FRANZ (2025)

Polish-born/Prague-trained director Agnieszka Holland, still making smart, provocative, accessible films 55 years into her career/35 years after hitting the international circuit with EUROPA EUROPA/’90, finds new angles on Franz Kafka less in content than in execution.  It freshens the conversation on this over-analyzed modernist to good effect.  Hopscotching around his short life (40 years), Holland’s Kafka (Idan Weiss) grows less neurotic, if more fragile (TB did him in) as the years pass, and with more public success in his lifetime than you may recall.  Decently, if unhappily employed; published, even a major literary prize; public readings; no unknown recluse.  Plus quite a bit of sex.  (What a lot of male nudity in the film.)  At home, a sympathetic family with the notable exception of his loud, large, dominating businessman father, always on the edge of financial failure at work or an explosion at the dining table.*  All beautifully caught in the film’s physical production.  And all relatively standard readings.  But Holland’s not only making a bio-pic, but also an Essay Film.  So we not only jump around his life span (1883 - 1924), but also into the present day with tour groups & guides talking us thru his work and workplaces.  Objects and physical spaces Holland has Franz enter as well, as if he were one of the tourists out to see where the great man lived and worked.  It sounds gimmicky, but doesn’t play that way.  More like a living tribute.  The film isn’t meant to be definitive.  It just wants to restart a conversation we thought was no longer going anywhere.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For all his literary influence over the past 100 years, Kafka’s film record is mostly misses.  A bit of THE TRIAL at a reading in here with lots of laughs would have been pleased Orson Welles whose film adaptation always made him laugh . . . if no one else.  Instead, the most successful Kafka on film is merely ‘Kafkaesque.’  Béla Tarr’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES/’00 and Roman Polansky’s THE TENANT/’75 about as close as anyone gets.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-tenant-1976.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/04/werckmeister-harmonies-2000.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That’s Peter Kurth as the Father, a dead ringer in voice & face for classic Hollywood supporting actor Sig Ruman, a favorite of Ernst Lubitsch & Billy Wilder.  (On purpose?)

THE JAZZ AMBASSADORS (2018)

Originally on PBS, Hugo Berkeley’s Peabody Award-winning documentary does a solid, if unimaginative job on a fascinating sidebar to Cold War history as USA & USSR fought to influence hearts, minds and political philosophies in a post-WWII world.  And solving the permanent stain of Stateside racism (where one picture of police brutality was worth a thousand Party Line editorials) was a real problem for Yankee Influencers.  Enter the United States Information Agency, an unlikely sponsor for what became an eight-year run of Jazz Band Diplomacy as Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman & Duke Ellington led their respective groups to global hot spots, paths paved by the Voice of America.*  Some of the choices (band/countries) look arbitrary, others carefully thought out.  For example, the more traditional Big Band Jazz of Goodman sent to ultra-conservative Russia where not so long before listening to jazz on a shortwave radio could have serious consequences.  This just the type of info the film skates past.  And, other than Armstrong’s  personal reception in Africa*, and Ellington’s ill-timed tour (the Birmingham. AL church bombing; JFK’s assassination), we don’t get much sense of events at home and abroad as they were happening.  But enough gets across via archival footage and smart new interviews to do fresh justice to this adventure in Statecraft.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Very ‘hotspot’ in the case of Armstrong who’d never been to Africa, had no idea he was so popular there, even causing one country to put their deadly Civil War on pause so he could give a concert.  Talk about the power of music.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *In our current environment, maybe we should send a few integrated Jazz Bands Over Here.

TORRENT (1926)

The Great Swede, Greta Garbo, opened her Hollywood career playing two Latin louches from Vicente Blasco Ibáñez potboilers.  (M-G-M had a thing for the novelist, see FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE/’21 and MARE NOSTRUM/’26.)  Garbo would go on to more appropriate fare but the Spanish-set TORRENT and the even more enjoyable Argentinean TEMPTRESS* make for an irresistible, if trashy, introduction.  Here, Garbo’s penniless small-town gal with a natural gift for song, is all but affianced to Ricardo Cortez, the richest young man in town.  Then Mama Cortez forbids the relationship, sets her son up with a proper senorita, and forecloses on the Garbo family home.  Vowing to elope and marry in Madrid where Garbo hopes to become an operatic Prima Donna, the pledged pair split as Cortez breaks his promise and concedes to Mama’s reality.  Decades later, Garbo (looking not a day older) discovers great divas can only go home temporarily while Cortez (looking worn and bored from years with a loyal wife and gaggle of kids) falls hard all over again.  And what of the torrent?  More symbolic than real, as the ex-lovers ride waves of emotion while the actual floods promise more destruction than they deliver.  (Kinda like the movie.)  Garbo’s cinematographer for nearly all her work, William Daniels, is already on board, while journeyman director Monta Bell, often called on for sub-Lubitsch sex comedy, does well enough once he gets past the first act countryside pastorale.  Much happier in big city theatrical life and playing with model effects during the torrential rains.  Surviving print in reasonable condition.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Garbo’s dresser brings a regular menagerie with her wherever they go.  And Garbo gets a nice scene with ‘Jocko’ the monkey when she goes home to visit.  And that’s not just any Hollywood capuchin, but Harold Lloyd’s co-star in THE KID BROTHER/’27 and Buster Keaton’s adversary in THE SCARECROW/’20.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Garbo’s other Latina minx in THE TEMPTRESS.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/temptress-1926.html

MAN’S FAVORITE SPORT? (1964)

Howard Hawks got close to catching a break on his last comedy.  Too bad ‘close’ only counts in horseshoes and drama.  At first, Hawks works the phony expert angle, think Barbara Stanwyck’s clueless cookery columnist in CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT/’45, forced to prove she’s a regular Ina Garten over the holidays.  Here, it’s fishing, competitive fishing at that, with fishing manual author and salesman-of-the-year Rock Hudson having never cast a line in his life.  But Hawks upends expectations, giving away the big incompetence secret before Act One ends to shift into emasculated male territory.  More in the spirit of BRINGING UP BABY/’38 or I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE/’49 where Cary Grant suffers one indignity after another before he can marry Katharine Hepburn or Ann Sheridan.  More opportunities to reel in comic befuddlement than Hawks can get from rods, bait & hooks.  Even favored scripter Leigh Brackett (credits ranging from Hawks’ RIO BRAVO thru early STAR WARS) doing an uncredited rewrite.  So much for breaks.  Elsewise, Cary Grant chose to go with Stanley Donen & Audrey Hepburn on CHARADE; Hawks moved his unit from classy Paramount to Lew Wasserman’s production-line Universal (their ‘house style’ stuck cinematographer Russell Harlan on airless studio lots and processed everything bright enough for the early Drive-In show), a ludicrous 2.5' running time trimmed to a still unhelpful 2'; turgid comic support; and poor hard-working Rock Hudson, game, but no Cary Grant.*  One bright spot: costumer Edith Head’s form-fitting full-body rubberized scuba suits for Paula Prentiss’s* likeable pain-in-the-ass love-interest and for gal pal Maria Perschy.  (Nickname, Easy.  Yep, it's the '60s.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Henry Mancini’s score loaded with the same Hammond Organ he used last year in Hawks’ HATARI/’63.  It worked a lot better there.  ALSO:  *Before casting Prentiss, Hawks saw a pre-release screening of DR. NO/’62 and tried to get Ursala Andress for the part.  Damned if he doesn’t steal that film’s ending for this film!  Hawks usually stole from himself.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Gregory Peck joined the ‘He’s No Cary Grant Club’ in 1966 when Donen followed up CHARADE with ARABESQUE/’66.   ‘Peck confessed he was not always up to meeting the rigorous demands of the picture, be they stunts or comedic delivery.  His ongoing excuse off-camera, ‘But Stanley, their’s only one Cary Grant.’

I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING! (1945)

No doubt, the signature film of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, the ‘written, produced and directed by’ team known as The Archers, remains THE RED SHOES/’48, their hit ballet backstager.  Though with 15 features (1941 - ‘57), P&P fantasists may look to A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH/’46 as ‘best,’ while those who lean exotica choose BLACK NARCISSUS/’47.  But all must agree the pair’s most perfect is this windblown enchantment.  A romance (no rom-com, more in the vein of late Shakespeare, think THE TEMPEST), at first view lighter than some of their major achievements, but growing in heart and mind over time.*  Their last WWII production, its distinctive stars, Wendy Hiller & Roger Livesey, meet cute (make that meet surrealistic, what a dream Hiller has!) on separate paths to an island in the Scottish Hebrides.  Indeed, his island as Livesey is ‘Laird’ and using his eight-day military leave to visit.  Hiller’s joining the wealthy, older industrialist who’s rented the entire island for their wedding.  Problem #1: a gale is rising at sea, making passage too dangerous.  Problem #2: Livesey & Hiller are falling in love.  Complications, characters and traditional Scottish customs bridge the personal divide (purposefully awkward) until their protective lies are finally cleared in a storm at sea that pushes the relationship as well as the technical limits of 1945 special effects.  (So much more convincing at the time in b&w than color.)  All leading to what must be the most satisfying finish of any P&P movie.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  The special handcrafted look & sound of so many Archers’ films on full display in this most British/Scottish of their films.  How ironic that nearly all the major creatives, other than Powell, were German/Hungarian Jewish exiles from the Nazis: Pressburger, composer Allan Gray, cinematographer Erwin Hillier, and production designer Alfred Junge.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That delayed capitulation would include Powell.  In love with Deborah Kerr when he co-wrote the script with her in mind, it was decades before he realized he’d made a masterpiece with Hiller.  Hiller’s specialty being wonderful in every role she touched.

THE PHENIX CITY STORY (1955)

One of the great progressive muckraking films of the mid-‘50s, this B-pic by master of the form Phil Karlson (ironically, best known for his reactionary small town/vigilante-sheriff ‘70s hit WALKING TALL/’73*) looks better than ever.  Not only for how it captures period details of the customs & inbred corruption in small-town segregated South, but because so much of the social/civic culture it uncovers continues today in more sophisticated/less brazen style.  Shot to a considerable extent on the actual locations around Phenix City, AL, the true(ish) story is structured as a rabble-rousing thriller (note film noir scripter Daniel Mainwaring) as returning Army vet Richard Kiley (and family) goes to work in Dad’s law office.  That’s John McIntire as the flinty former State D.A., keeping his nose out of non-legal affairs as the town succumbs to the vice mob in booze, gambling & prostitution.  The whole city run as a Protection Racket by a small, vicious rabble.  But once the old man is drawn back into the fight after his son stands up to them, and a little Black girl is murdered as a warning, the town’s good governance committee of honest businessmen needs a winning candidate to run for D.A.  Far more violent than you imagine for a film of the period, Karlson gets the real flavor of the South (the Slow-Walk response by local police as infuriating as those missed calls by professional wrestling refs on tv), while the blanket racism of the town all the more effective for its casual acceptance on the side of the vice issues. Under Karlson, the film ain’t subtle, but neither is the story.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Even more ironic now after TALL’s ‘heroic’ Sheriff Buford Pusser was posthumously tagged with his wife’s ‘unsolved’ murder, the incident that started his violent clean-up.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  Famously a big fan of PHENIX, what a pity Martin Scorsese didn’t re-watch it before starting KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON/’24.  It might have helped.  The films less dissimilar than you’d think.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/04/killers-of-flower-moon-2024.html

LA MARSEILLAISE (1938)

Released between LA GRANDE ILLUSION/’37 and LA BÊTE HUMAINE/’38, Jean Renoir’s two biggest hits of the 1930s, this crowd-funded historical on the start of the French Revolution never found a crowd . . . in France or elsewhere.  And subsequent re-releases fared little better.  The recent, uneven 2018 restoration allows you to see why; yet also makes a case for the pic.  An ADHD first half pilots a series of vignettes, with stops at Louis XVI’s court when not arresting down-and-out poachers or listening to discontented army rebels in Marseillaise where a catchy tune with grisly lyrics is making the rounds.  (Look for a wine barrel acting as Trojan Horse and for principled foreign mercenaries.)  The film structure a pageant of pit stops played as political vaudeville alternately pleasing and annoying the left-wing Popular Front backers currently (if briefly) running France.  Our level of engagement interrupted by changing POVs of class, location and political philosophy; with dialogue taken as much as possible from public records.  Narrative traction missing till the hoards head North with the goal of taking the palace from King Louis.  The court's reaction?  Indifference.  Plenty of military drills promising safety.  Now, Renoir’s concept finds purpose and shape, while his use of massed force (unexpectedly monumental) grips us with inevitable clash and slaughter.  Plus powerhouse opposition coming from Pierre Renoir’s Louis XVI and from Louis Jouvet’s Revolutionary Committee Head.  The People United Will Never Be Divided.  Sure, but great acting tends to bend feelings at the Movies.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The uneven quality of picture elements on the restoration must reflect editions at various lengths in failed attempts to recoup costs.

THE RETURN (2024)

Perhaps you’ve heard, there’s a new version of The Odyssey on screen.  Yet two years ago, this chamber version (just the last act, ‘Return to Ithaca’) flew by with a token theatrical release and nary a ripple on the cultural Zeitgeist.  Pity.  In its own way, it’s very good.  We open as Ralph Fiennes’ Odysseus washes ashore at his old stomping grounds, much worse for twenty-year’s wear and naked as the day he was born.  (Nearly naked & distressed the fashion in Ithaca so he fits right in.)  Rather than announce himself, the former leader, and already legendary victor at Troy, stealthily takes stock of the situation on his island.  Faithful wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche sporting Julia Roberts’ profile & considerably more acting chops) anxiously fending off hunky/premature/avaricious suitors; abandoned son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) having Daddy issues; the island at a standstill.  Situational baggage barely clearing the dramatic bar under inexperienced director Uberto Pasolini.*  But as Odysseus is successively recognized, complications (personal & public) kick in to move things along and cover a host of unforced filmmaking errors.  By climax, Fiennes has bulked up to rather amazing (and believable) action-figure form.  Return of the Trickster?  The film, no mere addendum, but a worthy thing of its own.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Director Uberto Pasolini (more active as producer) is related to a famous Italian director, just not the one you’re thinking of.  He’s Luchino Visconti’s nephew.  Though that other Pasolini’s take on ancient Greek tragedy in MEDEA would make an interesting followup.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/medea-1969.html

THE WARRIORS (1955)

Errol Flynn buckled his last swash in this low-budget period adventure.  The usual nonsense, but not bad, a tale from the French/English Hundred Years War (1400s) with Flynn (fleshier in face & figure at 45) as son & heir to Britain’s King Edward, going incognito to infiltrate the French Court as the unknown Black Prince.  He’s really on the hunt for battle plans from archenemy Comte De Ville (Peter Finch) and hoping to rescue kidnapped Lady Joan (Joanne Dru).  Director Henry Levin and producer Walter Mirisch, working in the U.K. on their way up the Hollywood ladder*, take advantage of two built-in obstacles.  ONE: By necessity, battles are small and ad-hoc, believably messy; and TWO: heavy period armor meant the aging Flynn wouldn’t be needed on camera during the tough physical action, but only after the main fighting and dangerous bits when he’d put his metal vizor up.  (Thousands of £s saved by using stunt doubles not only for stunts, but whenever possible.)  Diminished as a force on screen thru age, bankruptcy (the main reason he signed on), drugs, booze and hangers-on,  Flynn at half staff still better at this sort of thing than anyone other than 1920s' Douglas Fairbanks.  A natural in the genre’s unnatural poses.  How he’d fare in today’s gory iterations is anyone’s guess.  But since CAPTAIN BLOOD twenty years  ago, he was only challenged by his former self.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Henry Levin a journeyman director of B+ programmers made this shortly before his temporary career bump (late ‘50s - mid’‘60s) to A-list fare.  While already prolific producer Water Mirisch followed this with classic Bs (THE PHENIX CITY STORY/’55; INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’56) on his way to permanent Oscar’d A-lister.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/invasion-of-body-snatchers-1956.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Young Flynn certainly was a hard act to follow.  See CAPTAIN BLOOD/’35.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/captain-blood-1935.html

THE WHITE REINDEER / VALKOINEN PEURA (1952)

A rare Finnish Art House perennial from the’50s, unjustly forgotten.  Shot, directed & edited by Erik Blomberg who also co-wrote with wife/star Mirjami Kuosmanen, a ringer for Dorothy McGuire.  Here she’s a chaste newlywed hoping to boost her husband’s libido with a visit to the local spell thrower.  (Maybe it’s all those layers of clothes needed even in bed.)  But the groom is only thinking about the reindeer drive, thousands of the beasts needing constant attention thru the snowy landscape.  But if her husband hasn’t taken notice of her charms, other men have.  He does make a mid-drive pit-stop to gift his bride with a small white reindeer, but it can only provide so much satisfaction even as it possesses her.  And worse to come as the spell (or is it simply the witch already within?) unbalances the settlement and the animals.  Only a deadly metal-tipped lance aimed by the husband at the white reindeer can alter this cursed course.  And that shot can still send a shock wave thru any audience willing to accept a folktale.  Shot silent on magnificent locations, with all sound elements added in ‘post’ (including a full bore symphonic score from Einar Englund), what’s more important is that the film is æsthetically silent in technique and narrative logic. So if every turn isn’t laid out on a plate, the tone of the piece makes its effect.  The film, appropriately enough, is bewitching.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Restored a while back, not all available restored editions are equally sharp.  Something even more important with silents than for synch-sound pics.  Sample first.

THE RIP (2026)

Well-received commercial filler from NetFlix (keeping that pipeline loaded), ludicrously tagged as ‘based on true events,’ but really a tricked out caper pic with an All-Star cast.  (Well, Two-Stars; Five Featured Players.)  A prologue details a Miami drug bust gone wrong,  ‘Cartel’ involvement, female Police Captain left dead.  Later, back at Police Headquarters, Feds, Top Brass, Investigating Lieutenant and Detectives in-fighting to beat the band.  Who pulled the trigger?  Who fumbled the ball among the force?  Hardly the best time to receive a CrimeStoppers tip on thousands in illegal drug money stashed in some ‘drop house.’  That’s when the twists start to show up as Lt. Matt Damon and longtime second Ben Affleck take very different approaches in dealing with the discovered cash; not thousands but 20 million.  Tempting, no?  Mob/cartel money?  Connected to the Captain’s murder?  Suddenly, every action has a double meaning.  Someone going rogue?  Innocent renter cuffed as possible accomplice.  Neighborhood gone mysteriously dead.  And is that a getaway vehicle waiting in the garage?  So many questions!  Not only who’s telling the truth, but what is the truth?  Co-writer/director Joe Carnahan is something of an action specialist, not that you’d notice from the staging here.  Lots of stuff playing in the dark.  (To protect his reputation?)  So when the explanations arrive, it’s hard to understand what happened . . . or care.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  With movies like this, it’s easy to see why NetFlix shies from theatrical release.  Going straight to home platform makes this look like a hit.  And, by the numbers, it is.

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1920)

James Fenimore Cooper’s novel has been lucky in its movie adaptations; more than a half dozen so far.  (No eight-part streamer?)  Main contenders out in 1920, 1936 & 1992, all respectable.  Surprisingly, it’s this silent version, at about 75", that sticks closest to the novel, keeping its largely tragic ending and daring racial mix-and-match coupling.  It also lays out the story best: two sisters visiting from Europe, caught in a war between French & British territorial claims while Native Tribes ally with opposing sides.  Since our POV lies with the Brits, their Native allies are the ‘good’ Indians (including that Last Mohican) and Hurons the Baddies.  The main action a journey for the sisters thru a No Man’s Land Forest to reunite with their father.  The small group led by an Indian Scout they, and their British escorts, don’t fully trust.  (Great White Scout Hawkeye more a supporting character here.)  Easy to tell French and Brits apart by their uniforms, while different war paint does the same for Native Peoples.  (Good thing too since the whole cast is White.  That’s Wallace Beery as the film’s Indigenous villain.)  Co-directed by image-oriented Maurice Tourneur (mostly on interiors) and future M-G-M stalwart Clarence Brown* (mostly locations), the film’s much admired visuals hard to judge in the just acceptable available editions.  Good elements are said to exist, but have they ever come out?  Meanwhile, various meh copies on line, some of the best looking accompanied by hopelessly inappropriate canned classical music cues.  But you can still get a pretty good feel for the film.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Best known sound versions.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-last-of-mohicans-1936.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-last-of-mohicans-1992.html

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *Long overdue bio by Gwenda Young in CLARENCE BROWN - Hollywood’s Forgotten Master.

THE DIRTIES (2013)

Early sighting of talented Canadian writer/director Matt Johnson (of the excellent workplace dramedy BLACKBERRY/’23* and current well-received Portrait of A Chef as a Young Man pic TONY/’26 - not seen here) is worth a look, but has aged rapidly.  Pushing thirty at the time, Johnson plays a film nerd high school senior (hyperventilating over classic film like Quentin Tarantino having a celluloid orgasm), alpha-male to a gang of two, himself and BFF Owen Williams, who’s starting to find the act a bit jejune, even creepy.  Their class project a film takedown of the school hall bullies needling them, ‘The Dirties.’  Told as a revenge fantasy, Owen worries that Matt (they both use their real names) is leaning into the scenario as if they were plotting a real shooting.  Some of this extremely well observed; unusually for these things, the girls, if less active than re-active, at least are allowed independent thought not about boys.  But after a while, you notice that the hand-held, slash & dash style of our filmmaking buds covers not only what they shoot, but also how the film shoots them.  It begs the Brechtian question, by whom?   The  basic conceit of narrative filmmaking, here pulling you out of the story..  Yet it could have worked dramatically if Johnson tied this destabilizing style to Matt’s deteriorating mental state.  A psychopathic loss of control accelerated as Owen starts turning away.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, BLACKBERRY.  (If TONY shows equal growth, it must be all the critics say.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/07/blackberry-2023.html

LOVESICK (1983)

Woody Allen was known to complain (or perhaps puzzle is the word) on why a Dudley Moore rom-com like ARTHUR/’81 commercially buried even his most successful work.  And though we (and Woody) can only guess at the reasons, we can know how Moore would fare in a Woody Allen film by looking at LOVESICK, written and directed by Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman, co-writer of ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, SLEEPER and MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY.  Loaded with Allen tropes, characters, locations, social milieu, NYC-centric supporting actors, couplings with participants separated by decades, etc.  And, wouldn’t you know it, LOVESICK grossed about a third of next year’s Dudley Moore mid-life crisis pic MICKI + MAUDE/’84, which covered similar territory.  Brickman, who only directed a handful of films, has a great cast and crew on paper, but the comic doings of an indulgent psychiatrist for rich Upper East Side Manhattan neurotics isn’t much more interesting than one of the 45 minute sessions boring Dr. Moore to tears.  And that includes his latest couch sitter, playwright Elizabeth McGovern, whom he barely hears but instantly falls for.*  '80s attitudes & sexual politics being what they are, what once might have been considered charmingly romantic behavior by Moore now looks like stalking.  And the laugh lines that do come off only make the situation feel more uncomfortable.  The one thing that still plays is a sort of corporal ghost of Freud giving sage professional & personal advice, not of the patient but of the good doctor.  Underplayed to perfection by Alec Guinness who doesn’t miss a beat or a laugh, he seems to float above the film, coming off as the only modern (or is it timeless?) character in the movie.  While Brickman, back among the living, cheats by letting everyone off the hook with conflicts resolved by fiat.  Woody would never have let him get away with it.  He’d also have put the kibosh on the bouffant comb-out on Dudley’s hair.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *As mentioned, Blake Edward’s MICKI & MAUDE, every bit as blinkered in passé Freudian methodology and ‘80s sexual attitudes, but playing out (hilariously) as a period piece rather than dated/objectionable.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/05/micki-maude-1984.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Even a cinematographer as gifted as Gerry Fisher is flummoxed by the McGovern face.  Something about the square jaw and the luminescent blue eyes make her always look disconcertingly out of focus.

WINDS OF CHANCE (1925)

The Alaskan Gold Rushes at the turn-of-the-last-century (four or five major runs) held more space in America’s collective conscious than we can imagine.  Two major silents in 1925: Charles Chaplin’s ever popular THE GOLD RUSH (though only a few establishing shots made on location) and this sprawling adventure with exteriors largely shot in the Canadian Yukon, even at Dawson City where much of the story is set.  A genial mix of drama, romance, thrills and comedy from a Rex Beach novel, more Henry Hathaway/John Wayne NORTH TO ALASKA/’60 romp than a truly great & terrifying look at  the scene as found in Clarence Brown’s astonishing TRAIL OF ‘98.*   The two leads: strong/stately adventurer Ben Lyons, honestly working up a stake to make a claim, and slightly used Dawson City hall owner Anna Q. Nilsson.  (Yep, the same Nilsson who’s one of the bridge-playing ‘Waxworks’ in SUNSET BOULEVARD/’50.)  These two pair up on the way to Dawson City*, but their dalliance ends when her cheatin’ husband shows up.  Also on the journey, fragile Dana Viola, left alone after her father falls off the wagon and gets shot.  She’s taken under the wing of hearty, river hauler Victor McLaglen playing a Frenchman!  No matter, these two easily steal the pic.  (And our poster knew it.)  Also tops, the thrill-sequence down the rapids with everyone's belongings.  (The real deal, no tricks.  Note Buster Keaton’s ‘props’ genius Fred Gabourie, just off THE NAVIGATOR/’24, in the credits.)  Plus cunning villainess Dorothy Sebastian (later Buster Keaton’s co-star on and off-camera), along with a pair of bickering old-timers for comic relief.  It’s all a little pokey, a little corny, but looser than director Frank Lloyd was in his prestigious sound films.  Available for free on TUBI (one reel missing, but elsewise, other than faint ‘blasting,’ in good shape.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Dawson City history, along with some preserved films from their end-of-the-line film exchange (a landfill), on view in DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME.  Also a link to THE TRAIL OF ‘98.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-trail-of-98-1928.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/dawson-city-frozen-time.html

ORPHÉE / ORPHEUS (1950)

Jack-of-all Arts Jean Cocteau (gadfly dabbler to agnostics) made just a handful of feature films.  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST/’46 the most popular while this update of the Orpheus myth usually considered his best.  That’s debatable.  Better to claim it as the most ‘Cocteau-ean, a Greatest Hits compilation.  You know the basics: Lyric poet Orpheus/Orphée (Jean Marais) loses beloved wife Eurydice (Marie Déa) to Death (here Princess of Death Maria Casares), but wiles his way across the River Styx to bring her back to the living IF he can keep from looking at her till they’ve safely returned.  Usually things don’t end well.  (Here, more have your cake and eat it, too.)  Cocteau has devilish fun updating visual aspects; those motorcyclist Death Aides a leather fetishistic delight.  But too often he settles for vamping before plunging into his simple signature, clear-eyed F/X (mirrors of water to step into; Upside-Down Anti-Gravity tricks, reverse motion to wake the dead) and not one but two of his lovers in the same film.*  The good stuff (those effects) are tight & tidy as ever (even tv’s BATMAN picked up on one), while important themes in ethics, decor, æsthetics, poetry & eternal love sound hollow when tapped.  Philosophical metaphysics 101.  Head- scratching surrealism and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST's sturdy emotionalism were more satisfying as film.  Even George Auric’s score falls back on Gluck’s operatic masterpiece for something memorable.  (The built-in distancing of opera or ballet a better match for this story.)  Still essential, but time has taken its toll.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *In his mid-30s, Jean Marais’s big, square, noble head certainly fit for The Classics, but Roman rather than Greek.   At 25, Edouard Dermithe’s Cégeste is the one to model for a Greek bust.  Cocteau covering all bases.

THE MAN WHO SHOT THE GREAT WAR (2014)

Belfast volunteer George Hackney, Royal Irish Rifles, 14th Division, took his camera along to France in the Great War.  (A ‘pocket’ camera that needed a very large pocket.)  Unusual for the time, especially at the front where he served from 1915 to '16 (Hackney about 30 at the time) as amateur photography was strictly banned.  (There’s not an amateur composition in his work.)  He got around detection largely by shooting on plates rather than film. It allowed him to process in the field, each plate holding multiple images.  Unsurprisingly, he came back a changed man, many friends lost, his religious beliefs in question, though he long remained an elder in the Presbyterian Church.  Carefully made into prints for albums, the collection went largely unseen before albums, prints, negatives, accompanying diaries were donated to an Ulster Museum.  Rediscovered in time for the WWI centenary, this BBC documentary gave them new circulation.  This film, though filled with too much supposition and not enough detail on his process (dir. Brian Henry Martin/script Ian McElhinney), brings some remarkable images, sharp in clarity and in Hackney’s choice in subject matter, to light.  Probably at its most revealing in the visible changes that appear before-and-after the 1916 Battle of the Somme.  And it’s thru these casual portraits of men, including many who were lost, and their grave sites, that Hackney  best captured his temporary world.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The film uses a technique that pans, scans and lifts certain elements to create a 3D effect.  Peter Jackson did something different with restoration and color on his digital revamp of WWI archival motion pictures in THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD/’18.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/03/they-shall-not-grow-old-2018.html

THE MAN WITH A CLOAK (1951)

Don’t be fooled by a few ‘name’ stars and some top-line tech, this is basically an M-G-M programmer with a bit more polish than usual.  It’s mid-1800s New York (actually M-G-M’s backlot Londontown) and young French gal Leslie Caron (in her second film) is new in town, lost in the big city till friendly stranger Joseph Cotten points out the creepy mansion she’d passed by as too unsavory a place for the rich grandfather of her fiancé, currently in Paris fighting for the Republic.  Naturally, Grandpa Louis Calhern is a Monarchist with no intention of helping out his sole living relative.  Chances are he couldn’t anyway as respectable houseguest Barbara Stanwyck (who runs his life and debaucheries) along with venal butler Joe De Santis are planning on inheriting everything . . . and soon.  Only diff?  Babs willing to wait for the apoplectic old man to die naturally while De Santis wants to speed things along.  No doubt some studio exec thought this could be worked up as a period suspenser along the lines of GASLIGHT/’44.  (This guy couldn’t even come up with a decent title.)  Cotten the dead giveaway as he plays nearly the same character and has the exact same structural function as he did in the earlier classic.*  (They did give him a meaningless identity twist which you’ll guess easily.)  In ways large & small, the film feels like an expanded episode from some high quality tv anthology show; all pedestal and no statue.  Just where director  Fletcher Markle would soon be headed.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *As mentioned, GASLIGHT/’44.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/gaslight-1944.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Impeccable dubbing by Harriet Lee for Stanwyck's throaty vocal.

VILLA RIDES! (1968)

In the late ‘60s, a desperate Hollywood tried to join the youth rebellion bandwagon, but couldn’t drop old habits.  Hence, this bio-pic on Mexican Peasant Revolutionary Pancho Villa stars Yul Brynner as Pancho.  A stretch even with a full head of hair.  (On the other hand, the new generation is repped by Robert Towne and Sam Peckinpah on script.)  Brynner led to Omar Sharif in next year’s CHE!, and the year after that to Stanley Kramer stumbling thru college campus riots in R.P.M. (Get it?, Revolutions Per Minute.)  All three films D.O.A.  You’d think the studio execs were permanently out to lunch.  A bigger surprise on this Buzz Kulik film is what a lavish production it is.  (Were they thinking David Lean epic?  Great lensing by Jack Hildyard; lousy score from Maurice Jarre, both Lean regulars.)  For commercial insurance, Robert Mitchum sticks out his considerable gut as a high-flying weapons dealer (sympathies moving from Federales to revolutionaries) while Charles Bronson always shoots first as Pancho’s top aide.  The story, not without interest, has Pancho loyal to new President Madero (Alexander Knox), but unable to get on with the other Generals he outshines in the field.  (Including a wily rival played by Herbert Lom amusing himself as a sort of Mexican Inspector Dreyfus.)  The whole film simply too odd to hate.  But you do wonder who took the blame.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Pancho Villa really was a interesting case, and not the illiterate peasant stooge as usually portrayed.  Try a print-the-legend version as seen thru an American reporter’s eyes in Hollywood’s VIVA VILLA!/’34 or from a Mexican POV in VAMONOS CON PANCHO VILLA/’36.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/08/viva-villa-1934.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/vamonos-con-pancho-villa-lets-go-with.html