroc the only tech here to reach A-list status.  Not rising, second-billed Paulette Goddard, in decline after being dropped at Paramount in ‘49, her fast-fade hard to figure out.  (Also Grey Listed?)  Of the supporting players, Lee Van Cleef makes a mark, his hatchet face perking things up.  There’s even a bit of suspense toward the end when a few cases climax with a single endgame.  But still forgettable.

LINK:  *The real deal that: Robinson’s art collection uncomfortably modern by Hollywood’s stultifying standard.  Here’s a MoMA catalogue from 1953 (the year this film came out), forty paintings loaned: Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Corot, Lautrec, Modigliani, Monet, Gauguin, Degas, Chagall, Delacroix, Cezanne - all the usual suspects.  https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_3301_300062120.pdf

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Three years later, ultra-conservative C.B. DeMille ‘cleansed’ Eddie G. hiring him for a juicy supporting role in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’56.

DORAIBU MAI KÂ / DRIVE MY CAR (2021)

Something special here; and an international breakthrough for Japanese writer/director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi.  Contemplative, but with typical Japanese restraint in behavior and personal issues upturned by flashes of melodrama told not seen.  Including murder, infidelity, child abuse, landslide burial, unexpected loss of wife, mother, child; all in this decidedly quiet, even sedate film.  Gasp-worthy ‘reveals’ that alter perspective & attitude with U-turn dramatic strategies not so far from Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, only here more organically contained.  At first, theater actor/director husband and t.v. scripter wife seem in perfect harmony, but their symbiotic relationship has fissured, something we feel without being able to place.  Even after we meet a young heartthrob actor from one of her projects.  An ellipsis before we pick up the action, and much has changed.  The husband, now alone, is directing Chekhov’s UNCLE VANYA in a multinational/multi-lingual production in Hiroshima (one actor speaks in extremely beautiful Korean sign-language), and he’s cast that very heartthrob actor as a most unlikely Vanya.  Off-stage, the director has been assigned a young female driver for his long rides to and from his waterfront apartment.  An initially frustrating experience he grows to like, even need.  Along with other actors in the play and the theater staff, interplay charting the production’s growth is seen in parallel with the text of the play (mostly heard in the car on a cassette tape read by the director’s wife) commenting and clarifying on dark personal areas you had no idea might be covered in this form.  Consistently illuminating, with shocks and earned emotional catharsis, shot in compositions as immaculate as the stage director’s prized red Saab 900.  Stunningly held together and consistently involving over its three-hour length.  Indeed, the time hardly noticed.

DOUBLE-BILL: Not a lot of laughs in Japan’s idea of Anton Chekhov!  Post-modern in its use of (captioned) multiple languages, but elsewise very ‘50s sincere.  UNCLE VANYA, like so much Chekhov, luckless on screen with the notable exception of Louis Malle’s rehearsal pic of Andre Gregory’s performing edition VANYA ON 42ND STREET/’94.

ILLUSION TRAVELS BY STREETCAR / LA ILUSIÓN VIAJA EN TRANVÍA (1954)

After the rural bus adventures of SUBIDO AL CIELO/’52, urban conveyance means Mexico City trolleys in this further example of Luis Buñuel-Lite.  If anything, ‘Lite-er,’ with Buñuel not taking a writing credit though slightly daft Dada-ist tendencies & religious scepticism remain.  The trouble starts when a pair of low-level trolley engineers show initiative at their workplace, fixing up a decommissioned trolley car so it runs like new.  Bad idea, a new cab is already scheduled to go into rotation and the men laid off for insubordination!  Taking the old car out for a final joy ride after an evening of drinking and amateur Biblical theatricals (Buñuel must have written that part!), the trolley is continually mistaken for being in service with various groups of customers boarding for a free ride.  (On a trolley, even joy rides must stick to the tracks.)  Finally sobered up, the guys now can’t get back to the station without being seen and getting everyone in trouble.  But then luck sends them an honest man; and as no bureaucracy as big as Mexico City Public Transportation can handle an honest man (especially when he's a cranky retiree), there’s still hope the crime won’t be discovered.  Lovingly paced and acted, with a bit of romance folded in, the film is as sweet-natured as anything in Buñuel.  Plenty of stupidity to go around, but very little meanness other than from that petty old, honest man.  Slight, but fun.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   As mentioned, SUBIDA AL CIELO/MEXICAN BUS RIDE. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/subida-al-cielo-ascent-to-heaven-aka.html

THE WINGS OF THE HAWK (1953)

Joseph Losey, Douglas Sirk, Leo McCarey, George Stevens, Budd Boetticher, André de Toth, Hugo Fregonese, Jean Negulesco, Raoul Walsh: a roll-call of great (or near-great) directors linked 1951-to-1955 by, of all people, Van Heflin, after he ankled at M-G-M.  (Naturally, McCarey, the biggest name in the bunch, responsible for the one real stinker.*)  Here, originally in 3D (note the pistol lowered right in your face during a prison escape), Boetticher has Heflin as an American gold prospector in Mexico during the 1910 Revolution, interrupted on one side by vicious Government Federales and on the other by uncoordinated Revolutionary Banditos.  Taken into custody by one, and then by the other, he soon falls for Julia Adams, a distractingly Beverly Hills looking Revolutionista.  Back-and-forth fighting and alliances reasonably well worked out and economically staged by Boetticher, not shy exploding ordnance.  (That man could load a lot of info into tight spaces, here 81".)  Helped by a lot of Mexican supporting actors, look for debuting Pedro Gonzales who’d go on to play scores of comic relief Mexican sidekicks, but rarely with better material, he's a delight.  The film ultimately comes up a bit shy in most departments, but with sympathies in the right places.  One scene with scores of locals massacred by the Federales reaching even a bit farther.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *The find in the bunch, Fregonese’s THE RAID/’53.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-raid-1954.html

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (1988)

Time has done little to fix what’s wrong with Robert Zemeckis’s pastiche 1940s film noir, a multimedia Live-Action/Cartoony-Animation mash-up: L.A. Private Eye meets Looney Tunes.  Often technically dazzling, it’s the easy stuff that sinks.  It starts well, a cartoon homage (very M-G-M/Tex Avery) as put-upon Roger Rabbit tries to keep co-star Baby Herman out of harm’s way.  Cleverly drawn by animation whiz Richard Williams (his work the consistent saving grace in the film*), the problems begin when Roger Rabbit steps off-screen, so to speak.  Good company on-screen, he’s miscast off, an annoying presence to spend an entire film with.  (Disney tried and failed to make him a franchise character.)  While Bob Hoskins, detective on the case and always good company, is equally miscast.  Pugnacious & roly-poly, he never feels like a classic L.A. Private Dick, and can’t do the physical shtick needed for the big action climax.  Zemeckis not much help cutting in and out with his stunt double.  In fact, not much at editing in general.  Check out an early scene between Hoskins & Roger’s studio boss.  And the case?  At first, it’s about trouble between Mr. & Mrs. Rabbit (Jessica Rabbit: femme fatale with a soft spot for Roger, amusingly voiced by an uncredited Kathleen Turner), merely a Red Herring for a CHINATOWN storyline with evil Christopher Lloyd trying for a Land Rights grab in Toontown.  All remarkably uninvolving.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Decades in the making, Williams’ chef d’oeuvre  THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER was taken from him and edited down by about 20 minutes into ARABIAN KNIGHT, a flop 1995 MiraMax/Weinstein release.  Various independent hands have put out ‘fan cuts’ of various lengths with this link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gows7iOoqaU) considered best.  Elsewise, Williams can be sampled in smash opening or closing credits of films like THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE/’68 and A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM/’66.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Along with Jonathan Demme, few directors of the time frittered away more early promise than Zemeckis.  Unsuccessful on release and still little seen, I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND/’78 and (even more) USED CARS/’80, in spite of shortcomings, hold up in ways his latter output doesn’t.  And neither sours in memory.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-wanna-hold-your-hand-1978.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/used-cars-1980.html

THE POWER OF THE DOG (2021)

1925, but still the Old West in Montana where this Jane Campion Art-House Western takes place.  Slow, deliberate, yet more traditional than you expect, with the big dramatic turning points inferred rather than heralded, change the setting and you could be watching a prequel to Edna Ferber’s GIANT; just with all the story beats removed.  (Tossed aside like bull testicles at round-up.  Yikes!)  Set in vast cattle ranch country, but played very close to the vest, dominant brother Benedict Cumberbatch (less acting technician, more Daniel Day Lewis observationist here) lords it over chubby sibling Jesse Plemons, especially after Plemons marries local cook Kirsten Dunst who’s soon overwhelmed playing mistress to a great house.  (A bit overwhelmed by the part, too.)  With sadistic tendencies exacerbated by what he views as abandonment, Cumberbatch lashes out, breaking down his sister-in-law till she withdraws into drink, only to find a personal crisis of his own when Dunst’s willowy college-aged boy comes home for the summer.  Frail & delicate as Lillian Gish in a D.W. Griffith film, Kodi Smit-McPhee’s striking physical presence hides a Gish-like stubborn strength & resilience that catches Cumberbatch unawares, their unlikely friendship confusing and upsetting the boy’s mother nearly as much as it upsets & clarifies Cumberbatch’s desires.  Ultimately, leading to tragedy and, for the survivors, release.  Artfully arranged by Campion in brief chapters, the film takes its time pulling you in, hooking different people at different points.  But pull you in it does.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, GIANT/’56.  Assuming you can get thru it (George Stevens’ work weighs a ton & a half).  Surprising how much lines up dramatically.

SHIELD FOR MURDER (1954)

Edmund O’Brien doesn’t inspire much confidence catching the shadow of a ‘boom-mike’ right at the start of his directorial debut.  But the tone & attitude of this film noir is so distinctive (make that odd), with everyone playing in italics, it adds interest to all the familiar Bad Cop story beats.  O’Brien opens by killing a bookie’s bag man, grabbing the 25 ‘Gs’ he’s carrying and staging the hold-up/murder to look like a botched arrest, unaware a witness watched it all from a second story window.  Already pegged as a violent cop, back at the station fellow cops and the local newspaper reporter are primed to be suspicious.  Only detective pal John Agar backs him . . . for a while.  But the case spins out of control with O’Brien losing his cool when he finds that deaf witness to the killing, striking out again just as a pair of cops start nosing around and the usual ‘Blue Wall’ of silence threatens to crack.  Add on a girlfriend who’s getting tired of waiting; a sex-hungry barfly eager to ‘engage;’ an expensive proposed flight out of the country with costly fake I.D.; a shootout at an active public swimming pool; and O’Brien’s signature sweaty runs from danger and you’ve got plenty to chew on.  O’Brien has everyone play with a sense of barely controlled hysteria (especially himself, an unusually irredeemable brute), but hasn’t the action chops to get the most out of the tight spots he works himself into.  (That indoor public swimming pool shootout leaves a lot of suspense on the table.)  Agar uses his big friendly dog persona to good effect as loyal pal, but other relationships feel undercooked.  Never less than watchable, you can’t help but wonder what hard-nose helmers like Phil Karlson or Don Siegel might have done with it.*

DOUBLE-BILL: *Don’t just wonder, see Karlson finesse similar ideas & situations (with reporters rather than cops) in SCANDAL SHEET/’52.

LARCENY (1948)

Dull programmer from dull journeyman megger George Sherman, breaking from his usual quickie Westerns to helm this jerry-built film noir.*  Too bad, it’s nutty enough to have been dumb fun.  John Payne, fresh off a surprise hit with MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET/’47, plays front man to a gang of con artists run by reliably amoral Dan Duryea.  On this job, Payne’s wooing small town war widow Joan Caulfield (in fast career decline), feeding her a line about raising cash for a memorial to her late husband while really planning to take the money and run before anyone’s the wiser.  But to the surprise of no one, he falls for the lady and tries to get out of his bargain with Duryea.  Even with avaricious moll Shelly Winters doing every low-down trick she can think of to keep Payne off the straight & narrow.  (Winters still in youthful flush, jaw-line intact.)  With plot & characterizations already tumbling toward inadvertent non-sequitor, we rush toward a third act where things turn positively ludicrous.  Easy to imagine someone else bringing a little pace & style to the proceedings to get away with this crap.  But with Sherman giving the orders, don’t get your hopes up.  Dreary stuff, right down to the repurposed dialogue and sets.  The cast phones it in, protecting themselves with indifference.  All except Caulfield who, as an actress, proves some kind of terrible.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: To see what can be done on this sort of thing (and with this sort of budget) check out next year’s noir thriller IMPACT/’49.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/01/impact-1949.html   OR: *Just as Sherman’s career was winding down, he finally got an A-list/full budget assignment when John Wayne tapped him for BIG JAKE/’71, one of the generic Westerns Wayne cranked out post-TRUE GRIT.  In the event, Sherman took ill and Wayne directed much of the pic himself sans credit.

RABID DOGS / CANI ARRABBIATI (1974)

This late film from Italian horror pioneer Mario Bava comes without the expected giallo elements (no bared breasts/no primary colored palette), but in its less flamboyant way reps something of a return to form for the director.  (Or would had it received a proper release.  Instead, two decades on the shelf before it came out.*)  Alarmingly nasty, often downright vicious (very proto-Tarantino*), it’s a suspense-filled hostage drama centered on a botched robbery that sends three criminal thugs (‘Doc’ and two feral accomplices) on the run, killing one curvy young thing to get past the cops, kidnapping the dead girl’s friend for protection.  Ditching their damaged vehicle, they commandeer the car of a father driving his sick boy to hospital and force him to take them (and the girl) out of the city.  Bava allows some pretty broad acting (call it Italian Method Enthusiasm; only the father holding back), with beautifully laid out story beats so the police don’t have to behave stupidly just to keep the plot moving.  And the threat of a sick kid needing to see a doctor; a father trying to hold things together; a pretty female hostage fending off backseat advances; a coolly composed killer running the show; and two whack-job partners give Bava plenty to work with.  G’normous George Eastman is particularly good as an oversexed thug nicknamed ‘32.’  (That’s in centimeters, it translates to 12.5 inches.)  Even the comic relief, a chattering female hostage who talks herself into a ride, is made quick work of along the way (Bava knows we're fine with murder as long as it shuts her up), before we reach final destination and the film pivots from sadistic to nihilistic.  Or does right before a shockingly playful twist explains the last remaining unknowns; actions you thought were pure narrative expedience.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Belatedly released in the ‘90s at 86", a further re-edit (with a bit of added footage & scoring) supervised by Lamberto (son of Mario) Bava came out as KIDNAPPED at 96".

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Often mentioned as an influence on RESERVOIR DOGS/’92, Bava’s film only came out five years after Tarantino’s film.  (Though he does credit Bava as a major influence.)