CALCUTTA (1946)

Popular in its day, now overlooked, this film noir may not have much Calcutta atmosphere (not even much Paramount Studios Calcutta atmosphere), but gets full measure out of an ‘original’ Seton I. Miller screenplay that leans heavily on THE MALTESE FALCON/’41 and CASABLANCA/’42 for story beats & characters.  (Alan Ladd was never so Bogie-ish; it also explains the strange presence of debuting grotesquerie Edith King, a sort of gender-flipped Sydney Greenstreet.)  Flying cargo in & out of Calcutta with William Bendix & John Whitney, three pals who play the field with exotic beauties like June Duprez, or did until Whitney announces his engagement to Gail Russell, revealing a sultry, slightly corrupt beauty in her best perf.  But when Whitney turns up dead and a cache of gems goes missing, Ladd & Bendix are under suspicion even as they attempt to find the real killer(s).  Wary of the fiancé, Ladd soon falls for her . . . but is he being taken for a ride?  The usual investigation almost makes sense in this one, but what really puts it over is the visual boost director John Farrow gets from cinematography great John Seitz, almost as transforming here as he’d recently been to writer/directors Billy Wilder & Preston Sturges.  Even more impressive when you consider that Farrow had been directing for a decade and made over a score of largely unmemorable films.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Look fast to spot Hollywood’s first ever female croupier at a gambling table.  And check out some fine model airplane work in a pair of emergency landings.  Impressive F/X for the period.  (Presumably by Devereaux Jennings and better-known kid brother Gordon.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Seitz also brought more style than Farrow was wont to use on THE BIG CLOCK/’48, an escalating suspenser with opulent perfs by Ray Milland, Charles Laughton & Elsa Lancaster.

ÔSONE-KE NO ASHITA / MORNING FOR THE OSONE FAMILY (1946)

Where Keisuke Kinoshita’s first four films were made under wartime conditions (political & military policies to greater or lesser extent either sold, excused or put to the side), what a difference Unconditional Surrender made.  Questioning authority, once finessed away, now the main topic.  Specifically, the cost of war on a liberal-minded family of intellectuals and artists favorably inclined toward The West.  Opening at Christmastime 1943 as ‘Silent Night’ is played on the piano and sung by the family before a bit of Chopin played by a conscriptee one last time before he reluctantly begins military service.  One pacifist son has written a mildly critical article that’s enough to get him arrested while the youngest hopes to leave school early to become a war pilot.  A daughter is unofficially engaged to an unwilling draftee while a conservative Aunt & Uncle (a grafting Colonel stationed in Tokyo) move in after their house is bombed.  Simply set within the home of the widowed mother (Haruko Sugimura whom you’ll recognize from TOKYO STORY/’53), we move on to 1944, then two segments in 1945, before and after war’s end.  The four-act Chekhovian structure, another Western cultural reference, unmissable.  The Uncle & Aunt get their comeuppance, the family loses sons but survives.  And while it’s fascinating to see a film focused on this subset household lined up to resist the war, you do wonder how true to life this is or whether it’s just been careful designed to work hand-in-hand with new censorship/propaganda edicts.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Akira Kurosawa, who would later start a short-lived film company with Kinoshita, was more roundabout bringing similar concerns to his first post-war effort, NO REGRETS FOR OUR YOUTH/’46)    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/waga-seishun-ni-kuinashi-no-regrets-for.html

LUCK (2022)

Resurfacing at Apple TV+ after a forced departure from PIXAR/Disney, animation-guru John Lasseter brought along his recipe box.  So why cook up this not-so-fresh batch of leftovers?  Famously ‘hands-on’ as producer (it’s what got him in trouble), the film is officially directed by Peggy Holmes (script Kiel Murray, Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger), but the relationships, characters, moral lessons and reflexive jokes all display the Lasseter brand.   Alas, some ideas reheat better than others, and the alternate world POV our heroine gets sucked into (here it’s the land of GOOD and BAD LUCK), offers far less possibilities for deep-think development than, say, INSIDE OUT or SOUL.  This time, Little Miss Orphan has just aged out of the kiddie home and is now on her own: new apartment, first job, new acquaintances, new face, too, since she’s been drawn to look like a middle-aged soap star just back from a face-lift.  Something very Susan Lucci about her.  Sucked into her adventure following a ‘lucky’ cat, her journey thru a garish playground of happy-go-lucky and happy-go-unlucky beasts underwhelming.  Selflessness will save her (she uses her lucky penny to help a young orphan snag a Forever Family), but does little to add interest to this bland creation.  I’m at a loss.  Not only at how poor this is (conceptually and in execution), but in generally respectable reviews.  Perhaps too much product & too many platforms have lowered old standards.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Instead, burgeoning teen self-awareness from Makoto Shinkai in the superb Japanese anime KIMI NO NA WA / YOUR NAME/’16.  An international phenom everywhere but the States where it stalled out at 5 mill.  No leftovers on this one.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/kimi-no-na-wa-your-name-2016.html

TIEMPO DE MORIR / TIME TO DIE (1966)

Sober-sided debut for Mexican director Arturo Ripstein, a South-of-the-Border Western that leans self-consciously toward Greek Tragedy.  Taken from a Gabriel García Márquez story, it follows the heavy tread of Juan Sayago (Jorge Martínez de Hoyos), a middle-aged man back in town after 18 years in jail for a local murder his home town well remembers.  Especially the dead man’s two grown sons, patiently waiting to take revenge in spite of warnings from the local sheriff.  Turns out our prodigal murderer had his reasons, even convincing one of the sons to rethink his plans all while trying to restart a life put on hold with his one time fiancé (now a widow with a young son) and fixing up his long abandoned home.  Not a lot of surprises in how this all works out, though the film is at its considerable best zigging when you expect it to zag: Honor & honesty or thicker-than-blood vengeance?  That former fiancé foregoing love for pragmatism.  An unforgiving crippled old-friend.  (Ripstein hadn’t been Luis Buñuel’s assistant for nothing.)  But much feels as dusty and worn as the unpaved streets and town square.  And, like so many debuts, an unvaried pace takes its toll.  Still, a unique voice can be heard here.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: In Hollywood, a few A-list b&w Westerns with Greek Tragic aspirations in fashion during the ‘50s.  By 1966, when TIEMPO came out, THE GUNFIGHTER/’50, HIGH NOON/’52 and THE TIN STAR/’57 would all have been forced to use color.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/tin-star-1957.html

PANIC IN THE YEAR ZERO (0000)*

(*Actually 1962.)  Oscar-winning leading man (mid-‘30s thru mid-‘50s), Ray Milland proved resourceful and game as the industry shed old-studio ways and he tumbled off the A-list.  First at Republic Pictures, acting & directing small-scale commercial fare off underdeveloped scripts, then turning to exploitation pics at American International Pictures, where he found himself sequentially ‘attached’ to FROGS, X-RAY EYES, and crocheting ex-footballer Rosie Grier.  Here, he directs & stars as the head of a nuclear family trying to outrun nuclear holocaust.  Thanks to an early start on a countryside vacation, Milland, wife Jean Hagen, kids Frankie Avalon & Mary Mitchel are lucky to miss the first nuclear blasts back home as their trip turns into a survivalist adventure against the odds and a suddenly lawless populace.  It’s every man for himself and every women in jeopardy as The Millands fight, hunt, hoard, hide and eventually kill or adopt when strangers call for help or supplies.  Milland’s character is intriguingly off-putting, jarring in his single-minded pursuit of any advantage to help the clan.  And if budget restrictions and Milland’s rather basic film technique hold the film down, it's still an interesting time capsule of the ‘Duck & Cover’ era.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Maybe a score that had more than Les Baxter’s jazz-licks and a few scare-cues could have lifted the drama.  Or dialogue less mockable than daughter Mitchel whining after annihilation by some mystery enemy (foreign power?, alien force?), blithely asking ‘What’s the matter with everyone?’

BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1956)

One of a deluge of caper pics made in the wake of Jules Dassin’s game changing RIFIFI/’55, this early Jean-Pierre Melville film sees his signature touch come into focus.*  Filmed in drips & drabs over two-years as funds became available, its long production likely kept it from beating RIFIFI to the screen.  Those rickety finances also explaining some merely serviceable actors, though not elder statesman/leading man Roger Duchesne off-screen for over a decade; sexy teen Isabelle Corey spotted on the streets; and many others not the usual suspects.  The story is straightforward: High-Roller Bob, an ex-con on an epic losing streak, is tempted to rob Deauville Casino with a bespoke gang and some inside info.  Warned on all sides (even by a sympathetic cop) to drop the idea, you think you know where Melville is going here . . . but you don’t.  The young kid Bob mentors (an excellent Daniel Cauchy) blabs to teen tart Corey who then spills all to a former pal, now a police informer.  But this bit of typical film noir misogyny comes with a twist that takes the stink off it.  Same for Bob, losing himself in the run of his life at the gambling tables of Deauville just as the caper goes into motion.  It should ruin him.  Yet there’s saving grace in there as well.  Melville playing his cards very close to the vest.  Shot in varied monochromatic moods by the great Henri Decaë (with more Melville ahead for him), you’d never guess the stop/start nature of production.  Know where to place the camera and everything coheres.  It plays like Melville in training wheels, but takes you where he wants to go.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Duchesne’s role might have been written for Jean Gabin, but the dicey on-and-off work schedule hadn’t a chance of attracting him.  Plus, he’d just done something similar for Jacques Becker in TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI/’54, with this film’s Daniel Cauchy.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Put it this way.  Halfway in, one of the gang reaches out to a former accomplice, now a Casino employee, threatening blackmail if he doesn’t ‘give’ with inside info.  Only then does he mention a ƒ500 honorarium.   Suddenly, a lightbulb switches on above the ex-con’s head, ‘Ahh, so I’m being paid.’

ALL THE KING'S MEN (1949)

The first, and certainly the best, of three major attempts at dramatizing the rise and fall of corrupt Populist Louisiana Governor Huey Long.  (A 2006 remake and 1953's A LION IS IN THE STREETS the other two.*)  Impressive & uneven in equal measure, the Robert Penn Warren novel a streaming mini-series waiting to happen.  Writer Robert Rossen had only recently added on director’s shingle and the lack of experience shows.  (Actually, it would in all his films; it’s the devil’s work to get his stuff to cut together.  Here, Robert Parrish came on to ‘fix’ an initial edit.)  The first third, charting the rise of ‘good’ Willie Stark (that’s the Huey Long figure), is the least successful.  Rossen has a reporter tag along thru early political strivings & stumbles in the poor rural South, finishing with a too early run for Governor, set up to fail by entrenched politicos.  But Broderick Crawford’s twice-burned Stark comes alive after that.  Winning the race at last, the hairpiece goes, the ties grow even shorter, the ennobling wife is left at home and he leverages his adopted son into big time college football.  But he’s also making deals for ‘the people,’ with plenty of kickbacks, even pulling that wised-up reporter into his circle, along with the reporter’s respectable girlfriend, her physician brother, and their old-school Judge of an Uncle.  And Stark keeps everything in order thanks to gatekeeper extraordinaire Mercedes McCambridge, stealing all her scenes on shockingly modern terms.  She’s the only thing in here that doesn’t feel pinned into place to make the next point.  Still, once it gets going, compelling stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Promising on paper, the 2006 remake is a near complete bust.  While A LION IS IN THE STREET (dir. Raoul Walsh/James Cagney) is downright odd. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/all-kings-men-2006.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/09/lion-is-in-streets-1953.html

THE SOUND AND THE FURY (1959)

After big success turning William Faulkner’s THE LONG, HOT SUMMER into faux-Tennessee Williams the previous year, producer Jerry Wald, composer Alex North, director Martin Ritt, writers Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank Jr., and star Joanne Woodward went back for second helpings on this famously unfathomable Faulkner novel with a title out of MACBETH: ‘A tale told by an idiot, full of Sound and Fury, signifying nothing.’  Well, they got the ‘signifying nothing’ part right.  Here, the model is less Tennessee Williams than producer Wald’s earlier hit PEYTON PLACE (Yoknapatawpha Place?), and Jack Warden's ‘idiot’ doesn’t tell the tale, mostly hangs out on the porch.  And just what is that tale?  Something about a cursed Southern family, once prominent, now vaguely incestuous, with Woodward hunting up sexual possibilities off the decaying family grounds causing Step-Uncle Yul Brynner (sporting a fine head of hair) to lock her up for safe keeping.  Perhaps traveling ‘carny’ man Stuart Whitman can offer a way out . . . but does Joanne want out?  Meanwhile, Prodigal Daughter Margaret Leighton, Woodward’s mother, returns after years away to a shabby mansion largely run by no-nonsense Mammy-type Ethel Waters, trudging up & down the stairs, bringing tea & sandwiches to various interrelated semi-invalids, pipe dreamers and her own handsome grandchildren.  And you thought the novel was tough to follow!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Stick with THE LONG, HOT SUMMER; at least it’s an entertaining mess.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-long-hot-summer-1958.html

THE GIRL IN WHITE (1952)

Minor bio-pic on pioneering doctor Emily Dunning, first female to get an internship at a major NYC hospital, is pleasant and well-made, but never feels necessary.  Boasting better than average turn-of-the-last-century period details for 1952 M-G-M, the film is too careful for its own good.*  Only a few ambulance rides thru city streets rouse much response from director John Sturges while striving doctor-in-training June Allyson is her usual maddeningly nice self.  (She’s even nice getting pissed at the hazing from the all-male staff.)  Arthur Kennedy supplies romance as a fellow trainee leaning toward research abroad and Gary Merrill the most interesting character as the grumpy, but dedicated unit head who starts to question his bias against women in the profession as he warms to Allyson professionally and personally.  You keep thinking someone might have done something special with the material.  George Stevens’ I REMEMBER MAMA/’48 comes to mind; possibly because Barbara Bel Geddes would have been just right here.  But the studio was in transition (founding M-G-M father L. B. Mayer OUT/message-driven producer Dore Schary IN), and this mid-list film got lost in the shuffle.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For a plusher M-G-M take on a pioneering woman in the profession, try MADAME CURIE/’43.  OR: Get an idea of what I REMEMBER MAMA’s Barbara Bel Geddes might have done.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/01/madame-curie-1943.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-remember-mama-1948.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The script afraid to let Allyson’s young doc ever be wrong.  In a major character building sequence she revives a man thought dead by a callous intern.  If only her efforts had been correct . . . but for nought.