THE MISLEADING LADY (1932)

B’way farce Sexual Politics, circa 1913, and perfectly horrifying. Filmed twice as a silent (1916, 1920), in this sound iteration director Stuart Walker livens things up with some fancy dissolves & camera tricks in the first reel before giving in to a straightforward filming of this bizarrely dated play.* Here’s the Ad Copy: ‘KIDNAPED! Carried off, struggling, at midnight! Spirited by plane to a lonely hunting lodge! Chained up while her captor laughs! Is it all in fun? You’ll say so when you see “The Misleading Lady” misled into love!’ That’d be bored society gal Claudette Colbert, egging on Edmund Lowe’s infatuation at a weekend party, but only to impress a B’way producer. Humiliated when the truth comes out, the plot turns from romantic misunderstanding (she’s fallen for him for real) to Taming of the Shrew with Lowe stealing her away for some mocking, but surprisingly rough manhandling at his woodsy cabin. Forcibly stripped, chained like a bear, locked in a closet, every gesture symbolic rape with little amusement displayed in Colbert’s shrieks for help. And things only gets worse: a jilted fiancé with gun; a news reporter looking for scandal; a lunatic asylum escapee who thinks he’s Napoleon. It adds up to one of the more distasteful comedies in Hollywood history.

LINK: *From 1913, the original rave review from the NYTimes. Note long time M-G-M father figure Lewis Stone in the Edmund Lowe role as stalwart lead. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1913/11/26/100663520.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=11

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The last film for Colbert at Paramount Astoria Studios, Queens, NY, and one of the last before Paramount left their East Coast lot. Colbert had better luck there the previous year with Maurice Chevalier & Miriam Hopkins in Ernst Lubitsch’s delicious chamber musical THE SMILING LIEUTENANT/’31.

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (2018)

Super. Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant make a wonderful tag-team in this fact-based story about a washed up ‘Popular’ biographer and a fading gay ‘toyboy’ who meet over drinks at a dive bar and gleefully fall into self-destructive criminal behavior. It starts by accident when McCarthy, at wit’s end financially, ‘lifts’ a letter from a famous author stuck in a book she’s using at a research library, then sells to a Rare Books/Autograph store. Soon, she’s forging these ‘collectibles’ and using Grant as a front to avoid suspicion from the buyers. Naturally, it all ends badly, as laid out in a tidy script (by Nicole Holofcener & Jeff Whitty) hardly absolving the pair from some pretty atrocious behavior aimed inward & out. Yet long before their comeuppance, the situation & relationship has grown, tough, funny & unexpectedly touching. Special stuff, lovingly directed by Marielle Heller in a style that skips right past the 1990s setting, harking back to a 1970s filmmaking style in look, pacing & tone. A smart move, like everything in here.

DOUBLE-BILL: While not really comparable, 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD/’87 (with Anne Bancroft & Anthony Hopkins) has a similar obsessive small bookshop/book-lovers vibe to it.  If only the film was half as good as Helene Hanff’s delightful little memoir.

THREE STRIPES IN THE SUN (1955)

A couple of years before SAYONARA came out* (a big ticket item on love affairs between American servicemen and the Japanese during post-WWII occupation), this modest fact-based programmer from Columbia Pictures tested the waters on the same subject. Aldo Ray is the ‘Jap’ hating war vet, re-stationed in Japan, unable to move past his war mentality. But a young female Japanese interpreter and a visit to a war orphanage soften him up pretty quick, and soon he’s scavenging supplies from the base to help feed & house these undernourished war kids while falling hard for the pretty interpreter. Not a bad set-up for sentiment, comedy & a few lessons in common humanity. If only A-list writer Richard Murphy, in the first of only two directing gigs, got more out of his cast or the material. Dull, dull, dull; lots of opportunities, all missed. So Aldo Ray lumbers toward enlightenment; Dick York gnaws on 'best-bud' comedy shtick; Philip Carey gets stuck playing tough, but wise senior officer; and a pleasing Mitsuko Kimura ends a brief career as the spunky object of affection; all of them pretty much working on their own. Best thing in here is Burnett Guffey’s honestly drab on-location lensing of everyday places Hollywood rarely bothered to show, not a famous landmark or poetic sight in view. Plain, dusty, almost barren. Alas, so's the film.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Touchy, but warming post-war relations between Asians and Americans were in the air at the time. Right between this film and Marlon Brando starring in SAYONARA/’57, he tortured himself down to ‘feather-weight’ shape and put on YellowFace makeup for the once admired, but perfectly ghastly TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON/’56. (see below)

THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD (1934)

George Arliss, ‘distinguished’ actor from Early Talkie days, is much livelier than ere, moving from Warner Bros. to 20th Century Pictures to play founding father and favored son in this stiff bio-pic on the great Jewish Euro-banking family. From their start in Frankfort’s ghetto, to triumph in the Royal Courts of England, the five sons of Papa Rothschild fan across the continent to prosper, but only effect real social change when Heads of State need huge sums to fight Napoleon (again!) after his escape from Elba.* (Amounts truly mind-boggling from a single family - something like £100,000,000.) And just as London-based Nathan Rothschild saved Europe in war; so too does war save this film from Alfred Werker’s stolid direction & Nunnally Johnson’s by-the-numbers script, which flares to life in the third act. Loretta Young is on hand as a Rothschild daughter who pines for gentile British officer Robert Young and Boris Karloff makes a mark as anti-Semitic nemesis. But Arliss is pretty much the whole show, and just enough to hold interest. Still, for best results, down a shot of schnaps every time someone touches a mezuzah. Not before or since, has Hollywood seen so many mezuzahs.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A bit of showmanship from studio head Darryl F. Zanuck celebrating the first year of 20th Century Pictures (before he took over/merged with Fox) with a final half-reel of early 3-strip TechniColor in crayon-bright hues. (M-G-M beat them to the punch by a couple of months with a more tastefully colored finale on an otherwise b&w THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE/’34.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *All-time favorite palindrome: ‘Able was I ere I saw Elba.’

LINK/DOUBLE-BILL: An AUDIO Double-Bill - Where this Rothschild drama only comes to life at the end, THE ROTHSCHILDS (Sheldon Harnick/Jerry Bock’s 1970 follow-up to their musical FIDDLER ON THE ROOF) works best in its first half. For BARNEY MILLER fans, here’s Hal Linden’s Tony Award-winning showstopper as Mayer (Papa) Rothschild: ‘Sons.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAelRDxxA5A

A VOYAGE ROUND MY FATHER (1982)

Frail, and looking older than his years, Laurence Olivier had been hamming it up or phoning it in on recent projects (JAZZ SINGER; CLASH OF THE TITANS; INCHON . . . Yikes!) before getting a supporting role worth his time & talent in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. Adapted in 1981 from the Evelyn Waugh novel by John Mortimer of ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’ fame, it likely led to Olivier’s next part, playing Mortimer’s eccentric dad in this father/son memoir. Largely filmed at the Mortimer estate in Oxfordshire (very nicely, too, by longtime Merchant/Ivory lenser Tony Pierce-Roberts), it’s something of a diary piece for Mortimer, wonderfully played by Alan Bates, as he reviews his difficult relationship from boyhood on, to Olivier as his barrister dad, accidentally blinded as an adult, yet largely ignoring his condition & limitations. If anything, using them to get away with some pretty atrocious, if often very funny, behavior. Olivier’s health at the time make some scenes difficult for him, but he’s largely on top of things. (Alec Guinness played the role on stage and it’s fun to imagine a less combustible approach.) And though the focus generally holds to father-and-son, as well as to wife & daughter-in-law, some of the funniest bits focus on Public School days, including a real lulu ‘facts-of-life' discussion from Michael Aldridge’s plummy headmaster. (All about how to avoid unwelcome advances when being offered tea & cake!) Not unexpectedly, we’ll discover a sentimental heart behind Dad’s gruff exterior, but the film & characters stay reasonably flinty & honest. It’s good stuff in a minor key.

DOUBLE-BILL: Mortimer’s credits are long & broad (THE INNOCENTS/’61; BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING/’65; TEA WITH MUSSOLINI/’99), but RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY/’78 - 92 always comes first, and manages the rare feat of improving as it goes along. Especially when Marion Mathie takes over as the missus to Leo McKern’s immortal Rumpole in Season 4.

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940)

Prime, early TechniColor Arabian Nights fantasy, a triumph for producer Alexander Korda who kept it going in the face of war, multiple directors (including Michael Powell), cash shortages, and a mid-shoot move from Britain to Hollywood. The story skips about, as if told by an excited child who'd just rushed home from the cinema to tell you all about Sabu’s little thief and John Justin’s King-on-the-run as they overcome all obstacles. And such enchanted wonders!; with effects that either hold up beautifully (cityscapes!; bluer than blue skies!; pageantry!) or, where technically dated, delight thru color & fancy. There’s magpie method to the mad narrative, held together by the trio of Miklós Rózsa’s score; acting turns topped by Sabu’s charm offensive heroism and Conrad Veidt’s deadly glamor as villain; and the look of the thing as designed by co-producer William Cameron Menzies*, drawn by Vincent Korda and caught by lead cinematographer Georges Périnal. Criterion’s 2008 restoration is almost good enough, color slightly understated (to match the British release?) and with occasional TechniColor registration issues. Still, probably the best yet seen. So too this version of the story.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Menzies the one creative holdover from the famous 1924 Doug Fairbanks/Raoul Walsh silent version. (see below)

ANTHONY ADVERSE (1936)

From a forgotten bestseller, a forgotten period whopper you’ve likely forgotten even if you saw it. Quite the prestige item for Warner Brothers, more like some lux, over-padded award-bait from M-G-M, with once spunky Mervyn LeRoy showing the bland corporate style of megging he’d soon bring to Metro. Unusually long at 2'20"*, the story bumps along, foisting one jarring coincidence after another at us as faux foundling Fredric March nobly tiptoes thru a personal landmine of Napoleonic-era woe, almost aware he’s an illegitimate heir: son of villainous Claude Rains’ unfaithful late wife; grandson of wealthy merchant/employer Edmund Gwenn. All he really wants to do is settle down with childhood playmate, now budding opera soprano Olivia de Havilland, but calamitous financial circumstances waylay him with fraught trips: political troubles in Cuba; the slave trade in Africa. Finally returning home, he finds his abandoned little wife now the toast of Paris opera & mistress to Bonaparte! (Hard to believe this was ever taken seriously, but it just might have worked over at M-G-M with, oh, Woody Van Dyke directing Franchot Tone & Jeanette MacDonald.*) March manages to look 20-yr-old babe in the woods in a carefully lit intro shot (thank you, Tony Gaudio!), but elsewhere, you can see he was pushing 40 while de Havilland was just 19; an uncomfortable pairing. Best for Rains & Oscar-winning Gale Sondergaard (whose position in the story is hard to figure out) as joined-at-the-hip villains, but even this evil pair can’t lift the drama past generic also-ran.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *One positive from the extended running time lets composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold fully work out his film-as–opera aesthetic, earning one of the film’s four (out of seven) Oscars® though officially going not to Korngold, but to Warner Music Department Head Leo Forbstein! A rule that would be changed two years later, ironically when Korngold won again, this time for THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/’38.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Indeed, it did work over at M-G-M in the top-grossing MAYTIME/’37.

THE LION HAS WINGS (1939)

With a brief gap between British & Hollywood shoots on his TechniColor remake of THE THIEF OF BAGDAD/’40 (the start of WWII forced the move), producer Alexander Korda contributed to the burgeoning war effort with this patriotic quickie. Half rose-colored documentary/half sentimental family drama (and nearly all hooey), it was designed for maximum uplift, a sunny-sided portrait of a desperate situation. And as such, fairly effective. The first half hour is nearly all documentary, a potted history on how we got where we are. (And not so far from what Frank Capra would turn out Stateside in PRELUDE TO WAR/’42, first in the WHY WE FIGHT series.) After that, the film mixes in more fictional story as Korda regulars like Merle Oberon & Ralph Richardson join the war effort. (She’s a nurse; he oversees early bomb runs.) Best now for factory footage showing planes & ammunition still hand-crafted; a ramped up, human-scaled cottage industry fighting a war. Korda adds some production value with a clip of Elizabethan Pageantry from his own FIRE OVER ENGLAND/’37 (with Flora Robson’s Queen Elizabeth firing up her subjects*), then gives Oberon a similar ‘there’ll-always-be-an-England’ speech for Richardson to fall asleep to. Nice touch.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Even with Robson, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and the Spanish Armada, FIRE OVER ENGLAND doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

AIRPORT '77 (1977)

When did movie sequels stop being Hollywood Second-Class Citizens? Hard to pinpoint an exact year* (STAR WARS/’77, conceived as a Trilogy, doesn’t count; JAMES BOND an anomaly), but surely sometime after this AIRPORT stinker. Produced by Universal schlockmeister Jennings Lang/megged by tv hack Jerry Jameson, it’s loaded with amusingly cheesy effects courtesy of Albert Whitlock, grainy process shots (typical of Universal labs at the time) and a ludicrous story about a hijacked plane loaded with old masterpieces & old movie stars. They’re all flying down to open James Stewart’s new museum in Florida.* (Apparently, he’s planning on unpacking & hanging the Rembrandts & Renoirs during cocktail hour.) But the hijackers (tv rather than film personalities) screw up and the model plane bounces down and sinks in The Bermuda Triangle. Suddenly, it’s AIRPORT meets THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE as Captain Jack Lemmon (hiding behind a mustache, but we know it’s you, Jack!) floats to the surface to save the day . . . if not the priceless masterpieces. A long list of semi, and semi-retired, stars booked seats (Darren McGavin & Olivia de Havilland manage to keep their self-respect), but only baddie Monte Markham gets to wear a really big bow tie! Lang got one more of these sequels ‘green lit,’ THE CONCORDE . . . AIRPORT ‘79, before switching vehicles for ROLLERCOASTER/’77; the latter with 'SensuRRound Sound' theater shaking woofers. Yikes!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Stewart must have had a look at his toupee in THE SHOOTIST/’76. This year’s model much improved.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Note that Steven Spielberg passed on directing JAWS 2 a year after this, but not on the JURASSIC PARK sequel, THE LOST WORLD/’97. Prestige tipping point for the Hollywood sequel?

THE ROAD TO MOROCCO (1942)

I guess you had to be there . . . Third of the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope ROAD pics (generally considered best in the series) is pleasant fun, with a wacky ‘anything goes’ spirit (talking camels?) and two exceptional songs in the mix (the title tune; ‘Moonlight Becomes You’). But its euphoric reception and blockbuster biz now seem unwarranted. (No doubt, wartime jitters gave a commercial boost to the silliness.) The usual format remains: Partners on the run; Dorothy Lamour in the middle; bad guy complications (here Anthony Quinn); rivals in love/comrades-in-arms; advantage Bing; gag Fade Out. Hope shows particularly good form (perfect timing/glint in the eye). But there’s a structural flaw with the romance settled too early as Lamour opts for Bing after she sorts out a bad omen in the second act. Worse, the film gives Hope an alternate partner in annoyingly chipper Dona Drake, effectively ditching the competitive angle between the boys. We know the inevitable outcome, but you can’t remove the motor and expect a vehicle to run.

GAUGUIN - VOYAGE DE TAHITI (2017) THE MOON AND SIXPENCE (1942)

‘About as exciting as watching paint dry.’ A phrase not only for house painters. But thanks to Somerset Maugham’s re-imagination of Paul Gauguin into Charles Strickland for THE MOON AND SIXPENCE*, it’s easy to be pulled into the life of this bluntly honest, disagreeable man as he rejects bourgeois values, friends & family to pursue painterly bliss in Tahiti. Dropping Maugham’s fictional embellishments, Edouard Deluc does a reasonable job with the real Paul Gauguin in his bio-pic by limiting the time-frame to the artist’s departure from Paris and first stay in Tahiti. And he’s fortunate to have Vincent Cassel believably wasting away as an uncompromising Gauguin. But even with exotic love life & illness, it quickly runs out of things to say. So, the main interest in GAUGUIN comes in seeing how the real life stimulated Maugham’s fictional embellishments. And craft wins out over genius.

Adapted into film by Albert Lewis, an ex film exec with a literary bent, he had artsy taste, but less aptitude for directing. Even with transformative cinematographer John Seitz on the project, there’s no swing to Lewis’s filmmaking. In 1942, it’s neat & polished compared to the realistic grunge & poverty on display in 2017. Yet the earlier film is quite good, in its way, with George Sanders’ Gauguin character fascinating & cruelly honest by his own reckoning. The last half reel was originally in TechniColor (and good luck finding it!), but the best section comes with a marital drama back in Paris between Sanders and the wife of second-rate painter Steven Geray. With class act Herbert Marshall doing his Maugham routine as our guide. Together, the two films make an oddly satisfying DOUBLE-BILL.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In an insane piece of casting, Florence Bates is something to see as a much married Tahitian sexpot, especially when doing a native dance.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: The Maugham book holds up beautifully.

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938)

Has swash ever been better buckled? TechniColor pageantry as dewy fresh? A more plus perfect cast or a score so rousing, romantic & loaded with honest emotion? A collective effort that seems effortless and (in spite of two directors & three cinematographers) all of a piece. Everyone knows that this Warner Brothers classic on the old Sherwood Forest legend can’t be beat. Not by Douglas Fairbanks in 1922 or Sean Connery in ’76, just to name two. Here, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains et al. stamp their personalities on the archetypal roles; director William Keighley establishes character & Michael Curtiz (who largely took over) gives dash, while composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold supplies pomp & sentiment. But the film needs to look its best to really deliver. There were surprisingly fine, restored 16mm prints distributed in the ‘70s. A revelation at the time. Yet when Warners dug up 35mm theatrical prints for the studio’s 75th Anniversary Tour, the 3-strip TechniColor had fallen alarmingly out of register in copies available for projection. And though you could see just what the original prints were aiming for by pulling out N. C. Wyeth’s ROBIN HOOD illustrations,

that didn’t stop a recent MoMA restoration ‘rethink’ from sucking half the life out of the color saturation and doubling the grain. A real fiasco. Fortunately, current DVDs are in much better shape, and significantly improve in sharpness & definition in the last four reels. No doubt even better on Blu-Ray.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The DVD comes with the 1999 documentary GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR, allowing you to see how much better transfer techniques have gotten in just the past 20 years. The shots from ROBIN HOOD in it look spectacularly bad, totally misrepresenting the color scheme & film grain.

DOUBLE-BILL: Rougher, less polished, CAPTAIN BLOOD/’35, first of the Flynn/de Havilland swashbucklers (with Curtiz & Korngold already onboard), has a special feel of discovery about it. OR: For a more recent attempt at the form: Philippe de Broca gets smashing perfs from Daniel Auteuil & Vincent Perez on a late, unexpected success in the umpteenth version of LE BOSSU / aka ON GUARD/’97. (see both below)

STAND UP AND CHEER (1934)

With Warner Brothers bringing renewed popularity to musicals (42nd STREET; FOOTLIGHT PARADE; GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933), Fox Film Corp. grabbed Warner Baxter from 42nd ST. for this Depression Era revue showcase about a new Presidential Cabinet Post: Secretary of Amusement!* Charged with putting on shows across the country to lift up national spirits, he’s being blocked by a cabal of hidebound businessmen & senators. Will Rogers came up with the idea, and you can see the possibilities, but almost no one involved (in front or behind the cameras) is up to speed in the genre. The dramatic situation is barely touched on; we never see the shows coming together; none of the songs or production numbers are memorable, or even well performed. The sole exception to this dreary mediocrity (and it’s a major exception) is little Shirley Temple. Five going on six at the time, she makes the most of a single scene; a song & dance number with her pop (bland James Dunn); and a quick wave in the finale. Not much screen time, but all she needs to blow everyone else out of the water. She is spectacularly adorable. (Also: For those who can parse the comic smarts behind Stepin Fetchit’s ‘darkie’ act, a deeply odd scene played with a penguin ‘passing’ as Jimmy Durante. Bizarre.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Those three Warners musicals mentioned above. All great, all essential.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Secretary of Amusement? Not as ridiculous as it sounds. A couple of years later, FDR's Works Progress Administration started up the nationwide Federal Theater Project under Hallie Flanagan, now best known for some of Orson Welles’ early Mercury Theatre productions. (An All Black MACBETH in Harlem; the fascist JULIUS CAESAR on B’way; the blocked/controversial rabble-rousing union musical THE CRADLE WILL ROCK.) Covered as it was happening in 1937 by Willson Whitman in BREAD AND CIRCUSES.

SPECTER OF THE ROSE (1946)

With scores of classic credits (even more uncredited), Ben Hecht was both the greatest and the most influential of all Hollywood scripters. Yet, in seven attempts at directing his own stuff, he showed not simply a lack of aptitude, but something like contempt for the craft. As if he was getting back at directors who ill-served him. This one, co-produced with favored cinematographer Lee Garmes, and made quickly for a song at Republic Studios, takes place in the world of ballet as high strung dancer Ivan Kirov attempts a post nervous breakdown comeback with new love/dancing partner Viola Essen (both in their only film role). But look out!; he may have killed his last partner! Something the cops are sniffing out and which ballet mistress Judith Anderson, impresario Michael Chekhov and poetic hanger-on Lionel Stander all fear. Garmes puts out striking, artistically lit compositions, but nothing cuts together. Hecht too busy giving free reign to purple prose Clifford Odets might have blanched at. Though some of it so ripe, it’s fun. As a one-off, it’s watchable, in a 'What Were They Thinking' sort of way. And worth a listen for an inventive score from 'Bad Boy' classical composer George Antheil.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hecht had better results on his previous directing gig, ANGELS OVER BROADWAY/’40, with Rita Hayworth, Doug Fairbanks Jr, and Thomas Mitchell. OR: Two years later, Republic tried artsy low-budget again to even worse critical & commercial response: Orson Welles in Shakespeare’s MACBETH/’48. Decades later, with original Scottish-accented soundtrack restored, it’s a rightly acclaimed off-beat masterpiece. (see below)

READ ALL ABOUT IT: New bio from Adina Hoffman: BEN HECHT: FIGHTING WORDS, MOVING PICTURES.

THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER (1944)

Filmed more-or-less concurrently with A GUY NAMED JOE, Irene Dunne’s other prestigious, big budget WWII-weepie, each one a huge hit in their day, neither has outlasted the times they were built for.* In JOE, the dead hang around as ghostly presence to watch over us as Dunne moves on from Spencer Tracy to Van Johnson. CLIFFS, though just as death fixated, is more of a Hands-Across-the-Sea plea with MidWest American gal Dunne impulsively marrying a British Baronet just before WWI in Part One; then watching her son join WWII in Part Two. Dunne’s natural empathy works wonders in the first half, especially for normally bland Alan Marshall, unexpectedly charming here, both much helped by director Clarence Brown’s refusal to push things. Quite the lux production, too, with the episodic structure ‘artistically’ bridged with Dunne reading poetic couplets. Yikes! Part Two gets a bit sticky, as young son Roddy McDowall (courting unbilled Elizabeth Taylor) grows into handsome soldier boy Peter Lawford.* It’s all too plush for words, though held back emotionally by a typically weak score by reliably second-rate Herbert Stothart. But very well shot by George Folsey (look for a crane shot moving in on a horse & carriage from above) and gaining goodwill from its well-handled first hour.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Something Steven Spielberg learned to his regret when he remade A GUY NAMED JOE/’43 as ALWAYS/’89.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Here’s a good chance to note that some actors really do have a ‘good’ side and a ‘bad’ side in profile. With McDowall, definitely go with the Right Side.

TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970)

Long dubbed TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE!, time has been relatively kind to this weirdly impersonal Pearl Harbor docu-drama. Seen now, especially in light of CGI overkill, much of the action has an impressive scale, a plush confidence in the combustible mass destruction coming after intermission. And if some of the cockpit scenes or the brightly lit acting spaces posing as ship decks & bridges betray themselves as soundstage mock-ups, they come and go quickly between military arguments that do a pretty good job parsing out strategies on either side of the Pacific. (With Stateside SNAFUs mercilessly exposed.) That split view was meant as the film’s big selling point, with no less than Akira Kurosawa taking on Japanese reins. No surprise he ankled before production got started (he still earns a story credit), and the trio of Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku & Toshio Masuda taking over with faceless competence, but little excitement or emotional engagement. It’s OKAY! OKAY! OKAY!

DOUBLE-BILL: Universal Studios followed up on this 20th/Fox production with MIDWAY/’76, a shoddy near sequel with the typically underwhelming Jack Smight directing a needlessly starry cast (Heston, Fonda, Mitchum, Glenn Ford, James Coburn, many more, even Toshirô Mifune!). OR: Skip both and go for Otto Preminger’s infinitely more entertaining/involving IN HARM’S WAY which wrecks Pearl Harbor in a reel & a half before moving on as the Navy licks its wounds and revs up for revenge. Another All-Star package, here given real acting opportunities.

ROXIE HART (1942)

B‘way play, silent & sound film, B’way Musical, Film Musical, plus 22 years (and counting) for the current B’way revival, Maurine Dallas Watkins’ CHICAGO, on how sexy/cynical Roxie Hart uses publicity & the press to get away with murdering her lover, has had quite the run. But this version, written by Nunnally Johnson & directed by William Wellman, often held as the standard telling, is a major disappointment. Not because it finesses the murder angle to squeeze past the Hollywood Production Code, but because everyone winks their way thru, defanging the material. Ginger Rogers, in odd, unbecoming makeup, is a soft-edged Roxie, spoofing her gum-chewing character and about as dangerous as a feather pillow. As the newbie newsman who falls for her, George Montgomery is a pleasant blank in the Flashback section, but does have some fun aping Clark Gable in the wraparound segments. Adolphe Menjou gets closer to the spirit of the thing as Roxie’s lawyer of expedience, but adds little to his tough, wily editor in THE FRONT PAGE/’31. Same goes for Lynne Overmann, who might as well be filling in for Lee Tracy who played THE FRONT PAGE lead reporter in it’s B’way premiere. Disappointing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Rogers gives a tip-top comic perf this year in THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR/’42. And for a taste of the Real McCoy, Criterion’s newly restored edition of THE FRONT PAGE/’31.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-front-page-1931.html

LOS OLVIDADOS (aka THE FORGOTTEN ONES; THE YOUNG AND THE DAMNED) (1950)

Heartless and heartbreaking, Luis Buñuel’s early masterpiece charts the dead-end lives of Mexico City slum kids, adding vivid surrealistic touches and nihilistic cruelty to Neo-Realistic style. A compact story revolves around three kids: a reform-school runaway who's a charismatic, daringly likable sociopath with revenge on his mind; his younger tagalong pal, not a bad kid by nature, trying to work his way back into his mother’s good graces, but easily led astray; and an abandoned street kid, picked up by a blind street beggar as guide/helper. Jobless, illiterate, most of the boys live aimlessly on the street, waiting for a chance to make a score, grab lunch from a street vendor, or simply cheer from the sidelines. Buñuel gives these thugs odd, unforgettable grace notes, often at their worst moments, so each petty theft or random act of violence has a personal sting. (Only girls & mothers seem to work.) Then poking the wound with glimmers of quickly sabotaged hope, or a dream of magical realism twisted with nightmarish horror. All crushingly brought out in Gabriel Figueroa’s b&w cinematography in spite of the bad prints now generally available.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Vittorio De Sica’s SHOESHINE/’46 an obvious influence. So too Dickens’ OLIVER TWIST, with Oliver’s waylaid bookstore trip for his kindly benefactor lifted pretty directly.

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE (1989)

No doubt, it seemed like a clever idea, but styling a Jerry Lee Lewis bio-pic into a cotton-candied GREASE knock-off limits writer/director Jim McBride’s options & payoff. He might be filming a literary conceit. And concentrating on the child bride scandal that stymied Lewis’s top-of-the-charts breakout leaves little room to see how his square-peg-in-a-round-hole Honky-tonk Rock & Roll fit into the rebellious ‘50s music scene. Dennis Quaid, in his hot-bod phase but keeping his ass covered (rare at the time!), has all the ingredients to play Lewis, but never quite convinces lip-synching Jerry Lee’s smash vocals. He’s better at percussive keyboard dives, but guys up nearly every line as if this were sketch comedy. Like the film as a whole, it’s entertaining, but played in ‘Quotation Marks.’ And if Alec Baldwin sports an iffy accent as Lewis’s preacher/cousin Jimmy Swaggart, the rest of the cast hits closer to the mark. Especially 19 year-old Winonna Ryder as the 13 yr-old cousin Lewis marries. (Everyone’s a cousin in this story.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Two from 1978: Try not to cringe comparing film to memory in GREASE; or go for the neatly handled BUDDY HOLLY STORY.

DR. EHRLICH'S MAGIC BULLET (1940)

Paul Muni’s loss was Edward G. Robinson’s gain when director William Dieterle followed up PASTEUR, ZOLA and JUAREZ with a fourth ‘Great Man’ bio-pic on turn-of-the-last-century research scientist Dr. Paul Ehrlich.* And with Robinson in for Muni, who’d just ‘ankled’ at Warner Bros., it’s our gain, too, since Robinson’s lack of histrionics were the better fit for this leaner storyline. Lean but tough, with most of the film taken up by Ehrlich’s searching a cure for syphilis, a very tricky storyline for the period. (Tricky now, too.) John Huston gets credit for a last whack at humanizing the script, adding color & character to what might have been a very dry test tube drama. Instead, there’s a surprisingly strong emotional kick to it, right from the start when a young man gets the bad news. Ehrlich’s family life remains a bit stiff, but the professional side of things (struggles with colleagues & funding, a major court fight, a diphtheria outbreak), along with timely parallels to current German political concerns, give the film plenty of drama. Well-paced by Dieterle and handsomely caught in James Wong Howe’s dark, moody cinematography.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Right after this, Dieterle made a fifth ‘Great Man’ bio-pic, again with Robinson in a role Muni might have taken, A DISPATCH FROM REUTERS/’40. (Hal Wallis, who produced all of them, considered SERGEANT YORK/’41 the last in this bio-pic series.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In spite of his varied resume, Eddie G. was still ‘typed’ as Mob Guy #1. Hence the addendum on our poster promising that MAGIC BULLETS is ‘Not A Gangster Picture!’ (Click poster to expand.)

CIRCUS WORLD (1964)

After a pair of unconventional epics, EL CID/’61 (a stupendous success) and FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE/’64 (a staggering flop), independent mogul Samuel Bronston went out not with a bang, but with this lumbering, very conventional whimper. Hitting all the usual circus tropes (wreck, fire, daredevil rivalry, performing accidents), the sole twist has Big Top owner John Wayne (plus stunt double to scamper up all those tent poles) hauling his outfit off on a Euro-tour in hopes of finding high-flying ex Rita Hayworth. Fourteen years a fallen woman, she's hiding from life & abandoned daughter Claudia Cardinale after an affair with Duke led to her husband’s mid-act death plunge. Henry Hathaway, Jack Hildyard & Dmitri Tiomkin meg, lens & score with professional blinders on, they’re the grown-ups in the room, ploughing thru script absurdities to make the most of various obstacles & disasters. (Though a felled ship remains a real head-scratcher, keeling over simply from passengers rushing port-side.) Watchable, in a lazy sort of way, it suddenly comes alive near the end in a montage of acts on opening night. Gorgeous stuff here, stunningly executed, staged & edited. Why there’s even a truly funny clown act!

DOUBLE-BILL: Far more circus charm, atmosphere, hoke & nuttiness in Carol Reed’s TRAPEZE/’56 or C. B. De Mille’s super bright/cornball GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH/’52.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Nicholas Ray, just off Bronston’s poorly received, but entertaining 55 DAYS AT PEKING/’63, gets story credit, presumably a planned follow up taken away from him.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Listen as Wayne gives Cardinale some surrogate fatherly advice all about ‘high dives’ & ‘safety nets.’ Sure sounds like a disguised parent-to-child talk on contraception. Yikes!

STAR SPANGLED RHYTHM (1942)

First out of the gate with a WWII All-Star Revue pic, Paramount trooped the colors and their contract players as part of Hollywood’s morale-building war effort. An effort soon followed by the other ‘Majors.’ The story in this one, such as it is, has longtime studio gatekeeper Victor Moore letting soldier-boy son Eddie Bracken think he’s running the joint. A fib he’s forced to fake when Bracken & his army pals show up on leave before shipping out. Fortunately, aggressive telephone switchboard jockey Betty Hutton, already pen-pals with Bracken, is around to press the stars into putting on a really big show. Harmless, but very hit-and-miss, the film keeps threatening to turn into serious fun, but comes up short. Fortunately, the big variety show uses half the players on the lot which livens things up even with sketchy comic sketches and largely forgettable songs. One new classic though, THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC, sung by Johnny Johnston (who he?) and danced by Vera Zorina/staged by husband George Balanchine (both fresh from Rodgers & Hart’s I MARRIED AN ANGEL on B’way). Click on the poster to make out the impressive cast list.*

DOUBLE-BILL: Next year, Hutton, Bracken & director Preston Sturges (tres soigné in a small bit here) would team up for a true American classic, MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK/’43.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Even standing next to Dorothy Lamour & Veronica Lake, Paulette Goddard is some kind of knockout.

INCREDIBLES 2 (2018)

Fourteen years on (and after two Live Action pics), writer/director Brad Bird reanimates his INCREDIBLE Super Hero Family for more of the same. Much more of the same. Maybe too much more of the same! In this one, which picks up shortly after the first film ended, a new toddler in the family is ‘teething’ on newly developing, still uncontrollable Super Powers under Dad’s supervision while Mom is busy taking on ScreenSlaver, a new dastardly Super Villain who’s hypnotizing the world via video screens. The fun factor is largely the same as before, with fashionista Aunt Edna (a mash-up of actress Linda Hunt & costume designer Edith Head, voiced by Bird) again stealing the pic, this time with a brief stint of babysitting. If only the main storylines were as involving: Domestic Duty Dad pretty old hat sit-com territory while Mom stretches out standard procedure heroics that offer little but sound & fury. And Bird knows it, laying on CGI pyrotechnics to the point of exhaustion, an Amusement Park that’s all E-Ticket rides. Exceptionally well done yet vaguely disappointing.

DOUBLE-BILL: With a vibe that recalls the Roger Moore James Bond era, THE INCREDIBLES/’04 is great fun, and far better balanced than this sequel.

BLACKkKLANSMAN (2018)

Like his beloved Knicks, it’s been quite a while since Spike Lee was part of the conversation. (Recently, ten episodes of a rebooted SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT on cable. Who knew? Worse, who cared?) But he claws back to relevance on this deliciously serious absurdity, a fact-inspired, if fanciful story about a Black rookie cop (over-parted John David Washington) who lays an undercover trap for a small Colorado chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, but needs a white colleague (Adam Driver, excellent) to be his physical stand-in. Unevenly fitted with comic & deadly complications (including Driver’s character being a non-practicing Jew), the film gets into its own kind of trouble charting Washington’s romance with hard-core Black Activist Laura Harrier, whose doctrinaire approach to all issues walls her off. It should act as a sort of sexy challenge, a turn-on for Washington, but these two don’t do much for each other. (Reversing the pattern of a ‘70s White/Black Buddy Pic, Driver is given no social life at all.) Halfway along, the film starts to feel like it's all setup/no payoff, with Lee unable to generate suspense, even with a self-indulgent extra half hour running time. But the basic story holds you, the period detail gives a kick, and the last act is helped by a neat turn from Topher Grace as rising Klan Wizard David Duke. But a lot of thoughtful suspense got left on the table.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Lee builds an unexpectedly lackluster climax with weak use of parallel editing on a Ride-to-the-Rescue finale, following a classic technique largely invented by D. W. Griffith and perfected in his BIRTH OF A NATION/’15! Ironic, no?

LEGEND OF THE LOST (1957)

John Wayne must have had a lot of trust in underrated helmer Henry Hathaway, or simply admired his efficient style, making four more films with him after this clunker. Each of them miles ahead of this stinkbomb.* It’s your standard Treasure Hunt adventure with Rossano Brazzi going to Timbuktu and hiring local vagabond Wayne as his guide into the Sahara. He hopes to find the lost city (and the lost gold) his father died trying to claim. Sophia Loren’s the local good time gal & occasional thief who tags along and comes between the men. Romantic triangle anyone? Greed & madness? Lost in the Sahara? Backstabbing? (That’s literal backstabbing.) Equally ridiculous & formulaic, not a happy credit for scripter Ben Hecht. With ace cinematographer Jack Cardiff doing little for either Loren or the Sahara . . . and Wayne & Sophia doing even less for each other.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *The next Hathaway/Wayne pic, NORTH TO ALASKA/’60, is fun & spritely; then CIRCUS WORLD/’64 (not seen here); SONS OF KATIE ELDER/’65 (standard revenge Western with a sharp third act);and a classic, TRUE GRIT/’69. (Wayne also shows in Hathaway’s HOW THE WEST WAS WON/’62, but only in the John Ford directed Civil War segment.)

NIJINSKY (1980)

After unexpectedly strong critical & commercial success dramatizing ballet (on-stage & off) with THE TURNING POINT/’77 (come for the bitch-fest; stay for the dance), married power-couple Herbert Ross & Nora Kaye (director; producer) went a step & a half deeper on this much less well-received bio-pic of Nijinsky, the legendary Russian dancer/choreographer whose meteoric career ended in madness.* Book-ended with a pair of missteps (Nijinsky’s INVITATION TO THE DANCE intro uses needless camera tricks which lessen rather than heighten the experience, and an ending montage with b&w stills from the film when you expect archival shots of the real Nijinsky), almost everything in-between is both better and far more accurate than you expect it to be. As Nijinsky, George De La Pena is physically slighter, more delicate than the model*, but remarkably open and believable in his passions, his dancing genius and his frail mental makeup. His affair with older ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (Alan Bates in tremendous form) is natural, touching & dangerous, while his ultimately tragic rebound move into the waiting arms of ballet groupie Leslie Browne understandable. And if Bates steals the pic, De La Pena gets its two peak moments: dramatically in a room destruction scene, stunningly set to a furious cut from Stravinsky’s RITE OF SPRING, and balletically in a superb recreation of his scandalous AFTERNOON OF A FAUN, much helped by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth’s stage lighting on both Nijinsky and a stunning replica of Léon Bakst’s original backdrop painting, in rich Fauvist colors. On release, a major disappointment compared to TURNING POINT, it now seems the more significant achievement.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Writer Ben Hecht, in one of his occasional outings as writer/director, had Nijinsky in mind on his ballet themed murder mystery SPECTER OF THE ROSE/’46.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/specter-of-rose-1946.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Billy Wilder tried to interest Sam Goldwyn in this story, but the idea of it ending in an insane asylum, with the greatest dancer of his generation thinking he was a horse (!) was a step too far for Sam. Too depressing! But wait, said Wilder, it has a happy ending . . . he wins the Kentucky Derby!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Mikhail Baryshnikov, who starred in Ross’s THE TURNING POINT, and turned this film down, had a build closer to the real Nijinsky.