CLIVE OF INDIA (1935)

There’s a great story in the life & times of Robert Clive, a clerk in the East India Trading Company (mid-1700s) who segued into the military where he rose to out maneuver other colonizing European countries to grab & organize India for the Brits. And while you hardly expect to see a nuanced view of the historical/cultural/financial/social costs & benefits in a film made by Hollywood Anglophiles, you do expect rousing, well-told (if mindless) entertainment. Sure enough, this Darryl F. Zanuck production has a big feel to it, half of the Hollywood British Colony (led by an indispensable Ronald Colman) seem to be in it, with confident, action-oriented work from director Richard Boleslawski. Yet it doesn’t come off at all. It’s mostly a script problem, with huge gaps between crises as Clive pulls everyone’s bacon out of the fire, far too many immaculately resolved via explanatory title cards. (Clive Cliff Notes.) Finally, after all his labors & success, even coming out of retirement to sort out the messes made of his good work, he’s unaccountably on trial in the House of Commons, likely to lose home, wealth & reputation over his impulsive actions. With a miscast Loretta Young as Clive’s long suffering, ever supportive wife, the film is an imposing misfire.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: Even in his prime, Ronald Colman rarely made more than one film per year. Yet 1935 saw three. Rarer still, he’s clean-shaven in two of them! (Here, and in his indelible star turn on the otherwise uneven A TALE OF TWO CITIES.) But note the P&A staff kept his trim, signature mustache for the film poster anyway.

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (2018)

The answer is . . . writer/director Terry Gilliam.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Sad doings here. And after a two-and-a-half decade struggle to get something on screen. Instead, watch the true tragicomic backstory of Gilliam’s initial attempt in LOST IN LA MANCHA/’02. Below, a slightly revised repost:

‘This documentary on writer/director Terry Gilliam’s aborted Don Quixote pic proves that you really do make your own luck. For insurance purposes, a fiercely destructive hail storm and a star too ill to work ended things, but this show was never more than half a step ahead of disaster. Lack of funds, lack of planning, lack of technical expertise, lack of production coordination. The only thing not lacking: facile ideas from the ever fecund Mr. Gilliam. He’s loaded with ‘em; all bad. What little we see and hear is awful, particularly the proudly referenced central idea of having modern day Johnny Depp dropped back in time as a slim Sancho Panza to Jean Rochefort’s tottering Don Quixote. Even at his best, Gilliam always had trouble separating the wheat from the chaff, and this one's all chaff.’

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Critically & commercially, casualty rates on directors' Passion Projects as dire as The Battle of the Somme. Now pushing 80, will Gilliam ever direct again?

THE CROWD ROARS (1932)

Minor, but still valuable Howard Hawks, first of two with James Cagney (CEILING ZERO/’36 the other) had more than its share of late changes as a father/son race car story switched to dueling brothers (Cagney & a miscast Eric Linden) and leading gal pals Joan Blondell & Ann Dvorak (one sweet/one neurotic) swapped parts.* (This left top-billed Cagney & Blondell coupled with lower-billed Dvorak & Linden; Hollywood protocol be damned!) Cagney’s the cocky racing ace who takes kid brother Linden under his wing, making his taken-for-granted mistress (Dvorak) a jealous afterthought. She gets back by tossing Blondell at Linden to cause a wedge, but the new pair wind up a love match. Instead, it’s Cagney’s engineer, Frank McHugh, who lands in the middle, dying in a fiery crash that sends Cagney into a downward spiral. The script feels cut to the bone, missing pieces here & there. And while there’s some great (and terrifying) racing footage, the process work used to get our stars into the action is inconsistent at best, even for the period. Cagney pulls it all together anyway, his breakdown after returning to Dvorak a great moment. Plus, a great tag end as a pair of ambulances start an impromptu race to the hospital. It’s just that you want the film to be great . . . and it ain’t.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Hawks based this on THE BARKER, a father/son story with many similarities in a carny setting. Filmed very effectively by George Fitzmaurice in 1928 as a part-Talkie, with the Cagney/Linden/Dvorak/Blondell roles superbly handled by Milton Sills/Douglas Fairbanks Jr./Dorothy Mackaill/Betty Compson. Beautifully restored by UCLA, but good luck finding it!

THE LAST MILE (1959)

Static & easy to produce, this one-set ‘Death House’ prison-break drama was a star-making vehicle for Spencer Tracy on B’way and for Clark Gable on the road. (Preston Foster did the forgettable 1932 B-pic.) Three decades on and moldier than ever, it gets a second B-pic iteration, now with a snarling Mickey Rooney as ‘Killer’ Mears, the cell block tough guy who grabs opportunity by the neck (a prison guard’s neck) to escape the inevitable. Made quick & cheap by Howard W. Koch, the first two acts stick close to the play & to the warehouse cell setting, with what might as well be a Community Theater production. The cast, each with a little showpiece to play in their individual cell, go into overdrive as if trying to impress some imaginary Hollywood agent sitting out front. Slightly bizarre. The last act, which is the prison break (threats, squawk box communication, gun waving, cold-blooded murder, heavy breathing) turns far more conventional, with the play opened up for scenes happening outside the confines of the Death House. It’s ‘better’ filmmaking (think Quentin Tarantino ‘guilty pleasure’), but not nearly as interesting as the oddly abstracted earlier parts. Like we changed channels on the old Zenith television set during the commercial and landed on a climax of THE UNTOUCHABLES. Not such a bad idea. Some of those episodes were pretty good!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Supposedly, toilets made a 1960 film debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO. But here they are, one per cell, the year before.  Kudos to crappers!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Stick with the ‘mother’ of all Hollywood prison dramas, THE BIG HOUSE/’30, still strong, still effective, still tough as nails.

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DIStANCE RUNNER (1962)

The late-‘50s/early-‘60s New British Cinema (Angry Young Men; working-class sensibilities; social chip on the shoulder; ‘kitchen-sink’ realism hiding behind fashionable ‘New Wave’ camera idioms) hasn’t aged well. Its once vaunted honesty now looking as phony as the polished studio fare it was designed to blow up. And are they all directed by Tony Richardson? He must have been tiring of them, too; moving on to the fun, games & big time commercial success of TOM JONES/’63. But just before that, he made what now seems the best of the lot, a paradigm of the form, without the self-pitying/pre-deterministic edge of defeat that weighs so heavily elsewhere. With a semi-documentary style butting against occasional New Wave stylistic flair, the non-linear narrative jogs alongside Tom Courtenay’s wayward twenty-something delinquent, drifting thru bad relationships & petty crime after his father’s death and his mum’s fast turnaround with a new boyfriend. His potential as a runner, quickly spotted by Reformatory Head Michael Redgrave at the facility where he’s serving a sentence for robbery, offering a chance to lift himself up. But at what cost to Courtenay’s sense of self? And would a win at a track meet be a victory for him, or the school Head? Strong, thought-provoking stuff here, from Alan Sillitoe’s story & script, well caught in the drab beauty of Walter Lassally’s b&w lensing and in its pitch-perfect cast. Look for Edward & James Fox at the climactic race as ‘Public’ School competitors, and Alec McCowen, hopeful & painfully out-of-touch as a sympathetic counselor.

MURDER IN THE FLEET (1935)

The same producer, director, lenser & comic-relief team from the previous year’s DEATH ON THE DIAMOND with another B-pic murder mystery, now moved from professional baseball to U.S. Navy operations at sea. As directed by Edward Sedgwick, a bit more ambitious, a bit less effective, fumbling the mix of murder, sabotage, romance & comedy. Robert Taylor, just shy of his MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION breakthrough over at Universal, is the handsome young lieutenant tasked with overseeing a rush job on a secret new firing mechanism. Miss the installation deadline and the Navy loses exclusive rights! Anyone could purchase the contraption! But there’s a sniper on board the ship, slowing things down with his deadly aim. Yikes! Who could it be? A civilian visiting the ship? One of that Japanese delegation on an inspection? A disgruntled crew member or mechanical expert? A pretty good set up for suspense, plus gags from various romantic intrigues. (Script by John Ford favorite Frank ‘Spig’ Wead.) But Sedgwick proves all thumbs coordinating the rapid changes in tone or in finding atmosphere on the upper deck of a soundstage ship. He’s happiest overworking the romantic rivalry between his comic trio (Una Merkel, Nat Pendleon, Ted Healy) unaware how weirdly blasé ship’s captain Arthur Byron’s looks. Or is he the guilty party? Nah, my money’s on the great Mischa Auer as a very tall Japanese diplomat with Key Luke as assistant. The film less than the sum of its mismatched parts.

BEST FOOT FORWARD (1943)

Breezy little musical, a B’way transfer from the M-G-M Arthur Freed unit, about movie star Lucille Ball slumming at a Military Prep School Prom with a young cadet as a publicity stunt. Mayhem & mix-ups to follow. Pretty adorable at first (all those young academy boys & their dates, it's WWII HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL!) in spite of a so-so Hugh Martin/ Ralph Blane score* (‘Buckle Down, Winsocki!’ best known), but enthusiastically delivered in spiffy Big Band arrangements (Harry James playing at the prom) & sharply routined by dance director Charles Walters. It runs out of steam before it ends, but there’s good fun spotting fresh, debuting faces, many straight from the B’way run. Like June Allyson, Nancy Walker, most of the leading cadets (look for floppy-haired pal Kenny Bowers), and that ambitious chorus boy Stanley Donen, seen partnering Allyson in her ‘Barrel House’ dance number while behind the scenes, assisting Walters just as he had assisted Gene Kelly staging the dances when he appeared in the B’way show. And still a teenager! Lucy doesn’t get a lot to chew on, and is dubbed in her one song, but what a looker!, towering above the rest of the cast. Best of all, B’way afficionados get a rare shot a seeing classy B’way leading man William Gaxton, go-to star for the likes of Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin & Richard Rodgers over a long stage career, who hardly left a trace on film or records. Playing Ball’s slippery agent, he doesn’t get a song, but this middle-aged movie novice is amazingly expert up there. Too bad Bob Hope & Bing Crosby took all his big B’way roles in the movies.

DOUBLE-BILL: Freed figured out the Rah-Rah college musical three years later when he got debuting scripters Betty Comden & Adolph Green to remake GOOD NEWS as a fond ‘20s period piece.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Next year, Martin & Blane partnered for Freed on MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS. That’s ‘partnered’ since this team didn’t actually collaborate, working on songs separately but publishing as a duo. Sounds odd until you remember that’s also how Lennon/McCartney did it in Beatles’ days.

CASANOVA BROWN (1944)

Nunnally Johnson rewrote this thrice-filmed romantic comedy (on B’way in 1929 with co-author/star Thomas Mitchell) as a light vehicle for Gary Cooper, looking for a comic change of pace after dying in two of his last three pics. Each a heavy hitting smash of two-plus hours. Here, Coop juggles three putative brides in 94 minutes when his upcoming wedding to Anita Louise is disrupted by news of a little girl, his little girl, just born to his ‘ex,’ Teresa Wright. (A marriage quickly annulled after he burnt down the family manse. Don’t ask.) Learning the infant is going up for adoption, he dashes to the hospital, kidnaps the child, even proposes to a sympathetic nurse in case he needs a wife to complete the transaction. While a big hit at the time, the laughs, like so many a Hollywood farce, now come off as forced & labored, especially in the first act (that house fire!), with more than its fair share of ‘funny’ miscommunications needed to keep the plot moving. That said, you’d be hard put to find a more charming group of players (Coop’s underplaying a huge relief), while the look of thing, thanks to lighting cameraman John F. Seitz, is quite unlike romantic comedies of the period. Director Sam Wood, a useful technician without much style of his own, depended on designers (like William Cameron Menzies in OUR TOWN/’40 and KINGS ROW/’42) or strong cinematographers (like this film’s John Seitz) for visual interest. And here, Seitz tosses aside expected proscenium-based views for dramatic setups & angles, abetted by a driving pace that lends weight to ridiculous situations. It turns more conventional in the last act, all those plot & character resolutions, but the formal look of the earlier parts is quite striking.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Seitz, who made his bones in silents with director Rex Ingram, was also responsible at this time for transforming the film techniques of writers-turned-directors Preston Sturges & Billy Wilder. (MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK/’43 and DOUBLE INDEMNITY/’44 among the results.)

BLONDIE OF THE FOLLIES (1932)

Infamous as showgirl turned mistress/film star under newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, and famously misrepresented in CITIZEN KANE as a talent-free lush, the real Marion Davies is now recognized by most critics as a naturally gifted comedian too often forced into ill-suited dramatic roles. Hearst couldn’t bear seeing her take pratfalls and had the cash & clout (for a while) to push her on the public as a great tragedian. At least, that’s current critical consensus. Truth is, she wasn’t much of a comedienne either. Even lighter roles played like a game of charades with Marion pulling face, more good sport/good-time gal than comic actress.* Not so here. Just this once, in a largely dramatic role laced with comic trimmings, she lives up to the role of a lifetime . . . her lifetime. Developed as slum-rags-to-uppercrust-riches by Frances Marion & dialogued in laughs, tears & showbiz camaraderie by Anita Loos, it reflects something of the real Davies as a one time working-class daughter raised to the heights of Prohibition Manhattan Cocktail Society, a blonde follies girl wooed & won by rich playboy Robert Montgomery, coping badly with ‘this thing called love,’ as Cole Porter put it. Running away from a tenement homelife; guided by Billie Dove as the best pal (and maybe a bit more?) who cleared the showbiz path ahead only to find herself overtaken by this blonde upstart; well helmed and strongly cast by Edmund Goulding (check out those one-take family scenes in the tenement apartment). With Davies still looking young & pretty at 35 (she's superbly lit by cameraman George Barnes), balancing jokes, drinks & tragedy without guying the material. Even the artificial moments feel grounded.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *A lot of Davies’ positive critical rehabilitation tied to guilt over the KANE portrayal.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As Davies’ on-stage dancing partners, that’s the world famous Rocky Twins, famous androgynous beauties from Norway in their one-and-only film appearance.

A LIFE IN THE BALANCE (1955)

Promising, but inadequately worked out B-pic, handsomely shot on nighttime locations in Mexico City (using all Mexican tech below-the-line) for 20th/Fox’s lowball Panorama shingle. Ricardo Montalban (very hunky in a white-T) stars as an unemployed, single dad, a would-be musician, hoping to roust up the cash to buy his 10-yr-old son the guitar he’s promised. But soon after his nosy neighbors overhear him raising cash from an old flame, the woman is murdered by on-the-prowl serial killer Lee Marvin. All this seen by Montalban’s kid who’s up on the apartment roof for tonight’s fireworks. Hearing the neighbors finger his dad to the cops for the crime, he’s around to spot the real murderer, and follows him over a long night in hope of clearing his father. Meanwhile, Dad’s also spending the night out, buying that guitar at a pawn shop and romancing local pickup Anne Bancroft. (Anne Bancroft?) Eventually, police home in on Montalban just as Marvin, elsewhere in the city, spots the kid tailing him and starts up a most unlikely friendship. There’s real dramatic potential in all the crisscross relationships, and suspense as the cops move in. If only director Harry Horner, better known as an Oscar-winning art director, could handle his cast, fix bad lines & straighten out dumb story beats. (That’s all?) Still, worth a look as blueprint for a better film and for its darkly stylish lensing of unusual Mexico City locations.*

DOUBLE-BILL: The most interesting angle in the film is Marvin’s need for friendship with the kid. An idea nicely developed by Clint Eastwood & Kevin Costner in A PERFECT WORLD/’93.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *That darkly stylish lensing is wonderfully lit by . . . whom? There’s no credit for cinematographer, but I’m guessing Gabriel Figueroa, Mexico’s greatest lighting cameraman, perhaps working off-the-books while under contract elsewhere.

MEDUZOT / JELLYFISH (2007)

Inexplicably well-reviewed/Cannes Camera D’Or award-winning Israeli film from married writer/directors Etgar Kerey & Shira Geffen offers half-baked magical realism in telling its tale of three modern women in crisis mode: a neurotic newlywed; Filipino caretaker/nurse away from home & family; unfulfilled intellectual-type grimly functioning as banquet hall waitress. Plus more women with crises of their own for them to bump up against, using bad decisions & missed connections to move things along. Top encounter happening between a lost pixie girl, mysteriously showing up on the beach without guardian (or past?), silent & stubbornly clinging to our waitress until she sparks a panic by disappearing after being ‘conveniently’ left on her own. The film empty enough so you can read anything you like into it between its two standout moments: an hilarious avant-garde production of HAMLET (the caretaker’s employer is a cast member) and from Gera Sandler, the one rounded character in here as the newlywed’s patient, ultra-supportive husband. Apparently shot on 35mm but looking washed out, much like the lives on display. No doubt the point, but frankly, it’s hard to care.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Go old-school women’s crisis with Joe Mankiewicz’s witty LETTER TO THREE WIVES/’49.

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1983)

After a decade of dwindling returns on progressively toothless, technically shoddy, family-friendly pablum, someone on the Disney board suggested it might be best to just stop live-action feature film production. Instead, they came up with a new releasing shingle (Touchstone) for films with adult appeal, promptly connecting on a Hail Mary pass with Ron Howard’s SPLASH/’84. Forgotten in that success was this compromised, but still remarkable try at grownup horror from the year before. Adapted by Ray Bradbury from his own novel, and directed with rare taste & insight by Jack Clayton, it's an Americana coming-of-age memory piece about the bond between a pair of 12-yr-old small town boys who at first delight as a mysterious fair appears out of the blue but soon discover that in carnivals as in life, the devil is in the details. Literally so since the manager/owner is offering new, youthful starts to adults disappointed in life. But at a horrible price recalling PINOCCHIO’s Pleasure Island. The film tested poorly and a fair amount of reshooting led to a flawed narrative line tricky to follow. But you’ll catch on. And with it, a unique and effective tone even if the film flopped badly. (Very Stephen King like, too. No wonder he took a whack at the adaptation.*) With fabulous set pieces that help make up for occasional continuity problems including one scene where Jason Robards, older father to one of the boys, turns down a chance to reclaim years of his youth as Jonathan Pryce’s devil figure snatches page after burning page from his book of unrecoverable opportunity. A scene so perfectly balanced & deep in conception & execution, it can take your breath away. Beautifully shot by Stephen Burum, with superb art direction (ever so slightly off, like a meticulous scale-model town blown up to life-size), it’s one of those flawed films that feel all the more personal & precious since you need to help it along here & there to get the most out of it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Knowing the ways of Disney, where nothing is ever thrown away, surely an original cut, with the original Georges Delerue score, hides in the archives.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Was SWTWC in King’s mind when he came up with IT?

DOUBLE-BILL: Director Jack Clayton likely got the gig for his work with the pair of kids in THE INNOCENTS/’61, his adaptation of Henry James’ creepy TURN OF THE SCREW.

STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE (1939)

In any other year, this well-made, if highly fictionalized bio-pic would be better known/more celebrated. But 1939 Hollywood was a tough year to stand out in.* So many good-to-great films to compete against. And now, changing views on the effects of Christian missionaries in ‘the Dark Continent’ (here, mid-19th Century notions refracted thru mid-20th Century) lend uncomfortable undercurrents to what was meant as triumphant storyline. Not so much on the good doctor, Livingstone quite the remarkable self-made man, explorer/geographer as much as religious proselytizer, but with newsman/exploiter Stanley whose hunt for the doctor in uncharted African territory shapes the narrative and sidesteps problematic areas. His token opposition to the slave trade mere cover. All-in-all a tough modern sell even if you don’t know much of the real man. That said, on its own terms this is quite impressive filmmaking; with second-unit African footage unusually well-integrated on process soundstages for L.A. stay-at-homes Spencer Tracy & Cedric Hardwicke. Scripter Philip Dunne finds workable story beats for Tracy in thwarted romance, tribal war, tropical diseases, and a big Science Academy showdown finale. (Very Warner Bros. bio-pic that.) All kept on the move by director Henry King who even had a Chief White Hunter credited as part of his African second-unit!

DOUBLE-BILL: *It was a crowded field in 1939. Hardwicke’s other two films just that year were ON BORROWED TIME (from Paul Osborn’s fine & clever play on the grim reaper) and William Dieterle’s stunning HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. (Note Hardwicke in demand at M-G-M, R.K.O. and 20th/Fox.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: They say it took twenty takes before Tracy (returning to Fox five years after he’d been kicked out) could say ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume,’ without cracking up.

BULLITT (1968)

Hiding in plain sight behind the spectacular (and spectacularly real) car chase sequence everyone knows, is an exceptional police procedural that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Steve McQueen, in his absolute prime (nearly as cool as his Mustang GT.), is the tough, stubborn San Fran detective who lands in the soup when a hot witness under his protection takes a hit. Under pressure to clear up his mess over the weekend, the clues and obstacles follow fairly standard cop thriller tropes, but the execution from director Peter Yates, cinematographer William A. Fraker & editor Frank Keller update genre conventions by a generation, still looking fresh and inventive. Yates is particularly sharp throughout, loading an active frame with startling shards of info in subtle visual jolts, beautifully caught by Fraker on real locations in a style that’s closer to edgy European than overlit ‘60s Hollywood. (Compared to Don Siegel’s MADIGAN, a fine procedural from the same year that’s echt Universal Studios, BULLITT comes off as stylistically revelatory/revolutionary.*) Many scenes play with little or no dialogue, but there’s just enough for the outstanding supporting cast to make a mark. Not only Jacqueline Bisset and an amusingly smarmy Robert Vaughn (doing a Bobby Kennedy turn), but also standout early sightings of Robert Duvall & Georg Stanford Brown. More than the sum of its procedural parts, and more than its great car chase, BULLITT grabbed onto a new late ‘60s Zeitgeist.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *So too an opening credit sequence laying out the initial crime in snazzy high cinematic fashion. Worth revisiting right after you’ve finished watching.

DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Altman’s odd/uneven/comic BREWSTER MCCLOUD/’70 used Michael Murphy and a drawer-full of turtlenecks to send up the BULLITT mystique.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT (2018)

After Brad Bird rebooted Tom Cruise’s fading MI series as a witty update of a Roger Moore-era James Bond thriller in GHOST PROTOCOL/’11, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie took over the series for more of the same in #5. Too much more of the same, upping the quotient of fun & games relentlessly into a joyless franchise with eyes on the foreign market.* Cruise and Paramount must have been happy though, since he’s back for #6 (7 & 8, too!) with the longest MI yet. (By nearly half an hour!) The usual Spy vs Spy nonsense (with silly rubberized faces) brings international intrigue & arbitrary crosses, double-crosses and ‘surprise’ turnabouts as our gang of ‘Impossibles’ pursue three missing orbs of plutonium timed to go off in Kashmir and wreck half the world’s water supply. The action scenes are fast, furious and exhausting; also impossible to figure out/read, which should be half of the fun. Instead, Tom relies on his energizer bunny routine, clenching his jaw to hide any recent face work. Talk about mission impossible!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: I know it’s part of his job description as Group Techie, but must Ving Rhames be the only guy shown carrying bags in the pic as if he were the MI porter? Sheesh.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Stateside grosses barely (or simply not) keeping pace with ever growing budgets.

THE BIG HOUSE (1930)

Exceptional. A rare Early Talkie that thrives, rather than withers, under the technical limitations of the silent-to-sound transition period, with difficulties in film production turned into dramatic assets. The lack of slickness and weight of each camera movement aiding verisimilitude as much as the strikingly designed sets. Writer Frances Marion covers (or is it invents?) just about every prison pic trope out there, with then-husband George W. Hill’s unflinching direction missing nothing, as young, terrified Robert Montgomery gets ushered into the massive jail for a ten-year stint that will test his character along with cell mates Wallace Berry (brutal, explosive) and Chester Morris (tough but decent). Marion throws us off-balance right after the opening reel, switching her main protagonist from an apparently sympathetic Montgomery to Morris’s seen-it-all wiseguy. All three leads at their best: Montgomery, playing without his usual polish & proving despicably weak (superbly lit to expose character by Hill’s regular lenser Harold Wenstrom); Berry testing limits in bulky threat, yet oddly likeable; Morris in such heroic form, you wonder why he ever slipped into B-pics. It’s a huge production, hundreds of prisoners, a dozen strong character roles, and a remarkably uncompromising action finale that still astounds. Powerhouse stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hill & Marion continued this vein in ‘31 with Berry in THE SECRET 6, finding a new star in sixth-billed Clark Gable whose part seems to grow as the film goes along. OR: Howard Hawks’ nearly contemporary, if not nearly as good, prison pic, THE CRIMINAL CODE/’30.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note our second poster for what must have been the Spanish version, made before subtitles or dubbing came into common use, probably shot at night on the same sets, but with different leads in the main roles.

THE DAREDEVIL DRIVERS (1938)

No one’s much fun to be with in this Warners programmer about a banned racecar driver who sues a bus company for damages when one their coaches wrecks his speedster. But he just might change his mind after meeting the company owner, a pretty gal in danger of being run out of the biz thru sabotage from within and a power play from without by a larger competitor. Sounds like a workable plot, and with second-unit action director B. Reeves Eason calling the shots over a one-hour running time it should make some sort of mark. But the minor league players in the cast are anything but good company (alpha male Dick Purcell, a poor man’s James Cagney, especially weak*), and there’s not enough racing footage to make up for what’s missing. (All stock shots, newsreel accident footage & backscreen process work.) A pity, because hiding in plain sight is a perfectly hilarious story idea Purcell proposes to get back on his feet: use underemployed race car drivers on all the bus routes for extra-speedy service runs! A spectacularly silly idea! Imagine terrified customers & uninsured accidents as motorbike cops chase revved-up buses on those curvy two-lane country highways. Kids on the bus in thrall to all the excitement & danger; oldsters losing their lunch as the bus all but tips over on hairpin turns. You get a taste of this when company owner Beverly Roberts drives a bus with failing brakes, but it’s a suspense sequence not comedy. Too bad.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Spot some company siblings in debuting Gloria Blondell (kid sister of Joan) and Charley Foy (kid brother of King of the ‘Bs’ producer Bryan Foy) doing comic relief. He’s okay; she overplays something awful.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: * The real James Cagney hits the race track (and Joan Blondell) in Howard Hawks’ THE CROWD ROARS/’32.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)

In spite of awards & commercial success, epic filmmaker David Lean was always quick to point out that ‘DOCTOR ZHIVAGO got the most terrible reviews worldwide,’ but that ‘it made more money than all my other films put together.’ The initial critical reception is surprising. Perhaps the film seemed old-fashioned in a bad way in ‘65, too plush, too well-groomed, even for an advance-ticket RoadShow item about social change & romance amid the Russian Revolution & follow-up Civil War. The film’s still old-fashioned, but now in a mostly good way, with solid, literate story construction (check out the parallel editing of story lines in the first act), handsome, if studied, compositions (if rarely breaking the bounds of tableau vivant), and a roll-call of vivid character actors who know just how to scale up to Lean’s epic-sized vision (naturalism be damned). Note Alec Guinness’s glacial cadences turning a nothing part as Zhivago’s politically connected older half-brother into showy star turn. As the largely passive, too-good-to-be-true doctor, Omar Sharif doesn’t get the credit he deserves, holding the film and his indecisive love life together with little more than moist puppy dog eyes, the indispensable leading man. Grander turns come from Tom Courtenay’s neurotic radical; Rod Steiger’s brutal lover/power player (the only multi-faceted & believably Russian character in here); and Julie Christie, thrillingly beautiful, tempest-tossed love of all three men; object of Zhivago’s most famous poems, wisely left unheard in Robert Bolt’s clipped, clever screenplay. At its best pre-intermission, the plot turns sloppy & repetitive in the last hour. But Lean paces so well, keeping up grand vistas & violent set pieces with thousands between intimacies, you never lose interest. Even when Maurice Jarre’s score gets stuck in auto-repeat mode.

DOUBLE-BILL: Julie Christie had another literary pick of three men (Alan Bates, Terence Stamp, Peter Finch) in John Schlesinger’s undervalued FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD/’67. Superbly shot by Nicolas Roeg who actually started ZHIVAGO only to be replaced after a couple of weeks by Lean fave Freddie Young.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Keep a sharp eye for visual nods at classic Soviet cinema, mostly Sergei Eisenstein (POTEMKIN; NEVSKY) and Aleksandr Dovzhenko (EARTH).

THE BLUE DAHLIA (1946)

The only original screenplay from L.A. crime novelist Raymond Chandler came out of an unfinished novel he was stuck on. Coaxed by producer John Houseman, with Paramount in a rush for an Alan Ladd feature before he resumed military service, it had to come together fast. But Chandler’s writer’s block returned before the third act, and he only managed to get it done by working from home with the aid of copyists, studio couriers and constant, heavy boozing.* With a Hollywood backstory this good, you wish the film were its equal. It’s not, much heavy lifting needed to get this story up on its feet. But once war vet Alan Ladd’s unfaithful wife is killed and he goes on the lam after a meet-cute/pick-up with Veronica Lake (she picks him up!), and the cops start investigating a host of tasty suspects, the film grows too entertaining to nitpick. George Marshall’s direction treads along at a somber, unvarying pace, but that atmospheric title seems to cast a lucky spell on all the implausible doings. William Bendix, as Ladd’s army bud with a metal plate in his head & explosive tendencies has a field day as a murder suspect so obvious you just know he couldn’t have done it. (Apparently, Chandler wanted him for it, but ran into objections from the real U.S. Army.)

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *The hair-raising behind-the-scenes story of the production, with Chandler risking the bottle in order to finish on time, is neatly covered in FRONT & CENTER, second in John Houseman’s three-part auto-bio.

THE AMERICANO (1955)

Substandard doings for Glenn Ford at the time, this B-pic for an A-list star skips tough-to-film sequences to keep to its tight budget, missing those special moments that might have made something of this relentlessly ordinary pic. The film started shooting in Brazil, ran out of funds, then picked up back in Hollywood with a few casting changes. (Arthur Kennedy out/Frank Lovejoy in; etc.) It’s a contempo Western that has Ford traveling south (Texas to Brazil) with three Brahma bulls he’s selling to ambitious/ruthless cattleman Frank Lovejoy. But he winds up playing referee in a war between open range herders, hard working native farmers, and some outlaw anarchists. You can go to the Southern hemisphere, but you still can’t get away from standard Hollywood story beats about ranchers vs farmers. Cesar Romero is pretty much alone in having a good time on this one, playing a sly, likable bandito who buds up to Ford. And Ford seems happy having him steal every scene. Heck, not much else going on. Most everyone speaks English, which is fine, but when we do hear the local lingo, it sounds like Spanish. In Brazil? But then, what do you expect with a shlockmeister like William Castle calling the shots. That said, the film doesn’t so much leave a bad taste as an odd one.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For a drama about bringing a new breed of cattle on the range (English stock come to Texas), try James Stewart, Maureen O’Hara & Brian Keith in THE RARE BREED/’66. Horribly directed by Andrew McLaglen, it wastes a heckuva story with a bad script & bad production values. (The acting’s not so hot either, though Keith is strikingly outrageous.) But you can easily see the great story lurking behind the disappointing execution.

L'AMANT DOUBLE / DOUBLE LOVER (2017)

Polarizing psycho-sexual thriller (with one twist too many) from François Ozon, the preternaturally gifted French filmmaker who tends to overthink his projects to the point of collapse. Not this one, it collapses from under-thinking. Marine Vacht, another rail thin Parisian ingenue, is seeing hunky, young shrink Jérémie Renier to still her psychologically induced tummy troubles. But as she gets better, he stops treatment for love and moves in with her . . . and a cat who goes missing. That’s when she spots his secret identical twin psychologist brother on the street and is soon involved in a second affair, one with a sado-masochistic flair. (Tussle-haired Renier to calm her down and combed back Renier to tussle with!) But Ozon tosses in so many scenes that turn out to be either dreams or mirrored doppelgänger sightings, he’s like the boy who cried wolf. You stop caring since it's likely as not imaginary. Eventually, all the parties get wise to each other and fight for supremacy with Vacht off hunting for Renier’s past in the person of Jacqueline Bisset who knows the score from a parent’s P.O.V.  And Ozon has one more rug to pull out from under you. One rug too many. There’s a visual pop to some of the doubleback ideas that gives the film a bit of ‘wayback machine’ Brian De Palma pizzazz, plus an unhealthy dose of ROSEMARY’S BABY. Too much or not enough?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Maybe Ozon needs to be forced to make a film he thinks he doesn’t want to do. Anything to rebalance his act. He’s got too much talent to waste it like this.

KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES (1953)

Ironically, Tyrone Power was more believable playing a full-blooded Indian doctor in 1939's THE RAINS CAME than as a ‘half-caste’ British officer in this early CinemaScope colonial epic. Put the disparity down to the pull of Golden Age studio æsthetic, the natural abstraction of b&w cinematography and Power’s youthful dazzle. Post WWII, shifting body mass & thickening features (along with Deluxe color prints) add an unwelcome realism, spoiling the illusion. Behind him, a strong production and a classic story line help (only this half-caste can possibly stop a local uprising), while lenser Leon Shamroy nails frame & horizon in the early ultra-WideScreen process and Bernard Herrmann’s score fills in missing emotions. Even sedate megger Henry King finds a stately swagger to his pace (look for a really nice bit of scary special effects weather in the desert), but is ultimately defeated by two badly miscast roles: Goy Rolfe’s swarthily painted Brit as the ‘mad’ Indian khan trying to grab power, and Terry Moore as Power’s love interest. Daughter to Michael Rennie’s sympathetic commanding officer, this reckless Lawrencian object of desire is too much the All-American teen. This one’s best around the edges.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Why does Ty Power always look shorter than he actually was? Nearly 6', he looks about as tall as height-challenged Tom Cruise. (Here, he’s got to compete with Rennie & Rolfe, each of them standing 6'4".)

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, THE RAINS CAME. (see below)

CREST OF THE WAVE (1954)

Meant to be explosive (literally explosive) as new, powerful underwater bomb material undergoes rigorous testing off an isolated Scottish isle, this little film from the Brothers Boulting (John & Roy) is seriously underwhelming. Taken from a play, and feeling like it in the extended barracks scenes, the gimmick is that American Navy scientist Gene Kelly (in a rare straight dramatic part) is brought in after a series of failures to fix the problem before the next pair of brave British ‘volunteer’ testers get blown to pieces. John Justin is there to stick up for English Naval research, along with a handful of Her Majesty’s sailors adding comic relief and competitive spirit against the pair of USN seabees Kelly brings along with him. Kelly & Justin are fine as a pair of wary officers who finally start working together, and it’s a treat to find Bernard Lee (‘M’ in early James Bond pics) go proletariat as a tough navy ‘lifer.’ But the rest of the seamen are a dreary, cliché-ridden lot. So’s the pic.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For tough, manly men working thru submarine trials & personality clashes, go for Robert Wise’s RUN SILENT RUN DEEP/’58, with tip-top perfs from Clark Gable & Burt Lancaster.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Composer Miklós Rózsa adds some much needed tension with his score, but also gets stuck underlining comic bits with ‘funny’ music cues he couldn’t have been happy about.

GIDEON'S DAY / (AKA GIDEON OF SCOTLAND YARD) (1958)

Though hardly the only obscure film from John Ford’s late prime (see WHEN WILLIE COMES MARCHING HOME/’50; THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT/’53; THE RISING OF THE MOON /’57*), none was treated quite so shabbily. Made on quick notice when other projects hit snags, this police procedural (a long day of easily solved cases for Jack Hawkins’ likeable Inspector) was twice cut from it’s original length & lost Freddie Young’s lovely TechniColor lensing in b&w prints made for its token Stateside release. The film hasn’t a bad rep so much as it has no rep. Yet, while minor stuff, it does make for pleasant company, unexpectedly zippy as it gambols about well-chosen London locations & on clever, economically handled sets by art director Ken Adam. Loaded with good humored character actors, most of the relaxed comedy lands nicely though the suspense elements hardly catch fire. Anna Massey makes a sweet debut as Hawkins’ violinist daughter with an evening concert he’s trying to make, but Ford was probably more concerned with giving favored actress/friend Anna Lee her first role after six years on Hollywood’s BlackList. And the real pull for Ford may have been in its idealized depiction of the Inspector’s family. Loving, quick to forgive when work comes before family, a happy alternative to Ford’s own difficult, largely unhappy homelife. In the restored prints now available, it makes a nice rainy day feature. Just don’t go in expecting THE SEARCHERS.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Of those other obscure titles, Ford’s favorite was THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT. Awkward, near great, racially divisive. (see below) REMINDER to SmartPhone users, for easy film-by-film navigation, scroll down to View Web Version LINK to access the MAKSQUIBS Search Box in Upper Lefthand Corner on the full site. (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-sun-shines-bright-1953.html)

TENDER COMRADE (1943)

More talked about than seen nowadays, it was that title (TENDER COMRADE) that added a touch of infamy to this innocuous WWII trifle about four female defense plant workers pooling their rent money to move from furnished flats to a comfy colonial big enough for a family of ten. Voting on disputed issues, hiring a (Jewish?) German exile to housekeep & cook, stopping now and then for uplifting, patriotic pep talks on why their men are fighting overseas, it’s about as radical as a bond drive. Ginger Rogers, finishing up her R.K.O. contract, found some of the talk a little leftie in hindsight. Hmm . . . by such standards her own STAGE DOOR/’37 might have come under suspicion if it had been called STAGE COMRADE! This all makes the film sound rather more interesting than it is, but don’t you believe it. Director Edward Dmytryk got it about right when he called it maudlin, but personally a welcome step up into A-list projects. His biggest concern: would fave photog Russell Metty please Rogers when she saw the dailies? He was on to something. Ginger looks puffy, her eyes unfocused. More importantly, her old school/studio style acting jars against rising co-star Robert Ryan, leaning forward into a more naturalistic, post-war modernism. But this clash pales next to Trumbo’s lazy, uncomfortably misogynistic script, loaded with bickering flashbacks as wise, warm, manly Ryan condescends to Ginger’s female wiles & hysteria. Ruth Hussey, Patricia Collinge & a young Kim Hunter are the other tenants, each with a single problem to work out; while Mady Christians is the Jewish (?) German war refugee they hire to run the house. Ham-fisted, politically harmless fluff, unworthy of director, writer or Commie Hunter.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Dmytryk would quickly make up for this with MURDER, MY SWEET/’44, and later do right by Ryan in a post-war classic, CROSSFIRE/’47. Trumbo also quickly made good, following up with THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO/’44. OR: For a Hollywood view of the family homefront in action, David O. Selznick’s magnificent, if overripe, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY/’44.

PROSPERITY (1932)

Times were good in 1925 when Marie Dressler handed over her small-town bank to son Norman Foster on his wedding day. But now it’s 1932 Depression and a silly spat with mother-in-law Polly Moran leads to her abruptly closing her account, yelling at the teller for her cash, and precipitating a run on the bank that will ruin them all. A surprisingly timely dramedy to come out of M-G-M. (Issues & resolution not so far from Frank Capra’s superior AMERICAN MADNESS made the same year at Columbia.) Even more surprising, while the knockabout family comedy can be forced & downright annoying (Polly Moran’s full-out style has aged poorly), the dramatic side of things (simplistic, naive, highly unrealistic even in context), works very well within the film’s framework. Director Sam Wood, after some stiff Early Talkies, starting to get his camera up & running again (much like the beleaguered bank); Dressler, as always, uniquely fascinating, fussy & overcooked working thru mediocre gags and one-liners, then utterly still and rawly powerful in serious moments. Moving from one extreme to the other without transitions to buffer emotional whiplash. It’s an acting trick Dressler does a lot, a technique more in line with neighboring panels in a cartoon strip than anything like acting in a modern sense. And we’re poorer for the loss.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above, AMERICAN MADNESS/’32, another ‘bank run’ story that sees the bank manager save the day. And, unlike this interesting pleasantry, a masterpiece.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/american-madness-1932.html

REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER (1975)

Clueless attempt to make a gritty Sidney Lumet-like NYC police meller (think SERPICO/’73, DOG DAY AFTERNOON/’75, PRINCE OF THE CITY/’81) fails badly.* With an overwrought Michael Moriarty sabotaging his rising career playing a softhearted/softheaded new generation undercover narc who shoots fellow undercover officer Susan Blakely, unaware she’s on a job, playing mistress to the city’s top black drug dealer. (Imagine that holding up in court.) No spoilers needed here since the whole shebang gets told in flashback as investigators work up their ‘Report to the Commissioner.’ The great Yaphet Kotto is around as the kid’s unwilling partner in the unit, adding a touch of verisimilitude to the proceedings. But he’s fighting a losing battle between lousy toupées on character actors and the film’s big set piece, an overdrawn climax that starts with a chase thru Midtown (with hunky dealer in white boxers) and ends as a Mexican Standoff in a Saks Fifth Avenue elevator! William Devane, Bob Balaban & a very young Richard Gere give the film a bit of a celebrity lift, and ‘70s street vibe adds pulse, but nothing can save this clunker.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Stick with the above mentioned Lumet trio.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Abby Mann co-wrote the adaptation with his signature note of borrowed importance.

DEVIL AND THE DEEP (1932)

Charles Laughton’s Hollywood debut*, a reasonably effective marital drama most of the way which unexpectedly builds real suspense in a thriller-diller last act. And with Gary Cooper, Tallulah Bankhead & (briefly) Cary Grant in the other leads, you shouldn’t have trouble holding on for its action-packed finale. Fabulously shot by Charles Lang, and occasionally very well directed by Marion Gering, it opens with Laughton’s submarine captain murderously jealous without cause over his wife’s friendship with second-in-command Cary Grant. But his jealous rage takes a pathological turn when Grant replacement Gary Cooper meets Bankhead and, without knowing who she is, gives plenty of cause in a desert overnighter. There’s frisson a’plenty just watching Coop’s minimalist approach standing up to Laughton’s maximalism, here justified by incipient insanity. But the root of his jealousy is plainly stated in a gaze at Cooper in his devastating prime, ‘Must be a happy thing to look as you do,’ he says in wonder & abasement. (Ah, Charles, we ALL feel that way!) Tallulah is very good here, yet you’ll see why Paramount was about to drop her after a couple of years. She’s all but impossible to light & photograph; even in good angles, something of a death mask about her. It all ends with the three heading off to sea with sub & crew, Laughton hoping to sabotage the works and send them all down with the ship. Really exciting stuff here. Where has it been hiding?

DOUBLE--BILL: *Paramount had already lent Laughton to Universal for James Whale’s peculiar comic horror pic THE OLD, DARK HOUSE/’32 but they held its release back till DEVIL came out.