WE ARE NOT ALONE (1939)

Largely ignored on release, this miscarriage-of-justice story was popular novelist James Hilton’s ‘other’ 1939 film, lost beneath the success of his much-loved GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS.  Also lost, the film career of Paul Muni when a decade’s run of prestige items at Warners came up short after the last of his Great Man Bio-pics, the over-produced JUAREZ/’39 under-performed, followed by this.  Muni's film work turned sporadic; only six films over the next two decades.  A pity as this is effective and affecting, with unusually withdrawn, naturalistic work from Muni playing an absentminded, unassuming English doctor, resigned in his miserable marriage to Flora Robson’s depressive.  Befriending troubled emergency patient Jane Bryan, a Austrian chorus girl needing a job just as WWI casts her as an enemy alien, it’s Robson who suggests Muni hire the girl as nanny for their fragile young son.  You can guess the rest . . . but not quite, as Flora Robson’s mean-spirited wife doesn’t turn jealous, there’s nothing physical going on, but, shamed by town gossip & class snobbery, sends Bryan away.  And when Robson dies from poison just as Muni is helping Bryan get to her new job out of town, circumstantial evidence tosses these assumed lovers into court on a murder charge.  And this is where the film comes up short, with Muni’s passivity hard to swallow on his own charge, impossible when you consider its affect on the innocent young woman sharing the docket.  Some tricky philosophic double-talk at the end, as unconvincing as Theodore Dreiser in AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY/A PLACE IN THE SUN, tries to make sense of it all . . . and fails.  Even so, for at least the first two acts, Muni, with a spot-on accent (there’s a Rex Harrison cadence to it) and Robson’s severity & bitterness are very compelling.  Director Edmund Goulding & cinematographer Tony Gaudio also on good form.  Only composer Max Steiner works too hard, trying to inflate a quiet drama and making an odd choice with Haydn’s Symphony 94 ‘Surprise’ as a source for his main theme.

DOUBLE-BILL: Undaunted, Warners got a big hit out of a similar situation with Charles Boyer, Bette Davis & Barbara O’Neil in similar roles in next year’s ALL THIS, AND HEAVEN TOO/’40.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: According to IMDb, Bryan replaced German actress Dolly Haas, who broke down after a week’s shooting.  You can get some idea of the what went missing watching Haas play a murderer’s guilt-ridden wife in Alfred Hitchcock’s underrated I CONFESS/’53.

THE SCARLET COAT (1955)

With lux production values and a sharp/ambivalent Revolutionary War spy story (Benedict Arnold, but focused around rather than on him), this John Sturges film (his M-G-M followup to his breakout BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK/’55) is ultimately dragged down by a confusing script and some crucial casting missteps.  A pity as there are few enough American Revolutionary War films out there, even fewer good ones.*  Cornel Wilde fences like the Olympic athlete he nearly was, but is otherwise too guileless an actor to play a double-agent hiding patriotic inclinations among the British high echelon.  He’s been sent in to discover who’s leaking miliary secrets to the Brits.  Extraneous love interest Anne Francis as a society lady with conflicting loyalties, equally unsatisfying and not sparking to Wilde.  On the other hand, the Red Coats and their sympathizers get all the good lines and scene stealers with George Sanders’ civilian pro-Brit skeptic while top red-coat general Michael Wilding sees both sides of the conflict, than bets on the wrong horse.  Worth a look for the attempt at complexity and for a good, if frustratingly obscured, historical story.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: M-G-M contract star Stewart Granger (one of the few still around in ‘55) refused the lead citing script problems.  More likely, he saw that Wilding had the better part.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Are there any good American Revolutionary War feature films?  DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK/’39; JOHNNY TREMAIN/’57; and . . . ?  Hollywood wags say it’s the wigs, those white powdered wigs, that put people off.

DOLEMITE IS MY NAME (2019)

It’s been a while since Eddie Murphy made us sit up and pay attention.  DREAMGIRLS back in 2006, to be specific.  He must have known it, too, using the opening of this film to bury the hatchet @ SNL, guest hosting after a two decades’ boycott.  The film itself is standard auto-bio fare, a goof-ball Life-Begins-At-Forty tale, foul-mouthed & unexpectedly sweet-natured, about the long gestation of ‘70s rap comedian/actor Rudy Ray Moore, a perennial also-ran on the L.A. scene, as he reinvents himself into larger-than-life/cornier-than-life scatological tall-tale-telling comedian Dolemite.  A hit from the git-go with this new alter-ego, he parlays success from record sales of his popular act into a longshot bid as a Blaxploitation movie star, helped (if that’s the word) by his personal posse; a socially-engaged Black Theatre playwright; and a tech crew of skinny white kids fresh out of UCLA film school.  (Yes, his D.P. really was Josef von Sternberg’s kid.)  If only the story beats didn’t also come straight out of UCLA film school.  (And not so fresh.)  But Murphy, round of belly, in colorfully uncoordinated ‘70s attire, is so (fill in your own X-rated adjective) entertaining, the by-the-numbers dramaturgy and over-extended running time barely disrupt from his irresistible force personality turn.  Worth it for the comic sex scene alone.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Murphy, a serious film buff, knows what he’s doing when he sends Moore & pals off to see Billy Wilder’s flat 1974 version of THE FRONT PAGE.  After that, anyone might think they could make a better movie.  (Ironically, this late career nadir was Wilder’s only commercial success after THE FORTUNE COOKIE/’66.)

DISPUTED PASSAGE (1939)

In the middle of a run of prestige M-G-M pics (with Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young, Franchot Tone, Luise Rainer & Spencer Tracy), A-list director Frank Borzage made this decidedly B-list Paramount film.  Taken from a novel by religion-minded ‘Pop’ author Lloyd Douglas* (THE BIG FISHERMAN would become Borzage’s unhappy last film), it’s led by a Pre-‘Road Pic’ Dorothy Lamour, character actor Akim Tamiroff and Gable wannabee John Howard (check out the stash).  No doubt, something splashier was envisioned when Borzage signed on, then downgraded in development, leaving him with no stars and a B+ budget.  Mighty odd script, too, changing direction halfway along as Howard’s rising research doctor, first at school then as assistant to gruff, demanding doctor/professor Tamiroff, meets Lamour, exotic Caucasian, born, bred & orphaned in China, who makes a major impression before heading to a kid’s hospital under Japanese threat back home.  And that’s where the story restarts midway in with Howard seriously injured at a bombed Chinese clinic, reunited with Lamour just as Tamiroff flies in with his grump act for a life saving brain operation in a field hospital!  At least, Borzage gets his moral in (‘There’s more to us than surgeons can remove,’ as Alan Jay Lerner would later put it), but this one’s hardly worth a trip to the movies let alone to war torn China.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Douglas scored in Hollywood with the hard-sell uplift of MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (’35 & ‘54) and THE ROBE/’53.  Not seen here, but more promising (at least more modest) is WHITE BANNERS/’38 with Fay Bainter, Claude Rains & Jackie Cooper.  (Now seen!  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/10/white-banners-1938.html)

INSOMNIA (1997)

Standard (but it’s a high standard) Scandinavian police procedural, reminiscent of the original WALLANDER tv series (the one from Sweden, not the Kenneth Branagh depressive), with a twist in plot & character that plays more like WALLANDER meets TOUCH OF EVIL/’58, the Orson Welles noir classic about a dirty chief of police who won’t let evidentiary niceties keep him from solving the case & getting his man.  An impressive writing/directing debut for Erik Skjoldbjærg who finds fresh meteorological spins on shopworn story beats when mid-forties Swedish homicide specialist Stellan Skarsgård arrives in Norway during the Midnight Sun season to work on the case of a murdered teenage girl.  Sleep depravation vies with a nasty killing, a meticulously cleaned corpse, uncongenial local colleagues and hard to crack suspects/witnesses, to drive Skarsgård into delusions & a mental breakdown.  Made worse by a fatal error which has him covering up for himself (and incidentally for the likely killer) with falsified prime and planted evidence.  Compelling stuff, much aided by Skjoldbjærg’s way of tying action to landscape, and unprincipled behavior to exhaustion.  Ending with the sort of resigned ethics Roman Polanski found in CHINATOWN.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Showing impressive range, leading man Stellan Skarsgård paved the way for Al Pacino when Christopher Nolan jumped to the A-list in his INSOMNIA/’02 redo while Hans Petter Moland got Liam Neeson to remake KRAFTIDIOTEN/’14, his bloody revenge comedy with Skarsgård, as COLD PURSUIT/’19.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: From silent days to now, you could always establish the bad guy by having him kick a defenseless dog.  Here, in a shocking show of confident character layering, Skjoldbjærg gets away with having Skarsgård shoot one!

BEAU JAMES (1957)

After two decades under contract, Bob Hope’s last three Paramount films tried a semi-dramatic pivot from his signature cowardly comic act.  But where the first two (THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS; THAT CERTAIN FEELING) either tamed or optimized the Hope ‘quip reflex’ inside the storyline, this last attempt (modeled closely on FOYS* from the same writer/director) can’t figure out how to use it as an element of characterization & storyline without taking a beating from Bob’s habitual comic tics.  Pretty good characterization & storyline, too: the Rise & Fall of New York’s corruptible, bon vivant Mayor Jimmy Walker.  Under Melville Shavelson, directorially regressing since his debut on FOYS, 1920s period detail is sketchy and staging awkwardly square, but his politicos are nicely cast with Tammany Hall graft repped by Paul Douglas and Republican conscience by Darren McGavin.  Alexis Smith also fine as his go-along estranged wife.  But Vera Miles all wrong as nice gal pal/later B’way glamster Betty Compton.  Technically, the film is also something of a shambles with loads of lousy process work.  (And from the best rear projection department in town, run by the legendary Farciot Edouart, a man who supposedly refused to pass on the tricks of his trade.  Did he delegate the assignment?)  Just enough of the real story comes thru to hold your interest, but this shoulda/coulda been a lot better.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *So closely they even try to match the earlier film’s guest-celebrity turn.  In FOYS, Hope’s Eddie Foy duos with James Cagney’s George M. Cohan.  Here, it’s a double act with old Jimmy Durante as . . . young Jimmy Durante!  Plus Jack Benny & George Jessel showing up briefly as their younger selves.

CONTEST: Though he lost his first election against Walker, Fiorello LaGuardia eventually became New York’s most iconic mayor (‘33 - ‘45).  And with a Pulitzer Prize winning musical about him by FIDDLER ON THE ROOF team Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick that grabbed two scenes from this film as song highlights on stage.  Name them to win a MAKQUIBS Write Up of any easy to get (!) streaming movie of your choice.

THE LADY LIES (1929)

(Some re-release prints titled WHY NOT?)  Very early Paramount Talkie, made at New York’s Astoria Studios which usually meant ‘canned theater,’ as it does here.  But this time, not in a bad way.  It’s all about class & public perception as Walter Huston, widowed upper-crust lawyer, feels mounting pressure from stuffy relatives, his entitled prep-school kids and a ‘respectable’ prospect to drop the perfectly lovely, socially unsuitable dress-shop attendant he’s taken out of the workplace and supported as his mistress for the past two years.  And since the lady is played by Claudette Colbert (her third film, but her true sound debut), it’s nearly impossible to understand what possible objections anyone could have.  Director Hobart Henley can’t transcend Early Talkie filming limitations (Lubitsch he ain’t), but he keeps a move on and gets some remarkably modern turns from his cast.  Colbert utterly ‘there’ as soon as she opens her mouth (in English & French), Huston not far behind.  A bit less Charles Ruggles as Huston’s tipsy BFF would help, but he comes thru winningly toward the end.  That's little known Betty Garde, a real treat as his honest, gold-digging spitfire gal pal.  And nice work from Tom Brown as Huston’s disapproving teenage snob of a son, learning a hard, eye-opening (if pat) lesson in relationships.*

DOUBLE-BILL: While Pre-Code/Pre-Crash LADY sails thru censurable problems, Colbert’s ZAZA/’38, a fascinating near-miss from George Cukor, would have to suffer for similar sins.  Huston also got a second shot at his character on stage & screen in DODSWORTH/’36 under William Wyler.  OR: *Tom Brown probably had his best role as TOM BROWN OF CULVER/’32, Wyler’s lean, heart-tugging military school meller with an early appearance by a shockingly young & handsome Tyrone Power Jr.

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

A quote from admired graphic novelist Maximilian Uriarte (MARINE CORPS; BATTLE BORN) impetus for today’s post: ‘Battle Born was inspired heavily by John Milius’s 1982 film ‘Conan the Barbarian.’  ‘Conan’ has one of the most beautiful visual & film soundtracks of all time. The first 30 minutes are some of the greatest shots ever made, and then the movie kind of goes on for another hour and a half.’  Recommendation enough to fill in what's long been a personal film lacunae.  And Uriate’s entirely right about that last hour & a half.  Dogged is the word that comes to mind as Milius (co-writing with Oliver Stone) sends Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mighty Conan off on a quest for glory, a kidnapped princess & private revenge to a Shangri-La lorded over by James Earl Jones’s blue-eyed menace (his parents' killer), accompanied by three sidekicks.  Arnold a sort of a big beefy WIZARD OF OZ Dorothy in an alternate cream-colored, testosterone-loaded Emerald City.  But if Uriate’s right about the last two acts, he’s overly generous about the first.  With even the much lauded Basil Poledouris score sounding like warmed over Rózsa.*  Milius’s does his best work in the smaller scaled moments of that first 30 minutes, but even there the action is poorly staged, as when young Conan’s home, village & family are leveled by Jones and his marauders.  And while we can appreciate the isometric benefits to the Schwarzenegger build from an adolescence spent pushing the beam of a circular mill as a prisoner, application remains doubtful.  Thank goodness that fine character actor Mako shows up as mysterious shaman/mentor to our desert-wandering  Conan for a few winking gags.  But this is one of those films that needs to be seen at just the right age to make its mark.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Speaking of Mikós Rózsa, Anthony Mann & Charlton Heston’s EL CID/’62 makes for constructive comparison.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: In spite (or is it because?) of an oversized personality and oversized rep, John Milius only directed seven feature films over his career.  Now in his mid-seventies, his last feature came out three decades ago.  Just how difficult a guy is he?

GUNN (1967)

Wedged between a trio of epic productions (two with runaway budgets, and one of those a career altering fiasco), Blake Edwards came out with a quick pair of inexpensive projects.  This unheralded expansion of his popular PETER GUNN tv series (with composer Henry Mancini’s earworm theme), followed by his largely one-set Jacques Tati homage, THE PARTY/’68.*  Both films ignored at the time, the latter, with Peter Sellers’ tour de force/politically incorrect Indian actor, long rediscovered/reevaluated, but this very ‘60s, slow-to-boil detective yarn still little seen, underappreciated.  The rare Edwards film not shot in some WideScreen process, it’s only slightly embellished from the tv model which works nicely for steady development of the case as Craig Stevens’ Gunn investigates a mob ‘rub-out’ on a yacht and finds likely suspects in another mob hoping to move on their territory.  The main fun comes from Gunn methodically hitting likely spots in a fast changing L.A. waterfront scene (river rats, brothels & strumming folkies on the way out/hard core gangsters, arcades & free-love hippies on the way in).  Some of the interiors are pretty dire, gaudy as a high priced Reno motel suite, but the casting is on-the-nose, young Ed Asner excellent as a top police dick, even former Wagnerian Helen Traubel showing up as a beloved club owner.  And if some of the twittering sex-babes are now period embarrassments, its fun to see how much Cary Grant Edwards is able to pull out of Craig Stevens and his charcoal gray suit.  Strikingly so at times under Philip Lathrop’s lensing (lots of succinct connect-the-info panning shots, plus a mini-LADY FROM SHANGHAI mirror shootout and a pre-title James Bond action sequence before some very Bond-like opening credits).  Neat modest fun, with a couple of twists you won’t see coming as things heat up toward the end.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Look quick to see Mancini at the piano.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, THE PARTY.  THE GREAT RACE and WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY? were the large-scale pics just before and DARLING LILI right after.  The last two, like GUNN, co-written by William Peter Blatty of EXORCIST fame.  (Edwards half-heartedly tried reviving PETER GUNN in 1998 on tv with Peter Strauss.)

TAKE MY LIFE (1947)

After final credits under Powell/Pressburger & David Lean, cinematographer Ronald Neame became director Ronald Neame with this modest, but savvy ‘wrong man’ thriller.  Whipping up a goodly dose of Hitchcockian suspense as Hugh Williams, husband/manager to rising opera soprano Greta Gynt, is charged with murdering former lover Rosalie Crutchley.*  As presented in court and seen in tricky voice-over flashback by stout prosecuting counsel Francis L. Sullivan, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.  And stylishly presented by Neame, working a bit too hard to make a show of this standard, rather implausible material.  Little is known of the victim, not even a photo, but plucky Greta, playing amateur detective, makes enough improbable connections & deductions to locate a likely suspect in Edinburgh headmaster Marius Goring.  Already showing the sort of confident, faceless professionalism that would carry him thru THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE/’69 and THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE/’72 (all well managed, all the same to him), Neame builds up considerable tension without much to work with.  The highlight, a nail-biting school tour with Gynt & Crutchley’s creepy secret husband Goring, each of them aware of some nameless imminent threat, but holding back on what they think is going on.  Brought off by Neame & cinematographer Guy Green (who’d also turn director) with little more than pacing, shadows & architecture.  All debuts should go this smoothly.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: * Character actress Rosalie Crutchley gives a fascinating, if abbreviated portrait of a troubled woman as the victim.  Fascinating looking, too.  Not quite a beauty, but such an interesting face.  She and Marius Goring wiping the nominal leads off the screen.

FEHÉRLÓFIA / SON OF THE WHITE MARE (1981)

Extraordinarily vivid, almost psychedelically imaginative animation from Hungary, long considered an international treasure (after its disappointing original local reception), only now, after four decades, getting an official Stateside release.  With a style that merges Japanese anime & Peter Max, director/animator Marcell Jankovics emphasizes suggestive design elements over concrete narrative to tell a folk-based Hungarian creation myth/origin saga about a fertile white mare of the forest who gives the world three sons, each with different super powers in strength, iron & water.  ‘Tree-shaker’ (Mister Strength) journeys to the underworld where he finds his two brothers waiting to test him before they join forces to save the kidnapped princesses from evil dragons of the lower depths.  Only problem, how to get back topside!  The myths, compiled from conflicting folk stories, are more in line with the Finnish Kalevala creation story than the better known Norse myths familiar from the Ring Cycles of Wagner & Tolkien.  And why not?  Hungarian & Finnish languages are related only to each other in spite of the dozens of German & Romance tongues found in places between these countries.  (And each considered about as difficult to learn.)  As fascinating and occasionally charming as this all is, it must be noted that the ‘day-glo’ pastel look and repetitive nature of certain abstract motifs can pall.  But there’s certainly nothing like it out there.  (Unless, perhaps, some other film by Jankovics.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Parts of Disney’s FANTASIA/’40 (The Pastoral Symphony; Night on Bald Mountain) find echos here, as does the color & saturation of YELLOW SUBMARINE/’68.  OR: Master animator Richard Williams’ never completed THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER/’93 (officially released in an unapproved cut as ARABIAN KNIGHT).  Best seen in one of the on-line ‘fan’ cuts; look for ‘the Princess’ cut.

KID MILLIONS (1934)

In spite of a way with comic song that still pleases, especially slightly risque ones (Making Whoopee!; If You Knew Susie; You’d Be Surprised), B’way star Eddie ‘Banjo Eyes’ Cantor is a tough sell these days, missing the personal hook of Ziegfeld Follies co-stars like Fanny Brice (kept alive via Streisand in FUNNY GIRL, Will Rogers (a fatal plane crash at the height of his fame), or W.C. Fields (with his bristling curmudgeonly legacy).  Cantor’s rep now largely resting on the six early film musicals made for Samuel Goldwyn (1930 - ‘36), none holding up well.  And then there’s the BlackFace (in five of the six) adding a major obstacle to the technical challenges & slow pace as early film musicals learned to walk.  And by the time they got up to speed (here with director Roy Del Ruth), Cantor’s schnook shtick (sexually & ethnically ‘cleansed’ by Goldwyn for broadest appeal) had started to fall out of favor.  This penultimate Goldwyn project sends him to backlot Egypt where a $77 mill. inheritance waits, challenged by three other parties, as well as a local promise of death for the winning claimant.  Fine in theory, but the jokes & score are lame; only Irving Berlin's interpolated minstrel number ‘Mandy’ stands out, especially with the Nicholas Brothers getting showcased.*  Also, young Ethel Merman, in clarion voice, making her feature debut.  (She sings the song on the sheet music pictured above.)  Then Ann Southern, George Murphy, Edgar Kennedy, Warren Hymer, Stanley Fields, Paul Harvey, showy support above the line, but they pretty much sink.  All before the split-reel finale, a trip to Eddie’s Ice Cream Factory showcasing the new, improved 3-strip TechniColor.  It looks like a trailer for some never made Willy Wonka movie. If only!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *For a modern audience, seeing actual Black performers like the fabulous Nicholas Brothers working next to Cantor in BlackFace must seem incredibly odd . . . at the least!  Yet, it was still common at the time for Black stage acts to ‘black up.’  America’s top Black vaudevillian, the great Bert Williams, featured with Cantor in the 1917 & 1919 Ziegfeld Follies always worked in BlackFace.  (Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson usually gets credit for being the first Black star to go without.)

HEADLINE (1943)

A forgettable programmer two-thirds of the way, this bare budget British Tabloid tale springs to life in a last act with enough style & suspense to make you wonder if new filmmakers were brought in.  David Farrar impresses as usual*, here as a hotshot, deadline-skirting reporter, always on the verge of being fired by his demanding, combustible editor.  Especially on his current assignment, a juicy love triangle with blackmail, pay-offs and cold-blooded murder.  Real front page stuff with a bomb planted right in the middle: the editor’s wife is one side of the triangle.  Yikes!  Get the story and expose her; or lose the scoop and see the guilty party run off.  If only the set up didn’t play like rote recitation of well-worn formulas shot in routine fashion with flairless efficiency by director John Harlow on compact sets.  The sudden (if late) improvement quite unexpected.  Even the sets improve.  Check out a stylish movie-house lobby where Farrar meets an informer and spots a rendezvous between killer and editor’s wife.  Not a one-off either, but leading to a series of smart scenes, a suspenseful climax on a getaway train, and a nifty wrap up set piece to round things off with a pair big romantic gestures to bring down the curtain.  Too little, too late, I suppose.  But still, nicely done.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Easy to imagine Warners doing this in the early ‘30s with James Cagney as charging reporter and Edward G. Robinson as cuckold editor.  But they’d fix those first two acts.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Why didn’t David Farrar become a major star?  The guy seemed to have it all; starring roles for Powell/Pressburger (BLACK NARCISSUS/’47; THE SMALL BACK ROOM/’49; GONE TO EARTH/’50), handsome, a fine actor, and a manly, unforced sexy swagger not matched in the U.K. till Sean Connery came on the scene.  Perhaps the Stateside failure of GONE TO EARTH, disastrously refashioned by co-producer David O. Selznick as THE WILD HEART/’52, killed any Hollywood interest.  (Make SMALL BACK ROOM your Double-Bill.)

YOU NEVER KNOW WOMEN (1928)

With a much bigger cultural footprint than today, CIRCUS themed movies were mainstays in Hollywood from silents to the ‘60s.  But extra caché and something of an explosion in A-list interest came after the international success of E.A. Dupont’s VARIETÉ in 1925.  From HE WHO GETS SLAPPED/’24 and SALLY OF THE SAWDUST/’25, just before, to THE DEVIL’S CIRCUS, THE UNKNOWN/’27, THE SHOW/’27, FOUR DEVILS/’28, THE CIRCUS/’28, many others, exceptional films from Victor Sjöström, D.W. Griffith, Benjamin Christensen, Tod Browning², F.W. Murnau*, Charles Chaplin.  And this little gem, long thought lost, but beautifully resurrected on KINO.  Director William Wellman is in good early form a year before he made his rep with WINGS.  Like VARIETÉ, and many of these circus films, there’s a romantic triangle, here between millionaire ne’er-do-well Lowell Sherman and Houdini-like illusionist Clive Brook.  Both pining for lovely Florence Vidor, stage assistant to Brook (whom she loves like a brother and Sherman who by chance keeps taking credit for saving her from danger).  Eventually, a death-defying stunt goes wrong and sorts out loyalties.  The story is piffle, but the atmosphere (Oo-la-la!) really holds your attention with the ‘Moscow’ Circus troupe stunningly caught in constant foreground or background action by cinematographer Victor Milner, and the wonderful art direction of Paramount’s Hans Dreier, brought over from Germany (by Ernst Lubitsch for FORBIDDEN PARADISE/’24?), then staying for the rest of his career.  What luck the one surviving print was in near pristine shape!

DOUBLE-BILL: *Murnau’s FOUR DEVILS . . . and good luck finding this lost film.  Leave it to Hollywood to lose Murnau’s follow up to SUNRISE!  Any of the others mentioned above will do nicely, especially Browning’s unbelievably sick THE UNKNOWN with Lon Chaney as an armless wonder in love with a very young male-averse Joan Crawford.

YOUTH (2015)

Not YOUTH/2017, Xiaogang Feng’s big soapy ‘70s saga of an army entertainment unit in the PRC, but YOUTH/2015, Paolo Sorrentino/Michael Caine’s elegiac film about a blocked, aging composer.  Much buzz in the wake of Sorrentino’s previous international success with THE GREAT BEAUTY/’13, but with budget & gross just matching, ‘biz’ something of a let down.  A pity, since this is the more interesting of the pair, while sharing many of the same faults, especially Sorrentino’s over-indulgence in the kind of high-end fashion magazine visuals that made his YOUNG POPE series a slog to sit thru; here too often stopping the film in its tracks.  Ironic, as these ultra-composed/over-studied compositions are also his calling card & greatest artistic strength.  Something of a directorial conundrum!  Set in one of those top-tier Northern Italian luxury Hotel/Health Spa Resorts (balcony view of The Alps included), the current season boasting nightly ‘Pop’ avant-garde entertainment for a gaggle of stymied creators like composer/conductor Michael Caine (with daughter asst. Rachel Weisz); film auteur Harvey Keitel (with ass-kissing acolytes); deep-dish actor Paul Dano (debating an unlikely new role), all in creative crisis.  None more so than elderly eminence Caine, under fierce pressure to raise his baton once more for Queen & Country (literally), reinforcing his rep as a one-hit maestro.  And if the double-helping of end-of-life profundity is a pain, much is pleasingly undercut with unexpected humor growing like weeds between the cracks of personal revelations both wise & tragic.  Including an Edward Albee-worthy George & Martha verbal bout for Keitel & his refusing muse Jane Fonda, the latter in full war paint.  With similar detonations on tap and much jolly depression for all.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Credit to occasional film composer David Lang for coming up with the big ‘Simple Song’ composition everyone spends half the film talking up and somehow not disappointing us when we finally get to hear it.  It’s a stunner, with soprano Sumi Jo & violinist Viktoria Mullova glamming things up in front of a gorgeously lit & arranged orchestra while Michael Caine aces the rare trick of looking like he knows his business as conductor.

FANG HUA / YOUTH (2017)

Not YOUTH/2015, Paolo Sorrentino/Michael Caine's film about an aging, blocked composer, but YOUTH/2017, a big soapy saga by under-exported Chinese director Xiaogang Feng on the hopes & dreams, lives & loves, careers & missed opportunities of the members of an entertainment unit in the People’s Republic Army.  Looking back from today (the film wraps with epilogues & reflections), we follow the pathetic path of Xiaoping He (debuting Miao Miao) as she hesitantly joins the troupe and immediately faints in class, a real ‘little wren’ type.  So many clicks and BFF among the largely sex segregated unit, how will she ever fit in?  Thank goodness for the inexhaustible goodness of handsome, resourceful Feng Liu (an excellent Xuan Huang, best reason to watch), always on hand to buck her up physically & emotionally.  If only his eye wasn't already set on flirty, undeserving, two-faced Dingding Lin.  And so it goes with a dozen or so moderately differentiated characters (lots of girls/two or three boys), until disappointments and injuries start breaking up that old performing gang o’ mine and an Act Three change in location when our two leads transfer to the fighting army for some gory war action.  (Him: bravely wounded in a showy one-take battle sequence/Her: up to her elbow in blood as a front line nurse.)  Starting at the end of Chairman Mao/Gang of Four days, then continuing for the rest of the ‘70s, plentiful tears, renunciations, an amputation & reunions.  Xiaogang Feng certainly brings a lot of craft to this kitsch, but stages half his set pieces as if they were musical numbers. Fine at camp, but at war? When nurses set up tents for a field hospital we might be watching outtakes from BYE BYE BIRDIE/’63.   How did this ever get taken seriously?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Zhang Yimou’s TO LIVE/’94 covers similar terrain and has its own problems, but is far less sticky.

FIRE OVER ENGLAND (1937)

At Warner Brothers, Michael Curtiz, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Erich Wolfgang Korngold et al., reset the Douglas Fairbanks silent swashbuckling standard for the sound era with CAPTAIN BLOOD/’35.  Refreshingly rough & ready, follow ups would incrementally sacrifice spontaneity & sense of discovery for ever increasing technical finish & neater dramatic integration. But as a whole, the series set the bar extremely high.  Too high for most to compete.  Certainly too high for this British striver from Alexander Korda’s British outfit, led by fading Hollywood director William K. Howard* (with favored lenser James Wong Howe in surprising low-contrast form) unable to get a rhythm going between set ups careful to hide an inadequate budget; unhelped by a stop-and-start script prone to speechifying; and a cast which looks better on paper than on screen.  A tale of the Spanish Armada, high seas piracy, and plucky British perseverance, it’s similar to Warners infinitely superior THE SEA HAWK/’40.  Flora Robson plays Queen Elizabeth in both, much improved in the later pic.  Here, even with Laurence Olivier, Leslie Banks & Raymond Massey, only Vivien Leigh (spectacularly lovely and able to act) bests Warners’ counterpart Brenda Marshall in the love interest spot.  Ultimately, this one hangs fire and is mainly worth a look as testament to Hollywood’s superiority in the field at the time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: *Howard, near the front of the directing pack thru the mid-‘30s, slips noticeably here, and never recovered after his Stateside return.  While Olivier, still uncomfortable on camera (compare to James Mason in a small role), found his film legs working in Hollywood with William Wyler cracking the whip on WUTHERING HEIGHTS/’39.  Olivier knew it, too, asking Wyler to direct his HENRY V/’44, then giving his best ever for Wyler in CARRIE/’52.

ALMOST ANGELS (1962)

Made during a bad period at Disney, this modest family film must have been shot under-the-radar as it largely avoids the saccharine tropes and reflexive, kiddie-pandering Mouse House gags of the time.  (Laughter from kids dropped off for virtual babysitting at live-action Disney of the ‘60s & ‘70s, triggered from dogs, cats, ‘beetles,’ Annette Funicello & Tim Conway, may have been technically ‘live,’ but sounded as programmed as a canned sit-com laughtrack.)  Unjustly forgotten, ANGELS was lucky to be made in Austria, with its tiny budget and real locations showing barely a speck of Disney’s dated (even at the time) house-style.  Not that it’s some recovered masterwork, just a nice little film about a bunch of rambunctious boys who sing as the Vienna Boys Choir.  With the real choir boys playing themselves, they have a motley mutt-like appeal far removed from Hollywood casting agencies.  So too, the trio of lead boy actors, nicely varied/superior lip-synch singers.  And a perfect little narrative engine as the new kid with a star-quality voice (top notes most sopranos would kill for) is on the receiving end of hate at first sight with last year’s top boy.  But enemies become frenemies then friends before facing the crisis of the older boy’s life when, right before the annual tour, his voice breaks.  Unless the boys can figure something out, he’ll have to leave the choir.  (Same story arc as BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY/’73, if far less sentimental.)  Director Steve Previn (André’s older brother) suffers some bad acting (mostly from the new kid’s parents), but keeps things from dragging or turning too cute for words while getting everything he can from small boys overwhelmed by ornate, grandiose spaces.*  And what a relief to have Schubert, Brahms & Strauss on the soundtrack instead of the ghastly ‘comic’ underscoring that disfigured even the better Disney pics of the time.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *While the old Golden Age studio house-style was largely a thing of the past in ‘62, it survived another two decades @ Disney & Universal in moldering fashion.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Steve Previn will never be mistaken for Jean Vigo, but of course there’s a pillow fight (with feathers).  See ZERO FOR CONDUCT/’33 for a short second-feature.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Presumably charged with using Disney Deutschmark parked in Europe, producer Peter V. Herald followed with two more German/Austrian based pics: MIRACLE OF THE WHITE STALLIONS/’63, another great idea (saving the famed Lipizzaner Horses in WWII), but poorly handled, and a bad version of the oft-filmed EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES/’64.

THE KREMLIN LETTER (1970)

Hard-to-follow globe-trotting Spy vs Spy tale, something to do with the urgent recovery of a letter from some rogue U.S. Naval officer threatening the newly nuclear China.  An unlikely scenario for John Huston's misbegotten shaggy-dog Cold War thriller.  Patrick O’Neal, barely able to keep his eyes open, is the Navy man with a photographic memory recruited by shadowy CIA scenery-chewer Richard Boone to lead a Moscow-based ‘op’ targeting a Russian circle (Max von Sydow, Orson Welles*) also interested in the eponymous letter.  And while the plot and multiple killings come to nothing, perhaps the double-crosses and lack of scruples on both sides of the Iron Curtain caught Huston’s interest.  Or maybe it was the new ‘70s sexual freedom: Lesbian training circles; new girl spy slipping between the sheets to ‘learn the trade’ from O’Neal (a guy who can’t even get his eye lids up); gay spy rings with George Sanders in drag or knitting socks; plus a touch of drugs & S&M .   We’re an onion skin away from parody, a tone that may have pointed the way toward  Huston’s masterly PRIZZI’S HONOR/’85, unimaginable without this misstep.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned, PRIZZI’S HONOR, Huston’s penultimate film.  And one of his best.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Welles looks positively normal-sized (or nearly so) here, and even seems to be playing a role with his own famously undistinguished nose.  Good accent, too.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Not my Screwy Thought, but John Huston’s, trying out a new way to get away with all those Ruskies speaking English for our benefit; a theatrical convention too many people sweat over.  (Sydney Pollack was known to avoid projects that called for it.)  Here, interacting Russian characters start out speaking Russian, but with an English dialogue track quickly covering.  After a line or two of this (literal) double-talk, we switch to English only.  It works, but is it necessary?  Stanley Kramer solved the same issue in JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG/’61 with a speedy 360° panning shot that starts in German and ends in English.  The only thing he did solve.

THE BRAVADOS (1958)

Exceptional Western from vet helmer Henry King, a strong outing amid a string of unworthy late projects that have long diminished his critical rep.*  Fifth of six films with Gregory Peck. At their best (see TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH/’50; THE GUNFIGHTER/’51) these two slow burn artists compound their strengths in emotional depth and ambiguous payoffs.  (Influenced here by recent adult Westerns from Anthony Mann & John Ford?)  Peck’s the stranger in a small town, showing up to witness the hanging of four men for murder & bank robbery.  The same four men he believes raped and murdered his wife.  But with most of the town at evening mass the night before the hanging (in a church far grander than this town could possibly support), the men make a well-planned escape and Peck is soon leading the local posse and serving up personal justice in unusually tough manner for the period.  A grand example of peak CinemaScope lensing (Leon Shamroy, more theatrical than usual with almost no grain in the HD transfer), there’s an expendable romance tucked in (Joan Collins, over-parted), but just about everything else exemplary Hollywood craft with good support for Peck from Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi, Henri Silva, Lee Van Cleef, Andrew Duggan, Gene Evans.  The film a lesson in construction and organization.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *King also suffered (critically, and sometimes commercially) as Darryl Zanuck’s go-to director on many uncongenial 20th/Fox prestige projects.

DOUBLE-BILL: Peck co-produced William Wyler’s THE BIG COUNTRY/’58 next, another superb Western, this time with Charlton Heston instead of Stephen Boyd as main antagonist.  Ironically, a falling out with Wyler likely led to Peck passing on Wyler’s BEN-HUR/’59 which fell to Heston with Stephen Boyd as main antagonist.

PROVIDENCE (1977)

Acclaimed and approachable, this big award-winner for Alain Resnais hasn’t aged well.  David Mercer’s merciless/near-funny script has John Gielgud’s dying author (think Somerset Maugham dressed like Cecil Beaton) easing his pain by drinking his way thru a long night while free-associating a new novel with characters suggested by his children & late wife.  And what a wildly unpleasant burgoo of courtroom theatrics, wartime situations & domestic haggling he’s come up with: son Dirk Bogarde prosecuting half-brother David Warner on werewolf euthanasia charges; circular veranda chats with late wife Elaine Stritch; kitchen battles between daughter-in-law Ellen Burstyn (forcing a smile) and Bogarde.  A poverty of imagination the sole takeaway from these sub-literary reveries, and Gielgud’s bitchiness the only show in town.  Then, everything goes topsy-turvy in a last act that shifts from dark interiors to verdant outdoor sunshine on a grand estate as his three grown children make a visit to celebrate Dad’s 78th.  Presents, good wine, luncheon on the terrace, and not a trace of his fictitious counterparts to be seen in these agreeable adults.  Where did the ghastly specters of Gielgud’s novelistic dreamworld come from?  No doubt the real misanthrope is screenwriter David Mercer.*  Unearned dramatics, and pretty hard to take.  But worth a look just for Gielgud’s energetic malevolence and for a late romantic score from Miklós Rózsa, often in juxtaposition to the chilly precision of Resnais in the modern sections.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Also aging poorly, scripter David Mercer’s best known film, MORGAN!/’66, again with David Warner.

WANTED FOR MURDER / A VOICE IN THE NIGHT (1946)

Moonlighting between two projects with ‘Archers’ partner Michael Powell (I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING/’45; A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/’46), it’s fun to imagine co-scripter Emeric Pressburger responsible for everything good in this serial killer thriller, and for the striking intimations of later Hitchcock projects (especially STRANGERS ON A TRAIN).  But with five writers credited, who knows who deserves kudos for its top notch characters & construction.  A good cast, too, with Eric Portman as a deranged ‘gentleman’ strangler growing madder by the day; Dulcie Gray as the girl getting too much attention; Derek Farr as the nice new guy in her life; and Roland Culver (fourth-billed, but with the largest role*) as the Scotland Yard Inspector racing against the clock to stop the next murder.  Alas, what’s all too clear is that all these good efforts are seriously compromised by Lawrence Huntington’s stiff-jointed megging.  True, he’s not helped by a starvation budget (some alarmingly poor process work and a big schlurpy, overused mini-piano concerto from film composer Mischa Spoliansky), but it’s Huntington’s essential dullness that leaves the suspense on the table.

CONTEST: *Culver’s a lot like John Williams who played Hitchcock detectives in DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54 and TO CATCH A THIEF; admittedly a pretty standard role.  Less likely is a little scene for Culver and assistant Stanley Holloway early in the investigation more or less lifted from G.B. Shaw’s PYGMALION and prefiguring a famous scene Holloway played as Alfred P. Doolittle in the Lerner & Loewe adaptation MY FAIR LADY.  Only Holloway plays a different part here.  Name the role he's mirroring and the two similar scenes (here & from MY FAIR LADY) to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of a free streaming film.

REDES (aka THE WAVE) (1936)

Fred Zinnemann made his directing debut on this agit-prop/proletariat film (shot in 1934, the title translates to NETS), funded by Mexico’s newly installed left-wing government.  With strong whiffs of Eisenstein’s POTEMKIN/’25 in its working-class/injustice premise: Power to the people! (At least: Power to the fishermen!); it was shot on a silent-era, hand-cranked Akeley camera by famed still photographer Paul Strand (all sound dubbed in ‘post’) and is too artfully composed by half for its own good.  Zinnemann wanted more movement & spontaneity.  But Strand held to a handsome, even chic, distressed-fashion look*: strikingly fit, blemish-free peasants (non-pros, the lead a university student, the rest Mexican Men’s Health worthy) who stop fighting amongst themselves to join as one in the face of twin tragedies (including a child dying for the price of medicine), rising against capitalistic boat-owners, overlords & the town’s monopolistic fish trader; all responsible for near-starvation wages.  Beautifully restored, including a soundtrack with Silvestre Revueltas’ notable score, at an hour, it’s as lean as its Party Line protagonists.

DOUBLE-BILL: Also restored, BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN is now aspirational and entertaining; far easier to see how it conquered the cinematic world, though unlikely to ever regain a Top Ten World Cinema position.  OR: *WHITE MANE/’53, Albert Lamorisse’s superb followup to his much-loved THE RED BALLOON/’52, offering similar (unintentional?) distressed-fashion chic with its child protagonist’s untamed coif & worn, sun-baked outfit.  OR: ARAYA/’59, Margot Benacerraf’s nearly forgotten documentary on the Araya Venezuelan salt marshes.  (All three covered below.)

MANDALAY (1934)

‘Our Lady of Decolletage’ Kay Francis stars in a late pre-Code pic that’s perfectly willing to give a pass to murder, prostitution, drunkenness, living in sin, gambling & police coverups, but drawing the line at gunrunning.  That’s the game Kay’s smiley lover-boy, rotten Ricardo Cortez plays, and as the film starts, he's already in financial distress, taking it on the lam till he can raise dough for a new deal and leaving Francis in the lurch.  That'd be a Rangoon lurch where Warner Oland’s anything-goes nightclub hires Francis as their new ‘available’ songtress at a white piano where she dazzles the menfolk and ‘sinks’ to new heights.*  This first act all very von Sternberg/Dietrich before switching gears with Kay taking a slow boat to Mandalay for a reset and meeting disgraced doc Lyle Talbot on board.  A broken man atoning for a surgery gone wrong under the influence, he’s drinking his way into the jungle where he plans on ending it all treating  natives for the deadly Black Fever.  Can love & sacrifice redeem these two?  Maybe, but not with Cortez showing up in the adjoining cabin.  Yikes!  He’s still hot for Francis, still in hock to the big money men, still evading the police.  The story’s something of a mess, but plenty effective moment-by-moment under Tony Gaudio’s darkly glamorous lensing, Kay changing hair-styles & outfits at a clip (one conservative number with a V-neck & decorative buttons an Orry-Kelly knockout) & Michael Curtiz’s typically muscular direction.  All capped by one of the most outrageous Pre-Code endings imaginable.  Four months later, Hollywood began enforcing the Production Code seriously.  Kay Francis’s career never quite got over it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In the nightclub, Kay’s a sensation accompanying herself on a white grand, singing  a Sammy Fain number, ‘When Tomorrow Comes.’   IMDb has Francis doing her own singing, but is she?  Sounds a lot like the great Helen Morgan (of SHOW BOAT fame).  More likely a Morgan imitator, but definitely not Francis.

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (1949)

PRIVATE LIVES meets ANNA KARENINA in a David Lean pic from his overlooked ‘middle-period.’* A prestige item for future wife Ann Todd which he took over from Ronald Neame, who retains producer credit. From an H.G. Wells novel about the tragic consequences of an affair he had in Boer War days, the modernized Eric Ambler script can’t fully account for nearly four decades of social change & two World Wars, robbing the story of its scandalous motivation. Todd, looking like Joan Fontaine’s less photogenic stand-in, is raptly in love with scientist/professor Trevor Howard, but, distrustful of passionate commitment, turns to companionate marriage with wealthy international financier Claude Rains. They weather one crisis, but nine years later, a chance meeting with the long happily married Howard at accidentally booked adjoining rooms (with balcony in the Alps!), is espied & misinterpreted by Rains who finds enough circumstantial evidence to start divorce proceedings. Nothing much wrong here, and Lean’s taste for plots with infidelity runs from BRIEF ENCOUNTER to DR. ZHIVAGO, but only Rains finds something to play in his characterization. Elsewise, wan doings. Or is until the last reel, when yet one more mistimed renunciation takes a bad turn and the film goes all ANNA KARENINA on us in a stunningly crafted suicide set piece, shot & edited to a fare-the-well; it all but demands viewing..

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Between Lean’s early Noël Coward/Charles Dickens adaptations and his later ‘thinking man’s’ international epics.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Initially retitled ONE WOMAN’S STORY Stateside, since PASSIONATE wasn’t allowed to be used in titles at the time. Imagine it on a marque. Shocking!

ANTOINE ET ANTOINETTE (1947)

Immensely charming, witty and well-observed, Jacques Becker turned a stylistic corner with this ‘pink-collar’ working-class dramedy in a still-recovering post-war Paris. A tale of young love for a struggling, but basically happy couple (the well-matched Roger Pigaut & Claire Mafféi). Him: working at a book manufacturer (operating a rather terrifying page trimmer, watch those fingers!)/Her: clerking at a discount department store under an officious floor manager. On a tight budget & even tighter space in a walk-up flat, with nosy neighbors & slow receding wartime rationing, the opening three reels are a marvel of habit & humor, technically pacey & fluid as it introduces neighborhood & characters, hopes & dreams with near Neo-Realistic clarity. The main story arc involves a persistent, lecherous middle-aged grocer, favoring customers who favor him and using hard-to-get tinned sardines as calling cards for pretty young employees ‘with benefits.’ Antoine, jealous of the attention & general flirting aimed at his wife (she hardly gives it a thought) thinks things will turn around when they hit the lottery for 800,000 Francs. . . . then misplaces the ticket. Becker loses a bit of the magical atmosphere he’s built up with this conventional whimsy (imagine De Sica’s Bicycle Thief losing a lotto stub instead of his bike), but even if this is Neo-Realism Lite, Antoine’s desperation remains heartbreakingly real, cleverly structured and loaded with character revelations neatly resolved. A priceless look at a brief, forgotten era in Paris, with people to treasure, real locations (only the very last shot faked); an altogether irresistible package.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Becker shows particular flair in his use of background & diegetic music. Note the relentlessly rising keys as a piano is methodically tuned behind Antoine at the lottery board, shadowing his growing panic. And the fugue that breaks out when he heads to the park to grieve among statues & fountains. (GIGI’s Gaston does much the same in the Vincente Minnelli musical.) Or a young unhappy bride at a wedding Antoine’s crashed singing the Gounod/FAUST aria ‘The King of Thulé’ at the piano in an untrained voice.

DOUBLE-BILL: Becker was moving into his best period, topped by his classic CASQUE D’OR/’52.

RAISE THE TITANIC (1980)

Hits in print/bywords for Hollywood hubris on the screen, only two of Clive Cussler’s nautically-inclined Dirk Pitt adventures have braved film transfer: this fiasco, aquiver at the thought of becoming a new James Bond franchise*, and SAHARA/’05 (not seen here), which generated more news in post-release legal wrangling than in audience response.  (Losing $150 mill can do that.)   Plenty of blame to go around in RAISE, a typically undercooked Lord Lew Grade project (he wasn’t dubbed Lord Low Grade for nothing), from direction to script, even to its John Barry score, recycling a circular theme from his own BLACK HOLE score of last year.  But mainly, it’s the plot, stupid.  Many moon ago, a load of new energy source material, rumored to be more powerful than uranium, went down with The Titanic!  Now, US and Russian governments are out to find the famous sunken liner and the hidden radioactive loot.  But with the located ship too deep for normal search methods, they must Raise the Titanic to . . . well, you get the idea.  Note how a pretty good, not quite starry cast (Jason Robards*, Richard Jordan as Pitt, David Selby, plus Anne Archer & Alec Guinness with nothing to do) pales next to the cast for the similarly aimed HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER/’90 (Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, James Earl Jones, even Richard Jordan again, many more).  And with so much happening far underwater, the abundance of slo-mo set pieces can lull you to sleep. Helped by John Barry’s circular lullaby.

CONTEST: *The film does anticipate a James Bond film (SPECTRE/’15) in one way, reusing a twist involving a simple word misunderstanding nipped from the only film Alfred Hitchcock ever remade.  Name the film and the twist to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up on your choice of a streamable film.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Lew Grade & John Barry ‘topped’ this (if that’s the word) next year in THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER; Robards once more on hand, now as U.S. Grant, to ask ‘ Who was that masked man?’

FREUD (1962)

Never a good sign when the studio slaps a new title on your under-performing pic.  Here, hoping to ‘sex’ up a withering box-office with FREUD: THE SECRET PASSION.  (Has the practice ever worked?)  Time, on the other hand, has done a lot of good for John Huston’s bio-pic, now looking more substantial, or at least more interesting, than it must have upon release.  Shot in grainy, high-contrast b&w (Douglas Slocombe), not an easy choice to make against ‘60s pressure to use color or a tv-friendly compressed grey-scale, the film sticks to a few early years in Sigmund Freud’s psychological inquiries.  Focused on OEDIPUS COMPLEX issues in early childhood, it stumbles in being too on-the-nose leading us thru discoveries while shrinking Freud’s client list down to a single patient (Susannah York, overparted) for the last half of the film.  That said, it’s quite an impressive shot at a difficult subject, with more period feel than common for a 1962 film (especially from Universal), with an unusually fine turn (more or less his last work) from Montgomery Clift*, a Freud who continually surprises himself with revelations that apply as much to him personally as to his patients.  An unexpectedly strong showing, faults and all.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Clift was not in good shape for the shooting.  Drinks, drugs, fragile mental condition.  He only made one small indie pic four years later (THE INTRUDERS).  Huston gets a bad rap for mistreating his failing star, but his auto-bio (AN OPEN BOOK) offers convincing defense, without even mentioning he was set to work a third time with Clift (THE MISFITS/’60 was first), when Elizabeth Taylor wanted him for REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE/’67.  Clift died before filming began, replaced by Marlon Brando.  (Plus more good inside stuff on original FREUD scripter Jean-Paul Sartre.)

DOUBLE-BILL: The best on-screen Freuds come with a comic spin: Alec Guinness in LOVESICK/’83 (an apparition to Dudley Moore in this sub-Woody Allen relationship comedy) and Alan Arkin pulling Nicol Williamson's Sherlock Holmes out of his funk (and stealing the pic) in THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION/’76.

WATERLOO (1970)

Hog-heaven for Battlefield Re-Enactor mavens, considerably less interesting for anyone else.  At an unrecoverable cost, producer Dino De Laurentiis blamed his third-choice stars for the flop (neither Rod Steiger as Napoleon nor Christopher Plummer as Wellington a box-office draw), but the real problem is lack of rooting interest.  Can’t really blame hack scripter H.A.L. Craig (even with a C.V. of 10 duds, including AIRPORT '77!) or that grandest of mediocrities,  USSR filmmaker Sergey Bondarchuk, hired on the strength of the BORODINO segment of his 1966 WAR & PEACE.*  (Still tossing in occasional inappropriate stylistic/au courant editing tics & extreme-closeups out of the blue.)  But the all too obvious problem is that there’s no character or side to care about on the field of battle.  Especially tough since you can never quite follow the action in these things.  (Thank God for those kilted Scots.  So easy to identify!)   We do learn one thing: Don’t stand next to the Duke of Wellington!  On a positive side, all that death & destruction does make for a lot of pretty pictures, and someone (cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi, a clever second-unit technician?) came up with a cool POV angle to capture officers charging into battle on horseback.   And as it’s unlikely to be equaled without loads of not-quite-convincing CGI in place of actual (in this case Russian) armies, there’s a definite must-see aspect to it.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The full 6+ hours of Bondarchuk’s WAR & PEACE is daunting, if only fitfully successful on any level beyond sheer girth (see below).  But its BORODINO segment (shortest of six at 1½ hours) does make for an interesting comparison.  But there, similarly faceless military action is buttressed by a wealth of characters we’ve spent hours building interest in.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: At the David di Donatello Awards (think Italian Oscars®), this somehow tied for Best Pic with Vittorio De Sica’s GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS and Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST, achievements on a slightly higher plane.