LA MARSEILLAISE (1938)

Released between LA GRANDE ILLUSION/’37 and LA BÊTE HUMAINE/’38, Jean Renoir’s two biggest hits of the 1930s, this crowd-funded historical on the start of the French Revolution never found a crowd . . . in France or elsewhere.  And subsequent re-releases fared little better.  The recent, uneven 2018 restoration allows you to see why; yet also makes a case for the pic.  An ADHD first half pilots a series of vignettes, with stops at Louis XVI’s court when not arresting down-and-out poachers or listening to discontented army rebels in Marseillaise where a catchy tune with grisly lyrics is making the rounds.  (Look for a wine barrel acting as Trojan Horse and for principled foreign mercenaries.)  The film structure a pageant of pit stops played as political vaudeville alternately pleasing and annoying the left-wing Popular Front backers currently (if briefly) running France.  Our level of engagement interrupted by changing POVs of class, location and political philosophy; with dialogue taken as much as possible from public records.  Narrative traction missing till the hoards head North with the goal of taking the palace from the court.  Their reaction?  Indifference.  Plenty of military drills promising safety.  Now, Renoir’s concept finds purpose and shape, while his use of massed force (unexpectedly monumental) grips us with inevitable clash and slaughter.  Plus powerhouse opposition coming from Pierre Renoir’s Louis XVI and from Louis Jouvet’s Revolutionary Committee Head.  The People United Will Never Be Divided.  Sure, but great acting tends to bend feelings at the Movies.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The uneven quality of picture elements on the restoration must reflect editions at various lengths in failed attempts to recoup costs.

THE RETURN (2024)

Perhaps you’ve heard, there’s a new version of The Odyssey on screen.  Yet two years ago, this chamber version (just the last act, ‘Return to Ithaca’) flew by with a token theatrical release and nary a ripple on the cultural Zeitgeist.  Pity.  In its own way, it’s very good.  We open as Ralph Fiennes’ Odysseus washes ashore at his old stomping grounds, much worse for twenty-year’s wear and naked as the day he was born.  (Nearly naked & distressed the fashion in Ithaca so he fits right in.)  Rather than announce himself, the former leader, and already legendary victor at Troy, stealthily takes stock of the situation on his island.  Faithful wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche sporting Julia Roberts’ profile & considerably more acting chops) anxiously fending off hunky/premature/avaricious suitors; abandoned son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) having Daddy issues; the island at a standstill.  Situational baggage barely clearing the dramatic bar under inexperienced director Uberto Pasolini.*  But as Odysseus is successively recognized, complications (personal & public) kick in to move things along and cover a host of unforced filmmaking errors.  By climax, Fiennes has bulked up to rather amazing (and believable) action-figure form.  Return of the Trickster?  The film, no mere addendum, but a worthy thing of its own.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Director Uberto Pasolini (more active as producer) is related to a famous Italian director, just not the one you’re thinking of.  He’s Luchino Visconti’s nephew.  Though that other Pasolini’s take on ancient Greek tragedy in MEDEA would make an interesting followup.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/medea-1969.html

THE WARRIORS (1955)

Errol Flynn buckled his last swash in this low-budget period adventure.  The usual nonsense, but not bad, a tale from the French/English Hundred Years War (1400s) with Flynn (fleshier in face & figure at 45) as son & heir to Britain’s King Edward, going incognito to infiltrate the French Court as the unknown Black Prince.  He’s really on the hunt for battle plans from archenemy Comte De Ville (Peter Finch) and hoping to rescue kidnapped Lady Joan (Joanne Dru).  Director Henry Levin and producer Walter Mirisch, working in the U.K. on their way up the Hollywood ladder*, take advantage of two built-in obstacles.  ONE: By necessity, battles are small and ad-hoc, believably messy; and TWO: heavy period armor meant the aging Flynn wouldn’t be needed on camera during the tough physical action, but only after the main fighting and dangerous bits when he’d put his metal vizor up.  (Thousands of £s saved by using stunt doubles not only for stunts, but whenever possible.)  Diminished as a force on screen thru age, bankruptcy (the main reason he signed on), drugs, booze and hangers-on,  Flynn at half staff still better at this sort of thing than anyone other than 1920s' Douglas Fairbanks.  A natural in the genre’s unnatural poses.  How he’d fare in today’s gory iterations is anyone’s guess.  But since CAPTAIN BLOOD twenty years  ago, he was only challenged by his former self.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Henry Levin a journeyman director of B+ programmers made this shortly before his temporary career bump (late ‘50s - mid’‘60s) to A-list fare.  While already prolific producer Water Mirisch followed this with classic Bs (THE PHENIX CITY STORY/’55; INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’56) on his way to permanent Oscar’d A-lister.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/invasion-of-body-snatchers-1956.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Young Flynn certainly was a hard act to follow.  See CAPTAIN BLOOD/’35.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/captain-blood-1935.html

THE WHITE REINDEER / VALKOINEN PEURA (1952)

A rare Finnish Art House perennial from the’50s, unjustly forgotten.  Shot, directed & edited by Erik Blomberg who also co-wrote with wife/star Mirjami Kuosmanen, a ringer for Dorothy McGuire.  Here she’s a chaste newlywed hoping to boost her husband’s libido with a visit to the local spell thrower.  (Maybe it’s all those layers of clothes needed even in bed.)  But the groom is only thinking about the reindeer drive, thousands of the beasts needing constant attention thru the snowy landscape.  But if her husband hasn’t taken notice of her charms, other men have.  He does make a mid-drive pit-stop to gift his bride with a small white reindeer, but it can only provide so much satisfaction even as it possesses her.  And worse to come as the spell (or is it simply the witch already within?) unbalances the settlement and the animals.  Only a deadly metal-tipped lance aimed by the husband at the white reindeer can alter this cursed course.  And that shot can still send a shock wave thru any audience willing to accept a folktale.  Shot silent on magnificent locations, with all sound elements added in ‘post’ (including a full bore symphonic score from Einar Englund), what’s more important is that the film is æsthetically silent in technique and narrative logic. So if every turn isn’t laid out on a plate, the tone of the piece makes its effect.  The film, appropriately enough, is bewitching.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Restored a while back, not all available restored editions are equally sharp.  Something even more important with silents than for synch-sound pics.  Sample first.

THE RIP (2026)

Well-received commercial filler from NetFlix (keeping that pipeline loaded), ludicrously tagged as ‘based on true events,’ but really a tricked out caper pic with an All-Star cast.  (Well, Two-Stars; Five Featured Players.)  A prologue details a Miami drug bust gone wrong,  ‘Cartel’ involvement, female Police Captain left dead.  Later, back at Police Headquarters, Feds, Top Brass, Investigating Lieutenant and Detectives in-fighting to beat the band.  Who pulled the trigger?  Who fumbled the ball among the force?  Hardly the best time to receive a CrimeStoppers tip on thousands in illegal drug money stashed in some ‘drop house.’  That’s when the twists start to show up as Lt. Matt Damon and longtime second Ben Affleck take very different approaches in dealing with the discovered cash; not thousands but 20 million.  Tempting, no?  Mob/cartel money?  Connected to the Captain’s murder?  Suddenly, every action has a double meaning.  Someone going rogue?  Innocent renter cuffed as possible accomplice.  Neighborhood gone mysteriously dead.  And is that a getaway vehicle waiting in the garage?  So many questions!  Not only who’s telling the truth, but what is the truth?  Co-writer/director Joe Carnahan is something of an action specialist, not that you’d notice from the staging here.  Lots of stuff playing in the dark.  (To protect his reputation?)  So when the explanations arrive, it’s hard to understand what happened . . . or care.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  With movies like this, it’s easy to see why NetFlix shies from theatrical release.  Going straight to home platform makes this look like a hit.  And, by the numbers, it is.

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1920)

James Fenimore Cooper’s novel has been lucky in its movie adaptations; more than a half dozen so far.  (No eight-part streamer?)  Main contenders out in 1920, 1936 & 1992, all respectable.  Surprisingly, it’s this silent version, at about 75", that sticks closest to the novel, keeping its largely tragic ending and daring racial mix-and-match coupling.  It also lays out the story best: two sisters visiting from Europe, caught in a war between French & British territorial claims while Native Tribes ally with opposing sides.  Since our POV lies with the Brits, their Native allies are the ‘good’ Indians (including that Last Mohican) and Hurons the Baddies.  The main action a journey for the sisters thru a No Man’s Land Forest to reunite with their father.  The small group led by an Indian Scout they, and their British escorts, don’t fully trust.  (Great White Scout Hawkeye more a supporting character here.)  Easy to tell French and Brits apart by their uniforms, while different war paint does the same for Native Peoples.  (Good thing too since the whole cast is White.  That’s Wallace Beery as the film’s Indigenous villain.)  Co-directed by image-oriented Maurice Tourneur (mostly on interiors) and future M-G-M stalwart Clarence Brown* (mostly locations), the film’s much admired visuals hard to judge in the just acceptable available editions.  Good elements are said to exist, but have they ever come out?  Meanwhile, various meh copies on line, some of the best looking accompanied by hopelessly inappropriate canned classical music cues.  But you can still get a pretty good feel for the film.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Best known sound versions.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-last-of-mohicans-1936.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-last-of-mohicans-1992.html

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *Long overdue bio by Gwenda Young in CLARENCE BROWN - Hollywood’s Forgotten Master.

THE DIRTIES (2013)

Early sighting of talented Canadian writer/director Matt Johnson (of the excellent workplace dramedy BLACKBERRY/’23* and current well-received Portrait of A Chef as a Young Man pic TONY/’26 - not seen here) is worth a look, but has aged rapidly.  Pushing thirty at the time, Johnson plays a film nerd high school senior (hyperventilating over classic film like Quentin Tarantino having a celluloid orgasm), alpha-male to a gang of two, himself and BFF Owen Williams, who’s starting to find the act a bit jejune, even creepy.  Their class project a film takedown of the school hall bullies needling them, ‘The Dirties.’  Told as a revenge fantasy, Owen worries that Matt (they both use their real names) is leaning into the scenario as if they were plotting a real shooting.  Some of this extremely well observed; unusually for these things, the girls, if less active than re-active, at least are allowed independent thought not about boys.  But after a while, you notice that the hand-held, slash & dash style of our filmmaking buds covers not only what they shoot, but also how the film shoots them.  It begs the Brechtian question, by whom?   The  basic conceit of narrative filmmaking, here pulling you out of the story..  Yet it could have worked dramatically if Johnson tied this destabilizing style to Matt’s deteriorating mental state.  A psychopathic loss of control accelerated as Owen starts turning away.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, BLACKBERRY.  (If TONY shows equal growth, it must be all the critics say.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/07/blackberry-2023.html

LOVESICK (1983)

Woody Allen was known to complain (or perhaps puzzle is the word) on why a Dudley Moore rom-com like ARTHUR/’81 commercially buried even his most successful work.  And though we (and Woody) can only guess at the reasons, we can know how Moore would fare in a Woody Allen film by looking at LOVESICK, written and directed by Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman, co-writer of ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, SLEEPER and MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY.  Loaded with Allen tropes, characters, locations, social milieu, NYC-centric supporting actors, couplings with participants separated by decades, etc.  And, wouldn’t you know it, LOVESICK grossed about a third of next year’s Dudley Moore mid-life crisis pic MICKI + MAUDE/’84, which covered similar territory.  Brickman, who only directed a handful of films, has a great cast and crew on paper, but the comic doings of an indulgent psychiatrist for rich Upper East Side Manhattan neurotics isn’t much more interesting than one of the 45 minute sessions boring Dr. Moore to tears.  And that includes his latest couch sitter, playwright Elizabeth McGovern, whom he barely hears but instantly falls for.*  '80s attitudes & sexual politics being what they are, what once might have been considered charmingly romantic behavior by Moore now looks like stalking.  And the laugh lines that do come off only make the situation feel more uncomfortable.  The one thing that still plays is a sort of corporal ghost of Freud giving sage professional & personal advice, not of the patient but of the good doctor.  Underplayed to perfection by Alec Guinness who doesn’t miss a beat or a laugh, he seems to float above the film, coming off as the only modern (or is it timeless?) character in the movie.  While Brickman, back among the living, cheats by letting everyone off the hook with conflicts resolved by fiat.  Woody would never have let him get away with it.  He’d also have put the kibosh on the bouffant comb-out on Dudley’s hair.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *As mentioned, Blake Edward’s MICKI & MAUDE, every bit as blinkered in passé Freudian methodology and ‘80s sexual attitudes, but playing out (hilariously) as a period piece rather than dated/objectionable.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/05/micki-maude-1984.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Even a cinematographer as gifted as Gerry Fisher is flummoxed by the McGovern face.  Something about the square jaw and the luminescent blue eyes make her always look disconcertingly out of focus.

WINDS OF CHANCE (1925)

The Alaskan Gold Rushes at the turn-of-the-last-century (four or five major runs) held more space in America’s collective conscious than we can imagine.  Two major silents in 1925: Charles Chaplin’s ever popular THE GOLD RUSH (though only a few establishing shots made on location) and this sprawling adventure with exteriors largely shot in the Canadian Yukon, even at Dawson City where much of the story is set.  A genial mix of drama, romance, thrills and comedy from a Rex Beach novel, more Henry Hathaway/John Wayne NORTH TO ALASKA/’60 romp than a truly great & terrifying look at  the scene as found in Clarence Brown’s astonishing TRAIL OF ‘98.*   The two leads: strong/stately adventurer Ben Lyons, honestly working up a stake to make a claim, and slightly used Dawson City hall owner Anna Q. Nilsson.  (Yep, the same Nilsson who’s one of the bridge-playing ‘Waxworks’ in SUNSET BOULEVARD/’50.)  These two pair up on the way to Dawson City*, but their dalliance ends when her cheatin’ husband shows up.  Also on the journey, fragile Dana Viola, left alone after her father falls off the wagon and gets shot.  She’s taken under the wing of hearty, river hauler Victor McLaglen playing a Frenchman!  No matter, these two easily steal the pic.  (And our poster knew it.)  Also tops, the thrill-sequence down the rapids with everyone's belongings.  (The real deal, no tricks.  Note Buster Keaton’s ‘props’ genius Fred Gabourie, just off THE NAVIGATOR/’24, in the credits.)  Plus cunning villainess Dorothy Sebastian (later Buster Keaton’s co-star on and off-camera), along with a pair of bickering old-timers for comic relief.  It’s all a little pokey, a little corny, but looser than director Frank Lloyd was in his prestigious sound films.  Available for free on TUBI (one reel missing, but elsewise, other than faint ‘blasting,’ in good shape.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Dawson City history, along with some preserved films from their end-of-the-line film exchange (a landfill), on view in DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME.  Also a link to THE TRAIL OF ‘98.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-trail-of-98-1928.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/dawson-city-frozen-time.html