BLONDE VENUS (1932)

The ratio of Sublime to Inane swings noticeably in the six Hollywood collaborations of Marlene Dietrich & mentor/helmer Josef von Sternberg. Skeptics to the legend lean toward the earlier films (where Marlene has cheeks as well as cheek bones) while true believers opt for the delirious excess of the final two. So, where does that leave this mid-point entry?* Here, Marlene plays the loyal & loving wife of radium-poisoned Herbert Marshall. To save him, she stoops to conquer, chantuesing in a nightclub where she promptly falls for Cary Grant’s ‘swellegant’ racketeer. Sternberg usually had the older suitor (or husband) as masochist/reject, but VENUS adds button-cute Dickie Moore as a wild card; he’s Dietrich & Marshall’s son, and that changes the equation. The film holds its place in popular culture because of ‘Hot Voodoo,’ the song where Marlene emerges from a gorilla suit, but it’s sacrificial MotherLove that drives the narrative. (Alas, none of the songs are memorable.) With Sternberg, it’s never quite clear how much of this is supposed to be taken seriously. (Dietrich sacrifices, sins, gives up her son, sinks to the depths, rises to stardom, then gets it all back. 'Is that all there is?') But with Jules Furthman on script, the swift transitions move the outrageous story ahead like a graphic novel for the soap opera set, and his kidding-on-the-square dialogue perfectly characterizes while getting healthy laughs. And not only for Dietrich & Grant. Just see what he does for the amazingly assured Hattie McDaniel in an early appearance.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: * With seven films, why is #5 midpoint? Well, THE BLUE ANGEL, made in Germany, is sui generis. DISHONORED/’31 was #3, but gets dropped as their sole misfire. (But keep the great execution finale.) Here’s the full line-up: BLUE ANGEL/’30; MOROCCO/’30; DISHONORED/’31; SHANGHAI EXPRESS/’32; BLONDE VENUS/’32; THE SCARLET EMPRESS/’34; THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN/’35. (Though in America, BLUE ANGEL got released second, after MOROCCO . . . but in an inferior English-language edition.) Note the missing year of 1933 when Paramount untied the Gordian Knot and gave Dietrich to Rouben Mamoulian for the ill-considered SONGS OF SONGS. Then, back to Sternberg for the last two films. Confused yet?

NIGHT FLIGHT (1933)

Like any long-sought treasure, few ‘lost’ films are able to meet the inflated expectations of unavailability. But this rarely seen David O. Selznick production, from Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s book, turns out to be a true buried beauty. Hardly a great film (heck, it’s not even a good film!), it’s so handsomely designed & visually inventive, it disarms normal objections. Meant as an all-star follow up to Selznick’s DINNER AT EIGHT/’33, it top-bills John & Lionel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery & Myrna Loy; all that’s missing is a storyline. No matter, helmer Clarence Brown, an avid flyer, seems positively liberated by the assignment, as is his inspired lenser Oliver Marsh. John Barrymore, in another superb perf from his brief glory years (1932-34), agonizes in an office impressive enough for a small-time fascist dictator as the tough-minded boss of a So. American mail service. He’s just instituted night flights and won’t let fog, rain, black-outs, impassable mountains or worried spouses stop him. A commander out of wartime, he sends young pilots like Gable, Montgomery & the likable William Gargan to possible death, all to advance the cause. (Gable’s miscast, but Montgomery has some remarkable scenes.) Hayes, who’s wistfully insufferable, and Loy play the not-so stoic wives, while a fidgety Lionel Barrymore grumps as his kid brother’s second. Selznick tossed in a bit of corny melodrama involving a polio serum to shore-up the film’s episodic structure and damned if he didn’t reuse it on MADE FOR EACH OTHER/’39. But it’s the romance of the air, captured by all the tech departments working on some kind of painterly high, that holds the film togteher. The trick work is unusually fine for its period and the real flying sequences are beautifully caught, quite spectacular. Why even Herbert Stothart’s musical score has its moments. Now that’s unusual. (Be sure to check out the vintage Harman/Ising cartoon for some mint-condition 2-strip TechniColor.)

DOUBLE-BILL: The hard-shelled guy sending flyers into harm’s way may echo Howard Hawks’ THE DAWN PATROL/’30. But then, Hawks’ ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS/’39 strongly echoes this film. And Gable, a fly-boy here, will take on a variant of Jack Barrymore’s role when he makes COMMAND DECISION/’46.

HEROES OF TELEMARK (1965)

Five years after Kirk Douglas dropped Anthony Mann for Stanley Kubrick on SPARTACUS*, the two tried again with this by-the-numbers WWII ‘impossible mission’ story. Kirk plays a Doubting Thomas professor who’s roped into the resistance when Richard Harris shows him evidence of ‘heavy-water’ production at a mountainside factory. Shut it down or the Nazis get the atom bomb! But when the British commando squad goes kaput, it’s up to a handful of skiing Norwegian patriots to play saboteur, including Professor Kirk. It’s a good premise, there’s even a whiff of truth in the story, and the snowy locations are cool (no pun intended), but everything’s bent to accommodate Kirk’s inflated sense of himself. How much better if this scientist/professor, the ‘indispensable man,’ wasn’t mission-ready at all. Maybe even a bit of a klutz who had to be shown the ropes. Literally. (If nothing else, it’d give poor Michael Redgrave something to do.) And the script skimps on detail, so all we do is tag along. It’s not really a bad pic. Well, except for the ramped up finale which puts a gaggle of tow-headed tykes in harm’s way. But it’s sad to see Mann, on his last completed pic, running on auto-pilot. (Extra demerit points to composer Malcolm Arnold for ripping off his own score to THE BRIDGE OF THE RIVER KWAI/’57.)

*It was a friendly break due to ‘artistic differences.’ Honest! BTW - Co-star Peter Ustinov always insisted that everything good in that pic was shot while Mann was still helming.

DOUBLE-BILL: Why not try MAX MANUS/’08, a WWII Norwegian Resistance pic made by actual Norwegians.  UPDATE: A 6-part Scandinavian series, KAMPEN OM TUNGTVANNET / THE HEAVY WATER WAR/15, though more dutiful than inspired, does nicely sticking to the facts of this story.

STUPEUR ET TREMBLEMENTS / FEAR AND TREMBLING (2003)

Alain Corneau’s brightly colored film of Amélie Nothomb’s autobiographical book (on her year working as an office assistant in Japan) is basically LOST IN TRANSLATION/’03 meets AMÉLIE/’01. A young Belgian woman (named Amélie, of all things!) wangles a job in Japan, hoping to revive the Asian self she remembers from living there as a little girl. But, like that other AMÉLIE, this film has a paralyzing case of the ‘cutes’ and, like LOST IN TRANSLATION, not enough meat on its bones to fill out a feature. What keeps it going are the constant misreadings this Amélie makes of her co-workers and the truly balmy office culture that has been grafted out of Western Capitalism & Japanese etiquette. If only Sylvie Testud’s Amelie weren’t such a nincompoop. It only justifies the staff’s behavior toward her, making the inscrutable East ‘scrutable.’ When Amélie daydreams herself into flights of fancy over the city-scape, the only thing that really flies out the window is our sympathy. But try to hang in there for her final day at the office. (Or fast-forward.) Moving up the office chain of command & offering formal regrets; suddenly, everyone starts acting their parts, toeing a thin line between honesty & face-saving politeness. And the possibilities of the film briefly come into focus.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: In Paramount’s delightful omnibus comedy, IF I HAD A MILLION/’32, Charles Laughton, in a segment directed by Ernst Lubitsch, works his way up a similar chain of command and manages to tell us everything we need to know about his office in a neat three minutes. Leaving about 80 minutes for another six succinct stories from other parties.

GENGHIS KHAN (1965)

Omar Sharif & Stephen Boyd play tit-for-tat Mongolian Warlords in this bizarrely cast Irwin Allen (less-than) historical epic about the founding father of the great Khan dynasty. Filmed on an unexpectedly lux scale, it lumbers along with a cast of thousands hacking away at each to little effect. Meantime, a big international cast (James Mason, Françoise Dorléac, Eli Wallach, Robert Morley, Telly Savalas, Michael Hordern, Woody Strode) collect their checks & try to keep a straight face. (YellowFace in the case of Morley & Mason. PC it ain’t, but Mason is deliciously naughty and they make a funny team. Heck, the rest of the cast are about as Mongol as these two are Chinese.) With films like WHERE THE BOYS ARE/’60 on his CV, and two Dean Martin Matt Helm pics coming up, Henry Levin was just the megger for Irwin Allen. They did manage to get Geoffrey Unsworth as cinematographer, but then went with Dusan Radic’s ludicrously overripe score. Happily, they shave a good 30 years off Khan’s life, so we get out after two hours. But not before seeing Beijing interiors that glisten like a Las Vegas Peking Duck joint and palace grounds that might serve as a Ming Dynasty Miniature Golf course. Sink your shot on the last hole and you get to watch the movie all over again!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Sergei Bodrov’s MONGOL/’07 was supposed to be the first in a Genghis Khan trilogy. Impressive in its physical production, frustratingly opaque in storytelling, the sequels have yet to appear. And now Bodrov’s prepping a film with Jeff Bridges & Julianne Moore! It’s not about the Khans.

MARIA LARSSONS EVIGA OGONBLICK / EVERLASTING MOMENTS (2008)

Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell, who directs, co-writes, shoots & edits most of his work. never recaptured the broad appeal he won Stateside with THE EMIGRANTS/’71 and THE NEW LAND/’72. This recent saga, a true tale from his wife’s family that might have pleased a similar audience, went begging for attention; such is the commercial black hole that passes for foreign-language film distribution in the States these days. Here, in the opening decades of the last century, the hard working family is headed by a violent-prone dad whose flirting eye & taste for ale threaten their precarious hold on room & board. He and the stoically strong mom & seven kids stick it out in Sweden as many of their friends & relatives take off for America. While their lives over the first quarter of the last century are both finely observed and filled with plenty of interest & incident (unions, radical politics & ship dock labor all get a fine workout), the story turns on, of all things, a bourgeois hobby: Mom’s fixation on photography. A camera won at a fair back in her courting days is pulled out for pawning. But the gentlemanly proprietor at the nearest camera shop insists that she try it out before consigning it. The passion for picture-taking comes and goes over the years, but it lends purpose & identify to her life, as if justifying a grueling existence. Troell tends to overdo the autumnal mist of times past, how much more effective the soft focus of the photos would appear against a vividly sharp & naturally colored environment. And the slight, self-congratulatory tone he affixes to this artisan-mom is unnecessary. But her story is never less than appealing or revelatory. No small thing.

DOUBLE-BILL: The complete EMIGRANTS Saga is really too long for Double-Bill material. At 6 hours, it’s a triple bill all on its own! But with Norway in for Sweden, you can compare & contrast family dynamics with George Stevens’ classic I REMEMBER MAMA/’49. Those Scandinavian mothers are an indomitable bunch!

MAX MANUS: MAN OF WAR (2008)

Don’t look for a post-modern ironic edge or sickly comic ultra-violence in this tru-life tale on the Norwegian resistance heroes of WWII. Joachin Rønning & Espen Sandberg’s film is as square & straightforward as a Baby-Boomer war epic, and with much the same positive charge; more GUNS OF NAVARONE/’61 than INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS/’09. Max Manus was already a vet from fighting Stalin on the Finland front when he returned home to find Norway occupied by the Nazis. He was soon caught in the early days of the resistance, but made a legendary escape crashing thru a third story window. (The actual escape happened from the hospital where he was being treated after the blind jump.) Trained in Scotland, he returned to Norway where he effectively ran the expanding resistance movement even as his tight group started to fall under pressure from Nazis and local collaborators. The film’s story construction occasionally veers from solid to stolid, and the action scenes don’t always hit their full potential, but the story generates so much power & good will, and raw emotion in the last act, that you’ll feel like cheering rather than nit-picking.

DOUBLE-BILL: Errol Flynn & Ann Sheridan joined the Norwegian Resistance (Hollywood Division) in Lewis Milestone’s remarkably tough & effective EDGE OF DARKNESS/’43.

THE WAY BACK (2011)

After MASTER AND COMMANDER/’03, Peter Weir took eight years to return to the screen with this putatively true prison escape pic. The story is less about a daring escape from a Siberian Gulag in the early 1940s then about the ensuing heroic 4,000 mile trek by the seven escapees and a young Polish woman who joins them later. The film moves along on a Homeric series of impossible physical obstacles (water, weather, victuals, Russians) that have to be met, conquered or finessed, but the characters and story feel underdeveloped, psychologically & dramatically inert. Only in the third act, when the number of survivors has narrowed, do we get the kind of interpersonal dynamics that coax the film to life. Weir probably errs in holding off on the backstories, they’re doled out to provide variety over the course of the long march to freedom. The lack of personal information keeps us from making a full emotional investment in the characters. On its limited terms, it’s hard to find much to pick at (other than Colin Farrell chewing up the scenery as a proletariat tough guy), but the film never justifies its existence and tanked commercially with a near career-stopping thud.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For snowbound Siberian wildness, try Akira Kurosawa’s DERSU UZALA/’75 about an aging man of the forest and his friendship with a modern surveyor.

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945)

A young woman revisits the wilderness retreat she & her late father so loved. She’s come for his memorial, to spread his ashes over the paths they once rode together. Galloping hard on the dangerous route they shared, she pushes against her tight leather saddle, nearing an auto-masturbatory climax. She lowers the urn with her father’s ashes and positions it between her legs, the precious metal phallus sacred and upright. Climax is achieved at the crest of the trail; the urn pops open and her father’s ashes triumphantly ejaculate to the right & left of the horse's rearing flanks. Ecstasy, exhaustion . . . relief, release. This scene, surely the most sexually perverse image in cinematic history won’t be found in LAST TANGO IN PARIS, GOING PLACES or SALO, nor should you look for it in the collected work of David Lynch, Russ Meyer or even DEBBIE DOES DALLAS. Astoundingly, it’s in this mainstream studio success made at the very height of Hollywood’s self-censoring Production Code under the watchful eyes of the all-powerful Catholic League. And it’s only the first in a series of outrages committed under the cool gaze of beautiful, balmy Gene Tierney, impassive as a sphinx in sunglasses in John M. Stahl’s TechniColor masterpiece on the evils of over-possessive love. Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price Darryl Hickman and an unborn child are the main victims in this gloriously ripe melodrama, but they couldn’t have done it without the remarkably consistent efforts of technicians & designers who made the locations (fabulous house interiors, abstracted courtroom, shimmering lakes & woods) and costumes (Tierney often changes a wrap just to match the wallpaper) perfectly wed to story & character arcs. (Leon Shamroy’s TechniColor lensing is simply loaded with iconic images.) And even at its most outrageous, when you expect to see Carol Burnett peeking around the corner, taking notes for a parody, you might also find Douglas Sirk, Nicholas Ray & Vincent Minnelli standing in line to take their shot at the form, with CinemaScope added to the mix.

DOUBLE-BILL: The link between the underappreciated John M. Stahl and deservedly anointed Douglas Sirk is particularly strong since Sirk remade two of Stahl’s best, IMITATION OF LIFE/’34;’59 and MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION/’35;‘54. Sirk didn’t remake this one (though there is a lousy tv version to avoid), but he did make WRITTEN ON THE WIND/’56 which shares some of the good girl/bad girl/man-in-the-middle situations and courtroom flavor of LHTH.