PROFUMO DI DONNA / SCENT OF A WOMAN (1974)

This, one of the best examples of the bitter Italian comedies of Dino Risi, has unfortunately been buried by Al Pacino’s Oscar-winning 1992 remake; half as good, twice as sentimental, nearly an hour longer. The basic outline remains: young army cadet Alessandro Momo is assigned to accompany Vittorio Gassman’s blind, embittered, possibly suicidal, retired military officer on a trip to Genoa, Rome & Naples. Purposefully arrogant & willfully opinionated in a determined attempt to avoid unwanted contact, slights, condescension or pity, Gassman goes well past the expected model of rude Falstaffian life force, something the boy picks up on, and off to a level of rhapsodic cruelty aimed at whomever is around to take a hit. It keeps the film bracingly uncomfortable at times, vibrating with real-life possibilities glossed over in the equally popular remake. So, the big set piece in ‘92 is a blind man’s tango while here it’s hunting up a proper whore in Genoa. It's probable that Risi hadn’t the heart to follow this tough line of reasoning all the way to the end, and the second half of the third act does wind up feeling like a compromised first draft of what might have been. Not enough to really hurt the film, but still, not quite up to the rest. Gassman is very fine, broad & true as prime James Cagney; and matched step-for-step by the heartbreakingly young Alessandro Momo, dead in a motorcycle accident at 17 shortly before this was released.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Gassman plays another impossible arrogant life force, this time accidentally mentoring Jean-Louis Trintignant in Risi’s superb IL SORPASSO/’62.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/il-sorpasso-easy-life-1962.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Dino Risi is often remarkably similar in theme & film technique to Blake Edwards. (Though preferring to work in ‘Flat’ rather than WideScreen formats.) A classic misdirected blind man’s punch in the Rome section of PROFUMO is pure Edwards, reveling in offhand, perfectly timed, shockingly funny bad taste.

MOTHER! (2017)

Unlike the usual LOVE IT or HATE IT split reaction to a Darren Aronofsky envelope-pushing provocation, MOTHER! was pretty much all HATE IT. Disingenuously sold as an intellectual horror pic, it’s really more of a modernized NOAH/’14 reboot, his previous Biblical misstep. (Though told without a Noah character as God-chosen conduit to ‘reboot’ the world.) Hard to imagine that a less deceptive ad campaign would have kept this from flat-lining. Mismatched couple Jennifer Lawrence (dewy, self-reliant homemaker) and blocked Hemingwayesque writer Javier Bardem unexpectedly find their isolated country home is being rapidly invaded by the strangest of strangers in exponentially growing numbers, with the house & their relationship falling apart from the stress. (Or maybe it’s those hand-held cameras working so darn close in.) And once the allegorical nature of the film kicks in, things spin even faster out of control with ultra-violence & gore. What’s going on here? Shhh, it’s all about creation . . . er . . .CREATION; and learning about God, unhappy with his score after the first 9, taking a ‘Mulligan.’ (A modest self-portrait for writer/director Aronofsky?) Even a pithy (if unspoken) moral: If at first you don’t succeed, try & try again. But maybe at a different studio.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: What a good opportunity to revisit ROSEMARY’S BABY/’68.

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946)

Neat little horror number from Warner Bros., another reading-of-the-will/inheritance/ murder tale, but with a diabolical twist: a disembodied piano-playing hand is the killer. Yikes! His showpiece? Brahms’ Left Hand Only piano arrangement of Bach’s D Minor Chaconne for solo violin.* No classic (though scripter Curt Siodmak of WOLF MAN fame knows this game as well as anyone), but loaded with third-string talent like director Robert Florey & lenser Wesley Anderson over-achieving. Nifty F/X, too. That is one creepy crawling hand in 1890s Italy where partially paralyzed pianist Victor Francen gathers his friends at his villa to sign a new will. There’s music arranger/antiques con man Robert Alda; nurse/companion Andrea King; astrological researcher Peter Lorre; and the town lawyer. Then, after Francen dies from unnatural causes, they are joined by an avaricious father/son pair of relatives and, of course, local police chief J. Carroll Naish to investigate. But with Francen lying in the mausoleum, who is that playing Bach on the grand piano in the middle of the night? Next question, who killed the lawyer? And two more questions: who tried to strangle Lorre and who attacked the venal son? Nothing in here haunts in the manner of a prime Universal Horror pic, but plenty slick & fun.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *That’s the legendary, self-destructive Ervin Nyiregyhazi playing on the soundtrack. Famous & mentally unstable, he all but disappeared from the classical music scene only to be rediscovered by a Columbia record producer in the ‘70s and given a splashy comeback album with some of the wildest classical piano ever put on LP.  (NOTE:  Nyiregyhazi plays on the soundtrack, but the dismembered hand seen on screen is Victor Slatkin’s, brother of violinist/conductor Felix (concert master @ Fox), brother-in-law to lead Warner cellist Eleanor Aller, Uncle to top conductor Leonard.)

FOR THE DEFENSE (1930)

A (late) Early Talkie, this tasty legal drama (with romantic angle) is imaginatively shot by Charles Lang* and cleanly helmed by John Cromwell, who could be more dependable than imaginative. William Powell & Kay Francis, already showing easy command, star as a top Manhattan defense attorney with a mostly mob clientele & as the glamorous stage actress he’d do anything for . . . except marry. Deeply in love, but miffed at his hesitation, she toys with another lover during an overnight drive that ends in a tragic accident. Worse, Kay was behind the wheel when they hit & killed the man on the road. So when the lover takes the blame, swearing her to secrecy, she pleads with Powell to take the case! But how much can she tell him? And will he have to jeopardize his rep to get his rival off? As neatly structured as it is played, there’s loads of late-‘20s/early’30s NYC flavor in here. (Especially in some Speak Easy & banquet scenes made, like the rest of the film, on the Paramount California lot.) Modest, but a beaut.

DOUBLE-BILL: Earlier the same year, Powell & Francis (again with Cromwell & Lang) made a gambling drama, STREET OF CHANCE/’30, which sounds equally interesting, but is hard to get hold of. Instead, a pair of gems from 1932, the witty JEWEL ROBBERY for William Dieterle or ONE WAY PASSAGE, a masterpiece of haunting romantic fatalism from underrated Tay Garnett.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Check out Lang’s off-hand use of a rare ‘zoom lens’ shot at the 12" mark. Not many such shots in this period, but when they do show up, it’s mostly @ Paramount. Did they have the only zoom lens in town?

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936)

The Crimean War of the 1850s, with major campaigns plotted in British & French war offices by Generals working without much knowledge of the area or even proper maps, remains Poster Child for War As SNAFU. Top/down chaos, with only the even grosser incompetence of Russia under Tsar Nicholas I rescuing the situation. No wonder Warner Bros. fictionalized the conflict to use the famous Tennyson poem and spotlight a fast-rising Errol Flynn.* And between desert battles & political intrigue? Romance for 19-yr-old Olivia de Havilland, choosing between Flynn & younger brother Patric Knowles. Everyone tries to do the honorable thing, but duty calls (again & again) right at the precipitate confessional moment. It’d be slightly ludicrous in a more realistic film, but heightened studio artifice helps it fly. That and director Michael Curtiz’s dazzling form in both action & sentiment, with Flynn adding nuance & power to the raw excitement (and beauty) shown the year before in his CAPTAIN BLOOD breakout. (Yet how disheartening to see so many East/West issues and battles of influence between Russia & Europe recognizable after 200 years.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Not a film for the PETA crowd what with leopard hunts & scores of horses ‘wire tripped’ for the battles. So many, it ended the practice in Hollywood.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Rule of thumb when watching fictionalized historicals: only the most unbelievable story element will be based on fact. Here, the eponymous ‘charge,’ though not ordered with forged papers, as seen here, was initiated by reversing a superior officer’s specific instructions.

DOUBLE-BILL: Though it doesn’t compete in terms of sheer production values, Paramount’s LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER/’35 (Gary Cooper/Franchot Tone/dir. Henry Hathaway) brings swoon-worthy bromantic elements to its Rah, Rah, Raj story line.

POPEYE (1980)

Beautiful & eccentric (heck, downright peculiar), who but Robert Altman would try to fashion an Art House Family Musical from Jules Feiffer’s loose-limbed/episodic adaptation of early E. C. Segar Popeye comic strips? Though the playing avoids the slavishly creepy copycat style of recent Dr Suess live-action adaptations, nothing seems to work quite as intended. Well, nothing other than the heaven-sent infant playing Swee’pea (Altman’s own grandkid Wesley Ivan Hurt). Even Shelley Duvall, a physically perfect Olive Oyl, is left too often to her own devices (and her own music scale), tripping up on flights of unedited comic lunacy. (Lots of Zasu Pitts in there, too.) Yet while the characters, sketchy storyline (Popeye finds his girl, his Pappy & baby in a basket) and tuneless Harry Nilsson score may leave you scratching your head (so too Altman’s fumbled staging of compound slapstick gags & Robin Williams’ verbal drone in his otherwise appealingly boyish, low center-of-gravity Popeye), there’s something so magically right about Wolf Kroeger’s physical production design and Giuseppe Rotunno’s spellbound cinematography, you quickly recalibrate for the film’s obvious flaws to soak up what’s unique (and uniquely right) in here.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Altman was coming off a deadly series of flops at the time: BUFFALO BILL/’76; 3 WOMEN/’77; A WEDDING/’78; QUINTET; A PERFECT COUPLE/’79; HEALTH/’80. So bad, even POPEYE’s modest commercial success didn’t stop producer Dino De Laurentiis from booting him off RAGTIME/’81, the film project he was born to make.

THE HUNTED (1948)

With so many great, all but forgotten, little films noir on DVD (or ‘streamable’), perhaps it’s a useful corrective to have a few stinkers in the mix just to keep things honest. And they hardly come stinkier than this low-budget nothing-burger from talent-challenged Jack Bernhard (12 pics & out over four years on ‘Poverty Row’). One numbingly utilitarian shot follows another in painfully dreary fashion, as Preston Foster’s police detective checks up on the gal he loved yet put away for murder & robbery. That’s ‘Belita,’ a novelty star who ice-skated her way into a few roles before quitting the biz. Things improve just a bit when noir icon Charles McGraw shows up for half a reel as a California police dick who stumbles upon the real guilty party, but way too little & way too late to help. For those who are interested, Belita’s skating routine comes about halfway in and, hey!, she’s a pretty good skater for the period. Yawn.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For a fine example of just how far a tiny budget could take you in ‘48, try Edgar G. Ulmer’s RUTHLESS, a sort of zero-budget CITIZEN KANE. Though best known for the striking minimalism of tour de force noir DETOUR/’45, give Ulmer a few extra nickels and he was capable of larger things.

LOGAN LUCKY (2017)

In this new Steven Soderbergh heist caper, a sort of Chicken-Fried/Good-Old-Boy OCEAN’S reboot, the film might as well be an afterthought. Slickly made, and plotted to a hard-to-track fare-thee-well, it follows a gaggle of West Virginia ‘white trash’* on a racetrack cash deposit ripoff executed while the biggest race of the year runs. But there’s a patronizing edge to a production that was as much distribution experiment as entertainment, with Soderbergh trying to control cost & cash flow by cutting out studio middlemen for his own indie release. Plotwise, this failed newfangled finance scheme sounds more interesting than any of the twice-chewed cud playing on screen. Yet, they each turned in a twist ending you didn’t see with the film quietly tanking and the film story setting up a sequel unlikely to see the light of day. Instead, an all-girl OCEAN’S reboot (down from 11, 12 & 13 to 8); and, in a twist you did see coming, distributed by the Good-Old Brothers Warner.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The preternaturally talented/prolific Mr. Soderbergh takes more than his fair share of stumbles. More credit to him.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *What a load of mix-and-match Southern accents from this motley crew! And, dear oh dear, Hilary Swank returning to the big screen after three years for this nothing role?  Best guess?  Promised bigger things in that putative sequel that never happened.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Bill Forsyth’s BREAKING IN/’89 takes better advantage of a similar idea.

THE VIRGINIAN (1914)

After co-directing THE SQUAW MAN/’14 (with Oscar Apfel), Cecil B. DeMille took his first solo directing credit (‘Picturized by’) on this follow-up Western also starring Dustin Farnum. A quick learning curve is noticeable; better pacing, quicker scenes, more edits & shot variety, parallel story & character development ( Cowboys out West/Piano teacher in The East), and real grandeur in capturing & dramatically using the scenic beauty of the land. Check out the camera placement when the train carrying the little lady comes to town. As perfect a composition as you could find. Credit to Alvin Wyckoff, DeMille’s new cinematographer who’d work with him thru the early ‘20s, the only period where C. B.’s filmmaking didn’t look behind-the-times. Owen Wister’s oft-filmed story (the one where the hero tells the bad guy ‘When you say that, smile’) has a cow-punching lead with a tragicomic best pal who hangs for cattle rustling, before it goes on to find love with an Eastern lady come West to be schoolmarm. Just about everything you could want from the form even if DeMille’s 1914 presentation has its limits. (The available Passport-DVD edition is no more than watchable.) And in addition to the film’s obvious historical interest, it’s generally well-cast with the unfortunate exception of leading man Dustin Farnum, a stagy actor who played to the gallery, and physically what was once called ‘a fine figure of a man,’ meaning big, none too pretty & running to fat.

DOUBLE-BILL: Victor Fleming’s Early Talkie 1929 version, with Gary Cooper, Walter Huston & Richard Arlen is memorable, if on the stately side. The hanging sequence unforgettable. And, of course, there’s Buster Keaton’s great moment in GO WEST/’25 with Buster on the receiving end of the famous order to ‘Smile when you say that!’ Quite the conundrum!