SPECTER OF THE ROSE (1946)

With scores of classic credits (even more uncredited), Ben Hecht was both the greatest and the most influential of all Hollywood scripters. Yet, in seven attempts at directing his own stuff, he showed not simply a lack of aptitude, but something like contempt for the craft. As if he was getting back at directors who ill-served him. This one, co-produced with favored cinematographer Lee Garmes, and made quickly for a song at Republic Studios, takes place in the world of ballet as high strung dancer Ivan Kirov attempts a post nervous breakdown comeback with new love/dancing partner Viola Essen (both in their only film role). But look out!; he may have killed his last partner! Something the cops are sniffing out and which ballet mistress Judith Anderson, impresario Michael Chekhov and poetic hanger-on Lionel Stander all fear. Garmes puts out striking, artistically lit compositions, but nothing cuts together. Hecht too busy giving free reign to purple prose Clifford Odets might have blanched at. Though some of it so ripe, it’s fun. As a one-off, it’s watchable, in a 'What Were They Thinking' sort of way. And worth a listen for an inventive score from 'Bad Boy' classical composer George Antheil.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hecht had better results on his previous directing gig, ANGELS OVER BROADWAY/’40, with Rita Hayworth, Doug Fairbanks Jr, and Thomas Mitchell. OR: Two years later, Republic tried artsy low-budget again to even worse critical & commercial response: Orson Welles in Shakespeare’s MACBETH/’48. Decades later, with original Scottish-accented soundtrack restored, it’s a rightly acclaimed off-beat masterpiece. (see below)

READ ALL ABOUT IT: New bio from Adina Hoffman: BEN HECHT: FIGHTING WORDS, MOVING PICTURES.

THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER (1944)

Filmed more-or-less concurrently with A GUY NAMED JOE, Irene Dunne’s other prestigious, big budget WWII-weepie, each one a huge hit in their day, neither has outlasted the times they were built for.* In JOE, the dead hang around as ghostly presence to watch over us as Dunne moves on from Spencer Tracy to Van Johnson. CLIFFS, though just as death fixated, is more of a Hands-Across-the-Sea plea with MidWest American gal Dunne impulsively marrying a British Baronet just before WWI in Part One; then watching her son join WWII in Part Two. Dunne’s natural empathy works wonders in the first half, especially for normally bland Alan Marshall, unexpectedly charming here, both much helped by director Clarence Brown’s refusal to push things. Quite the lux production, too, with the episodic structure ‘artistically’ bridged with Dunne reading poetic couplets. Yikes! Part Two gets a bit sticky, as young son Roddy McDowall (courting unbilled Elizabeth Taylor) grows into handsome soldier boy Peter Lawford.* It’s all too plush for words, though held back emotionally by a typically weak score by reliably second-rate Herbert Stothart. But very well shot by George Folsey (look for a crane shot moving in on a horse & carriage from above) and gaining goodwill from its well-handled first hour.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Something Steven Spielberg learned to his regret when he remade A GUY NAMED JOE/’43 as ALWAYS/’89.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Here’s a good chance to note that some actors really do have a ‘good’ side and a ‘bad’ side in profile. With McDowall, definitely go with the Right Side.

TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970)

Long dubbed TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE!, time has been relatively kind to this weirdly impersonal Pearl Harbor docu-drama. Seen now, especially in light of CGI overkill, much of the action has an impressive scale, a plush confidence in the combustible mass destruction coming after intermission. And if some of the cockpit scenes or the brightly lit acting spaces posing as ship decks & bridges betray themselves as soundstage mock-ups, they come and go quickly between military arguments that do a pretty good job parsing out strategies on either side of the Pacific. (With Stateside SNAFUs mercilessly exposed.) That split view was meant as the film’s big selling point, with no less than Akira Kurosawa taking on Japanese reins. No surprise he ankled before production got started (he still earns a story credit), and the trio of Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku & Toshio Masuda taking over with faceless competence, but little excitement or emotional engagement. It’s OKAY! OKAY! OKAY!

DOUBLE-BILL: Universal Studios followed up on this 20th/Fox production with MIDWAY/’76, a shoddy near sequel with the typically underwhelming Jack Smight directing a needlessly starry cast (Heston, Fonda, Mitchum, Glenn Ford, James Coburn, many more, even Toshirô Mifune!). OR: Skip both and go for Otto Preminger’s infinitely more entertaining/involving IN HARM’S WAY which wrecks Pearl Harbor in a reel & a half before moving on as the Navy licks its wounds and revs up for revenge. Another All-Star package, here given real acting opportunities.

ROXIE HART (1942)

B‘way play, silent & sound film, B’way Musical, Film Musical, plus 22 years (and counting) for the current B’way revival, Maurine Dallas Watkins’ CHICAGO, on how sexy/cynical Roxie Hart uses publicity & the press to get away with murdering her lover, has had quite the run. But this version, written by Nunnally Johnson & directed by William Wellman, often held as the standard telling, is a major disappointment. Not because it finesses the murder angle to squeeze past the Hollywood Production Code, but because everyone winks their way thru, defanging the material. Ginger Rogers, in odd, unbecoming makeup, is a soft-edged Roxie, spoofing her gum-chewing character and about as dangerous as a feather pillow. As the newbie newsman who falls for her, George Montgomery is a pleasant blank in the Flashback section, but does have some fun aping Clark Gable in the wraparound segments. Adolphe Menjou gets closer to the spirit of the thing as Roxie’s lawyer of expedience, but adds little to his tough, wily editor in THE FRONT PAGE/’31. Same goes for Lynne Overmann, who might as well be filling in for Lee Tracy who played THE FRONT PAGE lead reporter in it’s B’way premiere. Disappointing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Rogers gives a tip-top comic perf this year in THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR/’42. And for a taste of the Real McCoy, Criterion’s newly restored edition of THE FRONT PAGE/’31.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-front-page-1931.html

LOS OLVIDADOS (aka THE FORGOTTEN ONES; THE YOUNG AND THE DAMNED) (1950)

Heartless and heartbreaking, Luis Buñuel’s early masterpiece charts the dead-end lives of Mexico City slum kids, adding vivid surrealistic touches and nihilistic cruelty to Neo-Realistic style. A compact story revolves around three kids: a reform-school runaway who's a charismatic, daringly likable sociopath with revenge on his mind; his younger tagalong pal, not a bad kid by nature, trying to work his way back into his mother’s good graces, but easily led astray; and an abandoned street kid, picked up by a blind street beggar as guide/helper. Jobless, illiterate, most of the boys live aimlessly on the street, waiting for a chance to make a score, grab lunch from a street vendor, or simply cheer from the sidelines. Buñuel gives these thugs odd, unforgettable grace notes, often at their worst moments, so each petty theft or random act of violence has a personal sting. (Only girls & mothers seem to work.) Then poking the wound with glimmers of quickly sabotaged hope, or a dream of magical realism twisted with nightmarish horror. All crushingly brought out in Gabriel Figueroa’s b&w cinematography in spite of the bad prints now generally available.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Vittorio De Sica’s SHOESHINE/’46 an obvious influence. So too Dickens’ OLIVER TWIST, with Oliver’s waylaid bookstore trip for his kindly benefactor lifted pretty directly.

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE (1989)

No doubt, it seemed like a clever idea, but styling a Jerry Lee Lewis bio-pic into a cotton-candied GREASE knock-off limits writer/director Jim McBride’s options & payoff. He might be filming a literary conceit. And concentrating on the child bride scandal that stymied Lewis’s top-of-the-charts breakout leaves little room to see how his square-peg-in-a-round-hole Honky-tonk Rock & Roll fit into the rebellious ‘50s music scene. Dennis Quaid, in his hot-bod phase but keeping his ass covered (rare at the time!), has all the ingredients to play Lewis, but never quite convinces lip-synching Jerry Lee’s smash vocals. He’s better at percussive keyboard dives, but guys up nearly every line as if this were sketch comedy. Like the film as a whole, it’s entertaining, but played in ‘Quotation Marks.’ And if Alec Baldwin sports an iffy accent as Lewis’s preacher/cousin Jimmy Swaggart, the rest of the cast hits closer to the mark. Especially 19 year-old Winonna Ryder as the 13 yr-old cousin Lewis marries. (Everyone’s a cousin in this story.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Two from 1978: Try not to cringe comparing film to memory in GREASE; or go for the neatly handled BUDDY HOLLY STORY.

DR. EHRLICH'S MAGIC BULLET (1940)

Paul Muni’s loss was Edward G. Robinson’s gain when director William Dieterle followed up PASTEUR, ZOLA and JUAREZ with a fourth ‘Great Man’ bio-pic on turn-of-the-last-century research scientist Dr. Paul Ehrlich.* And with Robinson in for Muni, who’d just ‘ankled’ at Warner Bros., it’s our gain, too, since Robinson’s lack of histrionics were the better fit for this leaner storyline. Lean but tough, with most of the film taken up by Ehrlich’s searching a cure for syphilis, a very tricky storyline for the period. (Tricky now, too.) John Huston gets credit for a last whack at humanizing the script, adding color & character to what might have been a very dry test tube drama. Instead, there’s a surprisingly strong emotional kick to it, right from the start when a young man gets the bad news. Ehrlich’s family life remains a bit stiff, but the professional side of things (struggles with colleagues & funding, a major court fight, a diphtheria outbreak), along with timely parallels to current German political concerns, give the film plenty of drama. Well-paced by Dieterle and handsomely caught in James Wong Howe’s dark, moody cinematography.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Right after this, Dieterle made a fifth ‘Great Man’ bio-pic, again with Robinson in a role Muni might have taken, A DISPATCH FROM REUTERS/’40. (Hal Wallis, who produced all of them, considered SERGEANT YORK/’41 the last in this bio-pic series.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In spite of his varied resume, Eddie G. was still ‘typed’ as Mob Guy #1. Hence the addendum on our poster promising that MAGIC BULLETS is ‘Not A Gangster Picture!’ (Click poster to expand.)

CIRCUS WORLD (1964)

After a pair of unconventional epics, EL CID/’61 (a stupendous success) and FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE/’64 (a staggering flop), independent mogul Samuel Bronston went out not with a bang, but with this lumbering, very conventional whimper. Hitting all the usual circus tropes (wreck, fire, daredevil rivalry, performing accidents), the sole twist has Big Top owner John Wayne (plus stunt double to scamper up all those tent poles) hauling his outfit off on a Euro-tour in hopes of finding high-flying ex Rita Hayworth. Fourteen years a fallen woman, she's hiding from life & abandoned daughter Claudia Cardinale after an affair with Duke led to her husband’s mid-act death plunge. Henry Hathaway, Jack Hildyard & Dmitri Tiomkin meg, lens & score with professional blinders on, they’re the grown-ups in the room, ploughing thru script absurdities to make the most of various obstacles & disasters. (Though a felled ship remains a real head-scratcher, keeling over simply from passengers rushing port-side.) Watchable, in a lazy sort of way, it suddenly comes alive near the end in a montage of acts on opening night. Gorgeous stuff here, stunningly executed, staged & edited. Why there’s even a truly funny clown act!

DOUBLE-BILL: Far more circus charm, atmosphere, hoke & nuttiness in Carol Reed’s TRAPEZE/’56 or C. B. De Mille’s super bright/cornball GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH/’52.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Nicholas Ray, just off Bronston’s poorly received, but entertaining 55 DAYS AT PEKING/’63, gets story credit, presumably a planned follow up taken away from him.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Listen as Wayne gives Cardinale some surrogate fatherly advice all about ‘high dives’ & ‘safety nets.’ Sure sounds like a disguised parent-to-child talk on contraception. Yikes!

STAR SPANGLED RHYTHM (1942)

First out of the gate with a WWII All-Star Revue pic, Paramount trooped the colors and their contract players as part of Hollywood’s morale-building war effort. An effort soon followed by the other ‘Majors.’ The story in this one, such as it is, has longtime studio gatekeeper Victor Moore letting soldier-boy son Eddie Bracken think he’s running the joint. A fib he’s forced to fake when Bracken & his army pals show up on leave before shipping out. Fortunately, aggressive telephone switchboard jockey Betty Hutton, already pen-pals with Bracken, is around to press the stars into putting on a really big show. Harmless, but very hit-and-miss, the film keeps threatening to turn into serious fun, but comes up short. Fortunately, the big variety show uses half the players on the lot which livens things up even with sketchy comic sketches and largely forgettable songs. One new classic though, THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC, sung by Johnny Johnston (who he?) and danced by Vera Zorina/staged by husband George Balanchine (both fresh from Rodgers & Hart’s I MARRIED AN ANGEL on B’way). Click on the poster to make out the impressive cast list.

DOUBLE-BILL: Next year, Hutton, Bracken & director Preston Sturges (tres soigné in a small bit here) would team up for a true American classic, MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK/’43.