PORTE DES LILAS / THE GATES OF PARIS (1957)

Hailed internationally as a major innovator for his Early French Talkies (UNDER THE ROOFS OF PARIS/’30; LE MILLION/’31; À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ/’31), René Clair’s work became progressively inconsequential over the years.  But this late work retains enough of his former charm & invention to seek out, even if the old magic doesn’t return.  A darkly comic romance about a pair of neighborhood layabouts (local drunk Pierre Brasseur; guitar-wielding troubadour George Brassens) and young, handsome, on the lam Henri Vidal, soon to be hiding from the cops in Brassens’ cellar.  Stirring the dramatic pot is Dany Carrel, the jolie barkeep's daughter, torn between worn, but loyal Brasseur and excitingly dangerous Vidal.  Clair’s script works up a few too many close calls as the police search for the missing fugitive as well as eleven missing tins of foie gras, forcing plot turns with mechanical elements (shattered wine glasses at the bar; a conveniently positioned cat to trip over; a gaggle of kids to spoil a getaway), harmless stuff.  (Maybe that’s the problem.)  But the film moves well under Clair, as does his camera, while ace production designer Léon Barsacq gives it a hyper-realistic, yet utterly studio-bound look similar to what Mario Chiari was doing for Luchino Visconti the same year in WHITE NIGHTS/’57.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Those early Talkies, as fluid as anything being tried at the time, sadly seem to have fallen out of favor.  Not one even highlighted on Clair's IMdB page.  OR: For something in English from his WWII Hollywood exile, try the lesser known indie IT HAPPENED TOMORROW/’44.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/it-happened-tomorrow-1944.html

MARY MAGDALENE (2018)

Hagiographic bio-pic (literally!), Garth Davis’s followup to LION/’16* is a passion project (literally!) on the final story arc of Jesus & the Apostles as seen from Mary Magdalene’s POV.  Earth-toned in look & attitude, the film passed this way but once, leaving little mark; unlike its lead character.  In this telling, an ultra-naturalistic style makes the usual gang of true believers look like a closed shop of Method Actors, whispering unintelligible verities to each other between stops for the occasional miracle on their way to Jerusalem and destiny.  The one perky member of the pack?  You guessed it: Judas the Outlier.  Joaquin Phoenix, alarmingly weathered at 44, limns the most exhausted Jesus yet seen on screen.  (At 51, H.B. Warner seems younger in C. B. DeMille’s KING OF KINGS/’27; while clever Martin Scorsese hired age-appropriate Willem Dafoe, 33 on the dot, for THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST/’88.)  Rooney Mara, as that sadder-but-wiser sidekick Apostle, the much disputed Mary M., brings an anachronistic kick and unyielding solemnity to every move & motive.  Maybe someone forgot to tell the cast that ‘gospel’ means ‘good news.’  (Just announced as Garth Davis’s next gig?  TRON 3 for Disney.  And that ain't no gospel.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Far more believable (and entertaining), Monty Python’s LIFE OF BRIAN/’79.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/05/life-of-brian-1979.html  OR: As mentioned above, Scorsese’s TEMPTATION (not seen here).

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: *Will LION go down as the last mediocre film pushed into Academy Award contention by the bullying tactics of the unlamented Weinsteins?  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/04/lion-2016.html

LADY WITH RED HAIR (1940)

Neat, if fanciful, Bio-Pic on one of those symbiotic relationships between a novice actress (Miriam Hopkins) and her mentor/director (Claude Rains) that skirts the usual conventions.  Even romance, refreshingly moved to the side.  The actress is the once infamous Mrs. Leslie Carter, going into acting after a scandalous divorce.  (As per the film, to raise cash and gain custody of her little boy; it's pure Hollywood motivation.  Everything else at least hovering near the truth.)  Presenting herself to B’way’s magnificent megalomaniac David Belasco, producer/writer/director, a sort of sham Priest of the Theatre, unnaturally attired in clerical collar, living atop his own theater.*  (The apartment still there.)  Together, after a false step or two, they make magic, but once denied child rights in spite of success, she leaves him, produces on her own, marries a charming second-rater and flops.  Can this egotistical pair make up long enough for her next show to succeed?  A glorified B-pic from Warners (a budget too tight to afford articles in the title!), efficiently helmed by Curtis Bernhardt, a Euro-exile new in Hollywood.  Too bad he couldn’t hold the excitable Hopkins down in the opening courtroom scenes, pitched far too high for comfort.  (Directors really had to clamp down on Hopkins to keep her in line; see Lubitsch, Wyler, King Vidor.)  But get past the first reel and everything clicks into place once Mrs. Carter and Mom (a wonderful Laura Hope Crews) take rooms at no-nonsense Helen Westley’s theatrical boarding house.  These scenes are worth the whole film.  A bit dressier than the real thing, but sympathetically delineating a world of also-rans & dreamers with great turns from a load of character types (Mona Barrie, Victor Jory, Cecil Kellaway).  And once we do get to Belasco, a truly inspired idea to base the relationship not on the usual SVENGALI template*, but on Shaw’s PYGMALION (a recent smash on-screen for Leslie Howard & Wendy Hiller); it works like a charm.  Rains especially good, really letting loose as this Henry Higgins of a Belasco.  So hang tough thru the prologue to get to the fun.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Now largely known for two Puccini adaptations (MADAMA BUTTERFLY; THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST/LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST), Belasco, in his day, was all melodrama & stage realism, once buying an actual Bowery bar interior as a set.  Even more impressive, needing a cat to cross stage in the middle of a scene, he spent weeks training one, placing it in a slightly too small box for two or three hours before releasing it in the wings Stage Right and having a dish of raw chicken liver waiting Stage Left.  The cat not only never missed a cue, but would take a moment mid-stage for a stretch before finishing its cross . . . to nightly exit applause.  Now that’s showmanship.

DOUBLE-BILL: *John Barrymore plays SVENGALI straight in 1931 and then for comedy in TWENTIETH CENTURY/’34 with Carole Lombard as a decidedly feisty Trilby character.

THE KEEP (1983)

Michael Mann ‘ophiles’ & ‘ophobes’ may fight over his ‘best’ (least over-rated?) film.  (Is there another director who promises more/delivers less; an auteur less able to make distinction between style, fashion & fashionable?)  But there’s surely no argument over his worst.  It’s this near-blasphemous, risible concoction, a WWII mystical horror set in an ancient, sacred mountain pass fortress where occupying Nazis (fair & foul division) take tactical turns to hold & secure this aerie lookout thru the Rumanian Alps and find it ‘protected’ by beastly ectoplasm trapped inside, pulling their men to their doom.  The SS officer in charge so desperate, he’ll even risk releasing a Jewish scholar, and his lovely daughter, from the local Concentration Camp to get expert advice.  (Maybe he could have advised the Paramount special effects department, too.)  Only Mann’s second feature, he’d made a buzz on his first, THIEF/’81, note another inappropriate Tangerine Dream score, but lost control of this production.  Best guess is that producer Howard (Hawk) Koch did the heavy lifting at the studio; the heavy editing, too, since an original 130" running time was slashed to an hour & a half.  Jürgen Prochnow (with fading post-DAS BOOT/’81 glow) & Gabriel Byrne are the main Nazis; Ian McKellen & Alberta Watson as dying Professor & curvy daughter; Scott Glenn some sort of supernatural avenger.  (Glenn may glow in the dark, but Watson earns the Booby Prize taking this stuff seriously.)  Maybe if it were more objectionable?  Nah.  Those missing 40 minutes?  Now that’s a scary thought.

LINK/WATCH THIS, NOT THAT . . . but at your own risk: Normally we use this label to highlight a better choice.  But apparently WWII pics with ‘KEEP’ in the title are a risky bet! https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/castle-keep-1969.html

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1934)

Martin Scorsese’s THE IRISHMAN/’19 was original, but had such a strong déjà vu feel, it often seemed like a remake.  His actual remakes came from 1962's CAPE FEAR in 1991; and 2002's INFERNAL AFFAIRS, spun out as THE DEPARTED/’06.  Each of them overcooked beyond the material's tolerance.  (Who’da thunk?  CAPE FEAR’s J. Lee Thompson besting Martin Scorsese.)  Forgotten in the discussion, his other remake, a buffed & bloated vision of Edith Wharton’s THE AGE OF INNOCENCE/’93.  Strictly speaking, it’s a remake of a remake, a 1924 silent is lost.  But this 1934 version, directed by B’way stage director Philip Moeller in the first of his two film credits, gets a lot across in 81 minutes.  Mediocre stuff, based on a play from the novel, Scorsese’s film much the better work (well cast; sumptuously produced).  Yet, the older film has an advantage in closer contact to Wharton’s characters, knowing what to take seriously and when the author is guying American sense & sensibilities.  Never succumbing to the upper-crust period envy of a DOWNTON ABBEY, as Scorsese does with every showy camera shot.  What remains of the story still works as Irene Dunne’s European sophisticate brings home marital difficulties that  throw an uncomfortable light on the cloistered social set of the New York ‘400,’ finding an unlikely champion in John Boles’ engaged gentleman, typically underwhelming as simpatico putative lover.  Will he toss society mores away for love?  Will she allow him to?  Quite effective in its modest way, with grand gestures from the largely eccentric supporting cast and far less comfort than you get in Scorsese’s dramatic misreading.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As Countess Olenska, Irene Dunne seems much younger than Michelle Pfeiffer in the remake, yet was two years older.  She’s quite the best thing in either film, though having Daniel Day Lewis rather than John Boles in the remake certainly helps even things out!

THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN (1969)

Filming on this fact-based WWII drama was interrupted by real life drama when Czechoslovakian location work came up against armed tanks rolling in from the USSR to put down a budding People’s Revolution against the Soviet-backed Communist government.  What a film-within-a-film that would have made!  Something for Pirandello.  Instead, a perfectly decent WWII story (a David L. Wolper production so it’s sobersided rather than fanciful) about the last standing bridge crossing the Rhine toward the end of the war, and the race between retreating Nazi forces & advancing Americans who both want to blow it up.  Or do at first.  Turns out German officer Robert Vaughan (using an unplaceable European accent) takes it upon himself to ‘slow walk’ his demolition duties so 75,000 soldiers have time to cross.  Meanwhile, Lt. George Segal for the Allies is charged with blasting away to stop an easy retreat.  Or is until Vaughan’s delay gives him a chance to take, rather than simply destroy, the bridge, facilitating Allied troop movement into Germany.  Director John Guillermin is merely efficient in the first half, but the tactical flip halfway in makes all the difference not only in storyline, but also in execution in front & behind the camera, especially in Segal’s relationships with wiseguy Sgt Ben Gazzara and credit-hogging Maj. Bradford Dillman.  The film’s no classic, but well done for this era in WWII actioners, easily topping prestige disappointments like CATCH -22/’70 and A BRIDGE TOO FAR/’77.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: The four main talents here: actors Segal, Gazzara, Vaughan; director Guillermin, all flirted with A-list status (Segal & Vaughan both Oscar® nom’d).  Yet each slipped off for one reason or another.  Guillermin losing his mojo after KING KONG/’76.  Vaughan hitting his big screen potential in support as corporate sleazeballs (see BULLITT/’68).  Gazzara fully engaged only on small indie work (see SAINT JACK/’79).  And Segal, with star wattage for the long haul, never topping his charismatic early lead in KING RAT/’65, as a WWII P.O.W., or in Robert Altman’s undervalued CALIFORNIA SPLIT/’74.

CARNIVAL IN FLANDERS / LA KERMESSE HÉROÏQUE (1935)

Once a ubiquitous Art House perennial, now relegated to some six-pack Criterion DVD set moldering on a back shelf at your public library.  A shame since this Jacques Feyder classic is as lively, funny & magnificently realized as its faded rep claims.  (There’s reason Preston Sturges tried to fashion a B’way musical from it.)  It’s 17th Century Low Lands, and the biggest headache in the prosperous city of Boom sees the mayor’s daughter in love with young master painter Julien Breughel, currently immortalizing Mayor & Town Elders on canvas, just as the girl’s engagement to one of the portrait sitters, a well-to-do butcher, is being finalized.  (Part of a kickback arrangement involving the mayor’s cattle.)  But a bigger crisis looms when a military advance man crashes into town with news of an armed Spanish Regiment due to arrive within the hour . . . and on Carnival Day!  Rape, pillage, looting, disaster!; or so it was not so many years ago.  But since every crisis is also an opportunity, while the mayor plays dead and hopes the column will pass; the women, led by the mayor’s clever wife, think up an entirely different scheme: entertainment, welcome, beer; mutual benefit assured.  With plotting as witty & elaborate as the film’s spectacular physical design (legendary art direction from Alexander Trauner; gorgeous layered cinematography by Harry Strandling; near continuous multi-plane action for hundreds in shot after shot, ably assisted by Marcel Carné (no doubt taking notes for future work); and a plus perfect cast (standouts include Françoise Rosay in a signature role as Le Mayor’s unflappable wife and Louis Jouvet as a pragmatic Spanish Priest with Inquisition duties in his past).  A feast of a film.  And if it occasionally slips into middle-brow cultural cliché, Feyder’s tastes are eccentric enough, his technique strong enough to keep any impersonal restrictions of state subsidized art at bay.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Based on a story by Charles Spaak, it’s also allegory for the times, asking Europe to move beyond past differences and live together.  An idea Spaak would return to in GRAND ILLUSION/’37, co-scripting with director Jean Renoir, as Germany moved ever closer to war.

FIVE DAYS ONE SUMMER (1982)

After stumbling in the Pyrenees on BEHOLD A PALE HORSE/’64, Fred Zinnemann couldn’t put a foot wrong on his next three (A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS/’66; DAY OF THE JACKAL/’73; JULIA/’77) before stumbling again, now in The Alps on this flat, career closer.  No disgrace, it’s handsomely made and even pulls off a climax where you not only don’t know which of its two leading men has survived, but aren’t sure which you want it to be.  No small trick, that.  But the story of middle-aged married man Sean Connery having an illicit fling with his niece, before meeting the youthful mountain guide she can’t help but notice, doesn’t amount to much, dwarfed by the scenery (Giuseppe Rotunno lensing) and not helped by Michael Austin’s tired dialogue & unilluminating flashbacks.  Zinnemann knew something had gone wrong, he thought it might have been Elmer Bernstein’s rote score.  But the main problem was staring right back at him since while Lambert Wilson (who made a striking cameo debut in JULIA) is both charismatic & sympathetic as the principled mountain guide (and matches up well against a typically powerful Connery), the film simply can’t work without a star-making perf by the young lady in-between the two men, needing a combination of both JULIA’s leading ladies: Jane Fonda’s gaucheness and Vanessa Redgrave’s radiance.  In her debut, Betsy Brantley supplies neither and scuttles whatever chance the film might have had.  A shame as the film grows more interesting as it goes along, the recreation of ‘30s climbing techniques easy to follow and fascinatingly primitive, so too the growing, if reserved antipathy between the two men.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above, Zinnemann’s underseen BEHOLD A PALE HORSE (with Greg Peck, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif) not without interest either.  But, as Zinnemann himself said, Hollywood’s aversion to films set in the cold certainly applied to his two mountain-set efforts.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/behold-pale-horse-1964.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hedging their bets in Turkey, the distributors came up with their own more commercially acceptable James Bond-like poster for this somber pic.  Yikes!  (Click to expand.)

THE BLUE LAMP (1950)

Unaccountably forgotten Best Pic Winner @ BAFTA, this quotidian policier holds up nicely, less from a solid, but familiar robbery/murder, than from the deep dive director Basil Dearden (at the start of his best period) & cinematographer Gordon Dines’ make into the suspended animation of post-war London: rationing, food shortages, war-damaged neighborhoods & infrastructure, a hobbled economy & general malaise.  Wonderfully caught Brit noir fashion, it plays into a ‘good cop’ story about an old-timer and his new partner as they hunt down a couple of low-life punks (including callow youth Dirk Bogarde*) whose carefully plotted robbery goes off-track and sets the entire police force after them and the hysterical girl they’ve involved in the crime.  Beat cops Jack Warner & Jimmy Hanley get top-billing*, but the big role (and best perf) is fifth-billed Bernard Lee (‘M’ of the early James Bond pics) as Detective Inspector in overall charge of the case.  And it’s likely that scripter T.E.B. Clark (a regular writer at Ealing Studios, best known for comedy) knew it, too, since he gives Lee a running character gag which is turned around right at the end in ridiculously satisfying fashion.  But then, the whole film is that way, touching & empathetic.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Ealing hit some of the same notes of lower-middle-class post-war deprivation in the kitchen-sink drama IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY/’47 which also sees Jack Warner in his usual policeman’s spot.  His partner in LAMP, Jimmy Hanley, also here, but not on the force.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *By the time this opened in Italy, Dirk Bogarde had leap-frogged past his co-stars.  (See poster.)

DR. JACK (1922)

For a variety of reasons (foreign competition, popular demand, artistic growth, financial return), the great silent-film comedians segued in the early ‘20s from two-reel shorts (20+ minutes, yet often the main draw on the bill) to five-reel/one-hour features (or longer).  A move sanctified by Chaplin in THE KID/’21, then seconded by Harold Lloyd in GRANDMA’S BOY/’22, both enormous hits.  (Buster Keaton’s THE SAPHEAD/’20, a remake of Douglas Fairbanks’ debut pic, THE LAMB/’15, was actor-for-hire work; his real first feature the astonishingly assured OUR HOSPITALITY/’23.*)  That makes DR. JACK Lloyd’s second long-form effort.  And if its last section evinces sophomore slump, the first three reels are enchantingly sweet & funny, a tribute to producer Hal Roach & directors Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor as well as Lloyd.  A sharply drawn prologue has Mildred Harris as a Sick-Little-Well-Girl (think Mary Pickford Poor-Little-Rich-Girl), invalided for years by a quack doctor milking her rich father.  Cut to Dr. Jack (Harold), the essential man in his little country town, rarely charging for his good works, working community wonders on recalcitrant school kids, aged mothers & a stubborn flivver.  The very essence of silent comedy apparent in even the smallest bits, as when Harold races in his car (that’s the ‘flivver’) to a patient and needs to clear cows off the road.  He lets the car drive itself slowly straight ahead while jumping out, racing in front, shooing said cattle, then jumping back in to continue on his way.  Done for real in a single shot, without fuss, without telling us he’s about to do something hard & funny, or congratulating himself; twenty times harder than he makes it look.  (Compare to a fraud like Jerry Lewis drawing attention to himself every moment while faking every move with separate shots.)  Here, we don’t just watch it; we are witness to it.  Unfortunately, the writers can’t quite maintain this level, and a big chase finale (silliness about an escaped lunatic exciting Mildred toward health while exposing the fake doc) is unworthy of the earlier parts.  Not bad enough to sour what’s come before; but uninspired.  Inspiration that would come aplenty over the rest of the decade.  And reaching a peak on THE KID BROTHER/’27, one of the great film masterpieces in any genre.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Chaplin & Keaton were, of course, geniuses whereas Lloyd was not.  Which makes his achievement all the more remarkable.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: In a way, Mildred Harris has the more typical Lloyd role in this one; the underachiever who comes thru in the end while Lloyd plays life-coach.  You’ll find Lloyd back in his usual spot right thru SPEEDY/’29, his final silent pic.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/speedy-1928.html

CONTEST: *Keaton steals a sight gag from here for OUR HOSPITALITY.  Name it to win a MAKSQUIBS WriteUp on a film of your choice.  (Assuming I can find it streaming somewhere!)

AMAZING GRACE (1972; 2018)

Long a best-selling classic on vinyl, tape & various digital sound formats, Aretha Franklin’s legendary Back-to-Gospel two-day recording session from 1972 finally solves the synch-sound technical issues that initially kept it off the screen.  (It really took 50 years?*)  Worth the wait, it remains compromised by missteps from hired-gun filmmaker Sydney Pollack who likely got the (last minute?) call from original releasing company Warner Bros. because of all that handheld skating action in his THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY/’69.  But even without expecting the curated/cultivated concert approach used by Martin Scorsese’s in THE LAST WALTZ/’78 or in Jonathan Demme’s STOP MAKING SENSE/’84, this is pretty haphazard work.  Not necessarily a bad thing since it offers a chance for spontaneous capture without polish; we are after all guests at a recording session in a church crowd.  Mick Jaggar & Charlie Watts show up for Day Two, why not us?  But Pollack’s roving 16mm cameramen coverage isn’t up to the task: drab looking/inadequate camera positioning.  (And the eyesore location of the New Bethel Baptist Church.)  But none of this ultimately matters when an amazingly young, fresh, even demur-looking (don’t let that look fool you!) Aretha lets out, along with fine backup & choir, with one mighty roar after another.  Even smiling through a real piece of family drama when Papa Preacher C. L. Franklin (his speaking voice uncannily like Nat King Cole) pulls focus to passive/aggressively put his daughter in her place for briefly abandoning Gospel for ‘Pop’ & R&B in a speech both celebratory & admonishing.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Quick resolution of various technical and ‘rights’ issues undoubtedly eased by the deaths of original producer/director Sydney Pollack in 2008 and Aretha in 2018.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Brief Warning: The film climaxes at the end of the first session with Aretha digging into the title track like nobody’s business.  Nothing quite compares after that.

BLACK CAESAR (1973)

Writing/directing cult figure Larry Cohen brings high-concept and low-aim to this crudely entertaining/crudely effective Blaxploitation gangster pic on the rise and fall of Fred Williamson’s Harlem-based crime boss, an impatient striver who expands his biz not wisely, but too well.  Offering himself as thuggish rep for the Italian gang who’ve long run the territory (bona fides established by ‘taking out’ a competitor), Williamson soon grabs the reins ‘Little Caesar’ style with a network of enforcers while plundering a sexy babe as if she were an adjacent city block he needed to annex.  His downfall proper begins when her affections shift to his BFF, a nerdy accountant Williamson has protected from bullies since juvenile delinquent days.  But if he is going down, Williamson’s taking as many along for the ride as possible.  Cohen gets by in the juvie prologue and in the first act with ‘70s style (swag, strut, James Brown soundtrack), but loses grip about the same time things turn against Williamson, Inc.  His technical deficiencies crashing into his ambitions.  And not only as director, his writing equally shallow.  In a score of pics over the next 25 years, he never got much better.  I suppose it makes the films all-of-a-piece . . . just not in a good way.  Still, this one is watchable and a sweet period time-capsule.  Hard to beat those straight up tracking shots of a dressed-to-impress Williamson walking past retail storefronts on 125th in Harlem.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: A quickly made sequel, HELL IN HARLEM/’73 (not seen here), ignored inconvenient plot elements and was poorly received.  Instead, a fact-inspired A-list version, AMERICAN GANGSTER/’07 (Denzel Washington; Ridley Scott). https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/in-spite-of-technical-facility-ridley.html

TWO FLAGS WEST (1950)

Screenplay by Hollywood vet Casey Robinson; direction by vet-in-the-making Robert Wise, but this Civil War oriented Western gets its main interest from an offbeat story, credited to film-critic-turned-film-writer Frank Nugent.*  Best known for his John Ford films, including FORT APACHE/’48, which this somewhat recalls . . . not entirely to its disadvantage.  A small piece of history sets up the situation as Southern POWs earn a get-out-of-jail pass if they enlist to take up Indian Wars out West for Uncle Sam.  Chafing at their position (and those blue uniforms), Joseph Cotten leads his not quite defeated outfit, along with Union Captain Cornel Wilde, to Major Jeff Chandler’s understaffed, desolate fort.  Once there, all three men fall for Chandler’s widowed sister-in-law Linda Darnell, eager to get back to her California family home.  But the main concern is Cotten and his men: desert on maneuvers to get back in the fight or wait for a coordinated plan being cooked up by counterfeit government agents?  Wise makes the plot complications clear as the Western sky, much helped by top talent below the line.  He also isn’t shy in showing some pretty raw violence for the period.  And there’s a fair amount of action since the plot is largely shaped by having North and South find common cause not in sharing the country’s future, but in the here–and-now of killing Native Americans; a rather uncomfortable moral for the 1860's, 1950s or now.  Chandler is especially good here, like a looser Charlton Heston.  But everyone pulls their weight, including a deep supporting cast (Dale Robertson, Noah Beery Jr., Jay C. Flippen, Arthur Hunnicutt) that lifts this pic past its B+ budget status.  Surprisingly uncompromising right to the end.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Wise’s three Westerns all worthy, all offbeat: BLOOD ON THE MOON/’48; FLAGS; TRIBUTE TO A BAD MAN/’56.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/blood-on-moon-1948.html  OR: As mentioned, FORT APACHE, which moves the bar from ‘good’ to ‘great.’  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/11/fort-apache-1948.html

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS (1975)

After the humiliation of being dismissed from TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT/’72 (rationale: box-office poison), Katharine Hepburn & director George Cukor (who had remained on AUNT with Maggie Smith in for Kate) licked their wounds with a first tv movie.  Ninth of their ten collaborations, it’s a slight period rom-com: Senior Citizen division, the best of Hepburn’s wan run of seven tv-pics; shot in a theatrical release ratio format with uncompromisingly high tech credits: John Barry score; Douglas Slocombe lighting cameraman.  Apparently Hepburn called on Laurence Olivier, whom she’d never worked with before, to co-star.*  Good thing too, his summation at the end of this silly Breach of Promise lawsuit case between Hepburn’s rich upper-class widow and a middle-class fortune-hunter the only moment to live up to the hype in this over-civilized entertainment.  The irony of the piece being that Olivier's character really was ‘breached’ by Hepburn as a young man.  It swept the Emmys when it came out, but the James Costigan script is all feints & misunderstandings with the two aging lions acting more cute & coy than even they can get away with.  (Oh hell, they do get way with it.)  Still, perfectly pleasant, just to look at, if too larky for its own good, with, as noted, a great blast of real acting from Olivier near the end.  He’s under-parted; Kate, not so much.

DOUBLE-BILL: Cukor & Hepburn’s follow up, a tv remake of Emlyn William’s THE CORN IS GREEN/’79, misses badly: Kate too old/miscast, and a hash of a script from novice Ivan Davis.  And right before Hepburn showed renewed box-office clout with another acting legend new to her, Henry Fonda, in the mystifyingly popular ON GOLDEN POND/’81.  OR: Rival Hollywood legend Bette Davis (ironically too young when she filmed THE CORN IS GREEN in ‘45) had a far stronger run of tv movies, including a truly great perf against Gena Rowlands in STRANGERS; THE STORY OF A MOTHER AND DAUGHTER/’79.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *More memorable than the film was Hepburn’s quick comeback to Dick Cavett on his interview show in 1973 when asked if she regretted never having worked with Olivier, ‘We’re not dead yet!’

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: FARMAGEDDON (2019)

Shaun the Sheep meets E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL in a fine return to form for the Stop-Motion animation guys of Aardman after a rare misfire with EARLY MAN/’18.*  The story, almost too close for comfort to the Spielberg classic, has a blue alien (cousin to the TRIX bunny?) corral Shaun & Co. (including sheepdog Bitzer) to help keep out of harm’s way (there's a reward for its capture) to find a space ship home.  Working thru an obstacle course of pleasingly funny parodies (more Kubrick/Spielberg than STAR TREK/STAR WARS), the film perhaps misses the satisfying warmth & originality of Aardman at its best, but rates a solid B+ all the same.  One of the rare ‘For the Whole Family’ pics really for the whole family and not just the kiddies.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Nothing to touch the perfection of the WALLACE AND GROMIT shorts.  Gromit’s furrowed brow possibly the most expressive body part on screen since Greta Garbo’s throat, but until one of those return, Shaun & Pals will do.  SmartPhone users: Type Aardman into the SEARCH Box on Web Version (scroll down for the link) for all our Aardman WriteUps, or use this LINK for three WALLACE & GROMIT shorts.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/wallace-gromit-three-amazing-adventures.html

IF THIS BE SIN (1949)

Relegated to ornamental duty as wifely consort to famous barrister husband Roger Livesey, Myrna Loy (in her only foreign-based film) has taken up with his young associate (Richard Greene), hiding the affair by claiming it’s not her, but step-daughter Peggy Cummings who’s the object of his attentions.  But when overwork breaks Livesey’s health, a convalescence on the Isle of Capri puts the foursome together and Loy’s lie turns prophetic even as past truths are inconveniently discovered.  Exceedingly smart woman’s pic just misses under Gregory Ratoff’s typically slapdash megging, lacking pace, rhythm & dramatic punctuation in spite of some fine work from cinematographer Georges Perinal.  (Loy, who could be tricky to shoot, given a kind of middle-aged tragic grandeur.)  Yet it’s possible (if unlikely, knowing Ratoff’s faults) to imagine a better/lost cut in the British release (as THAT DANGEROUS AGE) which ran a full two reels longer than the Stateside edition.  Does it exist?  Even as it stands, a pretty intriguing change-of-pace for Loy from her later top-billed vehicles.  Preceded by a final THIN MAN/’47; MR BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE/’48; THE RED PONY/’49; followed by CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN/’50.

DOUBLE-BILL: Any of the above Loy titles, DREAM HOUSE extra nice.

AU REVOIR LÀ-HAUT / SEE YOU UP THERE (2017)

Tremendous stuff!  As if Victor Hugo returned to write a WWI revenge novel.  Albert Dupontel, who mostly acts, but also writes/directs (he just won a fistful of Césars for ADIEU LES CONS/’20), overdoes the action & CGI in the opening scenes, a purposefully pointless battle two days before Armistice, setting up our trio of protagonists: war-addicted officer Laurent Lafitte; older soldier Dupontel, nearly buried alive; young Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, a gifted artist (a la Egon Schiele), severely injured saving him.  Nursed by Dupontel, Biscayart is suicidal upon seeing himself (he’s lost the lower third of his face), but lives to seek revenge against Lafitte, now working for Biscayart’s much hated rich, industrialist father and engaged to his sister.  Yikes!  Meanwhile, our soldier brothers work up a huge con with hefty commissions for designing War Memorials they have no plans to build.  All part of one of those big, circular storylines that tie everything together in Romantic 19th Century fashion.  (Grotesque characters very popular at the time: Hugo’s Quasimodo & Triboulet/Rigoletto, though Biscayart is closer to Gwynplaine of THE MAN WHO LAUGHS.*)  Lots of sentiment & laughs along with the devious plotting, organized for maximum clarity by Dupontel who also stops working in overdrive after the battle prologue with an ultra-lux production on this up-to-date old-fashioned story.  At its best, timing & farce staging Blake Edwards worthy.  And look fast to see him in a Buster Keaton style ‘pork pie’ hat.  Not much of Buster visible, but nice to see the salute.   Are his other films this good?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Paul Leni’s great late silent, THE MAN WHO LAUGHS/’28 with Conrad Veidt.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/man-who-laughs-1928.html

KIND LADY (1935; 1951)

Much produced play, from the Hugh Walpole story, a polite precursor to nastier modern spinsters-in-jeopardy thrillers*, has a cultured con artist befriend a wealthy society lady, replace the house staff with rough confederates, shut her up in the place and psychologically break her down to gain power-of-attorney so he can sell her Old Masters art collection and property.  Effectively creepy stuff in its Edwardian way, M-G-M filmed it twice to results that are paradoxically remarkably similar and completely different.  In ‘35, faceless B-pic megger George Seitz has younger leads Aline MacMahon & Basil Rathbone fraught with subtextual sexual tension.  In ‘51, action-oriented John Sturges (an odd choice though he’d just made the even more stage-bound MAGNIFICENT YANKEE/’50) has older, frailer Ethel Barrymore & sexless Maurice Evans.  For both films, finding a believable way to get the two leads in touch is probably the toughest story beat to pull off: awkward in the first film/far more smoothly handled in the second.  In fact, everything about the plotting much more sensible and well-run in the latter film.  (M-G-M’s version of GASLIGHT/’44 very influential on the remake, right down to the likely reused interior & exterior sets, shot, as was GASLIGHT, by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg.) 

But if the second film has been ‘fixed,’ it’s fixed the way you fix a pet; tamed, with the undertow of dread in the sadistic setup and humiliation neutered of full creepiness.  It’s ‘better,’ more sensible, yet less effective.  Quite the cast, though: Angela Lansbury, Betsy Blair, Keenan Wynn & John Williams in support.  (Evans & Williams soon to co-star on B’way in DIAL M FOR MURDER, but only Williams repeating in the Hitchcock film.)

DOUBLE-BILL: *Make this double-bill a triple with Olivia de Havilland & James Caan in modern variant LADY IN A CAGE/’64.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In the 1951 film, Evans seizes on Barrymore’s unusual bronze doorknocker as a way of introducing himself.  It’s a Benvenuto Cellini, no?.  Yes, an original, she replies.  If so, it would be worth considerably more than the mansion and much of the art inside!   He could have just stolen that and called it a day.  (When Cellini's famous salt cellar was stolen about twenty years ago, it was valued at about $60 mill.  Yikes!)

SUNSET IN THE WEST (1950)

In the fast evolving Hollywood of the late-‘40s (post-war/early television), Republic Pictures began using their proprietary TruColor system on Roy Rogers Westerns.  Less accurate than aspirational, TruColor’s two-tint system anything but true at the time.  Yet when handled properly, especially in parched/dusty territories out West, the tilt toward red/orange/blue of its available color spectrum (yellow/green inferred rather than registered) could produce unexpectedly satisfying results.  Or so fans assumed for decades since optimal viewing was impossible thanks to Republic chopping down product to fit one-hour time slots on tv; with a reel or two of footage tossed; murky color prints on incompatible stock; duped b&w copies.*  Miraculously, KINO-LORBER came out with a pair of fully restored 1950 films made from original negatives (TRIGGER, JR is the mate) proving what fans had long suspected/hoped for: the films are visual catnip.  Alas, this one’s just so-so as story: Roy re-ups with Sheriff Will Wright to catch a gang of gunrunners; but a fair share of catchy tunes (good); Gordon Jones’ corny comedy (bad), a fine old bloodhound dog (endearing); some nice action stunts (Trigger & Roy catch a train on the run) and a shocking amount of cold-blooded killing to go with the newly sharpened image.  No Dale Evans, but I think we’ll survive.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, TRIGGER, JR., just that bit better in story & picture.  OR: See and compare to TechiColor's two-strip system (with its slightly different color spectrum) at something near its best in the superb late-silent REDSKIN.’29.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/trigger-jr-1950.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/03/redskin-1929.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Old time Hollywood moguls rarely held on to junked footage.  Not so much to avoid upkeep costs, but to avoid the possibility of someone second-guessing them.  Prime examples include Columbia’s Harry Cohn on Frank Capra’s LOST HORIZON/’37 and Jack Warner with George Cukor’s version of A STAR IS BORN/’54.  Each now ‘restored’ with still photos to cover missing (really purposefully trashed) footage.

THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH (1970)

While bookended by live-action scenes directed by Dave Monahan, this adaptation of Norton Juster’s YA fantasy is the only feature credited to Chuck Jones, master of the Warner Bros. animated short.*  And though a spirited and entertaining piece of work in many ways, it’s obvious long form doesn’t particularly suit him; the film a series of hit-and-miss vaudevilles with ADHD connective episodes.  Former boy MUNSTER Butch Patrick is the daydreaming latch-key kid who finds life a bit of a bore till a mystery gift box pops up in his room.  It’s the eponymous gateway to a road of learning & adventures, new friends & cunning enemies as he battles thru warring kingdoms of WORDS & NUMBERS to reach RHYME & REASON at the Castle in the Sky.  Sounds a bit didactic, but charm & laughs win out along the way, with Jones working in a style familiar from his tv classic HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS/’66.  That well-packed/well-paced half-hour saw Jones profitably influenced & inspired by Dr. Seuss source material, drawing on its distinctive use of volume & color.  Here, the book’s original Jules Feiffer illustrations, all line & empty space don’t really come into play.  (See book cover.) 

But it works on it’s own terms, with the last couple of reels, excepting an unmemorable anthem capping an unmemorable score, unexpectedly touching, if not a patch on the heart-swelling GRINCH finale.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *No features other than compilations of his classic shorts and (possibly) U.P.A.’s GAY PURR-EE/’62, a wan one-off animated feature where Jones takes story credit, but possibly did more.  Note GAY PURR-EE director Abe Levitow co-directs here.

LONELYHEARTS (1958)

Neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed, Montgomery Clift, in his second film after a near-fatal car crash, is miscast as a cub reporter taken on by sadistic newspaper editor Robert Ryan to write a Miss Lonelyhearts column.  But Monty’s casting is the least of the problems on this woebegone project from Dore Schary, his first since ankling as M-G-M’s post-Louis B. Mayer Production Chief.  Larded with phony sincerity, this adaptation of Howard Teichmann’s flop play doesn’t feel at all like Nathaniel West’s famous story, but a maudlin (late) coming-of-age tale as Clift gets personally involved with manipulative letter writer Maureen Stapleton and lives to regret it.  Is she victim or perpetrator?*  Myrna Loy elegantly shares a few drinks as editor Robert Ryan’s fallen wife and Dolores Hart is a fresh young thing Clift intermittently attends to.  Everybody learns a lesson or two, then moves on.  Everyone but the production staff with Schary (just in his mid-50s) launching only two more films and novice director Vincent J. Donehue, busy with B’way & live tv, only one.  Judging by this, the loss was inconsiderable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: It takes some doing to make cinematographer John (‘Prince of Darkness’) Alton look bad, but Schary & Donehue manage with a production design and Golden Age tv technique that makes every setup and shot look like Playhouse 90.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *Already famous in stage circles, Stapleton got an Oscar® nom. out of this, but her effects are all misjudged.  It’d take a decade (and four widely spaced films) before she figured out how to get her peculiar brilliance across on screen.  In of all things, that slickest of late old-school Hollywood hits AIRPORT/’70.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/01/airport-1970.html

THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE (2004)

First (and best) of the feature-length SPONGEBOB films manages to expand the franchise while holding on to the charm and nutty fun of the series.  Better yet, it pulls you into its silly story even as it breaks the frame with a live-action gang of jolly pirates, parenthetically opening & closing the fable with a visit to the local bijou to watch the climax.  Back in the animated universe under the sea, the story bookends on SpongeBob’s dream job managing the new Krusty Krab operation, but the narrative engine takes him off on a dangerous adventure with trusty sidekick Patrick StarFish to retrieve King Neptune’s crown from Shell City.  A storyline too close to the old WIZARD OF OZ/’39 musical to be accidental.   Not just the usual classic film reference gags seen in so many animation series, but used to move things along story beat by story beat.   Right down to equivalents for the Flying Monkeys (with the same quick changing allegiances); an air-filled balloon to accidentally fly off without them; Neptune’s daughter as Glinda the Good Witch; and many more.  Creator Stephen Hillenburg even daring a few scary moments likely to upset little tykes.  (Not OZ nightmare inducing, but pretty dark as animated fish go!)  Fun technically, too, with a brighter than bright tv palette on the hand-drawn animation.  The whole film a pleasure to look at and root for.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The first sequel -  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-spongebob-movie-sponge-out-of-water.html

SINGAPORE (1947)

Credit vet Hollywood scripter Seton I. Miller with the idea of ‘borrowing’ characters from Warner Bros. CASABLANCA/’42 for a new story of WWII international intrigue.  And it almost works.  Here’s the lineup: Fred MacMurray in for Bogart; Roland Culver doing Paul Henreid; Richard Haydn as Claude Rains; unknown George Lloyd in his sole film credit covering Peter Lorre*; and fatman Thomas Gomez for fatman Sydney Greenstreet.  Wisely, Seton avoids linking fast-rising, inexperienced Ava Gardner to CASABLANCA’s Ingrid Bergman.  And no letters of transit either; instead, the paperwork’s for smuggled pearls, a million bucks worth hidden by MacMurray just as war broke out and fiancée Gardner went missing after a Japanese bomb run.  Now, post-war, he’s back to collect those pearls and hunt up the bride-to-be only to find the lady married (with amnesia) and a gang of thieves hot on his trail.  Ace B-pic megger John Brahm, at his best in superior noir programmers like THE LODGER/’44 and HANGOVER SQUARE/’45, does what he can on a Universal budget, but is stuck with that amnesia storyline.  He also can’t get a rise out of dour MacMurray who seems aware that gorgeous Ava was moving up fast.  His future more in line with his last film, THE EGG AND I/’47, a major hit, but now remembered for introducing Ma & Pa Kettle.  Still, unlike SINGAPORE, at least it’s remembered.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Who is this mysterious George Lloyd?  Possibly the same George Lloyd who has a few ‘40s credits on B’way, he bears more than a passing resemblance to character actor Norman Lloyd, now 104 and still telling tales about regular working pal Alfred Hitchcock.  Were they brothers?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: You could say HIS KIND OF WOMAN/’51 and MACAO/’52 (both with Jane Russell) find Robert Mitchum pulling this kind of thing off in his sleep.  But that sleepwalking gag is pretty tired.  (No pun intended.)  Nothing sleepy about Bob in either one.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/his-kind-of-woman-1951.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/macao-1952.html

THE CAT'S MEOW (2002)

Highly speculative silent-era Hollywood tale on the probable/never-solved murder of troubled producer Thomas Ince during a glamorous sex & alcohol fueled cruise on William Randolph Hearst’s luxury yacht in 1924.  With a passel of Hollywood celebs and hangers-on invited (Charlie Chaplin, Marion Davies, racy novelist Elinor Glyn, movie columnist Louella Parsons) and Hearst consumed by the wandering affections of mistress Davies, it’s a boat party fated to hit the shoals.  An excellent cast (Kirsten Dunst a stutter-free Davies; Cary Elwes as the once powerful Ince; Eddie Izzard a bit thick-waisted for Chaplin, but he wins you over; Edward Herrmann’s superbly multidimensional Hearst), convincing 1924 detail (excepting a few out-of-period recordings); rich lensing from Bruno Delbonnel in his first Stateside gig; and remarkably unfussy work from director Peter Bogdanovich, held down to good effect by the ship’s tight quarters.  Judging by the credits, Bogdanovich was more hired hand than initiator on this one, which may explain why the film takes a while to find it’s footing.  Scripter Steven Peros an obvious hack, referencing out-of-school tales as if he did his research thru old fan magazines like Modern Screen & PhotoPlay, then adding on limp witticisms & comebacks.  A factious tone largely dropped as the film goes along.  Did Bogdanovich rewrite the second half?  Really pulling itself together when tragedy strikes in the last act, starkly revealing the film that might have been.  Pretty good though, even as it stands.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Good companion piece to MANK/’20, also featuring a stutter-free Davies.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/mank-2020.html

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Silent Hollywood’s most intriguing unsolved murder involved actress Mary Miles Minter and director/mentor William Desmond Taylor.  The infamous 1922 mystery investigated decades later by director King Vidor with late-in-life girlfriend silent film star Colleen Moore during their retirement.  Vidor’s biographer Sidney Kirkpatrick put it between covers as A CAST OF KILLERS; Paul Newman almost made it at Paramount, Minter & Taylor’s old studio.

LANCER SPY (1937)

Though already seen in a dozen films, 20th/Fox tacked on a special end credit ‘Introducing’ 31-yr-old George Sanders in this WWI spy drama.  A sort of copycat PRISONER OF ZENDA , it sees British Officer Sanders take the place of wounded lookalike German Officer Sanders, crossing the border to steal secret Axis war plans.  With decent production values and a strong cast (Dolores Del Rio; Peter Lorre; Sig Rumann; Joseph Schildkraut; Lionel Atwill), plus rising Fox scripter Philip Dunne, it ought to make a superior B-pic.  But there’s little adventure or surprise once we hit enemy territory; and even less chemistry between Sanders & Del Rio.  (They tussle over German accents instead of each other; he’d improve; she’d never try again.)  Actor Gregory Ratoff, in his second directing gig brings little to the party (he’d hardly improve in thirty attempts), but the real blame lies in a lack of story development.  In too much of a rush to fix things?  (See our Double-Bill.*)  After two years of medium sized roles, Sanders would make his mark in CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY/’39, on loan to Warners with a much improved German accent.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *The David Selznick/Ronald Colman PRISONER OF ZENDA, out a month earlier, must have been the film they were trying to beat.  Hard to see Sanders in for Colman; his part would have been that scallywag of a villain Douglas Fairbanks Jr. played, Rupert of Hentzau.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/prisoner-of-zenda-1937-1952.html

CRAINQUEBILLE / COSTER BILL OF PARIS (1922)

Anatole France’s oft-adapted short story is a class-oriented bureaucratic nightmare about an elderly pushcart fruit & vegetable peddler pointlessly arrested by an officious gendarme on trumped up charges of obstructing traffic & disrespecting authority when he was simply waiting to get paid by a busy shopkeeper and said something innocuous the policeman misheard as an insult.  Unable to understand the court proceedings, Crainquebille lands a ƒ50 fine and two-weeks in jail.  He rather enjoys it; the first vacation he’s ever had!  But once out, he goes into fast decline, ostracized from the neighborhood he’s spent a lifetime serving.  A Zola-esque story from Nobel Prize winner France, it’s beautifully caught in this fine early feature from Jacques Feyder, seamlessly mixing styles not yet named in 1922 (documentary shots of Les Halles Central Market; Neo-Realistic stylings from professional actors; touches of surrealism in dreams & via animated objects) with effective melodrama and ironic satire.  Source material in Lobster’s DVD edition somewhat uneven (very fine to acceptable), and Antonio Coppola’s new chamber score isn’t always simpatico with the storyline, but generally, this a wonderful find.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The whole film something of a treasure, but the first two-reels, with documentary elements bumping into Feyder’s atmospheric setup in Paris as early dawn laborers on their way to work cross paths with late night society revelers just heading home, is all but flawless.  And well caught by cinematographer Léonce-Henri Burel.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Best known for CARNIVAL IN FLANDERS/’35, Feyder’s sole English-language film, KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR/’37 (Dietrich; Robert Donat; Russian Revolution) is a pip.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/11/knight-without-armor-1937.html

A SOLDIER'S STORY (1984)

Charles Fuller had but one feature film writing credit (also his sole B’way credit*), and this is it: a whodunnit with a socio-politico angle since the case (the murder of a despised Black Sergeant) involves a Black WWII Unit down South in a still segregated army.  With a hefty glance toward IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT/’67*, the man sent down to take charge of the case is Black, Howard E. Rollins Jr., the first Negro Captain seen by Black grunts or White officers at the Camp.  He even goes head-to-head with a white co-equal, eventually earning grudging respect and even a sort of friendship, just as in HEAT.  And while the mystery, writing & solution never rise above utilitarian (‘Blackness’ always the underlying topic), the film remains enormously entertaining in its way.  The plot, ‘opened up’ thru multiple locations & exposition handled on the move, never shakes off its stage origins; same for some of the actors, murdered officer Adolph Caesar, seen largely in flashback as Rollins interviews suspects, relies entirely on a stage villain’s snarl.  But you’re always pulled along by the basic Agatha Christie mystery structure and the cast is a treat of rising young Black actors in youthful glow.  (Glow is the word since the Southern climate has everyone’s skin glistening.  The continuity girl must have gone crazy trying to match dew levels!)  In only his second film, Denzel Washington is more important than his seventh-billing indicates, and Robert Townsend (where has this charmer been hiding?), also in an early credit, steals every scene he’s in.*  Perhaps with so many Black ensemble films now available, this feels less special than it did at the time.  But director Norman Jewison (a Canadian Episcopalian, BTW), having made HEAT OF THE NIGHT, knows how to make it work.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Rollins, playing the Sidney Poitier character, took Poitier’s role when HEAT went to tv. The original 1967 film is from Poitier's  annum mirabilis: TO SIR WITH LOVE and GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER in addition to HEAT.  All three now historical relics.  OR: See Washington & Townsend nicely paired in THE MIGHTY QUINN/’89, an island-set murder mystery offering similar race issues without on-the-nose lecturing, and Denzel dazzling in regulation police-issued white shorts.

ATENTION MUST BE PAID: *The original 1981 stage run (as A SOLDIER’S PLAY) was Off-B’way.  It only hit B’way in 2020 (with the film’s David Alan Grier moving up to play Sergeant), but shuttered early due Corona-19.

SILKWOOD (1983)

In spite of his much hyped Golden Touch rep, Mike Nichols, in the wake of two DOA releases (DAY OF THE DOLPHIN/’73; THE FORTUNE/’75) waited nearly a decade before trying again.  So this muckraking political tale of Karen Silkwood, putative nuclear fuel factory martyr, was considered something of a triumphant comeback.  Now, it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about.  Even the acting, usually a given under Nichols, is over-baked, with so much busy behavioral detail & tics it might be an investigation into Tourette’s Syndrome rather than sloppy work procedure and possible anti-union/cover-up murder around the plant.  Guided by Nichols, Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher, and on down the line with the notable exception of imperturbable Fred Ward, all do twenty small jittery things when one or two would do.  Streep, in particular, so busy with her hair & cigarettes, a gong of foreshadowing cancerous doom could have been rung.  A deglamorized Cher got a lot of attention at the time, but of the leads, only Russell surprises.  Over the next 30 years, Nichols made eleven more features, three or four reasonably good, but certainly nothing that lived up to his early promise.  Heck, even his early promise doesn’t live up to his early promise.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Stylistically, SILKWOOD less nuclear cautionary then union busting downer; less CHINA SYNDROME/’79 than NORMA RAE/’79 (which probably holds up best of the three).

OH, MEN! OH, WOMEN! (1957)

One of the rare films with no writing credit.  Best guess is vet Hollywood scripter Nunnally Johnson, credited as producer/director, adapted Edward Chodorov’s B’way hit without gaining approval.  It’s one of those ‘smart’ B’way comedies of the day, tough to bring off on film and dated even when they do.  At least there’s a workable idea in here as society shrink David Niven squeezes in one last appointment before leaving on his honeymoon cruise, only to quickly realize the new patient’s neurotic infatuation is with the woman Niven is about to marry.  Yikes!  Worse, he knows it, but the patient doesn’t.  Personal knowledge vs personal ethics; what’s the right thing to do?  If only the writing were a little sharper, a little funnier, and a lot less condescending toward women.  Two of ‘em, Barbara Rush as the bride/ex, miscast as a 'delightful' ditz, and Ginger Rogers* from the secondary couple: her, demanding/needy; him (Dan Dailey) heavy-drinking actor.  Johnson, more writer than director, tends to sit on his CinemaScope setups with proscenium-bound staging until waking up in the last reel when the action finally moves out of the office and onto a real ocean liner, belatedly livening things up.  The whole lot (actors, directors, writers) swept aside by 37 yr-old Hollywood newcomer Tony Randall, the only fellow around who knows how to play these things.* On B’way, he’d replaced Gig Young in Dailey’s role.  But here, he plays the neurasthenic patient . . . and he’s hilarious.  The material isn’t any better, but Randall seems to have some sort of pacing metronome in his head, everything timed to perfection.  It makes all the difference.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Only 46, this was effectively Ginger Rogers’ Hollywood swansong.  She looks fine, not always the case in these late pics,  but hasn’t a clue how to play a funny/desperate sophisticate, hitting every line with the same determined lunge; telegraphing every joke.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: On B’way, Franchot Tone & Gig Young (later in the run Tony Randall) had the Niven & Dailey roles, while Larry Blyden played Randall’s film role.  Plus Anne Jackson as the wife.  I’d pay to see that cast.

WATCH THISS, NOT THAT: Randall’s great in all these early films.  Faster, less coy than later.  This one worth a peek, but see his followup, WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER/’57 to get the full effect. 

DEAR COMRADES / DOROGIE TOVARISHCHI (2020)

Now 82, after a career of near comic unevenness (back to co-writing early Andrei Tarkovsky masterpieces IVAN’S CHILDHOOD/’62 and ANDREI RUBLEV/’66), writer/director Andrey Konchalovsky has rarely hit the target as squarely as he does here, vivifying a real-life horror of Soviet Life 1962 when a workers’ strike in the industrial town of Novocherkassk became a riot and then a massacre.  Perfectly rendered in design and execution, down to the use of squarish Academy Ratio and b&w cinematography typical of USSR MosFilm at the time, with the attitudes of the people just as well captured.  Yuliya Vysotskaya carries the film as a mid-level town official who smells panic in the air as wages go down, prices go up and basic supplies grow scarce.  Though not for her, her privileged position lets her skip the lines for backrooms where provisions are reserved for Party Officials, especially if they have something to offer in return.  But when her rebellious daughter gets caught up in the demonstrations as Town Hall is rushed by workers and sacked (we could be watching the January 6th D.C. insurrection), and either the Army or KGB snipers begin shooting, her ordered world and tough views on law, order & consequences crumble against a single parent’s fear for an only child.  Searching for her possibly dead daughter with a surprisingly sympathetic KGB officer, the trail already fading away thru State Sanctioned coverup (even blood stained pavement gone under fresh asphalt), she has to confront her own view of what a Workers’ Paradise in a post-Stalin era means.  Stunning work up & down the line here, loaded with lethal irony and personal conundrums on the future: her’s, her daughter’s, the Party’s.  A late career triumph, devastating, thought-provoking stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL: Best of Konchalovsky’s Hollywood days: RUNAWAY TRAIN/’85 with strong turns from Jon Voight & Eric Roberts.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Not only did Konchalovsky somehow get this thru official Russian funding channels, it even got the official nod to vie for Best International Feature at the 2021 Oscars.