OUR TOWN (1940)

Hitting the screen only two years after its B’way opening in 1938, this film adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic was initially well received.  Later, objections to the revised ending and floods of subfusc home editions (plus maybe a few too many High School  productions) knocked the film’s rep down a peg or two.  Nothing can be done about that happy ending (less than a minute long, it’s easy to mentally block), and now much that might have been done to improve picture quality has, at long last, been done, thanks mostly to The Library of Congress.  (Look for their 2023 restoration.)  And the film’s come up a treat.  Cleverly retrofitted for film by Wilder and actor Frank Craven, who repeats his ‘Stage Manager’ role from B’way, the revolutionary bare/prop-free stage production has been given a rethink from legendary Hollywood Art Director William Cameron Menzies, given his head by director Sam Wood to design a stylized realism that heightens every scene.*  The quasi-simplicity of Wilder’s turn-of-the-last-century portrait of a ‘good’ small New England town leaps off the soundstage: daily routine, pleasures & tragedies of home-life: births, young love, weddings, death; laid out by Wilder like a prose poem of details & duties.  Craven is still a welcome surprise as tour guide, brisk, sec, blunt, without nonsense or sentimentality.  The other major holdover from the original production, Martha Scott as young Emily, who marries the boy next door, less successful.  Twenty-eight at the time, a lack of freshness less from being a decade too old, than from having already figured out her line readings.*  And playing against a 22-yr-old William Holden only points out the difference.  Holden holds the screen effortlessly, breaking your heart with minimal effort.  A scene where Father Thomas Mitchell takes him to task almost unbearably moving.  With all the Hollywood supporting players at the very top of their game.  So too lenser Bert Glennon, just off John Ford’s STAGE COACH/’39; deftly jumping from Monument Valley to Menzies' carefully worked out stage set perspectives.  All of them memorably supported by Aaron Copland’s perfectly judged score.  (Now a concert piece that’s never gone out of favor.)  The restored film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58O76SinOrQ&t=1027s) now easily topping the many tv versions hanging out online.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Another Wood/Menzies collaboration, KINGS ROW/’42, something of an anti-OUR TOWN.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/kings-row-1940.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Martha Scott’s B’way understudy, Teresa Wright, would have been perfect.

HOPPERS (2026)

The sound you heard coming from PIXAR hometown Emeryville, CA last March was likely a collective sigh of relief.  They’d just released their first original (non-franchise) hit in some time.  (Since the pandemic?*)  No mega-smash, but a solid stand-up double.  In many ways it’s an odd film (a good thing after so much formula PIXAR), HOPPERS' story a variation on the old ‘pave paradise/put up a parking lot’ trope, with nods toward Cinderella’s time-limited transformation, as unlikeable characters & unattractive design choices seem to hint at self-criticism & acknowledged course correction.  This being PIXAR, reset comes with a $150 mill price tag.  (But who stuck those scary sharp teeth in a duck’s bill?  Yikes!)  Our nominal heroine, a self-righteous pain, is 19-yr-old squeaky-wheel Mabel, determined to save her spoiled childhood pond (and the critters who once lived there) in the face of highway development.  Her antagonist a self-infatuated mayor (Jon Hamm, very good) who can’t compromise without losing face.  The gimmick a science project that ‘hops’ personalities from one species to another.  Mabel zapped into a beaver bod.  The script, trying too hard to be fair to all sides, winds up celebrating false equivalency as if it were compromise.  Not quite the same thing.  But that’s politics; we’re here for art, yes?  Good to see PIXAR questioning so much about itself.  Even if it’s yet to find answers.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Dear PIXAR character animation team.  The ‘cartooniness’ of the character animation design is worth pursuing, but this in-between stage is uncomfortable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  They miss an opportunity when the various animals play call-and-response with their distinctive vocalizations.  It plays like a song cue (‘I Bought Me A Cow’ from Aaron Copland’s Old American Songs?), but nothing comes of it.  Pity.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *A sure theatrical hit lost to PIXAR when LUCA/’21 turned streamer in early pandemic days.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/luca-2021.html

IL CAMMINO DELLA SPERANZA / THE PATH OF HOPE (1950)

A decade before DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE/’61, the most iconic of all commedia all'italiana titles*, writer/director Pietro Germi, like so many others, was still turning to Italian Neo-Realism for guidance.  So even with Federico Fellini co-scripting, this immigration melodrama gets its start firmly planted in the naturalism of Sicily's rocky soil.  Its story remarkably close to what you’d encounter today with the major difference that the borders being illegally crossed all within Italy.  Or are till the very end.  In a small Sicilian town, the closing of the local sulfur mine leaves most of the locals unemployed, willing to give their small savings to a smuggler promising passage and jobs in France.  Naturally, the guy’s a swindler, their money already mailed to an accomplice when a mixup at Rome’s train terminal puts everyone on the run; government agents in pursuit; couples split/lost in the city, the lucky ones reunited in police stations before being ordered back to Sicily . . . or else.  Cutting loose, some grab temp farm labor, unaware they’re scabbing against a labor union, the few now left, clamoring into unmarked trucks, clawing their way to a dangerous mountain-pass border crossing.  Germi pushes the melodrama till things start looking like a ‘well-made’ play.  But the cast (headed by Raf Vallone; with pros in most of the leads) is empathetic as hell (those big-eyed bambini!).  There’s even an operatic climax straight out of CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA.  Effective?  Si.  Neo-realistic?  Non così tanto.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The ironic distancing and dark comic tone that fed commedia all'italiana not yet possible, not before the economic miracle later in the decade, nicknamed ‘Il Boom.’

ACROSS TO SINGAPORE (1928)

Second of three films taken from Ben Ames Williams’ novel ALL THE BROTHERS WERE VALIANT (also 1923, now lost, and 1953 - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/all-brothers-were-valiant-1953.html).  Oddly, only one of its four seafaring brothers turns out to be valiant, the others either lost at sea, lost in the plot or lost in the Mysterious East (from unrequited love or a fortune in stolen pearls).  Only the youngest valiant.  With plot tweaks to match different casts, this one has Ramon Navarro (29, but looking a decade younger) perfectly cast as the teenage kid who’s grown into a young man (delicate, but sturdy) while his older brothers were at sea.  Eager for a first voyage, he’ll miss his girl (22-yr-old Joan Crawford), only to be emotionally waylaid when alpha-male brother Ernest Torrence (50 and looking it) forces an engagement on the terrified girl.  As if that’s not enough, the voyage under stress from storms and a First-Mate who takes advantage of Torrence’s monumental bender, leaving the lovesick man for dead in Singapore (actually he’s leaving him with Anna May Wong!), and commandeering the ship.  Once home, Navarro takes the rap before stealing off with Crawford to find his big brother and clear his name.  Nicely directed by William Nigh (a prestige silent helmer who steadily lost ground when sound came in), though the first two reels of forced roughhousing between the boys before they ship out are a pain.  Thankfully, it’s shot by the great John F. Seitz, a transformative lenser for Rex Ingram, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder.  Serious print deterioration means you’ve got to squint thru a lot, but much remains in pretty good shape.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Torrence’s claim to film immortality came earlier in 1928, playing enormous, disappointed Dad to Buster Keaton in STEAMBOAT BILL, JR./’28.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/steamboat-bill-jr-1928.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  1928 was such a phenomenal year for silent cinema.  And Early Talkies generally so stiff.  (In round numbers: 1928 80% siient/20% Talkie; 1929 20% silent/80% Talkie.)  It’s easy to see what was being mourned/what was being lost.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (2014)

You’ve heard of the so-called ‘Cilantro Gene,’ a condition causing 23% of the population to taste rubber tires when eating the popular herb?  Less known/equally powerful, the MARVEL Comics Movie Mutation, a genetic response presenting as doziness, hives, nausea, rejection to endless cross-plugging of the MARVEL Universe, characters & franchises within a single film; all exacerbated by CGI abuse; battle-palooza fatigue; ‘fatal’ blows of zero consequence; and no built-in bathroom breaks for three hour running times.  A MARVEL-phobic effect, once rare, now showing alarming spikes of growth in casual viewers & loyal fanboys.  It's one reason the first Chris Evans led CAPTAIN AMERICA film (THE FIRST AVENGER/’11) was such a pleasant surprise to gene carriers.  Perhaps because its origin story held to a single hero; perhaps because period elements gave an analogue feel to practical and non-practical (CGI) effects; perhaps because old-school director Joe Johnston brought mid-century æsthetics from his THE ROCKETEER/’91 with him as well as action chops that bothered to connect the thigh bone to the leg bone.  Alas, as noted at the time*, it couldn’t last; and this sequel, generally considered the high point in MARVEL’s film renaissance, figuratively put the cilantro back in the recipe.  Here, directors Joe & Anthony Russo* packing back in all the allergy inducing elements on a story about a splinter group sabotaging the Super-Hero good guys of S.H.I.E.L.D. from within.  A story built for cross-plugging at every exposition stop and story beat.  Sure tastes like rubber tires to me.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Bearing in mind that you should never take advice from anyone who says, ‘I don’t usually like (fill-in-the-blank) genre movies, but this one is worth seeing.’  But that first Evans CAPTAIN AMERICA film is darn entertaining.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/04/captain-america-2011.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Remarkably poor editing (especially in hand-to-hand action stuff) for a film costing near 200 mill.

THE GREAT ESCAPER (2023)

Last call for Michael Caine & Glenda Jackson (and with them, a British film generation), who go out not with a bang, but with an anecdote, fact-based/well chosen.  It’s 70 years after D-Day and Normandy Landing vet Caine, now living comfortably with frail wife Jackson in an assisted care facility, realizes he’s too late to join a group for the commemoration in France.  But it’s never too late to pack a few essentials and take off by foot.  Then bus, cab, train & ship.  Near 90, Caine shuffles along with his trusty cane, catching breaks thru the kindness of strangers without sprinkling too much fairy dust in helpful advice on the way; though it’s a near thing.  Journeyman director Oliver Parker is roped in by William Ivory’s workaday script.  All the WWII flashbacks usurping precious acting opportunities from our leads.  But the film has its touching moments and doesn’t plead for tears; nor needs to.  Caine & Jackson left with dignity intact.  Jackson in particular, fierce as ever when need be.  (Unlike the sweet-natured gal who plays her in the flashbacks.)  Sadly, Jackson died shortly before the film came out, while Caine, who announced his retirement upon completion, saw the film fail to get Stateside distribution.  Boo!  (PBS picked it up.)  That’s showbiz.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  These self-acknowledged screen farewells rarely go even this well.  But there’s built in affection toward films like GHOST STORY/’81 and THE WHALES OF AUGUST/’87.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/ghost-story-1981.html

THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE / OCHAZUKE NO AJI (1952)

Sandwiched between EARLY SUMMER/’51 and TOKYO STORY/’53, two Yasujiro Ozu classics that fit expectations on the Ozu oeuvre, this modest marital dramedy gets overlooked.  Doubly so as behind an imposing title that promises utmost Japanese subtlety, lies a small film with a light tone.  Yet the film is all Ozu, and not to be missed, especially if you’ve seen WHAT DID THE LADY FORGET?/’37.  That film something of a trial run for this one fifteen years later; offering a unique opportunity to see Ozu’s response ripen from simple sit-com to emotional resonance.  In both films, a poorly matched, childless couple, rapidly stiffening into incompatible middle-age stasis (wife: snobby, custom-bound, social striver; husband: comfort-loving/low-ambition compartmentalist) are jarred out of their routine when their visiting ‘modern’ niece starts speaking up for herself, skipping arranged marriage meetings, going about the city on her own (she’s a crack pinball player), coming home at all hours and finding her own dates . . . whom she also treats poorly.  (The guy loves it!)  Seeing how much of this is just like LADY;  yet how much Ozu has grown as observant filmmaker (the whole last act becomes thrillingly emotional after a marital crisis clears the air for renewal), is like having a privileged moment alone with Ozu.  What could be more valuable?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  This is more like a whole course on Ozu, but here are the films mentioned above.  (Anyway, is there an Ozu film not worth seeing?)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/early-summer-1951.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/tokyo-story-1953.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/07/what-did-lady-forget-shukujo-wa-nani-o.html

POLICE PYLON 347 (1976)

Poet and pulp-fiction writer Kenneth Fearing got a lot of mileage out of THE BIG CLOCK, his sole story picked up for feature adaptation.  A twisty murder story with the usual innocent man having to prove his innocence before an eye-witness works up his portrait.  With Ray Milland & Charles Laughton, the 1948 original was set in a publishing house before this French policier made it an all cop inside job followed by relocation to the Pentagon as a military suspenser for Kevin Costner in NO WAY OUT/’87.  (And more! - there’s also an unofficial ripoff with Denzel Washington as OUT OF TIME/’03, again in a police setting.)  Not a lot of surprise left in the story, generally look to your boss to find the guilty party.  What does surprise is that this French version, from regular Yves Montand/Simone Signoret collaborator Alain Corneau is the stinker of the bunch.  Mostly because the victim, Stefania Sandrelli’s sloe-eyed vamp, is such an insufferable tease (stalker?) on the pair of middle-aged men (Montand and François Périer) she’s targeted.  One slaps her; the other brains her with an ashtray; audience cued to applaud.  Ugh.  Only Simone Signoret, invalid wife to Périer, has a bit of fun plotting from her bed.  Are all Corneau films this dull?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  John Farrow’s original shot at THE BIG CLOCK/’48 is an over-rated film noir, but it sure beats the other tries.

12 MONKEYS (1995)

A polite way to describe the films of Terry Gilliam is to call them maximalist.  A more accurate description might compare them to a hungry teenager overloading a dinner plate at his first open buffet.  If only someone had told him you can go back for a second plate if you’re still hungry.  This one, philosophical future preposterous Sci-Fi, comes off better than most, it certainly did commercially.  Bruce Willis is the time-traveling guinea-pig for a group of experts trying to figure out the mystery of the 12 Monkeys, a gaggle of infectious primates who unleashed a plague, killing about 5 billion Earthlings.  Unfortunately for Willis, time coordinates not always on-target for the correct year to find out about the deadly man-made monkey virus and bring the info back-to-the-future.  Christopher Plummer and lunatic son Brad Pitt keep popping up at various landing points, as does helpmate Madeleine Stowe.  But don’t sweat the big stuff, the whole shebang is a shaggy-dog story (oops, shaggy-dog tragedy) with a ‘red herring’ not as a wrong turn, but as solution.  Brad Pitt nearly steals the pic with his escalating rants of insanity, letting his inner Gene Wilder out.  (If only he didn’t pull the same stunt every time he comes on screen.)  And Gilliam’s big sentimental finish?  Indefensible.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  At one point in the ‘present,’ Willis & Stowe go to the movies to watch VERTIGO and THE BIRDS at an Alfred Hitchcock retro screening.  Later, Gilliam riffs on VERTIGO story beats.  It adds little to the film, but does offer a chance to see how much available prints at the time needed the major restoration (largely overseen by Robert Gitt) it got for it’s successful re-release a year later in 1996.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Gilliam credits Chris Marker’s half-hour short, LA JETÉE/’62 as source, probably good advice.