THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET (1934)

Aging out of her Daring Modern Women period (at 32!), and with the re-enforced Hollywood Production Code breathing down her decolletage, Norma Shearer narrowed her range to ‘distinguished’ stage vehicles like this popular play (a great success on B’way for Katharine Cornell) about invalided poet Elizabeth Barrett, her tyrannical father and romantic rescue by fellow poet Robert Browning. Probably the best of her latter day roles, Shearer’s a size & a half small for it, but at least she doesn’t press. (Later, as Juliet, Marie Antoinette, and in roles associated with Lynn Fontanne, Gertrude Lawrence & Jeanne Eagles, she can seem lost or panicked, tossing in insufferable little laughs as cover. Likely she saw ‘Kit’ Cornell in this, everyone did . . . and took notes.*) The story is surprisingly uncomfortable even now, with Charles Laughton’s monstrous father (as ever, toeing the line between slightly ridiculous & brilliant) is still alarmingly scary, bringing out the incestuous angle in spite of any censorship issues. And there’s excellent support from Fredric March, offering some much needed zip as an impetuous Browning, and, gliding across the floor, that great eccentric Una O’Connor as a lady’s maid nearly as loyal as Elizabeth’s dog Flush.

DOUBLE-BILL: Sidney Franklin, after about 50 (mostly silent) features, and now transitioning from helming to producing, megs in default M-G-M laissez-faire style. (A simple staircase crane shot a major event.) He’d return to directing for the CinemaScope/MetroColor 1957 waxworks remake w/ Jennifer Jones, John Gielgud & Bill Travers.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A few notes on ages: *Cornell still reviving this on B’way in 1945 when she was 52, and still playing against her original Browning from 1931, Brian Aherne. And note that in the film, Laughton, a mere 35, was only three years older than Shearer, and two years younger than March. (The real Browning was about six years Elizabeth Barrett’s junior.)

THE SUNDOWNERS (1950)

Not to be confused with Fred Zinnemann’s fine 1960 Australia-set family drama (see below), this little indie Western ought to be better. Connected to John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS/’56 via writer Alan LeMay and lenser Winton C. Hoch, you can certainly see the possibilities in its cattle poaching plotline, but director George Templeton doesn’t pull much out of the situations. As brothers bent on stopping a gang of local cattle rustlers, Robert Sterling & debuting John Barrymore, Jr. (Drew’s pop!) don’t exactly fill the screen with personality. But they completely disappear once Robert Preston shows up as The Sociopath Who Came To Dinner. He’s got a shared past with the boys and is eager to steal back any losses in the herd . . . and then some. Shooting to kill when given half a chance, romancing Sterling’s gal, rubbing his victims’ noses in defeat and singing a little victory song to celebrate, he’s a show & a half all on his lonesome. If only someone would have stepped up to meet him halfway, Preston might not have slipped off the big screen and over to tv & the B’way stage for much of the ‘50s. Then again, that’s how he snared the role of a lifetime when an upstart musical no one gave much of a chance to came along needing a semi-forgotten leading man to play MUSIC MAN Harold Hill. And there’s a taste of that conman's showmanship on display here.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In an early appearance, a young, rail-thin Jack Elam makes an impression as a Preston victim.

SANDOME NO SATSUJIN / THE THIRD MURDER (2017)

Best known Stateside for warm-blooded, multi-layered family tales (STILL WALKING/’08; LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON/’13), Japanese writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda shows impressive range in this methodical & deliberately paced, but consistently compelling courtroom drama. The victim, a small factory owner, has evidently been murdered & robbed by a recently fired employee, a man who’s killed before. But little turns out to be quite as straightforward as we are first led to believe. Or, indeed, first shown. (In film, seeing is always believing.) The confession may be a partial lie; even a complete one. A false statement given to take the death penalty off the table. Or perhaps to protect a family member’s participation in the crime. (That’s a member of the victim’s family.) Then, in a self-destructive move as the trial nears an end, the accused reverses his plea, reneges on his confession and reverts to ‘the truth.’ Whatever that is. A move all but guaranteed to doom his case. Kore-eda lays all this out with deceptive calm, the interview sequences in jail between client & lawyer, a masterclass in close-up camera positioning and changing levels of power. The typical Japanese reserve can be puzzling to Western audiences at times. (Hey! Speak up! Be a bit rude and tell us what you want!) But it’s Real Deal, fascinating stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL: Pumped up for Hollywood, this sort of story gets ‘Pop’ sensibility as in PRIMAL FEAR/’96 (Richard Gere; Edward Norton. OR: With an Art House veneer from Iran, the shifting perspectives of Asghar Farhadi’s superb A SEPARATION/’11.

THE CHOCOLATE SOLDIER (1941)

Originally welded onto George Bernard Shaw’s ARMS AND THE MAN (War, Sex, Bulgaria), Oscar Straus’s popular Viennese operetta was retrofitted at M-G-M for Ferenc Molnár’s THE GUARDSMAN (jealous Musical Comedy Leading Man disguises himself to woo his own ‘unfaithful’ Leading Lady wife). No wonder Straus’s score is arbitrarily scattered about (with hit number ‘My Hero’ getting five hearings!), and buttressed with party pieces by Mussorsky, Wagner & Saint-Saëns. And why not? Nelson Eddy, on one of his periodic outings sans Jeanette MacDonald, is in resounding voice, and certainly does better on the vocals than in handling Molnár’s sophisticated Boulevard Farce. (Comic style on the hearty side). While new co-star, debuting Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens, glories in a rich, warm voice that knocks the socks off M-G-M’s twittering stratospheric songbirds. (Her comic style? Mostly of the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth variety.*) Poor Molnár also gets manhandled by the Hollywood Production Code since his playful banter on infidelity is sabotaged by having Stevens know right from the start that her new Russian lover is really her very own husband. In the play (and in M-G-M’s 1931 Pre-Code Talkie with Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne), neither the audience nor the masquerading husband can be quite sure that she knows.* Considering that Roy Del Ruth directs as if one scene isn’t connected to the next, the film is harmless stuff, and certainly sounds well. And that recurring hit number, ‘My Hero,’ is a first-rate earworm.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Greta Garbo’s TWO-FACED WOMAN, out the same year, ran into the exact same Production Code trouble. In that one, it’s Garbo who’s two-timing herself with Melvyn Douglas . . . except he knows all along!

DOUBLE-BILL: *(A theoretical double-bill as this is currently unavailable.) Stevens did a 1955 tv version of CHOCOLATE SOLDIER that may have returned to the original Shaw-based storyline. OR: As mentioned above, The Lunts in THE GUARDSMAN/’31, alas very stiffly directed by Sidney Franklin.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Returning to Hollywood just once, in Leo McCarey/Bing Crosby’s GOING MY WAY/’44, Stevens never enjoyed the filmmaking process. Especially lip-synching on set where she generally sang her numbers an octave below pitch to her own pre-recorded track. It kept her from opening her mouth too wide and spoiling the pretty picture. She hated it. So, back to Met for two more decades on stage, then fund-raising until her death in 2013 at 99.

THE ASTONISHED HEART (1950)

Having already expanded STILL LIFE (one of nine short plays that made up three evenings’ entertainment in TONIGHT AT 8:30) into the hugely successful BRIEF ENCOUNTER/’45, Noël Coward no doubt hoped lightning would strike twice adapting a second. Think again. This time, Coward takes the lead (after dismissing initial choice Michael Redgrave) in this psychiatric gloss on the old ‘Physician Heal Thyself’ theme. As a top London shrink, happily married to Celia Johnson, he finds himself helplessly falling into a death spiral of bottomless passion when her old school chum Margaret Leighton stops by. Johnson, as supporting wife, patiently waits out the affair, unaware he’s hitting untested depths even as the mistress looks ready to move on. As a condensed half-hour, the play works far better than the film* where every addition comes across as too obvious or simplistic. But fun to see Coward working with real life partner Graham Payn (overparted even playing his assistant), plus Joyce Carey, who played the wife on stage, now as office secretary. Naturally, Johnson & Leighton (particular faves of Coward) are immaculate as spouse & temptress, but Coward’s clipped delivery comes close to self-parody.* (Yet what strength he finds at the wordless end.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Coward was usually very canny about what he could do on film (as opposed to stage & tv). Presumably, Redgrave’s abrupt departure necessitated a quick replacement. He never chanced another leading role on the big screen. (Even turning down David Lean when offered Alec Guinness’s role in BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:*And when played in its original One Act form, still does. In this Joan Collins’ anchored tv production, Sian Phillips nails the Celia Johnson role. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bJa1lnF5rE

THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1948)

Somewhat cavalier Hollywood adaptation of the classic Wilkie Collins’ mystery novel (less a Whodunit than a Who-Is-It) makes for good spooky Victorian fun. (Is there a faithful first-class iteration out there?) The basic set-up & characters are recognizable: a family fortune to inherit, a hidden step-sister, the pretty companion & the handsome art teacher, a trio of odd villains and neurasthenic uncle, even if the story runs its own course. But with the Good Guys indifferently cast (Gig Young & Alexis Smith hopelessly American; Eleanor Parker only right in half of a double role), the film gets taken over by the Baddies (corpulent, threatening Sydney Greenstreet; John Emery, chilly & supercilious; and a memorably nasty, lunatic John Abbott). And with Warners unable to decide if they were making an A or B+ production, director Peter Godfrey & lenser Carl Guthrie put out standard Hollywood backlot Brit flavor. On the other hand, Max Steiner composed an unusually ambitious score, too little known and helping the third act ratchet up considerable suspense. Worth a look.

DOUBLE-BILL: A friendly rival to Dickens, Wilkie Collins launched the Victorian Mystery novel. But this film comes in the wake of more unified pics it strongly influenced like George Cukor’s big ticket GASLIGHT/’44 (Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Angela Lansbury, Joseph Cotton) and John Brahm’s HANGOVER SQUARE/’45 (Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, George Sanders).

LA POISON (1951)

Multi-tasker Sacha Guitry (playwright/ actor/director) left his Boulevard Comedies for rural Marcel Pagnol territory in this marital farce, a village fable both comic & cruel, burnt sugar on a crème brûlée. Michel Simon (at his rumpled best) & Germaine Reuver are miserably mismatched in a marriage from Hell, daggers in their eyes/murder in their heart. She’s bought rat poison from the druggist/he’s found a fancy Paris lawyer to confess to. And that’s where he goes before the crime, to let the celebrated defense lawyer suggest ‘proper’ answers. The lawyer has no idea he’s teaching Simon the best way to do in the missus and get off scot-free. So, the courtroom trial plays like a theatrical turn; the town gets windfall publicity & lucrative tourist trade; police & the legal system prove incompetent &/or corrupt; and Simon is Hero of the Day, while the poor druggist gets a taste of his own medicine. Technically, the film is one of Guitry’s most conventional, but in its ideas as cynical, bitter & subversive as he ever got . . . plus hilarious.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Guitry could always be counted on for witty credit sequences, and this film’s elaborate, deeply personal intros rank with his best.

DOUBLE-BILL: Orson Welles’ original idea for what became Chaplin’s MONSIEUR VERDOUX/’48 must have been closer in tone to LA POISON than the finished product. Which, in spite of many felicities, ultimately mistakes sanctimonious for serious. A charge Guitry could never be accused of.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: How this missed the ‘90s Hollywood remake boom (maybe for Jack Nicholson/Kathy Bates?) is a mystery.

A DISPATCH FROM REUTERS (1940)

Fifth & final of the Warners/William Dieterle ‘Great Man’ bio-pics*, climaxes with Edward G. Robinson, as News-Wire pioneer Julius Reuter, fighting accusations of fake news! Mighty timely for an 80 year old film. Equally timely then, what with war breaking out in Europe, and the border separating legit news & political propaganda crumbling. Lightest of the series, the first half struggles to find drama. (Poor Eddie Albert, as Reuter’s dreamy assistant, overdoes his fool act for a few weak plot beats.) But the film gains in interest as Robinson moves up from carrier pigeons and telegraphed stock quotes, switching to a news gathering service based on the network of financial news agents he’s built up. And a climax with news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (true report or venal stock manipulation?) works up enough suspense (along with a nod at Insider Trading issues) to overcome a lackluster romantic angle between Robinson & Edna Best (they each have more chemistry with the pigeons) and the bizarre casting of angelic Dickie Moore to play Robinson as a little boy in the prologue.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Paul Muni starred in Dieterle’s first three bio-pics (PASTEUR, immunization & science vs. suspicion; ZOLA, on Anti-Semitism; JUAREZ, national self-determination) before Robinson took over the series on DR. EHRLICH (STDs) and this paean to a Free Press. Worthy films (in good ways and bad, see Write-Ups below), though the Muni trio (big ticket prestige items in their day) have largely fallen out of critical favor. Best to start with DR. EHRLICH’S MAGIC BULLETS/’40, lively and retaining its air of daring controversy.

WHIPSAW (1935)

Well-turned jewel heist pic, taken to unexpected heights by the phenomenal star wattage on display from Myrna Loy, a year after hitting her stride in THE THIN MAN, and Spencer Tracy, still the new guy @ M-G-M after splitting from FOX. Seeing these two in early peak form, and with some sort of electro-magnetic/ chemical charge coursing between them, defines the very essence of M-G-M’s core strength. It opens in London, with Loy causing a fender-bender with rich American Robert Warwick. He’s about to pick up four fabulous matching pearls worth half a mill/she’s looking for his weak point. Instead, two accomplices move in, eventually grabbing the pearls somewhere in the Customs Office after a Trans-Atlantic cruise. But wait!; a second gang is waiting on the dock, ready to grab the pearls from the first gang! Also plenty of reporters & cops. That’s when Tracy shows up, a mug working a con of his own, one he needs Loy to pull off. But something’s fishy about this guy, and Loy knows it. He’s no mug . . . he’s a . . . well, you’ll guess what he is. But the whole four-way sting is so neatly worked out; the by-play for the stars so terrific; and a rain-drenched country pit-stop at the home of an isolated couple with a baby on the way so loaded with legit sentiment that you’ll forgive a bit of awkward plot mechanics in the last act for the satisfied feeling you’ll get. Director Sam Wood, always dependent on his creative team, sets a crackling pace even without a background score, and gets a major assist from lenser James Wong Howe, offering glamor & loads of visual imagination.*

DOUBLE-BILL: *Add art director William Cameron Menzies to Wood & Howe and you get something as imaginatively rich (and downright weird) as KINGS ROW/’42.

MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID (1952)

Champion swimmer turned Hollywood novelty star Esther Williams celebrated a wet decade @ M-G-M with this heavily fictionalized bio-pic of celebrated Australian lady aquatic Annette Kellerman, aka ‘The Girl in the One-Piece Bathing Suit.’ And what a relief, after shoehorning one ‘Can-You-Top-This’ water ballet specialty after another into her films, to have those glorious TechniColored water-tank ‘Numbos’ legitimately motivated as stage turns on the Hippodrome stage. (ESTHER: What’s my motivation for getting wet? INTERCHANGEABLE DIRECTOR: To give us a reason to make the film.) Mervyn LeRoy megs this one with typical generic smoothness (Velveeta substituting for Real Cheddar), and not an ounce of believable period flavor or local color. Walter Pidgeon phones it in as Annette’s encouraging Dad (she overcomes childhood rickets; he overcomes lousy hairstyling) while stolid David Brian & a pleasingly vulgar Victor Mature play rival suitors. But forget all that, you know why you’re here, it’s to see the two showcase Busby Berkeley spectaculars right in the middle of the pic, each announced by cascading water jets and both exulting in George Folsey’s TechniColor lensing to properly glorify the feminine pulchritude, male beefcake and Berkeley’s bizarrely sexualized musical fantasies. The second one positively pornographic.

DOUBLE-BILL: Go back to GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 to see LeRoy & Berkeley work in better balance.

LINK: Check out the real Annette Kellerman here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYi7Kbdesp0

FOUR FACES WEST (1948)

The landscape is epic, the story chamber-sized in this unusually fine indie Western from a seemingly rejuvenated Alfred E. Green*, with Joel McCrea & Frances Dee, Hollywood’s handsomest, happiest couple (3 kids/ married 57 years). There’s a religious bent to the warm-hearted story, though it's far more gently handled than John Ford’s contemporary 3 GODFATHERS/’48, as an injured McCrea meets Dee on a train after he’s robbed a bank right under the nose of new sheriff Pat Garrett (Charles Bickford). These two are made for each other, but he’ll have to face the music, and return the cash, for any future together. Meanwhile, they find a guardian angel in saloon owner Joseph Calleia and a mission of mercy in a desperately ill family who waylay McCrea just as he nears the Mexican border. A lovely (and all but villain-less) fable, taken from Eugene Manlove Rhodes’ Paso Por Aqui, gets just as lovely a presentation with cinematographer Russell Harlan in spectacular form on spectacular locations. Be sure to have an extra look at a mock-up nightscape shown during a train ride a bit before the half-hour mark. Like some leftover UFA silent film model, a real visual knockout.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *A late peak for Green. Showing new confidence after having the biggest hit of his long, largely uninteresting journeyman career with THE JOLSON STORY/’46?

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, Ford's 3 GODFATHERS, a story William Wyler, Richard Boleslawski & John Badham have all taken on. Wyler’s very early Talkie version (HELL’S HEROES/’29) quite exceptional. Ford’s is more than a little bit sticky, but with a great, largely original, third act tacked on.

LINK: Excellent print here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTNYysSa9HU

ALFIE (1966)

Made on the cusp of ‘Mod’ or Swinging London (Antonioni’s BLOW-UP opened six months later), Bill Naughton's adaptation of his own play is unusually specific as to time & place, which, of course, helps make it universal. Retaining the theatrical device of breaking the ‘fourth wall,’ Michael Caine’s Alfie can confide, defend & explain the ways of his Rake’s Progress; a womanizing cad with an upset conscience. He courts us 'across the footlights' to make his argument, only to lose his case to himself. Both heel and pushover, it’s a real tour de force for Caine who’d made a name for himself in ZULU/’64 and THE IPCRESS FILE/’65, but broke out to a different level here, charming & appalling as he runs thru ‘birds’ without fully connecting. Director Lewis Gilbert takes all the play-to-film obstacles in stride, getting away with stylistic tricks by ignoring the difficulties. And with a cast to make it work, as Caine’s seemingly easy conquests turn on him, one by one. Shelley Winters is a standout as an older bedmate who holds the reins (and with no vocal whining for a change!); funny, sexy & knowing exactly what she wants and what she can get. And what an unexpectedly frank & brutal abortion sequence after Vivien Merchant, wife of a hospital roommate, has succumbed to Alfie’s inevitable attentions. You’d never see it in a popular entertainment today.

DOUBLE-BILL: In THE RAKE’S PROGRESS/’45 (aka NOTORIOUS GENTLEMAN)/, Sidney Gilliat & Frank Launder make Rex Harrison such a womanizing rotter, only WWII can redeem him. (Skip Jude Law's unfortunate 2004 ALFIE remake.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Terence Stamp, who starred in the play (a hit in the West End/a flop on B’way), turned down the film. Lucky thing for roommate Michael Caine and for the film. Caine’s more cheeky than handsome, a quality that makes his confidence something of a ploy. Stamp’s God-given looks would have done all the work for him, unbalancing the drama.

TRADE WINDS (1938)

. . . the story goes, perennially undersung director Tay Garnett, back from a round-the-world tour, and loaded with exotic vistas shot along the way, thought up the plot for this film as a way to use some of that fab foreign footage. And not a bad idea. Society gal Joan Bennett finds the man who caused her sister’s death and shoots to kill! Now on the run, she hides by going from blonde to brunette & hopscotches the 7 Seas pursued by lame police dick Ralph Bellamy and sharp private dick Fredric March who’s soon joined by smart/daffy asst. Ann Southern. Naturally, March falls for his mark; Bellamy tracks down the wrong gal; Southern dopes out the situation; and Bennett can’t tell if March wants her or the $100,000 reward. It’s one of those projects where everything’s in place, but is let down by a script (Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell, others) that falls short in plotting & witty dialogue (heavy with mal mots), and by a pinch-penny production that blots Garnett’s travelogue footage with subfusc process work. Though it does stand as something of a precursor to the process shot happy ROAD pics Crosby & Hope started up the following year.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: March’s ultra-womanizing character is darn close to his real lecherous self. And Bennett must have liked the switch from blonde (like elder sister Constance) to brunette, since she never went back. The change caught the attention of no less than Cole Porter who referenced her new look (veddy Hedy Lamarr) in this Danny Kaye ‘patter song’ on B’way in LET’S FACE IT. (The lyrics also rib Paramount’s Bob Hope who, ironically, played Kaye’s role in the movie version though the song went to co-star Betty Hutton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuLTpzhxCSM

WINGS FOR THE EAGLE (1942)

By 1942, both Ann Sheridan & Dennis Morgan's careers @ Warners had moved past this little WWII programmer. But an aircraft factory setting & a relationship where Morgan takes advantage of Sheridan’s crumbling marriage to BFF Jack Carson refreshes the formula. Morgan, a bit of a jerk here, hopes to keep the draft at bay by working in an ‘Essential Industry.’ Sure, he’ll succumb to patriotic sentiment & stop his romantic poaching by the finish, but the script comes up with some nice turns to get him there. George Tobias & son Russell Arms bring a lot of heart to their roles as factory foreman forced out for not having citizenship papers and as putative Army Air Force flyboy. Plus, a rare Hollywood sighting of ‘little person’ Billy Curtis working a legit factory job rather than a sideshow. (He’s small enough to check out engine casings from the inside.) He can't reach the payroll punch-in clock and gets roughly kidded for his size, but kidded like a regular, if short, guy. Any other examples in the period to match? Any now? Director Lloyd Bacon keeps up a decent pace, though can’t do anything with a corny bit of flying action tagged on at the end. But this was mid-1942. News from the front still pretty dark. And like the trailer promises: Prioritizing Adventure and Romance! Add in a bit of comedy, and you’ve nailed the wartime entertainment trifecta for the times.

DOUBLE-BILL: Morgan & Carson would pair up for a series of light vehicles, but are revelatory in next year’s exceptionally dark backstager, THE HARD WAY, alongside the equally fine Ida Lupino & Joan Leslie. (Billy Curtis shows up, too, back in a showbiz role.)

THE MERRY WIDOW (1934)

Best known for ‘knowing’ sex comedies & those witty ‘Lubitsch Touches’ that eluded censors with visual innuendo*, Ernst Lubitsch was equally celebrated for the use of spectacle in his early German productions. But once in Hollywood, the stunning use of mass movement in films like ROSITA/’23 and FORBIDDEN PARADISE/’24, soon gave way to the more intimate style we now recognize as echt Lubitsch. But in this M-G-M remake of the famous Lehar operetta, he must have been encouraged to lay it on. So, quite the display: balls & marches & corps of sweeping dancers filling the screen in waltz time. It’s thrilling, but does tend to overwhelm the tiny little story made up to fill in the space between the well known music cues. Briefly: Maurice Chevalier falls for the latest Maxim's Minx (Jeanette MacDonald) unaware she’s the Merry Widow he’s only seen hidden under a widow’s veil, the very woman he’s under orders to woo & win, bringing her and her fortune (half the State economy) back home from Paris. M-G-M tends to overdress everything, and the longueurs of operetta can hang fire, but a super cast (Edward Everett Horton, George Barbier & Una Merkel in support of MacDonald & Chevalier) manage to locate a beating heart under all the frou-frou thanks to Lubitsch and favorite scripter Samson Raphaelson.

LINK:*Here’s a clip where Billy Wilder defines The Lubitsch Touch to some students. He gets the film wrong, but the scene described is from THE MERRY WIDOW.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jOVRKzwURY

DOUBLE-BILL: Erich von Stroheim’s MERRY WIDOW/’25, a great hit in its day, adds two acts worth of an elaborate backstory to beef up the operetta plot. (The 1952 version is just regrettable.)

LIGHTS OF NEW YORK (1928)

Remembered as Warner’s B-Unit production Head in the ‘30s & ‘40s, Bryan Foy (‘Keeper of the B’s’) had earlier directed scores of silent & early sound shorts before expanding this little ‘Two Reeler’ from a Two to a Six reel mob story, backing into the First All-Talking Feature-Length film six months after the song-studded, but largely silent JAZZ SINGER in ’27. (And pissing off his superiors till they saw their 20 thou investment earn over a million.) Derided as an artistic embarrassment ever since, it’s really not so bad; a curious antique about a pair of rubes who buy an NYC barbershop not knowing it’s really a front for a bootleg booze warehouse. Stiffly paced and too reliant on master shots (a rare close-up is wasted on the oscillating clanger of a telephone bell, a silent film convention made instantly obsolete by synch-sound), it’s fun to see which actors naturally ‘get’ Talkie acting technique (Eugene Pallette, already on form) and which over-articulate in a stagy manner (main heavy Wheeler Oakman). Here and there, a few lines (or awkward line readings) can still cause a panic (there’s a lulu on how much the State will save by avoiding an electrocution), but there’s more fun noting just how much is already in place awaiting cinematic chrysalis. Easy to see why everybody wanted to see it; easy to see why film lovers were horrified.

DOUBLE-BILL: Alas, Foy’s follow-up and only other feature as director, THE HOME TOWNERS/’28, is lost.

LE SOUFFLE AU COEUR / MURMUR OF THE HEART (1971)

After a series of successes that sat slightly to the side of the French New Wave, Louis Malle broke ranks to make a pair of well-received Third-World documentaries, then returned to narrative, with a new personal bent, in this stunning, auto-biographically inspired coming-of-age tale. Set in the mid-‘50s, it’s a dramatic lark, consistently hilarious as it serves up the entitled world of its wealthy family: youngish Italian mother, self-satisfied doctor father, and one put-upon cook/housekeeper overwhelmed by their three obstreperous teen boys (all limbs & raging hormones). It’s Malle’s alter-ego, the youngest of the boys, who sets the agenda as he discovers his mother’s affair; battles his taunting older brothers (endearingly appalling between pummeling & arranging his sex initiation); fends off advances at Catholic School (Michael Lonsdale, stupendous!); and heads to a lux health spa as treatment for his recently discovered heart murmur. But murmurs of the heart are more than medical, with Malle’s script (grabbing a rare foreign film screenplay Oscar nom.) supplying character density worthy of Gustave Flaubert. (AN ADOLESCENT’S SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION?*) None of this possible without Malle’s easy technical command and ability to get the best out of his cast of young newcomers, and a career defining one from Lea Massari’s bewitching mother. The scenes between her & son Benoît Ferreux at the spa after her breakup, some of the most privileged moments in film.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The Flaubert connection is also made in the film trailer. So much for special insight!

DOUBLE-BILL: The infamous incestuous turn of events (shocking only for not being shocking), along with Massari’s reaction, recalls Deborah Kerr’s legendary curtain line to John Kerr in TEA AND SYMPATHY/’56 (‘When you speak of this . . . and you will, please, be kind.’) where playwright Robert Anderson uses her as symbolic mother.

FLOWING GOLD (1940)

This halfhearted Warner Bros. programmer for John Garfield, Pat O’Brien & Frances Farmer ought to be better. But B-Team director Alfred E. Green & scripter Kenneth Gamet just go thru the motions on a better than average story of boom-to-bust oil mavericks betting on a longshot claim. Buffoonish Raymond Walburn is Farmer’s dad, a blathering oil promoter who hires Pat O’Brien’s indie outfit in a race-against-the-clock oil dig. (The drill gang, a nicely varied gaggle of rough, lesser-known character actors, is the best thing in the pic.) Also on board, after briefly working for the guy who’s trying to shut them down, is man-on-the-run John Garfield, hiding out on a murder charge. You’ll guess every move from the start, but there’s some good fun on the edges: a muddy boomtown, fiery derricks, a nifty model truck on a collapsing road, a dance hall sequence. And while Garfield would soon rise to the A-list as O’Brien largely stayed in B-pic trenches, Farmer all but disappeared a year later from mental issues. Even here, there’s already something ‘off’ about her.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A 1924 silent version of FLOWING GOLD is lost, but its three leads (Milton Sills, Anna Q. Nilsson & Alice Calhoun) suggest a different story behind the oil drilling.

DOUBLE-BILL: Jessica Lange salvaged a bruised early rep playing the tragic Farmer in FRANCES/’82.

TOPAZE (1933)

Exceptional. Charming & gently funny, a Shavian social comedy from French dramatist (and filmmaker) Marcel Pagnol about a middle-aged innocent, a Holy Fool/Boys’ School professor who fails up after being fired for flunking a rich man’s son. But when the boy’s entrepreneurial father needs a scientific flunky to help market his Sparkling Water Tonic, Professor Topaze is just the patsy for the job, vain & naive behind pince-nez & pointy beard. Complications? Well, the rich man’s mistress grows fond of the academic sucker. (A lovely, Myrna Loy, starting her rise from exotics & bad girls to warm-blooded leads.) Then there’s the usual suspicious wife; the former fake scientist who’d been fronting the old brand of bubbly; and most of all, the professor himself and his new found sense of worth. He’s innocent, not dumb, and knowledge is power, non? In a role that’s proved irresistible to Louis Jouvet, Peter Sellers, Fernandel & Frank Morgan, John Barrymore (in his miracle years: 1932 - 1934) shows his deft touch with character comedy, somehow physically shrinking to fit, and keeping up with director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast’s jaunty pace. And what a piece of dramatic compression in Ben Hecht’s script. One of the few sophisticated comedies of the period to stand comparison with Ernst Lubitsch, and with a wonderfully distinctive art moderne look working in contrast to the dull school world Topaze leaves behind.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Reginald Mason, one of B’way’s busiest actors, gets a rare chance to show his wares on film as father/ entrepreneur. And doesn’t miss a trick against Loy’s blasé mistress.

DOUBLE-BILL: The older, lesser Barrymore brought a similar touch to THE GREAT MAN VOTES/’39.

GUNS OF DARKNESS (1962)

With their marriage falling apart and a New Year’s Eve revolution in the air, sugar plantation exec David Niven & wife Leslie Caron, part of a small, heavy-drinking British colony in some fictional South American country, become unlikely actors in helping a freshly deposed despot get over the border. You know the drill: Oblivious/Entitled Brits meet Third World politics with cultural blinders of misperception & prejudice revealing unexpected depths of moral & physical courage. In theory, a potent dramatic mix, but tricky to pull off without seeming obvious or naive. Even Graham Greene had trouble working it out in THE COMEDIANS (both as novel and the starry film made from it). Here, director Anthony Asquith & writer John Mortimer feel as miscast as some of the actors (David Opatoshu as benevolent, but tough-minded South American head-of-state?), aiming for mordant/ironic distance before turning all serious. Scene by scene, many effective moments (Niven, in particular, growing into his role), but the sum is less than the parts. Though not for lenser Robert Krasker (famous for Greene’s THE THIRD MAN & fresh off EL CID). Stuck with some unfortunate soundstage exteriors, he comes thrillingly alive given a chance in real town squares, palace interiors and a sinking bog that might have given the cast of WAGES OF FEAR pause.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, THE COMEDIANS/’67, faults and all. (see below)

JOHNNY EAGER (1941)

Second of the ‘JOHNNY’ mob pics. (APOLLO was first; then this, with ANGEL, ALLEGRO and O’CLOCK to follow; then, a parody, JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY/’84). EAGER is pretty out there as big-budget M-G-M releases go, with a screwy double-helix sort of plot and a panting bromance for tough guy Robert Taylor and intellectual sidekick Van Heflin. (Respectively, unknowing & half-knowing, it threatens to tip over into something positively physical.) Taylor’s a former mob boss, now on parole and keeping his nose clean by driving a hack. Except he’s really back running his old gang, working the angles to open his new doggie racetrack worth half a mill. Typical sideline for a cabbie, no? Heck, who’s going to notice a little racetrack in town? And so damned handsome every gal tosses her house-key at him. That would include an already engaged Lana Turner, daughter to Edward Arnold, the lawyer who put Johnny behind bars. Too bad Johnny doesn’t know what tru-love is; he’s just setting up Turner for a bit of blackmail so Papa will sign a waiver on the racetrack. Heflin, there to keep things running smoothly, is soused all the time, channeling thwarted passion into a bottle. Not that any of this is mentioned! But oh!, those close-up male-bonding two-shots. Yikes! And it all might have come off, if only rival gangs hadn’t felt cut out of the action; or if Johnny hadn’t noticed that he’d fallen for Lana . . . for real. It’s pretty entertaining trash. And if director Mervyn LeRoy doesn’t pay enough attention to his angles on the action stuff, he does gets cinematographer Harold Rosson to put out some snazzy, atmospheric cityscape backgrounds. Enough dramatic shadows & subway lights pulsating thru the tracks to camouflage a multitude of narrative nonsense.

DOUBLE-BILL: Henry Hathaway’s JOHNNY APOLLO/’40, first & best of the ‘JOHNNYs,’ with Tyrone Power, Dorothy Lamour and this film’s Edward Arnold. OR: Check out the plot pilfering from A FREE SOUL/’31 (for the romance) and THE ROARING TWENTIES/’39 (for the finale). (all three films, see below)

THE HOUSTON STORY (1956)

Lousy. Before turning to low-wattage/high-gimmick chillers (MACABRE/’58 was the first), directorially challenged William Castle made a last pair of dreary programmers @ Columbia: URANIUM BOOM/’56 (which we bailed on) and this hard to follow oil drilling con-man thriller. Gene Barry, taking over as lead when Lee J. Cobb fell ill, never convinces as the oil man who bribes foremen in the field to steal crude for sale on the open market, switching delivery systems from trucks to pipes with help from mob man Edward Arnold. But the plan collapses in a power struggle and Barry has to flee the country with his girl. Only problem, he’s got two! Blonde nightclub chanteusie Barbara Hale (uncomfortably platinum’d) and sympathetic hash-slinger Jeanne Cooper. Alas, the girls’ delayed confrontation goes for little, like everything else in here, when a bit of film noir swagger might have covered much of what’s missing.

DOUBLE-BILL: Presumably meant to follow-up Castle’s slightly better 1955 release, NEW ORLEANS UNCENSORED. (see below)

LOUISE EN HIVER / LOUISE AT THE SHORE (2016)

Think French anime. In Jean-François Laguionie’s hands, this delicate mood-and-memory piece works like close-up magic, confounding expectations within touching distance. Hand-drawn in a soft water-colored look, it plays out in calm style, charting an unlikely year in the life of Louise, a senior on her own in a deserted coastal resort town. She’s missed the last train out at summer’s end, and when a record high tide floods the town, a full year passes before any visitors return, leaving Louise to fend for herself. Turns out she’s a natural Robinson Crusoe, able to handle every need & small crisis while drifting occasionally into reveries of times past. Presented as if balanced on a razor’s edge between the real and the magical, it’s consistently lovely to look at with Laguionie’s drawing style hitting a peak when a stray dog enters the story as a natural companion, a visual feast of black & white brush-strokes. Mostly for grown-ups, the pic is an amble, a memorable one.

DOUBLE-BILL: More French animation with a watercolor like palette in the kid-friendly ERNEST & CELESTINE/’12.

THE ANGEL WORE RED (1960)

Coming up short doing double-duty on this Spanish Civil War drama, writer and occasional director Nunnally Johnson took the hint and never helmed again. (It’s also possible this former 20th/Fox company man was lost working outside the old studio system.) The story picks up as Dirk Bogarde’s conflicted priest abandons a church grown out of touch with the people. And on the very day Spanish Republicans turn against them, destroying church property and murdering clergy. But the wrath that has Bogarde on the run is really a cover for the latest threat to town, Generalissimo Franco’s rebel forces. Temporarily finding safe harbor (and sex) under the protection of cabaret girl/prostitute Ava Gardner, Bogarde also holds a get-out-of-jail-free card in a religious relic all parties revere. Vittorio De Sica shows up, horribly dubbed with some anonymous voice, as a cynical general, while Joseph Cotten is an equally cynical one-eyed radio journalist and de facto narrator keeping score for us. Not an uninteresting situation, with the cut-throat insanity of war getting a strong workout. But under Johnson’s hand, the events seem contrived or confused, visually dull even with the great Giuseppe Rotunno as cinematographer. It also doesn’t help that Ava looks wildly different from every angle. (Or the inappropriate music score once past the credits from Bronislau Kaper.*) You keep thinking what John Huston or Fred Zinnemann might have done with such material at the time.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: THE MAN IN THE GREY FLANNEL SUIT/56 is the one Nunnally Johnson directed film that could be charged with having visual style. OR: *You can see what Fred Zinnemann did with similar elements in his near miss BEHOLD A PALE HORSE/’64.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/behold-pale-horse-1964.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *An international production, it’s a shame this DVD doesn’t offer the alternate score made for the Italian market from Orson Welles collaborator Angelo Francesco Lavagnino.

DRAGON SEED (1944)

Big-ticket M-G-M item, from a Pearl Buck bestseller and running a prestige signifying two & a half hours, hits all the usual tropes of WWII small-town resistance stories. Act One sets up Happy Valley, doping out contented nuclear families & spotting envious gossips ripe for enemy picking. Act Two has the conquering army march in, dispatch holdouts and set the new order in place. Act Three brings partisans out of hiding, rising in righteous revenge in spite of long odds. Then, uplifting epilogue with noble sacrifice before cuing National Anthem and out. EDGE OF DARKNESS/’43 (Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, dir.-Lewis Milestone, and this film’s Walter Huston playing the same elder statesman role he takes here) is a fine example of the form. But, of course, we’re ignoring the wild card as DARKNESS was Norwegian while this film puts its all-Caucasian leads in YellowFace for a story of rural China brutally invaded by the Japanese. And the film’s not ineffective, with its starry cast ethnicized with minimal fuss to adjust the Caucasian eyelid crease. The practice must seem absurd to younger audiences (it certainly does to older ones!), especially with stars as well known, and personalities as ‘fixed’ as Katharine Hepburn. Here playing forthright rebel mother/cool mass murderer, a stretch in any makeup. Of the large cast, Aline MacMahon (a regular Mother Courage) & Hurd Hatfield (bloodthirsty #3 son) pull the trick off best. But these things have largely aged into curiosities.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, EDGE OF DARKNESS.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Easy to forget how mainstream this once was, one of the top grossing films of ‘44.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Look fast to see the Production Code ban on married couples sharing a bed dropped for Huston & MacMahon.  If they weren’t in YellowFace, it’d never have happened.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (1971)

Made in a period when B’way’s biggest Musical Hits were dying on film (HELLO, DOLLY/’69; SWEET CHARITY/’69; MAN OF LA MANCHA/’72; 1776/’72; MAME/’74), director Norman Jewison earns points simply for surviving the transfer. Happily, it’s much better than that, often beautifully serving the fine, slightly gentrified Sheldon Harnick/Jerry Bock/Joseph Stein stage show taken from Sholem Aleichem’s turn-of-the-last-century tales of shtetl life in a Russian-Jewish community where long held traditions were being challenged by a new generation just as time there was running out. In general, the men fare better than the women, even if Topol, physically perfect as Tevye, dairyman father to five independent-minded daughters, reads all his lines with ‘kletzmer’ inflections. Still, he gets everything across, so too Paul Michael Glaser’s radical suitor from Kiev and Leonard Frey, joyously good as a poor tailor who grows into a mensch. (Sadly, he also gets the score's one dud song.) Jewison (an Episcopalian, of all things!) fumbles some of the vaudeville inspired bits, and the big comic dream sequence (a stage highlight) is botched. But helps Topol nail his throwaway gags, loose his rich plummy lower register on the songs, and harness enough power to handle all the big dramatic scenes. Similarly, Norma Crane as Tevye’s wife has her best moment playing 'straight' drama, entering a Russian Orthodox Church searching for one of her girls who has run off. It all works because Jewison aces the tricky balance between musical comedy stylization & grounded realism, strongly aided by cinematographer Oswald Morris’s earthy palette and daring lens choices. (Getting himself a hugely overdue Oscar®.) And if the film isn’t quite the classic the stage play is (six B’way revivals and counting, currently Off-B’way in a Yiddish chamber production), it’s awfully good in its different way.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A great Extra track on the Original Cast B’way Album CD features lyricist Harnick in a mordantly funny number dropped from the show: ‘When Messiah Comes.’

STRANGE LADY IN TOWN (1955)

With her stock fading after 15 years at M-G-M, Greer Garson brought her grand manner & flutey tones over for a one-shot deal at Warners, reuniting with favored director Mervyn LeRoy.* (Then nothing till SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO/’60.) As a new doctor with new ideas out West in the 1880s, a woman to boot, she's in competition with Dana Andrews’ established practice & old-fashioned ways, and worrying about scapegrace military brother Cameron Mitchell. The first half plays out in a lighthearted tone (in theory, jokes land with a thud), and gets worse when the film takes a serious turn with a bank robbery gone wrong, Andrews unmotivated hot-and-cold feelings towards Garson, and some sticky religioso storylines. (A blind boy sings Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’ with the voice of an angel. Yikes!) Shabby stuff, pushed along without much enthusiasm by LeRoy & cast, except for young Lois Smith who shows too much enthusiasm as Andrews’ tomboy daughter & love interest to Mitchell. Composer Dmitri Tiomkin also phones it in with a main theme that dips into his own superior theme for Howard Hawks’ THE BIG SKY/’52. No wonder Garson took five years off.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *LeRoy & Garson had better luck in her early ‘40s heyday on RANDOM HARVEST/’42 and MADAME CURIE/’43. (see below)