SHADOW ON THE WALL (1950)

Good (almost very good) little thriller has Zachary Scott returning from a long business trip to catch his second wife cheating on him with her own sister’s fiancé. Threatened by a gun he’s only putting away, she strikes hard with a hand mirror, knocking Scott out just as that ‘wronged’ sister (Ann Sothern) comes in, grabs the gun off the floor, and accidentally fires. By the time Scott comes to, Sothern has split, his unfaithful wife lies dead on the floor, and Scott assumes he’s the murderer! Blacking out just as he shot. Yikes! Quick blink and he’s on Death Row and Sothern ain’t talking. But not so quick, turns out the crime was at least partially witnessed by Scott’s little girl from his first wife, Gigi Perreau, now hysterical, traumatized and either unable or unwilling to remember events. Enter Nancy Davis (later Nancy Davis Reagan, in one of her few good roles) as the girl’s court-appointed psychiatrist. Bonding with the child in a series of role-playing games with dolls, she starts to get curious about discrepancies in the ‘airtight case’ against Scott. But will revelation come too late to save him? Nifty ideas here, and given a kind of poetic treatment, especially in the use of an Indian doll, nicknamed Cupid for his bow & arrow, who stands in as the shadow of real murderer You Know Who. All the perfs are tip-top: Scott in a rare good guy role; Perreau a lot like the young Natalie Wood, and just as good; and Sothern, after a decade of likeable roles at M-G-M, finishing up her contract playing a cold-blooded killer. Director Pat Jackson, moving from documentaries to features, does a nice job, too. But you can’t help feeling he’s left a lot of lyric possibilities, atmosphere & suspense on the table. In a way, the film’s like one of those poetic horror pics Val Lewton made so much of over @ RKO (CAT PEOPLE/’42, et al.). So what a disappointment to see Lewton was actually working on the M-G-M lot at the time, making a forgettable, little comedy called PLEASE BELIEVE ME. (More on that one later.)

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: It’s likely someone in the front office noticed the big success of another childhood murder/trauma story in RKO’s THE WINDOW the previous year. And that someone would no doubt have been Dore Schary, just moving from head of production/producer @ RKO to similar duties @ M-G-M.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The big reveal of Agatha Christie’s 4:50 FROM PADDINGTON, one of her Miss Marple novels, is 'borrowed' for this film’s ending.

BROADWAY BABIES (1929)

Half backstage musical/half cardsharp gambling racket, this Early Talkie is all technical birth pangs & little payoff since no one’s got the goods to break thru the mechanical limitations of the early sound technology. Once popular Alice White, looking a bit like Goldie Hawn from some angles, is the B’way Babe in question, engaged to dance director Charles Delaney, and living in the same theatrical rooming house. But an arranged date with Detroit businessman Fred Kohler goes so well, the guy falls hard, offering a way out with riches and a proposal. But first, he’ll have to survive the rigged high-stakes poker scam he’s fallen into. (A flight above the game room, a xylophone player spies and taps out Morse Code. Yikes!) Director Mervyn LeRoy, in his first Talkie*, is plenty stiff with both sides of the drama, submitting to sound technicians who use a surprising amount of dubbed effects and underscoring. (At the time, sound mixing was so primitive, it makes the voices sound underwater.) Delaney, as the disappointed beau, has an intriguing unvarnished quality, but everyone else is awfully stilted, especially Ms. White. LeRoy, who’d already made three silents with her, didn’t think she could act anyway without constant detailed coaching. Now, with the addition of sound, it’s clear she also can’t sing, can’t dance: a Triple Threat.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/DOUBLE-BILL: *LeRoy’s sloppy auto-bio (TAKE ONE) misremembers a late silent with White, NAUGHTY BABY/’28, as his first Talkie. (And a Part-Talkie with White, HOT STUFF/’29, came between BABES and BABIES.) And while LeRoy improved quickly with his best work coming in the mid-30s @ Warners, White was soon demoted to supporting roles. See her at her best as a chess playing secretary in EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE/’33, made after a year's hiatus.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN (2017)

Initially welcomed with some reservations, critically and commercially, it was old-fashioned word-of-mouth that made this a considerable hit. A rare event for big budget/ mainstream fare these days, when final gross is figured to the ha’penny after opening wknd. And that’s good news. If only the film lived up to the fan enthusiasm. Dashing thru a loose suggestion of the life & times of curio impresario P. T. Barnum, Hugh Jackman sells a little humbug and lots of sincerity giving ShowBiz voice to life’s outliers & freaks. At least to those entertaining to look at. Like Walt Disney building DisneyLand so his girls can enjoy a clean Amusement Park, he upscales sinister SideShows into ‘safe’ Curio Museums. A fascinating parallel largely ignored here. Also ignored, Michelle Williams’ put-upon wife who's luckier than Zac Efron as Jackman's classy business partner, saddled with a frowned upon interracial love affair and all the worst numbers. Barnum fails briefly by going High Hat with opera star Jenny Lind; Efron fails briefly to support his lady love; Williams fails briefly trying to balance family against business. All madly dashed thru to make time for a succession of Pop power ballads from . . . well, from just about everyone. Even coloratura soprano Lind belts away like an American Idol contestant. And so much going on, even brief magical moments like bed sheets swaying with dancing lovers in a rooftop dance get lost among lesser ideas. All very Baz Luhrmann from debuting director Michael Gracey, at sea whenever the music stops. Presumably chosen so Jackman could maintain more control of a show everyone loved out of town, but not so much on B’way.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: Fate must have set this up @ 20th/Fox since Jackman & Efron are so much like the characters Tyrone Power & Don Ameche were always playing there, especially in 1938 with IN OLD CHICAGO and ALEXANDER’S RAGTIME BAND.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Of course, there already is a great P. T. Barnum musical, Cy Colman’s One-Ring wonder BARNUM. A big hit on B’way with Jim Dale in 1980; even bigger in the West End for Michael Crawford (with a reasonably adequate video made at the time). Likely too stylized for film (it’s set entirely in that One-Ring Circus), but perfect material for the LIVE TV musical spectaculars currently being done . . . perhaps with Neil Patrick Harris?

THE CASTILIAN (1963)

Frankie Avalon in THE CASTILIAN? Who could resist? And in PanaColor! A sort of low-rent EL CID (Medieval Spain/Invading Moors), released just about the time that Charlton Heston/ Anthony Mann smash would have been winding up its commercial run. Alas, the Avalon billing belies his modest position as lute strumming troubadour/ narrator. And PanaColor? No more than a short-lived printing companion to EastmanColor. Still, in a largely Spanish production (for Warners release) you also get growly Broderick Crawford (if only for a reel) as the crude Kingly father of our hero’s inamorata, and Cesar Romero as best pal/fighting sidekick. Romero’s got a real part, and gives it all he’s got, including a glorious white beard. But mostly we get Espartaco Santoni as true historic figure Fernán González trying to unite the three surviving major Spanish Kingdoms of the North in a fight against the on-rushing Moors, along with a pair of real international stars leading one of the three kingdoms: Alida Valli (with her own dubbed voice) and Fernando Rey (with someone else’s). The big production puts up the occasional pretty vista out in the country plains, but the acting leaves much to be desired (blame director Javier Setó) while battle scenes waste lots of men & horses (blame action director Al Wyatt). One funny bit involves a pig stampede terrifying the Moors, but that’s about it for cleverness. Still, fun to think of Frankie Avalon squeezing this in between OPERATION BIKINI and BEACH PARTY. And while he doesn’t sport bathing trunks, a lot of the costumes look suspiciously like bathrobes & pajamas.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Stick with EL CID, a similar historical tale that looks more impressive than ever.

SCARLET PAGES (1930)

With dozens of B’way credits over three decades (including a two month run in this), and a score of silents from 1917 to 1925 (all lost?*), 'distinguished' stage star Elsie Ferguson, now a glamorous 57, returned to the screen for a One-And-Done try at the Talkies. Speaking in the cultured tones of a wised-up lady of accomplishment, she’s a defense attorney with a past (out-of-wedlock daughter given up for adoption 20 years ago), who takes on a murder case her District Attorney boyfriend (John Halliday) warns her against. It’s Marian Nixon, a showgirl who admits to the murder of her own father but won’t tell anyone why. Seems he was pimping her to a mob guy and possibly abusing her himself! But then, he wasn’t her real father; she’s an adopted orphan: father unknown/mother . . . ???? Any guesses? Might 'Mom' be a certain distinguished defense attorney who only discovers the personal connection while trying the case? Yikes! Fortunately, courtroom drama takes well to the restrictions of Early Talkie film technique/technology, and there’s some interest here simply as documentation of grand stage manners from a bygone era. (Specifically, the Morosco Theatre, circa 1929.) If only the play were a bit better! They never do come up with much of reason for introducing the real mother’s name. But with MADAME X an Early Talkie smash for Ruth Chatterton at M-G-M the year before, Warners must have thought reversing that film's formula a sure thing.

DOUBLE-BILL: *A Pipe Dream double-bill as Ferguson, who worked with top directors like George Fitzmaurice, Marshall Neilan & John Robertson was also a favorite leading lady for Maurice Tourneur, four films including a 1918 version of Ibsen’s A DOLL’S HOUSE, all lost.

WHITE WITCH DOCTOR (1953)

As major films like AFRICAN QUEEN/’51 and MOGAMBO/’53 were starting to send big stars like Bogart, Hepburn, Gable, Gardner & Kelly to Africa for at least some exterior shooting, this 20th/Fox production stays old-school with no one but the second-unit giving up the comforts of Hollywood backlots. It’s all process shots & soundstage mockups for Susan Hayward & Robert Mitchum, both at their most attractive, as missionary nurse and fortune hunter, with director Henry Hathaway shooting as if nothing other than TechniColor had changed in either film technique or “Dark Continent’ racial attitudes since TRADER HORN back in 1931. And what an unpromising start as Mitchum loads up caged wild animals to ship off to zoos only to have a man-in-a-gorilla-suit break free and cause havoc. Things can’t help but improve after that! So too a print with color registration problems that clear up starting at reel four. By then, our wary stars are warming up to each other as Mitchum rethinks his fortune-hunting partnership with crude Walter Slezak. Meanwhile, Hayward is taking charge of her clinic and saving Africans left & right, including a young native prince from an isolated tribe of savages. (Savage for a reason, mind you.) Standard doings, right down to the noble black guide who takes a fall for Bwana Mitchum. It works, after a fashion, thanks to good story structure that deftly ties all the narrative lines together, pulling you along in spite of all reasonable objections.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: The main rationale for watching, or rather listening, is the film’s phenomenal Bernard Herrmann score, best heard on it own in this superb suite from a 1970s recording, one of a series of Classic Film scores conducted by Charles Gerhardt for RCA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAh_uQcyJf8

DOUBLE-BILL: KING SOLOMON’S MINES/’50 probably deserves credit (if that’s the word) for restarting the fad for glossy, well-produced African adventure films.

TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING (1977)

Thought provoking military thriller, if not in the way intended. Instead, provoking thoughts on how so many Hollywood pros signed up for this glossy dud. Led by ex Air Force General Burt Lancaster, a trio of escaped prisoners (Burt's in on a trumped up murder charge) take over a nuclear ballistic missile launch silo demanding money and transport to freedom, along with the public exposure of a secret war policy manifesto explaining modern war actions as little more than pissing contests for the superpowers. The first half of the film is inexplicably poor, unable to convince on any level. Things perk up toward the middle as director Robert Aldrich latches onto a two-reel action set piece involving an attempt to flush out the hostage takers in classic caper style. But that just sends us back to square one as a big name cast of middle-aged depleted testosterone types argue over the fate of the world in front of President Charles Durning and we wait for the next Coca-Cola product placement. Somehow, in the midst of all this palaver, Melvyn Douglas, old, frail, reduced to essentials & spirit, makes a little acting miracle as a Presidential advisor.  But hardly enough to make up for one of Burt Young’s vocally strangled signature simpletons.  And it's two & a half hours before the thuddingly obvious secret comes out.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Lancaster shows his brass ass megalomania to far greater effect in the military coup thriller SEVEN DAYS IN MAY/’64.

THE GAY BRIDE (1934)

No forgotten classic, but plenty fast & plenty funny, this ‘crazy comedy’ delivers. Jack Conway, M-G-M’s peppiest contract megger, wasn’t one to linger, a style that works well for Sam & Bella Spewack’s script about Gold-Digging showgirl Carole Lombard, a gorgeous gal who ain’t particular about whom she marries, long as he’s got the funds. Currently, that description fits bootlegging racketeer Nat Pendleton, the mug carrying a torch. Just make sure the will is in order before the honeymoon. After that, let the actuary tables that their toll. And, should the worst happen, Lombard’s got a couple of his pals waiting ‘on deck.’ That’s where bodyguard Chester Morris comes in. Staying firmly out of the racket, he does a job of protection, but no more; saving up to buy a little home & garage setup in Jersey. If only Lombard had something other than dollar signs in her eyes, they might make a break of it together. The story runs pretty loose and hardly adds up, but the chemistry between the leads is simply terrific. Now little remembered, Morris was a pip in the right part, and these two are Art Deco dreams in looks and rhythm, especially when they put their pusses together in a two-shot. With nice comic assists from all sides, this is a modest, unexpected treat.

DOUBLE-BILL: Morris & Conway shine even brighter alongside Jean Harlow in Anita Loos’ irresistibly trashy, funny RED-HEADED WOMAN/’32, a tougher, better organized Pre-Code classic.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Ironically, Morris’s spot as M-G-M’s ‘go-to’ guy for action, glamor & comedy was in the process of being usurped on the one side by Clark Gable (Lombard’s future husband) and by the 1934 addition of William Powell (Lombard’s ex).

THE DEATH OF STALIN (2017)

Mostly superb, history as seen thru a comic ‘dribble’ glass darkly, and closer to the facts than many a ‘straight’ Based-On-A-True-Story period piece.* Riffing off comic book accounts by Fabien Nury & Thierry Robin, writer/director Armando Iannucci moves past the political shenanigans of his VEEP series to bring off a survival-of-the-fittest roundelay as danced by the monstrous circle of terrified Stalin enablers played in the wake of the old man’s botched death throes, a backstabbing struggle to coalesce on the right strongman to fill Uncle Joe’s shoes. By turns appalling & hilarious with proscribed officials returning to prominence, would-be mourners massacred after a failure to communicate and even the occasional ‘dead’ man awakes. Wonderfully orchestrated by Iannucci who gets great work from his all-star cast of character actors (Steve Busemi’s Khrushchev & Jason Isaac’s Field Marshall Zhukov standouts). Not without faults, the tone proves difficult to maintain and there’s Iannucci’s over-reliance on quick comic reversals, they feel like leftover comic tics from VEEP or his earlier IN THE LOOP/’09. But make no mistake, this is a major voice speaking up and visually a great leap forward; technically very adept with a big assist from Zac Nicholson’s expert digital lensing. Director & cinematographer currently prepping a new DAVID COPPERFIELD feature which will hopefully enliven & respect the material with similar smarts, zest & rudeness. (Another 'R'-rated Family Friendly label; 13 and up, not the kiddies.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Nice to see Michael Palin here as Vyacheslav Molotov (of the eponymous ‘cocktails,’ thrown at him, BTW), hardy supporter & survivor of both the Russian Revolution and of Stalin (just barely). Palin’s great Monty Python pic, LIFE OF BRIAN/’79, as good a match as any for this film’s unusual tone.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Any World History teachers out there? Here’s a surprisingly legit way to goose interest!

THE SECRET HEART (1946)

Ten years after her husband’s suicide left a pile of debt, two step-kids to raise and loads of personal guilt (intimations on a lack of intimacy poking thru Production Code euphemisms), Claudette Colbert is finally starting to pick up the pieces for a new life & an old romance. But first, she’ll have to solve the psychological mess of emotionally stunted step-daughter June Allyson*, a sheltered girl who idolizes a false image of her very troubled father. Hey!, not a bad set up for one of those psychological thrillers so popular in the mid-‘40s. Too bad the film’s such a dog. Not a believable moment in here as interventionist shrink Lionel Barrymore tells Claudette how to get Allyson away from her late Dad’s piano-mania (for Liszt, Chopin & Debussy) and into the game of life. A strategy that backfires when the teenager ignores suitable suitor Marshall Thompson and imagines life with Pop’s old pal Walter Pidgeon who’s already got his eye on Claudette. Everyone’s has to go brain-dead to make this one work, slumbering in the dull, comfy M-G-M house-style favored by vet staff director Robert Z. Leonard.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Flunking her first meaty dramatic role, Allyson seems less emotionally disturbed basket-case than spoiled/self-centered brat.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Switch to Colbert in another 1946 film, torn between Orson Welles’ Old World scientist and George Brent’s New World entrepreneur, in the gobsmacking melodrama of Irving Pichel’s irresistible TOMORROW IS FOREVER. Welles’ biggest hit as an actor in his (anti)glamor-boy Hollywood days. OR: For more classical piano with suicide & psychology, try James Mason & Ann Todd in THE SEVENTH VEIL/’45, an obvious influence here.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: There must have been a naughty boy in the M-G-M music department as the Chopin Nocturne played by Allyson (Op. 27, no. 2 in D-flat) is the one that famously ends with a musical representation of the post-coital sighs of Chopin’s lover, authoress George Elliot. (That’s one way to get around the old Hollywood Production Code.) Here’s Arthur Rubinstein at 75 in a rare clip from Moscow/1964; the sound crumbly, the performance incandescent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7f6Bs3TPYQ

THE STEEL TRAP (1952)

Writer/director Andrew L. Stone, who favored blunt, fat-free iterations of various suspense genres, disturbs even-keeled bank exec Joseph Cotten with the mother-of-all MidLife crises in this inside-job bank robbery thriller. Smothering us with explanatory voice-over narration, Cotten fills in his own backstory of an ordinary life upturned by a sudden urge to lift a million bucks from the bank’s vault then dash to Brazil, a country without an extradition treaty, with loyal, unknowing wife Teresa Wright. In Stone’s script, only the robbery has been thought thru, the getaway not so much ill-planned as unplanned, ad-libbed on the run in a series of increasingly OTT nail-biting beat-the-clock races. Too many!; they start cancelling each other out before a sudden course reversal offers an ending too neat, too tidy & too unbelievable. So much so, it apparently dumbfounded the old Hollywood Production Code office into inaction. And how weird to see Wright & Cotten, a disturbingly close niece & uncle in SHADOW OF A DOUBT/’43, now a disturbingly close married couple. (They also brought along SHADOW’s composer, Dmitri Tiomkin, to try and rattle our nerves.)

DOUBLE-BILL: There’s usually something a little ‘off’ (in a good way) in Stone’s work, an effective handmade quality a bit outside the Hollywood norm. When it’s working, as in THE DECKS RAN RED/’58, it shows him at his best. OR: Watch Cotten play hardball suspense and hit one out of the park in his very next pic, Henry Hathaway’s deliriously TechniColored NIAGARA/’53, co-starring Marilyn Monroe and Jean Peters.

KOHAYAGAWA-KE NO AKI / THE END OF SUMMER (1961)

Master filmmaker Yasujirô Ozu stays true to form in his penultimate film, charting changes in Japanese culture thru generational clash as a widower’s health declines along with the finances of his small, independent ‘sake’ brewery. And he does so right from the opening shot, a nighttime landscape of neon signs in downtown Osaka with one prominently reading NEW JAPAN. Brave New World meets tradition, complicated here by the widower’s three daughters, two being nudged toward marriage while Father renews an old relationship with a mistress. A revived friendship frowned upon by another of his daughters, but encouraged by the grown daughter of the mistress. She’s careful to always call him ‘Father’ (which he might well be) and hint at getting a mink stole from 'Dad' before heading out with one of her tall, blonde American suitors. Perfectly paced, beautifully composed, the film is, perhaps, less essential then some Ozu, but who would want to deny themselves the tragicomic pleasures & character-laced dramatic roundabouts in Ozu’s uniquely endearing filmmaking quirks, brimming with unexpected emotion?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: As Charles Schulz liked to put it: A cartoonist is someone who has to draw the same thing day after day without repeating himself. He was, of course, talking about PEANUTS, but the sentiment might well apply to the recurring patterns & themes (visual & dramatic) of Ozu’s post-war output.

FORGOTTEN WOMEN (1931)

First, some clarification.  This impressively odd All-Gal WWI story was originally called THE MAD PARADE, but had its title changed to FORGOTTEN WOMEN on re-release.  An unrelated 1931 film, a Hollywood backstager directed by Richard Thorpe before his M-G-M days, also was titled FORGOTTEN WOMEN.  Then yet another unrelated FORGOTTEN WOMEN (now lost?) appeared in 1949, directed by William Beaudine; the guy who directed this film!  Got that?  By then, Beaudine had become a real Hollywood Hack, working his way thru more than 350 titles.  Better things early on, including two fine late silents for Mary Pickford, LITTLE ANNIE ROONIE/’25 (with William Haines) and Mary's stunning childhood terrors masterpiece, SPARROWS/’26.  This Early Talkie, a low-budget indie, originally distributed by Paramount, hardly matches the Pickford films, but from what you can make out in the rare print sourced by Alpha Video, it’s a substantial, and substantially weird, achievement.  With an all-female cast, like George Cukor’s THE WOMEN/’39 men are a main topic, but never fully seen, it follows the follies & jealousies of eight canteen service women/nurses working near The Western Front. Lots of doughnuts, care packages, coffee & bandages.  On a dangerous motor van run to pick up injured soldiers, they wind up driving into No-Man’s-Land during a fierce bombardment.  Lost and under attack, they hide in bunkers & a blasted shelter.  With pressure from constant attacks bringing out all the panic & conflicts that have been building up, something's gotta give before the women pick lots on a suicide run to get help..  It’s really less like THE WOMEN, than JOURNEY’S END meets STAGE DOOR, with the best roles going to fading silent star Evelyn Brent, surprisingly vivid & forceful as a brave, hardened nurse, and to Irene Rich as Den Mother.  But all eight have their moments (when you can make out Who’s Who between a subfusc print and about ten minutes of lost footage).  Beaudine does pretty well with a mix of miniatures & fully-staged action, and improves in handling the interiors as the film progresses and space starts closing in on his cast.  Tough and fascinating, if hardly a complete success, it also tilts very Pre-Code racy.  Something which may explain some narrative lacunae in the battered print, probably from a trimmed Production Code Approved re-release.

DOUBLE-BILL:  For a WWII look at a similar group of service women, try Mark Sandrich’s SO PROUDLY WE HAIL!/’43 with Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard & Veronica Lake.

A FEVER IN THE BLOOD (1961)

Penultimate feature from vet megger Vincent Sherman (a top second-rater*, mostly @ Warners in the ‘40s & ‘50s; tv after this), it’s a big, dopey cut-throat political drama, an overheated melodrama that feels like it was downsized from A-list to B somewhere along the way. (Easy to imagine it being ‘pitched’ with a starrier cast and glitzier production values.) Perhaps they were hoping to latch on to the big success Gore Vidal was currently having on B’way with THE BEST MAN (eventually done in ‘64 for United Artists), but with Presidential Convention skullduggery demoted to Machiavellian machinations for the Governorship of some unnamed MidWest state. Vying for the nomination, conniving Senator Don Ameche, corrupt District Attorney Jack Kelly and honest-to-a-fault Judge Efrem Zimbalist Jr. The gimmick is that everything turns on a largely unrelated murder case involving the nephew of current retiring Governor Herbert Marshall. It barely ties in with the campaign, but there’s more juicy interest away from the courtroom as Angie Dickinson pines for Judge Zimbalist over her Senator husband (Ameche) and with old pro politicos Jesse White & Carroll O’Connor dispensing political wisdom no one pays any attention to. It gets pretty outrageous at times (to welcome effect!, they even run over a kid to move the plot along), and it’s always nice to bump into Ray Danton, here doing what he can as defense attorney. But generally, in front & behind the camera, everyone‘s just going thru the motions on a film that hadn’t a chance.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned above, Gore Vidal’s THE BEST MAN, a mediocre play that’s proved unexpectedly sturdy in revival. The 1964 film, very square, very watchable. OR: *See Sherman up his game with a fine Daniel Fuchs/Peter Viertel script on THE HARD WAY/’43, a tough as nails backstage meller with great perfs from Ida Lupino, Dennis Morgan, Joan Leslie & Jack Carson.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON (1931)

Based on his own historical bio-play, it’s another Great Man Portrait from that master of not-much-disguise George Arliss, who knew perfectly well he was a wizened 63 playing a 30-something Hamilton as George Washington’s Sec. of Treasury. (Though what an exceptional Washington from character actor Alan Mowbray!) Surely the only Hamilton dramatization to avoid even mentioning Aaron Burr, it’s a tale of marital infidelity vs. National Bill of Financial Unity. No duel; no gunplay; no mention of illegitimacy; instead, Hamilton is tempted while his wife is away and falls into a sexual trap only to find his blackmail payoffs to the lady-in-question being used to smear his political motives. Will he own up to his wife for the good of the country? Not a bad little plot, but the dramaturgy is turgid, and made worse by having everyone add a gay little laugh at the end of every other line. Presumably a holdover from the stage which might work better had any of the lines a whiff of wit to them. Dreary as the dialogue is, the acting is both spirited and fun in its stagy manner, and John Aldolfi (director of most Arliss projects @ Warners before dying young in 1933 just as Arliss was heading over to 20th CENTURY) gets some handsome production values to play around with. Arliss may seem an unlikely star, a posh snob-appeal sort, but was really quite popular in his day.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The young wife who leads Hamilton astray (he can’t resist climbing the stairs to fetch a coat he let her borrow . . . FADE OUT), is played by June Collyer, but was done on B’way by doomed, legendary Jeanne Eagles. A breakthrough perf for her in 1917 thanks to Arliss who did much the same for a struggling Bette Davis in his very next film, THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD/’32. How fitting that Eagles’ last two films, before her death from drug addiction in 1929, would both become famous Bette Davis vehicles: THE LETTER (filmed by Bette in ‘40) and JEALOUSY, retitled DECEPTION for Davis in 1946.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In the days of Louis XIV, it was customary for a Kingly Emissary of some sort to appear at a play’s finale to straighten everything out for a fitting (usually happy) end. And the wittiest thing in this generally stiff play (it’s also the most wildly inappropriate) uses President Washington right at the end for a similar coup de théâtre.

CONTEST: *Indeed, Arliss’s popularity in a certain play lives on in a famous salad dressing, created for his enjoyment during a stop in San Francisco. Name the play & the dressing to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice. Hint: not Ranch, not Blue Cheese.

THE GREEN BERETS (1968)

You’d imagine that 50 years after this film came out (and 45 since the U.S. pull out opened a long, winding, ironic path to winning over Vietnamese Hearts & Minds thru the pocketbook) some historical interest would have developed on John Wayne’s contentious pro-military look at the war.  But either Vietnam remains too complicated, or the film is too poorly made, for it to have accrues insight or value.  For all the unique elements & problems of the ‘conflict,’ this film might be re-fighting some WWII battle on locations in William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, led by weighty senior citizen  officers.  Wayne shares directing credit with Ray Kellogg, a second-unit man who presumably handled action & ordnance; and none too well.  A downed helicopter sequence with Wayne is really something awful.  The film’s standout element a gloating display of sadistic killings, surprisingly on both sides.  As a leftie newsman who ‘gets religion’ watching battles up-close, David Janssen seems constipated, he usually did in features, while the always pleasant Jim Hutton at least makes a likable fellow of his mash-up character, it’s Ensign Pulver requisition whiz meets Audie Murphy combat hero.  Our plot: Build BaseCamp; Lose BaseCamp to VietCong; Recapture BaseCamp from Vietcong.  And if you thought they’d forget to add in a baleful orphan boy or a soldier who dies on his final day, then perhaps you also won’t notice them splicing on a needless fourth act combo with Mata Hari, The Dirty Dozen & Bridge on the River Kwai.  (No kidding: Mata Hari, Dirty Dozen and BotRK!  Sheesh.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The big pro-military film of 1968, which ends with a proud son enlisting for an unmentioned Vietnam, was the ‘blended’ family comedy YOURS, MINE AND OURS, starring the very liberal Henry Fonda alongside the somewhat liberal Lucille Ball. And while BERETS did well enough, YOURS did 150% of this film’s take.

LINK: The sing-song lyrics of the title song (by GREEN BERETS novelist Robin Moore) are classic Patriotic Drivel and demand hearing even if you never get to (or thru) the pic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5WJJVSE_BE

THE DAWN PATROL (1930)

Though WWI ended before Howard Hawks (stuck in Texas as an Army Flight Instructor*) made it ‘Over There’, he still managed to lose plenty of aviator pals in the Post-War years. Including kid brother (and fellow director) Kenneth, dead in a plane crash filming SUCH MEN ARE DANGEROUS just as DAWN started pre-production. A personal tragedy that finds its parallel in this Early Talkie, Hawks’ first sound film. Hard to imagine any Hollywood director other than WWI pilot William Wellman better informed to handle the gallantry & fatalism of this story’s company of wartime flyers; and the awful duties of command in having to follow impossible orders sending young men to pointless death, then live with the consequences & casualties. Some of the acting looks a bit stiff now, though pretty advanced for the period, and with a gain in rawness & verisimilitude missing from Edmund Goulding’s far smoother 1938 remake. In 1930, it’s Richard Barthelmess (his most dynamic sound perf); Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (with a star-making killer smile); Neil Hamilton (stuck with philosophical verbiage). 1938 brought in Errol Flynn; David Niven & Basil Rathbone. (See below.) Viewed with Early Talkie blinders in place, it’s a remarkable sound debut for Hawks; with superb action sequences and thematically, what with group sacrifice for a common cause & tough/tender male bonding (watch Barthelmess gently touch the sleeping Fairbank’s hair before a flight), hopelessly Hawksian.

DOUBLE-BILL: In production since 1927 (and reshot-for-sound), Howard Hughes raced to get HELL’S ANGLES, his own WWI Fly Boy meller, into theaters first. And while he did briefly beat DAWN, he soon pulled it back for re-editing. Eventually, both films ran in theaters against each other, and both did well, though HELL’S cost too much to ever earn out. Up in the sky, HELL’S tops DAWN, though each has plenty of spectacular (and mostly real) airborne action, but DAWN sweeps the board on the ground, and generally holds up far better.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Look for a great unedited shot, taken from the back as one of these prop planes takes off, from revved-up to airborne, to see just how fast these ‘kites-with-engines’ could take off. Less than ten seconds. Modern audiences sometimes giggle at such phony-looking 'special effects,' unaware they’re watching a real thing.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Even Hawks, never one to let truth get in the way of a good story, might have blanched seeing his war record expanded on IMDb.com which has him flying missions in Europe as part of the famous Lafayette Escadrille. (Were they thinking of director ‘Wild’ Bill Wellman?) But then, this mini-bio also gives him credit for making a star of John Wayne in RED RIVER/’48 over John Ford’s STAGECOACH/’39, blithely ignoring a decade of starring pics in between, and then goes on to credit Hawks with directing the John Ford Cavalry Trilogy of FORT APACHE/’48 (filmed after RED RIVER, released before); SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON/’49 and RIO GRANDE/’50.

SHOSHUN / EARLY SPRING (1956)

Yasujirô Ozu’s breakout film, TOKYO STORY, only reached the international circuit after this film’s release. An unusually long three-year wait between films, apparently the result of a canceled project. (Previously, only WWII kept Ozu away from regular releases.) Something happened; but what? A career/confidence crisis after a masterpiece? Whatever it was, this film, about a new dissatisfied generation of post-war 30-somethings, ‘salary men’ at large companies, is more deliberately paced, and has an exceptionally melancholy tone. But once it comes to the boil, the story generates considerable interest & deeply felt emotion. At the center is a married couple, well-matched, but nearly oblivious to each other after about eight years and the death of their only child four years ago. It’s left the husband susceptible to an office flirtation at his serviceable, if slightly deadening clerical job, and leads to a quickly jettisoned affair. SHE taking it far more seriously than HE. Perhaps more important is the effect on his wife, just as a job opportunity comes up for the husband that would move them away from Tokyo. Ozu stirs in about a half dozen side stories on the way, all of uncommon interest, all involving in their understated fashion as played out in the perfect compositions of his equally understated film technique. Observation by a master, lightened with touching and funny elements of the human comedy. Not perhaps the best starting point for Ozu, but still unmissable.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Out on a Criterion series of ‘Late Ozu,’ the sourced print looks somewhat washed out in the early going, but improves as it goes along.

EL VERDUGO / THE EXECUTIONER (1963)

Luis Garcia Berlanga’s much-admired, even revered Franco-era film about an undertaker who marries an executioner’s daughter (then fights against taking over the 'family franchise' which he needs to keep his new government-sponsored apartment!) has the shape of dark, bitter comedy, but not the spirit. It’s critical rep won on intentions. Playing like an off-shoot of the Italian Commedia All’Italiana movement, and no wonder with Nino Manfredi in the lead*; Ennio Flaiano on script; Tonino Delli Colli lensing; perhaps the prestige of its Italian contingent helped it past Franco’s censors. Strongly influenced, if inferior to both Alberto Lattuada’s MAFIOSO/’62 (with Alberto Sordi) and Pietro Germi’s DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE/’61 (with Marcello Mastroianni), it meets those classics on equal footing only near the end, in a magnificent example of mise-en-scène, as Berlanga stages a doubled-‘Last Mile’ walk for both the condemned prisoner about to be garroted (a particularly nasty ‘hands-on’ form of execution) and for new executioner Manfredi who feels just as condemned. If only more functioned on this level, the film might live up to its bleak, comic reputation.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE and MAFIOSO. (*Few of Manfredi’s 100+ titles came Stateside, his best known, BREAD AND CHOCOLATE/’74, all wet. Instead, from the same year, Ettore Scola’s fine ensemble dramedy charting the lives of a group of friends over the post-war decades in WE ALL LOVED EACH OTHER SO MUCH.

THE GREAT AMERICAN PASTIME (1956)

Attempt to follow-up THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH/’55 with another leading man role for Tom Ewell doesn’t come off, doesn’t even try. Ewell was probably too eccentrically sardonic to carry a film anyway (his B’way & Hollywood success with ITCH something of a fluke*), but it’s hard to see this minor piffle about a lawyer who manages a suburban Little League team over the summer making much of a mark with anyone. The kids are pleasant enough, son Rudy Lee, who winds up playing on an opposing team, really quite good. And it’s a kick to see rail-thin 25-yr-old Dean Jones in his first year in film (he’s the coach). But there’s little spark or originality here as the boys’ parents bitch about field positions, strategy & losses. Plus single mom Ann Miller who makes Ewell’s wife Anne Francis jealous. Eventually, Ewell wins 'the big game' by letting the kids have fun out there. Piffle. With tv director Herman Hoffman (using Vincente Minnelli’s FATHER OF THE BRIDE/’50 as a loose template) unable to work up the shots needed to make sense of the action on field. (There is one nice over-head gag shot involving a pop fly . . . ONE.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The screenplay, from comic novelist Nathaniel Benchley (son Peter of JAWS fame), might have been better served as one of the dozens of wry one-reel shorts his dad, Robert Benchley, made on the trials of modern life in the ‘30s and ‘40s. And would have saved about 80 minutes.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *While Ewell soon reverted to supporting roles, the even more eccentrically sardonic Walter Matthau showed how to pull this sort of thing off in THE BAD NEWS BEARS/’76. But then, Matthau, who took a similar B’way-to-Hollywood path to leading man status with Neil Simon’s THE ODD COUPLE/’68, had a touch of empathetic genius in his acting.

GUILTY HANDS (1931)

After a two-year shot at directing, Lionel Barrymore gave in to the inevitable, winning an Academy Award playing a defense attorney whose headstrong daughter Norma Shearer falls for his most dangerous client, mob man Clark Gable in A FREE SOUL/’31. (O. J. Simpson’s infamous defense about those ill-fitting ‘gloves’ comes straight out of this film . . . but with a hat!) A huge triumph not repeated in this copycat follow up. Here, Barrymore’s a District Attorney with a headstrong daughter engaged to sleazy client Alan Mowbray, a womanizing sadist Barrymore says he’d kill before letting a marriage take place. And with the creep’s mistress (Kay Francis) one of the many guests on his island retreat for the wedding, he’s got a perfect candidate to take the fall as murderer. Director Woody Van Dyke, in early Talkie mode here, tosses up the occasional startling camera move as cover, but its mostly stiff & stagy, a Dark Old House/Murder Mystery filmed like a play. (Even using old-fashioned theatrical machinery for thunder & lightning effects.) Early on, Kay Francis shows a bit of modern glam & sex appeal, Paramount style (her home studio at the time), but it doesn’t last. Everything creaks, even for 1931, including a corny twist-ending to settle all scores.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: As mentioned above, A FREE SOUL.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/free-soul-1931.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The film does show a side of Lionel that’s a bit like his glamorous kid brother John. A spark usurped next year by Jack when he came over and joined Lionel @ M-G-M.

CONTEST: What surprising connection could there be between this film & a certain Astaire/Rogers’ musical? Name the film & the specific connection to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice.

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (2017)

Writer/director (and acclaimed playwright) Martin McDonagh’s well-received comic-singed sardonic drama about a mother’s search for justice after her daughter’s rape & murder, piles on too many unintended consequences, driven less by character or plot than by contrivance. Anything goes, as long as McDonagh finds an opening to the next got’cha plot pivot.  'Didn’t see that coming’ as dramatic self-justification. In a less naturalistic treatment, it’s so cleverly worked out (a cross between Coen Bros. sensibility and THE USUAL SUSPECTS) that it just might have worked. Turnaround with every new piece of info a favored structural device for Asghar (A SEPARATION) Farhadi; perhaps in the stylistically informed manner Todd Haynes gives to classic ‘50s Douglas Sirk melodrama. But here, unadorned and difficult to buy into.*  Frances McDormand is the wounded mother, inexplicably dour even before the tragedy, a revenge-mad harpy who advertises her pain, shaming the police on the eponymous billboards for their lack of action on the unsolved case. The twist is she’s nearly as wrong as she is right about her major antagonists: Woody Harrelson’s good-natured police chief; violent off-kilter cop Sam Rockwell; even philandering ex-husband John Hawkes. Fun in a sick sort of way, but not really convincing; as if the action were set in the wrong country. Perhaps McDonagh needs a home field advantage; not Ireland, the stage.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *In a film like THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST/'02, Aki Kaurismäki effortlessly gets the tone McDonagh is hunting for.

THREE DARING DAUGHTERS (1948)

After two decades, including a six-year wartime layoff, motherhood came to fluttery soprano ingenue Jeanette MacDonald. Three times! Teenage girls, all fluttery sopranos, especially eldest Jane Powell, and all raised to believe that Mom’s ex, a skunk who went south, never to return, is really a swell guy who’s always loved them. So when mom comes home from a vacation/rest-cure secretly married to pianist José Iturbi, the reception is chilly. Can this marriage be saved . . . or even announced? Can the family be saved? Can anyone hold intonation above the staff? Of course, it’s just an excuse for a musical potpourri of middlebrow Pop & Classical ‘Pops’ excerpts in the brain-dead manner of family-friendly producer Joe Pasternak who had a real knack for this tripe. Director Fred Wilcox no more than a functionary. But worth Fast-Fowarding thru some screechy coloratura for the goofy charm of José, and sister Amparo, in a wild two-piano, orchestral arrangement (with guitar & chorus!) of Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance; and later, an even weirder arrangement, with harmonica whiz Larry Adler fronting, on George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody #1. Who did these crazy charts? Music director George Stoll? Iturbi? Adler? Whoever it is, they could justify an even more ridiculous movie.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Powell, who somehow always looks just out-of-focus, made her bones co-starring with Fred Astaire in ROYAL WEDDING/’51 and all those In-Laws in SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS/’54. But with musicals on their way out, she got one decade to MacDonald’s two.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: M-G-M found lots of specialty spots for classical musicians like José Iturbi. But it’s rare to find them playing romantic lead as fictionalized versions of themselves! Pirandello might have thought it up. (Violin great Jascha Heifetz played a fictional character under his own name in THEY SHALL HAVE MUSIC/’39, but not the romantic lead!)

BEAT THE DEVIL (1953)

With help from Truman Capote’s on-the-set rewrites, John Huston made a ‘Shaggy Dog’ story out of what presumably started as a ‘straight’ international caper pic. (Note clueless poster.)  It’s less parody than slightly mad variant; tremendously entertaining, with the sort of laughs that bubble up days after watching. In a small Italian coastal town, Humphrey Bogart and wife Gina Lollobrigida meet up with a quartet of scoundrelly con men, all on their way to hoodwink a Central African country out of uranium deposits & rights. Or some such thing, the film isn’t too particular about what exactly is going on. But since the quartet includes Robert Morley & Peter Lorre, you have a pretty good idea of where you stand on the integrity front. Accompanying them on this fortune hunt, though unsure why or what it’s all about, are married twits . . . I mean, married Brits Edward Underdown and Jennifer Jones, his on-the-prowl/fantasist wife (commoners, but very La-Di-Da). Sporting a blonde wig & an unplaceable English accent, Jones seems unaware she’s in a comedy, which makes her all the funnier. Everyone else expert players, having a grand time and, for a change, passing on the feel-good vibrations though it took audiences decades to catch on.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The film’s fallen into Public Domain and dreary copies abound. But Film Detective has sourced a pretty good print for their 2014 DVD/Blu-Ray release which nearly does justice to the cinematography of Oswald Morris & camera operator Freddie Francis. (Note that on Film Detective the Academy Ratio (4:3) picture is mastered to show properly on an anamorphic (16:9) setting.)

IKIMONO NO KIROKU / I LIVE IN FEAR (1955)

Self-consciously issue-oriented, Akira Kurosawa’s despairing nuclear/nuclear-family drama reps a serious miscalculation (he suddenly feels out of touch), and is deservedly little known. Toshirô Mifune hauls out Paul Muni’s makeup box to play an elderly industrialist with a crippling monomania about imminent atomic annihilation and a yen to sell off the family biz and move everyone to Brazil. (‘Where the nuts are!,’ as CHARLEY’S AUNT has it.) But since no one in his extended family (one wife/three mistresses/many kids) wants to go, they drag him to family court to prove incompetence and protect the family inheritance. And as none of the family issues (or solutions) seem as difficult to us as they seem to Kurosawa, the situation plays out as point-making rather than drama, wobbling unconvincingly between King Lear and an Ibsen ‘problem’ play. Kurosawa has better luck with a parallel storyline on the panel of mediators tasked with deciding the matter and focusing mainly on the doubts of Takashi Shimura, in his usual voice-of-reason role.* Except here, he’s too reasonable to stop a tragedy. Or perhaps, Kurosawa is just too eager to make a point.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura got much closer to Japan’s Nuclear Anxiety the year before, within Pop culture confines, under the guise of Sci-Fi monster GOJIRA/’54. I know, I’m suggesting GODZILLA over Kurosawa. (But only in the original Japanese cut!) To make amends, Kurosawa’s next, a return to form in his MACBETH adaptation THRONE OF BLOOD/’57.

SERGEANT RUTLEDGE (1960)

Fascinating, if not entirely successful, this John Ford Western brings Civil Rights themes, an unsung sidebar issue in many of Ford’s post-war films, front and center. Woody Strode, more athlete than actor (but what an athlete!), works like a dog for Ford (whom he adored) as the Top Sgt. in the All-Black Ninth Calvary Regiment who’s being court-martialed on murder & rape charges (commanding officer & daughter) in the segregated army of the 1880s. (Shockingly, Army Desegregation was barely a decade old when this came out.) Dramatized as a trial with action flashbacks during testimony, Ford shoots and even lights much of this (Bert Glennon the imaginative cinematographer) in non-realistic stage play fashion, with hot spotlight fades & silhouettes that briskly cut in & out of the naturally shot action. Some on obvious studio sets and some in the Super-Realism of Monument Valley locations. (Glennon also makes striking, almost Gustave Manet-like use of leading lady Constance Towers’ fair complexion against the black soldiers.) More oddly, Ford also pushes the acting into stagy mannerism, and not only during comic relief. Note blustering Willis Bouchey in what would normally have been the Ward Bond role as a panel judge.* It has the (possibly inadvertent) effect of helping Strode, a magnificent physical presence, but an actor whose range went all the way from monumental to monumental, come off in a more naturalistic manner. In any event, the flaws matter less & less as the story picks up steam & interest. Too bad the big confession that clears everything up is puerile Perry Mason stuff, pulled out of the air thru the fierce purity of defense attorney Jeffrey Hunter’s blue, blue eyes. But the film earns serious points with a high comfort level on its many black characters (Juano Hernandez is particularly fine as an old army vet), and generally holds up better than other forward-thinking/racially sensitive ‘progressive’ films of the day. Less dated; less condescending.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Ward Bond, enjoying long delayed stardom on tv in WAGON MASTER (he’d even gotten Ford to direct one), was probably too busy for the role, dying (at only 57) a few months after RUTLEDGE came out.

DOUBLE-BILL: Strode is even better for Ford playing John Wayne’s ranch-hand/friend in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE/’62 which also has a perfect example of Ford working in a bit of current Civil Rights commentary in a scene where Wayne insists Strode come into a ‘Whites Only’ bar with him. So off-hand as to be easily missed, but an unforgettable moment in its way. What co-star James Stewart would have called ‘a little piece of time.’

DREAMGIRLS (2006)

Bill Condon brings Michael Bennett’s faux MOTOWN musical from B'way to the big screen faultlessly for about 45 minutes, then drops the ball with a series of dramatic & musical misjudgements he’s either unable to fix or (more likely) unaware of. The story, a fictionalized take on the rise (and hollowing) of MOTOWN founder Berry Gordy is dramatized thru the slow eclipse of soulful R&B star Eddie Murphy (so good you resent the decades of waste) and the rise of an anodyne Girl Group modeled on The Supremes (though Beyoncé’s Diana Ross turns Donna Summers on us). It's the classic American Success story about what gets lost on the way up, and must have worked like magic on B’way in Bennett’s maximalist staging. But Condon can’t figure out how to move past the purely diegetic use of songs (those sung as part of a stage act) and into the more integrated or sung-thru musical numbers that directly tell the story & work as dialogue rather than as commentary, filming both types of song in the same heightened manner (swoops & circling camera). And why deliver them all as powerhouse audition numbers? Exhausting. Worth a look for the high gloss production and a very impressive Mr. Murphy (where has he been hiding these talents?). Lower expectations for best result.

DOUBLE-BILL: Made more in the moment, SPARKLE/’76 tells a similar kind of story on the cheap, with ‘Blaxploitation’ trimmings. It also could have been better.

TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (1951)

A bit of career whiplash for stately Ruth Roman who went directly from Alfred Hitchcock’s lux STRANGERS ON A TRAIN/’51 to this modest film noir. Fortunately, it’s a good one, or is for the first half. Steve Cochran actually gets the most screen time as a hard luck con fresh out of prison after serving 18 years, slapped with a murder conviction when he was just 13. Now a stranger in a strange land, he's a social naïf who moons over Roman’s Dime--A -Dance gal only to run into an over-protective cop back at her flat. Cochran is knocked out in a scuffle; the dick gets shot in a tussle with Roman. When Cochran comes to, she lets him think he’s responsible and the odd couple hit the road. All this is neatly handled by hack megger Felix Feist (the dance hall scene is a pip with a loud one-minute buzzer to keep the dances short). But he sure likes to spy on action thru windows. The real trouble comes after the couple is forced together by circumstance, and then start to show genuine affection. Roman rarely connected with anyone on screen, using & abusing more her nature, a chill Hitchcock found useful in STRANGERS, but which leaves Cochran playing alone once they hide out as married crop pickers in California. The story mechanics are fine (friendly neighbors spot Cochran but are hesitant to turn him in), but the missing chemistry between Roman & Cochran rob the film of romance & suspense.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hitchcock had a new cinematographer on STRANGERS, Robert Burks, who came along with Roman. Compared to what Hitch asked of him, this assignment must have seemed a piece of cake.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The most alarming image in here may be Ruth Roman’s shock of platinum blonde hair in the early scenes. Talk about a mismatch.

THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU (1943)

Dandy WWII espionage caper, with something of a proto-James Bond flavor to it, especially in its high-tech/gas-manufacturing climax. Robert Donat, with his unbeatable gentlemanly dash, is the British bomb-defuser whose Romanian background & chemical expertise make him the perfect man, the only man, for a mission into Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. His job: contact the local resistance while posing as a Romanian collaborator and get inside that chemical plant before the Germans perfect, ship & deploy their latest deadly gas formula. Valerie Hobson’s the suspicious local contact who thinks twice after trusting ‘Tartu,’ fooled by her attraction; and Glynis Johns’ the landlady’s daughter, a brave young patriot whose slipup may blow Donat’s cover. M-G-M journeyman megger Harold S. Bucquet seems positively transformed working in wartime England (British by birth, but a Hollywood career), much helped by Hitchcock’s top British lenser Jack Cox & art director John Bryan who give the film a playful sense of scale & fantasy in the action sequences. (How this was done with rationed wartime resources is a mystery, even if the technical seams show.) The only drawback is trying to find a decent print among subfusc Public Domain editions. Hopefully, something out there is better than the ‘meh’ Film Detective DVD seen here. (No doubt, M-G-M has pristine materials, but won’t put it out. Grrr.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Six years before this, and two years before starring in James Hilton’s GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, Donat was a double-agent in Russia, saving Marlene Dietrich in another Hilton adaptation, KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR/’37.