KISMET (1920)

With Otis Skinner as Hajj, the wily Baghdad beggar seeking revenge for himself & marriage for his motherless daughter over the course of one eventful day, Edward Knoblock’s KISMET was for decades one of the great barnstorming companies crisscrossing America’s theaters.  Surprisingly, the play (and for that matter the even more successful musical version in the ‘50s) was never revived on Broadway.  Equally bad for its rep, all four film versions pricey disappointments: this stiff 1920 silent; 1930 in 70mm; 1944 with Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich and TechniColor; 1956 with CinemaScope, Vic Damone (!) and hit tunes deftly lifted from Russian classical composer Borodin.  And while the 1930 spectacular (still with Skinner after two decades in the role) is now lost, the three extant versions make for fascinating comparison as the old play gets progressively defanged of its bloodthirst and nasty tone.  Hajj, beggar/magician in 1920 has mellowed into beggar/poet/philosopher by 1956; his daughter no longer threatened with rape by an enormous half-dressed Black bodyguard; hand amputation for theft not repeated four times for comic effect, but merely serving as a song cue, and so on.  The unbowdlerized 1920 version, directed by Louis J. Gasnier (its surviving physical elements in poor shape) must have been seen as a high ticket item with elaborate trompe-l'œil backdrops and handsome practical sets.  But Gasnier, who shoots & edits in reasonable fashion for the period, gets stuck filming a lot of actors ‘mouthing’ play dialogue and sawing the air with wild hand gesticulation, like a parody of bad silent cinema mime.  Standards in screen naturalism had risen quite a lot by 1920 once Mary Pickford taught everyone how to act with your eyes rather than your hands.  A bit of stage history, but not much of a film.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  You can easily see what this ought to be by screening Douglas Fairbanks’ THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD/’24 and future Hajj Ronald Colman in IF I WERE KING/’38.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/thief-of-bagdad-1924.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/if-i-were-king-1938.html

EMILIA PÉREZ (2024)

Jacques Audiard’s audacious new film is probably more great achievement than great moviemaking, but definitely something you’ll want to see.  Best known Stateside for UN PROPHETE/’09 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/un-prophete-prophet-2009.html), Audiard continues his interest in drug underworld stories with this wild take on a Mexican drug lord running a powerful cartel of vicious enforcers with an unusual request for rising young mob lawyer Zoe Saldana.  Give up her current position and take him on exclusively.  All he wants is to keep his power and assets while he ‘disappears,’ transitioning to female before seamlessly returning to wife, kids, assets and power as the ‘dead man’s‘ cousin.  (Or is it sister?  I got a little confused.  His/her children eventually call her Auntie.)  But wait!  Audiard tells the whole tall tale as an ‘integrated’ Mexicali Musical, tunes ranging from Mariachi to Salsa.  ¿Sounds mad, impossible, si¿  It’s enthralling.  Beautifully detailed, staged and acted, even if half the numbers run together melodically.  Best is a serious lament for all the victims, the ’disappeared,’ which ends with a sort of star-filled sky effect of the grieving faces.  (Very Busby Berkeley!)  Told with the structure & style of a ‘40 film musical, but in a world more like ‘50s TechniColored melodrama.  It makes other pastiche cinemaniacs (like, say, Todd Haynes or Canada’s Guy Maddin) look like pikers.  Karla Sofía Gascón is a revelation as Perez, but everyone is superbly cast.  And should you get a case of the giggles at some inappropriate moment, don’t worry, happens regularly with ‘50s melodrama auteurs Sirk, Ray & Minnelli.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL:  Stylistically, this is the EVITA/’96 of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s dreams.

THE MISSING JUROR (1944)

Bargain-basement Columbia Pictures programmer wastes a dandy idea, not in execution (not bad at all), but in development (what does a pencil cost?).  Worth a look anyhoo as an early Budd Boetticher pic.  Known for his lean ‘50s Westerns with Randolph Scott, Boetticher only had two assists and a formulaic BOSTON BLACKIE behind him at the time.  Here’s that dandy idea: George Macready, wrongly convicted of murdering his wife gets a last-minute reprieve from Death Row when nonconformist reporter Jim Bannon uncovers the real murderer.  Yet just a few months later, jurors who’d voted to hang the former prisoner start turning up dead.  Five out of twelve so far and the police still think it’s coincidence.  Meantime, with the reprieved killer having gone mad in jail, and hanging himself before being burnt to a crisp in a fire, who could be out for revenge?  More importantly, who’s next to go of the seven remaining jurors?  Yikes!  Reporter Bannon gets rehired to interview the surviving jurors, but the hits just keep on coming.  Boetticher does a more than decent job with what he’s given, but the film is all but entirely bare-faced exposition, especially the first half, and Macready, with one of the most distinctive voices in Hollywood history, a poor choice for a double role.  (And that stock library music track also not much help.)  Onward Boetticher, onward!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The hangout for reporters and the paper’s editor is a little joint called Wally’s Grotto, a spot where you can get morning ham & eggs for 30¢ and a drink late at night.  Do places like that exist?  When does poor Wally get to sleep?

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (2024)

Once pundits gain some perspective on the films of 2024, they’re likely to label it as the year Hollywood misread the room.  With FURIOSA as box-office under-performing bellwether for an unheralded line-up of costly misfires (100 to 200 mill budgets) that either flat-out tanked or remain longshots to recoup.  (Warners & Lionsgate hit particularly hard.)  Non-starters include a musical JOKER sequel; the vanity epic MEGALOPOLIS (a sacrificial film fest fave that fell flat); preordained tax write-off ARGYLLE; the current Yuletide dud RED ONE . . . and we’ve hardly scratched the surface.  Of the lot, George Miller’s FURIOSA perhaps the most curious and hard to explain.  This origin story for one-armed warrior Furiosa looked like a safe bet to bring in the FURY ROAD fan base, but was no better received than TOY STORY origin film LIGHTYEAR/’22.  Was it a case of: ‘‘Haven’t we seen this before’ or simply ‘Accept no substitutions.’  Anya Taylor-Joy losing not only an arm but also Charlize Theron’s charisma.  Trying too hard?  That’s the case for a lot of the film's problems, including writer/director Miller, pushing eighty and fighting to prove he’s still got the action chops needed for this post-apocalypse tale of rival survivor clans trying to reach a ravaged earth’s promised land.  It’s telling that the major set piece, a wonder to behold, concentrates on stupendous vehicles and road action rather than on hardly differentiated characters.  At least top-villain Chris Hemsworth sticks out, giving a dastardly go as he tries to locate his inner Laurence Olivier and finds he ain’t got one.  He huffs & puffs & growls.  In general, casting agents ignored for a line-up of aging WWE types.  On the other hand, those who enjoyed FURY ROAD certainly should have a look.  Though they may be disappointed to see that Miller seems to have fallen victim to CGI sweetening where he once disdained its use.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned above, FURY ROAD/’15.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/11/mad-max-fury-road-2015.html

AMBP:  The most farfetched idea in the film?  Furiosa adjusting instantly to one-armed motorcycle driving.

VAAZHAI (2024)

Twelve may be on the young side for coming-of-age/sentimental education tales, especially with sex not much of a factor, but in 1999 young Sivanaindhan (M. Ponvel) must grow up awfully fast after his boyhood adventures with BFF Sekar suddenly end when village tragedy strikes in this fact-based film from Mari Selvaraj.  (NOTE: The film posts the usual fictional disclaimer, but if anything, seems closer to being true than usual for these things.)  We’re in a rural Indian village where plantain & banana groves offer the main employment opportunities, even for Sivanaindhan when he’s not excelling at school and sharing a crush with Sekar for the pretty, young teacher down the hall.  Hitching a ride on her motorcycle perhaps his top life experience till he realizes he’s lost the family cow while out riding.  These sorts of crises and his constant lying to squirm his way out of trouble & backbreaking field work his main goals within the long unchanged societal standards of 1999 India.  1999 but it might as well be decades earlier, giving this story a tone not so far from a Booth Tarkington PENROD book.  (Penrod at times quite the juvenile delinquent!)  But there’s little to prepare us for the real life U-turn from childhood pastorale (even one blinkered by rural poverty) into devastating personal loss.  Writing & directing as if it were his own story (was it, perhaps peripherally?) Selvaraj keeps a bustling tempo to match the resiliency of his leads, switching over to a metallic b&w for heightened intensity in non-linear flash-forwards, yet not ashamed to show us brilliant colors favored for even the humblest of garments.  The jumps in tone & use of Indian ‘pop’ songs give off a distinct vibe you may have to adjust to, but is both effective and affective in a very specific manner.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Mira Nair’s debut, SALAAM BOMBAY/’88 brings us an urban-India childhood experience from nearly the same period.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/02/salaam-bombay-1988.html

PERFECT STRANGERS (1950)

Before hyphenating up from Writer to Writer-Director, Billy Wilder posted this notice on his office door: ‘It’s Not Enough To Be Hungarian; You Must Also Be Talented!’  The gag refers both to the large contingent of Austro-Hungarians working in Hollywood (at a peak during the Nazi Era) and equally to the number of screenplay adaptations taken from Hungarian plays.  More often than not, the freest fantasias on just the barest of outlines.  PERFECT STRANGERS being a late example of the form.  Before moving to Hollywood, Leslie (Ladislprime aus) Bush-Fekete wrote the source play for this one, a courtroom drama about romance springing up between a pair of married jurors sequestered on a scandalous murder case.  Think proto-12 ANGRY MEN, but Co-Ed.  Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur picked up on the main idea in the late ‘30s for Helen Hayes on B’way, calling it LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.  (Hayes married to MacArthur, it’s his only stage work for her.)  After a modest run, it must have been kicked around for a decade on option before hotshot Warner producer Jerry Wald dusted it off for Ginger Rogers (her character married but separated) and Dennis Morgan (him married with kids but unfulfilled) and assigned it to Bretaigne Windust, a major B’way director not really clicking in L.A.  You can see what they were going for; unfortunately, you can also see where it’s going right from the start.  Lots of lazy stereotypes on the jury panel (the Guilty/Not-Guilty split all too obvious); the murder case something of a strawman to the illicit romance.  Perhaps this was all fresher at the time the play opened in ‘39.  Still, the short docu-prologue on how they picked jury pools back in analogue days (rows of filing cabinets; hand counted forms) is like watching a tedious circle in purgatory come to life, and there’s fun in spotting the well-known supporting cast (Thelma Ritter; Paul Ford; Alan (Fred Flintstone) Reed; along with recognizable actors in almost every speaking role), making for a reasonably engaging 90".

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:   Surely by 1950 we should have had a Black or Asian or Latino person on the jury.  (This still true in 1957's 12 ANGRY MEN, come to think of it.)  Excluding background extras, the sole Black person on screen being a silent elevator operator.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Describing the stultifying middle-class routine he dreams of breaking away from, Morgan (quite good here) bemoans the twice-a-week leg of lamb dinners at his mother’s and his mother-in-law’s homes.  Back then, lamb was the cheap meat!  Chicken was pricey.  And you thought ideas about divorce have changed.

ROADBLOCK (1951)

Loaded with potential, this R.K.O. film noir gets off to a great start right from the credits which scroll over a blacktop roadway as we speed ahead.  Most unusual for the period.  Then tops itself with a fake-out prologue you won’t guess before it’s all explained.  Alas, this first half-reel is the best part of the film.  Not a steep drop at first, that smash opening keeps you involved, as does a meet-cute which is more like a meet-dirty, but we’re running on fumes by the third act.  Pity.  Hard to assess blame, it’s a well-constructed story (co-authored by Daniel Mainwaring) following Charles McGraw’s insurance dick falling hard for femme fatale Joan Dixon (adventuress/chiseler) who leaves him for easy money as a mob mistress.  So when McGraw gets assigned to take down the mob guy, he’s more than a little conflicted, especially after Dixon confesses she loves him back, but won’t live on his puny salary.  McGraw so crazy for her, he’s tempted to play both sides of the fence for love and money.  Director Harold Daniels runs hot and cold (some of the office interiors so flat they might be from Jack Webb’s DRAGNET) and Dixon’s moll is chilly when she needs to be warm and vice versa.  But the film keeps coming back to life on plot & character twists.  Try it out with low expectations and be pleasantly surprised . . . or watch it after another tricky McGraw noir (like Richard Fleischer’s THE NARROW MARGIN/’52 https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-narrow-margin-1952.html) and you’re sure to see what’s missing.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  A final car chase, leading up to the titular ROADBLOCK, may be the earliest use in film of the Los Angeles River bed.  What took so long?

LA RAGAZZA CHE SAPEVA TROPPO (THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH) (1963)

Early directing effort for horror specialist Mario Bava, often considered the first step on the road to 'giallo,' the Italian shockers with lurid color, crimes, violence, gore, sex & female nudity (the guys would screw with their pants on).  Perhaps.  Bava, D.P,-ing since the ‘40s and still working in b&w is less assured here than in BLACK SUNDAY/’60 before and the TechniColored BLACK SABBATH/’63 after.*  But here, without color, gratuitous sex & nudity (only a gratuitous beach scene), plus nearly tasteful blood & guts, it’s giallo-lite at best, its content (as the title suggests) more Hitchcock homage than anything else, if more in thought than deed.  Stylistically barely more Hitch-like than Mel Brooks’ dud attempt, HIGH ANXIETY/’77.  One sequence involving an apartment elevator, a spiral staircase and a blonde does have the feel of a Hitchcock storyboard exercise, and jokey touches, like a phallic broken index finger show intent, but little more.  (There’s even a little self-cameo.)  A shame as the film opens quite well as Letícia Román (she’s the blonde mentioned above) takes over nighttime care of a rich elderly Roman invalid from Doctor John Saxon only to watch helplessly as the old gal suffers a fatal seizure on her very first watch.  With little reason to stay in Roma, she’s accosted on a nighttime walk and witness to a murder no one believes happened.  In fact, she’s tagged as a drunk, possibly insane.  Yikes!  Fortunately, that nice Dr. Saxon knows better and gets her released before taking her on a tour of the Eternal City.  (Gratuitous beach scene coming up, but we largely stick to the remarkably tourist-free Spanish Steps.)  Somehow, they get involved in an ‘Alphabet Murder’ scenario that makes little sense and provides minimal suspense.  All in all, I’d go for later Bava, once TechniColor and more complex compositions were added to his visual M.O.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  A.I.P. was releasing Bava in the States at the time, but reedited, retitled & rescored.  This one became THE EVIL EYE/’63, a few minutes longer & slightly rearranged (or so a peak suggests), more importantly, the restored picture, has a seriously compressed grey scale which robs almost every shot of the rich contrast Bava (who shot his own stuff) was going for.  Stick to the Italian original.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Bava’s next film, his rangy portmanteau BLACK SABBATH, was his move into TechniColor if not yet giallo.  An excellent pivot point in his career.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-tres-volti-della-paura-black-sabbath.html

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Vol. 3 (2023)

Even with a six-year wait to whet the appetite, the drop in quality, fresh imagination & interest from Vol. 1 in 2014* to Vol. 2 in 2017 is, if anything, exacerbated going from Vol. 2 to Vol. 3.  (Though not, it would seem, for GUARDIANS acolytes, perfectly happy with James Gunn’s repetitions and excesses in his wisecracking ‘dirty’ STAR WARS variant.)  Bigger, louder, CGI’er than ever, Gunn takes two full acts, and a bit of the third, just to get his ducks in a row watching our motley heroes (be they vegetable, animal or mineral) board the latest Death Ship and stealth-save the Galaxy (‘natch) with their familiar cooler-than-thou attitude.  Gunn overloading every shot with multi-plane action & pyro-technics, still ignoring the dictum: When anything is possible; Nothing matters.  And when the unending climax does get up & running, he adds kids (KIDS! - human & raccoon) to the final battle so they need to be rescued (er) heroically.  Weepy sentimentality not unknown to earlier volumes, but not at this level.  Even longtime villains get in the do-gooder act.  (Will Poulter packing on a conscience along with the impressive poundage.)  Meantime Chris Pratt spends much of his finale minutes breaking the longstanding movie record in valiant medical heart-pumping action as he tries to save the life of Rocket the CGI raccoon.*  Maybe he should have applied that effort to the movie.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *One of Hollywood’s longest -standing records, it had previously been held for nearly 65 years (!) by Luther Adler, pounding away at Paul Muni's heart in a vain attempt to bring him back in THE LAST ANGRY MAN/’59.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *And Vol. 1 such good, smart/dumb fun.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/03/guardians-of-galaxy-2014.html