BROKEN BLOSSOMS (1919)

While D.W. Griffith’s reputation largely draws from four epic films (BIRTH OF A NATION/’15; INTOLERANCE/’16; WAY DOWN EAST/’20; ORPHANS OF THE STORM/’21), nowadays, it’s only a reputation (or clips & footnotes), as even film history classes pass on one of cinema’s founding fathers thanks to BIRTH’s toxic race elements. Perhaps if we bypassed the spectaculars for something smaller & less controversial, like the pair of modest beauties he made with Lillian Gish in 1919. First out, this visually poetic tragedy with rising leading man Richard Barthelmess; and then the romantic pastorale that followed, TRUE HEART SUSIE (Write-Up below) with waning male ingenue Robert Harron. No two films could be less alike. BLOSSOMS, a horrific idyll about a sensitive Chinese shop owner, Barthelmess in Asian attitude, but no YellowFace (unlike Emlyn Williams in a 1936 remake*), an immigrant living in London’s Limehouse District, his youthful dreams of bringing peace to the heathen masses long lost to opium; and Gish’s motherless girl of twelve, living in squalor, terrified of her abusive, prize-fighting father (Donald Crisp). The acting, languid and heightened in turn, is superb, if very much of its time. So too a painterly production that filters dreamy cityscapes under a thick London fog that hides but can’t stop the violence or keep fate from calling on all three leads when Gish briefly comes under Barthelmess’s protection. Unimaginably beautiful lensing from Billy Bitzer with Karl Brown handling some of the trick miniature river shots.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *YellowFace still in use as late as the 1980s, and not only for comic parody.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above, TRUE HEART SUSIE/’19.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/02/true-heart-susie-1919.html   ALSO: Good copies online at various youtube addresses, but start with this short intro from Lillian Gish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kXyyuC02og

THE MAN BETWEEN (1953)

Director Carol Reed courted unflattering comparisons to THE THIRD MAN/’49, his famous post-war political thriller set in a divided Vienna, with a follow-up Cold War suspenser set in a divided Berlin. In theory, the stories are different enough, though hard to say for sure since scripter Harry Kurnitz’s heavily rewritten plot & characters are all but impossible to sort out. (And Reed knew it, trying to get THIRD’s Graham Greene to rewrite.) Stuck to a production timetable, he plunged on, hoping location & atmosphere would see him thru. Something or other to do with James Mason’s two-faced East Berlin agent working to stop defectors (with kidnapping; blackmail; pay-offs); or is he setting himself up for a run? His current blackmail target: West Berliner Hildegard Knef (overly-agitated; looking disconcertingly like Ginger Rogers). With a shared past and Knef's newly arrived British sister-in-law (Claire Bloom) in town, Mason’s just the fellow to be their guide on a visit to East Berlin. Complications ensue . . . but don’t add up. Reed was half right about getting by on atmosphere & on-site photogenic stops, pulling out a visual tour de force in a night-time climax as Mason, Bloom & a tagalong boy on a bike try to out run East Berlin authorities thru a construction site, a slow moving train on a bridge, sausage sellers and sidecar rescues. Sheer cinematic bravura from Reed that should have ended the film. Alas, a second climax comes off as forced, created to wedge in a suitably tragic ending.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Mason certainly has an odd (and oddly beautiful) German accent. But then, he also had an odd (and oddly beautiful) English accent.

DOUBLE-BILL: Mason’s protective relationship with Bloom not so different than his with Joan Bennett in one of his greatest films, Max Ophüls THE RECKLESS MOMENT/’49.

WILD ROVERS (1971)

Low-key, downbeat, yet consistently involving; an unusual Western, and an unusual film for Blake Edwards. With William Holden, revivified after THE WILD BUNCH/’69, and Ryan O’Neal (in-between LOVE STORY/’70 and WHAT’S UP, DOC?/’72*) as cowpokes on Karl Malden’s cattle ranch, shaken by a close brush with mortality when another hand dies after his horse gets spooked in the corral. A what’s-it-all-about moment they process by deciding out-of-the-blue to rob the local bank & take off for Mexico, a criminal lark that starts pretty well. But there’s lots of territory between Montana and the Rio Grande, plenty of time for a posse or fate to catch up. Edwards, who soloed on the script, must have had John Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN in mind: Holden as sensible George; O’Neal the childish (if not mentally handicapped) Lennie, with a puppy standing in for that famous pet rabbit. He doesn’t press the connection, but it's hard to miss in the generally fine screenplay. Not every comic aside lands comfortably, but better that than pretentious ones; and the brief action scenes immaculately staged & edited. Plus bonus value as Holden gives O’Neal acting lessons in character shading; and in seeing just how quickly O’Neal picks up on it. (He’s transformed from LOVE STORY.) Gorgeously shot by Philip Lathrop (arguably too gorgeous, Edwards no doubt, couldn’t resist), and a fine score from Jerry Goldsmith that rings more variations on ‘Old Paint’ than Aaron Copland ever thought of in his ‘Billy the Kid.’ Memorable stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Unlike Holden & O’Neal’s hot-streaks, Edwards was in career meltdown, turning out fascinating work the studios butchered & the public rejected. While GUNN/’67 and THE PARTY/’68 were over-looked chamber pieces, DARLING LILY/’70 was a real Hollywood fiasco. Studio meddling stripped half an hour off ROVERS (now restored) while just about everything on THE CAREY TREATMENT/’72 was dicked-up. (Edwards tried to have his name removed.) Then his fine spy romance, THE TAMARIND SEED/’74, got unfairly dissed by audiences & critics. Hence his ‘run for cover’ with RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER/’75 and major resurgence after his own brush with commercial mortality.

AIR HAWKS (1935)

More than decent Columbia programmer about an upstart airline company trying to raise cash & avoid a buyout who come under attack by a Mad Scientist (secretly funded by a rival outfit) shooting their planes out of the sky with a high-tech experimental Ray Gun. Yikes! Nicely shot by Henry Freulich, it helps make up for Albert Rogell’s by-the-numbers megging. Ralph Bellamy is reasonably manly as the tough company boss helplessly watching his fliers (including a married brother) die in burning planes, yet still finding time to romance swanky ‘chanteusy’ Tala Birell, a Romanian Hollywood import who didn’t ignite. Main interest now is in Mad Inventor Edward Van Sloan (Universal Horror stalwart: FRANKENSTEIN; DRACULA; THE MUMMY) working his secret laser weapon (quite the contraption!); and in seeing third-billed Wiley Post in a brief cameo, America’s best-known one-eyed/record-busting aviator in his only film appearance, only months away from his fatal flight with celebrity passenger Will Rogers. This film likely playing second-run houses when they crashed in Alaska.

DOUBLE-BILL: Though not credited, this is something of a low-rent version of John Ford’s AIR MAIL/’32 (Bellamy in much the same role), from a Frank Wead story that ‘inspired’ Howard Hawks’ ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS/’39. Hawks having already done Wead’s own revamp: CEILING ZERO/’36. All three pics working on an entirely different plane than AIR HAWKS.

MARGIE (1946)

After coming up short with CENTENNIAL SUMMER, a period family musical designed to copy M-G-M's mega-successful MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS/’44, 20th/Fox head honcho/producer Darryl F. Zanuck got closer to mark in this downsized coming-of-age piece. Built, like ST. LOUIS, on a series of short stories (here by Ruth McKenney*), the time is the late ‘20s, with real rather than original tunes, and the dramatic crises all minor league stuff. Jeanne Crain, who’d also been in the recently released CENTENNIAL, plays a motherless teen trying to get thru her high school senior year without falling on her face, letting the new French teacher see she’s crazy about him and finding a legit date for the prom. (The last lifted straight from ST. LOUIS.) All of this being told in the present by Crain to her own teenage daughter as they rummage thru the attic in 1946. And it comes off, sweet, but not too sticky, thanks to the taste & tact of director Henry King who refuses to overdo, go fussy or fusty and avoids pushing the cutes on us or his players. (King getting right so much Otto Preminger got wrong in CENTENNIAL.) And note the nice location shooting (real streets, real snow, real breath puffs) with Fox’s typically pudding-rich TechniColor (D.P. Charles Clarke) nicely tamed in quieter indoor scenes. If distant Dad Hobart Cavanaugh & dreamy teach Glenn Langan registered a little higher on the memorability meter, the film might have a bigger rep. (Big hit at the time, though.) Everyone else a hoot, especially Barbara Lawrence & Conrad Janis as dance-crazy neighboring lovebirds, and Alan Young as a poetry spouting nerd. Crain, 21 at the time, passes easily as a teen girl unaware of how lovely she is. But yikes!, imagine seeing a High School teacher being encouraged to date one of his teenage students nowadays!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *McKenney best remembered for her autobiographical MY SISTER EILEEN stories, filmed in ‘42, then twice musicalized. First on B ‘way in ‘53 for Roz Russell (score by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, Adolph Green) and then with inferior new songs for a 1955 film. Here, in subfusc form, is the compete 1958 tv taping of Russell’s show. (Better quality on a few separate numbers if you look around youtube.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsxzyqJX5wY

BARBED WIRE (1927)

Yet another little-known, but exceptional late-silent, nicely handled by underused director Rowland V. Lee, later to specialize in big films with tight budgets, here on an A-list project @ Paramount for Pola Negri. Possibly the first WWI story made in Hollywood with a sympathetic German Officer as leading man. That’s Clive Brook, stoic & honorable as a P.O.W. on Negri’s converted family farm in rural France. The attraction between them undeniable, complicated not only by opposing sides, but because she’s lost a brother in the war, he a sister. But when he stops a French Officer from attacking Negri, and she stands up for him in court, she earns the town’s approbation and a heart-attack from a hardhearted father. Lee sets up a spectacular post-courtroom sequence going from Pola’s walk thru a despising local mob who view her as a traitor, directly into hundreds of grateful German P.O.W.s offering her moral support behind a prison fence. It’s the sort of sequence you’d expect in a King Vidor film, here seamlessly caught in Bert Glennon’s mobile lensing. (A shame surviving prints only hint at the quality.*) Some OTT melodrama intrudes here and there, but not the emotional ending, which is OTT in a good way, a pacifist ‘We Are All Brothers’ moral (that’s a literal we are all brothers, BTW), demonstrating some of the special æsthetic advantages available only to the silent film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Note the billing for Einar Hanson on our Swedish (?) poster. The handsome young Swede, no doubt a special draw in his homeland, got bumped up to co-star for his small role as Negri’s off-to-war brother. While a likely local favorite, it’s even more likely Hanson got pushed up because he died in a car crash, only 27, shortly before the film was released. He did co-star with Negri in his next, and final film, THE WOMAN ON TRIAL/’27, now lost.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Glennon earned a rare double Oscar® nom for a pair of 1939 John Ford classics: STAGECOACH (b&w); DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (color).

DOUBLE-BILL: This and the preceding HOTEL IMPERIAL/’27 (for Mauritz Stiller; remade by Billy Wilder as FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO/’43) are probably Negri’s best non-Ernst Lubitsch pics.

THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN'S (1954)

Seasonally acclaimed for his near-definitive Scrooge in Brian Desmond Hurst’s version of Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL/’51, Alastair Sim was no one-trick pony, finding unexpected range within his eccentric comic persona. Never more so than in this popular whimsy, based on some Ronald Searle drawings (as seen in the credits) about a bankrupt All-Girls school which Sim runs as Headmistress Millicent Fritton while also playing his (that is her) dodgy race-track bookmaker brother Clarence Fritton. The main action involves a foreign student whose rich father has a favored horse in the upcoming derby and Millicent’s big bet to put the school back on its feet, plus an undercover police investigation by new ‘teacher’ Joyce Grenfell. Sydney Gilliat & Frank Launder’s script & direction takes a while to set up the conflicts and start delivering real laughs, but gets by well enough with just ‘the shape of comedy’ to keep us in the mood. That, and Sim’s double assumption of yin-and-yang Frittons proving not only a figure (or two) of fun, but also of unexpected sympathy. A few sequels followed with changeable casting, none seen here.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Apparently Margaret Rutherford was first choice for Millicent, but it surely works better with Sim in modified drag, using little ‘panto’ exaggeration. Though you do keep expecting one of the girls to say, ‘Headmistress, what enormous hands you have!’

THE PUBLIC DEFENDER (1931)

R.K.O. may have been thinking of starting up a series on this one. So why the generic title instead of THE RECKONER, its undercover revenge-minded leading character? Still a dandy idea, and not a bad Early Talkie. For silent film star Richard Dix, still gingerly adjusting to Talk, it was just one of eight films in 1931*, including the epic hit CIMARRON. He’s a sort of modern Robin Hood, striking the rich to bring justice to the less rich! Really more Batman/Equalizer sans costume, mask & gizmos; independently rich playboy by day/‘The Reckoner’ by night!; bringing down bad guys with help from agile assistants Paul Hirst & Boris Karloff. Tonight’s episode finds him helping an innocent bank officer set up by his four embezzling partners. Find the missing documents behind the scam and Dix frees the victimized exec while also winning eternal gratitude from his lovely, available daughter, Shirley Grey. (Grey making a blah debut in a short but busy five-year career.) It’s exceptionally well-shot by Edward Cronjager, especially in a wordless little theft sequence, but held back by a journeyman script & J. Walter Ruben’s spotty direction. Good fun all the same.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Note Boris Karloff as one of The Reckoner’s helpers, just one of fourteen roles this year, including FRANKENSTEIN.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Dix never matched his silent film status, but kept working almost to the end. His best probably came during David O. Selznick’s brief run as R.K.O. head-of-production: THE LOST SQUADRON/’32, a post-WWI flyboy-goes-Hollywood thriller with Dix leading Mary Astor, Robert Armstrong, Dorothy Jordan & Joel McCrea against Erich von Stroheim’s sadistic film director.

STRATEGIA DEL RAGNO / THE SPIDER'S STRATAGEM (1970)

Or: THE MAN WHO SHOT ATHOS MAGNANI.   For Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970 was the year of THE CONFORMIST, now looking more & more like his masterpiece.*  Yet he also found time to squeeze in this beauty, a Jorge Luis Borges short-story adaptation, made quickly for RAI tv. It opens as a train comes to a dusty town, dropping off an important passenger with a link to local history; the legend he’s come home to pay respects to now incrusted with thirty years of heroic mythmaking.  But as the truth behind the tale is revealed to Athos Magnani, Jr, his famed father is shown to have feet of clay.  When all is said and done, the truth of the past is buried for the present to allow legend to live and inspire the future.  Or: ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,’ as John Ford had it at the end of THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE which equally fits this story outline.  And, in a telltale stylistic touch, Bertolucci has the elderly survivors, friends of Magnani Senior who lived the events, play themselves in flashback in spite of being thirty years older.*   And if the Borges story, adapted to Fascist Italy with a murder that didn’t come at the hands of enemies, is far removed from John Ford’s LIBERTY VALANCE/’62, the parallels Bertolucci mines in tone, structure & style are too striking not to be at least subconsciously, if not deliberately motivated.  STRATAGEM can’t really compete with the fullness of vision & artistic command of THE CONFORMIST, but it’s a significant achievement on its own terms.   With a narrative line both precise & vague, aided by superb touches of local color (and cuisine!), along with a remarkably rich cast.  It’s lack of reputation a mystery.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *You can make the case that Bertolucci never truly recovered his form after the (false) positive reception on 1900 in ‘76.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Apparently, Spike Lee’s new film, DA 5 BLOODS/’20 (not seen here) also uses this Brechtian distancing device of purposeful age-blind casting in flashbacks.  When Ford did it in LIBERTY VALANCE, with a cast mostly 30 years older than the parts they play, he didn’t ‘announce’ it with stylistic quotation marks as ‘artistic choice,’ and got slammed at the time for doddering Hollywood laziness.  Only eight years having passed when Bertolucci made STRATAGEM, Ford’s film wouldn’t see its rep climb to current lofty heights for decades.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Naturally, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE.   (Speaking of which, check out the hair style for each film’s love interest, Vera Miles and Alida Valli both with uncharacteristic cropped hair styles.)

THE HARD WAY (1943)

Closer to tragedy than woman’s-weepie, with a cast & director punching well above their weight (other than Ida Lupino who was always up there), this sharp meller from Warner Brothers is a tale of two sisters (Lupino; Joan Leslie) hitching a ride out of their grim factory town on the backs of duffer vaudevillians Dennis Morgan & Jack Carson. Lupino plays the heavy as viciously ambitious, goal-oriented stage mom (make that stage sister) to Leslie’s teen sweetheart musical comedy prodigy; living the life she missed out on thru her kid sister's looks & talent, but presses too hard, and winds up tearing everything she’s achieved to pieces: partnerships; marriage; careers. Told in flashback from a suicide attempt (and it’s not the only suicide in here!), Daniel Fuchs & Peter Vietel’s fine original screenplay only takes the easy way for a moment near the end, but more than makes up for it with tangy, stage-smart dialogue and a stunning set piece for Lupino as she brings down Gladys George’s fading diva. Good as everyone is in here, and that includes director Vincent Sherman, awfully lucky to have James Wong Howe lensing, it’s Jack Carson, of all people, who’s the revelation. Heartbreaking as a second-rater with a good heart who goes unappreciated. He never hit this level again.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The soundtrack is loaded with American Songbook classics, and not just the usual studio-owned titles. Plenty of Harry Warren & Cole Porter, but how’d they get those Rodgers & Hart tunes used in the overture to Leslie’s final B’way show? And keep an ear out for Dennis Morgan as band leader, singing something ghastly called ‘Good Night, Oh My Darling,’ credited to M.K. Jerome. It’s one of those pop tunes stolen from the classics; here Chopin.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Leslie had an on-and-off career for decades, but her A-list years, playing against Gary Cooper (SERGEANT YORK/’41), James Cagney (YANKEE DOODLE DANDY/’42), and Fred Astaire (THE SKY’S THE LIMIT/’43), only lasted thru her teen years.

THE FRIGHTENED CITY (1961)

He’s third-billed and comes on late, but soon-to-be 007 Sean Connery overwhelms everything else on screen in this mob drama. (The opening credits promises Brit Noir, but the sequence proves a stand-alone, all but unrelated to anything that follows.) Herbert Lom has the ostensible lead as a high-flying London financial consultant who also cooks books for Alfred Marks' small-time protection racket. Why not stop fighting your competitors and start working with them as one big protection racket operation, asks Lom. Think of the savings. Think of the growth opportunities. A sure win-win. Enter Connery, a cat burglar who needs a fast score after his second-story man takes a fall, the perfect enforcer for Lom’s new consortium. But when Connery unknowingly arranges a ‘hit,’ he turns on Lom’s overextended outfit just as the police are closing in. Not a bad set up for a violent London underworld thriller, no? Don’t you believe it. Under John Lemont’s coy megging this low-budget mediocrity lacks everything: pace, style, action chops. Only Connery makes a mark, in fighting trim even with bad hair and an off-the-rack suit. Connery had looked ready for bigger things since DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE back in ‘59, but it took next year’s DR. NO to seal the deal.

DOUBLE-BILL: A late urban crime pic from Republic like CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS/’53 matches up and is nearly as crummy. (Frankly, I wouldn’t bother with either.)

INVISIBLE STRIPES (1939)

With George Raft & William Holden (fresh off his GOLDEN BOY debut) listed above-the-title, and Humphrey Bogart just below, you expect more than a routine B+ time waster, especially from Warner Brothers. No such luck. Raft & prison pal Bogart, released from Sing-Sing on the same day, are on different tracks: Raft toeing the line as a ‘good’ parolee; Bogart going straight back to the mob. And it sure looks like crime pays as Bogie & gang haul in the dough while Raft, keeping his nose clean, loses job afer job when his past comes up. Briefly, the film tries a fresh angle with a stab at a kid’s job: Raft as stockboy, but this also ostracizes him until he wins over his young co-workers . . . when his past comes up! Neat idea, too bad it's dropped in favor of Raft heading back to his bad old ways when kid-brother Holden’s chip-on-the-shoulder attitude threatens to ruin his chance at a future and with boring wife, second-billed Jane Bryan. Lloyd Bacon megs as if he’s carrying a brick in his pants; and hardly a fresh idea in here. Even Holden, fine between Barbara Stanwyck & Adolphe Menjou in GOLDEN BOY, barely treads water. The main reason to stick around is Bogart, especially after he’s shot, acting circles around his co-stars . . . even in these circumstances. (Holden would catch up, Raft never did.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Raft’s short stint at Warners began earlier this year in what turned out to be his best for the studio, co-starred with James Cagney in EACH DAWN I DIE.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: 'In’ joke as Bogart & girlfriend leave a movie theater showing YOU CANT GET AWAY WITH MURDER/’39, a real Warners programmer with a top-billed Humphrey Bogart.

ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE (1973)

Director/producer/ composer James William Guerico’s epic-shaped indie, a monumental little film, quirky, stylish, ravishingly shot (by Conrad Hall), desperate to hit that EASY RIDER/’69 cultural/commercial sweet spot, but from a reverse angle. Earning buzz with a push toward serious cineastes (note the ad copy: An American Movie By A New Director), only to quickly disappear, taking Guerico along with it. He never directed or scored a movie again. (According to star Robert Blake, barely directing this one, leaving decisions to Blake & cinematographer Hall while giving separate credits to the Second-Unit for the main action set piece.) All told, it’s like a parody of ‘70s personal cinema (and quite entertaining on those terms), a modern day Western morality play with Robert Blake’s height-challenged chopper-cop uncovering drug-related murder and police corruption. He’s the last honest cop, Zen Master of his trade; so you know where this one’s going. But so glossy, so iconographic, so vehicularly fetishistic, the One Sheets, fold-out newspaper ad spreads and trailer created a buzz even a film this pretentious couldn’t hope to match.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: At one point, the corrupt homicide dick says a suspect has a rap sheet as long as the Gettysburg’s Address. Does he know what a famously short speech it is? Does Guerico?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The film’s a lot like an over-extended, self-indulgent drum solo in a second-tier rock band. So naturally, when Blake works a rock concert, that’s exactly what we get! Helps push the running time near the 2 hour mark, along with a run-on end shot.

LEASE OF LIFE (1954)

Modest, but not to a fault. One of those ‘well-lived/quiet life’ stories, a bit like GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS/’39, but with a country vicar rather than a teacher. An apt vehicle for CHIP’s star Robert Donat, returning to the screen after three years, heavily aged by the asthma that would finish him off after only one more film, THE INN OF SIXTH HAPPINESS/’58. But unlike his last role in THE MAGIC BOX/’51, he needn’t pass for a 20-something here. Instead, he’s dying from an irreversible heart condition, but going on just the same, especially for his daughter who’s up for a major music scholarship in London. How to make her living expenses provides the film with just enough of a dramatic engine to hang a little film on, as Donat’s prognosis unexpectedly frees rather than defeats him spiritually & intellectually, even as it costs him possible advancement within the church. There’s a bit of out-of-character drama involving a will, a cash inheritance and wife Kay Walsh’s sticky fingers, which seems forced to goose up the last act, but most of Eric Ambler’s screenplay rings true. Never more so than during Donat’s public epiphany delivering what was meant to be a sobersided sermon. Donat hadn’t attempted this sort of bravura piece since his famous Act One curtain speech in WINSLOW BOY/’48. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, using Eastman Colour after two TechniColor pics, makes a lovely thing of it, and director Charles Frend, just off his best film (THE CRUEL SEA/’55), knows not to press the delicate material. Touching and likable, if slow to get into gear; it only gets better as it goes along. 

READ ALL ABOUT IT: It’s another HEAR ALL ABOUT IT, this time for film composer Alan Rawsthorne who had Donat record his Concert Piece for Speaker and Orchestra PRACTICAL CATS the same year. It sets six of the famous T.S. Eliot poems (the ones Andrew Lloyd Weber turned into CATS) as a rhythmic tour-de-force for Donat, somewhat in the style of William Walton’s FACADE. Find it on SPOTIFY under Robert Donat.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, still very effective, with Donat getting his Oscar over Clark Gable in GONE WITH THE WIND.

ALIAS NICK BEAL (1949)

State District Attorney Thomas Mitchell sells his soul to the devil to run for governor in this middling effort from director John Farrow on a much overworked story.  At its best when Ray Milland’s Lucifer is on screen, appearing out of the blue via simple edits, foggy arrivals or merely stepping into frame unexpectedly, the absence of ghostly special effects helping to make this modern Beelzebub convincing.  So too Milland’s surface ease and sly wit.  (He might be prepping for his murder-by-proxy role in DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54.)  If only the original story & script (Mildred Lord; Jonathan Latimer) weren’t so diffuse.  Darryl Hickman is tossed in as a juvenile delinquent needing reform at Mitchell’s Boy’s Club only to largely disappear from the story; Geraldine Wall & Audrey Totter barely register in a Wife vs. Tramp love triangle; Fred Clark promises venom but doesn’t deliver much threat as a graft grabbing power broker; George Macready’s Reverend-with-conscience-to-spare is no Jiminy Cricket; while a quartet of elder politicos function as a weak chorus when Mitchell succumbs to temptation.  None of them getting proper character development or story integration.  The old tale holds up anyway (it always does), but you’ll see why this particular iteration has been largely forgotten even with Franz Waxman’s stirring Lutheran-themed score.  (Waxman on fire at Paramount at the time with well-deserved Oscars for SUNSET BOULEVARD and A PLACE IN THE SUN over the next two years.)

DOUBLE-BILL:  So many modern Faust stories to pick from, but Preston Sturges’s THE GREAT MCGINTY/’40 is tough to beat for a fast, unlikely, parallel rise to the governor’s mansion.  Squint hard, and it’s a near-Faust story with Brian Donlevy’s McGinty as Faust & Akim Tamiroff as a politico-power broker Devil.  OR: From the previous year, Farrow & Milland working better developed material in the THE BIG CLOCK/’48, itself loosely remade as NO WAY OUT/’87.

DRÔLE DE DRAME / BIZARRE, BIZARRE (1937)

Once a staple of the much-missed Art House circuit, this Marcel Carné/ Jacques Prévert pic has, unlike their classic CHILDREN OF PARADISE/’45, largely fallen thru the cracks. A shame as this comic outlier in their long collaboration now seems funnier than ever. A sui generis nutjob case, it’s a spoof of British murder mysteries (complete with those funny British names so loved by Victor Hugo), shot on teeny-tiny soundstages in front of papier-mâché sets, peopled with a very French, very eccentric cast. Louis Jouvet is a particular hoot as a severe Bishop campaigning against criminal author ‘Felix Chapel,’* who turns out to be his own cousin, botanist Michel Simon, writing under that pseudonym to earn the extra income he needs to support a wife and his hothouse mimosas. Meanwhile, handsome milkman Jean-Pierre Aumont is wooing the housemaid and secretly supplying most of the criminal stories Simon sells. And this situation might happily continue if only Françoise Rosay, Simon’s snobby wife, didn’t feel she had to hide from the disgrace of public disclosure by secretly leaving town only to be reported dead, murdered by her husband who now has to live disguised as M. Chapel until things get sorted out. And that might also work out if only there wasn’t another killer, a real one. That’d be the slightly mad young man claiming to be a butcher of butchers, and the current wooer of middle-aged Mme. Rosay, a very young Jean-Louis Barrault, showing a nude backside that easily tops the expressive limitations of his famous mime act in PARADISE. The pace skips beat now & then, but Carné knows when to cut to something silly to get a laugh (say, Aumont’s enormous oversupply of milk bottles) when he needs comic punctuation or a reset. It’s cleverly worked out, satisfying fun.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Could this Felix Chapel be any relation to ‘Ambrose Chapel’ in Hitchcock’s THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH/’34; ‘56)?  Neither one quite what they seem.

THE AMBASSADOR'S WIFE (1956)

Hoping to settle a bet between Dad and a skeptical U.S. Senator, the daughter of America’s ambassador to France goes undercover as a fashion model to date a young U.S. officer on leave in ‘the mythical city of Paris.’ Will the young man do his country proud and behave himself or disgrace the service with a forward pass? Not a bad idea for a romantic farce, theoretically helped by location shooting in ‘the miracle of CinemaScope.’ And while the two female leads are charming (Myrna Loy’s Senator’s wife; Olivia de Havilland, 21 years after her film debut as the eponymous daughter . . . who by all rights should be about 21!), Norman Krasna’s script fails to deliver much in the way of wit or surprise. Still, he might have gotten by on workable structure alone if only he didn’t freeze as director (his third & last try) on those depth-of-field challenged early CinemaScope lenses: interiors staged like a high school commencement; touristy exteriors barely enlivened by cinematographer Michel Kelber’s picture postcard views.* The men on hand (Adolphe Menjou, Tommy Noonan, Edward Arnold, Francis Lederer) overplay weak material while bland romantic lead John Forsythe overdoses on underplaying, too earnest to win laughs. Phantom of the Opera buffs may enjoy getting inside Le Palais Garnier, but slim pickin’s for everyone else.

DOUBLE-BILL: As director, Krasna had beginner’s luck on PRINCESS O’ROURKE/’43, with de Havilland and good early turns from Jane Wyman, Jack Carson & Robert Cummings. OR: *Michel Kelber in excelsis for Jean Renoir’s FRENCH CANCAN/’55, made entirely on studio sets (interiors & exteriors); look for the stunning 2010 restoration.

THE EAGLE AND THE HAWK (1933)

Standard 1930s WWI aviation drama. But that's a pretty good standard, especially with John Monk Saunders, source of late-silent/early Talkie classics like THE DAWN PATROL and WINGS* on story (some aerial footage nipped from both films), and producer/ director Stuart Walker (helped by director-in-training Mitchell Leisen, listed as Associate) getting unusually detailed work from Fredric March & Cary Grant, both in youthful prime. As the unit’s ace aerial photo pilot (‘the Eagle’), March is at his early best, realistically aging about ten years over three months of service, earning medals without getting a scratch while five young observation-gunners (his ‘Hawks’), directly behind in his two-seater, die in action. Enter Grant, in something of a breakthru perf, his face now leaner, his restraint newly evident, called out as a flop pilot by March back in training, now the best gunner/observation man around, still holding a grudge. Their up-and-down frenemies pact put to the test when jovial pilot Jack Oakie buys it. And if the first half dramatics are something of a retread, the film just grows stronger, even perverse, on the back end, hitting its peak at a grand reception in London where March, on a ten-days leave, meets society dame Carole Lombard (very good here) for a bit of Pre-Code comfort, and where he’s introduced to the young son of the house who politely asks if the men he’s killed went up in flames like a Roman Candle. Chilling stuff, perfectly played by March holding on by a thread. Neatly served ending back at The Front, too.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: *Saunders trained for WWI, but remained Stateside as a flight instructor. This film an excellent midway point between the early Talkie roughness of Howard Hawks’ 1930 DAWN PATROL and Edmund Goulding’s slicker 1938 remake.

YOUNG CASSIDY (1965)

Taken from Sean O’Casey’s six-volume auto-bio, this fairly standard, fairly traditional Portrait of the Artist as a Young Working-Class Irish Playwright is also fairly good. Started by John Ford, he drank himself off the project in three weeks, happy to let Jack Cardiff take over.* Three sections appear to be Ford’s: a brief fling with a still barely known Julie Christie as a prostitute Rod Taylor’s Cassidy picks up at a street demonstration turned riot (the riot itself all Cardiff); some effective scenes surrounding the death of Cassidy’s mother (Flora Robson); and a very Fordian pub fight (check out a straight-ahead knock out punch from Taylor that’s pure John Wayne). But Cardiff also does fine work and certainly gets a lot of from his cast: Michael Redgrave’s W.B. Yeats and Edith Evans, even better as Abbey Theatre doyen Lady Gregory, each giving this rough young man encouragement when audiences initially reject him. Best of all is an unusually reticent Maggie Smith as the bookshop clerk who takes a liking to this violent-prone, self-taught man of letters whose spirit outruns her possibilities. (Ford approved script & cast, but I don’t think he worked with Smith.) A bit conventional, and the ending turns abrupt (would an encore meeting with a suddenly faded Julie Christie have done the trick?), but still involving stuff.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *With all but alcohol consumption in rapid decline, Ford no longer was being offered much other than Westerns, preferably with John Wayne attached as commercial insurance. Yet, Ford all but self-sabotaged this rare quality assignment drinking himself into oblivion most nights with Taylor around to carry him home to bed. Best guess is that Ford grew afraid of not being up to the possibilities of a dream project. And, rather than fail, bailed.

DOUBLE-BILL: One of the few things Alfred Hitchcock & John Ford had in common were uncharacteristically stiff Sean O’Casey play adaptations, JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK/’30 (Hitch) and Ford on THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS/’36.

SEVEN DAYS TO NOON

One of the better films from the middling Boulting Brothers, John & Roy, builds suspense as disillusioned nuclear scientist Barry Jones threatens to detonate a stolen ‘device’ in the heart of London. Posting a letter directly to the Prime Minister demanding a halt to all research & development weapons programs, our mild-mannered terrorist is soon identified by an even more mild-mannered Scotland Yard team, but remains unfound for days as the clock ticks down. Lenser Gilbert Taylor (of DR. STRANGELOVE; HARD DAY’S NIGHT; STAR WARS; THE OMEN) steals honors with superb on-location London shooting, but can only do so much with airless office interiors and an evacuation sequence that gets about half of its potential due to a tight budget. (We know Londoners love a good queue, but they aren’t this well behaved!) Plot twists no more than adequate, but a rich cast of characters with amusingly Po-Faced police & politicians nicely contrasted against the eccentric lower-class locals where Jones hides with his nuclear valise. Yikes! And check out the gas lighting fixtures in one of the flats he stays at. Gas, still in domestic commercial use in 1950? Who knew? Not quite the nail-biter the Boultings wanted, but the suspense factor well served by John Addison's perfectly ‘spotted’ music score.

DOUBLE-BILL: The bombs do go off in THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE/’61, altering the planet’s axis and heating things up in Old London Town.

TÓNGNIÁN WANGSHÌ / THE TIME TO LIVE AND THE TIME TO DIE (1985)

Though his international rep came a bit later, Taiwanese filmmaker Hsiao-Hsien Hou may have been at his best in the 1980s, as in this filled-to-the-brim semi-autobiographical family drama.* Something more than a coming-of-age story, it focuses on the bumpy path of an adopted son in a large family, the film split between his playful youth (at about 10) and a more troubled adolescence (near 20), dramatically punctuated with the loss of his health-plagued father in the first half and his mother & grandmother in the second. Hsiao-Hsien Hou paces the informal patterns of life beautifully, without pointing things out for us, not even detailing the many children in the family. Who’s that? You may exclaim at times. The idea is too give in to the flow of life in this lower-class household as fortunes ebb and flow around them. By the end, you’ll find you're completely absorbed in incidents ranging from a small turf war between rival street gangs to a mother’s declining health, or something as simple as a solitary stand-up bath. A unique, moving, and unexpectedly welcoming family journey.

DOUBLE-BILL: With a more traditional narrative structure (young couple moves to the city and find themselves lost), DUST IN THE WIND/’86 may be a better Hsiao-Hsien Hou starting point even though it’s something of a followup to this film. Before, A SUMMER AT GRANDPA’S/’84 (not seen here) is first of the trilogy.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Just how autobiographical? In real life, Hsiao-Hsien Hou seems a little too young for the mostly ‘50s time frame. Closer to the age of the kid brother.

PLUNDER ROAD (1957)

Jules Dassin’s RIFIFI/’55, the classic French caper with the dialogue-free/real-time burglary, is all over the opening of this minor league crime pic as five masked men grab $10 mill in gold bullion off a train they’ve tricked into stopping. With cinematographer Ernest Haller laying on rain-soaked atmosphere, we can just barely piece together what’s going on in the extended opening action sequence as ill-gotten gains are loaded onto three separate trucks and driven away for a rendezvous in California. Director Hubert Cornfield makes good work of it, getting strong perfs out of little remembered second leads like Gene Raymond & Wayne Morris. The sticking point is Steven Ritch’s by-the-numbers story & script which settles for only the most obvious everyday errors to trip them up one-by-one/truck-by-truck and dies a quotidian death, not helped by an overblown score. Even a clever twist on getting all that gold across the border can’t get things back on track. Maybe the script just needed a relentless cop in pursuit, the missing element in its construction. As it stands, this starts to feel like a double episode of the old HIGHWAY PATROL tv series, but without a Broderick Crawford figure rattling off lines as he investigates and arrests.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Assuming RIFIFI’s been seen, why not give HIGHWAY PATROL/’55-‘59 a watch. Easy to find (and free) on various youtube platforms and holding up surprisingly well. All those old rural towns, roads, mom & pop cafes and small industrial factories now period document as PATROL a rare show of the period to shoot on rural locations. And while an occasional star-of-the-future shows up (Clint Eastwood, Leonard Nimoy), most of the actors have a pleasing non-professional feel about them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsbLnFBa-6Q&list=PL-aJSrEGIGy4Muhw4lhuYII5kDrBlUqrv

EYE OF THE CAT (1969)

Lame kitty-cat horror, but worth a look, less for its murder plot (eccentric invalid aunt Eleanor Parker is stalked in her cat infested mansion by feline-phobic/fortune-hunting nephew Michael Sarrazin & girlfriend Gayle Hunnicutt) or its suspense elements (runaway wheelchair; kitty shock cuts) than for its hideous interior design (an all-fuchsia Hall-of-Infamy worthy grand foyer merely a taste of the tastelessness) and for Sarrazin’s positively alarming shaggy head of hair (check out his intro shot). Yikes! Everything in here reeks of Lew Wasserman’s Universal house-style, circa ‘60s Movie-of-the-Week regardless of budget, with under-cooked plots and over-lit sets to match faceless functionary house directors like Jack Smight and (as here) David Lowell Rich. The lone surprise is the amount of flesh on display. Presumably, an attempt to seem ‘with it.’ Today’s crop of ultra-buff young actors would be well-advised to have a look at Sarrazin’s willowy frame before tackling that next ‘60s period piece. 'Scrawny defined' might sum it up.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: From Hungary, FEHÉR ISTEN (WHITE GOD)/’14 shows what can be done with dogs rather than cats in this sort of thing.

THE LATE GEORGE APLEY (1947)

After a decade writing @ Paramount & a decade producing for M-G-M, Joseph L. Mankiewicz added directing to his shingle moving to 20th/Fox, learning on the job helming three Philip Dunne screenplays in a row: GEORGE APLEY; THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR; ESCAPE.* Dunne’s adaptation significantly softening an already coarsened B’way play of John P. Marquand's Pulitzer prize winning novel about a Boston-centric eccentric, a turn-of-the-last century father holding fast to dying traditions while his children move past a stultifying tradition that rejects anything too far removed from Beacon Hill. Percy Waram, the sole holdover from the B’way production, almost steals the pic as Apley’s sceptical, open-minded brother-in-law (Waram, a stage vet who made few films, showing a precision that’s something to wonder at). But the film was obviously designed to showcase Ronald Colman, charming, bemused & befuddled in one of his last roles as the eponymous Apley who gets less a comeuppance from his family on changing times than a gentle tutorial. It’s pleasant, low-wattage entertainment, the play and film designed to ride on the commercial backdraft of the phenomenally successful, broader domestic comedy of LIFE WITH FATHER, still running on B’way and opening as a film the same year as this. You’ll note a few weak links in the cast, and the odd editing bump, but Mankiewicz was always more interesting as a director working on other people’s screenplays than he was of his own scripts which he treated with kid gloves as sacrosanct text.

DOUBLE-BILL: *As noted above, the other Dunne projects are quite good with ESCAPE not quite hitting its potential, but MRS. MUIR a modest masterpiece with exceptional perfs, awesome Bernard Herrmann score and an uncredited Mankiewicz secretly rewriting all the scenes with George Sanders, giving hints of their work together in ALL ABOUT EVE.

THE STRANGER'S RETURN (1933)

Celebrated for impressive if flawed epics (THE BIG PARADE/’25; NORTHWEST PASSAGE/’40; WAR AND PEACE/’56) and ambitious, if too merit-worthy artfilms (THE CROWD/’28; OUR DAILY BREAD/’34*), King Vidor is truly at his best in this largely over-looked, small-scale romance, a rural pastorale that stands comparison with some of the best observed work in the American cinematic canon. Even it’s title a beaut, perfectly capturing its lead character and unique spell. Miriam Hopkins (right between TROUBLE IN PARADISE and DESIGN FOR LIVING for Lubitsch) is at her least arch/most natural as a sophisticated East Coast divorcée, come for the first time to the MidWest family farm run by curmudgeonly 85 yr-old grandpa Lionel Barrymore, living with a passel of in-laws he barely tolerates. Might this delicate looking young woman, a free-spirited blood relative be the one to take over from him? Instinctively drawn to the place, and to country life (depicted in a good-natured harvest hazing rite Hopkins triumphs over), she’s equally drawn to neighboring farmer Franchot Tone, a college-educated/natural intellectual type, married (with kid) to the sweet gal he grew up with. Instant rapport for Tone & Hopkins undeniable, only their decency holding them back. Especially after a brief kiss in a running car that traces their growing passion in a brief unbidden roll thru the wheat fields. This short segment, one of the great erotic moments in film, a touchstone of visual & narrative economy; and dare one say it . . . taste. (A ‘privileged’ moment, partly stemming from novelist/co-scripter Philip Strong whose STATE FAIR, recently out earlier this year from Fox under Henry King, holds similar rural bona fides.) The film is not without a touch of blather to help round off the narrative (Barrymore has a spell of dementia to reveal all secrets), but not enough to mind, quickly pulling itself up to realize its sad, abrupt ending with clear eyes; grown-up and quietly devastating. Seasons flow on; the land must be turned.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Vidor’s next, the independently produced farmers’ commune story, OUR DAILY BREAD, with Soviet-style montage & left-wing politics, gets all the critical attention. Easier to write a deep-think academically acceptable thesis on.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/11/our-daily-bread-1933.html

ABANDON SHIP! (1957)

(AKA: SEVEN DAYS FROM NOW; SEVEN WAVES AWAY) Tidy survival-of-the-fittest lifeboat drama with a rejuvenated Tyrone Power* triaging from 26 desperate souls to a mere dozen on a small craft designed for nine. Even with brutal life-or-death decisions, getting down to an overloaded 12 requires steely/heartless resolve, but how else to save any of them? Especially with a storm rising, no S.O.S. sent from the ship and land 1500 miles away? Journeyman director Richard Sale husbands his modest budget with the same sort of brutal tactics Power uses, getting fine work from his cast (Marie Lohr as a retired opera singer & Stephen Boyd as a compassionate ship officer particularly good) and not dwelling too longingly on necessary cruelties. But are they necessary? That’s the question being asked as Power works thru Nietzchean superman challenges. Heroic necessity or self-preservating villain? You decide.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hitchcock brings similar ideas & filming techniques, plus far more enjoyable dramatic fillips, to LIFEBOAT/’44, a WWII allegory with Walter Slezak’s Nazi villain in the Nietzchean superman spot. What a difference a decade makes! OR: Andrew Stone is all about the sinking and nothing else in his shipshape THE LAST VOYAGE/’60.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Dead at 44, a year after this film, Power’s youthful dazzle waned alarmingly in the ‘50s. But he seems to have dropped a decade here. Swimming for his life in the ocean, you presume it’s no trick of makeup, nor helpful b&w lensing. He’s dreary & worn in WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION later this year and a Color by Deluxe blank in THE SUN ALSO RISES. Here, his puppyish revival a mystery, but a happy one.

THE KEY (1934)

1934 brought signature roles for William Powell (M-G-M’s THE THIN MAN) and Edna Best (Alfred Hitchcock’s THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH), but just before, this forgotten little gem at Warners for Powell to finish off his contract. A love triangle set in the middle of the 1914 ‘Irish Troubles,’ with Best married to British officer Colin Clive but still carrying a torch for ex-lover (and Clive’s fellow officer) Powell. Balanced between romantic conflict & street conflict (a hunt for rebel leader Donald Crisp), the fog-bound action takes a while to hit its stride, coming into dramatic focus when director Michael Curtiz launches a technically tricky visual flashback reigniting the old affair. After this, the two conflicts intertwine in a series of renunciation scenes and sacrifices where, for a change, you can’t be sure who Edna will end up with. Some of the early scenes now look awkwardly played (that clipped diction!), but they soon find their footing with unusually satisfying story beats along with some exceptionally strong supporting actors. A real find.

DOUBLE-BILL: Soundstage Hollywood Dublin returned next year on the R.K.O. lot in John Ford’s THE INFORMER/’35; different P.O.V., same fog.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Most Golden Age Hollywood stars needed to land at the ‘right’ studio to find their true cinematic selves. Not William Powell, perfectly in tune with himself whether at Paramount, Warners or M-G-M.

THE PUBLIC EYE (1972)

Last call for the classy craftsmanship of British director Carol Reed is piffle, but no disgrace. Expanding from his own one-act play, Peter Shaffer (of AMADEUS/’84 and EQUUS/’77 fame) stretches his little idea beyond its limits with circular dialogue as buttoned-up British tax advisor Michael Jayston hires a quiet private detective to check up on free-spirited American wife Mia Farrow, only to wind up with Topol’s eccentrically enthusiastic gumshoe on the job. Turns out, Farrow isn’t having an affair, but is starting a life-affirming flirtation with a mysterious, irrepressible, if non-verbal, man in a white trench coat who always seems to be following her. Guess who. Fortunately, these three make for such an odd triangle, initial awkwardness starts to spark surprising emotional ricochets, if you can wait for the third act to kick in. Unexpectedly boyish and off-beat handsome, Topol is so much younger than expected after aging up to play Tevye in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF/’71, he has a gauche quality that explodes Shaffer’s format in a goofy, appealing way. Not really much to this one, but a lovely London look from Christopher Challis and an unusually blissed out score from John Barry. No one went to see it, and Reed never worked again, but in spite of its stagy talk, talk, talk, it’s a rather pleasant lark.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Much like George Cukor, whose late-career Oscar for MY FAIR LADY/’64 seemed to stall rather than start projects; so too with Reed, whose well-deserved comeback & awards on OLIVER!/’68 led to nothing but Anthony Quinn in FLAP/’70 (not seen here) and this.

THE OUTLAW (1943)

Jane Russell made her busty film debut in a cantilevered bra designed by producer/director Howard Hughes. Cleavage & censorship delayed wide release for a few years, but also created lots of buzz, if not enough to earn out wildly inflated costs on this slightly deranged, seriously inept Western. Begun by Howard Hawks as a tricked out Billy the Kid fable, scripter Jules Furthman added Doc Holliday to the usual mix (Walter Huston guying every line) to join Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell having fits of jealousy toward both) and a surprise ‘happy’ ending. Hawks, after discovering fresh leads: Russell as well as Jack Buetel, his willowy, young Billy (pretty as the slim hipped gals Hawks tended to marry or cast in his pics), left after a week’s shooting, handing it over to the interfering Hughes. And take over he did, on his second, and mercifully last, directing gig. Slathering Tchaikovsky over every longing glance when he wasn’t forcing composer Victor Young to Mickey Mouse every tiny gag. Luring cinematographer Gregg Toland into frame-breaking push-in close ups of youthful lust; amid his general all-thumbs staging of the risible action & dialogue as Russell, Huston & Mitchell preen for Billy’s ‘attentions.’ Berserk or betraying Hughes’ true callings? It might be campy fun at half the length, but at nearly two hours, it drags something awful. Russell eventually figured out how to come across on screen, after her features firmed up, but poor Jack Buetel was a goner from the start.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Lines like ‘Best you gotta cut his clothes off,’ as Russell moves in on sickly, supine Billy or ‘Shall we pull on the last cuckoo,’ before pistols are drawn must have been added to help get this one banned in Boston for the sake of publicity.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hughes' only other directing gig was the WWI aviation epic HELL’S ANGELS/’30, with Edmund Goulding & James Whale handling most of the Early Talkie dialogue scenes & Jean Harlow getting the sexy dish career push treatment.