(A.J. Cronin's) HATTER'S CASTLE (1942)

Best known for social-issue tales from British coal country (THE CITADEL/’38; THE STARS LOOK DOWN/’40), here A.J. Cronin serves up ripsnorting melodrama with Gothic trimmings charting the comeuppance of small town hatter James Brodie, a loathsome tyrant on the order of Edward Moulton-Barrett of Wimpole Street.*  A terror to wife, son & daughter (an early lead for Deborah Kerr), he’s an equally bad influence on the town’s businessmen in spite of running his shop (the only hatter in town) into ruinous debt, made worse when modern competition opens next door.  Ignoring medical attention for his cancer stricken wife from new doc James Mason (also in an early lead), goading his boy into trouble at school, bringing his barmaid mistress home to run the ‘castle,’ his rage even responsible for getting Kerr knocked up by opportunistic/two-timing lover Emlyn Williams since she’s too scared of her father to scream for help.  Raging storms, train disasters, bankruptcy, suicide, attempted patricide, a very full plate of sin & sorrow.  Megged without much flair by Lance Comfort, yet with flashes of technical brilliance that stand out in relief next to the rest.  All of it, held in terrified thrall to Robert Newton's large scale work as the tyrannical father.  Never one to be accused of underplaying, Newton could be shockingly effective in the right role (making flesh creep as Bill Sykes in the David Lean version of Dickens’ OLIVER TWIST/’48), here he sometimes loses focus with his villainy too generally applied, but more often reaching a heaven-storming evil thrill.  And it’s nice to see a British film made without stiff upper-lip reserve, even if it occasionally swings for the fences and misses.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *As mentioned, above, THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET/'34. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-barretts-of-wimpole-street-1934.html

THE DARK HORSE (1932)

Neat B-pic from Warners leaves a lot of potential on the table, but has good fun as far as it goes.  Sleek & sleazy, Warren William is just the man to run a political campaign for ‘Dark Horse’ gubernatorial candidate Guy Kibbee, an unelectable delegate picked at random to end a deadlocked convention.  Too bad William’s stuck in jail, behind on alimony payments to heartless/avaricious ‘ex’ Vivienne Osborne.  But that won’t stop Party secretary Bette Davis from singing his praises (the two all but engaged).  And with a Get Out of Jail Card from the Party Bosses, William starts in educating Kibbee and gearing up the publicity mill.  If only the ‘Ex’ weren’t still looking for trouble, making a big play for Kibbee (and a big payoff) at a secluded country cabin.  A perfect storm of a scandal; and William can only cover things up with what’s bound to look like a disloyal move against tru-love Davis!  What’s a political operative to do?  Nicely handled, just not enough on the political schooling of a novice nor on the thwarted romance.  Best for seeing Warners trying to figure out how best to use Ms. Davis (she could have played either gal), with good comic support from Frank McHugh and a snappy pace that's probably less director Alfred E. Green’s than editor George Marks’.  Standard stuff for the day, but a good standard; with Davis (still platinum blonde) very appealing under Sol Polito’s lighting.

ATTENTION  MUST BE PAID: Lots of Pre-Code touches including a game of strip poker for an unmarried pair, and a painful gag involving barbed wire and Guy Kibbee’s crotch.  Ouch!

DOUBLE-BILL: Seven years on, Kibbee was still governor in MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON/’39.

MIKAËL / MICHAEL (1924)

Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer (PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC/’28; DAY OF WRATH/’43) made this unusual film at UFA Germany.  Unusual in subject matter, that is, a relatively frank gay-themed story, perhaps only possible at the time from Weimar Germany.  (Two other rare gay oriented silents, DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS/’19 with Conrad Veidt and GESCHLECHT IN FESSELN / SEX IN CHAINS/’28, also Weimar based.)  Beautifully designed in Secessionist style by Hugo Häring and lensed by Karl Freund, assisted by Rudolph Màte, what luck to have it so well preserved, restored and near atonally scored in a 2016 edition from the F.W. Murnau Foundation.  Fellow Danish director Benjamin Christensen stars as an aging master painter, painfully losing his young male model (pale/fair Walter Slezak in his slim youth) to a wicked Countess whose portrait Christensen is unable to bring up to his exacting standards.   Adapted by Thea von Harbou between scripts for husband Fritz Lang (DIE NIBELUNGEN; METROPOLIS), it’s one long descent for the elderly artist with Dreyer in the zombie mode of his late period, doggedly charting Christensen’s abject acceptance of loss of affection, loss of art, loss of finances, from the unworthy boy he loves in spite of his selfish behavior depressingly believable.  (The vibe between these two very Oscar Wilde/Boosie.)  Finally, a late masterpiece comes out, bringing artistic apotheoses even if no lessons have been learned.  Compelling in its deterministic attitude, snail-like pacing and objectivity, best for Dreyer completists and for the suggestive sexual inclinations with an incestuous note when Christensen refers to Slezak as ‘being like a son.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Lenser Freund takes a role on screen as an art dealer, his roly-poly physique a match for Walter Slezak in his Hollywood character actor days.  (Slezak was the German passenger in Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT/’44)  Odd to think that Freund’s next film, Murnau’s THE LAST LAUGH/’24 would revolutionize camera movement with a new sense of roving freedom, after this film which hasn't a single pan or moving shot in it.  (Freund also an evolutionary force, inventing basic three-camera sitcom setup techniques when he was lighting cameraman on I LOVE LUCY in the ‘50s.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: And speaking of I LOVE LUCY, see Dreyer’s next, back in Denmark for MASTER OF THE HOUSE/’25.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/12/du-sal-re-din-hustru-master-of-house.html

OR: For something by Christensen, skip his Hollywood films to see him as writer/director/actor at his best (and weirdest) in the bizarre documentary-style witchcraft investigation of HÄXAN/’22.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/09/haxan-witchcraft-through-ages-1922.html

GUNDA (2020)

Artful in its simplicity, with patience that pays off, Viktor Kosakovskiy's quotidian gaze at farm animals, mostly a sow & her brood of 20 or so newborns, with side glances at a careful chicken and a herd of majestic cows, all stunningly wrought in steely digital black & white, is a miracle of empathy that documents without anthropomorphizing.  Shot in steady long takes made at ground level, it gives startling intimacy to every small action, leading us along without verbal guideposts or compromise on facts-of-life decisions.  Our sow has teats for just so many piglets.  Bad news for the runt of the liter.  Toward the middle, you might start to feel you’ve gotten what you could from this cast of barnyard characters, and from Kosakovskiy’s technique.  Just the place for two brilliant set pieces, one with Mom going on strike against those relentless feeders: No More Free Lunch!  (She’ll give in to their squeals soon enough.)  And finally, a devastating, magnificent last shot.  Ten uninterrupted, unmanipulated minutes, giving witness to what in effect is The 5 Stages of Grief for Mother Pig when her insistent young brood suddenly isn’t around anymore.  As subtle & moving a piece of theater as you'll find.  A privileged pig moment.  Something any actor would kill to play and be wise to study.  The film is an astonishment.

INTERNATIONAL LADY (1941)

While his next three writing assignments saw Howard Estabrook adapting stories by Alexander Dumas, William Saroyan & Thornton Wilder, this WWII spy yarn is boilerplate nonsense.  Released before Pearl Harbor, it begins with the war already on in a London Blitz meet-cute between concert singer Ilona Massey (secret Nazi agent broadcasting info via musical code) and U.S. Consulate lawyer George Brent (secret undercover FBI agent).  But this budding romance turns trio when music critic Basil Rathbone (secret undercover Scotland Yard man) horns in.  The flirtation level is mad, and when Massey isn’t around, the men’s whispered confidences play like boy-to-boy tête-à-têtes which also comes off as flirting.  It's as if Noël Coward updated DESIGN FOR LIVING for wartime.*  With even more complications once they all go Stateside (carrier pigeons; Nazi cabals; a sharp-shooting assassin; radio broadcasts in musical code); you might wish they had decided to revive DFL!  Brent, Rathbone & Massey’s brittle style might be just right for Coward.  No such luck; with journeyman director Tim Whelan unable to stop the plot from falling apart and lenser Hal Mohr unable to do much with unadorned interiors or Massey’s froideur.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Coward’s DESIGN FOR LIVING, very freely adapted in 1933 (and not necessarily for the worse) by Ben Hecht & Ernst Lubitsch for Gary Cooper, Fredric March & Miriam Hopkins , has seen its rep only grow over the years. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/01/design-for-living-1933.html

SODOM AND GOMORRAH (1962)

From big-budget to cheap exploitation, the late ‘50s/early ‘60s saw Hollywood churn out Biblical epics.  (Mostly filmed in Italy & Spain.)  Vet directors like Raoul Walsh & Henry Koster (sure to come in on budget), but also such nonconformists as Nicholas Ray & Robert Aldrich getting on the bandwagon and busting the bank.  Ray’s KING OF KINGS/’61 (once dubbed I WAS A TEENAGE JESUS) now has its defenders, but Aldrich’s Old Testament yarn finds few champions . . . including Aldrich.  And you can see his point.  The usual problems: risible dialogue, mix-and-match international accents & acting styles, a notable lack of skin & sin for all the talk, and a storyline that has Lot locked into a Moses template, leading a flock of suffering Hebrews to new land by the River Jordan.  A bigger problem stems from the jealous rivalry of Sodom's brother/sister act with siblings Queen Anouk Aimée & court schemer Stanley Baker stealing focus from ostensible leads God-fearing Stewart Granger as Lot & lovely non-believer Pier Angeli.  A pity, since even with a lack of objectionable acts (so many Sodomites and not a single misused orifice!); much of the design (from Ken Adams, later of James Bond); most of the action set pieces (extended battles that actually show strategy along with a cast of thousands); and Aldrich’s nifty habit of nudging the pace forward; all help keep momentum going over a pretty lively two-and-a-half hours.  Or perhaps the film is just helped by low expectations.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Who but roughhewn, no-nonsense Aldrich could have segued the same year from ‘Whatever Happened to Lot and His Family?’ to WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?

SHADOW OF THE LAW (1930)

Early Paramount Talkie has a visually imaginative start under director Louis Gasnier before running out of creative steam after the second reel, wasting whatever promise it had.  William Powell gets things started, walking an apartment neighbor home (Natalie Moorhead, one floor above) only to wind up defending her from a violent lover and watching in horror as a punch hurled in self-defense sends the brute flying backwards out the window to his death.  (Cool special effects fall!)  After a speedy trial, it’s a life sentence as the mystery neighbor lady takes a powder, leaving Powell on the hook for murder.  Escaping prison, Powell establishes a successful new life under a secret identity, but when he finally finds the vicious dame who left him to rot and begs for help, she tries blackmail and then more lies, leaving him in the lurch once again.  Moorhead is something of a find here, shockingly amoral in her unexplained determination to ruin Powell’s life and leverage a comfortable lifestyle.  While Powell is predictably ahead of the Talkie acting curve, his easy wit and clipped style fully formed.  (Plus, for the couple of reels he’s in jail, appearing without his signature mustache to utterly miserable effect.  Gable & Colman were still themselves clean shaven; Powell simply disappears.)  Not without interest up thru the jail scenes; falling flat thereafter. 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Compare the prison scenes with George W. Hill’s THE BIG HOUSE, out the same year and looking amazingly advanced for the period, a real wallapalooza in Early Talkie cinema.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-big-house-1930.html

AGATHA AND THE TRUTH OF MURDER (2018)

Writer/producer Tom Dalton’s speculative fiction about the real-life 11-day disappearance of mystery book doyenne Agatha Christie, well enough received to generate two follow-ups (AGATHA AND THE CURSE OF ISHTAR/’19; AGATHA AND THE MIDNIGHT MURDERS/’20 - each with a different Christie, neither seen here), is pretty bad, even amateurish.*   The main idea has Christie, suffering writer’s block as her husband moves for divorce, working her way thru the crisis by taking on an unsolved murder case which she handles (surprise, surprise) as if it were one of her novels.  Dalton largely follows the general pattern of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, inviting all the likely suspects to an isolated spot in hopes of gaining an inheritance, leading to deaths & investigation until the murderer or murderers revealed.  Nothing wrong there, it’s execution, clues & logic that go missing.  One misperception that is cleared up is the idea of a limitless pool of great British character actors.  Starting from the top, with Ruth Bradley’s Christie coming across as a sort of Michelle Dockery stand-in.  (And why go for Dockery?  Christie famously big-boned, tall & horsey.)   Everyone else also subbing for some better/better-known Masterpiece Theatre regular.  Add in a lack of period flavor & style (cars & clothes not bad, but ‘20s attitudes & speech completely missing) and it becomes hard to even call this one a missed opportunity.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: An alternate solution to the disappearance in AGATHA/’79; Michael Apted directing the Mutt & Jeff team of Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman (not seen here).

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: As mentioned in the credits, this was made without input or approval from the Christie Estate.  And they approved Kenneth Branagh’s ORIENT EXPRESS/’17 and DEATH ON THE NILE follow-up?  Yikes!  And that cutesy misguided MISS MARPLE series for Geraldine McEwan & Julia McKenzie?  Best head back to the great Joan Hickson, given Agatha Christie’s personal imprimatur to play Marple.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/10/agatha-christies-miss-marple-1984-92.html

I CARRY YOU WITH ME / TE LLEVO CONMIGO (2020)

Beautifully handled, and just plain beautiful, Heidi Ewing makes a smooth transition from documentaries to narrative film charting the real-life relationship of two illegal Mexican immigrants, a gay couple now successful New York restauranteurs, and the hell they went thru to get here, neatly laid out in clear non-linear fashion.  Covering about twenty years, excluding brief childhood flashbacks, one of the men is leaving a young son behind to find work in the States, the other, with his own family issues, will follow after waiting over a year.  Nothing in their difficulties will come as a surprise (either on the sexual front, crossing the border or in finding themselves Stateless in America), but Ewing makes nothing but right moves editing their story, casting for various ages (the men play themselves in the present day sections), and in finding just the spot to make her compositions come alive.  She’s even better in her use of color.  (Also quite the thing for Manhattan bridges; one snowy shot with the Brooklyn Bridge outlined behind a real keeper.)  Don’t let the familiarity of the story arc get in the way, it doesn’t for Ewing who finds fresh, raw, true emotion in every moment and between some refreshing relationships, even the old one between the nice gay guy and his chubby gal pal.  Nothing in here feels cliché.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Elia Kazan brought some of the same passion & longings to his own family history in AMERICA AMERICA/’63.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/america-america-1963.html