THREE BRAVE MEN (1956)

Sobersided and purposefully styleless, so we’ll know it’s a serious movie, this late entry in Hollywood’s anti-communist film cycle turns the corner away from hysteria and toward fairness. At least, that’s the idea in writer/director Philip Dunne’s enervated telling of this ripped-from-the-headlines Pulitzer Prize-winning tale. Ernest Borgnine, family man/civilian clerk working for the U.S. Navy, abruptly loses clearance & gets suspended due to some minor Pre-War Communist associations (magazine subscriptions; two bucks to a Spanish War Children’s Relief Fund; the usual ‘premature’ Anti-Fascist smears). More seriously, he’s also being anonymously denounced as a local ‘radical,’ possibly over some community housing issues. Lawyering up with Ray Milland, taking on the case in spite of a substantial financial loss, the film works hard to give impartial hearing not only to Borgnine, but also to the government/military panel. But in doing so, Dunne soft-pedals the two most interesting elements of the case, barely touching on the possibility that Borgnine is being targeted as a Jew (something we discover only when Andrew Duggan’s sympathetic Presbyterian Pastor makes a house call, noting that Borgnine’s rabbi is ill; and later, some coded Anti-Semitism when the main informer reveals himself as a right-wing white supremacist). Even more interesting, and possibly much worse, is the likelihood that government investigators have knowingly lied in their field reports, misrepresenting what people said about Borgnine. If there’s any case to be made here, it’s more a case for Borgnine suing the government! Instead, we get Secretary of the Navy Dean Jaggar, looking a bit like President Eisenhower, being congratulated for not condoning injustice.*  A pretty low bar. The real story would be whether anyone ever investigated the investigators.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Three years later, the Hollywood BlackList would be broken when Dalton Trumbo received credit on SPARTACUS and EXODUS, both released in 1960.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *As per TAKE TWO (Philip Dunne’s auto-bio), tough-minded criticism of the Navy was deleted from the script and their participation flipped to have them be part of the solution.

TOM JONES (1963)

If not a great film, something director Tony Richardson acknowledged when he trimmed a reel of footage from his ‘Director’s Cut,’ surely one of the great civilized entertainments of the day; and a rare Best Pic Oscar for a comedy. The John Osbourne script, a series of picaresque set pieces from the Henry Fielding novel, and heavily tweaked by Richardson, got a real cinematic workout with all sorts of silent slapstick film techniques, not always organically used, drawing us in as well as distancing us from all the bawdy & cheeky action. So too John Addison’s famous faux baroque score and Walter Lassally’s adventurous cinematography, innovative even when it misses the mark. As the horned-up scamp-of-a-foundling too pretty to ward off ladies of every class, it’s hard to believe Albert Finney was an unhappy camper during production. Perhaps that kept him from overplaying. He leaves that to everyone else in a memorable cast that includes Hugh Griffith, Diane Cilento, Edith Evans & Joyce Redman. And that’s only the ones who got Oscar noms. The film instantly made other period pieces look hopelessly square. Still does, especially on later copycat literary adaptations that tried too hard to be hip.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Finney ‘ankled’ on David Lean’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA/’62, missing a rare chance to star in consecutive Best Pic winners.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The difference is slight, but if you get the Criterion Edition, go for the Director’s Cut.

LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER (1963)

After converting the noisy-but-loving Jewish family of his B’way play A HOLE IN THE HEAD into the noisy-but-loving Italian family of Frank Capra’s 1959 film, Arnold Shulman doubled down with two noisy-but-loving Italian families in this ‘daringly’ adult comedy romance. (He’d return to noisy-but-loving Jewish families adapting Philip Roth’s GOODBYE, COLUMBUS/’69.) This one, from directing/ producing partners Robert Mulligan/Alan J. Pakula, just off TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD/’62, has young Macy’s Department Store clerk Natalie Wood tracking down itinerant jazz musician Steve McQueen when she finds herself, after a half-remembered fling, pregnant. Hence our ‘daring’ element: raising the cash & finding a ‘doctor’ for an illegal abortion . . . and falling in love thru the ordeal. This section of the film really is handled in a new, grown-up manner; with the center of the story played in street-wise/near documentary style, still coming off as freshly felt & new.* And fun to watch established, but still young stars handling untested waters and different expectations. McQueen easily catching everything thrown at him; Wood, very fine when she doesn’t have to hit emotional extremes beyond her natural range. In doubt, she pulls out her default one-size-fits-all staccato delivery. But she’s at her best here, and so lovely, you might not care . . . or notice. Too bad the rest of the film is book-ended by far more traditional situation comedy family tiffs & tussles. Fine as far as they go, but the heart of the film, which feels as if Mulligan & Pakula actually tossed the script after watching some of the new British working-class New Wave cinema, works on a different level.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As McQueen’s fallback gal, Edie Adams not only gets everything done with minimal screen time, but shows where Christina Hendricks picked up her MAD MEN shtick & style.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Specifically, Mulligan & Pakula must have had the revolutionary filming techniques of Tony Richardson’s A TASTE OF HONEY/’61 in mind. Yet PROPER probably holds up better.

TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932)

The surprise of this famous antique, the real Tarzan foundation pic in spite of a film history going back to the ‘teens, is what a rattling good adventure it still is. Often beautiful, with leftover African footage from TRADER HORN/’31 set alongside painterly trick matte shot landscapes, it’s all kept in constant motion in W. S. Van Dyke’s pacey direction. Maureen O’Sullivan, comely daughter of African explorer C. Aubrey Smith, joins him and partner Neil Hamilton on a hunt into forbidden territory to find the legendary Elephant Graveyard with its fortune in ivory. But Hamilton’s crisp elocution isn’t enough to keep them safe from jungle danger, especially those river alligators & hippos. Yikes! No, only the yodeling call of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan can help. And he’ll claim O’Sullivan’s Jane in return. (The story is at times remarkably like next year’s KING KONG.*) Add on a bit of back & forth between civilized gents; wild beasts (real except for a few men in Great Ape suits); a wonderful rescue of a young elephant by Tarzan & his elephant work force; plus Cheetah, the best actor in the pic (chimp or human); before a truly terrifying climax involving a savage tribe of dwarfs. (Not pygmies, we are told, apparently blacked-up midgets though not in stylized BlackFace makeup. So, less or more objectionable? ) Absurd, exciting, sexy, unmissable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: With a lighter touch, fantastic tone & fewer scares, the sequel TARZAN AND HIS MATE/’34 is to the original as FRANKENSTEIN/’31 is to BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN/’35.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Before KING KONG, Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack made CHANG/’27, a fictional African adventure made with documentary techniques and an obvious influence here, especially for its climactic elephant stampede.

LE CHAT DU RABBIN / THE RABBI’S CAT (2011)

Award-winning animation from France (released theatrically in 3D), from a comic book series by Joann Sfar who co-directs with Antonine Delesvaux. Visually, the graphic hand-drawn æsthetic is an enchantment of North African light, architectural design & decor, but as story, something of a picaresque mess. It’s 1930s Algiers, a time when you could find Muslim, Jew, Christian & Russian Orthodox in the same town, if hardly in perfect harmony. At least our rabbi can always talk over Talmudic fine points with his cat, who suddenly starts to speak after assaulting a pet parrot. (The cat’s attempted bar mitzvah the film’s comic highlight.) Then, with daughter & friends from afar, cat & rabbi joining a series of adventures in & out of town, eventually driving into the African interior, with a Russian Jew who fled pogroms at home by stowing away inside a trunk of religious books. He’s convinced that a ‘Black Jerusalem’ can be found in Africa along with a lost tribe of Black Jews. Sfar’s general tone is less kid-friendly than sophisticated European, with lots of racial & religious stereotypes used without irony or apology for easy characterization. Some now looking more than a little objectionable. But it’s the hit and miss quality of the storytelling that keeps this from reaching its potential. Still, visually, a treat until an oddly abrupt ending.

DOUBLE-BILL: For a more satisfying French animated cat: A CAT IN PARIS/’10 (see below).

A GIRL, A GUY AND A GOB (1941)

You can really feel the hand of producer (and silent comedy great) Harold Lloyd behind some of the better planned gags in this pleasantly silly comedy, a triangular love farce with a young Lucille Ball wedged between larky sailor George Murphy & rich scion Edmond O’Brien. A programmer from R.K.O., it’s a low-rent YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU/’38 with Lucy in the Jean Arthur spot (sane girl in a slightly crazed family) and O’Brien making like James Stewart (learning to love their loose free-spirited ways).* You’ll note this leaves Murphy a bit out of things; he’s really more best pal than lover, made for the sailor’s life. But the film does a reasonable job finessing the imbalance giving him lots of screen time and bouncy (if overbearing) energy. Pity the script doesn’t do nearly as good a job running the storyline or hiding the dud episodes. No matter, solid journeyman director Richard Wallace knows how to get out quickly when something isn’t working and where to let Lucy show smarts or detonate emotion. Check out her close-up when she figures out who she's really meant for. The pic’s piffle, but likable piffle.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Frank Capra’s YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU remains an unlikely Best Pic Oscar® winner, and a serious misreading of Kaufman/Hart’s far more politically inclined play. But still prime-Capra; expertly done.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Between on-the-job training from Harold Lloyd here, and friendship with Buster Keaton built up during a lot of downtime @ M-G-M later in the decade, Ball earned a veritable Masters² in comedy technique.

BIG CITY (1937)

From M-G-M, Hollywood’s most dependably Republican studio, a rare pro-Proletariat take on a big city taxi war that’s tearing the town apart as well as indie cabbie Spencer Tracy and his Eastern European wife Luise Rainer. It takes director Frank Borzage a good half hour to find his footing during a series of slo-mo meet-cute scenes for this already married couple, even with Tracy manfully trying to coax Rainer away from her typical moping and insufferable heavenward gaze. But the film comes to life when bad guy William Demerest sets off a bomb in his own company garage, pinning the blame on Rainer. Pregnant and suddenly on the lam to avoid deportation, the situation becomes cleverly loaded with left-leaning politics & class prejudice normally sidestepped or given the most anodyne treatment. Especially at the house that Louis B. Mayer built. (See Borzage & Tracy, with Joan Crawford, revert to form on their very next film, MANNEQUIN/’37.) Not that things stay tough for long, as an amusing eleventh-hour ride-to-the-rescue gets followed by a riotous all-star boxing donnybrook of a finale. (Real boxing stars; very funny stuff.) Still, just enough left in for something to chew on; presumably even more pointed in the original script from Hollywood progressive Dore Schary, later Mayer’s unhappy successor at the studio. Interesting stuff, if only Luise wouldn’t coo with gratitude while gazing upward, ever upward.

DOUBLE-BILL: Similar urban cabbie wars in TAXI/’32, a snappy post-Early Talkie with James Cagney & Loretta Young that emphasizes gangster elements along with a touch of Cagney’s unexpected Yiddish. OR: As mentioned above, MANNEQUIN.

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (1990)

Square and sturdy, like a 4-story building that could support twenty floors, this residuum of Tom Clancy’s techno-jargon’d Cold War thriller delivers the goods in stately meticulous fashion. No narrative elisions will do! Sean Connery burrs effectively as the renegade Russian Captain of a nuclear-powered ‘stealth’ sub barreling Stateside. Is he attacking or defecting? No matter: Ruskies will take action against him as traitor; Americans against an aggressor. Only Alec Baldwin’s Jack Ryan, thinking-man CIA action figure, thinks to offer safe harbor. Typically for one of these Clancy doorstops, it’s more blueprint verisimilitude than storyline; tough to get on screen. With characters no deeper than the material of their uniforms, everything depends on pacing, star power & production design; all specialties of producer Mace Neufeld & missing-in-action director John McTiernan.* And if the only real surprise in the pic is a submarine the size of a felled skyscraper cornering underwater like a Maserati, the film does have its pleasures as celluloid comfort food.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Whereas Baldwin blew off the inevitable sequel to play STREETCAR’s Stanley Kowalski on stage, confounding & infuriating Hollywood with what seemed hubristic Movie Franchise-icide (Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine & John Krasinski all smoothly stepped in), action-oriented hit-maker McTiernan found his career stifled after ROLLERBALL/’02 and BASIC/’03 tanked. Eleven credits & out at only 52. Maybe, like Baldwin, he should have refused genre type-casting.

THE TAKE (2016)

Generic terrorist thriller that morphs rather amusingly into a slightly screwy caper pic. And all the better for it; just not better enough. Idris Elba (in something of a James Bond try-out) and a crew of Brits playing Americans in Paris, dash thru their paces in the streets, alleys & rooftops of Paris trying to catch groovy pickpocket Richard Madden (in a confused perf) who’s unknowingly lifted a ‘bag-with-a-bomb’ from clueless terrorist ‘mule’ Charlotte Le Bon. Suddenly, French military & Paris police are also on his tail, but it’s maverick CIA agent Elba who finds him, believes his story, then grabs Le Bon so the trio can hunt down the real bombers (and dirty cops) hoping to create street anarchy to use as cover for . . . well, can’t give it all away! It’s a pretty good set up, largely wasted thru bad acting (other than Elba) and in James Watkins by-the-numbers writing/directing. It does develop a more amiable tone as it goes along, but tosses any goodwill away with a tag ending for a never-gonna-happen buddy/buddy sequel. Titled BASTILLE DAY in most territories, Stateside distributor Universal presumably felt no one would get the reference to French Independence Day, when the main action occurs. Hence the meaningless title THE TAKE which hardly helped matters commercially: Domestic gross $50,000. Yikes!

THE HANGING TREE (1959)

When Voltaire said, ‘better is the enemy of good,’ he could have had this Delmer Daves Western, a late vehicle for the aging Gary Cooper, in mind. (Voltaire a Western fan?) But it’s true: Daves not long off the ‘better’ 3:10 TO YUMA/’57; Coop’s ‘better,’ his previous film, Anthony Mann’s MAN OF THE WEST/’58; cinematographer Ted McCord just off his ‘better,’ Michael Curtiz’s largely unheralded THE PROUD REBEL/’58, with its unusual yellow-tinged palette. Still, pretty strong work most of the way, only seriously falling off at the climax. It’s Gold Rush Days in wide open, lawless Montana as bitter doctor-with-a-past Gary Cooper shows up in a Pop-Up mining town, quickly blackmailing Ben Piazza’s wounded young thief into being his bond servant. And with only fierce, drunken faith healer George C. Scott on hand to interrupt his doctoring and nighttime poker games by making trouble. (The debuting Scott is mesmerizing, lean as a whippet/scary as Satan.) But then Maria Schell shows up, injured & orphaned in a runaway stagecoach robbery, nursed back to health only to become an unwitting catalyst to a host of deadly sins: greed, lust, jealousy, vicious town gossip, drawing out everyone’s worst nature. Especially longtime prospector Karl Malden, partnering Schell & Piazza on a grubstake claim secretly financed by Cooper. And it's success, not failure which brings on inevitable catastrophe not only for the characters, but also for the film which collapses into forced melodramatic conflicts & personal confrontations Daves is unable to make much sense of. But worth a look, with Coop in exceptional form.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, 3:10 and WEST are classic Western achievements. Alas, PROUD REBEL only available in lousy Pan & Scan Public Domain editions.

BEAUTY FOR THE ASKING (1939)

Early starring vehicle for Lucille Ball is awkwardly directed by Glenn Tryon, but holds a lot of interest not only as career signpost for Lucy, but also for its unusual feminist business slant. An original story by Grace Norton & Adele Buffington, fleshed out by scripters Paul Jarrico & Doris Anderson, it mixes cosmetics & romance with Ball dumped by fiancé/business partner Patric Knowles just before she perfects the beauty cream they planned to market. Sinfully handsome, but weak-willed, the guy loves her, but can’t refuse the easy, clingy charms of millionairess Frieda Inescort. Undaunted, Ball goes out on her own, cornering top ad man Donald Woods, quickly smitten and joining her to find a silent start-up investor . . . Frieda Inescort! Well, it’s that kind of story, and not poorly run, without too many ginned up farcical elements. (At just over an hour, mix-ups are straightened out on the spot.) That leaves Ball to run the company, pine for Knowles, turn down Woods’ regular proposals, and even trying to rebuild the failing Knowles/Inescort marriage. (Knowles really shines at playing a shit; Inescort’s flutey diction is a bit much; Woods quietly charming.) All while R.K.O. tried to figure out how best to use this strange 'near' star with everything at her fingertips: beauty, audience rapport, physical gagging, singing, a natural for straight, comic or character drama . . . the works. Paramount, M-G-M & Columbia would face the same problem. In retrospect, the wide ranging roles make the Pre-I LOVE LUCY days exceptionally interesting whether the films were good, bad or indifferent. This one’s indifferent, though better on reflection.

DOUBLE-BILL: Best of Lucy’s R.K.O. period came in DANCE, GIRL, DANCE/’40 where her burlesque turn completely upstages nominal leads Maureen O’Hara & Louis Hayward, and saves the film for iconic feminist director Dorothy Arzner.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Years later, in I LOVE LUCY days, she & Desi Arnaz’s DESILU company would buy up the R.K.O. lot.

TEA WITH MUSSOLINI (1999)

Improbably, this lightly autobiographical WWII memoir has become (by default?) the only Franco Zeffirelli film that remains watchable.* A delicious story, if hardly a great film, Zeffirelli found superb collaborators in writer John Mortimer (whose work here is like a precursor to Julian Fellowes, particularly GOSFORD PARK/’01) and cinematographer David Watkin, cleaning up much of Zeffirelli’s colorful excesses. ‘Luca,’ the film’s Zeffirelli character, is an illegitimate kid in ‘30s Florence, a veritable orphan after his married father refuses to take him in, left in the care of British secretary Joan Plowright. But it ‘takes a village’ to raise him, a village of eccentric British ex-pats, all delusionally hanging fast in Florence as World War closes in, leaving them enemy aliens, even Maggie Smith’s stupidly stout-hearted widow of a past ambassador to Italy. By turns idiotic, willful, funny & loving, the crew, which includes Judi Dench & American contingent Lily Tomlin (hopelessly out of her acting league vs. the Brits) and Cher (uneven, but often fascinating as a oft-married, art-collecting rich Jewish-American with a gorgeous, if shady, Italian lover), endure all humiliations. Plot & peregrinations by turns surprising, touching & delightful, with growing theatrics & heroics as war takes its toll. Zeffirelli loses control of his material at times, the scenes with Mussolini don’t really play, and he has trouble organizing simple moves. But it all works out in the end thanks to superb character writing & playing by Mortimer and the Dames. Just hang tough thru the obvious bits.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Brave souls are welcome to revisit Zeffirelli’s once lauded Shakespeare reductions: SHREW/’67; R&J/’68; HAMLET/’90 for confirmation. And naturally, Zeffirelli fouled his own nest, following up this rare success with an irredeemable second personal memoir, CALLAS FOREVER/’02.

DESIGN FOR SCANDAL (1941)

Aiming for a smart, sophisticated, ‘40s B’way tone, Lionel Houser’s original comedy script for mid-list M-G-M stars Rosalind Russell & Walter Pidgeon gets about halfway there. Or does if you can deal with the surprisingly distasteful gameplan: Blowhard publishing tycoon Edward Arnold schemes to reduce his alimony on a golddigging wife by having top trouble-making reporter Pidgeon romance Judge Russell so a phony fiancée can blackmail her on a charge of alienation of affections. (Ugh.) But then he falls for her. Yet it's so nicely underplayed (well, by all except Arnold who blusters away), with ultra-pro helmer Norman Taurog refusing to oversell the modest laughs. Same goes for Franz Waxman’s score which avoids the usual yuck/yuck/wah/wah Mickey Mouse excesses of the day that turned studio orchestras into quasi-laugh tracks. Plus a really funny, neatly worked out courtroom finale with all parties on hand and a particularly sharp outing from a sly Guy Kibbee as a no-nonsense judge. He’s worth the whole show. Too bad the pot doesn’t come to the bubble sooner.

DOUBLE-BILL: Made between two of Roz Russell’s best known comedies: HIS GIRL FRIDAY/’40 and MY SISTER EILEEN/’42, the latter much improved for her on B’way as the Bernstein, Comden & Green musical WONDERFUL TOWN. And Pidgeon?, he's right between two Oscar’d Best Pics: HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY/’41 and MRS. MINIVER/’42.

HELL ON FRISCO BAY (1955)

Alan Ladd’s company produced this little noirish revenge pic with him as an ex-cop just out of prison after being framed for manslaughter. Met by cop pal William Demerest and loyal ex-wife Joanne Dru, all he wants is some space to go after dockyards boss Edward G. Robinson who’s sure to know the score. It’s a good, twisty tale, with excellent support from henchmen like Paul Stewart and his unexpectedly classy girlfriend Fay Wray. They even throw in a kid to interact with Ladd for a bit of SHANE action. But, in a reverse from film noir norm, the material is better than the execution. To his credit, Ladd ignored the era’s ‘Grey List’ of proscribed talent with Leftist leanings, giving Edward G. Robinson his first A-pic in years and hiring Frank Tuttle who directed Ladd’s breakthru THIS GUN FOR HIRE/’42. But where Eddie G comes thru in spades, sadistic & gleefully menacing, Tuttle seems all used up except for some well-staged fights, defeated by CinemaScope’s wide open frame, rarely putting in foreground objects while holding to proscenium centered camera set-ups with an unchanging walking pace.* Still watchable, with the story building as it goes along and the great cinematographer John Seitz turning flat, boldly color-schemed sets into near abstractions. A RED-tiled Men’s Room for a fight; Robinson’s sickly, oppressive GREEN & YELLOW kitchen. A very distinctive look.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, Ladd & Tuttle at their best in THIS GUN FOR HIRE.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Robinson was fully rehabilitated next year, thanks to C. B. DeMille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, but Tuttle only managed two more credits before dying in ‘63.

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976)

With his copper-colored hair, British teeth and angular look, David Bowie makes an arresting physical presence in his first straight acting gig. But it’s not enough to carry this flat, cliché-ridden story past a small cult audience of true-believers. And it’s not that the ideas, effects & style have dated over the years, the film was just as limp (and limply received) upon release. Oddly, cinematographer turned peculiar director Nicolas Roeg was coming off his best work (DON’T LOOK NOW/’73), and with the same lighting cameraman (Anthony Richmond), though neither shows much of their earlier inspiration. Here, story and presentation are not so much arty as pretentious or sleepy with Bowie’s intergalactic alien traveler building money-churning enterprises (helped by vision-challenged businessman Buck Henry) to bring his little alien family to Earth from a drought plagued planet. But the slippery slope of capitalism, alcohol, sloth, ennui & sex pull him down. BTW, lots of sex & nudity for a spacey Sci-Fi mood piece, with Rip Torn’s babe-collecting research scientist giving up a quick peak and generous footage of a bouncing Bowie appendage. (Alas, a ‘willy’-double.) Not that his relationship with Candy Clark makes much sense with or without sex or that it avoids shabby ‘70s misogyny. (That side of the film really is dated.) Originally released with a couple reels lopped off, the film probably played better that way: More mystification/Less explanation. The fuller cut just clarifies a poverty of ideas.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Bowie, who got thru early films with his distinctive look, found real acting chops in showy support on ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS/’86 even if the film was fatally hobbled by a miscast, unengaging lead.

BIG CITY BLUES (1932)

Modest programmer from Warners sends young country mouse Eric Linden to big bad NYC with a modest inheritance for a cautionary tale. A gullible lad, Linden will lose it all to scheming older cousin Walter Catlett and his hard-drinking party pals including uncredited Humphrey Bogart still playing upper-crust wastrels in his failed first try at Hollywood. He’d soon head back to B’way and success with THE PETRIFIED FOREST. But the boy also loses his heart to Joan Blondell’s chorine which makes everything worthwhile; or would if not for that showgirl dying in his hotel suite during a drunken brawl while 'the gang's all here' and the lights are out. Yikes!, one night in New York and he’s already on the lam! Tinny stuff, and a bit obvious even for 1932, but Mervyn LeRoy’s rat-a-tat-tat megging keeps things up tempo while playwright Ward Morehouse manages a pair of eyebrow-raising adult sequences for Linden as he hunts for Blondell and gets picked up at a SpeakEasy by Jobyna Howland’s rich, lonely, dowager, looking for company and maybe a bit more. Then taking him on to a fancy nightclub where Clarence Muse shouts the Blues and gaming tables are one flight up. Too bad the rest of the little film isn’t nearly as arresting.

DOUBLE-BILL: Now largely forgotten, Linden can be seen at his best in what is probably his last good role, starring in Clarence Brown’s superb distillation of Eugene O’Neill’s AH, WILDERNESS/’35.

BIG JIM McLAIN (1952)

John Wayne had no one to blame but himself (and fellow producer Robert Fellows) for this lame crime story that sends him off to Hawaii, along with James Arness, as House Un-American Activities Committee investigators hunting down a Communist Ring. Half-hearted noir stuff with Wayne in a Robert Mitchum role. The Commie plot looks faintly ridiculous now (they never actually do anything), not that there weren’t ‘Party Line’ loyalists, but the presentation and police procedural formulas are so poorly handled, not even location shooting on the islands keep this from coming across as two-fisted hokum. Well, four-fisted what with Arness. He’s particularly ripe, flying off the handle at the mere mention of Commies. (Though fun to see someone tower over Wayne by a couple of inches & thirty pounds.) Nancy Olson shows up for some rapport-less romance with the Duke; and poor Hans Conreid trying in vain for what one imagines is supposed to be comic relief as a nutty nuclear professor. Journeyman director Edward Ludwig, with some interesting looking credits in the ‘30s, proves a very dull boy and can’t stage action. Even cinematographer Archie Stout, a favorite of Wayne and John Ford, seems uninvolved . . . on location in Hawaii!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For Wayne in Anti-Commie mode, William Wellman’s BLOOD ALLEY/’55 hits the target, with Lauren Bacall matching up nicely with Wayne against the exotic Chinese backdrop.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note our German poster which swaps out HUAC/Commie Hunt for drugs. The same substitution used for Samuel Fuller’s PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET/’53 in France: Commies & microfilm out/mob guys and drug smuggling in. It made the film a lot easier for the proto-New Wave/Cahiers du Cinéma gang in France to love.

HELL'S HIGHWAY (1932)

R.K.O. must have rushed this out to beat Warners’ I AM A FUGITIVE ON A CHAIN GANG/’32 in the marketplace with their own Chain Gang Exposé. Muckraking and reform-minded on prison violence & the cruel atrocities used to keep discipline & control in these incarceration Hellholes, it’s certainly a shocker. Too bad they forgot to include a plot. Odd since Rowland Brown was less director (3 credits) than writer (24 credits). Even with great support from cinematographer Edward Cronjager, dark and contrasty, he’s unable to arrange shots for rhythm or dramatic suspense, bumping along from one horrific incident to the next as tough-guy prisoner Richard Dix stops spitting in the face of authority when kid brother Tom Brown shows up in the pen (literally) and immediately gets into trouble. Fortunately, new inspector Stanley Fields is around to take notes on what’s going on and help the Governor confront the corrupt authorities for a little bit of justice in a sop to Southern Censorship Boards. Still, worth a look, with Dix showing a big improvement in Talkie technique from his stiff perf in last year’s award-winning CIMARRON/’31 though unable to convince us that Tom Brown, twenty years his junior, could possibly be his brother.

DOUBLE-BILL: Fact-inspired I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG holds up well both in and out of prison; while Universal got into the act of condemning Southern penal systems a year later with Pat O’Brien in LAUGHTER IN HELL/’33. Often OTT, but with some remarkable Southern location stuff under low-budget workhorse director Edward L. Cahn. Disinterred from studio vaults just a couple of year ago, it may yet show up on DVD.

THE STORY OF WILL ROGERS (1952)

Smooth and effective, this neatly handled bio-pic of actor/columnist/rope-twirler/humorist Will Rogers sets limited goals and achieves them with straight-forward storytelling. The one big cheat comes in using Will Rogers’ dad, who died in 1911 before his career took off, as a sort of lifelong disapproving foe. Not that it matters much in this pleasant film, with a fine turn from Will Jr as his dad.* He keeps from pushing too hard or overselling the laughs in the material, Rogers’ didn’t become the most beloved performer of his time thru rope tricks, riding skills or anodyne Populism, but with charm & contagious decency. It radiated out of the man, and his son had more than enough to play him. Ambling along without the usual trials & tribulations once Rogers spontaneously stumbles upon a topical monologist act, lightly seasoned with his Cherokee cowboy mein & roping skills. Few obstacles to overcome, instead, ride along and enjoy the handsomely designed & shot TechniColor view with director Michael Curtiz neither phoning it in nor working too hard for big effect. As the understanding wife, Jane Wyman is fine, as is the rest of the supporting cast with Slim Pickens extra fun as a cowboy pal (looking hilariously like British indie actor Timothy Spall). And, when we get to Rogers’ debut with The Ziegfeld Follies of 1917 (mispronounced Ziegfield by Rogers!), out pops the real Eddie Cantor in BlackFace. Yikes! (Some line-up that year with W. C. Fields, Fanny Brice & Bert Williams also on the bill!*)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *How many sons played their famous dad in the movies? Hank Williams Jr did it. Eddie Foy Jr played his famous vaudevillian dad a few times, sibilant lisp and all, but the feature film THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS/’55 had Bob Hope (sans slobber).

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Cantor wouldn’t have been the only BlackFace performer in the 1917 FOLLIES. Bert Williams, the most famous/best paid/most recorded Black performer of the day also worked in BlackFace.

DOUBLE-BILL: Rogers had a top performing film every year from the start of The Talkies till his death in 1935. They sometimes dawdle (or embarrass modern audiences as he spars with shufflin’ black comic Stepin Fetchit), but his three with John Ford are classics (DOCTOR BULL/’33; JUDGE PRIEST/’34; STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND/’35) while probably the best place to start would be with Henry King’s endearing STATE FAIR/’33, far better than its two musical remakes if much harder to get a hold of.

JACKIE BROWN (1997)

Though never attracting the fanboy cult followings of other Quentin Tarantino projects, this twisty, hard-boiled crime-caper may be his best; certainly it’s the most pleasurable. Taken from Elmore Leonard’s deviously plotted novel, relatively modest in scale with characters showing a bit of mileage, it fits Tarantino’s deliberate style to a T while holding down his penchant for narrative longueurs; believably quirky yet welcoming, with major violence always positioned just outside the camera frame. The plot is really quite simple: Pam Grier’s Jackie Brown, mature stewardess at a third-rate airline, caught smuggling cash across the Mexican border for illegal gun dealer Samuel L. Jackson, agrees to help Fed Agents Michael Keaton & Michael Bowen take him down. With a little help from Robert Forester’s sympathetic Bail Bondsman, she plans on bringing in his entire fortune, giving enough to the Feds to satisfy their needs to gain a major arrest while secretly keeping most of the cash for herself. Naturally, things don’t go according to plan, especially with the crew of fuck-ups Jackson finds to do his legwork: Bridget Fonda, Chris Tucker, a wry Robert De Niro (always a treat in supporting roles). And all those distinctive acting chops serving their characters rather than shining up their resumés or, worse, playing up to their eccentric director. (An increasing problem in Tarantino pics.) The man should do more adaptations.

DOUBLE-BILL: Two of the best Leonard adaptations came just before (GET SHORTY/’95) and just after (OUT OF SIGHT/’98).

RED-HEADED WOMAN (1932)

Largely thanks to Anita Loos, a writer with a film heritage running back to INTOLERANCE/’16 and the Pop cultural imprimatur of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, even stuffy M-G-M was able to locate Jean Harlow’s sexy sweet spot in only her second assignment at the studio. Hilarious and appalling (or is it hilariously appalling), Harlow’s a company secretary with an eye (and her hands) on the boss, square-jawed Chester Morris, who hasn’t a chance. Refusing to take NO for an answer, she doesn’t suggest an affair, but dives right in. (Neatly realized by director Jack Conway in a tight phone booth clinch.) Then parlays one success as stepping stone to bigger things. Fortitude and outrage, a bracing combination for immoral gain, and few had Harlow’s gift at getting away with so much bad behavior while retaining rooting interest. Though she gets awfully close to the line when she puts on that baby voice to heighten the corrupted beauty. Many would rather be shot at. (Harlow’s prepared for that, too!) And as punishment for her sins? You’re kidding, right? More like a fresh Sugar Daddy and that devastatingly seductive chauffeur sitting up front, Charles Boyer making a quick Hollywood stop for a trio of cameo appearances a few years before coming to stay.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The same year, Loos gifted Marion Davies with the best role of her career in the well-observed backstager BLONDIE OF THE FOLLIES.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/blondie-of-follies-1932.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Except in its lightest shade, red hair photographed very dark, more black than brown on B&W film stock. Natural red heads had to lighten up for the movies. Hence this Austrian poster for RED-HEADED WOMAN.

LACOMBE, LUCIEN (1974)

Political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s over-quoted/over-simplified description of the ease of Nazi complicity as ‘the banality of evil’ finds cinematic form in this remarkable Louis Malle film. Lucien Lacombe, late teens, working as a hospital custodian in 1944 Occupied France, drifts almost accidentally into joining the German Police after a former teacher, now running the local Underground Resistance, turns him down. A farmer’s boy, with the brute force & cruel cunning of a country life, Lucien shows little education or social skills, an empty vessel waiting to be filled. What Nazi officers & French collaborators see is a useful assignment-ready thug. (And in Pierre Blaise, the non-professional Malle discovered for the role, we see an infinitely readable face . . . with nothing to read on it. Thoughts and feelings inferred.) But change is coming on two fronts for Lucien. First, from a cosmopolitan, morally degenerate collaborator who becomes mentor, introducing him to ‘the better things,’ including a Jewish tailor from Paris he hides (for a price), along with the man’s delicately beautiful daughter. Second, from the encroaching Allied Forces making steady headway into Occupied territory. Malle lets this play out in near documentary form, observation rather then explanation. It means an occasional loss in the narrative line, narrowing the focus on Lacombe who can show sparks of decency at unlikely moments, without ever abandoning the threat of casual violence. Only at the very end, in flight and in his element out in the country, does he let his guard down to reveal the face war took from him.

DOUBLE-BILL: Malle’s better known, and much loved other WWII story, AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS/’87, a film taken from personal memory about Jewish students hiding at the school he attended, has a warmth and sentiment not found in LACOMBE’s tough, conflicted response. Equally superb in its less controversial way; both films essential viewing.

CLASH BY NIGHT (1948)

Largely rewritten from a fast-flop Clifford Odets play (Odets fanciers will recognize a few choice epigrammatic howlers, ‘You can’t make me any smaller, I’m pre-shrunk’), this kitchen-sink infidelity drama is unexpected territory for director Fritz Lang , but seems to have helped him over a slump. Scripter Alfred Hayes moves the action to a California fish factory town, giving Lang & crack cinematographer Nicholas Musurca a chance to open with a mini-documentary, sketching in sea, seals & sea gulls, along with boat men, factory girls (Hey!, Marilyn Monroe sorting sardines!) and the docks by the train tracks as Barbara Stanwyck returns home sans fame or fortune. Constructed like a silent, it makes a superb (and original) opening half-reel. Too bad it’s the best thing in here. The rest is slightly overplayed, overdrawn misery as a toughened up Stanwyck finds herself equally repelled & drawn to Robert Ryan, a man as unfeeling & selfish as she is (they both call it honesty), even as she wills herself to marry (and cuckold) his best pal, solid, comfortable Paul Douglas. (Douglas is just tremendous in this tricky part. Compare with Ernest Borgnine in MARTY/’55.) And Monroe? She’s married to Stanwyck kid brother Keith Andes (in a role Ryan played on stage*), and a lovely, unneurotic delight. (Maybe a tough, meticulous, largely unsympathetic director like Lang kept her away from destructive/artsy ‘enablers.’) Ultimately, the Odets play can only get you so far, second drawer stuff. Though Lang amusingly stages half his big scenes right in front of a kitchen sink! Such a literalist.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *On stage, Tallulah Bankhead, Lee J. Cobb & Joseph Schildkraut had the Stanwyck, Douglas, Ryan roles. It still only ran a month.

TRANSATLANTIC MERRY-GO-ROUND (1934)

Indie-producer Edward Small, who had a knack for turning out smart swashbucklers on a budget (like THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO/’34), here tried his hand at the sort of topical comic ensemble parody Paramount had luck with, often with W. C. Fields fronting a gang of variety players. And, to give it a backhanded compliment, it’s not too bad. At least it starts with a bang, as mob man Sidney Blackmer is gunned down in his cruise ship suite before we jump back 48 hours to show all the possible perps coming on board: a jealous husband, card sharps, mistresses, a blackmail victim, phony cruise staff, an escaped killer with a grudge . . . why you’d think half the passengers & crew had it in for the guy! Luckily, there’s also a police dick on holiday. (Make that ‘busman’s holiday.’) Only Jack Benny, M.C. for the ship’s entertainment & radio broadcast transmission hasn’t got a motive, just charm, smarm & great comic timing. (Benny always poo-poo’d his film career, but worked steadily & well on screen from the mid-‘30s to the mid-‘40s.) Gene Raymond & Nancy Carroll are the main romantic couple and she’s a delight. It's like GRAND HOTEL at Sea, so no surprise that the radio show does a Grand Hotel parody, along with a handful of neat Richard Whiting songs, one boasting a wild Busby Berkeley rip-off ‘Numbo’ tossing girls about like sacks of potatoes! Enter with low expectations; leave with a grin.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Sidekick Patsy Kelly sadly gets lost in the mix, but whenever she does show up, she’s a hoot.

DOUBLE-BILL: Over at Paramount, MILLION DOLLAR LEGS/’32 stands as something of a template for the form.

SILVER RIVER (1948)

Unfairly court-martialed out of The Union Army after an act of bravery and initiative at Gettysburg, Errol Flynn wises up, turning hardhearted, bitter & avaricious. Seizing an opportunity, he jumps into the gambling biz and heads West to find fortune, expanding into banks, silver mines & territory. Soon, he’s rolling over everything in his path, including Bruce Bennett, mild mannered mine-owning husband of Ann Sheridan, one of the few things Flynn wants but hasn’t conquered. In this last of seven collaborations for Flynn & director Raoul Walsh, the tone has darkened, intriguingly so. But the ambitious story (David & Bathsheba out West as Flynn’s bibulous lawyer Thomas Mitchell tells us) doesn’t play into anyone’s filmmaking strengths. Flynn looking unhappy/uncomfortable; Sheridan browbeaten & dour in her last Warners pic; Walsh losing interest after a fine Civil War action prologue. And a last act turnaround/redemption that feels rushed, unmotivated and out of character. Disappointing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Try UNCERTAIN GLORY/’44 or GENTLEMAN JIM/’42 (really, any of their other films together) to see Flynn & Walsh working hand-in-hand. OR: Flynn, unexpectedly fine under William Keighley in a better handled downbeat Western with a similar Civil War period setting, ROCKY MOUNTAIN/’50.