THAT FORSYTHE WOMAN (1949)

A typical star-clogged loss-leader from a directionless post-WWII M-G-M, this ‘prestige pic’ proved unable to recapture past studio glory.  On the plus side, there’s a cleverly trimmed script from Book One of the John Galsworthy novel about a wealthy, but ruthless British family dynasty (just a couple of generations old), but only so much can be done with such a disagreeable lot.  (Not that this has stopped multiple dramatizations.)  Even the good eggs a chilly bunch.  And while the 1880s setting calls for overstuffed period detail, pudding-rich late-‘40s TechniColor makes you long for the outdoors only to discover you’re now stuck on an M-G-M backlot, even in the country.  The story, a roundelay of mismatched pairings & misaligned fortunes, suffers from missing backstory, but could still work if the cast hit the mark.  As it is, only underrated Errol Flynn (underrated as an actor, that is), convinces as Soames Forsythe, superb as a man whose pride can’t take no for an answer.  As the penniless beauty he desires, Greer Garson would have been fine twenty years ago; as would Walter Pidgeon, appropriately enough sporting a bad dye job as a painter who’s the family Black Sheep.   (Don’t believe the studio publicity about him & Flynn swapping parts to play against type.*)  A very young Janet Leigh and placid Robert Young both hopelessly MidWest American as the naive ingenue cast aside when her lower-class artistic lover falls for another.  (Guess who.)  Director Compton Bennett would show more moxie figuring out how to integrate docu-wildlife footage, a mystery treasure hunt and romantic melodrama in next year’s KING SOLOMON’S MINES/’50.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *This film could have profitably used the two stars of KING SOLOMON’S MINES!   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/king-solomons-mines-1950.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *While the story calls for Soames to basically rape his wife (not a crime in Victorian England), the thought of the gentlemanly Pidgeon forcing himself on Garson . . . well, the very thought.  In any event, the Production Code reduced rape to a quick slap on the Garson jaw by a sexually frustrated Flynn.

DANS LA COUR / IN THE COURTYARD (2014)

Though recently tapped for Cannes’ 2026 Opening Night with LA VÉNUS ÉLECTRIQUE/THE ELECTRIC KISS, French writer/director Pierre Salvadori has a low profile in the States.  Too French?  Too light?  Too mid-list?  But if COUR is anything to go by, we’ve been missing a trick.  From desciptions, this seems considerably darker than his other work, though it doesn’t start that way.  Gustave Kervern stars as a shambling, disheveled 40-something, a severely depressed substance abuser who walks out of a concert gig (he’s a rock guitarist) and into a job as live-in janitor at a slightly worn apartment house.  Hired on the spot by an unconcerned/disinterested Catherine Deneuve who’s going thru her own mental crisis, sloughing off longtime volunteer commitments to obsess over minor building issues.  And it seems every tenant in the building on the cusp of a nervous breakdown.  Yet without qualification for either building maintenance or mental counsel, Kervern’s calm manner of letting time take care of problems satisfies the co-owners and all turns out well.  But wait!  That’s a likely Stateside version of the film had it gone thru Hollywood Development Hell.  Salvadori having none of it.  Instead, at nearly every turn, the story takes the darker path with ingrates using Kervern for their own purposes, tenants over-loading him with tasks, and mental fantasy taking hold of Deneuve’s increasingly fragile state of mind.  A spontaneous visit to her childhood home with a by now poignantly chummy Kervern a particular (and dramatically brave) horror.  There’s resolution, of a sort, but this is hardly Handyman Mary Poppins by the time Kervern checks out.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Deneuve, quite rightly, nominated for a Best Actress César.  No grandstanding, no begging for sympathy, nothing taken for granted.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Salvadori’s best received film (at least his most nominated) is EN LIBERTÉ! (THE TROUBLE WITH YOU) which followed this in 2018.  (not seen here)

CLIFFORD (1994)

A polarizing film.  Everyone hates it for a different reason.*  Back when Hollywood was struggling over how to make use of Martin Short’s obvious talents, they tried off-beat leading man (leading clown?) to see if he could ‘open’ a film.  He couldn’t.  Splitting the lead in thirds helped*, but he only found his niche when they incorporated the law of diminishing comic returns and cast him in support.  But he’s still the whole show in CLIFFORD, forty-four at the time, 'realistically' playing a tantrumy ten-yr-old.  (Think ELOISE away from The Plaza.)  Turning progressively creepy (exponentially irritating) as we go along, he’s left in the care of child-hating Uncle Charles Grodin trying to impress child-loving girlfriend Mary Steenburgen and going slightly mad in the process.  (Or with his comic twitches is he auditioning to replace Herbert Lom as Chief Inspector Drefuss in a new PINK PANTHER pic?)  The one great bit in the film (likely unintentional), comes in what might be called ‘the battle of the bad hairpieces’ as boss Dabney Coleman is called out for a lousy toupé, but no one says a word about Grodin’s equally bad rug.  Elsewise, the series of comedy situations don’t so much develop as repeat under Paul Flaherty’s laisser-faire direction; and the film’s flashback structure (an older Short lectures a new bad boy on his misspent youth) is needless padding.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Okay, not strictly true.  The film has its fans, and something of a cult following.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See THE THREE AMIGOS/’86. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-three-amigos-1986.html

CAIRO CONSPIRACY / WALAD MIN AL-JANNA (2022)

This, the second of exiled Egyptian filmmaker Tarik Saleh’s Cairo Trilogy, is the masterpiece of the three.*  A slow-burn political thriller in religious garb during the run-up to elect a new Grand Imam at Al Azhar University, the apex for Islamic Studies for over a millennium,  We follow events thru the wide eyes of Adam, a new Al Azhar student on scholarship from his small fishing village, just arrived on the historic Cairo campus to find his bunk and bearings.  (Now officially ‘a sardine.’)  Adam also starts to find new friends, unaware the primitive yet beautiful site is a hotbed of political activity, covered by spy networks.  But he learns fast.  Especially after a wised-up classmate, a likely informer for State authorities, is murdered on campus, and the hunt to discover the murderer(s) leads to Adam being recruited as his replacement.  First assignment?  Become a trusted member of the radical anti-State (terrorist?) organization planning election interference.   After this, without seeming to alter tempo in the Hollywood manner, Saleh tightens the screws on all sides as everyone suddenly stops trusting Adam (with the possible exception of State recruiter Fares Fares).  Salem getting this across not with the usual tropes of chases, guns and close calls, but with rigorous intellectual/philosophical debate that can also put lives at stake as secrets about religious candidates are uncovered.  Fascinating, and deadly in intent; the film ending with a twisty sort of religious grace based on Islamic studies and principles.  Our moral?  Adam’s lesson?  Well, not that ‘the tragedy of this world is that everyone has their reasons’ (as Jean Renoir put it in RULES OF THE GAME/’39), but that everyone has their agenda.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Fares Fares, who stars in all three films, lets student co-star Tawfeek Barhom take focus, but is just as good as conflicted State intelligence gatherer.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The first and third (THE NILE HILTON/’17; EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC’25) not far behind.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-nile-hilton-incident-2017.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/04/eagles-of-republic-2025.html

SERIAL MOM (1994)

Dialing down the danger factor of his early films, campy curator John Waters was coming off two mainstream hits (HAIRSPRAY/’88; CRY-BABY/‘90), when he went for the triple, but got thrown out at the box-office plate.  Not that this suburban satire doesn’t get its laughs (a gory comic gloss on CRAIG’S WIFE*, the stage classic about an obsessively meticulous homemaker who drives everyone away with her mania for neat perfection; ORDINARY PEOPLE/’80 one of its many offspring), but here Waters’ targets are too easy; as social satire, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.  With ultra-bright colors and broader than broad playing, Kathleen Turner uses a killer smile (make that a killer's smile) to play the Happy Homemaker to her exemplary nuclear family: loving husband, two great kids, colonial home, glazed meatloaf.  But guests must abide by her rules of etiquette or else.  (Hard to believe Waters missed having a pet to die early and set things in motion.)  And everyone seems to be winking at the camera to let us know they’re only fooling.  A touch of Waters' audacity surfaces here and there: a grieving brother pivots from revenge to profit participation, a murdered teen lover loses his liver when skewered.  But even a super cynical ending all too tame.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *George Kelly’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1925 play was filmed thrice: a silent in 1928 for Irene Rich; as CRAIG’S WIFE/’36 (with Roz Russell); as HARRIET CRAIG/’50 (with Joan Crawford).    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/12/craigs-wife-1936.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/harriet-craig-1950.html

ROSEBUD (1975)

With few exceptions, producer/director Otto Preminger’s technically distinctive film-making, call it ‘Imperial Style,’ had a remarkable run for a decade starting in the mid-‘50s.  But luck deserted him with HURRY SUNDOWN/’67, and he never really recovered (Zeitgeist or talent).  So it may just be low expectations that now makes this penultimate film look better than its miserable rep suggests.  Indeed, its extensive prologue, a reel & a half detailing a kidnapping at sea by a PLO terrorist splinter group, is essential viewing , echt Preminger.  A last bloom of that Imperial Style, with signature long sweeping, mobile takes, calm but steady activity unfolding at its own pace via WideScreen coverage to capture a real event in real time.  Otto at his breathtakingly efficient best.  He doesn’t keep it up, not with son Erik’s patchwork script (his sole attempt), but this rather ordinary three act political thriller, with awkward close action and standard 1975 terrorists vs political stooges vs ultra-competent British & Israeli spies, is reasonably entertaining.  Or is if you’re cool with Richard Attenborough as a terrorist leader in a secret Lebanese cave condo; five fleshly teen hostages (including Isabelle Huppert & Kim Cattrall); an impressive supporting cast; and most of all Peter O’Toole (stepping in when Robert Mitchum ankled) playing Britain’s top expert Middle-East spy as if he were doing Henry Higgins in a revival of PYGMALION.  (He’s even pinched Rex Harrison’s flippant demeanor and hat(!) from MY FAIR LADY.*  And all Premingerians need to see the first couple reels.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Preminger’s next, his last, THE HUMAN FACTOR/79, also more interesting than its dire rep.  Not really a surprise given its Graham Greene source novel and screenplay by Tom Stoppard.  But on a very tight budget, no more Imperial Style.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A dream role for O’Toole, he spent three years as Higgins (1983 to 1985) via tv film, West End run, then B’way.

LE MONDE TREMBLERA / THE WORLD WILL SHAKE (1939)

Dandy conception, but script development & execution leave a lot on the table in this French fantasy about a scientist who invents a different kind of ‘time machine,’ one that tells you how long you’ll live.  With gears & gauges, bells & whistles, this analogue contraption takes up an entire wall, as electric bolts jump from vacuum tube to spherical receptor, plus head-set with contact points for the ‘subject.’  Final tally in years, months, days & minutes displayed on a machine fashioned like an old cash register.  Obsessed inventor Claude Dauphin, first seen escorting a chatterbox tart to play guinea pig only to see the girl duck out with nary a franc once he turns the thing on.  Confident all the same, he tells investor Erich von Stroheim not to worry, his gamble will soon pay off.  It better, as Stroheim’s gone deep into debt with loan sharks.  He’s hoping millionaires will pay thru the nose to see how long they’ve got.  And think of the insurance scams!  Meanwhile, his daughter, all but engaged to Dauphin, is getting tired of waiting and falling for Dauphin’s best pal, a handsome young doctor.  Meantime, the machine is proving uncannily accurate; with global consequences as dying millionaires shut down factories to go on one last vacation.  Yikes!  And Dauphin starts playing God by switching longevity charts.  Are his life forecasts predicting or causing suicides?  Loads of personal complications & moral dilemmas to follow.  Yet even with Henri-Georges Clouzot co-scripting, director Richard Pottier is left playing thru a thin set of events, especially after Stroheim leaves the scene.*  Plenty interesting all the same, especially recalling the European political situation when this came out.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Stroheim had been acting in French films for a couple of years now.  But he still sounds fresh out of a Berlitz crash course.  Which makes his non-idiomatic French far easier to understand than those rattling native-born cast members.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Lots of lousy subfusc dupes out on this title.  Perfect prints with excellent subtitles can be found under its original name.  So sample first if possible.    

NUREMBERG (2025)

Rubbish.  Stepping away from his day-job (producing & occasionally writing schlock comic-horror film series (SCREAM; MURDER MYSTERY; READY OR NOT), James Vanderbilt triple threats*, hanging up a directing shingle (his sophomore effort) with a new angle on the post-WWII Nazi Nuremberg trials that put top surviving Third Reich officers in the docket to answer for the Holocaust.  Well cast and well received (critically & commercially), it opens with a G.I. peeing on a Swastika decal pasted on a rock at war’s end, and Field Marshall Hermann Göring surrendering.  With dumb comeback dialogue covering exposition before moving on to standard-issue pre-trial moves & courtroom melodrama (Vanderbilt also betraying an unfortunate addiction to matched transition edits), the main gimmick concerns Rami Malek, an army psychiatrist brought in to work up quick profiles of the Nazi defendants in hope of giving the prosecution a leg up during proceedings.  With Rami taking a special interest in Göring’s personality (Russell Crowe with just a bit of unnecessary padding), the relationship starts looking too chummy for comfort to the military (especially Colonel John Slattery).  How else to discover what makes such evil tic?  But will it lead prosecutor Michael Shannon to take his advise or will that wily Kraut slip out of yet another noose?  Apparently, there’s a certain amount of truth behind all this.  But Vanderbilt’s cheap melodramatic touch and reflexive handling of character motive make any chance at belief irrelevant.  Something none of the film’s 52 (!)  producers noticed under the weight of Brian Tyler’s misguided, suspense-heavy score.  One more film that hangs its importance on the importance of its subject matter; and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Much the same could be said about another shot at the same subject, producer/director Stanley Kramer’s JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG/’61.  Or of an early writing credit for Vanderbilt, ZODIAC/’07, also well received critically if not commercially, but which points the way to what’s wrong here.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/zodiac-2007.html

THE BIRDS, THE BEES AND THE ITALIANS / SIGNORE & SIGNORI* (1966)

Commedia all'italiana master Pietro Germi, best known for DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE/’61, goes to Treviso for a triptych of one-act sex farces within an unchanging cast of middle-aged middle-class Lotharios.  Story #1 centers on a socially connected doctor whose long-time pal is struggling with a bout of impotence.  The weakest and most stereotypical of the three  stories, the guy who can’t keep his pants on also can’t get it up!  But what if the cure turned out to be a quickie with the Doc’s wife?  The betrayal cure.  Tired stuff.  But improvement is just around the corner in story two.  Here, when a long-standing extramarital affair is exposed, the husband’s not ashamed, but relieved, even shaving off his goatee to celebrate his new freedom.  But since family ties can’t be clipped off quite as easily as a goatee, the story’s not over till the fashionably thin wife sings.  Spot on perfs all ‘round, and unexpected real emotion between comic playing.  Nice use of the confused son & daughter, too.  Then the last story blows them all away as a willing young beauty uses her allure & availability like a credit card.  (Germi brutally frank as needed.)  But when the girl’s peasant father shows up to collect, threatening the five men who’ve been partaking, he has a trump card to play.  His girl is still a minor.  Regrets, scandal, incompetent lawyer, outraged judge, real trouble in Treviso.  Germi not fooling around.  Enter one of the wives.  She knows the score.  She’s known the score; and not just the sexual score.  Plus faith that the rich have their ways (they write the rules), while the poor, especially the undeserving poor (the girl’s father thrilled at the cash he thinks is coming) always end up with the short end of the stick.  As if the poor man forgot: in Italian; commedia all'italiana doesn’t only mean comedy.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Try a Germi outlier, ALFREDO, ALFREDO/’72 with Dustin Hoffman going all Italian on us.  (Dubbed on the Italian track, he does his own talking in the English language dub.)   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/03/alfredo-alfredo-1972.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *For once, the Stateside title improves on the generic original.