A LIFE AT STAKE (1955)

At large after leaving M-G-M in ‘53, Angela Lansbury spent a few years taking on just about anything offered.  Mostly tv & indies like this cut-rate variation on DOUBLE INDEMNITY/’44 with Lansbury, surprisingly dishy at 30, married to older moneybags Douglas Dumbrille, but eyeing younger hunk Keith Andes, the old man’s new business partner, with lust & murder on her mind.  But whose murder?  Angela may be out to screw the guy she’s screwing, not her husband.  And, in an extra turn of the screw, Angela’s perky kid sister Claudia Barrett is also hot for Andes when not busy overhearing secrets.  A fine setup for a film noir, if only the script laid things out more clearly & irregular helmer Paul Guilfoyle knew how to squeeze a tight budget or stage action.*  (One nighttime sequence with tipsy Andes getting in jams is so much better you wonder who made it.)  But more than enough oddities to engage, especially in first meetings between the four main characters that play like sexual pickups: Dumbrille ogling a provocatively half-nude Andes just out of bed, a grown-up boy toy in ‘50s gay-coded clingy white pants; Lansbury offering her bod horizontally in a low-cut/strapless one-piece bathing suit to Andes; kid sister Barrett coming on too strong for comfort.  The plot has them buy & sell real estate and houses, but what else is being bought and sold?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Guilfoyle, who mostly acted, no relation to the Paul Guilfoyle who plays boss on the CSI tv series.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, Billy Wilder’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY with Stanwyck, MacMurray and a phenomenal Edward G. Robinson.

THE LIGHTHOUSE BY THE SEA (1924)

One of the few surviving silent features from the Warner Brothers heyday of RIN TIN TIN, the ‘Wonder Dog’ who saved the studio from early bankruptcy.  That it exists is no thanks to Warners, the source element comes from KodaScope Libraries, a non-theatrical operation for home & school rentals, slightly cut/16mm.  And while not in great physical shape (all Public Domain editions seem to come with crap generic scores), the handsome look and ocean locations still register well enough on this big hit.  Rin Tin Tin's FIND YOUR MAN earlier this year had the same director & writer in Mal St. Clair (who’d go on to become a sort of second-tier Ernst Lubitstch) and rising scenarist Darryl F. Zanuck (who’d go on to become a top-tier Darryl F. Zanuck*).  Fright-faced comedian Louise Fazenda (a Lily Tomlin lookalike who’d soon retire to marry producer Hal B. Wallis) has a rare ingenue part as the spunky daughter of a secretly blind lighthouse keeper.*  Lucky for her, she lands a pair of helpmates when a capsized boat deposits plucky William Collier Jr. and loyal pooch Rin Tin Tin on her ocean front doorstep.  Unlucky for her, a cutthroat gang of rum-runners plan to switch off the lighthouse beam so they can unload a boatload of illegal hooch.  Neatly put together, this fun charmer still comes across with that WWI pup now grown into a great movie dog.  Multiple German Shepards expand trick possibilities (one fella actually relights the lighthouse lamp!), but the secret to Rinty’s popularity was less athleticism & stunts than acting.  Six years old at the time, Rinty was a phenomenal dog actor whose every thought & emotion registered right thru the camera lens.   The loss of over a score of features a mystery and a shame.

ATTENTIONB MUST BE PAID: *Braille had become standard for the blind by 1924, but the girl’s father uses an earlier system of raised letters on the page.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Fine, slightly eccentric bio from Susan Orlean: RIN TIN TIN: The Life and the Legend.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *These RIN TIN TIN pics made Zanuck, which didn’t stop him from writing a memo in early Talkie days suggesting no future for Rin Tin Tin ‘since the dog can’t talk.’

IN THIS WORLD (2002)

Unusually successful alternating between serious & silly projects, here Michael Winterbottom tackles a particularly tough subject using documentary technique to chart a fictional, if likely, illegal journey of a couple of Afghan teens, refugees stuck among thousands in a Pakistan holding camp, fighting impossible odds to hopefully reach London.  Cousins Jamal and the slightly older Enayatullah are the very essence of resilience as they blindly shuttle thru country after country (Iran, Turkey, Italy, France, England) without documents and a bare smattering of local language skills, depending on the kindness of helpful paid (or bribed) strangers.  With just enough cash reserves from relatives back at the camp to get by, they go from one arranged meeting to the next, hidden behind produce or livestock in the back of trucks as they sneak past borders, moving from dirt-poor villages to major cities via commercial bus, even on foot.  Winterbottom gets amazing portraits from his non-pro cast of helpers and asylum seekers from different countries.  Discovering even the luckless can run out of luck.  Playing his moves very close to the vest, Winterbottom often leaves us as much in the dark as the boys are.  Who is this stranger guiding us to the next point?  Jumping ahead of himself before we get our bearings.  The idea to make us sympathetic participants in the journey.  But there’s a cost in losing informed involvement, the tactic reducing the horror of tragedy when it inevitably arrives.  Even so, moving and unsentimental; avoiding easy answers to intransigent problems.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  A similar tale from a century back in Elia Kazan’s AMERICA AMERICA/’63.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/america-america-1963.html

DAWSON CITY : FROZEN TIME

A treat for historically-minded film Geeks/probably a bit of a bore for non-believers.  This enchanted documentary tells a double story, largely thru found footage, of the life and times of Dawson City, a boom-to-bust Alaska Gold Rush town big enough at its peak to support three cinemas between the prospectors and service community of the early 1900s.  So while we concentrate on fortune’s folly in the first half, the second picks up on what got left behind.  Specifically, hundreds of damaged cans of silent nitrate film (many fragments of ‘lost’ features) used as landfill, then, decades later, accidentally recovered.  Told by Bill Morrison in an elegiac tone of mournful uplift, it’s elegantly constructed out of excerpts from fictional silent film that match moments of Gold Rush days, historical still photos (many from original glass negatives), along with home movies of the town over the years, a few modern interviews with the celluloid rescue heroes, and tantalizing resurrections of surviving reels from the pits.  Not just feature film, but surprises like news footage of the infamous Chicago Black Sox.  It all happened because Dawson City was an end-of-the-line distribution stop.  Why return commercially exhausted product?  It certainly burns easily enough for quick disposal.  (Nitrate film will continue to burn under water.)  Much was destroyed that way, more simply dumped into rivers.  But hundreds of reels became landfill, a sleeping repository for pieces of time, cinematic history.  Much is irreparably damaged, much still gravely beautiful.  With even the film grain telling part of the story.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: A late silent epic, THE TRAIL OF ‘98, gets a fair amount of play since it’s all about a town like Dawson.  Never lost, it happily survives in fine shape.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-trail-of-98-1928.html

THIS HAPPY BREED (1944)

Noël Coward wrote and starred in two hit plays in 1939: PRESENT LAUGHTER, an autobiographically inclined sex farce about the literary elite; and this follow-up to the UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS dramatics of CAVALCADE/’33, now covering the years 1919 to 1939, but from a middle-class family house POV.  LAUGHTER hit B’way six times (Clifton Webb; Coward; George C. Scott*; Frank Langella; Victor Garber; Kevin Kline), BREED never.  Too topical, too local, it fell out of favor like so much Coward post-war (tagged patronizing/ condescending), its rep never quite joining in the Coward mid-‘60s revival.  A particular loss for this superb film which neatly trims some of the Father Knows Best bromides that hold down the play.  David Lean, in his first solo directing credit, brilliantly works inside tight rooms & passageways (note future directors Ronald Neame & Guy Green on staff*), smartly opening up the play with historical markers to ring in the passing years, highlighting incidents small as buttering a cat’s paws, large as a tragic car accident (stunningly realized not simply off-screen but doubly off-screen).  Coward particularly strong with wounding family squabbles that feel (and probably were) firsthand memory.  And with an all but flawless cast.  Holding back on his florid style, Robert Newton is excellent as the father (though Robert Donat, who turned it down would have been even better), yet can’t truly match the level of identification Celia Johnson gets as his wife and Stanley Holloway as the best-of-all-possible neighbors.*  With Kay Walsh’s prodigal daughter and John Mills' lovestruck boy-next-door not far behind.  All in a gorgeous, somberly refined TechniColor production, the film often intensely moving.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Johnson played on stage with Coward who needed little convincing he couldn’t pull off this character on film in spite of his own actual lower middle-class background.  And, yes, George C. Scott is the outlier in that PRESENT LAUGHTER list, excellent on stage in the Coward role with a great bit of repeated comic business, habitually turning straight at the audience as if he were passing a mirror, unable to not take an admiring glance.  Get a taste of this playful side of Scott in Paddy Chayesky’s THE HOSPITAL/’71.

CONTEST: *Uncredited (even on IMDb), but that’s yet another future director doing the brief opening narration.  Better known for acting, name him to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.

THE NIGHT RIDERS (1939)

Even after STAGECOACH lifted John Wayne to A-list status in Hollywood, he still had quite a few Western programmers in the pipe line and contracted in his future.  This one is on the low end of its type.  A late entry in Wayne’s popular ‘3 Mesquiteers’ series from Republic, it holds two standout features: One helpful/One disqualifying.  The helpful one is Jack Marta’s striking nighttime cinematography (really red-filtered daytime lensing) still showing its original luminescent glow thanks to pristine source elements.  And, ironically, that pristine preservation undoubtedly due to the film’s disqualifying factor.  But first, a brief plot precis: Riverboat card sharp & a forger use phony documents to claim huge territorial land rights.  Enter the 3 Mesquiteers disguised as a trio of Robin Hood/Zorro types fighting back for the little people.  The problematic/disqualifying part?  Someone thought white Ku Klux Klan robes would be just the thing for them to wear as cover when they ride around dispensing justice.  Yikes!  No wonder the negative & prints are in such good shape.  Who’d show this thing?  No doubt an informal ban has kept this safely hidden away for decades.  (By comparison, STAGECOACH no longer has an original negative to work from.)  Too bad this isn’t one of the better entries in the series.  Not even the bizarre puppetry of Mesquiteer Max Terhune helps much.  (His wooden dummy barely gets an appearance.)  And the climax, a fake-out firing squad, must have given kiddie matinee audiences nightmares for weeks.  George Sherman  haphazardly directs an original story that lifts its one big twist (President Garfield’s promise to help out is stopped by assassination!) from another recent pic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Listen close to hear Hank Worden’s distinctive voice get a line in when the ranchers complain about the unbearable rents from the new land owner.  And look fast to see cute kid Sammy McKim give Wayne a sucker punch right in the kisser.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  For a better-than-average 3 MESQUITEERS oater, try SANTA FE STAMPEDE/’38.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/02/santa-fe-stampede-1938.html

THE THIRD DAY (1965)

You can almost hear the old studio system collapsing around you in this inert melodrama.  Not only in its soapy plot (amnesiac can’t explain the car crash that killed his mistress while he attempts to save his marriage and the family business before his frail father-in-law dies), but also in the way the old story beats & tropes had the rug pulled out from under them when studio artifice, backlots and the comfort of monochrome were exchanged for the vagaries of life in the real world and color.  What once had been phony (at worst) but at best artistically abstracted into all-of-a-piece drama is now only phony.  Certainly so with styleless hack Jack Smight producing/directing.*  With Percy Faith’s wretched musical exclamations.  In set decoration that puts Mona Washbourne, that embodiment of lower-middle-class British acquiescence, inside a tastelessly overstuffed estate as doyen to old-money power & wealth.  (Greer Garson too busy?)  Sally Kellerman debuts as wanton mistress; a pre-LAUGH-IN Arte Johnson sounds just like Mel Tormé as the piano-playing cuckold; Roddy McDowall, Robert Webber, Arthur O’Connell, Vincent Gardenia also on hand, while poor Herbert Marshall ends his film career with less than a whimper, ‘speaking’ with a finger tap.  All so Elizabeth Ashley & George Peppard can rekindle their relationship from ground zero.  Amnesia, the ultimate reboot opportunity.

ATTTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *An early scene for Peppard & Ashley (as disagreement tilts to bedside seduction) could serve as a Film School 101 lesson in bad editing and where not to put the camera.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The arrogant prick element that always came to the surface in George Peppard made for a good fit in his next (and probably best) perf, THE BLUE MAX/’66.

CESAR ET ROSALIE (1972)

It's Yves Montand who makes this menage à trois story ‘pop.’ He plays a self-made millionaire who has be #1 at all he tries: at business, at a party, at family gatherings, at being a guy’s guy at his weekly poker game (the smoke is positively alarming in this scene) and especially at being a great & caring lover to his beautiful young mistress Romy Schneider. But his edifice comes crumbling down when Sami Frey, a youthful former lover of Schneider, returns to the scene. Montand can’t seem to stop his inner Stanley Kowalski from crashing through the sophisticated surface he’s cultivated. And director Claude Sautet does a fabulous job not only letting him show himself at his worst, but in showing how both Schneider & Frey are alternately appalled and attracted by his violent fits & grand gestures of apology. The sexual politics of the time dates some things (Schneider makes an awful lot of coffee for the boys), but the story arc holds up beautifully. By the end of the film, these three seem ready to tackle a French edition of DESIGN FOR LIVING, gay sub-text and all. Too bad the currently available DVD (WellSpring) is such a smeary looking transfer, but it will serve till something better shows up.

IT HAPPENED TOMORROW (1944)

While fellow exiled-directors Jean Renoir & Max Ophuls struggled in WWII Hollywood, René Clair made a remarkably smooth transition. And if the passing years have reversed critical opinions on their American films (especially for Ophuls who batted out masterpieces wherever he landed), this gentle farce retains its charm & freshness. Set in the late 1800s (like Clair’s best film, THE ITALIAN STRAW HAT/’28), it’s the story of a young reporter who mysteriously receives a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper today. The obvious advantages of getting a really Early Edition help him find fame, fortune & tru-love. But what to do when your own obit shows up on tomorrow’s front page? Fight it? Go fatalistic? Dick Powell is a bit long in the tooth for a cub reporter, but he helps the much younger Linda Darnell loosen up. Clair downplays her statuesque quality simply by accentuating how much taller Powell is. Clever. Dudley Nichols interlocks his plot without making dumb choices (not so easy in a Hollywood farce) and Clair delights us (and no doubt himself) casting veteran comics in supporting roles (Jack Oakie, Edgar Kennedy, Sig Rumann, & Edward Brophy) somewhat like Preston Sturges, whose CHRISTMAS IN JULY/’40 (our DOUBLE-BILL, also starring Powell) has a similar light, winning tone.

THE QUIET GUN (1957)

This little Western with Forrest Tucker as Town Sheriff has a decent physical production and a neatly structured story about a land grab disguised as racial ‘cleansing.’ But it comes up awfully flat with a largely faceless cast & paceless direction from tv megger William F. Claxton. (Someone should have introduced him to side angles.) The opening shows promise as gunman Lee Van Cleef rides into town and roughs up stable-hand Hank Worden. If only the scene were better connected to a plot that has the town elders running a ranch owner off his land for 'living in sin' with a Native American mistress. Sheriff Tucker smells a set up, but he’s also concerned about the rancher’s estranged wife, coming in on the stagecoach and, for him, the girl that got away. If only someone was around to make a movie out of the thing. Claxton (or perhaps vet lenser John Mescall) comes up with a dandy camera position right at the end for a long one-take shootout, but it’s the only memorable composition in the pic.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: From Hollywood’s Department of Tall Tales: Did Forrest Tucker really have the biggest schlong in old Hollywood? Stories tell of Mario Lanza pulling his out at restaurants to whack his wanger on the table. John Ireland lost screen time on RED RIVER after Howard Hawks got word of him ‘showing off.’ Desi Arnaz & Milton Berle also have their supporters. But only Forrest Tucker was known to putt with his; dropping to his knees on the golf course to take a swing. (Sure, he had to lean forward a bit, but still . . . )

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE (1967)

Everybody’s hiding some kind of love that dare not speak its name in John Huston’s expansion of Carson McCuller’s novella. Set at an Army base way down south, Major Marlon Brando is married to Liz Taylor, but only has eyes for soldier-boy Robert Forster. He’s got a thing for horses, rides ‘em barebacked & bareass, but will stand at attention to watch La Liz sleep the night away. Not that she knows, she’s too tired from love-in-the-afternoon with Brian Keith, the Colonel next door who’s devoted, in a chaste way, to Julie Harris, his neurasthenic wife. She, in turn, despises him, preferring to gossip with their fey, Philippino houseboy. Whew, that’s a burgoo & a half! The film is usually considered one of Huston many misfires from this period, and he does lose control of the material at times, but there are extraordinary things in here. Certainly, no one in the cast is phoning it in. Taylor is a perfect fit for a change, even her squally voice doesn’t hurt; broad of bust, broad of beam & more than a tad mean, she’s wicked funny. Brando, in a role meant for Monty Clift, plays as if on a dare, beating himself up in a vanity-free mode that prefigures LAST TANGO/’73, though the accent is close to impenetrable. These two might be Brick & Maggie the Cat a few years down the road. With all it’s faults, you can’t keep your eyes off this one. NOTE: Huston desaturated the original prints, leaving a golden tone and pale hues on a nearly b&w image. But when the film flopped, the studio switched back to full color. The current DVD offers Huston’s ‘golden’ look, but the accompanying trailer gives a good idea of what the fully loaded TechniColor prints must have looked like. The difference is startling.

SKYSCRAPER SOULS (1932)

Undercooked, but fascinating; it’s GRAND HOTEL/’31 in a skyscraper,* but with featured players instead of an All-Star cast. Warren William (on loan from Warners for a rare M-G-M gig) is in crisis mode from the get-go, ruthless at dispensing cutthroat business deals or personal charm as he works to keep his 100 story skyscraper. Already balancing a wife & mistress, he’s soon grooming a fresh young thing on the side while varied office romances brew on every floor below among the likes of Jean Hersholt, Anita Page, Norman Foster & Wallace Ford. A lively set up, if only theatrical impresario & sometime movie megger Edgar Selwyn had the technique to make it swing. The film starts brightly enough. Well, not brightly, but showy, in the plush M-G-M manner. (Parquet floors everywhere you look!) But Selwyn either can’t sustain the rhythm to pull us over narrative bumps or was defeated by the usual post-production committee reshoots of Irving Thalberg’s M-G-M. And the cultured tones of Hedda Hopper, Verree Teasdale & Maureen O’Sullivan can wear you down when you’re not being put off by sexual harassment passing as healthy male libido. (Poor Norman Foster gets the worst of it in his pursuit of O’Sullivan.) Things improve in Act Three when the plot pivots from love-and-sex to stocks-and-bonds as a market tip grows out of control and starts wreaking havoc. By then, just enough real 1932 financial desperation and frank Pre-Code amorality gets thru to make this a lively show even when it’s not quite working. (Note our hardcover book tie-in poster with the title altered to fit the pic.) 

DOUBLE-BILL: *SOULS actually hit movie theaters a couple of months before GRAND HOTEL, but they really don’t pair up. Instead, try John Stahl’s neglected ONLY YESTERDAY/’33, a less than thrilling unwed mom meller that opens with an absolutely stunning 2-reel Wall Street Crash prologue. OR: For Pre-Code/Warren William mavens, see how much appalling behavior he gets away with back on Warners home turf in the shamelessly enjoyable EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE/’33.

CHILD'S PLAY (1972)

Not to be confused with those Doll from Hell horror pics, this CHILD’S PLAY is a stage-to-screen transfer from B’way titan David Merrick (aka ‘The Abominable Showman’), the first film in his brief, unhappy attempt to become a big time movie producer.  Running a season in New York, the ludicrous story by never heard from again playwright Robert Marasco, is set in an elite, but creepy Catholic High School, where strict-disciplinarian Latin prof James Mason goes head-to-head with popular English prof Robert Preston and new Phys Ed hire Beau Bridges plays peacemaker.  Meanwhile, something’s up with the student population who seem to be playing a game of Lord of the Flies whenever the staff ain’t looking.  Boys cut & branded in their own blood; broken bones in the locker room; reenacted crucifixion in the chapel.  Yikes!  (Heck, this is making it sound more fun than it is!)  None of this makes much sense or adds up to the sadistic rites-of-passage implied.  But it’s a treat to watch old pros Preston & especially Mason, make their marks thru diametrically opposed styles of acting.  Bridges, on the other hand, plays his clueless character cluelessly.  Director Sidney Lumet tries hard for spooky effects (using the film as an audition reel for next year’s THE EXORCIST?).  So too Michael Small on the score, with an inappropriate cue for every threatening moment & point of punctuation.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Alec Guinness, John Mills and director Ronald Neame pull off this sort of sick power struggle with a military background in TUNES OF GLORY/’60.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/tunes-of-glory-1960.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY Considering the atmosphere: all boys’ Catholic school, priests, chaste lay teachers and no females even mentioned (has Bridges ever been on a date?), a gay angle seems missing.  Even as sub-text.  Was it in the play and bowdlerized out?  Or would it not have come up in 1972?  (The plot does involve ‘dirty’ pictures being sent to Mason, but we never see them.  Priestly indiscretions?)

HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS (1960)

One-of-a-kind Backstage-Western from director George Cukor (it's an enchantment or a shrug depending on your POV) follows a traveling theatrical troupe as they skip from town to town in the old West, stopping for dramatic engagements, on-the-road catastrophes, threats from displaced Indian scavengers and lovesick killers-for-hire. Loaded with incident, if not much traditional plot, its script was being rewritten by Walter Bernstein from Dudley Nichols’ draft during filming which probably accounts for the loose structure & lively spontaneity that gives it so much charm. Everyone (well, everyone but a miscast Antony Quinn*) turns in blissed-out comic perfs, no one more so than Sophia Loren as the troupe’s star, spectacular in a series of wasp-waist corsets & an unexpectedly becoming blonde wig. But what really holds everything together is the seemingly paradoxical mix of stylized art design & earthy naturalism of the film. Technically, cinematographer Harold Lipstein, art director Gene Allen & color-coordinator Hoyeningen Huene out-dazzle each other even if the current VOD could do with a color-corrected restoration. Cukor seems to be sharing his delight with us. Out of his fach, but in his element both on and off the stage, reveling in opportunities for sophisticated mise-en-scène wherever he finds it. The final climax is exceptionally well worked out, with a visual slapstick wit to it, and the earlier scenes of marauding Indians uniquely convincing, scary & unsettling. It adds up to very special treat.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Maybe the producer simply called the wrong ‘Tony.’ Curtis is the ‘Tony’ they should have tried.

GANGWAY FOR TOMORROW (1943)

Best known for radio work on the scary anthology show LIGHTS OUT*, Arch Oboler dabbled over the years in largely disappointing films. Debuting with a prestige piece, ESCAPE/’40, an appalling anti-Nazi story with Norma Shearer rescued from a Nazi concentration camp by Robert Taylor. Yikes! He redeemed himself on this tiny B-Pic about a car pool of aircraft factory workers on their way to defense plant jobs, recalling in flashback how they got here. Margo’s 'French Chanteuse' who was in the resistance; Robert Ryan’s race car driver injured out of the air force; James Bell’s prison warden forced to pull the electric chair switch on his own brother (featuring a rare flashback within a flashback); just crowned Miss America Amelita Ward learning that fame (and paid endorsements) ain’t all it’s cracked up to be; and John Carradine’s rail-riding intellectual hobo discovering even he owes a debt to society. The stories are neatly structured, speedy (all five in 70 minutes), generous with sharp character turns, and smartly helmed on a dime by John H. Auer who’d go on to make many a bad meller. All told, this reps the most sustained piece of film writing Oboler ever managed. Perhaps because it doesn’t attempt too much. Well played, especially by Carradine & Harry Davenport in the last bit.

DOUBLE-BILL: Portmanteau or ‘omnibus’ films were having a moment during WWII. Biggest of the lot, the all-star TALES OF MANHATTAN/’42 (see below).

LINK: *As always when Arch Oboler is mentioned, we post a LINK to his ten-minute LIGHTS OUT creep-a-thon masterpiece, THE DARK! It’s the one with a once-heard/never-forgotten sound effect of a man being turned INSIDE OUT!! And while nothing compares to the original broadcast sound cue, it’s hard to find on youtube so here’s a later version nearly as unsettling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSmEh8TxswQ

SUCH GOOD FRIENDS (1971)

Dyan Cannon hits every note she can think of trying to make sense of the upper-crust NYC society type she plays in this slightly desperate late work from Otto Preminger. First, her talented husband (author, magazine editor) goes off to hospital to have a mole removed; next day, he’s in a coma. Confronted with mortality, and far too many thoughtless visitors, Cannon starts questioning everything she thought she had going for her: love & marriage, financial stability, friends, medical advisers, kids, the domestic help, even if she wants him to recover. It’s MANHATTAN/’79 meets THE HOSPITAL/’71, but without the charm, wit, superior acting, pace, laughs or observational smarts.* (Plus, infinitely worse costume design. Yikes!) Scripter Elaine May, smelling a rat, and with her own debut (A NEW LEAF/’71) just out, pseudonym’d out as ‘Esther Dale’ and let Preminger take the rap. After all, brittle comedy was never Otto’s thing. But it’s still a bit of a shock to watch him humiliate his cast for a cheap laugh or two. Burgess Meredith & James Coco in the flesh! Ken Howard impotent in tight briefs. A Polaroid ‘centerfold’ shot for Cannon. (Is it her?) And why use brief fantasy hallucinations early in the film only to drop the whole idea later? Even Otto’s usual immaculate staging stratagems turn stiff under the unaccommodating lensing of Gayne Resher. Switching from his usual WideSceen format (2.35:1) to ‘flat’ (1.77:1), and then freezing his compositions as his cast hovers into frame. It’s not just the picture ratio that was shrinking for Otto.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: * As mentioned, THE HOSPITAL/’71, from an unusually disciplined Paddy Chayefsky script, and Woody Allen’s touchy romance, MANHATTAN/’79. Or try Stephen Sondheim’s landmark musical COMPANY, same era (1970)/same crowd. A recent semi-staged concert version with Neil Patrick Harris was unfortunate, but there’s a classic documentary (COMPANY: Original Cast Album/’70) that’s a rare treat.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/05/orinal-cast-album-company-1970.html

HÄNDLER DER VIER JAHRESZEITEN / THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS (1972)

For acolytes and agnostics, German New Wave writer/director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s story begins here.  Still in his mid-20s, he’d been pumping out films, theater & essays at a blistering pace when he took a breather, call it a half-year sabbatical, just as he was on the cusp of an æsthetic breakthru after seeing a retrospective of films by master Hollywood melodramatist Douglas Sirk, getting new attention at the time.  And while FOX AND HIS FRIENDS/’75 is usually considered Fassbinder’s most Sirkian film (he cast himself in the Jane Wyman part!), a new tone and new filmic formulations are immediately evident.  (Especially with the use of color & composition finally seen clear thanks to new restorations on Criterion DVD.)   And if MERCHANT remains a bumpy, uneasy affair, it’s still as close as we’re ever going to get to a Douglas Sirk version of WOZZECK.*  Our Wozzeck everyman is Hans Epp, who goes from Foreign Legionaire abroad to fruit vendor back home, from romantic wooer to sadistic husband, from family embarrassment to family success, from a failing fruit cart to successful small businessman; losing friends, lovers, and his wife & daughter’s respect along the way.  Then falling into deep depression and drinking himself to death with endless toasts of Schnapps.  Happy Days!  With it’s odd blunt tone and non-professional stiff acting (the filmmaking transformed into what Fassbinder is aiming at whenever Hanna Schygulla as the sister shows up), it’s never going to be a work for casual viewing.  But there’s more than mere promise, and in many ways, it remains one of Fassbinder’s most watchable films.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *The German New Wave got around to the Georg Büchner play (as opposed to the oft-filmed Alban Berg opera) in 1979, Werner Herzog directing Klaus Kinski as Wozzeck.  (not seen here)

BIRD OF PARADISE (1932)

Everybody’s favorite throw-the-native-beauty-in-the-angry-volcano pic finally gets a worthy DVD release on KINO. Sourced from excellent nitrate elements held by the George Eastman House archive, it replaces all those murky Public Domain issues, revealing a physical beauty once only guessed at. For director King Vidor, the film was a huge leap forward from his last two, THE CHAMP/’31 and STREET SCENE/’31, superb works that functioned within the technical constraints of Early Talkie mechanics. No more. Now, the freedom of movement & fluid camera work of the late silents are back in action. (Maybe it’s a great leap backwards.) We also get a full background score from Max Steiner, one of the first, and something of a warm-up for KING KONG/’33. The old story doesn’t clunk as much as you might recall, opening with a great meet-cute during a shark attack (!) before settling down to tribal rituals (courtesy of choreographer Busby Berkeley) and a tabu love affair for the fleshly charms of Dolores Del Rio & Joel McCrea in erotic Pre-Code form. Yummy stuff.

UN PROPHETE / A PROPHET (2009)

Last year’s Grand Prix at Cannes was this pulsating prison pic from Jacques Audiard about an Arab newbie (Tahar Rahim) who’s forced to murder a fellow inmate to gain protection. And initially, this well-made film looks & sounds like a typical prison drama as the kid learns the ropes; starts to work for the Corsican drug lord (Niels Arestrup) who runs the joint from his cell; oversteps; and eventually rises to a height from which he must fall. Maybe, maybe not. We follow the template only so far as Audiard is far more audacious and moves past the prison walls to show how criminal communication makes the rounds in the real world, cross-contaminating everything they touch. It’s fascinating stuff and watching how Rahim plays his role as odd-man-out (or is he the ultimate insider?), crossing cultural lines as he works out where he stands in the line of command is stunningly handled. And it’s not all mind-games since Audiard delivers a steady stream of beautifully executed action sequences all thru the story. The film bears comparison with the Robert De Niro sections of GODFATHER II/’74 or Al Pacino’s SCARFACE/’83, though happily without the De Palma excesses or the self-aggrandizing perfs in either film. It's a major achievement.

AGAINST THE WIND (1948)

Better title: SCHOOL FOR SABOTEURS, a pretty good description of this WWII mission pic from Ealing Studios that punches above its modest weight.  ‘Bully’ leader James Robertson Justice runs a secret unit training ‘unlikely’ types (secretaries; priests; engineers) as spies & sabotage operatives.  Normally, ‘over there,’ you’re caught/you’re through.  But when a top organization man gets picked up mid-op by Nazi Occupation forces in Belgium, a group of agents (some parachuted in, some already in place & working with local resistance) is sent to get him out.  A super cast, including a young Simone Signoret (with a fierce accent in her first English pic); Robert Beatty (a priest who declines the emergency suicide tablet); Jack Warner (unprincipled); John Slater (a French Jew given a new unrecognizable face); Paul Dupuis (the Belgian hometown boy); and so on.  Ealing regular Charles Crichton directs, getting some humor into one of his serious projects (Ealing’s signature eccentric comic British style yet to evolve), while favored scripter T.E.B. Clarke keeps us off balance by casually knocking off heroic characters when we least expect it, revealing courage as part timing/part luck-of-the-draw, and finding Quislings hiding in plain sight.  Here and there, the film skips steps (from budgetary & running time issues), but this is darn clean filmmaking from all concerned.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Fun to see a very young Gordon Jackson fall hard for Signoret.  The way she looks who wouldn’t?  But by the end, it’s reciprocated!  A tougher swallow than any of the Nazi close calls they get away with.

DOUBLE-BILL: Tough, realistically bleak WWII resistance work from Signoret in Jean-Pierre Melville’s ARMY OF SHADOWS/’69, a late to Stateside shores astonishment.

THE GOODBYE GIRL (1977)

Neil Simon came up with a new ODD COUPLE when he forced twice-dumped B’way dancer Marsha Mason & Off-Off-B’way actor (and legal subleter) Richard Dreyfuss into sharing a modest two-bedroom NYC apartment. And if the story & dialogue sport the tinny sound of playwright Simon cracking-wise, he’s able to keep it mostly in character since everyone in here is echt showbiz. That includes Mason’s wisenheimer-beyond-her-years 10-yr-old daughter, no doubt conceived on the Borsht Belt Circuit. No big surprises: Mason lets her guard down & learns to trust again (even if the guy is an actor); Dreyfuss learns how family trumps vocation (even acting!); no wonder the story wraps up half an hour before the film does. Still highly watchable and very well-played (especially by Dreyfuss) with savvy director Herbert Ross a huge step up from Simon plodders like Gene Saks & Arthur Hiller, always moving forward, even at the sentimental moments. 40+ years on, the main curiosity is noting how once outré elements like Dreyfuss’s organic health food mania or a campy-gay take on Shakespeare’s Richard III have now gone mainstream. It alters a lot of our responses . . . for the better.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: When Richard (pause) Dreyfuss got announced as that year’s Oscar® winner, gasps could be heard as a different Richard, Richard Burton, was favored for EQUUS/’77. A situation memorably played a decade before by Stephen Boyd in THE OSCAR/’66 (a perennial nominee in any All-Time Worst Film contest) when his character, FRANK Fane, rises from his seat in anticipation only to hear FRANK followed with Sinatra. It's based on the true story of two different ‘Franks,’ directors Frank Capra (the guy who rose prematurely) and Frank Lloyd (the guy who won.) Initiated by presenter Will Rogers who called out ‘Come up and get it, Frank!' Yikes!

THE MADONNA'S SECRET (1946)

Typically slapdash second-run feature from Republic Studios where bills got paid with cheap serial Westerns & Roy Rogers matinee fare (strong product showed when John Ford or Frank Borzage parked for an indie project), but usually came to grief when they tried to expand their offerings with attempted class.  Ergo this LAURA-wannabe murder mystery, a lesson in moviemaking missteps.  At least there’s real deal noir atmosphere thanks to ‘Prince of Darkness’ cinematographer John Alton, just not enough to get past a phony parade of characters, story development, dialogue & structure.  (Oh, is that all?)  Francis Lederer, with his look of corrupted handsomeness, stars as a successful portrait painter who falls for his models only to see them die in circumstances that point back to him.  Under suspicion, if not under arrest, his only champion his newest model, the secret sister of an earlier victim . . . and she might be next!  Even with cops keeping scorecards on Lederer, nothing adds up in this one.  And while there's a strong line up of supporting male actors doing character bits, the women are all perfectly awful.  Ann Rutherford, too sweet by half, a particular horror as the sister, and Gail Patrick’s rich society bitch unbearably arch.  After a while, the general incompetence almost becomes fascinating . . . not that I’d recommend it.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned above, LAURA/’44.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Completely extraneous nightclub act sees some glam torch singer get the pointy end in a knife-throwing act while she warbles.  Hilarious.

THE MAN WHO RECLAIMED HIS HEAD (1934)

Eager to follow Claude Rains’ successful debut in THE INVISIBLE MAN/’33 with more comic-tinged horror (and with him seen as well as heard), Universal Pictures opted for a B’way flop with a juicy title he’d recently done. But there’s little horror & less comedy in this pacifist tract about Rains crusading anti-war essayist and expedient newspaper publisher Lionel Atwill who sidles up to both the Military Industrial Complex and Rains’ wife Joan Bennett in an attempt to manipulate Rains into taking a pro-war/pro-munitions position. (Perhaps the play resonated better in 1932 when it opened than 1934, after Hitler had come to power.) Structured much like it’s near namesake, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, it opens with Rains’ broken man bringing a valise with a certain ‘reclaimed’ object to the office of an old acquaintance. Then, the whole sad story told in flashback under Edward Ludwig’s utilitarian direction. The first act hangs together, even with Rains ghastly daughter ‘Baby Jane’ shrieking all her lines, but things get awfully preachy as we go on, briefly coming to life in a grim climax as Rains pulls out a saber to take revenge. Grisly horror left to one’s furtive imagination and Merritt B. Gerstad’s chiaroscuro lighting. Yikes!

DOUBLE-BILL: Between INVISIBLE and RECLAIMED, Rains made one of those terribly uneven, but interesting Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur artsy indies, one of the better ones, CRIME WITHOUT PASSION/’34, with Rains as a lawyer more guilty than his clients.

MACBETH (1948)

Orson Welles tried to rejigger his fast-fade Hollywood trajectory with the low-budget legerdemain of this ‘quickie’ MACBETH, shot @ little Republic Pictures, home of the Western. It’s tremendous stuff, alive & exciting, but its shameful reception had Welles altering his original Scottish-tinged soundtrack & trimming off a couple of reels to little commercial effect. He’d wait a decade for his next Hollywood production. Restored on Olive DVDs to its original glistening edge, it’s not much like a Western, but rather like one of those famous Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneau poetic-horror numbers made @ RKO just as Welles was being pushed out of the place. (The phenomenal witches with their bubbling tangible clay apprehensions could have come from I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE/’43 . . . or from Welles’ own legendary ‘Voodoo’ MACBETH of 1936.)   http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/voodoo-macbeth This MACBETH suffers sins of omission (where’s the third murderer?); sins of commission (Welles devised an unnecessary Christian Priest as counterweight to the Pagan witches); a few poorly staged scenes that look like Golden Age Television Play-of-the-Week stuff; and from its debuting Lady Macbeth, Jeanette Nolan, who hasn’t the depth of response to properly feed into Welles’ rapturously tortured King. But it also has the narrative thrust and visual thrills to trump its few problems. (The DVD could have alleviated even more had it come with a subtitle track.) At the time, the film was commercially & critically obliterated by Laurence Olivier’s award-winning HAMLET/’48, which has its own strengths & pleasures. But from a cinematic standpoint, Welles towers over all comers with a technique even further ahead of its time than CITIZEN KANE was in ’41. The film’s persistent lack of appreciation remains both incomprehensible and inexcusable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY-I: What are the odds that Welles and Giuseppe Verdi would adapt the same three Shakespeare properties (MACBETH; OTHELLO; FALSTAFF) and do them in the same order?, with each making a composite of plays for Falstaff. And what are the odds that the same speedy cinematographer, John Russell, would be used by Welles here, and by Hitchcock on PSYCHO/’60 to help keep the costs down?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY-II: Okay, not really a Screwy Thought, instead, a suggested Screwy Party Trick for the vocally gifted. Try reciting the great (and mercifully short) ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ soliloquy in your favorite Hollywood voice. Boris Karloff or Bette Davis are pretty easy to do. Very impressive! Ah, where have all those distinctive Hollywood voices gone? Now that everyone whispers all the time, grand eccentric voices have been flattened out.

TIE DAO YING XIONG / RAILWAY HEROES (2021)

Fact-inspired hooey about Chinese resistance fighters in the Sino-Japanese war (it’s 1939), trying to stop Japanese Occupation forces from running war supplies on the trains.  Old-fashioned, a bit corny and plenty patriotic (the film takes a break before the final action sequence to administer the Chinese Communist Oath to new volunteers), it’s also darn entertaining.  Not far from ‘60s Hollywood WWII ‘mission’ pics (think GUNS OF NAVARONE/’61; DIRTY DOZEN/’67; KELLY’S HEROES/’70), but with the weird æsthetic combo of modern CGI embellishment next to fake snow left over from 1940s M-G-M.  You'll recognize the character types: grizzled heroes who quip before blowing themselves up for the cause; youngsters with specialized knowledge; a pretty nurse who’ll keep your secret & staunch the bleeding; and loads of cigarettes to dramatically light and share . . . even with that cunning, sadistic enemy leader.  Oddly, the film starts in relatively realistic mode (note a barbaric, pointedly harrowing execution), before loosening up into Boys’ Adventure’ tropes as it goes along, reversing the usual pattern.  All nicely supported by awesome production values & detailed period touches by crafty debuting writer/director Feng Yang, already a natural (and already knowing which side of the bread is buttered) in his first at bat.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Over on the European Front, Burt Lancaster & John Frankenheimer set the bar for these things in THE TRAIN/’65.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/02/train-1965.html

MURDER ON A HONEYMOON (1935)

Third, and best of the six Hildegarde Withers murder mystery films was also the last one to feature indispensable horse-faced star Edna May Oliver.* (After PENGUIN POOL MURDER/’32 and MURDER ON THE BLACKBOARD/’34; before MURDER ON A BRIDLE PATH/’36 with Helen Broderick and then Zasu Pitts in THE PLOT THICKENS/’36 and FORTY NAUGHTY GIRLS/’37.*) James Gleason stayed for all six as irascible, open-minded Homicide Inspector Piper, but as the series’ modest charms were largely built on the grudging respect & unlikely friendship that grows behind the bickering of schoolteacher/amateur sleuth and hardheaded police vet, any antic charm runs thin without the eccentric comic thrust of Edna May. This one, neatly helmed by Lloyd Corrigan and imaginatively shot by Nicholas Musuraca, offers some nice Catalina Island location work, a planeload of suspect passengers, and a gang-related offing for Hildegarde to investigate, dangerous enough to cause Gleason to fly out to make sure his gal pal doesn’t get rubbed out uncovering the killer(s). Good, lively fun.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Oliver left R.K.O. after this for M-G-M and one of her greatest roles as Aunt Betsey in DAVID COPPERFIELD/’35.

CONTEST: *Eddie Cline, who directed NAUGHTY GIRLS and co-directed some Buster Keaton two-reelers back in the ‘20s, reuses a famous gag from one of those shorts to good effect there. Name the Keaton short and the gag to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.

PICCADILLY (1929)

 

Late British silent (with tacked on ‘talkie’ prologue) from famed German megger E. A Dupont is worth seeing just for the releasing company’s tag line on the end credits, "WorldWide Pictures: Photoplays made where the stories laid." Like VAREITY, Dupont’s best claim to cinematic fame, PICADILLY is a sex triangle story among performers (a nightclub rather than the circus) as club dancer Gilda Gray does a fast fade when her partner (Cyril Ritchard) splits on her. She’s screwing the club owner (Jameson Thomas) to keep her position, but business is business and he finds a new sensation right in his very own scullery. Anna May Wong. She's superb here, a veritable Louise Brooks siren. Soon, Wong dumps her boyfriend for Thomas and when she’s killed that leaves us with two likely suspects. Working with a superb lenser, Werner Brandes, and the legendary Alfred Junge on the spectacular sets, Dupont offers some beautifully realized visuals, but the style becomes repetitious. Here the big overused technical gimmick are fast pans to link players in dramatic situations - it’s striking, the first twenty times, but then turns into a mannerism). Meanwhile, the story quickly exhausts its possibilities. Still, it’s quite an eyeful and you get to see Charles Laughton do a masterful bit in his film debut.

KAIRO / PULSE (2001)

This moody bump-in-the-night creep-out from writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa works its slow, dreamy mode to excess and winds up feeling overextended.  Perhaps better suited to anthology tv.  (Was there a Japanese TWILIGHT ZONE?)  Centered on a young class of pink & white collar office workers, it begins when a freelancer doesn’t show up with the computer disc he’s been programming.  Yet when one of the staff goes to his apartment she finds he’s been there all along, just not answering phone, text or door.  Standing in the corners of his barely lit apartment, the disc has been ready for pick-up, but he’s too distracted to care.  Something to do with his computer, filled with strange shadowy figures that come & go, and subliminally call to him.  Turns out his system hasn’t caught a bug, but a soul . . . a dead soul.  Minutes later he jumps to his death.  The film extrapolates from this incident, with ectoplasm leakage soon infecting everything until only a single couple are left uninfected to ride it out on a ship at sea and a questionable future.  Kurosawa certainly holds tone: dark, dank, barely lit; and there are some wonderful moments traversing an empty city amid the murky lighting scheme and the occasional unsettling special effect of disintegrating souls.  But this INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’56 manqué, makes ennui too oppressive.  When the film ends, you may have melded into your couch.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Three official version (so far) of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, plus scores of rip-offs.  Go for the original.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/invasion-of-body-snatchers-1956.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Kurosawa’s youthfully fit & attractive cast generate lots of undirected (and unmentioned) sexual tension.  An orgasm or two might have chased the auras away.

FOOL FOR LOVE (1985)

Golan/Globus, the guys behind The Cannon Group, generally put their considerable energies into action crap for the more undiscriminating parts of the International Marketplace.  But when they did try to class up their product with ‘quality’ merchandise, more often than not, their High Brow offerings were even worse than their usual trash.  Like a diner cook taking over the evening shift at a 2-Star Michelin-rated restaurant.*  And so it proves on this Sam Shepard adaptation of one of his most popular plays.  Yet assessing fault a bit tricky since the play itself feels all used up in theme & execution.  Robert Altman, during his desert years between NASHVILLE/’75 and THE PLAYER/’92, handles the talky situations with easy confidence and has a fine cast (Shepard, Kim Basinger, Harry Dean Stanton, an excellent Randy Quaid).  It’s the situations that now feel threadbare.  Shepard & Basinger get stuck playing the old Can’t-Live-With-‘Em/Can’t-Live-Without-’Em tropes from her Motel abode when he shows up after a two-thousand mile drive just as she’s prepping for a date with Quaid.  Everyone talks around the issues that led to the split in that fill-up-the-empty-space manner of early playwrights everywhere, before we finally cast back to psychologically explanatory clichés of parental abandonment before Shepard (as playwright) shuts everything down with a barely motivated conflagration.  Do other Shepard plays look this shopworn?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The happy exception that proves the rule on ‘Quality’ Cannon product is John Frankenheimer’s 52 PICKUP/’86.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/52-pickup-1986.html

COUNTERPLOT (1959)

Small potatoes film noir is hardly worth the effort.  Shot in Puerto Rico, it’s a final credit for legendary lenser Karl Struss (SUNRISE/’27; DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE/’31; SIGN OF THE CROSS/’32) without a decent film since LIMELIGHT/’52.  Let’s hope he enjoyed the weather as story & acting leave just about everything to be desired.  Forrest Tucker is unintentionally unsympathetic as an innocent man on the run from a murder charge, holed up with a cute local kid to play go-between while he waits for his gal pal to hit town; hopefully before the real killer finds him.  Elsewhere on the island: local insurance agent holds back on a big payout; bit smuggler tails the kid to find Tucker; and a fat, sleazy lawyer thinks he can make like Sydney Greenstreet.  (He can’t.)  Add in forgettable nightclub songs for our lady friend to match some unforgettably bad acting and there’s little director Kurt Neumann can do.  Guess you could say he’s up to the challenge.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note all the empty space in the frame above the actors in most shots.  That’s because it was shot in Academy Ratio but meant to be trimmed to anything between 1.66 and 1.85-to-1 by the projectionist.  You can do much the same with most DVD players by bumping up the image one step.  It really helps wake up the shots.  Just don’t use the 16x9 anamorphic stretch mode.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: (A re-posting from Hollywood’s Department of Tall Tales.)  Did Forrest Tucker really have the biggest schlong in old Hollywood?  Stories tell of Mario Lanza pulling his out at restaurants and whacking his wanger on the table.  John Ireland allegedly lost screen time in RED RIVER after Howard Hawks got word of him ‘showing off.’  Desi Arnaz & Milton Berle also have their champions.  But only Forrest Tucker was known to putt with his; dropping to his knees on the golf course to take a swing.  (He had to lean forward a bit, but still . . . )

IFIGENIA / IPHIGENIA (1977)

After ELEKTRA/’62 and THE TROJAN WOMEN/’71, iconic Greek director Michael Cacoyannis wrapped his cycle of freely adapted Euripides with this historical step back to opening moves in the Trojan Wars.  Functioning much like the Biblical story of Abraham & Isaac, it’s one more child sacrifice called for by God, or ‘the Gods.’  Here, Agamemnonas is ‘oracled’ to offer up beloved daughter Ifigenia to get out of the doldrums.  That’s literal doldrums (well, landlocked doldrums), as he has engaged an army but can’t set sail until the winds blow in.  Tricking Mother Klytaimnistra to send the girl off to camp to wed Achilles, his scheme quickly collapses with secret messages waylaid, Achilles kept in the dark, a usurp-minded brother, and a large hungry army kickstarting the jinx by slaying a sacred deer for dinner.  This purposefully flip description a bid to get at what’s missing from this often well laid out, handsome vision of the story; it never dares to subvert or reinvent.*  Cacoyannis gets away with this pageant-like presentation for half the way, but once Achilles shows up, looking like a Greek Alain Delon, and then falls for an androgynous Tadzio of a Ifigenia Luchino Visconti might have cast in DEATH IN VENICE, the screen quickly goes dead as the stink of culturally approved state-fund-worthy art drowns the project in tears & nobility.  (Are the earlier films like this?)  Worth a look for the scrubby locations and some fine acting.  (What screen presence Irene Papas has!  Klytaimnistra here; her nemesis Helen in TROJAN WOMEN after starting with avenging Elektra.  It does make you want to watch the other two.)  Cacoyannis lived another thirty-four years, with but two more feature films after a break of a decade.  Still largely known for ZORBA THE GREEK/’64 which also has Papas with Anthony Quinn’s Zorba and a youngish Alan Bates who rather quietly out acts them both.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, ZORBA THE GREEK/’64 https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/03/zorba-greek-1964.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Couldn’t Agamemnonas have asked for a second opinion from another oracle?

HOLIDAY (1930)

While sharing director, stars, playwright & adaptor (George Cukor; Katharine Hepburn; Cary Grant; Philip Barry; Donald Ogden Stewart) with more glittering sibling THE PHILADELPHIA STORY/’40, HOLIDAY/'38 has a tenth the cultural residue.  Yet it’s the better work, certainly the one to resonate with modern ideas for modern audiences.  So, if that 1938 filming remains in PHILLY’s shadow, what chance for this 1930 iteration?  Nicely paced for an Early Talkie by director Edward H. Griffith, it  has more than just historical interest going for it.  Trimmed, rather than ‘opened-up’ for filming, the story sees young self-made Johnny Case bank just enough of his early financial success to think he can take a time-out for self-discovery before getting back on the career track.  Will rich fiancée Julia Seton come along for the adventure or bully him into joining her father’s world of Big Finance and the Social Set?  The situation complicated by sister Linda, loyal but possibly the better match for this free-thinking Prince Charming.  Staged in Pre-Depression 1928, both films versions (1930; 1938) had to make do with the new ethos of a 1930s Depression Era.  But what held down popularity then now looks remarkably advanced.  So too the iconoclastic characters Barry has us root for.  In this version, undervalued Ann Harding is nearly as fine a Linda as Hepburn would be, hopeful but used to disappointment.  As her alcoholic brother, Monroe Owsley, who originated the role on stage, repeats to good effect, but can’t touch the wistful defeat Lew Ayres brought in ‘38.  So too bland leading man Robert Ames, missing the edge & athleticism Cary Grant gave this outsider.  And while it’s fun to see Edward Everett Horton repeating as the friendly bohemian pal (his role beefed up to good effect in 1938), the wild card that makes this version unmissable is Mary Astor as the fiancée who thinks she can change her man into a proper consort.  1938's Doris Nolan isn’t in the same league.  And what a difference some real competition makes.  Watch the Hepburn first; this one cut so close to the bone some relationships a bit hard to read.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, the 1938 HOLIDAY.  But also Philip Barry’s near follow-up, THE ANIMAL KINGDOM/’32 which imagines what might have happened had the ‘wrong’ couple gone thru with the marriage before the ‘right’ person came back into their lives.  Griffith again directing Ann Harding in what amounts to the same character, while Leslie Howard & Myrna Loy take on roles very close to Johnny Case and Julia Seton.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/08/holiday-1938.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Donald Ogden Stewart’s far superior script for Cukor’s 1938 HOLIDAY a paradigm for ‘opened-up’ stage-to-film transfers.  Perhaps helped by his intimate knowledge of the play having originated Professor Potter on B’way, Edward Everett Horton’s part in both films.

THE LEMON DROP KID (1934; 1951)

Urban fabulist Damon Runyon (of GUYS AND DOLLS fame) hit the trifecta of shameless sentimental slush in this story of a race track tout finding redemption, love & loss after a big bet goes wrong and he hides out in a small town.  First filmed by legendary Hollywood drunks Lee Tracy & director Marshall Neilan, both on the cusp of major career falls, then remade for Bob Hope with all tears (and most of the story) removed.  In the process, something raw lost from the Depression desperation that lends drive to Runyon’s tall tale.  In its place, smooth professionalism with all the embarrassing emotional bits removed.  The original story sees Tracy’s slang-spewing race track tout not placing a bet that pays off big time, forcing him to go on the lam. 

That’s also how Hope's version starts, but from then on, two different films with Hope and main squeeze Marilyn Maxwell (main squeeze off set, too) using Santas to raise funds for a sham Old Dolls (Ladies) Retirement Home.  With a couple of songs, including Christmas perennial ‘Silver Bells,’ and two mob men hoping to skim the donations before Bob has a change of heart that makes everyone either happy or sent to the clink.  Slick, slick, slick, but also a real missed opportunity to see Hope work the darker aspects of the actual Runyon piece (jail, marriage, botched childbirth, death, sacrifice, adoption).  Even more than Tracy, a skilled wiseguy of the first order (he was B’way’s original Hildy Johnson in THE FRONT PAGE), Hope was a natural for Runyon’s odd rhythm and weird all present-tense writing style.  Check out SORROWFUL JONES/’49 to see just how natural.*  And director Sidney Lanfield, tightly tied to scripter Frank Tashlin’s usual cartoon style, aids & abets Hope just when he ought to have been challenged rather than enabled.  Something Neilan, in his last major directing gig, at least fitfully understands.  Some scenes feeling a lot like Leo McCarey’s work . . . just not enough.

ATENTION MUST BE PAID:  William Frawley’s in both films, but only magical in the first when he gets to sing Tracy’s baby out of a fit.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned, SORROWFUL JONES.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/sorrowful-jones-1949.html  OR: Robert Montgomery & Maureen O’Sullivan out the same year with nearly the same plot in HIDE-OUT/’34.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/06/hide-out-1934.html

BEDTIME STORY (1964)

Yes, Marlon Brando really does strip down to his skivies for a cheap laugh in this comic misfire.*  Just one mortification from a decade of resets after ONE-EYED JACKS and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY tagged him box-office poison.  (THE GODFATHER and LAST TANGO IN PARIS came to the rescue in ‘72.)  Brando’s films weren’t all bad in this period (‘63 - ‘71), but nothing really clicked.  Certainly not this styleless romantic caper from the combined talents then giving us THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES and PETTICOAT JUNCTION.  Brando’s American conman in Europe is an ex-soldier fleecing pretty locals for pocket-change with woeful tales about a sick old Grandma when he meets-cute with David Niven, a mock Prince working the same angle in the A-League, tapping rich American ladies looking for class.  A brief partnership works well, but turns into a competition when Stateside heiress Shirley Jones wafts in.  Win her favor and the lesser man leaves the Riviera forever.  Michael Caine & Steve Martin added a few extra twists, swank & style in the far superior remake DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS/’88.  This version, much like Universal Pictures house-style at the time, pure chintz.  And Brando’s new ingratiating personality (smiling more here than in all his other films combined) feels a bit desperate.  Shirley Jones was lucky though, showing up after the film is half over, and perking things up just by giving the boys a target to aim at.

WATCH THIS NOT THAT: Smartly reimagined, DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS/’88 is a hoot.  Especially Michael Caine’s hair styling.   

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Marlon on film a good deal beefier than on the poster.  (Built like Alec Baldwin, another Stanley Kowalski gone to seed.)