OUTPOST IN MALAYA / THE PLANTER’S WIFE (1952)

Pushing 50, Claudette Colbert had cut way back on her workload by the time she made this British mid-lister, the latest waning Hollywood star hired to add commercial luster to a British production.  Set on a rubber tree plantation in Malaya (hadn’t this industry gone all synthetic post-WWII?), she’s going thru a bad patch with husband Jack Hawkins just as the country’s going thru an even larger bad patch with marauding Commie rebels.  These natives not only restless, but leftist, a threat to the posh lifestyle of the British colony.  For Claudette, it’s so long cocktail dresses & tony clubs; hello slacks & Tommy guns.  Yikes!*  With lots of location shooting, just not for the lead actors who stick to process shots and sets at PInewood Studios, handled better than usual by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth via trick effects & well-matched angles and film stock.  Journeyman director Ken Annakin had yet to lose all personality on big-budget anodyne family fare (MAGNIFICENT MEN AND THEIR FLYING MACHINES; CHITTY-CHITTY BANG-BANG) and brings off what people once thought of as Colonial slice-of-life atmosphere.  Servant/master relationships; the lifestyle & strict dress code of the gin & tonic set; the care & bleeding of those damn rubber trees; the ironic away-from-home ultra-patriotism of the locally born & bred Brits; the young scion with his native BFF.  Oops, a step too far on that last one since the local ‘pal’ is played by a White kid in dark body make up.  (Boo!)  All other Malaysians, more or less Malaysian.  By the third act the whole thing turns into something of a Far East American Western.  Smartly staged though, and pretty suspenseful as the underdefended estate comes under enemy attack and we wait for the Cavalry . . . er, British military relief. followed by marital resuscitation and a pledge to see it out while the boy heads home to England for safety & school.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *In John Ford's DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK/'39, Colbert sides with the Revolutionaries to battle American Indians fighting with the Brits in the American Revolution.

HÆVNEN / IN A BETTER WORLD (2010)

Danish director Susanne Bier’s Oscar® winner (Best Foreign Language), less breakout than consolidation/recognition of her run of five preceding well-received titles in under a decade.  (Bier likely best known here for the multi-part tv adaptation of John Le Carré’s THE NIGHT MANAGER/’17: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-night-manager-2016.html.)  Superbly structured and economically handled, this many-sided two-family drama begins away from home, in Africa where a Doctors-Without-Borders type is patiently speeding his way thru scores of cases in a camp near some unspecified war zone.  Admirable work, but it’s taken a toll back home in Denmark where he’s separating from his wife (an affair he’s written off but she hasn’t), but not their two boys, the eldest, about 12, an obviously great kid with a crooked smile, being horribly bullied (as a rat-faced Swede) in middle school.  At the same time, a second family (disengaged father/resentful son) are dealing poorly with the death of the mother.  And when this 12-yr-old son starts at the same school, he quickly bonds, even protects, the bullied kid.  Only his ‘protection’ takes a violent course, bringing out untreated fissures in everyone’s personality that threaten all relationships.  It’s a blister that won’t break without dangerous consequences.  Even the level-headed doctor finds his limit for tolerance crossed back in Africa.  Insightful, thought-provoking & heartbreaking (though Bier pulls back from the abyss); sentiment earned rather than taken.  (NOTE:  Family Friendly label on this one, but no younger than our 12-yr-old protagonists.)  

LE PROCÈS GOLDMAN / THE GOLDMAN CASE (2023)

The other French courtroom drama of 2023; the one that’s not ANATOMY OF A FALL (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/07/anatomy-of-fall-anatomie-dune-chute-2023.html).  That got all the attention (grosses, export, awards), GOLDMAN settled for sweeping France’s Best Actor trophies for Arieh Worthalter’s furious perf as Pierre Goldman, The Last Angry Man of the French Radical Left.  Following revolutions around the world in the late ‘60s, this French/Polish Jew lives a hand-to-mouth existence, mostly thru robbery, which he freely admits, with two murders and one shooting as collateral damage, charges he vehemently denies.  After some preliminary scene setting (the accused; lawyers; judges; crimes), we hit the courtroom and never leave.  Leading director Cédric Kahn’s to use Academy Ratio for tight framing on a film that’s almost entirely composed in medium close-up/ head-to-waist shots.  Goldman, alone, all but bursting out of his frame-lines whenever his lawyers try to ‘explain’ his actions thru context or bring in sympathetic character witnesses.  He’ll only accept hard facts as defense; he needs nothing else.  But what conflicting testimony comes in!  French evidentiary rules must have been incredibly loose in the mid-‘70s along with the court’s outrageously theatrical atmosphere.  And if Goldman isn’t the only one in court to go into tirades when crossed by facts or tactics, he’s still a unique pain.  But an innocent one?  Fascinating stuff here, with the film shedding its awkward nature of presentation as it goes along; as rigorously shot as it is argued.

TURN BACK THE CLOCK (1933)

Lee Tracy, born to play wised-up reporters flashing a press pass, was always something of a lowlife outlier at M-G-M, a mutt among the pedigree.  With supporting roles in A-list pics and leads in programmers, this final M-G-M role finds him top-billed as a disappointed everyman, a Manhattan pharmacist living above the shop with his little grey wren of a wife.  But when he bumps into an old pal who made good (Otto Kruger) and the guy offers to invest his small nest egg for him, he sees a second chance at the road not taken when he married for love instead of money.  Not so fast, says the missus.  Storming out, a traffic accident knocks him out cold and he imagines the successful life he missed out on.  It’s the old (even then old) alternate life scenario.  (IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE/’46 still the best known example.)  Always with the same moral: the grass ain’t greener on the other side of the fence, be thankful for what you’ve got . . . even in the Depression.  Co-written with Ben Hecht, director Edgar Selwyn (a major B’way producer who dabbled in Hollywood*) does have the time frame to give this iteration interest (WWI thru early Depression days), but Selwyn never quite got the hang of film technique.  And tossing in the occasional montage to make things ‘filmic’ hardly helps.  (The same could be said of Ben Hecht’s attempts at directing.)  Yet the film just odd enough to be worth a look.  (Plus fun actor spotting.  Look!  Auntie Em and Uncle Henry from THE WIZARD OF OZ!)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Edgar Selwyn’s real Hollywood achievement came from ‘lending’ half his name to a certain Samuel Goldfish.  Once producing partners back in New York, the Goldwyn Company took the GOLD from Goldfish and the WYN from Selwyn for its official name.  And the men had a verbal agreement not to use the company name as their own.  Guess who didn’t hold to the bargain?  As Goldwyn famously said: ‘A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.’  No wonder B’way wags said Goldwyn took the wrong halves of the two names.  He should have called himself Samuel Selfish.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For Lee Tracy in an A-list pic, DINNER AT EIGHT/’33.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/11/dinner-at-eight-1933.html

THE ADMIRAL: ROARING CURRENTS / MYEONG-RYANG (2014)

Korean foundation story, from 1597: Naval Division; a huge success locally, probably too obscure for foreign markets.  One of those Nation building fact-based myths of heroic forefathers overcoming impossible odds to stay independent.  (Not seen here, but a different angle on the same legendary battle recently out: NORYANG: DEADLY SEA/’23.)  Here with twelve barge-like warships* (a larger battleship, a ‘Turtle boat,’ lost to fire) taking on a Japanese fleet of 300 attack vessels.  Underdog country holds firm against a greater international power!  It’s not unlike Britain taking on the Spanish Armada; a nearly contemporaneous event, 1588.  That European battle largely won by England’s smaller, more maneuverable vessels running rings around larger/slower Spanish galleons.  Here, in a move that has Asian Martial Arts as model, a stronger attacking power (Japan) finds its great weight flipped back at them.  So too with bad sea conditions when a tidal whirlpool turns from Korean obstacle to potent offensive advantage.  The character of crusty, aging Admiral Yi will also be familiar to Western audiences as he’s a lot like Field Marshal Kutuzov who led Russia against the French in 1812 (see Tolstoy WAR AND PEACE), called back from obsolescence, then fighting with scorched Earth policies and tactical retreat.  Such similarities help to give easy narrative access, yet the film misses emotional involvement and lacks character development after its many introductions.  We’re left with a well-produced film that plays like a State-Approved pageant fit for international trade shows, right down to its incongruous Western-style musical soundtrack.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: John Woo brings fantasy & ‘swing’ to his fabulist sea battles and the power of weather forecasting (!) in RED CLIFF.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/chi-bi-red-cliff-2008.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/chi-bi-xia-jue-zhan-tian-xia-red-cliff.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Those barge-like warships powered by oar, the rowers using a circular technique that’s hard to figure out, impossible to imagine supplying the speed shown.

CARNIVAL STORY (1954)

Failing American circus goes to post-WWII Germany for a reboot in this mid-weight indie pic from budget conscious producers King Brothers, gleaning off C.B. DeMille’s bg-ticket Oscar-winner THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH/’52.  Directed by Kurt Neumann (times 2; there’s also a Euro-cast version, CIRCUS OF LOVE), the intriguing idea of how the two cultures differ (national culture and circus culture) is largely dropped, replaced by a less original romantic quadrangle when talent manager Steve Cochran spots Anne Baxter stealing his wallet to get food in the midway and gets her kitchen work in exchange for a little action.  The film unusually frank on their relationship and on Cochran’s physical & mental domination.  Next, daredevil diver Lyle Bettger (the main villain in GREATEST SHOW) takes her on as apprentice diver and for a while she splits her time between bed with Cochran and a water tank with Bettger, Baxter a natural from a six-storey high ladder.  Yikes!  Next guy up is Bettger’s WWII photographer pal George Nader, always on the hunt for a magazine article, especially a pretty one.  That makes two nice guys and one heel (Cochran), on the make, while Baxter, drawn to abuse after post-war life on the streets, can't shake Cochran.  A couple of marriage proposals, a sabotaged act, a missed trick, a jealous gal in tights, the usual circus tropes, but with a masochistic Euro-slant.  Too bad director Neumann is no UFA stylist.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The sharp-edged TechniColor seen in DeMille’s GREATEST SHOW quite a contrast to what we can currently see here in Ernst Haller’s unrestored AgfaColor lensing.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-greatest-show-on-earth-1952.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  A bit of slumming for Baxter?  This film surrounded by roles for Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and DeMille.  (Lang would have been just the guy for this one.)

PASSAGE TO INDIA (1984)

Forty years after coming out, David Lean’s final film has, if anything, ripened; most of the reservations found on its release now hardly noticeable.*   Unprecedented three-in-a-row epic successes (BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI/’57, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA/’62, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO/’65) had left Lean unprepared for really bad notices on RYAN’S DAUGHTER/’70.  And though profitable, Lean basically licked his wounds for 14 years before PASSAGE brought him out of professional exile.  Now 75, the film has an I’ll-show-you energy & pace that’s rather thrilling.  It also looks like it cost three times its 16 mill. budget.  Thru sheer craft and a master’s confidence, it's not merely deeply satisfying but somehow, on a technical level,  emotionally moving.  And what a daring choice for a literalist like Lean, E.M.Forster’s critical look at the ruling Brits in India, with Lean's signature large-scale East/West clashes set beside personal stories defined by half tones, unknowable truths & emotional deflection following a nearly affianced young woman (an unsettling Judy Davis) when she visits her intended (Nigel Havers) on a trip with his aging mother (Peggy Asncroft, nonpareil) to his posting.  Hoping for real contact with a different culture , the two visitors feel stuck in the English colonial lifestyle, but break out thru a chance encounter the mother has with local doctor Victor Banerjee (Satyajit Ray's frequent lead).  Their nighttime meeting in an elsewise deserted mosque mysteriously throbbing with emotion.  But the path of good intentions . . . you know, East is East and all that, lead to an outing gone wrong at some foreboding caves, a criminal case, a confession to . . . well, to what, exactly?  Not really Lean territory at all.  Yet what an involving piece he makes of it.  So consistently interesting, thoughtful and well paced, it’s one of those 3-hr films that feels untethered to its actual running time.  Lean died before starting on Joseph Conrad’s NOSTROMO (still unproduced), but could he have chosen a better farewell?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Three can still rankle: Maurice Jarre’s catchy score which naturally was Oscar’d; Lean reversing the novel’s last sentiments; and (the elephant in the room) Alec Guinness in ethnic drag as Professor Godbole.  And while he’s both charming & quite funny as the eccentric teacher/philosopher, the practice of Whites playing people of Color, at least in serious films, had already passed.  This casting entirely at Lean’s insistence, probably as insurance since Guinness, in spite of their long, bickering relationship, had been in all the late epics except the poorly received RYAN’S DAUGHTER/’70.

CONTEST:  Of late Lean epics, the only one shot flat (1.85: 1) instead of in a WideScreen format.  Explain why to win a MAKSQUIBS WriteUp of your choice.

THERE AIN'T NO JUSTICE (1939)

With a career’s-worth of credits at various studios already behind him, British producer Michael Balcon, putting a new team together for next year’s Ealing Studios startup, elevated assistant-director Pen Tennyson to helm this sharp little boxing programmer.  And Tennyson really came thru, starting with the cast.  Jimmy Hanley, personable, if darn skinny for a boxer, is reasonably athletic as the young car mechanic who chucks his old job to take up boxing (after accidentally getting in a row with a top pro boxer) unaware he’s signed on with a crooked manager.  It’s also how he’ll pivot from his nice, new girlfriend to the manager’s moll, pawing the lad to see if he’ll throw a fight for a quick payout.  He just might, too, as his sister needs some quick cash after shady fiancé Michael Wilding (the cad!) takes off with the 60 quid she had in the till.  Yikes!  Worked up with unusually satisfying twists from writer James Curtis (and a doozy of a climax when the bad guys try to stop the big fight by causing a riot in the stands), the film lets Tennyson display some atypical awareness for the time of workingclass life & sensibility in a lightweight drama (note the opening neighborhood establishing shots), the close family routine (Mom, Dad, son, daughter & 2-yr-old) in a flat two sizes too small, along with some terrific technical flair as needed.  Not only in above average fights in the ring, but in a quick-cut/montage suicide attempt.  Excellent stuff!  But Tennyson (and yes, he is related to the poet) only made two more films before dying in the war at  just 28 in 1940.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *One of the two, his last release, CONVOY/’40.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/04/convoy-1940.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Once available only in subfusc VHS editions, this is now available (via Canal+) in near mint condition.  An unexpected treat on these low-budget films.

TOMORROW'S GAME (2022)

There must be a wave of nostalgia for ‘90s Nickelodeon Live-Action comedy.  How else to explain the high IMDb rating and awards (from sports, kids & Latino niche film fests) for this condescending kiddie film about the clueless nephew of a baseball legend (the first Dominican in the Majors), who time-travels from 2002 to 1957, to witness his Uncle’s debut game.  Suddenly stuck in the past thru a fluke in antique technology (a reel-to-reel tape recorder that holds the old radio broadcast), he’ll need to recreate the exact setup & circumstances to get back to his 2002 ‘present.’  Sounds cute, if awfully derivative, but with good opportunities to spotlight progress in social/racial attitudes, technology & pro ball; all largely missed.  Those not missed, dumbed-down for 7-yr olds . . . back-of-the-class 7-yr olds.  At least we don’t have to put up with that Nickelodeon laughtrack mechanically chortling when the nephew proves so baseball-ignorant he thinks players wear tights and kick the ball.  On the other hand, we do have to put up with Nickelodeon’s negligible production values & amateur indicative acting.  (The techno-savvy girl he meets in the past a particular horror.)  Making their feature debut, co-directors Jonathan Coria & Trevor Wilson couldn’t have imagined film school studies would lead to making a modern equivalent of a 1960s charm-free/force-fed Disney-style family-friendly write-off.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  While parallels to BACK TO THE FUTURE/’85 are obvious, a better model would have been PLEASANTVILLE/’98.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/10/pleasantville-1998.html