THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES (1940)

One of the higher profile UFA directors to leave Nazi Germany for L.A. in the ‘Thirties, Joe May never got the break needed to maintain top-tier status after MUSIC IN THE AIR/’34, his first Hollywood film, underperformed.*  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/music-in-air-1934.html).  Relegated to B-pics for the rest of a truncated career, he still managed to make a few good ones, including this discount Universal Pictures period piece taken from the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic about a haunted family in a haunted house.  Streamlined to work on a tight budget, we pick up the story after a few generations of Pyncheons have gone thru a family fortune cursed by deceit and theft.  That’s their deceit and theft.  Now, it’s brother vs. brother as apparently wealthy (secretly bankrupt) George Sanders accuses artist brother Vincent Price of their father’s murder.  Instead of marrying cousin Margaret Lindsay, Price is off to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.  Sanders was already a past master in the cad department, but Price was new to this strain of Gothic guilt that would largely define his career after this.  And Lindsay, just released from Warners where she was the blandest of leading ladies, comes thru for once when she drops the ingenue act and gets to play sorrowful spinster.  With better than average supporting players (for Universal, that is), decent art direction and Milton Krasner’s atmospheric b&w lensing, the film is something of an undiscovered treat.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  May’s UFA best probably ASPHALT/’29.  (Most of his silent works hard to find or long lost.)  His Hollywood best probably CONFESSION/’37.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/asphalt-1929.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/confession-1937.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *As is still the custom, Hollywood execs, looking at his film’s grosses rather than his films, gave May short shrift on better assignments.  OR: it may have been May’s officious on-set demeanor which gave Fritz Lang a run for his money.

THE SCARLET LETTER (1934)

Among the most popular & acclaimed of late silent comediennes*, Colleen Moore should at the very least be remembered for ‘bobbing’ her hair to set the style as the epitome of a modern ‘flapper.’  The legendary look of Louise Brooks copied her.  Unlike Brooks, Moore no great beauty, but with a witty demeanor, sensible ‘can-do’ spirt and devil-may-care attitude to carry all, including that unfortunate nose, before it.  (She was also incredibly smart and later was a best-selling author of How-To books on business & finance for women.)  Was she too ‘Roaring ‘Twenties’ to transition to Talkies?  A couple of false starts in 1929 took her off the screen for four years, returning with the prestige flop THE POWER AND THE GLORY/'33, with its highly praised, if overrated, Preston Sturges script.  Just three more pics and done at 35.  This last an unlikely remake of the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic, made at Poverty Row’s Majestic Pictures.  Ignore the bits of comic relief with Alan Hale and the film isn’t despicable, more than can be said of the infamous 1995 Demi Moore/Roland Joffé travesty.  Robert G. Vignola directs stiffly (his career trajectory mirrored Moore’s), but he does get the story across.  (Unwed ‘widow’ in Puritan New England hides the true father from public shame just as her long lost husband shows up in disguise to complicate things.)  And it boasts a remarkably good physical production for a little outfit like Majestic.   Moore quite good too.*  The film, all but written off on release, now restored from UCLA and almost worth a look.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *For Colleen Moore, her WWI romance LILAC TIME/28 with luscious, if barely known Gary Cooper.  Excellent picture elements exist, but has anyone put them out?  Only subfusc public domain dupes around.  Wait for something better.  For THE SCARLET LETTER, Victor Seastrom’s superb 1926 silent with Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson and Henry B. Walthall who repeats here as the long-missing husband.

ATTENTON MUST BE PAID:  Note our poster boasts of 'A New and Surprising Colleen Moore.'

SUGAR (2008)

Writing/directing partners Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck tackle the lower fringes of Major League Baseball by following the early career moves (professional & personal) of hot Dominican pitching prospect ‘Sugar' as he tries to ride a newly acquired split-fingered curveball from his local Dominican Minor League team thru ‘A,’ ‘Double A.’ and ‘Triple A’ ball.  Odds are against him; much as the odds are against a film that has so many hackneyed tropes it needs to touch base on.  And that’s where this little film cuts itself loose, giving us all the stranger-in-a-strange land, fast American learning curve, sophomore slump, fish-out-of-water, Dominican Catholic goes Farm Belt Presbyterian (terrifying/hilarious) clichés you could want.  But freshened not only by the film’s big open heart, but even more by sliding into third (that’s Third Act not third base) with a shift in focus from Baseball Experience to Immigrant Experience.  And because Boden/Fleck take inspiration less from Hollywood payoffs than from outlier reality independents like Mike Leigh and even the Dardenne Brothers, that third act turn from perfect grass on a professional diamond to inner-city loneliness & hustle proves the best part of a remarkably satisfying film.  Wonderfully acted by a bunch of non-pros & first-timers, plus a lump-in-your-throat curtain call (or is it a line-up?) to wrap things up on a positive note.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Ron Shelton’s BULL DURHAM/’88 still the film to beat for a slick Hollywood effort on the Minors.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  A Personal Story.  The very first joke I can recall is (re)used in this film!  Eastern European immigrant with no English comes to America.  He eventually learns two words: Apple Pie.  At last he can order something at the local diner!  But as man cannot live on apple pie alone, he soon learns to say ‘Ham Sandwich.’  Screwing his courage to the sticking place, he asks the waitress for ‘Ham Sandwich.’  ‘White or Rye?’ she asks.  At a loss, he shrugs his shoulders, sighs and says, ‘Apple Pie.’  Here, it’s French Toast and Eggs Scrambled, Over-Easy or Sunny Side Up, but elsewise the exact same joke.

FLOW (2024)

Exceptional animation (many awards; in the bag/yet to come), officially from Latvia, but more generally European-Union, is best described as a chamber-scaled Noah’s Ark story . . . sans Noah.  Indeed without any humans or dialogue.  Just a handful of different species all in their own voice, awkwardly figuring out how to share the small Asian-style boat (a ‘junk’) and outlast the fast rising waters covering the earth.  Led by a smart, sleek cat who opens things by outrunning adversaries, if not those rising tides.  Leaping aboard a junk in the nick of time, our feline finds a sleepy capybara as companion and before long they are joined by considerably more wary beasts: dog, lemur, and a long-legged bird.  Floating toward a series of striking adventures in survival (neither cute nor jokey), they discover something like a protective friendship of inconvenience as they learn the ropes (literally; with Big Bird at the till) and bump their way thru this brave new watery world.  Then, just as mysteriously, the waters recede even faster than they rose.  A switch that proves equally challenging.  Lead animator/director/writer Gints Zilbalodis (he’s the Latvian) handles the somewhat limited CGI animation with real artistry.  With about a four mill budget, this isn’t the kind of ultra-detailed look of a Hollywood studio release (their fur coats have a modeled look, like suede over clay that works surprisingly well.  (The dog not quite as successful.)  But backgrounds and nature’s terrifying beauty wonderfully caught.  And with an ending that might just lead to the next chapter (10?) in this animated Genesis.  An enchantment, it’s the rare film that truly is for all ages.

LINK:  See the trailer.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=OY0DsUNNbFE

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For another look at animated world destruction, The Rite of Spring section from Disney’s FANTASIA/’40.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/10/fantasia-1940.html

MAD ABOUT THE BOY: THE NOËL COWARD STORY (2023)

Brisk, appealing documentary on British playwright, composer, actor, director (etc.) Noël Coward comes without a fresh POV (or really any particular POV), but does give ‘The Master’ his due.  That’s more than you’ll often get from a Brit’s perspective where they still seem miffed that he split from England when taxes hit 90%, his pre-War style went out of fashion in the ‘50s (little but WAITING IN THE WINGS revived from this period), and he found better weather in Jamaica along with freedom from sexual threat as a homosexual.  Ironically, he had but to wait a few years before early ‘60s revivals of his best stage pieces (HAY FEVER, BLITHE SPIRIT, DESIGN FOR LIVING, PRIVATE LIVES, PRESENT LAUGHTER*), along with theatrical & cabaret revues of his songbook (is there another Brit who can stand comparison with the American Songbook?) and revivals of his films made with David Lean (IN WHICH WE SERVE, BRIEF ENCOUNTER, THIS HAPPY BREED) showed a resiliency no one expected.  Before that, with finances at low ebb, he’d risked playing nightclub entertainer and had a huge and completely unexpected success in Las Vegas.  (This episode in his life once announced as a project for Colin Firth.  Still in development?)  Coward may have come across on film as effete and effeminate, but perhaps his impoverished youth made him tougher than he looked.  (Lean didn’t offer him the Alec Guinness part in BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI for nothing.)  Excluding some rare home movie clips, this film is no more than a smooth cut-and-paste job, and it misses a lot about his productivity to rehash old news.  But it does give an honest sense of the man many won’t know.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  The song ‘Mad About the Boy’ rumored to have been written in tribute to (surprise) James Cagney circa 1932.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  PRESENT LAUGHTER has been a star vehicle for an amazingly varied list of actors: Coward and Clifton Webb seem obvious, but also succeeding were George C. Scott, Frank Langella, Peter O’Toole, Kevin Kline and most recently Andrew Scott.

THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (1996)

In this high-concept pitch passing for an original movie idea, Geena Davis plays the action figure passing for an original character: an amnesiac mom whose violent super-agent past comes to town to assassinate her!  (Standard doings in 1996.)  Of course, Hollywood’s always made high-concept ideas into movies good and bad, still does.  But there was something of a mania for them after DIE HARD/’88 hit big.  (Now, the hunt is for interwoven comic book super-hero franchises.)  But from the late ‘80s thru the ‘90s, you could not only ‘take a meeting’ via HCFP (high concept/fast pitch), but raise actual development cash with a lot of Hollywood studio execs by calling your project ‘DIE HARD on a Bus . . . on an Ocean Liner . . . on a plane . . . in a Cabaña . . . at a Putt-Putt.’  (The only thing Hollywood story execs like better than a five-minute pitch is a canceled lunch date.)  The heyday for these things only ending when pitches went full-circle as DIE HARD IN A SKYSCRAPER.’*  Pure coincidence that this period perfectly mirrored Major League Baseball’s Steroid Era (1994 - 2004)?  Pumped up mediocrities soon forgotten.  With even the truly talented ones quickly expunged from the record books.  That’s what we’ve got here, from masters of the debased form writer Shane Black and director Renny Harlin.  Reheating their hot plate dinner for Davis whose amnesiac mom tries to remember what in her past has suddenly put her in harm’s way.  Helped by private investigator Samuel L. Jackson (his character in over his head, but vamping to good effect), they work their way up to a vast conspiracy from her real past.  A few character turns still pay off (David Morse perfect as a possible past romantic interest) and the eventual plot uncovered weirdly prescient of 9/11.  (Yikes!  In 1996?)  But the bloat for bloat’s sake undeniable.  So too a lack of facility with intimate kinetic action when the steroids aren’t pumping up and destabilizing the bigger things.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The joke, for the three readers who don’t get it, is that DIE HARD was in a skyscraper.

LET'S MAKE LOVE (1960)

In a funny way, Marilyn Monroe’s posthumous rep never recovered after Norman Mailer’s deep-think coffee-table monograph (MARILYN) took pains to celebrate what was least special about her work.  Worse, his attempts to take her seriously largely when she was trying to be serious have now hardened into critical dogma, a sort academic Party Line on Monroe.  So, what a relief to read this film’s director George Cukor’s take on what was special, unique and impossible about her, seeing Marilyn Monroe plain.*  ‘There’s been an awful lot of crap written about Marilyn Monroe and there may be an exact psychiatric term for what was wrong with her.  I don’t know  - but truth to tell, I think she was quite mad . . . I know people say, “Hollywood broke her heart,” and all that, but I don’t believe it.  She was very observant and tough-minded and appealing, but she had this bad judgement about things.  She adored and trusted the wrong people . . . I knew that she was reckless.  I knew that she was willful.  She was very sweet, but I had no real communication with her at all.  You couldn’t get at her.  She was very concerned about a lot of pretentious things (she’d done a lot of shit-ass studying), and I’d say, ‘But Marilyn, you’re so accomplished, you do things that are frightfully difficult to do.’  She had this absolute , unerring touch with comedy.  In real life she didn’t seem funny, but she had this touch.  She acted as if she didn’t quite understand why it was funny, which is what made it so funny.  She could also do low comedy - pratfalls and things like that - but I think her friends told her it wasn’t worthy of her.’  And this, her penultimate film, is the last in the line of sexy comic Marilyn (with a hint of melancholy) that Cukor was talking about.  It’s no more than adequate, at best, and wasn't particularly well received critically or commercially at the time.  But the years have improved it, and Cukor, working off a Norman Krasna/Hal Katnter script, refuses to push too hard.  The basic idea (a variation on three previous 20th/Fox films: FOLIES BERGÈRE DE PARIS/’35; THAT NIGHT IN RIO/’41; ON THE RIVIERA/’51) all deal with an ultra-rich womanizing Frenchman being parodied in a musical revue.  Here, Yves Montand’s the billionaire manufacturing mogul taken by public relations man Tony Randall (effortlessly sly & funny) to a show making fun of him.  Mistaken for an actor auditioning to play . . . himself (!), he’s gets the part on looks (naturellement) and signs a run of the play contract after he spots Monroe in the cast.  If only she didn’t already have the star of the show as a boyfriend.  Yet rather than bringing out the womanizer in him, the situation brings out sincerity.  She’s the first sympathetic woman he’s met who doesn’t know his finances!  Desperate to enlarge his skill set and his chances for doing a number with Monroe, he hires Milton Berle, Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly as coaches.*  Trusting in the situation rather thsn the gags, Cukor wisely sticks to low-stakes charm and a relaxed tone.  No more than pleasant piffle, but so elegantly laid out by Cukor and cast.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *Taken from a short chapter about working with Monroe in Gavin Lambert’s interview book ON CUKOR.  Out a year before Mailer’s game changing photo book.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Stateside, Montand known if at all for tough guy movie roles.  Back in France, he was a huge Music Hall/nightclub singer, often accompanying himself on guitar, with a mature style of his own.  He’d have needed little help from this stellar trio.  His only other Hollywood musical, ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER/‘70, against Barbra Streisand (against is the word) gives him even less to do.  Why he never got a shot at playing Emile De Becque in SOUTH PACIFIC; a real lost opportunity.

SECRET WINDOW (2004)

In PREMIUM RUSH/’12, Hollywood superstar writer and occasional director David Koepp has his bike messenger hero totally unaware that Manhattan has a subway system.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/09/premium-rush-2012.html)  Here, in an earlier directing effort, Koepp has his pulp fiction author, desperate to locate a copy of an old short story he wrote, totally unaware that libraries and magazine publishers would keep back issues he could check on.  Guess you gotta keep the story moving, no?  (It’s why the Indians never shoot the lead stagecoach horses.)  Johnny Depp, hot off his first PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, plays the pulp fiction author, suffering from writer’s block (natch) and depressed after wife Maria Bello leaves him for Timothy Hutton.  Now he’s confronted by unpublished Hillbilly author John Turturro claiming plagiarism.  That’s why he needs to get a copy of that old short story.  What follows is a series of escalating murders committed by the crazed Hillbilly, but designed to look like Depp dunnit.  Koepp adapts this Stephen King story, something of a companion piece to THE SHINING, and padded past its TWILIGHT ZONE possibilities.  (It’s actually more like ZONE’s fun forgotten tv ripoff ONE STEP BEYOND.)  Filled with dumb plot & character turns (plus one dreadful cornpone Southern accent from Turturro), seasoned with metaphysical tricks, all ‘explained’ in the film’s double-helix of a coda.*  The problem not that you won’t believe a minute of it, but that you won’t enjoy a minute.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *On the other hand, the twisty reveal does explain away that lousy Hillbilly accent.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Stephen King often writes himself into a metaphysical corner and needs a trick (or a dodge) to get out.  This one pretty old/pretty limp.  And while we’re not unqualified fans of either CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI/’19 or SHUTTER ISLAND/’10, they do demonstrate how old and limp can work.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/cabinet-of-dr-caligari-1919.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/shutter-island-2010.html

THE BELOVED ROGUE (1927)

Popularized in plays, operetta, silent and sound film as something of a Robin Hood figure*, 15th century French poet François Villon, only 32 when history loses sight of him, was likely more precursor to post-Renaissance ruffian artist Caravaggio than to the Sherwood Forest outlaw.  But facts don’t really enter into this John Barrymore silent which was meant to revisit the romance & adventure of his DON JUAN/’26, a hit at Warners, for this first project on a three picture deal at United Artists.  DON JUAN director Alan Crosland came along (the third of their four films together*), but the key figure is art director William Cameron Menzies who gives it lighter, more fantastical settings.  Villon is still the lovable scamp, a vagabond poet whose japes get him in trouble with Louis XI (Conrad Veidt)  before he saves Louis from the usurping Duke of Burgundy.  Villon also saves his own life in the process and wins the hand of Lady Marceline Day.  Picture quality not what it might be, at best rising to no more than acceptable, but enough to get the enchanting visual ideas across.  Barrymore overplays the first act, gamboling to beat the band with his (three) Merry Men.  But once he takes off his clown makeup (literally), he tones down and brings touching vulnerability and grace to the role.  (Veidt happy to pick up the ham acting crown which leaves Barrymore free to show off what tremendous physical shape he’s still in at 45 during his all but bare torture scenes.  If only the film elements were equally well preserved!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Best of the lot, IF I WERE KING/’38 with Ronald Colman & Basil Rathbone working off a Preston Sturges script.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/if-i-were-king-1938.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *DON JUAN, Crosland’s first film with Barrymore, was also the main calling-card for Warner’s VitaPhone synch-sound system.  Showcasing various ‘Talkie’ shorts and a recorded symphonic score for the silent feature.  Next year’s THE JAZZ SINGER/’27, also from Crosland immediately after ROGUE, then jump started the Talkie revolution.