THE LITTLE GIANT (1933)

Edward G. Robinson caught a break from the ethnic heavies he’d been playing at Warners in this modest charmer. He’s still a mug who strong-armed his way to riches pushing illegal booze, but now lightens his Post-Prohibition image as a reformed mug. Closing up shop in Chicago, he takes his chances (and his fortune), along with henchman Russell Hopton, to try the high life in California. Playing the society game, falling for Helen Vinson’s society dame, and unaware he’s being set up for a fleecing till Mary Astor, the social secretary he hired after renting the family manse her late father lost, wises him up to the corrupt ways of counterfeit society. No real surprises here, but no pressing for comic effect either. With gags & characterizations relatively gentle, rising naturally from the situations; quite unlike Warners’ usual comic overselling. Best guess gives co-scripter Wilson Mizner credit for holding to tone*, along with the unexpected chemistry between Robinson & Mary Astor who shows particularly lovely form.

DOUBLE-BILL: Robinson would milk this defanged gangster routine in three broader, but still enjoyable Warners pics (A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER//’38; BROTHER ORCHID/’40; LARCENY, INC./’42), but got the most out of the switch by splitting it in two for John Ford’s THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING/’35 with Jean Arthur over at Columbia.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Mizner died a month before this came out (only 56) taking his light touch with him?

SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1970)

Oddly watchable horror mash-up ineptly juggles multi-pronged storylines to inexplicably compelling effect. What starts as a police procedural on the hunt for a serial killer (with a homicide unit who might pass for Keystone Kops in dull British suits), jumps to Fascist Politics and a side-story of government power grabs (is this Nazi-like gang in office or shadow cabinet?) before we meet up with research scientist Vincent Price. Is he involved in the killings? Possibly harvesting body parts for some nefarious project? And what about that big yellow vat of flesh-eating acid he keeps in the shed? Yikes! But wait!, now we meet the human ‘harvester,’ a sharp-looking man-of-mystery, haunting the ‘Mod’ nightclub scene in hopes of collecting live lady specimens for the next experiment. Price building mix-and-match helpmates? Possibly with alien help. Double yikes! Not much is especially clear on this one, yet Gordon Hessler megs with abandon, rarely bothering to tie one sequence to another, letting the narrative line fall where it may. Watching is like changing channels on an old tv during commercial breaks. Peter Cushing shows up for a brief scene, while Christopher Lee, some sort of government enforcer, at least gets to meet up with Price for a big finish. None of them with screen time commensurate with their billing. But fun, if you don’t mind the mess.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A sharp print of the official Stateside release is out on Kino Lorber along with a not so sharp alternate ‘uncut’ edit with only minor differences. Certainly not enough to make up for its inferior print quality.

THE FOURTH WAR (1990)

Career lows for just about everyone on this Cold War battle between Colonels Roy Scheider (in his last mainstream lead*) and DAS BOOT’s Jürgen Prochnow, with a disinterested John Frankenheimer calling shots on the Czech Border. New at the base, Scheider’s a hard-nosed guy who, missing the old ‘hot’ Cold War, tries to start it up again all on his own after a border incident. Fighting pushback from Prochnow (tanks, guns, troops*), Scheider goes ‘rogue,’ singlehandedly running nighttime raids and sabotage missions on the Ruskie side of the fence, threatening a tenuous peace with his actions. Too bad no one read the news and saw that the Berlin Wall came down a year back in 1989! Presumably, the film was set up Pre-Thaw, and there might just be a movie in a pair of matched East/West Colonels missing the bad old days before Glasnost wrecked their world views. But this sloppy piece of work ain’t it. The film barely got released Stateside.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Later this year, Scheider got demoted to lead supporting role in John le Carré’s THE RUSSIA HOUSE which found a new kind of life for Cold War thrillers.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *And if you think John Frankenheimer can resist that cliché shot of a tank rolling right over a camera in a pit, you’ve got another think coming.

THE CIRCUS (1928)

From any other screen comedian, THE CIRCUS would be hailed a masterpiece, a one-stop ticket to Film Pantheon status: Silent Slapstick division. But, this being Charlie Chaplin, it lies between THE GOLD RUSH/’25 and CITY LIGHTS/’31 and must live in their shadow. That, plus a misery-making two-year production (divorce; set destroyed by fire; ruined camera negative on the climatic tightrope sequence), kept this gem from receiving its due. It was four decades before Chaplin returned to it, adding a score for re-release along with an opening song & prologue. And for its first two reels, you can only marvel; as blissfully conceived & executed silent slapstick as you could dream of. Charlie on the run from pickpocket and police at a SideShow; stealing bites of a hot dog from a baby; lost in a House of Mirrors; turning into an automaton figure to evade the law . . . and get a bit of revenge. Stupendous stuff! But then, three impossible traps in our story. Traps he almost gets away with. First is the matter of place: The Circus. Like The Marx Brothers in AT THE CIRCUS/’39, where better could Charlie land?* Hard to be the eternal outsider in your natural habitat. Even tougher, the main comedy stems from Charlie stumbling into the Big Top and accidentally getting big laughs. But once hired to be funny, this new clown can’t get a laugh. He’s only funny when he doesn’t know he’s being funny. Yet, even purposefully unfunny shtick needs to put up laughs inside the movie. A conundrum inside a conundrum. Chaplin being Chaplin, he does manage to thread the needle, even if the crowd’s eruptive response seems overblown. Then most impossible of all, Charlie, pushing 40, had to learn to walk the tightrope. And not just walk it; walk it funny! Twice as hard as learning to do it straight. Needless to say, he triumphs at this physical act, even as the film’s romantic triangle, and his predetermined renunciation is left barely sketched in. Still, enough to make the film’s circular ending almost unbearably moving. Brusque sentiment before he’s off to life’s next adventure. Chaplin in second gear? Perhaps, but you’d be fool to miss it.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The Marx Bros. would have been just as comfortable at the racetrack in A DAY AT THE RACES/’37, but that film is just as much A DAY AT THE SANITARIUM . . . where they’d also fit in!

THE CONSTANT NYMPH (1943)

Third time ‘round for this rather sticky liebestod between a classical composer in career crisis (Charles Boyer) and the besotted teenage girl crushing on him (Oscar® nom’ed Joan Fontaine). No doubt, the sexual aspect of the relationship, downplayed if still resonating here, felt less ‘icky’ in Pre-#MeToo days, but the plot depends on it! Less problematic is the music side of things, where Boyer’s initial rejection of his natural gift for lush chromatic late romanticism in pursuit of more intellectually fashionable percussive dissonance, strikingly mirrors the situation film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold faced back in the concert hall after WWII. The film has Boyer briefly embracing his true musical nature during a visit to aging mentor Montague Love and his bohemian family of lovely girls from assorted wives. Boyer adores them all, but sees them only as children, marrying their wealthy, socially connected cousin, Alexis Smith, who grows jealous of Fontaine . . . and with good cause! Sophisticated, fascinating stuff to think about, but Kathryn Scola’s script & Edmund Goulding’s direction opt for breathless hysteria to signify artistic temperament (and just about anything else), while letting everyone overplay wildly.* And though a large cast list looks tasty (Peter Lorre, Charles Coburn, Dame May Whitty), they don’t get a lot to do. So, this one’s really for Korngold mavens, with its gorgeous chance to hear him musically riffing on a morbid subject as close as he ever got on film to the dark psychological musings of his operatic masterpieces DIE TOTE STADT (with its VERTIGO-like plot) and DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE (with its nude resurrection element!)

DOUBLE-BILL: *Six years further removed from her teenage years, Fontaine got this character thrillingly right working with Max Ophüls in LETTER TO AN UNKNOWN WOMAN/’48.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Korngold underscores less than usual in dramatic scenes, presumably to highlight the diegetic musical moments. And that’s undoubtedly Korngold dubbing the piano parts when we see Boyer at the keyboard. (BTW, nice vocal match dubbing Fontaine when she briefly sings at the piano.)

DOWN THREE DARK STREETS (1954)

Dreary low-budget FBI ‘procedural’ sees Broderick Crawford solve the murder of fellow agent Kenneth Tobey by looking into the three cases he was working on at the time. It's a lot like one of those Louis De Rochemont docu-dramas from the ‘40s, but done on the cheap for indie producer Edward Small. Made the same year Crawford co-starred with Gregory Peck for Nunnally Johnson in NIGHT PEOPLE and against Glenn Ford & Gloria Grahame in Fritz Lang’s HUMAN DESIRE, this was an odd choice, sure to lower this Oscar-winner’s Hollywood standing. Even odder to hear him drop his distinctive rat-a-tat-tat vocal delivery to a normal cadence along with 20 pounds to something near conventional leading man heft. The three cases have decent character actors which helps, and a trio of nicely varied leading ladies in jeopardy: Ruth Roman (threatened with child kidnapping), Marisa Pavan (blind wife with admirable qualities of observation), Martha Hyer (uncooperative moll). Alas, the script neither interweaves nor builds much suspense, narrative counterpoint is beyond director Arnold Laven, and a drab looking print does no favors to Joseph Biroc’s lensing. On the other hand, fans of HIGHWAY PATROL, Crawford’s indie tv series starting the following year, may get a kick watching what amounts to a three-part pilot for that fine show.*

CONTEST: Spot the connection between this film and IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD/’63 to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up on the film of your choice.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *As mentioned above, Crawford’s HIGHWAY PATROL (1955-59; 156 episodes). Always a good show, the simple production values, on-location shoots, occasional rising star (Clint Eastwood; Leonard Nimoy) working next to unknown semi-pros and near DOGMA cinema techniques, now make this little show even more invaluable, a time capsule of small town ‘50s California, with Mom & Pop diners, hideaway cabin motels and Pre-Interstate two-lane highways forcing connections with the land & small communities on the way. (Party Game: Have a drink every time they have to backup a vehicle on the show.)

ROME EXPRESS (1932)

Intrigue-packed stuck-on-a-train British thriller, technically sharp & well directed for the period by Walter Forde, but with the lion’s share of credit due to scripter Sidney Gilliat in a warm-up to his even more expertly conceived LADY VANISHES/’38, co-written with Frank Launder for Alfred Hitchcock. This one sports a series of crimes & crises (like GRAND HOTEL on wheels; already well-known as play & novel, though only filmed later this year), with a famous movie actress hiding an affair with a married man; a tyrannical business tycoon lording it over his assistant; three men vying for a stolen Van Dyck canvas which is then lost in a briefcase mix-up; an insufferable Old School bore poking his nose into everyone’s affairs; plus ‘French’ Postcards and a French detective on holiday to take charge when a body turns up along with the missing canvas. Paced at a good clip, Forde loses narrative focus here & there (a scorecard might have helped!), but you’ll pick up the thread quick enough, especially with all those tasty character actors to push things forward: Conrad Veidt, Cedric Hardwicke (exceptional!), an unrecognizable Finlay Currie as a fast-talking publicity man; Hugh Williams; Donald Calthrop; and silent film star Esther Ralston whose dialogue sounds as if it were all dubbed. Super fun, super influential, a super find.

DOUBLE-BILL: Remade as SLEEPING CAR TO TRIESTE in 1948. (not seen here) OR: As mentioned above, THE LADY VANISHES.

SHARKEY'S MACHINE (1981)

Still a major star, but off his ‘70s peak, this Burt Reynolds cop drama was designed as a prestige project, a reunion with DELIVERANCE director John Boorman.*  But when work on EXCALIBUR made Boorman pass, Reynolds took over, putting out a well-made, but standard cop thriller. Not a whodunit, we know the murderer right away, the twist comes in who got it, with the big reveal lifted straight out of LAURA/’44. Oddly, everything works better before that big twist, starting with Burt’s busted bust operation and his quick demotion from glamorous Narcotics to grungy Vice. That’s where he collects his motley crew of cops in crummy suits to run a stake-out of Rachel Ward’s high class call girl. Under the protection of Vittorio Gassman’s bigtime City Boss, she’s diddling a Gubernatorial candidate, unaware that Burt & company are watching her every move. But they’re not the only high-rise voyeurs, Gassman’s private hitman Henry Silva has a similar lookout. Someone is going down. But who? Good fun as Burt puts his motley cop machine together; such a tasty bunch of characters: Charles Durning, Brian Keith, Bernie Casey, Richard Libertini. But a distinct lack of chemistry between Ward & Reynolds starves the romance while Burt’s action staging never makes the leap from competence to flair. Still, more watchable than Reynolds’ ‘Good Ol’ Boy’ pics of the period or his attempts at artistic stretching.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, Otto Preminger’s ultra-smooth LAURA with its gorgeous cast, Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson, ‘newcomer’ Clifton Webb, and David Raskin’s swooning theme music.  OR: *To get an idea of what Boorman might have done here, see his early game-changing action/revenge thriller POINT BLANK/’67.

THE GOLDEN ARROW (1962)

With his career in free-fall after aging out of Teen Idol status, then seeing his eponymous tv sit-com canceled after a year, Tab Hunter, still plenty dreamy looking*, took on this Italian Sword & Sandal pic (Arabian Nights - blond division - rather than Roman Empire), a lighthearted mock epic from Titanus films. Trying for that Douglas Fairbanks mojo, though lacking in grace & athletic ease, Tab’s pretending to be a foreign Prince when he accidentally wins the hand of the Princess of Damascus in a shooting contest. But upon losing the magical Golden Arrow that made it all happen, he now must search the world to recover it! Helped by three ‘comical’ genies, he’d best hurry since a trio of certified Eastern Princes are also out for the lady’s hand. (And while searching, maybe Tab could find his own speaking voice, since like everyone else, he’s dubbed by some anonymous studio pro.) Ridiculous when it means to be fanciful, the plot makes little sense. Even so, the film has a couple of things going for it in its bright, airy, colorful art design and in an amusingly amoral tone that keeps Hunter moving in on all the beautiful Queens of the Deep, Sorceresses of the Mountains & other female potentates as he looks far & wide for that damn arrow. (The film elides over actual screwing, but you can't edit out the glint in Hunter’s eye.) If only a bit more care had gone into the story & script.

DOUBLE-BILL: After this, it was all guest appearances on tv and A.I.P. Beach Party pics for Tab before finding a niche in smaller supporting roles and campy comedy. OPERATION BIKINI/’63 (not seen here) usually considered his nadir.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Yes, still dreamy looking, but with beefcake opportunities limited by a costume that only threatens to come off in torture scenes.

THE YEARS BETWEEN (1946)

Another unofficial reworking of Tennyson’s ENOCH ARDEN (presumed dead husband comes home to find his wife newly married or engaged), here set against the end of WWII with gauntly handsome Michael Redgrave upsetting the plans of his own ‘widow’ (Valerie Hobson) on the eve of her marriage to old pal James McKechnie. Taken from a Daphne Du Maurier play, it’s sudsy, but effective; smartly held together most of the way by director Compton Bennett and married scripters Muriel & Sydney Box. (These three fresh from making James Mason a major star in the hit psycho-drama THE SEVENTH VEIL/’45.) The plot leaves co-star Flora Robson a bit underused as housekeeper/nanny, so they try to make up for it with a big last act speech that settles all unresolved issues in a rushed ending. The film is fine as far as it goes, but does it go far enough? Missing is a proper account of Hobson’s success as an independent single woman, thriving in politics after beating her depression by winning her husband’s old seat in parliament. Here, it's used mainly to make Redgrave look like a selfish sore loser. Worse, there’s the problem of playing those old ENOCH ARDEN tropes with a straight face after Hollywood comically demolished them in TOO MANY HUSBANDS with Jean Arthur and MY FAVORITE WIFE (Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott). Compton & the Boxes aren’t strong enough moviemakers to lead us back to serious.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, the underrated TOO MANY HUSBANDS and the slightly overrated MY FAVORITE WIFE, both 1940.

X: THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES (1963)

After pinch-hitting for Vincent Price on PREMATURE BURIAL/’62, one of a series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations Roger Corman made for American International, longtime leading-man Ray Milland fronted two better-suited pics for A.I., PANIC IN YEAR ZERO/’62 (self-directing the dystopian drama) and this excellent Sci-Fi thriller, again under Corman. Yet another science vs nature tale as Milland’s ‘mad’ research scientist becomes his own guinea pig on an experimental chemical solution to enhance his vision up to super power status. Surprise!, early success leads to overconfidence and overuse. Milland needs more & more solution to get ever greater effect, destroying his sight and losing control of his life after he accidentally murders a colleague, forcing him to go on the lam, hiding out as a ‘healer’ for carny hustler Don Rickles. Yikes! One of Corman’s strongest outings, Milland deserves much of the credit for making this just believable enough to work, with simple visual effects giving his doomed experiment a P.O.V. that’s low on technical dazzle, yet seems to fit the storyline. If they were any better, they might not work at all. As is, it’s a paradigm of low-budget ‘60s Sci-Fi horror, with only Les Baxter’s dreary tv boilerplate score disappointing. The rest works a treat. Even the quick wrap up unusually satisfying.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, this whets the appetite for the Milland directed PANIC IN YEAR ZERO (not seen here).

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Check out the cover price on the Paperback Tie-In: 12¢

GONE TO EARTH (1950)

Like CLUNY BROWN/’46; DUEL IN THE SUN/’46 and MADAME BOVARY/’49; Jennifer Jones once again must choose between a butter-and-egg man or someone more attractive and dangerous. This time in the splendid wilds of Shropshire, under the artsy sway of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, writing/producing/directing as The Archers, and the saturated TechniColor gaze of lenser Christopher Challis/Freddie Francis camera operator. No surprise to find a slightly ‘off’ quality in the storytelling, The Archers cultivated handmade artisan qualities, especially in design & arrhythmic editing. Jones, wild as the countryside, is living with her coffin-making Dad and pet fox, when she catches the eye of ravish-ready squire David Farrar and his opposite number, consummation-delaying Parson Cyril Cusack. Naive and knowing, Jones marries one, falls for the other, repents too late.* Powell has trouble getting this one off the ground, it’s awkward as Jones’ fleeting passions, and the large cast are almost too characterful. But once the pieces are laid out, the film yields a strange, heady atmosphere all its own. Much helped by Brian Easdale’s fine score. (Stateside, Jones’ producer/husband David O. Selznick, in a destructive re-edit, added some unneeded clarifying signs & close-ups, and lopped off half an hour, releasing it as THE WILD HEART in 1952. Watch the final reel of each on the convenient KINO DVD to compare.*) One of those films that require sympathetic viewing, but worth the effort.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Perhaps this story might have worked better as a romantic ballet. With RED SHOES star Moira Shearer as lead?

DOUBLE-BILL: *Imagine this cast & crew magically imported to get David Lean’s problematic RYAN’S DAUGHTER/’70 right.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Damned if Selznick didn’t try the same trick on his next Euro-project for Jones, re-editing Vittorio De Sica’s flawed, but flavorsome STAZIONE TERMINI down half an hour into the disastrous INDISCRETION OF AN AMERICAN WIFE/’53.

(THE ADVENTURES OF) QUENTIN DURWARD (1955)

When IVANHOE/’52 outperformed commercially & critically (who saw that coming?), M-G-M producer Pandro S. Berman doubled down with a swashbuckling followup for journeyman contract helmer Richard Thorpe & journeyman contract star Robert Taylor, turning out the worst of all Camelot pics in KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE/’53: Taylor as a rather mature Lancelot in a tizzy over Ava Gardner’s louche Guinevere & Mel Ferrer’s wan Arthur. No matter, as one of the first CinemaScope releases, it did plenty o’ biz, enough to justify another go at the form. Still, someone must have noticed how droopy KNIGHTS was in spite of buffo box-office and tried to jazz up this Walter Scott adaptation with an ironic/comic edge: the age of chivalry is ending, gunpowder & shot have upended old ideas of truth & honor. So when Taylor calls on a French King for the hand of Countess Kay Kendall, asking not for himself (though he’s instantly smitten by the lady, as who wouldn’t be?*), but as emissary for ancient Lord Ernest Thesinger, he expects a fit greeting. But Robert Morley’s devious Louis XI has court games of his own to play, pitching one French Feudal Dutchy against another in a grand design to line up a proper Kingdom. If only you didn’t need a scorecard to keep track of the plots & counterplots; or if the attempted comic tone weren’t a bust from the start. And those long lines of CinemaScopic pageantry? They seem barely connected to the action. Yet about halfway in, as the tone shifts toward something less jocular, the film suddenly starts to work. Morley in particular comes to life as a frightening and very particular sort of Kingly character. (His second Louis for M-G-M, after Louis XVI in MARIE ANTOINETTE/’38.) And it’s all topped with a truly incredible Bell Tower sword fight finale for Taylor and his arch enemy (whomever that guy is supposed to be!), clanging clappers in a climax someone should have earned a bonus for. (Or is it in the novel?) Far better than KNIGHTS, it was a commercial flop and Taylor never donned metal cod piece again.

DOUBLE-BILL: *See the inimitable Kay Kendall in far more congenial circumstances in her next two films: George Cukor’s semi-musical LES GIRLS/’57 and Vincente Minnelli’s sly social romp THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE/’58, the latter with husband Rex Harrison, proudly gazing at her.

PETER PAN (1924)

Once thought lost, this silent film version of James M. Barrie’s Freudian Fairy Tale survived thru a single print of near mint condition. (Find it on KINO DVD.) Made with Barrie’s input, director Herbert Brenon offers the sort of cautious prestige moviemaking that tends to stink from too much quality & refinement. Happily, Barrie’s story is strong enough (and psycho-sexually weird enough) to withstand the largely proscenium-bound first two acts, holding interest till things loosen up in a more imaginative last act. Psychologically, the film misses a beat not using the same actor as Father Darling and Captain Hook. How else can the pure ‘id’ that is Peter Pan ‘kill’ his father and ‘marry’ his mother? And the style at the time for a dainty, feminine Peter (Betty Bronson*) feels odd after decades of tomboyish gals or teenage boys in the famous role. What holds up best are the charming/even thrilling special effects from Tech Director Roy Pomeroy, whose work still has a magical feel. (So too, James Wong Howe's crisp lensing in this early credit.) One shot near the end, when the pirate ship lifts off the sea to fly the boys home, still a stunning achievement. And here's a surprise: no epilogue with forever young Peter returning to find Wendy all grown with a daughter of her own . . . and so begin the cycle all over again. When was that bit added?

DOUBLE-BILL: *Bronson gets by here, but is truly insufferable as a waif with a brood of orphans to care for in the follow up Barrie/Brenon film, A KISS FOR CINDERELLA/’25. Worth a look for its ‘panto’ elements in a Cinderella dream with animated transformation magic. OR: Surprisingly, Disney’s 1953 animated PETER PAN captures a good deal of Barrie’s hormonally charged atmosphere. And while the score can’t match the old Mary Martin version, the Disney film is better than you may recall.

WHY WE FIGHT (1942 - '45)

Under the title MR. CAPRA GOES TO WAR, Olive Films has put together a collection of Frank Capra’s WWII Army films, made under his supervision during his war service to help recruits understand what the hell all the fighting was about. Exceptionally well introduced, really contextualized, by Capra biographer Joseph McBride (FRANK CAPRA: THE CATASTROPHE OF SUCCESS), they include PRELUDE TO WAR; THE BATTLE OF RUSSIA (Parts 1 & 2); THE NEGRO SOLDIER; TUNISIAN VICTORY & a post-war training short, YOUR JOB IN GERMANY. All still hold interest, not only for content but also as historic artifact themselves. The first, PRELUDE, remains the best-known, a sort of potted history of the path to war, it’s the one with all the cool maps & animated graphics showing Germany, Japan & Italy bleeding over borders to take over neighboring countries. (Disney did the animation graphics.*) But it’s the next two, RUSSIA and THE NEGRO SOLDIER, that really catch your eye. Especially Part 2 of RUSSIA, with its Battle of Stalingrad footage, and the fascinating Black History Lesson of NEGRO SOLDIER. Even its title sets up a historical tone, and the choice of what to include and what to omit (not a word about slavery; not a mention of current segregation in the services or the narrow fields of opportunity open to Blacks in the military). Largely written by Carlton Moss, who plays the minister in the film whose Sunday sermon is used to structure the story, the film is both advanced for its period and written with compromising blinders on. Longest and most disappointingly generic, TUNISIAN VICTORY suffers from missing combat footage lost at sea. A joint British/American project, this one turned out better in the Theatre of War than in the theater. The final brief film, about how U.S. G.I.s should go about policing, but never trusting defeated Germans, is hair-raising in a never forget/never forgive manner; script by Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Suess). As factual documentaries, these ‘teaching films’ are now a problematic part of history themselves. Unique and unmissable.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Disney’s great animated contribution to the war effort, VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER/’43, remains all but unknown. (see below under WALT DISNEY: ON THE FRONT LINES)    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/11/walt-disney-on-front-lines-1941-45.html

BROADWAY RHYTHM (1944)

Composer Jerome Kern’s last B’way show, VERY WARM FOR MAY, must have been jinxed. A final collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II after SHOW BOAT; SWEET ADELINE; MUSIC IN THE AIR (all filmed more or less intact), this retitled film kept nothing but one song (‘All the Things You Are’) and a bit of its out-of-town theater setting. But then, the stage show was treated just as shabbily by absent-producer Max Gordon, off in Hollywood embalming his hit play, ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS, then, upon his belated return, insisting on a new book no one liked . . . not even him! A blah three-month run & Kern never wrote for B’way again.* The largely original film version (downgraded from top producer Arthur Freed to L. B. Mayer son-in-law Jack Cummings) tries an Old School/New School angle with young producer George Murphy (sporting a disfiguring mustache) staging an up-to-date show for B’way while ‘Pops’ (Charles Winninger) opts for old-fashioned hoke out-of-town. Naturally, they join forces for a smash ending that makes little sense as drama or logistics. So it’s a good thing Roy Del Ruth’s film has a slew of Dance Directors staging nifty specialty acts. Worth a look to see young Lena Horne tear into Gershwin’s ‘Somebody Loves Me’; piano dazzler Hazel Scott swinging Chopin; a pair of good tap solos; slightly bizarre impressionist Dean Murphy go from Joe E. Brown to FDR & Eleanor; even leading lady Ginny Simms who offers little but diminuendos on long-held high notes. And that missing plot continuity? So extreme, it feels downright refreshing.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Kern did sign on for ANNIE GET YOUR GUN with lyricist/librettist Dorothy Fields and Ethel Merman as star, but died before he got started. (Producers Rodgers & Hammerstein induced Irving Berlin to take over, which he did, generously altering his percentage in Dorothy Fields' favor since Berlin wrote his own lyrics. A very classy move.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Hollywood rule-of-thumb says any storyline, no matter how tangential or idiotic, is better than no storyline, even if you’re just hiding a revue. See plotless ZIEGFELD FOLLIES/’45, fabulous and frustrating, for confirmation.

PREMATURE BURIAL (1962)

Of the series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations Roger Corman made in the early 1960s, the only one not to feature Vincent Price. Contractual issues with American International led Corman to go with Ray Milland as leading man, a change that makes all the difference, though not in a good way. A far more naturalistic actor than the positively rococo Price, Corman’s typically back-loaded horror structure needs Price’s over-scaled, campy style to get us thru the narrative filler of Corman’s embalmed first and second acts, vamping to extend the short story or poem he used as starting point. Milland works the thin material for what it is, too honest an actor for the film’s good. To Price, it’s all fodder for personality & vocal tics; perfectly in step with Corman’s take on Poe . . . for better or worse.* (Milland’s own strengths worked better on non-Poe Corman projects.) Here, the story has Milland newly married in spite of an obsession with death and his irrational fear of being buried alive, as he believes happened to his father. The script tosses in a bit of psychological ‘gaslighting’ to goose the narrative, but only comes fully to life in an amusingly morbid last act, with a coffin-bound Milland coming back to seek revenge. The guys he really should have gone after were the art & set decorators who apparently learned their trade at Motel 6.

DOUBLE-BILL: *See PIT AND THE PENDULUM/’61 for a good example of their symbiotic relationship.

KNICKERBOCKER HOLIDAY (1944)

Famous on B’way after emigrating from Germany, composer Kurt Weill was luckless on all his Hollywood transfers. LADY IN THE DARK/’44; ONE TOUCH OF VENUS/’48; LOST IN THE STARS/’74; this satirical piece, hits or succès d’estime on stage, butchered on screen. Some with added tunes by lesser hands. Here, Maxwell Anderson’s book, a not so great anti-tyrannical comedy about Peter Stuyvesant lording it over New Amsterdam (the target was FDR), largely survives. Weill's much finer score, not so lucky. The big hit, ‘September Song’ intact; the equally fine ballad ‘It Never Was You’ reduced to a few measures of background music; only two other songs from the show retained. Made on the cheap by producer Harry Joe Brown in his last directing gig, visually it’s drab as a ‘50s TV Spectacular. With Charles Coburn, a wily Stuyvesant but showing none of the devilish appeal Walter Huston must have brought to the role in the original stage run, though Nelson Eddy surprises with more animation than usual as a rabble-rousing newspaperman, in very fine voice on the few numbers left to him. One more missed opportunity for Weill, but worth a look as a historic curiosity and for a very young Shelley Winters, cute & funny as the second ingenue.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Weill also wrote original material for two semi-musicals, Fritz Lang’s troubled YOU AND ME/’38, with George Raft & Sylvia Sidney (not seen here), and the little seen delight, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE/’45, a late WWII pic at its best in a fantasy one-reel opera parody with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, Weill’s collaborator in LADY IN THE DARK and THE FIREBRAND OF FLORENCE.

LINK: An archival specialty arrangement of a cut number from KNICKERBOCKER showing what Anderson was aiming at. https://archive.org/details/78_how-can-you-tell-an-american_radio-city-four-anderson-weill_gbia0065085b/How+Can+You+Tell+an+American%3F+-+Radio+City+Four.flac

ROPE OF SAND (1948)

Bad blood and testosterone sizzle between revenge-minded Burt Lancaster and sadistic mining foreman Paul Henreid in this powerhouse entertainment from the Hal Wallis unit @ Paramount, with director William Dieterle ladling on a level of violence all but unheard of at the time. Set in the diamond dunes of Angola’s desert, the wide terrain is controlled back in the city by Claude Rains, and on-site by a shockingly vicious Henreid. (You’ll wince.) Past history brings Lancaster back on the scene to grab a cache of ‘rocks’ he left buried in the sand, helped by local scavenger Peter Lorre and by Corinne Calvet’s iniquitous escort. Or could she be making a play for Henreid & the diamonds, hidden at a location not even Henreid’s torture could force Burt to reveal. Maybe a lady’s charm could get him to talk. With many a plot twist to get thru before the tale is told (too many?), and with story hooks unexpectedly lifted out of Puccini/Sardou’s TOSCA*, we get to our destination after a few broken bones, dead bodies and a bag of cold, hard diamonds for remembrance.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *It's Calvet/Lancaster/Henreid in as Tosca/Cavaradossi/Scarpia, except for a final twist that sees Calvet & Lancaster swap function so that she takes on Cavaradossi action while Burt goes all in as Tosca! And that cache of diamonds hidden in the desert sand? A stand-in for Angelotti, TOSCA’s on-the-run revolutionary. Vissi d’arte, baby.

DUMBO (2019)

Tim Burton’s DUMBO: A Series of Unfortunate Events.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The original animated DUMBO/’41. PIXAR founder John Lasseter’s choice as the most perfect of Disney animated classics. With an all but completely different storyline, set in the circus of your dreams, it’s where you’ll believe an elephant can fly. Laughs, tears, tunes, hipsters, suspense, joy . . . the works.

Q PLANES / CLOUDS OVER EUROPE (1939)

Laurence Olivier is the glamorous test pilot and Valerie Hobson an undercover reporter in this deft little espionage number about industrial sabotage and kidnapping at sea of aircraft & crew by some unnamed foreign power. It seems a series of planes have vanished mid-flight from the skies, brought down (we soon learn) by a newfangled ray gun aboard a Top-Secret spy ship disguised as a salvage freighter. Some enemy country hoping to get their hands on a new experimental British-made super engine. And Olivier up for the next flight! Proto-James Bond material, not quite good enough to pass (the villains woefully underdeveloped), but given class treatment by a bunch of Alex Korda regulars (director Tim Whelan; lensers Harry Stradling & Jack Clayton; art director Vincent Korda), though not an official Korda production. What really makes this worth a look is Ralph Richardson as a Secret Service man, a spy-of-all-trades type. He’s a constant delight, as if tackling both ‘M’ and Agent 007 in some future James Bond film. (Why there’s even an Ian Fleming in the cast . . . just not that Ian Fleming.) Best in the first two acts (Richardson in clover, racing around to cover all bases), the film turns a bit messy in an action-packed third act, director Whelan not quite up to all the hand-to-hand combat during a shipboard takeover. While elsewhere, the bickering romantic banter for Hobson & Olivier is boilerplate stuff. Still, good breezy fun much of the way.

DOUBLE-BILL: More (and better) proto-Bondian wartime adventure in THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU/’43 with Robert Donat (and Valerie Hobson, again) as a bomb defuser turned spy.

LINK: Good Public Domain print here: https://archive.org/details/qplanes

A FOREIGN AFFAIR (1948)

Cynical & deadly serious, Billy Wilder’s political comedy about a righteous US Congressional delegation on a fact-finding tour in post-WWII Berlin, doesn’t get the attention it deserves.* And with front-loaded comic action, the drama just gets stronger as it calculates the pluses & minuses of corruption, social & political. Jean Arthur, in her penultimate film after a four-year break, is there as Iowa’s Congresswoman, a prim spinster with MidWest puritanical morals as unyielding as her tightly braided coif (a nod at Clair Booth Luce), chaffing at lax moral standards till she takes a fall of her own with two-timing Captain John Lund, a fellow Iowan mixed up with Marlene Dietrich’s sexual opportunist, a nightclub entertainer happy to play whatever chain-of-command is currently in power for protection & personal comfort. (BTW, that’s composer Friedrich Hollaender at the piano accompanying on his songs.) Overseeing this human comedy of love & provisions is Millard Mitchell, in his best role, as a Colonel-Knows-Best officer gently pulling the strings without letting on. Superbly plotted and phenomenally well-shot by Charles Lang (bombed out Berlin never looked worse/Marlene rarely so good in her later pics), the film was wise to many ideas before its time, shocking in its lighthearted amorality. Wilder, who served on Occupation de-Nazification Boards, knew what he was talking about, finding the wounding comic tone his beloved Ernst Lubitsch ignited in TO BE OR NOT TO BE/’41. (And look for a Lubitsch Touch worthy of the master involving seduction by file cabinet.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Perhaps undervalued because third lead John Lund, well-cast & very good pivoting from Dietrich’s corrupt allure to Arthur’s reluctance, is too shy on star wattage to properly compete. For comparison, see how John Hodiak makes out against Tallulah Bankhead in Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT/’44.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Long time partner/co-writer/producer Charles Brackett hated the film’s bitter edge & lack of uplift, splitting with Wilder after similar objections on SUNSET BOULEVARD/’50. Hard to believe that Gloria Swanson, that film’s pathetic silent film has-been, was a mere two years older than Marlene and just one year older than Jean Arthur.

THE KENNEL MURDER CASE (1933)

Spiffy murder mystery for William Powell, his penultimate film under contract to Warners, sees him reprising Philo Vance (S.S. Van Dine’s ritzy amateur detective*) after sleuthing in a trio of Vance films made when he was still at Paramount.* (It’s also something of an accidental dry run for THE THIN MAN series at M-G-M, Powell’s next studio.) Modest, but with a grand supporting cast (Mary Astor; Eugene Pallette; Robert Barrat; Etienne Girardot; all in a tizzy over show dogs, Chinese porcelain & murder) delivering loads of personality, and director Michael Curtiz, positively juiced behind the camera; at last, fully unshackled from the restraint of Early Talkie technology. While there’s still no background score, everything else is fully up to speed under Curtiz, adding his voice to the advances shown from Capra in AMERICAN MADNESS and von Sternberg in SHANGHAI EXPRESS the year before. Fun to see all those flourishes, wipes & trick edits, with Curtiz matching movement to mise en scène, swinging for the fences even on such mid-budget fare. The film is at its best in the first half, before too many murders call for too many elaborate explanations with the exposition wearing down the screenwriters. The Dine novels are probably meant to be closer to Dorothy Sayers than Agatha Christie. But this is generally good fun as a mystery and great fun as technical display.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Powell played Vance in THE CANARY MURDER CASE/’29; THE GREENE MURDER CASE/’29 and THE BENSON MURDER CASE/’30. Warren William took over from Powell on THE DRAGON MURDER CASE/’34. (not seen here)

TUNTEMATON SOTILAS / THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (2017)

Third film adaptation of Väinö Linna's classic WWII war novel, from Aku Louhimies, came out in three sizes: an international release of 2+ hours; a three-hour version for the home market; and extended tv mini-series at five. Kino-Lorber’s DVD opts for the three hour cut, which feels about right; easy to follow/compelling all the way. A traditional war platoon saga, it’s solid filmmaking, old-fashioned in a good way, with well-drawn, identifiable subsets of soldiers & officers taking us over the four year period (1941 - 1944) of Finland’s doomed fight to regain territory lost to Russia in the ‘Winter War’ of 1939.* For American audiences, it’s probably a shock to see that Finland aligned with Hitler’s German, and with no mention that British/American aid had first been refused. But the political backstory is downplayed for straightforward Men-At-War dramatics. Nothing you won’t recognize, but extremely good on those terms. With fully etched portraits of four or five leading players to chart the ebb and flow of battles & retreats. Technically, very well handled, with convincing effects wed to superb character acting. Seen at its best in the quiet heroics of a thrillingly well-constructed sequence where an indomitable older soldier, a take-no-crap-from-superiors type, finds a perfect natural redoubt hidden by snowfall, where he can believably take down an entire Russian battle unit moving below his position.

DOUBLE-BILL: Though very different in feeling & intent, Samuel Fuller’s flawed, but affecting THE BIG RED ONE/’80 comes to mind.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Finland’s 1939 loss to Russia in the Winter War got the prestige B’way treatment in Robert Sherwood’s THERE SHALL BE NO NIGHT: The Lunts, young Montgomery Clift, fat Sydney Greenstreet, and a multi-tasking Richard Whorf (actor & scenic designer), only to have Sherwood move the play’s location from Finland to Hungary post Nazi alignment!

READ ALL ABOUT IT: More great Finnish WWII movie material from this troubling period in William Trotter’s WINTER FIRE, told from the perspective of a reluctant Nazi intelligence officer stationed near the estate of composer Jean Sibelius. The mixture of war action & a blocked composer trying to ignore world events shouldn’t work, but does.

SECRET OF THE INCAS (1954)

Punchy adventure pic about an ancient Incan Gold artifact (myth or long lost treasure?) thought buried in the ruins of Machu Picchu, and a race between Charlton Heston’s American adventurer (atypically loose in morals & demeanor*) and scurvy rival scavenger Thomas Mitchell, each hoping to grab it before archeologist Robert Young & his Inca diggers find it. Fun, if a bit pokey (blame director Jerry Hooper), with ravishing Peru mountain vistas interrupted regularly by studio soundstage sets for the stay-at-home cast, and occasionally by de rigueur love interest Nicole Maurey as a stateless Euro-exile. Considering the film’s acknowledged influence on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK/’81 (Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones might have borrowed Heston’s leather jacket & khaki trousers from this film's wardrobe), the film gets little circulation, even as cult item. And with the glorious addition of freak-of-nature five-octave vocalist Yma Sumac, she of the gravelly low range and stratosphere-high Peruvian coloratura, this is some package of oddball delight!

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK/’81 . . . accept no sequels.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Hard-drinking scoundrel somewhat out of Heston’s range. Holding a glass of rot-gut whiskey as if it were a grenade about to go off.

ON THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE / THE FUGITIVE (1939)

Best known for his classic version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL/’51 (the Alastair Sim one), this earlier film by British director Brian Desmond Hurst is a real find. Consistently imaginative, it goes from a ‘kitchen-sink’ realism in Act One, to Act Two’s noirish paranoia before ending with jolts of German Expressionism in its man-on-the-run Act Three. Working from a novel by ODD MAN OUT author F.L. Green, noirish tints are backed up by composer Miklós Rózsa, and the expressionistic look by UFA seasoned cinematographer Günther Krampf. Still, the film largely belongs to that classically-trained everyman, Ralph Richardson, in the midst of a tremendous 1939 (FOUR FEATHERS; CLOUDS OVER EUROPE; THE LION HAS WINGS), typically superb as a much liked barber in a declining London nab, tempted into a robbery-of-opportunity when he spies a pile of loot thru an open window on a backstreet. A windfall that soon blows back on him, eating away home, family, work; a bad situation compounded by the murder of a would-be blackmailer. And the whole neighborhood seems to know who did it, so too the police. But lacking hard evidence, only a guilty conscience, and constant surveillance, will send the pressure over the boiling point. With its memorable cast (Diana Wynyard, Glynis Johns, Sara Allgood, Romney Brent) and strong tenement flavor, studio production details nicely matched to some grubby real-life locations, Richardson’s downward spiral makes for a devastating character study. Easy to find on line, and worth sticking out a dupey print that happily improves as is goes along.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Is this the first film to represent a murder by showing a record playing out? If not, it gets a unique spin with the needle coming to a stop as the wind-up Victrola runs down.