LADY ON A TRAIN (1945)

After keeping Universal solvent in her teen heyday (late-‘30s/early-‘40s), soprano sensation Deanna Durbin survived a chubby adolescence only to shed pounds and lose star standing as she hit her twenties.*  Surprisingly, the studio didn’t give up easily, here laying out a lux cast (lux by Universal standards) of small-potato swains, but top character support around Durbin in this well produced comic whodunnit that almost works.  The comedy tanks badly (comedy writing hard!*); but ‘straight’ film noir elements unexpectedly fine; from its Miklós Rózsa score to Elwood Bredell’s chiaroscuro lensing, and, frankly, AI could write a decent murder mystery.  Durbin’s a nepo daughter taking the train to New York when it stops just long enough for her to witness a murder in a room across the elevated tracks.  Only problem, no one will believe her.  (This set-up, fresh at the time, would be famously used by Agatha Christie a decade later in  4:50 FROM PADDINGTON.)  Neat twists (Dan Duryea NOT the bad guy!) and a rattling pace from director Charles David.  Something of a film Jack-of-all-trades in Europe, David only directed twice, his second and last RIVER GANG/’45, a Universal B-pic starring Gloria Jean, a teenage singer meant to be ‘the next’ Deanna Durbin.  No dice.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Two years after this, Durbin would walk away from the screen, marry this film’s French director (49 years wed), never look back, move to France and refuse all offers for books, interviews or recording.  She’d had it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *One good joke in the whole script: at a nightclub, but in mourning, Duryea orders a martini for his very proper Aunt.  But with a black olive.    

A LITTLE PRAYER (2023)

One of those modest films where you know what you’re getting into before you get into it.  A sure Audience Prize winner from some mid-list film fest; always a bad sign.  A rueful domestic tale best-destined for The New Yorker as a piece of short fiction you never get to.  An acclaimed ensemble cast that underwhelms.  (Other than pater familias David Strathairn, always good; even better acting under his pseudonym,  Sam Waterston.)  Capturing the sympathies of many a super-hero hardened critic who take it under their wing like a charity case.  (Only Angus MacLachlan’s third feature as writer/director since 2014.)  Not that it’s bad.  It’s adequate.*  More’s the pity; a tasteless moment might hot things up.  Strathairn’s the even-keeled Dad who runs a modest Heating-and-Cooling Factory & Service company with his son, a hail-fellow-well-met type who’s been papering-over serious personal issues (alcohol, drugs, infidelity, domestic violence) since returning from two military deployments.  Happily, the daughter-in-law is a dream for Strathairn and his wife (a costumed tour-guide docent at a local historical ‘colonial’ campus).  No doubt all the young couple needs is the baby they’ve long been trying for to get the relationship back on track.  Instead, we get the other sister back to the homestead with her needy hot-button issues and difficult little girl, having once more left her no’count drug-brewing husband, to lech on the family teat and be a role model for bad parenting.  MacLachlan’s careful to undersell this dramatic burgoo, only to juice things up in the last act with four or five big reveals.  I didn’t buy into any of them, but tens of others felt differently.

READ ALL ABOUT IT :  *I’ve stolen this idea of ‘adequate’ being worse than 'bad' from Orson Welles who said much the same in conversation with Peter Bogdanovich talking about Maurice Evans, the top Shakespearean during Welles’ Mercury Theatre heyday.  WELLES: He took on practically everything in Shakespeare, the critics raved, and the people packed in to see him.  BOGDANOVICH: And he was bad?  WELLES: Worse - he was poor.  Or so it’s transcribed (make that mis-transcribed) and printed in THIS IS ORSON WELLES.  But on the original audio tapes Welles clearly says: Worse - he was adequate.   FUN FACT: Evans, now probably best-known as Mia Farrow’s doctor in ROSEMARY’S BABY, was a ringer for Jack Benny!  Undoubtedly one of the many reasons Ernst Lubitsch thought of Benny (of all people, radio comedian of genius Jack Benny!) to play that great, great Polish Shakespearean, Josef Tura.

VIGIL IN THE NIGHT (1940)

As if doing penance for past pleasures, Carole Lombard (coming off the delicious melodrama of IN NAME ONLY/’39) and director George Stevens (fresh from Kipling’s tallest tale, GUNGA DIN/’39*) went all high-minded on the noble (if underpaid/appreciated) profession of nursing as seen in A.J. Cronin’s novel.  The popular Scotch novelist having something of a cinematic moment with VIGIL closely following THE CITADEL/’38 and this year’s THE STARS LOOK DOWN, both British-made prestige hits for M-G-M.  This one opens with Lombard (more Goddessy beautiful than ever*) trying to stay awake all-night with her young diphtheria patient before turning duty over to kid sister Anne Shirley (looking like the young Lana Turner) who immediately drops the ball, then lets Lombard take the blame.  Similar incidents pile up against a blameless Lombard as benefactors, bosses and big shots leave our good nurse holding the bag whenever things go wrong.  And they go wrong a lot!  Nonetheless, Carole perseveres, eventually proving her worth during a raging smallpox epidemic in a London isolation ward with the help of Brian Aherne, a devoted doctor who’s bothered to take note of what’s really going on behind the snubs and shifts in blame.  Heck, even that deadbeat sister comes thru by the end.  Dreary and self-sacrificial as this all is, the film builds sympathy, narrative interest and character as it goes along, but those two British-made adaptations have the edge on this one in almost every way.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, THE CITADEL and THE STARS LOOK DOWN.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/citadel-1938.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-stars-look-down-1940.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Plenty of big, stunning close-ups of Lombard at 32.  Stevens and cinematographer  Robert De Grasse obviously transfixed.  ALSO:  *That GUNGA DIN plot largely repurposed by Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur from their own play, THE FRONT PAGE/’31.

WHAT DID THE LADY FORGET? / SHUKUJO WA NANI O WASURETA KA (1937)

Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu was ‘discovered’ by post-WWII Western audiences via TOKYO STORY/’53, a quietly powerful family drama of grace notes, interpersonal subtleties and a diminuendo ending.  And while the film is representative of his style, and one of his greatest (make that one of film’s greatest), it also limited perception of Ozu’s range, losing sight of broader comic instincts.  So this minor effort, a sit-com of domestic strife, may mistakenly come as a surprise from this source.  What is surprising is its ‘Spare the rod and spoil the Wife’ moral.  Easy to forget how recently Hollywood dropped that sexist trope: the Happy Ending after Wife (or intended) got a good spanking and came to her senses, secretly pleased her man still cared enough to beat her; friends jealous since their husbands would never step up to bat.  Yikes!  Still easy to find in the 1960s.  And of course going back to The Taming of the Shrew and beyond.*  But who’d expect to find it in 1937 Ozu?  Here, it presents as a ‘much-deserved’ slap in the face from a weak-willed science professor, tired of being bossed around by the wife.  (Note: The couple childless, but the film’s last mini-arc pushes them, quite explicitly, toward the marital tatami.  The entire situation only coming to a head when his modern niece visits, rudely ticks off her nag of an Aunt, and tells Uncle to take charge of things.  NIECE: Lying for him when he’s caught spending the night at his assistant’s apartment when he was supposedly at a golfing weekend.  UNCLE: Egging on his handsome assistant to court this upstart niece.  Alas, the film, perfectly judged, acted and constructed, right down to some proto-‘pillow’ shots between scenes, is pretty weak tea.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Every modern production of TotS thinks they’re the first to have noticed (and fixed) Kate’s complete capitulation to Master Petruchio.  Making it unobjectionable by ironic playing or as comic over-reaction.  But has anyone ever seen a production that doesn’t undermine the groveling?  A tradition that likely started on the second night of the original 1594 production.

YUNOST MAKSIMA / YOUTH OF MAXIM (1935)

Once a staple of Soviet Film Studies, The Maxim Trilogy (or Maksim or Maksima) has long dropped out of sight.  (So too Soviet Film Studies!)  But to judge by the first of the set (RETURN OF MAXIM/’37; NEW HORIZONS/’39 follow), that’s a pity.  The trio, written and directed by Grigoriy Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, cover the tumultuous years 1910 to 1917 (though year-of-release 1935 is the film’s true focal point) as pre-Revolution Tsarist Russia simultaneously comes to a boil and runs out of steam.  Seen thru the eyes and actions of Maxim as he lives thru a Marxist sentimental education, he’s a naive young man whose life experiences lead him toward political radicalization.  There are parties (not the political kind), secret clubs (the political kind), schooling with anti-capitalist mathematical story problems (a hilarious scene) and near constant surveillance from the Tsar’s secret police.  (Nothing secret about them, they’re everywhere and always in uniform.)  Printing and passing out leaflets  about as far as anyone goes, but that’s enough to get you arrested.  Round ups leading to months in jail (a great place to meet fellow travelers) or to fill a quota for execution.  Eventually, Maxim’s tagged a habitual disturber of the peace (those leaflets) and is exiled from all the Russias.  The sentence both matriculation and set-up for eventual RETURN in the next film.  Though not before declining ‘comradely handshake of farewell from destined girlfriend, for kiss of remembrance.  Da!’  Boris Chirkov, Maxim in all three pics, is allowed to build up a winning presence rare in these Soviet films.  And the sophisticated use of  editing, dissolves & compositions (in spite of early Soviet Talkie ideas on narrative continuity) adds depth of texture and technical interest.*  Plus the largely diegetic score of political period songs well known to the proletariat, leaves just enough space in the opening scene for a snow ride where they let a young Dmitri Shostakovich have his head.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Parts two and three : RETURN OF MAXIM and NEW HORIZONS.  The last with guest appearances from Lenin and Stalin.

LINK: Free youtube link to Y.M. here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg93RFh5sEY

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Lenser Andrey Moskvin would later shoot IVAN THE TERRIBLE/'44; '46 for Sergei Eisenstein.

DONGJI RESCUE / DONG JI DAO (2025)

Think of it this way: If Michael Bay can reduce the Japanese attack on PEARL HARBOR/’01 into a loud, pseudo-patriotic, fast-paced, dumbed-down Michael Bay film, why shouldn’t Chinese directors  Zhenxiang Fei and Guan Hu give a ‘Pop’ patriotic spin to a heroic WWII incident that took place on a small isolated island in the East China Sea where Native fisherman were living under brutal Japanese occupation.  Especially when these two filmmakers easily best Bay at his own game.  The actual incident started when an American submarine successfully torpedoed the Japanese freighter Lisbon Maru, unaware that 1,800 British P.O.W.s were locked inside.  (Beyond this, truth leaks faster than water on the fast-sinking Lisbon Maru.)  One prisoner, blown off the ship’s deck and out to sea, is rescued by the kid brother of a pair of fisherman living alone of the far side of the island.  His older brother knows saving this man will mean nothing but trouble and tries to throw him back like an undersized catch.  Yikes!  Sure enough, word gets around, and the Japanese, already feeling disgraced by the ship attack, hold the entire island responsible.  Meanwhile, 1800 prisoners in the holds below deck are sure to drown when the ship sinks.  On the island, Japanese miscalculate with extreme cruelty which backfires, causing an uprising by the islanders who mount an attack before taking to sea with a flotilla of small fishing boats to try and save what men they can; the attack heroically led by that once reluctant older brother.  Marvelously characterized and cast, with spirit and humor in the first half, followed by astounding action footage (CGI fakery kept to a minimum) in the second; islanders showing pluck, cunning, sacrifice and courage.  Showmanship and flair aided by the use of a striking, extra-wide  format (frame ratio 2.85 : 1) while story and character development never let up.  Particularly so for older brother Bi-An (Yilong Zhu) who brings a level of physical swagger to personal vengeance rarely seen since Daniel Day Lewis bared his torso and started to run down his enemies in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS/’92.  Stirring stuff, reveling in its sure audience manipulation.  Plus a moral: Learn to hold your breath underwater for a good four minutes!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Best guess is that co-director Zhenxiang Fei (mainly with tv background) played kid brother to director Guan Hu whose last film was BLACK DOG/’24, a sort of anti-epic epic as subtle and abstract as this one is broad and concrete.  Note cinematographer Weizhe Gao came along with him.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/04/black-dog-gouzhen-2024.html

DOUBLE-BILL:  A documentary on the incident, THE SINKING OF THE LISBON MARU (not seen here), released in 2024.

THIS REBEL BREED (1960)

Descriptions of this zero-budget exploitation indie might as well be promising THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE meets 21 JUMP STREET (the earnest  ‘87 series, not the winking 2012 film).  Drug-fueled, racially-charged High School on the edge of violent gang-led implosion admits a pair of undercover cops posing as (very remedial) students to investigate the problems.  And damned if this description ain’t accurate.  At last, truth in movie advertising!  But directors Richard L. Bare & William Rowland so incompetent, the product so dreary, so starved of invention, there’s hardly a bit of fun to be had.  Worse, in trying to squeeze out an extra dribble of cash (from where? - Drive-In triple-bill rentals?), they tacked on a few make-out sequences which pop up at random moments for half-minute orgasmic rug rolls with skimpily-clad sexpots & horny boyfriends not in the rest of the film.*  Even a belly dancer as Special Guest Boob.  Rita Moreno is in here for the big dramatics as a Hispanic with a taste for White boys.  One knocks her up before getting knocked off.  (And why not?  When Moreno knocked off work she presumably was nailing her audition for WEST SIDE STORY/’61.)  BTW,  Moreno already 29, and all the other speaking parts cast with ‘teenagers’ also nearing 30 who’d soon be seen on tv; like Mark Damon in swarthy Mexicali make-up; Al Freeman Jr. there to give racial peace a chance; Richard Rust trying to hook the whole school (and selected kid brothers) on ‘Mary Jane.’  This ought to be a hoot.  Instead, it’s a pass.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The re-release with softer-than-soft-core trimmings retitled THE BLACK REBELS.  Pretty insulting; especially as the Black gang gets less footage than Whites or Hispanics.

SKYLARK (1941)

Even in the ‘20s. ‘30s, and ‘40s, when B’way’s footprint on mass culture was at its height, reigning stage divinities rarely made the movie version of their latest smash.*  Take Gertrude Lawrence, the hard-to-photograph stage star of this Samuel Raphealson play.  Here, she’s been replaced by Claudette Colbert as an advertising man’s wife who succumbs to ‘the Five Year Itch’ when husband Ray Milland puts business first once-too-often and a flirtatious Brian Aherne pitches woo.  Colbert proves one of the best substitutes in locating the elusive Lawrence charm, poise & presence.*   (Previously, Colleen Moore, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford & Ginger Rogers took turns; later Deborah Kerr.)  Raphaelson’s rueful, but rather sour play is perilously ‘opened up’ by ‘Hollywood Ten’ scripter Allan Scott.  (One of the few on the Communist Blacklist who actually tucked a bit of Leftist ideology into a film.  Listen up in a subway sequence where bickering husband Milland & wife Colbert hear out various riders’ comments, including a proletariat type behind his newspaper.  It’s Scott’s best addtion to the play.)  Elsewhere, he’s content to dumb things down with physical shtick and a kitchen cooking fiasco for Colbert.*  Director Mark Sandrich shows a limber touch when he can (see prologue), but elsewise has to deal with the arguments on work, life and compatibility reduced to a level that makes Colbert’s final choice even more unsatisfying than I think Raphealson wanted it to be.  Still, if not particularly funny, pretty interesting as a period piece on marriage & mores if you read between the lines.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Katharine Hepburn, an apparent exception to the substitution rule on her ‘comeback’ role in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, only got the film because she controlled the show rights.  *BTW note Kate also played the kitchen fiasco scene from this film for her PHILLY follow-up in WOMAN OF THE YEAR/’42.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  To see Colbert really run with the idea of fixing a stale marriage with a flirtation, Preston Sturges to the rescue in next year’s THE PALM BEACH STORY/’42.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-palm-beach-story-1942.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  STAR/’68, the Julie Andrews/Robert Wise bio-pic on Lawrence famously missed capturing the aura that saw Noel Coward, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Kurt Weill all write SongBook Standards for a woman unable to stay on key.

THE INNER CIRCLE (1991)

Pushing 90 and still active, few filmmakers of Andrei Konchalovsky’s stature have a C.V. as uneven as this Russian exile.  Showing good form in pulpy Stateside action/suspense like RUNAWAY TRAIN/’85, brilliantly sharp as recently as 2020 in his bureaucratic ‘Party Line’ takedown DEAR COMRADES!* (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/03/dear-comrades-dorogie-tovarishchi-2020.html), then serving up five embarrassments for each winner.  But he’s rarely been so evenly divided between his best & worst instincts within a single film as in this fascinating, fact-based life of Ivan Sanshin, personal projectionist to movie fan (and deadly critic) Comrade Josef Stalin.  Tom Hulce does a great job as the star-struck projectionist (watch him load film without looking) who can’t believe his luck, or notice how his good fortune is ruining his life with fragile wife Lolita Davidovich.  He becomes entangled with Stalin’s Inner Circle; she becomes emotionally entangled with the child of arrested neighbors.  Konchalovsky oversells everything in typical Russian fashion (the heartier the acting the better), whether scooping out caviar or baring your soul.  But while Hulce has the acting chops to cope with extremes, Davidovich is all at sea, unable to regulate.  Her tragedy seems less preordained fate than poor life choices.  And Konchalovsky never noticing the wheels are coming off his conception.  Still, fine scene setting (Moscow 1939 - 1953) and great supporting players almost get the project back on track.  Coarse & powerful/banal & thought-provoking; it’s the Konchalovsky dilemma.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Konchalovsky was at his very best in early collaborations with Andrei Tarkovsky on two stunning masterpieces, IVAN’S CHILDHOOD/’62 and ANDREI RUBLEV/’66.  A stabilizing influence who kept Tarkovsky grounded in narrative soil.  (And there are rumors of a third film: planned, shot, never released.  MosFilm!, please check your archive!)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   Armando Iannucci’s mordant/alarming THE DEATH OF STALIN/’17.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-death-of-stalin-2017.html