HERR ARNES PENGAR / SIR ARNE'S TREASURE (1919)

Now a tangential figure from cinema’s distant past, fitfully remembered as the man who groomed Greta Garbo for stardom before losing both her and his career to Hollywood, Mauritz Stiller was (along with Victor Sjöström) the standard-bearer of early Swedish cinema. While most of his work is now lost, this superb, technically advanced historical drama helps make up for much that is missing. Taken from a novel by Nobel Laureate Selma Lagerlöf, the dark 16th century tale follows three Scottish mercenaries on the lam after a prison escape. The opening scenes have some of the most startling effects in the film, especially a tracking shot following a guard as he walks around a stone passage encircling the prisoners’ jail cell. An interior dolly set up, it looks for all the world like the first ever SteadiCam shot, taken about six decades before such things existed. In general, cinematographer Julius Jaenzon makes striking use of minimal camera movement and maximal location shooting on the frozen lakes & land of a bitter winter. One where an escaped prisoner will find the love of a young woman not enough to save him from a deserved fate as murderer and, of course, as treasure thief. (See title!) There’s a mystical thread to some of the action (did George R.R. Martin know the film or the novel?) that adds unusual undercurrents to the largely naturalistic tone & events. And while the film doesn’t consistently maintain narrative line, the big set pieces, moving from action to processional, are compelling and impressive.

DOUBLE-BILL: Of Stiller’s surviving films, it’s possible to see EROTIKON/’20 (a sex comedy that sounds naughty, but isn’t); THE SAGA OF GÖSTA BERLING/’24 (a fallen minister tale/with Garbo; Lars Hanson; and amazing nighttime cinematography, especially on the ice, from Julius Jaenzon); and the fine Hollywood feature he finally made, HOTEL IMPERIAL/’27 with a tamed Pola Negri in a war story about a hotel situated on a malleable front line. Remade in 1939 (not seen here); and then again in 1943 by Billy Wilder as the excellent FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO with Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff & Erich von Stroheim.

EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014)

WAR OF THE WORLDS meets GROUNDHOG DAY.* And that’s pretty much it for this Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt/dir. Doug Liman affair. Generally well-received as a Sci-Fi actioner in the modern style of slice-and-dice edit/story/logic, fanboys thought it would have caught on big-time if they’d swapped out that generic title for the Ad Copy: LIVE, DIE, REPEAT. Catchy, no? Non-enthusiasts can have dumb fun noticing how everyone in here seems to be playing (make that ‘seems to be played by’) someone else: Cruise: Dennis Quaid; Emily Blunt: Uma Thurman; Brendan Gleeson: Ernest Borgnine; Franz Drameh . . . Franz Drameh, who he? Oh, the one who's playing Cuba Gooding.

DOUBLE-BILL: *That’s WAR OF THE WORLDS 1953, not the Cruise/Spielberg 2005 model.

CAMILLE (1936)

Though rightly celebrated for Greta Garbo’s beauty, command & delicate emotional navigation as The Lady of the Camellias in the old theatrical warhorse about a Parisian courtesan, CAMILLE also serves as a rite-of-passage for George Cukor into front-rank Hollywood directors. The best of his earlier work (WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD; BILL OF DIVORCEMENT /’32; LITTLE WOMEN/’33; DINNER AT EIGHT/’34, DAVID COPPERFIELD/’35) had David O. Selznick fingerprints on them as producer or studio exec, but here a distinctive period voice emerges. (Then an equally distinctive contemporary voice in HOLIDAY/’38, his next film.) According to Cukor, the script was largely Zoe Akins’ doing, and what a swift-moving unsentimental thing she makes of it. Opened up from the stage version without gaining bloat or losing character texture. There’s a fabulous nearly sadistic scene at the piano for Garbo and rich, older lover William Daniels. Terrifying. While as her young lover, Robert Taylor’s high gloss had yet to harden. And plenty of tasty support in all other directions; Laura Hope Crews triumphantly vulgar, and Lionel Barrymore almost trimming his sails as Taylor’s father. (This must be the only version of the story that skips over a ruined reputation wrecking a sister’s upcoming marriage to force renunciation.) Even the end goes briskly. The only thing that does let the side down a bit is Herbert Stothart’s typically subpar music score. Bits of Chopin & nips of Verdi’s TRAVIATA are fine, but then his own love theme comes up, starting as a near quote of Eddie Cantor’s big hit ‘Makin’ Whoopee’ . . . . in half-time. Sheesh.

DOUBLE-BILL: On the same DVD, a 1921 silent version of CAMILLE with the decidedly unnaturalistic stylings of Alla Nazimova, a great actress of a very different stripe. Staying close to the play, this modernized version grows on you after an OTT First Act; and features a winning perf from Rudolph Valentino, in his breakout year, in the Robert Taylor young lover role.

LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)

Moving well beyond their (sometimes wonderful) sketch comedy, Monty Python corralled their stream-of-comic-consciousness style into this hilarious (and thoughtful!) parallel Christ parable. Graham Chapman gets both laughs and earnest empathy as Brian (’E’s not the Messiah. ‘E’s a very naughty boy!’), born in that manger down the block from you-know-who. Directed by Pythoner Terry Jones with more care than you expect on story and period detail; even at its silliest, it’s somehow more believable than your average Biblical Sword & Sandal outing. Plenty of belly laughs, too, without feeling gagged up, building to constant, helpless hilarity once ‘R’-challenged Pontius Pilate (Michael Palin) makes a lisping entrance, then right on until we reach endgame with a sing-a-long crucifixion finale. Plus, good dumb fun spotting all the multiple role playing. John Cleese keeps walking out as one character then coming immediately back as someone else. Look for Sony’s ‘Immaculate’ Edition, a significant improvement on Criterion’s soft/grainy image & muffled soundtrack.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Lots of religious controversy back when this first came out. Perhaps inevitable, yet an odd reaction as the film goes out of its way to be anti-blasphemous. Maybe the real problem was the surprising amount of fleshly display. A full-frontal Messiah, even a fake one, too much for today’s Pharisees.

HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (1953)

A natural for epics, religious or otherwise, CinemaScope first tried on light romantic comedy with a typically 20th/Fox Three-Girls-On-The-Hunt story. (No studio was more loyal to the formula, and CinemaScope’s 2.66:1 frame-ratio turned out to be very useful for triptych compositions. Note poster!) Scripter Nunnally Johnson pilfered a handful of plays for the premise (using themselves as bait, Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe & Betty Grable share a swanky Manhattan apartment to trap millionaires, but don't necessarily get what they think they want) and director Jean Negulesco, steering clear of close-ups, avoids depth-of-field shots & keeps them all in lateral motion to deal with the technical vagaries of the sharp, but primitive, early CinemaScope lenses. Not without charm or amusement (Bacall wears clothes like a dream, check out that longish tweed wool skirt; while William Powell’s wise old suitor is his impeccable self), the main reason to watch is Ms. Monroe. Without much in the way of fresh material, Monroe has unusual confidence & bloom. Sure, the part is nicely within her range, none of her acclaimed/dreadful Method Acting on display. Perhaps it’s because, for once, she’s not playing the ‘dumb’ blonde, or even the ‘not-so-dumb’ blonde. That’s Grable’s role. (And frankly, she’s a bit out of her league next to her dazzling pals.) Instead, Marilyn’s terribly vain. Blind as a bat, she refuses to wear glasses. It's nearly her only joke, but it's enough.  As if a Fairy Godmother had taken the dumb-bunny curse off Marilyn, allowing her to be nearly as good a comedian as her reevaluated rep now claims.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A six-minute concert suite (with Alfred Newman conducting his own Gershwin-esque ‘Street Scene’) shows off the new Stereophonic soundtrack process. But it’s really there to bump up a suspiciously short running time.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Negulesco’s next two assignments THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN/’54 and WOMAN’S WORLD/’54 made for a three-in-a-row trio of Three-Girls-On-The-Hunt pics.

THE MATCH KING (1932)

Fascinating fact-inspired fiction (click to enlarge newspaper -with SPOILERS - below) stars Warren William in top Pre-Code form as a ruthless capitalist cad who ‘saves’ his Swedish hometown match factory by raising an unsecured bank loan, then continues rolling over bigger & bigger loans until he’s cornered the world market. 200 matches/a penny a box: worth billions. But if he ever stops growing, it will all catch up to him: Personally from the women he’s used for spying & sexual blackmail to gain state monopolies; Financially since he needs the next loan to cover the last. He can’t go on forever, but what might take him down? Corporate honesty? Unlikely. An eccentric inventor with a reusable match? Suppressible. An affair with an actress that turns into the real thing? Possibly. The economics, vague & simplistic, are enough to get the ideas across; the personal cost believable; and the film seems to turn the corner from Early Talkies to Talkie Maturity halfway along. (Did directing duties pass from Howard Bretherton to William Keighley at some middle point?) Lili Damita (later Mrs Errol Flynn) probably has her best role as William’s romantic Achilles Heel (she’s certainly gorgeous enough), but all the supporting roles are memorably taken with an exceptional turn from Harold Huber as a counterfeiter with fake Italian bonds to sell. Marvelous stuff; suicide by PONZI!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Maxwell, the newspaper tycoon who compounded one fraud on top of the last to keep his empire going, has much in common with William’s character. And the same might be said of MR. ARKADIN/’55, Orson Welles’ thrilling & maddening film about a secretive tycoon investigating himself.

COCO (2017)

When they're ‘in the zone,’ PIXAR plays a different game then other animators. And COCO’s ‘in the zone’ most of the time. (A loss of narrative focus toward the middle, has them overcompensate with, admittedly, spectacular visuals.) Three years ago, Guillermo del Toro went down a similar path in THE BOOK OF LIFE/’14, which makes COCO’s superiority all the more striking. Story originality, imagination, a big thumping heart, even in Mexican art research. (And sly gags right from the start, like adding a Mariachi kick to ‘Wish Upon A Star’ for the opening Disney logo; or in letting Benjamin Bratt lean into his Ricardo Montalban voice.) Co-directors Adrian Molina (his debut) and Lee Unkrich (who soloed on TOY STORY 3), they also worked on the script, find a great way to guide us thru the Day of the Dead tradition, emphasizing generational connection (and conflict) in a symbiotic spiritual relationship between the living and the dead. In this case, gently elaborated and emotionally lifted by 12-yr-old Miguel, a boy who can’t suppress an inherited gift for music in a house where music has long been taboo. Determined to follow his bliss and compete in a local talent contest, as well as show a bit of teen rebellion, he ends up stuck, possibly for good, in the Land of the Dead with past (make that ‘passed’) ancestors. More than enough framework to hang a film on, especially with its rich ethnic look. Beautifully voiced by a pitch-perfect cast (in both character and song), the film boasts an awesome third act twist, sorting itself out in wonderfully satisfying manner.

DOUBLE-BILL/CONTEST: With Miguel stuck in the Land of the Dead, his physical body starts dissolving into a skeletal ghost figure. No doubt, an intentional echo of PINOCCHIO’s nightmare-inducing donkey metamorphoses on Pleasure Island. But there’s another, harder to spot, ‘borrowing’ at the film’s climax as ‘50s style tv cameras ‘accidentally’ expose our villain by showing his true nature on live studio monitors. Name the likely film source to win a MAKSQUIBS DVD Write-Up of Your Choice.

EVER IN MY HEART (1933)

Brutally misconceived, disastrously ill-timed, this Barbara Stanwyck romancer, meant as a pivot from her ‘bad girl’ roles @ Warners, fails spectacularly. As an eligible beauty from the best family in town, Stanwyck unexpectedly throws over bland intended Ralph Bellamy when she falls hard for creepy Otto Kruger, the best pal he’s brought back from school in Germany. It’s 1909, and Kruger goes all out to be the good adopted American. But even becoming a citizen doesn’t help once WWI breaks out. Reviled and all but unemployable, he returns to his German roots, taking up arms for the old country. Now, after divorce, and rekindled romance with Bellamy, Babs joins up and is sent overseas where she inevitably winds up meeting Kruger, now spying for the enemy. Will it be love . . . or liebestod! Yikes! Archie Mayo directs, but who approved this wobbly disaster? And why the largely sympathetic tone toward Kruger’s character & motives in a film released half a year after the Nazis took power in 1933? Where’d they show this thing? German-American Bund Rallies?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For an empathetic look at some post-WWI Germans, there’s Frank Borzage’s THREE COMRADES/’38, with the only film credit ever given to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In a rare exception to the Hollywood norm of incompetence in the kitchen, family cook Ruth Donnelly kneads a mean ball of bread dough. And check out her one-handed throwing technique! Showoff.

DUST BE MY DESTINY (1939)

Three directors-to-be hide in the credits of this standard-issue hard-luck/ working-class Warners meller: scripter Robert Rossen; dialogue-director Irving Rapper; Byron Haskin on F/X. Any one a more interesting choice than journeyman helmer Lewis Seiler proves. Still, he’s competent, and what could anyone have done with this near parody of the chip-on-his-shoulder characters being worked up for new star John Garfield, here reunited with peppy Priscilla Lane from his breakthru debut in FOUR DAUGHTERS/’38. Fresh out of jail after a miscarriage of justice (the real robber just confessed); Garfield’s soon in trouble for hopping freight trains & resisting arrest. Sent to Reformatory, he meets-cute with Lane whose nasty step-dad runs the joint. Catching the canoodling lovebirds, Pop takes a swing at Garfield! Garfield swings back! Then the old man’s bum-ticker gives out! Geez Louise! Now, Garfield’s running from a murder rap! On the lam with Lane (sounds like a song cue, no?), even good luck turns bad: like a freebie wedding that comes with an identifying publicity photo; a diner gig that sets them up with an address the cops can raid; a heroic deed that makes you Front Page News. Yikes! That chip on the shoulder is now a boulder. And the last act turns positively ridiculous with a big courtroom sequence that defies all logic*. (Though Rossen’s left-leaning speeches for defense attorney Moroni Olsen are something to behold.) Alan Hale, looking rather handsome for a change, has a nice turn as a sympathetic newspaper editor, and Frank McHugh gets his laughs as a theatrical wedding organizer. But the film is entirely skippable.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Priscilla Lane probably had her best role (away from her sister act) later this year as the nice girl James Cagney is all wrong for in THE ROARING TWENTIES; *while Garfield gets a better day in court (a doomsday in court) in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE/’46.

OTHELLO (1952; 1955)

Starting at the end, with a double funeral & a brutal punishment, no Shakespeare film gets off to a grander, more exciting start. In Orson Welles’ savagely edited adaptation (in both text & film), OTHELLO is less a tale told than a tale retold. And best appreciated if you already know your Shakespeare. Heroically raising his budget via mainstream acting gigs between spurts of shooting in various countries, he then put the puzzle together higgledy-piggledly in a triumph of Cubist imaginative editing logic. (It has the feel of a Sergei Eisenstein epic, a filmmaker Welles later found too 'formalist' . . . just like Stalin!) Often, the effort involved shows, but not in a detrimental way. Though the casual merging of post-synch dialogue is initially off-putting for English-speaking audiences. (Does it improve as the film goes on or do we adjust?) Yet the sum effect is too thrilling to mind even the larger problems & missteps. With most of the perfs superb, whomever ‘voiced’ them. Along with his earlier MACBETH/’48 and his later CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT/’65, the three greatest Shakespeare film adaptations ever made . . . or imagined.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: There are three main differences from the original 1952 Euro-cut and the Stateside release of ‘55: Switching from the more Wellesian spoken credits to printed titles with added bits of unnecessary explanatory narration (advantage 1952); redubbing Desdemona with a more forceful British stage actress (advantage 1955); superior visual quality in the 1952 source material (game, set & match to ‘52). On the recent Criterion edition with both cuts, François Thomas gives an excellent summary of the changes. (Yet never mentions the difference in visual quality!)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As noted above, MACBETH and CHIMES.  How lucky to have them all so easily available after decades in hiding.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/chimes-at-midnight-aka-falstaff-1965.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/macbeth-1948.html

CRASH LANDING (1958)

Hollywood responded to the boom in post-war commercial aviation rider-ship with disaster pics. Emergency Landings; Sabotage; Engine Failure; Overworked Pilots; Metal Fatigue; Crazed Passengers; Mid-Air Collision. An endless parade of catastrophe bringing a Golden Age of Terror at 10,000 Feet (at least in quantity) using the same formula of human-interest dramas with every reclining cabin seat. This Economy Class example of the form touches all the bases, but trimmed to bare essentials. Gary Merrill, hard-nosed pilot with a lamed plane to ditch in the ocean, learns how to ease up on the job and at home where little wife Nancy Davis Reagan gets second-billing but little screen time & little to do. (No wonder it's her last feature.) Up in the sky, the cabin holds the usual suspects: lonely singles looking for love; business partners at loggerheads; romance among the crew; Mother & child; boy & dog. Not a trick or trope missed. The real suspense is wondering how they’ll manage the show with all the cost-cutting. Start with the plane: tinker-toy miniature; a tighter-than-tight pilots’ cabin; an overused static shot of the sole audio speaker; and the big rescue, managed without benefit of either sinking plane or navy destroyer to pick them up. All we see are inflatable life-rafts and a navy dinghy to ferry survivors. Brought to you by prolific lowball producer Sam Katzman & the late Fred F. Sears, a director so quick & efficient, he had five films released after his early death (at 44) in 1957.

DOUBLE-BILL: The big budget HIGH AND THE MIGHTY/’54 (John Wayne/William Wellman dir.) is much plusher air-disaster porn, but just as idiotic. While the bargain basement CROWDED SKY/’60 (Dana Andrews/Joseph Pevney dir.) scores with inadvertent hilarity.

HOME BEFORE DARK (1958)

Never a director of particular interests (or interest), Mervyn LeRoy rose or fell on whatever scripts & casts were assigned him, especially during his liveliest days @ Warners in the ‘30s. He then went all corporate at M-G-M, now as producer/director (‘39 - ‘54), before returning to Warners for a final dozen largely moribund pics between ‘55 - ‘66. This one, an inadequately worked out mental health meller, does show him at his late best, trying to lick a tricky story into dramatic shape. He fails, but at least still seems to care; something that can’t be said of most of these late efforts. Jean Simmons, fresh from the sanatorium post-breakdown, goes home to a chilly reception from husband, step-sister & step-mother (Dan O’Herlihy, Rhonda Fleming, Mabel Albertson) and a warmer one from surprise guest border Efrem Zimbalist Jr., a professor getting a tryout in O’Herlihy’s department at the local college. (And receiving an equally chilly reception not because he’s ‘mental,’ but because he’s Jewish.) We never get enough info to dope out Simmons’ situation, but it's some sort of manic/depressive condition. (Simmons very fine, very scary in manic phase. A little lithium and there’d be no story.) But the family dynamic never convinces, with O’Herlihy’s possible ‘gaslighting’ (egging Simmons on to fresh doubts about her sanity) coming off as a tease, a sort of psychological ‘red herring.’ The ending also tries splitting the difference on expectations, as if it had checked all the answer boxes on a multiple-choice survey. Still, worth a look for Simmons, Joseph Biroc’s dark b&w lensing and even a few good moves from LeRoy.

DOUBLE-BILL: In these late Warners pics, LeRoy also shows some real involvement on TOWARD THE UNKNOWN/’56, a test pilot story with William Holden. More typical was THE FBI STORY/’59 where James Stewart drifts aimlessly until the last two reels, suspensefully shot on-location . . . but by whom? Better yet, pick any of LeRoy’s ‘30s titles out of a hat. OR: For manic/depressive mental health ‘50s-style, along with the dangers of untested drug therapy, Nicholas Ray’s rich, strange & phenomenal BIGGER THAN LIFE/’56 with James Mason.

THE FINGER POINTS (1931)

At his peak playing bashful heroes in ‘20s silents, Richard Barthelmess remained enough of a draw to front a series of issue-oriented Early Talkies. Most were stories of moral decline, often without any last-minute/cop-out salvation. Here, he’s a gentlemanly southern reporter moved up north. New to big city ways, but shedding naivety with every assignment, he gets badly worked over by the mob after reporting on an illegal gambling club. Wising up fast, he goes in on a blackmail scam with rising crime boss Clark Gable, grabbing pay-outs from gangsters to keep news out of the paper. While back in the newsroom, he still only has eyes for ‘agony’ columnist Fay Wray, but is now in too deep to get out. Especially when Regis Toomey, a rival in news & love, gets a scoop on a major story Barthelmess already took 100 thou to suppress. Good stuff, but the Early Talkie execution is just deadly, with slo-mo pacing punctured only by the very young, very modern Gable. Wearing a ridiculous homburg, he already has that distinctive vocal rhythm, picking up his cues twice as fast as anyone else. Sound engineers at the time encouraged double beats between cues, Gable instinctively ignored their advice. Director John Francis Dillon, who died young in 1934, never did. (Note our poster, a book cover from the novelization.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Back @ M-G-M for his next pic, Gable was bumped up from thug to reporter in George W. Hill’s THE SECRET 6/’31. Sixth billed, he all but takes over the pic in the second half, even getting the final curtain shot. OR: Barthelmess as a WWI vet fighting drug addiction in William Welman’s fascinating (and less antique) HEROES FOR SALE/’33. (See below)

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Mick LaSalle examines Barthelmess as actor & social provocateur in his fascinating, if overstated, DANGEROUS MEN: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man.

THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD (1953)

Endearing little baseball pic from director Harmon Jones & writer Jack Sher doesn’t swing for the rafters, happy to connect for a solid single. We’re at Whacker Park, where the Bisons are so terrible fans ignore the team on the field and watch kids in a pickup game just past Right Field. That’s where Billy Chapin, 9-yr-old son of retired pro (and current stadium peanut ‘butcher’) Dan Dailey, coaches, using everything he’s learned from Pop, now a bit of a hard-luck case. The story gimmick, and it’s a good one, is that the kid gets hired as a batboy, and starts giving struggling players tips he gets from dad, passing them off as his own. He’s just a little kid, but heck, the advice works and the team’s on a streak. Maybe he could be the new manager? And it works as a film because Jones doesn’t oversell the cute concept. Even the woman in the picture, co-star Anne Bancroft as a female team exec who’s the owner’s niece, sticks to her boyfriend, aging player Lloyd Bridges, rather than being forced into a messy involvement with single-dad Dailey. The whole silly package is just one smart move after another in a genre known for crass jokes, stupidity & overplayed sentiment. For a change, there really is no crying in a baseball pic.

DOUBLE-BILL: 20th/Fox had a knack for funny/sunny baseball programmers: see IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING/’49. OR: Busy (but never showbizzy) child actor Billy Chapin as the older brother in Charles Laughton’s lyrical horror classic THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER/’55. (Not seen here, but a 1979 tv remake of KID, with DIFF’RENT STROKES star Gary Coleman, is long buried.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Jackie Robinson integrated the ‘majors’ in ‘47, but is this the first Hollywood baseball pic from a major studio to include a black ballplayer on the roster? (It’s Ike Jones, in his film debut. We’re excluding indie pic THE JACKIE ROBINSON STORY, out in 1950, but not from a major studio.)

ROMANOFF AND JULIET (1961)

Peter Ustinov’s most successful play, a sub-Shavian Cold War political comedy, now looks hopelessly timid, good-natured, but toothless in his self-directed film adaptation. He’s ‘The General,’ King of Concordia, a make-believe Ruritanian country sitting on a tie-breaking vote at the U.N. Now back home, and offered gifts & bribes from the Soviet Union & the U.S., Ustinov refuses both, the only safe choice. Instead, he plays matchmaker for Romeo & Juliet-like lovebirds, Universal contract players Sandra Dee (peppy daughter of the American ambassador) and John Gavin (accent-challenged son of Russian ambassador Akim Tamiroff). Ustinov probably had something along the lines of Shaw’s THE APPLE CART in mind, but the comedy & politics are warmed over & even handled, too easy/too obvious to leave a mark. There’s still some modest fun: an international roll-call vote with Ustinov voicing all responses in silly voices; an unexpectedly charming scene between Dee and Rik Van Nutter, the nice American guy she turns down; but hardly enough.

DOUBLE-BILL: Peter Sellers’ film breakthrough came in an equally tame Cold War political comedy, THE MOUSE THAT ROARED/’59. OR: Ustinov’s big directorial leap forward on his next gig, a superb adaptation of BILLY BUDD/’62 with Robert Ryan, Terence Stamp, Melvyn Douglas & himself.

HOLIDAY FOR LOVERS (1959)

It’s late in the cycle of 20th/Fox travelogue-oriented CinemaScope efforts; the ones that promised to take you . . . well, to someplace not yet seen in Wide Screen format. But in this half-hearted entry, only the second-unit made the trip to South America; the stars never left the lot, with locations brought to them via back-screen projection. THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN/’54, the phenomenal (if slightly creepy) success that started the cycle took its cast to Rome. Though only after director Jean Negulesco insisted, proving to studio head Darryl F. Zanuck he could shoot it for less on real locations. (He knew he’d never win the argument bringing up visual quality.) Alas, no such gumption from journeyman helmer Henry Levin. He stands his stars in front of process plates (some damn good*), but obviously not optimal, especially with little else to hold our attention as Clifton Webb (with a bad dye job) impetuously takes his family (Jane Wyman; Carol Lynley) to Brazil, Argentina & Peru after wayward daughter Jill St. John gets serious with either famous South American architect Paul Henreid (also with a bad dye job) or his rebellious artist son. Lynley, who yells all her lines, finds her own tru-love after they arrive, peeling off with pudgy serviceman Gary Crosby once he shows the depth of his feelings by spanking her. Yikes! As light ‘50s family comedies go, it’s not so much bad as dispiriting, with local color used like appliqué in an Arts & Crafts workshop.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: After a three year break, Clifton Webb retired with Leo McCarey’s unfortunate SATAN NEVER SLEEPS/'62, a sort of GOING MY WAY meets Communist China dramedy (really, that’s the set up). So this film, weak as it is, serves as swansong to America’s most unlikely family man. See CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN/’50 to see him really pull it off.

DOUBLE-BILL: Wyman was back for more process plate Europe on yet another family vacation, now in Paris for Disney’s exceedingly odd BON VOYAGE/’62. The only Disney pic to offer Fred MacMurray a street walker. Yikes, again! (He declines, but still . . . )

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *20th/Fox and Paramount, for some reason, generally did the best process/back-screen projection work. At Paramount, Farciot Edouart ran the department and supposedly took his secrets to the grave. (Compare Hitchcock @ ‘50s Paramount to Hitchcock @ ‘60s Universal.) But who was the key man @ 20th/Fox?

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE (1945)

Small-potatoes programmer bad enough to halt a few writing, directing & producing careers, a would-be cautionary tale on the limits of circumstantial evidence neither informative nor entertaining. Single-dad Michael O’Shea, a quick-tempered Irish-American jerk, pissed at the local baker who took his son’s hatchet away, storms into the guy’s shop, determined to get it back and spoiling for a fight. In the scuffle, the baker dies from a head wound, but was it an accidental slip or hatchet blow? From a certain angle, three witnesses at the shop testify to murder, sending happy-go-lucky Dad to Death Row. Yikes! And while his son sinks into depression & pathetic pleas for the witnesses to recant, O’Shea’s ex-BFF, nice guy/mailman Lloyd Nolan, whose testimony at the trial only made things worse, works up a strategy to trick the Governor into signing a stay-of-execution. Ridiculous without being fun (a ‘reverse’ jail break, probably second-unit work, shows a few signs of life), with even a total pro like Nolan stinking up the joint.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Nolan was just off one of his best, Elia Kazan’s superb debut pic A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN/’45.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: While O’Shea clearly would never get Murder One and the Electric Chair, he’s clearly guilty of something; looking for trouble when he precipitated the ‘accident.’ A bigger budgeted film would have had the Breen Censorship Office breathing down its neck.

I'D CLIMB THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN (1951)

Turn-of-the-last-century Rural Americana usually brought out the best in underappreciated studio stalwart Henry King, a director whose quiet, solid craftsmanship really puts across this episodic charmer. Taken from a fact-inspired novel about the new wife of a back-country North Georgia Methodist minister in the 1910s, Lamar Trotti’s tidy script (a bit too tidy) moves in discrete chapters, offering Preacher, Wife & Parishioners moral tests handling medical crises, romantic confidences, religious conviction & personal courage o’er the course of a year. It’s the sort of thing that can grow awful sticky, awful fast, but doesn’t under King who keeps from pushing emotional buttons or material too hard, balancing sentiment against tragedies real & perceived and earning his effects. Beautifully observed, if idealized, with some fine location shooting & a game cast, including Preacher & Wife/William Lundigan & Susan Hayward, natural & naturally sexy as the young newlyweds. FOX Cinema Archives’ DVD could use an upgrade, but it gets the qualities (and quality) across.

DOUBLE-BILL: D. W. Griffith cinematographer Karl Brown moved into directing with his silent Hill Country melodrama STARK LOVE/’27, shot in North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains, about people who might have come out of this story.

SALT OF THE EARTH (1954)

Left-wing Agit-Prop rabble-rouser, this fact-inspired story of a workers’ strike at a Zinc Mine in New Mexico was made with BlackListed Hollywood talent (director, producer, composer, writer*), then BlackListed from Stateside distribution. It naturally holds interest as socio-political document, but is also interesting simply as film. Shunned as Commie propaganda (note our USSR film poster where it presumably did get distribution), the film is loaded with Pro-Union/Socialist ideas and does a thorough job painting Capitalism with a thick black brush, but its didactic elements are hardly revolutionary. Striking for mine safety, wages and improved living conditions, the mixed laborers find themselves nearly as divided in their own ranks without trust between immigrants, Anglos & Mexicans here on work permits. And the plot also moves into sexual politics when the wives get in on the act. First to keep husbands out of jail, then finding their own voices (and enjoying the sensation), an evolution that reveals uncomfortable macho overreactions from husbands who feel emasculated. Technically, the film has a rough & effective Neo-Realism look (right down to the mix of pro & amateur actors). A shame that the soundtrack hasn’t come up very well, but the film still earns its rabble-rousing response. And, proving that you can take the talent out of Hollywood, but can’t take Hollywood out of the talent, it all wraps with a celebratory feel-good Hollywood ending. (The movie slipped into Public Domain decades ago, but The Film Detective DVD sources an okay print.)

DOUBLE-BILL: For a real life follow-up, try Barbara Kopple's classic docu HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A./’76.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Writer Michael Wilson, the best known name involved, did uncredited work (now acknowledged) on films by David Lean, William Wyler & Otto Preminger.

LADY GODIVA OF COVENTRY (1955)

The title grabs interest, but little else does in this shoddy period piece about that infamous nude horseback ride. (Side-saddle, of course.) Done on the cheap @ Universal by Abbott & Costello specialist Arthur Lubin, the 11th century Saxon/Norman rivalry story is larded with comedy & romance (with bits ‘borrowed’ from THE QUIET MAN/’52) to plump up a rowdy chapter in fake British history with saucy Lady-to-be Maureen O’Hara & thick, manly Lord George Nader. (He must have altered the spelling from 'Nadir.') Victor McLaglen’s around as comic squire, fortifying THE QUIET MAN connection, but mostly to make like The Three Stooges with a pair of dim-witted helpmates. For pageantry, you’ve seen better at High School assemblies. For action, High School parking lots. The DVD shows in standard full-frame (1:1.37), but was likely cropped to something like 1:2 for theatrical showings. Feel free to zoom in to approximate. Better yet, try the EJECT button on your remote.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For an Olde England period romp made around the same time with unexpectedly luxe production values & plenty o’ fun, try THE COURT JESTER/’55 or PRINCE VALIANT/’54.

SECRETS OF THE FRENCH POLICE (1932)

This little crime thriller (a double disappointment for RKO who must have been looking to start a franchise and set up a new star in Gwili Andre), something of a genre hodgepodge, with a bit of horror mixed in at the end, is no great shakes, but pretty good fun. Taken from a popular series in ‘American Weekly’ magazine, it’s a master-criminal police procedural with a bit of a comic edge, featuring Frank Morgan as Paris Chef de Police investigating a Russian con operation under the control of Gregory Ratoff* (making like Bela Lugosi), with a spiffy gang of thuggish Asian house servants. He’s got his eye on lovely Ms Gwili, a ringer for Princess Anastasia, who, with a little coaching & hypnotic suggestion, he hopes to pass off as genuine Romanoff, convince surviving relatives and then collect millions being held in reserve. (Yep, it’s the perennial ANASTASIA story, currently pulling them in on B’way as a sort of Y.A. musical.) Inspector Morgan sends out an army of investigators, but the main break comes from playboy (and petty thief) John Warburton, risking all to get inside the Ratoff mansion with its Dr. Frankenstein worthy dungeon. Yikes! Too bad, Warburton’s such a wet noodle on screen, and that Edward Sutherland’s direction drags, especially so in the days before wall-to-wall underscoring helped punch things up. But nicely produced, with cool sets & some startling camera tricks worth a look.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Morgan smokes like a chimney. You keep expecting him to contaminate one of his main clues . . . a sample of cigarette ash taken from the crime scene.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Something of a jack-of-all-Hollywood-trades (actor, director, producer), Ratoff had his best year as actor in ‘32. Six features, including SYMPHONY OF A MILLION and the very fine STAR IS BORN forerunner WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD, where he plays the studio chief, a role later de-ethnicized by Adolphe Menjou & Charles Bickford in ‘37 & ‘54.

LOVING VINCENT (2017)

This critically well-received, but painfully misconceived animated film investigates the last few months in the life of Vincent Van Gogh by tracking down people who knew or at least interacted with him before his suicide. As the film has it, a last letter from Vincent to his brother Theo, never got thru. Now, one year after Vincent’s death, the Postman’s son is charged with making good on delivery. But Theo has also died, so the postman’s son tries finding out what happened, and what best to do with the letter, moving thru a series of unlikely interviews as if he were building up a case for some victim; art history as police procedural. The real point of the film lies in the unusual, painterly look of its rotoscoped images*, animated with a handsome, if often stiff & cumbersome, oil paint based animation technique. It provides some striking Van Gogh-ish images (many wheat fields & crows in faux impasto), but is it homage, kitschy ripoff or pointless show? Grabbing the Van Gogh visual vocabulary one purloined picture per setting; it's museum gift shop memento mori.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Rotoscoping involves various techniques that turn filmed live-action into animation. Headache inducing in posterizations like Richard Linklater’s WAKING LIFE/’01 and some of Ralph Bakshi’s work (WIZARDS/’77; LORD OF THE RINGS/78), it dates back to early Disney feature animation where it was put to better use more as guidepost than stencil.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: This film's co-writer/director Hugh Welchman produced Suzie Templeon’s stunning stop-motion adaptation of PETER & THE WOLF/’06 which has the perfect match-up of form to content missing here.

PERSUASION (1995)

Acclaimed, but lesser-known BBC production of acclaimed, but lesser-known Jane Austen novel, released Stateside in a limited theatrical run. It looks great in any format. Rougher, less polished & posh than other Austen adaptations, and all the better for it, there’s hardly a whiff of ‘chick flick’ about it. (Though it’s a superb chick flick in a different way.) All the expected Austen boxes are ticked: a too-good-to-be-true suitor who proves . . . too-good-to-be-true; just missed personal connections; extreme class snobbery coming before a fall; upper-crust idiocy; and our divinely sensible, but taken-for-granted heroine. Here, folded into a framework right out of Cinderella: befuddled widowed father; pair of appalling sisters; overlooked runt of the litter who sparkles when given a proper setting; even something like a ball to run away from. And it works like a charm in the more naturalistic/down-to-earth settings demanded by a tight budget, guided by director Roger Michell in his debut feature, and pitch-perfect cast: Amanda Root (Austen’s empathetic alter ego), Ciarán Hinds (tall, manly, Naval Prince Charming), and a supporting cast of ghastly siblings, socially blind cousins, charming eccentrics & a few of life’s also-rans. In spite of clipped corners, still nicely plummy without being too 'culinary' (in the Brechtian sense); satisfyingly civilized (and civilizing) entertainment, equally fit for Austen acolytes & agnostics.

DOUBLE-BILL: A modern version of PERSUASION has recently been announced. Meantime, have a look at Whit Stillman’s recent, slightly cock-eyed LADY SUSAN adaptation, retitled LOVE & FRIENDSHIP for the screen. It’s terribly arch, and Kate Beckinsale doesn’t quite pull off the lead, but all in all pretty darn swell. (see below)

THE SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM (1933)

A ‘Dark & Stormy Night’ in an ‘Old Dark House’ story, something of a Universal Studios specialty, and not bad if you give it time to set up the situation. Kurt Neumann directs in lumpy fashion, or does until an action climax that looks ‘handed off’ to the second-unit. But an excellent cast is around to get us thru a trio of fearsome nights. Gloria Stuart’s the birthday girl, coming-of-age with three suitors vying for her hand (Paul Lukas, Onslow Stevens, William Janney). So when Dad (Lionel Atwill) reluctantly tells them about the castle’s infamous ‘Blue Room,’ where death calls precisely at One A.M., the putative fiancés make a pact to dare fate, by spending consecutive nights alone in the room. Sure enough, someone dies, then a second; but who in the house is doing the killing? Rejected suitor? Controlling Dad? Mystery guest? Someone on the house staff? Enquiring Chief of Police Edward Arnold wants to know! Silly and good fun, with a dandy, if guessable, twisty reveal. The bigger mystery is why Universal was still using a stage wind machine for sound effects instead of actual recorded stormy sounds? Handsomely shot and designed in standard Universal House of Horror style (lenser Charles Stumar had a real gift for atmosphere; see THE MUMMY/’32), its stiff manner finally giving way to that ripping set piece chase at the climax. No classic, but tasty.

DOUBLE-BILL: Again, Universal tries to repeat it’s success with Paul Leni’s fine late silent THE CAT AND THE CANARY/’28.

WEST OF THE DIVIDE (1934)

B-pic from John Wayne’s galley years (after Raoul Walsh’s under-performing 70mm THE BIG TRAIL/’30/before A-list resurrection via John Ford’s STAGECOACH/’39) is dire stuff, even for a ‘Poverty Row’ Western. Produced by Paul Malvern under his LONE STAR PRODUCTIONS banner @ Monogram Pictures, it’s got the elements to work (lenser Archie Stout; stunt man Yakima Canutt; sidekick George ‘Gabby’ Hayes; decent storyline), but Robert Bradbury’s sleepy megging and loads of blathering exposition keep it stuck in first gear. The story has Wayne seeking revenge by posing as an outlaw to sign up with the slick cattle rustler who murdered his dad twelve years back. Along the way, he saves a kid from an evil step-dad; discovers they’re related (positively Dickensian!); and fights with Mr. Bad Guy over the pretty little gal trying to hold on to her land & cattle. It all winds up somewhere between inert & inept. Oh well. Yakima, doubling for Wayne, pulls his classic jump from his horse onto an out-of-control team of four, and pulls off a brand new stunt, diving off his galloping steed straight thru the first-floor window of a house. A tight fit! Many of Wayne’s B-Westerns are surprisingly well-made, sturdy little vehicles. Not this.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Caveat emptor. Lots of Public Domain DVDs available, but most with an ill-fitting organ score slapped on at some later date. (For tv showings?) The Film Detective edition, flawed but honest, sticks to the original soundtrack.

SCARLET DAWN (1932)

More fascinating ‘What-If’ than satisfying accomplishment, this zesty romance, set during the chaotic start of the Russian Revolution, lost nearly two reels worth of Pre-Code footage (and possibly dicey political action), presumably for a re-release, leaving a bit less than an hour’s running time with many missing links & dramatic lacunae. (It even lost its better original title: SON OF RUSSIA.) Yet, there's too much that's good in it to write off regardless of length. William Dieterle, having smoothly transitioned from German actor to Hollywood helmer, gets it off to a running start as impossibly handsome Russian Baron Douglas Fairbanks Jr. trains home to Moscow with fellow WWI officers on leave from the front. Within five minutes we’ve landed at a vodka-soaked orgy, only to wake up two days later with Bolsheviks knocking down the door. Goodbye lovely/willing aristocrat Lilyan Tashman/Hello sweet housemaid (an overparted Nancy Carroll), the gal Fairbanks has long tried to molest, now useful proletarian cover to flee the country . . . tru-love & marriage to follow. Surviving as a busboy in Constantinople, who should Doug bump into but Tashman, eager to have his help working a lucrative con on a green pair of Father/Daughter American tourists hoping to rub against royalty. Everything in here is smashingly handled: fabulous Anton Grot designs; evocative Ernest Haller lensing; neat cameos from Russian ex-pats like Mischa Auer; all imaginatively done up by Dieterle. But now so choppy! Disfigured thru hellish cuts right up to its abrupt, if haunting question mark of an ending.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Hollywood portrayed the 1917 Russian Revolution in the ‘20s and ‘30s with a wonderfully conflicted attitude. Whom to root for? After all, didn't we start with a revolution against Aristos & Royalty? On the other hand . . . Communists!! Running the gamut from C. B. DeMille’s VOLGA BOATMAN/’26 to Jacques Feder’s KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR/’37. Perhaps best balanced in Josef von Sternberg’s late silent masterpiece THE LAST COMMAND/’28.