THE HEIRESS (1949)

Literate & thrilling, William Wyler’s pitch-perfect adaptation of Henry James’ WASHINGTON SQUARE, written by Ruth & Augustus Goetz* from their own dramatically charged stage play, has only improved with age. Olivia de Havilland won a second Oscar® as the only child of wealthy, widowed doctor Ralph Richardson in 1840s New York. Physically drab, painfully shy & gauche, her vivacious Aunt (Miriam Hopkins) attempts to guide her into society and seems to succeed when Montgomery Clift takes a sudden interest. But is it love or loot he’s after? That’s all that’s needed to set up a series of dramatic confrontations to sort out the personal relationships & situations. And while there’s never much doubt over Clift’s motives , the underlying factors in the quest (and value) of love & happiness are teased out to great effect. Perhaps even more heartbreaking are revelations between father & daughter, thanks to Ralph Richardson’s towering subtlety as the disappointed parent. He seems unable to put a foot wrong. Late in the film, after self-diagnosing a debilitating stroke, he actually appears to lower his heart-rate.* Clift expressed disappointment in his own portrayal, but his slight lack of contact perfectly fits his character whether he knew it or not. And did he realize at the time what a stellar line-up of directors he had to start his career? From Howard Hawks to Fred Zinnemann, then Wyler, George Seaton (the sole weak link), George Stevens, Hitchcock, De Sica, then back to Zinnemann. (A start-up list of directors only matched by Audrey Hepburn.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Journalistic Papa to the French New Wave, André Bazin said this of Wyler’s THE LITTLE FOXES, but it applies even more here: ‘There is a hundred times more cinema, and better cinema at that, in one fixed shot in THE LITTLE FOXES than in all the exterior traveling shots, in all the natural settings, in all the geographical exoticism which the screen till now has ingeniously tried to make us forget the stage.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Wyler, among other things the best actor’s director in the biz, was in awe of Richardson from the first set-up when offered six different ways he might enter his house and hang up his hat & cane. "Like a salesman displaying his wares,' said Wyler.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Wyler brought the Goetzes and similar sensibilities to his adaptation of Dreiser’s (SISTER) CARRIE/’52. Less tidy, less dramatically neat, less the ‘well-made’ play, it may also be the deeper achievement.

THE CIRCLE (1925)

W. Somerset Maugham’s near-perfect play has been adapted multiple times for television, but just once as a film, ironically as a silent. Bye-bye witty dialogue; hello explanatory prologue and a conventional resolution that completely reverses Maugham’s main point. Dire as it sounds, this Frank Borzage project is still a treat; and not so far off the spirit of the play as you might assume. Our Story: Thirty years ago Lady Cheney ran off with love-of-her-life Lord Porteous, the best decision she ever made and the greatest mistake of her life. Now, the scandalous pair have come home at long last for a visit only to find Lady Cheney’s daughter-in-law hellbent on repeating the pattern, running away from a dreary husband (Lady Cheney’s own deserted son) to live in exiled sin with the love of her life. But before the die is cast, this young lady wants to see if the old pair lived up to her happily-ever-after fantasies. To say they don’t hardly begins to cover it. A ghastly couple; crass, bickering, painted up like gargoyle parodies of their romantic youth. A lesson learned? Not bloody likely. Beautiful Eleanor Boardman & Malcolm McGregor are the handsome young lovers, nerdy Creighton Hale the cuckold husband, George Fawcett & Eugenie Besserer the dilapidated returnees. Great fun; with a well-preserved print, a superb new score by Garth Neustadler, and a very early appearance by Joan Crawford as the young Lady Cheney in the prologue.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: 1925 brought an even more unlikely silent film triumph in somewhat similar vein when Oscar Wilde’s epigrammatic LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN became a silent film masterpiece from Ernst Lubitsch.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/10/lady-windermeres-fan-1925.html

THE PRIME MINISTER (1941)

Once prestigious, now out-of-fashion, William Dieterle’s Great Man bio-pics (Zola; Pasteur; Juarez; Dr. Ehrlich; Reuters - with Paul Muni or Edward G. Robinson) hold up pretty well as entertainments; glosses on history fit for a Junior High Audio-Visual showing. (Or were a generation or two back.) But this British attempt at the genre, well-larded with historical parallels to current events in Churchill’s WWII England (the film came out before US entry), has all the faults of the Dieterle films (falsification, simplification, hagiography) and almost none of the virtues in succinct potted history, art design or even bravura acting. Frankly, it’s inexplicably dreadful. John Gielgud sounds like a fine idea for Benjamin Disraeli, but proves film resistant & uncomfortable. He had a couple of decent early appearances, but really wouldn’t figure out the medium till he got a couple of big Shakespearean roles under his celluloid belt. (Cassius in JULIUS CAESAR/’53 and Henry IV in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT/’65) Diana Wynyard is hopelessly miscast as his older, richer, dumber wife and the supporting players consistently bland. (Were all the good character actors at war?) Fay Compton does a bit better as a plump Queen Victoria, but even Thorold Dickson’s direction, with GASLIGHT/’40 (aka ANGEL STREET) in his past and the superb QUEEN OF SPADES/’49 in his future*, turns out a great lumpy mess with paragraphs & paragraphs of text substituting for narrative action. The film’s great climax, an eating match between an aged Dizzy & Bismarck to hold off a precursor to World War I an embarrassment. In comparison, Dieterle’s long unfashionable films look better than they have in years.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Coded allusions, but no mention of Disraeli’s Jewish background in here. Something Disraeli was always at pains to highlight. (It was Disraeli’s father who had him Baptized as a child, thus opening his path into society & politics.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Ian McShane made real contact with this contradictory personality in the mini-series DISRAELI: PORTRAIT OF A ROMANTIC/’78. And Alec Guinness does even better in the underrated, if minor, THE MUDLARK/’50.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:: *Ironically, if not for the accent, Anton Walbrook, the great Jewish/Austrian star of ANGEL ST. and SPADES could have made a phenomenal Disraeli.

NIGHT MUST FALL (1964)

A complete re-think of the old Emlyn Williams stage shocker about a cheeky young drifter who brings serious Alpha Male attitude into the lives of four sex-deprived women in an isolated English village house. With the thuddingly good gimmick of a recently discovered headless corpse in the area and the leather hatbox valise the young man keeps near him as unbidden sociopathic tendencies start to overwhelm the surface charm. Clive Exton’s screenplay opens up the play, adding large doses of Angry Young Man/ Working Class New British Cinema to the mix, which director Karel Reisz and actor Albert Finney (reunited after their groundbreaking SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING) whip up to a froth. But the genres clash; the realism of one consistently at odds with the calculated effects of old-fashioned melodrama.* But not without interest, especially for Finney’s unhinged perf & Mona Washbourne’s early pleasure at his testosterone-fueled bad manners.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Exton got closer with Richard Attenborough & director Richard Fleischer in the dark, fact-inspired suspenser 10 RILLINGTON PLACE/’71. And Reisz had more luck cross-breeding Angry Young Man/New British Cinema with Screwball Comedy in his next genre mash up, MORGAN!/’66.

DOUBLE-BILL: For the original NIGHT MUST FALL, try the old M-G-M version from 1937 with Robert Montgomery, Dame May Whitty & Roz Russell. (see below)

ONE TOUCH OF VENUS (1955)

Once in America, German composer Kurt Weill had two big hits (out of eight) on B’way before his early death in 1950.   The groundbreaking psychological play with music LADY IN THE DARK, and this enchanting & sophisticated entertainment about a statue of Venus who comes to life, causing havoc for the collector who bought her and the young barber who playfully put his fiancé’s ring on her finger.  The reps of both shows permanently damaged by lousy film adaptations: LADY a career misstep for Ginger Rogers in ‘44 and a nothing-burger version of VENUS with Ava Gardner in ‘48. With most of the score dropped from each film, it’s always been tough to get a feel for either show. (Both have been recorded complete.*)  And for that taste of the work of S. J. Perelman on the book and Ogden Nash for his witty lyrics, we can be grateful for this rather inadequate tv version picked up from, of all places, a Dallas State Fair production.  There’s quite a good cast with Janet Blair, looking like Janet Leigh and sounding much like original Venus Mary Martin; George Gaynes, fresh from partnering Roz Russell in WONDERFUL TOWN as the collector; and Russell Nype, fresh from winning a Tony as Ethel Merman’s assistant in CALL ME MADAM.  At a spare 80 minutes, the book barely makes sense, but most of the songs survive and most are wonderful.   ‘Speak Low’ best known, but ‘That’s Him;’ ‘The Trouble With Women’ (a barbershop quartet sung in a barbershop; ‘Foolish Heart;’ and especially ‘I’m a Stranger Here Myself’ waiting to be rediscovered.   This telecast is really no more than a ‘get to know you’ opportunity, but it certainly beats the inept film.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The complete VENUS score was recorded with Melissa Errico years after she became an overnight NYC Toast of the Town appearing in an ENCORES! semi-staged reclamation of the show.

LINK/DOUBLE-BILL: Weill’s little known wartime musical fantasy, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?/45 (with lyrics by Ira Gershwin his collaborator on LADY IN THE DARK and the brilliant doomed FIREBRAND OF FLORENCE) is a real charmer, with an hilarious tour de force mini-operetta dream sequence in ‘THE NINA, THE PINTA, THE SANTA MARIA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P13CWlPjJ44

L'HOMME QUI RIT / THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (2012)

French writer/ director Jean-Pierre Améris turns the Victor Hugo classic into L’HOMME QUI RIT-Lite, relatively faithful to the novel (at least till the end) while misreading intent. You’d hardly know Hugo’s ‘grotesque’ Gwynplaine (disfigured in childhood by Gypsies as part of a Royalist Plot, left with a terrifying grimace carved in his face) earned laughs from a cruel society tickled by his hideous misery. So, Marc-André Grondin hits on a sort of Teen Beat Gwynplaine, more cute than scary. With Gérard Depardieu as gruff protector, Christa Théret as his blinded childhood sweetheart and Emmanuelle Seigner as the titled Lady who sees him performing for the hoi polloi, learns his secret, then figures out how to use his aristocratic heritage to her advantage at the Royal Court. Hugo’s marvelous whirligig plot mechanics are streamlined into place, fashionable as a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp vehicle. On its own terms, much comes off, but you don’t need to know the astonishing 1928 Paul Leni/Conrad Veidt late-silent version to ascertain the missing emotional baggage, wonderment and real pain.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The 1928 version is in superb shape visually, but calls out for a fresh soundtrack to replace the original synched music-track disks, now sounding like a dated compromise to meet the burgeoning Talkie market.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/man-who-laughs-1928.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In CLAIR DE LUNE, a stage adaptation by his wife, John Barrymore played Gwynplaine in-between his two legendary Shakespeare productions of KING RICHARD III and HAMLET, a pair of roles that together almost perfectly characterize Hugo’s tragic, tortured jester.

LORD BYRON OF BROADWAY (1930)

Forgotten but fascinating musical clunker, an Early Talkie from M-G-M (so early, Leo-the-Lion has a silent roar), all about Charles Kaley’s heel of a tunesmith, a love-’em-and-leave-‘em guy who drops his latest lover once he gets a hit song out of the affair. And he’ll do much the same when his best pal dies in a street accident. What a skunk! (When it comes to rats in film musicals, Robert De Niro in NEW YORK, NEW YORK/’77 has nothing on this guy.) Poor Kaley, a bit stiff, but not badly cast, with something of George Gershwin in his profile, never heard from again after this sour debut tanked. Oddly, after an inevitable last minute redemption, he goes right back to old habits, writing a new song stolen from life. Some lesson learned. It must have puzzled the studio to watch helplessly as so much of the talent that scored in last year’s Best Pic Winner, BROADWAY MELODY (director Harry Beaumont; songsters Nacio Herb Brown & Arthur Freed; even a pair of 2-Strip TechniColor showcase numbers*) fell on their collective faces.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Listen up for the radio announcer when one of Kaley’s songs comes on the air near the end of the film. It’s an uncredited Jack Benny who’d just played Master of Ceremonies in M-G-M’s huge 1929 hit THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE. But the craze for Early Talkie Musicals went very cold very fast; and (with few exceptions) wouldn’t come back till Warner Bros. figured out how do it right in 42nd STREET/’33; the same year Fred Astaire hit town.

DOUBLE-BILL: *To see 2-Strip TechniColor in pristine condition, try the new restoration on Criterion of THE KING OF JAZZ, with almost 2/3's of the picture derived from original negative. A major flop in 1930, it’s surely the best of all the major studio revues, but missed its commercial window of opportunity showing up just a few months after audiences had soured on the form after too many inept musicals.

SUSAN SLADE (1961)

Third in a string of four angst-driven Young Love pics written/produced/ directed by Delmar Daves, all starring Troy Donahue in his comet-like glory days. They look pretty soapy now, teenage sexual revolution guilt, trimmed to fit a decaying Hollywood Production Code, yet spicy enough to thrill the 45 rpm singles set. This one skimps on the Pop Zeitgeist shift by giving virginal lead Connie Stevens relatively easy-going parents (Dorothy McGuire/Lloyd Nolan) and falling back on the oldest trope in the book: premarital pregnancy revealed when lover-boy dies before getting back for a hurry-up wedding. The tragic event telegraphed as soon as we hear the guy (a very attractive Grant Williams) is a mountain climber. But then, every story beat is telegraphed in this one, from Dad’s heart condition to a risible truth-revealing accident for Steven's toddler. (Played at the moment of crisis by a stiff, unattractive doll.) You’ll note that Donahue, busy at his horse stable and typing up the Great American Novel, is but tangentially involved. Hold the phone . . he’s the pure one! No wonder this title has lower visibility than others in the series. And the studio probably knew it, finding a spot to plug in Max Steiner’s theme song from the first in the series, A SUMMER PLACE. The real interest here lies in Lucien Ballard’s spectacular lensing. Those big exterior vistas! Vanishing point hallways. Smoke-stack churning ocean liners! Shadowed portrait shots to sculpt Donahue’s pretty, pouting face! Cheeks that could give previous co-star Sandra Dee a run for the money.

DOUBLE-BILL: Check out those Sandra Dee cheeks against Donahue’s leaner face from just two years back in A SUMMER PLACE/’59.

MAN IN THE ATTIC (1953)

An unnecessary remake of THE LODGER/’44, 20th/Fox’s excellent Jack-the-Ripper thriller. Director John Brahm gave the earlier film considerable London-town atmosphere & a creepy finesse, with sharply etched perfs from Laird Cregar, Merle Oberon & George Sanders as Ripper, Show Girl & Detective. Many elements (script, sets, music) repeat to some extent in this version by director Hugo Fregonese* for Fox’s low-budget Panoramic Productions. And it does get off to a tasty, crepuscular start before stumbling, largely thru its inadequate cast and a story that doesn’t quite connect the dots. The climax really gets botched, missing the superbly designed backstage chase that was a highlight in ‘44. Jack Palance may not have Cregar’s peculiar affinity for this particular heavy, but does brings a startling presence of his own. It’s love interest Constance Smith and Scotland Yard man Byron Palmer who really come up short. And what’s Frances Bavier, Andy Griffith’s Aunt Bea, doing in here as a London landlady? And with just the accent you’d expect from Aunt Bea.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *A obvious talent in Argentina on films noir like APENAS UN DELINCUENTE/’49, director Fregonese made two striking Westerns in Hollywood, APACHE DRUMS/’51 and THE RAID/’54, but little else to match them. Try ‘em both!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 silent THE LODGER, quite a different take then 1944. Try ‘em both!

THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933)

Vampires are sucking the blood out of unlucky inhabitants in the little Mittel-Europa town of Klineschloss, leaving the bodies to be discovered and reviving old superstitions in peasants, townees and city officials. Are the vampires killer bats . . . or human beasts? Modern-thinking police inspector Melvyn Douglas looks for a logical explanation, supported by research scientist Lionel Atwill & his assistant Fay Wray who’s also Douglas’s fiancé. Everyone else thinks it’s something supernatural. In content a typical Poverty Row horror pic, in execution, this Majestic Pictures production is quite a bit better than you expect, starting with that superior cast (George E. Stone & Dwight Frye also show up in tasty turns) and more than decent production values. Douglas is actually working on some of the same Universal sets he trod in the previous year’s OLD DARK HOUSE. Director Frank Strayer falls back now and then to lining up his cast as if he were filming a read-thru, but he’s just as likely to work up a real visual game plan using clever compositions in depth while maintaining a rollicking pace, obscuring his tight budget with dynamic camera moves and shock cuts. The last reel works up a real buzz even if some of the mysteries never do get properly explained. (Hypnotic transmission, anyone?) But a lot in here compares well with the quality horror stuff major studios were putting out at the time. Fans of the genre (and of wonderful Lionel Atwill) will want to dig in.

LINK: Lots of Public Domain prints in varying quality, even a Blu-Ray from Film Detective. But try this excellent youtube stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ8BqGrMW4U

DOUBLE-BILL: Wray & Atwill were something of a horror team at the time having just made a pair of 2-strip TechniColor pics @ Warners for Michael Curtiz: DOCTOR X/’32 and MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM/’33.

THE OPPOSITE SEX (1956)

Clare Booth Luce’s famous play (THE WOMEN) with the famous gimmick (no men), as loathsomely snobbish, misogynist & male-fixated as its author, is also surprisingly laugh-free in all iterations. A pair of starry B’way revivals (1973; 2001) quickly petered out while a much revised, misconceived film update in 2008 earns THE WOMEN Booby Prize. But this remake, an almost musical from frothy producer Joe Pasternak and vet helmer David Miller, has the worst idea of all . . . put the men back in! The play’s main claim to fame, as Booth’s middle-aged society types trade insults & husbands, tossed aside. (Don't worry, the one schmoe who has to work for a living is still the heavy, a grasping, nouveau riche villainess.) Oddly, all the changes make little difference. And thanks to broad playing & the cartoony look of sets & costumes in Cinemascope & MetroColor, it actually plays out in slightly less objectionable manner. June Allyson gets the worst of it (as did Norma Shearer in the original), all wounded pride and noble bearing as she heads off to Reno for a divorce from the unfaithful man she still loves. A very noticeable decade older than hubby Leslie Nielsen, she looks like she’s going to her own funeral. But then, everyone seems to be working off an expiring M-G-M contract. At least homewrecker Joan Collins and butchy gal-pal Ann Sheridan look pretty swell. Sheridan’s part, taken by Paulette Goddard in the original film, plays out with a new sexual slant now that men are back in the picture for everyone but her. Intentional?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Check out the camera setup as Allyson, Ann Miller & Agnes Moorehead sit on stools in the Club Car bar on a train to Reno. An obvious visual song cue, but no ‘Trio for Divorcées!’ One of many missed musical opportunities in here.

DOUBLE-BILL: George Cukor’s original THE WOMEN/’39 has its partisans, and is very strongly cast.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Personal life parallel with actor/director Dick Powell leaving wife Joan Blondell to marry decade younger June Allyson back in 1945. Now the wife & ‘ex’ are in a film with Allyson acting out Blondell’s real-life part.

THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996)

The third film version of H.G. Wells’ tale on Dr. Moreau (self-proclaimed sovereign of an isolated atoll/Mad Genius splicing genes to create humanoid beasts) is generally dismissed as a travesty.  And so it is!  Just less Travesty/First Definition: Crude, distorted, ridiculous misrepresentation; then its less-pejorative Second Definition: A Burlesque.  And its original filmmaker Richard Stanley may even have known it.  Where other versions hide the big reveal as climax (‘Are We Not Men?!!’), here all is explained after a couple of reels.  What’s left to fill out the running time is riot, release, rebellion and revenge.   It proves too little (or is it too much?) for John Frankenheimer, taking over from Stanley fairly early, but faced with little more than ordnance hunts for half his running time.  Yet, like the Curate’s Egg, it's good in part as Marlon Brando’s Moreau sends up his own work as Colonel Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW/’79*, but here with the distinctive vocal stylings of Charles Laughton.  (Moreau in ‘32; still creepy, still effective.)  Val Kilmer lolls around as his aide-de-camp, eventually giving himself over to a Brando impersonation.  And, as an outsider, horrified by what he discovers, David Thewlis looks half-human/half-animal even without any makeup from creature designer Stan Winston.   Admittedly, the tone rises & falls in stages only to dissipate once Brando leaves the scene.  But it's good unexpected (and largely unnoticed!) fun for a while.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, the old 1932 version is something of a classic. (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/09/island-of-lost-souls-1932.html)   A 1977 version with Burt Lancaster (not seen here) looks merely inadequate.  OR: *Eleven years before Col. Kurtz, Brando sent up his own character playing a skinny Guru in CANDY/’68.

EAST OF THE RIVER (1940)

Cut-rate version of the old Good Brother/Bad Brother story, with a twist since the prologue shows how one of the boys was adopted by Mama Marjorie Rambeau (the 'Ravioli Queen') to keep both kids out of Juvie Jail. Nothing wrong there, it’s everything else that goes kablooey, starting with Rambeau’s laughably bad Italian accent, in this lame Warners meller. Quick cut and the bad brother’s become John Garfield; the adopted one straight, tall & true William Lundigan; and Brenda Marshall tagging along as Garfield’s moll before switching sides. Dramatic hash thru & thru, leftovers reheated for an extra meal. And it might have worked, if only Alfred E. Green put some moxie in his megging. And while it looks like they’ve wasted a clever little ending, fret not, somebody at the studio probably used it again.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Not sure what Manhattan nab they’re going for here. Not the sort of detail director Green bothered with. The studio sets are backlot Warners Manhattan, the presumption is Little Italy, but the title suggests Hell’s Kitchen, no? (EAST of the Hudson River.) Wherever we are, our Belgian poster is closer to the mark in Flemish as MOTHERLOVE or in French as HOT HEAD.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Warners had just made the big boys’ version of this one in Raoul Walsh’s THE ROARING TWENTIES/’39 with James Cagney, Jeffrey Lynn, Priscilla Lane in the Garfield, Lundigan, Marshall spots.

THE HOT HEIRESS (1931)

Not yet thirty, composer Richard Rodgers (with lyricist Lorenz Hart), had been writing hit B’way scores for over a decade when Hollywood came calling. ‘Talkies’ needed tunes; his last few shows hadn’t clicked; who says no to a three pic deal in the Depression? (Note: Ten Cents a Dance; Ship Without a Sail; I’ve Got Five Dollars (Everything I’ve Got Belongs To You); Spring Is Here; With a Song in My Heart – all future American Songbook standards, all from those recent ‘disappointments.’) But in Hollywood, composers only had clout if they were Irving Berlin, everyone else (even George Gershwin) just an employee, answerable to musically clueless movie execs.* Hence, Rodgers watched from the side as this wan little Labor Guy meets Society Dame romance went into production. With one of four songs dropped (the best one); musical comedy star Marilyn Miller replaced by the unknown Ona Munson; and class divide/social gap issues reduced to HIS Chop Suey Joint vs. HER Weekend Party at the Family Estate. Walter Pidgeon is relaxed & naturally commanding as the jilted fiancé, but has little to do. Everything else charmless and forgettable.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: With HEIRESS a huge a flop, Warners gladly let Rodgers out of the last two contracted films. So, he & Hart hied off to Paramount, director Rouben Mamoulian and an early film musical masterpiece: LOVE ME TONIGHT/’32. Rodgers & Hart returned to social issues in the intriguing, if not completely successful HALLELUJAH, I’M A BUM!/’33.

LINK: *Lorenz Hart wrote the classic movie exec putdown in a lyric from PAL JOEY where two rivals in love diss the womanizing Joey by comparing him to one, singing ‘I know a movie executive who’s twice as bright!’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ7tvBmYOjc

ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC (1943)

Not the catchiest of titles. For that matter, the Merchant Marines, not the sexiest branch of the services. But this WWII actioner, Humphrey Bogart’s immediate follow-up after CASABLANCA, really puts out. The opening two-and-a-half reels are quite exceptional as Captain Raymond Massey and Lieutenant Bogie defend their ship (loaded with war materiel) from the blistering attack of a German U-Boat. (Scripter, and future Hollywood Ten victim, John Howard Lawson taking his cue from Noël Coward/David Lean’s IN WHICH WE SERVE/’42. And listen out for some pointed political ramblings over a poker game in the mess.*) With better news from the war in ‘43 , the film can be a bit tougher & realistic than the more fanciful releases of the scary previous year, adding an almost quotidian angle to some scenes. Big action returns in the last act, as Massey and Bogart take their new ship to Russia as part of a giant flotilla, then have to fight on their own after the convoy is forced to break up. The whole sequence really exciting, with unusually good effects work even with miniatures. (Sea stuff always hardest to fake as water can’t change its nature to match up to a reduced scale.) Excellent support up and down the line, and a consistent level of good, hard-nosed filmmaking you don’t expect from director Lloyd Bacon. He did photo-service work back in WWI, but still hard to imagine him fully in charge of these stylish action set pieces. Was it second-unit staff? Special effects stuff? The montage guys? (Here, that’d be none other than Don Siegel.) Well, someone earns a slap on the back; topping many similar/better-known WWII rousers. (BTW: That film poster? From the understandably delayed Japanese release of 1951.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Paid by the Script Continuity Girl! She didn’t seem to notice that Bogie’s toothache moves from Right-to-Left between scenes.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Note how Lawson hypes the Soviet/American partnership, particularly rosy at the time. And in the political roundtable, has token Jew Sam Levene come closest to spouting ‘Party Line’ dictact. Levene also recites ‘Kaddish,’ the Jewish Prayer for the Dead while everyone else mouths ‘The Lord’s Prayer.’

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, IN WHICH WE SERVE/’42.

ESPIONAGE AGENT (1939)

A year before Joel McCrea played a reporter who acted as an unwitting espionage agent in Alfred Hitchcock’s Oscar® nominated FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, he was a ‘witting’ one in this sketchy programmer from Warners. The film’s more of an intro for new star Brenda Marshall than anything else (her blank beauty & unanimated face saw her fast-fading after ‘43), and its slack script finds journeyman helmer Lloyd Bacon phoning it in. Same for composer Adolph Deutsch & lenser Charles Rosher. The bare bones plot finds Euro-orphan Marshall quickly marrying McCrea, then ruining his career in the diplomatic service when she ‘fesses up and renounces the Euro-spy ring that got her to America. Redemption calls when the newlyweds return to Vienna and expose that old fascist gang o’ mine. Far-fetched and haphazardly plotted, each story beat overheard as if we were in a comic operetta. The film does holds a bit of interest for its early call to action from the U.S. Congress against sabotage by foreign agents (and pings of pleasure in McCrea’s exceptionally well-tailored suits . . . such shoulders!), just not enough to make up for the lackluster story & filmmaking. Pass.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned above, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, the Hitchcock film that lost Best Pic to that other Hitchcock film from the same year, REBECCA.

ALGIERS (1938)

Hollywood remake of Julien Duvivier’s PÉPÉ LE MOKO/’37 is a near facsimile of the original; and none the worse for it. It’s the old swoony fatalistic chestnut about Charles Boyer’s Parisian jewel thief, now an ex-pat, safe as long as he stays inside ‘the Casbah,’ a shut off section of Algiers vertically populated by exiles, transients & the criminal underworld. Supported by a motley gang of thugs, loved by a local girl, homesickness is driving Pépé stir-crazy, a condition made even worse when he falls hard for Hedy Lamarr in a spectacular Hollywood debut as Gaby, a tourist from Paris worth the risk of leaving the Casbah . . . exactly what the police are hoping for. Wonderfully cast, with most equaling the line-up in the Duvivier French pop classic. (Swings and roundabouts on the ones who are significantly better or worse: Lamarr, never better and easily topping Mireille Balin; but Nina Koshetz not a patch on Fréhel in the French film.) What does go missing in John Cromwell’s Hollywood redo* is a certain ineffable Algerian texture caught by Duvivier even though both films are pure studio artifice with a few establishing location shots. (Some reappear here! Producer Walter Wanger getting all the rights, but alas not keeping them as the film has fallen into Public Domain. There’s a pretty clean edition on Film Detective.) Unique to ALGIERS? A chance to enjoy Boyer crooning a happy love song! Grab it.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Ironically, Cromwell was on the other end of the same copycat treatment when M-G-M remade his 1937 Ronald Colman PRISONER OF ZENDA for Stewart Granger in 1952 with director Richard Thorpe.

DOUBLE-BILL: Many similarities in here with Tay Garnett’s fine, fatalistic romance ONE WAY PASSAGE/’32 with William Powell & Kay Francis in peak form.

YUKINOJÔ HENGE / AN ACTOR’S REVENGE (1963)

Tasked with restaging a moldy potboiler filmed nearly thirty-years ago with the same lead actor (and remade by others just four years back), Kon Ichikawa, with oversized daring & visual flair as cudgel, turned out this wildly entertaining masterpiece. In one of his last screen appearances, Kazuo Hasegawa repeats in the classic double-role as a Noh Theater actor specializing in female roles (he’s in drag on stage and off) and as the manly/macho ‘People’s Bandit,’ always following the revenge from the best vantage point.* Hasegawa and his acting company are on tour when he spies two of the three nobles who ruined his family’s business, and led his parents to suicide, sitting in the audience. Now, after years of waiting, he can begin his grand plan by seducing the lovely daughter of one of the nobles. (Yes, still in drag, a big turn-on for her.) For Western audiences, occasional moments of confusion pop up, but not enough to derail the pleasures of Ichikawa’s stylish & stylized soundstage treatments and richly colored designs. With his usual visual restraint cast aside for sophisticated dazzle, starting with spectacular CinemaScope-friendly Noh Theater presentations along with highly theatrical ‘spot’ lighting effects used in the more realistic sets, one transition after another delivers pure jolts of visual delight. Get the biggest screen you can find! And give yourself a leg up on character & plot by going back after the first half-hour or so to start again from the beginning. This way, you won‘t need a scorecard to keep things straight.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *In the original 1936 film (not seen here/apparently unavailable on Region 1 DVDs), Hasegawa also plays his own mother.

OVER-EXPOSED (1956)

Crummy . . . just not crummy enough to be any fun. Platinum pudge Cleo Moore (a tag-along Marilyn Monroe type) goes from tarty clip joint gal to photographer’s assistant, before a quick rise from budding photo-journalist to staff snapper on the high society night club circuit. That’s where she accidentally photographs a mobster in the background of a missed shot, exposing his fake alibi. But all this success has spoiled Cleo’s once good-natured soul, she's turned hard & selfish, leading her to turn down a proposal of marriage (and a life of foreign correspondence traipsing) from newsman Richard Crenna. (It’s 1956, her work is obviously expendable.) Missing from the script is much, if any, of the promised scandalous exposure. At last, a tasteless picture of Cleo’s hits the front page without her approval, and the mob guy sends in goons to recover that incriminating ‘alibi shot.’ But vet megger Lewis Seiler, a sleepy sort even with a good script, knows he might as well phone it in. Everyone else is.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: In PICTURE SNATCHER/’33, James Cagney gives us the wild ride this film promises.

MR. ROBINSON CRUSOE (1932)

Sound films weren’t working out for Doug Fairbanks. He’d made a splendid farewell to The Silents with THE IRON MASK/’29; and later that year, with wife Mary Pickford, faked his way thru truncated Shakespeare in a stiff TAMING OF THE SHREW. But minus the novelty of a Talkie debut, his up-to-the-minute REACHING FOR THE MOON/’30 failed to connect.* So, after a two-year break, he scaled way back, shooting this pleasantly silly (if commercially unsuccessful) feature as if he were making a home movie. No castle, no pirate ship, no flying carpet, just goofy Rube Goldberg contraptions to ease life on the empty little island he’s jumped ship to play out a Robinson Crusoe fantasy. More like his early knockabout comedy, we’re not so far from a Buster Keaton two-reeler. (Buster’s first lead in THE SAPHEAD/’20 was actually a remake of Fairbanks’ THE LAMB/’15; while Doug’s first release for his own United Artists label, WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY/’19, is loaded with Keatonean ideas.) Hard to know what this film once looked like, subfusc Public Domain prints rule the DVD market. But someone (Fairbanks, megger A. Edward Sutherland?) has quite the eye for composition, if not so much for story construction. But in this penultimate vehicle, Doug’s delight and joie de vivre prove contagious.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Much of the film was shot silent, note the slight under-cranking, with sound elements added on later, no doubt aiding the production’s carefree tone.

DOUBLE-BILL: When the natives show up, in rather non-PC fashion, the spirit, if not the genius, of Buster Keaton’s THE NAVIGATOR/’24 can be felt.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *In REACHING, a really good story gets buried by Early Talkie technology and Doug’s general discomfort. Stock Market whiz who’s put his life on hold to make a success, swears he’ll take a break after finally falling love; then watches helplessly as a panic threatens to wipe him out. Will he hold to love or mammon?

RANDOM HARVEST (1942)

Slightly ludicrous, enormously effective amnesia tale from James Hilton (LOST HORIZON; GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS), a real whopper about fragile WWI vet Ronald Colman who leaves a sanitarium only to find himself lost amid huge armistice street celebrations.  Rescued by Greer Garson’s charming lassie (she’s a sort of female Harry Lauder entertainer), the two quickly bond (marriage/child) until a fresh bump on the Colman noggin brings back his old forgotten self while simultaneously wiping out any recollection of the past three years with Greer!   (Carol Burnett might have made it one of her wicked tv parodies without altering a line.)  Yet, under producer Sidney Franklin & director Mervyn LeRoy, the fraudulence is so controlled & all-of-a-piece, the film takes flight into a kind of alternate universe of believable studio artifice.*   (Imagine this played in actual settings & locations to see the stylistic dilemma Hollywood found itself facing in the more realistic Post-WWII film æsthetic.)   Ultimately, Ronald Colman is the likely cause of audience capitulation & emotional involvement.   (The film was an enormous success.)  He brings a touching quality to even the most unlikely situation, a halting grace, especially in the barely verbal early scenes when he’s in quiet distress.  As one of the few great silent stars to not only transition, but grow in stature in the sound era (somewhat like Garbo), it's as if his pre-Talkie technique added an extra tool to his acting arsenal, a special utility unavailable to others.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  One of the more interesting costume designers in Hollywood, Robert Kalloch outdoes himself in a formal number for Garson at a reception for the Prime Minister.  John Singer Sargent LADY X stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Yet even the same producer/director find no similar conviction or emotional effect in WATERLOO BRIDGE, an equally artificial construct that grates rather than charms.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974)

Having bailed on the Kenneth Branagh 2017 redo, it’s nice to see Sidney Lumet’s original all-star whodunit looking, if anything, fresher & funnier than it did back in ‘74. A game changer for the genre (like 2001 in Sci-Fi and SUPERMAN for Super Heroes), you’d have to go back to Billy Wilder’s WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION in ‘57 to find similar posh treatment on an Agatha Christie project. Elegantly designed, shot & scored, the film really takes off post-murder (of loathsome businessman Richard Widmark) in a series of one-on-one interrogations by Albert Finney’s detective Hercule Poirot, presented as deliciously funny vaudeville turns by a true All-Star cast. Not has-been stars; almost stars; or up-and-comers; but by legitimate film & stage legends. It’s a staggering list, and most with something irresistible to do up there. (Or just to look gorgeous.) Ingrid Bergman is certainly the funniest, a humble missionary taking a break from helping little brown babies in Africa . . . or is it India? With Wendy Hiller’s grande dame and John Gielgud’s subservient valet not far behind her. Lux & relaxing, it’s one of the great entertainments from an era that ignored, even despised, such necessary pleasures. And, as a series of lesser follow-ups proved, harder to pull off than you think.

DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Altman’s GOSFORD PARK/’01 probably comes closer to the mark than any of the official Agatha Christie follow-ups.

MY DOG SKIP (2000)

This WWII-era boy-and-his-dog story works so hard at being nostalgic comfort food, it’s tough to swallow. Made a year after author/memoirist Willie Morris died, you can almost hear the studio pitch: Southern-Fried CHRISTMAS STORY meets TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. (With a score shadowing the latter film’s Elmer Bernstein classic soundtrack.) Megged with squishy overindulgence by Jay Russell (from the Lasse Hallström School of Audience Pandering*), the period detail is grit-free, homogenized stuff, like a Live-Action Disney pic from the ‘60s. Even the pup comes pre-house-broken, and never needs to be fed or walked. In lieu of real character building quotidian chores, we get ginned-up boys’ adventures and adult-generated crises designed to thrust Frankie Muniz’s non-conformist kid into the community. And what a community! Jim Crow era Mississippi. Made in 2000, a bit late in the day to present such an idyllic view of segregation & second-class citizenship. Even the acting, with the exception of Kevin Bacon (superb even with a questionable accent), happy to skim the surface. Like everything else in here.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Hallström is at his best in his calling card pic, MY LIFE AS A DOG/’85. Or rather, parts of it.

MANHATTAN PARADE (1931)

Refashioned from Samuel Shipman’s one-week B’way flop SHE MEANS BUSINESS* (with the ‘business’ changed from Ladies’ Handbags to Theatrical Costumes to make a ShowBiz ‘Crazy Comedy’), there’s some nice backstage flavor in here (think Mel Brooks’ THE PRODUCERS), but director Lloyd Bacon has all his comics work at fever pitch, yelling themselves hoarse and outstaying their welcome. It’s exhausting. Likeable Winnie Lightner, the heart & brains of her own costume company, takes time off to be Mom to little Dickie Moore while hubby Walter Miller runs down the company and off with a secretary. Can Winnie revive things by fooling bickering comedy team/producers Smith & Dale with a delusional Russian stage genius she’s hooked onto? Think of all the costumes they’ll need! Hiding among the rat-a-tat-tat delivery, Charles Butterworth’s calm comic style makes a mark, and Bobby Watson’s flaming designer is a non-PC hoot. But even at a short 75 minutes (and missing the original 2-Strip TechniColor), this soon wears out its welcome.

DOUBLE-BILL: While backstage musicals always work to some extent; backstage farces prove less hearty. Hits like ROOM SERVICE (Marx Brothers/‘38) and Michael Frayn’s superb NOISES OFF (flattened by Peter Bogdanovich in '92) barely hint at their comic potential.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Opening 01/26/31, BUSINESS is but footnote to another play opening that night, GREEN GROW THE LILACS, a rural dramedy musicalized 12 years later as OKLAHOMA!

WOMEN'S PRISON (1956)

King of the ‘Bs’ producer Bryan Foy, who spent much of his career doing low-rent follow-ups to pricier fare @ Warner Bros., continued the tradition over at Columbia. Here, the Warners template pic is CAGED/’50, and this knock-off plenty effective on its own trashy terms; enlivened by an impressive cast of tough movie broads: inmates Jan Sterling, Cleo Moore & Audrey Totter, plus Phyllis Thaxter as a sweet, broken soul among the convicts. And, as trump card, sadistic Ladies’ Prison Director Ida Lupino. (As wild card, a male unit lies but a thin wall away.) Working yet again with reliable, if unimaginative Lewis Seiler helming (violence & same-sex undertones at a minimum), Foy’s tight budget forces him to reduce what should be a large prison population to a mere thirty or so souls, just enough for Lupino to turn the screws on before she goes all Captain Queeg on us. (Frugal as always, producer Foy takes a dramatic page out of Columbia’s THE CAINE MUTINY, which just happened to be in release as this was getting underway.) Look for Lupino’s real life husband Howard Duff as nemesis & prison doctor; perhaps he can explain just how Ms. Totter manages to get pregnant merely by kissing her husband during an illicit visit from the male side of the wall. (Yeah, they close the door, but just how fast does this horny guy work?)

DOUBLE--BILL: As mentioned above, CAGED.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The general prison population is integrated, but cell-by-cell . . . still segregated.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Like many studios, Columbia was compressing the Grey Scale of their b&w product. (Because of limitations in early tv picture resolution?) But journeyman cinematographer Lester White still puts out a handsome, if generalized, low-key/high contrast noir look.

ETHEL & ERNEST (2016)

With a pleasing picturebook animated style, meant to capture the look of Raymond Brigg’s popular graphic novel, this affectionate tribute to the author’s Mum & Dad, an exceptionally unexceptional middle-class couple, is ultimately too unexceptional. The early courtship is sweet, and the hardships of WWII (rationing, air-raid shelters, an only son sent to live in the country) hold interest. But by the last third of the film, we’re stuck in the kitchen with Dad ticking off changes in society he reads out loud from the newspaper and Mum tsk-tsking his devotion to Labour Party advances. (She seems to lean Tory more by class & manners than by political conviction.) The son’s journey seems more interesting: art school, an intellectual life beyond his parents’ ken, marriage to a quiet girl with schizophrenia, but the author modestly refuses attention. A U.K. bestseller, and you’ll see why; the film wasn’t picked up for Stateside theatrical distribution, and you’ll see why.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The heart of this film is better captured in Noël Coward’s THIS HAPPY BREED, filmed by David Lean in 1944 with a near perfect cast of exceptionally unexceptional types.

COMET OVER BROADWAY (1938)

By 1938, fast-fading glamour gal Kay Francis was running out the generous contract Warner Bros had long regretted writing in her Pre-Code prime. And if many of her B-pics are lively things (see CONFESSION/’37), that’s hardly the case here. Thrown together & rushed thru, Kay's a small town stagestruck dreamer, the leading player at her local community theater, who sneaks off from dutiful husband John Litel & infant girl for nighttime ‘lessons’ with a famous actor stopping in town. Backing away from unwanted advances just as Litel makes a surprise appearance, a slug on the jaw leaves one dead actor, one life sentence, and Kay on a theatrical road to redemption. And that’s just the two-reel prologue! Then , vaudeville, burlesque, B’way, London’s West End, tru-love with playwright Ian Hunter, all done to raise lawyer fees and honor wifely duties. (Yet what a relief to learn that hubby’s developed a heart condition after 8 years in prison.) Look close at a traveling shot during a walk thru town where cinematographer James Wong Howe chooses an unusually modern telephoto lens. That’s about it for visual interest, pacing or stage craft under Busby Berkeley’s laissez-faire megging. Drag performer Charles Busch, who kids these films with knowledgeable affection, could have played this script exactly as it stands and received bigger laughs than he got in his satirical pastiche DIE, MOMMY, DIE/’03.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: For the record, Minna Gombell is fun as a vaudevillian gal pal who spends eight years on the cusp of turning forty while Kay's child grows up to become Sybil Jason. Meant to be adorable, the kid’s a real movie-brat horror.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned above, CONFESSION, probably the best pic UFA’s Joe May made after moving from Berlin to Hollywood. It too features Ian Hunter as a bland lover, and has Basil Rathbone, excellent as Kay’s devilish seducer.