RACHEL AND THE STRANGER (1948)

Immensely likable pre-Western Americana (early 1800s/east-of-the-Missouri MidWest) sees fresh-faced William Holden as a young widower with a modest farm and a 10-yr-old boy to raise.  Needing a helpmate, he buys out indentured worker Loretta Young, marrying her for the sake of propriety.  A comely if lean gal of 25, Holden only sees her as a servant; the boy sees an interloper.  But with the annual Spring return of hunter pal Robert Mitchum, family dynamics are altered.  Mitchum’s instantly attracted and Holden finally notices what’s been under his nose.  Bring on the romantic rivalry.  With musical courtship for the strong voiced Mitchum, a slow warm-up from young Gary Gray and gruff appreciation/affection out of Holden, all that’s needed to put new interpersonal relationships to the test is an Indian attack.  Young, playing ten years younger sans makeup*, and just Oscar’d for THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER/’47, earns the prerogative of having two hunky guys five years her junior fight over her.  With underrated director Norman Foster keeping his powder dry on Waldo Salt’s well structured adaptation of a Howard Fast story.  (The latter two soon to be Hollywood BlackListed.)  A real charmer, right to the finish.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK  Young must have liked working with Foster (now best known for the MR. MOTO mysteries), having him direct 40 episodes of her various tv shows.  Two years on, Foster made a lesser slice of Americana, this time letting Holden do the singing (well, lip-synch singing) in FATHER IS A BACHELOR/’50.  The same year he made what is probably his best film, WOMAN ON THE RUN.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/01/father-is-bachelor-1950.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/woman-on-run-1950.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *With FARMER’S DAUGHTER just before and then a nun in COME TO THE STABLE/’49, Young was using less makeup than any Hollywood star at the time not named Ingrid Bergman.

RATON PASS (1951)

Throwaway Western from Warner Brothers barely tries to hide its inadequacies.  Though our poster does hide second-billed Patricia Neal, finishing her contract before heading off to 20th/Fox . . . and film immortality via DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL later this year.*  Neal plays a wicked adventuress who grabs opportunity in a small Western town owned & operated by the land-owning Challons, father & son.  So, Goodbye shady traveling companion Steve Cochran whose past gets him kicked out of town; Hello Challon scion Dennis Morgan, prematurely rumpled with the wary look of a contract actor expecting the ax to fall. (And it would next year.)  Back on screen, Neal marries scion, then quickly takes charge with help from big city lawyer Scott Forbes (the only interesting guy in here) while Morgan & Dad are out of town.  Duped, Morgan lets himself be bought out of his own inheritance, but plans to get it all back and take Neal down along with that Cochran fellow, back on the scene as trigger-happy enforcer.  Laughably transparent & consistently unbelievable under Edwin L. Marin’s sloppy helming (some close action work exceptionally poor), best guess production head Jack Warner was purposefully making a stinker to help him ‘clean house’ as the post-war slump began decimating the studios.  Especially sad to see the old gang of Warners contract players missing, replaced by second-raters like Basil Ruysdael, a sorry substitute as the elder Challon.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *It took but a single line for Neal in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL: ‘Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!’  But will she be too frightened to get the words out.  Yikes!  OR: For a better contempo Western along somewhat similar lines: Anthony Mann’s THE FURIES/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/furies-1950.html

MAMMY (1930)

Looking for a course correction after Al Jolson’s third film (SAY IT WITH SONGS/’29) made less then half his second (THE SINGING FOOL/’28), Warner Brothers lined up Irving Berlin (story & songs), Michael Curtiz as director, and two-strip TechniColor for the big BlackFace Minstrel production ‘numbo’ & finale.  It barely staunched the descent, and Jolson’s next, BIG BOY/’30, with Al trying on a realistic Black characterization put him off the screen for three years.  Here Jolie, playing top-comic Sideman in the Minstrel show, is set up to fire a prop gun that’s been loaded with a ‘live’ bullet at his romantic rival.  (The one timely touch in the pic!)  Curtiz, at least, keeps things moving while Berlin comes thru with a hit tune (‘Let Me Sing and I’m Happy’).  Elsewise, the ususal melodramatic drek with Jolson pining for Lois Moran, girlfriend of Lowell Sherman’s interlocutor, but largely laying on the songs & kisses for dear old mom (Louise Dresser).  And now that most of the TechniColor footage has been found and restored, we get to see BlackFace with a slight greenish tinge to it.  As if BlackFace weren’t cringey enough already.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above, Jolson plays what’s meant to be seen as an actual Black person, not a BlackFace stage caricature, later this year in BIG BOY.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/04/big-boy-1930.html 

Then, after a break, returning to Warners for WONDER BAR which manages to be both his best and his worst.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/01/wonder-bar-1933.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: No outlier, but America’s most popular entertainment for over a century, BlackFace Minstrel Shows are all but impossible for modern audiences to understand . . . and downright dangerous to hide or ignore.  Discuss.

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (2019)

Like a butcher grinding various meats together as meatloaf mix, writer/director/star Edward Norton minces Jon Lethem’s novel with equal parts CHINATOWN and (presumably) original Ed Norton for this grandly conceived vanity project.  It’s 1950s Brooklyn, Norton’s a junior private dick . . . with Tourette’s Syndrome.  Yikes!  (The verbal ticks, involuntary jerks, and here, compensating bear-trap memory catnip for a Oscar nom’d actor.)  When mentor Bruce Willis goes down after a mystery meeting, Norton spends the next two-plus hours following scraps of evidence that lead to a Jazz Club in Harlem and romance with mixed-race beauty Gugu Mbatha-Raw who’s investigating a racially divisive Public Works kickback scheme that funnels project monies thru a city power broker modeled after real-life NYC land grabbing builder Robert Moses, played by Alec Baldwin and imaginatively named Moses Randolph.*  (Think John Huston’s CHINATOWN land developer.)  Norton’s dutiful direction has the film only occasionally sinking into ‘80s cable-movie pastiche, but it's advancements in CGI work that offer reasonable NYC period atmosphere (nice to see a resurrected Penn Station instead of Grand Central) as the puzzle slowly comes together with every inadvertent (?) swipe from CHINATOWN.  The over-qualified cast of stellar character actors likely means Norton called in lots of favors: Cherry Jones, Willem Dafoe, Fisher Stevens & Bobby Cannavale all hunting up itches to scratch.  Maybe it's why this East Coast CHINATOWN-wannabe runs a self-indulgent fifteen minutes longer than that more complicated West Cost original.  Flaws & all, it's surprisingly watchable.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, CHINATOWN’74.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Norton even gives Baldwin the sort of big explanatory/exculpatory/self-aggrandizing speech John Huston delivered in CHINATOWN, right down to the mystery solving question of secret paternity.  To learn about the real Robert Moses, Robert Caro’s groundbreaking bio THE POWER BROKER.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Odd that Norton’s so dismissive of late 1950s New York Post, a period when its rep and fortunes were at a peak as a famous, commercially successful, Liberal leaning tabloid.  Is Norton confusing it with today’s money-losing Conservative NYPost?

THE LANDLORD (1970)

A compendium of Liberal Postures of the day, this race-oriented social satire about a rich, entitled white kid who buys a brownstone ‘fixer-upper’ to renovate in a Black neighborhood is both essential & embarrassing viewing today.  (Sell-by dates for edgy progressive attitudes always short.)  In a directing debut with New Wave embellishments, nonconformist Hal Ashby was bumped up from editor when producer Norman Jewison started work on FIDDLER ON THE ROOF/’71.  The Bill Gunn script frontloads the Racist White/hipster Black clichés*, slowly trimming the story’s more obvious touches as Beau Bridges (too much the guileless simpleton rather than trusting naïf) starts to warm up to tenants he planned on evicting; falling hard for one of them, Diana Sands (who wouldn’t?).  Their interracial romance rare and rarely explicit for the time.  This now works better than some of the coyer scenes of humanist/racial harmony acclaimed at the time.  A bonding scene for Bridges’ mom Lee Grant and wise/sassy tenant Pearl Bailey serving up the well-meant but condescending tone avoided elsewhere.  And if Ashby overindulges in tricky edits and time jumps, he always has Gordon Willis’s dark-hued cinematography to fall back on.  Generally improving as it goes along (was it shot in continuity or does Bill Gunn’s script simply relax and stop making points?), the film may perhaps be better to think back on than to watch.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Just ten more Hal Ashby films before he died at 59 in 1988.  Try his third, a quietly satisfying, forgotten little masterpiece, THE LAST DETAIL/73.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-last-detail-1973.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *BLACKFACE ALERT!  Gunn not above using BlackFace at an All-White Charity Benefit to get a point across.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Kudos to whomever designed the weirdly sexually suggestive poster.

MUTINY (1952)

Hollywood’s Communist Witch Hunt and subsequent Black List brought political expedience for movie moguls, even as they denied the List's existence; camouflaged writing credits for proscribed scribes; career lacunae from talent above and  below the line, even personal tragedy.  But also opportunity for one particular industry group, two-bit producers; here the King Brothers, able to hire top-tier/A-list names they otherwise couldn’t afford.  For this on-the-cheap War of 1812 wannabe epic, signing formerly rising director Edward Dmytryk for a flat fee of $5000.  Who else was going to take a chance on a ‘Hollywood Ten’ jailbird, off the screen for nearly three years, back in biz after ‘naming names’ against former fellow Communists.  Would his film be boycotted?  If so . . . by whom?  Dmytryk had ticked off every side of the current political equation.  In the event, no one took much note and this demi-epic got only the attention it deserved as a technically clever bit of modest moviemaking, hiding a slim budget behind fancy TechniColor & model ships, a decent cast, and a Philip Yordan script.  (If it was Yordan, he may have been a ‘front’ for some BlackList scripter.)  Circumnavigating British war ships to bring French funds back to America, Captain Mark Stevens has hired one time mentor Patrick Knowles to pick a crew.  Knowles has his own ideas: pick up beloved Angela Lansbury on the way and use his scurvy crew of cutthroats to mutiny and steal those French millions.  To their credit, the King Brothers ponied up for top lenser Ernest Laszio (a boost in your brightness level will help most editions) and a Dimitri Tiomkin score.  And if the film is by and large skimpy doings, severely held back by budget limitations, two nifty wild cards help: an early wooden submersible to attack the Brits (not entirely made up/totally terrifying) and Lansbury, neither heroine nor damsel in distress, but evil agent out for herself.  And wicked fun!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Films on The War of 1812 not exactly thick on the ground. But C. B. De Mille’s first shot at THE BUCCANEER (the 1938 version with Fredric March) is something of an unsung gem, hidden by the unhappy remake he only produced in ‘58.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-buccaneer-1938.html

CATTLE ANNIE AND LITTLE BRITCHES (1980)

Standard issue outlaws-on-the-run Western gets a fatal twist when two girl stowaways attach themselves to the all-male bank gang.  Handily brought to life by underrated helmer Lamont Johnson, with a rich look at a time when autumnal browns & desaturated tints were the æsthetically tasteful rage in Westerns.  And if there’s a bit much whooping it up from the boys, and acres of toe-tapping bluegrass on the soundtrack, a fine mix of young bandits (Scott Glenn & John Savage included) behind Burt Lancaster’s legendary, if aging mentor, gives the film plenty to work with.  All for nought as the film focuses on those girls: quiet, forgettable Jenny, played by teenager Diane Ladd in her third pic, and 23-yr-old Amanda Plummer, feral as an alley-cat, in a rapturously received debut now all but unwatchable.* Daughter of Christopher Plummer & stage musical comedy star Tammy Grimes, she favors mom in looks & croaky voice.  (You’d never guess Grimes could put over a theatrical song from what’s heard here.)  With Plummer, each moment given last gasp emphasis . . . all the time.  It’s exhausting.  Hard not rooting for implacable lawman Rod Steiger, cleverly giving the quietest perf of his career, to shoot her down and take us out of our collective misery.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DB:  *Similar bright career hopes dashed for another off-beat actress next year when Jodi Thelen's breakout debut in FOUR FRIENDS/’81 crashed & burned on arrival.  The Reagan years tough on nonconformist females.

STRANGER ON THE RUN (1967)

After three decades in Hollywood (Warners montage department to B-pics; indies & tv; now under contract to Universal), ultra-efficient director Don Siegel made one last Movie-of-the-Week (actually ‘Tuesday Night at the Movies’) before belatedly gaining A-list momentum, at the ripe age of 56, with his next project, the superior police procedural MADIGAN/’68.  But first came this undercooked chamber Western for future MADIGAN co-star Henry Fonda, playing a rail-rodding tramp in a story meant to mimic BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK.  (Working title: BAD DAY AT BANNER.)  There’s a redemptive backstory we only find out about late in the film (same for too much narrative info), but basically, Fonda has a message to deliver to a dead woman; gets blamed for her murder; goes on the run with a posse of railroad ‘enforcers’ on his tail (led by Michael Parks in blonde Brando mode); then hides out with widow woman Anne Baxter who gives him shelter and a horse.  Handsomely shot for a tv film of the period (Siegel could squeeze production value out of a rock), but too much of the narrative is merely vague when it wants to be mysterious.  Dan Duryea, Sal Mineo, Walter Berke among the many recognizable supporting players, plus an honest to goodness token Black, Bernie Hamilton, added for that Black hand meets White hand shot.  1967, ya know.  Another pass at the script and a better score might have helped.  (A mournful theme song 'repeats' like an undigested green pepper.)  NOTE: Though shot for broadcast tv in standard Academy Ratio (1.37:1), it’s framed to allow a blowup to 1.85:1 for theatrical international release.  If you have the capability, bump it up a notch.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK an obvious influence.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/bad-day-at-black-rock-1955.html

THE SKIN GAME (1931)

‘There isn’t much to be said about it.’  That’s Alfred Hitchcock to François Truffaut in their classic interview book, talking about filming John Galsworthy’s 1920 play.  And, for the first two reels (all character setup & exposition on an Old Money/New Money clash in England’s Lake District), he’s right.  Hitch’s evident disinterest at covering two families at war over a property grab that will turn a pastoral landscape into smoke-stacked factories showing in a series of unnuanced mastershots.  But 23" in, a special effect optical turns that pretty rural scene into a poster for a public auction of the property that has the film jump to life with tracking shots, experimental dissolves, punctuating closeups of bidders, with the sale now a mini-course of Early Talkie suspense technique.  Not all works, but it does allow Galsworthy’s themes of blackmail threats, payoffs, class warfare and an increasingly useless gentry to gain interest.  As the self-made capitalist striver, Edmund Gwenn takes the first of his three-and-a-half Hitchcocks (three films, one tv appearance) and makes a tasty meal of it.  But you do need to get thru that first act.  (Note: many lousy Public Domain copies, but an immaculate edition out from KINO.) 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: For a better Early British Talkie of better Galsworthy (his next filmed), LOYALTIES/’33, with Basil Rathbone as a tough-minded Jew fighting insular British anti-Semitism.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/loyalties-1933.html

TOBRUK (1967)

In a late credit, cinematographer Russell Harlan gives panache, and an exceptionally crisp look to this old-school WWII ‘mission’ film.  It's the best thing in this tall tale on a convoy of German officers transporting truckloads of Allies to some POW camp in Libya.  The gimmick: these ‘Nazi Officers’ really a British unit of disguised German Jews and the ‘war prisoners’ really active Allied fighters, the whole crew crossing the Sahara as part of a sabotage operation to destroy the Nazi fuel depot in Tobruk.  War film afficionados may find the film’s propulsive energy and impressive action set pieces (Oscar nom’d effects by Albert Whitlock designed to look like ordnance for a small war) enough to offset a Leo Gordon script & Arthur Hiller direction that doesn’t clarify what’s going on.  (Extra tricky with half the cast wearing ‘enemy’ uniforms.)  So adding a spy-in-the-ranks subplot probably not the best idea!  Rock Hudson is very good as a Canadian officer singled out for rescue by the fake German Jewish Commandos, but the rest of the cast must have been competing for an inauthenticity award.  Nigel Green’s ’central casting’ British officer particularly ripe while George Peppard (heading the German Jewish contingent) has a roving accent apt for the mythical Wandering Jew.  Hiller probably got the assignment for work on THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY/’64, but this is definitely NOT a Paddy Cheyefsky war film.  Still, the cool look (check out a HUGE soundstage desert dune area used for nighttime scenes) and all that combustible second-unit work offer some decent WWII swagger.

DOUBLE-BILL: Mid-list WWII ‘mission’ films, see Edward Dmytryk’s ANZIO/’68, pretty common at the time.  And on that level, TOBRUK comes up nicely.

LIFE BEGINS (1932)

Omnibus film from the year that brought that mother of all omnibus dramas, GRAND HOTEL.  It’s GRAND MATERNITY HOSPITAL.  Well, yes & no.  Six or seven storylines are in play, but nothing ‘grand’ about this women’s hospital ‘waiting’ ward for ‘before’ and ‘post’ delivery, looking about a step-and–a-half above a charity wing.  Pretty corny lineup, too: the lowlife willing to ‘sell’ her twins . . . till she gets a look at them, a six time ‘regular,’ the handcuffed murderess hoping to see her husband before she goes in; nervous Dad with a lucky rabbit’s foot*; the middle-aged gal with friendly advice; not a surprise in the lot.  Yet a fun watch with a strong cast.  (Look!, Clara Blandick, Dorothy’s Aunt Em.)  And considerable interest as a slice of Depression Era health care.  (When one mom-to-be poo-poos the idea of a kid growing up to be President, she’s talking about Hoover.)  Director James Flood follows the action to reasonable effect, tossing in an occasional arty angle to liven things up and helped by Pre-Code frankness, though not a baby-bump in sight.  (No doubt why the hysteric who only thinks she’s pregnant isn’t immediately spotted.)  Of the three leads, Loretta Young emotes with restraint as the prisoner-on-release facing a difficult birth; Eric Linden shows limited variety playing her young husband (three years on, he'd regress to High School senior for AH, WILDERNESS); while the great Aline MacMahon is a tower of graceful strength as head nurse.  Leaving only Glenda Farrell, a holdover from the B'way cast, to seriously overplay the tough, soused broad who melts in the end.

DOUBLE-BILL: Two remakes - A CHILD IS BORN/’39; LOVE STORY/’42 (neither seen here) - of Mary McDougal Axelson's flop play, her sole credit on stage & screen.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *That rabbit’s foot a rare example of a lucky charm failing on screen.  Normally, they only fail when you forget to bring them.  (Or did I miss seeing it dropped?)

STRANGER AT MY DOOR (1956)

Everyone punches above their weight in this chamber Western from Republic pictures, a close cousin to SHANE/’53, but shaped into the kind of explicit religious parable director Frank Borzage might have been drawn to.  (Borzage at Republic in the late ‘40s.  Could this have been planned with him in mind?)  In the event, Western series/serial specialist William Witney got the assignment.  And while some scenes look like anthology television, more is good, efficient filmmaking with third-billed Skip Homeier something of a revelation as a bank robber on the run whose horse goes lame, leaving him to hide in plain sight at the country home of preacher MacDonald Carey.  Homeier threatens Carey (whose much younger wife Patricia Medina is step-mom to freckle-faced Stephen Wootton) so he can stay while his horse heals, but in truth, no force needed as Preacherman Carey is glad of the challenge: a Godless sinning man who needs to be saved.  A situation far more interesting and evenly balanced than your typical hostage drama.  And juiced up because Ms. Medina so obviously attracted to this studly outlaw.  It’s why she overreacts, pleading for Carey to throw him out.  (As in ‘before it’s too late.’) Something Carey seems to know, without acknowledging, putting faith in himself & his wife while letting things play out in the hands of ‘you-know-who.’  Director Witney given more psychological nuance in this one pic than he got in his other 200+ credits combined.  Some of this hits too squarely on the head (like the big, black stallion whose sprit Carey needs to tame), but on the whole, the film is touching, effective, and damn exciting, if also regrettably plain looking and overloaded with a third-rate score.  Easy to imagine an A-list cast: Greg Peck in for Carey; Richard Widmark for Homeier.  But the leading players we’ve got have nothing to apologize for.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, SHANE, with director George Stevens proving as over-meticulous as Witney is off-hand/casual.  Though when it comes to having chops to make the most out of set action pieces (like the horse chases that open & close things), Witney no slouch.  OR: See Homeier as a kid in his film debut, wildly overplaying a Hitler Youth transplanted to small-town America as he recreates his stage debut hit TOMORROW, THE WORLD!  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/tomorrow-world-1944.html

VILLAIN (1971)

Grubby crime drama an odd choice for Richard Burton at the time.  Prestige period pieces & WWII actioners his go-to projects as his commercial status ebbed along with his marriage to La Liz.  He certainly gives it the old college try, but he’s out of his fach as a London mob boss lording it over a crew of toughs in his limited area.  Tipped off on a factory cash run ripe for picking, he needs to work with a neighboring mob as the grab will be outside his territory.  Then, suddenly it’s a rush job with a strike called for the next day.  And while they do get the cash, the job’s a bloody botch and now the bag man isn’t coming thru.  A good setup for Brit Mike Hodges* or Don Siegel in ‘71, but director Michael Tuchner, in his feature debut, proves as odd a choice as Burton, concentrating on his actors but missing the action chops needed for the set pieces.  Still, the film holds real interest as a period marker for the early ‘70s fashions & grooming and for setting up Burton’s cold-blooded thug as a literal ‘Mama’s Boy,’ with an invalid Mom he pampers while getting emotional support from Ian McShane, the bi-sexual boyfriend he beats the crap out of before bedding down.  Yikes!*  (McShane the one cast member able to pull off that ghastly ‘70s style.)  Cinematographer Christopher Challis, just off peak work in Billy Wilder’s THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES/’70, gives gritty, clear-eyed exteriors, but can’t do much with the Play-of-the-Week studio set interiors.  Even the post-synch sound is lousy.  But credit Burton with trying something different, maybe too different.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Another gay role for Burton after his poorly received turn with Rex Harrison in the D.O.A. filmed play STAIRCASE/’69.  (He’s got an invalid mother in that one, too.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/staircase-1969.html   OR:  *From the same year, Mike Hodges’ just as nasty/far superior GET CARTER, with Michael Caine.

WHITE BANNERS (1938)

MARY POPPINS meets STELLA DALLAS in this emotionally effective adaptation of a typically aspirational story from religion-grounded ‘pop’ novelist Lloyd C. Douglas.  Sticky stuff, if less so than his better known titles (MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION/’35 & ‘54; THE ROBE/’53), it’s much less pushy with its philosophy (something about everything turning out for the best if viewed as a long game), and certainly goes down easier thanks to superb work by three of its four leads.  Fay Bainter (double Oscar nominated this year, she won ‘Supporting’ for JEZEBEL, but surely for this, too), an all but homeless door-to-door salesperson, who knocks at the pinch-penny home of school-teacher/inventor Claude Rains & family one wintry day, only to sell herself as budget-conscious housekeeper.*  Rains, with help from bright/bratty student Jackie Cooper, the richest kid in town, finally has his breakthru with an electric ‘icebox’ idea only to see Cooper lose the patent the same night he lets Rains’ daughter catch pneumonia.  That’d be Bonita Granville, a drag on the film with perky overplaying; the rest of the cast all fine under Edmund Goulding's reticent approach (with nicely unforced 1919 period touches) and great portraitist cinematographer Charles Rosher taking just as much care on these unglamourous character actors as he did with big stars.  Extra nice turns from Kay Johnson as a delicate Mom & James Stephenson making a big impression after a late appearance as out-of-town mystery man/investor.  (Stevenson set for a Ronald Colman sort of career only to die three years later, only 52.)  It’s a quiet gem of a picture if you don’t mind the sentiment.  A bit more tough-minded (i.e. killing off a character or two) and this could have been a minor classic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: Unlike Granville, who never lived up to her debut in William Wyler’s THESE THREE/’36, Cooper was making a go of his teenage transition from A-list child star to Hollywood all-rounder having just jumped from M-G-M to Monogram, from Warners to Universal in his last four films.  Still on or behind the screen for another five decades. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/these-three-1936.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/SPOILER(?): *Though the film holds back on the motivation behind one of the leads, it’s easy to imagine the story playing out in even better fashion if you know the secret from the beginning.  It really dials up the emotion for you weepie heads.  (Hands please.)  No SPOILER here, but should you want to risk knowing all and maximize the emotional content, most plot descriptions, even the cursory one on IMdB, give it away.

WHERE EAST IS EAST (1929)

Lon Chaney’s penultimate silent* (a final collaboration with director Tod Browning, King of the Creep-Out) was this uninspired story of father/daughter love . . .  and a gorilla.  (Make that a man in a gorilla suit.)  You know, typical Tod Browning.  Chaney, living in Indo-Chinese luxury when not in the jungle trapping wild animals for zoos & the circus, comes home to find half-Asian daughter Lupe Velez (natch) engaged to the son of one of his contractors.  With a single-parent’s too-close-for-comfort bond with his girl (they wrestle to show affection), Papa is resistant to the lad until he stands up to a tiger on the loose.  But a second test proves tougher, Chaney’s ‘Ex,’ the mother who deserted Velez as a child, this exotic man-eater is vamping her way into the boy’s . . . er . . . heart.  Taylor with merely a whiff of YellowFace makeup and an ‘Oriental’ hairdo (she looks strikingly like Barbara Stanwyck) steals the pic.  If only it were worth stealing.  Exotic Far Eastern atmosphere & chintz-loaded sets can’t stop the plot from misfiring.  Why should Chaney want to fight for this unfaithful boy?  Why hide the truth about Taylor?  Why use a man in a gorilla suit as deus ex machina?  (Deus ex aculeatus?)  Disappointing.

DOUBLE-BILL: Chaney & Browning at their magnificent sickest in THE UNKNOWN/’27.  Chaney an ‘Armless’ Knife-Throwing Wonder and young Joan Crawford as his target.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Chaney’s final silent, THUNDER/’29, a ‘lost’ film.  ALSO: Note who’s Top-Billed in France.  Fright taking a backseat to La Femme.

CADAVERI ECCELLENTI / ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES (1976)

Only a few Francesco Rosi films live up to his ‘illustrious’ reputation, this is one of them.  At heart a murder mystery (three Sicilian judges; later more victims among judges in Rome) and study of a top-ranking police detective brought in to work the case, imperturbable Lino Ventura, it demonstrates how every tragedy is also an opportunity for someone.  And because this is ‘70s Italy, the alternate avenues of investigation and likely suspects ‘suggested’ as possibilities are picked according to political winds & whims.  A revenge-seeking victim of judicial injustice?  Anarchist or Mafia involvement?  Communists?  Fascists?  And just when Ventura seems to be getting a handle on things, superiors offer new marching orders: Max Von Sydow’s logic-skewed  Dostoevsky nightmare of a Judge Magistrate; Rightist Politico Fernando Rey (the film’s one comfortable soul); department boss Tino Carraro, constant as a weather-vane; a wire-tap specialist; a Center-Left conspiracy-minded official, the case too useful to too many factions for any solution to ever be accepted; a blame game personified.  Rosi probably errs with a nihilistic ending too pat/too easy, but the film, so beautifully wrought & elegantly composed ((Pasqualino De Santis lensed), its pace funereal chic, you’ll hardly mind or notice.

DOUBLE-BILL/LNK: Developing similar themes and tone, Rosi’s film might have been instrumental to both Alan J. Pakula’s THE PARALLAX VIEW and Francis Ford Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION, if only those films hadn’t preceded this by two years.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/conversation-1974.html

THE WALLS OF JERICHO (1948)

Best guess is 20th/Fox spent too much on the novel to call it off, throwing on an A-Team in hopes of saving face & getting their investment back.  Director John M. Stahl, just the guy for a meller of unrequited passion & revenge that winds up in a courtroom murder trial (see LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN/’45); studio fave Lamar Trotti to write/produce; top composer Alfred Newman & lenser Arthur Miller.  The whole gang stuck in a tidy Kansas town where surface charm & Valorem Americanus hide loveless marriages, dipsomania, rape, murder, common-law coupling, political & journalistic backstabbing, point-blank pistol practice and piggyback lovin’ (unrequited-sacred vs. rejected-profane).  It’s 19-‘teen's Peyton Place!  Cornel Wilde, too understanding for his own good, is the D.A. with political ambitions & a soused wife (Ann Dvorak); a repressed yen for gal-lawyer Anne Baxter; no malice for turncoat pal Kirk Douglas & his slandering newspaper; and even less interest in the roving eye of Kirk’s disdainful wife Linda Darnell, a revenge-minded transplant you refuse at your own peril.  Remarkably bad casting up and down the line on his one, Darnell’s villainy especially transparent, though fun to see Douglas in an early role playing at his actual height.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The Fox films mentioned above: LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN; PEYTON PLACE/’57.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/10/leave-her-to-heaven-1945.html

OR: See Warners get a grip on this sort of thing in KING’S ROW/’44.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/kings-row-1940.html

Á DOUBLE TOUR (1959)

Early Claude Chabrol, but already showing his blunt, threatening tone.  It’s likely the first to tap his Hitchcock-meets-Beaujolais sweet spot, yet also reveals a faultline: less involving as interpersonal relationships give way to detailing plot, usually murder.  Chabrol is at his best watching ‘the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.’  Literally so here, as a family-owned country vineyard estate lays the scene for a deadly roundelay of mismatched (or is it misdirected?) love affairs with 40-something Papa openly carrying on with that beauteous sunshine-lit red-headed neighbor while his key-light-deprived wife tries to work out a livable zone that keeps home, finances & family intact.  (People & places all cinematographically characterized in Henri Dacaë’s subtle lighting schemes.)  Two grown kids also in the mix: a socially awkward son whose main interpersonal relationship is with his portable turntable (and some Berlioz LPs), and a blonde daughter with an on-and-off engagement to charismatic lout Jean-Paul Belmondo.  (Winningly OTT with a puppy’s gusto for life, leg-humping and hearty breakfasts.)  Plus more amorous quadrangles with a dark-haired domestic everyone hits on, but who only has eyes for a visiting handyman.  Chabrol keeps all balls in the air with a jangly technique that would become less rather than more polished as he matured.  (You’d not be wrong to prefer it.)  The ending something of a pat letdown after the first two acts, but recovering on a long-held final shot.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Chabrol must have paid close attention to Renoir’s THE RULES OF THE GAME/’39, newly restored in ‘58/all the rage among Cahiers du Cinéma confrères.

THE HOLLY AND THE IVY (1952)

Wynyard Browne’s painfully conventional Home-for-the-Holidays play, slightly opened up & compressed for film by producer Anatole de Grunwald, functions like one of those old Chinese Menus where you choose One from Column A; One from Column B to make up a meal, but with cardboard characters & standard family-conflict tropes instead of Egg Roll & Moo Goo Gai Pan.  Ralph Richardson, doddering on cue, plays a decade older then he is as fading Pater Pastor; Celia Johnson, playing a decade younger, is the daughter he’s unknowingly pushing toward spinsterhood/caretaker; Margaret Leighton is glam daughter #2, drinking past sins away on a rare visit home from London; Denham Elliot the spirited, truth-telling soldier son.  Also there, an unmatched pair of bickering, old-bitty Aunts; John Gregson as Johnson’s local steady, hoping to take her off Richardson’s hands; and posh Godfather Hugh Williams.  The film might work, or at least play smoothly, with a better director, but George More O’Ferrall no more than functional, letting his cast overplay as if they’ve been out on the road too long.  Harmless enough to please some, but amid potted crises, guilty secrets, revelations & pat resolutions, it’s more dreary than cheery.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Home-for-the-Holidays needn’t mean Hallmark Channel banal.  Try Arnaud Desplechin’s UN CONTE DE NOËL to renew faith in the genre.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/un-conte-de-noel-christmas-tale-2008.html

UNDER TEN FLAGS (1960)

As Captain of a WWII Nazi Raider hiding his ship’s identity under false flags before attacking commercial & enemy vessels in open waters, Van Heflin gets his shot at playing ‘the Good German,’ a fair-minded man-of-principle doing his duty to the fatherland without breaking his personal code-of-honor.  A standard movie character for over a decade, often set against Aryan race prejudice personified by a second-in-command character, here John Ericson.  In practice, the ruse fools ship after ship, successful enough to attract the special attention of British Naval Command where the hunt is led by Admiral Charles Laughton in a late credit that slightly improves on a similar characterization in STAND BY FOR ACTION/’42, now with hints of Winston Churchill and better integration into the storyline.*  This fact-inspired Dino De Laurentiis production held back by tight budget (action largely lifted from newsreel footage) and a rush to fit a two hour story into 90 minutes, but effective enough to come across.  Director Duilio Coletti an unknown quantity, but note Silvio Narizzano, soon to make GEORGY GIRL/’66 as Associate Director, along with a Nino Rota score & Aldo Tonti lensing.  Those who can deal with bad Italian synch-sound and mix-and-match non-German accents will find a neat piece of genre moviemaking, if never quite as thoughtful as it imagines.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: For a better take on this sort of thing, one that largely sticks to the hunters in their subterranean command center, SINK THE BISMARCK, out the same year.  (As Dino de Laurentiis undoubtedly knew.)   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/sink-bismarck-1960.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *This payday job a weak link in Laughton’s spectacular late-career renaissance of WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION/’57; SPARTACUS/’60; ADVISE & CONSENT/’62.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/09/witness-for-prosecution-1957.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/06/spartacus-1960.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/advise-and-consent-1962.html

ABENTEUER IN WEIN / STOLEN IDENTITY (1952)

Intrigue, unavoidable in the air and on the streets of post-WWII Vienna, even more so on the screen post-THIRD MAN/’49.  As in this local low-budgeter, a faux Hitchcockian thriller that ought to be better known.  Francis Lederer (the only lead in both German & English-language versions) is a concert pianist whose controlling personality spins out-of-control when wife Cornell Borchers tells him she’s leaving for good on New Year's Eve.  Sneaking out between rehearsal & performance of the Schumann piano concerto (what an alibi!), Lederer finds & shoots the man Borchers plans to meet as he sits in the back of a taxi that’s stuck in traffic.  The discovered body an unexpected gift for hardluck cabbie Gustav Fröhlich* who dumps the corpse and grabs passport, clothes & cash for a shot at a new life & new identity in a new country.  But when the fleeing wife shows up to meet the dead man, the gig is up . . . or is it just starting?  Neatly plotted, with gobs of local color, panic, quick thinking and show-me-your-papers suspense (plus a lickety-split finale in the Schumann), director Emile E. Reinert (who died right after this at 50) keeps all the balls in the air while adding budding romance between close calls.  Pretty sweet stuff in spite of some missing pieces.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Yes, the same Gustav Fröhlich who starred for Fritz Lang in METROPOLIS/’27.

DOUBLE-BILL: Who but Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger would think to use Vienna’s post-war four-power division as backdrop to classic Viennese Operetta, adapting DIE FLEDERMAUS as OH . . . ROSALINDA!/’55, with CinemaScope to squeeze all four governments into the picture frame.  The film is better contemplated than seen, but there’s NOTHING quite like it.

THE BREAKING POINT (1950)

With CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, THE SEA WOLF (a dozen more just as good) behind him, claiming this lesser-known film from a 64 yr-old Michael Curtiz as being as good as any he made sounds hyperbolic.*  More so as it’s a remake of Howard Hawks’ free-and-fancy entertainment from the same source, Ernest Hemingway’s TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT/’44.*  Here, with a far more serious tone and relative faithfulness to Hemingway, everyone seems fully committed to its tough-minded tale of WWII vet John Garfield drowning in debt as his sinking independent boat business threatens home & family (two little girls, close physical bond with wife Phyllis Thaxter).  Chartered, then stiffed by a businessman & mistress (a blonde Patricia Neal) after an overnight fishing run to Mexico, he’s forced into illegal trade (human trafficking), a justified murder and nothing to show for his trouble.  With his back still against the wall, he goes rogue again; if anything, now more dangerously with some wiseguys out to rob a horse track.  Beautifully constructed and paced (Ranald MacDougall script), wonderfully shot in moody shoreline light by Ted McCord, the characters are complicated & fascinating (Garfield an unusually conflicted/flawed hero), Wallace Ford a sweaty con-man out of a nightmare, and the remarkable Juano Hernandez (just off his INTRUDER IN THE DUST breakthru) as boat-mate.  (That’s Hernandez’s kid stealing the film’s heartbreaker last shot.)  So, where has this beauty been?  Hiding in plain sight as Warners quickly buried it when Garfield got smeared as a Commie in ‘Red Channels,’ a rumor-driven Witch Hunt cheat sheet.  The suppression something of a sick ironic joke in that Garfield just about the only member of the old Group Theater NOT a Party Member.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Curtiz’s work so precisely staged, composed & effective, that a preposterously bad edit on a Garfield insert/closeup sticks out like a sore thumb.  Who stuck it in here?

DOUBLE-BILL: Garfield’s previous, UNDER MY SKIN/’50, also underseen/also Hemingway, no more than ‘goodish.'  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/under-my-skin-1950.html  OR:  *That third adaptation, THE GUN RUNNERS/’58 (not seen here), with Audie Murphy in the Bogie/Garfield spot, and director Don Siegel reluctantly on board.

THE REVOLT OF THE SLAVES / LA RIVOLTA DEGLI SCHIAVI (1960)

With that title, the review writes itself: ‘Yes, the slaves ARE revolting!’  Haha.  But this post-HERCULES/’58 entry in the onslaught of Sword-and-Sandal WideScreen Peplum is a step-and-a-half up from the usual CineCittà Roman Epic of the period.  Filmed not in Italy, but in Spain, it’s impressive looking, the big Roman interiors neither repurposed nor Las Vegas tacky, and its proverbial cast of thousands for the usual Romans vs. Early Christians set-tos, not only big, but unexpectedly integrated since this Emperor mistrusts the Pretorian Guard and opts for African Mercenaries.  Better yet, their leader gets a whopping big supporting part as the film’s main villain. A sexy beast with a model-worthy Black consort and a roving eye that has him making moves on the film’s tempestuous/ambivalent red-headed, fading Hollywood ringer, Rhonda Fleming.  Pretty daring interracial stuff for the international market circa 1960.  Alas, that concludes our positive comments.  For the rest, Fleming is stuck playing patrician daughter whose hot-and-cold response to Christian slave Lang Jeffries generates zero on-screen chemistry.  (Off-screen, Lang became Mr. Fleming for a couple of years.)  At 66, director Nunzio Malasomma was winding down a long, local Italian career while composer Angelo Francesco Lavagnino (of Orson Welles’ OTHELLO/’51), brings little fresh invention to his 13th film of the year.  Plenty of red meat toward the end (maybe you CAN have your Christian Martyrs AND eat them too!), but the only interesting bit sees our neurasthenic Emperor constantly ‘worry’ an itchy skin rash.  Nice touch.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Our poster (see above) has one of those old-fashioned come-ons to highlight every atrocity: SEE Christians sacrificed in the Coliseum!  SEE man-eating lions!  And so on.  But they miss the best: SEE St. Sebastian martyred with multiple wounds as arrows pierce flesh!  And such a beefy unæsthetic Sebastian for a target!

THE WALKING DEAD (1936)

After career-defining monsters & horror for Universal, the mid-‘30s saw Boris Karloff at various studios, Columbia, Gainsborough, 20th/Fox and Warners for this unusually polished production.  Technically a programmer (skimpy budget, 65" running time, no A-list players), it doesn’t play like one.  Instead, a haunting, near poetic experiment with the kind of top behind-the-scenes talent Karloff rarely got at the studio: producer Hal Wallis, director Michael Curtiz (plus future director Irving Rapper assisting), Hal Mohr cinematography, etc.  All bringing their A-game on a worthy story that has Karloff executed for a crime he didn’t commit (innocence revealed moments too late), returned to life by Prof. Edmund Gwenn (in the Lionel Atwill spot), then finding revenge on the real guilty parties in paranormal ways he apparently wills into happening.  The two romantic leads add little, but other supporting players, most of them guilty as hell, are just the ticket (Ricardo Cortez*, Barton MacLane, Paul Harvey, Henry O’Neill).  And the cunningly simple special effect deaths, combined with Hal Mohr’s atmospheric lensing are all you could want.  Stellar work, with Karloff touchingly uncomprehending on his unlikely, unasked for ‘powers.’  The film a near classic.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *For a change, Ricardo Cortez’s relentlessly glib manner perfectly suits his character as an on-the-take lawyer.  His clueless lack of fear or remorse when hearing about co-conspirators falling dead all around him perfectly judged.

TSAR (2009)

Big, handsome, typically banal modern Russian historical on the late days of ‘Terrible’ Tsar Ivan as he seeks blessing, redemption & obedience from once close friend Philipp, now Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church, striking out on all three.  It’s a loneliness-of-absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely story with a mentally unstable Ivan lashing out in all directions just when he needs to defend the state from invasion from the West (Poles) and destabalization from within (Boyars).  I think; director Pavel Lungin very stingy with exposition/explanation.  Perhaps this history is so well known in Russia Lungin assumes a level of knowledge that lets him run the plot like one of those tableaux-organized operas or ballets unconcerned with detailing narrative line.  Instead, episodic cruelties culminating in two grisly set pieces, one involving a bear pit where ‘enemies’ of the state are torn apart or tortured into ‘confession.’  (See our Metropolitan lift a severed head that appears to weigh about half a pound.  Lighter than it looks, like a good loaf of bread.)  Then, in an oddly comic bit of horror, an Amusement Park of Execution built to lighten Tsar Ivan’s mood, wooden ‘rides’ that pierce like meat tenderizers; with dummies for demonstration.  Plus, a  few de rigueur nods at Tarkovsky & Eisenstein tossed in the mix, sticking out all the more with a plot you can’t follow.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Sergei Eisenstein’s famously troubled production of IVAN THE TERRIBLE/’44 has its problems, but remains fascinating and eminently watchable.  Write-Up to come.  http://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/11/demoted-from-once-impregnable-iconic.html

COLLEGE HOLIDAY (1936)

For much of the ‘30s, you could work up a DNA profile of major Hollywood studios thru their mid-list musicals.  Warners leaned Populist; M-G-M went with Swank; while Paramount’s heart belonged to Dada, nutty, irreverent, a bit surreal.  (Paramount really had two styles: Dadaist and Bing Crosby, a genre all its own.)  This silly example of the Dada Revue has a struggling resort hotel rescued by students from a nearby college who put on a show with an Ancient Greek theme.  This takes care of the plot by pleasing rich Hellenistic patron Mary Boland and gives those comely co-eds revealing costumes.  Jack Benny is both co-owner of the hotel on the plot side, as well as the film’s informal interlocutor, while George Burns & Gracie Allen dish mildly funny non-sequiturs, Martha Raye makes faces and sings better than you expect, Ben Blue does some standout eccentric dancing (best thing in here), with the bland romantic angle carried by hearty Leif Erickson & a very pretty Marsha Hunt while Johnny Downs & Eleanor Whitney croon some neat Leo Robin/Ralph Rainger tunes.  Nothing to write home about, but the reason the film has completely fallen off the map undoubtedly stems from a gimmick topic which uses the whole class for an experiment in Eugenics (a topic that grew ever less amusing) and thru its big Minstrel Show climax.  Okay at first, it’s an All-White minstrel show.  But not for long!  One by one, then in serried ranks assembled, BlackFace comes upon most of the cast.  Poor Martha Raye gets a real workout, on stage with an actual Black child playing cupid.  Yikes!  Benny, Boland, Burns & Allen all keep their noses clean, so to speak.  Benny even gets to show off his ‘time step.’  But the ‘corking up’ is, if possible, even more objectionable/less motivated than usual.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: With Mitchell Leisen rather than Frank Tuttle helming, many of the same suspects did THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1937, a better example of the form, out shortly before this.

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE (2016)

Sandwiched between the retroactively high profile WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS/’14 and the instantly high-profile THOR: RAGNAROK/’17, this superb family film from Taika Waititi largely awaits discovery Stateside.  Stunningly shot in the New Zealand wilderness (The Bush), it’s another riff on Waititi’s favored missing-father/lost-son storyline*, here with technically orphaned ‘tween’ Julian Dennison (tubby & wonderful), a troubled kid dropped at a foster home of last resort in rural Nowheresville where he unexpectedly bonds with a rough, but loving eccentric foster mom and keeps his distance from grouchy, outdoorsy husband (Sam Neil, pitch-perfect).  But when even this welcome shot at stability is lost, the boy takes to the wilderness rather than let the authorities resettle him yet again, followed & reluctantly mentored by that old grouch of a foster dad.  Obvious as this setup sounds, there’s nothing obvious in the way Waititi plays it out as one gross/hilarious/exciting/ touching/law-breaking adventure tumbles over the last.  All as our runaway pair (and two lovable dogs) are turned by the media into either violent criminals or folk legends on the lam.  Meanwhile, authorities & militia organize a nationwide dragnet to bring them in.   Beautifully constructed (Waititi, or Barry Crump’s novel?), there’s no mistaking Waititi’s preternatural cinematic chops, the guy’s a natural.  We even learn the two essential rules of wilderness survival.  Find water; Don’t get naked.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *This missing parental theme used and/or camouflaged in artistic breakthroughs BOY/’10 and JOJO RABBIT/’19.  Waititi proving yet again he’s one of cinemas greatest kid directors.  Up there with Carol Reed , Truffaut & De Sica.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/11/boy-2010.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/jojo-rabbit-2019.html

HIGH TREASON (1951)

The Brothers Boulting, John & Roy, were well-established producer/directors by 1951,  but this neat police procedural following homegrown Communist Party Members out to sabotage British factories & electric plants was a Paul Soskin production, Roy soloing as writer/director.  And while he makes a good job of it, like many a Boulting pic, he leaves a lot on the table.  Here, it’s a problem of focus with randomly split attention between interesting lower-middle-class saboteurs and the generic police team chasing them down before the next attack.  Nice to have some sympathetic personalities among the conspirators (they meet at a local club for ‘modern’ classical music where a planted cop nearly gives up his cover endorsing Bach, Beethoven & Brahms), but the film only teases the backstories while ‘cheating’ with easy coincidences to help the investigators.  Then the big climax leaves the more personalized players out of the action, reducing suspense & emotional involvement.  Still, technically, it’s very well organized with exceptional lensing inside dark factories and around dismal urban neighborhoods & tenement flats from cinematographer Gilbert Taylor*, just off similar work amongst the London hoi polloi in a similarly plotted Boulting production, SEVEN DAYS TO NOON.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, SEVEN DAYS TO NOON/'50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/seven-days-to-noon.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *With DR. STRANGELOVE; HARD DAY’S NIGHT; REPULSION; FRENZY; THE OMEN; STAR WARS on a very long C.V., Taylor deserves more name recognition.

VALHALLA RISING (2009)

Just before his mainstream commercial breakthru with DRIVE/’11, Nicolas Winding Refn indulged himself with a thinking-man’s actioner fit for an art-house, loaded with gory contemplative savagery as mighty manslave Mads Mikkelsen takes on all comers, a tethered fighting cock in some Northern Medieval world of paganism, early Christianity and not a female in sight.  (How the race hadn’t died off a mystery.)  MM makes this testosterone-loaded Perils of Paul about as believable as any one could: escaping his bounds; killing his handlers; joining a Jerusalem-bound gang of apostles with his scruffy young helpmate.  (MM speaketh not; youngster communicates as needed.)  But on a directionless boat caught in uncharted mists, the Holy Land looks more ephemeral than ever.  And by the time sweet water appears to save them, the crew is largely convinced Mads is a cursed spirit who’s brought them to Hell.  Perhaps he has.  Refn loads on ominous, painterly visuals to diminishing effect, and there’s little to do but wait for the next gory outbreak.  If only the situation (you couldn’t call it a narrative) were as involving as Refn imagines.  Alas, the film is meticulously uninteresting.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: This NWR agnostic suggests the poorly received DRIVE followup, ONLY GOD FORGIVES/’13 (a better title for this than VALHALLA RISING) instead of his ‘successes.’  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/only-god-forgives-2013.html

ACTION OF THE TIGER (1957)

Five years before directing him to James Bond fame in DR. NO/’62, Terence Young gave Sean Connery a splashy early supporting role as rough shipmate to contraband Captain Van Johnson in this ratty adventure pic.  Pity they didn’t swap roles.  Johnson, in career decline, trying for the sort of tough guy Connery was born to tackle, looks to his inner Humphrey Bogart and comes up empty.  Grouchy about as close as he gets, reluctantly sneaking sexy Martine Carol (bared breasts restored in current editions) into Communist Albania to rescue a blinded brother and an ever increasing gaggle of refugee kids.  Handsomely shot by Desmond Dickinson in WideScreen/TechniColor, the locations (and drunken, swarthy Sean) just enough to keep you watching until the film bursts into life in the third act with a smash action set piece: a charge on horseback against modern army vehicles & equipment with bold bandit leader Herbert Lom showing cunning & Old World bravado.  Thrillingly fast, the battle lasts but two or three minutes, Lom is soon pursuing the fair Ms. Carol with proposals, local color and his chieftain father’s goat herds.  A tempting offer since he’s blackmailing Carol with safe passage out of the country for her band.  Young packs in more action, scenery, local customs, plot twists & double-crosses until the expected (if none too satisfying) finish.  Where has all this good stuff been hiding?  Even Connery makes a return appearance right at the end.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Director Young made some of the best early Bonds (see FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE/’63), but his rep was flattened after three late career disasters: THE KLANSMAN/’74; BLOODLINE/’79; INCHON/’81.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL:  *The very popular Carol was fresh off a rare box-office dud, Max Ophüls’ LOLA MONTES/’56, this problematic near masterpiece now the only thing she's remembered for.  But go back two more years for a film she should be remembered for, Alberto Lattuada’s LA SPIAGGIA/’54 (aka RIVIERA; THE BEACH; LA PLAYA).

CONTEST: Ironic, that a film that gets its title out of Shakespeare (HENRY V) should let Van Johnson misquote The Bard.  A common error, name the play and correct the famous line to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of a streaming film of your choice.