LOST HORIZON (1973)

BATTLEFIELD EARTH/’00 and GOTTI/’18 give John Travolta two. Eddie Murphy’s shows on THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH. PEPE/’60, an old default, finds Cantinflas doubling down on AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS to his regret. And honorable mention to George Lucas for HOWARD THE DUCK/’86 and RADIOLAND MURDERS/’94. All canonical choices for Worst Film of All Time (big-budget division). But after viewing a restored to full-length DVD of this Ross Hunter clunker, a remake of James Hilton/Frank Capra’s 1937 nutjob classic LOST HORIZON (see below), now sprinkled with twinkly tunes from Burt Bacharach’s lowest drawer, it surely sweeps the boards! A ghastly representation of a late ‘60s/early ‘70s ‘Family Musical,’ with Peter Finch finding Shangri-La, a valley of Love, Peace & spontaneous lobotomy, run by John Gielgud & Charles Boyer, hidden from the war-torn world amid the snowy Himalayas, alongside fellow travelers Sally Kellerman, George Kennedy, Michael York & Bobby Van. (Bobby Van? The sole cast member with musical comedy chops, he’s all but unwatchable.) Liv Ullmann, like a Zombie Julie Andrews without talent or voice for the genre, gambols with the children of this Utopia and gazes longingly at stout, sagging Peter Finch while Olivia Hussey longs to flee this gilded cage with York. Technically shabby from top to bottom (editing & voice dubbing particularly inept), with exteriors that rival a super-sized Putt-Putt course for beauty, and interiors that glow like a pre-fab Tiki-themed Las Vegas conference room. But only truly reaching its peak on one of its excruciating songs, with a fertility dance invaded by a unit of Polynesian(?) Chippendale dancers in color-coordinated Speedos and waving dancing ribbons. Sounds like mad, campy fun, no? No. Hack megger Charles Jarrott hasn’t a clue. Poor Ross Hunter. After hit mellers with Douglas Sirk and smash coy sex comedies with Doris Day back at Universal, he’d just been pushed out by mogul-in-charge Lew Wasserman after bringing in AIRPORT/’70, the biggest hit of the year*. Moving over to Columbia, this initial project insured he’d never make another feature again.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The Frank Capra 1937 version, nearly as silly/just as racist (Shangri-La your basic slave state with Euro overlords living in a palace while Asians work & live in the fields), does cast a spell of sorts thanks to Ronald Colman’s graceful playing & preternatural empathy, along with the pace, excitement & comic relief of Capra’s directorial legerdemain. For a quick lesson in moviemaking, compare the opening reel of the two versions. The loss of craft between ‘37 and ‘73 painfully evident.     https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/lost-horizon-1937.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *In Hollywood politics, Lew Wassermann’s distaste for Hunter could have survived a flop or two. But owing the survival of his currently struggling studio to the unprecedented success of a Hunter corn-fest like AIRPORT was more than he could stand.

RHYTHM ON THE RIVER (1940)

With the first Bing Crosby/Bob Hope ROAD pic doing blockbuster biz, Paramount upped the ante on Bing’s next: production polish, sets that looked nailed down, even a less ramshackle plot. Bing’s still his default lackadaisical character, now a songster ‘ghosting’ tunes for famous, but stymied B’way composer Basil Rathbone, while co-star Mary Martin, in just her second pic*, secretly does his lyrics. Naturally, they meet-cute, unaware of the connection before wising up after a brief fallout and then striking out on their own. Just one problem: everyone thinks their stuff sounds too much like Rathbone’s! A neat idea (Billy Wilder denies credit on his Original Story credit) that plays as if it had been ordered up for Astaire/Rogers. And no wonder with Fred & Ginger specialist Dwight Taylor on script. But where his earlier stuff was complimented with some of the greatest song & dance ever put on celluloid, the numbers here are no more than charming & pleasant. Still, reasonably good fun, with a surprising amount of live singing when there’s just piano accompaniment. Plus, a striking debut for the mordantly witty, pianistically gifted Oscar Levant, best known at the time as a Gershwin devotee and as the musical expert on radio’s INFORMATION PLEASE.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: More of a HEAR All About It. Sony Classical has just put out A RHAPSODY IN BLUE: the Complete Oscar Levant on eight remastered discs in a fancy LP-sized package (book included), with the famous Gershwin recordings and much more. Pricey though.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Paramount tried Martin in a dark brunette look that doesn’t quite work for her. A problem never fully solved during a short Hollywood sojourn. So, back to B’way for ONE TOUCH OF VENUS and legend in SOUTH PACIFIC, PETER PAN & THE SOUND OF MUSIC.

MACABRE (1958)

Schlock-meister William Castle was slipping into tv gigs when he returned to the Big Screen with this first of his Big Gimmick Pics, here a $1000 insurance policy against Death-By-Fright!* Later P.R. triumphs would hot wire a few seats for that Whoopee Cushion jolt of electric fear or post a fake nurse in the lobby for the faint of heart; anything to distract you from the anemic movie accompaniment. This one has William Prince as a bland small-town doctor whose daughter is reported buried alive, possibly in retribution for a pair of botched cases (two sisters dead) and/or the doc’s complicated love life (dead wife, selfish mistress, lovelorn office assistant). Shot with the visual allure of ‘50s anthology tv, at least there’s an amusingly odd perf from Jim Backus as a seen-it-all local police chief among the startlingly bad ones. But with films like this, $1000 ain’t nearly enough.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The second-billed feature on our poster, HELL’S FIVE HOURS/’58 (not seen here), about a nuclear facility taken hostage, looks more interesting than the top of the bill.

CHARADE (1963)

Everyone’s favorite faux Hitchcock-Lite (deservedly so), and doubly worth (re)watching now in the wake of director Stanley Donen’s passing. He’s in top form, flawlessly managing the unlikely tone of bald comic violence & grisly murder with grown-up Screwball Romance. A remarkably nimble showing, fresh & pacey, as clueless widow Audrey Hepburn tries to sort out the hidden $250,000 legacy of the late husband she hardly knew while holding off a trio of toughs (James Coburn, Ned Glass, George Kennedy); Walter Matthau’s CIA agent; and mysterious, if sympathetic man-in-the-middle Cary Grant. With lenser Charles Lang handling the ‘swellegant’ Paris locations, along with those classic faces, the film seems unable to put a foot wrong. No small concern on a plot carrying so much gun play & spirited, if deadly mayhem with a release date only three weeks after the JKF assassination.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Great light entertainment, like Stanley Donen’s, tends to be taken for granted. After all, half the trick lies in not letting the work show; yet it's famously hard to pull off. See Jonathan Demme come a cropper on his flop CHARADE remake THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE/’02 for confirmation. Even Donen came up short repeating the formula but pushing too hard in his visually stylish ARABESQUE/66. (see below)

FIRST REFORMED (2017)

Writer/director Paul Schrader jonesing like mad for Robert Bresson’s DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST/’51, right down to the diary. Bresson, a curate’s egg of a great filmmaker (‘very good . . . in part’) was a pain, a scold, a prophet of his own making, best in his early works. But even at his most extreme (or worst for non-believers), he always worked from within. Precisely the factor missing in this highly acclaimed, terribly self-conscious masterpiece manqué. Ethan Hawke, hitting character buttons hard enough to gain award traction, suffers from major health issues (he’s pissing blood) and has the sort of raging Catholic Guilt only a Presbyterian Reverend could endure. Divorced after losing his soldier son, he’s cutting off a barely begun affair with a church musician, drinking to excess, tending to a dwindling flock against ‘hipper’ churchly competition, and willfully falling into a relationship with a fresh young widow (Amanda Seyfried) whose husband suicided in spite of Hawke’s attempted intervention. For plot purposes, the husband was something of an eco-terrorist, leaving behind a suicide vest to pump up some last act suspense. Just one of the reasons the film, in spite of mostly static camera shots*; squarish Academy Ratio framing, hushed dialogue and largely functional editing, remains a study in ‘applied’ rather than ‘organic’ severity. The opposite of what Bresson achieves even at his most annoying.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *To his credit, Schrader doesn’t break out of static camera mode until stumbling into a tumbler of scotch and Pepto-Bismol. Something that would give anyone the heaves.

DOUBLE-BILL: Try out Bresson with A MAN ESCAPED/’56 or PICKPOCKET/'59, then proceed at your own risk. OR: For a more satisfying modern look at a troubled clergyman, Nanni Moretti’s fine, thoughtful THE MASS IS ENDED/’85.

LURED (1947)

Hunt Stromberg, a major M-G-M producer in the ‘30s, brings that studio’s posh sensibility to this handsome, but underdeveloped murder pic; with director Douglas Sirk & lenser William Daniels working up dense London atmosphere (less fog than usual) on a serial killer tale that (for once) has nothing to do with Jack-the-Ripper. Instead, the focus is on Dance Hall gal Lucille Ball, very glam here, a pal of the latest victim, recruited by Scotland Yard Inspector Charles Coburn to act as bait by answering a series of personal ads to hopefully flush out the murderer . . . if she doesn’t get killed first. Yikes! With Boris Karloff as an early, slightly crazed suspect; George Sanders, a more likely culprit Ball falls hard for; and George Zucco as her police protector. Add Joseph Calleia, Alan Mowbray & Cedric Hardwicke as ‘Red Herrings’ (or are they the real guilty party?) for more than enough characters to investigate. But the film winds up delivering less than the sum of its procedural parts. Maybe it’s a structural problem, with a smuggling operation (a ‘wrong’ crime solved) pulling focus away from the main threat. It makes for a redundant third act, talky & anticlimactic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Ball, at 5'6", and Sanders, at 6'3", make a swell on screen couple.

DOUBLE-BILL: Ball probably had her best film noir outing the previous year in Henry Hathaway’s THE DARK CORNER/’46.

HOLIDAY INN (1942)

It was songwriter Irving Berlin’s original idea: a Country Inn/Nightclub only open on holidays, developed by director Mark Sandrich & scripters Elmer Rice/Claude Binyon into a pair of sequential Romantic Triangles for Fred Astaire & Bing Crosby vying over Girl #1 (song & dance partner Virginia Dale) then Girl #2 (song & dance hopeful Marjorie Reynolds) before it's all worked out as Romantic Quadrangle by the finale. Lightweight dramatics for sure, but enough to hang a truly phenomenal line-up of Berlin holiday-themed numbers on, all immaculately performed, most freshly written for the pic, including three new American Songbook standards (WHITE CHRISTMAS; YOU’RE EASY TO DANCE WITH; BE CAREFUL IT’S MY HEART), the rest old hits or catchy novelty numbers. It goes down smoothly, if not without a hitch as Lincoln’s Birthday is celebrated in BlackFace. And not just any ol’ BlackFace, but a compendium of the form, with dark makeup on the band; Crosby a la Uncle Remus; girlfriend Reynolds in ultra-stylized traditional ‘Pickaninny’ BlackFace*; plus actual Black waiters & waitresses in antebellum period servant outfits while back in the kitchen, Louise Beaver & her two cute kids are mercifully left as is to join in a chorus of the specialty song, ‘ABRAHAM,’ charmingly, even if Beavers does refer to ‘Darkies.’ The number gets cut in t.v. showings, but if you only see one of these things, HOLIDAY hits all the insulting varieties of the form in just one sitting.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Fred plays ‘drunk’ in one number. Yet even with impromptu partner Reynolds literally dancing circles around him, your eye is still drawn only to Astaire.

DOUBLE-BILL: Fred & Bing reunited on similar characters for BLUE SKIES/’46 in TechniColor; and nearly again for WHITE CHRISTMAS/’54 in VistaVision! Alas, Astaire was toying with retirement and a rewrite for Donald O’Connor had to be rewritten for Danny Kaye when O’Connor fell ill. Kaye’s last minute ‘save’ let him demand what may have been Hollywood’s most lucrative deal of the era, with gross participation on 1954's #1 pic. O’Connor finally (re)teamed with Bing on the lousy 1956 remake of ANYTHING GOES, Crosby’s Paramount adieu.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *(A Rare Topical comment @ MAKSQUIBS!) With multiple BlackFace scandals in current political news, note that while HOLIDAY INN’s ‘Minstrel Numbo’ goes all BlackFace; twelve years on, WHITE CHRISTMAS’s even splashier Minstrel Show goes without. So, if it had become unacceptable between 1942 & 1954, why does it show up three (and more) decades later in elite college year books?

CLUNY BROWN (1946)

While not the masterpiece of his previous film, HEAVEN CAN WAIT/’43, Ernst Lubitsch’s final completed project does very nicely on its own terms as a slight delight. Set in Pre-WWII England, it tracks the up-and-down fortunes of exiled Czech Anti-Fascist Intellectual Charles Boyer, penniless in London, sponging off the kindness of society swells & titled strangers. Stumbling into a house party, he meets-cute with amateur plumber Jennifer Jones (subbing for her uncle in a drain emergency), as well as sympathetic scion Peter Lawford and Lady-of-the-Moment Helen Walker. An unlikely friendship continues in the comfort of Lawford’s country estate where Cluny has just been placed in service as Parlor Maid, complicating the rigid class conscious behavior Boyer respects, dissects & subtly ridicules. With everyone (even Jones!) relaxed & amused, and the merest wisp of a plot that sees Jones nearly fall into enervating local domesticity (with Una O’Connor’s putative mother-in-law clearing her throat in lieu of speech), the film tickles rather than wisecracks, using the unladylike task of plumbing as deus ex machina, before working up to a superbly economical Stateside coda that celebrates the Classless Land of the Free sans dialogue. Filmmaking has rarely looked so easy, so natural. Technique that takes a lifetime to build.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Just one scene, with Boyer letting himself into Walker’s bedroom, ostensibly to pitch Lawford, but finding an attraction of his own, hints at layers of desire & assertion a younger/healthier Lubitsch might have developed more fully.

THE FAR HORIZONS (1955)

Though a natural for movie development, bio-pics on the Lewis & Clark Expedition aren’t exactly thick on the ground.* So this highly fictionalized account, ginned up with a romantic rivalry between Fred MacMurray’s Capt. Meriwether Lewis & Charlton Heston’s Lt. William Clark as they plough West across the continent for President Jefferson, is a painfully wasted opportunity. The ladies in question are society gal Barbara Hale (in stiff low-cut gowns) & Donna Reed’s Native American gal guide (darkening her FROM HERE TO ETERNITY Hawaiian tan), each turning in turn from bland MacMurray to dashing Heston. (And who could blame them?) Cinematographer-turned-director Rudolph Maté settles for efficiency rather than sweep, rarely letting us know where we are in the journey. (Ironic that a film about map-makers could have used a few on-screen maps to keep us dramatically informed.) Some outdoor location shots make a mark, helped by the double-sized negative of the famed VistaVision process; and film buffs will get a kick seeing MacMurray, Paramount’s he-man from the mid-‘30s to the mid-‘40s, fuming at Heston, Paramount’s 1950s he-man. But it’s hardly worth the bother.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Instead, try King Vidor’s problematic, but fully engaged NORTHWEST PASSAGE/’40 with Spencer Tracy & Robert Young.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Old Hollywood maxim holds that period pics with men in wigs (think Revolutionary War) die at the box-office.  Perhaps this explains no one taking on another Lewis & Clark bio even though most of the story happens in wig-free wilderness.

TOM THUMB (1958)

After creating dozens of Animated Stop-Motion ‘Puppetoon’ shorts, George Pal moved up to Sci-Fi oriented features as Producer before hyphenating into Producer-Director on this Kiddie Musical Fantasy. No great shakes as story, little Tom Thumb seems to have spent a few matinees watching Walt Disney’s PINOCCHIO before joining childless couple Bernard Miles & Jessie Matthews as their very own little boy, getting involved with a pair of thieving scoundrels (Peter Sellers & Terry-Thomas), fulfilling a wish thanks to a materializing fairy, saving the day with his bravery . . . you get the idea. The playing is English Pantomime broad and a handful of mediocre songs go on ad infinitum. But worth a look for a fine-spun picture-book look from cinematographer Georges Périnal; the varied special-effects tricks (holding up pretty well or fanciful enough so you don’t mind spotting the seams); Russ Tamblyn’s athletic gusto as Tom (though he does put out a weird sexy vibe); and of course the liberal use of Pal’s signature ‘Puppetoons’ whether on their own or cleverly interacting with other elements inside the same frame. Fun, though today’s kids may well have moved on at an awfully young age.

DOUBLE-BILL: Pal’s next, THE TIME MACHINE/’60, is his best remembered; his last, 7 FACES OF DR. LAO/’64, his best. (Or is if you don’t mind Tony Randall in YellowFace as ancient, mythical Asian.) OR: For more late-‘50s analogue camera tricks in scaling a cast down to size, try DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE/’59.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: One of two tunes written for the film by Peggy Lee, ‘Are You A Dream,’ is lip-synched by Alan Young. But who did the fine dubbing?

PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE (1944)

Infamous for its Flashback within a Flashback within a Flashback story construction, this outstanding WWII actioner still keeps its story clear as a bell thanks to Casey Robinson’s step-by-step plotting (no matter the route) and with director Michael Curtiz as unfazeable tour guide. (Take that INCEPTION!) A paean to the indomitable French Spirit (at least as seen in film), it ratchets up a resistance angle on a small group of strong-willed Devil’s Island escapees who risk it all in hope of returning home to fight the Nazis. There’s a PAPILLON meets DIRTY DOZEN aspect to the fanciful storyline, with most of the men (Peter Lorre, Philip Dorn, George Tobias, Helmut Dantine) legitimate convicted criminals of various levels of depravity, and only Humphrey Bogart’s crusading anti-Fascist newsman there on purely false charges. The physical production, loaded with clever effects (led by Jack Cosgrove), is still impressive (lots of miniatures where you don’t expect them), with cinematographer James Wong Howe on a tear, and even the language mix (mostly accented English, but with French tossed in for flavor) smart & unusual. A romantic angle between Bogie & Michèle Morgan gets short-shrift, but doesn’t harm things in this underrated Vive La France wowser. (NOTE: Be sure to check out the great jazz short JAMMIN’ THE BLUES, phenomenally lit by Robert Burks,, included on the DVD.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Lots of holdover talent from CASABLANCA/’42 in here, but this film is less followup to that classic romance than to ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC/’43 which came in-between. (see below)

BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST (1941)

Anita Loos, who gave us Lorelei Lee in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and Jean Harlow’s raciest lines, must have hung her head in shame over this treacly bio-pic. Worse, she knew the damn thing worked. It’s all about noble Edna Gladney (Greer Garson), a personal tragedy magnet, she loses a foster sister, a child, a business fortune, fertility and a husband as she moves from Wisconsin to Texas, opening a newfangled Day Care Center for Tots of Working Mothers which morphs into a child-placing orphanage/adoption service and then a civic campaign to remove the stigma (even the term) of illegitimacy from official state records. Overburdened in M-G-M house style, over-dressed sets, pudding rich TechniColor (for Garson’s flaming tresses), Mervyn LeRoy’s stultifying corporate direction, it adds Walter Pidgeon, in his first turn as Garson’s consort, an unlikely Texas entrepreneur, while Ernst Lubitsch regular Felix Bressart adds a little bounce as a doctor from the wrong side of the tracks. The portrayals of black servants are simultaneous less insulting and more condescending than usual, with pretty maid Theresa Harris made up far darker than she appears in other pics. (Max Factor ‘Blackamoor?’*) Garson finally shows a bit of selfish self-pity at the end, but rights course for an uplifting curtain. Dramatic cotton-candy spun from lead.

DOUBLE-BILL: Against expectations, Garson & Pidgeon (in the third of eight pairings), again with LeRoy directing, hit similar emotional buttons without making you hate yourself in the morning on MADAME CURIE/’43, a follow-up bio-pic helped by a fine Paul Osborn script.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Darkening up black actors wasn’t unusual at the time (and the TechniColor process necessitated odd tints), but rarely so extreme. Directly below, two shades of Theresa Harris.

SNEAKERS (1992)

Antiseptic, but fun genre-crossing pic (CAPER FILM meets MISSION IMPOSSIBLE*) from remarkably unproductive writer/director Phil Alden Robinson. With Robert Redford and a motley crew of hip security hackers (Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix, David Strathairn) working break-ins on big company systems to expose hidden weaknesses. But Redford’s got a weakness of his own, a hidden past as a student radical who fled to Canada, a secret which is now being used by undercover government agents to blackmail Redford (& Co.) into stealing a powerful Universal Encryption Decoder. Lots of cool ‘90s state-of-the-art computer tech (the mix of digital & analogue equipment giving off a nice retro buzz), with Ben Kingsley as Redford’s college pal turned Master-of-the-Universe villain (dig that East Coast accent) and Mary McDonnell wedged in as Redford’s helpful ‘ex.’  If only the script didn’t overdose on ‘the cutes’ (every character metaphorically winking at us) or push quite so many politically correct buttons for cheap easy rapport.

DOUBLE-BILL: Steven Soderbergh must have taken a good look here before his OCEANS 11 remake.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: * . . . by me!  MI already IS an espionage/caper genre crossover.  Sorry.

THE OLD MAID (1939)

Maybe it was the prestige factor (Edith Wharton novel/Pulitzer Prize play), whatever the cause, everyone presses too hard at first in this Civil War Era story of cousins Bette Davis & Miriam Hopkins, rivals in love, then rivals for a child’s affection. Hopkins the worst offender, in needless competition with Davis, but it affects the whole cast and doesn’t right itself until post-war years, leading up to a ridiculously satisfying, one for the ages conclusion. It opens on Hopkins’ wedding day, as old beau George Brent (duller than ever) shows up out of the blue after two years to try and (re)claim his bride, only to run off with Davis as conciliation prize. Naturally, ‘you know what' happens, leaving an unwed Davis with little ‘Clementina,’ a child who grows up thinking she’s a foundling; Davis her prissy, repressed ‘Aunt’; and Hopkins an indulgent surrogate mom to love. Like interest at a bank, Wharton uses compound lies, compound misunderstandings, compound missed opportunity & compound coincidence to reward us with compound emotional dividends. Enough to provoke compound giggles here & there. But Davis finds her character’s secret in renunciation, never letting on she’s playing a long game for her daughter’s ultimate happiness & success. It’s as close as Davis ever got to playing STELLA DALLAS. Director Edmund Goulding was more comfortable with Davis in the contemporary settings of the just released DARK VICTORY/’39, but earns kudos for covering so much plot in 95 minutes without seeming to rush.

DOUBLE-BILL: Davis & Hopkins had even more fun loathing each other in OLD ACQUAINTANCE/’43.

NOT AS A STRANGER (1955)

After producing over a dozen films for other directors, all with running times ranging from 80 to 120 minutes, Stanley Kramer allowed a self-indulgent 2 hours 15 minutes for his own directing debut, dropping signature social issues & controversies for glossy medical soap opera. He’d make more than a dozen films over the next three decades, never growing much more proficient behind the camera, while here the pulpy nature of the material, and a lack of Krameresque pretentiousness, make the gaucheries less problematic than on later, more ‘prestigious’ work. (Excluding a rip-snorting visual parallel between rutting horses and manly infidelity. Yikes!) Robert Mitchum is the gifted, but cash poor intern who marries dowdy Olivia de Havilland more for money than for love. She, on the other hand, is head over heels, done up in an unbecoming blonde wig (she’s Swedish don’tcha know) which unfortunately comes off gray in b&w. Frank Sinatra makes do as BFF and mediocre doctor and there’s a big impressive cast trying to turn clichés into characters (Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford, Lee Marvin, Gloria Grahame, Jesse White, Myron McCormick, Lon Chaney), a typical Kramer all-star gambit. He also leaves his mark by getting a rare forgettable job out of lensing great Franz Planer. Modestly involving in its way, there’s a fun moment with wonderful Henry Morgan stuffing herring into his mouth and the first commercial cinema look at a real live beating human heart! Shot, of course, like a porn director moving us into the action. Oh, Stanley!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Does time stand still in this pic? Early on, Mitchum & de Havilland go to see THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA made the year before in 1954. But there’s at least five years of events still to play out. Have we drifted into the future? Just the sort of SNAFU producer Kramer should have brought to the attention of director Kramer!

THE CINCINNATI KID (1965)

The game is Stud Poker rather than Pool, but in most ways THE CINCINNATI KID is THE HUSTLER-Lite. And maybe all the better for it, dropping the heavy-lifting & gravitas. With Steve McQueen & Edward G. Robinson in for Paul Newman & Jackie Gleason as New Kid on the Block out to beat the Smooth Past-Master, the charisma factor is (if anything) possibly stronger, with a storyline that doesn’t mythologize so strenuously.* Typical of the mid-‘60s, period detail never quite convinces as the 1930s: hair, makeup & attitude the main culprits. But the St. Louis locations & atmosphere are nicely caught by lenser Philip Lathrop, especially exteriors, and it’s very well dialogued & structured by scripters Ring Lardner Jr. & Terry Southern, camouflaging a pretty small story. (Though does Ann-Margret really have to snack on an apple so we know she’s temptation personified? Bad girl to loyal Tuesday Weld.) Most of all, this is the first film where you can feel director Norman Jewison starting to show some real personality along with steady control. So much so that the big climax can still make you jump even if you know what’s coming.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *A third main character, George C. Scott’s controlling manager, is changed into Rip Torn’s far more conventional rich loser out for revenge.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above THE HUSTLER.

MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER (1946)

Richard Dix returns for the fifth in Columbia Picture’s low-budget THE WHISTLER series, derived from the anthology radio show. In this one, he’s a shady Private Investigator and seems to be having a fine old time of it, playing an unexpectedly subversive creep in his usual gentlemanly manner. Neat. Hired by an elderly record shop owner to find a missing young woman, heir to a possible fortune, he’s soon unraveling a couple of murders and on the hunt for the mysterious inheritance. William Castle offers straightforward direction, long before his schlockmeister heyday of horror gimmicks in the ‘50s & ‘60 (THE TINGLER; MR. SARDONICUS), though can’t quite keep the plot revelations from feeling arbitrary. Still, with help from a decent cast for this sort of thing (Regis Toomey; Mike Mazurki; Barton MacLane), Philip Tannura’s through-a-glass-darkly lensing and a no-nonsense one-hour running time, it gets the job done.

DOUBLE-BILL: A great silent star (THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’23; REDSKIN/’29), Dix rarely found his old form in sound films. Probably best in THE LOST SQUADRON/’32. (see all three below)

THE NORTH STAR (1943)

Even as setup for the tragic events to come, Lillian Hellman’s it-takes-a-Ukrainian-village drama, made at the height of WWII cooperation between Allied Forces & ‘Uncle’ Joe Stalin’s Russia lays on the Happy Valley ideal of rural Soviet life, where children grow up straight & the songs are diatonic, impasto thick. Off for a summer hike all the way to Kiev, a group of high school students suddenly find themselves in the thick of the first wave of Nazi invaders by land and air. They need to either get back home or help a truckload of munitions reach partisans in the woods, awaiting their chance to attack. Political melodrama, with speeches embroidered with glorious patriotic drivel, but the drive & horror of wartime emergency comes thru in up-front acting (Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston), and in alarming turns from Erich von Stroheim’s civilized blood-draining vampire doctor and Walter Brennan (later an enthusiastic John Bircher) as a cuddly Communist local character. Lots of fodder for later Commie Witch Hunts in here, yet the film was reedited down in ‘57 to become the generic Anti-Communist war film ARMORED ATTACK!

DOUBLE-BILL: Lillian Hellman offered a more characteristic (and personal) response to the war effort in her play WATCH ON THE RHINE, also filmed in 1943, awkwardly directed, but often very effective; while this film’s director Lewis Milestone covered similar events to better fashion in EDGE OF DARKNESS, also out in ‘43. (both covered below)

THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT (1932)

After a recent series of B’way flops in various capacities (author/producer/director/ star), Hollywood finally enticed a demoralized, if never humbled, George M. Cohan into his Talkie debut. It also flopped (and a low budget indie two years later was apparently destroyed on Cohan’s instructions), but for anyone looking for clues to the charm & dynamism of James Cagney’s YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, this is all we have of this American institution. It’s both indispensable and a major disappointment. Cohan doubles as a dull businessman put up for president by a quartet of plutocrats, and as charismatic lookalike Medicine Show barker (WARNING: BlackFace Alert!!) paid hush-money to secretly front for him, stumping the hustings before bowing out at the White House doors. With Claudette Colbert as confused girlfriend and Jimmy Durante making a pest of himself as his confused tent show partner. You can see how this might have worked in a political convention sequence, a sung-through affair by Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart (loathing their first go as Hollywood tunesmiths), with Hawaiian natives ‘Aloha-ing’; a top-hatted All-Black New York delegation; coal miners from Pennsylvania, et al.); plus Cohan delivering promises in song-and-dance. Little else lands as intended. Short & peculiar, the film may not bore, but consistently misses the easy political target it aims at.

DOUBLE-BILL/READ ALL ABOUT IT: Cohan, who never had another success on his own stuff, returned to form as actor in Eugene O’Neill’s AH, WILDERNESS (filmed 1935 by Clarence Brown with Lionel Barrymore in Cohan’s spot) and in Rodgers & Hart’s FDR satire I’D RATHER BE RIGHT. (Cohan's intro number from it opens YANKEE DOODLE DANDY.) Rodgers tells the unhappy tale of working (twice) with Cohan in his auto-bio MUSICAL STAGES.

THE MUDLARK (1950)

Hollywood Anglophilia runs alarming high in this wee bit of fancy about a guttersnipe of an orphan boy, a Thames river-rat scavenger, who takes it into his head to go off to visit the Queen. Victoria that is, wallowing in Windsor Castle 15 years after Prince Albert’s death. Made in England with Hollywood talent on top (scripter, star & director/Nunnally Johnson, Irene Dunne, Jean Negulesco), it grows on you as it goes along, largely because of Alec Guinness’s remarkable Benjamin Disraeli, by turns warm, deferent & acerbic. Dunning Dunne’s Victoria to rejoin the living, he tops all other Disraelis on film from George Arliss to John Gielgud (and Ian McShane on video tape). Climaxing in a speech to Parliament on a progressive program Victoria herself has championed, pulled off in an astonishing uninterrupted half-reel single shot that Negulesco managed to keep 20th/Fox chief Darryl Zanuck & his editors from disrupting with reaction shot inserts. Dunne is an unlikely Queen, but you adjust; Finlay Currie a rather massive Mr. John Brown, the other motivator in getting the Queen back to her self*; and Andrew Ray a pleasingly unpolished juvenile playing out borrowed bits from OLIVER TWIST and PYGMALION. A castle romance between classes (soldier & Lady’s maid) lets Johnson tweak British snobbery for Stateside audiences, but a celebratory tone largely rules the waves in this one. An indulgence, but a good one, handsomely shot by Georges Périnal and neatly scored in Elgarian fashion by William Alwyn.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Judy Dench & Billy Connolly cover similar ground from an entirely different angle in MRS. BROWN/’97.

MISSING WITNESSES (1937)

This Warner Bros. programmer, from ‘King of the Bs’ producer Bryan Foy, gets off to a good start (snappy direction from William Clemens, Sid Hickox’s stylish lensing and newspaper headlines doing half the storytelling*) as a protection racket roughs up a restaurateur & his establishment just as Detective Dick Purcell walks by. But a clean arrest goes for nought when the owner clams up in court, afraid to testify against the thugs, no doubt threatened by some unknown Mr. Big. Enter John Litel, commissioned by the Governor to get to the bottom of things by discovering who’s on top, and hiring Purcell as one of his agents. It’s all downhill from there, as Purcell’s tough guy cop, more moxie than brains, hasn’t the charm or charisma to pull off his minor-league James Cagney routine and Litel is no Edward G. Robinson as flinty fatherly mentor. The girl in the case, debuting Virginia Dale, a secretary with inside info on Mr. Big and Purcell’s on/off romantic interest, shows promise, but her part is so inconsistently written, she can’t always connect. And the film peters out in a series of quick/confused explanations and dud comic beats.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Foy might just as well have been called ‘King of Newspaper Headlines’ as his reliance on them for narrative shorthand was something of an inside Hollywood joke. See Rudy Behlmer’s book of studio memos INSIDE WARNER BROTHERS for details.

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (1938)

Independent producer David O. Selznick must have been using this Mark Twain adaptation as run-up to next year’s GONE WITH THE WIND mega-pic: similar era, TechniColor; Max Steiner score; antebellum South atmosphere; and nearly the same production staff, including über designer William Cameron Menzies, stretching artistic muscle on the impressive Cave Sequence. Considering its disappointing cast of kids (Tommy Kelly’s Tom Sawyer particularly weak), there’s really not much wrong with it. Yet it’s almost entirely unsatisfying, missing the rhythm of life on the Mississippi and substituting Hollywood whimsy for Twain’s tone of naughty delight when things go wrong only to turn out right; with the famous incidents tucked in rather than developed. Not that other attempts have fared much better, including one from 1930 quickly followed by the same cast’s HUCKLEBERRY FINN/’31 under this film’s director Norman Taurog. (Something of a kid specialist, his big hit this year was M-G-M’s maudlin BOYS TOWN.) But what makes this still worth a look is the delicate use of early TechniColor by cinematographer James Wong Howe, taking advantage of a production fluke that had him filming on sets designed for a scuttled b&w shoot, lending an earth-toned backdrop to the colorful costumes while he darkened coverage as much as possible, especially in the truly frightening cave sequence. (So good, even the acting improves.) Stellar work that naturally led to Howe being blackballed by TechniColor for over a decade.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The restored picture element in the Kino Lorber edition remains uneven, with too many out-of-register 3-Strip TechniColor shots creating a halo-effect. But when it’s good (and thankfully most of it is), it’s very good.

JAMAICA INN (1939)

With a break between his last British Gaumont pic (THE LADY VANISHES/’38) and his first for David O. Selznick in Hollywood (REBECCA/’40), Alfred Hitchcock signed on to this Erich Pommer/ Charles Laughton production, his last job as hired-hand, and instantly regretted it. A big period piece about cutthroat ‘shipwreckers’ and their secret Lord Advisor/Protector (Laughton in a role beefed up from the Daphne Du Maurier novel), the intractable script was rewritten, but hardly fixed. Laughton, after much trouble, came up with a lulu of a makeup & character, looking like a grounded Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon, he paws debuting co-star Maureen O’Hara and ogles undercover law officer Robert Newton, out to smash the gang of profiteers (Emlyn Williams; Leslie Banks). Loaded with inanities & absurdities, the tone feels ‘off’ right from the start. Yet, the film catches on as it goes along, with special effect miniatures & trick camera shots that are fun to watch in spite of (or because?) looking like the toys they are, lending the production the kick of a jolly puppet show. Characterizations out of a puppet show, too. After decades of subfusc editions, it looks incredibly handsome (Harry Stradling lensed) in a restoration out on Cohen Media that lets you revel in the ludicrous doings.

DOUBLE-BILL: Laughton & O’Hara made good later that year in Hollywood, sumptuous & superb in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.