GOODBYE AGAIN (1933)

Pretty lame. Warner Bros.’ 1930s house style for comedy comes down too hard to help pull off this third-rate B’way Boulevard Farce. And it needs all the help it can get. The set up finds novelist Warren William, tops in Ladies’ Fiction, touring his latest with loyal secretary Joan Blondell. But a stop in Cleveland brings something extra, old flame Genevieve Tobin who thinks she’s the model for his new bestseller, now hopes to leave butter-and-egg husband Hugh Herbert and pick up where she & William left off back in their college days. Things dribble along in talky manner before picking up slightly near the end for a mock divorce staged in William’s hotel suite. He gives ‘testimony’ dressed in pajamas. A yawner, but with one striking moment, literally so as Blondell serves up two sincere (possibly real) slaps to William. (I get it! She really cares for her boss after all!) With director Michael Curtiz calling the shots, those resounding slaps sound like the real thing. Too bad nothing else in here does.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: William, an underappreciated Pre-Code star, made two of his best in ‘33: naughty & hilarious as the driven department store manager in EMPLOYEE’S ENTRANCE; and superbly Damon Runyonesque for Frank Capra in his early masterpiece LADY FOR A DAY. And 1934 was even better. But he soon fell into Bs before dying young (only 53) in 1948.

HIGANBANA / EQUINOX FLOWER (1958)

Yasujirô Ozu’s first film in color (AgfaColor, to be exact), is lesser Ozu . . . but still Ozu. So still pretty wonderful. Dealing mostly with fathers & daughters, it’s one of his generational shift stories on loosening traditions in post-war Japanese culture; here a decline in arranged marriages. Father Shin Saburi, a successful businessman is first seen giving an awkward celebratory speech at a wedding, noting how his marriage, a happy one, began without choice or love entering into the equation. His wife smiles at his side, but what is she really thinking? At home, older daughter Ineko Arima is quietly determined to go a new way and make her own choice for a husband. And with Keiji Sada, a Japanese Gregory Peck type as suitor, you’ll know why. Between Japanese social reserve and communication in a dysfunctional family, the situation is more likely to hit a breaking point than resolution. But with gentle humor, deft observation and more emotional heft than you expect, Ozu finds a way. Here, the real beauty comes less in seeing how things play out than in just watching things play, as Ozu adds color to his compositional magic. Some shot choices more satisfying than entire movies*, and not just his distinctive low camera position. You’ll note something RED in nearly every shot. And his famous ‘pillow shots,’ the little still-life compositions between scenes, more beautiful than ever. Or the frames within frames of boxy apartments, an extra editing device so skillfully used you barely notice that the film uses no camera movement, no tracking, no zooms, not even a panning shot. Yet gives the illusion of movement as needed by increasing editing rhythm during moments of crisis or when Ozu wants to spread some good news around. It’s a lovely little film by this stealth cinematic revolutionary, deceptive as ever.

DOUBLE-BILL: In his next film, GOOD MORNING/’59, Ozu ups the ante from cultural generation shift to flat out Generation Gap, adding obstreperous up-to-date kids (and rude laughs) to the mix.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Example: off-center entry shot in a bar; green-upholstered seats on stool chairs.  Impossible to forget; yet neither self-conscious nor ostentatiously frame-worthy.

INTOLERANCE: LOVE'S STRUGGLE THROUGH THE AGES (1916)

Hard to fathom, but the most ambitious/ audacious film yet conceived came out (to under-performing confusion) more than 100 years ago. In scope, if not in execution, it has yet to be topped. Stung by criticism on the blatant racism of his epic-grossing BIRTH OF A NATION/’15, D. W. Griffith struck back at ‘intolerant’ cavils with this awesome Four-in-One epic.* And while the film remains both thrilling & absurd, it’s so packed with gobsmacking creativity & daring effect, to say nothing of advanced hopscotch construction, cast of thousands upon thousands & sets upon sets, it’s an irresistible force. Love, war & destruction as seen in a Babylonian tale of sabotage; in highlights from the Life of Christ; in the St. Bartholomew Massacre of French Protestants by French Catholics; and in a modern story of strikes, urban crime and over-zealous loveless welfare ladies. The first half of the film (about two hours long, though editions vary) carefully lays out the separate narrative threads (in physically spectacular fashion, Griffith’s technical chops far ahead of its production date, with Billy Bitzer’s lensing & camera tricks still packing a wallop). The second half (not much over an hour) is looser and more action-oriented, extraordinarily free in cutting between storylines, held together by some sort of mad logic. Even when naive elements raise an inappropriate smile, you’re never confused. Uncharacteristically, Griffith comes up with some fine comic relief, thanks to Constance Talmadge, hoydenesque Mountain Girl of the Babylonian story. (Graced with one of filmdom’s most magical ends, stilled by death into a heroic tableau). And while much of the cast still throw their arms about to denote emotion, most of the acting is very advanced. Especially so in the modern story, with its stunning factory strike scenes (INTOLERANCE was a one-film revolution for the Russian cinema), with Mae Marsh’s childish, but heartbreaking young mother and Robert Harron’s alternately harrowed & unaffected manner as he goes to the gallows for a crime he didn’t commit. (And look for a pre-tubby Eugene Pallette as heroic Huguenot Prosper.) At times, the production is so stupendous, so spendthrift with resources, you’ll hold your head in wonder; at other times, so bizarre & silly, you’ll hold it in disbelief. But you’ll never look away; you can't. Go for the recent Cohen Media edition with improved visual elements and Carl Davis’s thrilling full-orchestra score.

DOUBLE-BILL: Buster Keaton sends this up hilariously in his first feature-length film, THREE AGES/’23 (Caveman; Ancient Rome; Today). But he saved the name Brown Eyes, the doomed Huguenot girl, for the female lead in GO WEST/‘25. She’s a cow; a cow with big brown eyes.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Oddly, the concept of intolerance only drives the Huguenots/St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre storyline. Intolerance is tangential in the other three sections.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: At one particularly daring moment, a shootout is interrupted with an explanatory flashback.  (Audiences at the time must have thought D.W. mad.)  Something not seen again till Sergio Leone did it in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST/’68.

LES PERLES DE LA COURONNE / THE PEARLS OF THE CROWN (1937)

Inventive & freewheeling, a typically enchanting historical vaudeville from French hyphenate supreme, actor-writer-director-producer Sacha Guitry. This one all about the peregrinations of seven matched mega-pearls as they fall in & out of various royal hands after being found in the 1500s. Four will eventually sit atop the British Crown, but three others will go missing. Guitry, figuratively working without a net, jumps from one century & country to another, between different courts & royal households, looking high life & low, over three languages (not including Abyssinian gibberish), bypassing formal technique for offhand leaps in logic, language & linear continuity. Yet never causing a moment of confusion in the fast-paced action (and talk!), assisted by an easy to identify, all-star cast which helps to keep things straight. Look for a couple of especially wild turns from Arletty & Dalio in absurd Abyssinian BlackFace, too silly to be off-putting. (You may not think so, hence BLACKFACE Warning!!) Structurally, the first half collects all the precious jewels; the second, largely contemporary has a Brit, a Frenchmen (Guitry in one of his many roles) and an Italian tracking down the three missing pearls. Sophisticated, silly sui generis fun.

DOUBLE-BILL: When required, Guitry could hold to regular dramatic rules & tactics (in essence a man of the theatre) as in his masterful LA POISON/’51 with shaggy Michel Simon as a henpecked husband out to murder his wife . . . before she murders him.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Entertaining, plus a bonus in some none too shabby history as part of the mix.

SOL MADRID (1968)

A dud. With THE MAN FROM UNCLE tv series winding down, M-G-M figured they could boost Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) into features. It didn’t take. He plays Sol Madrid (who came up with this name?) some sort of undercover drug agent assigned to bring down rival dealers: mob-based Rip Torn and island-based drug lord Telly Savalas. A pretty good cast joins in (Stella Stevens, Ricardo Montalban, Pat Hingle, Paul Lukas in a last big screen role), all wasted on a snoozy storyline, with tacky sets & phony locations as feeble as director Brian G. Hutton’s action chops*, and with most of the interiors lit bright as a showroom. (Hard to believe cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp would soon lens PATTON/’70 and PAPILLON/’73.) The whole project feels less like a film than a Deal Memo the studio couldn’t get out of.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Hutton was inexplicably better on his next two films, finding and holding a slightly comic/absurd tone on both WHERE EAGLES DARE/’68 and KELLY’S HEROES/’70.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/where-eagles-dare-1970.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/kellys-heroes-1970.html

THE PARADINE CASE (1947)

Distinguished barrister Gregory Peck risks his reputation & his marriage when he falls for new client Alida Valli, a mysterious beauty who may be guilty of murdering her husband. Smoothly made, in fact, too smoothly made, the last film Alfred Hitchcock made under contract for David O. Selznick is very much the producer’s pic. Selznick personally wrote the 'veddy' British script (‘She’s trying to cover up for that filthy swine!’) based on a ‘30s novel M-G-M once optioned for Garbo, yet the basic set up strikingly mirrors Selznick’s own struggle between estranged wife Irene Mayer Selznick and new love Jennifer Jones. If only the film were as interesting as Selznick’s home life. Miscast male leads don’t help: Peck in a role that begs for a Ronald Colman; Louis Jourdan far too glamorous as Valli’s guilt-ridden lover. (Hitch wanted an earthy Robert Newton type for a note of perversity in the illicit affair.) And female leads not so much miscast as under-cast: Valli a substitute Ingrid Bergman; poor Ann Todd, as Peck’s loyal wife, like Joan Fontaine with a blobby nose. Hitch does pulls off some striking docu-flavored touches going thru jail procedures with the just arrested Valli*, and Selznick adds a few deviant touches to Charles Laughton’s ‘hanging judge’ and fragile wife Ethel Barrymore. But the film must have seem hopelessly dated even when it came out. Selznick’s first major flop as indie producer, painfully out of touch with the post-WWII audience. Hitch would quickly catch up with the changing Zeitgeist; Selznick never did.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Hitch found a proper use for this documentary prison flavor in THE WRONG MAN/’56.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-wrong-man-1956.html

TULIP FEVER (2017)

For the three folks who requested second helpings after GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING*, this time with romantic potboiler tropes tossed in the painterly 17th Century mix. Our story, and honest to Pete, this really is our story: Alicia Vikander, infertile second wife of wealthy, older burgher Christoph Waltz (a guy who chats with and names his engorged penis) falls for portrait painter Dane DeHaan just as he hits the jackpot in the tulip bulb spec market. Meanwhile, her housemaid is preggers by the fishmonger, another tulip bulb winner. But then he’s robbed & shanghaied off to sea, leaving the maid to shame & disgrace. Perhaps they could ‘plant’ the baby on the wife? And then let a fake death-during-childbirth sort out all these complicated affairs. Sure! That’s a good idea! What could possibly go amiss? If this sounds like a parody of historical fiction, co-scripter Tom Stoppard may have thought so too, as the film more than occasionally drops it’s swoon to lean in a comic direction. Half-heartedly so, as novelist/co-scripter Deborah Moggach presumably had first whack at the screenplay and takes her own storyline seriously. It leaves director Justin Chadwick with solid production values and an itch to hide as much as possible with an overabundance of pointlessly choppy editing and swooping camera moves. For camouflage? No wonder this sat on the shelf for a couple of years before opening to general indifference.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Actually, GIRL/’03 is a perfectly watchable pic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note this obscurant b&w poster, hiding everything in the pic (Old Amsterdam, faux Vermeer, tulip trading, period detail, storyline), but playing up the sex. An old advertising trick that couldn’t have fooled many paying customers.

THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942)

Of seven unmatched comedies (and one ‘Screwball’ medical drama) made by Preston Sturges @ Paramount over five charmed years (1940 - 1944), THE LADY EVE is the most perfectly formed; HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO the most Freudian; SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS the filmmakers’ delight; and MIRACLE AT MORGAN’S CREEK the champ, a staggeringly unified achievement in comic energy & invention. But the most extreme is undoubtedly THE PALM BEACH STORY, now looking more hilarious than ever. Claudette Colbert & Joel McCrea have flopped after five years of marriage. He can’t get his ‘hanging airfield’ off the ground, she thinks splitting up will give them both a fresh start before it’s too late. So, it’s off to Palm Beach for a quick divorce after settling their affairs (make that arrears) thanks to the unexpected appearance of a Fairy Godfather, aka The Weenie King! (Only Sturges . . . ) Without a cent or a suitcase, Claudette trains her way down to Florida banking on the kindness of strangers faced with a knock-out damsel-in-distress, and picking up a billionaire bachelor on the way (Rudy Vallee in comic clover). McCrea gives chase by air, deplaning into the arms of the billionaire’s much-married sister, dizzy Mary Astor. (With her immortal/dispensable consort Toto.) The comic invention never flags, with full lived-in personas on just about every eccentric met along the way. Listen up or you‘ll miss Colbert offering one of the driest putdowns in film history (‘and weave’) while Sturges lets us know that, au contraire Jean Renoir, the tragedy of life isn’t that everyone has his reasons, but that 'those in most need of a beating are always enormous.’ An equally profound sentiment.

DOUBLE-BILL: Sturges, after writing plays & film scripts since the ‘20s, went completely cold upon leaving Paramount for a production deal with abominable Howard Hughes who proved to be an even more immovable object than the mountain on Paramount’s logo. Sturges had one great act left in him over @ 20th/Fox where he made UNFAITHFULLY YOURS/’48.

CABIN IN THE COTTON (1932)

Issue-oriented drama from Warner Brothers. Not quite up to their later Ripped-From-The-Headlines standard, but getting there. Richard Barthelmess, whose soft, gentlemanly style was falling out of favor, the son of a Southern tenant-farmer on a large cotton estate, has worked his way up to running the accounts & company store of overbearing owner Berton Churchill. Torn between what he owes his boss for his advancement and the loyalty he owes his own people, a pull mirrored in his longing for pretty farm gal Dorothy Jordan and sexy rich girl Bette Davis, it takes a crisis (or two or three) to knock him off the fence. Director Michael Curtiz can’t establish a solid, playable tone all the way thru, some details remain very studio-bound/Early Talkie, but much is already powerful filmmaking, visually striking, especially in a swamp hunt/lynching sequence. And listen up for some striking use of diegetic (screen sourced) music. Uncommonly interesting and unexpectedly fair-handed on the labor/management/owner front, with any 1932 technical gaucheries easy to overlook. Especially when Davis is on screen, making a sexy breakthrough with Southern accent and an all-time favorite line: ‘Ah’d love to kiss ya, but ah jes’ washed my hair.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Scripter Paul Green, with B’way plays on poor black So. Carolina tenant farmers (IN ABRAHAM’S BOSOM) and on poor white No. Carolina farmers (THE FIELD GOD) gets an unusual puff credit line noting his professorship at the University of North Carolina. Talk about bona fides!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: According to Davis, Barthelmess developed a scene stealing trick of doing no acting at all in ‘full’ or ‘medium’ shots; saving it all for his close ups. That way, the editor would have little choice but to use those shots whenever possible.

THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975)

Much-liked ‘Pop’ political thriller*, and a prime example in showing how to trim a bestselling novel (originally SIX DAYS OF THE CONDOR) down to feature-length proportions. But in other ways, it hasn’t aged so well. Under Sydney Pollack’s hand, it’s carefully crafted & over-planned, missing spontaneity & the sense of style needed to let this sort of empty-calorie exercise breathe. Even when Pollack doesn’t put a foot wrong, he never ‘swings.’ But with Robert Redford, still the shining strawberry-blonde boy of yore, and Faye Dunaway, at peak goddessy gorgeousness, the film acquires the momentum of sheer glamour while murderous thugs & Max von Sydow’s suave hitman (impeccable) try eliminating Redford’s CIA research egghead. Dunaway’s really just along for the ride and for some close-up, skin-toned love-making, juxtaposed against artsy b&w photos of empty public spaces. Sheesh! Some of the cat-and-mouse moves, with Redford showing a natural talent for espionage survival tactics, are fun to watch, and there’s satisfaction in just imagining the writers working out the next narrow escape. But Pollack largely misunderstands the conventions of the form, inadvertently (?) surrendering any chance to broaden the film’s implications. Concrete when he needs to be abstract.

DOUBLE-BILL: Director Alan Pakula, a similarly dogged craftsman in search of natural style, tackled the genre (in more pretentious fashion) the year before in THE PARALLAX VIEW/’74. OR: For an early template, Hitchcock’s THE 39 STEPS/’35. (CONDOR even steals the ‘giveaway’ inappropriate shoes gimmick in STEPS, transferred from nun to postman.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *A genre to itself in the ‘70s, usually labeled ‘Paranoid Political Thrillers,’ yet not paranoid at all except in a few comic variations.

WHITE LIGHTNING (1973)

After a decade of tv, desultory film gigs, and a one-off breakthru in John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE/’72 (never so daring again), Burt Reynolds hit the commercial & character paydirt needed to ride out the ‘70s with the one-two punch of WHITE LIGHTNING and THE LONGEST YARD/’74. (In retrospect, a remarkably short heyday, SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II is out by 1980.) It was LIGHTNING that earned Burt his Good-Ol’-Boy bona fides; still does. Looking fit at 37, he gets early release from prison to dig up admissible kickback dirt on Ned Beatty’s corrupt Deep Southern Sheriff, with a side order of personal revenge for his kid brother, murdered by Beatty in a harrowing prologue. The trick of the film is in how neatly the moonshine payoff storyline skips back & forth between grim doings, horseplay and sharply run car chases. That’s second-unit director/stunt driver Hal Needham putting up some serious action chops while journeyman director Joseph Sargent does the rest in solid fashion, his general lack of flair actually helping the film by keeping things grounded in something approximating reality.* Reynolds would overdose on Southern hayseed humor & moonshine ethics by the time he made GATOR/’76, his self-indulgent/self-directed sequel. But for a few years, and even occasionally after his ‘70s run, Burt held to his sweet spot.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Shades of Robert Mitchum (see THUNDER ROAD/’58) and Marlon Brando (check out Burt’s profile shots) hover around Reynolds at his best. If only he didn’t know it.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Sober-sided director Joseph Sargent let himself go just twice, in COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT/’70 and THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE/’74.

CHANCES (1931)

WWI romantic triangle, and awfully familiar even for 1931. When playboy type Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (sans usual mustache) and brother Anthony Bushell, a shy one-true-love sort, get called to The Front right in the middle of their mother’s big War Fund Drive at her lavish estate, heightened emotions lead lovely Rose Hobart to quickly accept Bushell’s spur-of-the-moment proposal. Only problem: she’s just fallen hard for Fairbanks. If she only knew Fairbanks had finally stopped playing the field after blindly bumping into her during a London BlackOut, when he was unaware of his brother’s feelings. Naturally, The War intervenes to reset everything, but not before mix-ups, renunciation, denunciation & ultimate sacrifice/ultimate forgiveness. The British reserve is frightfully stoked, along with more verbal ‘pip-pips,’ ‘cheerios,’ ‘old chums,’ and ‘rippings’ than any single film should allow. Workhorse helmer Allan Dwan was given a surprisingly luxe production, especially on-and-off the French battlefields (trenches; troops; horses; munitions) with largely fresh shot footage and portrait-worthy lighting from lenser Ernest Haller; the big sequences exceptionally well-staged, the more intimate stuff still Early Talkies stiff.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: It’s never really been explained why Dwan, a superb technician over his 50 year career, quickly slid into B-pics after scores of major silents and strong early sound work. Perhaps Dwan wouldn’t fight for the breadth & depth some stories call for. Compare this film’s 72 minute running time with Howard Hawks’ DAWN PATROL/’30 (also with Fairbanks), at 108 minutes. Maybe Dwan's ‘go along’ attitude wound up shortchanging his films & downgrading his position.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, Hawks' DAWN PATROL. That’s the 1930 version. The 1938 version (Errol Flynn/David Niven/dir. Edmund Goulding) is also good, but less comparable.

VICTORIA & ABDUL (2017)

No doubt the law-of-diminishing-returns is coming down on these posh Anglophilic dramas on Queens Elizabeth I, Victoria & Elizabeth II. Stephen Frears/Peter Morgan/ Helen Mirren’s THE QUEEN/’06 now looking like the best of the fact-inspired bunch.* Yet here’s director Frears finding one more variation for Victoria as she runs thru another unlikely passion late in her lonely life when a young Indian clerk gets plucked from obscurity, largely for his height, and shipped off to England to present a commemorative coin to Her Majesty as part of the Golden Jubilee celebration. Finding him dashing, knowledgeable & exotic, Victoria develops a late interest in Indian culture while Abdul shows few qualms over his inappropriate ‘forward’ behavior. The first half of the film, largely comic in tone, works best (he’s really a bit of a cheeky bore, which is part of the joke), but as friendship deepens, holes in his story/presentation open him to attack from tradition-minded ministers at a jealous court, particularly Victoria’s testy son Bertie, later King Edward, and the film has trouble sustaining balance & believability. Still, much fun most of the way, with spot on perfs from . . . well, from just about everyone other than Simon Callow, an embarrassment as opera composer Giacomo Puccini.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: A last film for Tim Pigott-Smith who came to our attention in another India-themed drama, the superb Granada mini-series THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN/’84.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Yet there are on-going/acclaimed ‘Event Series’ right now on Eliz II and Victoria, while movies, for the moment, have run out of Victoria’s unlikely enthusiasms. This one, something of a follow up to MRS. BROWN/’97, and her special relation with Disraeli has been seen from the P.M.’s side, the Queen’s side, even off-to-the-side (THE MUDLARK/’50). So, what unknown enthusiasms are left to dramatize? A program of four-hand piano duets with Felix Mendelssohn?

THE SHIP FROM SHANGHAI (1930)

Leo the Lion had yet to acquire a roar in this early M-G-M Talkie (shot ‘29/released ‘30). But in other ways, this film takes chances with the new technology, shooting much of the action out at sea, not on a soundstage; part of what makes this largely inadequate drama more interesting than it has any right to be. Director Charles Brabin was on his way out of the business*, and you’ll see why in many a static two-shot. But here and there: in a well-handled sea squall or a shipboard attack from behind featuring startling camera movement & lens choice, somebody’s paying attention. (Second-unit?) The unsavory tale of class conflict & penny-ante mutiny is set up when five wealthy snobs (Brits & American) decide to ‘yacht’ their way home from Shanghai on a boat where Louis Wolheim’s nasty, insubordinate steward is barely able to be civil toward passengers or crew. Tension comes to a head when a devastating typhoon lets him take over. And from then on, it’s something between THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON and LORD OF THE FLIES as the boat drifts, provisions wane and tempers flare. Power unhinges him, or reveals character, and soon Wolheim finds he’s open to attack from both his rich ‘betters’ above and a crew of ‘lessers’ below. A delicious idea, but often painful to sit thru with that affected early Talkie style of acting (straight off the proscenium stage) as well as Wolheim’s oddly garbled British accent. Strangely compelling all the same. (Never more so than when Wolheim makes a big, unwanted forward pass at leading lady Kay Johnson.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: Wolheim, only 50 when he died the following year, figured out sound acting in his very next film, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT/’30. But this role is still worth a look as a close approximation of what he must have been like on B’way in Eugene O’Neill’s THE HAIRY APE back in 1922. (Same idea holds for Walter Huston who used his characterization in O’Neill’s DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS in the similarly plotted A HOUSE DIVIDED/’31.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Charles Brabin was one of three major names whose career never recovered from M-G-M’s aborted first try to shoot BEN-HUR in Rome, along with leading man George Walsh and Hollywood’s most powerful woman, scenarist/producer June Mathis who died (only 40) two years after M-G-M pulled the plug in Italy and brought up Fred Niblo (along with Ramon Novarro as a new Ben-Hur) to start afresh in Hollywood.

LONDON RIVER (2009)

Simple and effective, French-Algerian(?) writer/director Rachid Bouchareb downsizes from past efforts for this heartfelt look at two parents from different cultures, each searching for a missing child in the wake of a London terrorist bombing. Shot in gritty ‘80s style on 16mm stock, the film gains authenticity not only thru its physical look and out-of-the-way London locations, but also from the opposing acting techniques of Brenda Blethyn, single-mother to a missing daughter from a small isolated farm on Guernsey; and Sotigui Kouyaté’s father, an African long living & working in France with scant knowledge of his missing son. She: showing every emotion. He: showing nothing. Yet each, in their own way, totally readable. Their connection: a growing awareness that their children were involved, having an affair, living together, going to mosque for language lessons, and (horrifyingly) possible terrorists. Something neither parent dares to articulate, yet pulling them reluctantly together. (Blethyn especially bewildered and upset at what she sees as her daughter’s cultural/religious drift.) The last act holds three big revelations, but since each is a SPOILER, let’s merely note that one of the three is something of a cheat. Everything else, very fine.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A last film for actor Sotigui Kouyaté, a gaunt, but riveting screen presence who might have been the model for Alberto Giacometti’s ‘Walking Man.’

LIZZIE (1957)

Hoping to ride backdraft on Joanne Woodward’s Oscar’d THREE FACES OF EVE/’57*, this bargain basement Multiple Personality Disorder copycat opened a mere two months later. Eleanor Parker does triple-duty, flipping nimbly between subservient Elizabeth, slutty Lizzie & well-balanced Beth; Richard Boone her hypnotizing shrink; Joan Blondell an unsupportive Aunt; and actor/director Hugo Haas sympathetic ethnic neighbor/comic relief. (An eccentric minor-league director, Haas has some interesting oddities on his C.V., but this is hopelessly anodyne.) A few fun moments stick out: Lizzie’s comeback line to her aunt: ‘Look like a slut! I AM a slut!’ A bizarre ‘50s electric washing machine that might be mistaken for a small iron lung. And a young Johnny Mathis playing piano & singing (very loudly) at a dive bar, looking like a ripe, lush plum.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *THREE FACES is an obvious choice, but that film has aged something awful. Instead, Alfred Hitchcock’s much debated, psychologically simplistic/thematically compelling MARNIE/’64, which LIZZIE prefigures in many ways. Especially so in its Bad Man childhood memory climax with an actor made up to look strikingly like Kirk Douglas who Exec-Produced this under his BRYNA shingle.

PADDINGTON 2 (2017)

There’s good fun and sweet-natured sentiment in this sequel to the generally delightful PADDINGTON/’14, about a well-behaved young bear taken in by a nice upper-middleclass family in London. Though it does occasionally feel like everyone’s trying too hard. Writer/director Paul King loads up on busy design elements and overdoses on whimsy, but also finds enough goodwill to pull thru. Even when he does drop the ball, Hugh Grant shows up (in one disguise or another) as the film’s hammy villain, merging the wavelengths of Peter Sellers & Vincent Price to hilarious effect. And where MARY POPPINS (film, not book) served as the first film’s template (see below), this one goes back to GOING MY WAY, with genial bear in for genial priest, improving every life he touches and ending with a surprise visit from a much missed relative. With narrative drive supplied by Grant’s quest for a Pop-Up London Picture book that holds secret clues to a hidden fortune, a book Paddington innocently wants for his aunt. The way it all plays out is a little too much, but you won’t mind.

DOUBLE-BILL: ‘2' works much better if you’ve seen the original PADDINGTON.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Such a remarkably rich cast! It makes you wonder if young relatives begged their mom, dad, uncle or aunt to sign up for even a small role.

KIKI (1926)

Mirroring those famous Gish girls (Dorothy & Lillian), silent screen star Constance Talmadge kept largely to comedy while older sister Norma Talmadge stuck mostly to drama.* But not here. Only 32, yet starting to look matronly, Norma took a sob-sister break between GRAUSTARK/’25 and CAMILLE/’26 for this boulevard farce. And while no great shakes in the comedy department, at least she doesn’t come across as slumming. Looking a decade too old, she’s Kiki, a Parisian street hustler who worms her way into a music revue, promptly screwing up the big finale. (Funny, as she looks a bit like the real Fanny Brice and this bit is so like Barbra Streisand’s screw-up Ziegfeld production number in FUNNY GIRL/’68.) The rest of the film, kept on the move by director Clarence Brown, is a series of set pieces: Kiki makes a scene at a fancy restaurant; Kiki refuses to leave her boss’s apartment; Kiki gets drunk; Kiki pretends to be catatonic. Falling somewhere between modestly amusing and overstaying its welcome, you do get a shot at Ronald Colman in his dashing silent days as well as a very tall, rather funny rival in Gertrude Astor. Oh, and that little newsboy in the early scenes is Frankie Darro, best known for leading William Wellman’s WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD/’33.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Middle-sister Natalie Talmadge stayed mostly off-screen and married Buster Keaton. Ironically, she’s now the best known since Buster cajoled her into co-starring in his irresistible early masterpiece OUR HOSPITALITY/’23.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Mary Pickford’s last two starring vehicles were Norma Talmadge remakes: KIKI, an all-round 1931 disaster with Mary overdoing everything; then finally figuring how these newfangled Talkies might work for her in SECRETS/’33, with help from director Frank Borzage who’d done the Talmadge version in 1924. All for nought as it opened alongside FDR’s 1933 Bank Holiday. The banks survived, Mary did not.

THE PLUNDERERS (1960)

Intriguing little Western improves as it goes along . . . just not enough. In a late role, Jeff Chandler (dead next year at 42) has to come to grips with the useless right arm & defeatist attitude he got in the Civil War when four cowpokes turned cocky cowpunks show up and roll over his sad-sack little town. Turns out, the town’s ripe for terrorizing and the young drifters take advantage, demanding free booze, free room & board and free merch while all the ‘good’ citizens cower. Especially after their easygoing sheriff, pushed past his limit, pays the price. Trying to keep his distance, the violence ultimately tips Chandler into action. But how much can a crippled man do against four young bucks? One strategy remains: Divide and Conquer. Journeyman helmer Joseph Pevney & tv lenser Gene (son of Sol) Polito do some good honest work with this THE WILD ONE meets BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK mash-up*, but lack style and can’t pull off the slow-burn suspense they’re aiming at. (Where’s Don Siegel when you need him?) On a more positive side, the film fights its way past the compressed grey-scale of its early scenes and looks more Feature Film than TV Show in the second half. Plus, John Saxon, with Latino shading (convincing) & accent (less so), shows considerable screen presence & sexual threat as one of the baddies. Oddly, the film’s most despicable character, a two-faced town drunk, gets off scot-free. Maybe the budget ran out.

DOUBLE-BILL: *As mentioned above, BD@BR. (Marlon Brando’s response to ‘Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?,’ with ‘Whadda you got?’ is famous, but THE WILD ONE is one lousy pic.)

KIMI NO NA WA / YOUR NAME (2016)

Immensely popular anime (record-breaking in Japan), writer/director Makoto Shinkai’s time-shifting/ teenage transference romance (think SOMEWHERE IN TIME/'80 meets FREAKY FRIDAY) makes his earlier work look like warmup exercises. Any training wheels are off in this gamechanger about metaphysically linked High School teens, big-city boy/small-town girl, experiencing unexplained personality swaps which strike like dreams, but able to communicate back-and-forth via text messaging. Then, about halfway in, the situation really gets complicated thanks to a time continuum element. (Shinkai must like pulling the rug out in the middle of things since his last, CHILDREN WHO CHASE LOST VOICES/’11, uses a similar gambit.) A past master of landscape, architecture & transport (trains, cars & subways a specialty), Shinkai’s characterizations finally hold their own against his elegant & propulsive backgrounds. Inevitably, if inaccurately, he’s being called the new Hayao Miyazaki. Better to celebrate him finding his own voice.

DOUBLE-BILL: Within its abstract manner, the final episode of Shinkai’s multi-part 5 CENTIMETERS PER SECOND/’07 offers his early best.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Bonus points here on the super ‘Pop’ score from propulsive Japanese rock band RadWimps, sounding quite a bit like the music in DEAR EVAN HANSEN.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: NAME brought in over a third of a billion WorldWide, but only a meager 5 mill Stateside. Instead, a Hollywood remake is rumored. I’m depressed already.

CRONOS (1993)

The debut feature of writer/director Guillermo del Toro, a lyrical horror tale (what else?), is more of a visual than narrative success. It starts with an ages-ago prologue as a brilliant scientist invents a clock-like mechanical device shaped like a scarab, a gold time-piece that gives immortality. Jump ahead five centuries and this golden wind-up objet d’art shows up at an antiques shop but not its ancient instructions. They’re in the hands of a wealthy old man who’s just dying to prolong his life. Del Toro’s ace-up-his-sleeve is Ron Perlman, the old man’s put-upon nephew, sent to grab the elusive artifact. At times, the plotting & character development can feel arbitrary, and the story’s descent into vampire tropes lacks imagination. But the details . . . oh, the details, that’s where del Toro’s unique talent comes to life, turning grotesque moments into small art installations. All while moving the action along with color & panache. Think Tim Burton with action chops. And del Toro has only gotten better.

DOUBLE-BILL: Just two films on, del Toro would put all his gifts together in his first great film, THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE/’01, possibly his best.

TRIGGER, JR. (1950)

Typically modest, typically well-made (action-oriented director William Witney really knew his angles) Roy Rogers Western aimed at the Saturday matinee crowd. But what a convoluted storyline! Parking his circus at a ranch for the off-season, Rogers finds himself in the middle of a Wild West protection racket; winning a ‘killer’ horse at auction only to have it stolen by the protection gang who terrify hold-outs and murder show horses with it; helping the ranch-owner’s grandson get past a paralyzing fear of horses; staying up all night when Trigger (the Wonder Horse) is blinded in a horse attack; chasing down free-spirited Trigger, Jr. for a reel or two; all while avoiding eye contact with that curvy Dale Evans gal! Add in a trio of songs with ‘Riders of the Purple Sage,’ including one that’s background to a stampede-themed nightmare for that scaredy-cat kid. All in 68 minutes! Harmless stuff and not without period charm, but the real news is the LOOK of the thing. Most of the Roy Rogers Republic features were chopped down to fit one-hour tv slots , with trims tossed away and faded TruColor prints ditched for b&w dupes. But a new restoration, made from the original negative by Paramount and now out on Kino Lorber DVD, shows the old 2-strip TruColor of the period in all its pristine, if slightly odd, glory. Often compared to the early 2-strip TechniColor process, it processed/split colors differently and pulled what colors it could out of RED and BLUE (check out those skies!) rather than early TechniColor’s RED and GREEN. (TruColor would offer the full-color spectrum a few years later to compete with TechniColor only to be put out of business with the introduction of single-pack EastmanColor stock and its many variants.) The skin tones may lean to orange, but its fun to see how these things looked on release.

DOUBLE-BILL: For full-spectrum TruColor, try JOHNNY GUITAR/’54; looking good on OLIVE Films DVD.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: It’s likely that those big open Western skies made TruColor opt for BLUE over GREEN. But note how perfectly the process matched the Republic Pictures logo.

GOSFORD PARK (2001)

Consistently amusing, deliciously mean-spirited, Robert Altman pulled off one last comeback after a dud decade with this UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS social-strata roundelay cum murder-mystery. As if Agatha Christie penned a DOWNTON ABBEY episode, circa 1932, without conflating good manners with good behavior. Villainous little foxes in every corner, but especially UPSTAIRS. Yet it was actually written by, of all people, ABBEY’s very own Julian Fellowes a decade before the series began. (Altman’s original idea must have been RULES OF THE GAME meets MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.*) The cast is large, lux & famous, really incredibly posh, which lets us get our scorecard straight over a first half that darts all over one of those grand British ‘piles’ during a weekend shooting party. One that brings out the worst in the rich & titled, the not-so-rich & titled and a huge house staff augmented by visitor valets & lady’s maids. (Only a pair of showbiz types & a few staffers offer recognizably decent behavior.) It's after the murder, about mid-point, that the set up starts to pay off. And if Stephen Fry’s blunderbuss police investigator is a clueless parody figure, nearly all the personal mysteries, as well as the murder, are satisfyingly solved without him. With priceless perfs from Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Jeremy Northam, Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Alan Bates & Eileen Atkins, all divine; a dozen more nearly as good. You’ll need five forks (two just for the fish course), four spoons and three & a half knives to do it justice.

DOUBLE-BILL: *That’s Sidney Lumet’s 1974 MotOE not Kenneth Branagh’s unwatchable 2017 version.

PAY OR DIE (1960)

Joseph Petrosino, a real turn-of-the-last-century cop in Manhattan who led an all Italian-American police unit against the notorious ‘Black Hand’ mob, deserves better than this flatfooted bio-B-pic. A follow up to AL CAPONE/’59, director Richard Wilson rejoins lenser Lucien Ballard, repeating to good effect, and composer David Raskin (less good). Ernest Borgnine, in spite of his Italian background, makes an oddly unconvincing lead, with an indeterminate on-and-off accent as he struggles to convince shopkeepers & families to trust him rather than pay off threatening goons. The action is poorly staged, even laughable (an episode with tenor Enrico Caruso defying description), and sidebar issues (hesitant romance with local girl Zohra Lampert; stunted career advancement as Police Captain) providing little interest or relief. (Not much suspense to be relieved from.) A yawner.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The milieu would be fabulously recreated in the Little Italy sequences of GODFATHER II/’74 with Robert De Niro playing Vito Corleone as a young man poised between The Black Hand element and ineffective/corrupt police. An even more direct connection comes via actor John Marley, seen here and in the original GODFATHER/'72, both times with horses.

JULIA (1977)

When Mary McCarthy, author of THE GROUP, said of Lillian Hellman (on The Dick Cavett Show) ‘I think every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the,’ she might well have had Hellman’s late memoir PENTIMENTO in mind. The slim book, which includes the JULIA story, is one of the best things she ever wrote (including the plays), but also something of a tall tale, its veracity believably challenged. Especially so in regards to ‘Julia,’ probably based on Dr. Muriel ‘Mary’ Gardiner, still living when the book came out and with no known past or present association with Hellman. A problem for a book of personal memoirs. Less so for a ‘Based On A True Story’ film, code for largely fiction. How much Hellman’s self-serving fabulist tendencies matter, a debate best left to literary ethicists; we'll stick with ‘fact-inspired’ or ‘fact-suggested. And on those terms, this Fred Zinnemann film gets just about everything right. Vanessa Redgrave, at her most goddessy, is Julia, the WASPy rich, politically motivated life-long friend of budding playwright Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda). So when Julia goes missing in pre-WWII Berlin, Hellman tries contacting her from Paris, only to be contacted herself by members of Julia’s left-wing underground resistance group with a dangerous offer: smuggling cash across the border. A dicey assignment for a Jewish-American tourist in the late ‘30s. The film gets the look and tone almost magically right, while Zinnemann paces the edgy set pieces and character-building flashbacks like nobody’s business. Alvin Sargent’s script over-eggs Hellman’s shortcomings as Madame Spy, but then she’s so terrified at what she’s agreed to do you can just believe it. Fonda, an uneven actress, especially in prestige items (see ON GOLDEN POND/’81), is near her best here. Too bad she’s surrounded by actors with an easy emotional access that confounds her more limited talent, forcing her to work for every effect while Redgrave, Jason Robards as her partner Dashiell Hammett, Hal Holbrook & Rosemary Murphy as Alan Campbell & Dorothy Parker, Maximilian Schell in an exceptional character turn, even a debuting Meryl Streep have to be careful not to roll right over her. All given rapturous glow or suspenseful shadow by cinematographer Douglas Slocombe on some sort of all-time career high.* And Zinnemann’s patient craft, so rare in today’s studio offerings, adding to a sense of loss & melancholy reflected in the film’s final, perfectly composed tableau.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *In his charming, modest auto-bio, Zinnemann, praises Slocombe, particularly in regard to Fonda & Redgrave, noting that ‘Next to a mountain, a woman is the hardest thing to photograph.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Zinnemann’s first A-list directing gig also involved someone on the run from Nazi authorities, THE SEVENTH CROSS/’44 with Spencer Tracy as an escaped P.O.W. It’s just okay, and hard to imagine a more different sort of film. OR: The hit play Hellman works on for much of the film is THE CHILDREN’S HOUR. Filmed twice by William Wyler: as THESE THREE/’36 without its ‘daring’ lesbian angle, then ‘with’ in ‘61 under the original title.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/these-three-1936.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-childrens-hour-1961.html 

YELLOWBEARD (1983)

Even more than Westerns and Musicals, Pirate Pics (straight or parody) went down for the count sometime in the ‘70s. And stayed down till those CARIBBEAN lads revived the genre. Death blows from THE PIRATE MOVIE/’82; PIRATES/’86 and CUTTHROAT ISLAND/’95 did enough damage to sink careers as well as the films.* This one, a ‘not quite’ Monty Python take on the genre (a distinction our poster purposefully ignores) has a major-flop rep, though it did better than some, and is something of a mess, but a good-natured, often funny mess. Blame prolific tv director Mel Damski, lost at staging action or comedy, timing a gag or holding a consistent tone for a vast impressive cast (Graham Chapman, Peer Boyle, Cheech & Chong, Peter Cook, Marty Feldman, Eric Idle, Madeline Kahn, James Mason, John Cleese, many more) to play in. Happily, after a disjointed first act, the film sets to sea in search of buried treasure, forcing it to organize the scattershot jokes and splintered narrative to much better effect. And if it never really does come into focus, it does allow a shambling comic spirit to work its way thru.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Roman Polanski’s PIRATES, a financial & critical disaster of HEAVEN’S GATE/’80 proportions, is weirdly compelling once it ramps up its revenge story. A true & valuable film maudit, bleakly dark & funny, as if Samuel Beckett was gag-man on a comic pirate movie.

THE BREADWINNER (2017)

Well-intentioned, well-executed, curiously uninvolving animation about a young Afghanistan girl who disguises herself as a boy to evade Taliban restrictions on . . . well, on just about everything. The family situation is desperate: Handicapped father unjustly jailed; marriage-aged older sister, injured mother and noisome toddler, all unable to leave the apartment without male escort; cupboard growing bare; few possessions left to barter; even water requiring a trip out to the neighborhood well. A dark life with uplift confined to wondrous stories, told in cut-out picture book style, that the young girl fashions to entertain (and help control) her spirited kid brother. No wonder she ventures out ‘under cover;’ hair-cropped, renamed, free to roam. Nora Twomey, co-director of the well-reviewed, if equally underwhelming THE SECRET OF KELLS/’09*, never finds the right emotional distance to keep us watchful, informed, curious and engaged with the characters & story. You take note of the proper response to the latest family calamity, but it rarely gets under your skin. Worth a look for the handsome design & rich score (and for simple things, like the unexpectedly compelling relationships in mass between the back of a small girl & the back of a customer-turned-friend), but in general, much potential unrealized.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Tomm Moore, KELLS co-director, had more artistic & commercial success on his follow-up solo, SONG OF THE SEA/’14. OR: For something along these lines with more personal touch & daring style, Marjane Satrapi’sPERSEPOLIS/’07.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/06/song-of-sea-2014.html