LUZZU (2021)

Strong debut feature for writer/director Alex Camilleri who also edited & produced.  (What, no catering?)  Made in Malta with a mostly non-pro cast, it’s something of a throwback to Luchino Visconti’s LA TERRA TREMA/’47, a foundation film in Italian Neo-Realism.  Another fisherman’s tale with corrupt market forces and the inconstant sea ‘fixed’ against a fifth-generation independent operator.  But now, instead of a system unchanged in a millennium, the old ways of boat, sea & tangled lines are surrounded by the 21st Century: SmartPhones & computers; high-protein baby formula; trawlers wrecking the ocean floor & container ships sucking up labor.  Plus, the E.U. offering buy-out packages for operators of the old ‘luzzu’ one-man fishing boats, pressing to consolidate what’s left of a dying breed into regulated industry.  Camilleri proves a natural at setups (even out at sea), and in getting smart/believable perfs from his cast.  The film beautifully composed & well-paced, though his leads perhaps a bit too model-worthy.  The husband broad-shouldered, roughly handsome; the wife a knockout.  And there’s a second dramatic trigger besides the move to modernization when their infant son needs specialized medical attention.  Plenty of interesting characters along the way, too: an unyielding mother-in-law; a black-market chief offering good pay for under-the-radar work; his assistant, an itinerant Black assistant who becomes something of a wise friend (David Scicluna in a standout perf*), and an unexpected emotional charge from inanimate objects when the boats meet their fate.  Avoiding every phony trope in the film school playbook (the cops never added to increase suspense/threat; the kid’s health handled with simple intelligence; the strained marriage observed rather than ginned up for acting opportunities), it’s the work of a budding master.  And what an eye!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, Visconti’s second film, LA TERRA TREMA, still strong stuff if not the revelation once thought.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/06/la-terra-trema-earth-trembles-1947.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The lead actor, Jesmark Scicluna, who’s white, shares a surname with his mentor, who’s Black.  Related?  Or is Scicluna a common family name in Malta?   ‘LUNA’ no doubt means ‘MOON,’ but what does ‘SCIC’ mean in Maltese?

THE SAXON CHARM (1948)

Another behind-the-scenes roman à clef from novelist Frederic Wakeman, unlike last year’s THE HUCKSTERS/’47 on the ad game & radio, this one All About Theater*, and improving rather than diminishing over the years.  With more vigorous direction and a better score to reflect the story’s dark edge, we’d have an unheralded near-classic.  Robert Montgomery, in an exceptional late turn, doesn’t soft-pedal this fictionalized version of real-life B’way horror Jed Harris, a theatrical comet who blazed as producer/director for a decade (THE FRONT PAGE; OUR TOWN; THE HEIRESS; THE CRUCIBLE) before his loathsome, spiteful personality made him untouchable.  (Laurence Olivier famously based his Richard III on Harris; and currently in the news, film & B’way producer Scott Rudin, a modern example of this type of bullying terror & threatening behavior.*)  Montgomery captures the monster in decline, working with successful novelist John Payne on a first play while running roughshod over Payne & wife Susan Hayward, as well as fiancée Audrey Totter, lowbrow investors, office staff (Henry Morgan, exceptional), and any employee he comes across at clubs, airports & hotels.  Yet, he can still pull you in as easily as he repels when he turns on the charm, and with the smarts to make the whole ghastly experience seem worthwhile.  But his instincts have calcified and his enthusiasms hardened into daggers.  Claude Binyon, long time writer of light vehicles at Paramount, began to occasionally direct here (we’re at Universal), but shows slight aptitude for the task.  Thankfully, the writing not only holds up, but holds firm, right to the finish, with hardly a compromise to its multilayered characters.

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The obvious choice is ALL ABOUT EVE/’50 for more backstage skullduggery, deceit & bad behavior.  OR: *For the Scott Rudin angle, while Montgomery’s character may be cut from similar cloth, see John Malkovich in THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY/’93 for a more exact copy.  (Seated next to Scooter’s top assistant at a preview screening for LADY, and cringing as Malkovich’s despicable actions destroyed Kidman’s chance to escape, I nudged this office lackey and whispered, ‘Who does this remind you of?’   ‘OMG, Scott!  It’s Scott!,’ he replied.  A month later, overbearing noxious behavior had him out of there.)

ABISMOS DE PASIÓN / WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1954)

With dozens of film & tv iterations over the decades, there’s a version of Emily Brontë’s dark tale of caste, lust & pride to please just about anyone.  (Heck, you could even read the novel!)  And while they all skip much of the book’s plot, few skip more than Luis Buñuel in 1954, transplanted to  Mexico and making do with what other adaptations consider the third act.  This means we pick up Heathcliff (here called Alejandro) as he returns a wealthy man, hoping to exact revenge on the rich country family that abused him when he was little more than a foundling stableboy.  His monomania leading him to drive love-of-his-life Cathy/Catalina mad for settling into a companionate marriage with that lily-livered scion across the valley.  But if much of the plot has gone missing, what remains is more of the dirty passion beating in everyone’s heart (largely for the wrong person) than you’ll find elsewhere, and the romance of personal destruction at any cost.  (As well as a disturbing series of animal murders: buzzards shot; butterflies ‘pinned’ for preservation; frogs burned alive as purification ritual; pigs slaughtered . . . death surrounds us.)  Made with a cast assembled for some other canceled movie (apparently a Mexi-Musical), Buñuel didn’t much like the results.  But the acting, if very broad, is also, very effective in its black-and-white manner, the story all but taking care of itself .  Brontë might have approved.  And you adjust to its abrupt tempo & raw tone as it goes along.  Perhaps not the only HEIGHTS you need to see, but one you won’t want to miss.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: William Wyler’s Hollywood classic from ‘39 holds up better than you remember.  With enough of the story to help make sense of Buñuel’s eccentric take. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/05/wuthering-heights-1939.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: While rarely a good idea to coast on the emotional overload of Richard Wagner, especially repetitive chunks of TRISTAN & ISOLDE, it works about as well here as Wagner’s Ring Cycle did backing John Boorman’s EXCALIBER/’81.

THE HUCKSTERS (1947)

Frederic Wakeman’s big, bestselling exposé on changing business-as-usual practices in post-war media, agenting & advertizing was tamed for easy consumption and as a post-WWII reset for Clark Gable after his disappointing return to the screen in ADVENTURE/’45 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/08/adventure-1945.html).  And while Gable’s fine as a cashed out exec, back from the war and now looking to sell himself to Adolph Menjou’s advertizing firm, the impersonal corporate M-G-M style, softens the sharp edges the story needs to take hold.  Gable has two problems to work out: grotesque Soap Mogul Sydney Greenstreet, a chain-pulling terror and the ad firm’s biggest client; and Deborah Kerr’s noble war widow, a titled Brit he falls hard for.  Will Gable stand on principle or give in to corporate culture?  Will he find the key to Kerr’s class dame or settle for the louche appeal of old pal/songtress Ava Gardner?  The first is less character building drama than easy set ups; the second a mismatch since the chemistry is all in Gardner’s favor.  The missed possibilities are easy to see, Billy Wilder @ Paramount or Joseph Mankiewicz @ 20th/Fox would have been just the ticket, but the film goes flabby under journeyman vet Jack Conway’s styleless megging and heavily massaged script.  Worse, you can see what might have been in a neat half-reel that sees Gable & Gardner beating a couple of hot Hollywood agents (Edward Arnold & Frank Albertson as MCA’s Jules Stein & Lew Wasserman) at their own game on the train to L.A.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: To M-G-M’s credit, next time Gardner & Gable met, in John Ford’s MOGAMBO/’53, he quits on inappropriate cool blonde Grace Kelly to pair up for good with Ava’s sexy brunette.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/mogambo-1953.html

CONTEST:  At one board meeting, Greenstreet coarsely emphasizes his point by taking out his ‘upper’ dentures.  Let us know why it’s ironic for Greenstreet to pull out false teeth to win your choice of a streaming film for a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up.

DIRIGIBLE (1931)

Big budget, big box-office, big Grauman’s Chinese Hollywood Premiere, DIRIGIBLE repped a big step up for little Columbia Pictures, production chief Harry Cohn & director Frank Capra.  Still pretty lively, too.  One of a series of six or seven films for alpha male Ralph Graves (impulsive, arrogant, borderline obnoxious) & granite-jawed mentor Jack Holt; professional & romantic rivals, yet inseparable.  With Graves inevitably going too far and Holt saving his ass even though it means losing the girl.  Only the settings and the girl (here Fay Wray) change, as in the three Capra made: SUBMARINE/’28; FLIGHT/’29; DIRIGIBLE/’31.  This last the one to go for, technically advanced, with a better balanced storyline between its South Pole adventure and entanglements at home.  Aided by the new pen of wounded Navy vet Frank Wead, who knew the territory and would later write for Howard Hawks & John Ford.  Plus superb use of real dirigible footage (flying or inside enormous hangers, the latter, stunningly captured by cinematographer Joseph Walker) mixed with top-line process & model effects that even now raise only the occasional giggle.  Check out some devastating dirigible destruction during a freak storm at sea.  Graves didn’t last out competition from Pat O’Brien & James Cagney in these roles and quickly sank to Poverty Row work, yet he’s no stiffer than Holt.*  The real standout is character man Roscoe Karns as a doomed crewman, and, of course, Capra’s lucky charm actor, Clarence Muse.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Sure enough, just as Graves’ contract was wrapping up at Columbia, Pat O’Brien was co-starring with Walter Huston in Capra’s transformative AMERICAN MADNESS/’32.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/american-madness-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Muse, the sole Black actor in the film, plays waiter & then ship’s cook, working a fairly standard stereotype.  Waiting table on the three white leads, they discuss travel plans to The Antarctic, while he chimes in to their insufferable, barely hidden condescension.  But look a bit more closely; it’s just possible he’s playing them.  Muse was a wonderful actor.

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971)

Existential Road Movie so pretentiously vacant dedicated cultists can read anything they want into its empty spaces.   Five years after Monte Hellman megged a pair of enigmatic Jack Nicholson Westerns with similar ‘attributes,’ he returned with this slyly (unintentionally?) amusing Drag Racing meditation, teasing all the usual tropes (unanswered hitchhiker’s pass; tagalong gal with mutable loyalties; respectful friendly competitors; final showdown on an enemy track) but withholding the usual payoffs.  High-charting pop stars James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, each cutting their losses after this sole acting gig, are The Driver & The Mechanic, living the dream in a souped up ‘55 Chevy, going from diner to diner between racing stops where they make just enough cash to get to the next town.  'Pontiac GTO' Warren Oates may seem a less likely drifter (older, unemployed, lonely, hunting up hitchhikers mainly for companionship), but on the same wavelength when a race to D.C. on the old 'Blue Highways' is suggested.  As The Girl, Laurie Bird gives the film a distinctive acting base, making it three rank amateurs against Oates' vastly underrated pro, the subsequent performing imbalance often the only thing holding attention between tire changes.  Unique in its way, a Modern Road pic that goes beyond the usual debate on whether it’s The Destination or The Journey that matter.  Here, it’s The Carburetor.  Or is for Wilson.  For Oates, a pair of hitchhikers to ‘jaw’ at.  For Bird, a quick, silent exit with a near twin.  And for Taylor, a Nouvelle Vague freeze frame flame out and documentation of his long lost luxurious tresses.

DOUBLE-BILL: Walter Hill brought similar abstraction (and similar mixed results) to a different genre in THE DRIVER/’78.

SHANGHAI (1935)

After testing the local waters in a few small roles (e.g. RED-HEADED WOMAN/’32), Charles Boyer finally took the Hollywood plunge in 1935, co-starring against Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn & here Loretta Young in his third & least film of the year.  Thin romantic gruel from journeyman megger James Flood about star-crossed lovers, it’s loaded with noble renunciation scenes (one sees them both going at it), after Boyer’s penniless Russian exile reinvents himself as Shanghai’s most successful society investment banker and starts handling Young’s assets . . . so to speak.  But an insurmountable obstacle could dash all expectations, if not without a fight by the dogged Ms. Young to follow her man, even into uncharted territories, accompanied by her rich Aunt’s housemaid & mink.  Even with Boyer’s accent still thick as Grandpère’s Sunday mayonnaise, there’s glamorous chemistry between the leads and a surprising social obstacle for the lovers to overcome.  Without giving it away, let’s just say that intimations of MLK Jr.’s famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech are the last thing you expect to hear in this sort of thing.  Yet, here it is; three decades before the fact.  Ending the film with what could pass as a first draft of those famous final cadences at the Washington Mall 1963.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Look for a nice turn from little known Fred Keating as Young’s hard-drinking/hard-smoking asexual pal.  Sounding, looking & with the mannerisms of Lowell Sherman who specialized in these roles before his premature death the previous year.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Right before helping Boyer find his Hollywood form, director Flood helped Cary Grant become ‘Cary Grant’ in the effective aviation soaper WINGS IN THE DARK/’35 against Myrna Loy.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/10/wings-in-dark-1935.html

COLOR OF NIGHT (1994)

Bonkers psychological murder mystery; writing debut for future A-lister Billy Ray, final credit for frustrated director Richard Rush, his first since STUNT MAN fourteen years back.  Bruce Willis stars, playfully confused as a Manhattan shrink-in-crisis, escaping to L.A. after a patient suicides, then quickly taking over a group session when a California colleague is mysteriously stabbed to death.  Moving into the dead man’s house, Bruce is soon trying to find out if someone in the group is responsible for the murder.  Or is between steamy bouts of ‘80s-style soft-core sex with toothy, young, babalicious Jane March, tangentially involved in just about every aspect & suspect in the case.  March, in only her second film, seriously over-parted, short-changing the big third-act reveal.  But it hardly matters as Rush never establishes a tone for the strikingly strong cast to work in, though Brad Dourif’s patient and Reubén Blades’ police dick find a nice mocking spirit on their own.  Dumb & illogical as it is, the film is often off-the-wall fun, especially once Rush pulls back on excess displays of style.  With two reels added to the release print, his 2'20" Director’s Cut is apparently somewhat easier to follow even if things never do add up.

DOUBLE-BILL: With a C.V. of puerile stinkers (THE SAVAGE SEVEN/’68; GETTING STRAIGHT/’70), Rush’s claim to fame boils down to THE STUNT MAN/’80.  Why this one film is so good, so fresh, witty & exciting is a far bigger mystery than anything going on here.

ATTTENTION MUST BE PAID: The color of the title refers to Willis’s color-blindness to RED.  Yet, it hardly registers as a plot device in spite of some bright RED lipstick and a RED sports car.

DARLING, HOW COULD YOU! (1951)

James M. Barrie’s enchanting play, an earth-bound addendum to his PETER PAN, think the Further Misadventures of The Darling Family.  Called the Greys here, the play ALICE SIT BY THE FIRE*, it’s the same setup of absented parents, older teen daughter, grammar school son, toddler and fussy nanny.  But where Peter Pan flies into the nursery unaware a generation has passed since his last visit, now it’s the parents who’ve been out of touch, not for a night out as in PAN, but for five years in India, which seems like a generation to the children.  And if Dad instinctively stumbles his way back into their hearts, Mom trips up at every opportunity, distancing herself from every one, even the dog.  (A real dog this time, not PAN’s ‘Nana.’)  The fun comes in watching Barrie fix the broken family thru farcical misunderstanding, a nonexistent romantic mixup that has the daughter, with life-lessons learned strictly off stage plays with melodramatic rifts of scandal & infidelity*, trying to save Mother from marital disgrace, taking her place on an assignation with some supposed lover.  (In its 1905 B’way premiere, Ethel Barrymore was Mother & brother John a very confused ‘lover.’)  This film adaptation, by Dodie Smith of 101 DALMATIANS fame, moves the action from London to Boston, the overseas posting from India to the Panama Canal, and nicely opens up the action from the play's two locations, while director Mitchell Leisen keeps things on the move.  Yet it barely plays at all; farce, tough enough on stage, even harder on screen.  But the real problem is casting and a general lack of style, unified or otherwise, stolid realism where it needs to be fanciful.  Joan Fontaine, daringly playing her real age (she’s 33!), appears dense instead of out of practice at mothering; and if John Lund's habitual dullness fits Father, he’s still pretty dull up there.  At least they get by, Fontaine even generating a bit of sparkle toward the end as things start to clear up and she takes control over the action & comic reprisals.  But Mona Freeman is quite disastrously wrong as the girl, 25 at the time but channeling modern American teen in a role needing the grace-notes of a young Audrey Hepburn or Jean Simmons.  And you can’t help but see what ought to be happening as kid brother David Stollery, right at her side, lands every gag & bit of sentiment dead center.  A real shame for the play too, as it may be Barrie’s best bet for revival after PAN, excluding his one-act/proto-feminist THE TWELVE POUND LOOK.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The purposeful over-acting of the stage players gets closer to a workable Barrie style than anything else in here.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Back in 1904, the full original title was PETER PAN, OR THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T GROW UP.  This one might have been named not for Mother ALICE, but for the daughter: AMY, OR THE GIRL WHO WANTED TO GROW UP.

MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS (2005)

‘Truish’ and ‘Bluish,’ the story of a London Music Hall that stayed open (and topless) all thru the Second World War.  Bowdlerized, with little but the 'We Never Close' motif intact, it became a 1945 Rita Hayworth musical*, but this film, while still heavily fictionalized, comes within spitting distance of the facts.  And they’re just as interesting as the nude tableaux vivants that punctuate the final choruses on stage.  Judi Dench & Bob Hoskins are just about perfect as the recently widowed upper crust Lady and the dapper director she hires after buying a dilapidated London theater, as much hobby as investment.  But when Hoskins’ new idea for ‘Continuous Shows’ hits box-office fatigue, Dench decides to Go Blue with ‘tasteful’ nudity by the showgirls.  Can they find a way to get past the censor?  Will the bickering between Hoskins & Dench stop the show?  And will those nice British girls bare all for art & money?  Stephen Frears has a lot of fun staging the numbers and giving his leads plenty of room to chew the scenery.  Hoskins, who exec produced, unusually posh with a glam toupee.  Even finding touching moments for the girls & the stage-door-Johnny soldier boys.  And if the film is a bit too eager to please, like a puppy at the animal shelter, now & then it truly catches the mood of the times, as in a brief romantic sequence when the period score adds missing depth to the proceedings thanks to Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein’s ’All the Things You Are’ backing the action.  Longing, melancholy, wartime loss, suddenly we’re on another dramatic level.  (NOTE: A lot of nudity for one of our Family Friendly film labels!  So bare that in mind.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Back in 1919, Flo Ziegfeld’s FOLLIES used the same defense of still-life pulchritude to get past censors, to the tune of Irving Berlin’s ‘A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: * More than flesh goes missing in TONIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/12/asmidgen-of-truth-lurks-behind-this.html), the film mostly worth a look for a stupendous audition routine from Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo soloist Marc Platt.  Start at the 8" mark:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x4Z4uLQvtI

THE BEACHCOMBER / VESSEL OF WRATH (1938)

Top German producer Erich Pommer, in exile from the Nazis and hopscotching international movie hubs, teamed up with Charles Laughton, licking his wounds after I, CLAUDIUS/’37 imploded, forming Mayflower Pictures for three films before WWII shuttered the outfit.  This one, first & best of the lot, from a 1931 Somerset Maugham story, also saw Pommer calling the shots (for the first & last time) when writer Bartlett Cormack bailed on directing chores.  And while you definitely feel a lack of control behind the camera, it’s less of a problem than you expect since Maugham’s story (anticipating E.M. Forester’s 1935 THE AFRICAN QUEEN in all sorts of ways*) is strong enough to take care of itself and the cast so miraculously right.  Laughton’s a layabout drunk in a tropical paradise, always in trouble with the locals, the law & his bank balance, doing his best to ignore responsibility.  Meanwhile, do-gooder Missionaries, Elsa Lancaster’s teacher and her doctor/brother Tyrone Guthrie, both in their way, nearly as eccentric as Laughton’s ne’er-do-well, bring uplift to the non-believing natives.  But when an island in their archipelago succumbs to typhoid, just as Guthrie is felled by recurring malaria, Laughton & Lancaster must put aside differences and rise to the occasion.  The film is quite the charmer, if a bit over-extended before the medical emergency adds a dramatic jolt.  But everybody’s a winner here, including Robert Newton as the Island Controller (with a wayward, unplaceable accent: Dutch?  French? Cockney?).  Even the locals, for a change, are nicely particularized and get their moments.  Fun to see husband & wife Laughton & Lancaster playing an opposites-attract couple, with Lancaster in the most fully rounded role of her career.

DOUBLE-BILL: Newton takes Laughton’s role in the less well received 1954 remake.  (Not seen here.)  OR: *THE AFRICAN QUEEN/’52, displaying uncanny similarities.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Famed stage director Tyrone Guthrie only acted in two films, this and in Mayflower’s next, ST. MARTIN’S LANE/SIDEWALKS OF LONDON/’38, presumably at Laughton’s behest as Guthrie had directed him in a season of rep at the rejuvenated Old Vic, including his only shot at MACBETH.

LES RIPOUX / MY NEW PARTNER (1984)

Broad and obvious, but often flat out funny, Claude Zidi’s corrupt cop comedy was a shoe-in at the box-office (two sequels; series spin-off), but an unlikely Best Pic winner at France’s Cesar awards.  (Oscar® would never stoop so low, alas.*)  Formula stuff, but from a good formula, with Phillippe Noiret simply terrific, droll personified, as a comfortably corrupt arrondissement enforcer, half beat-cop/half one-man protection operator, who gives up his partner when a scam goes bad (‘why should we both go to jail?’) only to get saddled with a straight-arrow replacement from central casting: small-town Thierry Lhermitte, young, by-the-book, incorruptible, trim, blue-eyed handsome, as smooth as Noiret is rumpled.  Can this paragon be ‘bent?’  Putting the rube in harm’s way, Noiret shows Lhermitte the ropes in bribes, kickbacks, live-and-let-live laissez-faire police tactics, even when to make a move on a gangster, a horse race or a tart.  Chalk & cheese in a patrol car, these natural comedians make good company as Lhermitte slowly capitulates, then starts to surpass his mentor on the dirty streets of Paris.  Nice supporting characters too, at work and at play.  But Zidi is deficient in letting us see just how good Noiret is at balancing his surprisingly effective work ethic behind the grifting.  And the film’s overarching criminal case, needed to keep the farcical elements on a narrative track, isn’t properly setup or serviced.  If only a French amalgamation of Don Siegel and Blake Edwards were around to fix the holes.

DOUBLE-BILL: *For a downbeat response, try next year’s ultra-serious/ultra-realistic approach to Paris detectives in Maurice Pialat’s POLICE/’85 with Gerard Depardieu.  Very fine most of the way.  The kind of film Oscar® would have gone for.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Was this even released in the States?  Optioned for remake and suppressed?

THE MIRACLE MAKER (2000)

Claymation Jesus from Wales may not sound like a promising idea, but this Greatest Story Ever Told iteration gets closer to the mark than many a Passion Project.  Trimmed down, it assumes basic familiarity with the story, often switching from a pleasingly artisanal Stop-Motion technique to vividly colored hand-drawn animation for moments of crisis and during flashbacks; easily transitioning between the styles by not sweating over æsthetic clashes.  And what an unusually human Jesus we get.  Nothing comparable since Max Von Sydow took on the role in George Stevens’ otherwise regrettable GSET/’65.  Here, it's Ralph Fiennes in the part, backed by an All-Star vocal cast, with much of the story told a bit from the side in smartly chosen P.O.V. angles.  (The main one dealing with a deathly ill girl, cured & befriended by Jesus).  And a huge character list differentiated enough so that it’s all easy to follow, the story simplified, but not dumbed-down.  As usual, Pilate’s part in things feels whitewashed, as if he bribed some ancient journalist to alter his notebook, and the filmmakers (directors Derek Hayes & Stanislav Sokolov; script Murray Watts) bypass the stickier narrative points via ellipses (heck, so does The New Testament!), the resurrection elements always a tough sell.  But this is remarkably successful.  And not only as entry level/Intro 101 fodder.  There’s real charm in the execution (those miniature cities especially winning) and for the most part, it's thankfully shy on solemnity.

DOUBLE-BILL: Boomers will recall 1960s Claymation from GUMBY and the modern Christian parables (Lutheran Division) of DAVEY AND GOLIATH.  Perhaps too dorky for current age appropriate viewers, but great nostalgia.

CIRCLE OF DANGER (1951)

Frustrating.  Intriguing story and superb execution from director Jacques Tourneur, with exceptional U.K. location lensing from Oswald Morris in only his fourth D.P. credit*, can’t overcome missteps in character development and casting.  Ray Milland stars as an American who travels to England hoping to discover the truth behind his kid brother’s death in WWII.  Could it have been ‘friendly fire?’  Hunting up survivors from his brother’s British unit for questioning, his pursuit single-minded to the point of rudeness, Milland slips by on charm, apologies & generous gratuities, but definitely gives off an “Ugly American’ vibe as he grills former officers & servicemen.  Even the girl he’d like to steal from one of the men he meets finds she’s repeatedly stood up by Milland when he gets lost in his investigating.  Three times!  And when the truth finally does comes out, you might not like the answer.  Tough-minded stuff for the period, the story functions on George Bernard Shaw’s dictum of ‘two countries divided by a common language.’  But something goes missing in Welsh-born Milland’s Mid-Atlantic speech patterns & cultivated style.  The part needs the flat vowels and stubborn small-town naivete of a James Stewart or the misplaced confidence & Big City moxie of a wiseguy like Richard Widmark to bring out the sense of Ugly American entitlement that could supply the proper dramatic motivation.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The girl in the pic, Patricia Roc had a rare Hollywood role in Tourneur’s exceptional Western CANYON PASSAGE/’46 with Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy & Susan Hayworth.  OR: Milland tracks down WWII mystery in the Hollywood soundstage England of Fritz Lang’s THE MINISTRY OF FEAR/’44.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/ministry-of-fear-1944.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *Attention WAS paid . . . to cinematographer Oswald Morris who quickly shot up the ranks after this came out.  Especially as John Huston’s lenser of choice from next year’s MOULIN ROUGE/’52 to THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING in ‘75.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/moulin-rouge-1952.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Was Philip MacDonald’s original screenplay softened to accommodate Stateside audiences?

EDGE OF ETERNITY (1959)

Never short of galley work in the decades before Clint Eastwood/DIRTY HARRY made him a late-blooming A-lister, Don Siegel had three standouts in just the second half of the ‘50s.  Two generally known (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS; THE LINEUP*), and this expert thriller off the radar far too long.  Something of a Modern Day Western, Siegel opens in the middle of an action scene as two unknown men struggle for survival on a rocky Grand Canyon cliff.  (Burnett Guffey’s CinemaScope EastmanColor lensing spectacular throughout, with wonderfully suggestive AZ locations & period buildings, moody interiors, and an awesome yellow Thunderbird convertible.)  We later discover those two adversaries were involved in a deadly plot to secretly reopen a closed gold mine.  But at first we’re just as misdirected as Deputy Sheriff Cornel Wilde is; chasing Victoria Shaw around dangerous curves in her speeding sports car.  Add in flavorsome turns from Edgar Buchanan as Wilde’s boss and Mickey Shaughnessy as a suspiciously gregarious barkeep, while Siegel balances impeccably staged action thrills against a slightly skimpy, if well-structured mystery plot and character reveals.  And if honest plotting & detective work gets shortchanged toward the end, Siegel makes up for it with a nail-biting/hang-by-your-thumbs cliffhanger climax.  Where has this crafty work been hiding?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Everyone’s up on Siegel original BODY SNATCHERS/’56, but don’t take THE LINEUP/’58 for granted.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/invasion-of-body-snatchers-1956.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-lineup-1958.html

THE WHOLE TRUTH (1958)

Like the generic choice at your local supermarket or drugstore, this thriller manqué aims to deliver the same effect as the nationally advertised brands.  This one, a sort of DIAL M FOR MURDER knock-off with nods toward other Alfred Hitchcock films (a tag ending straight out of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN) is set to the boil, but only evaporates, without leaving a suspenseful residuum.  Movie producer Stewart Granger has a handful in tempestuous diva Gianna Maria Canale (even more annoying then called for), demanding ‘personal’ attention.  Been there, done that, thinks Granger, newly true to wife Donna Reed (in her final feature at only 37).  But when he’s suspiciously late for his own house party (and forgets to pick up the lobster), Reed has reason to doubt.  Especially when Scotland Yard man George Sanders crashes the party to ask Granger about Canale’s murder.  Yikes!  Only Sanders ain’t no cop, but the dead woman’s estranged husband, out to frame Granger for the murder.  With Jack Clayton producing & John Guillermin directing off Hollywood vet Jonathan Latimer’s script, you expect things to at least add up.  But the twists & turns are too arbitrary to bother about, with only Sanders’ froid (paradoxically) generating any heat.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: What’s with Mischa Spoliansky’s jazz-oriented score?  Loaded with ‘blue-note’ punctuation like Henry Mancini’s PINK PANTHER movies.  See George Sanders working to that Mancini beat in Blake Edwards’ A SHOT IN THE DARK/’64, unofficial PINK PANTHER 2.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/shot-in-dark-1964.html

THE ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD (1974)

Reasonably good Family Adventure Fare sounds like damning with faint praise (it is!, it is!).  But with Disney churning out so much formulaic junk at the time (tv types in toothless, technically shoddy, safe-for-the-kiddies retreads), this pleasant mediocrity positively glows in comparison.  A late credit for Disney house director Robert Stevenson, it shows more care in story & special effects than was studio norm at the time.  (And a much better than usual score: out with George Bruns’ ‘Mickey Mousing’ musical tricks/in with class composer Maurice Jarre.)  Some sloppy process work & unconvincing double-exposure looked dated even at the time (and keeps this one best for the 12 and under set), but matte paintings & model work evince real charm & picture-book imagination from designer Peter Ellenshaw & artist Alan Maley.  Plus, no plodding in its well-plotted story about a turn-of-the-last-century search for a missing son, lost in some mythical Viking island.  As if Jules Verne did a rewrite on James Hilton’s LOST HORIZON.*  Donald Sinden steals the film as the single-minded Edwardian father; David Hartman (a last acting gig before switching to tv host) is all rumpled surprise; and Asian-American actor Mako engaging as ever as an energetic Inuit guide.  And once their enchanting dirigible crash lands on the mysterious island civilization, there’s even a worthy opponent, a grand villain dressed in red, encircled by flames.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *As mentioned, Frank Capra’s LOST HORIZON/’37 (with two Write-ups!).  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/07/lost-horizon-1937.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/lost-horizon-1937.html   OR: Disney’s first big Live-Action pic, 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA/’54, the obvious template here, with the James Mason & Kirk Douglas dynamic much like Sinden & Hartman.

APPOINTMENT IN LONDON (aka RAIDERS IN THE SKY) (1953)

Documentary-bred, like his more acclaimed kid brother Richard, Philip Leacock uses his expertise with ‘actuality’ footage to cut together an intensely realistic, nerve-rattling bomb run that climaxes this otherwise modest, but more than modestly effective WWII RAF story. Co-written by the film’s composer, John Wooldridge, from his own wartime experiences, the first two acts may be strictly ground-based and observational, but still manage to load up on most of the customary flyboy tropes: a pilot’s lucky charm left behind on a run he’ll never return from; boys-will-be-boys behavior & singalongs; rival officers (one Brit/one Yank) in love with the same rare female officer; the awkward 'chin-up' visit from a freshly minted widow; and hoariest of all, a tantalizingly close goal of completed sorties over enemy territory.  That'd be 90 missions for Wing Commander Dirk Bogarde, who finally gets his shot at the mark when (in another trope) a pre-raid runway accident opens up a slot for him to step into at the very last minute.  Bryan Forbes shines as his American rival, with Ian Hunter solid in support running the station and Dinah Sheridan not quite able to keep the romantic angle from feeling shoehorned in.  More like this and Leacock would have had a major career.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The docu-realism of the final mission, covering most of the last two reels, closer to one of the great WWII documentary (long form) shorts than to a ‘50s WWII movie.  Try this restored edition of William Wyler’s Oscar-winning THE MEMPHIS BELLE/’44 to see how close.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW4F_ZMrS3A

THE CONQUERORS (1932)

Manly silent film star Richard Dix was a top R.K.O. asset in Early Talkies, especially post-CIMARRON/’31, a prestige hit from an Edna Ferber novel covering three-generations, Taming the West with newspapers.  Dix couldn’t have known he’d peaked, gently falling into B-pics in a few years, but here he’s still heading West, if without Ferber’s sharp aim, now Taming the West thru banking.  Banking?  Actually, quite the daring choice for a hero’s occupation in 1932.*  Ann Harding takes over as consort from CIMARRON’s Irene Dunne, and a shorter running time means one or two tragic events per reel.  Exhausting!  (It also lets Dix play his own grandkid.)  But with a jumpy script and William Wellman’s direction, over-stuffed & underdeveloped, nothing holds us as it did for Wesley Ruggles in CIMARRON, which had a homemade, clunky quality that made things stick.*  This one best for supporting characters like Guy Kibbee’s loopy, likeable Doc and eccentric Edna May Oliver as his noisy, understanding wife.  Plus a series of clever visual transitions covering three boom-to-bust economic catastrophes from montage specialist Slavko Vorkapich, copied over at Warners in 1939 for THE ROARING TWENTIES.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Some dialogue during a bank run anticipates IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE/’46, but a Frank Capra pic from this year, AMERICAN MADNESS, makes a better comparison, and shows how to make a bank manager your film's hero in 1932 as well as demonstrating the advanced film technique that shook Hollywood into its Golden Age.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/american-madness-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *With the notable exception of a mass family lynching, sadistically effective as shot by Wellman in unexpurgated Pre-Code fashion.  (Note it’s an all-white affair.)

THE GREAT GATSBY (1949)

The second attempt at filming the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic is a straightforward telling of renewed folly between rich former lovers Jay Gatsby: nouveau/unknowable, and Daisy Buchanan: refined/carelessly married, made shortly after the novel found belated favor.  (A 1926 silent, out soon after publication, has a tantalizing cast:  Warner Baxter, William Powell, Neil Hamilton, Georgia Hale, Lois Wilson, but presumed lost*; the high-profile 1974 remake a miscast swanky bore; Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 do-over a Baz Luhrmann film.)  This one very well cast: Alan Ladd, Betty Field, Ruth Hussey, Henry Hull, Macdonald Carey (an exceptional Nick Carraway), Howard De Silva, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Elisha Cook Jr., and Barry Sullivan (a Tom Buchanan Daisy could actually be attracted to), facelessly helmed by Elliot Nugent (even great lenser John F. Seitz unable to help) and gets off to a disastrous start with clips of Gatsby in gangster mode.  Yikes!  Goodbye man of mystery!  But once it settles down into the heart of the story, it feels significantly closer to the spirit of the times & (to a lesser extent) the book then other tries.  Much of this stems from Ladd’s reticence and seeming innocence in what he thinks passes as a cultured environment.  There’s a shocking scene with him, reclining by his pool, looking as petite as he actually was in life, that gets closer to the novel’s ideas on East Coast social envy and caste striving than you’ll find in any of the other films . . . including this one!  When it comes to THE GREAT GATSBY, ‘Not bad adaptation,’ isn’t pejorative.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Not for nothing did this film’s producer, Richard Maibaum, go on to co-write all those early James Bond films.  Grafting Sean Connery’s chip-on-the-shoulder/working class ethos inside an upper-crust world of undercover intelligence operations = GATSBY 007.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Alas, a never-to-be double-bill as that silent GATSBY, directed by Herbert Brenon after his superb BEAU GESTE/’26 (Ronald Colman’s favorite role; w/ Neil Hamilton, Noah Beery & William Powell) remains on the long wish-list of film requests at the Pacific Ocean Archive of junked Hollywood films.

LA NOCHE AVANZA / NIGHT FALLS (1952)

Terrific Mexicali-Noir, and a great starting point on Mexico Golden Age director Roberto Gavaldón.*  A fever dream melodrama about Jai Alai champ Pedro Armendáriz (why is this thrilling game not played north of Florida?), an arrogant bastard loathed by his competitors and currently involved with three contrasting ladies: a nightclub songbird reduced to backup lay (think Gene Tierney/Rita Hayworth); an upper-crust society teen he’s knocked up (think Ann Blyth/Jane Greer); an old flame just back in town, now a widowed heiress (think Joan Crawford/Gloria Swanson).  Set mostly at night, richly photographed (look for the restored edition), Armendáriz shows his tru-colors right from the start, dumping one date for another and kicking a dog as he enters her limo.  (Don’t worry, the dog gets his own back.)  The first two acts set up a furious roundelay of romantic, sporting & gambling entanglements.  Come Act Three, debt maintenance comes due on all these fronts with whiplash reversals, gunplay trigger action, gambling & blackmail switchbacks, mob kidnapping; all of it motivated by enough greed & stupidity to save a man’s life or seal a man’s doom.  Essential viewing.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Other Roberto Galvaldón pics tend to disappoint, but NOCHE is good enough to set anyone back on the hunt over his 50+ titles.  Suggestions welcome!

KAFKA (1991)

After a game-changing debut in SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE/’89, Steven Soderbergh’s sophomore pic was just as sophomoric as its title suggests . . .  but not in a bad way.  Juvenile & pretentious (Lem Dobbs’ script reeks of film school term project), but not dumb or jokey, it’s surprisingly entertaining.  (Though just once, couldn’t someone tackle Franz Kafka without Kafkaesque trimmings?)  Here, in moody b&w, Franz, buried in paperwork at the huge expressionist insurance building he works at, gets an unexpected promotion when an office mate goes missing.  Searching for him in the expressionist back streets & warehouses of a permanently crepuscular Prague leads him to an underground world of political radicals (led by Theresa Russell, less bad than usual) and later to a secret lair of endless political files & experimental torture in the restricted expressionist confines of the mysterious Castle.  Here, the film moves briefly from expressionist b&w to color, a la THE WIZARD OF OZ, right down to a film stock transition made by opening a nearly color-free door.  (Alas, sans three-strip TechniColor, visual shock much diminished.)  It sounds jejune, but Soderbergh moves relentlessly forward, deploying a stellar cast with Jeremy Irons a funny, frightened, touching Kafka while a merry band of supporting luminaries deliver standout turns (Alec Guinness, Ian Holm, Joel Grey, Jeroen Krabbé, Armin Mueller-Stahl).  Involving, and far less chilly than you suppose.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Woody Allen’s not dissimilar SHADOWS AND FOG/’91, made the same year, held back to avoid possible competition.  (Not that it mattered: FOG made nothing; KAFKA half of nothing.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/shadows-and-fog-1991.html   OR: See where a lot of this stuff comes from in Orson Welles’ very personal take on Kafka’s THE TRIAL/’62, a difficult, underrated film.  OR: Even closer to Kafka, Béla Tarr’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES/’00.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/04/werckmeister-harmonies-2000.html

MOBY DICK (1930)

John Barrymore had a big hit with a silent version of MOBY DICK, retitled THE SEA BEAST, so a sound remake seemed a natural.  But much had changed in the years between 1926 and 1930, especially in the book’s reputation.  A failure on publication, then forgotten, its foundation as the great American novel coming too late for the first film.  (SEA BEAST also the first ever film adaptation for anything by Herman Melville.)  So while modern audiences are vaguely appalled at the mishmash screenwriter Bess Meredyth made of the novel (whaler Ahab vies with his brother to marry before heaving off for another three-year stint at sea, returns sans leg to rejection, heads back to take revenge on Moby Dick - and on his nefarious brother, returning to find his love had been true all along), audiences were unlikely to know the diff.  By 1930, the book fully established in the pantheon of American Letters, yet Warner Bros. sticking with the Meredyth scenario, but with an hour trimmed off the running time.  A real shame as Barrymore more or less perfect at the time for the book’s Captain Ahab, reveling at any chance he gets to play something out of the novel.  (Slim pickin’s!  The ad copy describing Ahab as ‘The Mad Cap in the Crow’s Nest.’*)  Director Lloyd Bacon makes a good show out of the lux production and Early Talkie possibilities with striking, if uneven, special effects work.  (One shot with Barrymore in pursuit of the Great White Whale on one of those small whaling rowboats an intriguing mix of process shot, miniatures, tank work and split-screen exposure.)  A real missed opportunity here.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The John Huston/Gregory Peck MOBY DICK/’56 looks better now than it did on release, mechanical whale excluded.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/01/moby-dick-1956.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Filmed directly after Barrymore’s London triumph with HAMLET in 1925, the silent version would make a fascinating comparison, in spite of the ridiculous storyline.  Also a chance to compare Dolores Costello in ‘26 (soon to be Mrs. Barrymore) with Joan Bennett taking on the role for a pregnant Dolores in 1930.  If only a decent print could be found.

JOKER (2019)

A considerable achievement, if not quite the instant classic claimed, this bleakly comic, viciously dark plunge into the soul and (regrettably pat) origin/backstory of Batman nemesis Joker, was hardly to be expected from director/co-writer Todd Phillips after his unfortunate HANGOVER sequels.  (Along with a general reluctance to take Comic Book Pics seriously, those flat sequels helping to explain initially mixed Stateside reception, before critical perception turned decisively in its favor abroad, boomeranging back for the yr-end awards circuit.)  Gaunt & dangerously off-balance, like a volcano about to implode, Joaquin Phoenix restores his commercial viability, his talent never in doubt, after more than a decade of projects that disappointed in one of those two areas.  Set in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, with story beats lifted off Martin Scorsese’s TAXI DRIVER/’76 and KING OF COMEDY/’82, even Robert De Niro to play counterpoint, the film juxtaposes a citywide apocalypse with personal meltdown as Joker loses his psychosomatic mood-inhibiting pills and grip on the framework of mother-fed lies that supported his circumscribed life, giving in to an escalating inner-turmoil of evil.  And if too many narrative building blocks don’t click (a pretty pickup 20 years younger?; employment with Tourette's Syndrome as kiddie clown?; a live tv booking during a citywide crisis?; junior exec 'bros' singing Stephen Sondheim a cappella on the subway?), the sum proves greater than the parts.  Now just worry about the inevitable sequel.  We know how Phillips does with those.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Ironic that Scorsese, on something of a crusade against Comic Strip films being taken seriously, is so strenuously referenced on this ultra-serious Comic Book movie.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: While De Niro/Scorsese references play on the surface: underneath, lots of James Cagney/WHITE HEAT/’49 in here.  Giggles & violence, loss of control, mother fixation, explosive finale; and with Phoenix only an inch or two taller than the famously short Cagney.  Heck, even a dance down a flight of stairs, a Cagney speciality, though not in WHITE HEAT.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/06/white-heat-1949.html

MAN IN THE DARK (1953)

Crummy film noir programmer, rushed thru production @ Columbia Pictures to meet a 3D exhibitors’ deadline.  Too bad workaday director Lew Landers (over 100 films) was already running on fumes as the basic idea has possibilities: career criminal Edmund O’Brien gets paroled for experimental brain surgery, but loses his memory on the operating table and now can’t remember where he stashed the loot from his last robbery.  Worse, his old partners, wanting their cut, kidnap him off the sanatorium grounds and use tough moll Audrey Totter to see if he’s faking to keep all the cash for himself.  Even watching in 2D, there’s some fun spotting the in-your-face 3D moves, but with only 11 days to churn this out, Landers’ staging, sets & lighting are flat as a pancake; the bad guys risible; and comic relief painful.  O’Brien, even beefier than usual, certainly knows the drill for this sort of thing, his classic D.O.A. a paradigm of the form; and, if anything, Audrey Totter even more steeped in noir æsthetic.  But not even a big Amusement Park climax (complete with process shot rollercoaster rides) able to lift this one up.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The same Amusement Park used in the finale of WOMAN ON THE RUN/’50?  A terrific little known noir with Ann Sheridan & Dennis O’Keefe worth the detour.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/woman-on-run-1950.html  OR: As mentioned, D.O.A./’49, O’Brien’s classic noir directed by an inspired Rudolph Maté.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: O’Brien all over the map at this time . . . in a good way:  Ida Lupino indies; JULIUS CAESAR @ M-G-M; anthology tv; Oscar’d for BAREFOOT CONTESSA.

TUDOR ROSE / NINE DAYS A QUEEN (1936)

A big step up for Brit helmer Robert Stevenson (later Disney’s top house-director in the ‘50s & ‘60s*) came in this modestly budgeted Tudor historical on sixteen-yr-old Lady Jane Grey’s nine-day interregnum reign between the death of Henry the Eighth’s son Edward at 14, and ‘Bloody’ Mary’s takeover.  Running a bare 80 minutes, the behind-the-scenes machinations get stripped to the bone, but you can generally follow the telescoped political strategies as Felix Aylmer, Regent to Edward (Desmond Tester). loses out to ambitious Protector Cedric Hardwicke, eager to set himself up as the power behind Nova Pilbeam’s reluctant Queen, by arranging her marriage to son John Mills.  The twist to the relationship that these two kids were made for each other; the tragedy that pawns may be sacrificed to win the game.  Here, a lighter-than-expected production (in tone & execution) makes the sudden darkening in the third act unexpectedly emotional.  Pilbeam & Mills easy to grow attached to; their undeserved fates deeply upsetting.  Some of the model sets & toy-like effects turn giggle-worthy (those tiny British soundstages), but the pace & intelligence of the script and in the acting make up for a lot.

DOUBLE-BILL: Desmond Tester’s next was best, Alfred Hitchcock’s SABOTAGE/’36.  Same for Nova Pilbeam with one Hitchcock behind her, the original MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH/’34, and starring for him in YOUNG AND INNOCENT/’37.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Stevenson, a solid old-school craftsman, may be the most successful Hollywood director whose name you don’t know.  Strictly by admissions rather than receipts, keeping in mind that so many in his audience were kids at half-price, only Spielberg competes with the man behind all those top-grossing Disney titles (OLD YELLER to FLUBBER; MARY POPPINS to THE LOVE BUG and THAT DARN CAT; many, many more).  Yet, his best film is probably the Joan Fontaine/Orson Welles JANE EYRE/’43.

THE SECRET WAYS (1961)

Pretty good, if little known, Cold War suspenser (that title not much help), produced by its star, Richard Widmark, from Alastair MacLean’s novel.  Widmark a WWII vet, at ends in Vienna, yet to find his place in the post-war world and currently in serious debt.  Reason enough to take on an ill-defined/under-the-table government mission to get an anti-Communist resistance leader out of Hungary.  With little to go on other than a snapshot of the man’s daughter, he starts asking around and winds up over his head in intrigue even before taking the train to Budapest.  And once inside, things only get more complicated.  As producer, Widmark made a lot of smart decisions and one dumb one.  On the credit side: location, location, location, all real other than in Budapest; first-rate B-pic vet Phil Karlson to direct; memorable Euro-faces in support (Howard Vernon an exceptional sadistic interrogator); glistening noirish cobblestone atmosphere from lenser Mutz Greenbaum; jangly early score from ‘Johnny’ Williams.  On the debit side: Widmark hired wife Jean Hazelwood to do the script.  Oops!  And while it’s fine to be a bit lost in these espionage yarns, figuring things out along with our protagonist, here plot & motivations often too vague & ill-defined to follow & sort out.  Still, a fair amount of tension is built up along the way, and Karlson runs a dandy final action sequence, nicely extended with clever twists & sacrifices to keep it going.  They say ‘close’ only counts in horseshoes, but it works for espionage pics, too.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Next year, DR. NO/’62 made semi-serious espionage like this even harder to pull off. For a while, it was either campy/over-the-top James Bond or John Le Carré serious.

MANSLAUGHTER (1930)

A legend on Broadway/an afterthought in Hollywood, George Abbott, like so many from the legitimate theater, got corralled into a movie contract in the transition from silent-to-sound: eight features for Paramount before heading back to the stage for good.  (A few exceptions, including his stage musicals THE PAJAMA GAME/’57 and DAMN YANKEES/’58, co-directed with Stanley Donen.)  This, his third Talkie, a simplified remake from his own rewrite of C.B. DeMille’s over-stuffed 1923 silent (goodbye Ancient Roman Flashback Orgies!) was the one he thought best.  He’s right; and it easily puts the lie to the generally accepted notion that he was one more stage-oriented talent unable/unwilling to adjust to the demands of cinema.  Nonsense.*  This is a strong showing for 1930, pacey, fluid, nearly free of process shots, it’s yards ahead of the stiff Early Talkie norm.  And what modern work he gets from Fredric March as a hard-charging D.A. and from Claudette Colbert as the hopelessly spoiled society brat he falls for then must prosecute on a reckless driving/manslaughter charge.  He’ll completely fall apart from the guilt of doing the right thing; she’ll be humbled by all she goes thru.  Claptrap dramatics become a bit much even for these two by the third act, but it doesn’t take the sting out of some interesting ideas & situations.  Fun to see how far ahead these two are from the rest of the cast, easily fulfilling the demands of naturalistic Talkie technique while others still play as if thru a proscenium.  Hard to find a good print, but worth a look even in current subfusc editions.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Abbott, working closely with cinematographer Archie Stout, shows visual flair and free/fluid moves for the period.  Unfortunately for his movie career, his wife became ill during the period and he returned to the East Coast where the final films of his contract were made under the technical limitations endemic to Paramount’s Astoria Studios.  Things might have been very different had he completed his contract on the West Coast.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: There’s very little process work in the film.  (DeMille’s 1923 original has some fascinating early process screen work in the driving sequences.  A bit rough technically, but something to see!)  Here, even when you expect it, no process work for Colbert whether driving or while she’s water skiing.  In fact, Abbott had a stunt double skier on hand, but Claudette insisted, spending all morning learning how to do it before shooting the sequence in the afternoon.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Abbott remade another DeMille, THE CHEAT in 1931.  But in that one, advantage DeMille.  Instead, try HEAT LIGHTNING/’34, a great little Depression Era feminist film from a flop Abbott play.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/heat-lightning-1934.html