MR. TOPAZE (1961)

The one time Peter Sellers directed himself in a feature film.  Not that he didn’t plan more, or try taking over the reins elsewhere.  But fresh off G.B. Shaw’s THE MILLIONAIRESS/’60, producers Dimitri De Grunwald & Pierre Rouve (who also did this adaptation) tried to repeat their success with Marcel Pagnol’s much-adapted/very Shavian play.  Result: a resounding critical & commercial flop that essentially disappeared.*  Now, decades later, it’s restored from three surviving, rather faded, prints.  Looking more monochrome than EastmanColor, but worth the trip even for non-Sellers fans, if not a patch on two 1933 versions: a debuting Louis Jouvet in France; John Barrymore in Hollywood.*  What’s striking is how a degraded, nearly b&w image imparts natural distancing that helps rather than hurts the highly stylized acting Sellers & Co. go for in the first half of the film as Sellers’ sweetly shy, naive teacher refuses to upgrade a failing student’s score, loses his job & putative fiancé, then finds fortune as a do-nothing executive patsy signing fraudulent papers for a fat cat capitalist.  (Sellers using character actor Richard Haydn - the Uncle in THE SOUND OF MUSIC - in doofus mode as model.)  The trick almost pays off in the third act when the now fully corrupted Topaze turns tables, trading off a holy fool’s innocence for worldly financial gains.  This happens far too quickly here, and Sellers misjudges the effect his actors make (though Herbert Lom’s forced laugh already perfected).  But the play remains funny & thought-provoking and the film more watchable now than it must have been when it was new.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Bad enough for U.S. distributor 20th/Fox to wait over a year before its Stateside opening under a ghastly new title: I LIKE MONEY. 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *As mentioned, the superb 1933 Hollywood version, adapted by Ben Hecht for pal John Barrymore who personally choose the project.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/04/topaze-1933.html

THE 'MAGGIE' / HIGH AND DRY (1954)

Undervalued charmer from writer/director Alexander Mackendrick, its rep swamped by comic masterpieces he made just before (THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT/’51) and soon after (THE LADYKILLERS/’55).  Add in shared elements of past & future masterpieces I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING!/’45 and LOCAL HERO/’83, loudly echoed in character & storyline, and you’ll see why this remains something of a rarity.  But it shouldn’t be.  Paul Douglas is just about perfect as an American businessman trying to get a shipment of personal luxury items to a new vacation home up north in Scotland, apparently in a bid to save his marriage.  But with all the big boats booked, his agent is either tricked or just confused enough to hire an old ‘puffer’ (The ‘Maggie’) and it’s three-man/one boy crew of eccentric locals.  You get the idea: Ugly American warns up to non-efficient priorities and eventually stops to smell the roses.  Well, yes and no.  Douglas isn’t what you expect in many ways: smart, self-made, a quick study able to adjust, fair & honest, not by any means a closed book.  And the crew: something less than sweet-natured anarchists, if living in their own mental time zone, so to speak, and responsibly irresponsible.  Naturally one rendevous after another missed; stops for a birthday celebration in a little town (an exceptional scene for Douglas & a local colleen stuck on two men); pub visits (don’t leave any pother in the glass).  Accents pretty fierce in the first reel, but once Douglas shows up, it subsides . . . a little.  Often quite beautifully shot (Gordon Dines) and truly winning.  And if it’s not as great as the four films mentioned above; in horseshoes and film, close counts.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Fans of I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING! (and if you’re not, you should be!) will get a kick seeing Douglas in what is essentially that film’s Wendy Hiller role.  And if you get to this post in time, Martin Scorsese’s nonprofit The Film Foundation is launching a free virtual screening room to showcase restored films starting May 9 with (of all things) I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING!  https://www.film-foundation.org/

TORMENTO (1950)

While Italian Neo-Realism was casting its spell on international cinema, the home market headed to melodramatic soapers from Raffaello Matarazzo.  Execrable stuff to judge by this morbid Cinderella variant with ‘everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end’ as Thelma Ritter put it in ALL ABOUT EVE/’50.  Statuesque Yvonne Sanson (a big-boned Drag Queen-ready 5'10" beauty) is the put upon daughter doing all the chores as she & gentle Papa suffer under the glacial cruelties of her evil step-mother.  Caught on a date with fiancé Amedeo Nazzari*, they’re thrown out and head to Rome where his promising business deals implode, leading to a mistaken charge of murder separating groom & pregnant bride.  Yikes!  Now with a little girl, she’s stuck washing dishes when who should show up but her Fairy Godfather!  (Really an old love-struck neighbor.)  Alas, Sanson proves too voluptuous for her boss to keep his hands off her.  So, back to her now widowed Step-Mom (Papa having died of a heart attack after learning all), and a promise to dutifully raise the chronically ill little girl as her own, but only if Yvonne cuts all family ties and enters a sanatorium for wayward women.  Ludicrous as this sounds (and there’s much more to come), these things can work a certain magic with stylists like Douglas Sirk or John M Stahl in charge.  Here, not so much.  (Ah, to go back in time and watch half the audience weeping buckets while half weep from laughter.)  Some critics have been trying to raise Matarazzo’s rep (this film part of a Criterion Trio package), but how much dross can one endure in hopes of epiphany?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *If Amedeo Nazzari looks familiar, it’s not only because he could pass for Errol Flynn’s Italian Uncle, but because Federico Fellini cast him as the world weary movie star who loses his date and picks up Giulietta Masina for a evening on the town in NIGHTS OF CABIRIA/’57.  And that’s not the only connection with great Italian cinema as Assistant Director ‘Franco’ Rosi would soon be directing classics as Francesco Rosi.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/08/le-notti-di-cabiria-nights-of-cabiria.html

NOSFERATU RE-ANIMATED (2020)

With Disney & Universal turning old animated properties into Live Action mediocrities (or worse, see under Dr. Seuss), it’s fair play for Live Action Horror to go animated.  Especially when choice classics are lying in Public Domain.*  Ergo, this decade-long Passion Project with indie filmmaker/musician Fran Blackwood writing, producing, animating, directing, coloring, backgrounding & scoring (on his own or heading the department) on a one-man band redo of F.W. Murnau’s gasp-inducing 1922 Dracula ripoff.  ‘Re-animated,’ not re-imagined, the odd, compelling silent proving as undead as ever with only a bit of reediting, but largely a pretty straightforward hand-drawn/computer-assisted exercise.  (Think high-tech RotoScope.)  A new Heavy-Metal tinged music track and the old inter-titles replaced by subtitles over the image the main difference.  At times, the old subfusc image is gratefully clarified (a ship’s interior brought into the light; herky-jerky under-cranking smoothed out), but the process also seriously diminishes the ‘Creep Factor’ that’s kept NOSFERATU alive for a century.  Not an unpleasant reminder of inspired moments you may have forgotten, but with the horror largely neutered, what’s the point?  The man really behind this one-man show not Blackwood, but F.W. Murnau.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINKLINK: *Compare for yourself with trailers for the latest 1922 restoration and for this.  1922 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npxhdRMYHy0   2020 -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfsNn4BYAA0   And here's our 1922 NOSFERATU Write-Up.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/nosferatu-1922.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *NOSFERATU was always in Public Domain since Murnau & Co. never secured rights to DRACULA from the Bram Stoker estate, hiding behind a barely altered storyline & a new title.  Losing in court to Stoker’s widow, the negative & all copies ordered destroyed, leaving only a couple of seriously compromised prints as source elements.

JADDEH KHAKI / HIT THE ROAD (2021)

Iranian filmmaker Panah Panahi was in his mid-30s before he took up the family business in this memorable debut.  Dad is Jafar Panahi, and his mentor/collaborator Abbas Kiarostami, two of Iran’s best-known/most-honored filmmakers.  The pressure on your generation to be not just good, but award-winning and covertly subversive yet flying under the radar & past the authorities daunting.  That challenge now met with this sui generis Road Pic about a middle-class family out for a cross-country drive: chatty sentimental Mom, cynical Dad with broken leg, twenty-something putative filmmaker son, tyrannically irrepressible kid brother, and a failing old dog needing extra stops to pee.  But as we discover rolling along with such a seductive family of natural contrarians, this is no regular weekend drive, but a secretive flight to freedom for the older boy, forced to leave his country if he wants to serve his talent & pursue his dream outside of his own repressed society & country.  The younger brother doesn’t quite catch on to the serious nature just under the surface, but some of his wild behavior is him picking up on the bad vibe & tension.  Beautifully handled in every particular with great characters coming in & out of focus along the way, as well as Panahi’s exemplary eye for just the right shot & location for every turn and delay.  Special stuff here.  And at the end, quietly devastating.  How recognizable these Iranians are to us compared to some other countries in the area.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: While most Iranian films that find distribution Stateside focus on upper-middle-class society, CRIMSON GOLD/’03, one of Jafar Panahi’s best works hangs out with the have-nots.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/01/crimson-gold-talaye-sorkh-2003.html

CONVOY (1940)

One of British cinema’s great What-Ifs, writer/director Pen Tennyson had something of a charmed life before dying in a WWII plane crash at 28.  Mentored by producer Michael Balcon, his first real industry job was assistant director on Alfred Hitchcock’s THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH/’34, the Balcon production that got Hitch back on track.  Even better, he found future wife Nova Pilbeam on set as the young kidnap victim.  Sticking with Balcon as Ealing Studios started up, he steadily advanced to directing, this the last of his three films.*  You’ll need a bit of tolerance for low-tech model ships, stiff-upper-lip British war sensibilities & period special effects (technology & budgets limited by fiat), but Tennyson an obvious natural laying out character, story & action.  Captain Clive Brook (rigid) and new-to-ship Lt. John Clements (more at ease) must put their past romantic rivalry on hold to serve together, part of a fleet escorting a merchant ship convoy past the enemy.  Their relationship comes to a head when a merchant vessel under German attack turns out to hold Brook’s ‘Ex’ among refugees trying to reach England.  What he doesn’t know is that she’s also Clements’ ‘Ex.’  In fact, she left him!  What he does know is that he’d need to pull his modest cruiser out of the convoy to help her and hold off the massive German battleship which is using the threatened merchant ship as bait to find the entire convoy.  Great vignettes on all decks with various well-known players on hand (Stewart Granger, Michael Wilding, John Laurie, Edward Chapman, Mervyn Johns), tasty bits adding to the fun and (as war closes in) sentiment.

DOUBLE-BILL :  *His two other films: THE PROUD VALLEY/’40 (Paul Robson joins Welsh miners in song & in the pit), and THERE AIN’T NO JUSTICE/’39 (not seen here).

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Look for the 90" British cut.  Stateside release losing a reel-and-a-half of footage.

BOY A (2007)

Award-winning debut for Andrew Garfield (tv in the U.K.; theatrical elsewhere) as a hard-luck kid, grown to young manhood in jail on a murder conviction, about to get out with a new identity.  Mark O’Rowe’s script follows his halting steps into normal society, slowly filling in background with grim flashbacks to an abused, friendless boy whose one pal turned out to be a budding psychopath.  John Crowley handles the difficult material well: working-class details of Nowheresville U.K. spot on; Garfield’s learning curve at work & play (drinking buds; office romance); then moving on to the unavoidable discovery of his past and quick descent.  The dramatic problem he doesn’t solve (with one missed exception) is that there’s not a surprise in the entire package.  A tack which can work if tragic inevitability kicks in; but not when the highs & lows feel programmed by committee . . . or network execs.  On the other hand, about that exception . . .  Much of the drama rests with Garfield case worker Peter Mullan, a divorced dad with his own family problems including an estranged son just back home with a passive/aggressive chip on his shoulder from a father who seems to favor surrogate sons (like Garfield) over him.  The subject needs more investigation to work though; just as Mullan needs more clients than we see him with.  Perhaps a film better balanced between Mullan at work & Garfield at sea would have more going for it.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Garfield’s next big lead was RED RIDING/’09, where he showed range & originality only hinted at here.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/red-riding-trilogy-2009.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Casting director Fiona Weir (or someone) with quite the eye for spotting potential stars.  Not only Garfield, but in leading roles for upcoming series leads Shaun Evans before ENDEAVOR and Siobhan Finneran before HAPPY VALLEY.

MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG / PEOPLE ON SUNDAY (1930)

A handful of twenty-something Filmstruck Berliners were on board for this Portrait of a City story about ‘regular’ Jacks & Jills getting out to the country for a day.  But what a handful!  Writer/directors Curt & Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann, Billy Wilder, cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, producer Seymour Nebenzal, a line-up of future legends promising more than this modest charmer has in mind.  And that’s alright, assuming you can dial down expectations.  The format, briefly popular in European capital cities at the tail end of the silent era (influenced by the Russian KINO-EYE films?), calls for loosely organized ‘actuality’ footage and a simple story shot docu-style with non-pro actors.  Here, our types include a model, a taxi-driver, a record store salesgirl; met on their Saturday shifts in Berlin while planning tomorrow’s countryside excursion.  Sun, water, paddle boat, picnic, portable Victrola, and plenty of sex-suggestive passes.  Especially by the handsome guy (and doesn’t he know it!), simultaneously fondling a blonde on his right and the brunette to the left.  What narrative there is concerns his shifting affection toward his original date’s best friend, and, in absentia, the model who doesn’t make it, sleeping the day away back in Berlin.  The first act, with all the street activity in 1929 Berlin now holds the most interest, but the film builds real rooting interest in the relationships as it goes along.  (BTW: Euro-bathing costumes for the men just as embarrassing then as now.)  Wrapping up with another Monday, back to the grind in Berlin, to bring the curtain down on their revels.  Many prints (look for a 1'13" running time) with various music tracks out there.  I’ve not heard a bad one.

DOUBLE-BILL: When Jean Renoir made his DAY IN THE COUNTRY story, he adapted a Guy de Maupassant short story into a four-reel masterpiece, UNE PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE/’46.

SKYGGEN I MIT ØJE / THE SHADOW IN MY EYE (2021)

An award-winner in Scandinavia & elsewhere in Europe, Danish writer/director Ole Borndal has left little footprint Stateside.  A situation this film might change, but probably won’t with NetFlix slapping the generic title BOMBARDMENT on this exceptional end-of-the-line WWII story.  Based on a real 1945 incident (with speculative characters) where misdirected British bombers are led like moths to a flame from their actual target (Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen) to an inner-city Catholic grammar school after an attacking plane crashes and lights up the wrong location.  Suspenseful without ‘milking’ it, and boasting well-handled period detail & special effects.  But what allows this to rise well above expectations comes from strong characterizations (affected teachers, students, nuns, defecting collaborators, confused RAF pilots, downbeat soldiers, nerve-shattered parents); from its clarity of action; and in how it consistently locates the tone & attitudes of its era.  A rare find in even the best of recent WWII historicals.  It’s not just clothes & behavior, but in the physical response of Danes, Germans, collaborators to what has suddenly become a waiting game on the inevitable Nazi defeat.  With physical posture paradoxically poised and off-balance, uncomfortably held someplace between subjugation and liberation.*  Only the children yet to pick up on this endgame mindset.  The mood of a nation perfectly personified in the exceptional work of young Bertram Bisgaard Enevoldsen playing a traumatized teen who finds his way back thru crisis.    

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *It’s Sweden rather than Denmark, but Hollywood got some of this across in THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR/’62.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/counterfeit-traitor-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: This film earns another MAKSQUIBS ‘Family Friendly’ label that’s for teens, but not for kiddies.  SmartPhone users can scroll down and click onto the Main Site for an explanation of all our labels.  Also SEE them since they don’t display in SmartPhone blog mode.

THREE SECRETS (1950)

Irresistible ‘Woman’s Pic’ plays like the bastard middle sibling between 1949's A LETTER TO THREE WIVES and 1951's ACE IN THE HOLE.  This little-known Robert Wise title, a one-off indie released thru Warners, squeezed in post-R.K.O./pre-20th/Fox contracts.  He probably couldn’t resist this hook of a storyline: Mountainside plane crash kills Mom & Dad, leaves adopted five-yr-old son injured but alive . . . if daring volunteer climbers can reach him in time.  Yikes!  And now, amid a crowd of news reporters gathered at the base, three strangers discover they have a special secret in common.  Each one is the possible birth mom, forced to give up a child for adoption at the same Women's Shelter five years back for the usual causes: unmarried wartime romance (Eleanor Parker); scandalous mob-boss moll (Ruth Roman); divorced career-first woman (Patricia Neal).  Flashbacks tell their separate tales as the women bond in wary friendship and wait for news (alive or dead; theirs or hers).  Simply, but effectively done, with just amounts of heartbreak & life-lessons, along with a twist ending to satisfy all but the pickiest of realists.  Wise moving things along and finding great acting partners for each Mom.  Special nod to perennial tough-guy Ted de Corsia as the seen-it-all  gangster gatekeeper trying to keep Roman from disappointment.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Good as all three putative mothers are, Patricia Neal (soon to join Wise @ Fox) works on a different acting level than her co-stars.  Something Wise remembered when he was casting THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’52.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, LETTER TO THREE WIVES and ACE IN THE HOLE.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/a-letter-to-three-wives-1949.html

TRAIN TO BUSAN / BUSANHAENG (2016)

South Korean writer/director Sang-ho Yeon made his move from Zombie animation to Live-Action Zombies on this award-winning hit.*  And while it’s hard to find a fresh angle among the Living Dead (tropes as over-bred as ‘50s tv Westerns; viewers a beat ahead of twists let alone storylines), Yeon skirts the issue by switching genres halfway thru: Ta-ta Waking Dead/Hello Disaster Pic!  Though confidently handled right from the start, there’s not much Yeon can do to refresh the usual masses of ravenous flesh-munching monsters or surprise us when police, military and the government target infected & uninfected alike; or when ‘safe’ havens prove contaminated/unsupportable.  Better dramatic opportunities are found by testing family bonds or in seeing how need & skills can be trumped by cash, by social position or by sheer muscle power.  But what really brings this to life starts on a long dangerous train journey to a rare uninfected city which sees the film flip from monster pic to disaster movie.  Specifically, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE/’72 with two antagonist leads who need each other (Gong Yoo; Ma Dong-seok), not so far from Gene Hackman & Ernest Borgnine; a rising tide of the undead in for rising waters on an upside-down ship; and a series of logistic problems for a motley group of ill-matched strangers to solve together . . . or die.  (Alas, no one fat enough for the old Shelley Winters spot.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/poseidon-adventure-1972.html)  Yeon does put us thru five or six endings when two could have sufficed.  But the last two, along with a music-driven coda, tie things up nicely.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *His animated prequel, SEOUL STATION/’16, made first/released shortly after (free on IMDb - TV) never gets past expected Zombie tropes, mainly of interest as comparison.

THUNDERBOLT (1929)

While pacing tends toward Early Talkie slow in director Josef von Sternberg’s synch-sound debut, visual flair & fluid camera work are nearly as striking as in his silents, largely making up for technically generated longueurs.  And with story, dialogue & characterization from Charles & Jules Furthman with Herman Mankiewicz, building on modern movie gangster foundations as codified by Ben Hecht for Sternberg in UNDERWORLD/’27*, the film offers far more than mere historic interest.  George Bancroft, in his fourth & last Sternberg pic, brings a deep voice & halting speech to tough-guy/crime boss Thunderbolt, dodging fate and police to keep Fay Wray by his side and away from handsome pup Richard Arlen.  Even in romantic defeat, he’s still able to pull strings after landing on Death Row to frame Arlen on a murder rap.  Will he fess up and save the boy for his ex lover, or watch the kid walk to the chair before him?  Lovingly restored on Kino Lorber, the soundtrack notably improved, the better to hear every poisoned pearl of wisdom in Jules Furthman subversive talk.  As the warden, Tully Marshall is priceless, bemoaning his position to the condemned men.  Naturally, a Black prisoner is around to sing spirituals, but also working upright piano when we’re not being treated to competition in the form of a Death Row Barbershop Quartet . . . with a fast changing line-up.  Yikes!  When’s the new tenor arriving?  Wonderful/appalling stuff.  Beautifully designed (by Hans Dreier) and shot (Henry Gerrard), Sternberg would soon be off to Germany, and destiny, hiring Marlene Dietrich to star in THE BLUE ANGEL.  But these four with Bancroft (one now lost), along with THE LAST COMMAND/’28*, already stamped with greatness.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *As mentioned above, two of Sternberg’s best silents: UNDERWORLD and THE LAST COMMAND/’28.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/underworld-1927.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/last-command-1928.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Someone took the trouble to make this film racially diverse, and not only in prison.  Check out the Black-owned & operated nightclub with a mixed clientele watching an All-Black floorshow.  That’s gorgeous Theresa Harris debuting with a hot number on stage, before Hollywood demoted her to the usual maid & servant roles.

AN INSPECTOR CALLS (1954)

J. B. Priestly’s class-conscious look at ‘collective guilt’ among London’s wealthy & entitled demonstrates its remarkable staying power in this traditional stage-to-screen adaptation, first of many.* Cleverly worked out, if too neat & obvious to take seriously as political or social commentary, yet such an entertaining package, and so loaded with performance opportunities, it earns its place on both stage & screen revival circuits.  (As in a re-invention to startling, near abstract effect in the early ‘90s when director Stephen Daltry turned the entire first act into something of a dumb-show, staging action behind a torrential, surrealistic downpour.)  This version, an early credit for later James Bond director Guy Hamilton, plays it straight as the well-to-do Birling family (stuffy father & mother, imbibing son, social daughter with a proper fiancé) see their intimate engagement dinner interrupted by Alastair Sim’s Inspector Poole.  He calls after interviewing a young women on her deathbed, a suicide victim whose life was touched by each of the five family members.  Pulling chains one-by-one to expose compromising actions, Sim navigates a series of confessions, breaking down their stories before his own story also breaks down.  Guilt & repentance quickly becomes denial & relief.  But Priestly has another turn of the screw before he’s done with the lot of them.  No deeper than a wading pool, and just as unthreatening, this Morality Tale For Dummies is also irresistible boulevard drama, here slightly held back by packaging it with but one star performer in Alastair Sim, supported by a good, if faceless, touring cast and bombastic music cues.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *A high-rated new version (not seen here) from 2015 has David Thewlis as the Inspector.  And try Priestly’s all but forgotten charmer about a provincial theatrical troop THE GOOD COMPANIONS/’33.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-good-companions-1933.html

THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019)

A mood piece for a very very bad mood.  Writer/director Robert Eggers followed his surprise debut success in THE WITCH/’15 with this even more tightly controlled commercial under-achiever.  (His quantum leap into big budgets, THE NORTHMAN, due any moment.)  At heart,  a late-19th century two-hander for Willem Dafoe’s Old Salt Lighthouse keeper and new assistant Robert Pattinson, stuck with each other for an uncompromising four-week stint of revolting meals, maintenance and forced close company.  But when a missed relief boat of supplies (and a personnel swap?) leaves the pair literally at sea, drifting-in-place past endurance, deteriorating mental & physical condition, exacerbated by alcohol (rum laced with peyote?) and stir-crazed co-dependency, tips over into outbursts of mayhem and madness.  Using period film techniques & lenses on tricky light-resistant monochrome stock (as if panchromatic film hadn’t replaced orthochromatic a hundred years ago), the ultra-narrow 1.17-to-1 framing ratio* gives a mesmerizingly eerie, haunted look & texture to the men's work, fights & drunken revels.  You won’t know exactly what’s going on at times, but the bromantic loathing (like an all-male Strindbergian Dance of Death) and bleakly comic terror is consistently involving until Eggers turns a bit batty with hallucinogenic trappings and monstrous visions.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, THE WITCH.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-witch-2015.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  (WARNING!: Feel free to ignore the following boring material.)  *Eggers not entirely alone using the nearly square 1.17-to-1 frame ratio to rachet up claustrophobia.  This aspect ratio never more than a bastard compromise, a function of the initial silent-to-sound transition.  But only in the sound-on-film process FOX popularized.  Sticking a soundtrack on the left-hand side of the frame unintentionally cropped what had been a 1.37-to-1 image, leaving it a bit unbalanced since just the left-hand side got clipped.  Over at Warner Brothers, where sound-on-disc in use, the film image remained unaffected, if only for a couple of years.  By the time everyone switched over to various sound-on-film systems, a compensated image was balanced with slightly letter-boxed printing on 35mm returning to a standardized 1.37-to-1.  (TV and 16mm more commonly 1.33-to-1.  Got that?)  BUT when the initial transfer of some Early Talkies and many, many silent films was originally made, the copiers simply ran the old film strip, which often had image covering the entire emulsion (sometimes right over the perforations) thru machines with letterbox aperture gates designed for the new standard, unintentionally cropping image on ALL sides.  Thanks to lost silent & Early Talkie negatives, you still often encounter this frame amputation, particularly noticeable in close up with actors’ heads trimmed at the top.

KENTUCKY PRIDE (1925)

Horsey programmer from John Ford, modest stuff after last year’s heavy-lift with THE IRON HORSE*, but delivering plenty of charm & sentiment as Kentucky thoroughbred ‘Virginia’s Future’ narrates her own story a la BLACK BEAUTY.  (Heck, what better use of silent film inter-titles?)  Starting as a pampered filly, she’ll lose trainer, owner, mom, even her stall when wealthy Southerner Henry B. Walthall goes bust and leaves what’s left to his second wife & her shameless lover after Virginia’s Future breaks her leg trying to win a race for her master.  (A horrific moment that keeps this from getting a Family Friendly label.)  Even Walthall’s little girl winds up living with trainer J. Farrell MacDonald who lands as an L.A. Irish cop.  And Future?  Barely missing the glue factory, she’s sold for breeding before sinking to junk cart work.  Now it’ll be up to Future’s daughter, Confederacy, to win the race and save the day years later.  And who’ll be riding her?  Why it’s MacDonald’s own jockey son.  Corny stuff but briskly played, with Ford giving something of a subversive edge by having Civil War Southern vets loudly cheering CONFEDERACY! at the racetrack while generally pointing up how much these horses get treated as if they were slaves: separated without so much as a farewell from home & family, whipped, bred, worked to death.  No wonder Ford makes sure to include so many Black stable workers in his shots.

DOUBLE-BILL: Ford played a similar tune next year in THE SHAMROCK HOTEL: horses, bankruptcy, injuries, a racing finale.  With added Ireland vs America elements and youthful romance for Janet Gaynor in an early role against unconventional lead Leslie Fenton.  It’s also better preserved and has no talking horses.  OR: *The epic Ford had to climb down from, THE IRON HORSE/’24.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-iron-horse-1924.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Nice print found online (gratis), but without any music.  A CD of Scott Joplin piano rags making a fine serendipitous soundtrack.

PLAZA SUITE (1971)

The telltale title card for this film reads ‘A Play by Neil Simon;’ the playwright’s disinterest (or is it contempt?) toward a ‘lesser’ medium right up front.  Three unrelated One-Acts sharing nothing but location (more accurately it's Three Third Acts), it’s a near two-hander for a pair of stars to switch gears in three parts apiece.  Originally, on stage, George C. Scott & Maureen Stapleton, here it’s Walter Matthau (under three bad wigs) against three different women: Stapleton (unraveling middle-aged couple*); Barbara Harris (middle-aged reunion of former lovers); Lee Grant (middle-aged parents of a bride locked in the suite’s bathroom).  Close your eyes and you can almost hear how it could have worked on stage under Mike Nichols’ direction, as if Simon were still working up tv sketch material for Sid Caesar in YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS.  But as so often in Simon stage-to-film transfers, it’s gummed up by drab production, tv lighting (Republic Pictures vet lenser Jack Marta; why?), and Arthur Hiller direction that follows every move too closely (like a dog with a bone) when he’s not mistiming comic beats in edits that kill whatever rhythm the actors manage to get going.  At one point, even going outside the hotel suite just when we need to build up pressure for the film’s single biggest physical gag.  Sheesh.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Though now less known, PLAZA’s original run topped THE ODD COUPLE.  Currently a hit in revival on B’way with Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Broderick, it had another three-against-one casting gimmick as a tv film with Carol Burnett playing all the female roles against three different leading men.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Simon repeated the stunt a decade later in the same three keys (rue, reunion, farce, but flip-flopped the first two traits) in CALIFORNIA SUITE/'78.  Less successful on B’way, it’s the better film with Herbert Ross directing.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Simon must have had Tennessee Williams’ GLASS MENAGERIE and William Inge’s COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA in mind for Stapleton’s self-defeating gabby drudge.  She’d already played the Inge and would later do the Williams.

CONTEST:  What film was playing at the neighboring Paris Theater?  Name it to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.

THE PIRATES OF CAPRI (1949)

Honored in hindsight for zero budget fare like DETOUR/’45 and BLUEBEARD/’44, 'Poverty Row' films of conviction &  personal vision that feel like technical dares, Edgar G. Ulmer should also be remembered for a brief run in the late ‘40s when he was a go-to helmer for tidy mainstream fare that only looked expensive.  This swashbuckler, made right after RUTHLESS/’48*, the best of these films, is a SCARLET PIMPERNEL wannabe, made on a dime in post-war Italy.  Louis Hayward, something of a Ulmer regular, has the equivalent Leslie Howard spot, hiding heroics as the notorious Captain Sirocco under the guise of foppish court favorite Count Amalfi.  And, unlike Howard’s Pimpernel, Hayward’s double-act used to help the Queen and enable freedom fighting Naples’ revolutionaries.  With a cast of dozens believably passing as thousands, and a multi-national cast dubbed to speak Mid-Atlantic English, there’s also quality lensing from Anchise Brizzi (just off CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA/’48) and a Nino Rota score that might be Alfred Newman in Tyrone Power mode.  The big set piece an impressive parallel action romp between fancy dress court ballet and armed jail break of condemned patriots triumphs over budgetary constrictions.  Ulmer can’t do much to lend focus or voice to a first act that’s literally & figuratively all at sea, but a pretty good show all the same.  If only better prints were available.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *As mentioned, RUTHLESS/’48; along with DETOUR/’45.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/ruthless-1948.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/09/detour-1945.html

MARE OF EASTTOWN (2021)

There’s a moment in this reasonably involving, if over-praised and typically over-extended, small-town murder procedural mini-series, heavy on character development & decaying Rust Belt atmosphere, when you know they’re laying it on awful thick.  Not by overdoing some generic NorthEast accent, everybody holds the line there.  No, it’s toward the end of the first episode (of seven!), when a deglamorized Kate Winslet as lead Detective Mare Sheehan gets home from a long day to relax with a brewski and a shot of aerosol cheese from a can.  (On a Ritz®?)  Why not let the poor overworked gal pull a cryovac mini-log of chèvre out of the fridge?  Sure, it’s not at room temp, that’d be part of the characterization.  Instead, even the cheese is full-of-air and a bit of a cliché.  Winslet, letting her hair down, so to speak, though still able to turn heads when they throw a bit of light her way, is generally so down & dour, you can’t imagine why all the decent guys in the cast throw themselves her way.  Her life, nearly as screwed up as the case (drug-induced suicide of her son, custody battle over the grandkid living with her & Grandma, interrelated murder suspects she’s known for decades, multiple fake confessions to hide a loved one’s guilt - times 3!, etc.).  Some good acting carries you thru this, but you’ll be ahead of the script for most of the last four episodes, thinking up better titles.  PEYTON PLACE THRU A GLASS DARKLY?

DOUBLE-BILL: My, what a grumpy reaction!  Maybe it’s because I was alternating between this and Season Five (the best season) of the twenty year old Brit Crime series A TOUCH OF FROST.  Also about a deadbeat town and a dour detective who works around the system.  It felt fresher, more surprising and was better acted, shot, characterized and dialogued than anything found here.  And with a truly devastating ending that’s mirrored in MARE.  (Plus: four rather than seven episodes.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Mare’s really a lousy police detective, no?  Hey, there’s an interesting idea to hang an award-winning mini-series on.

THE HIDDEN ROOM / OBSESSION (1949)

Think of that gentlemanly yet vaguely sinister ‘pal’ who sets up the scam in VERTIGO/’58.  The guy James Stewart meets with after the unresolved rooftop prologue.  Here’s a chance to meet him in chrysalis, played by Robert Newton, adapted by VERTIGO collaborator Alec Coppel from his own novel.  In this story, he’s setting up a delayed murder of his wife’s latest lover, an American in London he’ll hold in the basement of a WWII ruin till the case grows cold and the bathtub can be filled with dissolving acid.  Very well handled Brit Noir by BlackListed Hollywood director Edward Dmytryk, making a pair of films in London while his case limped thru the U.S. courts.  More Hitchcockian associations pop up when an inspector calls, Naunton Wayne of THE LADY VANISHES fame, though style & a stuffy Men’s Club opening closer to Fritz Lang’s WOMAN IN THE WINDOW/’44.  Whomever it recalls, this is a dandy little thriller from Dmytryk, first of two made-in-exile British-based films before serving time Stateside, ‘Naming Names,’ and bouncing back as a Hollywood A-Lister.  (Films progressively less interesting as budgets increased.)  As the lovers, Sally Gray, in her penultimate credit, is an exceptionally chilly character (only her dog gets much affection) while Dmytryk’s fellow exile Phil Brown (a Lew Ayres type) is excellent as her lover/his prisoner.  But it’s Newton’s control, saturnine & sinister behind the manners, that leaves a mark.  And, what’s this, a score by Nino Rota?  In London?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Dmytryk’s followup, last before his Stateside return is the better known, left-leaning CHRIST IN CONCRETE/’49.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/christ-in-concreteaka-give-us-this-day.html

CONTEST: Newton was also done in by a dog the pervious year.  Name the pic, and the dog, to win a MAKSQUIBS WriteUp of your choosing.

JAMÓN JAMÓN (1992)

Early days for Penélope Cruz & Javier Bardem (fourth & fifth billed but with the most screen time) in writer/director Bigas Luna’s farcical passion play.  Purposefully coarse, often very funny, always very sexy (lots of skin, full frontal everyone) sees Bardem’s Serrano ham man (also jockey briefs model/wannabe toreador) hired to seduce pregnant/working-class Cruz away from her inconstant lover, the wealthy son of the very underwear factory owners who chose Bardem for their bulging ad campaign.  Soon, the wayward son’s rich mom only has eyes for Bardem.  And just when he’s fallen hard (so to speak) for Cruz.  But wait!  Before we’re run full course, Papa also takes a liking, er, make that licking to Cruz’s appetizing breasts which get quite the workout from all three men.  Toss in a barmaid, a trio of tarts, a fellow bullfighting enthusiast to jump in the ring with Bardem for a nude moonlit session of capes & taunts, upgraded motorbikes and a perfect potato tortilla (heavy on the Spanish Olive Oil) and you’ve got about the half of it.  The tone is all over the place, Luna no Pedro Almodóvar in navigating changing winds & stylish presentation.  But the gist of the film, class-conscious entitlement leeching its way into sexual blackmail & hypocrisy, comes across.  Or does till Luna takes a wrong turn in the third act and overshoots his target beginning with an unlucky piglet and ending with mismatched pairings at the finale and a little death that spoils the mood he’s been aiming at.  Seems he’s also no Jean Renoir following the rules of this game.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Cruz & Bardem wouldn’t get married for another 18 years.  He never looked better than he does here; she only got better looking.  Lucky guy.

FORCE MAJEURE / TURIST (2014)

Remade in English last year for HBO, Ingmar Bergman’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE, his long-form ‘70s drama about a picture-imperfect marriage, turns out to have already had something of an unofficial sequel in FORCE MAJEURE; call it SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE: Ski Resort Edition.  (MAJEURE itself remade in English as DOWNHILL/’20.*)  Here, the imperfect family unit (father/mother/daughter/son; all fit & handsome) see their alpine vacation interrupted on Day One by a ‘controlled’ avalanche that overshoots the mark, briefly blindsiding them at lunch.  Panic, dash, confusion; Dad heading out-of-harm’s-way while Mom & the Kids huddle for protection.  His spontaneous survival instinct exposing a fissure that will fester and possibly break them apart.  But did this act of nature cause or merely reveal a crack in the relationship they’ve been habitually paving over for years?  Writer/director Ruben Östlund plays with the fall-out (kids, friends old & new, eavesdroppers), building up to an awful breakdown, a bit too pleased with his idea and forcing issues to make points.  He also seems intrigued by bleak comic possibilities in the situation, but can’t quite figure out how to drop them in without touching the third rail.  (Not seen here, presumably the half-hour shorter Hollywood redo with Tina Fey & Will Ferrell tried this angle to skirt consequences.)  Östlund needlessly lets everyone off the hook with a convenient snowblind catharsis for the family; then finds a richer open-ended payoff as satisfying as it is intriguing.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *As mentioned, the poorly received Stateside remake, DOWNHILL.  Write it up for our Comments section.

THE COTTON CLUB (ENCORE) (1984; 2019)

A true film maudit (cursed film): out of control costs & drugs, murder behind scandalous mob financing, endless script revisions, mismarketing (see GODFATHER-like poster below), a soft reception & huge financial loss.  Producer Robert Evans, originally hoping to direct, corralled Francis Ford Coppola for the project (Coppola, in serious debt, brought in half the family); Evans wound up suing him.  And while he produced six more projects over the next two decades, Evans never fully recovered.  Yet, nearly four decades later, Coppola’s back for a narrative strengthening re-edit (ergo ‘ENCORE’), beefing up one of the two main romances and retooling nightclub acts to add more content.  (Coppola never met a film he didn’t want to re-edit.)  Sure enough, the film is better . . . just not ‘better’ enough.  Basically, a double romance steeped in fact-inspired mob & nightclub atmosphere, Richard Gere’s soigné cornet player recruited by sneering mobster ‘Dutch’ Schultz as chaperone to mistress Diane Ladd, quickly falls for her, then breaks away for Early Talkie stardom as Hollywood's on-screen mob guy.  (It’s the George Raft Story.)  Romance #2 has brother act Gregory & Maurice Hines splitting up when Gregory yearns for solo spots and fast-rising chanteuse Lonette McKee who keeps him at arm’s length since she ‘passing’ for white in segregated boîtes.*  The Hines pair all but modeled on the famous Nicholas Brothers, but then two other guys show up as them!  Still, this latter romance has dramatic interest and better music, slightly sabotaged by Coppola’s penchant for reaction shots when we just want to see the routines.  Still, those Hineses can dance!  But wait, there’s a third romance; or rather bromance for Cotton Club owners Bob Hoskins & Fred Gwynne.  This beats ‘em all, pushing the usual platonic boundaries.  These guys the only two who don’t look like they’re playing dress-up in period clothes.  A bigger problem: the stories don’t feed off each other in William Kennedy’s screenplay.  (Written during Kennedy’s brief heyday: this and a Pulitzer prize for IRONWEED, no other film credits.)  Then, and it’s pure Coppola, a violent fugal ending lifted straight out of THE GODFATHER with inter-cut tap dance & mob hits rather than inter-cut baptism and rub-outs.  Francis just asking for it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *McKee fresh off a B’way revival of SHOW BOAT was the first Black actor to play Julie LaVerne, the river-boat beauty caught ‘passing’ for white.  ALSO: Wait to the very end to see Gwen Verdon, as Gere’s mom, finally do a little dance step.  (Verdon’s dancing on film worth every second captured.)

ALL IS TRUE (2018)

Two fine recent books focusing on Shakespeare's life in Stratford felt as if they had shed new light on their subject in spite of being drawn, by necessity, largely thru informed conjecture.  From Maggie O’Farrell, speculative novelistic lyricism about Shakespeare’s lost son in HAMNET (awards/strong sales); and from Lena Cowen Orlin, THE PRIVATE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, emphasizing his ties & time in Stratford over London experiences.*  In contrast, this implausibly titled look at The Bard in Retirement, written by Ben Elton between spoofing Will on tv’s UPSTART CROW, is unlikely to add anything to the conversation.  Mourn son/ignore the three women of the family.  That’s the gist of it.  At least, star/director Kenneth Branagh, with Judi Dench as older wife Anne (a quarter of a century older!) make a convincing couple, strangers to each other in many ways, but occasionally sharing the infamous ‘second-best bed’ Will willed to her.  No one else clicks: the daughters too contemporary; Ian McKellen’s aged Earl of Southampton overplaying his few scenes; the rest of the town hardly registering.  And though Elton lards the dialogue with quotes from sonnets & plays, the main story, characterization & dialogue are less Elizabethan than Lillian Hellman (dark family secrets, misdirected passion, curtain lines for every revelation).   And so dark!  Real candle-lit interiors helping Dame Dench pass (she’s 84), but offering no ‘fill’ light.  This cliché of faux realism in vogue since Stanley Kubrick had John Alcott do it for BARRY LYNDON back in ‘75.  (Long past time for a reset . . . of light meters!)

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK: As mentioned, Maggie O’Farrell’s HAMNET (a quiet, contemplative wonder) and Lena Cowen Orlin’s THE PRIVATE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, reviewed here by James Shapiro whose four books on Shakespeare are not just indispensable but also readable.  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/books/review/private-life-of-william-shakespeare-lena-cowen-orlin.html?searchResultPosition=2

GIRL SHY (1924)

Harold Lloyd brought most of his team along (including game-changing new co-star Jobyna Ralston) when he left Hal Roach Studios for his own independent outfit, releasing first thru Pathé, then Paramount.  And right away output is newly grounded in believable stories and multi-layered character development while continuing with unsurpassed comic construction.  He’s still playing the nice small-town fella dreaming beyond his station/abilities*, typically winning here as a tailor’s apprentice too bashful to approach girls.  Stuttering madly in their company, though loud whistle noises can jumpstart him, why he’d talk a blue streak if he could only get comfortable.  Instead, skipping the town dance, he stays home to finish his book, The Secret of Making Love: A Practical Guide.  ‘Vampires?’  (‘vamps,’ btw, not the undead.)  Try Indifference.  Flappers?  A Cave Man approach.  Laughed out of a publisher’s office, he finds hope helping rich townie Jobyna Ralston sneak her little dog on the train to the city.  He can even talk to her!  If only she weren’t spoken for.  That’s the setup, filled to the brim with delightful/hilarious attempts to get his love-life in gear, climaxing with a truly phenomenal ride-to-the-rescue so he can stop her marriage to an already married man.  (She mistakenly thought Harold didn’t care.)  This last reel & a half, as Harold moves thru a series of stolen cars, trucks, horse-drawn-cart, free-running horses (including a gasp-worthy spill), an out-of-control trolley car, a hurtling LOL wonder of thrills and close calls.  One of the great compound gag sequences in all cinema.  Two films later, Lloyd released THE FRESHMAN/’25, one of the biggest comedy hits in Hollywood history which may explain why this breathlessly funny climax isn’t as celebrated as it deserves to be.  (Note: Look for the approved Harold Lloyd Estate edition from granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Race issues and the Silent Era.  For once, instead of ‘trigger warnings’ about BlackFace or insulting stereotypes, GIRL SHY resonates with legit, if comic, contemporary issues.  Speeding to reach the church on time, Harold swerves on to a one-lane road and runs right into a Black driver.  Someone’s got to back up.  Unwilling to waste a second, Harold offers to swap cars instead.  They’ll both back up.  Looking at his Model ‘T’ flivver vs Harold’s fancy vehicle (and unaware Harold’s is stolen), the Black driver is very willing to swap!  Harold soon loses control and runs into the ditch; car ruined.  But we also follow the Black driver who backs directly into the police, on the tail of this stolen vehicle . . . now driven by a Black guy!  Talk about Driving While Black arrests.  Worse, the driver doesn’t know about the case of bootleg booze in the back seat, jostled in the rush so that bottles start to POP as if guns were being shot.  Clutching his chest, he’s sure he’s been shot.  Yikes!  Some racial injustices never go away.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *No natural comic zany, Lloyd had to create an outsider status to hang gags & persona on.  Hence the ‘glasses’ character to help make him look more natural underdog/less upstanding Chamber of Commerce type.

DUNE (2021)

Fudged in 1984, David Lynch’s disowned adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic fantasy/Sci-Fi novel was all but impossible to follow in its initial 2'17" cut.  Two re-edits followed (3'10"; 2'57"), so-called ‘director’s cuts’ made without Lynch’s involvement.  (Somebody’s director’s cuts, just not his.)  Yet, maddening as the original release could be, the look of the thing, the way it played as free-floating abstract object, far more compelling then either extended cut.  (Perhaps it was otherwise for the book’s large fan base.  Not read here, DUNE’s rep has it best encountered at a certain age.  Late teens?)  But at any length, the ‘Chosen One & Mom’ storyline palls.  (Where did Herbert come up with that fresh concept?)  Yet here we are again, now with perennially overpraised Canadian director Denis Villeneuve having a whack at the first half.  (Part Two to follow.)  Lynch’s bright, colorful lacquered studio æsthetic now banished; replaced by earth tones & dusty desert spice atmosphere.  (‘Spice’ the mined commodity that makes the universe go ‘round and which the House of Atreides has been charged by The Emperor to run . . . or rather, fail at running.).  Framed by masses of expensive CGI & model work that look just like expensive CGI and model work, Timothée Chalamet, still groomed to pass as a Sandro Botticelli bride with Audrey Hepburn’s neck, is the putative ‘chosen’ one, surrounded less by a supporting cast than by a sacrificial one.  Everyone but his mom falling by the wayside defending the boy prince.  The large scale battles have some movement to them, but, my goodness, close-up action work is weirdly inept.  A fight for control inside one of those aerodynamically untenable bumble-bee helicopters; a mano-a-mano challenge in the desert ; hypnotic vocal commands; valorous last stands: did Villeneuve insist on doing these himself?  The second-unit must have been seething.  The film editor even more so.  Sure, we can actually follow the plot, and what a simple surprise-free path it takes.  Plus, there’s now one (count ‘em, one) goofy bit of physical business where a special desert sand walk fools those ginormous sandworms from rising to the surface and devouring you.  Is it a dance step?  It might ‘the Hokey-Pokey.’  (That’s what it’s all about.)  Probably only three years before Part Two.  Yikes!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  DUNE 1984, in the original 2'17" cut.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  The film cleaned up in Academy Award technical categories.  Oscar®, never lets you down.

RUBEN BRANDT, COLLECTOR (2018)

Sui generis animation from Hungary, Milorad Krstic’s film is visually hallucinogenic & enjoyably deranged in style & story even when its narrative thread proves elusive.  At heart, a caper pic with a ring of psychologically messed up thieves grabbing masterpieces from museums in plain sight using simple distraction techniques & sleight of hand during regular visiting hours.  (For one job, theft becomes lively performance art with a big shout-out to artist/provocateur Marina Abramovic.)  Turns out the thieves are getting their orders, along with group therapy, from their shrink, art collector Ruben Brandt, desperate to stop his terrifying art-inspired nightmares by gathering thirteen specific works from the world’s museums (Botticelli, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso, Warhol, etc.).  But a young Paris-based detective has special insight into the case, if he can only keep up with the thieves on chases thru the city, at sea, and on the highway.  (In action set pieces MAD MAX’s George Miller couldn’t top.)  I’m at a loss figuring out the various animated techniques used here, but it all looks fabulous.  With wonderfully imaginative character design reflecting early 20th century avant-garde movements a perfect fit.  So, even if you’re a bit confused in the first half, style, brio & kinetic fun should hold you till the story starts sorting itself out in the second half.  Riotous and rhapsodic stuff.  Sony Classics’ marketing couldn’t make a go of this, but it has future cult status written (make that drawn) all over it.

NOW, VOYAGER (1942)

After losing her contract fight in the U.K. courts, Bette Davis, forced to return to Warners, found she’d lost the battle, but won the war.  Two dozen pics over the next decade, half of them classics; the greatest run an actress ever had in Hollywood.  Putting aside ‘historicals’ and bitches, this and DARK VICTORY/’39 long considered the best of her sympathetic roles.  But where VICTORY, Oscar nom’d for Best Pic, long held first position and VOYAGER was condescended to as ‘merely’ a Woman’s Film,’ current reputations have flipped.  (Note it’s VOYAGER with Criterion DVD status.)  Quite rightly too, as this Ugly Duckling fable (Davis’s spinster aunt grows into a beautiful caring woman; rejects two likely suitors; thrives as surrogate mom to her lover’s once-troubled child) may well be fool’s gold, but it’s ten carat fool’s gold.  Strongly cast: Claude Rains’ interventionist shrink; Paul Henreid’s unavailable lover, Gladys Cooper’s starchy/controlling mother; John Loder’s nice boring beau; Mary Wickes take-charge nurse; Bonita Granville’s thoughtlessly cruel niece; literally a dozen more memorable players.  Listen for a remarkable exchange after Granville apologizes for past behavior, asks forgiveness, and Davis’s simple reply: ‘Never.’  A line meant six different ways.  (Davis hitting all six.)  Loaded with famous touches (not just the twin cigarette lighting & Max Steiner’s famous theme music), along with a few comic-relief duds, Irving Rapper brings more visual pizzaz than you expect.  More importantly, the film feels all-of-a-piece in the best major Hollywood studio manner.  Paradigmatic, essential.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  More screwy story from back in the day.  Pre-streaming, pre-DVD; pre-VHS, during the hard fought ERA wars of the ‘70s, a group of women’s rights activists requested a 16mm screening and I had the projector.  They’d heard of, but not seen the film and thought its mix of proto-feminism and Golden Age Hollywood manner might be fun, or at least good for a laugh.  But while a few stock & process shots caused a giggle, halfway in the tears started up.  By the end, everyone positively sobbing.

DOUBLE-BILL: See if you too now find this a considerably better film than DARK VICTORY.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The intro shot of a stylish Davis in the third reel, designed to match the first reel intro of dowdy Davis: close shot on fashionable shoes coming down the stairs; the face half-hidden by a  wide-brimmed hat, a thick slash of lipstick eradicating any hint of a bow; the birth of an icon, still a thrill.  Later, Davis will even explain the transformation in an intensely moving little speech on what beauty (or rather a kind of beauty) is and what it can mean, to the troubled little girl she takes under her wing.  (Oops, starting to sob again.)

THE GUN THAT WON THE WEST (1955)

Out at Warner Brothers in ‘49 as part of Jack Warner’s ruthless contract culling, likable lightweight Dennis Morgan was off-screen for three years before wrapping leading man status, only in his mid-40s, on three programmers.  Second of the lot, directed in desultory fashion by pre-exploitation William Castle*, is this cut-rate 70" Western 'epic' about a pair of post-Civil War army pals (Morgan & Richard Denning) now in a Wild West tent show, leaving to head out West to the Indian Wars, along with Denning’s wife Paula Raymond.  Part of the push to make territory safe for the oncoming Iron Horse: Denning needs to sober up; wife Raymond needs to choose between the men; and the army unit they’re helping needs to hold out till those quick-loading Springfield Rifles show up to even the odds against masses of Sioux on the warpath.  (Caucasian ringers for Native Americans particularly egregious here.)  With half the budget held back for a big battlefield finale (horseflesh & tinted Hollywood flesh), the film ought to go out with a bang, but once those superior rifles show up to save the day, and our soldier boys get to work killing, it feels less like a victory and more like an unfair advantage.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Same star, same director & same producer (Sam Katzman) in better form for next year’s URANIUM BOOM!/’56. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/uranium-boom-1956.html    OR: Gary Cooper’s followup to his career reviving HIGH NOON was a Civil War spy drama called, of all things, SPRINGFIELD RIFLE/’52.  Pretty good, too; André De Toth directs.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Castle’s straightforward default camera setup looks designed with last year’s 3D format in mind.  Even odder, some weird back projection process shot angles, including a lulu where a stage driver looks straight-ahead while daintily holding the reins as if he were balancing cups & saucers for afternoon tea.