JOSANGO TAIHI-SEN ORI: SONO GOSHO O NERAE / TAKE AIM AT THE POLICE VAN (1960)

This middling noir from Seijun Suzuki (about a prison cop who tries to find out who attacked him & his busload of prisoners) was made shortly before he broke thru the strictures of Nikkatsu Studio with a more personal voice. Typically, a good set-up forgoes the demands of logical development for a non-forensic grab-bag of intuition, luck & unlikely coincidence. But, that was the house style for these quickly made films, and Suzuki counters with such an abundant display of technical chops and visual pizzazz that you don’t mind the narrative ellipses & manipulation. Sometimes, just watching a screen pulse with slick compositions, razor-sharp editing & an array of witty framing devises carries the day. The opening jangles the nerves with a beautifully realized assault on a police van & there’s mayhem aplenty along the way. Death, destruction, speed, high contrast b&w in WideScreen . . . catnip for noir fans.

ILS / THEM (2006)

Creep-out horror pic about an isolated couple (young & sexy, natch) who find themselves under siege by a nebulous gang of flashlight-wielding psychos. The film claims to be ‘based on a true story,’ but it feels as tricked up as most modern thrillers, though lacking even a speck of humor and with implied, rather than explicit, gore. Co-meggers David Moreau & Xavier Palud and lenser Axel Cosnefroy were probably hoping to get back to some of the deep-seated fears of SPOORLOOS/’88 (the original version of THE VANISHING), but their trailing camera technique just makes you wonder what sort of scare pic the Dardenne Bros. might fashion.

TOKYO NAGAREMONO / TOKYO DRIFTER (1966)

At ultra-efficient/ultra-commercial Nikkatsu Studio, Japanese helmer Seijun Suzuki used formula-driven genre scripts as fodder for his highly personal, visually extravagant cinema. The writing is boilerplate stuff -- A semi-retired gangster and his top enforcer (Tetsuya Watari in a star-making turn) try to ‘go straight.’ Then, the loans that financed their new life come due and draw them back in. -- but Suzuki shows little interest in following the storyline. What matters to him are the stylized sets, violence & color-coded look that grow more daringly abstract as the collateral damage accumulates. You may not always be sure of what’s going on, but you won’t take your eyes off the screen. (Even when he missteps badly with a donnybrook in a Western saloon!) By the time the big climax comes, we’ve all but lost contact with surface reality as spatial relationships, settings, compositions & performing style start to resemble ‘THE GIRL HUNT', the famous Mickey Spillane parody ballet from Vincente Minnelli’s THE BAND WAGON/’53. This is exhilarating work, but possibly mystifying to newcomers. For a better balance between form, style & content, try Suzuki’s YOUTH OF THE BEAST/’63 first.

RING OF FEAR (1954)

Low-ball circus inanity from John Wayne’s production company, megged by Duke’s favorite script polisher, James Edward Grant. Grant had directed once before (THE ANGEL AND THE BADMAN/’47), but Wayne wisely stayed off-camera this time. The nonsense begins as Sean McCory’s criminal psychopath uses a touch o’ the blarney to murder his way out of prison and back to his old job as Ring Master for the Clyde Beatty Circus. Why, there’s Clyde himself!, with his alarming lion & tiger taming act. (The cages the poor beasts live in are even more alarming.) Pat O’Brien is on hand to run the show, but he has to bring in Mickey Spillane (yep, that Mickey Spillane) to find out who’s trying to sabotage the Big Top. There are a couple of nice scenes showing how the circus sets up in a small town, but everything else (story, plot construction, comic relief, dialogue & acting) is pure amateurville. Wayne must have liked it, though. He had Grant write his own take on the genre, CIRCUS WORLD/’64. That one sabotaged Sam Bronston’s deluxe indie outfit for real.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: You can't beat DUMBO/'41 for the look & feel of a small town circus.

THE LITTLE MINISTER (1934)

This ‘olde’ fashioned play from PETER PAN author James M. Barrie was supposed to help Kate Hepburn recover from recent catastrophes on film (SPITFIRE/’34) & stage (THE LAKE/’34). It didn’t. You can see the possibilities in its story of a young minister (John Beal) who falls for Kate’s mysterious rabble-rouser. She’s unhappily affianced to the mill owning Laird, but roams the High Lands in ‘gypsy’ disguise to warn his striking laborers of trouble. (The tale’s terrrrribly Scotch, don’cha know?) For the story to work, the tone has to be consistent and the romance enchanting, but Richard Wallace megs without the vision or technical skills to hold it all together. You won’t turn it off though, good things keep popping up amidst the coy, corn & studio crud. Hepburn’s stage idol, Maude Adams, triumphed in a clutch of Barrie plays (PETER PAN, A KISS FOR CINDERELLA, WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS, plus this & QUALITY STREET, which Kate also filmed). But Adams was tiny, tough and apparently played against the sentiment. She let the audience do the weeping. Kate, at this time, was a beautiful, bending willow, and she cried at the drop of a hat. The audience were left dry-eyed.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: It doesn't seem to have reached the home market, but 'BBC Play of the Month' did a production of this in 1975 with Helen Mirren. Sounds promising!

PRINCESS O’ROURKE (1943)

This Royalty/Commoner romance doesn’t try for the melancholy undertones (or directorial finesse) that made Lubitsch’s THE STUDENT PRINCE/’27 and Wyler’s ROMAN HOLIDAY/’53 such bittersweet wonders. It’s merely a wartime farce, a pleasantry. But thanks to a cast that goes for charm over punchy laughs, it all goes down easily. An exceptionally pretty Olivia de Havilland gently handles her bored Princess shtick and she neither condescends nor overplays her disguise as a ‘regular gal.’ Watch her nail the sentiment in a scene where she finds she has no skills worth donating to the war effort. As the airman who falls for her, Robert Cummings, so often over-parted, gets a role that really fits him while Jack Carson & Jane Wyman shine as his married pals. (Career bumps all around.) Norman Krasna’s Oscar’d script features the oddest meet-cute ever: Olivia overdoses on sleeping pills. Good grief. And he lets FDR & his little dog ‘Fala’ wrap everything up for a finale. The guy had chutzpah!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Warners put out that the real White House & the real Fala were used. But isn’t this the White House set from YANKEE DOODLE DANDY/’42? As for it being the real Fala . . . hmm.

THE SEA HAWK (1924)

Warners’ famous 1940 version of THE SEA HAWK (w/ Errol Flynn) only used the title of Rafael Sabatini’s swashbuckling story. But this 1924 silent production, from First National which merged with Warners, does the tall-tale proud. Frank Lloyd is remembered for helming prestige items like MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY/’35, CAVALCADE/’33 & the marvelous IF I WERE KING/’38, with Ronald Colman & its clever Preston Sturges script, but this plot-heavy revenge story shows a bounce & sparkle largely missing from his later work. As the wronged nobleman who becomes the Allah-loving ‘Scourge of Christendom,’ the forgotten Milton Sills is hunky, melancholy, stalwart & phenomenally effective.* As the slightly dense damsel Sills yearns for, Enid Bennett just needs to be rapturously pretty, a task lenser Norbert Brodin can only occasionally pull off. (It’s a plump little face, but see how she’s transformed once she dons Arab dress in Algiers.) The rest of the big supporting cast is just great, with Wallace Beery on good form as an (almost) honorable Pirate King. And what a whirlwind of a story. Once the situation & characters are set up, it’s comes at you with the definition of a good graphic novel and the zip of a proto-RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Tremendous stuff, great fun. *For more Sills see MISS LULU BETT/'21, on DVD & on this site.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/miss-lulu-bett-1921.html

CONTEST: The Robert Israel organ score on the excellent Warners Archive DVD is fine, though certainly no match for Korngold’s 1940's masterpiece for Flynn. It’s mostly Classical ‘Pops’ stuff, but he does pull off a sly joke thanks to Hector Berlioz. Figure it out to win our usual prize, a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up on the NetFlix DVD of your choice.

SABITA NAIFU / RUSTY KNIFE (1958)

This Toshio Masuda film is a weak link in Criterion’s intriguing DVD set of Japanese noir titles from Nikkatsu Studios. Shintarô Ishihara’s story sounds promising: Young, ambitious D.A. can’t get traction against a leading mobster until an anonymous letter shows up with details on an old suicide case. Turns out, the man was murdered and there are three witnesses to the crime. The twist is that the same anonymous letter was also sent to the gangster in a blackmail scheme. So, who will get to the witnesses first, the law or the mob? If only the execution made good on the possibilities. But the story plays out without enough logic, and Masuda doesn’t show much compositional flair for action. (Some of the backscreen projection work is remarkably crude and the staging of the fight scenes make every punch look like a miss.) Oddly, the climax is pretty exciting even if it shows Masuda dealing better with trucks than with people. But in general, this title is best for completists and fans of the lead actor, Yujiro Ishihara who made many films with Masuda after this one.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: A tough D.A. who plants an ex-con inside the mob; a giggling pyschopathic gang leader; a flawed, but essentially decent ex-gangster . . . classic noir doings. Why not catch them all in KISS OF DEATH/'47 after seeing this?

LE MANI SULLA CITTA / HANDS OVER THE CITY (1963)

A major find. This prize-winning effort from Francesco Rosi (Venice Golden Bear) never got the Stateside attention/distribution it deserved. Even with Rod Steiger (who’s very good) in a leading role, it must have seemed too tied to the intrigues of Naples politics to work outside Italy. Steiger plays a city councilman & real estate entrepreneur who uses his political connections to avoid the red-tape purgatory that would customarily stall his massive land deals & deny him building permits. But with elections on tap and the government in a tight three-way split (Right, Center, Left), anything could tip the political scales. Like, maybe, a massive building collapse next-to/caused-by some current unregulated construction? The collapse is brilliantly, terrifyingly staged by Rosi, who is totally in his element here. Look how naturally he particularizes his non-professional players (and their motives) so you’re never confused about who’s screwing whom, even during the fast-shifting political allegiances & gamesmanship of the third act. And while the Italian Communists get the best lines in this post-Il Boom storyline, the situations are less biased than you might expect. The film is a near masterpiece.