DIPLOMATIC COURIER (1952)

Trying for some of that THIRD MAN mojo, this international intrigue number makes some nifty moves in its first half as Tyrone Power’s State Department courier misses his ‘drop’ and has to beat those pesky Russians to retrieve a Top Secret file he was sent to bring in from the cold. With Henry Hathaway and favorite cinematographer Lucien Ballard making like 3rd MAN’s Carol Reed & Robert Krasker, the film delivers dark, inner-Euro-city atmosphere, momentum and some especially juicy spy vs spy/cat & mouse misdirection on a train before Casey Robinson’s unwieldy script implodes with multiple reversals of fortune & character. With a good girl who might be bad, and a bad girl who might be good, Patricia Neal gets stiffed in another of her largely disappointing major studio assignments while Hildegard Knef scores a solid career move forward. Both of them better off than third-billed military officer Stephen McNally with even less to do than lower-billed assistant Karl Malden. Nice support from rising Lee Marvin & Charles Bronson, but not even a bit of zither music at a restaurant saves this one from eventually feeling like it’s running in place.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, THE THIRD MAN/’49.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Fun seeing Hathaway try for a bit of Continental degeneracy with a drag act.

SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932)

The most sheerly enjoyable of the Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich series*, the film (shot ‘31/released ‘32) also deserves credit for putting paid to Early Talkie technique, particularly in its opening sequence, an astonishment of design, pace, studio artifice and sharp characterization. After the silent-to-sound transition, it’s back to Moving Pictures with a Capital ‘M.’ The story, slight but serviceable, opens as a motley group of First-Class ticket-buyers in Peking board the Shanghai Express amid a rising political revolution. Sure enough, half-Chinese mystery passenger Warner Oland takes them all hostage, stopping the train and watching old & new relationships come to the boil. Top of the list is a past one between Clive Brook's doctor and Dietrich’s notorious Shanghai Lily. An item five years ago, their renewed passion soon put to the test when Dietrich is forced to sacrifice honor for safety, and discovers that faith (religious or otherwise) has its limits. Heavenly nonsense, fast, funny and intensely glamorous , with off-the-charts wow factor in gorgeous physical presentation and Jules Furthman’s spare badinage. And in Brook, one of the few performers with insouciance to match La Dietrich whose looks here are in perfect harmony between her softer early look and the more severe abstraction to come. There’s a modest falloff in the last reel once we hit Shanghai (the studio may have noticed since they suddenly start up a wan background score), but until then this is just about perfect.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The films in brief: Brutish BLUE ANGEL; Romantic MOROCCO; Self-regarding DISHONORED; Dashing SHANGHAI EXPRESS; Ludicrous BLONDE VENUS; Baroque SCARLET EMPRESS; Masochistic DEVIL IS A WOMAN. 1930 - 1935, all essential. OR: Frank Capra, who seconded Sternberg’s modern pacing in AMERICAN MADNESS and followed it with something of his own SHANGHAI in THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN, both ‘32.

HERCULES (1997)

Major fun. Less celebrated than some in the Disney Animation Renaissance that began with THE LITTLE MERMAID/’89, it now plays better than most. Frequent partners John Clements & John Musker get visual style & gags (rarely stooping to hip/contemporary references) from mythological sources & ancient pottery, but lard the main story of how young Herc finds his true heroic self in stopping Hades & his unleashed Titans from taking over the world with generous lifts from PINOCCHIO, SLEEPING BEAUTY and SUPERMAN. Something of a magpie narrative, but a solid structure and strong personalities help it play well. And quite the grand villain in James Woods’ Flaming Hades. Plus an exceptional song score from Alan Menken (David Zippel’s lyrics less consistent) with the usual ballads & comic numbers (Danny DeVito’s mentor going full Jimmy Durante), divinely held together by an All-Girl Greek ‘Gospel’ Chorus. Animation heads get a rare chance to distinguish between FIVE and FOUR fingered characters in a single film and can spot a rare Left-Handed deal clincher if they look sharp.

DOUBLE-BILL: Pairs nicely with LILO & STITCH/'02, which is also less pushy & formulaic than other animation of the period, possibly last in the great ‘hand-drawn’ Disney Renaissance line-up.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Naturally, the Gods & Goddesses up in the heavens have a tough time competing with Golden Age Disney animation as seen in the Beethoven Pastorale Symphony section of FANTASIA/’40. (Goblins out of that film's NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN also referenced.)

TOMORROW WE LIVE / (aka AT DAWN WE DIE

From WWII Britain, a neatly made French Resistance thriller (with General De Gaulle's imprimatur!) that claims to based on a True Story. And it is! Just not French. It’s Czech; specifically, the assassination in Prague of Bohemia/Moravia’s Nazi Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich and the brutal consequences/retaliation by the Nazis. Some grab, no? Particularly since that story was about to hit American screens via Fritz Lang/Bertold Brecht’s HANGMEN ALSO DIE! * Be that as it may, what we have here is more than decent melodrama, assuming you can deal with veddy, veddy Brits playing Frenchies (John Clements, Godfrey Tearle) trying to get info across to England before the Nazis figure out their plan. Clements also needs to figure out whose side two women are on, patriotic café owner Judy Kelly and Mayor’s daughter Greta Gynt. Is one a Nazi collaborator or merely playing at it while secretly helping the underground? Choppy direction from George King proves but a modest obstacle, and the tight budget likely helps the film's claustrophobic quotient, along with Otto Heller’s exceptionally well shadowed cinematography. A combination of ‘Quota-Quickie’ gumption and wartime can-do spirit pulls it thru.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, HANGMEN ALSO DIE!/’43. OR: For more French Resistance budget surprises, MADAME PIMPERNEL (AKA: PARIS UNDERGROUND)/’45 with Constance Bennett.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Adding to the confusion, the original British title, TOMORROW WE LIVE, had just been used by low-budget specialist Edgar G. Ulmer in 1942; and before that by pro-Fascist Brit Oswald Morris for a collection of essays by various ultra-right authors.

HALLS OF ANGER (1970)

The gimmick is reverse desegregation, with 200 white kids bussed into an all-black high school of 3000 along with a resentful black teacher who thought he’d put the ghetto behind him, only to be dragged back into the inner-city vortex to hold the lid down as Vice Principal. Made fast and cheap, largely with tv talent, this could have worked as rabble-rousing exploitation (something American International Pictures might book in Drive-Ins) or as funky black-centric comedy, but as serious, issue-oriented fare, this just doesn’t cut it. (Younger viewers should note that the film looked just as obvious & dated when it came out as it does now.) Fun for early peeks at dewy young Jeff Bridges and doughy not-so-young Rob Reiner as two of the new students, alas none of the black kids bring enough personality to stand out from the crowd. You can see how things might have worked in a little scene where our frustrated lead Calvin Lockhart uses a trashy bestseller to add a sexy angle to his remedial reading group; and there’s a discomforting bit of needless violence that makes its mark when a pretty blonde girl is attacked in the bathroom for being a bit too popular. Other than that, it’s earnest, standard-issue social-problem tv fare. (It longs for the days when THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE/'55 seemed relevant/progressive.) And so dreary to look at. No doubt, everybody wanted to get out fast as possible. Even the sets could barely take time to get properly dressed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: At one point, one of the students mentions how you can’t expect every black kid to become another Bill Cosby or O.J. Simpson. Yikes!

SWEEPINGS (1933)

Something of a missed opportunity here. A family department store saga (Edna Ferber might have called it EMPORIUM!), about a far-sighted fellow who hits Chicago shortly after Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, and sees opportunity where others see ashes & devastation. That’d be Lionel Barrymore, effectively aging from mid-30s to mid-70s; wearing out a wife with four births; hiring a sharp Jew to run his burgeoning dry goods business (Gregory Ratoff, very good), but crucially failing to pass along any retailing DNA to his pampered brood: not first-born hedonist William Gargan; not underachieving/inhibited gay son George Meeker*; not society struck Gloria Stuart; not even favored baby boy Eric Linden, a careless ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’ charmer with a character arc that hints at a hidden better nature. If only there were time to delve into things, these 80 minutes are nothing but outline and undernourished drama. Montage specialist Slavko Vorapich stitches over missing segments with spiffy transitions, but a couple of behind-the-scenes shop talk tutorials would have done a better job and allowed director John Cromwell to show how Barrymore’s short-sighted scions all fail in turn. There’s a mini-series in here . . . or did MR. SELFRIDGE permanently spoil that idea?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Meeker’s character, the only sibling not shown with date, spouse or love interest, gives up an executive position to stay on as Window Dresser, Hollywood code for gay in Pre or Post Code days.

DOUBLE-BILL: 1933’s best department store film was racy Pre-Code dramedy EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE. (see below)

BIG WEDNESDAY (1978)

John Milius’s deep-dish surfing pic travels the ‘60s (and beyond) as Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt & Gary Busey compare chiseled chests and life’s disappointments as they ride, ride, ride out their golden youth and stare at what lies ahead. It’s one of those cult films, often out of circulation (because of song rights?), that gains cachet from being unavailable. Not that it’s bad, just less than meets the eye. But oh!, what an eyeful! Especially in buff buds of beachy, blonde, California beefcake. The story may cover more than a decade, but apparently, muscle definition is forever. As the years pass, the three go their semi-separate ways, but manage to circle back for major ocean swells, culminating after Vincent touches bottom; Katt returns from ‘Nam with a little mustache; and man-child Busey turns semi-pro wave hunter, for the mightiest Pacific cresting of their lives. The story stays empty enough so you can fill in your own meanings, and is cleverly organized by seasons on the shore, with pit-stops for fightin’, screwin’, drinkin’, Vietnamin’ and endless self-mythologizin’. What a sentimental lot they all turn out to be.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: These lives weren’t only unfulfilled on screen: Milius with only four features in front of him; Busey, possibly the most talented, long more punchline than actor; Katt fading into inconsequential tv; Vincent’s personal demons derailing his career.

DOUBLE-BILL: Milius’s film was buried by another 1978 film on manly virtues and a threesome unhinged by the ‘60s & Vietnam, Michael Cimino's THE DEER HUNTER. And while WEDNESDAY may not be all it’s cracked up to be, compared to the Cimino . . .

HALF A SIXPENCE (1967)

This over-stuffed adaptation of a West End/B’way hit, taken from H.G. Wells’ KIPPS (his anti-social mobility fable filmed in 1941 by Carol Reed at 82", here a whopping 143"!*) was yet another nail in the coffin of Hollywood Musicals, RoadShow Family division, made after windfall profits for MARY POPPINS, MY FAIR LADY and SOUND OF MUSIC. To his credit, old studio pro George Sidney, a vet from the Arthur Freed M-G-M unit, pulls the elements together without long gone studio apparatus to back him up. What he can’t do much about are the second-drawer elements. (From ‘Knees Up’ numbos to ballads, not an imaginative musical interval in the whole score.) Instead, we're beaten into submission at interminable lengths, the energy level alone exhausting. While our story (young orphan boy inherits a fortune and goes high hat before losing it all and returning to his better nature and loyal waïf) resolves ten minutes into act two, then has to spin its wheels for thirty extra minutes. The selling point should be Tommy Steele, who made his stage rep with it, but he’s one of those high wattage theatrical types who don’t ‘take’ to the screen. You can still watch it, thanks to Sidney’s professionalism (watch him attempt modern day relevance with a few New Wave stylistic touches) and even more for the impossibly posh cinematography of Geoffrey Unsworth who followed with 2001/’68. Talk about range! On the other hand, no follow up for our director. Only 50 years old and already more than three decades in the biz, Sidney saw the writing on the wall and never worked again.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The studio quickly saw this one as a complete loss and quickly put out our ludicrous ‘Sock It To Me!’ poster hoping to attract a younger, hipper crowd.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Theatrical notes: On B’way, the posh/snob who steals Kipps’ fortune was played by John Cleese. And no luck at the Tony Awards as 1965 was all FIDDLER ON THE ROOF with both Steele and third-billed Cyril Ritchard losing to FIDDLER’s Zero Mostel. Steele for this role and Ritchard for an entirely different show, THE ROAR OF THE GREASEPAINT - THE SMELL OF THE CROWD.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Carol Reed not only did better by KIPPS, he also showed how it was still possible to succeed in this form, deservedly so, triumphing critically & commercially with OLIVER!/’68.

THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER (1951)

In the late ‘40s/early ‘50s, director George Cukor, with married writers Garson Kanin & Ruth Gordon, made a series of films that took joy in watching everyday little people playing out Life’s Human Comedy. Modest pleasures all, often with documentary-style NYC establishing shots unusual for the period. And here’s a particularly tasty example of the form. Surprise! It’s not Kanin/Gordon, but from producer/co-writer Charles Brackett right after his break with longtime collaborator Billy Wilder. (SUNSET BOULEVARD proving too dark for Brackett’s taste.) And it’s a little marvel, thanks mostly to a typically treasurable turn from character-actor star Thelma Ritter as the titular marriage broker, a professional busybody specializing in Lonely Hearts types. And what a crew of hard-to-match singles she shuffles out of her Flat Iron office building, and at Saturday get-togethers at her apartment. (Anyone who can bring Zero Mostel and Nancy Kulp into mutual romantic orbit is some kind of genius.) Two outliers form the plot as Ritter misdirects cool Jeanne Crain toward Scott Brady’s wolfish X-Ray technician, while Crain upends her own ideas to give Ritter just the romantic push she doesn’t know she’s been waiting for. ‘Push’ being the one thing this delightful film so scrupulously avoids in either sentimentalizing or condescending to its imperfect souls. A real find; a delight.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: You can imagine this becoming a musical a decade later with Cukor’s earlier discovery Judy Holliday in the Ritter role. In fact, it just about happened in Vincente Minnelli/Comden & Green’s BELLS ARE RINGING/’60.

THE DROWNING POOL (1975)

After nearly a decade, Paul Newman returned to play Private Investigator Lew Harper a second time, and lost his way right from the start moving the action from novelist Ross Macdonald’s So. Cal. to mossy New Orleans. The plot has something or other to do with land, oil & love roundelays, but the real purpose of the exercise (and it does feel like exercise) was to piggyback on the success of the original HARPER to help First Artists, the financially troubled production shingle Newman had started up with Sidney Poitier, Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman & Steve McQueen. As detective mystery, it’s no more than okay: director, writers, tech work, awfully oblique for the genre*, and it was equally disappointing as a quick financial windfall.* Yet, thanks to the 9-yr gap between Harper films, it offers an all but unique opportunity to directly compare & contrast the generational change in production standards between the final days of Old Hollywood and the looser cinematic practices of the ‘70s. Really jarring to watch them one after the other. And it probably helps to clarify the differences (especially in mores & technique) in having such mediocre product to evaluate. (See HARPER Write-Up below.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Though it doesn’t have HARPER’s all-star cast, DROWNING holds it’s own with old stars Joanne Woodward, underrated James Franciosa, eternal Richard Jaekel, and newer personalities like middle-aged sleazeball Murray Hamilton & teenage Melanie Griffith who’d just made a far better mystery/detective pic in NIGHT MOVES/’75. The rare Arthur Penn film to improve with age.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *In detective fiction, the story can be as oblique as needed, but not the writing or filmmaking.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *More than anything, Newman, ridiculously fit, ridiculously handsome, loathed being used on screen as ‘a piece of meat’ (his phrase). Yet here, and not only in the big ‘drowning pool’ suspense sequence (lousy, BTW), he shows more skin than he ever had . . . or would. Another clue to the film’s real purpose as a cash cow.

INCENDIARY BLONDE (1945)

Big, splashy, popular, this fictionalized bio-pic of Speak Easy legend Texas Guinan (brassy nightclub owner famous for greeting B’way customers with ‘Hello, Suckers!’) holds up nicely. Betty Hutton is deceptively disciplined and tremendously likable rising from tent shows to early film stardom before finding her ultimate niche running a lowdown/high class B’way society night spot during prohibition. Many all-out physical comedians like Hutton come up short when they turn to drama, dropping their shtick and overplaying new found sincerity. But Hutton finds a middle path that works for her and the movie. She's terrific, even if the film is a cut below her best. She’s fortunate in leading man Auturo de Córdova, one of the great stars of Mexico Golden Age Cinema (fresh off Julio Bracho’s CREPÚSCULO/ TWILIGHT/’45) as her star-crossed lover, the two kept apart by matters medical, financial & criminal. Hutton also gets some unusually energized megging from journeyman George Marshall. Heck, Marshall, if no Minnelli, even shows some interest in period detail on this big TechniColor production. Hutton fanciers will note how much the first half anticipates ANNIE GET YOUR GUN (on B’way in ‘46; filmed with Hutton in 1950), while Streisand fanciers will note intimations of FUNNY GIRL in the second. Beating that one by a couple of decades.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, ANNIE and FUNNY.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: INCENDIARY has to finesse a tragic ending, so it starts with the funeral before flashing back to Texas Guinan’s early days and wraps up before we get back to it. Oddly, Preston Sturges (Hutton’s writer/director in MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK/’43) got into all sorts of trouble at Paramount attempting something a little non-linear, but not all so different than what we see here in his medical bio-pic THE GREAT MOMENT/’44. Why it became such a sticking point between Sturges and the studio that signed off on this is something of a mystery.

THE LAST DETAIL (1973)

Early glory days all ‘round for Hal Ashby, Robert Towne, Michael Chapman & Jack Nicholson: helming, scripting, lighting-for-grain, acting his pants off in a foul-mouthed three-hander about a couple of navy ‘lifers’ taking a swabby to jail for an undeserved 8-yr stint. With five days (and per diem to match) to get him there, Nicholson & fellow officer Otis Young figure they can haul young sailor Randy Quaid straight up to Portsmouth and have the rest of the time to fuck around on their way back to Norfolk. But they take pity on their babe-in-the-woods charge and end up traveling the long way to prison: drinking, partying, fighting a bartender & a few Marines (they hate them Marines!), stopping at home, and getting the kid laid. A ribald sentimental education for both kid and seen-it-all ‘lifers.’ Nicholson is exceptional here, tying crowd-pleasing mannerisms & tics to his character’s shrinking expectations. If anything, the film plays better now than it did on release.

DOUBLE-BILL: Towne & Nicholson switched genres next year for CHINATOWN/’74.

NONE SHALL ESCAPE (1944)

Shockingly effective programmer, the second Hollywood film from emigre director André De Toth, a (very) early Nazi War Crimes courtroom drama, made before the war had ended! The script, an imagination of such a trial, and a fairly believable one, simplified & naive in some respects, but also with some remarkably raw scenes of Nazi atrocities as Polish Jews are herded into cattle cars and gunned down during a revolt. Unprecedented violence against civilians for the 1944 screen, shown with a brutality unheard of at the time. Alexander Knox (being groomed for stardom that never happened when WILSON flopped later that year) is a wounded German WWI vet now unwelcome in the small Polish town where he’d once taught. He soon turns on one time friends when his engagement to fellow teacher Marsha Hunt is put on hold. She’s seen the change in him and his actions only grow worse, soon causing him to be run out of town. Twenty years later, a return in triumph, now a Nazi SS officer in charge of the occupation. The story told by various townspeople in flashback testimony during his trial. Fascinating stuff, if not as powerful as it wants to be, more a diagram for drama then a fully fledged work. But well handled, especially by some fine supporting players in bigger parts than usual, with De Toth and cinematographer Lee Garmes making much out of a very tight budget.

DOUBLE-BILL: Expand with stars, prestige and pretension from writer Abby Mann & director Stanley Kramer and you get JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG/’61.  OR: See emigre director Fritz Lang tackle a non-fictional Nazi villain (Reinhard Heydrich) in HANGMEN ALSO DIE!/’43.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A shame that André De Toth, a fine, tough director of mid-range pics, should be best remembered with some irony as the one-eyed helmer of 3-D pic HOUSE OF WAX/’53.

PRIVATE HELL 36 (1954)

Personally recruited by star/co-author Ida Lupino (she also co-owned the film company with ex-husband/co-author Collier Young), director Don Siegel, just off RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11, had a perfectly miserable time working with an unfinished script and a vodka infused cast.*  Decent enough as a corrupt cop drama, this one never fully inflates or engages. Steve Cochran’s the good cop who drifts bad when he skims 100 off of a 300 thou stash of stolen loot; and Howard Duff’s his partner, a family-man who only reluctantly goes along with the scam. (At the time, Duff was Lupino’s current husband.) The cop’s boss, Dean Jaggar, smells them out right away, but bides his time as Duff quickly drinks his way to oblivion and Cochran imagines running off with Lupino’s nightclub chanteusie who gave them the clue that led to all the cash. Siegel, with lenser Burnett Guffey, does some nice work toward the middle of the film, (tele)scoping out the racetrack for a lead, and in a smart, exciting car chase, but the rest of the film is an unsatisfying compromise between noir & ‘50s kitchen sink dramatics. Meh.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: See Siegel as master of the form in THE LINEUP/’58. OR: Try Lupino/Young on one of their issue-oriented releases, like THE BIGAMIST/’53 with Lupino co-starring & directing. OR: Listen to Lupino’s pipes in working order in ROAD HOUSE/’48.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Don Siegel’s pic-by-pic auto-bio, A SIEGEL FILM, tells the tale.

FUCHI NI TATSU / HARMONIUM (2016)

Writer/director Kôji Fukada misses badly here, attempting a reversal into tragedy from elements in his comic breakout success HOSPITALITÉ/’10. The situations oddly similar at first as a stranger enters the lives, home and garage workshop (here, tool & die rather than photocopying) of a modest household, nearly taking over as head-of-the-family. But unlike the earlier film’s larky tone, here all is sinister, and much unexplained. The stranger is no stranger, but just out of prison for murder. Something the taciturn father knows, yet takes little mind of, hiring him to work in the shop & to live upstairs as a new tenant. With a wife & daughter in the house? Soon, the wife is responding to the stranger’s sexual aura; the little girl blossoming under his attention. Then things move from merely off-balance to sociopathic before an eight year jump short-circuits everything, changing the drama from haunted character mystery to sorrowful revenge. Plus a new, young shop intern with personal ties to past events. But plot mechanics that worked perfectly well for comedy, now come off melodramatic & forced. A steady drip of guilty secrets, revealed like so many melodramatic story beats. (Asghar Farhadi in films like A SEPARATION/’11, is a master at these things.) Fukada reduced to having old secret photographs spill out of a bag and seen by the 'wrong' person to keep his plot moving. A pity.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The story summaries of other Fukada films (not seen here) sound deadly serious. Perhaps HOSPITALITÉ was his happy outlier.

SO BIG! (1932)

CIMARRON, GIANT and SHOW BOAT are all better known Edna Ferber 3-generation family sagas, but it was this relatively quiet self-fulfillment story (with a feminist slant) that got her a Pulitzer Prize. Filmed in ‘24 (now lost); ‘32 & ‘53 (with Jane Wyman), this is the only one to add an Exclamation Mark! And well earned in spite of being the shortest, it’s the Hop, Skip & Jump story continuity version. Barbara Stanwyck, in her first prestige piece, is orphaned, but optimistic as she heads off to teach in a small Midwest farming community. Prospering on her own, with newfangled crop ideas after her husband dies, she watches as her boy (he’s the one who’s ‘So Big!’) grows up sophisticated and slightly embarrassed of Mom. But his eyes are opened (at last!) to Mom’s true qualities just in time by the young commercial artist he falls in love with (Bette Davis*) and a sculptor from abroad he idolizes (George Brent) who has an old connection with (of all people) Mom! Director William Wellman keeps things moving, but his straight-ahead approach comes on too strong, missing any poetic feel for rural verities that, say, Frank Borzage or the Kings (Vidor or Henry) might have brought. Still, Ferber has better luck coming to life when things are a bit awkward & bumpy on screen. Smoother more polished attempts reveal the ginned up convenient plotting. This way, the big sentimental finish lands with surprising emotion.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Davis, playing a sort of Neysa McMein commercial illustrator, doesn't come on till the third act, then takes a couple of scenes to get her makeup right. And what a difference it makes! BTW: she loved this little role, finding it one of the few to reflect her own personality. And speaking of makeup, nice aging on Babs, not the usual overdone routine.

THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978)

Big, handsome, wicked fun, and more than a bit nutty. A globe-trotting thriller, poised on a razor’s edge between horror & comedy, it makes an unlikely project for square, craftsman-like director Franklin J. Schaffner, but this Ira Levin conspiracy novel really comes off.* It seems a colony of former Nazis living in Paraguay are trying to kickstart a Reich renewal project. Gregory Peck doesn’t have the natural flair to fully inhabit mastermind Dr. Mengele (a sort of Dr. Moreau here, it needs a Christopher Plummer kind of actor), but everyone else is spot on as former & future Nazi killers, research scientists, fading world-famous Nazi hunters and a gaggle of fresh faced little Adolphs. (A creepy Jeremy Black in his only film.) Standouts in the cast include Uta Hagen, Bruno Ganz & Rosemary Harris. James Mason hasn’t much to do as the top Nazi in Paraguay, but Lilli Palmer is striking & effective as assistant to Lawrence Olivier’s aging, Vienna-based Nazi hunter. Olivier, rarely the most natural of film actors, is spectacularly good here. And what a stunning old man he's become, handsome as a study by Michelangelo, he seems to be lit from within by cinematographer Henri Decaë who makes the whole film ravishing to look at. But all the tech credits are immaculate, from Robert Swink’s editing to Jerry Goldsmith’s witty film score, with echoes of waltzes from Strausses Richard & Josef, but with an off-kilter touch out of Ravel’s LA VALSE. And while the end of the film is something of a stretch, it hardly spoils the guilty pleasure.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Famous for ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE STEPFORD WIVES, Levin’s flop play, DR. COOK’S GARDEN/’71, made an exceptional little tv movie with Bing Crosby & Frank Converse in roles played on stage by Burl Ives & Keir Dullea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5fGZuJltzo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD6McxAFyyw

MADAME X (1966)

Unfairly tagged for her lover’s accidental death, a rich young wife & mother disappears to protect her family from social disgrace, hiding for twenty years as Madame X, sinking into absinthe & despair until being spotted by a lowlife blackmailer she does kill. Now, on trial for murder, unaware that the young defense lawyer working his first case is . . . (gasp) the son she abandoned as a child! Oft filmed, and you’ll see why, it’s prime hokum for bravura acting, no less than Sarah Bernhardt brought this irresistible trash to B’way when she was pushing 70. But if you don’t need youth, you do need style & technique to bring it off, two items missing from Lana Turner’s skill set. Too puffy to pull off couture, furs & jewelry (each with separate screen title credit), she looks more swaddled than chic, lost in a hideous Ross Hunter production where furniture, sets & even actors seem made of color-coordinated plastic. (Burgess Meredith’s boozy blackmailer excepted, he at least adds a bit of rude energy.) Turner and Ross Hunter both slipping badly since IMITATION OF LIFE/’59 and Douglas Sirk’s retirement. A bust; and yet you can still make out the sheer craft in Alexandre Bisson’s sub-Victorien Sardou story construction.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: M-G-M’s famous 1929 version, an Early Talkie triumph for Ruth Chatterton, now looks impossibly slow & stilted, but a 1937 remake (not seen here) is said to make the case for the play and forgotten star Gladys George, best remembered for supporting roles later in her career.

THE TALL GUY (1989)

In a first feature after much tv work, British writer (later director) Richard Curtis only hints at expertise to come in Rom-Coms like FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL/’94, NOTTING HILL/’99 and LOVE ACTUALLY /’03 . . . and is all the better for it. The later films far more expert, just not in a good way; manipulative & over-processed, Rom-Com Velveeta.* Not here, where the crumbly texture of Cheshire Cheddar still registers, distinct & artisanal. Suggested by Curtis’s days working as stooge/sidekick to Rowan Atkinson*, with Atkinson himself guying it up as an ogre-like stage comedian who mistreats on-stage assistant Jeff Goldblum as part of the act. And Goldblum is simply terrific as the depressed actor who breaks out of the doldrums after meeting-cute with sexy, slightly acidic nurse Emma Thomson. The film, rather off-handedly directed by Mel Smith, is loaded with big laughs and a proud British sense of the ridiculous, hitting peak insanity when Goldblum, a Frog Prince who doesn’t need a kiss, gets cast as the lead in a musical version of THE ELEPHANT MAN called, what else, ELEPHANT! (A hodgepodge of Sondheim’s SWEENEY TODD & Lloyd Webber’s PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, it’s a blissed out delight of tuneful horribleness. Sample lyric: ‘Somewhere – Up in Heaven – There’s an Angel with BIG EARS!’) The film’s wild humor and general bonhomie flummoxes many. But its fans are a hearty lot; happy, proud & gasping for breath between laughs.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Surely I’m not the only one who hoped that runaway kid at the end of LOVE ACTUALLY would get shot by an armed airport security guard.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The basic situation nodding to writer Ronald Harwood’s THE DRESSER/’83 and his backstage relationship with aging Shakespearean actor Sir Donald Wolfit.

TWO SECONDS (1932)

Exemplary little Warner Bros. item with cast & crew firing on all cylinders. A flip on Ambrose Bierce/OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, the adapted flop B’way play swaps hanging for the electric chair as condemned Edward G. Robinson relives the missteps that led him there. An hour’s remembrance in the two seconds it takes the electric charge to end it all. In flashback, he’s a high-rise construction worker, living bromantically with best pal Preston Foster (sole holdover from the stage cast and still playing to the back of the house at first). Ducking out on a double date, Eddie G. chats up dime-a-dance gal Vivienne Osborne (forgotten, but excellent) winding up on a fast track to marriage . . . and misery. Speedily handled in director Mervyn LeRoy’s best hard-charging early manner; the dialogue unexpectedly literate with both men fully understanding what’s going on/what’s going wrong; the look of the film quite remarkable for a near programmer with heightened grubby reality in Anton Grot’s coarsely textured sets and Sol Polito’s perfectly lit cinematography. Plus, at the end, a theatrically stylized set piece for Robinson to plead his case & ‘lose it’ in court. An acting tour de force on the order of Peter Lorre’s big confession at the end of Fritz Lang’s M, out the previous year and a likely inspiration.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Always a bit of a shock to remember that Eddie G. not only never won a competitive Oscar®, but never got nominated! Something other overlooked actors can take comfort in.

HARPER (1966)

Paul Newman had a big hit playing a laid-back L.A. Private Eye in this lax detective yarn taken from an old Ross MacDonald novel. (Note lead character ‘Archer’ renamed ‘Harper’ to go with all those other Newman ‘H’ titles.) With an All-Star, overqualified cast; Conrad Hall lensing; and debut William Goldman script, it ought to be better. Blame Jack Smight’s faceless direction, not an ounce of personality in it, with poorly handled action sequences.* But Newman also earns a share with his twitchy, unmodulated, self-regarding perf, as if jealous of all the eccentric/comic/threatening turns going on around him. Why should they have all the fun while I play straightman? Charged by wheelchair-bound Lauren Bacall to find her missing husband (kidnapped?; dead?), the puzzle holds few surprises and the suspects a one-note lot with little to do other than wait for Newman to come by for an interview. (Goldman unable to handle more than two or three characters on screen at the same time with comfort.) Some nice L.A. atmosphere comes thru, especially in the darker scenes, but lenser Hall phones a lot in and the process work is remarkably poor for the period. Still, if you want to see what passed for light, sophisticated fun, and corrupt West Coast glamor amid the changing mores of mid-‘60s Hollywood (note the morally ambiguous ending), the film has its moments.

DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Altman’s THE LONG GOODBYE/’73 and Roman Polanski’s CHINATOWN/’74 made films like this obsolete.

SCRWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *There’s something hidden in the blue-eyed stare of Robert Wagner’s boyish but aging suspect. (Gay in the novel?) A less visually constipated director would have caught some sort of interior battle going on between his gaze & the famous Newman baby blues. Smight completely misses it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In another episode of Clueless Hollywood Cooking 101, Janet Leigh (with little to do as Harper’s ex) tries to hold on to her man ‘the morning after’ with a bacon & egg breakfast she fries up in an ‘unseasoned’ cast iron pan the prop department must have brought on set straight from the box.

THE PLAINSMAN (1936)

Junk history/first-rate DeMille. In their second pairing of the year (after MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN), Gary Cooper & Jean Arthur are in peak form as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, jabbing away at each other to hide their true feelings. But unspoken love keeps drawing them together, tested to the limit by Indians on the warpath getting ready to attack Gen. George Custer with surplus Civil War repeating rifles illegally sold to them by Charles Bickford. James Ellison is pleasant, if out of his league as Buffalo Bill Cody, a pal charged with taking Wild Bill in as prisoner, but the rest of the cast is plenty tasty, especially two-faced Porter Hall and a very young Anthony Quinn, making a splashy (near) debut as an excitable Indian brave. (DeMille tosses in a line about unfair treatment on the reservation, but this 1936 film hasn’t a Native American clue in its headdress, from Paul Harvey’s Yellow Hand on down.) Fresh off an unexpected flop (THE CRUSADES/’35), Cecil B. seems reinvigorated, less studio-bound then usual, happily tweaking history into six-barrel action*, staging city life with multi-plane visual design, even finding dramatic heft in the Western landscape, all neatly caught by lenser Victor Milner.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Qualities he’d carry over to his next production, THE BUCCANEER/’37.

ATTENTION MUST PAID: Note our Euro-Poster uses the better known Buffalo Bill, not Wild Bill, for its title.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: In 1950, Jean Arthur played PETER PAN on B’way; incidental songs by Leonard Bernstein.  A hit (321 perfs) unrelated to the later Mary Martin musical.  But if you’d like to know what the hell Jean Arthur’s Peter Pan was like, this film’s hoydenesque Calamity Jane is probably our only clue.

COMFORT AND JOY (1984)

After charming international audiences with quirky coming-of-age comedy GREGORY’S GIRL/’80 and the eccentric Capitalist satire of LOCAL HERO/’83, Scottish writer/director Bill Forsyth was lured to Hollywood for three films and out. He’s hardly been heard from since.* Lost between early promise and fast-fade, this masterpiece; just about the wisest, most joyous character study out there, and, as bonus, one of the most unexpected & satisfying of Christmas films. With cinematographer Chris Menges capturing the soft Glasgow light, we follow beloved morning DJ Bill Paterson around town and thru an early mid-life crisis: dumped by longtime kleptomaniac live-in, looking for new challenges at work; stumbling into a local Ice Cream Truck War when he was only trying to check out the pretty counter girl. (Okay, ogling.) The balance between daily events & personal revelation/acceptance by turns funny, winning, odd, touching & true. Brought across by Paterson with a finesse thought lost when William Powell retired. With plenty of screamingly funny moments coming when you least expect them. No pandering, no cheating to get a laugh or a point across, and ending with a dusting of Christmas bliss most films can only dream of touching.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Of three Stateside pics, the middle one, BREAKING IN/’89 comes closest to harnessing the unique Forsyth voice.

GREED (1924)

Erich von Stroheim’s famous film maudit or ‘cursed film,’ taken from Frank Norris’s 'Naturalism'/Zolaesque novel McTEAGUE, shrunk on its way to general release from eight to four to three and finally two hours, losing subplots & allegorical asides in the process. Yet it survives, unique & powerful as no other film. Fired from Universal early in the shoot of his previous film (MERRY-GO-ROUND/’23) by ‘Boy Wonder’ production head Irving Thalberg, Stroheim found artistic scope at Metro Pictures only to see the company merge into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with its new combined head of production . . . Irving Thalberg!* Often chided for its unrealistic running time, as if Stroheim were asking for trouble, serials and prestige items had successfully come in at similar extended lengths: Fritz Lang’s four hour DR. MABUSE THE GAMBLER in ’22; a six hour LES MISÉRABLES in ‘25. Alas, all that now exists of GREED is the scant two-hour cut (most of it in superb physical shape, spectacularly lensed by Ben Reynolds & William Daniels) with various unhappy attempts to reconstruct fuller versions using production stills & panning techniques.* Check out youtube for various editions (with various scores), all with something to say about this blasted masterpiece. Just be sure the print quality is up to snuff. Beware of worn out, fuzzy 16mm dupe prints. What’s left of the story (all filmed on real locations & in real/existing buildings) mostly sticks to the triangular relationship between prospector-turned-unqualified dentist McTeague (a powerful Gibson Gowland), his sleaze-ball pal Jean Hersholt (those shirts!), and frail Zasu Pitts who drops cousin Hersholt to marry Gowland before winning a five thousand dollar lottery that will insidiously destroy them all. The loss of footage makes the decline far more abrupt then Stroheim may have planned, but it also pushes things relentlessly forward in cascading scenes-from-a-life fashion, not unlike story construction in a typical 19th century opera where you fill in missing pieces between arias & acts. (No wonder classical composer William Bolcom gave McTEAGUE the operatic treatment.) Then ending in unforgettable fashion as the two surviving men fight it out over gold, manhood, water and a yellow canary in the middle of Death Valley. This being an Erich von Stroheim film, we really are in Death Valley, and you will never forget it.

DOUBLE-BILL: *No dope he, Thalberg was wise to Stroheim’s obvious talent. If only he could coax it toward a safe commercial property. Something he promptly did in next year’s THE MERRY WIDOW. Listen to Thalberg & Stroheim in the M-G-M projection room as they watch reels & reels of shoes, specially shot to be used as inserts. Stroheim to Thalberg: You see, Irving, I vant to show the Baron has a foot fetish. Thalberg to Stroheim: And you, von, have a footage fetish!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The last living person to have seen a ‘full cut’ of GREED (best guess the three hour edit Stroheim personally asked fellow director Rex Ingram to whittle from his interim four hour cut) was Irene Mayer Selznick, daughter of Louis B./future wife of David O. & B’way producer of STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, objectively the smartest woman in Hollywood until Hedy Lamarr showed up. Her verdict? It was very long.

THE ETERNAL SEA (1955)

On one hand a by-the-numbers inspirational biopic, this decently budgeted prestige item from fast-fading Republic Pictures, with dutiful house director John H. Auer calling the shots*, also has something decidedly off about it. Sterling Hayden, even gruffer than usual, is Rear-Admiral John Madison Hoskins, a ‘Navy lifer’ who loses a leg just as he’s about to take command of his dream ship. Refusing to give up on his goals, he puts rehabilitation ahead of everything until getting a new command and raising hell to see the Navy move into the jet age. Just how admirable is this guy? Stubborn, vainglorious, prioritizing career over risk to his men, unconcerned with family issues. Since it’s a true-enough story of personal triumph, the ends justify the means, but a little voice in the back of your head may not be cheering on cue. Perhaps if execution rose beyond standard operating procedure, but only Elmer Bernstein, in an early credit, shows the necessary ambition, if not complete success, with his first big score. With corny choral touches for maximum patriotic flavor.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: It’s a very uneven pic, but John Ford tackles many of these conflicting issues (service, sacrifice, family life) in honest, riveting fashion in THE WINGS OF EAGLES/’57. The marriage between John Wayne’s ‘Spig’ Wead & wife Maureen O’Hara especially well caught.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Our Italian poster has scripter Allen Rivkin listed as director.

SERGEANT MADDEN (1939)

Fascinating . . . and very odd. With his career in tatters after two Marlene Dietrich flops, a brief sojourn at Columbia to modest results, and a disastrous train wreck on his aborted U.K. production of I, CLAUDIUS, director Josef von Sternberg landed at hidebound M-G-M (of all studios) assigned to a B+ programmer with Wallace Beery (of all stars), in one of his late, sleepy sentimental vehicles. Here, he’s a good natured cop-on-the-beat who not only picks up stray foundlings, but adopts them. Yikes! And so it goes for a couple of reels. Then things get interesting. We jump 15 years ahead to find birth son Alan Curtis working as a new cop on the old beat, but with none of Dad's good nature or instincts. In fact, the spoiled bully Curtis was as a teen has curdled into grown up pathology, a cop who's happy to shoot a punk kid in the back. His young wife (Laraine Day, another one of Beery’s foundlings, rapturously shot by Sternberg & brilliant lenser John Seitz) forgives him; so too the other foundling, adopted kid brother Tom Brown. Even Dad forgives him, but with a heavy heart knowing this could have been avoided. Then things really start to spin out of control with more killings: a mob guy; a good cop. Curtis is on the lam and the wife in labor when a despairing Beery sets a trap with the just born boy of his own bad seed son-of-a-cop. And while it’s admittedly a bit too much, Sternberg shows tremendous energy and even gets a real piece of acting out of Beery. Sternberg obviously trying to play ball with the powers that be at Hollywood’s biggest, most powerful studio. The film, which is in beautiful shape, could be the work of no one else. (And it's surely no more ridiculous as drama then BLONDE VENUS/’32.) Usually treated as an afterthought, the film, if hardly essential, is not for compleatists only. In some ways, it’s a throwback to UNDERWORLD, the Ben Hecht story that led Sternberg to create the modern mob pic back in 1927.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, UNDERWORLD.

PROFESSIONAL SWEETHEART (1933)

A busy girl in 1933, Ginger Rogers made her R.K.O. debut in this programmer; third of ten films in a year that ended with her meeting Fred Astaire in FLYING DOWN TO RIO. Tart-tongued off-the-air, as a radio personality Ginger plays sweet romantic babydoll to plug Gregory Ratoff’s dishrags. But she’s threatening to blow her top on air, and refusing to sign her new contract if they don’t let her paint the town and enjoy life (she’s fixated on a night in Harlem) just as a rival dishrag outfit is trying to poach her services. As compromise, country boy fan Norman Foster is brought up North as marriage bait. The two hit it off, but then he takes her home to Hicksvillle! What’s a mid-list celebrity gal to do? Silly stuff, played a mile-a-minute under William E. Seiter’s sketchy megging of Maurine Dallas Watkins’ script. And that script is the main interest here since Watkins wrote the base material pulped into Big City comic gold in CHICAGO (aka ROXIE HART, played by Ginger in ‘42). The tone here is equally caustic, if not nearly as shrewd, and closer to NOTHING SACRED meets TAMING OF THE SHREW. So, spankings & a punch in the jaw for Ginger. Yikes! As slambang crazy comedy goes, it’s a bit of a mess, but not without the pleasure of a gaggle of supporting comic players (Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins, Zasu Pitts, Franklin Pangborn, Sterling Holloway). And, for a change, a proper opportunity for gorgeous Theresa Harris to sing, dance & strut her stuff as Ginger’s atypically young & saucy Black maid. A scene that has her filling in for Ginger on-the-air, while we watch hubby Foster get all hot & bothered listening in, isn’t something you expect even in a Pre-Code pic.

DOUBLE-BILL: Jean Harlow goes thru similar paces in M-G-M’s BOMBSHELL released later in ‘33, more polished/classier/far better worked out. Victor Fleming directs. (see below)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: IMDb gives Ginger credit on her vocals. Really?

THE CRUEL SEA (1953)

WWII as seen thru the eyes, battles and loses on a modest convoy escort ship headed by Jack Hawkins, the sole professional seaman leading a crew of newbie sailors against German U-boats in the North Atlantic. Plainspoken & straightforward in presentation, exceptional in getting details right (director Charles Frend; lenser Gordon Dines; restrained score Alan Rawsthrone), it proves enthrallingly quotidian (which sounds oxymoronic) thanks mostly to Eric Ambler’s exceptional adaptation of Nicholas Monsarrat’s book. The effects are good for the period, sparingly used and smoothly intercut with footage shot at sea and some less smoothly integrated newsreel/actuality war footage. But it’s the combination of individual stories & teamwork that catches you, the cast so well particularized you’re never ‘lost at sea’ in following the action.  All given with typically stoppered British emotionalism, especially in set pieces that test captain & crew, buried behind stiff upper lips too filled with real loss, grief & sacrifice to read as cliché. (A ‘Sophie’s Choice’ moment involving survivors at sea & a possible U-Boat attack unbearably tense.) Great support all round, with Donald Sinden particularly fine in early, irony-free mode. A paradigm of the WWII memoir form.

DEADLINE - U.S.A. (1952)

Issues & characters as Black & White as printer’s ink in this seriously square newspaper meller from writer/director Richard Brooks. Humphrey Bogart, unusually gaunt even for him*, is the hard-charging managing editor of THE DAY, a courageous no-frills broadsheet racing the clock to take down Martin Gabel’s vicious, politically connected Mob King before the paper is sold by its heirs, closed for good. Writing, investigating, speechifying, Bogie is a whirling journalistic dervish, but still taking time to woo drifting ex-wife Kim Hunter before she marries a nice Butter-and-Egg man. Some decent character turns in here, and fun behind-the-scenes/at-the-presses insider detail. (The nickname for every edition slipped in for our delectation.) Back in the ‘30s, this would have been handled with a pacey, stylized treatment, but Brooks’ 1950s sensibility is far too realistic to support the well worn tropes, plot twists and last minute escapes. It's like watching a show runner’s Power-Point presentation of ‘the bible’ for a tv series on a big city newspaper.

DOUBLE-BILL: How stale & safe this looks next to the feisty, up-to-the-minute journalistic voice of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS/’57 (Tony Curtis/Burt Lancaster - Mackendrick/Odets/Lehman).

CONTEST: *Like Kate Hepburn in PAT AND MIKE/’52, Bogart’s first film after they made THE AFRICAN QUEEN/’51 shows them both looking almost painfully thin. EVERYONE got sick on that shoot. And there’s another link between these first films after that African adventure, spot it to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice.