SCHLOß VOGELÖD / THE HAUNTED CASTLE (1921)

F.W. Murnau’s eighth film (the first six are lost), an Expressionist Murder Mystery solved during a Dark & Stormy Weekend, is undoubtably less interesting for its own sake than as stylistic precursor to next year’s NOSFERATU/’22 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/nosferatu-1922.html), if not without a certain crackpot appeal.  Adapted from what must have been a particularly wheezy play, we’re trapped in a different sort of castle (a nice one) along with an upper-crust hunting party over a rain-soaked weekend washout.  The storm also blowing in notorious Graf Johann Oetsch, acquitted of fratricide but guilty in the heart of his newly remarried sister-in-law.  She’d have left the estate already if not for the possibility of purging her soul by talking to comforting Father Faramund; and he’s due to arrive any minute!  But when the good Father mysteriously disappears, well, as Lady Bracknell put it, ‘To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’  And this guy’s only a Father in the religious sense . . . if he is Father Faramund.  The acting is tamer than it would soon become, but still in Expressionist mode, while intimations of NOSFERATU stylings in design, use of miniatures, horse-drawn carriages, staging/camera & atmosphere are ubiquitous.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The lady of the estate and our remarried widow are all over each other every time they get together.  How would this have been read in 1921?  How should it be read today?

THE COSSACKS (1928)

Character actor Ernest Torrence had his best role as a big brute of a father disappointed by a lily-livered son he can barely recognize as his own flesh & blood, a tender-hearted lad who’ll never be tough enough to take his place when the time comes.  The son?  Buster Keaton.  The film?  STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.; released May 1928.  The upshot?  The boy plenty tough; saving the day for his proud Old Man! (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/steamboat-bill-jr-1928.html)  And here, in theaters less than a month later, the exact same character arc, but with John Gilbert as the weakling who needs toughening up.  With Tolstoy’s novel supplying a few narrative elements (Gogol’s TARAS BULBA might have done the same), it’s a huge romantic spectacle with ginormous action sequences of horseflesh, sword play & massed armies where furry-hatted Orthodox Christians take on the Heathen Turk in the Russian outback.  Both films underperformed, but if only one now seems a masterpiece, this late John Gilbert silent is still good fun.  And better than that in some stupendous action set pieces likely handled by original director George W. Hill.  Apparently, Clarence Brown was brought in to rework much of the personal drama* which sees Gilbert becoming fierce & manly earlier than initially planned (the change now the climax of Act One); pleasing Dad in their on-going war against the infidels; wooing lady love Renée Adorée against dilettante Moscow emissary Nils Asther; stepping into Papa’s shoes & drinking his vodka rations.  Brown aims for beery comradery among the simple, hearty, good-natured warrior men, but the light-hearted tone palls next to scenes of Turkish torture and lethal battle that make up the third act.  Still a fun watch, but the sum less than the parts.  Happily a Turner Classics edition has the film in near mint condition, with an amusing newly commissioned score from Robert Israel heavy on Tchaikovsky (Nutcracker to ‘Little Russian’ & Manfred Symphonies).  Next year, Gilbert returned to Tolstoy for his first Talkie, REDEMPTION/’30, bad enough to be held back for release as his second.  He’d never recover.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Brown’s reshoot squeezed in between two of his finest films out that same year: TRAIL OF’98 and A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-trail-of-98-1928.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Attention to our poster which is a paperback Tie-In from the period.  ‘Tolstoi’ would be proud!  M-G-M would keep the royalties.

OLIVER TWIST (1948)

Whether done ‘straight’ or ‘crooked,’ only Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL vies with Charles Dickens’ OLIVER TWIST in film adaptations.  (Or does Christ & Co. beat Dickens?)  Two versions stand out; David Lean: finely polished, dark & terrifying in ‘48; Carol Reed: lightened less than you imagine by musicalization, dark & terrifying in ‘68.  (The latter recently given an astonishing digital restoration if you can find it.)  Sticking with Lean, TWIST, following his triumphant GREAT EXPECTATIONS/’46, post-graduation Dickens after 3 hits & a miss with Nöel Coward, proved a surprisingly tough sell.  The orphans looking like Concentration Camp survivors (still a fresh memory); the violence harrowing (Nancy’s murder, barely seen, yet beyond gruesome thanks to Bill Sykes’ dog); Fagin’s problematic ‘Jewish’ makeup, faithful to original Dickens’ illustrator George Cruikshank, but looking like a Nazi propaganda poster.*  Yikes!  Yet, the film is a magnificent achievement, besting EXPECTATIONS with a plus perfect cast in a subtly stylized, charcoal-etched Victorian England, its story neatly trimmed of serial bloat & repetition.  Fully complimentary with the musical, the difference in tone controlled not so much thru song as by age, with a crucial two or three year difference between Lean’s kids and Reed’s.  Think of OLIVER! as the ‘white meat’ quarter (plus a less outrageous shnozz on Fagin)/Lean offering the gamier leg/thigh portion.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Roman Polanski’s much anticipated 2005 attempt sadly bland.  Instead, note similarities in Luis Buñuel’s Mexican masterpiece, LOS OLVIDADOS/’50.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/oliver-twist-2005.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/los-olvidados-aka-forgotten-ones-young.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *After a 12 minute edit, TWIST showed up Stateside in 1951 with Alec Guinness’s Fagin shorn of anything humanizing, but with nose intact.

THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987)

Purposeful nonsense as history/powerhouse entertainment as popcorn movies go, but with Brian De Palma’s usual default mode of insincerity, just the thing for so much of his output, limiting any real possibilities for depth or even much suspense in this Prohibition saga of Treasury Agent Elliot Ness & his little band of risk-taking aides going after big bad Al Capone & Co. in a tintype 1930s Chicago.*  At its considerable best whenever Sean Connery’s on screen as a tough old ‘beat’ cop who knows the territory (except when scripter David Mamet needs him to not know to keep the plot in motion), with star-making turns from Kevin Costner’s Ness & supporting cop Andy Garcia (both groomed to impossibly lux standards), less so from nerdy Charles Martin Smith doing a Taxman Cometh turn.  Set in a spit-polished Chicago past that might be a Greenfield Village exhibit, De Palma actually shows his best form out of town when the boys suddenly go all Western on us.  (Did no one ask how those city boys would ‘sat’ a horse?)  Fun to compare Robert De Niro’s Al Capone to Lee J. Cobb in PARTY GIRL/’58.  (Cobb’s lethal baseball bat is souvenir-sized gold-plated; De Niro's a Louisville Slugger.  Progress!)  Even more fun to notice how De Niro’s mobster & his top accountant might be auditioning to play a certain former president and convicted financial officer Allen Weisselberg.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Di Palma modi operandi sees him repurpose Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘Odessa Steps’ from POTEMKIN/’25 (the baby carriage clumping down the stairs) in a Chicago train station as the big set piece that tees up the final courtroom showdown.  Painfully overcooked, it deflates suspense in context yet plays brilliantly as an excerpt in a highlight reel.  Alas, Di Palma not a ‘kill your darlings’ kind of guy, seeing the trees and missing the forest.  (Di Palma’s excuse is that he had to ‘wing it’ when a more expensive idea got cut at the last minute.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/bronenosets-potemkin-battleship.html

THE FLAPPER (1920)

Inconsequential yet essential pop product from producer Lewis Selznick (father of David O. & future super-agent Myron) stars popular 25-yr-old Olive Thomas as a 16-yr-old private school girl whose earnest steady goes to a Military Academy just across the road, but whose eye lands on a sophisticated older gentleman who picks her up (literally) after her buggy tips over in the snow.  Naturally, he invites her to his fancy country club party (where she’s out of her depth), before returning to school where she just misses catching a pair of jewel thieves busy ransacking the girls dorm room.  Thinking they can use this naïf to safely move the loot, the crooks suggest a rendezvous at a swanky Manhattan hotel where they plan to leave Olive holding the bag (again, literally) and get her to safely delivery it to her father’s country estate for later pickup.  And while it may seem her adventures have gone terribly wrong, all will be settled when the cops show up and the separate parties (age appropriate beau; rich older neighbor; glam robbers) are forcibly brought together to clean up the mess.  Silly stuff, smoothly directed by Alan Crosland (a competent craftsman doomed to be remembered only for THE JAZZ SINGER/’27) and written by top scripter Frances Marion working on auto-pilot.  The main reasons for watching is to check out just what ‘flapper’ meant in 1920, a few years before these modern girls started ‘bobbing’ their hair.  (Colleen Moore & Louise Brooks got that trend going around 1925.)  For a chance to take a ride on the top of a double-decker bus cruising down Fifth Avenue, NYC (great ‘stolen’ footage on the streets & sidewalk), and especially for a chance to see the delightful (if doomed) Olive Thomas before she died just a few months later while on a ‘second honeymoon’ during her short, troubled marriage to hard-partying husband Jack Pickford, kid brother of Mary.  (One of the first major Hollywood scandals.)  Long thought a suicide after Pickford gave her an STD (the scandalous novel THE GREEN HAT took off from that idea*), it's now thought accidental (she drank the ‘wrong’ medicine).  The Milestone DVD, from the Eastman House Collection, doesn’t have the delightful original animated titles as seen in a print owned by MoMA, but is in generally excellent condition.  A real charmer, the early loss of lovely, talented Ms. Thomas considerable.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Banned from using the book’s original title, M-G-M renamed their adaptation A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS/’28, with Clarence Brown directing Garbo & John Gilbert to fine effect, along with the impossibly handsome teenage Douglas Fairbanks Jr as Garbo’s kid brother.  Fairbanks Sr., of course, was married to Mary Pickford, sister to Jack Pickford, Olive Thomas’s widower.  Even in Hollywood, it doesn’t get much more incestuous than that.

SONO OTOKO, KYÔBÔ NI TSUKI / VIOLENT COP (1989)

Terrific.  Already writing & starring, Takeshi Kitano took over directing on this searingly violent, searingly funny policier when the original director fell ill.  He’s been a triple threat ever since.  Here, he’s a classic ‘Dirty Harry’ kind of cop, flaunting rules but getting results beating out confessions & info from suspects.  But then, he beats up just about everyone to get what he wants.  Only his mentally unstable sister is off limits.  Just now, a fresh murder and a drug syndicate are getting his attention as he drags a newly assigned rookie around with him.  And the stakes only get raised when a buddy cop, fingered as a mob drug supplier, turns up dead.  Suicide or rub out?  Kitano turns every confrontation into a violently comic set piece, sending up action tropes while simultaneously working the shit out of them.  It’s deliriously effective.  But shortly after the halfway mark, the laughs start to stick in your throat.  And once his unfortunate sister becomes involved, the tone turns very dark indeed.  Not exactly serious, more tragic/absurd.  Masterly work from a novice, with Kitano balancing fast changes in tone while fully servicing the action set pieces as if he’d been doing this for years.  A great laconic presence, too; never missing a laugh.  Plus a twist ending for our rookie cop you won’t see coming.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  In the looks department, Kitano could pass for John Garfield’s long lost Asian cousin.  Same height, too, about 5 & a half feet.  Little guys keep sympathy on their side no matter how bad they behave.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Paid to the background score.  Mostly electrified Erik Satie & reedy ‘Cool Jazz’ where you expect something more propulsive.  (Satie working better than the Kenny G-like stylings.)

THE 400 BLOWS / LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS (1959)

Claude Chabrol may have been first out of the gate (with LE BEAU SERGE/’58), but it was François Truffaut, contentious critic turned preternaturally fluid filmmaker, who kick-started cinema’s Nouveau Vague revolution with his debut feature, a film even more autobiographical than generally thought.*  Proceeded only by LES MISTONS/’57, a charming 2-reel warmup, Truffaut got cinematographer Henri Decaë to shoot b&w ‘Scope (the only New Waver to debut in WideScreen?) for this epically intimate story of an unruly, misfit 14-yr-old dead set on turning delinquent.  Barely tolerated at home or school, Truffaut alter-ego Jean-Pierre Léaud is unable to hold off his worst instincts: playing hooky with a best pal; lying his way into more trouble when he’s caught; stealing spare change and hardware (which he’s unable to fence); he’s on a one-way road to Juvie Jail.  Tough, mordant & consistently hilarious, with indelible moments of stolen childhood bliss before the inevitable self-inflicted payback, Léaud’s Antoine Doinel remains a cursed yet unstoppable life force, a heroic screwup with a future.  Hence the legendary end shot.   While the unsung hero of the film (other than that little kid who destroys an entire Composition Book in two minutes flat) is probably co-writer Marcel Moussy who organized a solid structure from Truffaut’s stockpile of auto-biographical wrong turns and bold-relief memories.  The film still something of a miracle.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *Truffaut biographers Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana lay it all out in their denser than dense 1996 bio.  (Published Stateside 1999.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *LES MISTONS immediately before and the mid-career SMALL CHANGE/’76 are the Truffaut films closest to BLOWS (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/11/les-mistons-1957.html;  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/small-change-1976.html) while Jean Vigo’s ZERO DE CONDUITE/’33 something of a lodestar.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/05/complete-jean-vigo-1930-34.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Our Japanese poster (above), with Léaud half-hidden by his turtleneck was Truffaut’s preferred poster.  Here’s the oddly triumphant one made for France.

REVANCHE (2008)

Austrian writer/director Götz Spielmann was already in his mid-40s when this meticulously made award-winning film broke thru.  (Just one feature & one tv film since.)  A remarkable work, neatly split in two halves, the first a sort of tragic romance when a simple bank robbery goes fatally, if predictably wrong; the second, with the texture of a religious parable, showing how various involved parties coped with events.  But while both halves look realistic, the second part plays out thru crisscrossing coincidences you might expect in a 19th century novel by Hugo or Dickens.  That’s because the robber, a volatile two-time loser working at a brothel in Vienna, was hoping to run away with a Ukrainian sex worker, but is now forced to hide out at his Grandfather’s small country farm where the closest neighbors are a childless couple whose husband just happens to be the tortured cop who shot at his car after the robbery and accidentally killed the prostitute.  His wife a Church-going friend of the grandfather.  What are the odds; a billion to one?  Yet the film is so thoughtfully considered in execution, and so perfectly cast, Spielmann is able to maintain his naturalistic tone.  And when the robber, at first set upon revenge against the guilt-ridden cop (who’s impotent, something also ‘fixed’ as events play out) has a non-religious epiphany, Spielmann, with his outstanding production team, brings off a magical effect of redemption entirely in visual terms using nothing but a lake and a sudden rippling breeze.  An astonishing moment.*

SCREWY THOGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *If you want to see what Paul Schrader is unable to pull off as a filmmaker, compare this 'privileged moment' to anything in his much-acclaimed FIRST REFORMED/’17. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/02/first-reformed-2017.html

AKA (2023)

First-rate actioner a la Français, with Alban Lenoir, a leading man with the physical chops to sell the mayhem, the literary chops to co-write the script and the acting chops to walk us thru modern twists reminiscent of classic ‘70s-style paranoid thrillers lurking around every corner.*  Morgan S. Dalibert, Lenoir‘s writing partner, stepping up from cinematographer to direct, can’t always keep the moves and countermoves straight, but the main story comes thru so the big set pieces are readable, even believable, with contact violence generating plenty of gunplay, fury & bloodshed alongside some witty ‘noises off’ staging techniques at critical moments.  (Somewhere, Blake Edwards is smiling.)  The plot gets rolling with the usual Mid-East backed terrorist attack (though this may not be quite what it seems), before special agent Lenoir is assigned to go undercover as bodyguard/henchman to an organized crime syndicate who may be somehow involved.  He finds little peace there, what with rival gangs fighting over pole dancers at the strip club, and bags of loot stolen from the latest bank robbery.  Lots of info for Lenoir to leak or ‘tap’ to his superiors.  But there’s a catch to his success, he’s fallen for a family member.  Not, as you might expect, for the unhappy wife or the rebellious teenage daughter.  Nope, he’s made an instant pal of the young son, an attention deprived, undersized 10-yr-old whose mother has no time for him and a father who knows this kid ain’t his.   So, when that rival gang kidnaps the boy, Lenoir goes rogue on his own secret assignment, discovering some truths about the mob, his government bosses as well as the terrorists.  Standout perfs all ‘round, with fast moving shootouts and hand-to-hand combat that makes more sense (and uses less CGI) than you often get in these things.  Good stuff in here, especially M. Lenoir who has the bod to make you believe he could pull it off even if cameras weren't rolling.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  In the biz for two decades, now 43, Lenoir won a Lumiere award as Most Promising New Actor as recently as 2016.  Seen Stateside in supporting roles (TAKEN /’08), he’s like the missing link between Chris Pratt & Matt Damon.  Have his other starring films been released over here?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *In the ‘70s, producer/directors like Sydney Pollack & Alan J. Pakula were masters at keeping these conspiracy complications straight in their paranoid thrillers.  Not because they had the natural visual flair to pull it off, but because they didn’t.   Laying it all out piece-by-piece to not leave anyone (including themselves) behind; paradoxically facilitated by their lack of facility.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Luc Besson’s classic THE PROFESSIONAL/’94 a likely influence.

THE OMEGA MAN (1971)

You can see what attracted Charlton Heston to this Richard Matheson novel (filmed with Vincent Price as LAST MAN ON EARTH/’64*; again with Will Smith under original title I AM LEGEND/’07).  Its post-plague dystopian Earth lets Heston repeat his Last Man Standing from PLANET OF THE APES/’68, here a vaccine-hunting scientist; a mutant race give chase like the Apes in APES; a commune of mildly infected survivors need rescuing like APES’ slaves; even a ‘wild girl’ for a roll in the hay.  And mirroring the timeless rural East Coast of APES; near-future urban West Coast.  But what chance does this have to work when every element has been downgraded: director, script, cast, score, lensing, budget, even the mutant makeup disappoints.  (Those Ape prosthetics look primitive now, but at the time they were startling enough to win a LIFE Magazine cover.)  Zoom-happy tv director Boris Sagal seems unable to shake cinematographer Russell Metty into his former talented self, so we’re stuck with crappy ‘60s Universal house-style even though it’s a Warners film.  The Ron Rainer score might work better as a cut on a Tijuana Brass L.P.  Lead villain Anthony Zerbe has a Peter Sellers vibe, and a ‘daring’ interracial smooch between Chuck & Rosalind Cash proves less interesting than her remarkable Afro.  One of those don’t sit behind her classics.  All while consumerism runs amuck in a deserted downtown that’s well stocked with everything except irony.  A real missed opportunity for satire or drama.  A sentiment that, judging by his own published diaries (READ ALL ABOUT IT: THE ACTOR’S LIFE), Heston would have seconded.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Many people like the Vincent Price version.  Here, not so much.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/08/last-man-on-earth-1964.html

SATURN 3 (1980)

Acclaimed British novelist/essayist Martin Amis had a spotty record in film.  A mere eight credits, mostly made without his involvement other than the book sale, including well-received current release THE ZONE OF INTEREST/’23.  Rarely mentioned is this first credit, an original screenplay co-written with STAR WARS production designer John Barry, who briefly directed before being replaced by disinterested producer Stanley Donen.*  (Barry had designed two earlier Donen films.)  A typically crass attempt by Lord Lew Grade to climb aboard the STAR WARS bandwagon, the film hasn’t a clue how these things work, casting an incompetent Farrah Fawcett during her brief heyday against aging Kirk Douglas (long past his) as Space Station lovers at some food & mineral mining post.  They’re joined by rogue agent Harvey Keitel (dubbed by Roy Dotrice, why?) and his evil, indestructible Robot pal, Hector.  Keitel quickly starts moving on Farrah (‘What do you see in that old man?’  Good question.), but our May & September lovebirds manage to fend him off.  On the other hand,  Hector proves harder to stop when he catches Fawcett Fever.  Ludicrous as this all is, the film is actually a fun watch as Barry’s design work is an ultra-shiny treat, especially under the polished camera eye and strikingly grainless lensing of gifted Oscar-winning cinematographer Billy Williams.  You also get to imagine studio exec conferences on whether Douglas should wear pajama bottoms, briefs or just go ‘nekkid’ in bed with Fawcett.  (You know Kirk fought for the bare ass option.)  Meanwhile, composer Elmer Bernstein bumps against Richard Strauss/ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA and the F/X model guys steal the opening shot of STAR WARS.  Some of the model work does look like Revell model plane kits.  You can almost smell the rubber cement.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  We expect Fawcett’s hair to match the famous poster, but what’s with Kirk’s Beach Boys audition wig?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  What if Hector caught Farrah?  Find out in DEMON SEED/’77, a cult item with Julie Christie playing Beauty to an A.I. Beast.  (Also featuring Billy Williams' ultra-polished/grain-free lensing.)   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/07/demon-seed-1977.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Even director Donen, who tended to see the best in all his films, good & bad, called this one shit.

RONIN (1998)

Seriously overcooked car chase film (with intellectual pretensions and major Jean-Pierre Melville issues) sees director John Frankenheimer working hard to erase any memories of his last (Marlon Brando’s infamous ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU remake), but unable to make much sense of what’s basically a tricked up caper pic.*  A gaggle of international experts (robbers, ex-agents, computer whiz, demolition master), all outside the law, wait & plan in a chilly warehouse for Irish Boss Lady to start the mission: Cash Exchanged for Mystery Package.  (Shh . . . it’s a McGuffin!)  But since no one trusts anyone to be who they say they are or play straight, a nighttime handoff becomes a shootout, the shootout a spectacular car chase.  And damned if it doesn’t happen all over again, now in daylight with loads of collateral damage in a tourist-filled city.  Then, more of the same after the finale begins with a sizable lift out of Frankenheimer’s own classic THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE/’63.  Scripter David Mamet, like his characters hiding under an assumed name (Richard Weisz), must have thought he was turning GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS into a caper pic (actually, GGR kinda is a caper pic, no?), but hopefully found more than a McGuffin when he looked in his paycheck envelope.  (Hackdom has its rewards.)  Robert De Niro and Jean Reno are the sympathetic pair in the group, constantly surprised to find their partners have hidden agendas.  But only main villain Jonathan Pryce actually does anything surprising.  And while the CGI-free car chases are truly spectacular, they go on so long they start to feel disconnected from the film, unable to give off the afterglow of the more dramatically tethered classics in BULLITT/’68 or THE FRENCH CONNECTION/’71.  The latter’s unhappy sequel directed by a certain John Frankenheimer.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Sure enough, RONIN a commercial disappointment while MOREAU tanking disastrously but not without interest.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-island-of-dr-moreau-1996.html

ES GESCHAH AM HELLICHTEN TAG / IT HAPPENED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT (1958)

Fascinating, not so much for its grim story on the hunt for a serial killer of little girls than for what it suggests about acceptable limits on murder investigation techniques in post-war Germany. Co-written by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (playwright of THE VISIT) and directed by Ladislao Vajda, the first half is a neat, if unexceptional, police procedural showing step-by-step what happens after tramp/peddler Michel Simon trips over a fresh victim while cutting thru the woods.  Phoning the police as soon as he reaches the next town, his drifter status makes him not a concerned citizen but a likely suspect.  Townspeople & the police think its more likely he reported the crime to cover his own actions.  Only top detective Heinz Rühmann thinks otherwise, but as he’s leaving the force tomorrow . . . well, the courts will follow up.  But then events take a tragic turn and he’s more convinced than ever that the peddler didn’t do it.  Now off the force, his only clue a fantastical drawing the young victim made at school.  He thinks it depicts the scene of the crime and the murderer.  But how to decipher her clues?  So far, so good.  But here the film becomes sehr Deutsch, with our heroic detective spending half a year narrowing the crime scene area and finding a likely young girl to ‘bait’ a trap for the real killer.  Naturally, once he spots an 8-yr-old who’s just the type, he lies his way into putting her in harms way without letting the girl's mother in on the mission.  Sure, he's obsessed, but are we being asked to applaud his irresponsibility?  Very weird.  So too Gert Fröbe, who conveniently shows up as needed by the plot to play the sicko childlike suspect.  Copying Peter Lorre in M/’31; or is it just untranslatable Bavarian humor?

DOUBLE-BILL: Not seen here but apparently remade as a slow/mo art film in TWILIGHT/’90.  That might work.

1945 (2017)

A Hungarian village a few months after WWII; the sort of place where interpersonal eruptions ricochet in a town where you could divide six degrees of separation by three.  Today is wedding day for the mayor’s son, nearly everyone’s invited, even the bride’s former lover, a hunky farm manager she seems to prefer to the milquetoast groom.  Then there’s the mayor’s wife, addicted to some narcotic, but self-dosing so she can get thru the ceremony.  That’s assuming the tailor gets the alterations done on time and the brandy holds out thru the reception.  Add on another half-dozen little scenarios, well observed and neatly captured by director Ferenc Török in handsome, rather formal b&w compositions.  An insular social-system not so far removed from Marcel Pagnol.  (Actually, removed exactly as far as Hungary is from Marseilles.)  But now under threat by alarming news: two strangers in town, observant Jews by the look of them, perhaps father & adult son.  Relatives of the Jewish family taken away during the war?  The family whose house, whose land & whose worldly goods have been generously ‘distributed’ to various parties in town?  Goods they’ll now have to give up, possibly give back.  And what of the ‘official’ documents they signed to legally transfer the properties.  Who forged papers?  Who lied?  Who’s in trouble?  Who needs a drink?  Did those Jews have to come back?  And on wedding day!  It's a fine construct, though something a bit more reckless, a bit more dangerously comic (Gogol-esque?) might have better served these self-serving hypocrites.  And there’s a large hole right in the center since we instantly see why the two men are in town, while the locals, perhaps from panic & guilt, unaccountably miss it.  The problem not that we catch on, but that the villagers don’t.  But points for a fine feel on period detail & character, and for a willingness to show unchanged distrust & discomfort eight decades on.

THE LONG WAIT (1954)

Classy Brit Victor Saville ended his career with, of all things, a set of Mickey Spillane tough-guy adaptations, directing two of four he produced.   He must have regretted not directing I, THE JURY/’53 (http://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/05/i-jury-1953.html), stepping up to helm #2.  And thank goodness he did.  An improvement in every way, a strong film noir in all departments right from the setup as amnesiac Anthony Quinn finds out he’s wanted for a murder he has no memory of.  They’d lock him up if he hadn’t accidentally burned off his fingerprints.  Yikes!  Free to roam around town, Quinn investigates the crime: his old bank teller’s job; the four dishy dames clamoring for him (one an old flame disguised thru plastic surgery); the town’s corrupt officials & businesses; sees collateral damage from a bullet meant for him.  Every twist a new piece of clarity to his still puzzled brain.  Saville orders all the confusion so you follow along, and he hired brilliantly getting Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco to sparingly score the film (that awful theme song not his) and cinematographer Franz Planer, exceptional not only in shades of noir, but also delving into geometric stylings for the daringly sadistic climax as well as finding angles & lighting that positively transform Quinn who never looked so good before or after.  Saville went back to only producing for director Robert Aldrich on the much admired KISS ME DEADLY/’55, then returning as producer/director for last in the series MY GUN IS QUICK/’57 (not seen here).  If it’s half as good as this, it’s an easy DOUBLE-BILL.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Lots of bad Public Domain copies around on this one.  And since the crisp grain & texture of Planer’s cinematography is so much of the story, check around.  Studio Canal has a fine restored edition available.

DANCE, GIRL, DANCE (1940)

As the sole female director making mainstream Hollywood fare during the silent-to-sound transition, then more sporadically thru 1943, while openly living in a lesbian relationship (and looking the part in suits, close-cropped hair & a mannish aura), feminist critics & academics have inevitably burdened Dorothy Arzner with cultural & political baggage her small total of films can’t support.  Especially as the bulk of her available films were made during the Early Talkie era, adding obstacles in pace & technique for modern audiences on both progressive & retrograde elements in her work.  It makes this penultimate film (Arzner picking up from dropped director Roy Del Ruth after two weeks) a good starting point.*  And it doesn’t hurt that it’s also her most sheerly entertaining, a more than slightly daffy love triangle (make that love pentagon) among the modern ballet set with serious student Maureen O’Hara and knockout Lucille Ball, a more pop oriented type, rivals hunting up gigs & guys.  Ergo nearly divorced playboy Louis Hayward, passed back & forth while ex-wife Virginia Fields waits in the wings.  Plus, dance impresario Ralph Bellamy as backup for O’Hara.  The plotting is frankly bonkers, but the playing & audacity, especially by the fabulous Ms. Ball, is sublime.  Three more women come into play (dance roommate Mary Carlisle, lost in the shuffle; secretary Katherine Alexander, always a matchmaker never a bride; and dance mistress Maria Ouspenskaya as martyr) before everything gets sorted out in Night Court where wise male judge Walter Abel untangles Lucy from Maureen after their on-stage cat-fight (don’t ask).  All this plus a bit of modern ballet and two bravura strip routines for Ball with a humiliated O’Hara en pointe in-between.  Off the charts entertaining; off the map insane.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Or perhaps start with Arzner’s F. Scott Fitzgerald-like MERRILY WE GO TO HELL/’32.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/01/merrily-we-go-to-hell-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: WARNING: BlackFace couple in the big ballet number.

THE TOBACCONIST / DER TRAFIKANT (2018)

Though not without unforced errors (in the lighter first half, co-writer/director Nikolaus Leytner doesn’t trust us enough not to turn obvious; at the end he trusts too much and can be cryptic), this period piece (late-‘30s Austria as the Nazi Anschluss stiffens from rumor to reality) balances charm & tragedy in echt Viennese style.  Handsome country lad Simon Morzé, new to town (new to everything), comes to apprentice tobacconist/philosopher/WWI vet Johannes Krisch; gruff, quizzical, a bit of a bore/a bit of a cliché, but a good man to work for.  And what luck for an over-imaginative adolescent struggling with love, death & hormonal urges that Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz), gruff, quizzical, a bit of a bore/a bit of a cliché, but a good man to talk to, is a regular customer you can tell your daydreams & nightmares to.  Leytner using the store’s Havana cigars to get this unlikely friendship going in a natural manner; and in general laying on just the right amount of period detail to set the scene but not get in the way as Freud’s practice drops off due to rising anti-Semitism while the boy’s first love with a cabaret girl from Bohemia waxes, wanes & hits the political wall of popular fascism gone quotidian.  Leytner showing particular facility in handling (and undercutting) the maturing boy’s ultra-realistic daydreams and dramatically-charged/color-constricted nightmares.  The latter with something of the late-‘German’ romantic style of Swiss artist Arnold (‘Isle of the Dead’) Böcklin.  In spite of some lapses, the film unexpectedly fine.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  Bruno Ganz and Alec Guinness may not have a lot in common as actors (Ganz as solid as Guinness is chameleon-slippery), yet they're the only men to have played both Freud and Adolf Hitler in lead roles.  (Guinness plays Freud against modern psychiatrist Dudley Moore in LOVESICK/’83.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/hitler-last-ten-days-1973.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/downfall-2005.html

CRATER (2023)

Theatrical or Streaming?  Not a hard call for movie execs on this Disney Dystopia teenage space adventure.  (A mid-50s budget may sound skimpy for CGI-infected Sci-Fi, but with no-name leads, not so cheap.)  Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez/writer John Griffin, effectively in feature debuts, imagine Earth, a few centuries on, as pretty much toast, while an active Lunar Colony mines fuel for trips to the New World of Planet Omega.  Only a select few qualify, but kids of miners who died on the job win the coveted ‘E-ticket.’   That’s the setup for five teen pals who plan a last wild wknd* before their orphaned pal begins the 75-yr suspended animation trip they’ll never take.  So, naturally with a meteor shower forecast, they steal a Moon Rover to head out for lunar fun & games: low-gravity baseball with rocks  (we laugh at air leaks!); gas-boosted bungee cord blastoffs (boing; you’re in outer space); oxygen tank wasting gags; trashing the interior of the ‘model home’ that saved you with supplies; bury an ash capsule of Dad’s remains next to the ash capsule of Mom (heck, all caring fathers send their teenage sons on sentimental suicide missions, right?); et al.  A MasterClass on Teenage Irresponsibility.  Maybe if the kids weren’t meant to remind us of better past teen actors (the girl/Emma Watson; the pretty boy/Leo DiCaprio; the scaredy-cat Asian/Ke Huy Quan; the two Black teens more original as twenty/thirty years ago they likely wouldn’t have been cast . . . Progress!).  Unimaginative visually as it is in character, the film’s a tear-begging cheat.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *A good bet THE GOONIES/’85 was an early fave of Alvarez & Griffin.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-goonies-1985.html

THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE / TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN (2017)

Six years after the particularly well received LE HAVRE/’11, Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismäki returned to features with another droll, yet serious (seriously droll?) and timely immigrant-plight drama, but crucially moving location from France to his homeland.  It’s another parallel track fable, two men who cross paths going thru life-changing experiences.  Locally: Middle-aged Finnish businessman bets all his assets to quit ‘the rag trade’ (and an alcoholic wife) to buy a restaurant, a remarkably successful establishment considering its drab look & even drabber Finnish cuisine.  (It just survives a brief Japanese experiment featuring delicacies like pickled herring sushi.)  And from Syria: Youngish refugee, illegally entering the country via coal chute (don’t ask) to navigate bureaucratic mazes and lose his case for asylum (he’s already lost a sister on the way), but escaping to be found by our depressed, but kindly disposed restauranteur.  With signature visual precision & economy, Kaurismäki sprinkles his still, comic, deadpan style like fairy dust o’er all, with little camera movement to fuss up his exquisitely ‘right’ compositions and apt splotches of vivid color.  How he parses between threatening moments of despair or physical violence with sheer grace & wry humor a Finnish mystery as inscrutable as an ‘impossible’ stunt from the Buster Keaton two-reel comic shorts he’s perhaps not so distantly related to.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, LE HAVRE.  OR:  His latest, not seen here, but due in Cannes any moment, FALLEN LEAVES  /  KUOLLEET LEHDET/’23.

BUDAPEST NOIR (2017)

The title is irresistible.  The film not so much.  Vet Hungarian editor Éva Gárdos was near 70 when she jumped to feature directing on this old-school murder mystery, swapping out police or private detectives for a hard-nosed newspaper reporter, joined at the hip by his on-and-off photog gal pal just back from Nazi Germany.  So when a prostitute’s suicide starts looking more like defenestration, and a chain of contacts leads to thugs, madames, a pulchritude portraitist, prominent civil servants & wealthy private citizens, somebody’s got to ask the tough questions . . . and risk getting clobbered.  Hard to miss capturing just the right atmosphere for this type of thing in the backstreets, bridges & architectural gems of Budapest, and the plot twists from the late András Szekér’s novel still have a flavorsome kick to them and even add up logically.  (No small thing in this genre.)  If only the cast didn’t feel so up-to-date; the style so generic; the clothes so off-the-rack.  Leading lady Réka Tenki has real period style in her sweetly asymmetrical face, but everyone else is strictly LAW AND ORDER: BUDAPEST, especially leading man Krisztián Kolovratnik, whose heavy stubble changes in every scene.  Little things like that really matter in such an overworked genre; like Atti Pacsay’s award-winning cool jazz background score that sounds a decade off, more ‘40's/‘50s than ‘30s.  But ignore production gaffes to be rewarded with a third act that’s atypically well-prepared and tidy for the form.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: To see how to do these things for a modern audience, try the Philip Kerr series of Nazi-era Berlin detective novels featuring police detective Bernie Gunther.  The first three now out together as BERLIN NOIR (hmm, catchy title!) and the later books only get better.  Why they’ve not been picked up for film beyond me.

HEAVY METAL (1981)

Yes, the rock music genre is well represented on the soundtrack (along with an Elmer Bernstein score), but this is mainly a series of dystopian sketches from the eponymous magazine, done in ‘80s hallucinatory animation style.  And quite effective, too, though the eight stories tend to merge into one big search for a green orb of power by fighting alpha-males & flying alpha monsters along with a single bare, busty warrior princess type for almost every chapter.  (Just right for the presumed target audience of horny nerds.)  A Canadian production, Ivan Reitman was one of the producers, it’s loaded with SCTV vocal talent, but is largely held together not by narrative drive (that’s all over the place), but by all the violent action, its Space Opera æsthetic, Mayan architectural style, and lesbian leather-bar couture.  Some of the animation looks distressingly rotoscoped, but most of the drawing & effects have a stylish ‘80s period feel, pleasantly nostalgic.  The whole project, in spite of each segment having its own crew, held together by supervising director Gerald Potterton* along with R-rated erotism & ultra-violence.  (How many of the stories feature decapitation?)  Unlike the artsy FANTASTIC PLANET/’73 or some of Ralph Bakshi’s would-be edgy animated features, this one still cool, still fun.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Potterton worked on YELLOW SUBMARINE/’68, but is probably best known not for animation, but for the cross-Canada-by-mini-train comic travelogue, THE RAILRODDER/’65, a miraculous little short with Buster Keaton who more-or-less co-directed.  (As can be seen in the equally essential documentary on its filming: BUSTER RIDES AGAIN/’65.)

I MET MY LOVE AGAIN (1938)

A real curiosity this.  Stage director Joshua Logan had yet to his make mark on B’way when he was called to Hollywood as dialogue director for David Selznick (GARDEN OF ALLAH/’36) and Walter Wanger (HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT/’37).  Hating the experience, he was unexpectedly called back to co-direct (with Arthur Ripley*) Wanger’s wife, Joan Bennett, in this F. Scott Fitzgerald wannabe story of youthful futility, mistimed gestures of love, drift,  boozing & a fatal ‘mock’ duel in Paris; and finally love renewed.  Joan Bennett is the blonde girl in the prologue who runs off on a romantic whim then returns to science professor Henry Fonda as a brunette, now a chastened young widow with bratty child.  Can they make a go of it after ten missing years, especially with that clingy student making a big play for the professor.  It all comes down to a snowy, suicide ride of a climax almost as fatalistic & nutty as Wanger’s previous film, HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT.  That film had director Frank Borzage bringing his signature romantic fatalism; this one has Logan & Ripley.  A vacuum producer Wanger noted, calling in George Cukor (way too late) as a third director.  Still, fun watching Bennett ignore continuity from one scene to another as she tests various shades of brown hair.  (She’d go dark brunette from here on.)  And for some reason there’s an absolute whopper glam shot (it might be a George Hurrell portrait) of college student Tim Holt standing up to challenge Fonda in his science class.  Why Mohr went to such trouble is a mystery.*  But then, not much makes sense in this one.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Logan returned to Hollywood after twenty years, now a big shot B’way success.  He never did get the hang of moviemaking.  While Ripley, like Logan with only a handful of features made something of a cult item in THE CHASE/’46 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-chase-1946.html), from a Cornell Woolrich story.  Oddly, with Tim Holt’s dad, Jack Holt in a major supporting role.  OR: As mentioned, HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/hisory-is-made-at-night-1937.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Did Orson Welles remember this shot when he cast Holt in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS?

THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE (1956)

Better than decent Disney live-action historical works off the same Civil War incident Buster Keaton used for THE GENERAL/’26; here played straight and largely from a Northern P.O.V.*  Fess Parker, at the height of his Davy Crockett coonskin popularity, brings his cut-rate Gregory Peck manners along as he leads a raiding party of Northerners-in-mufti across the border to Marietta, GA with a plan to steal Jeffrey Hunter’s ammo-loaded train (that’s ‘The General’) and head back North.  That puts Jeffrey Hunter in the Buster Keaton spot.  Sounds a little weird even without slapstick trimmings.  Episodic tv director Francis D. Lyon works cleanly, but is held back by a lack of style (or rather 1950s Disney house-style), unvaried pacing and limited action chops.  And his ‘just the facts, Ma’am’ approach reduces characters to lowest-common-denominator motivation, dumbed-down for textbook history comprehension.  But the story remains compelling enough to keep us involved even with Junior High audio-visual department æsthetics that keep the lid on during a prison breakout sequence that ought to be the film’s climax.  And everything suffers whenever Disney house composer Paul J. Smith pours on those generic background music cues.  Look fast for a nice touch from engineer Slim Pickens, cookin’ off strips of bacon on the furnace door.  More detail & observations like that could have made this something special.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Like a Mathew Brady battlefield photo come to life (but with laughs!), good editions of THE GENERAL can be found on Lobster Films; KINO and EUREKA.  CHASE probably more fun to watch if you see the Keaton film first.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *It’s based on a book by conspirator William Pittenger whose estate moved to stop production on THE GENERAL back in ‘26.  But with three separate survivor memoirs as well as Public Domain historic records the suit never had a chance.  More info in James Curtis’s stunning new bio: BUSTER KEATON: A Filmmaker’s Life which also clears up a lot of misinformation on THE GENERAL, including it’s ultimate box-office performance.

LOS DÍAS DE LA BALLENA / DAYS OF THE WHALE (2019)

Film-fest oriented pic from Medellin, Colombia sees debuting writer/director Catalina Arroyave Restrepo offering student-level execution to a workable, if somewhat hackneyed dramatic situation: Twenty-something graffiti artist couple trying to move past the crime elements & drug scene of their student days even as past friends continue in ‘the trade.’  About halfway thru, the character drama finds a plot of sorts when one of their recently primed ‘wall canvases,’ located near a Youth Center they frequent, is vandalized with a threatening slogan aimed at them: ‘Snitches Get Stitches.’   Debating whether or not to go on with what is suddenly a dangerous art statement, the possibility of a beating, a murder and a magnificent painting of a whale tests their will.  You can see how this is meant to work, and there’s a refreshing new angle in seeing it play out in a middle-class milieu (not a favela in sight), but Restrepo gets little but standard responses out of her young cast, and her jerky handheld style grows progressively alienating.  Disappointing.

PROMISE AT DAWN / LA PROMESSE DE L’AUBE (2017)

Suffocating, exhausting, overbearing, insufferable, the kind of micromanaged Jewish ‘Smotherlove’ to drive a son (or daughter) to the psychiatrist’s couch.  Or, as in the case of French writer Romain Gary, to the typewriter (two Goncourt Prizes) and flyboy heroics in WWII.  Gary’s true tall tale/auto-bio was filmed before, Jules Dassin with an impossibly miscast Melina Mercouri in 1970, but Charlotte Gainsbourg’s drudge-with-a-dream Mother Courage is more within the margin of terror, unafraid to make this single Mom remarkable and horrific.  As the much put-upon son attempting to live up to maman’s absurd dreams of la gloire (the two out of Russia thru Poland), Pierre Niney, with his sleek Art Deco Jewish aspect, makes this literary fall-guy an almost believable human being.*  Co-writer/director Eric Barbier relies too heavily on consistent arrhythmic editing and staccato attack, like a case of the hiccups you can’t get rid of, but the story gains interest (and laughs) as one whopper follows another in Gary’s progress thru love, war, equal-opportunity anti-Semitism & guilty son syndrome.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   Awarded for the unfortunate YVES SAINT LAURENT/’14, Niney is just as good in FRANTZ/’17, a far better work.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/yves-saint-laurent-2014.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/09/frantz-2016.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *If anyone in French film is contemplating a George Gershwin bio-pic, Niney’s your man.

TONI (1935)

Long a missing piece of the Jean Renoir puzzle (between his MADAME BOVARY/’34 misfire and the great late-‘30s run starting with THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE/’36), TONI wasn’t properly restored till 2019.  (Criterion release 2020.)  But well worth the wait as this unique work sees Renoir forego Paris for Southern Province and 100% on-location working-class drama of foreign quarry workers and the local women they find readily available in a male depleted post-WWI France.  Purportedly a true crime story, one of those doomed love quadrangles with loyal Marie who has rooms to rent; flirtatious Josefa who likes having a spare man on the side; immigrant Italian laborer Toni moving from one to the other; and French foreman Max Dalban, villain in the piece, all four helpless in the face of malleable affection & unreturned longing.  Registered in plain, naturistic style by Renoir (nephew Pierre in his first major cinematography assignment), with wonderful supporting turns from carefree lover Andrex and sympathetic pal Michel Kovachevitch.  The film, oft cited as proto-Neo-Realism or prescient Nouveau Vague in style, does have some elements that lean that way.  But with it’s neatly rhymed narrative momentum, largely professional actors in leading roles, and sense of high dramatic determinism among the working-class, it’s just as close (if not closer) to operatic verismo (think CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA or LOUISE) than it is to Rossellini or De Sica.  And, if not without a few awkward beats (after its unsuccessful first-run the film was edited down by about three reels), it’s still memorable stuff, still echt Renoir.

DOUBLE-BILL: Charles Blavette (Toni) again worked with Renoir in 1959's PICNIC ON THE GRASS.  Though the Renoir film that best matches with TONI is his four-reel masterpiece A DAY IN THE COUNTRY/’46.

I, THE JURY (1953)

Bestsellers back in the day, surely the old Mickey Spillane potboilers with detective Mike Hammer couldn’t have been this bad.  On page delivering an edgy ‘50s thrill, presumably for their frank sex & violence, this initial Spillane film is pure amateurville.  (Make that puerile amateurville; so bad, you wonder if they’re ‘kidding on the square' or merely incompetent.)  Laughably written & ineptly directed by episodic tv man Harry Essex, this independent production wastes such notable talent as producer Victor Saville, composer Franz Waxman & lenser John Alton on a loopy tale of murder & revenge as Mike looks to uncover the killer of his one-armed pal.  Shot in 3D, but released ‘flat’ which perhaps explains the OTT acting from vets like Hammer’s boss Preston Foster as well as debuting lead Biff Eliot, maxi-intense, hopelessly over-parted.  Perhaps a film festival 3D presentation would perk things all the way up to campy fun.  Nah.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Two reasons to watch: The incredible interior where Hammer has his office, the Bradbury Building (those elevators!).  The building still stands, still seen on screen, now with close to 100 appearances.  Reason #2 below . . . 

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The second reason to watch is to better appreciate just how well THE BAND WAGON/”53 caught Spillane’s self-parodistic voice in the Vincente Minnelli/Michael Kidd ‘Girl Hunt’ Ballet with Fred Astaire & Cyd Charisse.  The great musical released exactly one week before JURY came out.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-band-wagon-1953.html

THE WINDERMERE CHILDREN (2020)

Lots of smart creative decisions aren’t quite enough to take this post-Holocaust docu-drama beyond acceptable/well-intentioned.  Fact-based, if highly compressed (so much left on the table), it follows 300 young Concentration Camp survivors as they struggle thru a program designed to help them jumpstart (rather than reclaim) lives thru a recovery program in rural England.  Lots of early missteps, beginning with the camp itself which for all intents & purposes comes across to the victims as a benevolent version of the hell holes they’ve come from.  But once the bumps get sorted out (and the unlimited bread-basket explained), other problems pop up as the kids, especially the older boys start to ‘act out’ and rebel in typical teenage fashion.  Bad behavior, but psychologically healthy; a sign of normalcy, if only the filmmakers weren’t afraid of losing sympathy by making these sorts of scenes as uncomfortable as they need to be.  On the other hand, having the younger children, as well as the older girls, largely drop out of the picture to focus on the young men over the four months of rehabilitation, may lose complexity, but gains in restraining soft-hearted (or is it soft-headed?) sentimentality.  (No mournful cellos playing like it's Yom Kippur service on the soundtrack.)  And it does build to an honest emotional coda when some of the actual boys, now old man, are juxtaposed with their youthful selves.  Maybe this tv movie just needed more running time (a lot more) to do the story justice.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Displaced WWII children in THE SEARCH/’48 (real ones, BTW) were the focus of professional breakouts for director Fred Zinnemann and actor Montgomery Clift.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-search-1948.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Director Michael Samuels too often leaves us in the dark . . . literally.  You get the idea, reflecting their dark recent past, but sometimes you simply can’t see what’s going on.

CLUB HAVANNA (1945)

You expect Grade-Z movie whiz Edgar G. Ulmer to pull off shabby, minor-key nihilistic pulp like DETOUR, his classic film noir released just before this.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/09/detour-1945.html)  What you don’t expect on the tiny PRC Poverty Row budgets he worked under is a splashy, nightclub musical noir with multiple storylines interwoven behind six musical acts.  All in just over an hour? That’s the task set in this enterprising genre mash-up covering a cash strapped investor wooing a wealthy old crone; a killer out on bail and a witness/performer who could put him back behind bars (and there’s a hired hitman hanging around to finish the job); a fresh divorcée popping a handful of sleeping pills when the man she’s long loved pulls back; powder room tête-à-têtes between crises; and more!  It’s GRAND HOTEL in a Nightclub, once removed.*  Dopey stuff, but also a fun watch.  Those Latin-rhythmed numbers are darn catchy.  (One dance duo with castanets a bit better than that.)  And Ulmer, who always shined playing around with music, maintains a beat in the vignettes with only a few inadequate actors stinking up the joint.  Though what Margaret Lindsey, hardly used to Poverty Row ways after years at Warners, Columbia & Universal, thought of the experience would be nice to know.  Some of Ulmer’s group staging when the club is full really defies the possibilities of his budget.  The film just the thing if you were a grindhouse operator looking for a short-ish feature to run as a ‘chaser’ on a triple-bill.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The ‘once removed’ cousin between GRAND HOTEL and this would be Warners’ WONDER BAR/’33, an earlier GRAND HOTEL in a Nightclub pic with Kay Francis, Ricardo Cortez, Al Jolson in his best perf, and a humdinger murder to solve.  It would be better known if it didn’t feature the most stupendously offensive, jaw-dropping BlackFace ‘numbo’ ever filmed.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/01/wonder-bar-1933.html