THE WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (2016)

With a long and fertile history of adaptation, top-tier Agatha Christie titles are no longer simply remade, but must be re-imagined.  Or so film producers think.  (YOUNG POIROT in the pipeline.)  WITNESS, which started as an early short story before Christie turned it into a play in 1953; Billy Wilder a film in 1957*; along with multiple outings on tv and radio, here gets refreshed right from title, gaining an article: THE.  On the whole, it does better than most Christie rethinks, but errs fatally in putting too much dramatic weight on her construct.  Christie can support murder, but not tragedy.  The basic story’s there, handsome drifter charged with killing a rich older woman for her fortune is screwed in court by his common-law wife’s testimony, only to see the outcome go topsy-turvy.  Wilder’s version famously added an extra twist-and-a-half to the fun.  And fun is exactly what this latest version lacks.  Trying for real tragedy with two different twists of fate that overplay their hand.  Christie believed in evil (it’s what made Miss Marple so insightful), but tragedy  not in her range.  As the accused, Billy Howle makes the most of things, with a restrained/anything goes sexual vibe not seen since Michael York’s heyday.  Everyone else gets their points  across: Toby Jones’ coughing solicitor (not TB, just bronchitis), Kim Cattrall’s wanton lover; Andrea Riseborough’s cunning vixen.  But like the choking, yellow-filtered atmosphere of 1920s London, it’s laid on too thick.  The Christie narrative DNA still works its magic, but cutting thru the fog is more work than need be.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Wilder, at his most impersonal, sticks to the play and let’s Christie’s clever narrative mechanics do the heavy lifting.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/09/witness-for-prosecution-1957.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Not 100% sure, but I think this is the only version that has the solicitor (here Jones) rather than the barrister (Charles Laughton for Wilder) as lead.

L’AVVENTURA (1961)

Michelangelo Antonioni was nearing 50, with a handful of impressive features behind him, when he found his true subject and broke thru internationally with this enigmatic classic.  A contrarian in the midst of Italy’s successful Il Boom economy, his reaction might be summed up as ‘is that all there is?’  Rejecting the notion that No Man Is An Island, Antonioni tells us EACH man (or woman) is an island unto themself.  It’s his only theme.  Following films like a portrait studio offering to roll down different backdrops (identity, environment, class, murder), but with main subject unchanged.  So choose your first Antonioni carefully; you can only get that big initial reaction once.  As first in the series, L’AVVENTURA is a good choice, though BLOW-UP/’66, with London Mod Era trimmings and a half-hour shorter the better intro.  L’AVVENTURA, first of four with Monica Vitti, is the one where a small yacht’s-worth of difficult/unpleasant Euro-Trash types (lots of LA DOLCE VITA/’60 in here) lose (misplace?) one of their own on an island stop.  The point less how they react to the missing friend than how they don’t react.  Three days later, affairs and business back to normal; as if she’d never been.  Chilly stuff , chic & elegant as haute couture.  And possibly as unnecessary.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Check out the young painter one of the yachters picks up once she's back on dry land.  In hair and pictures, the kid's a ringer for young Picasso.  And you thought Antonioni didn't have sense of humor.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Though it has its modern-day defenders, Antonioni never recovered his Prince of Disconnected Modernism & Existential Ennui rep after he fell flat on his Counter-Culture face in the hapless ZABRISKIE POINT/’70.  He knew it, too.  Barely one feature per decade after it.  But THE PASSENGER/’74 does at least manage to get into gear.

DAVID HARUM (1915; 1934)

Small-town Americana from Edward Noyes Wescott’s best-selling (semi-autobiographical?) book about a curmudgeonly banker who secretly acts as Fairy Godfather to half the town.  Filmed twice: Allan Dwan/1915; James Cruze/1934; the earlier version mainly of interest as a prime example of the ‘Famous Players in Famous Plays’ philosophy soon dropped when fresh-minted movie personalities proved far more popular than established stage vets by the company that became Paramount.  Here, our ‘Famous Player’ is William H. Crane, Harum three times on B’way and on tour (1900 - 1904).  Dwan establishes strong rural atmosphere from the start with a striking tracking shot (cinematographer Harold Rosson*) that runs up the town’s main street to the Harum bank.  But with character bits instead of plot, the film never builds.  Harum sets up a local romance; Harum trades horses with townies; Harum takes over a poor widow’s mortgage.  Worse, Dwan lets stage action & (inaudible) dialogue play intact, with 70-yr-old Crane demonstrating little camera rapport.  All improved in 1934 with Will Rogers able to take advantage of his quasi-improvistory manner, adding subtle jabs & jokes delivered at a walking pace while retaining the same moving pieces (marriage, ‘mudders,’ mortgage) and adding a real horse-race in the third act.  Cruze, who never lived up to the promise of his mega-hit THE COVERED WAGON/’23, lets Rogers be Rogers (all you really need to do on his films*), keeps controversial Black icon Stepin Fetchit reasonably understandable, and is blessed with tasty supporting players.  It also helps that whereas the silent version plays as 1915 contemporary, the remake helpfully distances the story back to the 1890s.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Rogers best seen in his John Ford films, especially STEAMBOAT ‘ROUND THE BEND/’35, and in Henry King’s STATE FAIR/’33.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/steamboat-round-bend-1935.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/06/state-fair.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *HARUM Rosson’s debut.  51 years on, Howard Hawks’ EL DORADO/’66 his last.

LADY IN A JAM (1942)

Starting in early silent animation, but mostly celebrated for two best-of-their-kind mid-‘30s ensemble comedies: ‘screwball’ MY MAN GODFREY and drama-tinged STAGE DOOR; you’ll look in vain to find their equal in other Gregory La Cava directed films.  Not that there aren’t worthwhile candidates, but nothing anywhere near that level.  (Lost silents and hard-to-find sound titles might prove otherwise.)  This, his penultimate release, shows him at half staff, riffing off GODFREY to reasonable effect, especially if you hang around till everyone goes west to reopen a ‘played out’ family gold mine.  Irene Dunne is remarkably committed to her rather unpleasant entitled character, a broke/mentally flighty heiress who can’t adjust to reduced circumstances.  Lucky for her, the sanatarium funded by her family in better times feels they owe her special treatment, so she’s followed by staff psychoanalyst Patric Knowles (charming at his most Errol Flynn-like), convinced he can fix her up in an afternoon; then tagging along to the depleted mine where the rest of the family live a threadbare existence.  Watch for Jane Garland, great in her only film role as a chubby young niece who knows the score.  Ralph Bellamy also there, reimagining the same third-wheel hayseed he’d tried out against Dunne in THE AWFUL TRUTH/’37.  But now, as extroverted as he’d previously been introverted.  Undoubtedly derivative, but La Cava makes it swing in spite of a scrappy script.  The truth is, screwball tropes without the Great Depression to anchor the craziness in real desperation rarely work even as well as they do here.*  Just don’t expect too much.  (Except for Hal Mohr’s lensing which is pretty phenomenal.  Especially out of Universal.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Book-ended by La Cava to finish his career on two more flawed comedies with Dunne (UNFINISHED BUSINESS/’41; LIVING IN A BIG WAY/’47).  Together, they showed better form with straight drama in  SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION/’32.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/07/symphony-of-six-million-1932.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *But what about Preston Sturges at the same time, I hear you ask.  Well, that’s one reason Sturges ain’t screwball.  He’s Sturges; a category of one.

THE BIG EASY (1986)

Many a nit might be picked in this New Orleans set policier that’s really about the sexed up relationship between showboating Police Detective Dennis Quaid and Incorruptible Assistant D.A. Ellen Barkin as they fuck & feud their way thru court battles and a drug-fueled gang war (or is it?).  But the end product is too entertaining to bother about shortcomings.  At their physical peak (Barkin’s cock-eyed looks a match for Quaid’s shredded physique, each with movie star smiles that could melt asbestos), they overcome director Jim McBride’s tourist’s view of New Orleans, careless plotting, and some unconvincing vowels in the local patois to make the case & their relationship mean something.  Though McBride’s painfully sloppy work can stop you in your tracks; the poor editor can barely match shots  while four or five action set pieces are downright painful.  And the big ‘reveals’ wouldn’t surprise a police intern.  On the other hand: no one pronounces New Orleans as ‘Naw-lins’ (hurrah!) or makes a late-night pit stop for Beignets at  Café Du Monde.*   Best of all is simply being reminded of what a naturally gifted/shamefully under-valued, actor Quaid was/is.  Still making it look too easy to land on the awards merry-go-round. 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *They couldn’t avoid all the local clichés: Chef Paul Prudhomme comes tableside to serve his Étouffée and Barkin gets stood up at Antoines.

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT / YEK TASADOF-E SADEH (2025)

With decades of major award bait material (Palme d'Or; a rare Original Screenplay Oscar nom. on a foreign-language pic; dozens more on this one alone), co-writer/director Jafar Panahi would have been Iranian cinema royalty by now if only his moviemaking weren’t suppressed in his own country.  This latest one of his best, a strikingly original prisoners’ revenge story that opens and closes in deadly earnest, but daringly plays out as farce in-between.  It starts when a car accident brings one-time prison warden (along with pregnant wife and young daughter) to a rural car garage where the grizzled mechanic recognizes the driver as the man who tortured him in jail.  But is it really him?  Followed and then abducted by the former prisoner, his life and health destroyed by the beatings he took in jail, he suddenly has doubts just as he starts to bury the man alive. He seeks absolute identification to ‘justify’ his actions.  And from here up to the last reel, the tone turns to absurdist journey as we gather other victims to verify identification.  A professor, a wedding photographer, the bride (groom in tow), a wild galoot hungry for vengeance.  Largely played as a dark roundelay in some bizarro On the Road farce Feydeau couldn’t have thought up.  With laughs that ought to stick in your throat, but don’t.  What can you do but laugh between the bribes you need to pay for just about any service.  Iran’s landscape may look like Utah, but laminated ‘No Tipping Allowed’ cards on every diner table unheard of.   Dangerous stuff from Panahi.  Wondrous, too.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: You don’t expect an Iranian film about delayed justice between a sadistic prison official and his tortured victims to make you think of a tweedy period farce like THE WRONG BOX.’66, but it does.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-wrong-box-1966.html

MEMORIAS DEL SUBDESARROLLO / MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT (1968)

Was Tomás Gutiérrez Alea the only Cuban director to remain in the country and develop a significant international reputation?  This inventive work, both ‘essay film’ and Rake’s Progress report, his best known.  Released in 1968, it covers the early ‘60s in Cuba’s revolution (think Bay of Pigs thru the Missile Crisis) with a style that’s pure Nouvelle Vague, and a startlingly apolitical protagonist, a Cuban flaneur to walk us thru layers of Havana society.  Played sympathetically in spite of his actions by Sergio Corrieri, very much in the manner of Marcello Mastroianni*, we first see him bidding an unemotional farewell to his family: parents, wife, relatives, off to Miami, part of the White middle-class flight from revolutionary mores, manners and financial upheaval.  So what’s keeping Sergio there?  Inertia?  Income from rental properties?  Possible sexual adventures?  That’s how he gets into trouble.  Seducing a girl he met on the street.  An innocent young thing.  Turns out she’s 17.  Warning signs all but posted on every curve of her body.  Intellectually naive, too.  Watch on a tour of Ernest Hemingway’s home; already a tourist site with the man fresh in his grave.  (Her hysterical family not far behind her in self-serving motive.)  Sergio seemingly unharmed and unchanged by these personal bothers, indolence unshaken by the events churning around him.  Somehow Alea even got away with showing what a bore Castro was whenever you put a microphone in his front of him.  The whole film even more fascinating now than it must have been in ‘68.  With a recent restoration that has it looking better than it has in decades.  Essential viewing even at its most unpleasant.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The echoes of Mastroianni the main exception to Nouvelle Vague style.  Not that Mastroianni didn’t make any Nouvelle Vague, but not what he’s known for.  Corrieri superb in the part yet with only 10 other film credits.  Few opportunities at the time in Cuba?

JACK ET LA MÉCANIQUE DU COEUR / JACK AND THE CUCKOO-CLOCK HEART (2013)

Co-directed by Stéphane Berla, but elsewise this physically impressive animated fairy-tale* is all Mathias Malzieu.  Adapted by Malzieu from his own book, musical score & songs by French band Dionysos (lead singer/front man Mathias Malzieu), he’s also the speaking & singing voice of Jack in the French version originale.  Auteur overkill?  It helps explain what goes wrong.  The Dickensian opening follows a desperate pregnant woman in a snow-filled landscape fainting on the doorstep of a witch-like midwife.  Birthing a nearly perfect boy (with an alarming crop of hair), he has but one defect: a frozen heart.  Luckily, the childless midwife has a closet of cuckoo-clocks to take its place.  But the boy must abide by three rules - ONE: Never touch the hands of the mechanical timepiece.  TWO: Never get over-excited.  THREE: Never fall in love!  Leaving the boy in the midwife’s care (she’s long longed for a child of her own), Mother sneaks off without looking back, and the boy grows up, goes rogue, and, like fellow imperfect adventurer Pinocchio, breaks all three rules before finding his fate.*  On the whole, the film is a joy to look at, but neither characters nor tale register as they must to gain emotional traction, largely because of Malzieu’s pre-immersion in his material.  He forgets that while he’s familiar with everything in here, we ain’t.  He doesn’t need a narrative nudge, but we do.  And by never bothering to swing back and give us proper entry, we’re lost after granting him an entire act to clue us in and get us up to speed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *CGI animation digitally styled to look like Stop-Motion.  (I think.)  In the English-language version, you can see the characters’ mouths are ‘speaking’ French.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Lots of Pinocchios out there.  But stick with the 1940 Disney classic for comparison.

BLÜCHER / THE BATTLE OF OSLO (2025)

Moving from previous documentary features to a WWII historical, Norwegian director Daniel Fahre tackles this locally famous war incident to good effect without overstating the case.  Keyed to the 1940 defense of Oscarsborg Fortress, an old structure meant to serve as a waterway buffer 30 minutes from the seat of government and the King in Oslo.  The fort underfunded and undermanned (largely with untrained recruits) in spite of pleas from aging fort commander Colonel Birger Eriksen (Bjørn Sundquist).  With the Norwegian military on high alert from nearby German/British naval activity and a large warship of unknown origin approaching, Norway’s neutrality & independence is on the line.  And no one can make out the markings or even an accurate distance to aim the fort’s two poorly maintained cannons.  Ordered to hold out as long as possible, the Colonel is running on instinct.  Something he’ll need to call on again when further attacks and a demand to surrender follow.  Told in flashback from a 1946 military investigation that's shot in b&w, the after-the-fact procedure is either mere face-saving or historical rewrite.*  Fahre works very close, presumably to save on the budget, but there’s enough large-scale battle sequences and explosions to get the situations across.  (Though too much ‘70s style rough hand-held camera work not a help.)  But the military dilemma and critical need for fast decisions register strongly.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *As they say in the Navy: Even if the Captain’s on the crapper when the fuck up happened, he’s still responsible for everything that happens on his ship.