GUILTY HANDS (1931)

After a two-year shot at directing, Lionel Barrymore gave in to the inevitable, winning an Academy Award playing a defense attorney whose headstrong daughter Norma Shearer falls for his most dangerous client, mob man Clark Gable in A FREE SOUL/’31. (O. J. Simpson’s infamous defense about those ill-fitting ‘gloves’ comes straight out of this film . . . but with a hat!) A huge triumph not repeated in this copycat follow up. Here, Barrymore’s a District Attorney with a headstrong daughter engaged to sleazy client Alan Mowbray, a womanizing sadist Barrymore says he’d kill before letting a marriage take place. And with the creep’s mistress (Kay Francis) one of the many guests on his island retreat for the wedding, he’s got a perfect candidate to take the fall as murderer. Director Woody Van Dyke, in early Talkie mode here, tosses up the occasional startling camera move as cover, but its mostly stiff & stagy, a Dark Old House/Murder Mystery filmed like a play. (Even using old-fashioned theatrical machinery for thunder & lightning effects.) Early on, Kay Francis shows a bit of modern glam & sex appeal, Paramount style (her home studio at the time), but it doesn’t last. Everything creaks, even for 1931, including a corny twist-ending to settle all scores.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: As mentioned above, A FREE SOUL.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/free-soul-1931.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The film does show a side of Lionel that’s a bit like his glamorous kid brother John. A spark usurped next year by Jack when he came over and joined Lionel @ M-G-M.

CONTEST: What surprising connection could there be between this film & a certain Astaire/Rogers’ musical? Name the film & the specific connection to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice.

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (2017)

Writer/director (and acclaimed playwright) Martin McDonagh’s well-received comic-singed sardonic drama about a mother’s search for justice after her daughter’s rape & murder, piles on too many unintended consequences, driven less by character or plot than by contrivance. Anything goes, as long as McDonagh finds an opening to the next got’cha plot pivot.  'Didn’t see that coming’ as dramatic self-justification. In a less naturalistic treatment, it’s so cleverly worked out (a cross between Coen Bros. sensibility and THE USUAL SUSPECTS) that it just might have worked. Turnaround with every new piece of info a favored structural device for Asghar (A SEPARATION) Farhadi; perhaps in the stylistically informed manner Todd Haynes gives to classic ‘50s Douglas Sirk melodrama. But here, unadorned and difficult to buy into.*  Frances McDormand is the wounded mother, inexplicably dour even before the tragedy, a revenge-mad harpy who advertises her pain, shaming the police on the eponymous billboards for their lack of action on the unsolved case. The twist is she’s nearly as wrong as she is right about her major antagonists: Woody Harrelson’s good-natured police chief; violent off-kilter cop Sam Rockwell; even philandering ex-husband John Hawkes. Fun in a sick sort of way, but not really convincing; as if the action were set in the wrong country. Perhaps McDonagh needs a home field advantage; not Ireland, the stage.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *In a film like THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST/'02, Aki Kaurismäki effortlessly gets the tone McDonagh is hunting for.

THREE DARING DAUGHTERS (1948)

After two decades, including a six-year wartime layoff, motherhood came to fluttery soprano ingenue Jeanette MacDonald. Three times! Teenage girls, all fluttery sopranos, especially eldest Jane Powell, and all raised to believe that Mom’s ex, a skunk who went south, never to return, is really a swell guy who’s always loved them. So when mom comes home from a vacation/rest-cure secretly married to pianist José Iturbi, the reception is chilly. Can this marriage be saved . . . or even announced? Can the family be saved? Can anyone hold intonation above the staff? Of course, it’s just an excuse for a musical potpourri of middlebrow Pop & Classical ‘Pops’ excerpts in the brain-dead manner of family-friendly producer Joe Pasternak who had a real knack for this tripe. Director Fred Wilcox no more than a functionary. But worth Fast-Fowarding thru some screechy coloratura for the goofy charm of José, and sister Amparo, in a wild two-piano, orchestral arrangement (with guitar & chorus!) of Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance; and later, an even weirder arrangement, with harmonica whiz Larry Adler fronting, on George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody #1. Who did these crazy charts? Music director George Stoll? Iturbi? Adler? Whoever it is, they could justify an even more ridiculous movie.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Powell, who somehow always looks just out-of-focus, made her bones co-starring with Fred Astaire in ROYAL WEDDING/’51 and all those In-Laws in SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS/’54. But with musicals on their way out, she got one decade to MacDonald’s two.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: M-G-M found lots of specialty spots for classical musicians like José Iturbi. But it’s rare to find them playing romantic lead as fictionalized versions of themselves! Pirandello might have thought it up. (Violin great Jascha Heifetz played a fictional character under his own name in THEY SHALL HAVE MUSIC/’39, but not the romantic lead!)

BEAT THE DEVIL (1953)

With help from Truman Capote’s on-the-set rewrites, John Huston made a ‘Shaggy Dog’ story out of what presumably started as a ‘straight’ international caper pic. (Note clueless poster.)  It’s less parody than slightly mad variant; tremendously entertaining, with the sort of laughs that bubble up days after watching. In a small Italian coastal town, Humphrey Bogart and wife Gina Lollobrigida meet up with a quartet of scoundrelly con men, all on their way to hoodwink a Central African country out of uranium deposits & rights. Or some such thing, the film isn’t too particular about what exactly is going on. But since the quartet includes Robert Morley & Peter Lorre, you have a pretty good idea of where you stand on the integrity front. Accompanying them on this fortune hunt, though unsure why or what it’s all about, are married twits . . . I mean, married Brits Edward Underdown and Jennifer Jones, his on-the-prowl/fantasist wife (commoners, but very La-Di-Da). Sporting a blonde wig & an unplaceable English accent, Jones seems unaware she’s in a comedy, which makes her all the funnier. Everyone else expert players, having a grand time and, for a change, passing on the feel-good vibrations though it took audiences decades to catch on.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The film’s fallen into Public Domain and dreary copies abound. But Film Detective has sourced a pretty good print for their 2014 DVD/Blu-Ray release which nearly does justice to the cinematography of Oswald Morris & camera operator Freddie Francis. (Note that on Film Detective the Academy Ratio (4:3) picture is mastered to show properly on an anamorphic (16:9) setting.)

IKIMONO NO KIROKU / I LIVE IN FEAR (1955)

Self-consciously issue-oriented, Akira Kurosawa’s despairing nuclear/nuclear-family drama reps a serious miscalculation (he suddenly feels out of touch), and is deservedly little known. Toshirô Mifune hauls out Paul Muni’s makeup box to play an elderly industrialist with a crippling monomania about imminent atomic annihilation and a yen to sell off the family biz and move everyone to Brazil. (‘Where the nuts are!,’ as CHARLEY’S AUNT has it.) But since no one in his extended family (one wife/three mistresses/many kids) wants to go, they drag him to family court to prove incompetence and protect the family inheritance. And as none of the family issues (or solutions) seem as difficult to us as they seem to Kurosawa, the situation plays out as point-making rather than drama, wobbling unconvincingly between King Lear and an Ibsen ‘problem’ play. Kurosawa has better luck with a parallel storyline on the panel of mediators tasked with deciding the matter and focusing mainly on the doubts of Takashi Shimura, in his usual voice-of-reason role.* Except here, he’s too reasonable to stop a tragedy. Or perhaps, Kurosawa is just too eager to make a point.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura got much closer to Japan’s Nuclear Anxiety the year before, within Pop culture confines, under the guise of Sci-Fi monster GOJIRA/’54. I know, I’m suggesting GODZILLA over Kurosawa. (But only in the original Japanese cut!) To make amends, Kurosawa’s next, a return to form in his MACBETH adaptation THRONE OF BLOOD/’57.

SERGEANT RUTLEDGE (1960)

Fascinating, if not entirely successful, this John Ford Western brings Civil Rights themes, an unsung sidebar issue in many of Ford’s post-war films, front and center. Woody Strode, more athlete than actor (but what an athlete!), works like a dog for Ford (whom he adored) as the Top Sgt. in the All-Black Ninth Calvary Regiment who’s being court-martialed on murder & rape charges (commanding officer & daughter) in the segregated army of the 1880s. (Shockingly, Army Desegregation was barely a decade old when this came out.) Dramatized as a trial with action flashbacks during testimony, Ford shoots and even lights much of this (Bert Glennon the imaginative cinematographer) in non-realistic stage play fashion, with hot spotlight fades & silhouettes that briskly cut in & out of the naturally shot action. Some on obvious studio sets and some in the Super-Realism of Monument Valley locations. (Glennon also makes striking, almost Gustave Manet-like use of leading lady Constance Towers’ fair complexion against the black soldiers.) More oddly, Ford also pushes the acting into stagy mannerism, and not only during comic relief. Note blustering Willis Bouchey in what would normally have been the Ward Bond role as a panel judge.* It has the (possibly inadvertent) effect of helping Strode, a magnificent physical presence, but an actor whose range went all the way from monumental to monumental, come off in a more naturalistic manner. In any event, the flaws matter less & less as the story picks up steam & interest. Too bad the big confession that clears everything up is puerile Perry Mason stuff, pulled out of the air thru the fierce purity of defense attorney Jeffrey Hunter’s blue, blue eyes. But the film earns serious points with a high comfort level on its many black characters (Juano Hernandez is particularly fine as an old army vet), and generally holds up better than other forward-thinking/racially sensitive ‘progressive’ films of the day. Less dated; less condescending.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Ward Bond, enjoying long delayed stardom on tv in WAGON MASTER (he’d even gotten Ford to direct one), was probably too busy for the role, dying (at only 57) a few months after RUTLEDGE came out.

DOUBLE-BILL: Strode is even better for Ford playing John Wayne’s ranch-hand/friend in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE/’62 which also has a perfect example of Ford working in a bit of current Civil Rights commentary in a scene where Wayne insists Strode come into a ‘Whites Only’ bar with him. So off-hand as to be easily missed, but an unforgettable moment in its way. What co-star James Stewart would have called ‘a little piece of time.’

DREAMGIRLS (2006)

Bill Condon brings Michael Bennett’s faux MOTOWN musical from B'way to the big screen faultlessly for about 45 minutes, then drops the ball with a series of dramatic & musical misjudgements he’s either unable to fix or (more likely) unaware of. The story, a fictionalized take on the rise (and hollowing) of MOTOWN founder Berry Gordy is dramatized thru the slow eclipse of soulful R&B star Eddie Murphy (so good you resent the decades of waste) and the rise of an anodyne Girl Group modeled on The Supremes (though Beyoncé’s Diana Ross turns Donna Summers on us). It's the classic American Success story about what gets lost on the way up, and must have worked like magic on B’way in Bennett’s maximalist staging. But Condon can’t figure out how to move past the purely diegetic use of songs (those sung as part of a stage act) and into the more integrated or sung-thru musical numbers that directly tell the story & work as dialogue rather than as commentary, filming both types of song in the same heightened manner (swoops & circling camera). And why deliver them all as powerhouse audition numbers? Exhausting. Worth a look for the high gloss production and a very impressive Mr. Murphy (where has he been hiding these talents?). Lower expectations for best result.

DOUBLE-BILL: Made more in the moment, SPARKLE/’76 tells a similar kind of story on the cheap, with ‘Blaxploitation’ trimmings. It also could have been better.

TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (1951)

A bit of career whiplash for stately Ruth Roman who went directly from Alfred Hitchcock’s lux STRANGERS ON A TRAIN/’51 to this modest film noir. Fortunately, it’s a good one, or is for the first half. Steve Cochran actually gets the most screen time as a hard luck con fresh out of prison after serving 18 years, slapped with a murder conviction when he was just 13. Now a stranger in a strange land, he's a social naïf who moons over Roman’s Dime--A -Dance gal only to run into an over-protective cop back at her flat. Cochran is knocked out in a scuffle; the dick gets shot in a tussle with Roman. When Cochran comes to, she lets him think he’s responsible and the odd couple hit the road. All this is neatly handled by hack megger Felix Feist (the dance hall scene is a pip with a loud one-minute buzzer to keep the dances short). But he sure likes to spy on action thru windows. The real trouble comes after the couple is forced together by circumstance, and then start to show genuine affection. Roman rarely connected with anyone on screen, using & abusing more her nature, a chill Hitchcock found useful in STRANGERS, but which leaves Cochran playing alone once they hide out as married crop pickers in California. The story mechanics are fine (friendly neighbors spot Cochran but are hesitant to turn him in), but the missing chemistry between Roman & Cochran rob the film of romance & suspense.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hitchcock had a new cinematographer on STRANGERS, Robert Burks, who came along with Roman. Compared to what Hitch asked of him, this assignment must have seemed a piece of cake.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The most alarming image in here may be Ruth Roman’s shock of platinum blonde hair in the early scenes. Talk about a mismatch.

THE ADVENTURES OF TARTU (1943)

Dandy WWII espionage caper, with something of a proto-James Bond flavor to it, especially in its high-tech/gas-manufacturing climax. Robert Donat, with his unbeatable gentlemanly dash, is the British bomb-defuser whose Romanian background & chemical expertise make him the perfect man, the only man, for a mission into Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. His job: contact the local resistance while posing as a Romanian collaborator and get inside that chemical plant before the Germans perfect, ship & deploy their latest deadly gas formula. Valerie Hobson’s the suspicious local contact who thinks twice after trusting ‘Tartu,’ fooled by her attraction; and Glynis Johns’ the landlady’s daughter, a brave young patriot whose slipup may blow Donat’s cover. M-G-M journeyman megger Harold S. Bucquet seems positively transformed working in wartime England (British by birth, but a Hollywood career), much helped by Hitchcock’s top British lenser Jack Cox & art director John Bryan who give the film a playful sense of scale & fantasy in the action sequences. (How this was done with rationed wartime resources is a mystery, even if the technical seams show.) The only drawback is trying to find a decent print among subfusc Public Domain editions. Hopefully, something out there is better than the ‘meh’ Film Detective DVD seen here. (No doubt, M-G-M has pristine materials, but won’t put it out. Grrr.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Six years before this, and two years before starring in James Hilton’s GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, Donat was a double-agent in Russia, saving Marlene Dietrich in another Hilton adaptation, KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR/’37.