THINGS TO COME (1936)

H. G. Wells’ future-historical, which made its video rep over the decades via murky Public Domain editions of various lengths, has been visually restored (more like resurrected*) on Criterion and other specialty labels. Now, it’s the intellectual content that looks murky. It begins auspiciously as total war comes to Everytown on Christmas 1940 in a sort of Soviet-montage-meets-Fritz Lang prologue. And right from the opening, story, dialogue & acting give off a hollow, didactic ring of unearned imprimatur. Nothing improves as we dash thru a century of death & destruction, leading to a prosperous rebirth in ultra-modern cities with Progressives holding back Regressives by the skin of their teeth. (Wells’ package might seem more convincing if the good guys didn’t look like Proto-Fascists dictating decisions for those poor, deluded folk below.) So, what’s the continuing appeal? It’s all in the look of the thing, a très avant manner, call it World’s Fair Chic, that still sends off a charge (and a chill). Loaded with cool analogue F/X, the models, optical-printer superimpositions & traveling mattes were coordinated by various design experts (William Cameron Menzies, Vincent Korda, László Moholy-Nagy, Ned Mann) with mix-and-match official titles. If only someone had bothered to make Wells layer a bit of character humanity & dramatic development in with the lecture.

DOUBLE-BILL: While its groundbreaking futuristic visuals often gets THINGS lumped together with METROPOLIS/’27 (looking back) or 2001/’68 (looking ahead), it has little in common with either. Rather, with ill-defined political thinking and a fondness for speechifying rather than dialogue, it’s closer to the grand idiotic dreams of an Ayn Rand whopper like the inadvertently hilarious THE FOUNTAINHEAD/’49, though not nearly as fun.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Alas, for all the visual restoration, the film’s superb Arthur Bliss score still sounds distorted on the overloaded original soundtrack. Bliss recorded excerpts at the time (not off the original soundtrack) now on Dutton, but a fine modern recording of the Suite is out from Rumor Gamba & the BBC Phil on Chandos.

THE PHYSICIAN (2013)

A big, old-fashioned, historically inaccurate, slightly corny, period entertainment, the sort of classically structured, plot-driven saga Hollywood rarely tries now. But they do in Germany, and with everyone speaking English everywhere you go! (No doubt trying for a Stateside theatrical release that didn't happen.) Based on one of those mega-bestsellers no one you know has read, it’s tasty fun on it’s own terms, just don’t expect it to rise much above a Renaissance Fair on the believability scale. Blandly handsome Tom Payne is the orphaned British lad who’s apprenticed to barber/surgeon Stellan Skarsgård, then gobsmacked upon meeting legit medicos in the isolated Jewish community. Where did they learn these miracles? So off he hies to Persia, hoping to learn from Ben Kingsley, greatest physician of the Eleventh Century, finding danger & romance along the way. The real interest here lies less in acquired medical advances or in keeping his Christianity a secret, but in the clash between a relatively enlightened Shah open to scientific enquiry, and the growing clan of religious zealots who want to shut it all down. Some things never change, East or West. The shiny production doesn’t always convince, the many CGI cityscapes are anything but an improvement on old matte painting analogue techniques; while the mix of accents can also be a pain along with a score that leans toward Maurice Jarre in the desert and on John Williams in town. Then again, originality is not the point. Instead, a Tall Tale with the world’s first appendectomy as climax; told graphically, with painterly compositions off a Hallmark gift card. Chances are, there’s an even better story in the facts.

DOUBLE-BILL: For a Hollywood comparison, try THE EGYPTIAN/’54, the first CinemaScope film to flop commercially.

THE CONQUEROR (1956)

Hiding behind that title is what might have been called Genghis Khan: The Early Years, a big, slightly crazed (okay, ludicrous) epic with John Wayne as the once and future king of the Mongols . . . back in the day. A major production for Howard Hughes’s fast-fading RKO Pictures, it was an unhappy sophomore effort for singer/actor Dick Powell as director, with painfully stiff interiors matching a hopelessly stiff cast. Heaps o’ horses, though! Mountain-covering herds of them in some impressive action scenes as Tartars attack. (Likely the work of second unit director Cliff Lyons who’d do much the same on the next GENGHIS KHAN/’65 bio-pic.*) Forgettable as this is as product, the pic remains infamous for its Utah shooting locations near recent atomic testing ranges. We’ll never know how much nuclear fall-out stayed in the atmosphere, but we do know that all four top-billed leads (Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz, Agnes Moorehead) developed and eventually died of cancer.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Look for a caravan-on-wheels in the Mongol campsite.  The first straw-covered mobile trailer to hit the market?

DOUBLE-BILL: *Khan hasn’t fared so well on screen. The ‘65 film is a trashy hoot and the Russian art-house epic, MONGOL: THE RISE OF GENGHIS KHAN/’07, was a trilogy that never got past Chapter One.

THE UNFORGIVEN (1960)

There’s something uncomfortable about this John Huston Western. That’s often a dramatic plus, a sign of complicated reactions to characters & situations. Not so here; more like narrative indigestion. Taken from an Alan LeMay novel, author of John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS/’56, the story has similar racist and anti-racist sentiments, but unlike Ford, Huston loses confidence in his story every time he’s forced to choose sides. At heart, it’s a simple ‘changling’ tale, with Audrey Hepburn as an adopted daughter who may be pure-blooded Indian. A lovely 31 at the time, she might pull off the part physically if she were half her age. (And might sound it if she could drop the tony Mid-Atlantic accent.) As the older ‘brother’ who runs the ranch, Burt Lancaster doesn’t get much closer to his role, though the two do make a starry couple and it was, after all, his own production company making the film. Supporting roles come off much better, with Audie Murphy very fine as the wayward brother, working again with Huston a decade after the director gave him his start in THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE/’51. And, of course, Lillian Gish, as their mother is a pioneering woman to the bone, briefly bringing the film up to its full allegorical potential playing a bit of civilizing Mozart on a new piano out on the open prairie. Though what she thought of Huston restaging the climax of THE BIRTH OF A NATION/’15 as the climax to this film can only be guessed at. Only the KKK goes missing from this blatant lift.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: What an odd acoustic is given to Dimitri Tiomkin’s score. Recorded in Italy with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, the cavernous sound stage keeps pulling you out of the pic. So too the aging print on this Kino Lorber DVD, dulling the superb lensing from Hepburn’s fave cinematographer Franz Planer (ROMAN HOLIDAY/’53; THE NUN’S STORY/’59; three more).

LOVE HAPPY (1949)

The Marx Brothers, kings of anarchic ‘30s comedy, went out not with a bang, but with a whimper on this cobbled together feature. Or so they say. Yet the film, more Marx Bros. addendum than stand alone project, generates nearly as many laughs as their last three @ M-G-M (AT THE CIRCUS/’39; GO WEST/’40; THE (perfectly dreadful) BIG STORE/’41). The original idea was for just Harpo, but Chico owed the usual gambling debts, so he came on board, and loyal brother Groucho showed up as Special Guest star. Half the film is taken over by a struggling musical comedy troupe Harpo looks out for; the other half involves a missing diamond necklace lost in a can of sardines. At least Harpo & Chico get better than average specialty numbers for piano & harp while Groucho gets to introduce Marilyn Monroe to the screen. The backstage stuff is no more than padding to bump the running time up to feature-length, but Harpo does get to work in some neat meta-physical gags with a distinctive Dadaist twist. (In one, Harpo ‘mimes’ a message to Chico . . . over the phone!) Some of the wilder jokes are possibly the doing of co-scripter Frank Tashlin, still making Loony Tunes @ Warners. Too bad they didn’t have a fantasist like René Clair to direct instead of dependable, earthbound David Miller. Even so, you can figure out the gags that don’t work in your head while enjoying the ones that do. Along the way, look close for Raymond Burr as one of the heavies, trying not to break up as he forces Harpo to smoke a huge rope pipe.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: At one point, Chico has to play a little bit of actual Chopin (the ‘Military’ Polonaise) to keep the plot moving. Wondering if he can play it supplies the only tension in the pic.

THE SHEPHERD OF THE HILLS (1941)

Evocatively helmed by Henry Hathaway, this very loose adaptation of a long forgotten novel by the once ubiquitous Harold Bell Wright makes for a decent slice of backwoods Ozarks Americana. And lovely to look at in surprisingly delicate TechniColor for the time, coaxed out by lenser Charles Lang. Harry Carey, a great Western star of the silent era, gets a rare lead in an A-pic, co-starring as prodigal dad to John Wayne’s revenge-minded son. Betty Field, in a lovely perf*, is the neighboring gal who guesses at the relationship, but knows Wayne would kill Carey if he recognized the father whose desertion led to his mother’s early death. Unable to reveal his identity, Carey takes on the task of helping just about everyone in the little valley, altruistic behavior that just adds to the suspicions of his new neighbors. That’s especially true for stubborn, embittered valley matriarch Beulah Bondi, certain that Carey’s out to destroy her illegal moonshine business and steal the affections of her favored, but damaged son (a haunting perf from Marc Lawrence). At times, the melodrama and the locals’ earthy qualities are short on conviction or come off as condescending, but much is quite subtly handled. And a self-immolation climax is something of an astonishment.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Betty Field showed her remarkable range over her next two films, BLUES IN THE NIGHT/’41 and KINGS ROW/’42, and it may have been that chameleon quality that kept her from the major film career she seemed destined for. OR: For true Smoky Mountain authenticity, try Karl Brown’s sui generis location-shot late silent STARK LOVE/’27.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: John Wayne was famously rescued from B-Western purgatory via a standout lead in John Ford’s STAGECOACH/'39. And, in a lesser way, Harry Carey also found his way out of B-Western purgatory in 1939 with a standout supporting perf in Frank Capra’s MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON. It didn’t make the 60ish Carey a star again, but it got him back in the majors.

RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11 (1954)

Ultra-tough prison meller shows its age in some sound-bite bromides on inmate sociology (quick-fix remedies via meals, guards, isolating psychos), but with dead-on casting & razor-sharp action staging from director Don Siegel in a great early credit, it's terse & effective all the way thru. Filmed by Russell Harlan in a god-sent location, an unused, slab-like maximum security unit at Folsom Prison, the film jumps to life after a brief documentary set-up, walking us thru a bit of lock-up routine. Prisoners down for the count with each clang of a cell-bolt. The riot that soon breaks out is meant as a principled stand, but soon spins out of control, spreading to other units with alarming speed; a domino effect perfectly handled by Siegel working on all cylinders. And look for a stunning sequence with hostages tied to a pipe along a wall that’s been prepped with dynamite to blow. Those hostages make for a Goya-worthy composition. Great (anti) poetic-justice ending, too, followed by a perfect, brusque tracking-shot out.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Siegel went back to prison for one of his best late efforts, his last Clint Eastwood pic, ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ/’79.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/12/escape-from-alcatraz-1979.html

SEVEN SINNERS (1940)

Hollywood utility player Tay Garnett helmed more than his fair share of genre fodder, but rose to the occasion when given half a chance. Here, he’s on form and in his element, playing out story & character riffs to recall some of his best work in ONE WAY PASSAGE/’32 and CHINA SEAS/’35*. Marlene Dietrich, cementing her renewed top-tier status after DESTRY RIDES AGAIN/’39 (still exotic/less abstract), is another riot-inducing bar-hall ‘chantuesie,’ now in modern tropical climes. Drifting from port to port with a couple of loyal pals (klepto-pickpocket Mischa Auer & ham-fisted protector Broderick Crawford), she lands in a new sort of trouble when she falls hard for John Wayne’s Navy officer. The feeling’s mutual, but also a disaster for the career-minded Duke, especially when waterfront thug Oskar Homolka claims Marlene as his own; then calls in the goons to prove it. It’s nonsense, of course, but awfully well organized by Garnett. (Some OTT bar fights might be out of an Agnes de Mille ballet.) Lenser Rudolph Maté makes it all look like an easy shoot, and quickly susses out how to do right by the famous Marlene cheek bones, feathers, sparkly hats and a spectacular skin-tight ‘nude’ number, courtesy of designer Irene. And what an unusually deep acting bench from Universal Pictures: Dietrich, Wayne, Auer, Crawford, Homolka, plus Reginald Denny, Anna Lee, Billy Gilbert, even a nice bit for Albert Dekker for a not unhappy (how'd it get by the Production Code) ending.

DOUBLE-BILL: *If Lana Turner/John Garfield’s POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE/’46 is Garnett’s best-known; ONE WAY PASSAGE is his best; and CHINA SEAS most like this.

CASH MCCALL (1960)

Why vet Warners producer Henry Blanke put B-list megger Joseph Pevney on this full-rigged prestige item is anyone’s guess. Pevney, not one to bring much to the party, manages to keep his big cast in line, but the film’s at best a missed opportunity. Natalie Wood, in a charming perf that doesn’t strain her natural limitations, is the daughter of Dean Jaggar, a manufacturing prez looking to sell out. James Garner’s Cash McCall is a likely buyer with two knocks against him: he’s more turnover specialist than company man, and he’s got a shared romantic past with Wood that ended badly. The script relies on too many contrived misunderstandings, especially a misogynist’s delight of a subplot with Nina Foch as a sexually frustrated virago. But many ideas & dialogue play with a nifty Shavian swing to them, sort of a sub-MAJOR BARBARA overview/dialectic on responsible capitalism. This from, of all people, longtime woman’s pic specialist Leonore Coffee on her last movie credit. But it all could have been so much better. Something Foch & Jaggar may have gossiped about as former supporting players on director Robert Wise & scripter Ernest Lehman’s EXECUTIVE SUITE/’54, a corporate drama that touches most of the bases missed here.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, EXECUTIVE SUITE; the modern snark of OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY/’91 with Greg Peck, Danny DeVito & Dean Jones; or even BARBARIAN’S AT THE GATE/’93 with James Garner still at the game.