UNION DEPOT (1932)

Low rent GRAND HOTEL/'32 with multiple/loosely interconnected storylines of everyday Jack & Jills not at some ritzy Berlin Hotel (The Adlon?), but at a train station patterned on NYC’s Grand Central.*  Crazy entertaining over a jam-packed 67 minutes, it reps best effort work from normally poky director Alfred E. Green, alive to every ethnic minority quirk in roving dialog grabs with lenser Sol Polito freely wandering art director Jack Okey’s vast station set.  Plus gasp-worthy chase sequences & narrow escapes amid crisscrossing tracks & trains, presumably from second unit man Al Alleborn.  Also at his best, young Douglas Fairbanks Jr., just out from a vagrancy charge with soused bud Guy Kibbee, hot to grab anything that comes his way amid the big city hullabaloo & hoi polloi.  And what adventure he finds: a violin case filled with counterfeit cash; a suitcase forgotten by traveling salesman Frank McHugh; swiping a station worker uniform to gain easy access (fair-play Fairbanks returning the ‘borrowed’ loot when possible); meeting-cute with Joan Blondell’s waiting-to-be-rescued chorine (served with a side of tru-love); a dozen more.  And when Fairbanks is inevitably caught, David Landau’s smart, sympathetic police detective there to figure out how dastardly Alan Hale figures into the cleverly designed switchback plot.  Fast & funny, touching & suspenseful, it’s loaded with Pre-Code sexual frankness even when Joan lets us know she’s basically a good girl.  Though under the impression Fairbanks is a rich swell, she’s perfectly willing to offer him 'private time' for a ticket to Salt Lake City.  Turns out, he is swell.  So too the film.

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF HE DAY: *One of seven writers here, Gene Fowler may have gotten a peek at M-G-M's GRAND HOTEL script from best pal John Barrymore.  Not that he took much, though it would help explain Alan Hale’s German accent.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Filmed in ‘31, there’s not much in the way of background music, but use of diegetic sound cues & ambient noise is phenomenal for the period, showing how much Warners was able to do having recently ditched sound-on-disc for sound-on-film.

TIME BOMB / TERROR ON A TRAIN (1953)

Like its UK/USA titles, this straight-forward suspenser doesn’t oversell its premise: Munitions Expert Glenn Ford races the clock to defuse a detonator hidden on one bomb among eleven cars of sea mines on a designated London to Portsmouth train.  Clean location handling from cinematographer-turned-director Ted Tetzlaff (who never quite lived up to the promise of THE WINDOW/’49*, rest of cast & crew all top Brits: lenser Freddie Young, art director Alfred Junge, composer John Addison), with tasty character support and (alas) a subpar romantic angle between Ford & bored Paris wife Anne Vernon.  The idea is that the incident brings a return to the excitement they felt back in WWII, but Kem Bennett’s debut feature script not up to much beyond good basic construction right thru its neat final twist.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The British Boulting Brothers stayed in London to play similar tropes in their nuclear bomb thriller SEVEN DAYS TO NOON/’50.  Best in a docu-like evacuation sequence. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/seven-days-to-noon.html  OR: *WINDOW remakes & near remakes include current NetFlix streamer THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW/’21 (not seen here).  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-window-1949.html

FAVOLACCE / BAD TALES (2020)

Fast-rising Italian writer/directors Fratelli D'Innocenzo (brothers Damiano & Fabio) earned a passel of International Film Fest awards & nominations with this frustratingly opaque fable about Rome suburbanites and kids hitting nothing but life’s wrong notes and speed bumps.  The brothers have their gifts: holding tone & a deliberate pace, edit-friendly composition & merging variated acting styles (mannered to non-pro naturalist), psychological engagement with their characters (though the adult women get short shrift), but it all feels directionless.  (Intentionally?)  And they seem to know it, opening wih a long introduction, something of an apologia, blaming the vagaries of what’s to come (possibly true/possibly not) on a ‘found’ diary, picked up after the fact and arranged/partially completed by our unreliable narrator.  As if they were washing their hands of responsibility.  Meanwhile, try and figure out what’s driving all the bad parenting, sexual curiosity, suicide pacts (or accidental poisoning?) on display during a short summer break.  Perhaps Il Fratelli might try walking before attempting an existential Olympic hop, bound & jump.

DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Altman’s SHORT CUTS/’93 springs to mind.  Would Fratelli D’Innocenzo know it?

ÉDOUARD ET CAROLINE / EDWARD AND CAROLINE (1951)

Lesser Becker, still worthwhile.  Dead at 53 in 1960, with just over a dozen mature features on his C.V., even minor work from French writer/director Jacques Becker too precious to miss.  Like this charming Rom-Com (even Sit-Com at times), a near companion to ANTOINE ET ANTOINETTE/’47, if not its equal, with Becker raising social status from struggling pink-collar workers amid post-war Parisian shortages (and loads of real Paris street locations) to ‘50s surplus on but two interior studio sets for Anne Vernon, stay-at-home wife to Daniel Gélin’s as yet unheralded concert pianist husband.  She comes from money/he’s got a chip on his shoulder about it; and tonight their differences rise to the boil as her wealthy Uncle gives a fancy party to introduce Gélin to society types who can make his name.  It leaves him even more resentful and her faded evening dress looking even more painfully dated.  All very French, very ‘50s in social attitude & sexual politics: ‘comic’ marital blows; women at the party on the lookout for modest affairs; Vernon’s sleek cousin crushing on her.  (Vernon worth the crush.  Gélin, known from Hitchcock’s MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, a sort of handsome French Dustin Hoffman type.)  With story beats that zig just where you expect a zag: Vernon taking shears to her dated gown, doesn’t make tatters (a la Lucille Ball), but couture; Gélin throwing a tantrum not from a ruined dress but from fashion blindness.  Drinking at the party, surely he’ll ruin his big chance.  Nope, if anything, he plays better.*  Rich ‘Ugly’ American husband of society lady at the party, she’s got the wandering eye, he turns out to be a pretty upstanding guy, speaking horrible, but ‘correct’ French, and winding up as the film’s wise fairy godfather.  Becker isn’t as connected to this crowd as in ANTOINE (a bit broad in tone & detail), but the faults do little to harm to film’s charm.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *And why not, that’s Ravel-specialist Samson François (here playing Chopin) on the soundtrack to Gélin’s rather casual keyboard contact.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Naturally ANTOINE ET ANTOINETTE.  OR: Becker’s next, CASQUE D’OR/’52, his masterpiece.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/08/antoine-et-antoinette-1947.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/casque-dor-1952.html

BLUE IGUANA (2018)

British writer/director Hadi Hajaig (with but four releases in two decades), had a decent, if derivative idea here, landing think-on-her-feet London lawyer Phoebe Fox at a crummy NYC diner to recruit low-grade parolees Sam Rockwell & Ben Schwartz for a tricky hand-off of negotiable bonds for a stolen mega-diamond (‘the blue iguana’) back in England.  (The Stateside diner scene a late add-on to get Rockwell & Schwartz on board?*)  Once ‘over there,’ the boys join two other players, but the drop goes badly and the race is on to recover loot and bauble.  Silly violent stuff, but entertaining thanks to likable lowlifes, rat-a-tat dialogue & spot-on casting.  Rockwell & Fox outstanding, with great personal chemistry.  (Rockwell could have phoned it in, but the guy never does.  A champ whatever you stick him in, and finally showing leading man chops rather than having to steal pics in support.)  Third-act twists go on too long, but what really drags this down is its disconjunctive/over-active filming style, as if Hajaig grabbed the baton from Guy Ritchie’s ‘90s filming style and then couldn’t give it away.  He just gets by on action sequences (though the editing frenzy fails to camouflage a multitude of staging sins), but not with simple things like straight-ahead table conversations or simple exposition dialog, farragoes of over-manipulated jump cuts and pointless fast-tracking showoff shots.  Meantime, conveniently ‘planted’ setups for gags & plot twists (like having a Zombie Pic filming next door so any real gore goes unnoticed) is depressingly lazy.   Makes you wonder how badly those ultra-violent ‘90s comedy capers have aged.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The idea you’d cross the Atlantic to hire such lowlife losers only makes sense with a plot specifically targeting second-raters as a guarantee for failure.  The twist coming when they succeed against all odds.

COBRA WOMAN (1944)

Eye-popping TechniColor, backlot studio artifice, campy fabulist adventure, just the ticket for unlikely Hollywood film star Maria Montez.  Half a dozen films with aquatic consort Jon Hall during the war years, and, if you were lucky, Sabu as sidekick, besting villains, inane plots & strapless everything.  This one tops of the divinely silly lot, with Montez kidnaped by Lon Chaney Jr. on her wedding day and taken to the island of her birth where younger identical twin sister is the despotic ruler.  You’ll guess the rest of the plot, but not the decor; the nightclub floor show passing as ritual cobra dance (backup chorus-line in blue); fire-breathing mountain; a dozen more near death experiences for all three.  And with stylish director Robert Siodmak calling the shots*, unexpectedly specific setups that almost make sense of the nonsensical plot & island logistics, serving up the shortest running time of the series.  A plus because while you wouldn’t want to miss it (especially in HD), you may also find that one is quite enough.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *More than other directors in these films, Siodmak emphasizes music over adventure,  as if Montez were a beautiful Carmen Miranda whose run at 20th/Fox mirrored these in color saturation & brief popularity.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hard to imagine serious, issue-oriented Richard Brooks co-scripted.  Even harder to imagine calm, sophisticated French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont married to Montez.

WATERFRONT (1944)

Americanized as director Steve Sekely, Austro-Hungarian war refugee István Székely must have been glad of steady employment anywhere, even Poverty Row Hollywood.  Here, it’s Producers Releasing Corporation, an outfit to make MONOGRAM PICTURES look like M-G-M.  Yet, even under these circumstances, you can tell he knows what he’s doing, especially in the first half of this Nazi Fifth Columnists story.  If only you could see it.  Subfusc copies the norm, so a largely nighttime undercover spy drama must be seen through a glass darkly, very darkly.  A shame since John Carradine is just the man to play a Nazi spy combing the San Francisco waterfront district to find fellow traveler/optometrist J. Carrol Naish, only to discover Naish has just been robbed, his ‘little black book’ of codes & contacts gone missing.  Calmly murdering even sympathizers once he gets what he needs, Carradine also enjoys serving up a bit of blackmail, threatening to expose a landlady’s relatives back in Germany when she points to a No Vacancy sign.  Before that, an elaborate meet-cute for two spies as Carradine recites ridiculous passwords while pretending to have his eyes examined; and later a neat scene where a detective sweats thru an interrogation while his suspect stays cool as a cucumber.  So what if the script falls apart in the third act, a decent looking print might have saved the day.  Not that we’ll ever know.

DOUBLE-BILL: Carradine starred in many a crappy B-pic between prestige supporting gigs.  One of the best he made that year (#9 of 11, also at PRC), BLUEBEARD for Edgar G. Ulmer, good enough to hope for a better print to turn up before having a look.

CAPTAIN ALATRISTE (2006)

Serious fun when not being serious, this deluxe Spanish Historical fiction (from a series of modern novels) follows unlikely Spaniard Viggo Mortensen (adding a mysterious element more obvious choices Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardem might have missed) in a ‘noblest soldier of them all’ scenario as he chafes at the iniquities of 17th Century Spanish society (royals, religiosos, retro rules) while staying true to all things Castilian, other than the lisp.  In a handsome production with an Old Masters’ look (think Velasquez), Alatriste is barely returned from noble fighting in an ignoble war against Protestant Flanders when he’s ‘enlisted’ to assassinate a couple of Dukes (Wales & Wellington) in from England incognito to visit the King, only to hold back from finishing the job.  The right thing to do, of course, but getting Alatriste into nothing but trouble, and setting the course for the rest of film on missions foreign & domestic; battles of heart, soul & territory.  Accomplished and nicely detailed at first, increasingly tangled political & personal issues in the film’s morally compromised second half find writer/director Agustín Díaz Yanes coming up short, his skills unequal to the task.  (Unlike Peter Weir’s MASTER AND COMMANDER out three years before this.)  Mixing old-fashioned duels and derring-do over twenty years (showing the merest touch of gray at the temples and nary a pound packed on) with uncomfortable societal attitudes toward women & religion treated in modern fashion as mere niceties everyone follows or ignores at the plot’s convenience.  Ultimately, the film wants to toma tu pastel y cómetelo también when issues get thorny.*   Something of a curate’s egg (an iris fade-out signals a decline), it’s conditionally enjoyable.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, MASTER AND COMMANDER/'03.  And what became of the presumed sequels?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Googled English-to-Spanish for ‘have your cake and eat it, too.’  Close to the mark?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Full Official English title: CAPTAIN ALATRISTE: THE SPANISH MUSKETEER, but did this receive even a token Stateside theatrical release?

TOMORROW WE LIVE (1942)

Grade-Z cult director Edgar G. Ulmer, Poverty Row’s poet of the peculiar, started his symbiotic association with ultra-low-budget Producers Releasing Corporation with this typically odd, atypically half-baked project.  Later PRC films (BLUEBEARD/’44; DETOUR/’45) show what he was going after; not so much here.  Jean Peters’ prodigal daughter, home after dropping out of college, gets an unwelcome reception from Pop at his minimally functioning desert diner, kept afloat by renting out sheds to black marketeer/casino owner Ricardo Cortez (the only reason to have a look).*  Called ‘Ghost’ for having survived various attempted rubouts, he makes a fast move on Peters; she’s initially interested, but already spoken for by soldier boy William Marshall.  You can see the possibilities, especially when a rival gang goes after Cortez and a jolting montage of gun play snaps him into madness.  But the script is just too risibly blunt, the multi-branched storyline never comes together, and a bit of WWII patriotism slapped on as coda pure desperation.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Who could possibly be frequenting Cortez’s upscale desert nightspot in the middle of nowhere?  Then again, Las Vegas was raising early casinos at about this time, so maybe.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Better Ulmer from this period, BLUEBEARD; DETOUR; or with a near normal budget & legit cast, RUTHLESS/’48, something of a discount CITIZEN KANE.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/09/detour-1945.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/ruthless-1948.html

GOING HOLLYWOOD (1933)

In decline and nearing the end of personal bungalow parking privileges @ M-G-M, thirty-something Marion Davies sought commercial insurance borrowing Paramount’s Gary Cooper as co-star on next year’s OPERATOR 13, and fast-rising Bing Crosby for this lightly satirical near-musical.  It wasn’t much help, the two films ending her M-G-M association and Marion showing the effects of drinking in the bungalow between those long breaks on set.  (Note the tricky striated makeup shadings dividing Face, Jaw-line, Neck.)  And a scattershot story as M-G-M (unlike R.K.O. with Fred & Ginger; Warners with Busby Berkeley; Paramount with Lubitsch & Mamoulian) had yet to figure out just what their kind of musical should be.  Here, Davies upends her life teaching French at a private all-girls school after swooning to Crosby crooning on the radio;  an epiphany that has her trailing him all the way to Hollywood.  Donald Ogden Stewart’s original script packs in a few gags about the movies; the irritating Fifi D’Orsay gets jealous and trades French barbs with Davies; Ned Sparks & Patsy Kelly crack wise in comic relief; Bing sings a handful of Nacio Herb Brown/Arthur Freed tunes (TEMPTATION; BEAUTIFUL GIRL) impressively recorded live on set; Davies replaces D’Orsay in Crosby’s heart and in front of the camera; but there’s no style (or stylistic unity) connecting the pieces.  Even within scenes, it’s all bumpy arbitrary shots, as if the editor had nothing to work with.  A likely scenario since once you subtract two reels worth of tunes, running time is under an hour.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In spite of Crosby, this one shows up irregularly, probably because Davies shows up in BlackFace.  And not the usual heavily stylized BlackFace caricature, but in realistic dark makeup as an extra on set.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Marion’s silent success with King Vidor, SHOW PEOPLE/’28, also about an outsider gone Hollywood, the likely template.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: In his fanciful auto-bio (EACH MAN IN HIS TIME), Raoul Walsh, specifically requested by Davies’ life-partner William Randolph Hearst to direct, shows little interest describing the film, but does recall a post-premiere weekend up at San Simeon where the guest list included Hollywood contingent Hedy Lamaar, Norma Shearer, Joan Bennett, Howard Hughes, Will Rogers, John Barrymore, Gloria Swanson & Ginger Rogers; and non-Hollywood types like Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill , General Douglas MacArthur, J. Edgar Hoover (escorting Ginger!),  Irene Castle, top Hearst gal reporter Adela Rogers S. John & Ernest Hemingway.

IL LADRO DI BAMBINI / THE STOLEN CHILDREN (1992)

Award-winning film from Gianni Amelio, its rep now somewhat in the shadow of his somber justice tale, OPEN DOORS/’90 just before, and the absurdist international trade horror of LAMERICA/’94 soon after.  (What a range in just these three!)  BAMBINI, heartbreaking & heartwarming without getting sticky, something of a three-day mini-epic, going south from Milan to Rome to Sicily, as young carabiniere Enrico Lo Verso (an Amelio regular) is left on his own with a couple of problem kids: asthmatic 9-yr-old boy; prematurely toughened 11-yr-old sister, separated from a mother who’s been pimping the girl & ignoring the boy.  Refused entry at a Catholic Orphanage in Rome, Lo Verso must get them to a children’s home in Sicily.  With its walking pace and incorrigible brother/sister act, the film patiently works its Neo-Realistic tone (both kids non-pro) to make the inevitable warming up more believable, more intensely touching when it does develop.  Especially fine during an impromptu stop at Lo Verso’s hometown where the kids experience a family unit as foreign to them as a moon landing.  Yet, even here, thrown out again.  Amelio’s moral: no good deed goes unpunished, but the effort not for nothing.  A wonderful film.

DOUBLE-BILL: Few Amelio titles recently brought Stateside, even for home viewing.  But OPEN DOORS and the astonishing LAMERICA/’94 easily found.

WATERLOO ROAD (1945)

At his best working with regular writing partner Frank Launder (Alfred Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES/’38; Carol Reed’s NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH/’40), this WWII homefront tale finds Sidney Gilliat writing & directing on his own to negligible effect.  Small beer as Private John Mills goes AWOL to chase down rumors his wife is ‘stepping out’ with local tough/wartime slacker Stewart Granger.  That’s about it.  Alastair Sim brings his amusing saturnine presence to a nothing role as the local doctor, introducing a neighborhood & present day scene of blitz-bombed row houses before we flashback to still intact homes where Mills’ discontented wife (Joy Shelton), stuck living with her in-laws, is also having a flashback, this one to her own happy wedding day.  (This flashback within a flashback the only stylistic fillip in the pic.*)  Talked into spending the day with Granger, the platonic pair stays one step ahead of Mills, himself but one step ahead of the military police.  A few real location shots add interest (those depressingly bleak row house exteriors shrieking of middle-class defeat), and from an extended fight between Granger & Mills fought in a tiny room.  Surprisingly effective, Granger towering over Mills who believably holds his own when not taking a few startling punches to the head.  Sim returning to pull us back to the present and bring us up to date.  Stirrings of future kitchen-sink drama, but no follow thru.

DOUBLE-BILL: *For piggyback flashbacks-within-flashbacks, hard to top PASSAGE TO MARSEILLES/’44 which stacks four or five running concurrently.  (Like a Russian nesting doll.)  Yet easy to keep track of with director Michael Curtiz and Casey Robinson script.  OR: See British kitchen-sink drama get underway in IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY/’47.

THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE (1987)

Now known to a generation or two largely as mistress of the pithy putdown, there’s more to Maggie Smith than is dreamt of in DOWNTON ABBEY’s philosophy.  With unlimited range & expertise across multiple acting disciplines, live on stage from Shakespeare & Molnar to Shaffer & Stoppard, and on film, particularly in smaller projects like this quietly moving character study of a middle-aged spinster falling into genteel poverty (and less genteel alcoholism) at an unwelcoming rooming house of lower-middle-class misérables in ‘50s Dublin.  Judith Hearne had once known better, orphaned and living with well-to-do Aunt Wendy Hiller (in her last feature film), she’s now a target for Gentleman Caller Bob Hoskins, freeloading off his sister at the same rooming house, convinced without cause he can boost a business idea with Hearne’s (nonexistent) savings.  The other characters (at the house; at her relatives; at church) very broadly drawn, needing to make their mark in a scene or two.  But this lack of stylistic unity does help to keep a certain obviousness at bay.  (Keeps things lively, too.  Some of the house ‘guests’ awful beyond expectation.)  But you’re obviously here for Dame Maggie.  So too director Jack Clayton, on his last feature, happy to let Smith take focus whenever possible.  At its best, devastating stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Cinematographer Peter Hannan ought to be better known; this film sandwiched between cult fave WITHNAIL & I/’87 and medium successful A HANDFUL OF DUST/’88. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-handful-of-dust-1988.html

END OF WATCH (2012)

Easy enough to write off David Ayer’s buddy/buddy L.A. policier as just another OTT urban cop drama now showing its age, but, fine reception notwithstanding, this should have been pegged as used goods when it came out, its COPS meets THE OFFICE shtick barely hidden behind intense turns by Michael Peña & Jake Gyllenhaal’s bickering best-buds, patrol-car partners working badboy backstreet angles.  And what a caseload of front-page worthy assignments they cover over a few weeks (burning building baby rescues; drug cartel takedowns; human trafficking exposures; and more!) while back at home one proposes/one has a first child; never a dull moment!*  All ‘captured’ thru various video portals, half personally shot by Gyllenhaal, documenting his days even when crawling thru smoke-filled rooms.  The technique leading to the film’s single laugh when a bedroom scene implies a third partner.  (Hey, someone's holding that camera.)  Not without its effective sequences and a touching end (undermined by a comic/ironic final coda), but ultimately as manipulative as the films it's trying to show up.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Had David Ayer originally conceived this as a series (or mini-series), then stuffed a year’s content into 110 minutes?

CARRINGTON V.C. / COURT MARTIAL (1953)

After a mediocre job on a great courtroom drama (THE WINSLOW BOY/’48, which studiously avoids the courtroom in Terence Rattigan’s original play), Anthony Asquith is just as mediocre directing this mediocre courtroom drama, now studiously stuck in the courtroom.  This time, a military courtroom, still featuring purloined funds and still featuring a second-billed Margaret Leighton, discomforting as ever.  David Niven stars as the officer in trouble, ‘borrowing’ cash from the unit’s safe to protest late pay and nabbing an extra £25 to bet on himself in a horse race.  The case boiling down to whether or not he ‘announced’ his intentions openly.  Wife Leighton knows the truth, if only she weren’t too mentally fragile to be relied on.  The proceedings twist & turn in interesting ways, with Niven quite a compromised character not only with cash & off-base privileges, but also with gal pal officer Noelle Middleton.  More than enough rope to tease out a bit of sympathy toward Leighton, if only to make the third act more suspenseful.  A notion Rattigan would undoubtedly have picked up on, but missing from John Hunter’s screenplay.*

ATTENTION MUST (NOT) BE PAID: The film opens with a built-in SPOILER, giving away the tag ending to anyone paying attention.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *A specialist in bringing Terrence Rattigan to screen, Asquith somehow missed out on next year’s DEEP BLUE SEA.  But Anatole Litvak's flop adaptation worth a look to see how a miscast Vivien Leigh could have been just right here in the Margaret Leighton role.  And, vice versa, Leighton just right for Leigh’s.  OR: More real Rattigan, and David Niven’s Oscar® in SEPARATE TABLES/’58.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/03/separate-tables-1958.html

THE SHAKEDOWN (1929)

For once the East Coast Execs got it right, noting the underlying quality of this modest programmer and sending it back in front of the cameras to add prestigious/expensive Talkie sequences to the completed silent cut in spite of a ho-hum reception from 'the trades' and new Universal chief Carl Laemmle, Jr.  (Those additions now lost, the full silent exists in a superb print out on KINO.)  After directing more than a score of 2 & 5-reel Westerns, 27-yr-old William Wyler moves confidently to this modern MidWest story; tough, funny, touching, about a gang of crooked boxing promoters moving town-to-town, fleecing small-town rubes with a fixed bout by sending likable ‘advance man’ James Murray ahead to warm them up, posing as a local boy bravely stepping into the ring against unbeaten Battling Roff (former pro boxer George Kotsonaros).  But this time, Murray gets too involved with a girl (Barbara Kent) and a freckle-face orphan tyke (Jack Hanlon, phenomenal!) and can’t go thru with the scam.  Wyler seems unable to put a foot (make that camera placement) wrong, with a fabulous economical narrative style getting his story to run in just over an hour by telling us three or four things at once.  (The occasional immature/showoff shot great fun.)  The film openly looks back at Chaplin’s THE KID/’21, but also ahead to King Vidor’s THE CHAMP/’31, even more to Meredith Willson’s THE MUSIC MAN/’62, though here the surrogate father/son story (really more Big Brother) takes precedent over the romance, and in very emotional fashion.  Plus the boxing scenes really hold up: Wyler shooting with kinetic elan; Murray in fabulous ‘fissick’ as his young pal says.  (His rapid decline after Vidor’s THE CROWD/’28 and this unaccountable.)  Barbara Kent is fine as the girl, but Murray & Hanlon are the main event.  (Hanlon debuted as one of the kids following Buster Keaton everywhere he goes in THE GENERAL/’26.)  This one a real find.

ATENTION MUST BE PAID: Look fast for the guy in the ring holding up the Round # card; it’s Wyler.

DOUBLE-BILL: One more silent before Wyler did his first all-Talkie, HELL’S HEROES/’29, his exceptional version of THE THREE GODFATHERS (made twice by John Ford; by Richard Boleslawski; many more).

THE RAID: REDEMPTION / SERBUAN MAUT (2011)

Exemplary actioner from Welsh writer/director Gareth Evans (working in Indonesia) plays like one long Martial Arts set piece after a prologue identifying our baby-faced hero, Iko Uwais, former prodigy master-fighter, 5'6" in his late 20s, able to ‘sell’ the deadly moves he’ll need to survive his SWAT team’s misconceived raid on a gang of lowlifes in a dilapidated high-rise.  Evans sets up his cunningly simple story, with just enough twists for interest, and enough breaks in the action to keep us from exhaustion, as Uwais & his uniformed unit storm a motley gang of criminal residents one floor at a time, working their way up to take down Mr. Big (evil drug lord/great villain Ray Sahetapy).  At least, that’s the plan.  Naturally, things don’t work out so smoothly when ‘spotters’ catch sight of the team on their way in, helped by a turncoat police officer.  All moves clean as a whistle under Evans' deft kinetic touch, not only attacks & counterattacks, but in the logistics of parallel floor-to-floor combat.  The building’s central staircase and open shaft perfectly suited for falls and floor hopping.  Super stuff for the genre, with the grisliest gore front-loaded so you don’t have to cringe all the way thru the pic.

DOUBLE-BILL: Evans returned  for more smashing in the even better received THE RAID 2 (not seen here) which, at nearly an hour longer, may be too much of a good thing.

DOA AL KARAWAN / THE NIGHTINGALE’S PRAYER (aka THE CURLEW’S CRY) (1959)

Classic ‘women’s’ meller from prolific Egyptian Golden Age writer/director Henry Barakat proves a lumpy mix in spite of its stellar rep.  Overstuffed with dramatic reversals, it hits the ground running as a pair of beautiful sisters & mother are sent into exile when the corpse of their adulterous father comes home.  Disgrace (for them and town) only avoided by shooing the women to some other village where they separately find work as servants.  But when the older, more beautiful sister is seduced by her handsome employer, all three are soon back on the road, led by a family uncle duty-bound to murder the fallen sister in an honor killing.  Motivation enough for younger sister Faten Hamamah (a top Egyptian actress and Mrs. Omar Sharif at the time) to seek revenge by taking her sister’s old position in order to drive the seducer mad with unconsummated passion.  Barakat takes a brisk, straightforward approach to all this melodramatic suffering, dropping & picking up characters willy-nilly and sending Hamamah packing whenever the plot needs a kick.  Then in the third act, grabbing story beats from the Scarlett O’Hara/Rhett Butler relationship in GONE WITH THE WIND.*  He gets his points across, but it’s all pretty strenuous and repetitious as we wait for fate to take its inevitable toll.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Darryl F. Zanuck could have used this in the ‘40s at 20th/Fox for Linda Darnell, with Gene Tierney as the older, more beautiful sister.

LE BONHEUR (1934)

At his most inventive & influential in silent film, Marcel L’Herbier had something of a late masterpiece in this devastating romance: psychologically/philosophically/morally complex, with a hint of Dostoevsky in its turns & tone.  Charles Boyer, in exceptional form as a newspaper caricaturist with anarchistic beliefs, responds to the return to Paris of actress/singer Gaby Morlay by shooting her after a rapturously received concert.  Planning to kill, he merely wounds and, during his court case, realizes he’s had some sort of epiphany.  So too Morlay, who not only forgives him, but finds herself falling in love.  Her husband, a useless Prince, and her gay manager, grandly drawn by Michel Simon in stupendously glam suits, are confused & appalled.  But fate doesn’t exactly hold much future for the odd couple lovers, especially once Boyer finds out the how the plot of her new film follows their own relationship.  Fascinating on almost every level, L’Herbier’s sound technique retains a silent film rhythm, with agogic accents that jar, though handsomely shot by Harry Stradling.  (Look for the 2013 restoration.)  A fantastic film no one seems to know Stateside; far surpassing L’Herbier’s experimental silent work that does still get the occasional outing.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Boyer had just starred for Fritz Lang, fresh out of Nazi Germany, as LILIOM/’34 in the best film realization of Ferenc Molnár’s famous play, now better known as the source material of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s CAROUSEL.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/liliom-1934.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Morlay’s daringly conceived perf has her looking far from her best when called for.

THE TWO POPES (2019)

‘Truthy’ fiction about Argentine Cardinal Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis) going to The Vatican to offer a letter of resignation to Pope Benedict (the former Cardinal Ratzinger) and finding he’s not alone in contemplating retirement.  With pitch-perfect casting in Jonathan Pryce’s Francis & Anthony Hopkins’ Benedict, the film plays like a ‘two-hander’ stage play opened up via multiple prologues & flashbacks to fill us in and expand on scripter Anthony McCarten’s main interest of the largely intellectual religious argument between conservative & progressive wings of the Catholic Church.  Yet, so cunningly stitched together, not only in its nonlinear construction (with special attention to Bergoglio’s compromising position during Argentina’s Military Regime), but also in director Fernando Meirelles’ digital and soundstage reproduction of Vatican City, it’s easy to overpraise the film.  Good as it is, the narrative does lose focus at midpoint.  But just when you think they’ve run out of topics, a series of confessions between current and future Popes pulls the story back on track.  And with only two or three little slips where McCarten sinks into easy identification tropes: enjoying take-out pizza; pop culture lessons; a World Cup soccer game.  Fortunately, not overstaying their welcome or deep-sixing the film’s main concerns on different attitudes in church doctrine & priorties.  And what an acting lesson from two old pros!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Except for John Huston’s acting turn as a wily Boston prelate, Otto Preminger’s THE CARDINAL/’63 is warmed-over melodrama.  But worth a look if only for its magnificent Saul Bass designed credit sequence as Cardinal Tom Tryon walks up a series of Vatican stairways.  Here, the real thing; and mesmerizing. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/02/cardinal-1963.html

SUBMARINE PATROL (1938)

When your next six films are STAGECOACH, YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, THE LONG VOYAGE HOME and HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY* (1939 - 1941), no surprise to see John Ford’s comic-skewing programmer about the wackiest wooden sub chaser in the WWI Navy snubbed.  Unjustly so.  20th/Fox production chief Darryl F. Zanuck hoped to pump this into an A-pic, a star-making vehicle for Richard Greene & debuting Nancy Kelly, sweethearts separated by class & boat schedules.  But Ford knew a clunker when he saw one, and emphasized/embellished all possible comic opportunities as an idle crew on a forgotten vessel is whipped into (ship)shape by Lieutenant Preston Foster, hoping to salvage his career with a daring mission.  Happily, Ford’s comic instincts are firing on all cylinders (less alcohol-based gags than usual which helps), with his stock company of character actors still young enough to pull off the hijinks.  (LINK: It shows what Ford was trying to do in his unhappy, if wildly popular, MISTER ROBERTS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/08/mister-roberts-1955.html)  With its landlocked look and casually handled model work in soundstage water tanks, only the last act asks to be taken even semi-seriously.  And while those dramatics don't quite come off, they do provide George Bancroft as Kelly’s suspicious freight-captain dad with a chance to briefly show some stunning silent film acting technique with a brilliant dialogue-free display of reaction shots as he works the ship’s engine room during an attack and belatedly bonds with future son-in-law Greene.  Then, back to lighter things for a swift wrap-up.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Eagle-eyed film mavens will note TOBACCO ROAD/’41 left off this list.

THE OLD GUARD (2020)

Notwithstanding heavy NetFlix eye-balling and pre-planned sequel, this adapted graphic-novel is plenty dreadful.  Charlize Theron, who produced, leads a motley international team of pro bono Special Ops Mercenaries fighting for Truth, Justice & Third World Underdogs. Their latest cause?  Themselves!  Seems Big Pharma has uncovered the gang’s secret: They’re Immortal!  Killed again & again over the centuries, they take a licking & keep on ticking.  (Kinda dulls the suspense factor, no?)  Kidnap the crew, work up a DNA profile and voila!, a Cure-All Vaccine to end all Cure-All Vaccines.  (Good luck getting Evangelicals to take it!)  This all might work on screen: fresh dead Black female addition from Afghanistan, courtesy of the U.S. Army; a turncoat on the team; a gay couple* (no, not Ancient Greeks); plus Theron made up to look like David Bowie.  If only the script could have bothered with a mission other than their own survival.*  (We’re only told of past deeds by newly designated group historian Chiwetel Ejiofor, switching sides in time for a sequel.)  Or if Mr. Big Pharma weren’t such a threatless little weasel.  Or maybe if Gina Prince-Bythewood megged without discombobulated editing in exposition and action set pieces that look like under-rehearsed Cirque Du Soleil.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *One of them the astonishing Luca Marinelli, fresh off his breakthru in MARTIN EDEN/’19.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/martin-eden-2019.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Generally speaking, franchise pics only show this level of self-regard by Episode IV.

SHERLOCK HOLMES (1932)

Amusingly imperturbable, Clive Brook had already played Sherlock Holmes at Paramount (THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES/’29; PARAMOUNT ON PARADE/’30) when he was called onto a new case over at FOX Films.  Credited to William Gillette’s oft-filmed play*, it’s more a sequel to it and never feels particularly ‘Holmesian.’  Here, the main fun comes from watching director William K. Howard, working with high-polish cinematographer George Barnes, toggle between handsomely lit drawing room exposition and visually imaginative set pieces (a death sentence in court; protection racketeers with hand-grenades; machine gun bullet-spewing cars; a prison escape; tunneling into a bank) made with quick-cut close-ups and associative montage editing.  Showoff stuff for sure, but decidedly advanced for the period.  So too, the sophisticated use of a background musical score by George Lipschulz.  With most supporting players, like Reginald Owen, a fine idea for Dr. Watson, getting short shrift, their functions largey taken up by Howard Leeds as ‘Little Billy,’ a role Charlie Chaplin played as a child for his London stage debut with author William Gillette as Holmes.  (Gillette still playing his signature part on B’way in his mid-70s.)  For Holmes fans, merely a curiosity; but for fans of the transition from Early Talkies to high-style Golden Age Hollywood, essential.  Lots of crap prints out there, but gorgeous restorations around if you look.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Gillette filmed his play in 1916 (once thought lost, rediscovered in 2014) and gets credit for this version; for John Barrymore’s in ‘22; and for Basil Rathbone’s second Holmes film (ADVENTURES OF . . . /’39), though it also ignores Gillette’s plot.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/05/sherlock-holmes-1922.html

BLOWING WILD (1953)

With a cast of heavy-hitters (Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Anthony Quinn, Ruth Roman, Ward Bond) and A-list talent (Philip Yordan script, Dmitri Tiomkin score, favored Hawks & Walsh lenser Sidney Hickox, top Argentinean helmer Hugo Fregonese), this film’s complete lack of reputation can signal only one thing . . . STINKER.  Why else wouldn't it be known?  But not this time; if anything, a bit of a find.  And if it doesn't fully connect, the script a draft or two shy of potential, this racy number about wildcat oil men fighting banditos and misdirected lust in South America, plays like some missing cinematic link  between Douglas Sirk & Sam Peckinpah.*  Cooper & Bond, prospectors gone bust, are trying to get back to the States when they meet Ruth Roman, equally stranded, trying to hustle the fare home.  Luckily, old partner Quinn also in town, flush with oil profits and married to former Coop flame Stanwyck.  Dramatically, a tricky five-spoke wheel needing constant structural attention, especially Tony & Babs who might have stepped out of some Strindberg play.  With plenty of incident while the romantic roundelay heats up: a truck of nitroglycerin to deliver; a new well to bring in; a showdown between local banditos and what passes for the military . . . plus, Roman’s got to learn how deal BlackJack.  No wonder the construction is bit jumpy at times.  But Fregonese knew his stuff* and Cooper, in unusually good post-HIGH NOON form, is well-matched to the baritone love calls of Ruth & Babs.  (How many cigarettes did it take to lower those voices?)  With alarming heroics for Cooper (he 'barehands' a ‘nitro’ missile) and an old-fashioned mad scene for Babs to show the younger stars what a real Hollywood legend can do.  While no forgotten classic, some surprisingly strong stuff in here.  (Beware subfusc Public Domain copies.  Excellent edition on OLIVE Films.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The Sirk/Peckinpah angle would have been easier to pick up on if this had been made a couple of years later in WideScreen & Color.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Argentinean Hugo Fregonese spent the first half of the ‘50s in Hollywood making small sharp B and B+ budget pics.  Try APACHE DRUMS/’51, an unnervingly claustrophobic TechniColor Western from Universal that was producer Val Lewton’s last credit.

YING / SHADOW (2018)

After mediocre Stateside reception for THE GREAT WALL/’16 (not seen here), Yimou Zhang’s followup, a stunningly realized Ancient China War epic, caused little stir in these parts.  A pity, since this twisty tale of a ‘pretender’ Feudal Commander (our eponymous ‘shadow’) challenging a neighboring kingdom to a duel over disputed territory without bothering to get the King’s okay, is involving on every level, and leads to superbly rendered (if backloaded) war action where swords & sabre spears battle razor-weaponized umbrellas . . . which also serve as sleds.  (Ya gotta see it to believe it.)  For a change, you can tell the players without a scorecard in combat; action full of surprises & reversals, grounded in strongly drawn narrative & character arcs.  But what really sets this apart is the physical production, a gorgeous restricted palette that has this color film playing out largely in monochrome, the black & white stylization boldly standing out against natural skin tones, the blush of verdant forest green, and the dark red blood of war.  Breathtaking, especially in court scenes where drapes and silk dividers are lightly touched with calligraphy & chalky figures.  And check out the Yin/Yang mat of the climactic mano-a-mano fight.  (See poster.)  You can easily tire of such painterly effects, dulled by overuse.  Not this time.  Rapturous.  Great gory fun as well.  It may get you to check out GREAT WALL in spite of the naysayers.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Director William Wellman tried a b&w visual scheme touched with dabs of high color in TRACK OF THE CAT/’54.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/track-of-cat-1954.html

THE UNDERCOVER MAN (1949)

In spite of breakout success with B-pic thriller MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS/’45, star Nina Foch and director Joseph H. Lewis never did reach the A-list*, plateauing on B+ budgets like this trim film noir about Treasury Department agent Glenn Ford (and team) taking down a Big City Mob Syndicate.  Split between IRS procedural efforts to nail down a paper trail for all those unpaid taxes (3 mill owed from illegal betting, protection rackets, counterfeit goods) and threatening set pieces (a humdinger kidnapping/rubout attempt at the climax), with plotting and strategy as clearly laid out & easy to follow as Ford’s classic noir GILDA/’46 was opaque.  Just not as fun, not as sexy, not as exciting, not as dumbfounding . . . and missing Rita Hayworth something awful.  Sense & sensibility not a necessity in these things.  Still, worth a watch, with good support on both sides of the camera.  If only the mob boss wasn’t nicknamed The Big Fellow.  (Not exactly Scarface memorable.*)  And if that sweet Italian grandmother didn’t rescue the operation with a long speech (in Italian!) about her dream of America.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Foch only hitting the A-list in supporting roles.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Something of a trial run for Lewis’s superior noir, THE BIG COMBO/’55.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-big-combo-1955.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Odd title for a film that doesn’t send anyone undercover.  Maybe the guy who came up with the title also thought ‘Big Fellow’ would make a catchy mob nickname.

WOOD AND WATER (2021)

Modest to a fault German indie, no doubt made with the Fest Circuit in mind, and, in this case, none the worse for it.  Shooting in Super 16mm, Jonas Bak brings family intimacy to a fictional(?) story that follows real Mom Anke Bak as she navigates retirement from a church job in rural Germany.   Widowed, early 60s, prone to anxiety/depression covered with a lot of knitting, she hopes to meet up with her kids at her daughter’s home not far from the house they grew up in before the father died.  But when her Hong Kong situated son bails yet again, his third yearly miss, Mom goes off on her own to meet him in tempest-tossed Hong Kong just as the Pro-Democracy Marches are taking to the streets.  Worse, her son won’t get back to town for a few days so she’s on her own.  And it’s in the way she handles being alone in a bustling city and how she finds little opportunities for human contact that make up the second half of the film.  Charmingly so.  Are Hong Kong residents really so warm & welcoming?  No big payoffs or revelations, just the pace of life neatly caught.  The non-pro cast doesn’t put a foot wrong.  Whether they put one right is another question as a want of dramatic tension is noticeable, a droning flat naturalism stemming from how everyone speaks English-as-a-second-language in HK.  Perhaps what’s lost in translation isn’t poetry, but personality.

DOUBLE-BILL: No doubt, my last sentence gave it away, but LOST IN TRANSLATION/’03 does spring to mind.  A film that, like all Sofia Coppola, would be twice as satisfying at half the length.

AZOR (2021)

Slow to boil, and never going past a (discomforting) simmer, the deliberate pacing & opaque concerns of Andreas Fontana’s debut feature will be a barrier to some, an invitation to ponder for others.  The elusive story & acting style all feints & tiny adjustments as Fabrizio Rongione’s Swiss private investment banker travels to politically unsettled Argentina hoping to shore up relationships with the ultra-wealthy elite previously handled by a partner in the firm gone missing.*  Comporting himself to fit the situation, he maneuvers with hardly a centimeter to spare in a fixed society where no one quite says what they mean, but indicate, infer or allude, while staying prepared for any big political changes.  The Right is IN; the Left is IN; the Army is Taking Over, only the One Per Cent is constant.  (Make that the 0.01%.)  Making the trip with wife Stéphanie Cléau, he leans on her impeccable taste & impeccable instincts, doing the rounds of the rich and entitled, men (and the occasional widow) who trust no one (certainly no one in their own extended families) to carry on their financial affairs.  (One wealthy baron would like to leave everything to a wife presumed dead.)  The tone taking something of a detour toward the end, with a possible explanation showing his client list isn’t entirely tethered to private planes, well-tended estates, restricted social clubs, thoroughbred horses and leisure laps in glistening pools.  A deceptively calm film that might have been scored by a minimalist classical composer, and, at its best, with similar hypnotic appeal.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *In looks & demeanor, there’s a lot of Robert Vaughan in Fabrizio Rongione.  Not MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., but a vibe more like the supporting bureaucratic villains Vaughan played in features.

ROMA (2018)

Immaculately shot personal-memory film from writer/director/ cinematographer Alfonso Cuarón, with a more quotidian approach than other family glances back like Fellini's AMARCORD/’73*; Bergman's FANNY AND ALEXANDER/’82 or Minnelli thru the musicalized fiction of MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS/’44.  And, unlike those vividly colored panoramas, using period-setting B&W to help establish an early ‘70s time-frame.  ‘Roma’ is an upper middle-class section of Mexico City, and the family unit about to break up are married professionals with four kids (and one very poopy dog); maternal Grandmother; two live-in housekeepers.  Cast to emphasize the gap between its indigenous domestics and a very Anglo-looking family, the class/cultural divide comes into play all thru the story.  So too the splendidly recreated neighborhood where you can reach the grocery store, a lively shopping avenue, or a movie palace on foot.  But personal and political changes can’t be stopped by a nice address, and Cuarón ends up with a wealth of incident without having to pump up events.  A difficult pregnancy; belated right-wing action against student strikes (a culmination of 1968, before a change in government); a father who deserts his family and the lies told to keep this a secret.  Emotionally moving in a manner that sneaks up on you, often handled in strikingly long takes that create tension on their own simply as movie technique, yet reveal rather than showoff.  The film a worthy companion to the memory films listed above.  NOTE: Labeled Family Friendly if a nude male martial arts routine doesn't put you off!  Our Family Friendly label not necessarily Kiddie Friendly.  Label definitions (and labels!, which don't display on SmartPhones) off to the side on the Full Web Page.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: Playing Oscar® ’got’cha’ is a no-win proposition, but did the Academy really believe GREEN BOOK the year’s better film?  Yikes!  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/01/green-book-2018.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Ironically, Fellini also used ROMA as title, but for a 1972 essay film on Rome, Italy.

FANCHON, THE CRICKET (1915)

George Sands' ‘wild child’ novel made a fine vehicle for Mary Pickford, though the film only comes to life about halfway thru.  Director James Kirkwood settles for stilted ‘picturization’ setting up the story of village outcast Mary as Fanchon, hiding in the woods to play tricks on townsfolk who won’t accept an orphan girl raised by a hermit witch.  Yikes!  The old lady really her eccentric Grandmother.  But Mary’s fallen for townie Landry Barbeau, engaged to Madelon and played by Mary’s kid sister Lottie.  (Young brother Jack also in the cast, this long lost film the only time all three Pickfords appeared together.)  But when Fanchon’s pranking doesn’t get her noticed, a trio of serious episodes comes to her aid: finding Landry’s ‘dim-witted’ brother, gone missing in the woods; then twice saving Landry, from drowning & from a fever.  If only his father would accept Mary as a suitable match.  Once the tableaux style of filmmaking (it is 1915) gears up for narrative purposes, incorporating kinetic Maypole dancing and mass village movement in hunt & revelry, the film erupts into life; so hang on.  Mary is wonderful, of course, funny, touching, fully aware that film acting is less a force of gesture than of glances.  And at the very end, we’re rewarded with one of the most magical shots in all film as Mary rises from a swaying field of wheat, part of the Earth.  Ravishingly caught by cinematographer Edward Wynard, who elsewhere plays up backlighting to highlight Mary’s signature golden hair.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Though not credited, this was apparently the first collaboration for scripter Frances Marion and Pickford.  Mary already the world’s top-paid actress; Marion soon the top-paid writer.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The Pickford/Marion partnership hitting its peak with a 1918 hat trick: STELLA MARIS; AMARILLY OF CLOTHES-LINE ALLEY; M’LISS, all three with Marshall Neilan directing & Walter Stradling on camera.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/mliss-1918.html