FAUSTRECHT DER FREIHEIT / FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1975)

Presuming no objections to a dose or two of Full Frontal Nudity (German Male Division), this middle-period film from Rainer Werner Fassbinder makes an excellent introduction to his work. (Admittedly an acquired taste not everyone acquires.) Rooted in an affair that ended before the film came out (note the dedication), Fassbinder takes on the role of his sex mate, lower-class, ungroomed, rough trade, unable to move into the sophisticated world of a new lover. But if the sexual dynamic was drawn from life, the economic angle gets reversed as Fassbinder’s ex-carny worker wins the lottery, suddenly able to buy a semblance of love by loaning funds to save the family business of his new boyfriend. He may not know which fork to pick up for each course, but can pick up a pen to sign a check or a contract. Needless to say, Fox is being used and while Fassbinder makes didactic drama of cash vs. class, the twosome don’t connect on any level so Fox looks dumb rather than masochistic. He’s like Lana Turner in some ‘40s melodrama from Metro: Gauche small-town girl flunks Life-in-the-Big-City 101. And so deterministic, you wonder if Fassbinder is hunting up mocking realism or the stylized distancing of Bertolt Brecht or Douglas Sirk. Lenser Michael Ballhaus helps with a ‘finished’ look unusual in the Fassbinder æsthetic book while actor-Fassbinder helps director-Fassbinder by getting his weight down just enough to make a plausible object of desire for eccentric, unwashed tastes.

DOUBLE-BILL: Fassbinder’s attempts to break out of the German film scene with DESPAIR/’78 and QUERELLE/’82 are disappointments while BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ/’80, his acclaimed mini-series, is a slog. Instead, THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN/’79, an ironic post-WWII drama with iconic work from Hanna Schygulla.

BRIEF MOMENT (1933)

Modest to a fault social comedy/romance, from S. N. Behrman’s modestly successful B’way play about a Nightclub singer (Carole Lombard, doing her own singing) who marries a High Society swell (blander than bland Gene Raymond) over his family’s objections. The gimmick is that she’s got the work ethic and he’s the wastrel, happy to live, party & drink off the family teat. If she could only get him a job at his dad's bank or even make an honest salesman out of the guy. (Ugh.) It’s pretty dull stuff, and dully directed by David Burton, with a couple of interesting elements on the sidelines. First, busy character man Arthur Hohl, usually cast as a heel, in a rare nice guy role, nursing an unrequited yen for Lombard, and even playing cupid at the finish. Sweet. And second, smooth Donald Cook, Raymond’s older, more successful brother, confessing he’s no more interested in work than his kid brother, happy to sign a couple of documents every day for a fat paycheck and let everyone think he’s an executive workhorse. Now there’s a fellow worth a play.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: That’s Monroe Owsley as BFF and irritating bad influence on Raymond’s weak character. Always pushing for another round of drinks, another pointless party run, another day at the track. In the original production, the role was stunt cast with the B'way acting debut of America’s best-loved (and equally reviled) drama & literary critic, Alexander Woollcott of Algonquin Round Table & MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER fame.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)

Something of a Portrait of Steven Spielberg as a Young Auteur, revealing his strengths & weaknesses in what was only his third feature, first as writer/director. Detailing a government hush campaign on UFOs and the ‘chosen’ believers who try to break in, it flirts with daring structural form, especially in its first hour, less First Act then series of extended prologues, with Spielberg effortlessly integrating state-of-the-art F/X with his multi-pronged storyline, but then selling himself short with cheap audience identification beats, tossing in wheezy gags & character tics when he grows scared of his own ambition and the sheer size of the thing. No wonder he put out three different cuts, including the disastrous ‘Special Edition’ that (anti)climaxed with an added mini-tour inside the alien mothership. (Thankfully removed in the presumed 'final' Director’s Cut.) Yet, watching the film now, you can see Spielberg was right to be dissatisfied, he just misdiagnosed the problem. It doesn’t stem from anything missing in the climax, but comes earlier; a noticeable dip when UFO convert Richard Dreyfuss goes overboard with his mountain building obsession, bringing it into his little suburban house. For 40 minutes, the film searches for the divine madness Dreyfuss succumbs to, a fever dream beyond Spielberg’s range of empathy. And the movie doesn’t relocate narrative focus till Dreyfuss & fellow believer Melinda Dillon find the UFO landing site. (Their rocky mountain crag visually reminiscent of THE WIZARD OF OZ/’39, the scene that had Scarecrow, Tin Man & Lion waiting before daring to enter the Witch’s Castle.) Yet the faults don’t hurt too much, thanks largely to John Williams’ György Ligeti-addled score (the part that sounds like 2001) and what must be the greatest line up of cinematographers ever to grace a single film: Vilmos Zsigmond, John Alonzo, William Fraker, László Kovács, Douglas Trumbull, Allen Daviau (uncredited) and Douglas Slocombe.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: In the final scenes, all the Americans tower over 5' 6" François Truffaut, perfectly cast, touching, positively radiating French humanist charm as an extraterrestrial research scientist. Did Spielberg come up with this plus perfect casting idea? Truffaut apparently jumped at the opportunity, eager to see a huge Hollywood production from the inside; it’s 20 mill budget probably enough to cover his entire output up till then.

ANOTHER DAWN (1937)

There’s a truncated feel to this isosceles love triangle: Kay Francis & Errol Flynn sharing equal lengths of passion while husband Ian Hunter gets stuck with the short angle. It’s not the budget, generously laying on one of those British Desert Forts, with mobs of armed men & horseflesh working to keep the peace between warring Arab tribesmen; William Dieterle to helm; Tony Gaudio lensing; even a rich Erich Wolfgang Korngold score.* But someone pulled the plug before they finished. Hunter, commanding officer back at the fort, is on a break in England when he meets and soon offers companionate marriage to young widow Francis. Never expecting to find another true love after losing her adventurous first husband, Francis immediately falls hard for dashing second-in-command Flynn when she returns to base with Hunter. Everyone knows what’s up; everyone wants to do the right thing; everyone utterly miserable. Only battle action can resolve this thing. Especially with an ending that’s reshot after negative audience testing. Even so, Flynn & Francis are so well matched, you root for the film to come off. Francis, connecting with a role that doesn’t rely on exposed decolletage; Flynn showing new emotional depth in intimate scenes between all the borrowed renunciation tropes & dramatic patches. Worth a look just as missed opportunity.

LINK: *Korngold’s score is oddly ‘spotted’ in some scenes. He found better use for the film’s Love Theme, using it to open his violin concerto. Here’s Hilary Hahn (with Kent Nagano). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcGEGl5bdbk

THE WINDOW (1949)

Phenomenally effective B-pic from cinematographer-turned-director Ted Tetzlaff, a ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ thriller taken from the same Cornell Woolrich story Alfred Hitchcock reworked as REAR WINDOW/’54.* Very different here, the downmarket version, but lots of Hitchcockian touches including a neat visual reference to the famous nervous pacing heard (well, seen) thru the ceiling in Hitchcock’s THE LODGER/’27. (NOTORIOUS/’46 wasn’t Tetzlaff’s last lensing credit for nothing.) No REAR WINDOW soundstage Greenwich Village in sight, instead, terrific East Side tenement location shooting, and flawless matching Manhattan mock-ups as young Bobby Driscoll spends a hot night on the fire escape, accidentally witnessing a murder thru the window of an upstairs neighbor. Trouble is, he’s such an inveterate tall-tale fibber no one believes his story. Tetzlaff’s gets us involved right away with his exceptional cast and remarkably true-to-life grimy art direction inside & out. You can smell the cabbage & grease in the hallway. Then studs the action with twists & bursts of suspense that have you yelling back at the screen: DON’T FORGET THE PILLOW! or CHECK OUT THE FLOOR ABOVE!! And when nice mom Barbara Hale forces her terrified boy to apologize in person to the nice, quiet couple in the apartment above for lying about them, letting them know that he knows; it’s one of the great eyes-wide-awake nightmares in cinema. All in a tidy 73 minutes.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Morris Engel’s famous no-budget indie THE LITTLE FUGITIVE/’53 gets lots of credit for shooting around the back streets of NYC, while this film had ‘been there/done that’ four years before.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The same Woolrich short story (‘The Boy Cried Murder’) was also revamped by Tom Holland for CLOAK AND DAGGER/’84, a star vehicle for Henry Thomas soon after E.T.

CHEYENNE (1947)

There’s a dandy idea to this B+ budgeted Western from Warner Bros., but director Raoul Walsh can’t quite make the unfocused script stick. Dennis Morgan, a bit worn, a bit thicker in the middle*, is the soft-spoken card-sharp who’s gambled himself into a job with Pinkerton Agents, forced to go undercover and pose as notorious stagecoach bandit ‘The Poet’ to clear his record. It sets him up against a nasty gang of robbers led by Arthur Kennedy, eager to move in on ‘The Poet’s’ territory; and possibly against Jane Wyman, ‘The Poet’s’ wife who may or may not be working with him. Add in dance hall gal Janis Paige (in delicious form), ‘inside’ man Bruce Bennett and Alan Hale as a reticent second deputy and you hardly know which way to turn all thru the pic. Nice. But Alan Le May’s script plays like an early draft that hasn’t nailed down the plot turnabouts or character motivation, covering up holes with sexy banter and too much forced whimsy. The latter abetted by a Max Steiner score that either giggles along or relentlessly thumps out its main theme. Pleasant in spite of the faults, but this might have been something special.

DOUBLE-BILL: *An underrated performer, see Morgan at his best in THE HARD WAY/’43 which also shows Ida Lupino, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson & director Vincent Sherman at their best.

THE CHEAT (1915)

With CARMEN, KINDLING and THE CHEAT, plus a dozen more shorts & hour-length features, 1915 was an early annus mirabilis for Cecil B. DeMille. KINDLING, a tale of tenement life, one of DeMille’s most surprising productions, realistic & forward-looking, is unavailable in any video format, but KINO has an excellent edition of this more typically ‘DeMillean’ High Society melodrama. Stage star Fanny Ward (already in her mid-40s, but still new to film) plays against real-life husband (and lousy actor) Jack Dean, as a heedless high-maintenance wife who’s lost $10,000 in charity funds on a bad investment and, desperate to replace it, borrows from handsome Burmese ivory dealer Sessue Hayakawa*, a man who has his own ideas about a proper repayment plan. Yikes! With nods toward MERCHANT OF VENICE and SCARLET LETTER, Hector Turnbull’s story revels in stereotypes (Oriental and Upper-Crust), popular enough for three remakes (see below) including a French version twenty years on, also with Hayakawa.

What makes this one stand out is the extraordinary visual treatment from DeMille and ace cameraman Alvin Wyckoff, making a true ‘Shadow Play’ of it.* Plus breakthru East-Meets-West conceptual touches, and a showcase trial after the husband takes the wife’s blame for shooting the would-be rapist, a sequence as well-composed & technically savvy as anything in DeMille. Playing despicable villain, Hayakawa’s frank sexuality was a sensation, and made him a major star for a decade, long before BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI/’57.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Hayakawa’s character was renamed to change him from Japanese to Burmese for the film’s 1918 re-release after an Asian-America Society objected to the portrayal.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The Movies, The Silver Screen, Motion Pictures, ‘Shadow Plays,’ never The Silents or Silent Film. That term only came in after ‘The Talkies’ took over.

DOUBLE-BILL: KINO’s DVD comes with MANSLAUGHTER as second feature, DeMille’s big 1922 release, and he’s already showing contempt toward his audience in this ludicrous drama about careless rich girl Leatrice Joy who mows down a policeman, and the D.A. (Thomas Meighan, star of KINDLING) who both convicts and falls for her.

LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT / THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (1967)

Jacques Demy followed the success of THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG/’64, his sui generis ‘Popera,’ with this occasionally enchanting pastel silliness. Lighter in tone and not sung-thru, it too often deflates from enchantment into mere silliness . . . or mere pastel. Françoise Dorleac & Catherine Deneuve are musical sisters in town waiting for Mr. Right & a ticket to Paris. But before pairing up with sailor Jacques Perrin & musician Gene Kelly, they flirt with festival workers George Chakiris & Grover Dale while Danielle Darrieux, their café proprietor mom, nearly misses a chance reunion with long lost love Michel Piccoli. And all around, the city streets are in constant plié eruption with song feints & snatches of dance. Michel Legrand’s Pop-Jazz score is so breezy, it wafts away as you listen. But Demy never sneaks or segues his way into the numbers, they just START UP; it’s the film’s best idea. All told, more peculiar than successful, missing the unifying tone that makes UMBRELLAS such a wondrous oddity. Even so, no one would want to miss it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Just about all the vocals & much of the dialogue is dubbed by others. But listen up in the second half when Gene Kelly’s own distinctive voice shows up for a pair of scenes set in Michel Piccoli’s music store. And in very respectable French.

DOUBLE-BILL: The film’s spontaneous All-Singing/All-Dancing ferry raft opening must have been a favorite of the creative hands behind LA LA LAND/’16.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1968)

From the mid-‘60s thru the ‘70s, controversy over Vietnam made the military something of a ‘third rail’ in film, turning nearly all war pics into current events allegory (intended or not); and all on-screen military officers into officious dolts. An attitude that kills this historical; not because wartime arrogance & incompetence didn’t lead to the eponymous death ‘charge’ at Sevastopol in The Crimean War, but because it did. Senile generals, disastrous infighting from the officers in charge, a Wrong-Way Harrigan Captain (his motives still a subject of debate); so what should register as the military campaign fuck-up of all time comes across simply as business as usual. Add in late ‘60s stylistics from director Tony Richardson and you’ve wasted a stellar cast (John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, Vanessa Redgrave, David Hemmings) & some impressive resources. Cinematographer David Watkin makes it all look gorgeous, even the carnage & horror, but can’t overcome Richardson’s habitual bad camera set ups or take the snark out of Charles Wood’s satiric screenplay. In fact, the only thing that really does work in here are a few brilliant animated sequences from Richard Williams which straighten out global machinations and function like period political cartoons. But hardly enough to save the pic.

LINK: Lousy posters for this film. Instead, a dandy one from Edison/1912. A one-reel release, now in very poor physical condition, it still puts on quite the show of horseflesh & soldiering once it hits the battlefield. Plus InterTitles by Tennyson! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfKo0dVnuDw 
And here’s a succinct animated history of the battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b73IaK2zQk8

THE SISTERS (1938)

The sum is less than the considerable parts in this big, involving period piece about a trio of eligible sisters (Bette Davis, Anita Louise, Jane Bryan) who find husbands, if not bliss, between the 1904 election of Teddy Roosevelt & Taft in 1908. A pricey novel, originally purchased for fast-fading Kay Francis, was instead used to get Davis, hot post JEZEBEL/’38, off suspension and back to work. But the writers never quite worked out the tricky three-sided storyline; going ahead in spite of missing construction elements, along with dead-end fade-outs and a misguided/tacked-on ‘happy’ ending. Still, generally fun, handsome to look at (as is Davis at her loveliest), along with the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake POV Bette’s tenement apartment. Yikes! Bette , primus inter pares over her two sisters, tosses over ‘butter-and-egg’ man Dick Foran (he’ll pick up on a lesser sister) to impulsively marry reporter/adventurer Errol Flynn. While they scrimp by in San Fran., third sis Louise, a heartless thing where marriage is concerned, goes for the best deal in town . . . more than once, love be damned. Yet all three ready to help should duty call. With its bumpy script, director Anatole Litvak loses his place in the comings and goings, but keeps up interest scene by scene. You should too.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Dashing to begin with, Flynn just grows better looking as his health gives out in the third act. A glamour trick more common in great female stars: Ingrid Bergman its Champ of Champs (see: GASLIGHT/’44; BELLS OF ST. MARY’S/’45; NOTORIOUS/’46.) And note that our poster, indeed ALL posters for the film, have Flynn's signature mustache even though he’s clean shaven in the pic. Or is before adding stubble in glamorous decline.

POLTERGEIST (1982)

When this Family Oriented Horror Pic was released, talk centered on how Steven Spielberg may have taken the reins from accredited/harder-edged director Tobe Hooper (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE/'74). A moot point in a Spielberg production from his own original story and script. (No doubt, final cut, too.) Heck, even the classic film clip on the family tv is Spielberg fave A GUY NAMED JOE/’43. (A film he remade, to his regret, as ALWAYS/’89.) But all the finger-pointing doesn’t much help the film, it’s the same Lite Fright-Fest mishmash about suburban parents JoBeth Williams & Craig T. Nelson (he’s very good), fighting off tactile & ghostly ectoplasmic units screwing with their house & lives, before abducting their youngest child. Enter a ghost-busting team to document the scene and fight off Special Effects Monsters that now look both technically dated (no matter) and conceptually weak (very much matter). The premise might have worked if the mix of comic, gory, scary, sentimental found (and held) a tone to play in, but it's neither fish nor fowl after Spielberg's Post-Production. A couple of years on, Joe Dante hit just the tone for GREMLINS/’84; even better on GREMLINS 2/’90. A perfect TRIPLE-BILL.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The ‘product placement’ shots are truly beyond the Pale, check out the bag of Cheetos!

ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938)

After two years (and two also-ran indies) away from Warner Bros., James Cagney returned to the studio for a dozen films over five years. About half were classics, though not the first out, BOY MEETS GIRL/’38 with frequent co-star Pat O’Brien: noisy, fast-paced & mirthless. Then this top-tier gangster meller, also with O’Brien, about two tenement delinquents, one who gets caught and goes from Juvie Jail to hoodlum icon; one who gets away to become neighborhood priest. Now, the hood is back on the streets, a hero to a new crop of toughs and a corrupting influence his old pal the priest has to stop. Director Michael Curtiz , constantly on the prowl in a surprisingly lux production, jumps right in with Sol Polito’s panoramic opening shot of the whole damn neighborhood. A jaw-dropping camera move repeated 15 years on, after a reel’s worth of prologue backstory. Ann Sheridan’s the girl in the picture; Humphrey Bogart & George Bancroft the slick mob connection ready to gyp Cagney out of a hundred grand; and The ‘Dead End’ Kids hanging out to see if their mob idol will turn ‘yellow’ when the electric chair fires up. Fine as the whole film is (it runs like a clock), the end chapter, with O’Brien asking Cagney to sacrifice his rep for the sake of the kids, and Cagney breaking down in pitiable fashion (is he faking it?), is a thing of Golden Age Hollywood beauty.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Who’da thunk there’d be another big movie hit that year for Delinquent Boys and an understanding Priest? More admired at the time, now all but unwatchable, BOYS TOWN saw Spencer Tracy beating Cagney for Best Actor Oscar®. Seen one after the other, the two films offer a perfect overview on the differing outlooks of M-G-M and Warner Bros.

1984 (1984)

Grim, respectful, effective, Michael Radford’s full bore version of the George Orwell classic can’t quite avoid playing out as visualized Cliff Notes; an easy-to-swallow medicinal dosage of dystopia. John Hurt, probably too on-the-nose for Winston Smith, our mid-tier proletariat alter-ego busy with workplace rotary phones & pneumatic tubes, altering history to fit the times. It’s partly a nature of the role, of course, but missing any surprise. Stunt casting might have knocked things off-course in a good way, an arhythmic vibe from a Rock Star (like The Who) or maybe a Monty Python comic. But Radford seems untuned to Orwell’s gallows humor, that nether zone between the puzzling, mirthless illogic of an Edward Lear Nonsense Poem and the yet-to-come existential paradox of Samuel Beckett. Offering lessons instead of dark satire & ‘Party Line’ parody. As O’Brien, Richard Burton, in his last film, gets the dual aspect of confessor & punisher across thru the remains of a dulled surface; and Suzanna Hamilton, Hurt’s sexual muse of resistance, earns the rare distinction of owning up to hairier armpits than her male lover. A cinematic first! Plus Cyril Cusack doing double dystopian duty after appearing in Truffaut’s equally over-modulated FAHRENHEIT 451/’66. (Which makes for a nice DOUBLE-BILL.)

LINK: Ridley Scott’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad for the new Apple Macintosh Computer must have given this film’s producers a jolt, similar enough in tone & design to bring up thoughts of intellectual property theft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA

THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (1982)

Peter Weir’s political thriller/romance looks only better with the passing years. Tense, at times intriguingly opaque, with gathering suspense both personal & political, it’s enthralling moviemaking. Mel Gibson, consolidating his rep after a breakthru in Weir’s GALLIPOLI/’81, is the ‘pup’ foreign correspondent in mid-60s Indonesia, arriving in Jakarta just as President Sukarno’s grip on the country starts to give way to general anarchy & fast-rising Communist factions. A babe-in-the-woods next to the seasoned/cynical reporters lounging at the bar (holdovers from some Somerset Maugham story), Gibson has the luck to get the lay of the land from mysterious Chinese dwarf photographer Linda Hunt (stunning) who both helps & controls him, and the other kind of ‘lay,’ plus inside info, from British Embassy attaché and possible spy-gal Sigourney Weaver, also stunning, but in a different way. (With a jawbone beneath the polished glamour Samson’s ass might have envied.) Spectacular period flavor on convincing recreated locations make for an electric atmosphere even when the narrative turns cloudy & garbled with complication. Gibson, particularly in light of later, coarsened efforts, is a revelation; nearly matching Hunt’s one-of–a-kind gender-bending triumph. It’s a puzzle, and a loss, to note that Weir has only made eight films since this, and none since 2010's little seen THE WAY BACK.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: While it’s always silly to expect much in the way of discernment from Oscar® noms (especially when a film under-performs commercially), it still comes as a shock to see what was singled out over this. At least, the very deserving Linda Hunt made the cut. http://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000003/1984/1

DOUBLE-BILL: To see just how easily this sort of romance/political thriller can go wrong see Richard Lester’s CUBA/’79 (w/ Sean Connery/Brooke Adams) or Sydney Pollack’s HAVANA/’90 (w/ Robert Redford/Lena Olin).

TIP ON A DEAD JOCKEY (1957)

Title great! Film . . . not so much. Everybody’s just going thru the motions on this little crime pic, taken from an Irwin Shaw novel about two ex war pilots (Robert Taylor; Jack Lord) drifting in Madrid. Taylor, all but divorced from Dorothy Malone, figures she’s better off without him, especially after he loses his last stake on a horse race gone crooked. Now, he’ll have to face his fear of flying on a smuggling run for shady character Martin Gabel. Shaw’s Hemingway pastiche has it’s possibilities, at least, it’s pretty to think so*, but the dialogue & character relationships barely scratch the surface in a film that’s short on energy & style until it finally hits the long-haul smuggling operation, neatly handled by vet megger Richard Thorpe (always at his best in what would normally be Second-Unit stuff) with Taylor & his little French pal (Marcel Dalio) showing the only affectionate relationship in here.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Jack Lord looks late 20s; Taylor, tired & worn beyond his years, looks mid-50s. Yet less than a decade stands between them: Lord 37; Taylor 46.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Out earlier the same year, Henry King’s wan try at Hemingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES, Shaw’s obvious model here. OR: Also that year, Malone & more fatalistic pilots in Douglas Sirk’s superb adaptation of Faulkner’s PYLON, renamed THE TARNISHED ANGELS.

SINCE YOU WENT AWAY (1944)

Where producer David O. Selznick tinkered incessantly with other people’s work (his chapter -length Memos & Telegrams the stuff of Hollywood legend), here he took full ownership with the credit ‘Screenplay by the Producer.’ (And director John Cromwell, a late hire, no lap dog, beautifully holding the story’s many strands together.) In many ways it’s Selznick’s most personal film, uneven, but heart-tugging, mixing likable narrative contrivance with magnificent set pieces to chart how a ‘typical’ American family handled life on the homefront in ‘43 when Dad went off to war. Like a Stateside follow-up to the ‘veddy’ British MRS. MINIVER/’42 and, though based on an epistolary book by Margaret Buell Wilder, not far removed from Selznick’s own LITTLE WOMEN/’33, the George Cukor/Katharine Hepburn classic. Looking like a Domestic Goddess, Claudette Colbert largely maintains a comfortable Pre-War lifestyle for her girls (Jennifer Jones & Shirley Temple), which means letting housekeeper Hattie McDaniel live-in but work elsewhere and taking in irascible lodger Monty Woolley. She’s visited, now & then, by her husband’s best pal Joseph Cotten, a Navy man the girls swoon over, though he flirts hard as he can with Colbert. An unusual relationship for the time, the chemistry is tremendous, though Colbert either doesn’t (or more likely won’t) acknowledge it. Jones winds up falling for Woolley’s just-enlisted West Point drop-out grandson (Robert Walker, charming), while crises large & small pop up between the jaw-dropping showstoppers mostly shot by Stanley Cortez working at full-bliss mode: a dance fund-raiser; a train station farewell; an immigrant’s dream of America the three most famous. The last really shouldn’t work at all, corny, bathetic, yet does because Selznick managed to coax Alla Nazimova out of retirement for the small role of this grateful Russian immigrant. Telling Colbert that she is the embodiment of her dream of America, it's the perfect summation of what the film strives to be; not the real America, but our best dream of that real America.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: By war’s end, this model of ‘real America’ had changed to something less myth-driven & glossy, as seen in William Wyler’s THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES/’46, careful to show not only UPPER middle-class, but also MIDDLE-middle; LOWER-middle and just plain low class.

RIO CONCHOS (1964)

Though wont to rollover & play dead on his Frank Sinatra vehicles (like the just completed ROBIN AND THE 7 HOODS), Gordon Douglas could show striking command of action-oriented set pieces when given a chance. A chance he gets in the second half of this brutish Western. Richard Boone, in a particularly nasty turn, is an ex-Confederate seeking revenge on the whole Apache Nation for the murder of his wife & daughter. Anthony Franciosa is a jailed, linguistically nimble Mexican con man forced to join him in aiding a couple of Regular Army soldiers (Stuart Whitman & debuting Jim Brown) on a mission to recover 500 stolen repeating rifles from former Confederate General Edmund O’Brien who plans on selling them to Apaches in Mexico. Douglas’s laissez-faire attitude toward actors allows for excessively broad characterizations out of Boone (underlining every line) and Franciosa (a close second to Dick Van Dyke’s notorious Cockney from MARY POPPINS in the race for 1964's Worst Accent of the Year), but once past the Mexican border, the demands of narrative & action over character bring a healthy improvement to the film. As does Joseph MacDonald’s spectacular cinematography all thru the pic (interiors & exteriors) in CinemaScope & Deluxe Color. So hang in there.

DOUBLE-BILL: Whitman starts on the wrong side of the law (against John Wayne) in THE COMANCHEROS/’61, written by this film’s Clair Huffaker and sporting many similarities.

PHANTOM THREAD (2017)

While a significant recovery (in quality if not box-office) from recent disappointments (THE MASTER/’12; INHERENT VICE/’14), Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, about a chilly, exacting couture dressmaker in 1950s London, is meticulously made without holding much actual interest. (Like the man’s clothes.) And oddly, our much lauded writer/director seems to agree, folding in ill-fitting thriller elements (poisonous mushrooms; ‘Baron Munchausen By Proxy’ syndrome) to stir things up and give his oxygen-starved yarn a Hitchcockian patina. Very Eau de VERTIGO with gothic notes from REBECCA/’40 and UNDER CAPRICORN/’49. Playing the cool, calm, not-so-collected designer, Daniel Day-Lewis, in what he claims as a final perf, takes his leave offering an immaculate impression of Jeremy Irons. (Very good, too, but still, Jeremy Irons.) As the little wren he picks up and transforms into a worthy object of fashionable fancy (though still treating her as staff when royalty calls), Vicky Krieps earns that unfortunate last name. Lesley Manville is far more successful as the controlling older sister, slightly losing control. Best of all, Harriet Harris in a brief but crucial spot as a wealthy, but unworthy client, gone blotto at her own wedding before Day-Lewis & ‘Creeps,’ er . . . Krieps sneak into her room to remove the artful gown she has disgraced. If only Anderson hadn’t missed the comic angle here; much needed relief unrealized . . . or rather, unrecognized. Instead, a typically confounding PTA coda. Something he got away with in THERE WILL BE BLOOD/’07 and MAGNOLIA/’99; not so much recently.

DOUBLE-BILL: For swooningly tactile textiles, Yimou Zhang’s gorgeous period thriller JU DOU/’90.

THE LITTLE AMERICAN (1917)

With her weekly salary reaching $10,000/wk, Paramount was troubled by Mary Pickford’s increasing independence. POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL/’17, with personally chosen scenarist Frances Marion, was due out, and company execs unhappy with it.* But who might take control? So, on orders from production chief Adolph Zukor, it was off to California and top director Cecil B. DeMille. A generally unhappy, if successful meeting of two headstrong bosses, first for the Western ROMANCE OF THE REDWOODS/’17, then this eye-opening look at German war atrocities as America’s Sweetheart grows from naiveté to resolve witnessing German brutality. After inheriting an estate in France, Mary, clinging to American neutrality as well as her friendship with French officer Raymond Hatton and a fiancé in his German adversary Jack Holt, barely survives the trip over when her ship (the Lusitania in all but name) is sunk by a German U-Boat. Eventually, her estate overrun by German beasts, she’s caught aiding the French as a spy only to be briefly saved by Holt who comes round in the nick of time to denounce his superiors. But with most of the villagers & her staff already shot by German firing squads, can anything save Mary & Jack from being the next victims? Blunt & often contrived, yet somehow not ridiculous, DeMille, in good form, forcefully stages atrocities while Mary finds whatever subtle acting moments she can amid the melodrama. If only we could properly see it all! Perhaps better prints will come to DVD.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The execs needn’t have worried. RICH GIRL was a big hit, and scenarist Marion went on to write many Pickford classics during Pickford’s moves from Paramount/ArtCraft to First National before co-founding United Artists with Charles Chaplin & husband-to-be Douglas Fairbanks. STELLA MARIS/’18, with Mary’s startling double-act, is usually considered the top Pickford/Marion collaboration, but AMARILLY OF CLOTHES-LINE ALLEY/’18 is equally fine, both well directed by Marshall Neilan, the latter exceptionally so.

THE STAR (1952)

Designed as sad, sorry spectacle from a first shot that finds has-been movie star Bette Davis gazing thru a showcase window at her own poorly attended bankruptcy auction*, it’s Hollywood schadenfreude, with the former Queen of the Lot brought down by age, changing taste, bad contracts and self-financed productions. That’s the set up for this post-ALL ABOUT EVE misfire, promising a masochistic field day for Davis, and tsk-tsk voyeurism for the audience. Alas, nothing lives up to the tawdry concept, with a flat script offering diva disapproval and equally flat direction from Stuart Heisler. He does earn some documentary flavor points, especially when a drunk Bette drives off at night (Oscar in hand) not via ‘backscreen projection,’ but on real L.A. streets. Sterling Hayden’s role as the regular guy she once tried to turn into an actor makes little sense while teenage Natalie Wood, a most unlikely daughter, is too bubbly by half. Bette does find a spot to do some good work late in the film, ‘defrumping’ herself for a screen test that goes terribly wrong. But we’re soon back to failing your way up to contentment. Or is it containment?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Davis had far better roles during her tricky career interregnum between the ALL ABOUT EVE/’50 comeback and the ‘Grand Guignol’ BABY JANE/’62 relaunch. (See THE CATERED AFFAIR/'56.) So naturally this was the one to earn an Oscar nom. And, irony of ironies, who should be up against her that year but Joan Crawford, besting Bette for a change in SUDDEN FEAR, then losing alongside her to Shirley Booth for COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA, a role producer Hal Wallis had initially offered to Davis.

CONTEST: *A similar auction of has-been movie star goods opens another film the following year. Guess the title to choose any film for a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up.

PROFUMO DI DONNA / SCENT OF A WOMAN (1974)

This, one of the best examples of the bitter Italian comedies of Dino Risi, has unfortunately been buried by Al Pacino’s Oscar-winning 1992 remake; half as good, twice as sentimental, nearly an hour longer. The basic outline remains: young army cadet Alessandro Momo is assigned to accompany Vittorio Gassman’s blind, embittered, possibly suicidal, retired military officer on a trip to Genoa, Rome & Naples. Purposefully arrogant & willfully opinionated in a determined attempt to avoid unwanted contact, slights, condescension or pity, Gassman goes well past the expected model of rude Falstaffian life force, something the boy picks up on, and off to a level of rhapsodic cruelty aimed at whomever is around to take a hit. It keeps the film bracingly uncomfortable at times, vibrating with real-life possibilities glossed over in the equally popular remake. So, the big set piece in ‘92 is a blind man’s tango while here it’s hunting up a proper whore in Genoa. It's probable that Risi hadn’t the heart to follow this tough line of reasoning all the way to the end, and the second half of the third act does wind up feeling like a compromised first draft of what might have been. Not enough to really hurt the film, but still, not quite up to the rest. Gassman is very fine, broad & true as prime James Cagney; and matched step-for-step by the heartbreakingly young Alessandro Momo, dead in a motorcycle accident at 17 shortly before this was released.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Gassman plays another impossible arrogant life force, this time accidentally mentoring Jean-Louis Trintignant in Risi’s superb IL SORPASSO/’62.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/il-sorpasso-easy-life-1962.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Dino Risi is often remarkably similar in theme & film technique to Blake Edwards. (Though preferring to work in ‘Flat’ rather than WideScreen formats.) A classic misdirected blind man’s punch in the Rome section of PROFUMO is pure Edwards, reveling in offhand, perfectly timed, shockingly funny bad taste.

MOTHER! (2017)

Unlike the usual LOVE IT or HATE IT split reaction to a Darren Aronofsky envelope-pushing provocation, MOTHER! was pretty much all HATE IT. Disingenuously sold as an intellectual horror pic, it’s really more of a modernized NOAH/’14 reboot, his previous Biblical misstep. (Though told without a Noah character as God-chosen conduit to ‘reboot’ the world.) Hard to imagine that a less deceptive ad campaign would have kept this from flat-lining. Mismatched couple Jennifer Lawrence (dewy, self-reliant homemaker) and blocked Hemingwayesque writer Javier Bardem unexpectedly find their isolated country home is being rapidly invaded by the strangest of strangers in exponentially growing numbers, with the house & their relationship falling apart from the stress. (Or maybe it’s those hand-held cameras working so darn close in.) And once the allegorical nature of the film kicks in, things spin even faster out of control with ultra-violence & gore. What’s going on here? Shhh, it’s all about creation . . . er . . .CREATION; and learning about God, unhappy with his score after the first 9, taking a ‘Mulligan.’ (A modest self-portrait for writer/director Aronofsky?) Even a pithy (if unspoken) moral: If at first you don’t succeed, try & try again. But maybe at a different studio.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: What a good opportunity to revisit ROSEMARY’S BABY/’68.

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946)

Neat little horror number from Warner Bros., another reading-of-the-will/inheritance/ murder tale, but with a diabolical twist: a disembodied piano-playing hand is the killer. Yikes! His showpiece? Brahms’ Left Hand Only piano arrangement of Bach’s D Minor Chaconne for solo violin.* No classic (though scripter Curt Siodmak of WOLF MAN fame knows this game as well as anyone), but loaded with third-string talent like director Robert Florey & lenser Wesley Anderson over-achieving. Nifty F/X, too. That is one creepy crawling hand in 1890s Italy where partially paralyzed pianist Victor Francen gathers his friends at his villa to sign a new will. There’s music arranger/antiques con man Robert Alda; nurse/companion Andrea King; astrological researcher Peter Lorre; and the town lawyer. Then, after Francen dies from unnatural causes, they are joined by an avaricious father/son pair of relatives and, of course, local police chief J. Carroll Naish to investigate. But with Francen lying in the mausoleum, who is that playing Bach on the grand piano in the middle of the night? Next question, who killed the lawyer? And two more questions: who tried to strangle Lorre and who attacked the venal son? Nothing in here haunts in the manner of a prime Universal Horror pic, but plenty slick & fun.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *That’s the legendary, self-destructive Ervin Nyiregyhazi playing on the soundtrack. Famous & mentally unstable, he all but disappeared from the classical music scene only to be rediscovered by a Columbia record producer in the ‘70s and given a splashy comeback album with some of the wildest classical piano ever put on LP.

FOR THE DEFENSE (1930)

A (late) Early Talkie, this tasty legal drama (with romantic angle) is imaginatively shot by Charles Lang* and cleanly helmed by John Cromwell, who could be more dependable than imaginative. William Powell & Kay Francis, already showing easy command, star as a top Manhattan defense attorney with a mostly mob clientele & as the glamorous stage actress he’d do anything for . . . except marry. Deeply in love, but miffed at his hesitation, she toys with another lover during an overnight drive that ends in a tragic accident. Worse, Kay was behind the wheel when they hit & killed the man on the road. So when the lover takes the blame, swearing her to secrecy, she pleads with Powell to take the case! But how much can she tell him? And will he have to jeopardize his rep to get his rival off? As neatly structured as it is played, there’s loads of late-‘20s/early’30s NYC flavor in here. (Especially in some Speak Easy & banquet scenes made, like the rest of the film, on the Paramount California lot.) Modest, but a beaut.

DOUBLE-BILL: Earlier the same year, Powell & Francis (again with Cromwell & Lang) made a gambling drama, STREET OF CHANCE/’30, which sounds equally interesting, but is hard to get hold of. Instead, a pair of gems from 1932, the witty JEWEL ROBBERY for William Dieterle or ONE WAY PASSAGE, a masterpiece of haunting romantic fatalism from underrated Tay Garnett.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Check out Lang’s off-hand use of a rare ‘zoom lens’ shot at the 12" mark. Not many such shots in this period, but when they do show up, it’s mostly @ Paramount. Did they have the only zoom lens in town?

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936)

The Crimean War of the 1850s, with major campaigns plotted in British & French war offices by Generals working without much knowledge of the area or even proper maps, remains Poster Child for War As SNAFU. Top/down chaos, with only the even grosser incompetence of Russia under Tsar Nicholas I rescuing the situation. No wonder Warner Bros. fictionalized the conflict to use the famous Tennyson poem and spotlight a fast-rising Errol Flynn.* And between desert battles & political intrigue? Romance for 19-yr-old Olivia de Havilland, choosing between Flynn & younger brother Patric Knowles. Everyone tries to do the honorable thing, but duty calls (again & again) right at the precipitate confessional moment. It’d be slightly ludicrous in a more realistic film, but heightened studio artifice helps it fly. That and director Michael Curtiz’s dazzling form in both action & sentiment, with Flynn adding nuance & power to the raw excitement (and beauty) shown the year before in his CAPTAIN BLOOD breakout. (Yet how disheartening to see so many East/West issues and battles of influence between Russia & Europe recognizable after 200 years.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Not a film for the PETA crowd what with leopard hunts & scores of horses ‘wire tripped’ for the battles. So many, it ended the practice in Hollywood.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Rule of thumb when watching fictionalized historicals: only the most unbelievable story element will be based on fact. Here, the eponymous ‘charge,’ though not ordered with forged papers, as seen here, was initiated by reversing a superior officer’s specific instructions.

DOUBLE-BILL: Though it doesn’t compete in terms of sheer production values, Paramount’s LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER/’35 (Gary Cooper/Franchot Tone/dir. Henry Hathaway) brings swoon-worthy bromantic elements to its Rah, Rah, Raj story line.

POPEYE (1980)

Beautiful & eccentric (heck, downright peculiar), who but Robert Altman would try to fashion an Art House Family Musical from Jules Feiffer’s loose-limbed/episodic adaptation of early E. C. Segar Popeye comic strips? Though the playing avoids the slavishly creepy copycat style of recent Dr Suess live-action adaptations, nothing seems to work quite as intended. Well, nothing other than the heaven-sent infant playing Swee’pea (Altman’s own grandkid Wesley Ivan Hurt). Even Shelley Duvall, a physically perfect Olive Oyl, is left too often to her own devices (and her own music scale), tripping up on flights of unedited comic lunacy. (Lots of Zasu Pitts in there, too.) Yet while the characters, sketchy storyline (Popeye finds his girl, his Pappy & baby in a basket) and tuneless Harry Nilsson score may leave you scratching your head (so too Altman’s fumbled staging of compound slapstick gags & Robin Williams’ verbal drone in his otherwise appealingly boyish, low center-of-gravity Popeye), there’s something so magically right about Wolf Kroeger’s physical production design and Giuseppe Rotunno’s spellbound cinematography, you quickly recalibrate for the film’s obvious flaws to soak up what’s unique (and uniquely right) in here.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Altman was coming off a deadly series of flops at the time: BUFFALO BILL/’76; 3 WOMEN/’77; A WEDDING/’78; QUINTET; A PERFECT COUPLE/’79; HEALTH/’80. So bad, even POPEYE’s modest commercial success didn’t stop producer Dino De Laurentiis from booting him off RAGTIME/’81, the film project he was born to make.

THE HUNTED (1948)

With so many great, all but forgotten, little films noir on DVD (or ‘streamable’), perhaps it’s a useful corrective to have a few stinkers in the mix just to keep things honest. And they hardly come stinkier than this low-budget nothing-burger from talent-challenged Jack Bernhard (12 pics & out over four years on ‘Poverty Row’). One numbingly utilitarian shot follows another in painfully dreary fashion, as Preston Foster’s police detective checks up on the gal he loved yet put away for murder & robbery. That’s ‘Belita,’ a novelty star who ice-skated her way into a few roles before quitting the biz. Things improve just a bit when noir icon Charles McGraw shows up for half a reel as a California police dick who stumbles upon the real guilty party, but way too little & way too late to help. For those who are interested, Belita’s skating routine comes about halfway in and, hey!, she’s a pretty good skater for the period. Yawn.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For a fine example of just how far a tiny budget could take you in ‘48, try Edgar G. Ulmer’s RUTHLESS, a sort of zero-budget CITIZEN KANE. Though best known for the striking minimalism of tour de force noir DETOUR/’45, give Ulmer a few extra nickels and he was capable of larger things.

LOGAN LUCKY (2017)

In this new Steven Soderbergh heist caper, a sort of Chicken-Fried/Good-Old-Boy OCEAN’S reboot, the film might as well be an afterthought. Slickly made, and plotted to a hard-to-track fare-thee-well, it follows a gaggle of West Virginia ‘white trash’* on a racetrack cash deposit ripoff executed while the biggest race of the year runs. But there’s a patronizing edge to a production that was as much distribution experiment as entertainment, with Soderbergh trying to control cost & cash flow by cutting out studio middlemen for his own indie release. Plotwise, this failed newfangled finance scheme sounds more interesting than any of the twice-chewed cud playing on screen. Yet, they each turned in a twist ending you didn’t see with the film quietly tanking and the film story setting up a sequel unlikely to see the light of day. Instead, an all-girl OCEAN’S reboot (down from 11, 12 & 13 to 8); and, in a twist you did see coming, distributed by the Good-Old Brothers Warner.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The preternaturally talented/prolific Mr. Soderbergh takes more than his fair share of stumbles. More credit to him.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *What a load of mix-and-match Southern accents from this motley crew! And, dear oh dear, Hilary Swank returning to the big screen after three years for this comedown nothing role? Best guess she was promised bigger things in that never happening sequel.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Bill Forsyth’s BREAKING IN/’89 takes better advantage of a similar idea.

THE VIRGINIAN (1914)

After co-directing THE SQUAW MAN/’14 (with Oscar Apfel), Cecil B. DeMille took his first solo directing credit (‘Picturized by’) on this follow-up Western also starring Dustin Farnum. A quick learning curve is noticeable; better pacing, quicker scenes, more edits & shot variety, parallel story & character development ( Cowboys out West/Piano teacher in The East), and real grandeur in capturing & dramatically using the scenic beauty of the land. Check out the camera placement when the train carrying the little lady comes to town. As perfect a composition as you could find. Credit to Alvin Wyckoff, DeMille’s new cinematographer who’d work with him thru the early ‘20s, the only period where C. B.’s filmmaking didn’t look behind-the-times. Owen Wister’s oft-filmed story (the one where the hero tells the bad guy ‘When you say that, smile’) has a cow-punching lead with a tragicomic best pal who hangs for cattle rustling, before it goes on to find love with an Eastern lady come West to be schoolmarm. Just about everything you could want from the form even if DeMille’s 1914 presentation has its limits. (The available Passport-DVD edition is no more than watchable.) And in addition to the film’s obvious historical interest, it’s generally well-cast with the unfortunate exception of leading man Dustin Farnum, a stagy actor who played to the gallery, and physically what was once called ‘a fine figure of a man,’ meaning big, none too pretty & running to fat.

DOUBLE-BILL: Victor Fleming’s Early Talkie 1929 version, with Gary Cooper, Walter Huston & Richard Arlen is memorable, if on the stately side. The hanging sequence unforgettable. And, of course, there’s Buster Keaton’s great moment in GO WEST/’25 with Buster on the receiving end of the famous order to ‘Smile when you say that!’ Quite the conundrum!