REACH FOR GLORY (1962)

William Golding’s LORD OF THE FLIES meets Ferenc Molnár’s THE PAUL STREET BOYS in this Little League anti-war cautionary tale.* Eager for battle, but too young to enlist, a gang of displaced schoolboys, sent for safety from the big city to a coastal town, play out turf battles in a mock war until real tragedy strikes. A workable idea, but Philip Leacock’s film starts on the wrong foot (and stays there) as our brutish boys take to their bikes on a metaphorical ‘fox hunt,’ chasing a cat right over a cliff. This action entirely unconvincing, but then the rest of the film is equally pre-deterministic, chucking believability overboard to score easy pacifist points. Nicely cast though, with a rough amateur edge to most of the teenage sociopaths giving the film whatever verisimilitude it has, even as action/character/plot fail to add up. No one in town notices something’s amiss? And just where are these maladjusted delinquents living? Disappointing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Peter Brook’s lumpy film of LORD OF THE FLIES/’63 once held a stellar rep, but Frank Borzage’s NO GREATER GLORY/’34, his version of Molnár’s THE PAUL STREET BOYS, remains a heartbreaking war allegory.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/no-greater-glory-1934.html

THE GILDED LILY (1935)

Coming off her 1934 annus mirabilis (FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE; CLEOPATRA - DeMille; Capra’s Oscar-winning IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT; racially-charged melodrama in John M. Stahl’s IMITATION OF LIFE), Claudette Colbert found lower stakes choosing between ‘regular newsguy’ Fred MacMurray and identity-masked British Lord Ray Milland (his first Hollywood role of note). It starts off well, as Colbert & MacMurray, in the first of seven pairings, shoot the breeze of a Thursday evening; him seeing stars/her hoping for fireworks. An explosion that spontaneously occurs when she bumps into Ray Milland on a subway platform. But tru-love takes a detour when MacMurray, on a work assignment, spots Milland boarding a British-bound ship as the fancy English Lord in town incognito and Colbert, after she sees the story in print, assumes she’s been taken for a ride. And that’s when the film goes off the tracks as MacMurray plays up the busted relationship as a publicity gag with Colbert, the injured party, rechristened ‘The girl who said NO!.’ Milking this misunderstanding as meal ticket, MacMurray comes across as a real crumb bum, costing Colbert her job and setting her up for even more humiliation as a flash-in-the-pan nightclub celeb. Then the film tries to have it both ways, letting Colbert succeed thru honest lack of talent, along with another go at Milland before everybody figures things out. Worse, Milland is so darn young, handsome & charming, he comes off as the natural match for Colbert, who dazzles in Victor Milner’s lens. No doubt this played differently for audiences at the time, all these mid-range Colbert rom-coms were big hits. (In spite of, or because of faceless helmers like Wesley Ruggles?) But after the first act, this one now works mostly as ‘30s artifact.

DOUBLE-BILL: DeMille’s FOUR FRIGHTENED FRIENDS (with a deglamorized Colbert) is an odd duck of a film, but the other three from ‘34 are classics. OR: See Ben Hecht juggle similar elements to better effect in NOTHING SACRED with Carole Lombard & Fredric March. (Look for the restored edition from KINO. Many Public Domain dupes out there.)

SCHLUßAKKORD / THE FINAL CHORD (1936)

Typically sudsy, romantic melodrama from Douglas Sirk (Detlef Sierck at the time) has all the expected ingredients for three-hankie nirvana: runaway mom returning from America to seek the baby boy she left behind; rich adoptive parents unknowingly hiring her as nanny; their crumbling marriage (she: hot for a seductive astrologist/he: finding a soul-mate in the pretty young nanny); an overly possessive housekeeper with a yen for her mistress; murder thru medical overdose; the works, yet it never quite emulsifies into a storyline you can buy into, bumping along point-by-point and shot-by-shot. A classical music backdrop adds interest, with Lil Dagover’s older wife reveling in empty high society & gossip, while husband/conductor Willy Birgel yearns for spiritual fulfillment thru Beethoven's Ninth with nanny/birth mother Mária Tasnádi Fekete. There’s a neat opening montage, a jazz party back in America that might have come from Ernst Lubitch’s SO THIS IS PARIS/’26, but much feels unpolished for Sirk, with far too many narrative shortcuts. Even in Nazi Germany both parents had to at least meet the child before adoption, ya? And Mária’s sponsors setting her up as nanny to her own son? Really? With Sirk at his best, the sense of personal identification can become overwhelming in even the most unlikely scenarios; here it’s just unlikely.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The remarkable Lil Dagover, tearing into her villainy with an appetite Bette Davis might envy, also led the way for older woman holding on to their sexual allure; she’s 49 pushing 50, not that you’d know it.

THE NAKED EDGE (1961)

Joseph Stefano, fresh off PSYCHO, riffs on SUSPICION/’41, an earlier Alfred Hitchcock film about a wife who comes to believe her husband is a murderer, yet so in love she’s willing to be his next victim. His script, a workable framework for a suspenser, something of a let down from a far more interesting prologue that sees Gary Cooper testify against a co-worker on a murder/robbery charge, putting the man in jail for life. Five years later, a delayed mail delivery shows up with a letter of blackmail that charges Cooper with the crime, lodging a nagging worm of doubt into wife Deborah Kerr’s head. Coop can’t explain away all the circumstantial evidence; Kerr can’t get past her doubts; and the wrong man may be in jail. If only workaday director Michael Anderson & gifted composer William Alwyn didn’t italicize every small revelation with self-defeating musical shrieks & attention grabbing camera moves. Stefano also overplays, hitting the same notes over & over. Kerr gets the worst of it, she’s either bonkers or auditioning for a remake of SORRY, WRONG NUMBER. Most commentators focus on Cooper, ill at the time in his last film (released after his death), but he’s excellent in a tough role, giving Kerr the benefit of the doubt and then some, with only a shot or two near the end revealing his grave condition. There’s actually too much material in here, enough for two or three films, just not enough for one.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, SUSPICION. OR: If SORRY, WRONG NUMBER interests you, the classic radio broadcast with Agnes Moorehead is a better bet than the disappointing 1948 film w/ Barbara Stanwyck & Burt Lancaster. LINK: Moorehead did eight radio relays, this one from 1945. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r5GZral6zs

THE BEAST OF THE CITY (1932)

Misguided attempt by M-G-M to go topsy-turvy on those celebrated early ‘30s gangster pics (LITTLE CAESAR; PUBLIC ENEMY; SCARFACE), focusing our sympathies on cops rather than robbers. But this try at fair play goes nowhere. (Though a fierce, if ridiculous, gun battle at the very end makes you feel you haven’t totally wasted 86 minutes.) Fast-fading director Charles Brabin* tries for dynamism, but the fancy tech work lags behind other studios while his multi-plane ‘action’ staging is stiff and looks over-planned/under-rehearsed. There’s just no swing to the thing, even with LITTLE CAESAR and SCARFACE’s W.R. Burnett on a story not without promise as Walter Huston’s kick-ass police chief goes after top mob man Jean Hersholt while kid brother Wallace Ford gets involved with mob floozy Jean Harlow unaware he’s being double-crossed. Harlow was the big draw here (note the tie-in book cover) in her first M-G-M feature. (And look for Mickey Rooney, also in a feature debut). Harlow’s acting is already vastly improved from earlier work, but she’d really find her sweet-and-sour self on her next pic, thanks to Anita Loos' naughty script for RED-HEADED WOMAN/’32.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Brabin never fully recovered after being canned in the wake of the aborted Italian shoot of BEN-HUR/’25, but stayed on at M-G-M as a utility man. His best sound film was probably STAGE MOTHER/’33 (with its proto-GYPSY storyline), but he was thru by 1934, a mere 52 yrs-old.

MY COUSIN RACHEL (1952)

From writer Daphne Du Maurier, more ‘near-beer’ Gothic Romance. This one a period piece, yet not too far off her better-known REBECCA/’40 where an admired beauty proves to be a force of evil. Here, our mysterious beauty is presumed a force of evil, perhaps unfairly. Richard Burton, in youthful trim making an effective Hollywood debut, does the presuming, certain his beloved cousin’s death was caused by a fateful wedding to Rachel. That’s Olivia de Havilland in peak loveliness as cousin-by-marriage Rachel, causing this young man’s libido to rage against wary instinct as she serves cup after cup of an Italian herbal tea elixir. Passion potion, palliative or poison? Nunnally Johnson’s succinct script manages to hold an ambiguous tone without turning idiotic, though some of the foreshadowing is on the clumsy side, while a surfacey Gothic style from director Henry Koster and lenser Joseph LaShelle matches the Du Maurier level of invention just right. Any deeper response and the film wouldn’t work at all. Leave it to composer Franz Waxman, just off his masterful A PLACE IN THE SUN score, and the sole holdover from REBECCA, to reach that deeper response without pulling everything down around him.

DOUBLE-BILL: A 2017 remake (not seen here) with Rachel Weicz, from Brit writer/director Roger Michell, attracted little interest.

MANBIKI KAZOKU / SHOPLIFTERS (2018)

Superbly original filmmaking from writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda, again focusing on a family unit, but here one of choice rather than simple blood-ties. Indeed, nothing simple about this story even after the third act explanations show up. Something that makes for a tricky write up without spoilers. What can be said is that Kore-eda is following a tradition going back to works by Dickens & Chaplin, who also found children in the trash, only to ‘adopt’ & raise them for their use as criminal accomplices. Here, it’s shoplifting. And not only ‘goods,’ but shoplifted lives, relationships & souls. And maybe not for the worse in a tight nuclear family of small-time con artists. Mom, Dad, Grandma, Older Sister, Rambunctious Boy & Newly Acquired Sad Little Sister, but with ‘quotes’ around each family position and pasts chasing them. Maybe there are advantages in day-to-day scrounging for food, clothing, housewares, squatter’s housing and gaming the welfare system. Kore-eda plays his fable very close to the vest, with immaculate compositions telling us no more than exactly what we need to know; withholding much we’d like to. And when he does fill in lacunae, everything clicks into place without a single disappointing answer. Something of a miracle, with outcomes ranging from bittersweet to softly tragic. Plus a cast that couldn’t be bettered, and in young Jyo Kairi, a worthy successor to little Jackie Coogan of Chaplin’s THE KID/’20. The film is a masterpiece.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Few Cannes’ Palme d’Or winners are as easy to get behind.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, Chaplin’s THE KID/’21. OR: For more Kore-eda, try STILL WALKING/’08, an earlier masterpiece.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Brandon Tartikoff, Chairman of Paramount when the first ADDAMS FAMILY movie came out, completely missed the point (and the underlying joke of the whole series) when he described them as the ultimate dysfunctional family. Kore-eda would have known better. Maybe he could be coaxed into an Addams Family reboot?

I WAS A SPY (1933)

Playing catch-up to Greta Garbo in MATA HARI & Marlene Dietrich in DISHONORED, British beauty Madeleine Carroll entered the WWI spy racket as a brave Belgian nurse, charged with delivering messages hidden in cabbages & apple cores, wrapped under bandages or written on cigarette paper, when not openly whispering them in cafés. Under the cover of a hospital job that has her tending all sides & nationalities, Carroll is romanced by German Kommandant Conrad Veidt, keeping her above suspicion & beyond curfew laws. Secretly, she’s in cahoots with dashing doctor/fellow spy Herbert Marshall, for some reason, two stone heavier than he was back in Hollywood. (Too many meat pies?) With nice production value and an exceptional supporting cast (Edmund Gwenn, Nigel Bruce, Martita Hunt), Victor Saville’s direction still can’t rise much beyond a mezza-mezza script that cuts too many corners. Or rather, can’t until a stunningly handled coda signifying the end of the conflict in four static shots, done entirely without dialogue and ending on striking portrait shot of a deglamorized, yet utterly beautiful, close-up of Carroll. If only the rest of the film lived up to the tag end!

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, MATA HARI/’31, pretty ridiculous but it does include this priceless exchange between Garbo spy & Ramon Novarro target: RN: I love you as one adores sacred things. GG: What sacred things? RN: God; Country; Honor; YOU. GG: I come last? OR the generally under-rated DISHONORED (look for the superb UCLA restoration), better in almost every way from the stiff Garbo pic though mainly famous for Josef von Sternberg’s shockingly interrupted execution scene and Dietrich’s final lip-gloss touch-up.

HOPE AND GLORY (1987)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, . . . but mostly the best of times. John Boorman’s counter-intuitive memoir of a suburban London childhood over the darkest days of WWII, emphasizes the horror, wonder, unanswerable questions and infinite excitement of a never-forgotten experience. With a uniquely playful tone emphasizing not the usual sacrifice & uplift, but positive outcomes landing almost by chance within one rather eccentric nuclear family amid the panic & localized deaths. Sarah Miles, making up for a lot of over-wrought dramatics, makes the most practical of moms, keeping a semblance of order with a husband off to war (for a bit), an old suitor she might have married, a newly sexually active 16-yr-old daughter, a girl about five and, in the middle, Bill, a roustabout boy and Boorman’s 10-yr-old alter ego who gives the film its main P.O.V. as he turns all but the very worst of events into occasions of adventuresome joy. Never more then when he’s suffering from Ian Bannen’s reprobate Granddad with his alarming freethinking ways. The stories, appalling & hilarious at the same time, hit one comic peak after another: A found tin of enemy jam; An unusually successful fishing excursion; A surprising schoolyard celebration (many more); OTT and completely believable. Not just youthful resilience, but national resilience; gilded with Boorman’s palpable love for his characters, giving the film unexpected warmth, depth, and the lived-in nap of history.

DOUBLE-BILL: Three decades later, Boorman made a coming-of-age followup taking ‘Bill’ thru compulsory military service in the pleasing, if not especially memorable QUEEN & COUNTRY/’14. It proved too little, too late, though not a bad sign-off for this great director.

POWER OF THE PRESS (1928)

Delightfully lighthearted comic/romantic melodrama from Frank Capra who seems on holiday in this throwaway fare after scoring big on SUBMARINE/’28, Columbia Pictures first film to use synch-sound effects. Tossing off a final silent, everyone gets in the spirit as ridiculously handsome ‘cub’ reporter Douglas Fairbank Jr gets the year’s big scoop when the District Attorney is murdered and he spots cute mayoral candidate daughter Jobyna Ralston escape from a window at the back of the house. What a story! It’ll completely upend the election. What Fairbanks doesn’t know is that he’s being set up as patsy for a rival mayoral candidate now positioned to win on election night. But when Ralston pleads her case, Doug falls in love, and has to find the real killer. Capra, with fabulous moves from cameraman Ted Tetzlaff, shows tremendous late silent form (one shot whipping around an office door a real ‘Yowsa!’ moment). And watch for a great set piece, a mini-documentary on taking a story from typewriter, thru composition room, hot metal print run before it gets wrapped for the street. Done with a youthful zest for the medium few could equal at the time. Once we leave the newspaper offices the film loses some of its specificity, fun & momentum, but still a darn sweet ride. And that includes a wild car chase climax before young Doug straightens everything out to win the girl. All in just over an hour.

DOUBLE-BILL: Ralston, who didn’t survive the Talkie transition, probably had her best year in 1927: LIGHTNING; WINGS and in her regular spot as Harold Lloyd’s best co-star in his best pic THE KID BROTHER.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Perhaps because Joseph McBride wrongly refers to POWER just as melodrama in his epic, if mean-spirited, FRANK CAPRA: THE CATASTROPHE OF SUCCESS, everyone else follows suit . . . and tends to write off this fun pic. But all the melodramatic elements come with clear comic edge. Even in 1928, especially in 1928, height of Jazz Age sophistication, no one would have taken this seriously.

ABOUT MRS. LESLIE (1954)

After nearly 30 years on B’way, and a belated, Oscar-winning film debut in COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA/’52 when she was already 54*, a follow-up was in order for Shirley Booth, an uncommon actress with the common touch. But in what kind of role? Producer Hal Wallis had enough trouble convincing Paramount to hire her the first time. Studio execs debated if his latest 'discovery' looked more like a potato or a dumpling. Alas, second time out wasn’t the charm and Booth only made a couple more feature films before lowering her gaze to land a big success as tv’s housekeeping HAZEL. At least this film tried something out of the ordinary, or does for about half its running time. Another '50s kitchen-sink drama, her own story told in flashback from the suburban rooming-house she owns & runs (in Beverly Hills, no less) as three-and-a-half pocket dramas play out among her tenants. Two young/attractive would-be performers; a married couple waiting out bad news on a relative in hospital; the selfish spitfire teen girl next door she’s watching for the day; cliché stuff. Her past far more interesting as Shirley’s NYC café singer (in her own tender squawk of a voice) starts up an odd, ‘companiate’ affair with rich, handsome industrialist Robert Ryan. Once a year, every year, off they go for a six week Pacific shore, no-questions-asked getaway holiday. Ending with a hasty, full-throttle kiss goodbye. What’s with this Ryan character? Major psychological baggage holding him back? Then, when the explanation finally comes, it’s the most obvious, banal one in the book and the rest of the film groans it’s way toward unearned misery. Booth is so damn good, it’s affecting in spite of itself, even with director Daniel Mann making as drab a product as he possibly can. One of those directors who thinks suppression of visual flair a sure sign of honesty. Yet how far are we from Max Ophüls territory? Still, with so little of Booth out there, worth a look.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Booth’s film debut might have come earlier if Kate Hepburn had gotten her way to have Booth repeat her stage role in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, but the part was glammed up for Ruth Hussey much to Hepburn’s regret. Not that that stopped Hepburn from nabbing two of Booth’s stage hits in their film versions when TIME OF THE CUCKOO became SUMMERTIME/’54 and when DESK SET the play was turned into DESK SET/’57 the movie.

DOUBLE-BILL: Did SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR/’78 grow out of this?

THE MAGICIAN (1926)

Powerhouse silent film director Rex Ingram, lost his mojo when he moved operations from Hollywood to France*; films still good, Zeitgeist missing. His second, both impressive and influential, a horror film loosely based on a Somerset Maugham novel, strongly suggesting James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN/’31. It stars Ingram’s regular leading-lady (and wife) Alice Terry as a sculptor saved from paralysis by blandly handsome doc Iván Petrovich, their romance interrupted by ‘mad scientist’ Paul Wegener, hypnotically luring Terry to his castle to get his hands on the life-giving blood only she can supply for his experiments. Ingram, working for the last time with painterly cinematographer John Seitz (FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, PRISONER OF ZENDA, SCARAMOUCHE behind him; collaborations with Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges ahead), puts on a series of very creepy/very effective set pieces (a hallucinatory Walpurgisnacht; carnivals & snake acts; a laboratory in a thunder struck tower), but the story never acquires the sexy momentum Ingram drew from Terry with Rudolph Valentino & Ramon Novarro. While villainous Paul Wegener might be posing for stills, a tactic that worked better in his signature role of THE GOLEM/’20. Worthwhile, faults and all, especially in the fine edition put out by TCM (see it here: LINK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl0dc5cB-8w), with a score by Robert Israel that uses lots of Tchaikovsky, Liszt & Chopin.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Ingram was miffed when Metro Pictures merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, doubly so when passed over for BEN-HUR/’25.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: British director Michael Powell fell into the movie business and worked his way up in three of Ingram’s French productions. Recalled in remarkable detail in the first (and better) volume of his auto-bio A LIFE IN THE MOVIES.

CHARLEY VARRICK (1973)

Made on the favorable backdraft of DIRTY HARRY's commercial glow, this action/thriller from no-nonsense/just-the-facts director Don Siegel still waits to get the attention it deserves. A twisty tale of small-time bank robbers stumbling into big-time Mob Money, then trying to put police and Mafia enforcers off the scent, it just may be the best Elmore Leonard adaptation ever made. Particularly impressive, since Leonard had nothing to do with the film. Faux Leonard better than the real thing.* Walter Matthau, under the impression he was slumming in a non-literary pic, is an unusual choice that pays off as Charley, ex-crop duster/current hold-up man, trying to stay alive long enough to clean up after his dangerous good fortune. With standout support up and down the line, Joe Don Baker & John Vernon exceptionally threatening and vile culling their way thru Matthau’s associates to the missing cash. Siegel, delivering one thrilling set piece after another, also takes time for unexpected intimacy, including a brilliant scene for Vernon and a compromised bank manager, staged outdoors as a deceptively simple two-shot. (Like his action scenes, there's wit in the economy and precision.) With great work from debut cinematographer (and Siegel godson) Michael Butler, along with some truly alarming stunt work,* the film is a hard-nosed treasure waiting to be discovered.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Gold standard for real Leonard goes to JACKIE BROWN/’97 and GET SHORTY/’95. (Though not sure if revisiting SHORTY is worth the risk.)

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Find out how they did those stunts (and which were happy accidents) in Siegel’s auto-bio, A SIEGEL FILM. (Extra points for spotting Siegel losing at ping pong.)

THE GOOD FAIRY (1935)

Taken from a charming, not quite satisfying Ferenc Molnár comedy (a big success on B’way with Helen Hayes, Walter Connolly & a tacked-on ten-years-later epilogue to straighten out unresolved problems), Preston Sturges’ reworked script legitimately shows a very free hand, not just opening up the one-set play, but also in finessing Production Code objections. It doesn’t all come off, some of the physical farce now seems labored, but thanks to William Wyler’s command of mise-en-scène, it gains traction as it goes along, building character sympathy and really coming together in a stunningly well-constructed comic chase climax. Margaret Sullavan is the eponymous ‘fairy,’ a naïve orphan (in Sturges’ revision) chosen to work as a movie theatre usherette where she meets-cute with Reginald Owen, an eruptive waiter who opens her to a world of luxurious possibilities and wealthy ‘sponsors.’ That’d be Frank Morgan as the hopeful sponsor, put off when Sullavan slows down his advances with an imaginary husband. No problem, Morgan’s happy to sponsor this ‘husband.’ Problem solved, affair on. And the husband is . . . ? Enter struggling lawyer Hebert Marshall, a name plucked out of the phone book, but set for sparks to fly when Sullavan awkwardly enters his office & life. As mentioned, a bit of tolerance needed here & there (Sturges working out ideas he’d tackle again in CHRISTMAS IN JULY/’40 and THE PALM BEACH STORY/’42*), but even as it stands, pretty charming, pretty adorable, pretty darn funny. And check out that stellar supporting cast!

DOUBLE-BILL: Sturges still working out kinks in the plot when he tried this as MAKE A WISH, a semi-flop 1951 B’way musical for Nanette Fabray. Even with a score by Hugh Martin, it’s all but vanished; instead try the two Sturges classics mentioned above.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: By MAKSQUIBS as this got written up 12 years back. At least it’s 'new & improved!' The coronavirus quarantine is eating my memory!

CHRONICLE (2012)

Writer/director Josh Trank couldn’t have known his debut pic, a cautionary tale about three High School seniors who acquire, and then abuse, super powers, would boomerang into a cautionary tale for himself.*  A pity since, within limits, a lot of talent on display here. (High School ID advised though not mandatory for maximum enjoyment.) At a ‘rave,’ popular senior Michael B. Jordan, intellectual Alex Russell and nerdy cousin Dane DeHaan (carrying video camera*) spelunk into a mystery hole out back only to emerge with unexplained telekinetic powers. (That’s moving objects thru thought.) But what begins as amusing pranks & magic tricks soon accelerates into dangerous dabbling in real world events & felonies; three Sorcerer’s Apprentices without a sorcerer to corral immature teenage tendencies. The film has the usual problems of 25 yr-olds playing 12th graders, all echoing early Tom Cruise/Leo DiCaprio/Christian Slater to some degree. (Where’s John Cusack?) More troublesome, the film’s convenient reliance on video documentation (less cliché in 2012?), and in having Jordan’s top-trending teen spend so much time with a pair of campus also-rans. (Plus, cloud-surfing in a thunderstorm, even in emotional distress, hard to swallow.) Sill, it moves well, with Trank holding on to his nihilistic principles by losing his nihilistic principals. And thanks to a tidy budget, clean/impressive CGI set pieces that know when to stop.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *After CHRONICLE hit big at the box-office, Trank forgot the moral of his film: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility; blowing 10X the budget on FANTASTIC FOUR/’15 (not seen here) before disowning/badmouthing the pic after he’d lost creative control.   A clear case of ‘Franchise-icide,’ Hollywood’s ultimate sin.  Then a long wait before the recent, horribly received CAPONE/’20 (also not seen here).

DOUBLE-BILL: A treat for the DONNIE DARKO/’01 crowd . . . and speaking of careers, where has Richard Kelly, that film’s writer/director been for the last decade?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *DeHaan also carrying sympathy overload: dying mother, violent/alcoholic dad, virgin; if he had a dog, someone would kick it.

SLEEPING CAR (1933)

Born in Ukraine, Anatole Litvak was one of those malleable directors comfortable in whatever culture, language or country he found himself; professional ease in Germany or France, England or Hollywood, a sort of minor league Julien Duvivier. In this, his first English-language pic, he jumps in with technical assurance giving this silly romantic comedy visual flair & fluid movement to recall early René Clair (UNDER THE ROOFS OF PARIS/’30; À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ/’31). And if he’s unable to keep up the invention, it hardly matters since the story is such an unpleasant muddle. What were they thinking? Ivor Novello, in a dynamic mode that will surprise those who only know him from Hitchcock’s THE LODGER/’27, is a girl-in-every-port Sleeping-Car attendant on the Orient-Express (so girl-at-every-station?) who meets cute with Madeleine Carroll’s spoiled divorcée. But their on-again/off-again romance gets sidetracked when the film finally lands on a plot (of sorts) halfway thru with Carroll’s reckless driving having her tossed out of France unless she marries a Frenchman in 14 days. (Suddenly, it’s Buster Keaton’s SEVEN CHANCES with a gender switch.) Alas, our two leads have by now become too unpleasant to root for . . . separately or together. William Powell & Carole Lombard might have pulled it off. Not these two. Worth a peek for first act technical dazzle, but little else.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Litvak upped his game on tragic romance in MAYERLING/’36 (Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux); and romantic charm in TOVARICH/'37 (Boyer, Claudette Colbert)..

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: No posters seem to survive on this one, so a magazine cover of Ms. Carroll, probably in support of THE PRISONER OF ZENDA/’37.

HOME AT SEVEN / MURDER ON MONDAY (1951)

This modest murder mystery is the unexpected choice for Ralph Richardson’s directing debut . . . and finale; he never tried again. Richardson makes an unexceptional job of it, but does surround himself with pros behind (writer Anatole de Grunwald; lenser Jack Hildyard; score Malcolm Arnold) and in front of the camera (himself; Margaret Leighton; Jack Hawkins). If only the story’s tsunami of circumstantial evidence linking Richardson’s mid-level bank manager to a local robbery/murder didn’t end as a last minute deus ex machina soliloquy that scuttles a promising plot gimmick with Richardson coming home, as always, at seven, but a full day late. It’s not Monday at seven, it’s Tuesday at seven. 24 hours gone missing. No moot point when some recent actions & a few white lies only tie him tighter to that robbery at his club and to the murder of a club employee he tried to have fired. As director, Richardson can’t do much with the facile explanations that get him in (and eventually out) of trouble, all second-hand stuff, but does manage a slightly off-balance, playful tone that keeps you watching. A shame he put Hawkins in the wrong role. Cast as a sympathetic shrink, brought in by Leighton’s worried wife, he really ought to be playing the police inspector, a better, larger role which goes to journeyman Campbell Singer. Perhaps Richardson let Hawkins make the choice.*

DOUBLE-BILL: *See what Hawkins might have done as Inspector in John Ford’s barely released, much dissed, modest to a fault, but neatly handled GIDEON OF SCOTLAND YARD/’58.

ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON (1933)

A rare chance to compare/contrast Hollywood minimalist & maximalist icons as Gary Cooper and James Cagney tackle the same role eight years apart.* Here, it’s Coop as discontented, middle-aged dentist Biff Grimes looking back at the girl who got away, lovely Fay Wray, swept into a hasty marriage by supposed best pal Neil Hamilton to a life of fame & fortune while Gary ‘settles’ for sweet, but unexciting Frances Fuller. (Busy on B’way, this is a rare Hollywood gig for Fuller.) Loaded with charm and ‘Gay ‘90s’ period detail, there’s just enough plot to support Cooper’s slow-burn as he thinks back on how he was consistently one-upped by Hamilton, while he waits to take revenge on his old pal, unexpectedly in town after a decade and in need of a dentist to pull an aching tooth. Naturally, a twist at the climax settles all grievances, but the film functions nicely as a mild, rather than wild, stroll in the park with plenty of opportunities for Coop to snub the girl who’ll prove to have been the right choice all along. Director Stephen Roberts, who died young in ‘36, let’s some scenes go on too long (the play was still running on B’way with Lloyd Nolan as lead when this opened), but builds rhythm in a series of playful outings for the foursome. Good quiet fun, with Cooper graying up handsomely for the bookend scenes and giving out with a passable baritone (in harmony!) on a few singalongs with second-best pal Roscoe Karns. Winning stuff, even with a reel and a half missing from modern prints.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Cagney's version, Raoul Walsh’s THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE (Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth, Jack Carson co-star) is a far better developed film, though perhaps a bit too knowing in the manner it polishes up period flavor & charm. Walsh gave it another turn, this time as a musical under its original title with Dennis Morgan, Don DeFore, Dorothy Malone & Janis Paige/’48 (not seen here).

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Interesting that Cooper & Cagney were two of Orson Welles’ favorites. Coop because you thought nothing was happening on set (and Welles watched him being filmed up close), only to see it all show up (and more) when projected on the screen. And Cagney because he broke every rule on what was supposed to constitute film acting (in scale, projection, larger-than-life characterization, speed), it wasn’t how BIG the acting was, but how TRUE.

THE MOON IS DOWN (1943)

Little remembered John Steinbeck novel, presumably rushed out to catch an early moment in WWII, made fast & cheap @ 20th/Fox on still-standing sets from HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY/’41, improbably repurposed from Welsh coal mining town to Norwegian iron ore city. Similarly repurposed, Irving Pichel, VALLEY’s narrator, here as straightforward director. (He acts in it too, that’s Pichel reading dynamite instructions.) The familiar story shows a small local militia quickly succumbing to Nazi invaders, helped by a local Quisling figure, who are soon crippled by their own overbearing regulations and the discovery that a free people will never be won over by brute force and retribution executions. A starless ensemble cast shines in its older character actors (Cedric Hardwicke, Henry Travers, Margaret Wycherly, honorary oldster Lee J. Cobb), but the young people barely register. (Though one did off-screen as wan leading lady Dorris Bowdon gave up acting for a successful marriage to this film’s producer/writer Nunnally Johnson.) And that’s not all that’s out of whack as conceptually strong situations aren’t properly set up. Ditto on relationships. Missed opportunities in a race to get this into theaters before events (and a better competing film*) overtook it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hoping familiarity with the set would keep him one step ahead, they also kept VALLEY cinematographer Arthur Miller, but he phones it in.

DOUBLE-BILL: *That better competing Hollywood film on small town Norwegian resistance was Lewis Milestone’s superb EDGE OF DARKNESS, out just months later with Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Walter Huston & Judith Anderson.

THE TENANT (1976)

Even without reading the book this film is based on, you can tell that the existential dread & modern paranoia in Roland Topor’s novel are secondhand goods, lifted to varying degree from Dostoevsky, Gogol, Kafka, Camus . . . you know the list. But if the novel is less than original, Roman Polanski’s first-rate film adaptation certainly is, possibly the best of his lesser known works. (Polanski’s last two for Paramount were ROSEMARY’S BABY/’68 and CHINATOWN/’74; imagine the consternation when this showed up!) Polanski stars in an unnerving study as an everyman figure who takes over the apartment of a female suicide victim only to find himself helplessly falling into the spirit & ways of the former tenant. Surrounded by a building’s worth of living gargoyles (disturbingly/amusingly cast with Supporting Oscar winners: Shelley Winters; Lila Kedrova; Jo Van Fleet; Melvyn Douglas), he politely, but ineffectually fights against the inevitable loss of self when not attempting to discover the mystery of the communal toilet directly across from his window. What are those people doing there, standing for hours and staring at him. And when he does go to investigate, his doppelgänger stares back. No Exit. (Sorry, Sartre.) As a friend of the tenant who becomes a new girlfriend, Isabel Adjani overworks her inner Diane Keaton, but everyone else is spot on, especially at a ghastly housewarming party with Polanski’s awful office mates as noisy guests. Ignore the tag ending, something Fritz Lang might have arranged, but until then, this is thrillingly good. Plus Philippe Sarde’s score and Sven Nykvist’s miraculously subtle/expressionistic lighting.

DOUBLE-BILL: Kafka/Welles’ THE TRIAL/’63; Camus/Visconti’s THE STRANGER/’67; Melville/Friedman’s BARTLEBY/’70 - all on similar wavelengths.

THE LONG DARK HALL (1951)

One of those frustrating films more interesting to discuss than see.* A somber ‘wrong man’ murder case, Rex Harrison is buried under a mountain of circumstantial evidence when his mistress turns up dead and he initially lies about the relationship to protect loyal wife Lilli Palmer. Just off B’way’s BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE and at the height of their theatrical glamor, this real-life married couple make unlikely suburban middle-class stiffs, especially for the workaday realism scripter Nunnally Johnson was aiming at. The film is less forced in a few film noir sequences with serial killer Anthony Dawson going about his deadly business and later when he buds up with Lilli’s worried wife. Very creepy. If only untested directors Reginald Beck & Anthony Bushell had a stronger approach to the material. They mostly just walk thru and hope the solid acting will pull them along. (And the hastily added wraparound segments with an American reporter reading up on the case only makes things worse.) Harrison & Palmer must have been hoping for a change of pace from their sophisticated theatrical offerings, but the film simply isn’t good enough. (They’d have better luck with THE FOUR POSTER next year.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: *Three of those ‘discussables’ involve Alfred Hitchcock. Cinematographer Wilkie Cooper, fresh from STAGE FRIGHT/’50 under Hitch, shows how hit-and-miss he was without a firm taskmaster. On the other hand, Hitch may have gotten the idea to cast Anthony Dawson as Grace Kelly’s putative strangler in DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54 here. Finally, for the sort of quotidian miscarriage of justice tale Nunnally Johnson was aiming for, see Hitchcock’s habitually underrated THE WRONG MAN/’56, mostly written by Maxwell Anderson.

BULLDOG DRUMMOND (1929) BULLDOG DRUMMOND STRIKES BACK (1934)

One of a mere handful of established silent era stars to not only make the silent-to-sound transition intact, but to surpass earlier success, Ronald Colman may have been pushing 40 (not that you’d know it), but was blessed with one of the most memorable, sheerly beautifully voices around; that fading cadence, those Mid-Atlantic vowels. No other major star without an eccentric vocal delivery was more imitated. (And not only by impressionists for comic effect, a host of would-be Colmans, including the young Larry Olivier in his first Hollywood foray.) Colman was lucky in his Talkie debut, a light comic, amateur detective thriller, in having imaginative, well-paced direction by F. Richard Jones, a natural technician with a grounding in comic two-reelers who died of TB soon after this.* And Jones was similarly lucky, that is on the job, helped by the dashing visual glamor & artful shots of cinematographers George Barnes & Gregg Toland, plus William Cameron Menzies on production design. A strong UFA German Expressionist influence here, only occasionally dragged down by dead-weight Early Talkie staging. Nineteen-yr-old Joan Bennett makes a striking debut asking Drummond to find her missing uncle, while Montagu Love & Lilyan Tashman vamp nicely as suave villains. Grateful cineasts of the day pounced on a Talkie that didn’t stop for songs or love-making speeches, but still moved like a . . . well, like a movie.

Five years on, Nunnally Johnson used the earlier Sidney Howard script as template for Colman’s moderately pleasing return as the upperclass sleuth. Now the girl with the missing uncle & stolen document is Loretta Young. There’s another Lights-Out sequence; even a running gag about interrupted romance. In the first film, Drummond’s insufferable pal Algy keeps showing up at just the wrong moment. Here, the roles get reversed. Under Roy Del Ruth, it’s likeable and nicely peopled, but the early scenes with a disappearing body and a real London ‘pea-souper’ promise legit mystery before the film takes something of a ScrewBall curve. It doesn’t stand out from the 1934 crowd as the first film did in ‘29.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Many lost films on the F. Richard Jones’s CV, but happily Douglas Fairbanks’ next-to-last silent, THE GAUCHO/’27, with Doug’s most ambivalent hero, is nicely preserved.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: IMDb disses Colman on his page with a link to the wrong PRISONER OF ZENDA! Not his classic ‘37 beauty (with Madeleine Carroll & Douglas Fairbanks Jr), but the shot-for-shot TechniColor remake of 1952 with Stewart Granger. For shame!

THE NAME OF THE ROSE (1986)

Something of a disappointment when it came out (tough to follow as unlikely a phenom as semiotics professor Umberto Eco’s wickedly entertaining/scholarly international bestseller), Jean-Jacques Annaud’s courtly adaptation of what’s basically a meticulously accurate* 14th Century murder-in-the-abbey Sherlock Holmes pastiche (Friar William von Baskerville?) has only improved with age. The astonishing physical production (cinematography Tonino Delli Colli; design Dante Ferretti) & near flawless casting (second-billed F. Murray Abraham a dead loss, but a small role) help put it over, but the script on this intellectual puzzle also plays fair, character & clues allowing gruesome murders & convoluted explanations to really add up, and with much of the mischievous fun & malevolence they had on the page. (Though you do need to give it time to get into gear and find its tone.) Sean Connery, beginning his late great period (UNTOUCHABLES, INDIANA JONES and RUSSIA HOUSE soon follow), brings wit & command, and a very young Christian Slater is innocence itself by his side. A kick just seeing everything fall into place; or perhaps, one of those rare mysteries that play better when you know (or at least half-remember) how it all turns out.

DOUBLE-BILL: Annaud can be a hard director to get behind. But his Seige-of-Stalingrad pic, ENEMY AT THE GATES/’01, deserves a second look. (So too ROSE to judge by previous, less than enthusiastic mentions here!)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Accuracy personally confirmed by a chance encounter with a member of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study (the place they built for Einstein to work in) who knocked Barbara Tuchman’s acclaimed 14th Century novelistic treatment in A DISTANT MIRROR in comparison to Eco’s pop masterpiece.

THE MATING SEASON (1951)

Don’t let the fourth billing fool you, in the largest role, Thelma Ritter is both main attraction & reason enough for seeing what by all rights ought to be a pretty tired marital farce for newlyweds Gene Tierney (glam diplomatic service brat) & John Lund (striving young exec from a working-class background). Turns out Mom (that’s Ritter) has just closed the ol’ hamburger stand and hitched her way over to join her boy, only to discover the fancy social bracket Lund’s trying to climb into and, knowing she’ll never fit in, decides to keep her distance. Then, when she does try a belated appearance, a domestic mixup sets her up as hired help to Tierney, followed by a series of miscues that keep her there as troubles brew at home and office where she fine tunes everyone’s problems with her folksy commonsense wisdom and good cookin’. The usual (reverse) class condescending malarkey. Yet, it’s all but impossible not to fall for it here, with a script smart enough to almost make sense of the escalating missteps (Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch) and direction from Mitchell Leisen that rarely pushes too hard and largely avoids ‘the cutes.’ Miriam Hopkins is a natural pain as Tierney’s snob-of-a-mom and there’s rich support from Jan Sterling, Ellen Corby, Larry Keating as a sympathetic boss and a wonderfully odd perf from little known James Lorimer, a real wild card as slaphappy dipsomaniac heir apparent. Goodness knows what this might be like without Ritter’s preternatural sense of fun, immaculate comedy technique & spot-on timing, but since she is there . . . what’cher waiting for?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Brackett double-dipped Ritter in ‘51 with THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER, this time with George Cukor directing. A bit less silly; it’s even better. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-model-and-marriage-broker-1951.html

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY (1957)

More points for effort than result in what ought to be a dandy fact-based WWII story of the only German Prisoner-of-War to escape and make it back to Berlin to fly & fight again after being held in Britain & Canada. Prolific director Roy Ward Baker keeps things simple on a tight budget, getting the most out of an excellent cast, including Alec McCowen in a sharp early turn as a not too gullible British officer, and a perfectly cast Hardy Krüger as the downed Nazi pilot. Determined & playfully arrogant, he trusts British love of routine & fair play to help him finagle his way past obstacles on land & sea, a slow-thinking army and any sharp-eyed locals. Change the uniform and he might be a precursor to Steve McQueen in THE GREAT ESCAPE/’63. Of course, rooting for Nazi flyers a bit of a leap, even more so in 1957, which is partly why we skip the last act of the story (possibly the most interesting part) where our adventurer returns to a hero’s welcome in Berlin before starting more bombing runs for the Third Reich. No doubt, the budget couldn’t make a go of it, but it’s something of a missed dramatic opportunity and a moral cop-out. Another chance for irony & suspense the filmmakers left on the table.

DOUBLE-BILL: Perhaps a splashier Hollywood remake could have dealt with some of the more uncomfortable elements, just as modest British P.O.W. pics like THE COLDITZ STORY/’55 and THE PASSWORD IS COURAGE/’62 expanded into THE GREAT ESCAPE.

THE YOUNG MR. PITT (1942)

With the exception of lighting cameraman Freddie Young, no one seems to have their heart in this large-scale ‘Great Man’ bio-pic on William Pitt, British Prime Minister @ 24 and then for nearly 19 years. Reestablishing the ‘great’ in Great Britain after its post-American Revolution low ebb (a conflict his Prime Minister dad is seen railing against, no doubt in here to boost Stateside appeal), he’s soon confronted with his biggest challenge as the French Revolution turns violent before bringing in the Napoleonic Era’s ceaseless wars. As allegory, this 1942 production works hard to emphasize Pitt the forward-thinking Churchillian politician, seeing dangers in Parliamentarian appeasers eager to sign off on any Peace Treaties to avoid war: parallels to Nazis, Hitler, Chamberlain & Churchill very much intended. What couldn’t have been intended, but which now is quite striking, are parallels with Pitt’s determination to last out the war in the face of his quickly deteriorating health much as FDR would deal with a few years after this came out. Robert Donat makes a fine Pitt, believably aging before his time. (As would Donat, dying at 53 from asthma.) With a standout perf from Robert Morley as Pitt’s main political adversary, the film is much less successful in a pro-forma romance with Phyllis Calvert. Wartime restrictions may account for substandard special effects & ship miniatures, but the real problem director Carol Reed faced was in the Sidney Gilliat & Frank Launder script which misses dramatic sweep and seems a bit embarrassed by the heavy-lifting patriotism. They were more in their element on lighter things. Not a patch on the California rah-rah-ing that came so easily to Hollywood’s British Colony and to Anglophile contract studio writers.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: * Especially over at Warners where Nazi Germany vs. Britain allegorical dramas like THE SEA HAWK/’40 did their bit for King & Country. And it also shows what a difference a great music score can make to these things. One of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's best vs. Charles Williams' generic 'Mickey Mousing.'

STREET SCENE (1931)

Elmer Rice’s Pulitzer Prize winning play about a particularly eventful day (romance illicit & pure; birth; street games; murder; gossip; music lessons; Italian Ices) on the stoop of a tenement apartment building in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, in King Vidor’s trimly faithful film version, seems an unlikely vehicle in which to find the end of the Early Talkie Era. Yet, there it is; at precisely 58 minutes into a 1'18" running time: An affair discovered; A husband’s enraged jealousy; A warning come too late; Shots fired; A crash thru a glass window; Streets alive with panicking passers-by and in the traffic & tempo of the city at large. Suddenly, the era of modern sound film has arrived as if someone flicked a light switch. Before then, the film, a superb example of Early Talkie technique, has bewitched us with a series of wonderfully flavorful archetypes of a churning multi-ethnic scene (though hardly a Black or Hispanic to be found), with Beulah Bondi, John Qualen and the marvelous, otherwise unknown Ann Kostant (as sympathetic spinster Shirley Kaplan) from the original B’way cast, joining Sylvia Sidney and a host of fine character actors you know by face if not by name. (Fun to see Frank McHugh’s brother, Matt, as a tough Irish lout.) The stage conventions of the piece, Rice using the stoop as a ‘single-unit’ stage set, works beautifully by stubbornly not opening up the play; the vast mural of lower and lower-middle-class life still involving. But as film, it truly becomes essential at that 58 minute mark. An unmissable evolutionary marker.

DOUBLE-BILL: Small town Texas boy King Vidor had already made his mark on city life with his classic late silent, THE CROWD/’28, though it looks too carefully composed next to this awkward, rough hewn gem. OR: Producer Samuel Goldwyn must have liked the city mural play, revisiting it in DEAD END/’37, also starring Sylvia Sidney, with a gangster story folded into the mix by playwright Sidney Kingsley and William Wyler’s far smoother, more polished production robbing the sense of verisimilitude Vidor got here. Technical limitations helping rather hurting things.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: (Another HEAR All About It.) The trio of Elmer Rice, Langston Hughes & composer Kurt Weill turned the play into a one-of-a-kind popular opera. There’s a great version of the big tenor aria, ‘Lonely House,’ done as a sort of power ballad by the great Sarah Vaughan once out on Verve Records OR: The whole opera from the English National Opera with Catherine Zeta-Jones in support from back in her musical comedy days.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: That Gershwinesque riff that keeps recurring is by music director Alfred Newman. A favorite of his, and used in many films before it was showcased (and expanded) as a stand-alone prelude (in CinemaScope and Stereo) for HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE/’53.

THE FIXER (1968)

Except for its Dalton Trumbo script, everything & everyone feels slightly, but crucially miscast in this John Frankenheimer adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s prize-winning novel, a fictionalized version of a late-Tsarist ‘blood conspiracy’ plot against handyman Alan Bates, a secular Jew, circa 1910 Kiev. (For Trumbo, delete ‘slightly.’) As a writer, Malamud was at his considerable best in short stories, but this attempt at mining a sort Dreyfus Affair/Book of Job drama should have a lot more impact on screen. Apparently, after Frankenheimer’s first-cut, more than an hour was lost which may have a made all the difference, especially in detailing the growth of international outrage on a rigged anti-Semitic case, forcing a trial on an unwilling government. But neither Trumbo nor Frankenheimer (and maybe Malamud) seem able to figure out where they want this to go, ending on an ironic/triumphant finale, a large-scaled, but feeble set piece that needs a Modest Mussorgsky (or perhaps one of those French Grand Opera masters, Giacomo Meyerbeer or Fromental Halévy, both Jewish, BTW) to save with his score.  Instead, we get generic uplift from Maurice Jarre.  The film’s not so much bad as well-intentioned . . . which in this case might be worse.

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Bates got his only Oscar nom here, the Academy going with prestige, suffering & aging makeup when there must be at least twenty better Bates choices, including both films that bookend this: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD/’67 and WOMEN IN LOVE/’69.

RUBBER (2010)

Like Luigi Pirandello rewriting Steven Speilberg’s DUEL/’71, his tv pic about a driverless, homicidal truck. That’s the thinking behind Quentin Dupieux’s Dada-esque What-If (more a What-Is-It?) about an abandoned, malevolent tire that picks itself up, dusts itself off, and starts running all over anything in its way. And when that’s not enough, vibrates to a telekinesis ejaculation of death vibes to blow up obstacles & perceived enemies. Framed as a spectator event, the absurd doings are apparently being staged by a cast of fake cops who may not know they are merely actors in roles . . . or are they? Purposefully hard to tell; and purposefully pretty good fun in its violent low-rent/low-tech manner. Modest F/X tire tricks & exploding heads good for a few shock laughs peppered along the way, even as the joke begins to wear thin. Dupieux a bit too proud of his quirky pretensions which might well be an inadvertent takedown of the Western ‘cool’ pretensions of cult director Monte Hellman.* As a two-reel short, this might have been a classic. But who makes two-reel shorts these days?

DOUBLE-BILL: *Hellman’s THE SHOOTING/’66 probably the one in mind. (View At Your Own Risk)