HUDSON'S BAY (1940)

Always eager to pick up competitor discards while bloom held to the rose, 20th/Fox production chief Darryl F. Zanuck slotted Paul Muni, fresh off his Warners contract, for this rollicking tall-tale about real-life early French Canadian adventurer Pierre Esprit Radisson.  In a rare action/adventure role, Muni seems to enjoy playing liaison to Indian trappers around Hudson’s Bay (in what was then New France) and King Charles II in Britain, making sure everyone (including the native population) got their cut of profits from the ensuing eponymous H.B. Fur Trading Company.  In a backhanded way, kick-starting Canada’s British future.  Journeyman director Irving Pichel, working from Lamar Trotti’s fanciful original script, goes broad-stroke comedy as Muni amuses himself with derring-do and Charles Boyer’s French accent, looking for once like a near minimalist actor next to the obstreperous turns of BFF Laird Cregar (in his debut, playing like he might never get a second chance) and various British-sounding ham actors (Vincent Price, Nigel Bruce, Morton Lowry, Montagu Love).   Messy fun if you don’t mind the rambling buddy/buddy routines, only to briefly take a deadly serious turn for part of a weirdly compelling last act.  The tone hardly matches anything else before or aft, but they almost get away with it.  Muni soon off to another studio before ankling Hollywood entirely post-WWII.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As love interest to Muni partner John Sutton, Gene Tierney gets second billing for about ten minutes screen time.  Impressive!  ALSO: Bad brother Lowry’s storyline lifted straight out of LOST HORIZON . . . right down to the snow.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Errol Flynn in his own Canadian adventure, part of the war effort, in Raoul Walsh’s larky impossible mission NORTHERN PURSUIT/’43.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/12/northern-pursuit-1943.html

THE DIVINE LADY (1928)

Solidly produced, if a bit square, like much of his more ‘distinguished’ work, director Frank Lloyd won the first of his two Oscars® for this romantic historical drama.  (The second was for CAVALCADE/’33, though he’s now best known for MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY/’35.*)  LADY was the first of three major films about the Horatio Nelson/Emma Hamilton affair, with Lord Nelson battling ships at sea in the Napoleonic Wars and battling hearts in port over Lady Hamilton, the commoner who infamously married up.*  Alas, it’s one of those stories that sounds better than it plays.  Lady Hamilton, bustling to climb into society, pimped into a companionate marriage, then diplomatically maneuvering as ambassador’s wife in Naples to save the British Fleet.  Lord Nelson showing up once in a blue moon as war rages to woo milady and plead for supplies between losing a limb and an eye.  Eventually, they’ll each desert a spouse to set up house only to part once more when war draws him back in.  Corinne Griffith, a silent beauty who didn’t survive sound, is happier as the grand lady than as hoydenesque cook’s daughter.  (That’s Marie Dressler, who’d thrive in sound, briefly livening things up as mom in an early comeback appearance.)  And a nice turn from Victor Varconi in a rare lead as the diminutive Nelson.  This being 1928, there’s a VitaPhone soundtrack with music & effects, even near synch sound with Griffith dubbed on a few traditional Scottish tunes; the main ‘original’ love theme all but stolen from Sigmund Romberg’s ‘One Kiss,’ currently being sung on B’way in THE NEW MOON.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *The other two were Alexander Korda’s THAT HAMILTON WOMAN/’41 - Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh & an undeserved good rep; and THE NELSON AFFAIR/’73 - Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson & no reputation at all.  (Olivier does gets one great line though, murmuring to Lady H. on New Years 1800 that he has now loved her thru two centuries.  Sigh.)  OR:  *What Lloyd should be remembered for was work like THE SEA HAWK, a 1924 beauty which likely got him this gig.  Which in turn likely got him BOUNTY.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/sea-hawk-1924.html

DOGMAN (2018)

Best known for his portrait of modern Neapolitan mob culture in GOMORRAH/’08, and currently for the first of three new adaptations of PINOCCHIO (three too many?), this fine threat of a film from Mateo Garrone is an unnerving cautionary tale about the dangers of codependency with a sociopath.  Marcello Fonte, small, slight, likeable, a loving divorced father & self-employed dog groomer, is also a recreational cocaine dealer, largely to keep up his side of things with a teenage daughter.  It’s also positioned him far too close to town tough Edoardo Pesce, a terrifyingly out-of-control addict, an amoral thug with less empathy than a sewer rat.  Built like a linebacker and slow-thinking, if not dumb, he’s in near constant rage at whatever stands between him and his momentary goal.  A ticking time bomb constantly in debt, he coerces Fonte into various burglary schemes that barely pay off.  And, when one goes seriously wrong, leaving Fonte to serve a year’s term in his place.  Welching on their deal when he gets out, the worm finally turns.  Garrone captures the downscale working-class Italian seaside atmosphere with bravura visuals that seem utterly simple, even crude when necessary, while amping up suspense & violence waiting around the corner.  It’s one smart moviemaking decision after another, none more so than starting the film with the sick codependency a surprise but also a long established given.  No pat backstory explanations or facile psychology.  And, in a truly great opening, having Fonte at his shop, taming a vicious dog in a manner he no doubt imagines could work just as well as on Pesce.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, GOMORRAH: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/gomorrah-2008.html

THE MAN WHO WATCHED TRAINS GO BY / THE PARIS EXPRESS (1952)

Loyal, incorruptible head clerk Claude Rains watches in horror as company boss Herbert Lom burns 18 years of account books to hide his embezzling ways.  Seems the patronizing Mr. Lom has been using his Holland company assets to support a secret life in Paris, bankrupting not only the firm, but all the savings Rains has been dutifully tucking away for his wife and children.  The shock is enough to drive a man to madness . . . or murder.  An all too likely outcome doggedly observed by sympathetic Inspector Marius Goring, in from France to close the case against Lom only to find himself tracking Rains, on the lam in Paris after possibly murdering his boss and definitely stealing what’s left of the company cash reserves.  Unusual for a film this size in 1952, it’s a splendidly TechniColored production, well handled by writer/director Harold French* with sophisticated cinematography from Otto Heller.  It also does a better job than most Georges Simenon adaptations in balancing a modest story against sharp etched characterizations.  And it’s got a cast to make things hum with Märta Torén as the Parisian temptress and (briefly) Anouk Aimée as a tart shocked to find she’s only being used for directions.  The film is a small thing, but smart and rather elegantly put together.   And if Rains isn’t quite able to pull off the physicality needed for some ‘second-story’ action or as a lethal threat with a knife, he more than makes up for it in calibrating degrees of incipient madness as he sinks into a moral morass.

DOUBLE-BILL: A recent series of tv films with Rowan Atkinson as Simenon’s famous Inspector Maigret really come off.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Blacklisted at the time, writer Paul Jarrico worked on the script without credit.

HELL BELOW (1933)

Though only four years younger, M-G-M had been toying with slotting Robert Montgomery in for fading fave William Haines since LOVE IN THE ROUGH/’30, a Talkie remake of Haines’ SPRING FEVER/’27.  The switch completed here in a typical Haines vehicle (arrogant youth with wiseguy attitude loses best pal, gets into trouble with love & authority, proves worthy in the last half-reel) not only going to Montgomery after Haines’ M-G-M split, but bumped up to major release with tougher dramatic edge, longer running time & stronger cast.  The bifurcated story has stunning action out at sea (mostly submarine POV) and soggy romance ashore (illicit love shadowed by crippled husband in the background).  Fortunately, most of the time we’re on water, playing into the considerable strengths of M-G-M utility man Jack Conway, showing major action chops in some beautifully staged set pieces, superbly lit by Harold Rosson (wooing fiancée Jean Harlow at the time, the guy must have been exhausted!) with smash editing from Hal Kern (later David O. Selznick’s cutter of choice).  Walter Huston is exceptional as the new sub commander Montgomery chafes under while making love to his daughter (an unhappy perf from Madge Evans, but with a great meet-cute: air-raid interrupted Ferris Wheel ride).  Ship-shape support from Robert Young, Eugene Pallette, Jimmy Durante, Sterling Holloway (in a haunting death bit), plus an extremely fit John Lee Mahin, script co-author, as Lieutenant ‘Speed.’  Second-unit man John Waters, presumably behind the superior tech work, won an Oscar® next year for VIVA VILLA!, again for Conway as well as initial director Howard Hawks.  Barring a few rough process shots, hard to explain why the tech work is so much better than usual for M-G-M at the time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The script must have been loaded with spicy Pre-Code dialogue, now lost thru little trims removing the offensive lines, presumably for a post-‘34 Production Code re-release.

MARTIN EDEN (2019)

Well-received adaptation of Jack London’s semi-autobiographical novel (better known in Europe than here), something of a cautionary tale on the risks of self-improvement, is rare this year in being as good as advertized.  Co-written by director Pietro Marcello and Maurizio Braucci (note writing gets top-billed in the final credits), it’s loosely updated to the ‘50s, though time can feel untethered, better to reflect the texture of a 1909 novel.  A Bildungsroman on the intellectual development of a noble savage, a sailor whose thirst for justice & knowledge take him into society and have him catching literary fever.  Vowing to write up to his potential without compromise, he has much to absorb & many to meet along the way.  Lovers from different stations in life; the leftist world of union politics; at louche soirées and in shared second-class train cabins.  Moving so fast, he but half understands when he’s moved past them.  And with new-found success, lashing out in violence and hurtful self-interest, unable to clearly see how his position has changed.  Superbly imagined both structurally & as physical production (Luchino Visconti couldn’t have been more meticulous and wouldn’t have been as technically adventurous*), the film ultimately proves its worth thru its leading actor, an amazingly tactile hunk of fleshly breadth in an assumption by Luca Marinelli.  Such a hot, magnificent beast of a fellow hasn’t been seen since the glory days of Jean-Paul Belmondo.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Imaginatively captured on Super 16mm by Alessandro Abate & Francesco Di Giacomo approximating the look of many different film stocks in grain and color density as well as effectively incorporating some excellent archive footage.

THIS DAY AND AGE (1933)

After weathering the loss of his independent studio and suffering thru a humiliating three-pic ‘ordeal’ at M-G-M, a (briefly) chastened Cecil B. DeMille proved you can go home again, resurrecting his status at Paramount in a single stroke with sex, gore, early Christianity in Ancient Rome & Claudette Colbert’s bosom in THE SIGN OF THE CROSS/’32.  Once more able to write his own ticket, DeMille followed with this perplexity, a ‘30s Social Problem pic balanced on the razor’s edge between Populist & Fascist tendencies.  A lumpy work in many ways, where has this fascinating oddity been hiding?  Likeable Richard Cromwell stars as a high school kid who gets ‘wise’ to the ways of the world when he watches helplessly as the wheels of justice toss out his eye-witness testimony and let protection racket boss Charles Bickford walk free from an air-tight murder rap.  But what if there were a backdoor to justice using a gang of righteous kids standing together and willing to get serious with their honorary roles as local Youth Government leaders?  Acting District Attorney; Stand-in Mayor; Trainee Chief of Police.  They're cocked and loaded for the real thing!   Plus the girlfriend. Would she be up for vamping Bickford’s enforcer to trap him in some out-of-the-way place?  She might get pawed in the attempt, but it'd give the boys extra time to get their plan in motion.  The basic insanity of the scheme, with student leaders acting like some intramural Lynch Mob, hits many of the same buttons Frank Capra would deal in, though far less balanced & technically assured.  More than a bit scary, the pic an overlooked key to unlocking the American psyche at a Depression Era crisis point . . . and completely out of its mind.

DOUBLE-BILL: DeMille rarely tackled current events.  But does, in his slightly appalling manner, in MANSLAUGHTER/’22 and THE GODLESS GIRL/’28.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: There’s a nice surprise in seeing DeMille taking care to integrate his High School.  The plot even has Cromwell recruit one of the Black students for the group.  Alas, to play a shoeshine boy as part of the scheme . . . but still.  Progress!  And note how this otherwise regular kid goes into a ‘Darkie’ act to ‘sell’ his role.

CONTEST: One of the questions that trips Cromwell up in the initial court case involves a moonless night affecting his view of the crime.  A ploy used in another Cromwell film in what classic American movie?  Name the film to win a MAKSQUIBS WriteUp of your choosing.

ANAPARASTASI / RECONSTRUCTION (1970)

Greek filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos made a strong debut reconstructing (as the title would have it) a domestic case of murder set in a fast declining mountain town, something between contemporary Greek Tragedy and Neo-Realistic melodrama.  Angelopoulos himself noted how closely his plot follows Visconti’s OSSESSIONE/’43 (itself an unofficial version of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE/’46), though without the twist of justice that doubles back to catch a killer.  Here, the trick is in the telling, with a non-linear narrative from different points of view:  returning husband; unfaithful wife & her suspicious brother; guilty lover; authorities; even documentary film crew as the case attracts national attention.  And then there’s the awful judgemental gaze & fury of the townspeople.  The re-ordered scenes cause some confusion sans scorecard, but Angelopoulos seems to have planned the whole film from its powerful static/long-take final shot, captured from outside the house (of Atreus?) so that we infer the murder happening within.  Powerful stuff.  But what really makes this one stand out is the drab living conditions and end of the line atmosphere of a town in the foothills hanging on to a hardscrabble life that can no longer support it.  Phenomenally well caught by lenser Giorgos Arvanitis, it makes ZORBA THE GREEK look like a tourist trap.*  

LINK/DOUBLE-BILL: Inevitably, ZORBA THE GREEK/’64.  Baring in mind it’s a period piece helps it play at its considerable best.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/03/zorba-greek-1964.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Never thought of it before, but ZORBA's story actually is a tourist trap, with Alan Bates the tourist who gets trapped.

DANTE'S INFERNO (2007)

Sean Meredith’s cheerful, modernized look at the Dante Aligeri classic (adapted by Meredith, Paul Zaloom, Sandow Birk & Marcus Sanders), using simple two-dimensional cutout stick puppets cavorting on fanciful, toy-sized forced-perspective stage sets of painted cardboard flats, does a neat trick getting across all the various levels of punishment to fit the crime & past sins of weak and/or wicked humans.  More living comic book than artful graphic novel, story takes a back seat to the pleasure of seeing how the creative team tackles the next visual challenge.  Consistently involving, if not consistently enlightening; reaching a visual peak toward the end when the style turns yet more limited, suggesting the black & white/silhouette animation technique of the pioneering Lotte Reiniger.*  But then, shortly after, touching bottom with a painted live actor standing in as Lucifer.  (Talk about dropping the ball.)  Still, if not always hitting the sweet spot between wacky fun and refreshing homage, close enough to work as eccentric intro to a difficult work.

LINK/DOUBLE-BILL: *At an hour & twenty minutes, Reiniger’s best known work, THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED/’26 , is, perhaps, too much silhouette animation!   But her many shorts are tough to find.  Here’s a neat, if somewhat heavy-handed, mini-bio to get started on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gm9kZLP0uE

FIRST COW (2019)

After stubbing her toe on an (implied) commercial film (NIGHT MOVES/’13), critics’ darling Kelly Reichardt returns to form dragging her artistic tail between her legs with another small contemplative tale, so dark, so quiet, so slow, so earnest, you hardly react at all . . . unless you’re a Film Fest habitué.  (New York Film Critics 2020 Best Pic, etc.)  Once past a foredooming prologue, we’re cast back to the days of the Oregon Frontier where shy, stranded cook John Magaro and wandering Chinese entrepreneur Orion Lee buddy up to fleece the townsfolk with something new . . . a pastry!  A sweet, naturally flavored biscuit; just the thing if only they could get their hands on some milk.  But with only one cow in the territory, owned by Property-Is-Theft master Toby Jones (and who better to steal from?), they must risk night raids to get at the mooing source.  There’s a fine comedy left unmined in this material; like the old, politically incorrect gag about how to make Hungarian chicken . . . first, steal a chicken!  Alas, Reichardt couldn’t spot a joke in a Catskills Hotel.  Instead, a needlessly extended two-plus hours of whispered dialogue in poorly defined, murky interiors, captured in less than optimum digital photography.*

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Reichardt’s determinist style probably worked best in her other Oregon territory tale, the enigmatic MEEK’S CUTOFF/’10, an acquired taste you may not acquire.  OR: Thematically similar Western from Blake Edwards (of all people) in the underrated WILD ROVERS/’71.

LINK: More Reichardt Write Ups here: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=reichardt OR: For WILD ROVERS: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/wild-rovers.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *And in the old, squarish Academy Ratio in case we missed the artistic self-restraint.  Perhaps Reichardt’s real gift lies in writing up grant proposals.

VOLPONE (1941)

In France, English Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson’s dyspeptic classic on greed & two-timing con artists is generally played in the Stefan Zweig/Jules Romains free adaptation seen here.  Major roles are eliminated and the ending significantly altered to give a definite winner, yet its basic appeal & amoral design remain intact.  Or do in this well-mounted film featuring a lively cast of avaricious zannies doing their worst to each other under Maurice Tourneur’s assured direction on André Barsacq’s splendiferous sets.  Harry Baur’s Volpone is a financially unsettled Merchant of Venice busy collecting extravagant gifts from rich ‘fair-weather’ friends, each hoping to get the ultimate fast return on their investment as sole benefactor in the new will a secretly healthy Volpone is rewriting before his 'imminent death.'  This venal offering the brilliant idea of Volpone’s ambitious servant Mosca (the Fly), a man who knows which side the bread is buttered on . . . plus the luck, should it fall, to have it land buttered-side up.  Volpone sees all these goods & services (favors from lovely brides & daughters; a disinherited son) easily falling into his lap, but Venetian authorities may have a say.  It’s a masterful set up for Jonson’s particular type of satiric social savagery and Tourneur provides the pace & panache to pull it off.  Jonson’s characters may be one-note creations, but there’s enough so we don’t tire of them.  And, in Louis Jouvet’s Mosca, a towering example of hubristic success in ace acting as well as devious plotting.

DOUBLE-BILL: Another free adaptation, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s THE HONEY POT/’67, even with Rex Harrison & Cliff Robertson in the leads, was a leaden fiasco.  But the next major adaptation, moved to Old West San Francisco, from TOOTSIE’s Larry Gelbart, a big B’way hit for (successively) George C. Scott, Robert Preston & Vincent Gardenia.  Alas, never recorded for commercial use in any medium.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Tourneur, in Hollywood during the silents, fathered two great Hollywood filmmakers. One literally: son Jacques, known for suggestive horror & film noir; one as boss/mentor: classic Hollywood craftsman Clarence Brown.  Two more different quality filmmakers can hardly be imagined.

THE IMPATIENT YEARS (1944)

The rare female writer/producer in ‘40s Hollywood (including GILDA/’46 as producer only), Virginia Van Upp was rarer still bringing female perspective to her work, as in this original script on a warp-speed wartime marriage gone sour.  A year-and-a-half's separation removed from the four-day whirlwind courtship/wedding/honeymoon, Jean Arthur & Lee Bowman find little in common other than the toddler she’s been raising in his absence with mooning male border Phil Brown and dear old Dad Charles Coburn.  Sentenced to replay their 4-day courtship before being granted a divorce, they reignite in bumps & starts.  A bit sticky here & there, with that forced/awkward quality familiar from many a ‘40s comedy, it finds its feet as it goes along in some very funny set pieces (a misunderstanding at a lunch counter a small comic gem) and in some nice touches of legit sentiment (visiting the couple who married them).  Second lead Bowman stepped up to play disillusioned husband (better when the film takes a sober turn*) while Arthur only needs to soften up her look a bit to get every last drop of humor & emotion out of the script.   Vet megger Irving Cummings’ direction best descibed as uneventful, but lighting cameraman Joseph Walker, an Arthur specialist, has her best side glowing in some last reel portrait shots.  Arthur’s adieu to Columbia as a contract player (she’d only make two more films total*).  It's small potatoes, but darn nice in its way.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Bowman an obvious second choice to Joel McCrea who turned this down after his big hit with Arthur & Coburn in THE MORE THE MERRIER/’43 (far more admired/now looking a bit overrated).

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *You have to wonder how much age played into Arthur’s crushing self-critical doubt and semi-retirement.  Born in 1900, she tended to play (and look) 15 years younger than she was.

DOUBLE-BILL: A decade later, Judy Holliday, Columbia’s new warm-hearted/quirky-voiced blonde comedian was sent on a similar flashback journey by a divorce judge in THE MARRYING KIND/’52.

LONG MEN KEZHAN / DRAGON INN (1967)

Consolidating and refining on his previous Kung Fu/Martial Arts film, COME DRINK WITH ME/’66, visionary director King Hu left Hong Kong based Shaw Brothers to double-down on exotic style, pageantry and splenetic fits of action on another ancient Chinese factional war saga.  And while you won’t follow all the nuances and alliances as ruling Palace Eunuchs and their minion-like Eastern Depot warriors hunt down rebel warriors led by Wu and his men (plus a stupendous lone swordswoman) giving safe harbor to the remaining Yu clan after their father’s execution, you won’t entirely lose the narrative thread.  Not only does Hu stage action like nobody’s business, in his hands, journeys, political wrangling and pre-battle staging hold nearly as much interest as fancy footwork, bloody slashings & lethal payoffs.  (All looking swell after a 2013 restoration that has the EastmanColor print looking like Fuji film stock back when Fuji was the new competitor to KodaChrome.)  Polly Ling-Feng Shang-Kuan debuted to instant stardom as a whirling dervish of a female warrior and lean Chun Shih is equally effective as an over-achieving bladesman.  There’s a price to be paid being so influential, certain elements, especially in wire work have been surpassed, but the freshness and wonder largely holds up.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: An even better King Hu entry pic is RAINING IN THE MOUNTAIN/’79.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/kong-shan-ling-yu-raining-in-mountain.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Here and there, the traditional Chinese music score switches to (of all things) Mussorgsky’s 'Pictures At An Exhibition' in the Ravel orchestration . . . which really sticks out!

A GOOFY MOVIE (1995)

You’d imagine Goofy, Disney’s old-time anthropomorphic animated dog, too long in the tooth and distant to support a full-rigged kid-oriented feature film in 1995.  Truth is, he’d never quite gone away, even fronting a recent tv series.  Enough for Disney bean-counters to think this canine Intellectual Property worth the investment to maintain.  But if cold corporate logic initiated this old-school project (fashioned like an extended cartoon short), studio creatives brought real affection to the old guy and a nifty idea in a Father/Son bonding story.  Max Goof is the high school senior forced to take a cross-country car trip with his embarrassing dad when he’d rather hang out with his new girlfriend.  But the film’s promising beginning is quickly dumbed-down for the kiddie trade, frenetic when it means to be funny, much in the manner of those dreadful live-action films Disney was half-heartedly churning out in the ‘70s (think APPLE DUMPLING GANG*) before the company got rebooted in the ‘80s with live-action SPLASH/’84 and animated breakthru in THE LITTLE MERMAID/’89.  Here, even the laughter feels canned.  Pity.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The film came out in 1995, yet Disney has Goofy sing a ‘50s tune (‘High Hopes’) to date him.  More likely, Goofy would have been zoning out to The Rolling Stones.   Now that could set up a funny Generation Gap routine.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A Grand Canyon sequence recalls Disney’s first ever CinemaScope short, GRAND CANYONSCOPE/’54 with Donald Duck taking in the sights.

THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR (1951)

Smart and tidy for its first two acts, this legal drama collapses in the third with a pair of surprise witnesses Perry Mason might have found too convenient to believe.  Charming, lanky Michael Denison, a successful estate lawyer in a mid-sized British town, takes on a rare criminal case when the Mother and grown daughter at The Franchise (a small estate near town) are accused of kidnaping a teen townie, holding her in their attic against her will to work as a house servant.  It’d be all too ridiculous if she didn’t have all the details on their house & routine down pat.  And since the ladies have to prove a negative, the law leans toward the accuser.  Popular mystery writer Josephine Tey also gets the details right (her novel had four adaptations, even more if you include radio) and director Lawrence Huntington makes the modest budget work for him with a pitch-perfect cast (starchy Marjorie Fielding as Mom; Dulcie Gray as quietly sane daughter/love interest; Ann Stephens the perky accuser; mechanic Kenneth More, sympathetic if underused), but can’t keep the film from coming full stop when those last-minute revelations show up in court.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: British legal drama is at something of a dramatic disadvantage with defense split between Solicitor & Barrister.  So the fellow doing the investigating  & exciting legwork may not be the fellow presenting the case in court.  Might be good for the client, but tough for the dramatist.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Denison, who had his highest profile part in next year’s THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST/’52, was married to co-star Dulcy Gray for 59 years.

THIS IS MY AFFAIR (1937)

Behind that generic title, a fast-paced turn-of-the-last-century historical whopper, plush romantic melodrama for newly engaged Hollywoodites Barbara Stanwyck & Robert Taylor entangled with a menacing gang of slick bank robbers.  (All the publicity around the  glam couple no help to the pic's long term rep.)  Stanwyck, the gang’s performing pet, doing vaudeville turns at the classy club they use for cover; Taylor, working on the QT for President William McKinley, trying to infiltrate after regular legal channels fail.  Brian Donlevy (brains of the troop/half brother to Stanwyck) buys Taylor’s criminal act while slow-witted front man and incorrigible practical joker Victor McLaglen sees Taylor only as rival for Babs’ affections.  The script comes in with missing pieces, too much simply falls into Taylor’s lap, but a great third act twist (the only historically accurate thing in here!) makes up for a lot.  Fun to see normally soft-spoken Sidney Blackmer as noisy, excitable V.P. Teddy Roosevelt, a standout among all 'round good support.  Plus better than usual period detail, especially in some ripely staged musical numbers.  (Stanwyck’s alto wouldn’t have gone past the front tables, but a specialty number by Tyler Brooke is a delight, loaded with legit period trimmings.)  Journeyman director William Seiter doesn’t do much particularly wrong, but with a little more care & imagination, this one might have soared.

ATENTION MUST BE PAID: In a jail cell toward the end, Taylor shows a vulnerability rare in his work.  He should have worked with his wife more often.

THE LOOKING GLASS WAR (1970)

Prettier-than-James-Dean wannabe Christopher Jones (from WILD IN THE STREETS as per our poster) and Pia Degermark (from ELVIRA MADIGAN; a film no one’s actually seen but which fans of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 tire of hearing about) are a couple kids on the run after Jones’s international spy mission tanks toward the end of this fumbled adaptation of a lesser John le Carré novel.  Under writer/director John Pierson (with a ‘Mod’ film technique more applique than organic), you’re never sure what’s it all about after an undercover agent dies in Finland & a roll of secret film goes missing.  For reasons both unexplained and inadequate, recent Eastern Block defector Jones is tasked & trained to sneak back across the border to figure things out and report back.  (I think.)  Or is he just being set up by various rival agencies on both sides of the East/West divide for a politically convenient fall?  Maybe Jones could shed light on that as well.  Considering the unusual clarity in recent le Carré adaptations like THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD/’65 and THE DEADLY AFFAIR/’67 , this is a big step back.  Purposeful obfuscation is one thing, but this is just too confusing.  It lowered filmdom’s interest in le Carré for a decade; till Alec Guinness renewed the brand in TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY/’79.  Here, with a strong-on-paper cast, only young Anthony Hopkins, still new to film, makes a connection.  Otherwise, disappointing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: As mentioned above, SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (holding up well) or the underrated DEADLY AFFAIR.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-deadly-affair-1966.html

THE TRAIL OF '98 (1928)

Still impressive late silent (with music & effects track) on the quick rise & fast fall of the Klondike Gold Rush, with unusually muscular direction from Clarence Brown on the toughest shoot of his long career.  A constant location work misery (mainly Colorado) in blizzards, mud-clogged thaws and raging rivers.  (Four stuntman died.)  Loaded with one impossible set piece after another when news of an Alaskan gold strike travels the country in Act One; hopeful fools mass westward, then turn right to face a long trek North, hazarding a weather-blasted death march up to Dawson City, staging area for the Klondike, as Act Two; finally heading into unchartered wintry wilds with the unlikely hope of finding a fortune and getting in your claim before it’s stolen in the Third Act.  Unusually for these epics, the human stories are just as thrilling as the big action sequences (avalanche; running the rapids; sled race to make a claim; life or death climb over the pass; a fiery climactic fight to the finish - all boasting still remarkable F/X) as madness, failure, starvation & lives lost claim characters in near arbitrary fashion.  Not just the reckless, old or bad, but Grandparents; bound-for-life brothers turning against the other over a shot of whiskey; a larky go-getting teen.   And hardly a moment to mourn the loss.  Dolores Del Rio (prostituting to survive) & Ralph Forbes (in remarkably sensitive form) are the lovers; Karl Dane, strong as an ox as a loyal, comic Dane; Harry Carey as the opportunistic villain (stealing land & women); each in top form.  With one of the great fights in film as climax.  (Damn hard to make those work without easy sound effects to add oomph to the punches.  And watch how director Brown lets Carey calmly set up the battle.)  Extra credit to cinematographer John Seitz, just off his last two films with Rex Ingram (MARE NOSTRUM; THE MAGICIAN) and THE PATSY for King Vidor, for shooting under such conditions.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Some of the more spectacular effects look like ‘Schüfftan Process’ trick work though inventor, Eugene Schüfftan, had yet to come Stateside.  (The process combined live action with miniatures fit into frame with mirrors.)

LINK/DOUBLE-BILL: Charles Chaplin’s great comic take on this madness: THE GOLD RUSH/’25.  (Look for the restored 88" cut.)  OR: The other 1928 Hollywood epic to kill stuntmen (and possibly a few extras!), NOAH’S ARK.  Beautifully restored, but TRAIL is the better pic.) https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/noahs-ark-1928.html

SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999)

With its painterly physical production (call it high-tone drear) and showoffy cast enjoying every scare & giggle in this re-imagined American legend about Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, what a pity Tim Burton forgot to invite us along on what comes off as a long, stylized, shallow yet sophisticated inside joke.  Johnny Depp’s Ichabod is a crime investigator in this telling, channeling Edgar A. Poe 19th Century ratiocination techniques (a bit before the fact) in hopes of solving a series of decapitations up in Sleepy Hollow, New York.  Instead, he gets a personal ‘I Do Believe In Spooks!  I Do Believe In Spooks!  I Do, I Do, I Do’ revelation.  Yet even with most of the town allied against him, figures out the witch’s curse that has kept the specter on the prowl.  Young Marc Pickering is a standout as a local assistant, and Depp is still in his youthful prime (though overselling the comedy as if he were still Edward Scissorhanding).  But logic is wanting in the horror department and Burton’s ‘action chops’ remain inert as ever.  (Not a decent shock cut in here; and chances are the more effective combat scenes & chases were handed off to second unit specialists.)   Plenty handsome & fun just to look at, but laughs & frights in short supply.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A few years back, a big touring exhibition of Burton’s drawings showed almost no artistic growth over the decades.  So, perhaps it wasn’t bigger budgets that dried up what was so special in those early films, but thin top-soil.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Disney’s animated double-bill THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD/’49 has a great look and Bing Crosby’s singing narration, but sees Ichabod take a backseat to a truly memorable WILD RIDE over at Toad Hall in the opening WIND AND THE WILLOWS abridgement.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-adventures-of-ichabod-and-mr-toad.html

ONE MAN'S JOURNEY (1933)

Sentimental saga about general practitioner Lionel Barrymore who returns to his little town (with young son) after washing out in the big city.  Over the decades, his self-sacrificing efforts become invaluable to townspeople unable to pay fancy fees while he harbors dreams of opportunities missed.  Finally getting his due after defeating a smallpox epidemic, he watches as his grown boy heads off to specialist school in Vienna and a chance at the life he’d long dreamt of.  Bumpy going at times, director John S. Robertson nearing the end of a career that found him always a step-and-a-half behind the curve (partially covered up here by tricked up transition devices*), some raggedy story editing actually lending an air of freshness to business-as-usual character development.  As when adopted little sis Dorothy Jordan doesn’t end up engaged to handsome son Joel McCrea.  The script has other plans for both of them: McCrea getting engaged to society gal (real-life wife) Frances Dee (the lucky stiff!), while Jordan gets knocked up by the town’s rich wastrel son.  But what really makes this little programmer stand out is noticing how many story beats anticipate Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but with Barrymore, that film’s Scrooge-like villain, in the James Stewart/George Bailey slot as hero/martyr/eternally frustrated dreamer (doctor rather than banker).  You almost have to wonder if Capra knew the film.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Most of Robertson’s work lost silents.  Dimly remembered, if at all, by his merely adequate 1920 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE starring Lionel's kid brother, John; and that film largely remembered for Barrymore’s famous makeup-free transformation from Jekyll to Hyde, disappointingly handled by Robertson.  Fortunately, you can get a better look at Barrymore doing this amazing sleight-of-hand contortion (sleight-of -face?) under director Alan Crosland in DON JUAN/’26.  (Plus, the film’s in mint condition with its original VitaPhone music track.)

SEALED CARGO (1951)

Neat little WWII actioner, with a fresh angle, stumbles a bit toward the end, but largely gets the job done.  Dana Andrews stars as a fishing boat captain working possibly dangerous waters off the Canadian Atlantic Coast when he finds a wrecked Danish schooner and tows her in to shore.  Something’s fishy though, and it’s not the halibut.  Turns out, the sole survivor of the found ship, Captain Claude Rains, is hauling something even more valuable than the barrels of rum Andrews samples; fresh supplies of German torpedoes waiting for a big U-Boat rendezvous.  Andrews and his multinational crew have fallen for a wartime ruse and unwittingly helped the enemy.  Now, they must fight their way out or wait for the ship, the town and all hands to go kaboom.  Yikes!  Journeyman director Alfred L. Werker, just off the one high-profile movie of his career (LOST BOUNDARIES/’49, a racial drama about a light-skinned black couple*) does a good job integrating various trick shots, process work & miniatures; less well parsing action & combatants.  Hard to tell Axis from Allies in the dark.  Good turns from crew members Philip Dorn & Skip Homeier, but little can be done with pro-forma love interest Carla Balenda, hitching a boat ride to visit Dad.  And what’s with that title?  SEALED CARGO.  Really?  Sounds like a typically idiotic idea from new R.K.O. owner Howard Hughes, holding forth with bad ideas on every studio release.

DOUBLE-BILL: More unlikely warriors with Merchant Marines Humphrey Bogart & Raymond Massey doing battle against the AXIS on a bigger budget for ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC/’43.

LINK: *So light-skinned, they’re played by white actors.  Link to LOST BOUNDARIES WriteUp below: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/09/lost-boundaries-1949.html

10 RILLINGTON PLACE (1971)

At his best working a low-budget in tight quarters (see NARROW MARGIN/’52), director Richard Fleischer had just fumbled the three biggest films of his career (DOCTOR DOLITTLE; CHE!; TORA! TORA! TORA!) when he scaled back for this remarkably dark serial killer film, taken from the sensational, real-life ‘Christie Murders.’  In a grim, London neighborhood of featureless row houses, young couple with child John Hurt & Judy Geeson rent a nauseating two-room flat from quietly creepy tenant manager Richard Attenborough, a man we already know from the prologue to have committed his first strangulation.  Taking advantage of circumstances (a marital spat, an unwanted pregnancy, an illiterate husband’s simple ways), Attenborough offers trust, protection and his services as a cheap, silent abortionist before starting to murder again; then pinning his crimes on the husband.  Played out like some inexorable proletariat Greek tragedy, the film would be all but unbearable to watch, if only you could tear your eyes away.  Alternating between a carefully framed show-no-more-than-needed compositional technique and near docu-drama style (with no music), its one-foot-before-the-other approach develops serious cumulative power.  With little traction Stateside (the case much better known in Britain), Fleischer never dared dig so deep again.  Intense and unforgettable.

DOUBLE-BILL: A year on, Hitchcock’s FRENZY/72 was, in his preferred style, a ‘slice of cake’ serial killer story.  Set in a frozen in time Covent Garden, London to fit Hitch’s memories, the film was a success everywhere but Britain.  OR: A 2016 BBC three-parter take on the same Rillington tale (with Tim Roth & Samantha Morton) drops documentary style for horror film tropes that coddle the story.

MR. PERRIN AND MR. TRAILL (1948)

Hugh Walpole’s novel of misery in a second-tier British ‘Public’ School, atypically focused on staff rather than students, is so solidly constructed it easily survives the inadequacies of this plain-penny production.  (Hey, BBC/Masterpiece Theatre, mini-series waiting to happen here!)  Unfazed by a modest budget and studio-bound look, journeyman megger Lawrence Huntington is undone by a pair of missteps that move the time frame from pre-WWI to post-WWII without acknowledging social change; and by a casting decision that uses a heavily made up Marius Goring as elderly schoolmaster Perrin, who grows infernally jealous of popular new teacher, war hero and instant boys’ favorite Traill, played by David Farrar who looks great but in real life was actually four years older than Goring.  Even more than the time shift, the lack of age differential undercuts the heart of dramatic action.* And yet, even with these roadblocks, the internecine battles of hidebound school masters, the passive/aggressive sadism of Headmaster Raymond Huntley, hopeless romantic longings for lovely school nurse Greta Gynt as she gravitates toward the hunky Mr. Farrar, all these small personal tragedies played out in front of sad disappointed middle-aged/life’s-passed-me-by teachers in the common room, come across.  Plus that chorus of pubescent students eager to make fun of every sorrow & eccentricity.  Tremendously effective & often touching in spite of the flaws, especially when shards of humanity pierce thru the hard-shelled surface Goring’s Mr. Perrin has polished so carefully; abstruse and heartbreaking otiose.  Barely hitting 35% of potential, the film still packs an emotional wallop.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Easy to see where Goring falls short by imagining how Alec Guinness would handle the role thru his BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI characterization.  They even have the same final line of recognition come too late: ‘What have I done?’

DOUBLE-BILL: You can tell just how out of touch this film’s ideas on post-WWII boarding school must have seemed by watching Terrence Rattigan’s superb THE BROWNING VERSION/’51 which deals in many similar issues.  The Anthony Asquith 1951 version with Michael Redgrave, please.

THE CONSPIRATORS (1944)

Remember the refugees in WWII Casablanca (the town), desperate to reach neutral Lisbon from where England or even the USA was possible?  Well, two years on from CASABLANCA (the film), we’ve arrived.  And what a convoluted mess of spies, counterspies, stonewalling bureaucrats, bumpy romance, swanky eateries, coastal smugglers & international intrigue awaits!  And such a collection of warring Euro-accents in Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Victor Francen, Vladimir Sokoloff, Eduardo Ciannelli, Steven Geray.  Everything but a Portuguese accent.  Plus Hedy Lamarr, gorgeous, disinterested, post M-G-M contract, dropping in at Henreid’s table to hide from the cops after her contact gets murdered in the street.  Good choice, he’s a heroic Holland saboteur hoping to reach England; she’s an agent . . . but for whom?  The rest of the film has these two running dangerous errands for various resistance groups: his led by Sydney Greenstreet & the Allies; hers under some sort of Nazi insider coordinator.   Designed originally as an A-list feature with lots of returning CASABLANCA talent, producer Hal Wallis bailed after Jack Warner ‘stole’ his Best Pic Oscar on that classic and the package was reworked and handed to Jean Negulesco with a B+ budget.  And while Negulesco can’t make the action or relationships add up, he gives it such an entertaining buzz, you often can’t tell or don’t mind.  Just don’t expect it to stick with you.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID³: ONE: Lamarr turns out to have a Dachau Concentration Camp past and flinches visibly at the prospect of returning with her husband to Germany.  Perhaps the only time Hollywood made even an oblique reference to her Jewish background & flight from Europe.  TWO: Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit of behavioral acting brilliance from Peter Lorre when he thinks Henreid’s a Nazi spy and his hand suddenly begins to spasm.  THREE: A rare use of Henreid's heroic height (6'3") to aid characterization.  Very effective!

DOUBLE-BILL: Negulesco had better luck right before this with script & perfectly pitched production on THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS/’44, his dandy second feature that led to this troubled pic.

GUARDIE E LADRI / COPS AND ROBBERS (1951)

Classic commedia all'italiana, an early, but already characteristic effort from Mario Monicello (here co-directing with Steno) in uproarious style grounded in life experience; call it Neo-Realistic Slapstick.  Sad-faced comedian Totò (real name Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno Porfirogenito Gagliardi De Curtis di Bisanzio), small time confidence man with a big family to support, is caught working the tourist trade selling fake Roman Era coins in the Forum, but escapes from Officer Aldo Fabrizi (the tubby priest in Roberto Rossellini’s OPEN CITY/’45), also with a big family to support, starting a long wily chase of recapture.  Loaded with classic set pieces (best comes early as the two old men grow too exhausted running to take even one step more), but with a perfectly structured story arc that brings the two families together between close calls, clever stratagem and shared interaction that grows into a believable relationship of partial understanding.  Shot in appropriately harsh style by future Giallo director Mario Bava, emphasizing the barren outskirts & hardscrabble life just beyond Rome, the consistently funny cat-and-mouse maneuvers never get in the way of a serious underpinning of poverty and desperation fueling the action.  Worthy of comparison with the great silent comedians of the ‘20s, it’s a superb example of the level of achievement in so much commercial Italian cinema of the ‘50s.

ATTENTIION MUST BE PAID: If you pick up a certain Jackie Gleason/Art Carney vibe here, you’re not alone.  Just check out the art work on our Spanish poster.

THIRTEEN WOMEN (1932)

With decidedly creepy concept, depth in casting, spooky/supernatural atmosphere and remarkably advanced film technique (director George Archainbaud abandoning Early Talkie style), along with a full background score from Max Steiner (years ahead of the pack), this occult-centered murder mystery is dandy nightmare material painfully sabotaged by missing footage. Down from 73 to 59 minutes!  (A Pre-Code film trimmed for a later Production Code re-release?)  Unusual horror on many fronts, including that big female cast, the premise picks up a group of well-to-do college grads ten years on, all receiving death threat letters from some swami they saw back in school days.  And when a series of horrible personal events (divorce, the death of a child) starts them suiciding one-by-one, they all start taking  the predictions seriously.  But Swami has just died in a train accident (if it was an accident); he’s not responsible . . . so who is?  Enter police detective Ricardo Cortez, who takes special interest in one of the women, Irene Dunne, and her adorable little boy.  By now we know the culprit, it’s fellow student Myrna Loy, still in her ‘Oriental’ period, here as a ‘half-caste’ Indian.  She’s developed the power of auto-suggestion, strong enough to make a woman shoot herself or to fall in front of a train.  How many will die?  Who’ll be next!  The severe cuts mean we never do get all thirteen deaths, but what we do see is plenty grotesque, even shocking; with Loy in tremendous form as pure evil beauty, less exotic/whimsical than was norm for the period.  If only those missing minutes could be found.

DOUBLE-BILL: Dunne and Cortez had just co-starred in Gregory La Cava’s fine adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s Rich Doc/Jewish Ghetto weepie SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION/’32.  Magnificent & corny in equal measure.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Shortly after this film’s release, Peg Entwistle, suicided in real life, more extravagantly than she had in the film, jumping to her death off the ‘H’ of the famous HOLLYWOODLAND sign.

WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER (1922)

Old battle-lines are being drawn once more with the opening of David Fincher’s MANK/’20.  While mainly about Who Was Responsible for What in yet another telling of The Making of CITIZEN KANE (dozens of books, two feature films) and likely to be about as accurate to Orson Welles & scripter Herman Mankiewicz as AMADEUS was to Mozart & Salieri, just as much attention is being directed at an acclaimed perf from Amanda Seyfried as actress/Randolph Hearst mistress Marion Davies.  But while the portrait of Kane is very much a portrait of Hearst, the second wife in that film, Susan Alexander, isn’t at all like Marion.  Something Welles was oft at pains to point out!  Including his foreword to her (sort of) autobiography, THE TIMES WE HAD.  Accepted wisdom holds that this Ziegfeld Follies beauty was pushed by Hearst toward unsuitable dramatic vehicles but thrived when given a chance at lighthearted comedies.  And while it’s true that she doesn’t have much to offer in serious roles (the closer you get to her, the less she has to show), she really was only slightly better (let’s say more comfortable) being sassy/larky in her two best remembered laughers, THE PATSY and SHOW PEOPLE, 1928 silents from King Vidor who wisely surrounds her with stellar talent to play off of, knowing that her one true talent was playing hostess, either at Hearst’s fabulous San Simeon estate or in her fabulous studio lot trailer/bungalow.  Alas, this one leans toward drama, a stiff, overstuffed period piece (designed to impress by legendary FOLLIES art deco stage master Joseph Urban), with Davies as kid sister to Henry VIII.  He wants to marry her off to France’s aging King Louis XII; she wants to elope with a hunky British commoner leadenly played by Forest Stanley.  Marion certainly tries: dressing up as a boy, fencing for her life, throwing tantrums at Kings, aping Mary Pickford without the empathetic/communicative magic.  Hearst gave her a huge production (mostly filmed at Paramount’s Astoria lot), but director Robert Vignola rarely knows what to do with the thousands of extras and immense sets.  The idea of humanizing and dirtying up historical figures showing the influence of Ernst Lubitsch, specifically his own Tudor piece, ANNA BOLEYN/DECEPTION/’20 which he’d top next year with Mary Pickford in ROSITA/’23.  Still, worth a look for many reasons, most of them historical.  Look for a beautifully restored & scored edition out on UnderCrank Productions.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: For Davies at her rare best, Edmund Goulding’s BLONDIE OF THE FOLLIES/’32, from a Francis Marion story with Anita Loos dialogue.  Here’s a LINK to our WriteUp.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/blondie-of-follies-1932.html

UNDER SANDET / LAND OF MINE (2015)

Terrific.  From Denmark, a fact-inspired WWII aftermath story about some doubly unlucky prisoners-of-war, mostly teenage German soldiers, forced to defuse more than two million land mines, planted by Nazi forces on Danish beaches. before being sent home.  (The bombs mistakenly placed there to ward off the big Allied Invasion that came ashore not in Denmark but in Normandy.)  Here, a small unit of ten prisoners are trained and kept in line by a single Danish officer more than twice their age, charged with removing 45,000 of the bombs from beaches.  The story arc doesn’t hold many surprises, other than who & when something’s gonna blow, but the situation & personalities have no trouble holding interest as anger and a taste for revenge turn to grudging respect and a certain kind of affectionate dignity that evolves over a series of two steps forward/one step back story beats.  Exceptionally well acted, particularized and paced, director Martin Zandvliet refuses to sensationalize or oversell tense situations in a Hollywood manner, banking rather than abusing pyrotechnics, musical foreshadowing and CGI gore.  (He does have a little girl wander into uncleared territory, but the set piece nicely dovetails into another tragic storyline.)  Then wrapping things up with a narrative ellipse that wallows not.  The film well received, yet underestimated/under seen.

DOUBLE-BILL: Probably best of the lesser known Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger films, THE SMALL BACK ROOM/’49, with what ought to have been a star-making perf from David Farrar as a British bomb disarming expert in 1943.

SECRET PEOPLE (1952)

Irregularly gifted director Thorold Dickinson, at his best in LOYALTIES/’33, GASLIGHT (aka ANGEL STREET)/’40 and QUEEN OF SPADES/’49, here working his own original story, can’t quite pull off this political thriller set during the run up to WWII.  Sisters Valentina Cortese & a pre-ROMAN HOLIDAY Audrey Hepburn are displaced persons in London, living with a surrogate uncle after their father was murdered by Fascists back in an unnamed homeland.  Reconnecting with friends from the old country, they’re unaware the men are now part of the Communist underground resistance and plotting political assassination.  Missing all signs of trouble, the sisters end up tangentially involved in a bombing conspiracy gone wrong.  It’s a tense, clever setup, and Dickinson proves a wiz at developing and clearly organizing stakeouts, ambushes, chases and the tight-cornered logistics of a house search, only to fall down on characterizations and relationships.  The main problem stems from a kindly Uncle (Charles Goldner) whose Mittel-Europa shtick is strictly touring company and, unexpectedly, from Valentina Cortese, normally a fine screen presence, here unable to gauge her effects.  Happy, depressed, confused?; hard to differentiate.  (Famously hailed by Ingrid Bergman as the woman who should have won her Supporting Actress Oscar® in ‘75 for Truffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT, she might be auditioning for that role here.)  On the other hand, Serge Reggiani, as her ambivalent long-lost boyfriend, is very effective*, even when Dickinson leans on easy coincidences to keep the suspense up.  And what a treat to see the young Irene Worth in a small but pivotal role as a British agent working with Cortese.  If only the ending didn’t feel manipulated to please the censors by providing proper punishment for the crime, it’d be easier to celebrate what does work rather than note what doesn’t.

DOUBLE-BILL: *1952 was a good year for Serge Reggiani with CASQUE D’OR against Simone Signoret, dir. Jacques Becker, his next.

THE BOY FRIEND (1971)

When it opened in the 1950s, Sandy Wilson’s pastiche ‘20s musical seemed a modest charmer, especially in its year’s run on B’way with a debuting teenage Julie Andrews in the lead as a rich, popular schoolgirl who falls hard for a poor bellboy who turns out to be . . . even richer than she is!*  Happy Ending!  Purposefully twee and silly, Wilson was poking gentle fun at Jerome Kern/P.G. Wodehouse Princess Theatre Musicals that poked fun at themselves.  So, by the time director Ken Russell got his hands on the material, it needed bucking up.  Having super model Twiggy in her first film helped (she could sing & dance to pleasant effect), but his big idea was to graft 1930s Busby Berkeley style and the plot of 42ND STREET onto things.  Now, a backstager, the show within a show has Twiggy sub at the last moment for injured star Glenda Jackson.  Plus, a Hollywood director in the audience who doesn’t see the schlepdreigel production before him, but the film he envisions in his mind’s eye.  Indeed, just about everyone in the cast has their own idea of what’s happening on stage visualized by Russell in bludgeoning detail.  This meta -musical idea might have worked, but Russell has zero interest in unifying presentation or running the simple story in a readable manner.  It’s all excessive thrusts & parries in a variety of styles meant to WOW us.  Every number a ‘Numbo.’  Two of them connect: a seaside swimming routine and a Parisian Pierrot act done as if it were silhouette puppetry.  (Some classy work under tough conditions from cinematographer David Watkins.)  But even here, the actors work too hard to keep an emotional distance and not ingratiate.  It’s Busby Berkeley meets Brecht.  A man of patterns, pulchritude, perversion & pudenda, Berkeley hardly knew a dance step and didn’t need them.  Truly inimical, and quite beyond Ken’s ken.  Only the young Tommy Tune, a cross between eccentric ‘30s specialty dancer Hal Le Roy and BIG BANG THEORY’s Jim Parsons comes across.  Rail thin & towering, he’s not much helped by second-rate material and Russell’s lack of visual legato or invisible editing technique.  But at least he has a reason for being up there.  Something woefully lacking elsewise.

DOUBLE-BILL: Maybe Russell was simply overwhelmed with work in a year that also saw THE MUSIC LOVERS and THE DEVILS hitting theaters.  He’s just as extreme, but far more satisfying in next year’s difficult/worthwhile SAVAGE MESSIAH/’72.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Master of musicals Stanley Donen’s affectionate spoofing in MOVIE MOVIE/’78, much closer to the mark.

CONTEST: *Andrews, whose ‘20s pastiche film musical was THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE/’67, is tangentially involved here.  Explain the connection to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.