THE OUTLAWS OF RED RIVER (1927); THE BEST BAD MAN (1925)

Pickford, Fairbanks, Valentino, Chaplin or Lloyd, Garbo, even Rin Tin Tin; all still names to conjure with as silent cinema’s #1 Sweetheart, Swashbuckler, Latin Lover, Comic, Goddess and Dog.  Only Tom Mix, by far the biggest Western star, no longer a known name.  Two recent restorations show why he’s mostly forgotten, if not why he was once so ubiquitous.  An anodyne presence in the formulaic BEST BAD MAN, he’s better in one of his ‘Special’ productions, OUTLAWS OF RED RIVER/’27.*  The former mostly of interest for a chance to see nineteen-yr-old co-star Clara Bow as the land owning gal who thinks Mix has duped her out promised water irrigation when it’s really Mix, an effete out-of-state landowner, who’s been duped by locals who’ve stolen the money he sent out West.  So, heading West undercover, he sorts things out (with a light comic touch) and falls for Clara after a couple of back-loaded action set pieces: a roller-coaster of a train ride thru the mountains and a flood/rescue after that unfinished dam explodes.  (Note director John G. Blystone credited as co-director with Buster Keaton on OUR HOSPITALITY/’23, also with a flood/rescue finale.)  OUTLAWS is much better, with a nifty backstory for Texas Ranger Tom whose foster parents were murdered by outlaws and his little foster-sister taken.  Sixteen years later, he finds the head of the gang who’s ‘adopted’ the now grown little sister and clears everything up (by  posing as an outlaw & joining the gang) with many thrilling action scenes all thru the pic.  Some for him and some for his remarkable ‘wonder’ horse, Tony.  (It’s Tony who’s worth the price of admission!)  Well staged on great locations with good stunts for Mix, it’s neatly-plotted, well-acted and physically handsome, with exciting direction from B-pic stalwart Lewis Seiler and even a black hat on Tom for a change.  One of Tom’s best.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Mix’s ‘Special’ release of ‘25 was Zane Grey’s RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, possibly his best pic.*  So it was back to programmers like BEST BAD MAN.  (PURPLE survives in superb physical condition, but all home viewing options are lousy dupes.)  OR: Blake Edwards had a great idea in SUNSET/’88: Tom Mix and pal Wyatt Earp (Bruce Willis; James Garner) solve a murder mystery during Hollywood’s silent-to-sound transition.  It opens with a bang up runaway stagecoach sequence then quickly turns lazy, inaccurate and dumb, in Edwards’ worst late period manner.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *Au contraire per silent film expert William K. Everson whose ‘Pictorial History of the Western Film,’ a far more serious look at the genre than its title suggests, celebrates the standard Mix mix of horsemanship, action, top technical work & consistent use of stunning filming locations in his regular output, and finds him stumbling on attempts to step out of this formula, listing DICK TURPIN and PURPLE SAGE as rare misfires.

MADRES PARALELAS / PARALLEL MOTHERS (2021)

After a sober prologue on the possible discovery & reburial of villagers who ‘disappeared’ in unmarked graves during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, Pedro Almodóvar shifts gears for (of all things) a switched-at-birth-babies story.  A stretch even for Almodóvar to link up all the opposing tones & tropes before an epilogue returns us to that village.  But credit due for packaging it all so beautifully.  Favored muse Penélope Cruz is the fashionable & nearly forty photographer (single/childless) whose current assignment, archeological researcher Israel Elejalde, not only comes up with a possible plan of action on the gravesite, but also falls for Cruz.  Nine months later . . .   But when Cruz delivers, teenage maternity wing roommate Milena Smit goes into labor at the same time.  And while the mix-up isn’t shown, the discovery is handled with a kind of grace that shows Almodóvar in full melodramatic Douglas Sirk form.  (Hard not to reimagine the two woman with ‘50s Sirkian casting: Jane Wyman & Sandra Dee?)  Abetted as usual with full saturated color from cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, and boasting an exceptional Alberto Iglesias score nicely recapped in the end credits.  Considering how a young Almodóvar once thought his generation lived as if Generalissimo Franco had never existed, you can see how Smit’s cultural & political ignorance of the past has him rethinking his own youthful posturing.  And if some of this feels shoe-horned in, the final scenes at the gravesite are intensely felt/intensely moving.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Just as ancient Greeks & Romans followed serious plays with something sublimely comic, these old swapped-at-birthed tropes get hilariously twinned (nay, goosed) in START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME/’70 which Donald Sutherland and an inspired Gene Wilder keep aloft for eight of its nine reels in spite of pretty lame filmmaking.

CARNIVAL (1935)

Robert Riskin was Columbia Pictures Prexy Harry Cohn’s ironman writer in the ‘30s.  Eight Frank Capra pics that put the studio in contention with ‘the majors,’ and about a dozen with other directors.  Best of the non-Capras probably THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING (John Ford/Jean Arthur & Edward G. Robinson) made directly after this surprisingly weak effort with a good cast & situation.  Starring three ‘mutts’ on the outs at their former studio, now taking Columbia B-pic leftovers: Sally Eilers, lately of Fox, now fallen out of fashion; Jimmy Durante, lately of M-G-M, now out of favor; Lee Tracy, also lately of M-G-M, just plain out!  The trio making a fine team of puppeteers doing voices & pulling strings on a Carny marionette show.  The gimmick in Riskin’s original screenplay has Tracy lose his wife in childbirth then trying to keep his kid as a single dad always on the road.  If only he had a steadying wife to back him up.  Blind to Eilers’ charms, Tracy searches for an upscale mate only to wind up on the lam with kid in tow when the authorities come a’calling.  Riskin, who wrote some of the best supporting characters of the ‘30s, makes them the leads in this sentimental comedy.  But plotting and structure are too formulaic, too obvious.  The weirdest moment comes on a group tour of a ‘preemie’ baby ward where Tracy meets a prospective bride.  But the fat, healthy babies behind the windows of their germ-free baby-boxes stop the narrative cold.  (Presumably real preemies couldn’t’ be filmed.)  Journeyman director Walter Lang, shortly @ 20th/Fox for a 25 yr run, megs like he’s looking for the exit.  Even Dickie Walters, the painfully adorable fat-cheeked son-o’-mine, a dud.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Still determined to see a CARNIVAL film from 1935?  Heigh thee to 17th Century Flanders for classic French cinema in CARNIVAL IN FLANDERS.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/03/carnival-in-flanders-la-kermesse.html  OR:  As mentioned, Riskin back on form in his next script THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-whole-towns-talking-1935.html

L’IMMORTALE / THE IMMORTAL (2019)

Well-received directing debut for actor/writer Marco D’Amore who takes the lead as Čiro Di Marzio, a sort of Mafia Foundling who acquired his ‘Immortal’ moniker beating the odds on survival from birth to young adulthood: pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building; shot in the chest; left to drown in the Gulf of Naples.  The Unsinkable Molly Brown has nothing on this guy.  Though coming out of the Italian GOMORRAH crime series, it’s a stand-alone feature (first since the original back in 2008?*), the story picks up as series regular Čiro is ‘rewarded’ with one of those coveted Mob positions no one really wants, running cocaine distribution for his Naples outfit up in Latvia.  There, he’s immediately thrust into a winless war of control between warring local & Russian criminal syndicates.  Yet the film is at its most involving not in these sequences, but back in Naples during a prologue which has Čiro shot & dumped overboard; surviving that apartment collapse; then in flashbacks thru-out the film detailing his sentimental education as a 12-yr-old in tough Naples nabs, mentored by cog-in-the-wheel drug delivery man Bruno (whom Čiro cleverly saves from arrest in ‘immortal’ fashion) and his relationship to a girl ‘singer’ he’s sweet on.  Back in Latvia, it’s THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE DRUG RUNNER as Čiro is forced to quickly deal with leaks inside his ‘posse’ and defuse a three-way power struggle involving his own team as well as the opposing Latvian & Russian teams.  Surprisingly, the weakest aspect of this first feature isn’t writing or direction, but in the acting, plenty of weak links among the cast.  (The kid in the flashbacks especially tame.)  And while neither this film nor the series feels as eye-poppingly original as the first GOMORRAH film, it certainly works on its own terms.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The original GOMORRAH/’08 has a documentary vibe no longer felt here.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/gomorrah-2008.html

STELLA DALLAS (1925)

Hiding in plain sight on a 2020 Warners Archive DVD of the Barbara Stanwyck/King Vidor 1937 STELLA DALLAS (listed on the back-cover as Vintage Featurette STELLA DALLAS) is director Henry King’s better 1925 silent.  A mediocre 16mm dupe and no music track, but still worth the effort.  (You may be able to find the out-of-print Sunrise Silents edition on-line.)  Little remembered Belle Bennett is even more believable than Stanwyck as a low-class gal who manages to hook a rich society type rebuilding his shattered life in a small town after his father’s suicide.  Incompatible from the git (unlike Stanwyck, you know she’ll never be able to change her spots), she refuses to move with him when his job sends him permanently to New York, their little girl staying with Mom.  But as the daughter grows, Stella comes to realize what’s best for the girl means giving her up to the father.  Frances Marion, adapting Olive Higgins Prouty’s novel, works this up into a fine set of waterworks, especially the last four reels beginning with a renunciation scene for Mom and Step-Mom, while a typically patient Henry King knows just when to push and when to back off.  He also has a dream supporting cast in Ronald Colman, teenage sweethearts Lois Moran & Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Jean Hersholt; far superior to the remake.  Both remakes if you include Bette Midler’s STELLA/’90.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Here’s Stanwyck in 1937; and full credit to King Vidor on that final tracking shot ending the pic.  And a link to the next collaboration for Henry King & Ronald Colman which comes (hurrah!) in near-mint condition, THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH/’26.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/stella-dallas-1937.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/09/winning-of-barbara-worth-1926.html

CONTEST:  A big emotional scene sees no one showing up when little Laurel Dallas throws a party.  It’s not the only 1925 release to use that idea.  Name the other No-Show Party scene of 1925 to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Hard to imagine now, but there were so many Mother Love stories in silent film (the pre-M-G-M Louis B. Mayer specialized in them), they all but constituted their own genre: Westerns; Thrillers; Slapstick; Mother Love.  See our Movie Tie-In book reprint cover above. 

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (2022)

Handsomely produced, physically impressive, this remake of Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel, an early Talkie triumph for Lewis Milestone in 1930, is this year’s prestige disappointment.  It starts well enough as young Paul Bäumer (Remarque’s alter-ego) and friends sign up in their German town for an already stalemated war only to be shocked by the reality of WWI combat, bleak living conditions, and the pointless nature of being used as cannon fodder in a war of attrition.  But somewhere between casting and story emphasis, something goes terribly wrong in what was designed to be a more German-specific look at what had always been a German POV story, anyway.  Key missteps of commission & omission include top brass Armistice conferences and the loss of Paul’s haunted return home on short leave.  (The latter the very heart of Remarque’s novel.)  And worse to come as writer/director Edward Berger goes all Steven Spielberg on us as the Armistice is about to go into effect on the 11th hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month/1918 when (SPOILER ALERT!) a vainglorious Captain sends hundreds of new recruits and the few vets not fast enough to have taken off, on one final territorial thrust for the honor of the Fatherland.  And only fifteen minutes of war left!  An actual ticking clock adding suspense.  After two years at the front, Paul’s being stabbed in the back; that’s literally stabbed in the back.  (Well, bayoneted.)  Left as a beautified death-mask in plaster dust; eyes & mouth inauthentically shut, posed as if to complete a Pietà.  Remarque’s novel doesn’t end on Armistice Day or even in November, let alone with a huge battle sequence. ‘He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.’  Death coming not with a bang, but a whimper.  An unremarkable death on an unremarkable day.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The 1930 version, if not without Early Talkie awkwardness in its dialogue scenes, remains a stunning achievement.  READ ALL ABOUT IT: Particularly in how Milestone and cinematographer Karl Freund came up with something to visually match the devastating final two lines from the novel.  A fine chapter in Kevin Brownlow’s THE WAR, THE WEST AND THE WILDERNESS.

MISSISSIPPI BURNING (1988)

Lord, I miss Gene Hackman.  This Civil Rights drama, a hyped-up telling of the real 1964 F.B.I. investigation ‘Down South’ after three Freedom Rider activists went missing (presumed dead), well-received, awarded, successful, later took a double hit.  One trivial: historians uncomfortable with fictional/thriller liberties (as if this were unusual); and one that stuck a couple of decades on when the film became a prime example of White-Savior Syndrome*, stories with Black political & social issues treated as platforms to laud heroic White Folk, any Blacks in the cast kept to supporting roles.  Neither issue exactly untrue, yet on its own terms, the pic remains an exciting, often exceptional work.  Hackman’s on tremendous form as the seasoned F.B.I. agent with roots in the Deep South, ready, willing & able to play the White Supremacist field as it lays to get the job done, chaffing at much younger boss Willem Dafoe, an out-of-his-element/by-the-book technocrat FBI man.  (It’s much the same dynamic Brian De Palma used the previous year for Sean Connery & Kevin Costner in THE UNTOUCHABLES.)  With director Alan Parker and lenser Peter Biziou turning in probably their finest work capturing what was then a shockingly recent past of violent, proudly open racism (and other than the ‘openness,’ how much has really changed in that benighted State, still last or near last in so many social categories?)  Mostly though, Lord, I miss Gene Hackman.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Fourth of five Oscar noms for Hackman in what was elsewise a surprisingly weak Best Actor field, he lost to Dustin Hoffman’s twitchings in RAIN MAN.  Medical conditions always trump good acting at the Academy.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *William Wyler’s little-known racially-charged final film, THE LIBERATION OF L.B. JONES so far ahead of the curve, it was already beginning to move past White-Savior Syndrome in 1970.

THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS (2020)

‘Can’t-miss’/award-winning documentary on Northern Italy’s truffle trade doesn’t exactly miss, merely underwhelms.  Between nosing dogs, sweetly eccentric aging owners, retail middlemen & restaurant purveyors, fungi assayers & connoisseurs, writer/director/lensers Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw dig up plenty of photo-friendly material, but never find an organizing principle to set their gems in.  Everything given more or less equal weight other than the dogs who suffer a double indignity: not only acting but also as unpaid camera operators!  (Attached POV ‘Go-Pro’ collars?)  Where’s the canine union when you need it?  Still a fun watch, but this ought to have been better.  Stick it out and you’ll be rewarded with the best shot in the pic as a stubborn old owner sneaks out for some nighttime foraging urged along by the panting anticipation of his eager partner.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  That funky/earthy truffle odor something of an acquired, and very expensive, taste.  Hence, truffle oil, an item most great chefs studiously avoid.

TÁR (2022)

Writer/director Todd Field, a suspiciously deliberate filmmaker (deliberate in output, three features in twenty years; deliberate in pacing; deliberate in what he doesn’t show), makes his chilliest film yet about a chilly (and reckless) Western classical music conductor (a rare woman at the top of her field) who ‘has it all’: Berlin Phil appointment; concert-master wife; child; acolytes (with benefits) to assist & mentor.  She’s also due for a fall, fated to be undone by an overblown sense of entitlement, personal hubris and by decisions made thru sexual attraction.  Extremely accomplished filmmaking, but with something of a hole right in the center as the dramatic fulcrum feels jerry-rigged purely for dramatic effect when Tar (Cate Blanchett, even better than advertized) pointlessly humiliates a student conductor in a Julliard Music School masterclasss who’s not only chosen to work the student orchestra thru an atonal piece of modern music she disapproves of, but disses White Western (cis)Male composers in general.  (Whatever is he doing there?  And why would she bother with such easy pickings?)  The scene, Tár toying with the nervous lad like a cat with a mouse, designed solely with an eye to a precipitous fall and well-earned comeuppance.  It has the uncomfortable feel & texture not of life, but of bad playwriting; a sham set up for the last two acts you'd expect to find in late David Mamet or anytime-at-all Neil LaBute.  Fortunately, craft, acting & suspense manage to work around this weakness, especially when Field also turns reckless with a double climax; first in an over-the-top moment of action, then in an over-the-top final ‘reveal.’  Each one making you laugh out loud . . . in a good way.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Preston Sturges humiliates classical music conductor Rex Harrison to a fare-thee-well in UNFAITHFULLY YOURS/’48.