THE MARAUDERS (1955)

Remember the big, handsome lug in SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS/’54? The bro’ who couldn’t sing or dance? That square peg in a round hole was Jeff Richards, an M-G-M contract player granted a spot of star-in-the-making exposure. Here, opportunity knocks by way of a mean little Western that didn’t pay off career-wise. Likewise for its sharp director Gerald Mayer, and for languid love interest Jarma Lewis. All three demoted to tv gigs or just out of the biz within a couple years. And what an odd choice of vehicle to try and put them over, a nearly abstract storyline that sets Richards’ desert homesteader with a working well against paranoid-psychotic Dan Duryea’s tubercular villain. (Hacking like he’s auditioning for CAMILLE.) Duryea takes over a gang of cutthroats when his more civil boss gets shot during a failed attack on the homestead. Meantime, Richards, helped by a little family who’ve stopped for water, has Duryea & Co. (including a nasty Keenan Wynn) faked into thinking they’re up against a score of well-armed defenders. The death-rate is positively alarming, and two more come to grief post-credits, yet the film still manages a happy ending. A bit more story development might have made something out of this. Mayer showed real promise in his debut (DIAL 1119/’50) and co-scripter Jack Leonard has credits on a couple of ‘B’ classics (NARROW MARGIN/’52; HIS KIND OF WOMAN/51). But only the scenery-chewing Dan Duryea leaves an impression.

DOUBLE-BILL: Jeff Richards returned to the big screen as star of the dunderheaded Grade-Z ‘guilty pleasure’ Sci-Fi pic ISLAND OF LOST WOMEN/’59. Who can forget its immortal last line? ‘Why this metal alloy hasn’t been used since . . . the days of the druids!’

LEVIAFAN / LEVIATHAN (2014)

Andrey Zvyagintsev has yet to fully make good on the promise of his stunning debut on THE RETURN/’03, but this recent pic comes encouragingly close. A despairing, yet somehow vital look at corruption on every level of society in a small northern coastal town in Russia, it’s less cautionary tale than modern Book of Job. There’s even a local Orthodox Priest (also corrupt) to lay out the parable in précis. Zvyagintsev’s masterstroke recasts the biblical story with characters Gogol’s Inspector General would have recognized and, at least for Stateside audiences, following the old vaudeville sketch ‘Pay The Two Dollars’ to its extreme conclusion.* (That’s the one where a guy refuses to pay a small fine on his lawyer’s advice and winds up petitioning his case all the way up to Death Row.) Here, the juggernaut starts with an Eminent Domain battle that’s almost won for a local handyman by an old pal, now a savvy Moscow lawyer. But this being Russia, never underestimate the resilience of officials who are part of the chain of command. Or the complications that come from mixing vast quantities of vodka with an unhappy second wife; an attention-deprived step-son; and a handsome legal advocate. Beautifully paced & acted, Zvyagintsev finds striking locations whether he’s in the mountains or shooting in a bureaucrat’s soulless office building. What’s gone missing since THE RETURN is the way that film’s personal focus shed light on larger societal issues, a design of dramatic action he now works in reverse.

DOUBLE-BILL: Obviously, THE RETURN is a must. But also try Francesco Rosi’s superb HANDS OVER THE CITY/’63 for some Italian land-grabbing political corruption. *ALSO: You can see a classic rendition of ‘Pay the Two Dollars’ with those two well-known Gogol specialists Victor Moore & Edward Arnold in ZIEGFELD FOLLIES/’45. (A hard DVD to find, so, while it lasts, here’s a LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKT8QoboD1g)

WOMAN OF STRAW (1964)

By the time British director Basil Dearden gets this promising murder-with-a-twist pic to the table, the dish has turned lukewarm. But in its first half, Ralph Richardson blazes away as a despicable tycoon, an ailing, aging millionaire despot who lords it over associates, house staff & heir-apparent nephew Sean Connery from his wheelchair, treating everyone like dogs. Literally so for his two African personal servants who are made to perform actual dog tricks. And now he’s planning on leaving his fortune to charity. No wonder Connery’s looking for a lever to shake things up. Enter Gina Lollobrigida, a gorgeous nurse with too much integrity to (initially) jump at Connery’s sneaky financial offer to get at all that loot. But it’s precisely her stubborn refusal to play along, with either Connery or Richardson, that turns the old man’s head and brings them to the altar. He molts; she sees a new man under the shell; Connery worries the old goat may live longer than he thought possible. So, just where does that leave the old man’s fortune? Pretty interesting psycho-sexual set-up by the halfway mark. Which is exactly when the film resets; turning into a standard, if third-tier DIAL ‘M’ FOR MURDER wannabee. (Connery/Lollobrigida/Inspector Alexander Knox in for Ray Milland/Grace Kelly/Inspector John Williams.) But without the clever forensic-based drama and meticulous logistical thrills of Hitchcock’s fun little classic.* (Dearden also drops the arhythmic staccato editing he uses in the first half.) Instead, farfetched & risibly dumb, with lazy plotting & a couple of fright-laughs when a pair of sun-glasses slip off a dead man’s nose. (A stab at covering all the implausibilities in a courtroom summation comes across as amateur obfuscation.) Elegant to watch though, thanks to dreamy locations, dreamy looking Gina & Sean, and Otto Heller’s dreamy lens work.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Might as well rediscover DIAL 'M,' Hitch’s elegant drawing room murder puzzle. (Now out in BLU-RAY 3D.)

THE IMMIGRANT (2013)

With yards of ambition unmatched by commensurate talent, writer/director James Gray has achieved a charmed critical rep that rewards him on effort rather than execution. (A small output with yawning gaps between each tortured project helps amplify the ‘serious artist’ tag.) Hardly anyone actually goes to the films, but his strenuous push to connect with the Francis Coppola & Sidney Lumet lineage on his second & third pics (THE YARD/’00; WE OWN THE NIGHT/’07) gets offered as self-evident bona fides. WAIT! That’s our Write-Up on the last Gray opus, TWO LOVERS/’08, but it still hits the mark. This guy must talk up one helluva film to keep getting these D.O.A. projects off the ground. (He’s already filming something called THE LOST CITY OF Z for 2016 release.) This one’s a sort of Italian verismo opera thing (think CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA which actually shows up in LOVERS), but moved to early 20th century Lower East Side & Ellis Island. Marion Cotillard is an easy decade too old to play the innocent soul who lets Joaquin Phoenix's shady manager pimp her. She's hoping to bribe her sister out of the TB ward. And Jeremy Renner is scrunched & unmagnetic, anything but theatrical, as a striving magician who’d like to run off with her. (He might be playing the Richard Basehart role in LA STRADA/’54.*) Gray shoots most of the pic behind yellow filters (candles, gaslight, ya know) for that Tenement Museum diorama effect, while keeping the acting as hushed & subdued as a Tour Guide docent, winding up with a near complete misrepresentation of the period spirit. How does he think people survived, even thrived in these dreadful conditions? But at last, a real guilty-pleasure moment after Phoenix gets his jaw broken & falls into Brandoesque mumbling & mannerisms for a final aria, a male variation on STELLA DALLAS’s 5-hankie tear-stained sacrifice. Alas, nary a sniffle in the house.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *There’s quite a lot of LA STRADA in here though it’s not quite the unofficial remake that Woody Allen’s SWEET AND LOWDOWN/’99 was.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Charlie Chaplin’s THE IMMIGRANT/’17, one of his greatest early achievements. (Charlie takes the Marion Cotillard role.) At a tidy two reels, you'll save 100 minutes.

RETREAT, HELL! (1952)

Those Halls of Montezuma get a real musical workout on the soundtrack, but there’s blessedly little triumphalism in this tight, mid-budget Marines-go-to-Korea tale. Standard-issue stuff in most ways, you’ll recognize the principals: tough-as-nails commander; green kid from a military family; reservist with his mind on his wife & kids, getting into trouble by playing things safe; grizzled number two; even comic relief double act doughboys. But the film does well by them with well-sourced combat footage to support some unusually clear action direction from B-pic expert Joseph H. Lewis, unfazed setting up logistically sound combat maneuvers or unyielding swarms of Chinese infantry. It helps that the basic story, from early in the conflict, is all about a failed campaign that barely scraps by to fight another day. There’s little false bravado. Plus, if you get too far ahead of things, you can play make-believe studio head and recast with A-listers: Karl Malden in for Frank Lovejoy; Glenn Ford for Richard Carlson; Tony Perkins for Russ Tamblyn; and Robert Wise to direct. It wouldn’t necessarily be any better, but it’d sure cost a lot more.

DOUBLE-BILL: How many big-budget Korean war films were made at the time? BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI/’54 and . . . what? Indie stuff like Anthony Mann’s MEN IN WAR/’57 & Sam Fuller’s THE STEEL HELMET/’51 were more typical.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Who came up with the ad copy on the poster? ‘ . . . a bunch of husky guys with star-spangled spunk.’ Yikes! Good grief!? Sure, it was a more innocent time, but not that innocent. Somebody must have been sniggering up his sleeve.

THE GAUCHO (1927)

Douglas Fairbanks’ penultimate silent plays swashbuckling outlier to his other pics of derring-do; and may be all the better for it. Smoking, whoring, drinking, yet still our lovable, athletic Doug, he’s a South American ‘gaucho,’ running with a band of hard-riding outlaws who back him against a tin-pot dictator. Both hope to fleece the fortunes of a local shrine (The City of Miracles) until Doug gets a spiritual wake-up call and winds up saving the joint for Priest, Poor and Pretty Gal, the saint whose miracle got the place going. (See prologue.) Lupe Velez lays it on a bit thick as Doug’s jealous girlfriend, and the story is more a series of linked set pieces than grand story arc, but it gathers a fine head of inevitability by the third act. Watch for a staggering display of long-horned cattle flesh before they run over the town; and a downright scary tussle between Doug and a raggedy man, suddenly of no discernible volume, who infects Doug with the ‘Black Doom’ (leprosy). IMAGE seems to have the best DVD edition, but it’s a sorry fall-off from prints that were still circulating back in the ‘70s which did a far better job showing off Tony Gaudio’s superb lens work (including a 2-strip TechniColor sequence not seen here) and in doing justice to F. Richard Jones’ solid helming. A forgotten talent of great promise, his first Talkie (Ronald Colman’s BULLDOG DRUMMOND/’29) is already fully up on its feet, but he died at 37 the following year of TB.

DOUBLE-BILL: Odd that the outlier pic in Mary Pickford’s career, Ernst Lubitsch’s ROSITA/’23, should also be her most poorly preserved feature. Odder still, it was intentional since Mary, Doug’s wife at the time, couldn’t forgive Lubitsch for making her do things his way; and worse, making a success of it. (It only survives as a beat up Russian Archive print.)

SUPERMENSCH (2013)

After a humiliating rejection on THE LOVE GURU/’08, Mike Myers tried to lift himself out of one major funk with this decent, if weirdly over-produced hagiographic documentary (less vanity project than vanity offering) about groovy celeb manager Shep Gordon. With hangdog physicality and laid-back attitude, Shep (everyone calls him Shep) landed a gaggle of hard rock/R&B clients (Joplin, Alice Cooper, Jimi Hendrix, Teddy Pendergrass) without really trying, then, after sex, drugs & rock & roll, parleyed his success into celebrity chefs, actors, even the Dalai Lama (not strictly a client). Myers doesn’t trust his material, loading on aural/visual cues for every clause in every sentence. It’s witty fun . . .for a while. But soon, you notice a hollow tone developing as Shep (everyone calls him Shep) works his client list as substitute family. A man of too many friends, he’s searching for the unbreakable family bond that makes you return to the dining-room table even after saying something unforgivable, especially after saying something unforgivable. Myers, like everyone we see here, loves Shep (everyone calls him Shep), but is just visiting before heading off, refreshed and probably wealthier. Hosts of ‘exes’ are left unaccounted for in the interviews, but no doubt there’s plenty of hired help (also unseen) to clean up the physical & psychological messes Myers hasn’t interest in considering. In a blinkered way, it's delightful, with entertaining show-biz stories; but stuffed with an overwhelming sense of One-Percenter Entitlement. Hope you got over your funk, Mike.

DOUBLE-BILL: This would almost certainly pair up nicely with HIS WAY: A Portrait of Hollywood Legend Jerry Weintraub/’11 about the late wheeler-dealer/producer (not yet seen here).

JUBAL (1956)

There’s something of a Baby-Boomer divide on Glenn Ford. One of the last pre-Method Acting screen icons, Pre-Boomers were around in time to feel the pulse of his pre-1960s work, when Ford’s banked sexual charge still held a reserve of threat. But by the time those younger opinion-making Boomers came of age, Ford was reduced to coaxing heat out of embers. It’s why so many film-goers were caught off-guard at the emotional charge he could still call on for SUPERMAN/’78. Where had this quietly compelling presence been hiding? And that presence is one of reasons this standard-issue Western from Delmer Daves (splendidly shot in rich, dark tones on a very WideScreen by Charles Lawton) holds more interest than it probably deserves. It’s already a little late in the day for his ‘shy guy with a spine’ act, but Ford’s still effective as the new man on Ernest Borgnine’s ranch, fending off unwanted attention from the boss’s unhappy wife and glaring hostility after winning the foreman spot from jealous ranch-hand Rod Steiger. (Steiger & Borgnine, replaying characterizations from OKLAHOMA!/55 and MARTY/’55, who’d each be better served phoning it in, go full throttle to annoying effect.) A religious sect gets tossed in for narrative seasoning, but only a surprise appearance from young Charles Bronson as third-wheel/deus ex machina adds something fresh. He may be the best thing in the pic.

DOUBLE-BILL: Daves, Lawton & Ford got back together (in b&w and a less wide screen) to make a masterpiece, 3:10 TO YUMA/’57.

WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY? (1966)

As uneven as it is inspired, Blake Edwards’ large-scaled WWII farce takes nearly half its running time to find its footing. But once it does, it hardly puts a foot wrong. It opens as General Carroll O’Connor assigns by-the-book Captain Dick Shawn to take a little Sicilian town using Lieutenant James Coburn’s over-worked ‘C’ Company. The city’s Italian forces are delighted to surrender, but only after tonight’s much anticipated end-of-hostilities festival. Wine, Women & Song . . . or more war? MEANWHILE: a couple of local yokels roam the ancient catacombs under the city, planning a bank robbery from below; U.S. Army surveillance misreads their aerial photos and plans a bombing run; Nazi surveillance misreads their aerial photos and retakes the town; the Italians have second thoughts about surrender; and Major Harry Morgan shows up, gets lost in the catacombs, and goes bonkers. Okay, that’s about half of what’s going on . . . and all at one & the same time. No wonder Edwards has trouble getting his narrative ducks in order, ya vol? Actually, no. Those ducks are all efficiently lined up for action. What holds things back over the long first act is less elaborate set-up & obvious gags, more personality imbalance. The tipping point comes not when all the action gets into gear, but when Dick Shawn’s overdrawn comic martinet gets drunk, gets laid, gets serenaded . . . and gets it, showing some humanity and loosening up to see the war Coburn’s way. Spoilsport duties get reassigned to Harry Morgan’s progressively loony Major. (It's a rare character blunder from Edwards who should have tried a button-down Bob Newhart type rather than Shawn’s overdrawn blowhard.) Suddenly, everything starts to work both as comedy and as beautifully staged action fare. And while no one can touch Morgan’s hilarious mental meltdown, Shawn is fine once his character comes ‘round, turning in a great second-half that includes a wild bit of drag. Everyone else goes ‘drag,’ too, military drag, with the absurdity of war shown via uniform swaps by Italian, American & German troops. (Who am I shooting at?) Handsome production, too, with a typically sophisticated look (Philip Lathrop lensed) that made Edwards’ output the best looking physical comedies of their era.

DOUBLE-BILL: Edwards had no problems starting DARLING LILY/’70, his WWI comedy/drama; the opening may be the best thing he ever cooked up. It’s the rest of the film that turns on him.