HOUSE OF BAMBOO (1955)

Rough-edged writer/director Samuel Fuller never quite hit the A-List, but had a fine run of what might be called B+-pics @ 20th/Fox in the ‘50s. (Mostly indie B-pics before & aft.) This mob drama, superbly shot on location in Japan, may be the slickest, most entertaining from those prime years.* Working smoothly in his 2nd CinemaScope pic, after the claustrophobic submarine espionage of HELL AND HIGH WATER/’54, Fuller, unlike so many Hollywood helmers in Japan, picks right up on the possibilities of using the small boxy apartments & sliding panel doors as framing/editing devices. (Cinematographer Joe MacDonald’s doing?) With his typically blunt style in characterization & storytelling giving the film a special insider/outsider feel, only some overly coy bath scenes date. Robert Stack is stiff, but fine as the undercover police agent who infiltrates Robert Ryan’s Tokyo protection racket. On the way falling for the Japanese widow of one of the gang while, apparently having Ryan fall for him! Ryan suppresses this into bromance, but something’s going on between these guys; and second-in-command Cameron Mitchell sniffs it out. Good stuff. Better than the police contingent, who get a bit lost in the action, though it’s fun to hear Sessue Hayakawa, two years before BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, speak with a generic dubbed voice. It all ends in a thrilling, slightly berserk shoot-out, high above the city on a revolving marque. With an A-lister’s budget, Fuller could have shot this as dusk turned to night and the pulsating lights came on.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Academics & auteurist wags go for Fuller’s more extreme low-budget indie work, even when it spills over into self-parody. But his best may be his first @ Fox, PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET/’53.

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX (1939)

Classic Tudor drama opens in thrilling fashion as pomp & splendor from Anton Grot’s superb physical design feeds into swift interlocked introductions of character & plot, with Sol Polito’s rich TechniColor lensing bathed in a sumptuous Erich Wolfgang Korngold score, gallant, propulsive, plushly romantic. And though the film sustains interest & momentum, after the opening reel, once the main drama kicks in and the royal quarreling begins, the effect does level off. The fault, dear viewer, lies not in the stars (or the Warners staff), but in our playwright, Maxwell Anderson. Not enough to sabotage enjoyment, the pic remains loaded with wonderful acting opportunities which Bette Davis, especially, makes the most of, see the Act One finale (straight from the play) as she gives Errol Flynn’s robust Essex a ring of forgiveness. But Anderson’s blank verse dramas try too hard to rise above his natural abilities. These days, he’s mostly remembered for a handful of lyrics to classic Kurt Weill songs. Not so at the time when he was thought fit companion to Shakespeare! (See book cover with original play title.)

The print sourced for the DVD has a few problems in TechniColor registration alignment, but is generally quite good & very bright, giving welcome respite to current preferred styles of eternal gloom & darkness in period pieces. Here, such effects are reserved for tragic moments; the ending on this one, unforgettable in lighting, stage design and in a pair of dolly shots Curtiz gives to Davis’s devastated Queen. A visual poetic effect with no need of Anderson’s blank verse.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Like many bio-pics, the most unbelievable moment invariably turns out to be one of the few true things on screen. Here, it’s when Essex turns his back on Elizabeth and she impulsively slaps him in front of the court. A real event.

DOUBLE-BILL: Anderson’s verse plays were mostly de-versed on screen. (KEY LARGO/’48; MARY OF SCOTLAND/’36; ANNE OF A THOUSAND DAYS/’69.) To hear one that was largely left alone, try his Sacco & Vanzetti-inspired WINTERSET/’36. OR: Davis had a second go at QE in THE VIRGIN QUEEN/’55. Lesser, but still watchable, there’s a classic line reading when a rival reveals her pregnancy and a bald-headed Bette haughtily says, ‘BE . . . VERY . . . PROUD.’ (OR: Look fast to catch the play’s original stars, The Lunts, no less, take a curtain call as Elizabethan & Essex at the start of THE GUARDSMAN/’31.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As part of a loan-out deal to David Selznick for GONE WITH THE WIND, Olivia de Havilland accepted a supporting role here that asks for little but ravishing looks. She never looked better. Friendly with both, she also undoubtedly served as buffer between Davis & Flynn, chalk & cheese personalities whose differences likely worked in their dramatic favor.

MAJO NO TAKKYÛBIN / KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE (1989)

Bookended between the family warmth & formal compositional integrity of MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO/’88 (John Ford might have chosen the camera set ups) and the energetic genre conventions & muscular escapades of daredevil fliers in PORCO ROSSO/’92 (Howard Hawks might have sketched the storyline), it’s easy to underestimate the charms of this less audacious teen coming-of-age puberty allegory. Heroes & heroines always seem to lose some magical power as trade-off to maturity (sexual & otherwise) in these things. (Its why Peter Pan refuses to grow up.) Here, master anime-tor Hayao Miyazaki, smoothly taking over a project about an adolescent high-flying witch-in-training, lets KiKi have her cake and eat it too, regaining lost powers in a spectacular climax with a runaway dirigible. As action tour-de-force, it’s only challenged by a wallapalooza ride on a bicycle fitted with an airplane propellor and a cute neighbor boyfriend to pedal, steer & hold on to. The rest of the film is gentler as KiKi & cat companion JiJi (wonderfully voiced in the English dub by Phil Hartman) find their place in the Old Euro-style town they’ve chosen: KiKi, with a special talent in airborne delivery; JiJi, with a lady cat on the next door roof; and Miyazaki, with a perfect pitch & rhythm for each episodic adventure. Be sure to watch the end credits which run over some exceptionally lovely cityscape scenes.

DOUBLE-BILL: Miyazaki certainly has a flying fetish, going up in all his films and then ending his career with THE WIND RISES/’13 about a airplane designer. (Maybe not ending! A new Miyazaki film, BORO THE CATERPILLAR, has recently been announced.)

BRIGHT ROAD (1953)

Not enough meat on the bones of this well-meant tale of newbie teacher Dorothy Dandridge learning on the job at a segregated elementary school down South. While only tangentially dealing with racial issues (a nice departure for the period), the subject does come up in a natural manner when the lead student, a tough to teach character named C.T., wonders if God is black or white since we’re all created in his image. And the subject comes into focus again when a student falls ill and the visiting doctor is Robert Horton, the film’s sole white character. But the main focus is on Dandridge trying to get thru to C.T. (something of a blank in Philip Hepburn’s perf) and how she interacts with school principal Harry Belafonte, making his film debut. The two are distractingly gorgeous, but don’t get your hopes up, the story doesn’t go there. With more texture & better observation (the Southern locales are backlot stuff); greater attention to his inexperienced cast; and a bit of coaxing to bring out the story’s implied poetic tone (lots of singing already built into the scenes); tv director Gerald Mayer might have made something of this. Quick example: when C.T.’s little friend dies suddenly from a viral infection, he stops by her makeshift grave to reflect. How much better, and more natural, to have him note her passing by coming upon her empty desk in class. Too many missed opportunities like this.

DOUBLE-BILL: Follow Belafonte & Dandridge into the sexy fatalism (and dubbed operatic voices) of Otto Preminger’s stunningly realized CARMEN JONES/’54 (see below).

SUNRISE (1927)

Given near carte blanche to relocate from Germany to Fox Studios, F. W. Murnau lavished Hollywood resources & technical dazzle on what basically remained UFA cred & sensibility. His initial project, more tone poem than story, has straying husband George O’Brien tempted from rural life & family (Janet Gaynor & child) by a wicked sensualist from the big city. Mad with lust, yet unable to follow thru on the vamp’s horrifying suggestion of murder, the farm couple rebond (and rebound) over a day lost to the joys of the city’s teeming humanity, only to be literally blown apart (temporarily?) by a storm at sea. With German Expressionism tempered into a style that would look & play in a heightened, but more naturalistic manner (in both set design & acting), Murnau still stuck closer to the Old World than the New. This countryside has a Europa flavor, and the long amusement park sequence is less Coney Island than Vienna Prater. But Gaynor & O’Brien bring homely, emotional charge to their roles, without condescending or making them cute hicks. (It’s why O’Brien needs coaxing at a city café before joining his wife in a traditional country dance.) But what gives the film its well-deserved classic status is an all but continuous line up of jaw-dropping visuals. From Murnau’s signature camera movement & still astonishing trick shots (legendary lensing from Charles Rosher & Karl Struss), to his equally important command of mise-en-scène in modes showy and ‘un.’ (The floors alone could support a college thesis.) Famous for influencing a couple of generations of filmmakers at the time (from John Ford to Frank Borzage just @ Fox), it also haunts in unexpected places like the marsh in Hitchcock’s PSYCHO or the woods toward the end of Fellini’s CABIRIA. The film is both a one-off wonder and a culmination late silent era cinema. Indispensable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The film also has unique status as that rare Best Pic Oscar® winner (Best ‘Artistic’ Production) no one grouses about. (Same goes for that year’s fellow nominees CHANG and THE CROWD.) OR: Murnau’s still little known CITY GIRL/’30 which shows him picking up a real American vibe in another rural vs. city drama. Murnau walked off the pic rather than turn it into a Part-Talkie, so the ending is a bit truncated. But another phenomenal, indelible beauty.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/05/city-girl-1930.html

NANCY DREW . . . REPORTER (1939)

Fun. Second of four Nancy Drew programmers from Warners’ ‘B-unit’ has Bonita Granville as an exhaustingly energetic, pint-sized teenage crime solver. (The influence of M-G-M’s Andy Hardy/Mickey Rooney series hard to miss.) This entry has Nancy conniving so lawyer dad John Litel (he's like the opposite of a helicopter parent) will work a hopeless murder case Nancy’s written up for the local press. But she’ll need exculpatory evidence to bring Pop around, so plays detective with three neighborhood pals: little Dickie Jones (who does a great Donald Duck*), young Mary Lee (with ‘swinging’ vocal chops) and boy-next-door Frankie Thomas (a ringer for FAMILY TIES’ Jonathan Taylor Thomas in looks & demeanor). These three pretty much steal the pic, especially Thomas who even faces the probable killer in a boxing ring. With decent production values and a solid storyline, delivered in pacey style by journeyman megger William Clemens & sharply lensed by Arthur Edeson, this is just what you hope for (and rarely get) from one of these little things. And that includes a spiffy DVD from Film Detective sourced from a near mint print.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Dickie Jones may have picked up a few Donald Duck vocal pointers over at Disney where he was recording the voice of PINOCCHIO/’40 at just about this time.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hard to separate Granville from her signature role as the terrifying lying school-girl in William Wyler’s THESE THREE/’36. A perf she never came close to matching.

THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE (1958)

While Philip Barry’s cynical reporter in PHILADELPHIA STORY could ironically note ‘the prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges,’ old-school British playwright William Douglas Home took him at his word. And here his play, a trifle about an American girl finding a match as she runs the Debutante gauntlet of British Society, is so expertly handled by Vincente Minnelli directing Rex Harrison & Kay Kendall in a masterclass of heightened comic underplaying, it’s a featherweight delight. Sandra Dee, before she became a teen icon, is charming, and staving off ‘the cutes,’ as Harrison’s Stateside daughter from a first marriage, forced onto an uppercrust treadmill of balls, fancy dress & dinner party dates. While John Saxon, as her seemingly inappropriate beau, and Angela Lansbury as a gossipy busybody with her own child playing the debutante circuit for spousal material, have style to spare. But it’s the married team of Harrison (right between his legendary B'way & London runs in MY FAIR LADY) and Kendall who blast into some sort of cosmic comedy heaven, turning Douglas Home’s modest mots into consistent laugh bombs. You’ve got to go back to Carole Lombard to find a natural comedienne with equal style, clothes-sense, timing & drop-dead gorgeousness. And to Lucille Ball for the physical skills. Watch near the end as Kendall collapses into a heap as she navigates a half-flight of stairs.* And Harrison, disproving the idea that married couples fail to spark on screen, matches her note for note when he’s not beaming with pride.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *You’d never know Kendall was in remission from the leukemia that would kill her the following year, only 33. Her final film, Stanley Donen’s ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING/’60, doesn’t really come off, but she was spectacularly funny for George Cukor in LES GIRLS/’57 the year before.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Harrison made a graceful tv film of Douglas-Home’s THE KINGFISHER/’83 (see below). He’d done it on B’way with Claudette Colbert, but Wendy Hiller did the screen version.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/kingfisher-1982.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Blame producer Pandro Berman for the film’s one goof up, using only M-G-M owned music material for all the balls. A dance arrangement of ‘The Boy Next Door’ at a formal British ‘coming out’ reception? Other ‘pop’ selections only slightly less obtuse.

KANSAS PACIFIC (1953)

Producer Walter Wanger was still working his way out of Hollywood purgatory (for taking a shot at wife Joan Bennett’s putative lover) when he put out this large-scaled B-Western.* And it’s not oversold or half bad. Facelessly megged by Ray Nazarro, it stars a relaxed, even charming Sterling Hayden as an undercover army officer sent West to help construction boss Barton MacLane finish the new cross-Kansas rail line before the oncoming Civil War breaks out. But with half the State leaning South, work is in constant danger from sabotage within & deadly attack without. With a good supporting cast & Reed Hadley’s smooth, attractively conflicted villain on board, only love interest Eve Miller feels generic. (Fun to see hard-working bit players like bulbous Irving Bacon & saturnine James Griffith with something to chew on.) Too bad the Film Detective DVD is sourced from such a faded CineColor print. Watchable, other than in the nighttime scenes, you’d never know the process had recently improved before quickly going out of business against various EastmanColor/Tri-Pack systems.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Quite an extravagant production for a 70" Oater, with the money up on screen in men, horses, railroad ties, track & dandy explosions.

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)

Fritz Lang ended his Hollywood run with a pair of crime mellers for producer Bert Friedlob @ RKO. Far more engaged here than on BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT/’57, his phoned-in follow-up, this one’s darn good (late) Lang, recalling earlier themes & even managing a partial return to the richly textured chiaroscuro of SCARLET STREET/’45 & UFA days (Ernest Lazslo lensed). It’s a dandy story, neatly handled by vet writer Casey Robinson, as Vincent Price takes the reins of his late father’s news syndicate and runs his three top editors (Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders, James Craig) against each other on a serial murder case (The Lipstick Killer) to become second in command. John Barrymore Jr. is amateurish as the psychotic mama’s-boy perv, but Ida Lupino, handling the paper’s women’s angle, and Dana Andrews, as the heavy-drinking independent star commentator, capture the intense sexy/sleazy rapport of workplace frenemies. At times, the small budget shows, especially in the newsroom (what a quiet work environment!), but Lang comes thru on any number of confident action set pieces: apartment stair diagonals & subway tracks showing his typical graphic/architectural compulsions. At 66, it would have made a classy exit for the fading one-time giant.

THE GREEN SLIME (1968)

Sort of like ALIEN(S) . . . if the monster aliens were bean bags. Consistently energetic, typically ‘60s Japanese Sci-Fi Monster Horror, but with an All-Western Cast rather than a couple of Hollywood ‘ringers’ plugged in to gain Stateside commercial release. Instead, Robert Horton & Richard Jaeckel take off from a TinkerToy Space Station to save our planet from an Earth-bound asteroid. (And to fight over Luciana Paluzzi’s Med Officer.) It’s a suicide mission that goes so well, they make it back in time for the celebration (Day-Glo outfits swinging to a cool, hip beat), unaware they’ve accidentally brought back a speck of active Green Slime material which grows, splits, replicates & evolves into waddling monsters that look like Hallowe’en-themed bean bag chairs with deadly tentacles. Yikes! With its bright plastic look, rhythm-and-blues title track, telephone receivers that bump against space helmets and zippy, logic-free helming from Kinji Fukasaku, what’s not to like?  (Note the ludicrous WARNING on our U.K. poster!)

DOUBLE-BILL: Best Japanese slime pic, on an all together different plane, Ishirô Honda’s THE H-MAN/58.

B.F.'s DAUGHTER (1948)

That’d be Barbara Stanwyck, daughter of mega-millionaire/ industrialist Charles Coburn, whose life-plan is upended when she ‘sees plain’ long time fiancé Richard Hart (proper, conservative, handsome but dull) and falls hard, fast & unexpectedly for cash-strapped Van Heflin’s left-wing econ prof & radical lecturer. And at the height of The Depression. Not a bad set-up, from the John P. Marquand novel, known for uppercrust Bostonians & MR. MOTO, with scripter Luther Davis fresh off a hit on THE HUCKSTERS/’47. But the film hasn’t an ounce of imagination in presentation, M-G-M vet megger Robert Z. Leonard doggedly going thru the motions with exactly one interesting shot in the whole pic. (Heflin seated uncomfortably on a couch outside Coburn’s stadium-sized office where a ‘30s-style mural shows a laborer with a sledgehammer apparently ready to strike.) The drama comes out of Stanwyck’s & Heflin’s lifestyle compromises, and when she does something in secret with Papa’s money to either help his career or sabotage his political principles. It almost comes across. But the last act, when he makes a success & spends WWII working for FDR, plays out as a dramatic dodge. Perhaps at a studio less relentlessly Republican, this might have added up.

DOUBLE-BILL: Philip Barry’s HOLIDAY/’38 tackles similar issues with class, style, tenderness & laughs. Plus an unbeatable cast (Grant, Hepburn, Ayres, Horton) under George Cukor & lenser Franz Planer.

CENTURION (2010)

Pretty lousy, but fun if you’re in the right mood. No surprise that hack writer/director Neil Marshall went on to helm a couple of GAME OF THRONE episodes, as tone, pace & gore level all demonstrate.* (That includes the use of unconvincing digital blood splatter effects that look like animated applique.) Michael Fassbender, lithe & cut as a disco dancer, is the second-in-command Roman centurion who survives after the Picts of Northern Britain massacre his legion. With the handful left, he heads into enemy territory, hoping to rescue captured General Dominic West. It doesn’t quite work out, and soon they are back on the run from a gaggle of handpicked Picts, including Olga Kurylenko, ultra deadly wolf-lady. Yikes! She some scary gal!! Much slash & burn along the way. (The usual sound & fury, signifying the usual nothing.) Fortunately, when rest is needed for the wounded & weary, a blonde bonnie lassie is conveniently stumbled upon. She’s got her own beef with those Picts, so takes them in, feeds them tasty, non-poisonous mushroom stew and even speaks their language . . . with a Scottish accent. It's all coming out as English, of course, but presumably standing in for Latin. (What a missed opportunity! Rome-era Latin with a Scot’s ‘burr!’) And since everyone, savages & invaders, seem to have come straight out of some RSC production, you barely notice that the story makes the local underdogs villains and the occupation force good guys. (But they noticed, tacking on an ironic twist to even things out. All that’s missing is a heap of haggis on the dinner table for a coda fit for a hero.)

DOUBLE-BILL: While this barely opened Stateside, the storyline was picked up the following year in THE EAGLE/’11 (not seen here - w/ Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell/dir.-Kevin Macdonald). It also flopped, but after a proper release.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Indeed, GoT withdrawal might be the best reason to watch this. Then again, GoT without Peter Dinklage is like GoT . . . without Peter Dinklage.

EXTRAORDINARY TALES (2013)

Raul Garcia’s varied (and variable) animation of five Edgar Allan Poe short stories comes across more portfolio than program; a quick, easy watch, if not an especially memorable one. The contrasting styles, done via CGI, but not always looking it, fit the morbid moods, and the well-known vocal roster even more. For introductions, Poe’s famous Raven debates ‘Death’ in a style that recalls paper cut-outs before Christopher Lee comes in to narrate THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER which apes the look of wooden puppets in faux 3D effect. This is followed by an amazing ancient recording of Bela Lugosi reading TELL-TALE HEART, visually the least effective item, built over live-action filming, digitized into high-contrast (solarized?) b&w images; a technique that works better for architectural detail than for characters. Julian Sands handles more traditional vocal acting in the lesser-known CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. Backed by a graphic/comic book look, this story of death-bed hypnotism is exceptionally creepy. Guillermo Del Toro’s accent adds Spanish Inquisition savor to PIT AND THE PENDULUM which gets much of its force from a restricted, autumnal palette . . . and prison rats. Yikes! While the animation in MASK OF RED DEATH has a more traditional hand-drawn vibe, a vivid watercolor look and an impressive sense of court life bustle with figures suggesting Egon Schiele. (Also, a single line of dialogue read by Roger Corman in homage to his Poe anthologies). It’s the one you can imagine being expanded. Or could if Garcia, with lots of experience in the field of animation, not so much in animation direction, were better able to unlock the narrative potential hiding behind Poe’s elegant prose. Instead, objets d’art with occasional shivers.

DOUBLE-BILL: Disney took a whack at this sort of thing adapting THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, in the first half of THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD/’49. Don’t be fooled by Bing Crosby’s folksie manner, the final ride is the real deal. Plus, it comes with an opportunity to see Mr. Toad (& Co.) from THE WIND AND THE WILLOWS. Never pass up a chance to revisit Toad Hall!

TARGET ZERO (1955)

Set in 1952, this Korean War pic is better than you expect from a programmer, just not better enough. Demerits come with Arizona locations which hardly look foreign, let alone Korean; a lazy sense of logistics in actions sequences (until an excellent climactic big battle probably not from director Harmon Jones, but sterling second-unit work); and a script that stops too often for philosophical speechifying. (What does it all mean? Every man dies alone. You fight to survive. Unconvincing talk at best.) Too bad, since the character mix & basic situation show potential. We open behind enemy lines, not that U. N. Medical aide Peggie Castle knows it. But a trio of Brits in a tank, along with gruff Lt. Richard Conte and his small unit of war-tested men fill her in before heading back to see what might be left of Conte’s base company up in the hills. There are nice touches: a South Korean soldier takes off his boots to enter a Buddhist Shrine; friendship signified by whether you share cigarettes or smoke your own; and rising names like Charles Bronson, Chuck Connors & L. Q. Jones. Just not enough distinctive elements amid boilerplate stuff until they reach Conte’s slaughtered company and try to hold the position by calling in air & sea strikes. Those low-flying jet bombers are something to see. But then they take on hordes of Red Army Regulars as if they were shooting fish in a barrel (or Indians in a serial Western) and the film gets a bit silly.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Instead, try a personal, even eccentric Korean war film like Anthony Mann’s MEN AT WAR/’57.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934)

Famous, fascinating, ultimately unsatisfying, John Cromwell (working from credit-shy Lester Cohen’s lumpy script) tries cramming Somerset Maugham’s 450 page auto-biographical novel into a spare 83 minutes. Cromwell, already an experienced director, seems out of sorts here, with odd positioning on reverse angles & needlessly fussy out-of-focus dissolves between scenes. Even with half the book lopped off, it’s all bare-bone highlights and little connective tissue as Leslie Howard’s cash-poor/club-footed med student gets knocked down in life & love from low self-esteem & even lower expectations. Howard nails the crippling kindness & personal embarrassment of the part, but at 41, the masochism & self-abasement come across as fatigue. To see a real Maugham character come to life, keep your eyes on Reginald Denny as fellow student/ frenemy. And, of course, Bette Davis in her breakout role as the Cockney trollop Howard can’t shake. Much of her work now looks like Hollywood period stuff and may not fly for a modern audience, starting with the wavering accent, but YOU - CAN’T - TAKE - YOUR - EYES - OFF - HER. And when she does let go, in some brief, intense scenes charting her rapid dissolution, she goes places actresses hadn’t touched since the silent era. Two later attempts at the book fail badly; afraid of an unsympathetic Mildred: with Eleanor Parker in ‘46 & Kim Novak in ‘64, both over-parted. (Though in the latter, Laurence Harvey, in theory, if not quite in practice, is perfectly cast in the Howard role.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Attention to your DVD edition. Lots of dreadful Public Domain discs out there. Best of a bad lot is on KINO, sourced from the Library of Congress archive.

DOUBLE-BILL: Howard & Davis made two more films together, poetically stranded in THE PETRIFIED FOREST/’36 (Humphrey Bogart’s breakthru, thanks to Howard who insisted he repeat his B’way perf - and Bogie does seem to be repeating it) and a delightfully unexpected comic backstager, IT’S LOVE I’M AFTER/’37, with Olivia de Havilland as a junior third wheel.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: With Maugham’s rep in a well-deserved rebound these days, maybe someone will give this the space demanded via cable/streaming format and not have to skip over so much of the book. Come to think of it, same goes for THE RAZOR’S EDGE.

THE WHITE DAWN (1974)

Philip Kaufman’s not-quite-good-enough fact-inspired film is a culture clash from the turn-of-the-last-century about a trio of Arctic-stranded whalers saved by a tribe of Inuit Peoples. Often exciting, with a fine documentary favor, the film is hobbled by character attitudes & cinematic tics that smell more of 1974 than 1896. So Timothy Bottoms’ open-hearted hippie kid is the one eager to join in tribal ways; Lou Gossett, an exotic outsider to his mates and the Eskimo, can see both sides; leaving gruff Warren Oates as the unaccepting conservative old guard, twisted by his debt to damn savages. (Note how Oates reacts in disgust to a polar bear hunt when he should find common ground in a simlarity to whaling.) And the inevitable infection of Inuit ways (alternating the pure & honorable with religious superstitions inimical to the whalers’ understanding) with contaminating foreign influences (booze, gambling, ownership) is too commonplace to hold up against the unusual locales. It leaves the film’s better set pieces (igloo construction, tribal dance, hunting) working as stand-alone episodes. Still, the use of real Native Peoples and incredibly difficult Arctic locations is a bump up from Anthony Quinn in THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS/’60 or the soundstage fakery of ICE STATION ZEBRA/’68.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: An old Hollywood maxim has it that films set in cold climates struggle at the box-office. True enough for the films mentioned above.  (Paramount not even bothering to come up with a halfway decent poster on this one.)

TRIAL (1955)

Appalling. Glenn Ford just off the ‘daring’ social-issues of BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (inner-city school violence; racial tension; generation gap), double-dips into 'problem pics' with this courtroom drama, larded with tacked on raw political trimmings (HUAC; Commies; KKK types). A law prof, but a courtroom virgin, his first case in the real world finds him handling front-page/ LOOK Magazine stuff, defending a Hispanic kid on a trumped up death-penalty/murder charge. Seems new partner Arthur Kennedy is off with the boy’s mom, raising cash on the Communist Speaking Circuit, offering up the boy as a fresh ethnic martyr. If only the dead girl hadn’t simply keeled over after flirting with the kid due to a bad heart (rheumatic fever), as testified to by her personal physician was also happens to be the coroner. There’s really no case against the kid, so naturally, they force him onto the stand so John Hodiak’s high-powered D.A. can trip him up. The plot is plenty idiotic, made worse by helmer Mark Robson, who pitches it all way too high, like a Center-Right Stanley Kramer on steroids. At a husky 39, Ford is well past playing this stuttering courtroom novice, and fails to connect with assistant Dorothy McGuire. But why pick on these talents; victims all to Don Mankiewicz, whose novel & screenplay call his famous lineage (son of Herman, nephew of Joseph) into question.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Bad as he is here, Ford had yet to hit bottom. See next year’s TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON/’56. Then, major comeback in 3:10 TO YUMA/’57.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hiding in plain sight is our all-time favorite storyline! The one where an unappreciated guy finally gets a shot at his dream job, unaware he’s only being hired for his supposed incompetence. But he turns the tables, proving he’s got the right stuff after all.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: In one of his strongest films before he was effectively BlackListed out of the country, Joseph Losey handles similar issues in the little-known knockout THE LAWLESS/’50.

THREE STRANGERS (1946)

After a fortuitous pairing in THE MALTESE FALCON/’41, Peter Lorre & Sydney Greenstreet became a sort of team @ Warners, co-starring in high quality B-pics & lending support on bigger-budget items. This crackerjack suspense yarn may be the best of the ‘Bs,’ a winner-takes-nil lottery fever tale with Geraldine Fitzgerald holding up her end (and then some) in third position. Jean Negulescu, in one of his nifty early directing gigs, stretches a thin budget for a crepuscular London, where our three strangers interlock on the fate of a lottery ticket & a bit of luck off an exotic statue. There’s Fitzgerald’s furtive, estranged wife, trying to foul her husband’s exit; Greenstreet’s solicitor, playing with a client’s investment money; Lorre’s petty crook, drinking his way into a pal’s murder charge. Beautifully orchestrated, probably by co-scripter Howard Koch working off an initial draft from John Huston which already touches on favorite themes of riches slipping thru fingers.* Fitzgerald, who never quite broke thru to major stardom, may have her best role here, at least as leading lady. And if Greenstreet does little fresh (he gives much the same perf later this year in THE VERDICT), Lorre is a mini-revelation, touching & sweet, as a compromised good guy. But everybody shines on this one.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note FALCON holdovers lenser Arthur Edeson & composer Adolph Deutsch.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Huston’s first film after war service, THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE/’48, might well be titled THREE STRANGERS; and ends with nearly the same ironic twist.

WHILE NEW YORK SLEEPS (1938)

With the recent death of CHARLIE CHAN’s Warner Oland (replaced by Sidney Toler) and the Peter Lorre MR. MOTO series facing demise over Japanese war rumblings (and Lorre wanting out), 20th/Fox B-pic production head Sol Wurtzer was hurting for a new series.*  But this try, the second of three NYC crime-reporter yarns featuring newsman Michael Whalen & sidekick photog Chick Chandler (The Roving Reporters) just doesn’t click. Faceless direction from H. Bruce Humberstone can’t clarify a silly plot (practical joking nightclub owner is killed for real soon after one of his dancers plugs him with a blank), but races along so we don’t much notice. The real problem is Whalen. As a character he’s an unmitigated jerk (we’re meant to find him breezy & spontaneous); physically he’s saddled with one of the worst caterpillar mustaches in the biz. Ick! While everybody else tries covering things up with ladles of forced, hearty laughter, like gravy on a Blue Plate Special. Order something else. Currently out on a subfusc DVD from ALPHA.

LINK: As taster, a rival Public Domain print (pretty lousy) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeWjBI7ez9k

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Wurtzel soon came up with the slightly better MICHAEL SHAYNE series (seven films/’40-‘42) for Lloyd Nolan as a lighthearted Private Dick (see below). They improve as they go along, cutting back on the lame comic tone.

KRAFTIDIOTEN / IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE (2014)

Wicked (and wicked funny) revenge tale from Norway sees Stellen Skarsgård’s Citizen-of-the-Year, a Nordic legend in snow clearance, hunting down the men responsible for his son’s death. The police write it off as a drug overdose, but Skarsgård knows better, and with a lead from his dead son’s pal is soon murdering his way up the chain of command in a big-time drug organization with surprising ease . . . and gory violence. But it all becomes much more complicated when the attacked gang mistakenly blames a rival outfit of Serbian drug suppliers for the deaths, inadvertently killing the competitor’s son to get even. That makes two gangs & one revenge-minded father all out for bloody justice; hoods dropping like flies. Director Hans Petter Moland manages the mayhem with grim hilarity & a tip-top cast (that’s Bruno Ganz using a cracked voice as the Serbian Godfather), violent afterbeats often alarmingly funny. You know you shouldn’t laugh, but can’t help it. All in the midst of such magnificent snowy beauty. Copy on the packaging mentions Tarantino & the Coen Bros. for comparison, but the tone & technique (amused, even elegant, with graphic violence waning rather than waxing) is more Don Siegel meets Aki Kaurismäki. (Imagine that pair on a Liam Neeson kickass revenge pic to get the idea.*) A token Stateside release didn’t pan out, but don’t let that stop you.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Sure enough, Moland is announced for an English-language remake next year, retitled HARD POWDER, with (yep) Liam Neeson attached. Don’t let that stop you from watching this first, either.

THE LITTLE PRINCE (2015)

Better title: (NOT) THE LITTLE PRINCE. Who the heck thought the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry classic about a lost aviator & an engaging child prince (loaded with whimsical meta-physics & philosophy) could best be served as side-story for a PIXAR/Disney-style school-girl fable on self-empowerment? 20 minutes of PETIT PRINCE highlights remain intact, charmingly realized in Stop-Motion animation, but mere platform for a by-the-CGI-numbers wraparound story of a blindly ambitious single-mom doing whatever is necessary (make that whatever is ESSENTIAL) to land her obedient 8-yr-old girl at an elite high-performance school for over-achievers. Too bad their chilly, high-tech house is next door to the ramshackle home of an eccentric, aging aviator. (Saint-Exupéry, had he lived so long.) Soon, he’s tempting the child away from formal prep routines with wise aperçu, fanciful illusion & humanity; seeing from the heart, as visualized in tantalizing draft pages of his unpublished book. Workable enough as prologue to get into a certain book; alas, here it’s used to get us past a certain book. And then off on a girl’s journey of enlightenment as she’s exposed to possibilities beyond rote learning & group think. Eventually, if arbitrarily, linking up with a 20-something version of The Little Prince, currently employed as a multi-tasking drudge for the usual evil corporate types. With impressive vocal talent involved, not particularly well-suited for their roles, they must have confused literary deconstruction with literary desecration. Then again, failing to squeeze the oddities of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book into the formulaic mold of commercial Hollywood animation is, at the least, something of a backhanded compliment.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Jacques Tati handled many of these ideas in magical fashion with MON ONCLE/’58. OR: The flop Stanley Donen/Lerner & Loewe LITTLE PRINCE film musical from ‘74 (see below) pleased just about no one (including Donen/Lerner & Loewe). But once past a few rocky opening sections, there are too many good things in it to miss; exceptional turns from Bob Fosse & Gene Wilder.

SON OF BELLE STARR (1953)

After infamous outlaw gal BELLE STARR got a big-budget bio in '41, the inevitable B-pic followed: '48/ BELLE STARR’S DAUGHTER, and the family tree completed in this Z-level SON OF . . . Lame doings from journeyman Western helmer Frank McDonald with Keith Larsen (who he?) as The Kid, joining up with a gang of stagecoach robbers to find out how he got pinned with their previous robbery. Oh, the burden of carrying his late mom’s rep. To McDonald’s credit, he stages a solid close-quarters fight scene after The Kid’s Mexicali gal sets him up, and there’s a surprisingly nihilistic ending. Elsewise, dreary stuff, valuable (if that’s the word) for a chance to see the palette-challenged CineColor process, like 2-strip TechniColor, but with inconsistent color density & hues that come & go from shot to shot. (Darkish interiors come off best.) A later refinement, dubbed SuperCineColor, would offer a more complete spectrum.

DOUBLE-BILL: Yet another Belle Starr fictional bio-pic, MONTANA BELLE/’52, one of those Jane Russell Westerns Howard Hughes sat on for a few years before releasing. (Not seen here though it sure sounds hopeless, even with Alan Dwan helming.) In TruColor: better than CineColor/weirder than TechniColor.

THE PUMPKIN EATER (1964)

In spite Anne Bancroft’s Oscar® nom & Best Actress @ Cannes, this British New Wave classic is little remembered. Much the same could be said for its unlucky director Jack Clayton with a mere seven features over 25 years; all superb except for the only one that seems to count, his inert GREAT GATSBY from '74. This one may not be the best place to start though; a tough, nasty, often bitterly funny intellectual marital bruiser, but it sure is tasty! With Harold Pinter (no less) adapting Penelope Mortimer’s novel about a mentally unstable wife raising a passel of kids from three husbands. Her latest, steady, emotionally reserved novelist & screenwriter Peter Finch, may or may not be unfaithful, especially when on location. Or so says James Mason, wryly considering his status as cuckold of the moment, and out to let Bancroft know the score. But plot movement only touches at the heart of things here, where attitude & style, rotten to the core under a cloak of civility, is Clayton’s real target. And while it doesn’t hit consistently, overstating here & there, plenty gets thru, and the film only improves as it goes along. (Plus a delicious early credit for Maggie Smith, stealing all her scenes from Bancroft. No easy thing to do!)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The film often feels like a strange cross between LOLITA/’62 and TWO FOR THE ROAD/’67. The latter mirrored in marital spats and the can’t-live-with-him/can’t-live-without-him situation. But why LOLITA should come to mind is a little tricky. Perhaps it’s just James Mason, and the shared b&w look from cinematographer Oswald Morris who shot them both.

DOUBLE-BILL: Just about any of Clayton’s features will be a revelation if you only know him from GATSBY. And while his best may be THE INNOCENTS/’61, from James’s TURN OF THE SCREW, scripted by John (husband of Penelope) Mortimer, don’t ignore his remarkably beautiful, downright terrifying, SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES/’83, from the Ray Bradbury book via, of all studios, Disney.

DETACHMENT (2011)

British director Tony Kaye, provocateur more than technician, has done something rather odd here, a sort of nihilistic ‘90s UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE ‘redux.’ Set in the present, it adds on an elaborate backstory to fill in the melancholia of Adrien Brody’s talented, but engagement-phobic substitute teacher. And if much is too good to just write it off, too many wrong turns keep it from connecting; not helped by Kaye’s idea of poetic-cinéma vérité. (Though the chalkboard animation narrative bridges are pretty cool.) Brody’s specialty is long-term 'temp' assignments, this time a month of English Lit at a failing High School. Loaded with natural ability, he feigns disinterest even as the class starts seeing thru the facade. And they should be wary watching their other teachers sink into bored routine. (And what a faculty: Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan, Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu et al.) But away from the school grounds, Brody’s barely baring up, dealing with a senile G’dad & a teenage hooker he’s (not quite believably) taken under wing. But there’s an arbitrary feeling to these character arcs, in and out of school. Maybe if Kaye had simply given in to the usual tropes and not pretended he was charting new territory, he could find a way into a film that wasn’t so . . . detached. Still, good in pieces; with Brody very good.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Kaye sure likes to compose shots with a block color backdrop behind his subject(s). Here, mostly RED.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  See what’s changed/what’s the same from ‘wild’ urban schools of the ‘60s in UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE/’67 which lost much of its charm without its epistolary format, but found other things that worked.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/up-down-staircase-1967.html

FOLLOW ME QUIETLY (1949)

Early directing duty for Richard Fleischer buries a couple of good ideas in a minor (and mild) serial killer police procedural, with noir trimmings. William Lundigan shows off a great head of hair and too pleasant a manner as the detective running the case; he’s also got a lame groupie in Dorothy Patrick’s irritating reporter. A neat gimmick (maybe from Anthony Mann in a rare story credit) has rain storms acting as trigger for the murders, and a faceless dummy dressed to look like the murderer from behind(!) to aid in witness identification. This should get a ‘bad’ laugh every time, but it's surprisingly effective and sets up a weird scene with Lundigan chatting up his dummy before going home. That’s when this ‘dummy’ stands up, places the ‘real’ mannequin back in the chair, then sneaks out. Alas, no follow up to this creep out; instead, standard issue police work until they pick up a trail and a late flurry of action that leads to a well-handled chase thru a factory to bring everything to a head. It’s all very . . . meh. Mann had already been directing for a while, with two exceptional pics of his own in ‘49 (REIGN OF TERROR; BORDER INCIDENT), while Fleischer would soon make some striking B-pics (see NARROW MARGIN/’52) before moving up to the A-list. And not for the better.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: See alternate titles listed above and covered below.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (2016)

Turns out, even an all-digital production may, at least metaphorically, go ‘off’ in the can after the initial buzz dies down. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan’s hosannaed domestic drama got high marks for its restrained, rueful & occasionally humorous account of large tragedies amongst the little people when Casey Affleck’s life-embittered uncle is named guardian of high school nephew Lucas Hedges after his brother’s heart gives out. Then it’s all observational details & interpersonal missteps as a wary relationship develops. But Lonergan stumbling technique, meant to appear honest & non-intrusive, misses half the drama (literally, the camera misses it) and lets a sort of dawdling overdose of Method-Acting take over the paceless production. That might matter less if he hadn't withheld the 'secret' underlying family tragedy used to explain Affleck’s character for half the film. The idea must have been to add a layer of structural suspense to kitchen sink drama, but once reveled, it cheapens the tone when a short, sharp prologue could have better informed events. (And trimmed 20 minutes off the running time.) Something’s gone wrong with Lonergan. Successful early plays and an excellent debut with YOU CAN COUNT ON ME/’00 only seemed to slow the creative process. Surrounded by friendly enablers after that (hard to spot a cast member who’s not a past pal), he desperately needs critics & naysayers to get his formidable gifts back in harness. (Unlikely after all the awards garnered here.) But special mention to Michelle Williams as the emotional ex-wife, and to Josh Hamilton (an original cast member in Lonergan’s THIS IS OUR YOUTH/’96) as a perplexed estate lawyer. Ultimately, the film feels like Lonergan’s last (the heavily re-edited MARGARET/’11) in being both underdeveloped and overcooked . . . or is it overdeveloped and undercooked?

DOUBLE-BILL: Modest, homely, the little known DEEP WATERS/’48 handles similar story elements to handsome, if somewhat conventional effect. With director Henry King at his understated best, pushing ever so slightly against Hollywood formula.

PERSONAL PROPERTY (1937)

Jean Harlow’s last completed film is flimsy stuff. A B’way fizzle with Leslie Banks, it means to delight with glamour stars playing down to the hoi polloi: Robert Taylor (in the Banks role) barking like a dog to cover a phone conversation; Harlow guying it up imitating a stuffy British Lord are the comic highlights. But why blame them and not everyone in front & behind the camera? The gimmick has Harlow, a cash-strapped ‘rich’ widow in London, held by a ‘writ,’ and Taylor, fresh out of jail for selling a car he didn’t own, wangling a position overseeing her possessions from inside her townhouse. Stuck together until she can pay the bill, he winds up playing Butler while she entertains fiancé Reginald Owen (& Co.), unaware Taylor’s the guy’s kid brother. (And both sides unaware they’d be marrying into debt.) High comedy was hardly W. S. Van Dyke's directorial forte, his rough-and-ready pace from THIN MAN & Jeanette MacDonald vehicles useless here. Only cinematographer William Daniels shines. Not so much with Harlow who looks different in almost every shot (signs of the peritonitis that killed her @ 26 three months after this opened?), but in glorifying the brief youthful prime of Robert Taylor. Least well-remembered of all the great stars (and under contract @ M-G-M longer than any of ‘em), for once you can see what all the fuss was about . . . at least physically.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Taylor, whose star rose very fast, was such a looker, the inevitable ‘powder puff’ rumors soon cropped up. (He’d been brought in the very year Ramon Novarro was dropped on a tide of similar gossip.) Hence this film’s bathtub scene with prominent attention to the manly hair on Taylor’s glistening chest.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Harlow is charming, funny, sexy, the whole package (against Spencer Tracy, real-life fiancé William Powell & wonderful Myrna Loy) in her previous release LIBELED LADY/’36.

BATTLE ZONE (1952)

This, one of the few Korean War pics made during the conflict, fails to connect on a pretty good idea: Frenemies from back in their WWII days as Combat Photographers, career marine man Stephen McNally has mixed feelings when free-lancer John Hodiak rejoins the unit. First off, McNally’s happily engaged to Hodiak’s ex-fiancé Linda Christian; second, McNally does the boring, but necessary grunt work (enemy terrain assessment, munition piles) while Hodiak gets special ‘ops’ high-profile assignments. Robert Capa eat your heart out. Both equally valuable, but for glory, medals and the gal . . . glamour-boy’s got the edge. Or does he? A tasty set up, and the cast is solid, but this modest programmer does so little with it. At first, it’s all romantic triangle going nowhere before finally tossing in a down-and-dirty last-minute behind-enemy-lines sortie to gather Photo-Intel before the big offensive push. Danger boy and detail man working in tandem. Journeyman helmer Lesley Selander keeps the motor running juggling action, actuality footage, dutiful comic relief and date nights, but producer Walter Wanger (with many a stellar credit on both sides of this) must have had his mind elsewhere. You bet he did! Still working his way back into Hollywood graces after a four month jail term for attempted murder. Yikes!* No wonder he wasn’t giving the dramatic opportunities his full attention.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Convinced of an affair between wife Joan Bennett & agent (later producer) Jennings Lang, Wanger took a shot . . . and missed. Better aim might have spared us all those AIRPORT sequels. (BTW: wife Bennett stuck by her husband.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Hodiak’s success in the WWII/Battle of the Bulge themed BATTLEFRONT/’49 (see below) no doubt played a role in choosing this film’s title. OR: Sticking with Korea, it was only after Eisenhower got most of the troops home (the war never officially ended) that Hollywood did a big-budget film on Korea with THE BRIDGES OF TOKO-RI/’54.

FELLINI - SATYRICON (1969)

Federico Fellini goes decadent chic detailing pre-Christian Rome as a sort of Euro-Trash orgy & spa for the freakish & depraved. It’s Fellini at his most wasteful, overloading with a thousand and one ideas to hide a basic poverty of imagination. Loosely taken from Petronius, itself a thing of patches (most of the book is considered lost), the story echoes one of those Greek wandering epics, here with a pair of brotherly students fighting over a boy-toy in a series of near-miss adventures on land & sea while the political & social pecking order shifts on report of dying Old Caesar (Tiberius?) and rising New Caesar (Nero?). Here & there, when he’s not overloading the screen with busy detail, Federico hits on a striking composition (a textured wall, a small elephant in the background, a ship silhouette) that freezes (friezes?) to display the sense of utter strangeness a more disciplined film might have shaped from the material. But Fellini never fully recovered from the (well-deserved) international success of 8½ and hid an essential emptiness of spirit with excess everything. Even the best of his later work suffers from too-much-of-a-good-thing syndrome. It leaves SATYRICON looking like an artistic cry for help against a sea of enablers.

DOUBLE-BILL: The sheer strangeness of Fellini’s ancient world was enough of a break from standard issue SPQR to boost the film’s initial impact & rep. (Ironically, it was made at Cinecittá, right next to the usual Sword-and-Sandals/Peplum crap.) Yet it’s equally unconvincing on its own terms. Per cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, Fellini thwarting realism on purpose. (For a physical Rome you can believe in, catch the superb production design & color palette achieved by Tony Walton & Nicolas Roeg in A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM/’66 for Richard Lester. No kiddin’.)