THE BLACK CAT (1941)

Only the title and a demoted Bela Lugosi remain from Edgar G. Ulmer’s truly strange BLACK CAT of 1934. This one hunts for shivers & laughs with Dark-and-Stormy-Night/Old Dark House tropes and misses badly, wasting a game cast in the process. It starts with the usual family-gathering for a reading of the will, but this time before the ailing matriarch is dead. Not to worry, she’s soon bumped off. Someone wanted their share right away, but didn’t know that nothing gets handed out until all the cats on the gloomy estate (there are hundreds) have died. This leads to more killings, of would-be inheritors & cats, before the culprit is found. Not a bad little set-up, but the script feels thrown together with forced comedy from Broderick Crawford & Hugh Herbert constantly interrupting any hope of suspense from Basil Rathbone, Gale Sondergaard, Gladys Cooper, young Alan Ladd or a barely used Bela Lugosi. Lenser Stanley Cortez throws a lot of shadows around, but hack director Albert S. Rogell can’t pull anything together.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: James Whale’s THE OLD DARK HOUSE/’32 gets closer to the mark, though it’s plenty arch in its own way. OR: As mentioned above, 1934's BLACK CAT.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note the billing for supporting player Alan Ladd on this French Poster reflecting his post-WWII stardom.

STRIKE ME PINK (1936)

Sam Goldwyn, after producing an annual Eddie Cantor musical-comedy from 1930 to ‘34, skipped a year before making this final, downsized vehicle. Oddly, the smaller budget helps in comparison to the earlier over-produced films; more consistently silly & fun, faster on its feet and mercifully BlackFace free. If only the Harold Arlen songs were more memorable. Director Norman Taurog, on a break from knockabout fluff @ Paramount with Bing Crosby, keeps Eddie on his toes as new manager of an amusement park, trying to resist mob-man Brian Donlevy who’s pressuring him to take a truckload of ‘fixed’ slot machines. No one seems overly concerned or convinced by the blackmail scam Goldwyn’s writers have cooked up for a plot. (Something to do with nightclub singer Ethel Merman pretending to kill a guy then getting Eddie to take the blame.) But it hardly matters. Cantor scores on about half his bits and gets one solo & one duet of the unmemorable tunes; Merman resists a dose of ‘glam’ photog treatment, but sings the heck out of her two solos/one duet. And it all ends in a crazy, overextended chase thru the Amusement Park with just enough gags landing to come off.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Cantor was twice tamed by Hollywood. First by Goldwyn, who made him cuddly & less Lower East Side Jewish. Then by strict enforcement of the Hollywood Production Code after 1934; tough when your signature song is ‘Making Whoopee!’ Just one more 'A' pic (@ 20th/Fox) before slipping to 'B's and radio.

GUNFIGHT AT O.K. CORRAL (1957)

One more O.K. Corral pic. For some, the O.K. Corral pic. And if you suspect it’s no more beholden to the facts than any of the others, that’s O.K., it only needs to convince while you watch. No classic on the order of John Ford’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE/’48, but mighty classy in its own way, especially in its use of Hollywood star power. Burt & Kirk, of course, as man-with-a-badge Wyatt & man-with-a-gun ‘Doc,’ but also Rhonda Fleming as good ‘bad’ girl & Jo Van Fleet as overwrought ‘bad’ good girl; plus John Ireland, Earl Holliman, Jack Elam, Dennis Hopper, Lee Van Cleef, Martin Milner, THE SEARCHERS’ Olive Carey, many many more. Leon Uris’s script is structurally a tough nut to crack, with major new characters showing up in new locations well into the Third Act, but director John Sturges maintains a steady suspense-building tread that really pays off. So too, the remarkable clarity & depth-of-field he gets out of the VistaVision process working with lenser Charles Lang. Note his staging on the larger interior sets for a near-3D effect; and those logistically ‘readable’ shoot-em-ups. Nothing groundbreaking, but a kind of filmmaking that once gave Hollywood professionalism a good name.

DOUBLE-BILL: Sturges, unhappy with vet producer Hal Wallis’s action-oriented final cut, made something of an unofficial sequel in HOUR OF THE GUN/’67 with James Garner & Jason Robards stepping into the Earp/Holliday roles. It's one of those odd films that seem to play without a shadow, leaving no mark.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Dmitri Tiomkin’s memorable score has a recurring theme song for Frankie Laine with a whistled motif that, on its own, stripped of lyrics, might have served Ennio Morricone for a Sergio Leone ‘Spaghetti Western.’

5 FINGERS (1952)

James Mason, who stars both here & in Joseph Mankiewicz’s next (as Brutus in an M-G-M try at Shakespeare’s JULIUS CAESAR/’53), thought 5 FINGERS Mank’s last well-directed film. If exaggeration, it's not by much; and leaves this as a dandy farewell to 20th/Fox, where he did his best work including ALL ABOUT EVE/’50; LETTER TO THREE WIVES/’49; GHOST AND MRS. MUIR/’47. This lesser-known title belongs right with them. (Something that can’t be said for his prodigal return on CLEOPATRA/’63.) A fact-inspired WWII spy story about Mason, ultra-smooth valet to Turkey’s British Ambassador Walter Hampden, he’s blithely photographing Top Secret Documents and selling them to the Germans. They pay well, but can’t quite believe in their bounty, sure that Mason is really working for the Brits. Working off Michael Wilson’s script (substantially re-dialogued with characteristic Mankiewicz wit & wisdom), the film is beautifully crafted & peerlessly cast; showing more visual elan than Mank ever gave to his self-originated projects where he was apt to ‘sit’ on his own cleverness & sophistication. (As if he expected people to be jotting down wordplay.) Here, he keeps on the move, and (presumably) sticks to Wilson’s superb dramatic structure. Plus, they’ve a wild card to play (a fictional one), bringing in a striking class-conscious romance between Mason and old employer, Danielle Darrieux, a glamorous Polish Countess scratching for cash on the Embassy Party Circuit in neutral Turkey. A year before EARRINGS OF MADAME D . . . , she’s properly devastating, turning a role that’s two-thirds dramatic stratagem into a believable, touching & hardheadedly venal charmer. It makes for a supremely satisfying double-twist ending.

DOUBLE-BILL: Mason's plan is to skedaddle off to Brazil with all that Nazi loot. You’ll find him there 25 years later, not as amoral neutral but as retired Nazi in THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL/’78.

DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939)

James Stewart cleans up a Wild West town without a pistol in this peak Hollywood Factory entertainment, capping a breakthru year for him and serving up a career reboot for Marlene Dietrich as Frenchy, the saucy saloon singer who’ll ‘see what the boys in the backroom will have.’ Smoothly handled by journeyman director George Marshall (who’d also do the ‘54 Audie Murphy remake), this is one of those can’t-miss storylines (four film treatments, tv series, B’way musical) that thrives by not being pushed too hard, and having everyone play on the same wavelength. Something you can see in Brian Donlevy’s almost likeable villain, lording over the corrupt town of Bottleneck, yet falling for Stewart’s folksy humor and breezy personality, unaware he’s being set up to take a fall. That’s the main gag in the film, winningly fooling everyone . . . on both sides of the screen. While Dietrich, as the bad gal who flips, has some terrifically funny scenes (watch her vamp Stewart on a settee), though she probably turned audiences back her way in a down & dirty fight with Una Merkel. And credit producer Joe Pasternak for rousting up the strong line-up of supporting players at budget-wary Universal.

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: It seems a stretch (okay, it is a stretch), but Stewart’s Destry is not so far from Henry Fonda’s Abraham Lincoln in John Ford’s YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, made the same year. Two tall skinny storytellers who get the point across (and get their way) with roundabout cornpone humor & misdirection. Easy to imagine them switching roles. Say, weren’t they living together at the time? Maybe they ran lines by each other when they weren’t peeking at the pool next door, hoping to catch Garbo take her daily nude swim.

THE THREAT (1949)

Cast & crew are third-string players, but everyone’s at the top of their game in this lean, mean prison breakout suspenser. Nominal lead Michael O’Shea plays Good Guy Cop, convalescing at home when he hears that vicious psychopath ‘Red’ Kluger (raspy-voiced Charles McGraw stealing the pic*) has escaped prison, vowing revenge against him and the D.A. who sent him to Folsom. And he proves good as his word, helped by reluctant moll Virginia Grey & a gang of thugs hoping to collect stolen loot before flying off from a secluded rural landing strip. Structurally daring, the film largely dispenses with a first or second act (well, all but the second act climax), going hellbent for leather right from the start with mostly action sequences till they hit the cabin and have to wait . . . and wait . . . and wait for the partner and his late arriving plane. This last sequence, by far the longest in the pic, is very proto-Quentin Tarantino, though not so over-extended. How could it be with the no-frills/B-pic budget and a bare 66" running time. One or two convenient story beats ae used to get us there, but they hardly matter as the violence still has a nasty kick to it, rare for the period. This one’s just dandy.

DOUBLE-BILL: *For more McGraw, Richard Fleischer’s THE NARROW MARGIN/’52 is top choice.

NIGHT PEOPLE (1954)

From divided post-war Berlin, a plotty Cold War piece about a kidnapped American soldier; snatched from the streets and whisked off to the Russian Sector to facilitate a swap for a pair of senior-citizen Anti-Nazis. Good twisty fun if you don’t think too hard about it. (Like why the Ruskies don’t just kidnap the frail old couple in the first place. Or the scrabbled ending, a self-described 'punt.') Yet the film has its pleasures as Gregory Peck’s methodical Colonel works out the crisscrosses, helped by former under-the-radar lover Anita Björk, currently working both sides of the East/West divide; and deals with rich, politically connected ‘Ugly’ American Broderick Crawford, hard-changing father of the kidnapped boy, just blundered in from the States and demanding fast action. Directing for the first time after decades as a top Hollywood scripter, Nunnally Johnson proves visually non-interventionist, typical of the early CinemaScope manner. He’s looser in the opening & closing segments, but mostly gets by thru excellent casting & the natural Yin/Yang dust-up that runs between Peck’s still-waters-run-deep cadences and Crawford’s patented blitzkrieg vocal delivery. Think of it as illustrated radio drama, a pretty enjoyable one. (Or John Le Carré For Dummies.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Johnson, had more than 70 writing credits over four decades, but only directed 8 of them (from ‘54 to ‘60). Two years after this, THE MAN IN THE GREY FLANNEL SUIT/’56, again with Peck, shows considerably more visual panache.

ANOTHER MAN'S POISON (1951)

The title’s something of a spoiler in this soggy, stage-bound thriller that’s more fun than it has any right to be. Bette Davis, just out of ALL ABOUT EVE/’50, looking ravaged & ravished at 43*, is a British-based pulp mystery writer with an estranged husband and a hot affair with her secretary’s fiancé. But one dark & stormy night, after evening tête-à-tête with beloved horse Fury, Gary Merrill (her real-life husband-at-the-time) pays an unwelcome call. He’s just robbed a bank with the missing husband! Turns out, Bette knows all about it; hell, she’s just murdered the guy with an overdose of horse medicine; he’s lying dead in the drawing-room now. Yikes! Well, guess there’s nothing for it but for Merrill to impersonate said dead husband. Heck, no one in town has ever seen the guy and the only picture of him in the big country estate is none too clear. (Hmm, like this plot?) Now if only nosy horse doctor Emlyn Williams* wasn’t constantly butting in to ask leading questions. Nonsense, of course, but wonderfully shot with cobblestoned film noir trimmings by Robert (THIRD MAN) Krasker, and energetically helmed by Bette’s old Warner Bros. mate Irving Rapper. It’s something of an off-beat find.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Davis’s looks alter alarmingly all thru the pic. But whether looking at her worst or best, it’s hard to think of a more ‘interesting’ face in the movies.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Bette Davis starred in the film version of Emlyn Williams’ great stage success THE CORN IS GREEN/’45, as the spinster schoolteacher who mentors a fictionalized version of . . . Emlyn Williams (played in the film by John Dall).

WHERE'S POPPA? (1970)

Part of the proudly tasteless/slightly smutty/envelope-pushing edgy new comedy that came-of-age with the Baby Boomers in the late-‘60s/early-‘70s.* But with so much dependent on long lost shock value, do the laughs hold? George Segal, dutiful son of senile Ruth Gordon, is at the end of his rope taking care of her. But after giving her breakfast (Pepsi & Fruit Loops) and heading to work, he lucks into nurse of his dreams Trish Van Devere. Will Mom approve? Flitting around this basic premise are various purposefully cringe-worthy comic set pieces: a Central Park gang of sharp-dressed Black muggers; the forced rape of an uncover male cop (no charges, instead long-stemmed roses as thanks); maternal butt snuggles; a gorilla-suit wake-up call; subconscious fantasy jump cuts; a courtroom debate for a violent peacenik hippie & a bonkers death-loving Army Colonel; and so forth. Some can still make you laugh (Vincent Gardenia’s impeccable comic timing on the witness stand remains irreproachable and Segal is sweetly funny crooning Maurice Chevalier’s ‘Louise’), but some is now less amusing than objectionable. Especially under Carl Reiner’s often comically inept staging & camera direction. Those who found it a subversive comic gem back in the day may still find it so; fresher eyes not so much.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Over in Britain, MORGAN!/’66 started the ball rolling, and holds up better.

LADY BY CHOICE (1934)

Writer Jo Swerling wastes a decent first act in this little Columbia programmer, an attempt to double-dip on the success of Frank Capra/ Robert Riskin's LADY FOR A DAY/’33. May Robson, ‘Apple Annie’ in the earlier film, plays another feisty old street tramp, but in worse shape, a real wreck; drunk, disorderly, unsympathetic. A regular at night court where Judge Walter Connolly has run out of ideas to keep her out of trouble. That’s when she’s spotted by Carole Lombard, charged with indecency for her Fan Dance routine. Given a suspended sentence, Lombard (with sleazy agent Arthur Hohl) thinks up a publicity angle to help the act: adopt the old gal as her mother! So far, so good; neatly handled by hack megger David Burton, glowing under Ted Tetzlaff’s lensing. (Lombard looks like a Goddess.) But once these two gals get under the same roof, in an apartment a millionaire might envy, the relationship & mutual reformation doesn’t make any sense even by the standards of Hollywood wish-fulfillment. Worse, Carole is stuck with total drip Roger Pryor as upper-crust romantic partner. At least, it’s over in 75 minutes.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Lombard slipped in a couple of Columbia pics while under contract at Paramount. The one before this, TWENTIETH CENTURY/’34 (John Barrymore; dir-Howard Hawks), one of her best. OR: As mentioned above, LADY FOR A DAY, a true Capra beauty.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/08/lady-for-day-1933.html

THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT (1953)

John Ford mavens tend to write off the director’s special affection for this forgotten (even despised) B-pic as unwarranted devotion to a failed pet-project. Or, since it’s John Ford, contrarian behavior. Returning to Irvin Cobb’s stories of a Pre-WWI Jim Crow-era Kentucky (see Will Rogers/JUDGE PRIEST/’34), the casually accepted racism in custom & attitude of the original had turned Politically Incorrect long before this came out in ‘53, let alone now. Yet Ford subverts as much as he signs on to; and right from the start as that misunderstood comedian Stepin Fetchit (all but unemployable two decades after his Hollywood heyday playing shufflin’ ‘Darkies’) drops his fishing line to dash a four-minute mile, worried he’ll be late for Judge Priest’s wake-up call. Stepin Fetchit, in a hurry? A first, though still speaking in that high, strangulated voice. Similar topsy-turvy behavior informs about every other set piece in a film largely concerned with the re-election campaign of Charles Winniger’s Judge Priest, upsetting decorum of accepted behavior, yet staying true to his idea of Southern graces. Whether welcoming home the town’s alcoholic Black Sheep scion; granting a ‘Fallen Woman’ a respectable funeral (and borrowing the local Black Church for the purpose - note how the church stays segregated for an All-White service as Black parishioners look in from outside); supporting the woman’s shamed daughter; standing up to a lynch mob coming for a young black on a rape charge (we’re only two years from Emmett Till). Uncomfortable to watch even 65 years on, especially the first two or three reels. (Are we catching on to bait-and-switch tactics or adjusting to Cobb & Ford’s overly-sunny representations?) The film is too fascinating to miss on many levels, as well as loaded with tremendous set pieces: a duel with carriage whips; the lynch mob scene Ford wasn’t allowed to keep back in ‘34; or his long planned, and much admired, prostitute funeral procession.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Oddly, the film, all but dumped Stateside by Republic Pictures, was critically well received in England, even nominated for a BAFTA Best Pic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: When we finally get around to singing MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME the lyric is changed with ‘Darkies’ replaced by ‘Children.’ Progress or infantilization?

SANTA FE STAMPEDE (1938)

One of those quickie Westerns John Wayne churned out in his ‘galley years’ (post-THE BIG TRAIL/’30; pre-STAGECOACH/’39). This one, from Republic Pictures workhorse director George Sherman, a ‘Three Mesquiteers’ actioner, featuring Wayne, Ray Corrigan & Max Terhune. In most ways a standard Kiddie Matinee Western (Terhune even squeezes in some ventriloquism) with the boys showing up to help an old pal make a gold claim in the face of corrupt town officials. But halfway in, light banter & lack of serious consequences give way to something darker: real violence & a sense of hopelessness as a cute little girl is murdered along with her father (and after she endears herself to us by telling Wayne how pretty he is!); plus a falsely accused Wayne threatened by a lynch mob before nearly burning to death (with the cute girl’s older sister) in the jail house. And not played as heightened serial melodrama, but in the nail-biting ride-to-the-rescue spirit of early D.W. Griffith. Pretty well handled, too. Not quite ‘a find,’ but not without interest.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Don’t hold your breath for the stampede of the title.  Pure alliteration, no more.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Listen out for a near quote from (of all things) Berlioz Symphony Fantastique.  The harp arpeggios from ‘Un Bal’ are the dead giveaway.

BECKET (1964)

Even with a major restoration that looks far better on DVD than it did in theatrical revival a decade ago (much to the benefit of cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth), BECKET remains more satisfying as acting showcase than historical drama. But with acting this good, that’s enough. Peter Glenville, who also directed the B’way run, never developed a fluent film technique (only seven films over a decade), with stiff crowd scenes and an odd attachment to two-shots where both leads stare straight ahead dramatically. (Effective used sparingly, here it’s in every other scene.) But the debate on Church vs State authority from Jean Anouilh’s play holds a lot of interest as Peter O’Toole’s robust (often hilarious) Henry II loses the loyalty of close advisor Thomas Becket (Richard Burton, groaning with gravitas) once he’s appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s a breached bromance for the ages (and more than that?; so much talk of love, such heart-palpitations), ending in public breakup; exile; a magnificent horseback reconciliation on the beach; assassination; penance & sainthood. A full and satisfying story arc, slightly undercut if you know that Becket was actually 15 years older than Henry, his roistering days behind him. John Gielgud gets a moment as the wily King of France (on a hideous set), while Martita Hunt & Pamela Brown glower amusingly as Henry’s mother & queen. But the film is all about the two boys, and they’re worth all the bother.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: O’Toole had a second helping of Henry II (with Kate Hepburn as Queen) in THE LION IN WINTER/’68. Coarser, even more crowd-pleasing, and with a phenomenal cast of up-and-comers as sons.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/lion-in-winter-1968.html

EMPLOYEES' ENTRANCE (1933)

Tip-top Pre-Code dramedy about tyrannical department store manager Warren William, a ruthless manipulator of 12,000 employees under him, and the board members, bank officers & absentee-owner above. In a series of swift cutaways, we watch store fortunes rise in the ‘20s, only to crumble as The Depression kicks in. The rest of the film charts his desperate (often despicable) struggle to stay ahead of the competition by any means, whether bailing on a delivery gone awry, or losing old-timers for junior execs like Wallace Ford with fresh ideas and 24/7 work ethics. What William doesn’t know is that Ford’s gone behind his back to marry lovely store model Loretta Young (dewy & beautiful at 19). And what Ford doesn’t know is that Young succumbed to Warren ‘Pre’ & ‘Post’ Nuptials. Meanwhile, the store’s falling fortunes have the bankers salivating for a takeover. All packed into 75", chock-a-block with hilarious sex angles (that’s Alice White as the tart minx spying on a rival for William even if it means learning to play chess!); and tragic vignettes of ousted long-time administrators. Jack-of-all-genres director Roy Del Ruth, in one of his best outings, keeps it all moving and clear as a department store display window. Not to be missed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Warren William always played (and looked) a decade older than he was. (Died young, too, only 53.) Wallace Ford, the ‘kid’ he mentors, was only four years younger.

DOUBLE-BILL: At Pre-Code Warners, William was Sleazebag King. From 1932, try THE MOUTHPIECE or THREE ON A MATCH.

TORTILLA FLAT (1942)

Lucky in adaptations of his major works, John Steinbeck saw his lighter, California-coastline stories on the rough & tumble locals of Monterey & Salinas Valley overcooked. (Even Rodgers & Hammerstein stumbled with their musical PIPE DREAM.) Here, in swarthy Latino makeup that gives him a unintentional menacing look, Spencer Tracy plays defacto head to a shiftless group of deadbeat ‘paisano’s’ (unlikely Latinos John Garfield, Frank Morgan, Akim Tamiroff, John Qualen & Allen Jenkins) who avoid work and seem meant to delight us with their scams (often as not against each other) & naive peasant wisdom. But mostly come off as not-so-juvenile delinquents. The main storyline has Garfield confronting two life altering events: inheritance and love. Each of them sabotaged by Tracy who thinks they will only tie him down. Some of the intrigues & sentiment still come off in entertaining fashion, though a sour note of condescension always hangs about. (In the books, too.) In a way, authenticity might be the last nail in the coffin for these stories; inauthenticity softens them. It certainly helps Austrian/Jewish Hedy Lamarr as the fiery Portuguese who reforms Garfield and, just this once (probably thanks to director Victor Fleming), finds the temperament otherwise missing in her screen portrayals. Always gorgeous, but never ‘there,’ she finally locates her dramatic sweet spot.

DOUBLE-BILL: Though not thought of as a Hollywood team, Fleming directed Tracy five times: CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS/’37; TEST PILOT/’38; DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE/’41, TORTILLA FLAT; and A GUY NAMED JOE/’43. First was best.

PHOENIX (2014)

Clueless (even tasteless), award-winning embarrassment from Germany, a Post-WWII story about a Jewish survivor, horribly disfigured by the Nazis, who returns to Berlin in search of the non-Jewish piano-playing husband she never stopped loving . . . but who may have betrayed her. Only glitch, she’s had total face-reconstruction! Will he recognize her? (But Wait! That might be an advantage!) Has love survived? Will she discover all before he figures out ‘her’ secret? Most important of all, does it star Joan Crawford & Franchot Tone like a real 1940s meller? Hard to know what writer/director Christian Petzold, critics & Film-Fest jurors where thinking. This sort of lumpy stew could make sense with a highly stylized treatment, but played out as ‘kitchen-sink’ realism, in a flavorless, unconvincing recreation of ruined Berlin, it’s borderline insulting. Especially with convenient plotting that locates missing Piano Man in the chaos of divided Berlin in about five minutes; then has him figure out how to use her amazing physical similarity to his ‘dead’ wife for an inheritance grab in another five minutes. If he can only teach her how to pretend to be ‘her;’ never knowing that she's really 'she.' Sheesh!

DOUBLE-BILL: Petzold’s last film, BARBARA/’12, a 1980s-set East/West German thriller, is better than this, but also has the feel of a 1940s Hollywood meller.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: As leitmotif (and final story beat), we get Kurt Weill’s ‘Speak Low’ (lyrics by Ogden Nash), from ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, a forgotten marvel of a musical. (Avoid the lousy film version.) Right show, wrong song: ‘I’m A Stranger Here Myself,’ from the same musical, is helpfully up-tempo and much more apt to the storyline. Here’s Mary Martin from the original cast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMA0e5QhUhA

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1952)

Sam Goldwyn’s big family musical, with its fine Frank Loesser score and idiotic plot, looks weirder than ever. Co-star Farley Granger called it a Boy Meets Girl/Boy Loses Girl/Boy Gets Boy story. He’s right, but doesn’t go far enough. Goldwyn spent two decades trying to get a script till B’way sophisticated hit-maker Moss Hart gave him what he wanted, going back to Myles Connolly’s original whimsy for a storyline. Andersen, a decidedly odd duck in real life, is made into a dreamy cobbler, making up tales for school kids before skipping town with his orphaned fawn-like assistant to head for Copenhagen. (Mispronounced in dialogue & song with a ‘soft-A’ vowel.) Once there, he’s sprung from jail (don’t ask) to solve a ballet slipper crisis; fall for lovely star dancer Zizi Jeanmarie; and misread her hot-and-cold relationship with company manager/hubby Granger. (Note the shared double-bed! A Post-Code first?) Eventually, Andersen writes a ballet story for her (THE LITTLE MERMAID), but returns to his village (with fawn-like companion) to regale cuddlesome children & forgiving parents. Director Charles Vidor seems utterly lost on the Pop-Up Picture-Book sets (out of a touring operetta company?), and even Kaye (charming in all his songs) seems testy with some of the kids. He also swiped the one song meant for Granger & Jeanmarie - ‘No Two People’ - knowing a breakaway hit when he heard one. Star’s prerogative.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: That’s Jeanmarie’s husband, Roland Petit, choreographer/partner in the Liszt-scored MERMAID ballet. But the standout dancer is in the Schubert-scored Ice Skating Ballet where Jeanmarie’s partner completely pulls focus off her without even trying and with little to do. Called ‘The Hussar’ in the credits, it’s Erik Bruhn and you’ll instantly see what Rudolf Nureyev saw in the guy; the very definition of ballet dancer noblesse.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: To see Kaye & a gaggle of delightful school kids, there’s MERRY ANDREW/’58, his underrated charm-fest chamber musical.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/merry-andrew-1958.html

THE TOY WIFE (1938)

The only film with Luise Rainer solo-billed above-the-title, but hardly a promotion. Instead, near career sabotage with her misconceived character pursued by 'Featured Players' Melvyn Douglas & Robert Young rather than A-list stars, and journeyman director Richard Thorpe ill-matched to an oft-filmed French play. (FROU-FROU by CARMEN librettists Meilhac & Halévy.*) In antebellum New Orleans society, Rainer’s just returned from France with older sister Barbara O’Neil (next year’s mother to Scarlett O’Hara) to find a proper husband. Frivolous & flirtatious, more irritating than enchanting, her infantile impetuosity inexplicably tempting to Young (irresponsible; debonair) and Douglas (solid; sobersided). Guided to the safe choice by older sis O’Neil (who’d also fancied Douglas), Rainer proves too immature to raise their son or run the house leaving O’Neil to move in and take over all but the most conjugal of wifely duties. It all unravels with desertion, social disgrace, a duel, three deaths . . . and is perfectly dreadful on every level. Especially Rainer, at her most insufferable, gazing ever upward rather than catching the eye of fellow players.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The best reason to watch is to compare & contrast production standards @ lively Warner Bros. vs stodgy M-G-M in handling similar elements the same year in JEZEBEL; admittedly, with Bette Davis, Henry Fonda & director William Wyler all near the top of their game. Another Southern Plantation tale, so be advised that ‘Darkies’ are on hand to sing, dance & pray to ‘De Lord’ in regrettable period fashion. (Less 1830s than 1930s.) Though only WIFE has the gall to name one of the house slaves ‘Pickaninny.’ Yikes!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *What are the odds? Augustin Daly, who presented FROU-FROU on B’way, wrote an unrelated play titled JEZEBEL.

GUN GLORY (1957)

Standard issue mid-size Western finds gunslinger Stewart Granger going back to the farm, trying to make a go of things with the wary, resentful son he left behind and now hardly knows. They’re soon joined by Rhonda Fleming, pushed out of a job in town and glad to take on homemaking duties. It’d be idyllic, if only Granger & Son didn’t both take an interest; the conservative townsfolk weren't gossiping; and villainous cattleman James Gregory wasn't planning on running a herd 20,000 strong right thru everyone’s farmland & home. Too bad preacher Chill Wills can't convince the farmers to take a stand. Or that Granger’s the only person around with the skills to lead a resistance. It’s Cattlemen-vs-Farmers meets Stranger-Comes-To-Town; reasonably effective if without much texture, a factor rarely associated with Granger who homogenizes everything he touches. Fleming is quite good here, so too Chill Wills. But Steve Rowland in his first major role (he’s director Roy Rowland's son) is a crucial decade too old as the boy; an angry 25 when he needs to be a worshipful, but disappointed 15. (A better score might also help.) Nothing wrong with a SHANE/’53 wannabe, but this one isn’t very distinctive.

DOUBLE-BILL: Granger’s best Western is a chilly one, NORTH TO ALASKA/’60 with Henry Hathaway calling the shots for him & co-stars John Wayne & Capucine.

THE GREAT LIE (1941)

Ultra-slick soaper opens as the alcohol-fueled marriage of aviator George Brent & glamorous concert pianist Mary Astor gets nullified on a technicality. Sobered up, Brent soon realizes he’ll always be playing second-fiddle to Tchaikovsky and returns to loyal stand-by gal Bette Davis. But this happy (and legit) marriage turns tragic when Brent’s plane goes missing in the Amazon Jungle! Worse, Astor got herself pregnant on their (false) wedding night!! So, likely widow Bette offers to take the child, raise it as her own and give it Brent’s name & fortune. What could go wrong? Ah, illegitimacy, mother of a thousand & one Three-Hankie Weepers. Made during Davis’s glory decade @ Warners, this lesser-known title makes for good, not great trash. But composer Max Steiner has fun sampling Chopin & Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in his score while Astor (who worked with Davis to pump up their interplay and win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar®) had the piano-playing chops to fake her way around the keyboard. (The actual phlegmatic playing is probably by Max Rabinovitch.) And check out the neatly served Damon Runyon two-reeler, AT THE STROKE OF TWELVE, an early credit for director Jean Negulesco, included on the DVD.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Davis probably had to fight half the studio on the realistically disheveled, just-out-of-bed look she pulls off toward the end: hair a mess, no makeup, workaday pajama pants. You can bet Jack Warner raised hell when he saw the ‘dailies.’

DOUBLE-BILL: Two years before, in THE OLD MAID, Bette had the illegitimate kid, still with Brent, director Edmund Goulding, lenser Tony Gaudio & composer Max Steiner. Plus, twice the tears and double the masochism.

SALAAM BOMBAY! (1988)

One of the great feature debuts, Mira Nair’s plunge into the world of Bombay’s street boys brings Dickensian overtones & texture, with echoes of OLIVER TWIST both broad & intimate, to its very different world. Startling right from the top, where, in a switch, a young boy finds the circus has run away from him, he hies himself off to the nearest big city (Bombay) in hopes of making enough money to get back to home & mother. Settled in as go-fer to pimps, madames, hookers & addicts in a poor neighborhood where’s he’s also ‘tea delivery-boy,’ he hardly has time to come up for air. With professional actors in the adult roles, and amateurs street kids as juveniles, Nair consistently lands in the sweet spot, molding a true ensemble team. And what a world of color, delight, terror & heartbreak she finds on the street and in the crowded tenement apartments where everything plays out. A few melodramatic episodes feel a bit pushed, but the whiplash sentiments are both painfully believable and crushing to onscreen characters & viewer alike. Nair never made anything finer.

DOUBLE-BILL: A documentary from Calcutta, BORN INTO BROTHELS/’04, is both similar & compelling.

SCHATTEN / WARNING SHADOWS (1923)

Subtitled ‘A Nocturnal Hallucination,’ this extreme, if soggy, silent film example of German Expressionism is more cited than seen. As with Robert Weine's THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI/’19, writer/director Arthur Robinson tends more to his art design & trick effects than to plot, but with less successful integration of story, acting, mood & look. It’s also frankly hard to follow with Robinson largely going without explanatory surtitles. (There are introductory titles and, apparently, more narrative titles added for foreign release.) The basic idea comes thru as we join a wealthy court audience at a puppet show to watch a sort of Francesca da Rimini tale of infidelity. The visual gimmick is in how Robinson variously hides, reveals or misreads story points thru shadow, reflection or silhouette. But with a lack of surtitles to help clarify plot & relationships, along with the blasted condition of the surviving source material, our confusion makes it seem to move at a snail’s pace, while the ultra-stylized acting is off-putting & silly. (Where’s Conrad Veidt when you need him?) The cinematographer was Fritz Arno Wagner, so this must have originally been something to see, but so dramatically inert it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm watching this print.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Two very strange phallic elements in here: the hair styling of the errant wife looks like an erection on the back of her head; and, on her lover, what may be film’s most revealing pants with material so clingy you could measure the circumference of his testicles.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Lotte Eisner is far more enthusiastic in her classic look at German Expressionism, THE HAUNTED SCREEN. And while the book doesn’t have the cachet it once had, it's still worth a look if only for the well-reproduced stills. Judging by her comments, she saw a far better, more detailed print than what's now available.

IT (2017)

The Pied Piper meets the gang from STAND BY ME (plus token girl) in last summer’s big, family-friendly horror hit. Surprisingly shy on the scare factor, like much Stephen King, the pay-off fails an elaborate set-up, IT plops a devilish child-snatching clown in a small town once every 27 years for a spate of deadly havoc. Heck, the town’s rotten enough without him! What with lean, mean older teens getting their jollies terrorizing outlier pubescents like Fat Boy, Asthmatic Wimp; Cautious Jew; Girl with a bad rep & a molesting dad; a token Black*; Kid with Glasses (really, his handicap is glasses?); and likable stutterer whose kid brother got ‘clowned.’ (Note change: the STAND BY ME lead lost an older brother.) There’s some nice late-‘80s detail, and a few deft gross-outs, but who approved a script that only moves forward by dropping things? Fine to drop a clue now & then, but here, every story beat is nudged into place with something dropped: knife, booklet, packet of capsules, flashlight, bullets, rope. Not that audiences minded. (Or noticed?) Like having the girl crop her hair in anger and suddenly turn into Kristy McNichol. It’s an ‘80s thing.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Like STAND BY ME, the kids are all junior psychologists. So much positive feedback! Maybe that’s what they’ve all become in the PART TWO 27-yr reunion pic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The Black Kid gets a PC handle: Home Schooled Kid! Really! Then they let him be the guy who brings a gun to the final showdown. An abattoir gun, but still.

THE LONG GRAY LINE (1955)

Starting as a bumbling waiter to hordes of West Point Cadets on his first day off the boat, Irish immigrant Marty Maher stays to becomes a 50-yr Non-commissioned institution in this Mr. Chips Goes to West Point saga. And if you can make it past the broad blarney & comic blather of the opening reels, the film gains interest as life’s hard knocks & war’s toll darken the landscape while director John Ford gets his footing in CinemaScope. (He hated the ultra-widescreen format and largely avoided it in the future.) Maher keeps trying to leave the place, like James Stewart in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE/’46, but his personal story (even a lost child) never catches fire. (NOTRE DAME inventing football’s forward pass to beat ARMY the film’s big moment. Honor thru Failure, a typical Ford motif.) As an archetype with fabulous overtones, Tyrone Power makes for pleasant company, but he's short on technique & variety. Something supplied in spades by Donald Crisp as his authoritarian Old World father and Maureen O’Hara as the redheaded colleen he marries. They have a naturally stylized atmosphere about them, even in posture & musical line readings. Indulgent in sentiment & running time (2+ hours), but worth it for Ford’s coup de théâtre curtain-call: a visual paraphrase of Faulkner’s ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ To Ford, ‘The dead are never past. They’re not even dead.’

DOUBLE-BILL: The original Robert Donat/Greer Garson GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS/’39, holding up nicely.

SUSAN AND GOD (1940)

M-G-M was a sucker for the shallow sophistication of B’way playwright Rachel Crothers. Joan Crawford alone did three. (NO MORE LADIES/’35; SUSAN AND GOD; WHEN LADIES MEET/’41.) In the right role, a better actress than she often gets credit for, ‘Susan’ isn’t the right role. The required ‘tony’ performing style, something slightly less & slightly more than realistic acting, a calling card of B’way divas like ‘Kit’ Cornell, Lynn Fontanne & Gertrude Lawrence (who made this a hit on stage), is far beyond Crawford’s natural range. Instead, she forces, killing laughs & repose. Then aping Lawrence’s distinctive flutey cracked vocals when trying to sound genuine. She plays a runaway wife & mother, just back from England where she was spiritually awakened. Now in thrall to a new system of relating to God, she insists on trying it out on all her rich horsey friends. Quite a line up, too: Ruth Hussey, Rita Hayworth, Bruce Cabot, Nigel Bruce, John Carroll, Rose Hobart, even housekeeper Marjorie Main. Only alcoholic husband Fredric March (very comfortable here) is deemed unworthy. Naturally, the treatment upsets all the relationships (divorces, marriages, house-parties equally upturned), with only March & their unhappy daughter finding the underlying truth Crawford spouts but doesn’t understand. George Cukor, working from Anita Loos’s adaptation, keeps up the pace, but the basic material stays as inert as the soundstage sets. And with Crawford so fraudulent, the inevitable ‘happy’ recoupling looks like a wrong turn.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Adrian’s outfits for Crawford are the one amusing element. You could make a basketball net out of one of her face veils; and her final number makes her look like she’s been roped at a cattle show.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Does anyone work in these plays? Hayworth & Carroll are job-hunting stage actors, but no one else does anything but socialize, proselytize or ride horses.

I FIDANZATI (1963)

Ermanno Olmi’s superb follow-up to IL POSTO/’61, his Portrait of a First-Time Job-Hunter in Milan’s ‘Il Boom’ economy, shows fast developing cracks in the system. The opening is hard to beat as a lower middle-class dance hall comes to life with a couple of musicians and well-dressed locals coupling & uncoupling on the freshly dusted floor. Social dancing: the only acceptable physical contact at the time. One couple, late 20s/early 30s, shows obvious signs of tension. A coveted job promotion is sending the man off to a plant in Sicily; the woman, now worried about their future. Will the engagement keep? The rest of the film meticulously charts her sense of abandonment against his own disappointments living a lonely half-life as stranger-in-a-strange-land. Wonderfully captured by Olmi in images that are harsh, beautiful, and filled with a sense of the futility of rising expectations eased only by the couple’s shared sense of personal growth in a relationship that finds strength & maturity thru distance. The ending is a bit abrupt, a reel or two extra would help, but Olmi’s sense of craft & tact offers much.

DOUBLE-BILL: IL POSTO is even more satisfying & original. Yet, other than that and THE TREE OF THE WOODEN CLOGS/’78, little of Olmi is available Stateside.