MIRACLES FOR SALE (1939)

Best known for Creep-Out/Horror silents with Lon Chaney*; Bela Lugosi’s atmospheric but hopelessly stiff DRACULA/’31; and that sui generis circus-world oddity FREAKS/’32, director Tod Browning proved unwilling to adjust his silent technique to fit modern synch-sound Hollywood.  (Not unable, unwilling.)  Only coming to terms with the inevitable on THE DEVIL-DOLL/’36 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/12/devil-doll-1936.html), his last assignment before a final return three years on for this toss-away M-G-M programmer (not that studio’s strong-suit).  And it’s surprising good fun, a sort of magician’s shaggy dog story about ex-illusionist Robert Young, now a magic act salesman & psychic debunker, trying to help desperate Florence Rice fight off a phony spiritualist (her secret sister) who’s gotten involved in some very real murders.  Continuity and editing still a bit bumpy, and you won’t be able to figure out all the explanations, but the zip of magic tricks added to a nutty police procedural makes for good spritely stuff if you turn off the left side of your brain.  Plus, snazzy lensing in an early outing from the excellent Charles Lawton Jr., later a fave of John Ford, Budd Boetticher & others for decades.  Why Browning never got another shot after this more mysterious than anything in the plot.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Try THE UNKNOWN/’27; or perhaps THE SHOW/’27 which anticipates FREAKS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-unknown-1927-mystic-1925.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-show.html

INTENT TO KILL (1958)

Celebrated British cinematographer Jack Cardiff added a second shingle to his skill set when he directed this dandy hospital thriller.  (Desmond Dickinson D.P.’d)  Jimmy Sangster took a break from Hammer Film monsters to adapt Brian Moore’s novel about a Leftist South American leader (Herbert Lom) undergoing brain surgery incognito in Montreal.  (A running joke has everyone diss Canada: too cold, too dull, too far away from everything.)  Richard Todd & Alexander Knox are the surgeons who drill into Lom’s brain hoping to stop seizures before political rivals take advantage.  But a hired team of assassins, already on to the ruse, plan to make murder look like a natural occurrence.  So, no guns, no poison, no strangulation; instead, a stealth needle loaded with pockets of air ready for injection.  Two wild cards in play: a lack of security at the hospital to maintain Lom’s incognito status; and too much sex among the principals.  Hey, gotta give the women something to do!  Even Betsy Drake*, the one female doctor in the story wants to be involved with Dr. Todd while his wife is openly sleeping around; the dictator’s wife entangled with his chargé d'affaires; and one of the assassins hooking up with a hotel hooker.  All this neatly laid out for us structurally, plus a great bit at the climax that sees Drake & Todd getting all lovey-dovey while seated on the hospital’s emergency staircase unaware they’re blocking one of the assassins from sneaking up to the third floor.  (It’s the Parcheesi Gambit!)  Cardiff would soon peak as director with D.H. Lawrence’s SONS AND LOVERS/’60 before going back largely to superior lensing, but this was an excellent start to his side gig.

DUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Can it be a coincidence?  Betsy Drake, weakest link in the pic, was still married to Cary Grant when this was made, and already Mrs. Grant when he made CRISIS/’50 with Richard Brooks which plays with similar dramatic elements.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/09/crisis-1950.html

OAMENI DE TREABA / MEN OF DEEDS (2022)

From Romanian director Paul Negoescu, a cautionary tale that pivots from countryside corruption & comic incompetence to real casualties; Gogol drollery to Grand Guignol.  Iulian Postelnicu, in an award-winner perf, is the small town chief of police (well, he’s got one assistant) hoping to buy a local orchard with cash raised from a flat he co-owns in Bucharest with his siblings.  But first, the town mayor (who along with the local priest are a formidable tag team of self-interest) needs a favor.  Seems the husband of the prettiest wife in town has met with an ‘accident.’  Worse, that newly hired junior cop has taken it upon himself to investigate before the proper authorities come up with the ‘truth.’   (And BTW: here’s the deed to that orchard you asked about.)  A fine sick joke lets us know the Mayor had, years back, stolen the property from the family that built it up.  In the first half, Negoescu gives this a mordant, yet still comic edge.  But once the junior cop is beaten to within an inch of his life for being honest, all the laughs stick in your throat as backtracking & coverups take over, personal limits of conduct are broached, and the price of doing business in a one boss town turns deadly.  Exceptionally brought off, with clear as a bell staging (often from a little further back than you expect) and no one but one lucky chicken, who opens the film getting bumped out of a truck before deciding to cross the road, none the worse for wear.

ATTENTION MUST B PAID:  No doubt there’s some political allegory going on that will largely escape non-Romanians.  But the film works perfectly well without such knowledge.  (And note how our poster sticks to a comedy angle.)

GODLAND / VANSKABTE LAND (2022)

From Denmark and Iceland, an award-winning historical, severe in character, storyline & execution.*  It’s late-1800s when young, untested Priest Elliot Crosset Hove is assigned to build a church before winter sets in at a small Danish community under development in Iceland.  Writer/director Hlynur Pálmason gives his game away from the start, introducing the priest as the sort who ignores the fine meal his superior has put on the table to unblinkingly stare with the eyes of a zealot as he receives his special commission.  A difficult trip to the site loses a man to wild river currents, while unceasing daylight & strangely unsettling/beautiful terrain uplifts & weighs down on them in equal measure; except for the local guide whose Icelandic tongue keeps him grounded to the land but at a certain distance.  So, it’s a shock to finally reach the not unpleasant homestead community and be welcomed by a widower with two girls in comfortable conditions, then asked why he didn’t just sail directly to port.  Was his journey a test?  Something to do with the photographic equipment he’s been diligently carting with him?  And once there, this chilly addition to the little group turns covetous of accommodations, horses, the farmer’s older daughter; and begatter of distrust (him and the widower; him and the guide; him and his own neglected duties).  The film disquieting and, frankly, dislikable.  It all ends badly with violent secrets leading to murders of man and beast.  I suppose you could call it uncompromising; it’s certainly no ad for Danish Lutherism.  Yikes!  Here looking much like Calvinist denial, dressed up with those finicky white neck collars.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Severe enough to be shot on 35mm stock in ‘Academy Ratio’ (1.33 : 1), particularly helpful in mountainous settings where compositions lean toward the vertical.  And in a film calling for many full-face close-ups, proportionally 1.33 : 1.

SONG OF RUSSIA (1944)

Under pressure from Washington to orchestrate sympathetic views of Soviet Russia, now part of WWII Allied Forces, it wasn’t long before Hollywood had to plead for remorse as post-War Commie Witch Hunts gathered steam and HUAC came a’knockin’.  The usual poster boys for such political flip-floppery?  Sam Goldwyn’s Once Upon a Russian Steppe in THE NORTH STAR/’43 (later reedited as ARMORED ATTACK/’56 with military atrocities turned non-partisan) and Warner Bros.’ quasi-journalistic MISSION TO MOSCOW/’43.  These prestige releases gaining Seven Oscar noms between them.  Yet this justly forgotten  M-G-M effort makes them look Neo-Realistic by comparison.  Celebrity conductor Robert Taylor, waving his arms instead of the flag, making this just before war service, falls for pretty proletarian Jean Peters, busy rattling off Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto when she’s not hitting the tractor back on the farm.  Taylor, instantly smitten, spends the first hour & change touring the wonders of the last 5-Year Plan with her (nightclubs; subways; crop yields - the last two courtesy of badly matched stock footage) before Russian Orthodox marriage & concertizing stopped by that pesky Nazi invasion.  Stay & fight or publicize the cause at Symphony Halls around the world?  Best moment?  Taylor, finding father-in-law at bombed out homestead, covers the corpse with his Burberry overcoat; the ultimate sacrifice.  None of this too surprising if you recall that Taylor was already in line to win the booby prize on these glossy war mellers after rescuing Norma Shearer from a Concentration Camp in ESCAPE/’40.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  You’re only a click away from the HUAC horrors mentioned above.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/mission-to-moscow-1944.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-north-star-1943.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Something of a cursed cast here with all our top-billed players dying young.  Chain-smoking Taylor and his chain-drinking manager Robert Benchley gone at 57 & 56.  While Peter’s dad John Hodiak’s bad heart kept him out of the war, it also killed him, only 41.  Peters saddest of all, paralyzed in a hunting accident, gone at 31.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Least talented of the major studio contract composers, Herbert Stothart was also the most classically inclined to steal from the masters.  So, imagine how he makes hay with a score that openly credits Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky for about 90% of diegetic and background music.  Much is rhythmically altered and faintly embarrassing, but not the women farm workers when they sing a chorus from Eugene Onegin.  Works like a charm.

SPA NIGHT (2016)

Well-intentioned, well-observed, well-received, but modest to a fault debut of writer/director Andrew Ahn.  Semi-autobiographical?  It reeks of a film-school graduation short stretched to meet entry qualifications on the fest-circuit.  A character piece, it follows a Korean family of three, stuck in lives of quiet desperation in L.A. after their Mom & Pop Korean restaurant goes bust.  Mom quickly lands a job at another place, thanks to a Church connection, but Dad’s one-off gigs grow sparse and he starts to drink.  Meanwhile the 18-yr-old son (alter-ego/heart of the film) visits a former church pal, now at USC, for a taste of college life.  Out of his inner-world routine (running & SAT prep), he may be the tallest Korean around (two generations taller than his folks), but he comes up short socially with these immature college habitués.  More important, coming up short at that pricey SAT prep course, he takes a part-time job at a Korean Spa where he zones out doing menial tasks and tries to subdue an interest in the non-Korean gay pickups going on.  All this neatly done, if perhaps missing a bit of needed teen grit, mess & angst.  Along with a lack of resolution that’s meant to ring true, but feels more like avoidance.  Still, interesting for the L.A. Korean Community background and social networking.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Admittedly, not really on point, but for a warm/poignant family drama (elderly father, the well-off son who left home; mentally challenged brother) running a beat up Public Spa in China, Yang Zhang’s XI ZAO / SHOWER/’99 is a real find.

WIND RIVER (2017)

Excluding what seems a false start (VILE/’11 - not seen here), current go-to Man of the West Taylor Sheridan made his directing debut, from his own script, on this Modern Western/Police Procedural.  No one’s trying to reinvent the wheel on this one, which turns out to be a good thing, indeed, Sheridan’s shooting style so straightforward, you might have a moment’s confusion when he cuts directly into the film’s big ‘reveal’ flashback.  Storytelling worked out more thru character, climate & landscape/less thru plot & action.  (Who knew Budd Boetticher was doing posthumous mentoring?)  Jeremy Renner is solid & reserved as the wildlife agent in & around Indian Territory Wyoming pulled from predator control to aid unseasoned FBI agent Elizabeth Olsen, unversed in the customs of the county as she tracks down the killer of an 18-yr-old Native American who froze to death running for her life in the snow-covered mountains.  It’s a case with personal echoes for Renner along with tricky borders that cross Reservation, State, and Federal control.  Good, clean investigation in a tough to handle setting; Olsen talented but unprepared to take charge.  Yet what’s most interesting about Sheridan’s work isn’t what he does dramatically, but what he avoids.  No romance bubbling up between the leads; no simmering tensions with Renner’s young son when he has to work on this murder (Renner separated from his Native American wife); no wildlife revenge from that unkilled mountain lion who could have ironically settled scores.  A bit of forced melodrama that must have been particularly tempting to add in.  Many more smart moves . . . or rather smart denials of easy payback & twists.  Not that we don’t get a big, traditional shootout finale.  A film that gets its drama, its emphases and its logistics right.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Similar crime territory (literally territory, crossing in & out of Indian Reservation Lands) nicely handled in streaming series LONGMIRE (2012 - ‘17).  Or is when the show sticks to cases and goes easy on interpersonal complications.  (Graham Green in both, but in LONGMIRE he's a baddie.)

SIN / IL PECCATO (2019)

Andrey Konchalovskiy’s messy bio-pic on Renaissance master Michelangelo Buonarroti is less THE Anti-AGONY AND THE ECSTACY/’65 than contrary view/continuation.*  Dirty and scrubby, it largely picks up the story where the earlier film stopped: finishing the Sistine Chapel and the death of Pope Julius II.  Here, drama comes as a tale of two cities (Florence & the Vatican in Rome); two powerhouse families (Medici & Della Rovere); even two marble quarries.  Not much noble on view in this Michelangelo, a scruffy, unwashed fellow (Alberto Testone’s peasant face not far off the Michelangelo portraits he snuck into his famous frescos*), whereas Charlton Heston in the earlier film more fit as a subject for sculpting than self-portrait.  Tiresome at times with unvaried ranting & raving from Michelangelo; when does he work?  But his obvious genius, accepted, understood, fully appreciated even then, is grudgingly indulged by his patrons.  (At times a scorecard might help keep track of principals, projects & locations.)  Was he really this impossible?  But Konchalovskiy, who was partner/co-scripter on that greatest of all artist bio-pics, ANDREI RUBLEV/’66, knows when he has to deliver and damned if he doesn’t find an analogous set piece to RUBLEV’s overwhelming Casting of the Bell finale.  Here, it’s at the end of the second act, a quarry extraction of a mighty block of pure white marble.  This remarkable sequence feels like we’ve entered a time machine and are watching the event happen.  Period techniques, real weight, real danger; a gobsmacking full reel of material (in Academy Ratio, BTW) that makes up for many patchy moments elsewhere.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *That big, clunky, unexpectedly entertaining ‘60s bio-pic on same: THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY.  Put together with this, you might even find something of the man.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/06/agony-and-ecstasy-1965.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Amusingly, and it’s the only amusing thing in the pic, from some angles, Testone’s Michelangelo looks a lot like Hugh Griffith in his role as Sheik Ilderim in BEN-HUR/’59 which he played opposite Chuck Heston.

BACKLASH (1947)

Dozens of films & tv episodes use BACKLASH in the title.  Yet, having seen but one other (BACKLASH/’56 - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/01/backlash-1956.html), I can still comfortably say this is the worst of all BACKLASHes.*  Poor 20th/Fox Exec Sol M. Wurtzel, long-time head of B-pics, no longer able to count on MR. MOTO films or CHARLIE CHAN to keep his unit profitable.  Now, forced to make-or-break on every release, always starting from scratch.  Sure enough, Wurtzel was on his last legs.  Only in his 50s, he’d be out of the biz in two years after nearly 200 film credits.  This one a substandard film noir about a murdered defense attorney with a former killer-client at large; a young wife with insurance to claim upon his death; and a D.A. already involved with the straying wife.  Plenty of suspects for the beetle-browed detective on the case, along with his comic-relief Italian partner.  (He puts the make on every secretary with a bit of Italian verse.  Maybe it played better in ‘47 . . . nah.)  Journeyman hack Eugene Forde, a regular CHARLIE CHAN megger, can’t find a single interesting angle or a spark of originality in his cast of also-rans and serial players.  Blah would be putting it mildly.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: I’m sure Forde has better CHARLIE CHANs to watch, but who can keep them straight?  On the other hand, seven of the eight MR. MOTOs are top-notch programmers, the good ones all directed by Norman Foster, and produced, of course, by Sol Wurtzel.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/thank-you-mr-moto-1938.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Not so fast, a few of those BACKLASH titles come from WWF/WWE tv specials which are probably worse than this film.  Too bad no kitchen-sink dramas, suggested title: BACKSPLASH.

THE RAIN PEOPLE (1969)

Hollywood’s most implausible runup to a game-changing film saw Francis Ford Coppola go from a series of critical & commercial failures in various genres (poetical fright pic; sentimental education; turgid RoadShow musical; small character piece) to land the great narrative film of its era, THE GODFATHER/’72.  This one, made directly before that career-defining blockbuster, was the character piece.  And though a complete non-starter on release, people seem to hold unreasonable fondness for the ridiculous thing.  A navel-gazing Method Actor 'roadpic'  vehicle (SCARECROW/’73 with Al Pacino & Gene Hackman a better example of the form - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/11/scarecrow-1973.html), it has Shirley Knight doing the faux-spontaneous hemming & hawing on every bit of action & dialogue.  She seems only marginally ahead of James Caan, the injured/mentally-challenged ex-football college player she picks up while dashing away from an unhappy (abusive?) marriage upon finding out she’s pregnant.  Coppola flashes a bit of technique at us, largely via subliminal flashbacks to barely specified events, but the wistful tone (sub-William Inge, which itself is sub-Tennessee Williams) is basically a cover to hash out themes from Ibsen & Steinbeck (A DOLL’S HOUSE meets OF MICE AND MEN).  Do people really take this stuff seriously?  Caan, meant to be about seven-and-a-half mentally, feels closer to a stage comic in slow-think mode, conveniently so.  (Think Crazy Guggenheim from the old Jackie Gleason show . . .  but without the sentimental Irish ballad.)  Near the end, Robert Duvall shows up for a riveting turn featuring some unearned melodrama (sex, shooting, backstory monologue, near rape), completing the package with a dose of sensitive rubbish.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Steven Spielberg’s apprenticeship was in tv, but his first mainstream feature, which falls into the same dramatic ballpark (sensitive roadpic with a couple on the move), is infinitely superior; something of a minor masterpiece if equally unseen, THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS/’74.  Damn if it also didn’t lead directly to his career breakthru.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-sugarland-express-1956.html

A GENTLEMAN AFTER DARK (1942)

Journeyman director Edwin L. Marin doesn’t bring a lot to this crime thriller, a low-budget affair that misses its potential.  Too bad, a top-tier cast (Brian Donlevy, Miriam Hopkins, Preston Foster) and solid below-the-line players (Dmitri Tiomkin score; Milton Krasner lensing) from indie producer Edward Small sounds promising as Donlevy’s gentleman thief robs jewels from high society with wife/partner Miriam Hopkins, leaving nothing behind but a faint scent of heliotrope.  But when ‘baby makes three,’ Donlevy wants to go straight (to the country) while Hopkins shows interest in neither baby nor great outdoors.  (Shades of GREEN ACRES!)  Lucky for her, new lover Phillip Reed is waiting to step in; ratting out Donlevy on his final job to Police Detective Foster, old time Donlevy pal.  Twenty years on, the little girl thinks she’s Foster’s kid; Donlevy’s about to be paroled; and Hopkins returns from abroad to blackmail both ‘Dads.’  Neat-o.  And while Marin hadn’t much coin to spend, look what Fritz Lang does with something similar (also with Krasner as cinematographer) and barely more cash on THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW/’44 and SCARLET STREET/’45.*  The two films capturing just what’s missing here.  A fun watch, nevertheless, with a few good curve balls in the third act.  And Hopkins surely is one badass unsympathetic dame.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *In addition to his superior work with Lang (no easy man to please!), Krasner later became a regular for Vincente Minnelli & Joseph L. Mankiewicz.  But check out the artistic stylization Lang brings to SCARLET STREET and WOMAN IN THE WINDOW to see what this film might have been.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/08/woman-in-window-1944.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note how they ring out the passing years when Donlevy is in prison, stamping out license plates with advancing years on them.  Cute!

SKIN DEEP (1989)

Current critical thinking on writer/director Blake Edwards holds that after hitting a four-film peak at 60 (REVENGE OF THE PINK PANTHER; 10; S.O.B.; VICTOR/VICTORIA), he more or less ran out of gas, stuck on Mid-Life crises plots and living off fumes in posthumous Peter Sellers PINK PANTHER pics.  (MICKI +  MAUDE/’84, which he didn’t write, excepted.*)  And while there’s some truth in that, SKIN DEEP, once past a first act with too many lame gags and sub-Neil Simon banter, pulls together impressively.  Perhaps because Edwards was to a large extent correcting his unhappy remake of François Truffaut’s THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN.  Basically, hire gifted farceur John Ritter in place of Burt Reynolds.  Ritter, self-entombed in a vicious cycle of booze & broads, uses his addiction to avoid writing his new novel or committing to a relationship.  The unapologetic hedonistic tone, unusual for the period, now looking refreshingly smutty.  No 'tasteful' sex for Edwards, in his films, only compositions are tasteful!  And what a joyous collection of immaculate long takes and two-shots, especially for slapstick comedy.  Much will look familiar from other Edwards pics, but Ritter gives it a fresh angle, and all the men are memorable.  (The women, other than Nina Foch's MIL, significantly less so.)  And before he heals himself, four or five superb, vanity-free set pieces for Ritter who’s game for anything.  Most infamously in a BlackOut sketch for a couple of erections sheathed by glow-in-the-dark condoms; even better a tour de force physical bit for Ritter jerking uncontrollably after getting a free sample of ‘revenge massage’ therapy.  Ritter’s playing should have been far more celebrated; so too the film.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As a comparison, see MICKI & MAUDE for the scenes between Dudley Moore & BFF Richard Mulligan.  Here, equivalent chats are split: Ritter and sympathetic barkeep Vincent Gardenia/Ritter and seen-it-all psychiatrist Michael Kidd.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/05/micki-maude-1984.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  Edwards delivers ‘Noises Off’ gags like nobody’s business.  See how he makes it look easy here in two sound-effects only car crashes.  Or for a whole course in such things, BLIND DATE/’87, a silly film designed to make Bruce Willis fit for the big screen, is a compendium of perfectly run slapstick filming techniques.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/02/blind-date-1987.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Fans of ABBOTT ELEMENTARY, look fast for Sheryl Lee Ralph in a rare early film role.

THE BELOVED VAGABOND / LE VAGABOND BIEN-AIMÉ* (1936)

Maurice Chevalier was headed back to France after a half-decade in Hollywood and German director Curtis Bernhardt was jobbing his way toward Hollywood when they crossed paths in London for this modest charmer.  It’s third time ‘round for William Locke’s story about rising architect Chevalier forsaking upper-crust London fiancée Betty Stockfeld (he's secretly saving her embezzling father from prison by giving her up) and hitting the road to Paree with a pair of tagalong pals: young master Desmond Tester (immediately before Alfred Hitchcock blew him up in SABOTAGE/’36), his sketches thru this pic a delight, and pennyless performer Margaret Lockwood (two years before Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES/’38 gave her an international rep).  Together, they make up a surrogate family singalong act at taverns on the way.  But when old love Stockfeld, now free of deadbeat Dad & arranged groom, comes back in the picture, it threatens everything, including Chevalier’s growing feelings toward young Lockwood.  Very young, she’s almost thirty years younger than Chevalier; his growing awareness that this kid is now a woman might be out of GIGI/’58.  Bitty fare, but Lockwood must have been a revelation at the time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Like many Chevalier projects, this was simultaneously shot in French.  Largely recast, too; that's the French lad in our poster.   For France, Lockwood & Tester OUT; Chevalier & Stockfeld IN.  Fortunately, tech’s the same which means ace Continental cinematographer Franz Planer & classical composer Darius Milhaud worked on both.  Apparently, the French version (not seen here) runs three-reels longer than the British cut.  Whatever could it contain?  Does it play more smoothly or does the film still wobble badly before Lockwood shows up?  (Except, in the French cut, it’s not Lockwood, but a certain Hélène Robert, who seems to have been a classically-trained singer.)

STÜRM: BIS WIR TOT SIND ODER FREI / CAGED BIRDS (2020)

Fact-inspired Swiss/German film about 1980s ‘Jailbreak King’ Walter Stürm, a largely non-violent crook/con man, estranged son of a wealthy industrialist, who’d already broken out of Swiss jail seven times when this film opens on his eighth.  As his story goes public (he seeks not freedom, but dignity . . . and better muesli), he becomes something of a folk hero, a real life urban legend, particularly to the burgeoning anarchist LEFT in 1980s Europe; including fringe elements like terrorists, kidnapers, Red Brigade, rich radical chic types who patronize revolutionary ideas & feral lovers.  That’s the social landscape that brings Stürm (Joel Basman) into the orbit of Barbara Hug (Marie Leuenberger), an uncompromising agitator/lawyer of, by & for the Left.  The sick joke behind this attorney/client relationship, besides Hug’s subsumed yearning for her client, is that Stürm is apolitical on everything except prisoner rights.  Assumed to be part of the radical Left, especially by one young doctrinaire type, she’ll quickly sour on his lack of Party Line principles.  This is all good stuff, though you wonder if director Oliver Rihs knows how unappealing these cause motivated kids now look.  But what makes the film a great watch is not its ideas or ideals, but its style, with Rihs closely following a Rainer Werner Fassbinder æsthetic in its look, from cast, clothes & makeup to lighting & film stock.  All of it held in place by the fierce physicality Leuenberger brings to ‘Babs,’ a woman defined by a refusal to take note of her own body’s betrayal as her one kidney fails & a degenerative bone disease crooks her gait* and has her self-dosing on liquid morphine capsules.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That broken gait too well copied by the hand-held camera operator.  She’s wobbly enough without the help!

MARYLAND (1940)

After KENTUCKY/’38, a TechniColored horse racing drama (with romance) set among rival family stables, 20th/FOX tried double-dipping in MARYLAND, but with steeple horse races.  (Thankfully, this one such a dud, they skipped the other 46 States.)  Here, Fay Bainter’s horse fancier turns morbidly guilt-ridden after sending her horse shy hubby on a hunt where he promptly takes a spill and expires.  ‘Sell all the horses,’ she cries, ‘Shoot the new foal!’  Neither her character nor the film recovers from this unsympathetic order (what was producer Darryl F. Zanuck thinking?), but sure enough son John Payne grows up to ride the very horse the foal had years later and to win the big race.  You see, stable hand Ben Carter didn’t have the heart to shoot the animal, but raised her to sire the next champion! ( Payne also ticks Mom off falling for deadly dull Brenda Joyce, daughter of horse trainer Walter Brennan.)  Director Henry King, normally at his best with Americana, can’t do much with this one . . . and doesn’t much try.  Still, the film’s not without interest, largely from its large cast of Black supporting players that goes from recently Oscar’d Hattie McDaniel on down.  And while the staff (home & stable) hold to insulting stereotypes of ‘Darkie’ behavior and rolling craps for comic relief, the weird thing is that they get nearly half of the film’s running time.  One half-reel entirely set in an All-Black church service where Ben Carter, the tender-hearted stable hand who couldn’t shoot the foal or quit playing craps, gets religion and goes clean.  His new truthful persona leading to an appalling courtroom scene, meant to be comic, where his natural confusion (or is it all on purpose?) makes mincemeat of the proceedings.  Ah, the good old days of the Jim Crow South.  Undeniably fascinating/slightly horrifying.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Great character actor Clarence Muse, the preacher here, had his last role just before he died at 89 playing in a far better horse racing drama, THE BLACK STALLION/’79  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-black-stallion-1979.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Great Hollywood orchestra builder & conductor, Alfred Newman (patriarch of the musical Newman dynasty) was never the most fecund of tunesmiths.  Here, largely phoning it in, like everyone else, he self-borrows his wonderful Ann Rutledge melody from YOUNG MR. LINCOLN/’39 for this film’s love motif.  The tune, a favorite of LINCOLN director John Ford was specifically requested for use by Ford as a wistful, lost love theme in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE/’62.

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES (2000)

Cormac McCarthy’s bleak American fables have proved tough to adapt on film.  A situation that only makes this near miss/lost opportunity harder to accept.  So don’t!  Good enough as is, HORSES improves significantly with a bit of creative viewing; possibly into the best McCarthy on film.  Backstory, please.  (Note: the following is also largely creative!)  After SLING BLADE/’96*, Billy Bob Thornton’s over-praised directing debut over-performed, distributor MiramaX (at the time Harvey Weinstein & Co.) upped his budget by a factor of sixty (that’s 6-0, from one mill to about 57 mill) for this second gig, McCarthy’s shockingly effective tale of Texas buds from separate horse ranches trying their luck South of the Border, along with a tagalong wild boy picked up along the way.  And that’s when things really go south . . . not only directionally.  A stolen horse upsets all plans and leads to multiple murders, a ‘dirty’ execution, death rituals inside a vicious prison culture and true love to complicate/compensate all issues.  Thornton does make a few odd choices.  Should the cinematography be as lush as one of those Robert Redford Oscar-bait films?  Where’s the scrubby Texas ranch land?  Excellent as he is, there’s not a Texas bone in Matt Damon’s body.  He looks entirely built thru hockey practice.  BFF Henry Thomas far more Texan.  How do wads of cash appear at unlikely moments?  And the grand pash between Damon & Penélope Cruz comes off as a trope too far.  But there could be a simple explanation to these faults; apparently, the hand of Harvey Weinstein took over in post-production and forty to fifty minutes of material was tossed.  (Check out the subliminal flashbacks at a railroad stop to spot moments not seen earlier, probably left on the cutting room floor.)  Hard to call the re-editing sabotage as the film and its fatalistic view of man & destiny still come thru.  But a truly great work seems to have been purposefully occluded in a manner not unheard of by those who had sold their cinematic souls to the Weinsteins.  Thornton’s directing career never recovered.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Great to see Bruce Dern finally show up in a neat little part.  He even gets to play a good guy!  ALSO: Click on the poster above to expand and check out the astonishingly feeble quotes.  And this a quick replacement poster to help a film struggling at the box-office.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Here’s our outlier post on SLING BLADE.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/sling-blade-1996.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Oscar’d for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS/’91, scripter Ted Tally also lost all career momentum after this; a mere two credits over the next two & a half decades.

MOONLIGHTING (1982)

Writer/director, occasional character actor, Jerzy Skolimowski, whose career grew out of the Polish New Wave, rarely made a film as accessible (or as good) as this modest, yet thrilling and suspenseful workplace drama about a quartet of Polish tradesmen illegally in England to renovate a London townhouse on the cheap just as the Solidarity Movement is about to come to grief at home.  Jeremy Irons, fresh off BRIDESHEAD REVISITED on tv, shows real movie star chops as the contractor in charge of the project and the three other men.  The only one to speak English, the others all but stuck inside the house as they go about tearing down everything but weight-bearing walls and rebuild the place from dump to posh.  Skolimowski finds infinite challenges in just getting by without calling undue attention to themselves, stretching the inadequate funds, waiting for the weekly call home (at a nearby booth), and unavoidable interior disasters.  (It’s always the plumbing.)  Refusing to pump up tension for easy effect outside or in, as Irons calmly and creatively runs all tasks, becoming something of a reluctant Artful Dodger in the performance of his duties.  (One scam involving double-dipping on groceries flirts with phony suspense tropes, but they get away with it.)  Underlying everything are events at home where Russia has started military action against Poland; Irons unsure whether or not to tell the men.  All beautifully handled, touching & funny, too, with a political bonus as bossman Irons and his men play out management/labor issues.*  With regular Merchant/Ivory cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts putting in quietly spectacular  work.  What a lesson in capturing darkness that still can be properly read by an audience.  Why Skolimowski couldn’t follow this up with other breakthru projects something of a mystery.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Skolimowski’s acute observation really sweats the details.  Look close during holiday greetings between the four, the three working under Irons exchanging handshakes and hugs; Irons and the men only handshakes.  

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Not seen here, Skolimowski’s recent art-house film, EO/’22, a life story of a donkey, very well received in a limited release.

THE SIGN OF THE RAM (1948)

After being paralyzed by a shotgun in a hunting accident, fast-rising M-G-M ingenue Susan Peters was off-screen for three years before returning, just the once, in this modern Gothic thriller from Columbia Pictures.  Playing from a wheelchair, she’s Alexander Knox’s young second wife, a seemingly well-adjusted anchor to a brood of grown step-kids (she’d injured herself saving one of them) and lady of his grand castle/estate on the seacoast.  Life is good; she’s even a noted poet of sentimental verse which doesn’t reflect her personality at all.  Then again, neither does the cultivated persona she puts on when meeting new live-in assistant Phyllis Thaxter.  Hardly a source of comfort & light to her family, Peters stealthily works to poison any budding relationship, characteristically telling her step-son’s new fiancée to renounce her engagement since insanity runs in the girl’s background.  Yikes!  Only gossipy Dame May Whitty, a busybody neighbor everyone tries to avoid, stays out of her sights.  Surrounded by cliffs, flooding cave chambers & dense fog on treacherous paths, somebody’s sure to come to grief.  Or will if this controlling invalid isn’t found out in time.  An odd role for a handicapped actress to choose, certainly not the Pollyanna pity party audiences probably were looking for.  Three years back, cult B-director Joseph L. Lewis found just the atmosphere needed here in another modern little Columbia Gothic, MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS/’45.  (Matte paintings & sets from that film repurposed here?)  Alas, director John Sturges still an apprentice and not especially suited to give this material the sick psychological ‘swing’ it needs to give us the creeps.  Fun watch, though.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS, which not only looks a lot like this, but also makes nice use of Dame May Whitty.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: With its overwrought story beats and outrageously false revelations (why does no one question Peters?), this material might be best suited for drag performer Charles Busch to riff on.  Or did he already do that in his satirical pastiche DIE, MOMMY, DIE/’03?

ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD (1986)

Ah, the Cannon Group, aka the Golan/Globus boys.  A barrel-scraping production team active in the ‘70s & ‘80s; always on the hunt for low-lying fruit or a commercial angle to hang a crappy film on.  (When they tried for a quality product, things got even worse.)  This one a followup to their KING SOLOMON MINES remake of the year before.*  Lambasted as being a cheap ripoff of INDIANA JONES, a comparison that might go either way, no?  What were the films George Lucas got his inspiration from?  More problematic, where MINES had J. Lee Thompson directing and a score from Jerry Goldsmith, the sequel has journeyman tv & Disney house director Gary Nelson and Cannon house composer Michael Linn.  Still, not really a bad production, cheap in a fun way . . . for a while.  But when the stunt work and unmatched edits reach their nadir in a ludicrous leap over a cave chasm, everyone tosses in the towel.  Richard Chamberlain is almost adequate as a Great White Adventurer hunting deepest darkest Africa for the eponymous lost city as well as a lost kid brother, amusingly cast with Chamberlain’s longtime real-life partner Martin Rabbett.  Not so amusing is a pre-breakout Sharon Stone, aping Dyan Cannon as tagalong fiancée; and James Earl Jones as an African warrior auditioning for Marching Band drum major with an ax for a baton.  Yikes!  Credit the Golan/Globus boys when knowing when to quit.  No more QUATERMAIN pics for a couple of decades.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Just about everyone in the film adds an ‘R’ to Allan Quatermain’s last name, pronouncing it Quartermain.  Can this be right?  Or did no one notice?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Best and best known of the eight (?) KING SOLOMON’S MINES adaptations is M-G-M’s 1950 hit with Stewart Granger & Deborah Kerr.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/king-solomons-mines-1950.html

L'HORLOGER DE SAINT-PAUL / THE CLOCKMAKER (1974)

Already established as film critic, fest organizer, historian & raconteur extraordinaire on all things cinematic, Bertrand Tavernier was 33 before he directed his first feature, this much acclaimed adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel with Philippe Noiret, in the first of eight collaborations, equally acclaimed as the distanced father of a murderer.  Though never quite as good as its rep (it’s fine as far as it goes), Tavernier only came into his own when he made a stylistic u-turn halfway thru his output, leaving French classicism for a momentum-based approach (breathless but you catch up to it*) that felt like he’d finally found the real Tavernier and could stop mimicking films admired in the past.  (This film dedicated to classic French screenwriter Jacques Prévert, ‘nuff said.)  A strange novel for Simenon, it echoes Dostoevsky, Camus and that perennial bestseller Jesus (mostly ‘The Prodigal Son’).  Tavernier moved it from America to France, specifically Lyons, where food is taken even more seriously than in Paris.  Meals suffuse nearly every scene, with Jean Rochefort, who co-stars as the detective on the murder investigation of Noiret’s estranged son, never without a meal in front of him; sometimes two since he orders for Noiret then eats off both plates.  The murder case, a murky affair,  involving his son’s new girlfriend, who Noiret had never met, and their boss at the factory, a thorough lout who’s forced himself on many a factory girl.  Yet the son insists he had other reasons for the murder; and the father, not quite sure of, nor caring what they were, decides to stand by his son without reservation.  The plainspoken appeal of the film still moving.  Look for a fabulous scene where Noiret goes into a church after the verdict.  To pray?  Or to have a look at the workings of a clock with moving figures ringing the hours.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *To see later Tavernier at his best, try the WWII story SAFE PASSAGE/’02 or WWI’s even better  CAPTAINE CONAN/’96.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/09/laissez-passer-safe-passage-2002.html

THE SISTERS BROTHERS (2018)

After decades in French cinema (editor to script & direction), Jacques Audiard, best known for A PROPHET/’09*, went West, way West, on this English-language Western.  Shot in Romania (which is actually East!); such are the vagaries of international film production when you need twenty producers & production companies for finance.  What’s important is that it passes for America just as the film passes as a Western, if a rather unpleasant one.  Set around the time of the California Gold Rush, the eponymous brothers are assassins-for-hire (loose cannon Joaquin Phoenix/stable but depressed John C. Reilly) on route to meet up with company scout Jake Gyllenhaal who’s found their target, gold ‘diviner’ Riz Ahmed.  On the other hand, why bring him in to the boss when you can make untold riches trying out his 24 carat methods of finding ore?  Just don’t get too greedy, boys.  Situations and characters all involving (Ahmed really a spectacular actor), but somehow the combination of that tongue-tying title and a lighting scheme to beat COMES A HORSEMAN/’78 on the darkness meter, dampened commercial enthusiasm.  And why so long?  Western master Budd Boetticher would have brought this in at 80".

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *In case you missed it, Audiard is the real deal.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/un-prophete-prophet-2009.html

READ ALL ABOUT IT/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Academics like to divide Westerns into Traditional; Modern; Post-Modern.  Broadly meaning White Hats vs Black Hats; Grey Hats vs Black Hats; Grey Hats vs Grey Hats.  This is cherry-picking as usual since even back in the Silents, particularly in feature-length films, the 'Good’ Bad Man of Modern and even Post-Modern Westerns shows up with William Hart in the 19-teens.  You'll find it all parsed to perfection in William K. Everson’s A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE WESTERN FILM, which only looks like a photo survey for non-discriminating fans.

THE AGE OF CONSENT (1932)

Though a member of good standing in Golden Age Hollywood royalty simply for directing MY MAN GODFREY/’36 and STAGE DOOR/’37, far too little is otherwise known or celebrated in Gregory La Cava’s output to ignore what might be taken as an overlooked throwaway, yet plays out as an intensely felt contemporary youth drama set at some sub-Ivy League East Coast university for the underwhelming elite.  Taken from a B’way play that had the misfortune to open (and quickly close) just as Wall Street crashed, it’s the old story of horny kids & class lines in a college town.  Here, likeable junior Richard Cromwell can hardly wait two years to marry (i.e. start screwing) pretty co-ed Dorothy Wilson.  After a dance, and a silly fight, he escorts Arline Judge’s cute little diner waitress, a townie, home after midnight, where he’s invited in since Pop’s off at work.  After an illicit nightcap or two, he awakes next morning ‘entwined’ just as Pop gets home.  Turns out the girl’s underage, that’s statutory rape in any county and that means a quick marriage or jail.*  What makes this one work so well is La Cava’s ability to get believable perfs from his cast, all in their early twenties which makes a huge difference in these things.  Especially since, with behavior & dress so vastly removed from modern norms, it can still feel realistic.  Plus, La Cava offers no real villains, even the girl’s Dad has a point, while the rich wild campus king, Eric Linden, too sweet-natured to seriously worry about.  John Halliday has the strangest role as mentor/professor, a man who purposefully missed his chance for love & marriage and doesn’t know he regrets it until he sees what Cromwell would do for love.  (Or is it all hormones?)  Especially when he reconnects with the spinster prof he blew off twenty years ago.  (Before she reenters the picture, Halliday sets off definite gay vibes in his interactions with Cromwell.  Ironic as Cromwell was gay; something Angela Lansbury found out only after their semi-arranged marriage.)  Only a bit over an hour, no doubt this had a modest theatrical release.  Yet gets so much right; something often the case with La Cava’s half-hidden works.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For a more modern look at Ivy League life that also gets small town atmosphere right, try John Sayles undervalued BABY IT’S YOU/’83.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/10/baby-its-you-1983.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The camera ‘finds’ the lovebirds fully dressed and asleep.  So did anything happen?  You bet, even in Pre-Code films some things still had to be inferred.

ANATOMY OF A FALL / ANATOMIE D'UNE CHUTE (2023)

Last year’s big international award-winner (even Cannes dropped their usual contrarian ways for it) is at heart a domestic murder mystery, a classy ‘did she or didn’t she’ tale of a wife, a husband, a son & a dog thrown into legal turmoil when the husband dies in a fall.  Suicide?  Accident?  Murder?  With only circumstantial evidence on a case that quickly captures the public’s imagination, social/political/moral bias is forced to stand in for facts.  And while writer/director Justine Triet spins this out to a satisfying, even logical conclusion, with dramatically deft stops for bombshell court surprises (no, the dog doesn’t testify . . . well, not directly, but an audio tape of pitched battle between husband & wife does), you might wonder what all the fuss was about on a story Alan J. Pakula might have optioned for development in the ‘80s.*  The answer comes in the setting.  Not the French Alps where the family has relocated, but in the psychological terroir of an Ingmar Bergman film like SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE/’74 which ups the courtroom drama tropes.  As wife/mom/main suspect, Sandra Hüller is an alarmingly chilly creation, laughing to cover up awkward moments (and she’s all awkward moments); a successful writer of semi-autobiographical books her late husband would have given his soul to write; as teasingly intimate with her stylish lawyer as she is distant from the young woman who helps at home and has an easier relationship with the hearing disabled son than she does.  That sightly ‘off’ feeling has you questioning your own feelings . . . or is it bias?  But for the case, not the film.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *The Pakula film is PRESUMED INNOCENT/’90, currently streaming in a new, much expanded remake.  Something of a bumper crop of these stories at the time.

RAIN (1932)

When seen in the Library of Congress archive edition (out on VCI at its full 93" Pre-Code length in superb picture quality*), Lewis Milestone’s 1932 film of W. Somerset Maugham’s once ubiquitous tale of hooker & hypocrite butting heads on a tropical isle till something’s gotta give is much the best version.  Maxwell Anderson’s screenplay moves pieces around, but largely sticks to the Colton/Randolph stage adaptation that added romance & Marines to the mix.  These theatrical origins prove something of a problem for Joan Crawford’s Miss Sadie Thompson.  On a pass from M-G-M, along with regular lenser Oliver Marsh, the two are both on fire, but Crawford’s lack of stage technique, unvaried of pace or tonal variety, threatens to make longer speeches monotonous.  No matter, physically she’s so perfectly cast, it makes up for anything that’s missing.  Especially with director Lewis Milestone still working thru silent film technique, and knowing full well the effect Crawford will make when she takes off the good-time gal makeup and shows her redeemed, naked face.  (We’re suddenly confronted by a staggering beauty.  She never looked this good before or after.)  As the religious zealot who temporarily tames her free spirit before succumbing to his own testosteronic impulses, Walter Huston sweeps the board of anyone who ever played the role.  (On film, that’s Lionel Barrymore & José Ferrer.)  The rest of the cast also well chosen, with store/hotel owner Guy Kibbee a mass of likable rotting sweaty flesh, only upstaged by his even larger native wife.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *VCI also has a decent, if unrestored, reference print of the censored cut, about 74".  (It lists art director Richard Day as Richard Ray in the credits.)  But it’s the improved picture quality of the original release version, not the restored cuts. that makes the biggest difference,

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Here’s the semi-musicalized Rita Hayworth version, MISS SADIE THOMSPSON/’53.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/miss-sadie-thompson-1953.html

NO SUDDEN MOVE (2021)

Like the proverbial tree that falls in the wood with no one to hear, a dropped theatrical release and the one-two punch of COVID restrictions and HBO burial kept this darkly comic Steven Soderbergh/Ed Solomon period crime drama from making any noise.  Filmed in parts of Detroit where the ‘50s never left, its locations almost magically right, the first act holds its cards so close to the vest, the straightforward Industrial Espionage storyline acquires a special kick simply by coming into focus.  Ah!, so that’s why Brendan Fraser is contracting a trio of jailbird vets (Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Kieran Culkin, strangers to each other),  to ‘babysit’ the family of auto-exec David Harbour.  A perfect nuclear family held hostage while Dad sneaks into his boss’s safe to grab a top-secret report.  But naturally, since this is a fucked-up crime caper, the secret file’s been moved; the secretary with the combination is having an affair with the exec; the two men back with the hostage family begin to see they’re part of a larger setup . . . and that they’re the fall guys; Jon Hamm’s detective shows up to investigate after the thieves start turning on each other; and Matt Damon makes a startling appearance as master auto-industry puppeteer tamping down any leak about costly technical advancements.  A little patience is needed as this gets going (at the end, too), but things come together and sort themselves out admirably.  And the cast is such good company, you’ll hardly mind.  Plus, any eventual appearance by Bill Duke is certainly worth the wait.  The film may have been a little too sophisticated for its target audience, but is damn accomplished in spite of Soderbergh getting a bee in his bonnet as his own cinematographer trying to match the distortion in early CinemaScope lenses of the period.  (He may also have made some odd lens choices to be able to film in the real interiors of those small 1954 middle-class homes of the day.  (Narrow stairs; small rooms.)  Soderbergh wise to the ways self-limitations can be artistically freeing.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Per IMDb, Soderbergh’s original cast (including George Clooney, Nicholas Cage, Josh Brolin & others) had to be replaced when COVID delays resulted in scheduling conflicts.  And they say COVID had no positive effects.

VÍCTIMAS DEL PECADO / VICTIMS OF SIN (1951)

Perhaps the culmination of cabaretera, an offshoot of the entertaining & absurd Prostitution Melodramas, common enough during Cinema Mexico’s ‘40s & ‘50s Golden Age to constitute a genre unto itself.  Cabaretera added song & dance to the mix, especially when Cuban-born Ninón Sevilla starred.  Crammed with incident between extended cabaret numbers, first in an upper middle-class nightclub, later in a lowdown joint near the railway (literally on the wrong side of the tracks), action concentrated to fit into time left after musical numbers on a film that runs about 85".  The presentation both familiar (the ‘good’ bad girl) and foreign as Asian classical theatre.  Director Emilio Fernández & great Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa (as much a ‘Prince of Darkness’ as Hollywood’s John Alton), run the whole thing as a stylish/stylized feminist film noir as Sevilla’s club success is derailed when a local pimp not only fails to recruit her, but sees her rescue the infant he had with one of his other girls.  The child pulled from a public trash can seconds before a garbage pickup.  Yikes!  The pimp, out for revenge after six years in jail, will murder her lover/impresario; steal his son (now six); before he’s shot by Sevilla who’ll go to jail for her crime of revenge while the little boy lives on the street, selling newspapers & shining shoes in hopes of raising enough pesos to buy Mom a pair of shoes.  Double Yikes!  The whole shebang a strange, often bewitching, sometimes laughable* mix of the puerile, toe-tapping (that Afro-Cuban/Rumba beat), primitive & sophisticated.  On the other hand, while seeing one may be essential, seeing two may be too much, already.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Sevilla more a sexy thing than a great musical talent.  Not so her mentor at the club, Rita Montaner, a very great talent indeed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: While working as a prostitute between club gigs, Servilla is one of an astounding lineup of street hookers positioned in front of their ‘work’ chambers.  Down the sidewalk comes the club owner who’ll revive her career, but who’s now simply looking for some action, closely followed by a huge Mariachi band.  An indelible composition from  Fernández and Figueroa.

LUCKY PARTNERS (1940)

In spite of a forced setup typical of Hollywood rom-coms at the time (older man randomly wishes good luck to a younger woman he passes in the street . . . and the luck sticks), the star power is terrific; enough to get you over early bumps.  Ronald Colman is charm itself against an obviously delighted Ginger Rogers (brunette here) as the surprised beneficiary.  Taken from an early Sasha Guitry film (BONNE CHANCE/’35 with Guitry and his 22-yrs younger wife, beating the Colman/Rogers age gap by two years*), the gimmick is that Rogers is already engaged to Jack Carson, but agrees to a platonic ‘honeymoon’ with Colman’s eccentric semi-retired artist if they win on the Irish Sweepstakes ticket they’ve bought together . . . what, no chaperone!  Little mystery on why this picks up steam and starts to engage just when you think it’s bound to turn dumb, someone brought in hot B’way writer/director John Van Druten for a rewrite.  On a roll at the time for stage work, he couldn’t do much with the first act, but the film steadily improves as it goes along, ending with a riotous courtroom scene that’s nearly as funny as it thinks it is.  Director Lewis Milestone, though known for serious things, was also the winner of the sole Oscar® for Comedy Direction (TWO ARABIAN KNIGHTS/’29*), puts a swell cast thru its paces and gets particular sparks out of Harry Davenport’s sensibly confused judge.  No classic, but better than you might expect.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The Guitry can be found online, but clips reveal a pretty bumpy piece of work. OR:  Two years on, Colman was in his 50s, but wooing the even younger Susan Peters, just 21, in his biggest hit ever, RANDOM HARVEST/’42.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/09/random-harvest-1942.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Most Milestone sound films show a bias toward silent technique, especially on cuts to close-ups in agogic rhythms that don’t flow via seamless ‘invisible’ editing.  Not so here.

HAUNTED MANSION (2023)

Film adaptation suggested by the old DisneyLand theme park ride/experience is a wan Tim Burton wannabe.  And perfectly ghastly.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Not seen here, but didn’t Disney fuck this up twenty years back with Eddie Murphy?  (Most of our double-bills are meant as recommendations, but I guess this one's a warning.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Check out the kid looking for a father figure in the story.  (Bottom-left on our poster.)  A ringer for Gary Coleman  in his 1970s DIFFERENT STROKES prime . . . if that’s the word.

THE GREAT WALL (2016)

Did Beijing host a World’s Fair in 2016?  Summer/Winter Olympics played elsewhere, yes?  So why does this overproduced historical Asian Actioner feel like a generic Tall Tale fit for mass consumption at some International EXPO?  A bare 90 minutes (sans credit crawl), it’s on the short side.  Just the thing for an air-conditioned break after exhausting queues for rides & cultural exhibits.  Once edgy, now safe, top-tier director Yimou Zhang offers faceless professionalism on a tale that only tangentially involves China’s Great Wall as Western adventurers Matt Damon & Pedro Pascal get captured trying to steal bags of ‘black powder.’  (Wouldn’t they at least be looking for a gun-powder formula?)  Unaware they’ve stepped into an invasion of CGI lizard monsters (well, something like that) out to take over the country.  But the boys fight so well they’re adopted as warriors by the Emperor’s forces (specialized male & female units in color coordinated team uniforms under a lovely lady General).  Quite the show, too, as if Busby Berkeley took up Chinese period warfare.  Commercially, the film weathered backlash for it’s Caucasian hero (even on our Asian poster Damon’s front-and-center, not Commander Tian Jing), but that’s less bothersome than having so many characters conveniently fluent in English.  Even more injustice in that while Damon & unreliable BFF Pascal are each about 5'10", Zhang manages his angles to make Damon look about half a foot taller.  That’s real star power.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Yimou Zhang’s HERO/’02 has long been a go-to entry point for the new wave of historical Chinese action/pageant pics.  But a favorite here is John Woo’s two-part RED CLIFF, made on his return to Asia from Hollywood filmmaking.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/chi-bi-red-cliff-2008.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/chi-baction/i-xia-jue-zhan-tian-xia-red-cliff.html

PATTERNS (1956)

Had Benjamin Franklin lived to see the ‘Golden Age’ of live tv drama in the 1950s & ‘60s, his most famous quip would go, ‘Nothing is certain except death, taxes & overrated tele-plays.’   PATTERNS, Rod Serling’s pre-TWILIGHT ZONE calling-card credit being a prime example.  (MARTY/’55, 12 ANGRY MEN/’57, DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES/’62 likely the best known for going from small to large screen, with the latter an exception to the rule.)  Here, slightly recast/slightly opened up is the film version of the 1955 Kraft Television Theatre presentation, both from Serling & director Fielder Cook.  A corridors of corporate power drama, Van Heflin’s the fresh exec from the MidWest hired by CEOgre Everett Sloane as a stealth replacement for fast-aging Ed Begley.  Only problem, Begley & Heflin bond right away, agree on the issues and put people first.  Sloane all heartless bottom-line.  (Anyone who can’t see where this is going deserves to watch the film.)  Glib and pretentious at once, Serling can always be counted on to highlight the obvious.  That’s okay, but his morality tales (at least his originals) work better in half-hour format.  (No time to find him out.  Even TWILIGHT ZONE always better at 30" rather than 60".)  Worse, every story beat telegraphed; every character flaw set in neon (Begley might as well have LOSER printed on his forehead); every actor indicating like mad (‘The Method’ nowhere in sight, with loyal secretary Elizabeth Wilson all telltale twitches); and every piece of info repeated so we won’t miss it.  Plus, a copout ending to let us know capitalism is tough, but good for you.  (Today Sloane would be a stand-in Scott Rudin/Harvey Weinstein pariah.)  Made on the cheap, the film still managed to lose a boodle as M-G-M’s EXECUTIVE SUITE had pretty much swept this territory.*

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Playing much the same role she had in her Oscar®-winning turn in NETWORK/’76, Beatrice Straight is Heflin’s worried/supportive wife.  Funny since William Holden had the equivalent Heflin role in EXECUTIVE SUITE/'54 and would get Straight as his equivalent wife when he played something similar in NETWORK.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/executive-suite-1954.html

I SAW WHAT YOU DID (1965)

Feeling dissed by co-star Bette Davis as HUSH . . . HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE /’64, their followup to the unexpected smash success of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?/’62, began filming, Joan Crawford feigned illness to ankle the film.  Professionally, a fatal move which this fallback project did little to fix.*  No doubt, Crawford knew it was a cheap exploitation pic, but as her previous completed film, STRAIT-JACKET/’64, was another crappy-shocker from schlockmeister William Castle, she must have felt she was running for cover.  Perhaps even relieved her role was little more than a glorified cameo.  She enters at 20 minutes/leaves at 50.  (12" on screen?)  Meanwhile, the real story focuses on a couple of bratty teen girlfriends (career stopping debuts from Andi Garrett & Sara Lane going on to a combined total of 8 credits) whose prank phone calls tell perfect strangers ‘I saw what you did!’  Naturally, one random number goes to John Ireland who’s just murdered his lover in a shower scene meant to recall Hitchcock’s PSYCHO/’60.  (And good luck that!)  At his best, Castle’s films were campy, amusingly awful and gimmicky.  This one is only awful.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Sets, soundstage exteriors, acting, hair styling; everything third-rate without being fun.  But the booby prize goes to Castle ‘house composer' Van Alexander.  So off the mark, you wonder if he looked at the film before scoring.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Ryan Murphy’s 8-part mini: FEUD: BETTE AND JOAN/'17, gets a helluva lot right seven-eights of the way, only to collapse into misogynist fiction in the final episode.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/10/feud-bette-and-joan-2017.html