COEUR DE LILAS (aka LILAC) (1932)

Splitting the stylistic difference between his start in Germany (two films) & this first French feature, Anatole Litvak, that most cosmopolitan of directors, brings UFA flavor (especially in montage & dynamic composition) to a very French murder story that’s more character study than procedural.  Triumphantly fluid, it bypasses any lingering Early Talkie stiffness right from the start as neighborhood urchins come across the body of a dead businessman.   But while circumstantial evidence leads to a hasty arrest, it doesn’t convince detective André Luguet who goes undercover to find the real killer.  Taking a room in one of the city’s roughest arrondisements, he’s got an eye on Lilas (Marcelle Romée), an independent ‘tart’ who lives and works right across from a bar where Jean Gabin runs the neighborhood riffraff.  Thinking he’ll use the girl to pry info (perhaps a confession) from the mec, Luguet never imagines he’d fall for one and be threatened by the other.  The story’s fine, but the real selling point is the local and period specific atmosphere Litvak finds in claustrophobic sets and plein air location work.  With unusually strong set pieces like that opening reel when the body is discovered and the whole neighborhood shows up; a country wedding that finds Fernandel in an early appearance, or tragic songstress Fréhel back at the bar dueting with . . . Gabin!  (Speaking of tragic, Marcelle Romée would suicide by year’s end, only 29.)  Not a perfect film, but definitely worth the hunt.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The poster at the top came out after the film’s initial run, and saw Gabin bumped from third to first-billed.  Moving above the title in his breakout year.

THE WHITE CROW (2018)

The title refers to a person who is ‘unusual, extraordinary, not like others, an outsider.’  Exactly what Ralph Fiennes’ film ain’t.  Not that it’s bad, just ordinary.  Some of it quite well done, but always exactly what you expect.  Call it YOUNG RUDI, as in ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev, in this triangulated telling of Youthful Struggles; Student Days; and his International Breakthru in Paris where his wildly acclaimed dancing on stage, and free-spirited ways off, spooked his Russian handlers into ordering his return to Moscow, triggering a spur-of-the-moment airport defection heard ‘round the world.  Ralph Fiennes, speaking Russian, is mentor/protector, occasionally striking dance position introducing Rudi to ballet discipline while wife, also striking position, introducing Rudi to heterosexuality.  Ballet dancer Oleg Ivenko, given the hopeless task of playing Nureyev, can certainly dance the part (when Fiennes defers to let us see him whole), but without Nureyev’s unconventional Tartar bone-structure, he’s like a K-Pop singer playing Mick Jagger.  (See the actor playing Nureyev’s Dad to get the idea.)  Worse, David Hare’s screenplay never gets Nureyev past petulant on the way to culturally/politically/socially dangerous.  The story (and it’s a great story) feels inconsequential.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  French company member Pierre Lacotte (played here by Raphaël Personnaz), Nureyev’s first new friend in Paris, died last week.  Here’s his NYTimes Obit. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/arts/dance/pierre-lacotte-dead.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Ballet pics, particularly ballet bio-pics, are notoriously hard to pull off.  Facing similar problems, Herbert Ross’s poorly received NIJINSKY/’80 comes off better than most.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/nijinsky-1980.html

LA FEMME DU BOULANGER / THE BAKER’S WIFE (1938)

Marcel Pagnol’s more or less perfect social comedy with Raimu, shaggy & middle-aged, as the new baker in a one boulangerie town, losing the will to bake after pretty, much younger wife Ginette Leclerc runs off with the hunky shepherd down the lane.  Orson Welles, a big Raimu admirer, noted how the film nicely shows the relative importance of acting to directing.  But while he’s undoubtedly right about Raimu’s greatness, he underestimates Pagnol’s simple, effective directing choices: long-take master shots, multiplane townscape compositions and restrained camera movement, all perfectly serving his material.  A whole town, a whole way of life, a whole lost homogenous system of societal checks & balances (priest, teacher, Marquis, spinster, drunk, hunter, housekeeper) coming to life without slipping into vaudeville; acquiring humanity as the villain-free story plays out ancient comic, rural encounters, the town uniting to find the wife and bring the bread oven back to life.*  And in such delightfully blunt, even rude manner.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *It makes a nice comparison with John Ford’s THE QUIET MAN/’42, which also plays the archetypal/rural eccentric card to solve a marital crisis.  But where critics tend to come down hard on Ford’s ‘stage Irish’ characterizations, Pagnol, who’s really doing much the same thing, gets a pass.  (Both film also well stocked in non-PC period-accurate attitudes.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-quiet-man-1952.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Raimu’s acting choices are startlingly fresh, often the opposite of what you expect, especially for that most maligned of comic victims, the mature cuckold.  Then, when he does get a bit of his own back, it’s done thru metaphor, and ridiculously moving.

KANSAS CITY (1996)

Harry Belafonte is still fine & dandy in his last starring role, playing underworld gambling czar on the Black side of town in 1930s Kansas City, backed by an anachronistic, if awfully good, mixed-race jazz band in his headquarters.  But they’re the only parts to come off in this major misfire, a passion project for Robert Altman*, apparently still smarting from Dino De Laurentiis dumping him from the not too dissimilar RAGTIME/’81.  Altman’s late career resurrection via THE PLAYER and SHORT CUTS, likely got this one financed (20 mill cost/1.6 mill gross), but watching floozy Jennifer Jason Leigh kidnap drug-addicted political wife Miranda Richardson in a desperate attempt to free her husband after a failed robbery (and on election day) proves confusing and uninvolving.  (Regular readers will note we’ve dropped our usual JJL ban in light of Belafonte’s recent passing . . . if only Altman hadn’t.)  Most of the cast look downright uncomfortable, as if their period costumes had just come out of the box, in a production as fresh-from-the-car-wash shiny as an over-polished DisneyLand pageant.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *With John Huston’s THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING/’75 as one notable exception, most long-delayed Passion Projects wind up critical and commercial disasters.  Because the filmmaker has lost all perspective?; because the original impetus has flamed out?; or just because the times they are a’changing?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Re-imagine RAGTIME with Altman calling the shots.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/ragtime-1981.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Play a drinking game during the credits: One shot for every Altman listed.  (It’s four or five so measure your booze accordingly.)

SONG LANG / TWO MEN (2018)

New Queer Cinema comes to Vietnam.  Or nearly does in this debut feature from gifted writer/director Leon Le, whose tone (very Kar-Wai Wong*) indicates somewhat more than the bromantic melodrama shown on screen.  And note that the original Vietnamese title, ‘song lang,’ refers not to 'two men,' but to a small, pedal-played percussion instrument used in SouthEast Asian classical music, here in ‘Cai Luong,’ a fading operatic form that combines traditional theatrical styles with a more modern sound.  It’s where violent debt collector Lien Binh Phat is struck to the quick on seeing Isaac*, the elaborately made-up leading man of the company.  Their meeting enough to stop Phat from burning costumes & scenery for unpaid loans.  When the young men next meet, it’s a proper meet-cute, a fight at a restaurant that ends with them back at Phat’s place for a long night of instant bonding over conflicting values, 1980s computer games, and their model-worthy looks, with director Le really turning up bromantic temperature.  And he pulls it off up to this point with perfectly caught atmosphere and yin & yang lifestyles (the artist and the thug) thrumming with sexy undercurrents.  But the film can’t maintain its balance as our handsome gangster grows too sensitive, too soft-hearted, too pensive.  Unwillingly revealing unexpected musical talent on a Vietnamese classical lute-like instrument, too, a gift from his father who had once been a ‘Cai Luong’ company man and passed it down to his gifted son.  Coincidence & fatalism laid on too thick.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Match with Kar-Wai Wong’s directing debut.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/as-tears-go-by-1988.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Isaac is a ‘V-Pop’ singer so I’m assuming he’s doing his own ‘Cai Luong’ vocals.  Very impressive.

THE DUKE OF WEST POINT (1938)

Once M-G-M’s A YANK AT OXFORD* made a ton of dough and a regular guy out of pretty-boy Robert Taylor, it was only a matter of time before someone thought to reverse trajectory: A BRIT AT HARVARD?  Well, almost.  Instead, indie producer Ed Small, working on the R.K.O. lot, cooked up a similar story where American-born/British-bred Louis Hayward, follows family tradition into West Point and finds his arrogant attitude & sense of entitlement only partially offset by athletic prowess on the gridiron.  Can’t say just how similar this is to YANK (not a film made for revisiting), but both obviously stick fairly close to M-G-M’s old William Haines template: cocky prick annoys everyone only to come thru in the end and save the day/win the girl.  Hayward’s supercilious manner always kept him just shy of A-list status, but works like a charm here, building sympathy in the second half as he finds out that even at West Point a good deed never goes unpunished, suffering thru Cadet Silent Treatment (a real sadistic hazing ritual at the Point) till he wins the big hockey game and has his altruism unmasked.  (Hockey?  That’s a new finale.  Note the total lack of face guards, even on the goalies.  Yikes!)  Richard Carlson & Tom Brown make endearing roommates and Joan Fontaine proves she really was a hopeless actress till George Cukor got her up to speed in THE WOMEN/’39.  Vet director Alfred E. Green goes thru the motions and hides behind a lot of stock footage, while the second unit tries to figure out how to shoot a hockey game..  The latter, mistakes and all, proves pretty good fun.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Might as well see what’s the same and what’s not in A YANK AT OXFORD/38.  (Not that you weren’t warned!)  OR:  Producer Small & Hayward must have hit it off, reuniting on next year’s superior THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK/’39. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/05/man-in-iron-mask-1939.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The running time listed on IMDb is a reel shy of the mark. The full cut runs 107".

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Y@O.  Most succinct title ever?

CRY MACHO (2021)

Place: Hollywood.  Event: Story pitch meeting.  Target: Vet male star, no longer box-office gold, pushing 60.  Your Opening Line: Well, I got this story about a 45 year old guy . . . Reaction: DING-DING-DING!  You’ve got his attention.  (This is a true story BTW.)  So, imagine what it’s like these days at Malpaso, Clint Eastwood’s company.  All the same, except that Opening Line: Well, Clint, I got this story about a 75 year old guy.*  Hey!, how many 91 year olds still star & direct movies?  (He writes & produces, too, but usually without taking any credit.)  His latest, not much seen, not much liked, is one of those Clint Eastwood pics for people who generally don’t like Clint Eastwood pics.  A significant subset in his output going back at least to BRONCO BILLY/’80.  And if this one came and went without making a mark, it’s largely a case of false expectations.  Not at all the film you expect from the set up: Clint heads below the border to bring back the resentful teen son of the man who only recently fired him.  And while there’s a bit of action involved in prying the boy away from his vengeful Mexican mom & her sexed-up acolytes, with a few highway adventures along the way, it’s more 1980 religious parable than actioner hiding under Clint’s new sheep’s skin coat.  Debuting Eduardo Minett plays the rather unlikable, off-putting kid, easy to find, hard to convince.  And if the journey back North doesn’t take 40 years, it is unexpectedly extended; sees them taking shelter in a chapel; waking to manna for breakfast (dropped off by an attractive widow lady rather than dropped from the sky); sees a new generation cross the border while the elder steps back; even has a protecting angel in the form of a fiery red fighting cock.  Laid back, often quite funny (once you adjust to the rocking chair pace), Homeric rather than Mosaic, it's more amuse-bouche than Eastwood entrée.  Sometimes that first little bite is the most delightful part of a meal.

DOUBLE-BILL:  As mentioned, BRONCO BILLY.  Write a COMMENT (see below) and let us know how it’s holding up after all these years.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Best known for THE RAINMAKER/’56 (which is a lot like THE MUSIC MAN and was itself musicalized to good effect as 110 IN THE SHADE), author N. Richard Nash died in 2000 after decades trying to make a film from his novel.  (As our poster notes, they must have been waiting for Clint to get old enough.)

T-MEN (1947)

With producer Louis De Rochemont starting his distinctive run of film noir docu-dramas @ 20th/Fox (see THE HOUSE OF 92ND STREET/’45), no surprise to find copycat B-pic producer Bryan Foy (late of Warner Bros., now joined with Hollywood insiders Ed Small & Aubrey Schenck) glomming onto this new genre in a distribution deal for British-based Eagle-Lion.  The surprise is that this little indie manages to beat the majors at their own game, thanks to the powerhouse combo of director Anthony Mann, really finding his form thru cinematographer John (‘Prince of Darkness’) Alton.  The ‘T’ in the title is for Treasury Department and tall Dennis O’Keefe is the undercover agent sent to Detroit (along with partner Alfred Ryder) to sniff out a counterfeiting ring.  Posing as former members of the now defunct River Gang (the real Detroit mob was the Purple Gang), they’ve got a set of top-quality hand-engraved paper-money plates to take them all the way up to Mr. Big in L.A.  But only if they don’t blow their cover.  With pitch black locations; low-life hoods as pals; sweaty steam rooms for reconnoitering & murder; cheap furnished rooms; pay-phones in the hall and suspenseful close calls, they find Wallace Ford (threatening and pathetic) who leads on to violent henchman Charles McGraw & gatekeeper Jane Randolph.  The voice-of-God narration (straight out of the De Rochemont pics and his own MARCH OF TIME shorts) is OTT, but the film plays with all its violence & pace intact.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Detroit, Motor Capital of the World, still had trolleys in ‘47.  Who knew?  ALSO: Fans of tv’s ONE STEP BEYOND can spot an uncredited John Newland working in the L.A. treasury office building, one of his first Hollywood jobs.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The film did well enough for Mann, Alton & O’Keefe to repeat in next year’s RAW DEAL/’48.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/01/raw-deal-1948.html

OBSESSED (aka THE LATE EDWINA BLACK) (1951)

West End murder-mystery (a two-week flop on B’way) gets a film adaptation with all the production values & visual flair of 1950s ‘Golden Age’ television.  Perfect 'Playhouse 90' material.  David Farrar and Geraldine Fitzgerald are the illicit lovers, freed when wife Edwina Black dies at curtain rise.  Not of natural causes, but poisoned.  Yikes!  And since Geraldine knows she didn’t do it; and David knows he didn’t do it; and Jean Cadall’s housekeeper/companion is quitting because she thinks both of them did it . . . well, who DID do it?!  Enter Inspector Roland Culver, loaded with maddeningly calm questions and hoping for a spot of tea while he sorts it all out.  He’d better hurry, too, since our lovers are either viciously accusing each of murder or busy making promises to honeymoon in Venice on M’Lady’s fortune.  It’s all vaguely ridiculous and cumulatively entertaining as our clever inspector returns to parse the twists & turns with psychological acumen and indirect questions.  Vet director Maurice Elvey, with major credits back to the ‘teens (HINDLE WAKES/’27 particularly fine: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/hindle-wakes-1927.html) must have wondered what he had come to.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: One year later, a perfect paradigm of this sort of play came along in Frederick Knott's DIAL M FOR MURDER, quickly followed by the ‘unopened’ perfection of Alfred Hitchcock’s stunningly faithful, stunningly successful 1954 film adaptation.  Note just how interchangeable OBSESSED’s Inspector Roland Culver is with M’s Inspector John Williams.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/dial-m-for-murder-1954.html

THE WOMAN I LOVE (1937)

Lost between prestige hits THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR/’36; THE GOOD EARTH/’37; the Oscar’d LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA/’37, Paul Muni’s airborne WWI drama (loaned to R.K.O. from Warners) is now little known.  A pity, since it holds up well, better than some of his ‘in disguise’ period films.  Impressively mounted by Anatole Litvak, poached by Hollywood after MAYERLING/’36 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/mayerling-1936.html), to remake his own L'ÉQUIPAGE/’35 (not seen here) with Muni, Miriam Hopkins & Louis Hayward in for Charles Vanel, Annabella & Jean-Pierre Aumont.  Some of this shot-for-shot copy (with reused background & action footage?), physical production and tech execution is stunning.  If only the earthbound love triangle were as compelling as military life & drama in the skies!  Briefly, young Hayward meets-cute in Paris with married Hopkins the day before he’s called up.  Assigned as a gunner to Muni, the least popular man in his unit, he has no idea the new pash is the unhappy wife of his pilot partner.  Yikes!  It’s bromance & bonding as the men make an unbeatable team in the air, removing the jinx Muni had with previous gunner-mates.  But once the situation is sniffed out, une froid settles between the pair just before the next big push.  Perhaps this romantic fatalism played better in French.  Even so, the film grows on you even if Hayward’s playing is too callow even for this callow youth.  Hopkins & Muni both excellent.  But, my goodness, check out Annabella as the unhappy but honorable wife in the original.  Shockingly young and beautiful next to husband Vanel where Muni & Hopkins make a relatively well-matched couple, at least in age & looks.  But definitely worth a watch.  And check out the adorable kid playing Hayward’s baby brother.  He’s Wally Albright and he can really act.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Title change to THE WOMAN BETWEEN in the U.K. to avoid thoughts of King Edward VIII’s recent abdication over ‘The woman I love.’ 

DOUBLE-BILL:  The French original, L'ÉQUIPAGE/’35, is easily found in a beautiful restoration on-line.  What can’t be found are English subtitles to go with it.  But if your French is good enough, it’s surely the one to go for.

STARTER FOR 10 (2006)

A.I.-ChatBot wasn’t around yet, but you’d never know it from this off-the-rack coming-of-age college memoir.  Loaded with up-and-comers (James McAvoy, Rebecca Hall, James Corden, Dominic Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch) overcompensating for being a decade too old for university life, the film is pleasant enough in the early going as McAvoy’s lower middle-class striver (from Essex!) tries to adjust to the posh lads and sophisticated co-eds of the mid-‘80s who see right thru him.  The story hook is extracurricular with McAvoy making the College Challenge Team (this side of the pond it was TV’s College Bowl) and initially falling for rich, glam blonde teammate when his natural match is obviously the politically active Jewish brunette he spars with.  (Beatrice & Benedict they’re not; while all the scenes involving Ms. Blonde, especially a New Year’s visit at her ‘cottage’ with Mater & Pater, are excruciating.)  The one surprise in the whole film is an on camera crisis during the tournament that feels so totally out of character it just may be a true incident from the life of scripter David Nicholls.  You still won’t believe it.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Grossing small-change on release, the film built a cult following (from all those rising stars?) and is currently being turned into a stage musical.   And those scenes back home in Essex?  One more I VITTELONI/'53 copycat Fellini.  

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Cameron Crowe made his rep with stuff like this, but at least it was actually made in the time period.  Think SAY ANYTHING/’89.  (It’s a good guess that McAvoy studied John Cusack’s perf assiduously.)  But for something far better observed, try John Sayles’ sleeper pic BABY IT’S YOU/’83.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/10/baby-its-you-1983.html

THE CRYSTAL BALL (1943)

Typical light romantic comedy of the period from Paramount (released by United Artists*), a neatly executed example of a form that tended to be overdressed at M-G-M; overplayed at Warner Bros.; under-cast at Columbia & Universal; and Tyrone Powered at 20th/Fox.  Paulette Goddard’s an out-of-town gal who falls into Gladys George’s fortune-telling racket, swindling clients via crystal ball to find ‘lost’ valuable items purposefully misplaced by an inside accomplice.  (Generous reward evenly split.)  But Goddard grows more interested in Ray Milland, boyfriend to one of the victims and, wouldn’t you know it, he’s a fellow sharpshooter she’ll meet-cute at the carny booth she shills for.  And while this sounds like one of those forced farcical things (okay, it is one of those forced farcical things), loosey-goosey playing under director Elliot Nugent shows considerable finesse executing running jokes & compound gags from Virginia Van Upp’s original script, along with help from a better than average cast for one of these (William Bendix; Cecil Kellaway; Virginia Fields; Sig Arno).  Even composer Victor Young gives us a break, toning down the Mickey Mousing used on so many comic films as background score/qua laugh-track.  These mid-list comedies so often start dumb & grow tedious, it’s easy to overrate the merely decent, but this one’s pretty fun.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Goddard & Milland, something of a team at Paramount for a few years in the mid-‘40s, seen at their best together in KITTY/’45, a period piece (think VANITY FAIR) which may also be director Mitchell Leisen’s best, and is stolen lock, stock & barrel by character actor Reginald Owen.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *So, what is this 100% Paramount film doing over at United Artists?    Best guess is that the film biz, going thru the roof during the war years, saw films expected to play a week (or even a split week) being held over two or three weeks, precipitating a backlog at the major studios while United Artists was left on the hunt for product and offered a buyout.  Why U.A. retained rights after the initial run is a mystery.  But then, Paramount is the studio who would sell twenty years of their catalog (1929 - 1949) to Universal for a song in the mid-‘50s.

LE GRAND BAIN / SINK OR SWIM (2018)

One more male-bonding/mid-life crisis pic.  The old standby now a genre of its own since THE FULL MONTY/’97 turned unlikely international hit, spawning innumerable retreads.  That said, this iteration pretty irresistible, swapping MONTY’S ‘Regular Joe’ striptease act for middle-aged guys with middle-aged bellies working thru various personal & professional calamities by mastering the art of synchronized swimming.  Gonad-accessorized Esther Williamses they ain’t.  It’s a slam dunk idea with just enough truth behind it (a Swedish amateur swimming club which also inspired a concurrent British film*) to keep things on track.  With separate backstories running at once, director Gilles Lellouche doesn’t always succeed in keeping all eight balls in the air (yeah, I know, the balls are in the water; and there’s sixteen of ‘em), but you’ll either figure it out or fill in what he misses while enjoying his super cast of scene stealers.  Plus, two female coaches just as interesting as the men.  And with that most empathetic of French stars Mathieu Amalric taking the nominal lead in this ensemble piece, you know you’re in good hands.  Even left wanting a bit more from his family’s POV.  Same for most of the guys in here.  Lots of award action/lots of box-office; well deserved.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL:  *That British film, SWIMMING WITH MEN/’18 (not seen here), made a much smaller splash (1.5 mill gross to BAIN’s 40) and likely put the kibosh on any thought of Hollywood remake.  Probably just as well as American actors would diet & exercise to make themselves either too fat (‘It’s not really me!’) or too fit (‘Still got it, huh?'), ruining the concept and sense of grounded reality that allows this film to take flight.

DODSWORTH (1936)

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis, having built his rep skewering an American businessman, turns tables to profile & celebrate an admirable one, Sam Dodsworth, a MidWest automobile mogul who sells the company to take early retirement and get to know himself.  Turns out he knows himself pretty well, honest, curious, unpretentious, interested in the world as he finds it.  What he doesn’t know so well is his adored wife, a class-conscious snob from a ‘hick’ town who thinks she’s meant for more sophisticated things.  Neatly adapted to the stage, and then just as neatly opened-up for the screen, by Sidney Howard, the film all but perfectly cast and the first of 12 Oscar-noms for director William Wyler.  (Wyler, with more prestige-play to quality-film adaptations then anyone but George Cukor, had an uncanny nose for knowing when to, and when not to, ‘open up’ a play in transferring from stage to screen.*)  As Dodsworth, Walter Huston (along with Harlan Briggs the only stage repeater) turns Sinclair’s unlikely role-model capitalist into a real human being.*  As his flirtatious age-conscious wife, Ruth Chatterton gets the worst of it, though she nails the age factor desperation.  (Fay Bainter might have been more subtle on B’way, but the main fault lies with Sinclair.)  Her three suitors (David Niven, Paul Lukas, Gregory Gaye) neatly fileted.  Best of all is Mary Astor as an independent divorcée living in Italy (‘Because it’s cheap!’) who offers a possible out for Huston and an ignored lifeline to Chatterton with a devastating word of advice.  (One of the great line readings in cinema.  Knowing Wyler, he probably made Astor repeat the single word in 26 takes.)  The film is immensely satisfying.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Huston did much the same in Frank Capra’s pivotal AMERICAN MADNESS/’32, confounding expectations by making a hero out of a Bank Manger who staves off a Depression Era bank run.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/american-madness-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Wyler stage adaptations from just this period; COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW/’33, trimmed but not opened; THE GOOD FAIRY/’35, modestly opened; THESE THREE/’36, modestly opened and not so modestly tweaked; DODSWORTH, considerably opened; DEAD END’37, not opened enough.

RON'S GONE WRONG (2021)

Lots of new or recently ‘upped’ talent on this initial release from Locksmith Animation.  So why does it feel so warmed over?; an Artificial Intelligence fable that tries to have its ‘Bot’ and leave it, too.  Barney’s the one kid in school without a tagalong ‘bot’ to help him make friends & influence classmates during recess & at home.  But when Dad & Grandma finally kick in and buy a knock-off ‘bot’ for his birthday, a defective program in its system only makes things worse.  Or does it?  Turns out those glitches may be worth a lot to someone back at the factory, the key to a Fix-It patch for millions of ‘bots.’  It puts Barney & ‘Bot’ on the spot just as a power struggle over monetization and info collection erupts back at Computer Center.  Smothered in background ADHD visual embellishment along with an unappealing ‘plasticy’ look to CGI character design, the film is more exhausting than inventive.  (Maybe it worked better in 3D.)  And whatever they were trying to say all too quickly overtaken by current events involving TikTok spying and unregulated ChatBot GPT ultilities.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The film also not helped by having similar themes covered to generally better effect a few months earlier in THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINE/’21.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-mitchells-vs-machines-2021.html

TOKYO OLYMPIAD (1965)

The most influential film ever made?  Let’s opt for Louis & Auguste Lumière’s L'ARROSEUR ARROSÉ (THE WATERER WATERED), part of the first-ever publicly projected film program, playing alongside actualitiés in 1895.  In that one-shot/one-minute wonder, a mischievous lad briefly steps on a gardener’s water hose before releasing it to blast him in the face.  Here you'll find the entire DNA code of narrative cinema in embryonic form.  As for second most influential?  I’d pop for Kon Ichikawa's 1964 Olympic documentary.  Full implications showing up not in feature film but in something far more ubiquitous: Televised Sports.  All those technical refinements & innovations you thought Roone Arledge invented on ABC’s Wide World of Sports?  The back stories & cultural positioning a hack like Bud Greenspan glommed onto in his Olympic Recaps?  ‘Jump cuts’ in view and speed as seen in those heavy-handed NFL films?  All taken from Ichikawa in his masterful overview.  Heavy on Track & Field, he skips many events even in its full near three-hour cut.  (What, no diving?)  Somehow managing to glorify and undercut events into artful abstraction without touching the third-rail ‘Kitsch’ of Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous two-part (Berlin) OLYMPIA/’38.  Long available in a bewildering assortment of edits & lowered visual quality (the film had originally been planned to accommodate different cuts aimed at different countries), the original Japanese edition has been beautifully restored at a bit shy of three hours.  Perhaps the last Olympics to feel human-scaled and largely apolitical; you’ll probably not recognize many of the athletes . . . which might be half the point.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Filmed as a sort of tie-in to the Games, Cary Grant made his final feature film as if in the middle of the event, stripping down to his briefs to join the Speed Walkers and play cupid in WALK DON’T RUN/’66.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/04/walk-dont-run-1966.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Who remembers that East and West Germany competed as a single nation in the competition?  Or that their shared anthem was Beethoven’s Ode to Joy?

BOY MEETS GIRL (1984)

French filmmaker Leos Carax began his career vibrating in perfect intellectual sympathy with the French cineast community.  Later works had bumpier receptions, but this Nouvelle Vague besotted debut from a former film critic (what else?) has a great glossy black & white look, the cool of alienated youth, and the empty vessel prêt-à-porter æsthetic to encourage read-what-you-want-into-it Pop sensibility.  Plus, it’s fun!  Carax’s regular alter-ego Denis Lavant is the height-challenged feral pup intellectual, spending his last day in Paris before Army service.  In a quandary on whether BREATHLESS or JULES & JIM holds the greater influence, Carax has Lavant fight with his BFF over a girl (he’d rather debate an affair than consummate it) before finding a more interesting/more troubled object of desire at a posh party he wasn’t really invited to.  It’s enough to make a young man miss the last train to oblivion.  Hard not to be swept along by Carax’s playful visual chic while pondering that when it comes to philosophic Parisian discussions, the longueurs the better doesn’t hold.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  In case you wondered, BOY MEETS GIRL is the French title.  Here’s the classic Hollywood story on the cliché.  Big-time movie producer has the same dream night-after-night.  It’s the best idea he’s ever had, if only he could remember it when he woke up.  Hoping to capture it, he puts pen & paper on the bedside table so that the next time the dream comes, he’ll get it down before he forgets.  Next morning he wakes up and looks to see if he wrote something down while half asleep in the middle of the night.  Sure enough he did!  The great idea he dreamt over and over again?  ‘Boy Meets Girl.’

FEMALE ON THE BEACH (1955)

Broadly speaking, Joan Crawford’s career split into four decade-long acts: Striving Joan in her M-G-M ‘30s Prime; Melodramatic rebirth @ Warners in the ‘40s; Mature Joan looking for the fountain of youth & studio deals in the ‘50s; and finally, ‘60s Grotesquerie.  BEACH is mid-list Mature Joan, landing at Universal with a noticeable dip in production values and a story that lifts from the best of the ‘40 in a prologue that opens like MILDRED PIERCE/’45 and a main story arc to mirror her recent Oscar-nom’d turn in SUDDEN FEAR/’52.*  (Same lenser too, Charles Lang, here reduced to light reflectors faking ocean-front property on studio sets.)  A largely ridiculous tale of widowed Joan (in tip-top scary shape) finding her new neighbors are running a con on her.  Cecil Kellaway & Natalie Schafer in a crooked pinocle racket, sweetened with graying boy toy Jeff Chandler.  Only problem: Mr. Grey (Chandler) falls for Mrs. Black (Crawford) for real.  But when circumstantial coincidence (circumstantial coincidence?) makes it look like Chandler plans on doing away with the new bride on the honeymoon cruise, Joan has to think fast to stay alive.  Yikes!   This might have worked with a bit of style in the acting (everyone feels vaguely insane) or direction (Joseph Pevney’s dutiful megging hasn’t a clue), but they’d still have to come up with something better than the whopper of a twist that unties all the knots here.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The DVD shows in Full-Frame, but original theatrical releases would have cropped the image slightly (like, 1.66 or 1.85:1 aspect ratio) which most players can deliver by enlarging the picture image one notch.  Just don’t use the 9X16 anamorphic setting.  Streamers probably don't have a choice.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *An even better solution would be to stick with the far superior SUDDEN FEAR/’52 mentioned above, with an initially charming Jack Palance turning deliciously bad.

(AN ACT OF LOVE:) THE PATRICIA NEAL STORY (1981)

Unusually accomplished tv-movie (exceptional for 1981) about actress Patricia Neal’s hard-won recovery from a massive triple-stroke (while working on John Ford’s SEVEN WOMEN), holds up surprisingly well; tough and unsentimental almost till the end.  Only a final double triumph (return to Hollywood/return to work) turning a bit sticky, but no deal breaker.  Glenda Jackson hasn’t Neal’s sexy drawl or looks*, but manages a reasonable facsimile in the pre-stroke scenes before showing what she’s capable of, emotionally/physically, post-surgery when she has to relearn everything.  Scenes where she frightens her kids like some blank-slate/Frankenstein monster just devastating.  Yet the key to film’s continuing effectiveness comes largely from the ornery ‘tough-love’ rehabilitation approach of writer/husband Roald Dahl, putting her thru the wringer in his maniacal determination to get all the way back to the woman he knew before the stroke.  Funny to think that Dahl now the better known name and not the Oscar-winning actress (for HUD).*  Less funny to know that Dahl, serially unfaithful thru the marriage, divorced Neal, mother of his five children, two years after this film came out, then immediately remarried.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *See Neal make John Wayne as sexy as he’d ever be on screen in the last film she completed before her stroke, Otto Preminger’s IN HARM’S WAY/’65’.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Dahl’s estate recently bought by NetFlix for a cool half billion.  Yikes!  Past adaptations include WILLY WONKA, THE WITCHES, MATILDA and that most famous of all Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes: LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER.

KANSAS CITY PRINCESS (1934)

Over five films (‘33 to ‘35), Warner Brothers tried to make a comedy team out of fondly remembered Joan Blondell and barely remembered Glenda Farrell.  It didn’t take, but at least this little programmer doesn’t push as hard as Warners was wont to.  Then again, not really much to push in this story of gold-digging Kansas City manicurists, trimming cuticles and mugs before they scadadle out of town, training to NYC before they’re whisked off to Paris along with a boatload of millionaire possibilities.  Viva la France!  Robert Armstrong’s the besotted/mob-connected operator wooing Blondell with a diamond engagement ring (swiped by his own BFF); Hugh Herbert a money-bags at sea for Farrell to make waves at.  The film briefly threatens to come alive when the gals hide in plain sight with a large group under stolen scout uniforms and run away from jobs, cops and butter-and-egg men.  A gender swapped SOME LIKE IT HOT?*  Don’t get your hopes up.  The idea dropped before we even hit the gangplank.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Also echoes of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES in the NYC-to-Paris fortune hunt.  Filmed as a silent in 1928 with a pair of blondes (Alice White; Ruth Taylor) twenty-five years before blonde Marilyn Monroe and brunette Jane Russell made the musical.

YOJIMBO (1961) SANJURO (1962)

While SEVEN SAMURAI remains Akira Kurosawa’s most famous title, YOJIMBO was (and likely still is) his biggest hit.  Deservedly so.  An hour & a half shy of SEVEN’s full-length cut, its plot known to many who’ve never heard of Kurosawa thanks to Sergio Leone’s near carbon-copy Italian Spaghetti Western A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS/’64 with Clint Eastwood.  The easy-to-follow story has unattached samurai warrior Toshirô Mifune (in Eastwood’s case a gun-for-hire) selling his services to both sides in a warring two-faction town that ultimately leaves him richer (in coin) and the town poorer (in population).  Violence, humor, irony, outrageous acting choices, with Mifune at his most engaging, scratching & killing with abandon.  Less well-known and less highly rated, the sequel, SANJURO, refitted from an earlier unrelated Kurosawa screenplay, is more relaxed, lighter on its feet, every bit as engaging, with its own rather joyful voice.  This time, Mifune’s ragged swordsman comes to the aid of an elegant nonet of young gentlemen who’ve fallen into a deadly political trap by picking the wrong political faction and now, only Mifune has the tactical skills, unerring intuition and camellias to get them out of their jam . . . if they’ll only listen to a man below their high station. 

Kurosawa isn’t the only director to be denied critical acclaim on a quick sequel; and not the only one to get scant recognition for it.*  Yet SANJURO has its own spot-on look and tone.  More soundstage bound, it feels more all-of-a-piece, with better secondary parts in general (especially for a couple of smart, delightful court ladies), less fussily staged with longer takes.  Plus the fun they must have had filming it is contagious in a manner unique in Kurosawa’s output.  Though much of this will only be apparent when the two are watched in proper order.  So make it a DOUBLE-BILL.  (Criterion has them as a package.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *The relationship between a hit film and its quick sequel most like this comes out of left field, Blake Edwards’ THE PINK PANTHER and its more-or-less accidental follow-up A SHOT IN THE DARK.  Like SANJURO, a rush rewrite to incorporate the last film’s hit character in a looser, more improvisatory  fashion.  And so quickly produced, both films were released in 1964.  One diff, SHOT works just as well whether or not you’ve seen PINK.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/shot-in-dark-1964.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Only downside (at least for some), Kurosawa’s taste in music, with favored composer Masaru Satô’s awkward mix of Japanese & Western styles.

DEVI / THE GODDESS (1960)

Near faultless filmmaking from Satyajit Ray, made directly after his famous Apu Trilogy*, also with Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore as a young married couple, but here in a period piece; late 1800s.  Extrapolated from a short story by Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee, we see trouble rising not long after the husband heads to Calcutta to complete university exams.  He’s from a legacy household, wealthy enough to not work, but with modern ideas.  And it’s during this absence that disaster strikes when his fanatically religious father thinks his prayers have been answered in a dream that reveals his very young daughter-in-law as the incarnation of the three-eyed goddess ‘Kali,’ spiritually divine healer.  The young bride, too reserved to protest and deathly afraid of the dream being true, can only watch helplessly as catastrophe strikes not from a failure, but thru success when she’s held responsible for the recovery of an ill (possibly dead) Beggar’s grandson.  By the time the husband returns, called home by a jealous sister-in-law (his wife neither reads nor writes), the situation is out of control.  And when a favorite nephew, the sister-in-law’s young boy, takes ill, the power of faith in ‘Devi’ gets put to the test.  Ray is in complete control here.  (Regular cinematographer Subrata Mitras; superb score from Ali Akbar Khan.)  The film a masterclass in casting and pace, with compositional dividing elements within the frame altering perception of aspect ratio vertically & horizontally, while character placement within the frame or thru height & angles comment on action and family dynamics.  None this ever coming between the story and the viewer, only felt emotionally.  Ultimately, the film is both mysterious and quietly devastating.  With his APU debut films and THE MUSIC ROOM coming before, THREE DAUGHTERS out next, Ray must never have heard about sophomore slump.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Well, more like a quadruple-bill adding on the three APU films: PATHER PANCHALI/’55; APARAJITO/’56; THE WORLD OF APU/’59.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/aparajito-1956.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/world-of-apu-1959.html

WAR GODS OF THE DEEP / CITY IN THE SEA (1965)

Jacques Tourneur, past master of film noir, psychological horror, Westerns, found himself confined to shlock features & tv gigs after directing his last worthy assignment, the remarkably fine ‘suggestive’ horror NIGHT OF THE DEMON/’57.*  Not much could be done with this one, his final theatrical feature, typical low-rent American International Pictures fare: title from Edgar Allen Poe/plot lifted from Jules Verne (mostly MYSTERIOUS ISLAND), it opens with decent sea coast atmosphere as a body floats ashore and Tab Hunter’s investigator carts it to a nearby castle.  Meeting a few odd folk (David Thomlinson & his pet rooster!, soon-to-be comatose Susan Hart, an unexplained goblin), he follows the ‘Gill Man,’ whatever it is, thru a secret passageway only to fall into the depths beneath, landing unharmed in an underwater city.  Run by Vincent Price doing a Captain Nemo number, this waterlogged dictator currently panicked by imminent destruction bubbling up from a sea-floor volcano about to blow.  (Underwater footage apparently taken from Ishirô Honda’s ATRAGON/’63.  Not fully seen here, but easily found on-line and looking a good deal more fun.)  Tourneur does what he can, but too much time goes to philosophical speechifying with Price standing in place on a single set.  That seaquake can’t come soon enough.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Tourneur had so much to offer, so much talent on display, but after DEMON no one gave him a thought.  Click here for more info and LINKing possibilities.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/11/night-of-demon-1957.html

THE SICILIAN CLAN / LE CLAN DES SICILIENS (1969)

Henri Verneuil’s ultra-glossy caper pic, well-liked, successful, probably best described as a Powerhouse Mediocrity for Jean Gabin, Alain Delon & Lino Ventura as two crooks & a cop.  You can almost hear its producers salivating over commercial possibilities, shooting French, English & Italian versions to maximize international appeal.  Not much deeply wrong here, it’s no disgrace like, say, THE TOWERING INFERNO/’74, merely a by-the-numbers jewel-heist suspenser with cop-killer Delon escaping from an unbreachable prison van after a court appearance so he can convince mob guy Gabin (et famille) to work one last grab before retiring to Sicily.  And Detective Ventura time and again just missing his man before an inevitable, if inadvertent crack breaks the case open after Ventura’s step-by-step diligence fails.  A handful of big set pieces build pretty well, though even these miss their potential, but a big twisty climax with the plane piloted by a bemused Sydney Chaplin for a New York landing is oddly suspense-free.*  In spite of the film’s studied impersonal tone, three standout elements manage to hold interest: Ennio Morricone’s ‘Jew’s Harp’ heavy film score (for its Sicilian timbre?); Henri Dacaë’s impossibly smooth, grain-free lensing (giving a sort of imperial look); and the imposingly hideous late ‘60s style of its apartment interiors & public spaces: Red Naugahyde sofas, ‘Orange Crush’ colored pod chairs, Polka Dot patterned walls.  It certainly keeps nostalgia at bay.  Yikes!

DOOUBLE-BILL:  *Almost as suspense-free as Delon’s last attempt at Hollywood stardom via THE CONCORD . . . AIRPORT ‘79.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Keep Delon & cinematographer Dacaë, add Yves Montand & director Jean-Pierre Melville, and see this sort of thing refashioned as existential High Art in LE CERCLE ROUGE/’70.

ONE, TWO, THREE (1961)

Billy Wilder’s jokes on the divide between Communist dogma and Capitalist indoctrination had coarsened considerably since he co-wrote NINOTCHKA for Ernst Lubitsch in ‘39.*  Shot on location at the height of the Cold War (the Berlin Wall went up during production in the middle of an active set), it’s taken from a late ‘20s Ferenc Molnár play where class rather than politics was the issue as a taxi driver is molded overnight into an aristocrat facsimile.  Now, the transformation performed on young, doctrinaire Party Member Horst Buchholz, overplaying to beat the band and awkwardly engaged to American Coca-Cola Princess Pamela Tiffin (smoothly changing from airhead to sexual strategist).  But James Cagney, Berlin’s top Coca-Cola exec, is really the whole show here, working all angles at once to turn this raw kid into something acceptable to his Atlanta-based boss, Dad to the ‘princess’ and flying in tomorrow to check on his new son-in-law.  Did we mention the lovebirds are not only secretly married, but also not so secretly expecting?  The first act has a surprisingly high percentage of dud jokes, getting by solely on Cagney’s quicksilver pace, chutzpah & sheer momentum (the first act plays far better with an audience carrying it along).  Fortunately, the last forty minutes see Wilder & co-scripter I.A.L. Diamond finally stick the landing on their jokes & visual gags, not simply riding on Cagney’s admittedly rather amazing torque, staccato delivery and bantam rooster posturing.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Speaking of NINOTCHKA, that’s Sig Ruman, one of NINOTCHKA’s trio of Russian Commissioners in Paris, dubbing this film’s Count Washroom Attendant.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/12/ninotchka-1939.html

SOLARIS (1972)

After IVAN’S CHILDHOOD/’62 and ANDREI RUBLEV/’66, the greatest Soviet films of his era, Andrei Tarkovsky turned insular & obscure in a series of increasingly self-indulgent art house perplexities.  Fashioning himself into a sort of one-stop Ingmar Bergman/Stanley Kubrick, the artistic/philosophic contortion an ill-fitting low-wattage stance that did his very real qualities no favor.  Ironic, too, as Tarkovsky no Kubrick fancier.  (Doubly ironic since a main impetus here was to make an Anti-2001.  Triply ironic as SOLARIS’s mass appeal, it was Tarkovsky’s one truly popular title, came thru a deceptive ad campaign selling this as a Soviet 2001 Head-Trip movie.)  Donatas Banionis (think lethargic Paul Sorvino doughboy) is the psychologist called to a floundering space station.  Once a bustling space module, now all but deserted, staffed only by a pair of depressed scientists and one very corporeal ectoplasm, the doctor’s own late wife.  Yikes!  How to study strange oceanic activity with such a distraction.  And what does ‘she’ want?  Banionis’s attempts to send her to safety back on Earth (blasting, medicating, freezing) go all GROUNDHOG DAY as she keeps coming back like a song.  And now, he’s the one getting sick.  The film has its champions, Steven Soderbergh & George Clooney lopped off an hour in a 2002 remake (not seen here) that divided opinion between those who hated it and those who really hated it.  So what happened to Tarkovsky after those first two films?  Best guess is that friend & collaborator Andrey Konchalovskiy (a filmmaker not without Pop sensibility) played Paul McCartney to Tarkovsky’s John Lennon and kept him from falling off the deep end.  And it’s just possible Tarkovsky knew it since his next big project, a film on PETER THE GREAT, brought Konchalovskiy back into the picture.  Alas, the film was suppressed by Soviet authorities and is, even now, after five decades, currently in post-production.  (So they say.)  Could a third Tarkovsky masterpiece be waiting in the wings?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Tarkovsky ain’t known for his sense of humor, but check out those Soviet Space Module pajamas!  Gold piping & embroidery on white linen.  Hilarious.  Poor Banionis has one scene where he wanders around in just the top half.  Scariest thing in here.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  As mentioned, ANDREI RUBLEV and Tarkovsky’s outstanding debut IVAN’S CHILDHOOD.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/ivanovo-detstvo-ivans-childhood-1962.html   OR:  Early Tarkovsky collaborator Andrey Konchalovskiy went on to a prolific, if uneven, international directing career.  One of his best as recent as 2020's DEAR COMRADES.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/03/dear-comrades-dorogie-tovarishchi-2020.html

TETRIS (2023)

Comically serious End-of-the-Cold-War industrial thriller on buying Western Intellectual Property Rights to TETRIS, an early (and still addictive) ‘80s Game Boy component (now it’s an APP), the film as exceptional as it is unexpected.  Invented on primitive Soviet Era computers by Alexey Pajinov (Nikita Efremov, charming & sympathetic), unaware he’s wading into treacherous (possibly traitorous) territory with each Western contact wowed by the commercial possibilities.  Main bidders include ambitious cash-strapped tech entrepreneur Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton, crucified under an ‘80s mustache) and increasingly desperate media baron ‘billionaire’ Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam, sublime), similarly cash-strapped.  Offer and counter-offers, Soviet delays, bribes, overnight flights, secret surveillance, ‘Kompromat’ videos, expiring deals, worthless checks & empty promises, and a Looney Tunes cast of characters to tighten suspense.  There’s nothing in the C.V.s of director Jon S. Baird or writer Noah Pink to explain just how good this is.  (Crisscross machinations & caper tropes this confidently handled not seen since ARGO/’12.)  So a seemingly dry subject matter becomes a constant whirligig (there’s even a touch of family sentiment), wonderfully aided with period computer graphics linking scenes and morphing in and out just for visual delight.  The whole ‘80s gestalt feels as if Sydney Pollack or Alan Pakula had served as mentors from conception thru studio politics and theatrical release.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Toughest of all major Orson Welles films, MR. ARKADIN/’55 (aka CONFIDENTIAL REPORT) suddenly makes perfect sense when you connect Arkadin with a man like Robert Maxwell.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/mr-arkadin-1955.html