SOUTH PACIFIC (1958)

The main takeaway from this film adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s stage musical isn’t the songs, plot or perfs, but the infamous washes of color that tint the screen in various hues whenever a song threatens.  Joshua Logan, director on B’way & film, spent pages of his auto-bio apologizing.  Initially filmed both with and without the effect, Logan was mistakenly led to believe the lab could easily remove it in post-production.  (Latterly, the film has appeared in video formats with various levels of reduced filtering.)  Seen now, distanced from the WWII story, the ‘49 stage show and the late ‘50s film, it’s less distracting, an attempt to heighten stylization not so different than the use of music itself.  The sad truth is, this off-putting technique is just about the least of the film’s problems.  Those begin with Logan’s ineptitude as filmmaker.  A ‘40s & ‘50s legend on B’way, he never developed a feel for film.  Continuing with construction and peaking with what amounts to a second-choice/road company cast.  As a naively provincial, slightly racist nurse from Little Rock, stationed in an erotically charged Pacific Isle, Mitzi Gaynor is her usual perky self; voice & personality missing essential vocal undertones.  (Doris Day and Shirley MacLaine both unavailable?)  As the older French exile with a violent past, racially mixed-family and hopes of marriage, Rossano Brazzi is as Italian as Ezio Pinza was in the original stage production.  Pinza, a basso contante for the ages over three decades before ‘crossing’ to B’way, seemingly made an Italian-born Frenchman de rigeur as Emile de Becque.  Why not a French Frenchman?  Mais qui?  Charles Boyer fine, but a decade too old.  Yves Montand perfect (and with a voice), but too young.  Jean Marais?  As the young marine given a taste of island ecstacy before taking on a near suicidal mission, John Kerr looks the part, but sings with another’s voice.  And the love match basically has the virginal girl’s mother pimping her.  A bit icky.  (BTW, that’s Juanita Hall as Mom/Bloody Mary.  Dubbed in spite of doing the role on stage and singing again (stage & film) in R&H’s FLOWER DRUM SONG.  So many weird decisions.  The film still made a shitload of cash.  Hard to kill anything with that score.  On stage, they’re positively profligate with it, tossing out SOME ENCHANTED EVENING a mere ten minutes after the curtain rises.  Here, forty awkward minutes of beefcake tomfoolery and exposition on the beach before we get there.  To the film’s credit, a sequence of three character songs after the amateur Navy stage show (hometown blues for Gaynor & Kerr; anti-racist screed for Kerr, de Becque’s regretful solo ‘This Nearly Was Mine,’ painfully cut to half-length) show how this thing could have worked in spite of stiff megging.  (Check out an early office scene where Kerr meets his superiors to see just how bad Logan could be.  Or his use of matte paintings & cycloramas for long shots of forbidden island Bali Hai.  Sheesh!)  Logan’s next musical adaptation (FANNY/’61) dropped all the songs.  CAMELOT nearly bankrupted Warner Bros before PAINT YOUR WAGON/’69 tanked Stateside,  only to make pots of dough in Europe.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/06/fanny-1961.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/11/camelot-1967.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/paint-your-wagon-1969.html

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Best R&H film adaptations came first (OKLAHOMA!) and last (THE SOUND OF MUSIC).  Most in need of a redo: CAROUSEL.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/oklahoma-1955.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-sound-of-music-1965.html

UNFORGETTABLE (1996)

Instantly players in the ‘80s/’90s Neo-Noir Revival when THE LAST SEDUCTION/’94 came out, director John Dahl and sultry star Linda Fiorentino wound up being bit players after this second collaboration.  Dahl, at least, active to this day (mostly cable & streaming); Fiorentino, all but thru in six years.  Agent/manager negligence?  Difficult to work with?  On the ‘wrong’ side of forty?  Hard to guess from this meager paranormal thriller that sees Ray Liotta’s forensic doc, a long-grieving widower blamed for his wife’s death, taking unhealthy interest in Fiorentino’s mind-merging experiments.  Injecting himself with untested serum to get inside a witness's brain, he damages his health to seek the truth.  It gives Dahl an excuse for fast-edit psychotronic razzle-dazzle as Liotta shoots up to investigate with Fiorentino playing worrying sidekick/health coach for a guy she inevitably/unaccountably falls for.  A deep dive hardly needed when the real killer is so obvious a five-year-old movie novice could have spotted him in the first reel.  That said, it’s not a bad watch.  Dahl had a talent for these things* and Fiorentino grows on you in this silly role once you get past the horrible bangs that sparsely cover her forehead. 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Though Dahl does have a manner of being slightly ‘off’ with his camera set-ups.  A bit too close, they sometimes ‘read’ as genre parody.

DOUBLE-BILL:  As mentioned, THE LAST SEDUCTION really got people’s attention.   Not seen here since its theatrical release.  Send a COMMENT (see link below) and let us know how it's holding up.  OR:  Fiorentino’s striking debut, hard to the touch/quick to melt, against a very green, very likable Matthew Modine in VISION QUEST/’85.

THE LAST VERMEER (2019)

Dreadful.  Producer Dan Friedkin makes a sorry directing debut on this fact-inspired post-WWII tale of Vermeers, art forgery and Nazi collaborators in Holland.  Here, the accused wartime profiteer is art dealer/master forger Han Van Meegeren, a painter with a grudge against the art critics and authenticators who stopped his career back in the day.  He claims the Vermeer he sold to Hermann Göring for a fabulous sum was his own work, and who could object to a Dutchman pulling a fast one on the Nazi elite?  Profiteering as wartime sabotage.  Except . . . what if it IS a Vermeer masterpiece?  Patriot or Quisling?  Past Jewish resistance member Joseph Piller, now with the American Army, is trying to figure this all out, but the Dutch authorities want to handle it on their own, rush thru a trial, then execute the bastard.  Not a bad true story, but Friedkin’s film is a terrible mess.  The first half loaded with needless exposition, pointless personal backstory and chases thru the streets (nice period detail); the second, mostly courtroom drama and surprise 'reveals' barely worth a Perry Mason episode.  None of the actors have any rapport with anyone else on screen, Claes Bang seems too TALL to connect to anyone as the Army investigator, and in a regrettable first, Guy Pearce is an unwelcome presence on screen, overdoing John Malkovich tics & tricks to play the usual arrogant prick/genius who lives to brag about his unsung genius and annoy with a highly theatrical, uppity attitude.  (Malkovich can pull off these creepy characters; Pearce, hands aflutter, junior league at theatrical posturing.)  With a final twist so inconsequential, it may cause you to inverse gasp. ( A shrug?)  Turns out, some people in Occupied countries sucked up to the Nazi elite big time.  Quelle shock!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  With Alain Delon in peak form, Joseph Losey delivers a devastating look at a similar subject in M. KLEIN/’76.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/monsieur-klein-1976.html

IRON WILL (1994)

Thirty years after his last screen credit, John Michael Hayes (four classic Hitchcocks & top-grossers PEYTON PLACE and THE CARPETBAGGERS among his titles) returned to the big screen a final time with what is essentially a YA/coming-of-age Disney film.  I know . . . but a good YA/coming-of-age Disney film, especially for the ‘90s.  A fictionalized take on a real dog sled run (500 miles from Winnipeg to St. Paul), Mackenzie Astin channels his young James Stewart (check out the hair) as the farmer’s son who has to put dreams of college on ice when dad dies and mom's got to sell the farm.  But the $10,000 racing prize that tempted his late father looks just as good to this 17-year old American kid.  And, after a month’s training with dad’s old Indian partner as mentor, he’s off to take on hardened pros, all seasoned dog-sledding Goliaths.  Not a lot of surprises on how this all turns out, but the journey is sweet, cleanly shot (the bright look a pleasure after so many ‘antiqued’ filming techniques) and exciting enough to grab front page headlines from WWI.  And while tv actor/director Charles Haid (in his sole feature credit) proves no master of tone, he runs a clean story line and was given an unusually strong cast for a Disney pic.  Kevin Spacey as the cynical reporter; David Ogden Stiers as the race sponsor; Brian Cox as the bigshot betting against the kid.  The huskies a wonderful lot (earning more legit tears than the frostbit humans), and someone (Hayes?) had the grand idea of turning the main villain/competitor into Messala (Ben-Hur’s chariot opponent).  Even rousting up dogs with mostly black coats (like Messala’s chariot horse team) while giving Astin a pure white lead dog.  Too bad they didn’t go all in and reuse Miklós Rózsa’s score.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: For a more realistic dog sled run, TOGO/’19.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/11/togo-2019.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In BEN-HUR, there is no score under the big chariot race.  Here, it’s from Joel McNeely, a Disney regular who’s also made some of the best re-recordings of classic Hollywood scores.  Bernard Herrmann’s VERTIGO; a reconstruction of his all but complete unused score for TORN CURTAIN (when will someone dub in the whole Herrmann score on that misbegotten film?), plus an absolute knockout recording of Franz Waxman’s SUNSET BOULEVARD, including the alternate opening sequence set in a morgue.

DEVIL'S KNOT (2013)

The real mystery of this Tru-Crime story (three young boys bike into the woods and never come out) is how it became, as the Tie-In paperbacks used to say, ‘Now a Major Motion Picture!’,  and not a run-of-the-mill DATELINE or 48 HOURS tv investigation.  With A-list Oscar’d stars and everything, still one of those $15 mill pics that lose 40 mill.  Who ‘green-lights’ these things?  Reese Witherspoon is fine, I suppose, as one of the moms fearing the worst; and Colin Firth perhaps thought trying on a Southern accent would make a nice challenge.  (The accent also fine, I suppose.)  But director Atom Egoyan has little feel (or luck) finding humanity in one of those in-bred God-fearin’/Satan-obsessed Southern communities where Church sermons thunder against the morals of ‘youth culture’ and some quickly located teens and layabout 20-somethings call themselves Wiccans and confess to crimes . . . then recant.  Firth, an investigator helping a pair of lawyers working pro bono fights the good fight with scant motivation against a biased judge and a lynch-minded community.  Neither Firth nor film raising much of a sweat in this bright, shiny, antiseptic looking town.  Previously covered in books & documentaries (the events happened in 1993), it’s hard to see the purpose here.*  A sentiment seconded by film distributors who gave this an extremely limited release.  Then, right at the end, what ought to have been the film’s last two acts are inadequately laid out for us on title-cards (four or five paragraphs’ worth of them) filling in a race to justice and a long delayed Get-Out-of-Jail-Free twist (without exoneration/unable to sue the State of Arkansas) that might have made a more interesting film.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *IMDb lists four documentaries:  WEST OF MEMPHIS/’12, PARADISE LOST: THE CHILD MURDERS AT ROBIN HOOD HILLS/‘96, PARADISE LOST 2: REVELATIONS/‘00, and PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY/‘11.  (none seen here)

ROSITA (1923)

First of the major German directors brought to Hollywood, Ernst Lubitsch did a quick pivot from FAUST to much lighter fare when Mary Pickford’s mother discovered Goethe’s play was considerably darker than the Gounod opera.  (She murders her own child!)  Internationally famous at the time for epics that gave hormones to historical figures, here Lubitsch goosed Pickford’s career out of the doldrums.  It worked so well, commercially and critically, Mary later came to resent its success.*  Seen now, without that background, the first two acts, while excitingly staged on gorgeous sets (dynamic masses filling the streets of Old Seville), and knowingly played as Mary’s feral street-singer attracts the wandering eye of libidinous King Holbrook Blinn, it’s pretty lightweight stuff.  Or is until the stakes get raised in a third act largely stolen from TOSCA.  (Less the Puccini opera than LA TOSCA, the Sardou/Sarah Bernhardt play.)  Suddenly with something dramatic to play (King promises a 'mock execution' of a political prisoner to gain Mary’s sexual favors, then secretly reneges on the deal), it all comes spectacularly alive in unusual vertical compositions that place principals in the lower third of the frame to accentuate the massive sets.  (Cinematographer Charles Rosher seamlessly working in matte shots and various optical tricks.)  That’s Raoul Walsh’s kid brother George as the handsome prisoner and Irene Rich as a knowing Queen to put things right for a happy ending Sardou never thought of.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: And paid fast, as MoMA’s restored print (see LINK below) is available to museum members online for free only till Nov. 3rd.  Hopefully, a proper video release will follow.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: *Pickford turned against ROSITA in later years (perhaps having ceded artistic control  made it all too hard to swallow the critical & commercial success) and it became one of the few titles she didn’t bother to maintain properly.  The sole surviving print, from a Russian archive, has been miraculously resurrected and is introduced by MoMA film curator Dave Kehr on this link.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ2iZ9Sofl4

TOLKIEN (2019)

More accurately, YOUNG TOLKIEN.  This exceedingly handsome, cunningly parsed bio-pic on the LORD OF THE RINGS author, didn’t connect with the vast audience for his writings & adaptations.*  Their loss.  The story, laid out in three parts (with some flashbacks & inter-cutting), begins as BOY TOLKIEN, an orphan with a knack for literature & languages on full scholarship at a ritzy boarding school, is toughing it out with wealthier lads till he finds a fellowship of artistic leaning chums.  (All veddy, veddy British.)  Then UNIVERSITY TOLKIEN, finding a voice thru profs/mentors and a late switch in academic studies.  (Why it is always Oxford or Cambridge in these things?)  Lastly, SOLDIER TOLKIEN, learning the worst of life’s journey, and losing half of the fellowship in the trenches at the Battle of Somme.  Returning a wounded vet, now prepared to start a family & the great work.  The usual way of handling these things is to cherry pick incidents that match up with favorite moments, characters or themes found in the books.  Guilty as charged.  But Finnish director Dome Karukosi (his first English-language film?) & writers David Gleeson/Stephen Beresford glance rather than pounce on the eureka moments, while believable period art direction & an exceptional cast (young fellowship members & the well-matched mature replacements) make sure we’re not just looking ahead but involved in the here & now.  Nicholas Hoult, a gravely handsome Tolkien, and intellectual match, fellow orphan Lily Collins (looking like Jean Simmons in profile), supply warmth & charm.  But the standout perf comes from Tolkien’s poet pal, Geoffrey Smith, played with uncanny attention to detail by Anthony Boyle.  As much a stage as film actor, you need to go back to Stephen Rea in MICHAEL COLLINS/’96 or even Ralph Richardson in the 1939 version of THE FOUR FEATHERS to find its like.  Warm and touching without being overly sentimental; something of a bromantic classic that its target audience missed.

DOUBLE-BILL: It’s what DEAD POETS SOCIETY/’89 thinks it’s up to.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A better poster might have helped.  This French one the best of an anodyne lot.

THE CAMERAMAN (1928)

Just as hardcore Marx Bros. fans don’t fully appreciate their initial success moving from Paramount to M-G-M for A NIGHT AT THE OPERA/’35, so too Buster Keaton cultists on his move from independent production to the M-G-M maw.  But while both were progressively tamed into shadows of themselves (Keaton in six years; the Marxes in seven), their wings had yet to be clipped in these first efforts, comic masters tweaked not flattened by the ‘good taste’ and lack of comic sensibility of studio production chief Irving Thalberg.  Particularly so in Keaton’s case where his eccentric comic stamp remains largely intact, if in a conventional boy/girl setting.*  (COLLEGE/’27, his most Harold Lloyd-like vehicle, holds to similar pattern.)   Here, Keaton’s street photographer falls hard for a secretary at M-G-M’s newsreel outlet, trades his tin-type equipment for a pawn-shop motion picture camera and spends the rest of the film following the girl (an excellent Marceline Day) and hunting up newsworthy subjects.  Each episode integrating narrative movement, thrills and laughs.  Exceptions include a break for Buster to play an inning of baseball at Yankee Stadium all by himself, and an improvised one-shot/one-take changing room bit as Buster and film Unit Manager Edward Brophy (spontaneously raised by Buster into a perfect comic foil) try changing into bathing suits in a single tiny cubical.  (Look fast to check out Buster’s amazing gymnastic physique.)  But everything in here is a standout: answering the phone an ingenious technical gag; a large public pool date with Day an entire comic universe for Buster to milk for laughs; a Chinatown Tong War where Buster at work turns a construction scaffolding into a natural camera crane and a ridiculously dangerous slapstick gag.  Helped by the amazing ‘Jocko,’ a capuchin monkey/assistant.*  Keaton makes impossible physical gags look so easy, you hardly realize the level of accomplishment involved.  Much like this intensely funny, sweet-natured, touching and endearing film.  (Look for the Criterion 2020 edition.)

DOUBLE-BILL:  *‘Jocko’ the Monkey fresh off his other classic film role, playing against (who else?) Harold Lloyd in THE KID BROTHER/’27, Lloyd’s most Keatonian (and best) film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *That slight ‘flattening’ makes THE CAMERAMAN a particularly good entry point into Keaton.  (Same for the Marx Bros. and NIGHT AT THE OPERA.)

PLEASANTVILLE (1998)

Undersold as merely clever on release, twenty-five years of ideological & social polarization have only added depth & emotional resonance to writer/director Gary Ross’s political parable about a pair of modern siblings (Tobey Maguire; Reese Witherspoon) sucked into the b&w world of a ‘50s/’60s family tv show.  Alternately amazed, amused & appalled at the happy conformity and absurd common-sense lacunae they find, the film celebrates disruption, knowledge & spontaneous unpredictability against this sterile, all-knowing Garden of Eden world (more trap than paradise), as unbidden longings (sex, maturity, artistic leanings, violence) trigger free-will/anti-Theist eruptions of healthy color, discontent, hormonal desire & complexity.  With an exceptionally well worked out plot structure by Ross that largely avoids a preachy tone.  (Though he does telegraph gags & morals; and it’s a bit unfair to have used LEAVE IT TO BEAVER as the main template since that show holds up so much better than others of its ilk; think OZZIE AND HARRIET, DONNA REED SHOW, FATHER KNOWS BEST, ROOM FOR ONE MORE, et al.)  Technically, the early digital effects all but faultless, seamlessly mixing and exponentially growing into colorful maturity as backlash from b&w conservatives threaten to stop the unstoppable.  With a real Frank Capra climax set in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD’s courtroom to close the narrative circle before everyone gets their just, if open-ended, reward.  Among the plus-perfect cast, Jeff Daniels, as a diner operator coming out of his shell to discover the artist inside, allows Ross to put on a magical mini-art history sequence as heartwarming as anything in here.  Plus Don Knotts as a magical TV Repairman!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Watch b&w cinematography raise good looks to myth as the young Paul Walker, all sharp angles and facial planes, is naturally abstracted past simple realism with color removed from the picture.  Enlarged thru reduction.  It’s why Orson Welles called b&w the actor’s best friend.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Composer Randy Newman grabs a hunk of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s BETWEEN TWO WORLDS/’44 for one of his main themes.  It works perfectly, but is uncredited.