VISAGES D’ENFANTS / MOTHER (1925)

Twenty-four years is a long time to dream of a specific loaf of bread.  But once seen, the XL homemade multi-grain boule seen in Jacques Feyder’s naturalistic Alps-set drama, proved as impossible to forget as the film’s title proved illusive.  Found at last, it proves just as magnificent as memory had it; the film’s pretty good, too.  Feyder’s once stellar art house rep, tenuously held largely thru CARNIVAL IN FLANDERS/’35 and KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR/’37, now a thing of the past.  But a pair of superb silent restorations on Lobster Films (this and CRAINQUEBILLE/’22) show just how good he could be.  VISAGES (also known as FACES OF CHILDREN), shot entirely on location in the Alps (and in real weather conditions) 1922-23, took a couple of years to get distributed . . . and promptly bankrupted the film company.  Hard to get hold of before a 2005 restoration, now looking and sounding even better in Lobster's 2015 edition, a simple story magnificently told, shot, edited and acted (remarkably modern in all categories) about the widowed mayor (with two children) of a small, isolated mountain village who remarries a neighboring widow with one child.  Told largely thru the eyes of the mayor’s 10-yr-old son (Jean Forest, superb*), the naturalistic style shows the parents’ psychological blindness to the boy's grief & needs even as they try to be fair to all three kids.  You can see why the very naturalistic storytelling didn’t register with 1925 audiences.  If they’d only held on to the third act, they’d have been rewarded with gorgeous environmental melodrama in real-life locations D.W. Griffith & Lillian Gish might have envied for WAY DOWN EAST/’20.  How good to know that once tragedy has been averted, the happy, now blended family will surely be treated with slices of that bread, two-inches thick and slathered with preserves.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Young Forest debuted in Feyder’s CRAINQUEBILLE/’22.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/03/crainquebille-coster-bill-of-paris-1922.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The stunning cinematography is by Léonce-Henri Burel, famous for working on the best films of Abel Gance and Robert Bresson, as well as Rex Ingram’s last, BAROUD/’32.

KNOX GOES AWAY (2023)

Directing for just the second time at 73*, Michael Keaton, who also stars, avoids any hint of sophomore slump assuming you can accept the film’s gimmick.  (A big ask!)  In fact, it’s a modest triumph.  Keaton plays a retirement age contract killer with a bad case of galloping dementia and a mess of affairs to put in order before mental oblivion overtakes him.  Sure enough, that's when estranged son James Marsden shows up needing help: he’s just murdered a guy.  Yikes!  Not that the victim didn’t deserve it, a serial teen rapist, including a grandkid Keaton’s never met.  The 16-yr-old is scheduled to go with Dad for an abortion next week.  Adding to these problems, Keaton’s latest hit left two extra people dead, and a crime scene loaded with clues.  Yet, as director, Keaton is largely able to pull off this whopper by laying back & turning the knobs down as low as possible, and, as his character, writing up a seven-step plan to point police, mob, girlfriend, ex-wife Marcia Gay Harden and big boss Al Pacino (amusingly amused at himself) in the right direction so he can settle scores, distribute his considerable wealth, then drift into Never-Neverland at the expense of a State Criminal Institution.  It shouldn’t work at all (either as a plan or as a script), yet you’re happy to go along with every twist & turn in Gregory Poirier original screenplay.  Kind of like an early Coen Brothers film noir, but filtered thru the sensibility of a ‘50s Ealing Brit-Com.  Satisfyingly witty rather than LOL funny, but very cleanly laid out, and with Keaton showing unexpected action chops as needed and nifty optical spasms to show his brain short-circuiting.  If he hurries, Keaton may have the time & energy to go for directing gig #3.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Not seen here, Keaton’s first shot at directing was another hit man story, THE MERRY GENTLEMEN/’08.  Thoughts?  Our COMMENTS section awaits.

KIMI TO, NAMI NI NORETARA / RIDE YOUR WAVE (2019)

Between his anime features on a High School rock band (LU OVER THE WALL/’18) and Feudal Days set to a rock-‘n’-roll beat (INU-OH/’21), Masaaki Yuasa let his inner Wagner out on this death obsessed liebestod that uses a ‘Pop’ tune as leitmotif.  It’s certainly distinctive.  But is there method in the madness along with visual extravagance in this very Japanese tale (okay, Japanese/Wagneresque) on how love can outlast death; yet still look & play like a typically giddy manga adaptation?  It starts as a pair of chance encounters for twenty-somethings Minato & Hinako (fireman & flower shop clerk) puts them on a path to surfboard romance in a Japanese coastal town.  The two a regular Snooky-Ookums’*, anime flesh/anime sex suggested.  Yikes!  Yet with a tragic first act finish that leaves Hinako mourning her loss until she gets a message in a bottle . . . Minato!  Well, ectoplasmic Minato, a presence that only appears to Hinato when she sings 'their' song.*  (Would it were a better tune!  Catchy, but annoying.)  But is he real or an insoluble shape-shifting figure she should drop for more solid flesh?  (And if you think Hinako doesn’t see Minato in the bottom of the water in a lime green toilet bowl, you’ve got another think coming.)  The first act is the most interesting visually, some very cool POV animation as Hinako bikes into town or on country roads that let Yuasa capture glaring seaside light in a manner rarely attempted.  Often lovely, often strange, always very Japanese.  Or is it Japanese/Wagneresque?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *The cult of death culture, so common in Japan, is stoically confronted in the recent GODZILLA MINUS ONE/’23 pic.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/05/godzilla-minus-one-gojira-10-2023.html

LINK:  *Don’t know ‘Snooky Ookums?’  All explained in the first half of this little clip from EASTER PARADE/’46.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P4ZD6mRrBo

ROLE MODELS (2009)

Harmless, but often quite funny, this scatological commercial comedy (extra scatological in the ‘Unrated’ edition) has Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott as High School motivational speakers (Skip Drugs/Chug our company’s Energy Drink) who suffer a critical/spiritual meltdown, a vehicular incident, and are lucky to get Community Service rather than jail time thanks to Rudd’s ‘ex,’ Elizabeth Banks, attorney-at-law.  Stuck 'Big Brothering' a couple of needy boys (one nerd/one constantly acting out) under the supervision of tough former-addict Jane Lynch, a chilly start soon starts to thaw as compromise & understanding seep in: Everybody Wins/Everybody Learns a Lesson.  A formula perfected in THE BAD NEWS BEARS/’76 though it goes back (in film) to the silents.  And why not?  Even when poorly done, the tropes work like a charm; and here Rudd & company (he co-wrote; David Wain does spritely/brightly lit direction) serve it up well-acted (lots of comic looneys roaming about in support), cleverly structured with satisfying payoffs, and written with enough enthusiasm to get past the spots that miss.  (Though a couple of beers before watching wouldn’t hurt.)

DOUBLE-BILL:  As mentioned, THE BAD NEWS BEARS/’76

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Never thought of it before, but hearing Rudd sing out of tune (it’s his big emotional climax) shows what a natural for Nathan Detroit he’d be if Hollywood ever gets around to the oft-rumored GUYS AND DOLLS remake.  The hit 1955 version looks worse than ever (and it looked pretty bad at the time) and one of its main problems is having two Sky Mastersons (Brando & Sinatra) and no Nathan Detroits in the cast.

THE POPE'S EXORCIST (2023)

No, not the new Russell Crowe exorcist film.  That’s THE EXORCISM/’24 (not seen here), apparently all about making a film much like William Friedkin’s THE EXORCIST/’73.  This is last year’s Russell Crowe exorcist film, a relatively standard issue possession pic nominally based on a real guy, Father Gabriele Amorth, top Vatican exorcist for decades, till his death in 2006.  The usual Catholic hocus-pocus scenario, two possessions worth: an appetizer to save a bed-trussed lad with severe red-eye syndrome then the main course over in Spain where a typical American family (sans dead dad) has inherited an unusual fixer-upper, a decayed family manse that once housed an accursed Abbey.  What could possibly go wrong? Naturally, it’s haunted by the Devil centuries after a failed exorcism from back in Inquisition days.  A devil of a job even for Crowe’s Father Amorth with branches of this possession reverberating all the way to the Pope (Franco Nero!) in Vatican City.  Crowe claims he prepared by studying the real Father Amorth, but by the look of things, he spent more time watching old Raf Vallone movies.  And the script, which shamefully deflects blame for the Spanish Inquisition to the Devil (how convenient!), seconded by director Julius Avery, calls for so much acrobatic flying & gymnastic contortion, it’s less The Pope’s Exorcist than Cirque de Soleil Exorcist.  (With sequels promised, a forty year Las Vegas residency awaits!)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Look fast for a great unintentionally comic shot in the ultimate battle when the Devil takes the upper hand against Crowe till young assistant priest Daniel Zovatto (quite good BTW) makes an underhand lateral pass of the weaponized Holy Cross.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Lots of EXORCIST product at the moment.  In addition to these Crowe films, Universal spent a mint to acquire the official EXORCIST franchise only to come up short on THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER/’23 (also not seen here), commerically a relative under-performer (even worse critically) that put the entire series at risk.  Oddly, its budget-to-gross ratio (about one to four) right in line with this smaller film.

AN AMERICAN ROMANCE (1944)

Present at creation (1923 - ‘24) as Goldwyn, Metro & Mayer confusingly merged into M-G-M, director King Vidor ‘made’ the company when THE BIG PARADE/’25 became the top-grossing pic of the silent era.*  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-big-parade-1925.html)  For a while, it gave him unusual artistic latitude at the studio, just not enough to complete his dream project of following up that WAR classic with big films on WHEAT and STEEL.  WHEAT wound up as a self-financed low-budget indie: OUR DAILY BREAD/’34  -  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/11/our-daily-bread-1933.html), then twenty years after PARADE, finally tackling STEEL here, ending Vidor’s M-G-M career not with a bang but a whimper.  The studio getting cold feet on his 1910 to WWII industrial pageant.  Envisioned for Spencer Tracy & Ingrid Bergman, Vidor settled for Brian Donlevy & Ann Richards as ambitious immigrant/builder & helpmate/teacher/Mom.  Worse, thirty minutes were ineptly cut after early trade & premiere showings.  (Note some abrupt music cue cut-offs.  Does the full 2'31" edit still exist?)  Vidor never worked for M-G-M again.  Even sadder, it’s not very good.  Certainly no match for the first two in the trilogy.  Naiveté of characters & concept less problematic than clichéd dramatic incidents, charmless perfs and an ungainly mix of stylized studio exteriors rubbing against spiffy documentary inserts on early industrial work practices.  (A long sequence covering steel production terrifyingly good; and in crazy ‘40s TechniColor.  It overshadows all the homey drama.  A poor showing by studio, actors, script and director.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: When Donlevy becomes a citizen, listen closely to the text in the Pledge of Allegiance.  ‘Under God’ not there.  Added on by Eisenhower as a sop to coddle the Commie Witch Hunt crowd in the 1950s.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *D.W. Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION/’15 may have been seen by more people than BIG PARADE, but as it was sold via State’s Rights contracts (L. B. Mayer had most of New England) actual numbers/equivalent grosses impossible to know.

THE PROMISED LAND / BASTARDEN (2023)

Superb fact-inspired historical, this award-winner is something of a Danish Western set in the unarable Jutland, a hard-luck territory where dreams of crop & settlers go to die.  Yet it’s the very place Ludvig Kahlen, a proud but impoverished military vet, swears to cultivate after he opens a tiny crack into Royal Danish aristocracy and receives the King’s commission to develop.  Plagued by few funds, poor soil and dicey weather, Kahlen also must cope with local hostility as titled landowners want him out; none more so than Frederik De Schinkel, a vicious sociopath actively plotting to destroy him, seize the land and force his German laborers home.  He’d already done it to the nomadic outlaws working there illegally.  It sounds like a worthy history lesson, a drab period slog, but it sure doesn’t play that way thanks to liberal borrowings from land-obsessed tales running from GONE WITH THE WIND/’39 to ROB ROY/’95, brought into play from Ida Jessen’s incident-packed adapted novel.  Stunningly produced (Nikolaj Arcel directs*), the film is less old-fashioned than old-school, with something of the heft, gravitas, tone & forward momentum of films made in the ‘70s by Jan Troell & Max von Sydow, though with more of a commercial flavor.  Note the use of smart narrative ellipses to bring it in at a lean 2'.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/utvandrarna-emigrants-1971-nybyggarna.html),  The exceptional cast has Mads Mikkelsen, hidebound & heroic, taming land, lord & ladies,  and deserving all the awards he won as the unbendable visionary forced to bend to survive.  With particular kudos to Simon Bennebjerg’s sociopath aristo and to Melina Hagberg* as a baby bandit, an unclaimed ‘Roma,’ at the time called ‘Tater’ which oddly isn’t short for potato in spite of that vegetable being Mikkelsen’s secret weapon.

ATTENTION MUST B PAID:  *There’s an almost magical match between the young Melina Hagberg and Laura Bilgrau Eskild-Jensen who takes on the role at fifteen in the film’s last act.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *In every way an improvement on the (already good) previous Nikolaj Arcel/Mads Mikkelsen collaboration. A ROYAL AFFAIR/’12.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/09/en-kongelig-affaere-royal-affair-2012.html

PROMARE / PUROMEA (2019)

Thirty years after teams of techno-firefighters saved the world from flame and explosion, the fires are starting up again.  This time blame falls on the ethnic ‘Burnish.’  (Whoever the hell they are.)  But what if anti-terrorism laws being used against The Burnish are targeting victims rather than perpetrators?  If so, who are the real agents of destruction?  Is a government cabal calling the shots behind the bomb throwing tanks and fire-spewing flying battleships?  Or have I got the story wrong?  Honestly, kinda hard to tell amid the nonstop combustible ordinance in Hiroyuki Imaishi’s ultra-kinetic anime.  Not that it matters much during the first half of the pic where violence in a pastel palette is inventive enough to carry you thru; along with the motley mix of young action-firefighters led by hunky Galo and sleek Lio.  There’s even a mouth-to-mouth Kiss of Life climax for these two.  (The longest homoerotic smooch in non-porn anime history.)  Elsewise, no sexual tension between anyone on this crew of diverse action heroes.  All too busy screaming orders and rebel yells to stop for romantic complications.  And for about half the film’s running time, this proves more than enough as cool design elements (in background & character) and a digital execution with a hand-drawn æsthetic carries you along.  Just too much of it.  By the second half it hits like a noisy video game with an arena rock soundtrack you’ve spent enough time playing.  Though not I suspect, the target audience.  Though even they may get a bit tired of all the explanatory verbiage.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Hey!  Japanese pizza makers, put a little cheese on that pie!

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944)*

Allegedly, this play about a pair of kindly, old aunties who turn out to be ‘benevolent’ Angels of Death is a prime example of a tiny subset of works submitted as ‘straight’ drama only to be revised into riotous hit comedies before reaching the stage.  (Nöel Coward upon hearing laughs for a serious play, ‘My dear, if they laugh it’s a comedy.’)  Other examples include CHICAGO and 20th CENTURY (both transformed by Ben Hecht) and, from the world of film, CAT BALLOU.  However it came about, it makes an unlikely vehicle for Frank Capra (at Warners who’d already bought the rights) looking to make some quick cash before joining the military.  And while the film gets its laughs, it’s a shockingly coarse piece of work, with Capra regressing to the slam-bang comic tone familiar from many B’way comedy transfers at Warners by journeyman directors like Lloyd Bacon & Archie Mayo.*  Cary Grant (in what he claimed his least favorite perf) is all double-takes & broad reactions as the just married nephew terrified by what he finds at his Aunts’ house and what genes he may have inherited.  (Movie censors removed the play’s biggest laugh line when Grant’s character crows with relief ‘I’m a Bastard!’)  As bad guys on the run, Raymond Massey (making like Boris Karloff) & Peter Lorre manage to work against the relentless pace and there’s Capra’s good-luck charm, James Gleason to sort everything out with a third act appearance.  But the show’s famous curtain call that had all the unseen victims march up the cellar stairs to take a bow got lost when Capra was abruptly called up ‘for the duration.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Filmed in late 1941; copyright date 1942; special military release 1943; General Public release 1944.  Got that? 

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  The play, oft revived on tv & in amateur stagings, has dated, but you can still get a sense of how it once worked in Brooks Atkinson’s original rave review.  https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/01/11/85446379.html?pageNumber=13

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Probably the best of these stage comedy adaptations at Warners was THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER/’41, directed by William Keighley with winning turns in expanded supporting roles by Bette Davis & Ann Sheridan.

THE WAILING / GOKSEONG (2016)

Now 50, South Korean director Na Hong-jin’s most recent film (it’s only his third feature), comes with something of an identity crisis.  An award-winning local hit, it’s one of those films that seems as surprised by its own constantly changing tone as we are.  (It’s an old directing trick to not let your cast in on where the story’s headed, quite another to not let the writers know!)  At first, this plays as a slightly off-kilter serial murder investigation, with an oddly large police force for a small rural area in the mountains.  Our lead is heavyset Kwak Do-won, family-man/detective, always late to the crime scene from quality time at home with wife & adorable daughter.  And not much of a help when he does get there.  But the slightly comic tone doesn’t last long as a series of seismic shocks turn action to an even darker place when a possible killer is identified: A Man from Japan, not exactly a tourist and perhaps not exactly a man.  A ghost?  The Devil?  An Un-Dead?  Maybe he’s on the hunt for another possible culprit, a mysterious lady who takes possession of the detective’s daughter.  Next thing you know, it’s full bore Korean Exorcism to save the girl.  Or at least get rid of that scary looking rash her doctor can’t explain.  (Neither can the film.)  By the third act, we’ve morphed into something more like a Walking Dead off-shoot than detective case, and with too many half measures taken trying to find what might end all the creepy mysteries.  Na Hong-jin keeps us watching, especially with that shaman act, a bloody abattoir of mysticism (many a flying chicken head!), but the film is unsatisfying, 

DOUBLE-BILL:  Not seen here, but Na Hong-jin’s first feature, THE CHASER/’08, about a disgraced cop and a missing prostitute, sounds a lot more focused.

BYE BYE GERMANY / ES WAR EINMAL IN DEUTSCHLAND . . . (2017)

A little fact and a lot of fancy went into this post-WWII tale of commerce & revenge as a lively group of Jewish Holocaust survivors (all middle-aged males) grab control of the Black Market linen trade in hopes of making enough cash to leave Germany for America.  Co-writer/director Sam Garbarski locates the ‘can-do’ spirit, toughness & grim humor that helped these men survive the camps to replace the usual mournful tone and defeatist vibe.  No baleful cellos or whimsical Kletzmer band forced onto the soundtrack.  Moritz Bleibtreu is David Bermann, the only survivor of his family’s fine linen business, now in need of partners as his camp record shows he’d been a somewhat favored prisoner, possibly a collaborator.  So while his gang hits the streets to roust up customers with ‘special deals,’ he’s stuck defending his actions to German/American Special Agent Antje Traue, a woman who finds his story implausible.  Concentration Camp jester to Nazi officers?  Hand-picked to ‘teach’ Hitler how to deliver jokes as well as Mussolini?  It’s audacious stuff.  Well cast and very well produced.  If only the actually writing were better and didn’t drift away from uncomfortable period attitudes.  An important piece of misinformation doesn’t convince and the relationship between the female interrogator and her male suspect feels overextended, used to provide convenient structure and easy sexual interest.  A pity when the film is so original (even brave) in taking on its tricky idea.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Where’s Billy Wilder when you need him?  He actually worked as a Special Agent clearing ex-Nazis for work permits around this time and heard many a German express ignorance of any atrocities, once giving approval and work papers to the man who was to play Jesus as a member of the famous Oberammergau Passion Play.  ‘But be sure to use real nails in the Crucifixion’ he claims to have said.  The film he made about this period, A FOREIGN AFFAIR/’48, may be Wilder's least known masterpiece.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-foreign-affair-1948.html

REDUCING (1931)

In 1930, after years of professional purgatory (and worse), comic battleaxe Marie Dressler reemerged complete with her scene stealing support on Greta Garbo’s Talkie debut in Eugene O’Neill’s ANNA CHRISTIE, followed by a largely dramatic Oscar®-winner, MIN AND BILL.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/12/min-and-bill-1930.html)  Careworn, built like a long-retired fullback, glamor-free, she immediately became Hollywood’s top star till her death in 1934.  REDUCING, one of three bread-and-butter slapsticks she made with Polly Moran, a lesser talent who’d revert to minor support post-Dressler, the duo precursors to Lucille Ball & Vivian Vance or THE HONEYMOONERS’ Audrey Meadows/Joyce Randolph.  (The later, much like Dressler at her best, tinged with tragic undertones.)  In this one, Moran runs a busy NYC beauty salon/reducing spa and invites impoverished older sister Dressler (and family) to move from MidWest to Manhattan.  Shenanigans at the store and competition between Moran’s engaged daughter & Marie’s girl has Charles Reisner megging at a reasonable pace for 1931 M-G-M.  Yet the film only comes fully to life in the prologue and third act when Moran is off screen and Dressler can get down to business.  While hardly an actress in any traditional sense, not even a personality actress, Dressler had a genius for audience empathy, turning on emotional responses from a crowd as easily (and abruptly) as you might turn on a light switch.  And watch her work her own flesh (others’ too!) to get her point across thru physical contact.  Her own private ‘Delsarte Method’ of acting, picked up off the Vaudeville stage.* 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Fanny Brice, no doubt, learned this technique in much the same way and can be seen doing similar fleshly pawing in her few film appearances.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  More of this pair in PROSPERITY/’32.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/prosperity-1932.html

BLADE (1998)

BLADE, the half-vampire comic-book anti-hero set for a 2025 reboot as part of the MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE, is apparently having teething pains after the latest director ankled.  Twenty-six years back, it might not have mattered if kinetic, but faceless director Stephen Norrington walked off* as scripter David S. Goyer (who’d helm the third in the series - not seen here) and the commanding presence of Wesley Snipes’ Blade already fully run tone & storyline.  With hardly a bit of outside action, it’s all infra-dig vampire counterculture, Snipes is perfectly cast in what boils down to a drug addiction allegory (demi-vampire Blade tries to ‘kick’ his human blood habit with a methadone-like serum) while the living-dead underworld hierarchy wage internal (or is it interminable?)  battle.   Stephen Dorff is bad & buff as a mad-for-power impure vampire; Kris Kristofferson has a rare good post-leading man role as a serum researcher; but N'Bushe Wright is a complete bust, chemistry-free as doctor/love-interest.  For a while, cool gross-out effects (an intriguing mix of digital & practical) keep you involved, but before long Goyer’s brutish atmosphere (familiar from the Chris Nolan BATMAN films) and Hobbesian outlook wear you down.  So when the climax comes ‘round and Blade is trapped in a sort of Iron Maiden for blood extraction, it’s no more suspenseful or exciting then waiting for a Panini Press to time out.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *With a rep for being ‘difficult,’ director Stephen Norrington’s career never recovered after his fourth film, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN/’03 tanked.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen.html

WILDLIFE (2018)

Though reasonably prolific and a Pulitzer Prize winner, acclaimed novelist Richard Ford had never been adapted for film (or any dramatic medium?) till this 2018 film from actor Paul Dano.  And, in one fell swoop, his well observed directing debut (written with actress/wife Zoe Kazan*) lets us know exactly why.  Ford touches all the bases of ‘50s/’60s dysfunctional family drama, but stays clear of the third rail, offering only a reasonable facsimile of the real thing.  It’s 1960 Montana and new to town couple Carey Mulligan & Jake Gyllenhaal, along with 13-yr-old son Ed Oxenbould, can’t pick up the local cues.  Fired for little cause from his golf club job, prideful Gyllenhaal joins a firefighting brigade that takes him away till first snow; Mulligan drifts into modest jobs, immodest drinking, emotional detachment and a creepy affair with an older married businessman.  While Oxenbould, quite good here, is stuck in the middle, hoping for Dad’s return, horrified at Mom’s physical & moral dissipation and barely hanging on at school.  Just the sort of slowburn melodrama Nick Ray, Elia Kazan or Doug Sirk would turn the heat up on, or that Todd Haynes might rethink thru a modern prism on the past.  Dano’s response (or is it Ford’s?) is to becalm troubled surfaces, but let them bubble up overnight.  No-knead melodrama.  Not an uninteresting idea that!  But you'd need a lot more control of pace & acting to make it work.  Is Mulligan meant to be so unsympathetic?  Does Gyllenhaal’s hair-trigger temper and immaturity pre-date marriage/fatherhood?  And what to make of Oxenbould’s complete lack of resemblance to either parent.  A spiritual adoption?  Kudos to cinematographer  Diego García and whomever did location scouting (a townscape shot with a train barrelling thru out back; best five seconds in the pic).  Dano hasn’t tried to direct again (the film hardly got past the fest circuit), but he should.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See Kazan’s Grandpa Elia handle ths sort of thing in EAST OF EDEN/’55.*  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/east-of-eden-1955.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *It’d be fun (and instructive) to see/hear WILDLIFE refitted with the sort of wildly out of fashion big chromatic score Leonard Rosenman wrote for EAST OF EDEN.

WHISKY GALORE (1949)

Most studios would be happy to produce one good comedy a year; especially one that defined its era and provoked honest laughs over decades.  Yet, in 1949, little Ealing Studios had three.*  One of them was this debut pic for the criminally underutilized American-born/Scottish-reared director Alexander Mackendrick which happily riffs off a camera-ready true story already developed in Compton MacKenzie's novel about locals during WWII in a whisky starved island near the Scottish Hebrides who illegally salvage a shipwreck loaded with crates of high quality booze in a race against British authorities.   It's Dunkirk for spirits!  Easy to imagine a coarsened Hollywood version of this.  Instead, it has the feel of something real rather than being forced into prefab formulas.  Human nature over cheap laughs & drunkenness.  With a plus-perfect cast and dazzling on-location cinematography from Gerald Gibbs, Mackendrick, only recently out of advertisement shorts & documentaries, makes the sort of Ealing comedy John Grierson, Scottish ‘father’ of U.K.'s documentary movement, might have made.  Right down to the political gloss that shimmered over nearly all the films Mackendrick made before a couple of Hollywood misses sent him off to academia.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Complete the trio of classic 1949 Ealing comedy with PASSPORT TO PIMLICO  and KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/passport-to-pimlico-1949.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/kind-hearts-and-coronets-1949.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Some gags, especially the purely visual ones, so sly they only kick in late.  Look for one in the intro on how little entertainment is available on the island.  (It flew completely over the heads of American censors.)

DECISION BEFORE DAWN (1951)

By the late ‘40s/early ‘50s, Hollywood was increasingly adding nuance to characterizations of WWII German soldiers.  No longer all Nazi monsters, all the time.  And who better than soft-spoken, handsomely charismatic Oskar Werner to bring such characters to life.  Here, earning extra neutrality points as noncombatant Field Medic.  Nevertheless, even though it’s deftly directed by Anatole Litvak, who must have fought for this rugged battlefield assignment far from his regular fare, and outstandingly shot, heavy on the chiaroscuro, by Franz Planer, the film’s most important element is neither story nor character, but location, location, location.  All taken on still standing real German ruins and even more impressively from grand 19th century interiors and 18th century churches repurposed by German and American military forces as base operations offices as the war was coming to its close.  Werner’s only just been captured by Richard Basehart’s First Lt. when he’s put forward as a candidate to play insider spy, reporting to Col. Gary Merrill on upcoming German troop movements during the March to Berlin endgame.  But is this newly fledged ‘traitor’ willing to play patriot for a post-war Europe or is he a risk not worth taking.  Nicely plotted by Peter Viertel (from George Howe’s novel CALL IT TREASON), the film has an honest manner of featuring prominent supporting players who often as not don’t turn up again & again in the usual melodramatic style.  And Litvak grabs this opportunity, keeping away from expected contract players and casting a lot of fresh faces new to Stateside screens.  (Look fast for a young Klaus Kinsky as an early volunteer washout, and Hildegard Knef, at the time being pushed for English-language stardom.)  The last act tidies everything up in conventional fashion, but also features muscular warfare action you didn’t know Litvak had in him.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Litvak may have been equally surprised.  Or perhaps, after putting together some of the better documentaries in the WHY WE FIGHT WWII propaganda series, hoped to demonstrate what he’d learned.

LE PETIT SOLDAT / THE LITTLE SOLDIER (1963)

This is the ‘lost’ film Jean-Luc Godard made during his early run (BREATHLESS/’60 thru WEEKEND/’67), before he started to mistrust not the medium, as some would have it, but the cinematic gifts that came too easily to him.  The release year is misleading as this was made as the emulsion was still drying on BREATHLESS, then put on hold as a political hot potato while the French/Algerian War wound down.  By the time it came out, many topical issues were moot and few cared about the content.  Worse, few seemed to care about Godard’s Nouveau Vague stylistics.  Remembered now largely as being the film where Anna Karina met Jean-Luc (they soon married), she’s the mysterious beauty involved in Algerian political struggles who falls into bed with Michel Subor’s French deserter, living illegally in Geneva and trying to remove his stain by working to assassinate an anti-French operative.  Or is he a counter-spy?  Terrorist or counter-terrorist?  Or only dong this to get himself (and new love Karina) out of Europe and off to Rio?  Lack of clarity/motivation troublesome.  So too Godard’s ‘whip pan’ editing, torture sequences and copious car chases, all proving no substitute for the film's real problem, lack of the BREATHLESS Cool.  The rule breaking already coming off as merely reflexive.  And toward the end, when Subor directly address us thru the lens, Godard seems to have lost the film before the public did.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The best gag shot in the pic makes it briefly look as if Hitler is handling the assassination.  Indeed, THE RELUCTANT ASSASSIN or THE INCOMPETENT ASSASSIN might have made a better title.

 WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Looking for unknown, but top-draw Godard?  Check out his stunning little segment in the portmanteau pic THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL SWINDLERS/’64.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/les-plus-belles-escroqueries-du-monde.html

LE TABLEAU / THE PAINTING (2011)

Fittingly, that most painterly of French animators, Jean-François Laguionie, has a film about a painting.  Specifically, the goings-on among the ‘living’ figures on an unfinished canvas.  And what a busy, interesting, beautiful surface it is.  And if Laguionie misses a few opportunities (some more important than others), he’s turned out a remarkably beautiful object.  Using a mostly Fauvist palette (think Derain, Bonnard, and presumably that's Auguste Renoir making a guest appearance at the end), our main interlocutor is young, mischievous Lola, who introduces the characters moving within the picture frame, all living under a strict caste system keyed to their level of completion before the artist stepped away from his work.  Will he ever come back?  The figures who are completed, finished in form & color, lord it over the yet to be colored ‘Halfies’ and the lowly ‘Sketchies,’ mere line drawings of indeterminate status.  Naturally, there’s a love story crossing caste lines; a chase to stop a mixed band of runaways seeking equality; a daring jump out of frame (literally) to freedom.  (Faith in an unknown painting?)  With many an adventure, many a discovery, close calls in Brave New Picture Frame Worlds, and an attempt to find the painter and see if he ever intends to return and finish up.  Lots of philosophy mixed in (rather like GROUNDHOG DAY in some ways; free will anyone?  (Great for an imaginative kid, assuming a nude woman in the traditional reclining position is okay.)  Eventually, paint is discovered by the unfinished, but this soon gives way to riots of overindulgence.  You know, playing tennis without a net, rules, regulations or lines.  This idea needs a lot more development to gain the moral complexity it deserves.   Perhaps Laguionie was running out of time & money.  For once, a sequel would be an excellent idea.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Wonder how a CGI animation would handle a film all about paint on canvas.  Here, in a hand-drawn feature, it’s a natural.

FLYING DOWN TO RIO (1933)

This pioneering ‘Second Wave’ musical (the post-Early Talkie musical revival that got going in ‘33) is largely (and rightly) remembered as being a sort of ‘soft opening’ for Hollywood’s GOAT dance team, Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers.  (We ought to say Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire as she’s billed fourth and he’s billed a lowly fifth.)  Plotwise, it’s nonsense, of course, with blonde band leader Gene Raymond (and band) following girl-of-his-dreams Dolores Del Rio down to Rio where she's already engaged to wealthy Raul Roulien.  Unaware of their mutual pash, Raymond & Roulien already long time pals.  (And the way Roulien gives Raymond the eye when he drops his towel hardly clears things up!)  So much for our story.  What’s important is that when Gene goes a’wooing, Fred takes over the band . . . and the pic.  Though hardly a big part, someone knew to give Fred & Ginger the final shot.  No one could miss seeing how Fred comes on fully formed.  And not only in song & dance.  Sheer charm, knowing how to get real laughs out of what passes for witty dialogue, in tender plays for Ginger’s attention, and when these two lock foreheads as part of the film’s big ‘Numbo,’* in Vincent Youmans’ best tune, ‘Carioca,’ it’s like having a master do close magic right at your table.  Remarkably, this big production number, touching on Brazil’s multi-racial culture, even if segregated for Stateside consumption, and presumably not handled by journeyman director Thornton Freedman, but by dance director Dave Gould (?), is as good as any in the whole series.  Essential stuff.  And over the next four or five outings, they’d only get better.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Critical choice for series peak split between Mark Sandrich/Irving Berlin’s faultless TOP HAT/’35 (the third release) and #5 SWING TIME/’36 from George Stevens/Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields.     https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/swing-time-1936.html

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  Arlene Croce’s THE FRED ASTAIRE & GINGER ROGERS BOOK that rarest of items, a great book of criticism on dance & Hollywood cultural history.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The official big Numbo is the title tune with all those process shots (good ones!) of chorines in the sky, dancing up a storm on airplane wings.

I AM MICHAEL (2015)

Generally well-made, largely unsatisfying ‘true story’ (and pretty true for a change) about a San Fran based gay activist/writer who reluctantly moves to Olympia, WA with the boyfriend, has a medical crisis, finds God, goes straight.  Yet, as played by James Franco, remains closeted, a closeted narcissist.  (So, great casting, no?)  Living as a ‘throuple’ with Zachary Quinto & Charlie Carver, he converts his personal blog into a magazine for queer youth, but unsettled personal issues, especially with his deceased parents, leave him playing ‘is that all there is’ mental games and seeking spiritual landing with a str8 persona to fit his new idea of himself.  If only he could find a Junior Miss to arouse him.   Perhaps if this weren’t director Justin Kelly’s debut, he’d have seen how much the film needed the sort of explicit sex long common in European films to make sense of just what sexual conversion does for (or is it 'to') the straight married pastor Franco’s character is willing himself into being.  Instead, at film’s end, we’re left thinking what this tortured soul really needs is a living parent to come out to (and be accepted by), a decent psychiatrist and a gay priest.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Ironically, after a couple of decades of manic over-activity, some sort of sex scandal (heterosexual student/teacher misalliances?) has kept Franco in (self) exile, off the screen for the last five years.  He’s due back later this year. 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Note how they build up Franco’s near 6' frame with layers of shirts & bulky sweaters when he reboots as a str8 married preacher with confidence pumping wife Emma Roberts.  And shooting him to bring out a faint, but noticeable resemblance to Rock Hudson.  Too obvious to be inadvertent, it’s the one amusing touch in the whole pic.

RED SALUTE (1935)

Tossed-off opposites-attract number might just as well been tossed in the circular file.  The reissue title (see poster) gives the game up as yet one more IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT/’34 wannabe.*  Nothing wrong there, and swapping out class conflict (heiress meets working stiff) for left/right politics (rebellious General’s daughter in sympathy & engaged to a Commie provocateur* winds on the lam with a patriotic soldier boy; see, they're both on the run because . . . oh, heck, who cares) could have worked.  Clever producer Edward Small, who had a knack for spinning big films out of little budgets (THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO/’34), came up with real stars (Barbara Stanwyck, smirking her way thru the worst perf of her career; Robert Young, charmless as a tough egg gone AWOL), but second tier support (crucial in a rom-com) other than Cliff Edwards (that’s Jiminy Cricket to you) pleasantly warbling ‘I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now.’ ), but a brutally unfunny/sexist script and journeyman director Sidney Lanfield barely participating.  Sad to see Stanwyck going thru the motions (whatever possessed her agent?) and pathetic to see Young’s supposed defense of traditional values reduced to, 'Well, I grew up believing in the flag' and so forth.  Then solving all the problems with a big donnybrook at a ‘Red’ Rally where the former fiancé is exposed not for any ideas but for being in the county illegally.  Only subfusc prints seem available, but hard to care much.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Assuming you haven’t seen it, Frank Capra’s IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT/’34, which must be one of the most influential films ever made, has aged gracefully, still delights.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Yet when this radical gets invited to dinner at the General’s home, he’s shows up in black tie.  Really turned out, too, check out the stylish collar.

HIT MAN (2023)

Little question Glen Powell is having something of a moment right now.  After stealing all his scenes as a studly hotshot flyboy in TOP GUN: MAVERICK/’22, he’s now being credited with saving the traditional big screen rom-com in ANYONE BUT YOU/’23 (hands please if you bailed at the meet-cute) and now this decidedly better, off-kilter rom-com.  With its reality suggested plot (emphasis on ‘suggested’), it takes writer/director Richard Linklater back in tone & technique to BERNIE (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/02/bernie-2011.html) and also, like BERNIE (and too many Linklater films), starts to feel a bit thin.  Something I think Linklater is aware of.  Here, inventing an extra plotline untethered to actuality, veering disastrously dark (which is fine) and insultingly cynical (which ain’t).  Like sentimentality & tears, cynicism can also be unearned.  Powell, embracing his inner John Ritter*, is a New Orleans University prof. (deglammed with flattened hair given a matte finish) who finds an outlet for his recessive wild side jobbing with the local police as an undercover aide who poses as hit man for hire to various putative clients.  (Watch for the scene stealing ‘Retta’ as a police partner.)  Naturally, this being a rom-com at heart, Powell falls for one of his targets (Adria Arjona - more femme fatale than screwball mate*), convinces her not to go thru with the hit, then sees complications spin out of control.  Something of a disappointment then.  But with no more than a token theatrical release, it’s tough to know what kind of theatrical pull Powell is generating.  Especially since his next big ticket item, TWISTERS/’24, is hardly actor driven.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Not tv’s THREE’S COMPANY John Ritter, but the slyly gifted actor Blake Edwards & Peter Bogdanovich saw in him.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *More like Screwy Editing of the Day.  Powell/Arjona's meet-cute very oddly edited (both rhythm & angles; why the overhead shot?), especially as it begs to be played in a one-take/two-shot.  Makes you wonder if the actors couldn’t pull it off.

THREE / SAN REN XING (2016)

Fans of Hong Kong director Johnnie To were less enthusiastic than usual on this violent/gory actioner.  And To’s next, CHASING DREAMS/’19 (not seen here) had a similar response.   (Is To slowing down as he nears 70?)  Best known Stateside for the intricately plotted gangland saga ELECTION, here To hardly bothers with plot and concentrates on situation.  Personal details and backstory barely touched on, so focus shifts from emotional involvement to kinetic technique which proves not too troublesome on such a short film.  (Sans end credits it’s only about 80 minutes.)  THREE presumably refers to our principals: Louis Koo’s Chief Inspector, Wei Zhao’s dedicated neurosurgeon, and Wallace Chung’s wild-card drama queen gangster.  (Chung stealing the pic.)  We’re inside an ultra-modern hospital the whole way as Chung is brought in after a shootout leaves him with a bullet in the brain.  He’s in pretty good condition, considering!, but that bullet has to come out before it moves or starts disintegrating.  Chung does what he can to put off any medical procedure, especially one that knocks him out with anaesthetic, till his gang has a chance to get him out of there.  Inspector Koo wants to bring him in as soon as he can (he also has the place hopping with plainclothes & uniformed police).  While Doctor Zhao insists on saving the guy with a delicate operation.  Lots of red herrings in neighboring hospital beds (all entertaining loonies) and boasting a cool, antiseptic production æsthetic.  But To’s eye is already on the final set piece when gangsters, cops and patients converge in a kinetically balletic/ballistic mega-battle.  Kinda gross, kinda exhilarating, kinda hilarious.  A full-reel finale of violence, bloodshed, and a kind of cartoonish Peckinpah grace To must have been hoping to achieve.  Empty calories?  Sure, but tasty.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, ELECTION/’05.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/09/hak-se-wui-election-2005.html

MORNING GLORY (1933)

Katharine Hepburn’s Hollywood honeymoon peaked on this backstager, her third film (and first Oscar®), with LITTLE WOMEN as chaser.*  The two hits neatly defining her range at the time, yet leading to seven miscast flops (only ALICE ADAMS/’35 broke this disastrous run) and a new rep as box-office poison.  Hard to imagine now, but not even three consecutive classics (STAGE DOOR/'37; BRINGING UP BABY/'38; HOLIDAY/'38) could undo the damage.  Instead, two years off-screen and a huge B’way hit (THE PHILADELPHIA STORY) needed to reboot the career.  All of which seems to have left this charmingly naive piece (from an unproduced Zoe Akins play) more spoken of than seen.  A shame, as she’s not only very good in a part that’s tough to pull off (the naïf waif whose uncompromising dreams of stage success and chatterbox mouth set your teeth on edge yet equally make her believably endearing, especially to aged stage pro C. Aubrey Smith, philandering producer Adolphe Menjou, and sophisticated, but remarkably nice, playwright Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), but touch closely on her own hardheadedness, nervy determination,  enchanting looks and willingness to be as embarrassing as her character is.  (She’s also superbly lit by cinematographer Bert Glennon.)  Well directed by dipsomaniac actor Lowell Sherman (who’d beat brother-in-law John Barrymore by drinking himself to death in a year), it feels all of a piece, far better than the 1958 remake STAGE STRUCK/’58 which looks great on paper (Sidney Lumet directing Henry Fonda, Christopher Plummer, Joan Greenwood, Herbert Marshal and, oh dear, Susan Strasberg.), but dies on screen.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *The excellence of recent adaptations of LITTLE WOMEN (1994; 2019) has left the awkward beauty of George Cukor’s 1933 film, with Hepburn at her finest, somewhat in the shade.  Just avoid the high gloss TechniColored M-G-M version of 1949.

MELODY CRUISE (1933)

After flooding the market with stillborn Early Talkie musicals, Hollywood abruptly turned off the spigot for a couple of years before rebooting the genre with smoother sound technology and freer cameras in 1933.  Or so goes accepted film history.  As usual, the actual story far more complicated.  Just look at Paramount where Ernst Lubitsch’s gossamer operettas and Rouben Mamoulian’s artistically integrated LOVE ME TONIGHT/’32 had already figured things out.  Nonetheless, there’s some truth to the timeline as 1933 saw two major advances: dance director Busby Berkeley moved from stagebound work at Goldwyn to the singular insanity of his Depression Era spectacles at Warners (first up 42ND STREET/’33); and over at R.K.O., Mark Sandrich, in this debut feature, likely didn’t know he was paving the way for Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers to take flight when he put this crew together.  The group that, sans Sandrich, made FLYING DOWN TO RIO* (Fred & Ginger in support) later this year; then with Sandrich back as director, Fred & Ginger top-billed in next year’s THE GAY DIVORCEE.  CRUISE a first step you might not spot since it has the unenviable task of making a film star out of unphotographable Phil Harris, currently heard but not seen on Jack Benny’s radio show.  Sandrich plays along, lifting a traveling song number, shared from character to character a la Mamoulian (alas, Mamoulian had Rodgers & Hart’s ‘Isn’t It Romantic,’ Sandrich gets ‘He’s Not the Marrying Kind.’); grabbing the optical printer for life support with pointlessly elaborate geometric ‘wipes;’ letting top-billed Charles Ruggles ham it up trying to convince his wife those girls in his cabin were only taking a nap.  It’s that sort of movie.  Still, quite a learning curve for Sandrich as only a year separates this from the perfection of TOP HAT/’35.  Or does credit for that one rightly belong to Astaire & Irving Berlin?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  With so little going on, no wonder the poster is such a busy mess.

PICKPOCKET (1959)

Before French filmmaker Robert Bresson became a scold, as if he were too pure for the medium, there was a brief series of all but untouchable masterpieces, this reimagining of Doestoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT last of the three.  (Bresson’s later films also very great, but largely for the cinematic hairshirt/self-flagellation crowd.)  Raskolnikov is now Michel (Martin La Salle*), again a poor student/author manque who believes he’s above the rules of society, but here Bresson swaps out murder for theft as ‘crime.’  Something even a French Catholic intellectual (or the simple honest girl who hopes to reform him) would likely have less trouble forgiving.  This change in criminal magnitude ought to lower the conflict to misdemeanor level (mais non?), yet it doesn’t.  Instead, Bresson’s emotional austerity and technical severity raises stakes on every action/reaction in the film’s 76 compressed minutes of faultless, intensely emotional moviemaking.  So powerful in affect and effect, entire audiences stay in their seats during the playout music by Louis XIV favorite Jean-Baptiste Lully after the screen goes to black. Great for repeat viewings as Bresson, with agogic editing rhythms and narrative ellipses, plays possum, whipping out his formidable technique only as needed.  The pickpocket setups and execution gasp-worthy.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *As usual with Bresson, cast with non-pros*, though some went on to active acting careers, including lead Martin LaSalle with over 80 credits per IMDb.  And why not when you look like the missing link between Henry Fonda & Montgomery Clift.  (Or do from certain angles.)  Mere coincidence that these two starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s most overtly Catholic films: I CONFESS/’53 and THE WRONG MAN/’56?  The latter one of the few Hollywood films to physically look as if Bresson might have been involved.  (Exec producer?)  And three years before PICKPOCKET.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/03/i-confess-1953.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-wrong-man-1956.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Professional sleight-of-hand artiste Kassagi, definitely not an amateur, plays teacher/mentor to Michel and leader of the pickpocket ring.  He was also technical advisor on the film.  The Criterion edition has a clip of his nightclub act showing him in action as a magician whose apparent trick is really just a setup for an astonishing display of picking pockets, purses and wristwatches.

DIGGSTOWN (1992)

Few could have guessed that the promising, slightly snarky, social & political dramadies Michael Ritchie made in the ‘70s (SMILE; THE CANDIDATE; BAD NEWS BEARS; SEMI-TOUGH) would stand as his high water marks.  A few later titles clicked (Chevy Chase’s FLETCH has its fans), but this people-pleasing flop is the later credit that should have, but didn’t reboot a stalled career.*  With its great cast and neatly-built confidence game structure (the sole quality script from Steven McKay*), it targets small-town/big money boxing with smooth scam artist James Woods (another stalled career) fresh out of jail and finding a likely town of suckers in Diggstown.  Bruce Dern, who owns everything in the county, is the mark; Oliver Platt the ballyhoo sidekick setting the table; and Lou Gossett Jr. the aging, but still formidable knock-out technician brought in to bring down the town’s ten best fighters in a single day.  Though not without ‘90s stylistic gaffes and a racial component (two lynching references) the film’s larky tone can’t support, but the bulk of twists & character reveals is very satisfying.  (Platt & Gossett particular stand-outs.)  And wonder of wonders, pretty Heather Graham, on hand as the kid sister of Woods’ prison-mate, doesn’t fall into bed with Woods or become anyone’s sweetheart.  She’s just there to support the plot.  Imagine that.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Did McKay use THE MUSIC MAN/’62 as template?  Woods, Platt, Dern & Graham in for Robert Preston, Buddy Hackett, Paul Ford & Shirley Jones?  And Gossett?  Oh, he’s the Welles Fargo Wagon.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Ritchie’s got game here, but can’t match Walter Hill’s HARD TIMES/’75 or William Wyler’s THE SHAKEDOWN/’29 when it comes to boxing confidence scams.  Wyler’s film also simply exceptional at pulling off about the neatest trick you’ll see in any boxing film: believable matches done without sound effects, crowd noise or music cues.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/hard-times-1975.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-shakedown-1929.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The film did so unexpectedly poorly, the distributors sent it back out (to no avail) with a new title meant to recall a big confidence game hit: MIDNIGHT STING.

A RUN FOR YOUR MONEY (1949)

With six releases in 1949 (two dramas & four of their signature character comedies, heavy on U.K. flavor & eccentricity*), one film had to be the runt of the litter, and this was it.  A tiresome one-crazy-day farce about two Welsh coal-mining brothers who win a trip to London, £200 and tickets to see their team play a big football match.   Naturally, plans go awry as distractions pile up: missed connections, a lost bowler hat, an alcoholic pal from home with a Celtic Harp in hock, a cute local gal out to fleece the unsophisticated country lads . . . etc.  And if the Ealing creative staff was too talented to completely miss, the situations & even the acting are needlessly gauche even with Charles Frend megging & Douglas Slocombe as D.P.  Is Moira Lister as the confidence trickster supposed to be quite so unsympathetic?  Is Hugh Griffith’s tagalong drunk meant to be so annoying?  Only Alec Guinness, working under his own fast-receding hair, got lucky with the writing.  He has almost nothing to do as a reporter whose subjects go missing.  Finally, near the end, a bit of song (with harp accompaniment) clears up the whole mess.  And since no one sings as naturally as a Welshman, it helps.  But too little, too late.  Even in their prime, Ealing Studios couldn’t bat past 750.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Two delightful comedies of place & character (PASSPORT TO PIMLICO; WHISKY GALORE) and one toweringly subversive masterpiece (KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS) in a single year, nothing to sneeze at.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/passport-to-pimlico-1949.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/kind-hearts-and-coronets-1949.html

FIVE AND TEN (1931)

Not good, but not without interest.  Marion Davies, mistress of news king W.R. Hearst/model for Susan Kane in CITIZEN KANE, was hitting her mid-30s and, like nearly all silent film stars, feeling the shifting sands of popularity after Early Talkie success.  This was her pivot pic, dramatically challenging beyond her narrow range and first significant flop.  (Her best sound film came next year in BLONDIE OF THE FOLLIES/’32 -  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/blondie-of-follies-1932.html - but slow, steady decline followed.)  Taken from a pre-Depression novel by Fannie Hurst on the Woolworth fortune, Hurst presumably fascinated at the irony of the hoi polloi making a family rich by spending mere nickels & dimes at working class emporiums; a great subject barely broached here.  Leaving solid retail roots in the MidWest, the 'Woolworths' (here called the Raricks) buy a Fifth Avenue mansion, build the world’s tallest skyscraper, and bribe their way into Manhattan society as Richard Bennett’s Dad blindly chases ever grander retail schemes; ignored Mom Irene Rich takes a lover; goony scion Douglass Montgomery sacrifices his dreams to join the firm; and Davies falls hard for smooth Leslie Howard, stealing him from wealthy fiancée Mary Duncan.*  Seems money really can’t buy you happiness!  Though a coda suggests it can buy you a second chance.  Note that by collapsing a generation, Davies plays Poor Little Rich Girl (and future serial bride) Barbara Hutton.  Contradictorily, Davies is more comfortable playing the frolicking first act, yet only looks her best when she loses the rhythm as Hurst’s melodramatic instincts take over.  Too bad, someone could have done something with the plot points, story beats, characters & melodrama.  Wrong cast?  Wrong director?  Wrong studio?  Yep, yep & yep.

READ ALL ABOUT IT?/LINK:  It makes you want to look at the book.  But Hurst has fallen so far out of favor (after four decades of consistent bestsellers) only IMITATION OF LIFE now in print.  (That 1934 film’s Claudette Colbert perfect casting for the Davies role.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/imitation-of-life-1934-1959.html)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Long forgotten, Mary Duncan had just made her mark in last year’s CITY GIRL/’30, a final gasp of silent incandescence from F.W. Murneau.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/05/city-girl-1930.html