NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957)

(aka CURSE OF THE DEMON.)  Director Jacques Tourneur returns (with a less poetic/more concrete manner) to the suggestive horror films he’d made in the ‘40s for low-budget R.K.O. producer Val Lewton (CAT PEOPLE, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, THE LEOPARD MAN).  Proving maybe you can go home again if it's Elstree Studios England. Note top below-the-line talent in lenser Ted Scaife & designer Ken Adams.  Dana Andrews effectively stars (slurry diction under control) as a supernatural phenomenon debunker, in London to give a lecture, who comes up against his specialty.  But how to fight something you don't believe exists?  And with only three days before Demon-enabler Niall MacGinnis has foretold your death by a ‘force’ he only partially controls.  Peggy Cummings shows neat ambivalence as a newly hired assistant to a colleague of Andrews who dies mysteriously, and there’s a smash perf from Athene Seyler as MacGinnis’s worried, unloyal mother who prefers psychic mediums to demon romancers.   Add in unexpectedly sympathetic Scotland Yard types and simple, if alarming, F/X* (with an hallucinatory/infrared quality to some of the night shots) and you’ve got something pretty special.  Tourneur’s lack of quality follow up offers to direct a mystery.

AMBP: *The physically realized Demon Monster was added post-production against Tourneur’s wishes.  Also: the original Stateside release, CURSE OF THE DEMON, lost 12 minutes.  The complete cut should run 95".

DB: While best known for classic horror (as mentioned above) and noir, let Tourneur surprise you with the deeply felt religious-themed Americana of STARS IN MY CROWN/’50.  (Many of these covered below, simply go to the main web page and type Tourneur in the upper left hand corner Search Box to bring them up.)

THE INCIDENT (1990)

Superior tv movie from the days when Broadcast TV Movie was something of a pejorative.  Not a lot of surprises, but quality that shows above & below the line, with an exceptional lineup of senior character actors digging into their parts rather than coasting on past charm.  Walter Matthau plays it straight & true as a past-his-prime small town Colorado lawyer in WWII, forced to pull a John Adams and defend the enemy when ordered to handle the case of a German prisoner-of-war (Peter Firth) accused of murdering camp doctor Bernard Hughes, a personal friend of Matthau’s.  Harry Morgan (particularly fine) is the Fed judge bought in to run things as efficiently as possible (with a predetermined end); Robert Carradine as a sharpie prosecuting attorney; William Schallert the fair-minded local sheriff with some inconvenient questions on what ought to be an open-and-shut case.  With at-home complications from Matthau’s daughter-in-law & grandkid (Susan Blakely; Ariana Richards) and naturally a beloved son serving overseas to multiply Matthau’s discomfort level as the riled town questions his motives.  Joseph Sargent, a top director of tv & the occasional film (he & Matthau scored on THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE/’74 - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/taking-of-pelham-one-two-three-1974.html), gives unusual attention to period detail (the vintage cars look a bit too ready for the Labor Day parade, but those old actors sure know how to pull off a ‘40s wardrobe), and lets big scenes have a quiet finish to them that’s very effective.  Watch Matthau get the bad news you know is coming.  Good work all ‘round on this one.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: An underlying twist here (a personal fave) gives Matthau the case not on belated recognition of ability, but because he’s pegged as a second-rater and a bit of a lush.  He’s supposed to lose, but surprises everyone, including himself, by finding his form after all.  A popular, much used character trope, it had just propped up Paul Newman in THE VERDICT/’82, with Sidney Lumet ponderously directing & David Mamet pretentiously scribbling.  OR: See Matthau & Morgan retained in two sequels: AGAINST HER WILL: AN INCIDENT IN BALTIMORE/’92 and INCIDENT IN A SMALL TOWN/’94.  But with Matthau now hired for competence rather than presumed incompetence, neither gives off quite the same kick.

SLAVE SHIP (1937)

Fascinating and appalling, this little known film* about a ‘cursed’ ship running human cargo in the fast declining slave trade of 1860 is essential, if unsettling viewing.  Upturning a long held belief that Hollywood always romanticized Southern slavery, even when trying to be truthful/sympathetic to the victims of ‘that peculiar institution,’ this outlier film offers nothing but horror upon horror in the bowels of a slave ship packed to the gills with product, the seething mass under constant lash by the ship’s repellent crew.  Warner Baxter, the not particularly reluctant captain, finally seeing the error of his ways when he falls for Elizabeth Allan once back home.  The abrupt switch to cooing meet-cute romance disastrous to the drama, totally unconnected in tone to the opening scenes, the schizophrenic storyline credited to William Faulkner (!) of all people, though obviously much rewritten by Darryl F. Zanuck favorite, Lamar Trotti and comedy tweaker Sam Hellman.  (Someone must have written the drunken ship’s cook gags for Francis Ford.)  Back on board with his new wife, Baxter finds first-mate Wallace Beery ignored his orders and kept the old crew who are now forcing him to make a dangerous (if highly profitable) final slave run; even cabin boy Mickey Rooney on the wrong side of things.  It’s all mouth-gaping situations from then on out, as Baxter is left to die at the slave exchange, a fresh containment of slaves is shuttled aboard, and Baxter escapes to climb back on his ship and save the day.  And if some slaves wind up not getting drowned in the process, all the better!  Why this film, distasteful as it is, isn’t on the radar of current Black Studies is a mystery.  Perhaps the All White Man’s perspective is simply too much to swallow even with historical/period blinders on.  Not a single slave gets individual treatment.  But it seems too important a moment in popular culture to ignore . . . for those who can handle it.

DOUBLE-BILL: Baxter had just gone thru the Civil War as Dr. Sam Mudd, the man who unknowingly set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after the Lincoln assassination, in John Ford’s THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND/’36.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Was it withdrawn from circulation?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Very odd background score from Alfred Newman only occasionally matching up with events on screen.  ALSO: Keep an eye out for Mickey Rooney taking it on the chin, but for real, from Beery who was told off in no uncertain terms by director Tay Garnett who knew Beery’s nasty ways from helming him in CHINA SEAS/’35.

THE CONQUERING POWER (1921)

Quick to ride the backdraft on FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE’s phenomenal success, most of that film’s principal talent repeats only six months later for another literary adaptation (Honoré Balzac doing the honors) to merely respectable results.  But as the talents in question are director Rex Ingram, scripter June Mathis, Rudolph Valentino, Alice Terry (Mrs. Ingram), Ralph Lewis in a career best and cinematographer John Seitz*, ‘respectable results’ ain’t nothing to sneeze at.  Perhaps suffering from a rushed production schedule, the film doesn’t look forward as APOCALYPSE did, Mathis relying too heavily on title cards and letters (epistolatory cinema?), Ingram letting his cast get away with pretty old-fashioned indicative gestural acting for 1921 and too often resting on his tableau vivant staging laurels.  All the same, involving stuff, with Parisian dandy Valentino (unaware he’s suddenly penniless) visiting rich country cousin Terry, a much courted beauty suffering under the over-controlling hand of miserly father Ralph Lewis.  And if her local suitors think only of her gold & riches, Rudy’s heart beats with true love even after he goes overseas to run gold mining excavations.  (Looking quite rough & manly in the process).  But with Papa Lewis making sure these two lovebirds lose touch, they each end up assuming the other has moved on and married.  It’s only after Dad goes mad and dies, that things can be righted.  And this late story arc is where the film suddenly comes into its own, becoming worthy of Ingram’s pictorial gifts.  Especially in a hallucination sequence with Lewis accidentally imprisoned, locked in his gold counting room, attacked by phantoms of his own imagination.  A highlight rich enough to make any film.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Seitz’s cinematographic enthusiasm & visual panache would later make real movie directors out of word-oriented writer/directors Preston Sturges & Billy Wilder.

DOUBLE-BILL: As Lewis’s gold fever takes its fatal turn, Ingram seems to be looking back to D.W. Griffith’s great one-reeler A CORNER IN WHEAT/’09 and forward to Erich von Stroheim’s obsessive GREED/’24, a film von Stroheim hoped Ingram could edit down to a releasable length.  He did, from Stroheim’s 42 reels down to 18 (about three hours).  Both cuts destroyed in favor of M-G-M's official 10 reel version.

DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST / ARANYER DIN RATRI (1970)

Four long time pals, on a 30-something break before life & adult responsibilities kick in for keeps, go off on a countryside retreat in this Satyajit Ray classic.  Like other aging-past-their-Golden-Youth film stories, it’s heavily influenced by Federico Fellini’s I VITELLONI/’53 though here only echoing the contours of the earlier film.  Personalized by their different humours, a color film might have  coordinated tints for their outfits, they range from immature to class clown, from commitment phobic to utterly sincere.  This last, Ashim by name, wonderfully played by Ray alter-ego Soumitra Chatterjee who died last week, still best known internationally as grown Apu in the last of The Apu Trilogy, and about the most sincere actor ever captured on film.  He positively radiates the stuff.  Their journey opens with characteristic squabbles between the young men before they pick up a local guide and bribe their way into an unauthorized bungalow.  But a touristy tone of cultural clashes, joshing & drinks shifts to something more serious and to romantic possibilities once they meet some lovely locals.  Each of the young men responding with varying levels of interest, barely acknowledging the possibility of trouble coming from their (mis)adventures/(mis)behavior.  Epiphanies small & large, with only Chatterjee having the full life-changing lovestruck experience, brilliantly organized by Ray in a simple party game involving famous names.  The mood compounded in the following fair sequence with emotion & character revealed to magical effect using the simplest of means; the emotional pivot coming so fast, you may not notice it at first.  Intensely moving without seeming to work at it, it’s another masterpiece from one of the most sophisticated minds (and deceptively simple techniques) ever to make film.

 DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, I VITELLONI.

CONFIRM OR DENY (1941)

The dichotomy of a lux physical production with top below-the-line names (Richard Day design; Leon Shamroy cinematography) and a suspiciously short running time (73") is a dead giveaway that this up-to-the-minute WWII drama (out only days after the Pearl Harbor attack) was downgraded mid-production.  Meant to follow up on MAN HUNT/’41, Fritz Lang’s putative let’s-assassinate-Hitler thriller, we’re now in London during ‘the Blitz’ as dynamic American news editor Don Ameche begs for exclusive communication lines (cables, pigeons) to beat the competition.  But when the scoop of the war comes his way (Hitler’s invading England!), he’s forcibly kept from getting the word out by his own teletype operator (and love interest) Joan Bennett who insists he go by the book and run it by the war censor (John Loder in a nothing role).  A zippy piece of early war melodrama (story by Sam Fuller*), it starts well, with loads of turns for various character actors and a young Roddy McDowall, fresh off HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, in harm’s way as rooftop pigeon lookout.  Lang found the whole thing too phony, knew the end was a mess and found Ameche miscast and pushing too hard to be Clark Gable.  Happy to ankle the pic when he got sick, vet megger Archie Mayo took over and he makes a good show of it, keeping up pace & stylish effects.  But he also got stung by the same two problems Lang couldn’t fix.  Pretty good all the same, with Bennett in her prime, more devastating than any Nazi bomb.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Great meet-cute for Bennett & Ameche during one of those London wartime BlackOuts.  Who but Sam Fuller would come up with love at first sight . . . in the dark.

NAZARIN (1959)

Acclaimed and depressive, this Luis Buñuel film from his Mexican period is a rare example of the great man begging for admiration.  Not that NAZARIN doesn’t earn it, just surprising to see him ask.  Taken from a Benito Pérez Galdós novel about a wandering priest (leading man handsome Francisco Rabal) who serves the poor thru his own suffering & denial, the character is as close to Cervantes/Don Quixote as to the Gospel’s Jesus, and living proof that no good deed goes unpunished.  It’s not even clear if his actions help more than they hurt once he leaves his city hovel (where everything he possesses is either given away or taken) to roam the countryside begging for sustenance and helping out when he can.  And such a host of problems he finds!; painted prostitutes needing guidance, plague sufferers needing comfort, dying children needing his blessing.  At one stop, he seems to facilitate a miraculous cure, at another he gets into trouble with military officers.  Accompanied against his will by a pair of reformed tarts, would-be acolytes who follow his every footstep, as well as a dwarf who’s following one of the tarts, he’s soon arrested by soldiers who march him off to . . . where?  He’s ultimately given a pineapple by a passing peasant which he cradles like a child.  Shot in the most straightforward manner imaginable, this tale of appallingly wasted religious nobility is undoubtedly essential Buñuel, but without much straw in the loam.

DOUBLE-BILL: Buñuel feels more fully himself in the saintly absurdity that is SIMON OF DESERT/’65.

THE CAPTAIN HATES THE SEA (1934)

A pretty good idea and a pretty good cast can’t float this comic riff on GRAND HOTEL, even on a cruise ship.*  Wallace Smith’s script sets up the expected multiple storylines (a lush, a dick, some hidden securities, senior sexpot, even a captain who hates the sea!), but they don’t so much intersect as occasionally bump into each other.  Meanwhile, director Lewis Milestone (not known for a light touch in spite of winning the one-and-only Oscar ever given for Comedy Director on TWO ARABIAN KNIGHTS/’27 and his excellent early Talkie THE FRONT PAGE/’31) never finds a proper comic rhythm.  Yet, weak as it is, still an enjoyable watch thanks to some gorgeous lighting from lenser Joseph August and as sad swansong for the unfortunate John Gilbert.  Fourth-billed in spite of having the largest role, he’d recently bid adieu to his long M-G-M contract playing second fiddle to ex-amour Greta Garbo in QUEEN CHRISTINA.  Looking a bit frail and lightheartedly drinking himself to death (on and off screen, dead in just over a year at 38), he’s rather charming within the role’s limits.  (It’s as close to Ronald Colman as he ever got.)  Victor McLaglen’s a tough cop gone P.I.; Walter Catlett a sympathetic bartender; Wynne Gibson an ex tart trying to be the good wife; and Walter Connolly as a captain amused at the foibles of his passengers.  Tame stuff, but watch Milestone hit form in the film’s one serious sequence with Akim Tamiroff’s rebel leader arrested and summarily executed after getting off at a port city where he expected to lead a revolution.  Suddenly, everybody seems to know what to do, particularly Milestone, in his element, if only for five minutes.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Next year, M-G-M made their own ocean-bound GRAND HOTEL in CHINA SEAS/’35.  Expert entertainment with Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Rosalind Russell & Wallace Berry, dir. Tay Garnett.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *And speaking of M-G-M: Buster Keaton got nowhere with production head Irving Thalberg pitching a comic riff on GRAND HOTEL for himself & Marie Dressler.  (Buster as the slow dying Lionel Barrymore; Dressler to play Garbo’s balletic swan.)  Keaton biographers have for some reason poo-pooed this as a tired idea from a played out Buster in decline, ignoring the constant delights of THREE AGES/’23 which took off on D.W. Griffith’s INTOLERANCE in much the same way.

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (1947)

In the struggle that was British cinema in the late ‘40s/early ‘50s, a Golden Age of Dickens adaptations: David Lean astonishments GREAT EXPECTATIONS/’46 and OLIVER TWIST/’48; the Christmas Carol in SCROOGE/’51; and a darn good shot at THE PICKWICK PAPERS/’52.  Plus, from little Ealing Studios, this overlooked NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.  With a discursive storyline better served by mini-series (and there’ve since been many), this stripped to the bones version is brisk & bracing, even a bit brusque; but in a good way that doesn’t misrepresent this early novel.  (PICKWICK hardly a novel at all, which makes NICKLEBY second only to OLIVER TWIST.)  Unfortunately, lanky Derek Bond misses star quality as Nickleby, lad of little fortune & many a short term job; but every other piece of the casting puzzle spot on.  Particularly the men, glowering Cedric Hardwicke’s saturnine Uncle/’Protector’; Bernard Miles as his revenge-minded clerk; Alfred Drayton’s terrifying Squeers with his sadistic private school and pudgy horror of a son; Stanley Holloway’s hammy theatrical benefactor (just not enough of him); not a weak link in here.  And trimming the plot certainly helps tamp down any false sentimentality (Aubrey Woods’ tortured Smike less physically challenged than in other versions), though at this length, Dickens’ ‘rhymed’ plot devices & coincidences do topple onto each other.  Still, this is the version to go for after you’ve read the book.*

DOUBLE-BILL: Beautifully designed by Michael Relph just before he became an Ealing producer, it’s stylishly directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, who gets the most out of his small budget following his legendary contribution to DEAD OF NIGHT/’45 with Michael Redgrave’s ventriloquist losing himself to his ‘dummy.’  OR: Any of the Dickens films mentioned above.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Now at least partially displaced as first choice by the fine 2001 mini-series 3'20") with James D’Arcy fully capturing Nicholas’s grace and handsome soul.

ffolkes (aka NORTH SEA HIJACK) / 1980

Right in the midst of his improbably long run as a Teflon James Bond*, Roger Moore made a trio of equally improbable action-adventure films with fading, if still deal-worthy stars under the execrable Andrew V. McLaglen, a director who makes the term ‘Hollywood pro’ pure pejorative.  Son of John Ford regular Victor McLaglen, Andrew made many under-par/over-performing late John Wayne Western (though he claimed to loath the genre) and could always be counted on for coarseness, desperation ‘post-production editing, and an unmotivated donnybrook or two when the narrative stalled.  Good for small change at Stateside box-offices, these impossible missions worked better in international markets.  This one also steered clear of the WWII heroics found in the other two, instead offering a straightforward ransom drama with Anthony Perkins & Michael Parks (plus five) as bad guys threatening to blow up three huge ocean-based oil rigs unless the British government comes up with millions.  Enter eccentric anti-terrorist mercenary fflokes (no capitalization, please) and his Seal Team gang of indistinguishable underwater warriors.  Laughs & thrills few and far between, but it is the shortest of the three should you wish to try one.  (Moore also takes top-billing here which is somehow less depressing then seeing Richard Burton in THE WILD GEESE/’78 and Gregory Peck in THE SEA WOLVES/’80 stoop to get first-billing.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: While Greg Peck’s THE GUNS OF NAVARONE/’61 (a bit stiff, but largely holding up) is the obvious template for these three Moore/McLaglen pics; Burton’s copycat WHERE EAGLES DARE/’68, with Clint Eastwood, if overextended, is unlikely suspenseful fun.

ATENTION MUST BE PAID: *Those Bond Babes are only in the poster.  No doubt there to shanghai a few male fannies into seats.

THE FIRST LEGION (1951)

Lots of religiosity (and answered prayers) in the films of Douglas Sirk, but only two set at religious institutions: the fortress-like Nunnery of THUNDER ON THE HILL/’51, with Christian iconography & churchly architecture ginning up a dark-and-stormy-night melodrama; and, right before it, this exceptionally interesting, if not entirely satisfying, Miracle Story, which takes place almost entirely inside a gated Jesuit institute.  Emmet Lavery, adapting his own 1930s play, doesn’t fill in some missing pieces, crucial public reaction to a debunked miracle  is skipped over, and you can feel the sticky ‘real’ miracle ending coming a mile away, but Sirk compensates by handling the community of ‘brothers’ and their touchy grievances with tough, clear-eyed irritation & sympathy.  The initial crisis involves a Jesuit on the verge of leaving the community.  Even advice from the experienced Father Charles Boyer won’t alter his course of action.  But when ailing Father H.B. Warner has an apparently miraculous recovery from his death bed, it’s a game changer for all Doubting Thomases.  And not only among the brothers.  Once word gets out, their gated campus is suddenly overwhelmed as a destination pilgrimage for the desperate.  While the Jesuits, something of a independent Black Sheep cult inside the church, see both opportunity and disruption.  Worse, Boyer, the most worldly of the brothers, has an inkling the ‘miracle’ is based on a fraud.  Not of the Father’s making, but from Lyle Bettger, the cynical doctor involved in his treatment.  The hullabaloo, now adversely affecting a paralyzed patient the doctor cares about, Barbara Rush, suddenly a true believer in faith-based impossibilities.  Alas, Rush not at her best in beatific moments, but characterizations are elsewise pretty high (William Demarest, Leo G. Carroll, Walter Hampden, Wesley Addy, George Zucco), with the film just growing more involving.  Or does until that whopper of an ending.

DOUBLE-BILL: Operatically speaking, Poulenc’s DIALOGUE OF THE CARMELITES, composed five years after this film, shows weird, gender-switched similarities in plot & character.  OR: Hitchcock’s underappreciated Catholic-confession suspenser I CONFESS/’53.

THE DEFENSE RESTS (1934)

Punchy Columbia programmer left Jean Arthur, already in her mid-30s, still on the cusp of a career breakthru.  That’d happen on her next, THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING/’35, playing gal pal to Edward G. Robinson’s double act (Milquetoast clerk/on-the-lam gangster), John Ford directing a script by Jo Swerling and Joseph August lensing.  The last two two both repeating swell work here, but under journeyman hack director Lambert Hillyer who tends to suck the air out of this neat legal melodrama about brilliant, but ethically challenged lawyer Jack Holt (rough-edged Columbia contract player) who hires straight-arrow Arthur straight out of law school.  She wants to learn from the best defense man in town; she’d also like to reform the guy.  A hope that comes to a head when he represents a vile kidnaping child murderer.  Arthur, unaware Holt’s been blackmailed onto the unsavory case, thinks she can flip him with some past dirt she’s dug up.  But quit the case?  Quit the practice?  Quit this mortal coil?  Arthur may not know what she’s gotten her clay-footed idol into.  Swerling’s script takes the easy way out here & there, but tosses colorful character bits around generously.  Heck, even creepy Arthur Hohl plays a good-guy for a change.  Arthur (that's Jean Arthur) pushes all the right buttons, but needed a better setting and a more becoming hairstyle to sparkle.*  It took six mostly good features in 1935 before Frank Capra (and Gary Cooper) sealed the deal with MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN/’36.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL: While Arthur had Capra in her A-list future; Holt had him only in his past: SUBMARINE/’28; THE DONOVAN AFFAIR/’28; FLIGHT/’28; DIRIGIBLE/’31.  Note this re-release poster flips billing to put Arthur on top in larger font.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Columbia boss Harry Cohn thought Arthur looked like a horse from the ‘wrong’ side.  Problematic for an actress with Arthur’s insecurities.  Closer to the mark, Arthur’s looks only came up short when she was overdressed to look like a raving beauty.

THE MARRIAGE CIRCLE (1924)

Unable to agree on a follow up to the successful period romp of ROSITA/’23, Mary Pickford soon dropped the sexually knowing character Ernst Lubitsch had her play in that film (his Hollywood debut), returning to her comfort zone with innocent youth roles in LITTLE ANNIE ROONEY/’25 and SPARROWS/’26.*  But Lubitsch moved forward, finding his true Hollywood self in this, the first of his signature chamber-sized sex comedies, originally at Warner Bros., later at Paramount.  For Lubitsch, the pivotal moment presented itself upon seeing Charles Chaplin’s one-off drama, A WOMAN OF PARIS/’23.  Though commercially unsuccessful, Chaplin’s chamber drama about an affair that changes three lives was enormously influential in scale & technique, with an indirect manner of moving story along that Lubitsch refined into pure visual wit, unlocking the essence of what became ‘The Lubitsch Touch,’ the art of getting something unsayable (often sexual) across.  Doorknobs; windows unexpectedly open or closed; hats; missing buttons; white gloves & mislaid walking sticks; raised eyebrows; feint faints: all grist to the narrative.  After becoming internationally famous for his humanizing historicals, as still seen in ROSITA, Lubitsch went from casts of thousands to casts of five, and found a whole world in the bargain.  It started here; and he’s already a master of the form.  CIRCLE opens by sketching in the bad marriage of dapper Adolph Menjou (nipped from WOMAN OF PARIS) and the delicious Marie Prevost.  But once he spots her accidentally sharing a cab with Monte Blue, Menjou sees an opportunity for divorce.  Florence Vidor plays the other man’s spouse, also misreading what she sees to worry about the wrong woman.  Meanwhile, everyone’s best friend, the eternally hopeful Creighton Hale tags along, waiting (and waiting) to make a romantic move.  (He’s like Tony Randall in one of those Doris Day comedies.)  Slight, but sparking, still very funny, very involving, Lubitsch would return to the format all thru his career.  Including a loose sound remake (ONE HOUR WITH YOU/’32 with Lubitsch taking over directing duties from a flummoxed George Cukor) that’s aged less gracefully than the silent original.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: *Pickford turned against ROSITA in later years (perhaps having ceded artistic control  made it all too hard to swallow the critical & commercial success) and it became one of the few titles she didn’t bother to maintain properly.  The sole surviving print, from a Russian archive, has been miraculously resurrected and is introduced by MoMA film curator Dave Kehr on this link.  (But where’s the full restored print?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ2iZ9Sofl4

VIOLENT SATURDAY (1955)

Always at his best in modest genre & pulp projects, director Richard Fleischer had just raised his profile with Disney’s first bigtime live-actioner 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (fun, if lightly padded to RoadShow length), when 20th/Fox grabbed him for this exemplary bank robbery B+ suspense programmer.  A paradigm of early CinemaScope framing and a showcase for grain-free DeLuxe Color saturation, Fleischer has the cast, the script & the locations to lift a basic caper-gone-wrong pic into near classic status.  Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin & J. Carrol Naish are strangers-come-to-town, casing the local bank and finding a perfect post-theft hideout at Ernest Borgnine’s quiet Amish farm.  Of course, nothing goes quite as planned thanks to a host of small town events & bad timing, personal issues cleverly sketched and smoothly integrated by Fleischer from Sydney Boehm’s crafty script.  There’s bank manager Tommy Noonan, fixated to distraction by slinky Virginia Leith, a gal aware of her allure, currently interested in Richard Egan, unhappily married dipsomaniac, due to inherit the town’s ore mine.  And what of Sylvia Sidney’s sticky-fingered librarian, desperate to pay off overdue bills.  Most of all, Victor Mature, manager of Egan’s mining properties and the owner of a car sharp enough to catch the attention of the robbers.  Just the thing to get them anonymously over to that Amish farm post-stick-up.  Then a quick switch to a farm truck before they skedaddle off with the loot.  Engineered and constructed to hide the seams, everyone’s gathered at the bank at just the wrong time before Mature is pushed to play barnyard hero at the farm.  Sharp, deadly and showing pinpoint accuracy in every composition (multiple planes of action/multiple framing devices inside the WideScreen frame), this one offers prime pickin’s on every level.

DOUBLE-BILL: Earlier this year, Borgnine played baddie for John Sturges in the similarly intended BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK/’55.  With A-lister Spencer Tracy as star, and a social issue backing the storyline, it got a lot more attention than a Victor Mature starrer, but this holds its own next to it.

TERM OF TRIAL (1962)

Never fully comfortable in his occasional film work, stage-oriented director Peter Glenville unexpectedly handles the visual side of things quite well here, much helped by the rough-hewn, working-class cityscape cinematography Oswald Morris provides.  Instead, he’s felled by a screenplay without a credible moment in it . . . his own.  It’s high school drama, peopled with prim teachers and wild misbehaving kids, British ‘Juvies’ arriving on screen a decade after their American cousins.  Laurence Olivier, coiffed with the floppiest hair of his film career, is the numbingly naive teacher unable to stay disruptive punk Terrence Stamp challenging his authority or infatuated flirt Sarah Miles (transparent as Saran Wrap) breaking his personal space.  And more on his plate, from dissatisfied wife Simone Signoret to a smart bullied school kid doing himself injury, even a promotion that's slipping out of his grasp.  Glenville, unable to juggle these storylines into a semblance of order, keeps things moving by having Olivier turn a blind eye to every insult, rule infraction or romantic pass.  Finally getting into enough trouble to be brought to court on a charge of gross indecency.  How ‘bout charging him with gross stupidity?  Quite the waste of talent here.  Worse, a relentless tone of misogyny toward debuting Miles and in a trick twist ending with Olivier ‘playing’ his wife. 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Perhaps if Olivier’s temptation came from Stamp rather than Miles, things might add up dramatically.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: While not exactly better, five years on, TO SIR, WITH LOVE/’67 got closer to the mark on changing British mores & milieu in the classroom.  OR: To see this sort of teacher going thru it, Michael Redgrave’s classic, blisteringly interior perf, in Terrence Rattigan’s quietly gasp-inducing THE BROWNING VERSION/’51.

PADRI E FIGLI / A TAILOR’S MAID (1957)

While no BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET/’58 or THE ORGANIZER/’63, this ensemble piece from commedia all'italiana master Mario Monicelli is an utter delight from start to finish, a modest, yet considerable charmer.  With slight, slightly interconnected storylines, mostly about Fathers & Sons, as per its original title, but with a few daughters & mothers in the mix.  Part of the amazingly consistent work coming out of this period in Italian film when it seemed everyone and his brother knew how to make a movie.  As if classic film technique were something you were born with, or acquired with pasta.  Top acting honors to Vittorio De Sica as the ladies’ tailor whose high school daughter is seeing a slightly older boy, son of an irascible doctor.  A scene at a pool hall, with De Sica, not letting on who he is, casually giving out tips on dating to the boy is pretty irresistible character comedy stuff.  Topped here only by the warmth growing between a childless Marcello Mastroianni and a six year old kid he and his wife are caring for while he gets over a case of the measles.  (The kid has four brothers to keep away from.)  The two bond right away, sharing late night dinners & surrogate father/son bonding that help Mastroianni discover how much he wants/needs a kid of his own.  Plus Franco Interlenghi, the older boy from De Sica’s SHOESHINE, about to become a first-time dad; along with three or four more little stories, each beautifully paced, portrayed & played out turn the whole film into an E-Ticket ride.  And what a treat to have synch sound rather than the usual Italian dubbing that distances us from the situations while playing at a monotonous forte.  A very happy film, a lark made by a master.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, THE ORGANIZER, a more serious, more powerful film than you expect from Monicelli.  With a towering perf from Mastroianni.

ANIMAL FARM (1954)

In something of a triple dare, this adaptation of George Orwell’s political allegory not only challenged Disney hegemony in animated features, it also stayed true to his left-leaning critique of Soviet-style Communism (and totalitarianism in general*) while making an adult-oriented feature-length barnyard cartoon in, of all places, Great Britain.  Produced by Louis De Rochemont (of March of Time & Docu-Drama fame), animators Joy Batchelor & John Halas, originally from Budapest, give Orwell’s didactic Æsop fable a largely faithful, clear-eyed reading.  The poorly treated animals staging a revolt, forming a commune, only to morph into a new caste system, all being equal, but some being more equal than others.  A motto just as suited to animated features.  And if this example of the form hasn’t the polish and invention of a prime Disney feature, they make a real professional job of it that holds up well.  Especially in the spiffed up HD editions that show it at its best.  (Good riddance to those beat up high school A/V department 16mm prints.)  And while there's no happy ending, the anodyne style Disney gave those American Folk Tale shorts of the ‘40s works superbly here.  (Inadvertent cookie-cutter social commentary?)  What a shame we can’t know what Orwell, dying in 1950, would have thought of this.  Or of the first version of 1984 out two years later.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Of the two top pigs, ‘Snowball’ may be pure Trotsky, but ‘Napoleon’s’ Stalin comes with a large slice of Mussolini.  And watch Batchelor/Halas nod toward associative silent cinema ‘brutalist’ montage (a la Sergei Eisenstein) when the windmill tower explodes.

EL ORFANATO / THE ORPHANAGE (2007)

Accomplished horror, this unpleasantly creepy ghost story from J.A. Bayona (of the suggestively frightening A MONSTER CALLS/’16) was exec produced by Guillermo del Toro whose fine early film, THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE/’01, touched similar narrative & emotional territory.  But don’t be misled, in spite of similar components, the main influence isn’t del Toro but James M. Barrie and Henry James; PETER PAN meets THE TURN OF THE SCREW, though more focused on SCREW’S death fixation than PAN’s delayed puberty.  After an opening prologue at a slightly sinister orphanage (later of help explaining the inexplicable), we jump ahead decades to its transformation as a posh mansion for a couple with an adopted child of their own, and more children on the way with plans to reopen the space as a facility for a few select, damaged kids.  But something goes terribly wrong on opening day and their beloved, if troubled, adopted son mysteriously disappears.  But with no body found after months, there’s no closure, and the wife (herself a former resident at the orphanage) starts falling apart while the husband hopes to move on.  How is the mother to know that the truth, once discovered, might be worse than never knowing.  Elegantly handled and carefully constructed to keep us horribly well-informed at every step, the film is both immaculate and repelling in an overly clever way.  It’s admirable and hard to like.  With an unexpectedly good little spot for the wraithful presence of Geraldine Chaplin as a psychic medium.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, del Toro’s masterful DEVIL’S BACKBONE and Bayona’s A MONSTER CALLS.

THE TERORISTS (aka RANSOM) (1974)

Easy to see how Sean Connery might have been drawn to this gadget-free suspenser, course correction after the increasingly fanciful nonsense in his last ‘official’ James Bond pic, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER/’71.*  A modestly budgeted ‘thinking-man’s’ hostage drama, Casper Wrede’s overlooked action thriller hasn’t so much a bad rep as no rep at all.  A pity since its low-key realism pays off in its own way, especially in a consistently well-staged, triple-twist third act boasting stellar cinematography from Sven Nykvist and pulsating Jerry Goldsmith score.  A glossier package than you expect from its utilitarian Norwegian settings and sober mood (the country not named).  Connery, sans Nordic accent (Nordic Scots?), is the National Security Chief facing a two-headed hostage crisis: Terrorist gang at the home of the British ambassador, and confederates led by Ian McShane at the airport on a hijacked plane loaded with passengers and a ticking bomb.  With logistics & characterizations nicely worked out, Paul Wheeler’s original script finds Connery’s biggest obstacle in a British government all too eager to capitulate to every demand.  No surprise, Connery has a very different game plan, one flexible enough to take advantage of any wrong turn.  (Or was that part of the plan all along?)  Two of the last act twists really hit their mark (a jack-knifing truck in a tunnel joltingly effective), but a final political twist was a bit opaque to these ears.  At the time, audiences didn’t know what to make of this after those big Bond Spectaculars, but by now the film rates as something of a find once it gets going.

DOUBLE-BILL: *’Course correction’ not only here, but in three outlier pics made between DIAMONDS and this: THE OFFENCE/’73; ZARDOZ/’74 and as part of the all-star ensemble in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS/’74.

CROSSROADS (1942)

A typical example of an M-G-M mid-list feature, script not-quite camera-ready, but keeping the studio wheels in motion, the plant humming at near capacity and contract players & staff working; no more, no less.  Well . . . maybe a bit less in this case.  You can almost hear top execs giving out the assignment: ‘Nothing personal, Bill, it’s just business.’   Set back to 1937 France (avoiding war complications), rising French diplomat William Powell is accused out-of-the-blue of hiding an old murder charge under a second identity.  He pleads amnesia, a train accident 20 years back that left him with permanent memory loss, recalling nothing before he was 22.  So . . . maybe the charge is true?   He simply doesn’t know.  Yikes!  With supposed ‘ex’ Claire Trevor testifying in court against him; Basil Rathbone making a surprise appearance that gets him off the hook (then coming back for blackmail cash); and only loyal wife Hedy Lamarr (purely decorative here) steadfast.  Plenty silly; plenty talky; but reasonable fun parsing truth from fiction in the first two acts (are they ‘Gaslighting him or telling the truth?*), the film falls apart from a cascade of third act revelations and Jack Conway’s typically insensitive direction* with everyone going thru the motions, and only Margaret Wycherly’s pathetic putative Maman pulling past the comfort zone.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Hedy, just off a rare good M-G-M role in TORTILLA FLAT/’41, ankled the studio two films later only to find equally slim pickings elsewhere.  Even C.B. DeMille’s hit SAMSON AND DELILAH no help in the long run.  Instead, she and composer George Antheil invented ‘frequency hopping,’ used to control torpedoes in WWII and still being used in your SmartPhone.  No kiddin’!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Note: with director Conway’s idea of French style, other than in courtroom scenes, we might be visiting some Beverly Hills/Bel-Air suburban home monstrosity.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Speaking of 'gaslighting,' two years previously, a fine British film of GASLIGHT, later retitled ANGEL STREET when M-G-M made an even finer 1944 version under the original title for Ingrid Bergman; Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten & Angela Lansbury; George Cukor directing.

TENKI NO KO / WEATHERING WITH YOU (2019)

After his rapturously received YOUR NAME/’16, this much anticipated next film from Anime-tor Makoto Shinkai is another visual dazzler.  (Those lateral cityscape tracking shots!)  This one about a runaway teen coming upon the bright lights and high costs of Tokyo where the good-natured boy first falls in with a pair of counter-culture publishers; then falls for a ‘sunshine girl’ with a rare, inexplicable gift for sweeping aside Tokyo’s perpetual rainy gloom to literally let the sun shine in as weather turns Biblically bad.  But it's a supernatural talent that comes at a terrible personal cost.  It proves a tricky mix to pull off, with Shinkai’s storytelling abilities unable to rise to the occasion.  (Where’s Richard Wagner and his sacrificial dames when you need him?)  Construction a mess, with blocks of narrative moving forward only by happenstance & coincidence; too many close-call escapes for any one teen protagonist to have; and odd, arbitrary choices on what to explain and what to leave as a mysterious, metaphysic blank.  Shinkai’s favored time shifting stratagems (love and time in conflict thru jumps or generational gaps) replaced and less gripping as a technological cautionary tale for the world.  (Because it's less personal?)  Thoughtful, but unsatisfying, in spite of many felicitous beauties, including a fine score with good Pop tunes from Radwimps.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Runaway boy Hodaka always keeping his copy of CATCHER IN THE RYE nearby.  No wonder he’s annoying as Holden Caulfield.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Perhaps writer/director Shinkai would benefit from less autonomy.  Meanwhile, YOUR NAME.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/kimi-no-na-wa-your-name-2016.html

THE MYSTERY OF MR. X (1934)

M-G-M stuck Robert Montgomery into five films in ‘34, all sounding pretty dreary, including RIPTIDE, a prestige item with Norma Shearer.  But surely this little thriller was the most unnecessary.  A final Hollywood credit for accomplished B’way producer/ director Edgar Selwyn, his eighth since called to the coast in 1929 to make those newfangled Talkies, he never did get the hang of the medium.  On the other hand, hard to imagine anyone doing much with this.*  It starts with a decent enough twist as Montgomery is nearly trapped while stealing a valuable jewel just as a serial killer is offing a London ‘bobby’ right under his nose.  He’s officially in the clear, but even without evidence he’s detective Lewis Stone’s number one suspect.  A situation that makes his new romance with Elizabeth Allan, the already engaged daughter of Scotland Yard man Henry Stephenson, somewhat awkward!  Sure, you could run with that plot, but under Selwyn, not a spark of life in it.  Even cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh, putting out nice atmospheric work on exterior sets, is trapped by Selwyn’s laisser-faire point-and-shoot drawing room interiors.  Desperate to show some range beyond tuxedo’d pleasantries, Montgomery would campaign for a year to play the charming sociopath in Emlyn Waugh’s shocker NIGHT MUST FALL/’37.  Try that, or . . . 

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: * Not that M-G-M couldn’t put together a light, entertaining murder mystery in ‘34, it’s the year THE THIN MAN came out.

THE BAND WAGON (1953)

There are two kinds of ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood movie buffs, those who think SINGING IN THE RAIN is the greatest film musical, and those who go with THE BAND WAGON.  The choice is stark: Team Gene Kelly or Team Fred Astaire?  A compendium of snappy ‘30s Hollywood tunes by Arthur Freed/Nacio Herb Brown or ‘swellegant’ ‘30s B’way sophistication from WAGON’s Arthur Schwartz/Howard Dietz?*  The jokey elan of co-directors Kelly & a young Stanley Donen or Vincente Minnelli’s swank, seamless elegance?  Thank goodness Cyd Charisse is in both, though only a specialty dancer in RAIN.  Also in common, original book & dialogue from Betty Comden & Adolph Green.  And now we’re getting somewhere since RAIN’s spoofy, tourist’s view on Hollywood, as The Silents became The Talkies, makes for delicious satire and kidding-on-the-square romance, but not the depth of view coming from Comden & Green’s insider status after a decade’s work on B’way musicals.  RAIN is fun; WAGON is fundamental.  Hilarious without kidding or getting the cutes, its satire deepened by nuts-and-bolts knowledge and ‘privileged moments.’  Who else could have written a backer’s audition scene for Jack Buchanan’s all-round theatrical genius as he sells a modern version of the Faust story to fat cat backers?*  And who but Minnelli would have staged & edited it like a cubist deconstruction?  (A two year seminar in mise en scène in two minutes.)  WAGON also the only film from legendary B’way designer Oliver Smith, with a painterly look & trompe l’oeil effects like no other film.  That Paul Klee backdrop for Astaire & Buchanan’s soft shoe!  This song one of the series of back-to-back numbers in the final act that make people recall the film as back-loaded even though it’s not.  (Great stuff all the way thru.)  Ending with Minnelli sending up his own big ballet finish in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS with Michael Kidd choreographing a nightmarishly funny Mickey Spillane like detective story.  (Mock tough guy narration written without credit by Alan Jay Lerner.)  Then an unexpectedly moving little coda to send us home thinking maybe we too could sing & dance.  (Heck, didn't even get to mention ‘Triplets.’)

LINK: Astaire’s original 1931 recording of the beer drinking ‘I Love Louisa’ song comes with unexpurgated lyrics and an all-German second verse.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDjXfFS3CY4

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Ironically, a modern musical version of the Faust story was soon to be a big B’way hit, 1955's DAMN YANKEES where a middle-aged fan sells his soul to the Devil and becomes a young baseball sensation.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: * Both songwriting teams coming up with one new number: RAIN’s ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’ (blatantly lifted from Cole Porter’s ‘Be A Clown’ in THE PIRATE) and WAGON’s ‘That’s Entertainment,’ written to order in less than an hour when producer Arthur Freed (ironically RAIN’s songwriter) asked for something just like Irving Berlin’s ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business.’

THE BLACK ROSE (1950)

Double-dipping on semi-literate historical adventure, Darryl F. Zanuck kept Tyrone Power & Orson Welles working on location in Europe, but switched from b&w for the Renaissance Italy of PRINCE OF FOXES to TechniColor 13th Century England (and the Far East) on ROSE.  The earlier pic, directed by Henry King, used more Hollywood tech & talent, while Henry Hathaway used Brits.  To his advantage in cinematographer Jack Cardiff, lighting with painterly style unusual for 20th/Fox at the time*; less so in Richard Addinsell’s unmemorable score.  ROSE does have the stronger supporting cast (Jack Hawkins, Michael Rennie, Finlay Currie, Robert Blake, James Robertson Justice) while both films strike-out on their respective female leads.  Here, Cécile Aubry (a caravan hostage for Power to save & fall for) is less minx than French chipmunk.  (In her big love confession she suddenly looks like Judy Garland, of all people!  Prominent forehead, wide-spaced puppet-like doe-eyes, thick lower lip for chewing on.)  If only the story were half as involving as FOXES.  Alas, no match for Borgia intrigue here as Power’s near-noble Saxon (he’s illegitimate) leaves Norman England in a huff to seek fortune in far off ‘Cathay,’ making like Marco Polo with Jack Hawkins as sidekick.  Welles, jobbing to raise cash for his stunning version of OTHELLO/'52, has a fine time behind ‘Oriental’ makeup and a more ambivalent role than he had in FOXES, this film's natural DOUBLE-BILL.

Another DOUBLE-BILL: Director Hathaway playfully sends up the whole genre in PRINCE VALIANT/’54.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Color & crispness spectacularly raised in HD remastering.

KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR (1937)

Taking second-position to Marlene Dietrich (top-billed even in ‘box-office poison’ days*), Robert Donat is chivalric charm itself as an undercover British agent who worms his way into the nascent Red Army only to fall hard for Dietrich’s Old Guard Countess, helping her to reach ‘the Whites’ (and temporary safety) during the murderously chaotic Civil War days of the Russian Revolution.  But between close calls from mass execution on both sides, and skin-of-their-teeth escapes, the constantly changing political terrain (Red to White/White to Red) find the pair in and out of deathly dangers when not completely losing touch with each other.  Can they survive long enough to reach the border?  Atmospherically designed for romance & adventure, with Jacques Feyder helming a rare English-language pic*, the big, handsome production cost Alexander Korda plenty (did it ever make its money back?).  It's also fabulously shot by Harry Stradling with dappled lighting & a stylized studio look that lets Dietrich’s equally stylized glamor shine without looking out of place.  Especially so when she dresses down for getaways.  Silly stuff in its way, the James Hilton novel has nothing of the restrained stiff-upper-lip emotion Donat would mine two years on in GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, here its all romantic dash & life-or-death decisions for our leads on the lam.  Stoppered sentimental longing left to John Clements in a brief star-making/scene-stealing turn as a soft-hearted revolutionary playing a deadly game of no-way-out with his life while trying to help these sympathetic lovers.  All handled in two intense, memorable scenes.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Dietrich, who repaired her Hollywood bona fides roughhousing in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN/’39, made some swell films while out-of-favor, including the film that came between KNIGHT and DESTRY, Ernst Lubitsch’s much underrated ANGEL/’37.

DOUBLE-BILL: For a serious/absurd look at this period, Miklós Jancsó’s nihilistic war film CSILLAGOSOK, KATONAK / THE RED AND THE WHITE  (1968).  (see below)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Feyder also responsible for insisting that Korda hire composer Miklós Rósza (his first film score) after seeing a ballet in Paris with Rósza’s music.

TOGO (2019)

Grandly played, fact-inspired adventure as a ‘musher’ races his sled dog team thru Alaskan wilds & weather to get diphtheria serum home to Nome during a 1925 outbreak.  Cleverly put together & emotionally effective (even the hokey moments of manipulative comic tropes & heart-tugging puppy flashbacks work like a charm), it also serves as corrective to accepted legend on the dog sled teams who braved blizzards, mountains & half-frozen water to reach a hospital full of sick kids in the nick of time.  Credit went to ‘Balto,’ lead dog of the final leg, whereas the lion’s share of this incomprehensively dangerous journey (with ten-fold the distance of any other team) belonged to dog-of-the-century Togo (old for the job at 12) and team, mushed by strong, weather-beaten Willem Dafoe as the trainer.  The film seems to have skipped regular cinemas for streaming services, a pity as it’s quite spectacular even on the small screen.  Imagine on IMAX.  With director/cinematographer Ericson Core smoothly blending real location footage (and real dogs) with CGI sweetening.  (Only over-playing digital potential during the break-up of a semi-frozen lake.*)  All told, a family film to give family films a good name.

DOUBLE-BILL: The story of BALTO, the dog who got all the credit, was animated in 1995.  (Not seen here.)  For more real dog action, both original & terrifying, try FEHÉR ISTEN (WHITE GOD)/’14 from Hungary.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Did Cole know this wouldn’t be shown on the big screen?  A third feature after the tepidly received INVINCIBLE/’06 and his rethink fiasco on cult pic POINT BREAK/’15, TOGO seemed designed to lift him past earlier work as A-list action fare cinematographer.  But who got to see it properly?

THE DOORWAY TO HELL (1930)

Hard to mourn the mostly lost Early Talkies (1928 - 1930) of Archie Mayo, about the dullest Warner Bros. A-list megger.*  But you never can tell, as becomes clear watching the fluid, muscular, visually imaginative direction of this early gangster pic.  Sharp thru-out in film terms, its more advanced techniques probably stemming from cinematographer Barney McGill (backed by producer Darryl F. Zanuck?) rather than Mayo.  Talkie innovations & silent-era reclamations galore: low-angle camera set-ups; frame busting close-ups & two-shots; design-aided claustrophobic settings (no credit given, but Anton Grot?); crepuscular lighting for street scenes in warehouse & tenement districts (on fabulous backlot sets); the remarkably stylish work still feeling fresh.  Even the gangster storyline, anything but fresh, giving off the spark of a first telling.  Gentle Lew Ayres, fresh off ALL QUIET OF THE WESTERN FRONT/’30, cast wildly against type as a protection-racket beer hustler, grabs control of warring illegal distributors in prohibition-era New York, forcing them to tend their separate territories while uniting as a syndicate to benefit all.  But once Ayres has it all up & running, he tries to walk away from the life with a new wife (unaware she’s diddling second-in-command James Cagney on the side*).  Profits plunge; rivalries heat up.  Desperate to get Ayres back in the city, the mobsters kidnap his teenage brother out of military academy and hold him as ransom.  (Odd plot turn, no?)  But the nab goes wrong, the kid dies, and when Ayres returns to town, it’s purely for revenge.  Very little needs excusing on this one, with an exceptional final arc that starts with a prison escape and ends in a fatalistic denouement that plays just off screen to great effect.  And while the film won’t alter the triumvirate of early ‘30s gangster classics (LITTLE CAESAR, THE PUBLIC ENEMY, SCARFACE), it stands nicely just to the side as precursor.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Most wanted among the Mayo missing, MY MAN/’28, Fanny Brice’s (apparently) unhappy film debut which survives only as a soundtrack on VitaPhone sound disks.

DOUBLE-BILL: Of that threesome, THE PUBLIC ENEMY/’31, which famously swapped male leads after filming began, Cagney moving up to lead.  Something that could have happened here where Cagney receives fifth-billing for the second largest part.  (Same as Clark Gable in THE SECRET SIX/’31 where M-G-M had him billed seventh.)

RED LINE 7000 (1965)

After a film or two every year back to 1926 (and one of the best commercial success rates in the biz*), Howard Hawks took four years off to figure out what went wrong when he face-planted on his first WideScreen epic, 1955's Ancient Egypt LAND OF THE PHARAOHS.  The problem?  Dialogue!  Not knowing how ancient people spoke, thought Hawks, kept him from finding the right words to move his characters beyond empty spectacle.  But while this might have explained the pitfalls of PHARAOHS, it does little to explain what the heck went so risibly wrong with the dialogue for the contemporary characters of RED LINE 7000, three young race car drivers (The Natural; The Hothead; The Star) and the girls they love.  Probably a moot point.  With acting this bad, any dialogue would sound like Egyptian doggerel.  (The film generally considered Hawks’ nadir, though RIO LOBO, a misbegotten rehash/last-gasp Western for John Wayne, with a good prologue directed by the second unit, also in the running.)  There is some impressive (real) crash footage in 7000, but poorly wedged in visually or plotwise.  And while James Caan got a chance to redeem himself in Hawks’ surprising rebound (EL DORADO/’67), the other two drivers offer zero screen  presence (one never worked again); while the three all but undifferentiated girls (‘sexy’ French accent included) suffocate & suffer on airless soundstage sets behind lacquered mid-60s Playboy Pin-Up facials.  Strict Hawksians comfort themselves picking up on signature themes, but they’re not doing Hawks, his fans or newcomers to his work any favors.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Hawks critical standing lagging far behind box-office, ironically coming on strong with the French New Wave reevaluation just as he started to slip commercially.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The four films that top Hawks’ IMDb page are RED RIVER; RIO BRAVO; HATARI; and RED LINE 7000.  So much for classics with Bogart, Grant & Cooper.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: While not without its own major dramatic liabilities, the technical leap from 7000 to John Frankenheimer’s GRAND PRIX/’66 is like Outer Space’s leap in 2001.  (The movie, not the year.)