A PRIVATE'S AFFAIR (1959)

The title sounds like a punchline to a ‘dirty’ joke from the ‘50s (very Nudge-Nudge-Wink-Wink), but the film turns out to be a slight, innocuous Post-War Service Comedy. A late Raoul Walsh pic that’s harmless, silly and not unwatchable. (Damning with faint praise, no?) Our just-drafted trio (Sal Mineo, Gary Crosby, Barry Coe*) bud up at their new camp and, after getting whipped into shape in a reel & a half, spend the rest of the film dating and working toward an appearance on a live tv variety show (Jim Backus in the Ed Sullivan spot) that’s putting on an All-Army special. The boys didn’t even have to audition since nerdy inductee Bob Denver just happened to tape record their little singing routine as they worked KP peeling potatoes. With cute dates (Terry Moore, Barbara Eden, Christine Carère), a trip to the beach, and a ridiculous subplot involving Asst. Secretary of the Army Jessie Royce Landis marrying one of the boys by accident, Walsh wisely moves things along briskly: with a couple of laughs, a couple of bad songs, smartly stylized sets & ultra-shiny late ‘50s lensing. It just about squeaks by if you shut down your brain. And what a kick to see Sal Mineo in breezy charm mode, sans the usual strum und drang teenage angst.

DOUBLE-BILL: After phoning in the Biblical epic ESTHER AND THE KING/’60, Walsh did another Service Comedy, MARINES, LET’S GO, this time with four Marines larking about Japan on R&R from Korea. (Not seen here.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Coe actually won Golden Globe’s Most Promising Newcomer for this, but the career never got out of first gear.

FEAR IN THE NIGHT (1947)

Busy scripter Maxwell Shane, in the first of his occasional writing/ directing assignments, brings loads of visual panache to this William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich) story. Or does for those who can squint their way thru the subfusc video editions available; all apparently sourced from the same lousy print. It’s a fun watch as a young, sweaty DeForest Kelly dreams himself into an expressionist nightmare where he kills a man with help from some mystery dame in an oddly-shaped mirrored room. Then wakes to the news that such a murder really did occur . . . and he’s carrying incriminating evidence & bleeding. Yikes! How’d this happen? Fortunately, putative brother-in-law Paul Kelley turns out to be a sympathetic, if skeptical homicide dick (how convenient!) and takes on the case. Lots of neat visual flair all thru the pic, a full measure of noirish squalor in cheap residential hotel rooms, good leads & unexpectedly tasty support in character parts. Plus an intriguing, if naturally unspoken, unmistakable gay sub-text between Kelly & Kelley, more in composition & behavior than in dialogue. Check out their overnight together. (Something picked up from the Woolrich story?) The eventual explanations are more far-fetched than satisfying, but you’ll probably want to play along.

DOUBLE-BILL: Shane did a loose remake a decade later, NIGHTMARE/’56 with a starrier cast in Edward G. Robinson & Kevin McCarthy (not seen here).

THE TALL T (1957)

One of seven exemplary, chamber-sized Westerns made by Budd Boetticher from 1956 to 1960, each clean-limbed as their aging star Randolph Scott, most produced by Harry Joe Brown & scripted by Burt Kennedy.* This typically fat-free model (taken from an Elmore Leonard story) sees Scott held hostage at a stagecoach water station, along with loveless middle-aged newlyweds John Hubbard & Maureen O’Sullivan and driver Arthur Hunnicutt, by a trio of particularly ruthless bandits who’ve already murdered the father-son caretakers. And while the film follows a familiar divide-and-conquer pattern in fighting them, they’re so exceptionally well drawn that the old song feels new. (Their leader, Richard Boone, a particularly fascinating philosopher sadist, with a deeply disturbing, ready laugh.) All of it shaped by the film’s rugged landscape, delineating plot & character in a manner that’s something of a Boetticher specialty. And while none of these films run over eight reels, they move without rush and expand in your head after viewing.

DOUBLE-BILL: *All are well worth watching, though probably best to hold off on BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE/’58 as it’s something of a comic variant, and a bit too ambitious for this crowd to pull off on their ultra-tight budgets.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Note that the official Columbia Pictures VOD release looks fine once you get past some dupey-looking opening credits.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: If you think you recognize the cute kid working the station with his dad in an early scene, you probably do. It’s an uncredited Christopher Olsen who had a career’s worth of classics in ‘56 between this, Hitchcock’s THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and Nick Ray’s BIGGER THAN LIFE.

A NOTORIOUS AFFAIR (1930)

Even audiences eager for High Society slumming gave a pass to this stodgy Early Talkie that sees fading silent star Billie Dove drop her posh fiancé for rising, high-strung violin virtuoso Basil Rathbone. But once he hits it big on the concert circuit, he drops her for man-hungry society swell Kay Francis. It’s enough to give one a nervous breakdown! That’d be Basil, bedridden, unable to lift his bow. But is he really paralyzed or merely faking it to keep Dove by his side (and away from her ex-fiancé) after Francis has dropped him for a fresh pair of pants? Dreary stuff, with little interest shown from director Lloyd Bacon. Rathbone is particularly stagy; and silent beauty Dove (Doug Fairbanks’ co-star in THE BLACK PIRATE/’26), though still lovely, hasn’t much presence. Only naughty Kay Francis shows to advantage, ogling every man she sees, from the stable groom on up, and apparently acting on her desires, social class snobbery be damned! On a technical note, there’s an unusual amount of background score for the period. The only surprise in here.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Dove would call it a day in a couple of years, only 29, playing antagonist to Marion Davies in one the few good Talkies either of them made, BLONDIE OF THE FOLLIES/’32, Frances Marion story; Anita Loos script.

ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING (1942)

Terrific, just like it says on the poster! Classic British WWII aviation story from team Emeric Pressburger & Michael Powell, their first as The Archers, but missing the distinctive arrow-pierced target logo. It lives a bit in the shadow of the starry 49th PARALLEL/’41 just before and the epic LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP/’43 just after, but is every bit as good; a real ensemble piece about a bombing run over Germany that hits trouble coming home. Ditching their plane in Holland, the six-man crew spend most of the film in a suspense-filled journey trying to reach the coast, helped by various Dutch partisans, particularly a pair of brave women in Pamela Brown & Googie Withers. The cast is all top-drawer character types and there's great support from debuting Peter Ustinov's priest; eccentric ballet dancer Robert Helpmann as a shifty-eyed Dutch Quisling; even a neat cameo right at the end from Roland Culver. And the technical work is still a pip after all these years & all those wartime restrictions. Heck, check out the credits: Editor David Lean; Cinematographer Ronald Neame with assistants Robert Krasker & Guy Green. All building to an emotional kick in the third act that may blindside you. These things hardly come any better.

DOUBLE-BILL: Unlike England, where the war had been grinding on three long years and the audience well toughened up, over in Hollywood that year, the war was months not years old. So the tone was a bit more fantastic, rah-rah & fun when Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan & Co. crash land inside Germany and fight their way out in Raoul Walsh’s far more lighthearted DESPERATE JOURNEY/’42. (See below)

WAKE IN FRIGHT (aka OUTBACK) (1971)

Coarse, powerful & revolting, a nearly lost cult film from Australia, this early work from remarkably inconsistent Canadian director Ted Kotcheff becomes a blistering exposé of Outback mores (macho male variety) and custom (sociably alcoholic & violent). Plus a kangaroo roundup/massacre . . . a real one. Nearly pretty Gary Bond is the small town one-room teacher, off on holiday to a slightly bigger town where the difference between threat & friendship is papered over, actually cemented, thru all-night drinking sessions, forced camaraderie, gambling dens & ‘roo hunts. A likely sexual partner, the sister of a new ‘mate,’ leads to literal revulsion. But then, with all the homo-erotic male bonding (and probable overnight molestation), why bother. So into the hellish hole of iniquity and thru the heart of darkness & degradation, washed down with just one more pint forced on you from Aussie stalwarts Chips Rafferty (in his last film) and Jack Thompson (in his first). Or from disgraced ‘doc,’ Donald Pleasence who offers just about anything . . . as long as you don’t mind the stink. The restored print from DraftHouse Films has a yellowish cast that blisters the eyeball. So does the tale.

DOUBLE-BILL: Retitled OUTBACK for a Stateside release that barely happened, the taste for landscape-oriented Aussie drama taken up that year by Nicolas Roeg’s memorable solo directing debut WALKABOUT.

OPERATION C.I.A. (1965)

Cheaply made & modest-to-a-fault, this b&w espionage pic spots Burt Reynolds, in his first feature lead, as a wry, very ‘60s womanizing undercover agent sent to Saigon when the previous 'op' gets offed. With Thailand baldly standing in for Vietnam, Burt plays clueless agriculture lecturer while secretly following clues marked CREDIT. A risible idea for a tourist/spy which naturally sends him up many blind alleys. Unable to tell friend from foe, Burt stumbles along as various treacherous helpmates watch as he falls into waterways & changes into fresh shirts, activities designed to show off that fit, hirsute footballer bod. There’s a bit of interest in seeing a Vietnam-based story, however trifling, from Pre-Tet Offensive days, before U.S. military action had ratcheted up to become such a divisive issue. And then, toward the end, when Reynolds seems to be kidding the whole thing. But a lack of real locations makes it all pretty meaningless even as tone-deaf comedy.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Hollywood largely kept clear of Vietnam. Then, in 1978, two: Michael Cimino’s much praised (though not here) THE DEER HUNTER and Ted Post’s sadly under-seen GO TELL THE SPARTANS.

OVER THE WALL (1938)

Nobody does go Over The Wall in this wan little prison programmer. The ‘working title’ EVIDENCE (see poster) far more accurate. But that’s the least of its problems. Second of five stories Warners got from ‘Sing Sing’ Warden Lewis E. Lawes*, this one passes off bland Irish tenor Dick Foran as a hothead boxer who leads with his fists IN and OUT of the ring. Pudgy, and coming across as an unsympathetic lout, he pummels manager Ward Bond demanding a quick fight only to find himself framed when the guy is killed by his boss. Innocent, but convicted, bad luck turns good for Foran when prison chaplain John Litel hears him singing and slots him into his popular radio show to sing Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria.’ (This really is the film plot! And while Foran is a more believable singer than boxer, his easy top proves short of breath for Schubert.) Meanwhile, forgettable gal pal June Travis gets a job as secretary to the actual killer and soon discovers . . . Well, you get the idea. This one’s a real lemon though Litel (making like Pat O’Brien elsewhere on the Warners lot in ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES/’38) is pretty good, considering, and looks far more physically fit than Foran’s putative pugilist. Busy hack megger Frank McDonald holds a lickety-spit pace, but sure lets everyone ham things up.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Lawes best adaptation was his first, 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING, with Michael Curtiz getting great perfs from Spencer Tracy (filling in for a contract breaking James Cagney) and Warners’ newbie Bette Davis.

THE WICKED LADY (1945)

With James Mason as the dashing ‘highwayman’ thief and Margaret Lockwood as the ‘Wicked Lady’ who partners him, that’s after stealing her best friend’s fiancé (Griffith Jones) and cheating on him with Michael Rennie, this tongue-in-cheek historical ought to be good ludicrous fun. And writer/director Leslie Arliss gets about halfway there . . . it’s ludicrous. Very popular in its day, what with leading lady Lockwood’s heaving bosom and Can-You-Top-This villainy . . . murder included; she makes that cunning little vixen Scarlett O’Hara look like a nun. But what a shoddy piece of goods it is, with Gainsborough Pictures production values that Monogram Pictures might have found wanting. (Even viewers with a high tolerance for poor backscreen projection may wince at anything on horseback.) Perhaps, like that funny story that’s lost its effect, you had to have been there.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Mason book-ended this film with the last & best of his early brooding brute roles in THE SEVENTH VEIL/’47, and then went on to his breakthru role in director Carol Reed’s ODD MAN OUT/’47. (Avoid Michael Winner’s 1983 WICKED remake for drek-meisters Golan-Globus, a notable embarrassment for Faye Dunaway.)

'71 (2014)

In his debut feature, British mini-series director Yann Demange overdoes everything by half in a by-the-book Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ story. But he’s helped by a rare British Army POV which helps make the first half effectively overdone.*  Jack O’Connell, all wired up, is the newbie British ‘peace-keeper’ soldier, fresh out of training, now lost in the dangerous back alley mazes of a Catholic Belfast neighborhood after a weapons search erupts into a less than purely spontaneous street riot. Running for his life after his partner is shot dead, he lucks into a young Protestant lad who leads him to the relative safety of a Protestant area bar. Safe at last . . . or maybe not to judge from a glimpse at the bomb being readied in the backroom. Pretty exciting stuff, but shortly after this, the situation blows up (literally), and the film starts to overheat from competing factions (military; police; IRA terrorists; less severe IRA operatives; undercover agents; and the traditional suffering Irish women), all splintered into mini-factions working as much against themselves as against any perceived enemy. With this much internecine rivalry, the IRA would have self-imploded in months instead of going on for decades. Style & pacing help Demange keep things moving forward, so too a highly saturated image that gives an ominous sense of something wicked around every corner. Or does until a tricky shootout finale threatens to turn urban drama into Western melodrama.

CONTEST/DOUBLE-BILL: *Trying, and failing, to come up with another ‘Irish Troubles’ pic taken from this POV. Come up with one to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice!

THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (1961)

Neatly splitting the difference between Boy’s Adventure (think GUNGA DIN/’39) & Thinking-Man’s WWII actioner (BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI/’57*), writer/producer Carl Foreman shepherded this Impossible-Mission project, from the Alistair MacLean novel, to near classic status with a pitch-perfect All-Star cast; a last minute directing change (witty Alexander Mackendrick out/sturdy scene-builder J. Lee Thompson in*); and just enough deep dish ideas on the ways of war to chew on. It holds up beautifully, with only the occasional ‘60s special effect (easy to spot miniatures; halos & grain on process shots) to pull you out of the story. Elsewise, the structure, suspense and relationships are in perfect alignment as Peck & Co. (see poster) take on a German Division guarding those eponymous big guns. Laid out with just enough distractions & setbacks to keep you guessing, it’s as much character as plot driven, with a really exceptional perf from David Niven as the explosives expert. He even manages to steal scenes from Anthony Quinn in his (you can’t miss it!) BRIGHT RED shirt. Plus, a super Dmitri Tiomkin score & Oswald Morris on camera. A lot of the big, jaunty WWII epics from the early ‘60s that came in GUNS’ wake look a bit pokey now. But not this expertly paced, suspense-filled class act.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Director Thompson would soon fall into hackdom, but anyone who puts out TIGER BAY/’59; NAVARONE and CAPE FEAR/’62 in just a few years, shouldn't be taken for granted. OR: Having long regretted turning down the Carl Foreman scripted HIGH NOON/’52 (too much like his recent THE GUNFIGHTER/’50), Peck was an easy sell on this Foreman project.  Not so lucky with his next Foreman project, MACKENNA’S GOLD/’69, an expensive critical & commercial disaster, though also something of a ‘guilty pleasure.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Foreman got belated credit on BRIDGE long after the BlackList Communist Witch Hunt days.

CRY OF THE HUNTED (1953)

Softhearted (or is it soft-headed?) Maximum Security Sub-Warden Barry Sullivan, ordered to sweat information out of fall-guy prisoner Vittorio Gassman, passes the job off to a pair of detectives who manage to lose him in a traffic accident. Now it’s up to Sullivan to track the guy down for a last chance at locating the stolen cash & missing accomplices Gassman’s been covering for. But it's advantage Gassman when the prisoner slips home, since ‘home’ is deep in Louisiana’s uncharted swamp-lands. Top-tier B-pic director Joseph H. Lewis (of low-budget sexy bank-robbers GUN CRAZY/’50 fame*) manages some nifty set pieces (heavy on action, violence & funiculars!), but the story never finds a believable groove. Instead, concentrate on the peculiar police officers and Gassman’s wicked nasty swamp wife. And who was the genius who thought to put tubby William Conrad in hot, sticky Louisiana back country? He must have sweat thru ten shirts a day.

DOUBLE-BILL: Gassman tried playing Hollywood leading man during his marriage to Shelley Winters (1952 - ‘54), but it didn’t quite take. Best shot: THE GLASS WALL/’53. Then, back to Italian & International stardom. *For prime Lewis, try his next, THE BIG COMBO/’55.

DINNER AT EIGHT (1933)

One of the great entertainments in the brief interregnum between Early Talkies & prime Golden Age Hollywood.* And why not, with that lineup of writers* & actors under producer David O. Selznick (proving his bona fides to new boss/father-in-law Louis B. Mayer) & new to M-G-M director George Cukor (affirming his bona fides to Selznick). Organized around a society dinner given at the height of the Depression by fluttery Billie Burke, unaware that husband Lionel Barrymore’s business & health are failing or that daughter Madge Evans is about to dump fiancé Phillips Holmes for the once dashing/now hopelessly alcoholic actor John Barrymore. Plus she’s forced to invite crass, classless nouveau riche couple from Hell Wallace Beery & Jean Harlow as a business favor to her husband, along with eccentric musical comedy star (retired) Marie Dressler. The mixture of high & low comedy with real tragic desperation (financial & romantic) is peerless, with Dressler & Harlow often painfully funny (and Dressler showing her genius at switching moods in an instant when life turn serious). With everyone wearing a different mask to meet every situation, no one more so than John Barrymore in an astonishing perf that runs the gamut from faux British elocution to nasty drunk & anti-Semitic taunts to pathetic sobbing breakdown. (But missing from our Coca-Cola tie-in magazine ad. Not Jack’s beverage of choice.) Without a laugh, tear or dramatic shudder missed under Cukor’s steady gaze, it's one of the real champs.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *So why no Oscar® noms? Maybe because it came out during Oscar’s 'Leap Year,' 1932 - ‘34, a year & a half stretch to synch up eligibility dates with the calendar year.

DOUBLE-BILL: The Beery/Harlow characters, along with her ‘hands-on’ physician Edmund Lowe are the obvious inspiration for Broderick Crawford, Judy Holliday & William Holden in BORN YESTERDAY/’50, also directed by Cukor.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Frances Marion, Herman Mankiewicz & Donald Ogden Stewart adapting the George Kaufman/Edna Ferber B’way hit; an All-Star writing team to match an All-Star cast.

HOTEL BERLIN (1945)

Novelist Vicki Baum, of GRAND HOTEL fame, had a fabulous idea here, a sort of HOTEL GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG, set in Berlin as WWII gasps to a close, and with much the same multi-storyline action to follow as desperate staff, guests and passers-thru struggle to get a break, get a loan, get a decent pair of shoes and get out of their fast collapsing city. Main characters include Faye Emerson’s stage actress (expediently playing whatever role, or political angle, fits the occasion); Helmut Dantine’s on-the-run resistance leader (this real life war refugee finally cast not as some Nazi officer but as the good guy/hero he actually was). And there’s General Raymond Massey, last survivor of the anti-Hitler plotters; Peter Lorre’s demoralized ‘good’ German . . . many, many more.* Alas, too many more for director Peter Godfrey & scripters Jo Pagano & Alvah Bessie to accommodate or keep track of. Not completely satisfying, but worth the effort in spite of gaps in execution. And, by the end, surprisingly powerful.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Including Alan Hale in a rare despicable turn as a virulent, anti-Semitic Nazi officer.

DOUBLE-BILL: Stanley Kramer’s pretentious SHIP OF FOOLS/’65 floats the Grand Hotel template on a German ocean liner not long before the war.

ARABESQUE (1966)

While Cary Grant passed on this follow-up to CHARADE/’63, its director Stanley Donen took it on, bringing back Peter Stone (writing as Pierre Marton) for a script polish to bring out the same stylish Hitchcock-Lite suspense he’d given the earlier film. But a bit of wordplay can’t save the mishmash storyline that has Egyptologist Prof. Gregory Peck (in the Cary Grant spot) meeting cute with Sophia Loren’s woman of mystery to decipher a mini-scroll of hieroglyphs and stop an international assassination plot. Pleasant enough, when it’s not being twee & tedious, the fun’s forced in this one. Yet what a ravishing thing simply to look at with Donen and cinematographer Christopher Challis (in the first of three collaborations) dazzling the eye with a spit-shine polish, reflective surfaces and cantered angles, as they try to fill in narrative chasms with empty bravura style. A lost cause, if not without visual appeal, the true payoff came when they found worthy use for these tricks on their next film, the masterful Hollywood meets New Wave marital dramedy TWO FOR THE ROAD/’67.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hollywood vet Charles Lang shot CHARADE, beautifully, too, making for a fascinating comparison with Challis’s work for Donen.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Peck knew very well he was no Cary Grant at this sort of thing. Telling Donen when he couldn’t find the laugh in a line, ‘Well, there’s only one Cary Grant!’

POIROT: MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2010)

With four or five filmings out there, this version of the Agatha Christie classic, part of David Suchet’s POIROT series, tries too hard to stand apart from Sidney Lumet’s witty 1974 All-Star entertainment. Dark & dour, with little in the way of fun or mystery, it misreads Christie, adding indignation and a dose of Catholic moralizing to her deft puzzle. Suchet, exhausted and in bad spirits right from the start, makes a joyless detective Hercule Poiret in this one, the little grey cells working under duress. A shame as the production is unusually lux for the series and the cast, with some names soon to become famous (Jessica Chastain; Hugh Bonneville) is reasonably starry if not a patch on the Lumet parade of legends. The wicked smart plot remains a legerdemain wonder, so you’ll still be pulled into the whodunit aspects when a vicious businessman is murdered in his train compartment on the elegant Orient Express, but there’s little reason to opt for this version.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: As mentioned, the deluxe 1974 iteration holds up beautifully. (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/09/murder-on-orient-express-1974.html)

HE WAS HER MAN (1934)

James Cagney & Joan Blondell came to Hollywood after PENNY ARCADE, a fast B’way flop whose director, William Keighley, followed two years later. Filmed as SINNERS’ HOLIDAY, six more pairings followed with this, their 7th and last. It’s an unexpectedly dark, romantic number, more Jean Gabin/ French Poetic Realism than lighthearted Cagney/Blondell vehicle. (And note the purposefully misleading poster.) Directed with uncommon sensitivity by Lloyd Bacon, it casts a rueful spell. Cagney’s an ex-con who sets up a couple of safecrackers for the police; then winds up on the run when one of the thugs gets away. Blondell’s a tart, trying to turn her life around. She’s just engaged to Victor Jory’s Portuguese-California fisherman when she & Cagney meet-cute in his hotel room as she tries to retrieve her wedding dress. Sparks fly, and even though she wants to do the smart/honorable thing, the wedding is threatened. So too Cagney, now with a pair of hitman on his tail. A special kind of film, elegiac in tone, its frank sexuality likely got it suppressed under the newly enforced Production Code just two weeks after it opened. A real beauty (with lenser George Barnes lending a dreamy touch & lovely California coast location work) even if Cagney sports that mealy little mustache he’d to grow to tick off boss & arch nemesis Jack Warner.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Paid to the dialect coach! Victor Jory’s Portuguese accent even worse than Spencer Tracy’s in CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS/’37. They’re both fine anyway.

THE GOLDEN FLEECING (1940)

No more than a pleasant programmer, but with that rarest of features, a distinct comic voice. And not just any voice, but S. J. Perelman*, writing with wife Laura. Lew Ayres, in between Dr. Kildare movies, is the hapless life insurance salesman who can finally marry girlfriend Rita Johnson after selling a big policy . . . to mob informer Lloyd Nolan. Yikes! The guy’s got a bull’s eye on his back. (Bob Hope in ALIAS JESSE JAMES & Danny Kaye in THE MAN FROM THE DINER’S CLUB got in similar jams.) The structure is farce, but with Perelman consistently finding smart/funny ways to do dumb things. Packed with plenty of plot reverses & wild gags, it’s sensible silliness, short & sweet, with excellent support all ‘round. Virginia Grey’s moll especially good and even overcooked vaudevillian Leon Errol as Ayres’ xylophone playing father-in-law getting good laughs. In tone, a lot like Preston Sturges’s CHRISTMAS IN JULY, released just two months after this, with both films featuring Sturges regular William Demerest as well as a $25 thou reward.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Perelman’s best known film work: MONKEY BUSINESS/’31 and HORSE FEATHERS/’32 for the Marx Bros. But pair this one with Sturges’s CHRISTMAS IN JULY.

HELL UP IN HARLEM (1973)

Schlock producer Samuel Z. Arkoff asked for (and got) a rush job from writer/director Larry Cohen on this jarringly executed sequel to his own BLACK CAESAR. Made so quickly, HELL was in theaters while CAESAR still played second-run. Now with even more Blaxploitation action, you might imagine Cohen had developed enough technique to handle the fights, chases & shoot-outs so generously peppered in here. Imagine on. Picking up from CAESAR, NYC crime lord Fred Williamson survives hits from a crooked D.A.; reestablishes his territory with help from Pop (Julius Harris, the best thing in here); finds tru-love, wife & fast growing son before moving to Beverly Hills to ‘go straight’ just as Pop takes over the biz and (seemingly) turns against him. With little sense and even less explanation, the story moves from one violent action to the next without connective tissue or narrative logic. Fine for fans, but pretty flaccid moviemaking in spite of much sound & fury. And while you can't expect miracles in the way of action chops from Cohen on a third film, even the simplest reverse angle defeats him. Check out the post-coital set ups for Williamson & his bedmate. They might be speaking to some imaginary third person rather than each other. Worth a look for the MovieLab color process work (well reproduced on the Olive Films DVD) and for some stylish period details in clothes, cars & racial attitudes. But for that, almost any Blaxploitation pic from the period would serve equally well.

DOUBLE-BILL: Gordon Park’s lodestar Blaxploitation pic SHAFT/’71 looks positively Neo-Realistic in comparison.

HOTEL (1967)

With Leading Players rather than a true All-Star cast, it’s a Not-So-Grand Hotel, but snazzy & fun all the same. A first major adaptation of one of those clunky Arthur Hailey bestsellers, it wasn’t the game-changing blockbuster AIRPORT was in 1970, just the better pic. Director Richard Quine & lenser Charles Lang, are both in good form (Lang successfully taming the mid-‘60s taste for blanket over-lighting), but the main credit belongs to scripter Wendell Mayes, nailing the paradoxical structural trick of keeping multiple storylines clear while also weaving them all together. (He ‘d just done much the same for Otto Preminger on ADVISE & CONSENT/’62 and IN HARM’S WAY/’65.) Rod Taylor, likable manager of Melvyn Douglas’s posh grande dame New Orleans hotel, juggles with failing finances, usurping hotelier Kevin McCarthy (and his soigné/disaffected mistress Catherine Spaak), hit-and-run diplomats Merle Oberon & Michael Rennie, Karl Malden’s light-fingered room thief, even a timely Civil Rights action. And check out the ghastly 1967 fabrics & fashions Edith Head used to stay up to date. Better luck outfitting the men, especially Kevin McCarthy, whose exposed chest is his character tip-off. Very entertaining trash; right from the semi-animated opening credits.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Stars aged so differently at the time, Merle Oberon, stiffly preserved at only 56. She basically retired after this, coming back only for the near vanity production INTERVAL/’73.

DOUBLE-BILL: Naturally, GRAND HOTEL/’32. An antique, but with Garbo, Barrymores, Beery & Crawford, you’re playing a different ball game.

OUR DAILY BREAD (1933)

King Vidor, a visionary Hollywood director whose vision often exceeded his grasp, had three big subjects on his bucket list: War (THE BIG PARADE/’25); Wheat (OUR DAILY BREAD) and Steel (AN AMERICAN ROMANCE/’44). This middle one, a tough studio sell which wound up self-produced and largely self-financed, spent years in subfusc Public Domain hell, giving its simplistic, even naive, Depression Era/back-to-the-land message an amateurish quality that accentuated its faults. But seen in a remastered KINO edition* makes for an enormous improvement, even the acting looks better. (Though it's still awkward as drama.) The story follows a struggling young couple (for Vidor, it's the same hard-luck Big City newlyweds of his silent THE CROWD/’28, but with new actors) taking on a bankrupt farm and running it as a community effort for down & out families of all sorts and professions. (Many a nationality & religion, but still no Blacks.) Karen Morley, as the wife; John Qualen, as the experienced farmer; and a menacing Addison Richards as a tough guy on the lam; give exceptional characterizations, with only Tom Keene’s husband (elected boss of the commune) bad enough to pull you out of the story. Keene was mostly in B-Westerns, but Vidor may have noted a strong resemblance . . . to himself! See Vidor’s late cameo appearance, yelling out ‘Okay to go!’ when the irrigation ditch is ready. And it’s that irrigation sequence that’s always been the film’s calling card, a bit of Soviet Constructionist Cinema Americana style. And now, in this fine looking print, the rest of the film is nearly worthy of its finale.

LINK: Watch on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzvERtI9MGA

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Idealistic as BREAD is, the depiction of rural life & values isn’t a patch on Vidor’s uncredited work in the opening Kansas scenes of THE WIZARD OF OZ/’39; nor his devastating rural romance in his still unheralded masterpiece THE STRANGER’S RETURN/’33.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-strangers-return-1933.html

WAY BACK HOME (1931)

In YANKEE DOODLE DANDY/’42, James Cagney, as George M. Cohan, tries to explain a Variety headline to some neighborhood kids: HIX NIX STIX PIX.* Or: Rural Audiences Rejecting Rural-Themed Movies. And here’s a film the headline might have referred to. Spun off a popular radio show, it featured Yankee farmer/philosopher Seth Parker & his local pals, played by Phillips Lord & his over-the-air regulars in broad comical turns. There’s a fair amount of hayseed humor to wade thru, and you’ll need tolerance for community sing-a-longs (A Prairie Home Companion has nothing on this), but the two main dramas embedded in the town’s social life work up more interest than you expect, with Hollywood character actors lending considerable appeal. (They sure are better actors than those radio hams!) Bette Davis, in her fourth film, and the first she felt gave her a chance to show something, is the pretty young thing who defies a threatening father to elope with young Frank Albertson, illegitimate son of the town pariah. Frankie Darro plays a foster kid whose violent, long lost dad shows up out of the blue to kidnap him. Corny and corn-fed sentiment, if not without some real Maine atmosphere to it. The film sunk without a trace, as did the Hollywood careers of the radio players. While Albertson, villainous dad Stanley Fields, Darro & Davis did . . . well, quite a bit better.

DOUBLE-BILL: At times, a touch of D. W. Griffith comes across in William Seiter’s direction & especially in J. Roy Hunt’s lensing, with themes and characters reminiscent of TRUE HEART SUSIE/’19 and WAY DOWN EAST/’20, Griffith at his best.

CONTEST: *‘HIX NIX STIX PIX’ is considered Variety’s second most famous front page headline; what’s #1? Guess right to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing. HINT: it ran in 1929.

THE GIRL DOWNSTAIRS (1938)

Like infamous flop Anna Sten before her, it was three Hollywood strikes and out for Hungarian film star Franciska Gaal. This was the middle one (after Fredric March/before Bing Crosby), with Franchot Tone as co-star in a prettified remake of her Hungarian success CATHERINE THE LAST.* One of those silly romantic farces where a wealthy playboy disguises himself as a chauffeur to flirt with scullery gal Gaal. But only so he can sneak upstairs to see his fiancé without bumping into disapproving dad Walter Connolly. Then his heart is pulled downstairs. Director Norman Taurog doesn’t push too hard for laughs (most of the time) and it plays better than it has any right to, largely thanks to expert work from Tone (taming his drunken cad with charm) & Connolly (getting laughs on timing alone). Gaal is fine when the script doesn’t make her completely idiotic (right off the farm, she’s too gauche & naive to be believed), her character and hair styled on old Mary Pickford movies. (She’s nearly as tiny, too.) But looks and a pretty singing voice apparently weren’t enough.

DOUBLE-BILL: *CATHERINE, the German/Hungarian original produced by Joe Pasternak & directed by Henry Koster, sounds a lot more interesting, but is it available? Pasternak & Koster also came to Hollywood, hitting it big right away with Deanna Durbin’s starmaking THREE SMART GIRLS/’36. (See below)

THE GREAT O'MALLEY (1937)

This odd little film feels like an A-pic demoted to B+ late in development. Beat cop Pat O’Brien (in for A-lister James Cagney?*) is obstinately by-the-book, a stickler for even minor infractions. A pain to those he should be protecting and to his superiors back at the station, he destroys ex-con Humphrey Bogart’s chance at a fresh start with a summons on a noisy car muffler. Later finding redemption by helping the family Bogie left behind and decency from neighborhood teacher Ann Sheridan. Director William Dieterle, in the midst of his prestigious bio-pics with Paul Muni (PASTEUR; ZOLA), gives the opening some comic snap, and keeps O’Brien off his overbearing manner. But once we meet Bogart’s limping little girl (bathetic Sybil Jason), there’s not much he can do other than run the show as quickly as possible. (O’Brien too opaque an actor to set a tone on his own.) A tricky last act with a just released Bogie panicking about O’Brien’s next move against him is an intriguing idea but inevitably gets shortchanged in a film that barely runs 70 minutes. Look fast for a glimpse & the cackling laugh of Frank McHugh (a cop in a car) in a bit so small even IMDb seems to have missed it.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Cagney, at war with Warners in 1936- ‘37, made a pair of indies for Grand National, returning in ‘38 to co-star with O’Brien on the forced comedy of BOY MEETS GIRL and triumph in ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES. Maybe Warners was trying out Dieterle for that NYC tenement drama, a far bigger proposition eventually given to Michael Curtiz.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: This might have worked better with if O’Brien & Bogart swapped roles. Lots of Lt. Cmdr. Queeg in that stubborn, infraction-obsessed cop.

RUNNING WILD

W. C. Fields, who was usually paired with hack comedy directors, got a first class comedy man for a pair of silents in Gregory La Cava, a drinking pal who’d go on to make MY MAN GODFREY/’36 and STAGE DOOR/’37. No such classics with Fields, but neatly turned minor silents SO’S YOUR OLD MAN/’26 (faithfully remade in sound as YOU’RE TELLING ME/’34) and this one (re-imagined into the superior MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE/’35*). It’s an early iteration of Fields the henpecked family man: gorgon of a wife, disrespectful oaf step-son, snarling pet mongrel, dead-end work environment and (in a touch of grace) sweetheart of a daughter. The slower first half sets up all his failures at home & work, then pivots via hypnotic suggestion (!) turning Fields into a veritable lion of a man, clawing back success & self-respect. Just okay early on, but the ‘running wild’ part is good fun, with Fields, an agile 47 at the time, nearly dynamic enough to make up for the missing growls, inflections and signature comic verbiage. Get it on KINO DVD, a fine 2K remastering of the Library of Congress print with Donald Sosin’s excellent piano score.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Almost painfully hilarious, TRAPEZE uses the same setup but runs new comic turns. With Grady Sutton in clover as the awful stepson.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/10/man-on-flying-trapeze-1935.html

ESCAPE FROM FORT BRAVO (1953)

Director John Sturges moved up to A-pics on this plush M-G-M Western that ought to be better than it is. Something inimical about M-G-M ‘House Style’ and Westerns, with impressive location work undercut by crude soundstage ‘exteriors’ using painted cycloramas Col. Buffalo Bill would have sent back to the scenery department. Add on Eleanor Parker’s painted Leading Lady, John Forsythe’s lousy come-and-go Southern accent, a waterfall set a hop, skip & jump from desert vistas in Death Valley and you’ve lost half the battle before a camera turns. Yet what a lot of superb action comes thru in this tale of an isolated POW camp for captured Confederates, kept in line by tough, borderline sadistic Union Capt. William Holden, all of them surrounded by lethal Indians eager to savage outgoing escapees or incoming supply wagons. The neatly turned plot has Parker visiting for Polly Bergen’s wedding to officer Richard Anderson, but really there to run off with Forsythe and character actors John Lupton (the coward), William Campbell (the braggart) and an indispensable William Demarest (the sharpshooter). If only Parker & Holden didn’t upset the plan by sparking to each others’ flame! (Actually, these two don’t spark at all on screen; one more problem for Sturges to work around.) Bumpy going between the good stuff in the first two acts, but stick with it for a spectacular finale that uses more arrows than Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD and Olivier’s HENRY V combined. A jaw-dropping sequence.

DOUBLE-BILL: A big year for Holden who also broke the production Code in THE MOON IS BLUE (now unwatchable) and won an Oscar® for his other POW pic that year, STALAG 17.

ZAZA (1938)

On Broadway, a turn-of-the-last-century standby for David Belasco, then a 1923 silent hit for Gloria Swanson, this French stage perennial was moldy stuff by the time George Cukor & Claudette Colbert got to it. Yet what a refreshed marvel they make of the old material. Even if censorship issues suppressed major scenes between Colbert’s Music Hall star and Herbert Marshall, her secretly married-with-child gentlemanly lover. No one could possibly be surprised at this adulterous turn of events; and frankly, it’s not much to hang a whole story on (even when the play was new). Especially with a miscast Marshall, purring his way thru with calm British reserve. But everything else is so extraordinary here, with some of the best backstage atmosphere ever seen in a Hollywood studio pic, in echt French style.* Colbert is stunning on stage and off (Charles Lang lensing to perfection), with a supporting cast of real stage savvy. Bert Lahr, in a rare & wonderful straight perf, as performing partner/ manager, singing in character on stage with Colbert or trying out a new tune without any tricks in the dressing room. Constance Collier, a great stage star in her youth, normally confined in Hollywood to dotty society types, here getting her soul into a dowdy character role as Colbert’s dresser/assistant, and bringing a lifetime of knowledge to it. It all ends in a magnificent stage turn as Colbert sings her ex-lover out of her life for good.* A big flop in its day, and easy to see why, now a precious one-off. There’s really nothing like it from the period.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Born in France, Colbert shows no need to overplay with heavy French frou-frou. (Swanson is all over the place with it.) And thanks to Cukor’s personal friendship with Fanny Brice, Colbert was coached by a pro thru her stage numbers. Not for nothing is the end of this film so similar to the end of FUNNY GIRL/’68 where Barbra Streisand not only plays Fanny Brice, but does her signature song, always singing very much as Streisand, not as Brice whose torch song style was far closer to what Colbert, in charming voice & manner, does here. See more on this and Cukor in general, in Gavin Lambert’s excellent interview book ON CUKOR.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Cukor gave special credit to Paramount Art Director Hans Dreier for the film’s look. And it’s likely producer Albert Lewin (one time resident story editor & general sophisticate to Irving Thalberg) had some influence. Later going on to direct such visually literate pics as PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY/’45 and PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN/’51.

OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1964)

A troubled production (three directors, all disowning it; feuding leads), it’s one of those famous book adaptations that touches all the bases, but never makes contact. Vaguely set in the early 1900s, Kim Novak’s career never completely recovered from her earnest, but jarringly contemporary attempt at Somerset Maugham’s slutty waitress who takes possession of Laurence Harvey’s easy mark of a Med student. The worse she treats him, the more he longs to debase himself. While more of the book gets covered, it misses the feral charge Bette Davis gave the 1934 version (see below) or the emotional undertow composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold brought to the otherwise tepid try of 1946. Here, Ron Goodwin’s score is simply intrusive and Ken Hughes, who seems to have directed most of the film, never finds a rhythm to pull together all the misjudged camera setups. (We’re always in the wrong spot.) Even so, the highly autobiographical story (possibly Maugham’s best) pulls you along. And now and then, especially when Roger Livesey shows up fully formed as the eccentric father of the long sought ‘right’ girl for the young doctor, you can see the film everyone was hoping to make.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As literary adaptations go, Jack Cardiff’s film of D.H. Lawrence’s SONS AND LOVERS/’60, made around the same time in a similar style and covering the same period, succeeds in most of the ways this one misses.

NAYAK: THE HERO (1966)

Lesser known, but top-tier Satyajit Ray film about a big film star (played by India film deity Uttam Kumar) going thru a crisis of conscience & confidence as he takes an overnight train to accept a prestigious film award, just as his latest pic (a certain flop) is coming out. Interviewed by film-phobic journalist Sharmila Tagore along the way, he finds her tart rudeness preferable to the usual deferential treatment and opens up about his hopes, fears and past friendships far more than he would in a typical celebrity chat. The film, something of a quiet technical wonder considering its budget, is also unexpectedly Fellini-esque in its striking dream sequences, quick-cut flashbacks and Kumar’s decidedly Marcello Mastroianni sunglasses, straight out of 8½. (Kumar all but taking on the Mastroianni persona at times . . . and fully up to the challenge.) But Ray hardly stops there, fashioning an entire upper middle-class Indian society in motion as the train heads to Delhi. Family matters, business deals & social standing; a microcosm of the times. BTW: the title refers to the nearly heroic roles Kumar plays in all his films. Here, he’s taken down a notch or two, not to reveal feet of clay, but to expose a more complicated reality. Indispensable. 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The APU Trilogy permanently pegged Ray as a Neo-Realist, but his range was much larger.