A VOYAGE ROUND MY FATHER (1982)

Frail, and looking older than his years, Laurence Olivier had been hamming it up or phoning it in on recent projects (JAZZ SINGER; CLASH OF THE TITANS; INCHON . . . Yikes!) before getting a supporting role worth his time & talent in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. Adapted in 1981 from the Evelyn Waugh novel by John Mortimer of ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’ fame, it likely led to Olivier’s next part, playing Mortimer’s eccentric dad in this father/son memoir. Largely filmed at the Mortimer estate in Oxfordshire (very nicely, too, by longtime Merchant/Ivory lenser Tony Pierce-Roberts), it’s something of a diary piece for Mortimer, wonderfully played by Alan Bates, as he reviews his difficult relationship from boyhood on, to Olivier as his barrister dad, accidentally blinded as an adult, yet largely ignoring his condition & limitations. If anything, using them to get away with some pretty atrocious, if often very funny, behavior. Olivier’s health at the time make some scenes difficult for him, but he’s largely on top of things. (Alec Guinness played the role on stage and it’s fun to imagine a less combustible approach.) And though the focus generally holds to father-and-son, as well as to wife & daughter-in-law, some of the funniest bits focus on Public School days, including a real lulu ‘facts-of-life' discussion from Michael Aldridge’s plummy headmaster. (All about how to avoid unwelcome advances when being offered tea & cake!) Not unexpectedly, we’ll discover a sentimental heart behind Dad’s gruff exterior, but the film & characters stay reasonably flinty & honest. It’s good stuff in a minor key.

DOUBLE-BILL: Mortimer’s credits are long & broad (THE INNOCENTS/’61; BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING/’65; TEA WITH MUSSOLINI/’99), but RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY/’78 - 92 always comes first, and manages the rare feat of improving as it goes along. Especially when Marion Mathie takes over as the missus to Leo McKern’s immortal Rumpole in Season 4.

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940)

Prime, early TechniColor Arabian Nights fantasy, a triumph for producer Alexander Korda who kept it going in the face of war, multiple directors (including Michael Powell), cash shortages, and a mid-shoot move from Britain to Hollywood. The story skips about, as if told by an excited child who'd just rushed home from the cinema to tell you all about Sabu’s little thief and John Justin’s King-on-the-run as they overcome all obstacles. And such enchanted wonders!; with effects that either hold up beautifully (cityscapes!; bluer than blue skies!; pageantry!) or, where technically dated, delight thru color & fancy. There’s magpie method to the mad narrative, held together by the trio of Miklós Rózsa’s score; acting turns topped by Sabu’s charm offensive heroism and Conrad Veidt’s deadly glamor as villain; and the look of the thing as designed by co-producer William Cameron Menzies*, drawn by Vincent Korda and caught by lead cinematographer Georges Périnal. Criterion’s 2008 restoration is almost good enough, color slightly understated (to match the British release?) and with occasional TechniColor registration issues. Still, probably the best yet seen. So too this version of the story.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Menzies the one creative holdover from the famous 1924 Doug Fairbanks/Raoul Walsh silent version. (see below)

ANTHONY ADVERSE (1936)

From a forgotten bestseller, a forgotten period whopper you’ve likely forgotten even if you saw it. Quite the prestige item for Warner Brothers, more like some lux, over-padded award-bait from M-G-M, with once spunky Mervyn LeRoy showing the bland corporate style of megging he’d soon bring to Metro. Unusually long at 2'20"*, the story bumps along, foisting one jarring coincidence after another at us as faux foundling Fredric March nobly tiptoes thru a personal landmine of Napoleonic-era woe, almost aware he’s an illegitimate heir: son of villainous Claude Rains’ unfaithful late wife; grandson of wealthy merchant/employer Edmund Gwenn. All he really wants to do is settle down with childhood playmate, now budding opera soprano Olivia de Havilland, but calamitous financial circumstances waylay him with fraught trips: political troubles in Cuba; the slave trade in Africa. Finally returning home, he finds his abandoned little wife now the toast of Paris opera & mistress to Bonaparte! (Hard to believe this was ever taken seriously, but it just might have worked over at M-G-M with, oh, Woody Van Dyke directing Franchot Tone & Jeanette MacDonald.*) March manages to look 20-yr-old babe in the woods in a carefully lit intro shot (thank you, Tony Gaudio!), but elsewhere, you can see he was pushing 40 while de Havilland was just 19; an uncomfortable pairing. Best for Rains & Oscar-winning Gale Sondergaard (whose position in the story is hard to figure out) as joined-at-the-hip villains, but even this evil pair can’t lift the drama past generic also-ran.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *One positive from the extended running time lets composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold fully work out his film-as–opera aesthetic, earning one of the film’s four (out of seven) Oscars® though officially going not to Korngold, but to Warner Music Department Head Leo Forbstein! A rule that would be changed two years later, ironically when Korngold won again, this time for THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/’38.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Indeed, it did work over at M-G-M in the top-grossing MAYTIME/’37.

THE LION HAS WINGS (1939)

With a brief gap between British & Hollywood shoots on his TechniColor remake of THE THIEF OF BAGDAD/’40 (the start of WWII forced the move), producer Alexander Korda contributed to the burgeoning war effort with this patriotic quickie. Half rose-colored documentary/half sentimental family drama (and nearly all hooey), it was designed for maximum uplift, a sunny-sided portrait of a desperate situation. And as such, fairly effective. The first half hour is nearly all documentary, a potted history on how we got where we are. (And not so far from what Frank Capra would turn out Stateside in PRELUDE TO WAR/’42, first in the WHY WE FIGHT series.) After that, the film mixes in more fictional story as Korda regulars like Merle Oberon & Ralph Richardson join the war effort. (She’s a nurse; he oversees early bomb runs.) Best now for factory footage showing planes & ammunition still hand-crafted; a ramped up, human-scaled cottage industry fighting a war. Korda adds some production value with a clip of Elizabethan Pageantry from his own FIRE OVER ENGLAND/’37 (with Flora Robson’s Queen Elizabeth firing up her subjects*), then gives Oberon a similar ‘there’ll-always-be-an-England’ speech for Richardson to fall asleep to. Nice touch.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Even with Robson, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and the Spanish Armada, FIRE OVER ENGLAND doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

AIRPORT '77 (1977)

When did movie sequels stop being Hollywood Second-Class Citizens? Hard to pinpoint an exact year* (STAR WARS/’77, conceived as a Trilogy, doesn’t count; JAMES BOND an anomaly), but surely sometime after this AIRPORT stinker. Produced by Universal schlockmeister Jennings Lang/megged by tv hack Jerry Jameson, it’s loaded with amusingly cheesy effects courtesy of Albert Whitlock, grainy process shots (typical of Universal labs at the time) and a ludicrous story about a hijacked plane loaded with old masterpieces & old movie stars. They’re all flying down to open James Stewart’s new museum in Florida.* (Apparently, he’s planning on unpacking & hanging the Rembrandts & Renoirs during cocktail hour.) But the hijackers (tv rather than film personalities) screw up and the model plane bounces down and sinks in The Bermuda Triangle. Suddenly, it’s AIRPORT meets THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE as Captain Jack Lemmon (hiding behind a mustache, but we know it’s you, Jack!) floats to the surface to save the day . . . if not the priceless masterpieces. A long list of semi, and semi-retired, stars booked seats (Darren McGavin & Olivia de Havilland manage to keep their self-respect), but only baddie Monte Markham gets to wear a really big bow tie! Lang got one more of these sequels ‘green lit,’ THE CONCORDE . . . AIRPORT ‘79, before switching vehicles for ROLLERCOASTER/’77; the latter with 'SensuRRound Sound' theater shaking woofers. Yikes!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Stewart must have had a look at his toupee in THE SHOOTIST/’76. This year’s model much improved.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Note that Steven Spielberg passed on directing JAWS 2 a year after this, but not on the JURASSIC PARK sequel, THE LOST WORLD/’97. Prestige tipping point for the Hollywood sequel?

THE ROAD TO MOROCCO (1942)

I guess you had to be there . . . Third of the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope ROAD pics (generally considered best in the series) is pleasant fun, with a wacky ‘anything goes’ spirit (talking camels?) and two exceptional songs in the mix (the title tune; ‘Moonlight Becomes You’). But its euphoric reception and blockbuster biz now seem unwarranted. (No doubt, wartime jitters gave a commercial boost to the silliness.) The usual format remains: Partners on the run; Dorothy Lamour in the middle; bad guy complications (here Anthony Quinn); rivals in love/comrades-in-arms; advantage Bing; gag Fade Out. Hope shows particularly good form (perfect timing/glint in the eye). But there’s a structural flaw with the romance settled too early as Lamour opts for Bing after she sorts out a bad omen in the second act. Worse, the film gives Hope an alternate partner in annoyingly chipper Dona Drake, effectively ditching the competitive angle between the boys. We know the inevitable outcome, but you can’t remove the motor and expect a vehicle to run.

GAUGUIN - VOYAGE DE TAHITI (2017) THE MOON AND SIXPENCE (1942)

‘About as exciting as watching paint dry.’ A phrase not only for house painters. But thanks to Somerset Maugham’s re-imagination of Paul Gauguin into Charles Strickland for THE MOON AND SIXPENCE*, it’s easy to be pulled into the life of this bluntly honest, disagreeable man as he rejects bourgeois values, friends & family to pursue painterly bliss in Tahiti. Dropping Maugham’s fictional embellishments, Edouard Deluc does a reasonable job with the real Paul Gauguin in his bio-pic by limiting the time-frame to the artist’s departure from Paris and first stay in Tahiti. And he’s fortunate to have Vincent Cassel believably wasting away as an uncompromising Gauguin. But even with exotic love life & illness, it quickly runs out of things to say. So, the main interest in GAUGUIN comes in seeing how the real life stimulated Maugham’s fictional embellishments. And craft wins out over genius.

Adapted into film by Albert Lewis, an ex film exec with a literary bent, he had artsy taste, but less aptitude for directing. Even with transformative cinematographer John Seitz on the project, there’s no swing to Lewis’s filmmaking. In 1942, it’s neat & polished compared to the realistic grunge & poverty on display in 2017. Yet the earlier film is quite good, in its way, with George Sanders’ Gauguin character fascinating & cruelly honest by his own reckoning. The last half reel was originally in TechniColor (and good luck finding it!), but the best section comes with a marital drama back in Paris between Sanders and the wife of second-rate painter Steven Geray. With class act Herbert Marshall doing his Maugham routine as our guide. Together, the two films make an oddly satisfying DOUBLE-BILL.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In an insane piece of casting, Florence Bates is something to see as a much married Tahitian sexpot, especially when doing a native dance.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: The Maugham book holds up beautifully.

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938)

Has swash ever been better buckled? TechniColor pageantry as dewy fresh? A more plus perfect cast or a score so rousing, romantic & loaded with honest emotion? A collective effort that seems effortless and (in spite of two directors & three cinematographers) all of a piece. Everyone knows that this Warner Brothers classic on the old Sherwood Forest legend can’t be beat. Not by Douglas Fairbanks in 1922 or Sean Connery in ’76, just to name two. Here, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains et al. stamp their personalities on the archetypal roles; director William Keighley establishes character & Michael Curtiz (who largely took over) gives dash, while composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold supplies pomp & sentiment. But the film needs to look its best to really deliver. There were surprisingly fine, restored 16mm prints distributed in the ‘70s. A revelation at the time. Yet when Warners dug up 35mm theatrical prints for the studio’s 75th Anniversary Tour, the 3-strip TechniColor had fallen alarmingly out of register in copies available for projection. And though you could see just what the original prints were aiming for by pulling out N. C. Wyeth’s ROBIN HOOD illustrations,

that didn’t stop a recent MoMA restoration ‘rethink’ from sucking half the life out of the color saturation and doubling the grain. A real fiasco. Fortunately, current DVDs are in much better shape, and significantly improve in sharpness & definition in the last four reels. No doubt even better on Blu-Ray.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The DVD comes with the 1999 documentary GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR, allowing you to see how much better transfer techniques have gotten in just the past 20 years. The shots from ROBIN HOOD in it look spectacularly bad, totally misrepresenting the color scheme & film grain.

DOUBLE-BILL: Rougher, less polished, CAPTAIN BLOOD/’35, first of the Flynn/de Havilland swashbucklers (with Curtiz & Korngold already onboard), has a special feel of discovery about it. OR: For a more recent attempt at the form: Philippe de Broca gets smashing perfs from Daniel Auteuil & Vincent Perez on a late, unexpected success in the umpteenth version of LE BOSSU / aka ON GUARD/’97. (see both below)

STAND UP AND CHEER (1934)

With Warner Brothers bringing renewed popularity to musicals (42nd STREET; FOOTLIGHT PARADE; GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933), Fox Film Corp. grabbed Warner Baxter from 42nd ST. for this Depression Era revue showcase about a new Presidential Cabinet Post: Secretary of Amusement!* Charged with putting on shows across the country to lift up national spirits, he’s being blocked by a cabal of hidebound businessmen & senators. Will Rogers came up with the idea, and you can see the possibilities, but almost no one involved (in front or behind the cameras) is up to speed in the genre. The dramatic situation is barely touched on; we never see the shows coming together; none of the songs or production numbers are memorable, or even well performed. The sole exception to this dreary mediocrity (and it’s a major exception) is little Shirley Temple. Five going on six at the time, she makes the most of a single scene; a song & dance number with her pop (bland James Dunn); and a quick wave in the finale. Not much screen time, but all she needs to blow everyone else out of the water. She is spectacularly adorable. (Also: For those who can parse the comic smarts behind Stepin Fetchit’s ‘darkie’ act, a deeply odd scene played with a penguin ‘passing’ as Jimmy Durante. Bizarre.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Those three Warners musicals mentioned above. All great, all essential.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Secretary of Amusement? Not as ridiculous as it sounds. A couple of years later, FDR's Works Progress Administration started up the nationwide Federal Theater Project under Hallie Flanagan, now best known for some of Orson Welles’ early Mercury Theatre productions. (An All Black MACBETH in Harlem; the fascist JULIUS CAESAR on B’way; the blocked/controversial rabble-rousing union musical THE CRADLE WILL ROCK.) Covered as it was happening in 1937 by Willson Whitman in BREAD AND CIRCUSES.