RENDEZ-VOUS (1985)

L’amour fou can explain many an eruptive passion, especially with a cast of emotionally raw, attractive young actors, but it can’t support the dramatic weight co-scripters André Téchiné & Olivier Assayas aim for in this early work. A very young Juliette Binoche is the pretty young thing who is driving men mad, giving it up nightly on stage (in a silly French Blvd farce) and in bed with . . . whomever. (Do French ingenues abandon their clothes so readily in the real world? Or, even more unbelievable, land a cheap five-room Paris flat overnight.) Naturally, when she meets a nice guy (Wadeck Stanczak), she holds off on her favors, but not with his feral roommate, Lambert Wilson, who plays a divinely gifted actor currently debasing himself nightly as an XXX-rated Romeo. The film carefully avoids filling us in on explanatory backstories until Jean-Louis Trintignant’s deep-think theater director makes a belated appearance, which comes too late to parse motivations without making things look foolishly convenient. But by then, Téchiné’s astonishingly fluid, confident technique, and the general erotic charge has grabbed enough of your attention to keep you going.

DOUBLE-BILL: RENDEZ-VOUS nabbed Best Director @ Cannes, but the Téchiné/Assayas writing partnership is more grounded on their follow up pic, THE SCENE OF THE CRIME/’86. In hindsight, SCENE looks like Téchiné’s first masterpiece and was something of a graduation piece for Assayas who then moved on to direct his own stuff.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Those sweeping adagios on the Philippe Sarde soundtrack positively stink of Mahler . . . in a good way.

ASSAULT ON A QUEEN (1966)

Lousy. One of those hip, if basically mediocre caper pics that Frank Sinatra & the Rat Pack liked to make. Except this time, no Rat Pack. They must have seen the script. Frankie’s a down-on-his-luck deep-sea diver who finds a Nazi U-Boat while searching for sunken treasure with slick operator Tony Franciosa & va-va-voom investor Virna Lisi. No gold doubloons in the hatch, but an idea is born. Why not clean her up and use the old sub to rob the Queen Mary while she's out at sea? Say wha'? There’s a little bit of fun toward the end as the mismatched scale between the small sub and the mighty cruise ship make for eye-popping visuals, and a Coast Guard chase peps up in the last reel. But mostly, we teeter between the ludicrous & the desultory. Perhaps because of his tv background, megger Jack Donohue let’s his cast overplay loudly, only Richard Conte shows a bit of nuance as a wised-up engineer. And Sinatra? At 51, and looking every day of it, he seems largely disinterested, barely going thru the motions to keep the brand alive. Except for his hair which is carefully combed forward, like Caesar, the man not the Las Vegas Club.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: ‘Duke’ Ellington turned in a pleasing, lightly swinging score. It doesn’t do much for the movie, but probably made a lovely soundtrack album.

PERFECT STRANGERS / VACATION FROM MARRIAGE (1945)

British writer Clemence Dane retains a modest claim on film-goers as the author of Kate Hepburn’s debut pic, A BILL OF DIVORCE-MENT/’32. But this forgotten wartime romance, produced & directed by Alexander Korda for his London Films outfit, is a charmer that should be better known . It runs an all but foolproof plot about a terribly conventional, grey little married couple (Robert Donat & Deborah Kerr) who are separately transformed by service in the Navy. Now, about to meet for the first time in three years, they are each separately convinced that the ‘New Me’ will be hopelessly incompatible with the ‘Old You.’ The film isn’t exactly filled with surprises, and Korda the director was rarely the equal of Korda the producer, but it’s smoothly held together by a highly ingratiating cast and it doesn’t try to oversell itself. Ann Todd & Roland Culver have a turn as respective wartime romantic roads not taken, and Glynis Johns makes for extra good company as Kerr’s officer pal. And if the story and situations come off a bit undernourished, especially in the third act when the pair need to fall for each other all over again, much of the blame goes to M-G-M who released it Stateside with that crappy new title and a ten minute trim. Alas, that’s the only version available.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: As part of the rejuvenation plot line, Kerr grows confident & even glamorous in the usual on screen fashion . . . lipstick, a well-cut jacket & a new coif. But Donat, who looks haggard & shockingly aged from MR. CHIPS a mere six years ago, really seems to lose ten years right before our eyes. The lenser was the great Georges Perinal, a Korda regular, but the magic is as much Donat as lighting.

GENIUS WITHIN: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (2009)

Some wonderful stock footage (much of it previously unavailable) and fresh, candid interviews with intimates help make this recent documentary of the great, eccentric Canadian pianist stand out from the usual puff bio. (And only one ‘bloviator’ among the Talking Heads.) Right from the start, when Gould made his famous 1955 recording of the Bach Goldberg Variations, the advertising gurus at old Columbia Records knew what they had in him, and turned their strikingly photogenic find into the next young rebel figure. The first on a classical music scene just tapping in to a new generation of LP buyers. (Contact sheets from the recording session ‘fixed’ Gould as an ecstatic/iconic figure as firmly as Pop-portraits of ‘Che’ Guevara or posters of The Doors’ Jim Morrison.) To some extent, Gould’s personal perversities fed off this early success, as hungry publicity hounds highlighted his unusual playing position and his rejection of live concert hall performances. More crucially, loyal friends and a few carefully chosen/cultivated critics enabled troublesome habits. The studio control freak became the working model for life outside the studio, as well. Even his interviews became fully scripted. Of course, none of it would have meant anything without awesome piano chops, and who knows how much of his gift was fed by his eccentricities? The big surprise of the film is what a regular romantic life he led under the radar; the big missing element is any mention of what looks like an extremely well-handled (productive?) case of Asperger’s. (Did his estate block the filmmakers from even bringing up the term?)

DOUBLE-BILL: François Girard’s arty take on the Gould legend, THIRTY-TWO SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD/’93 (with Colm Feore playing the pianist) comes close to getting in touch with the man. And is certainly better than Girard’s stinkeroo art-house hit, THE RED VIOLIN/’98.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The film gives a lot of space to a famous difference of opinion between piano soloist Gould & conductor Leonard Bernstein on the Brahms First Piano Concerto. Lenny couldn’t let the good folks of Carnegie Hall think the lethargic tempos were his idea, so he stops to give ‘credit’ to Gould. Yet, two decades on, recording the piece with Krystian Zimerman, Lenny’s timings have grown remarkably close to those old indefensible tempi. 25:48; 13:45; 13:47 with Gould. 24:39; 16:28 (!); 12:59 with Zimerman. Here’s timings for the classic Artur Rubinstein/Fritz Reiner recording of 1954 - 21:32; 13:15; 11:19. Ah, much better.

KING OF KINGS (1961)

Nicholas Ray’s epic try at a Life of Jesus has its defenders (his uneven career inspires more than the normal amount of back-bending critical spin from Academics & auteurists), but the film never lives up to its opening reel promise. There, the film finds a storybook look and unfussy style, played out with minimal dialogue supported by Orson Welles’ pseudo-biblical narration which guides us along the familiar story in a comforting manner. Unfortunately, once Jesus & his gang grow up, Ray can’t locate the right tone or spirit. Some of the blame goes to the film’s hair stylist who puts a ‘page boy’ on Judas, 'perms' the Apostles and over-emphasizes Jeffrey Hunter’s Jesus-of-Hallmark look. But the main problem comes from Philip Yordan’s script which posits Barabbas as a sort of fighting counterweight to Jesus’s non-violent revolutionary. (Think Malcolm X vs Martin Luther King, Jr.) It’s a thought-provoking idea that doesn’t pan out, at least, not in this film. And it forces Ray to skimp on crucial scenes so we can better sympathize with Rip Torn’s conflicted Judas. The best perfs come from Siobhan McKenna’s Mary with her great froggy Irish cadence and, surprisingly, Hurd Hatfield’s ultra-slick Pontius Pilate, forever trying to wheedle his way out of things. The current DVD restoration does proud by lensers Franz Planer & Milton Krasner, but the sound-synch is fractionally off. It’s only two or three frames, but maddening. Poor composer Miklos Rozsa went straight from the Christian pageantry of BEN-HUR/’59 to this. (And QUO VADIS/’51 before that.) No wonder he works his main theme so hard over a grueling three-hours. But what a theme!

DOUBLE-BILL: Of course, there’s DeMille’s silent version from 1927, still quite a show in the fine 2-disk Criterion edition. But why not try Nicholas Ray’s much-maligned follow up pic, 55 DAYS AT PEKING/’63? He never recovered from this budget busting mega-flop, but it’s tremendous stuff in its slightly ludicrous way.

THE DARK CORNER (1946)

Exceptional (and exceptionally dark) film noir from director Henry Hathaway who smartly misdirects us thru its well-worn plot , but can’t quite make up for pallid leading man Mark Stevens. Everybody else is a knock-out, starting with Clifton Webb, who follows up on his breakout role in LAURA/’44 with another effete type who’s obsessed with a younger girl, this time his wife. Add in her opportunistic lover boy (a deliciously slimy Kurt Kreuger); a couple of Private Dicks chasing each other (Stevens and William Bendix wearing an out-of-season white suit); and Stevens’ smart, loyal secretary (Lucille Ball in smashing form). Plus, there's New York’s swankiest art gallery with Vermeer’s Girl With Pearl Earring in the main room and a late Rembrandt self-portrait on a stair wall! No wonder we don’t see what’s coming.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hathaway would top this with his next noir, KISS OF DEATH/’47, the one that made a star out of Richard Widmark’s giggling psychopath.

THE VERDICT (1946)

Don Siegel moved up from the Warners montage department to director on this neatly plotted whodunit, a Victorian-set programmer with plenty of fog to hide any inappropriate street sets. And it’s good fun until it loses its footing in a rushed third act. Sydney Greenstreet gets a rare lead as the Scotland Yard superintendent who’s duped by a rival (George Coulouris) and winds up sending an innocent man to the gallows. But when a new, unsolvable murder stumps his replacement, Greenstreet is pulled out of forced retirement to help on the new investigation, much to the amusement of his artist friend, Peter Lorre who lives in the same house as the murder victim and may even be the killer. With its modest budget, there’s less scenery than scenery-chewing, Siegel wisely lets his all-supporting cast munch away. Too bad he can’t so easily finesse the big reveal at the end. Especially, after Jack Warner forced him to shoot some ‘improvements’ that give up the culprit two reels earlier than originally planned.

DOUBLE-BILL: Lorre & Greenstreet are always a treat to watch together, and even better in Jean Negulesco’s THREE STRANGERS/’46 released just before this one.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Composer Frederick Hollander comes up with a Music Hall number that sounds a bit out of place here, but just right for his regular muse, Marlene Dietrich.

VOSHOZHDENIYE / THE ASCENT (1977)

This fiercely imagined WWII story was the last work of Larisa Shepitko (a rare female in the ranks of Russian directors) who died in a car accident two years later at the age of 41. The story opens in snow-blown terrain as a mixed unit of soldiers, partisans & civilians flee on foot from the superior German military machine. Desperate for supplies (food, weapons & ammo, replacements), two men peel off to forage in the area. Their first stop, a farm one of them knows, is burnt out & deserted, and the next two dwellings they come across have little to offer in supplies, comfort or even moral support. The few people they meet are terrified of being caught helping them. This first half of the film is thrilling stuff, beautifully handled and shot, using the old Academy ratio (1.33:1), in superbly detailed b&w. But after the weaker of the two men shoots a German soldier, they find themselves targeted and trapped in the barn of one of their reluctant protectors. Here, the film abruptly shifts from the simplicity of survival tactics during a winter war to the mind games played by prisoners and their masters. We watch as the weak turn strong; the strong turn weak; and terse talk grows windy & philosophical, with nuance rendered large, Ruskie style. We’re out of the tundra and off to the Moscow Art Players. On their own, each works dramatically, though only the first half brings out something special in Shepitko, including unusually fine hand-held camera stuff. Once the Germans round up everyone who had contact with the foraging soldiers, the smell of Soviet political victimization seeps in, along with some old-fashioned declamatory acting and even the perennial tear-stained patriotic youth.

THE 27TH DAY (1957)

This little Sci-Fi pic has a neat premise: An alien force from a dying planet ‘recruits’ five humans from various countries (USA; England; China; Germany; Russia) and gives each a deadly device capable of annihilating all mankind. Use it against each other, and a brave new world without humans will make a perfect home for the aliens. But hold off for 27 days and the bombs will deactivate. Can these five representatives of Earth’s super-powers just get along, or will Cold War attitudes and political trigger-fingers end life as we know it? Hack director William Asher ( a tv sit-com guy who also made those Beach Party pics) has a decent cast and an acceptable budget to work with, but once the five space travelers return to earth, the film goes into a dramatic coma. Only the stubbornly peaceful Russian soldier gets a bit of action, but that’s about it. Too bad, it’s just about a perfect set up for a Peter Sellers multi-role comedy, more THE MOUSE THAT ROARED/59 than DR. STRANGELOVE/’64.* But it’s fun just thinking about him playing all five earthling emissaries.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Though very popular in its day, MOUSE now looks tame & obvious. STRANGELOVE is, of course, a very great film; scary, funny, appalling, precise, with Sellers in brilliant form in three roles. He’d planned on four, but ankled on the bombardier which went to Slim Pickens.