THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER: RECOBBLED (1992 - 2013)

A Holy Grail for British animator Richard Williams (WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT/’88; sequences in A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM/’66; THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE/’68; various PINK PANTHERs), this never completed magnum opus was probably too ambitious from conception.  But what a conception!  And what an achievement as far as he got!  It’s THE LAST SUPPER for animation heads, a mess, but also the greatest painting ever made.  Basically, a standard ARABIAN NIGHTS story: beautiful princess pursued by an evil usurper is saved by a not-so-simple simpleton with a mouthful of tacks.  There hadn’t been an animated film this visually ambitious since Disney fell on his face with the stunning, but inert SLEEPING BEAUTY/’59. (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/12/sleeping-beauty-1959.html)  That too a financial disaster.  But Disney could weather the loss; Williams could not.  Far from finished when funds ran out and a Completion Company took over, the eviscerated results (about 80") issued by MiramaX vultures to zero B.O. under a couple of titles.  Fortunately, Williams retained his work print.  (Seen here with Williams in attendance.)  But while the work print proved invaluable, much better visual quality appeared on any number of fan edits that started to show up on the internet.  Best of the lot, Garrett Gilchrist’s long evolving ‘RECOBBLED Cut,’ dropping installments as it added chapters and refined as ever better elements appeared.  Where do these materials come from?  (The dates listed above reflect Williams’ work print and Gilchrist’s final (?) revision; running time 1'39".)  That’s the one to look for.  Hardly a perfect work, story sense never Williams’ forté, but being forced to see so much effort in such different stages of creative development isn’t just enlightening, but a backstage thrill into the wizard’s workshop.  With lovable characters (even Vincent Price’s villainous ZigZag with his rhymed couplets carries rooting interest), you’ll soon pick up on the hop, skip & jump rhythm of the narrative thread while you goggle at visual influences ranging from Chuck Jones to M.C. Escher, Aubrey Beardsley to Peter Max.  Designed to play on the biggest, deepest, widest screen possible (Williams has the compositional eye of William Wyler), if you can’t make out the flies buzzing around The Thief’s head, you need a bigger screen.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  The ReCobbled Cut uses well-matched, if abruptly edited classical music, heavy on Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade.’  But the repeating decor, designs and geometric floor patterns beg for an original Philip Glass score.  ReCobbled ReScored?

KING SOLOMON’S MINES (1937)

Originally published in 1885, H. Rider Haggard’s book was still showing up as major motion picture material every other decade a century later (1919; 1937; 1950; 1985).  To say nothing of once-removed second cousins for Tarzan & Maciste to visit; even a Son-Of iteration in WATUSI/’59.  And that’s before hitting the small screen via one-offs & series in spite of dated elements and attitudes: Darkest Africa clichés; Great White Hunter leading man.  M-G-M’s splashy version of 1950 (Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, African location backgrounds, TechniColor - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/king-solomons-mines-1950.html) long considered the class act in a landfill of kitsch, usually given top rating.  But a look at this British production when seen in a good print, easily overtakes it.  With solid journeyman director Robert Stevenson* on U.K. studio work, producer Geoffrey Barkas shooting location footage in Africa and cinematographer Glen MacWilliams (he’d later do remarkably convincing water tank work for Hitchcock in LIFEBOAT/’44) getting it all to match up pretty well, the film holds up better than M-G-M’s.  Just don’t expect major studio Hollywood technical polish.  (Certainly no ‘invisible’ editing!)  But what really makes this version a standout is in how it follows the book and in how well it’s cast.  Cedric Hardwicke, Roland Young, John Loder and Anna Lee all dashing, amusing, romantic as needed.  And then there’s Paul Robeson as mysterious fellow traveler Umbopa; friend, foe or just out for himself?  Just shy of 40 and in terrific shape, still built like the former Rutger’s football star he’d been before stage & concert hall, it’s probably the best role of his curtailed film career.  Somehow making his aid to these White fortune hunters & adventurers believable in even the most ridiculous situations.  And when he opens his mouth to sing one of the pseudo African songs, especially when he lets his bass bottom loose, he’s simply undeniable on screen.  He also looks like he’s having a great time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Yes, the same Robert Stevenson who directed Orson Welles in JANE EYRE/’43 and became Disney’s top house director in the ‘50s and ‘60s: MARY POPPINS/’64 and a host of Disney hits.  Considering his gross figures include half-price kids, it’s entirely possible Stevenson is the most commercially successful director in Hollywood history counting not by dollars but admissions.

LA CAPTURA / FACING EL CHAPO (2026)

If other Mexican tv-movies are this good, sign me up for a subscription.  Directed by Chava Cartas (script by Bernardo Esquinca from Héctor de Mauleón’s magazine series), a story too amazing to be anything but true.  Naturally well constructed, too.   (Who’d believe it as a piece of fiction?)  It opens as El Chapo, Mexico’s top-drug lord (Hector Kotsifakis) and top cartel second El Cholo (Juan Pablo Cruz García) wade to freedom thru one of his infamous escape tunnels.  Moving thru the watery muck in their underwear, they emerge (weapons intact) then steal a car after tossing its middle-aged driver & passengers out.  The incident, initially reported as a simple stolen vehicle, and the car quickly spotted by roadside Federal Policemen (Alfonso Herrera; Noé Hernández), patrol car partners just reassigned to night shift.  Family man Herrera and near retirement loner Hernández strangers without a known history to have built trust on.  And with bigtime drug money corruption so rampant, it’s naive to have trust between agencies; from one desk at headquarters to the next; let alone  to the guy sharing the front seat of your police vehicle.  Even more so with two of the most dangerous people in the world cuffed and wearing dirty underwear behind you.  (No wonder some crucial info gets ‘slow walked’ thru the system, there's always someone  on the take you've got to work around.)  Overtaking that stolen car, the pair immediately know who they’ve got and what the stakes, bribes and odds of survival are.  Plus, they’re running out of gas in unfriendly territory and a stop will surely expose the men in the back seat.  Sure enough, word inevitably leaks thru mobile phone pics and a hostage drama quickly ramps up as cops & criminals race not only to the scene, but also to Herrera’s family home.  All this honestly and cleanly handled without having to push the situation.  Yes, massed military-style standoffs in the mix, but at heart this is a chamber piece.  And all the more effective for it.  (NOTE:  Once again, for those on the Main Site who see our LABELS which don't show on e-phones, another Family Friendly listing, but definitely not kiddie fare,  Think Junior High and up.)

DOUBLE-BILL:  Instead of other drug cartel action/suspensers, go for a Western that works in similar fashion, 3:10 TO YUMA/’57, the Delmer Daves classic with Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, everyone at their peak.  Not the over-egged 2007 remake.

SON OF THE GODS (1930)

Fourth and last of the consecutive films silent star Richard Barthelmess and director Frank Lloyd made to ride thru the Silent to Talky transition (1929 to 1930).  Lloyd, by now, pretty much back on his feet technically, if anything, a bit ahead of the curve.  Barthelmess, on the other hand, never quite adjusting to ‘30s tempo, but holding on to stardom by moving into stories on controversial social issues.*  Here, it’s race prejudice.  Barthelmess who became a major star with his YellowFace turn in D.W. Griffith’s BROKEN BLOSSOMS/’19* (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/broken-blossoms-1919.html), again plays a Chinaman (as he’s pejoratively called here), but without YellowFace, since his Caucasian features are half the plot.  Sent into the White man’s world by proud, rich father Anders Randolf (very much in YellowFace), Barthelmess is not so much ‘passing’ as ‘not mentioning.’  And while he’s considered a great guy by his old college pals (always good for a loan), whenever his heritage leaks out to people who don’t know him, especially to hopeful young women, the reaction is vicious, as if getting a good table they’d never manage on their own was the equivalent of rape.  And the film doesn’t hold back on these attitudes.  Realizing he’ll never succeed, especially by living off his father’s largess, he tries Europe, finding a job and living on his own resources.  Once more, a white admirer, Constance Bennett, swears nothing could come between them, but a confession leads to a public flogging for being ‘deceptive,’ cunning as all Chinamen are!  Meanwhile, Dad is dying back in New York’s Chinatown (is that a set or a location shot on Doyers Street - looking much as it does today?).  You’ll know how the rest plays out, even the appalling cop-out for the censorship board to facilitate the ending.  That’s kinda fascinating, too; subject matter and rawness of presentation quite unexpected for 1930.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Unfortunately for Barthelmess, his series of socially engaged films (‘30 - ‘34), though often worthy as commentary and as film, never hit the way Paul Muni and Mervyn LeRoy did in I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG/’32.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/i-am-fugitive-from-chain-gang-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *To Barthelmess's credit, YellowFace more in attitude than in makeup.

MOTOR CITY (2025)

Hard to know where to start on this one.  Writer Chad St. John brings action experience, director Potsy Ponciroli made the promising OLD HENRY/’21, so this feels like regression, a concept-driven film-school graduation project.  Let’s start with its title: hard to see anything Detroit here.  Not filmed there, worse it looks not filmed there.  Supposedly set in the '70s, post ‘67 race-riots, we might be in any Rust Belt town, not a majority Black city just hanging on to a million residents.  The generic look matching its generic storyline: mob moll Shailene Woodley falls between new XXXL lover boy Alan Ritchson (the actor who saved REACHER from pint-size Tom Cruise) and local heroin franchiser Ben Foster.  But when he’s framed out of the picture by Foster with a historically large drug bust that makes the police look good, Ritchson winds up in the clink where he’s soon plotting escape & revenge.  Eventually killing his way out with a pair of prison accomplices with blood, car chases & mayhem.  Standard action fare; though a penultimate fight in the confines of a moving elevator is vicious enough to match violent French provocateur Gaspar Noé in unintentional laughs.  And now, since we can’t avoid it any longer, we need to mention that high-concept . . . er, gimmick . . . er, mere gimmick;  St. John & Ponciroli give everything in here the silent treatment.  That is the Silent Film treatment.  Or think so.  What they actually do is go about 92% inaudible dialogue.   ‘Silent films’ actually had plenty of dialogue, just no way to record it.  Reading lips becoming something of a game for audiences.  (Is Victor McLaglen swearing?*)  Here, the dialogue is muffled behind glass or obscured by distance.  You might as well hire a mime to do complicated exposition.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *One of the biggest laughs Buster Keaton ever got came thru lip reading.  Right at the end of THE BOAT/’21, his richly comic/existential short, when lost at sea with his family in a sinking boat somewhere between sand & sea, he’s asked by rescuers for his location and, speaking in medium close-up, ‘mouths’ the name of his vessel.  This punchline entirely dependant on the audience reading his lips.  Damned if they don’t!

A KISS IN THE DARK (1949)

Loud, fast, not particularly funny.  A good description of most Golden Age Warner Bros. comedies.  This one isn’t even fast.  Putative explanation follows.  Contract star Jane Wyman, after a decade’s slog from featured player to second leads, finally breaking onto A-list leads in THE YEARLING/’47 (on loan to M-G-M) then surprising the heck out of Warners execs when JOHNNY BELINDA/’48, a film no one wanted to make, hit big.  So, having nothing on deck for her, they called in comic script doctor Harry Kurnitz to punch up this dusty screenplay about neurasthenic concert pianist David Niven whose controlling manager has just bought an Upper West Side apartment building for his growing portfolio.  (He’s also robbing Niven blind.)  Checking out his new property, Niven finds a whole building of sweet eccentrics, falls for pretty model Wyman, woos her away from overbearing fiancé Chester Morris and is freed from psychological ailments by getting to know and appreciate New York's hoi polloi.  Alternately over or under played, it was director Delmer Daves only attempt at light comedy.  And it does alter the Warners model by not being particularly fast, but only because building manager Victor Moore has such a deliberate manner.  Not for nothing was Moore’s style best caught on film under Laurel & Hardy experts Leo McCarey and George Stevens.  Only at the end, when most of the comic complications have been dealt with, do you suddenly notice how charmingly Wyman & Niven work together, an adorable mismatch.  But by then it’s much too late.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Niven bats 1000 at similar comic weight in BACHELOR MOTHER/’39.  Wyman’s best in these things came during her Second Lead days.  Try PRINCESS O’ROURKE/’43.  (Note both films written by Norman Krasna, who’s often mistaken for Harry Kurnitz.)      https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/08/bachelor-mother-1939.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/princess-orourke-1943.html

COLORADO (1940)

Republic Pictures stalwart Joseph Kane directs this atypically ambitious Roy Rogers programmer.  (Admittedly more aspirational than fully achieved.)  No Western (and with hardly a verse of song), but a Civil War meller about Captain Jerry Burke (Rogers), assigned by no less than General Ulysses S. Grant to break up a Sessionist Conspiracy in Colorado illegally selling guns to the Indians and letting outlaws run wild, all so Union soldiers are needed to keep the peace and patrol the territory and can’t be sent East to fight in the war.  True Southern loyalists and venal public officials joining to help the cause or make a buck.  This complicated by a neat personal story with pretty Pauline Moore joining the stagecoach with Roy and sidekick Gabby Hayes (hey!, it’s still a Roy Rogers’ pic, no?) on her way to meet fiancé Milburn Stone (later Doc in GUNSMOKE), a turncoat Captain who Rogers keeps giving a break to (and vice versa).  Hmm, what’s that about?  Running about an hour, well acted and shot on locations John Ford wouldn’t have sneered at.  If only we could properly see it!  Alas, yet another poorly preserved slice of American cinematic history left to fall into public domain purgatory, but worth the hunt to find a minimally acceptable download amid the subfusc crowd.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Rogers, not yet 30, has yet to acquire that ageless look or Dale Evans.  But did already have Trigger.  (Acquiring the horse not long after Olivia de Havilland rode him in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/’38.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *A pair of properly restored Rogers in Republic’s own TruColor system out via KINO.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/03/sunset-in-west-1950.html

FOR THE BOYS (1991)

One of those ‘can’t miss’ ideas that miss badly, critically and commercially, moving director Mark Rydell permanently off the A-list he’d only recently hopped on, dropping James Caan two billing spots away from leads, and losing tens of millions for 20th/Fox.  And yet, it is a ‘can’t miss’ idea: Bickering pair of UFO entertainers* go thru three major wars (WWII, Korea, Vietnam) blindly unchanging while war and world move past them.  Okay, I’m cheating.  That’s what the film should have been about.  Instead, it’s a two-sided soap opera for both entertainers (each separately married), structured like THE SUNSHINE BOYS (Neil Simon’s play-to-film about a pair of estranged vaudevillians forced back together for a celebratory tv special).  The film peaks early with Bette Midler’s high stakes audition/debut at a WWII London UFO show where she’s so good, with a song or an ad-lib, putative partner Caan wants her immediately out.  A full-reel exhibition of everything Bette does best; and she’s a legit wonder.  Surely what got her the film’s sole Oscar® nom; it also leaves the film with no place to go other than in-fighting interrupted by the occasional personal tragedy.  Two peculiarities: Caan morphing from shit to pretty decent guy; Midler going from tart/sassy doll to pain in the tuchus.  Their always at odds personalities especially noticeable because of the real life antipathy between these two leaking off the set and onto the screen.  (Check the name NOT on the LP cover above.). You need to go back to Walter Matthau and Barbra Streisand in HELLO, DOLLY!/’69 to find the like on display in the final cut.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Bob Hope and Martha Raye are the usual suspects as the real people behind Caan and Midler’s characters.  Raye certainly thought so, unsuccessfully suing the producers for damages.  Hard to buy either as a serious inspiration beyond the obvious UFO connection.

LA FRENCH / THE CONNECTION (2014)

A fact-touched, but largely fictional, drug-trafficking thriller out of Marseilles (1975 - 1981), structurally neat as a pin, and unusually easy to follow.  (And note how its French & International titles are combined on our poster to reflect a certain 1971 movie.*  Writer/director Cédric Jimenez earning rather than coasting on the reference.)  A mano-a-mano duel between the lawman and the dealer, with Jean Dujardin’s magistrate, just promoted from juvie drug crime to the big leagues, playing new sheriff in town to go after longtime drug boss Gilles Lellouche*, a man whose tentacles reach all; from murdering henchmen to judicial bench men and disco club investors,  desk-jockey police dicks and political appointees.  What he didn’t figure on was the obsessive/addictive personality and workaround legal tactics of Dujardin’s Judge, a man who puts everything aside (even family and his own survival) to bring down decades of backroom deals and delivery infrastructure.  Jimnez is technically fully up to date in action-driven movement and editing, but he gets real period texture by shooting 35mm in a style that (abetted by cinematographer Laurent Tangy) mimics the color, tone and film stock of the late ‘70s.  (Note the '70s animated Gaumont logo, too.  As much a throwback as the sideburns.)  Not a great film or even a great story, but solid, pleasurable work.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Naturellement, FRENCH CONNECTION/’71.  (In France, they dropped the article.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/french-connection-1971.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Jimnez gives the leads a Michael Mann stare-off meeting midway along.  A misstep, though you can see why he felt he had to.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024)

Excluding the rare exception where actor-identification in a role supercedes the person they play (think Gary Cooper/Lou Gehrig), Hollywood bio-pics come in two often self-defeating flavors: WAXWORKS and LITE.  Neither necessarily pejorative; each can be screen worthy, both in use recently.  (Churchill bios always leaning WAXWORKS; Musicians tilting LITE.)  More noticeable (and positive) is a general move away from cradle-to-grave in favor of finding the crucial act to tell the tale in a single stroke.  So, no surprise to see co-writer/director James Mangold going Single Arc-Lite on Bob Dylan: fresh acoustic folksinger to electric literary-rocker.  Alas, no superceding identification in sight, it’s all Bob Dylan Lite (Timothée Chalamet - with a high polish shine); Pete Seeger Lite (Edward Norton - very good); Joan Baez Lite (Monica Barbaro - less good); and so on.  But what ultimately kills the film is what’s not in here: Mangold missing any sense of danger or revolution; something all these culturally revolutionary BabyBoomers had in spades.  Pollack, Mailer, James Dean, Johnny Cash; you never knew what you’d get when they showed up . . IF they showed up.  Here, we know exactly what’s coming and it boils down to the surrogate Father/Son dynamic between Seeger & Bob.  (That and a bit of bed-hopping from Dylan.)  Adolescent rebellion a decade late (arrested development from Bob Dylan?), leaving surrogate Dad and his politically activated acoustic folk behind to play his own electronic-flavored rock/R&B) and bring out a voice of his own.  Mangold’s reductive explanation only defangs and domesticates a difficult/complex personality.  The times they are a’changing, but bio-pic bromides are forever.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Another way to do these things is to have the celebrity figure cast a shadow from just out of frame, as the Coen Bros. have Dylan do in the unsatisfying INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS/’13.

THE WOODEN HORSE (1950)

Fact-based, yet by-the-numbers WWII P.O.W. breakout story (THE SO-SO ESCAPE?), decent rather than pulse-pounding, ‘veddy-veddy’ stiff upper lip British and intended that way.*  The gimmick’s in the title, a bespoke wooden ‘vaulting’ horse, built in the Stalag by officer-prisoners as a Trojan Horse able to hold three men inside.  It's an A-frame structure hiding a tunnel digger who secretly burrows while incarcerated officers camouflage verboten activity with jumps & flips over the ‘horse.’  Ease boredom!  Keep in shape!  Finish the hole!  All this still fresh in 1950, but for modern audiences the film only comes fully to life after three men (Leo Genn, Anthony Steel, David Tomlinson) clamber inside and are carried to a tunnel entrance hidden in plain sight.  Only then does director Jack Lee* get the engine to turn over as we stick to Genn & Steel and watch them finesse their way thru German occupied cities trying to find the resistance and a passage to Sweden.  Great locations and period detail backing the intriguingly uneven relationship growing between Genn’s helpless English-only superior officer and Steele’s indispensable multi-linguist.  The ending’s a bit abrupt, but better too little than too much.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For fuller realizations of U.K. precursors to THE GREAT ESCAPE/’63 try THE  COLDITZ STORY/’55 or THE PASSWORD IS COURAGE/’62.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-password-is-courage-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Writer/producer Ian Dalrymple had a freakishly strong year in 1938 earning two Oscar® noms for co-adaptations of G.B. Shaw’s PYGMALION and A.J. Cronin’s THE CITADEL.  Then never nom’ed again.

WHEN STRANGERS MARRY / BETRAYED* (1944)

First give thanks for easy-to-find mint prints all over the internet on this tasty film noir from Poverty Row Monogram Pictures.  Decent film elements from this source not something you take for granted.  Second, a tip of the hat to penny-pinching producers The King Bros. who lined up four future Oscar® winners for a Monogram ‘second’ feature: scripter Philip Yordan; actors Kim Hunter & Dean Jagger; composer Dimitri Tiomkin.  Most importantly, the film’s a fun watch, even with schlock director William Castle already jonesing to be a new Alfred Hitchcock.  Not only the plot, a rip-off of SUSPICION/’41 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/06/suspicion-1941.html), Castle blatantly lifts THE 39 STEPS/’35 shot of a cleaning lady finding a body and her shriek cutting to a train whistle.  (Jacques Tourneur’s CAT PEOPLE/’42 also gets badly burgled.)  Bumpy going in general (as if shots were missing), but hard to take offense with all the suspenseful/creepy set pieces.  And dig that deep focus hotel room composition.  (Castle certainly does, even repeats it.)  Plus untrustworthy characters to fill the narrative as child-bride Hunter starts to believe Dean Jagger, the traveling salesman she barely knows and impulsively married, may be the Silk Stocking serial killer.  When Jagger doesn’t arrive at the Manhattan hotel he’s booked for them, Hunter’s lucky to bump into past beau Robert Mitchum who’s long held a crush.  Hoping to find him, they see Homicide Detective Neil Hamilton for help.  (Hamilton a deadpan hoot in one of Monogram’s minimally decorated offices.*).   Once Jagger does appear, the couple is soon on the lam, sticking out as the only Whites at a Harlem Jazz Joint before finding overnight refuge in an uptown rooming house.  Fate comes knocking anyway; followed by a neat double-helix twist you may not see coming.  Ending with yet another Hitchcock lift; only this one anticipates the tag in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN/’52.  Ten bucks says the idea wasn’t Castle’s, but in Yordan’s script.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Good lord, Mitchum was a lean fellow with an amazing V-shaped build at the time.  Check out the broad shoulders/skinny waist in that big double-breasted suit!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Film re-released in ‘49 as BETRAYED with Mitchum jumping from third to first billed.  ALSO:  *Hamilton plays nearly the same role nearly the same way 20 years on in TV's BATMAN.

CANOA: A SHAMEFUL MEMORY (1975)

Working off a straightforward/fact-based script by Tomás Pérez Turrent on how small-town mass hysteria led to a mistaken-identity mob-lynching (the corrupt local priest falsely tying the victims to the 1968 international student uprisings), Mexican director Felipe Cazals used linear deconstruction and Brechtian distancing devices to create this classic of political engagement and generational cinematic change.  The story simple enough for a fable, a Grimm fable, as a happy-go-lucky group of 20-somethings, low-wage University workers, head off for an overnight hike on a nearby mountain.  But bad weather leaves them seeking shelter in an unfriendly rural town.  And while they find welcome at a farm building for the night, word has already spread (even on the town loud speaker system) that these kids are front men for a Communist invasion of rioting students out to destroy the church and local monuments.  Hasn’t their priest been warning of this for months?  The rest plays out like a lethal game of rumor, lies multiplying into violent attacks on the outsiders, though the first victim is a long distrusted local.  And neither the law nor a Hollywood-style voice of reason to stem the vicious tide of hate.  Cazals over-eggs the first half of the film with too much endearing larky behavior by the university crew, but there’s no denying the power of the inevitable atrocities of the something wicked this way comes second half.  Or the lack of justice after the fact.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Stateside mob violence of a different kind, but with a similar feel comes over strongly in Joseph Losey’s THE LAWLESS/’50.  OR:  *Take director Cazals’ advice, as seen in an Extra on the Criterion edition where, in conversation with fellow Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (BTW  Guillermo del Toro introduces the film), Cazals says the only film influence on this was Juan Bustillo Oro & Fernando de Fuentes’ EL COMPADRE MENDOZA.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/el-compadre-mendoza-1934.html

THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES (2018)

The work of film essayist Mark Cousins can be a bit precious and navel-gazing.  (Fine if the navel in question weren’t his but the subject’s!)  But in this fresh take on Orson Welles’ life & legacy, the style suits Cousins and subject equally well.  Probably the best film on Welles.  (Or is till Cousins misguidedly continues into post-mortem supposition.)  Aided by Welles' lifelong habit of sketching everything he was thinking about, Cousins organizes a peripatetic life with drawings casual and frame-worthy; by-passing protective moats to enter the Wellesian fortress.  Focusing more on the work than the life, this telling is immediately enveloping even for what’s not in here.  Not a word on weight.  Nothing on Hollywood disappointments.  Passing over the WAR OF THE WORLDS scandal.  Indeed, not quite enough on mundane commercial success as actor (largely for self-financing projects) or showing how Welles could coopt the system when it fit his purpose.  Instead, his astounding range of media reinvention (radio, film, theater), and nods at some bravely controversial political stands, particularly on race issues far ahead of the curve.  Much of this told thru a previously overlooked treasure of archival holdings of those quick-stroke drawings.  The University of Michigan archives seems an especially rich repository.*  Revelatory stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL:  The film points out a couple of attempts at dramatizing events: Richard Linklater’s ME AND ORSON WELLES/’08 surprisingly worthy; Tim Robbins’ CRADLE WILL ROCK/’99 weirdly mean-spirited.  Or look for most of his own work covered within.  Just type the title wanted into our SEARCH Box located on the Main Site (left side/top of the page).

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Has an exhibition of drawings using works spread across various institutions been attempted?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Cousins errs in showing clips from TOUCH OF EVIL/’58 in Academy Ratio (1.33:1).  The full frame negative was meant to be cropped down to 1.85:1, common practice at the time in many non-anamorphic films.  Universal Pictures was apt to send out uncropped full-frame prints where, if shown without the correct aperture plate, they'd reveal all sorts of studio-set artifice (lights, girders, wiring) hanging above the intended image.

THE TRIBE / PLEMYA (2014)

The sole feature from Ukrainian filmmaker Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi is distressing, but worth it.  (Surrounding this, he’s made about a dozen short subjects.)  A real misérable story, it follows (and ‘follows’ is the word for his tagalong/long-take film technique) a just-arrived deaf teenage student at his new boarding school.  Co-ed, though more boys than girls, the all-deaf institution a horror house for ‘parking’ unwanted kids in a kind of Survivor Academy of little learning and scams on & off campus, organized thru a pecking order of seniority rule.  Daringly, Slaboshpytskyi leaves the (Ukrainian?) sign language entirely untranslated (no subtitles/no voice-over, just natural sound) as 16-yr-old Sergei is greeted with a series of rough hazing assaults to put him in his place before he’s even found a dorm spot.  Later, he’ll be assigned various low-level jobs to make a few bucks selling crap on trains or pimping girl students at a truck stop.  Cash split between him, the girls and the older boys.  Sergei will wind up paying for his own session, losing his virginity and his heart.  He’s already losing any sense of humanity.  (Sex, violence and an edit-free bathroom abortion all Hard-R level.)  Everything fascinating and horrifying.  As for teaching , a smattering of subjects.  We see history and shop; if there’s any literature, the reading matter would likely be LORD OF THE FLIES.  Finally pushed too hard, the worm turns in Sergei with grisly finality.  No gloss, no answers, certainly no happy ending.  Really, no ending at all.  Just departure.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: We’re a long way from ZÉRO DE CONDUITE/’33.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/05/complete-jean-vigo-1930-34.html

LA MUJER DE LA FILA / THE WOMAN IN THE LINE (2025)

Fact-inspired ‘Mother-Love’ story from Argentina, ‘fesses up’ to trimming the truth ‘for dramatic purposes’ in a title-card just before the End Credits.  How you feel about this subterfuge from writer/director Benjamín Ávila may make you second guess the entire film.  On its own terms, it’s an involving and emotional journey thru the police procedures, courts and prisons of 2004 Argentina under a Perónist government.  You know what’s coming: miscarriage of justice ripping apart a happy home (working single-mom/three kids) when a SWAT Team invades to arrest eldest son Federico Heinrich (excellent) without warrant or charges.  Held in a prison archipelago at 18, it takes weeks to find out what’s going on.  Sympathetic lawyer impotently suggesting patience while Mom (Natalia Oreiro) seems a bit naive about the lack of basic rights under this right-wing So. American legal system.  Eventually, after many long waits in line, she establishes a routine for visits, bringing clothes, blankets, food, phone cards, etc.  Two new friends help her thru the confusion: another prisoner’s mom who’s been thru this drill for most of her life, and a long-term prisoner who shares her lawyer and is able to get word out to her when her son can’t.  But the film only jumps to a higher level not, as you might expect at an emotionally raw, self-support group for prisoner wives & mothers, but during Mom’s all-girl social get-together, friends who know more about her situation than they let on, but whose condescending ‘help’ gets under her skin.  It also hints at the fictional twist the film uses to add suspense, texture and a chance for Mom to play crime sleuth.  The revelation coming at a cost . . . to the film.

HIGH ROAD TO CHINA (1983)

How pissed off was Tom Selleck when ‘the powers that be’ at CBS and MAGNUM, P.I. contractually kept him from making RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in 1981?  First-choice for Indiana Jones, he was enough pissed off for someone (those same powers that be?) to palm off this copycat INDIANA JONES on him two years later.  A similar ‘30s period adventure in serial-style with Selleck as a trouble-prone free-lance pilot stuck with a rich, irritating heiress on a hunt to find missing Dad Wilford Brimley, missing somewhere in the Near-East, before thieving business partner Robert Morley inherits his fortune.  Directed with occasional flair by the unprolific Brian G. Hutton (only nine features in spite of two snappy Clint Eastwood WWII adventures - WHERE EAGLES DARE/’68; KELLY’S HEROES/’70 - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/where-eagles-dare-1970.html ; https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/kellys-heroes-1970.html).  Bouncing from one set piece to the next, all depends on chemistry between the bickering romantic leads, with Bess Armstrong’s strong-arm tactics simply too irritating for Selleck to respond to.  He sulks when he should smoulder.  Dwarfed by RAIDERS’ success and leaving unresolved plot lines at every turn of the tale, the film barely gets by; less debacle than forgettable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  An enormous star on tv, Selleck’s film career never got into high gear.  Ironically, ending with THE LOVE LETTER/’99 which was also a last feature (and something of a vanity project) for co-star Kate Capshaw.  Married to Steven Spielberg whom she met when playing the irritating gal pal role against Harrison Ford in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM/’84, a part that might well have been Selleck’s.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Listen out for John Barry’s fine score.  ONE - because it’s the best thing in here, and TWO - because figuring a grand tune was going to waste, Barry all but reused the Airborne Love Theme in here for OUT OF AFRICA two years later.

POLICE STORY / GING CHAAT GOO SI (1985)

Though a star in comic-leaning Hong Kong actioners for a decade (directing for five years), to the international audience, this film was Jackie Chan’s ‘calling card.’  (A previous self-directed ChopSocky period piece, PROJECT A/’83, likely primed the pump.)  STORY still one of Chan’s best, well-balanced between thrills, impossible stunts done ‘for real,’ slapsticky Martial Arts, a game gal adversary who flips, turning from reluctant to enthusiastic helpmate, a Mr. Big & gang out to silence or frame Jackie, his own police force hunting him, and chases via car and foot thru tight corners on streets and inside public spaces.*  Yet still human-scaled so you can just believe what you’re watching could happen.  (Nothing like ‘practical’ effects to sell a scene thru punches that land with consequence via camera angles, timing and editing rather than vapid CGI.  Why there’s even a plot you can follow.  Mostly about Chan peeling off mob secretary Maggie Cheung to testify against her boss in court.  A partnership with Chan that’s starting to look fishy to fiancée Brigitte Lin.  (Her evolving relationship with Cheung an unexpected treat.)  Jackie Chan’s film idols were Bruce Lee and Buster Keaton, and while he hasn’t the line or grace of either (more young Douglas Fairbanks, even in build), STORY let’s you see the connection and makes a great introduction.

DOUBLE-BILL:  This is probably Chan’s Goldilocks of a film, not too big, not too small, the size just right.  STORY 2 not seen here, nor 3 (and there’s a NEW POLICE STORY in the works for the 72 year-old veteran star), but as mentioned above, PROJECT A would pair well.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A tricky solo comic bit for Chan and a bunch of landline telephones needs a one-shot/one-take approach to work properly.  Here, it’s funnier in concept than in execution.  Chan not quite having the physical chops to pull it off.

THE HEAVENLY BODY (1944)

Why bother using top M-G-M producer Arthur Hornblow Jr, and director Alexander Hall, on loan-out from Columbia, still hot from HERE COMES MR. JORDAN/’41, for such a throwaway comedy?  (Plus the great Al Hirschfield on this trade poster!)  Granted, just about anything made money during the war years, but this is some kind of lame.  Our main gag: World-famous astronomer William Powell, in the headlines for discovering a comet on track to crash the moon, is exasperated when wife Hedy Lamarr keeps mixing up ASTRONOMY and ASTROLOGY.*  And now, thanks to busybody neighbor Spring Byington, in thrall to a new horoscope reading from Fay Bainter predicting a warm-blooded man (Clark Gable fill-in for the duration James Craig) is coming to sweep her off her feet.  Not a lot to get out of this set-up, yet the film is all but essential viewing just to see William Powell lose his comic mojo for the only time in his long career.  Largely in the first act, when he has most of his solo scenes against Lamarr.  Always gorgeous, always dramatically inert, her line readings flat enough to discombobulate the usually unflappable Powell technique.  She’s like a tennis ball that won’t bounce back.  Mind you, Powell’s timing plus-perfect with everyone else; even with Lamarr when there’s a third-party involved; or working on his own in reaction shots while taste-testing flavored vodkas with some new Russian pals.  (1944 - a very Hands Across the River Neva year.)  But Powell’s face plants with Hedy are unique, like watching the Statue of Liberty sit down to rest her torch.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Kinda ironic when Lamarr may have been the smartest actor in Hollywood.  Her experiments with avant-garde composer George Atheil in electronics & physics picked up by the Army Air Force for use in bombing runs, and currently part of that ‘smartphone’ you may be reading this on!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Powell’s next had him running for cover with another THIN MAN pic, THE THIN MAN GOES HOME/’44.  And if it hardly covers him (or anyone else) in glory, at least he’s back to form in what elsewise is the weakest of the beloved series,    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/thin-man-goes-home-1944.html

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?)