GERVAISE (1956)

Emile Zola’s L’ASSOMMOIR gets the ‘Cinema of Quality’ treatment from René Clément and a respectful script by Bost & Aurenche. As the hardworking, but luckless laundress with capitalistic dreams of running her own shop, Maria Schell is very blond, but seems unable to express more than one emotion at a time. The three men in her life are superbly characterized (by Zola & the actors), alternately helping & hurting Gervaise’s plans as sex, alcohol, luck & money take their toll. The meticulous production is impressive (there’s a gasp-worthy roofing accident that seems to slow time) and occasionally Clément catches the essence of Parisian mid-19th Century working-class cultural/political boundaries (especially in an abrupt trial sequence & at a birthday celebration). But all too often, Zola’s fatalistic, plot-heavy events are doled out in digestible bits. We’re never asked to discover things on our own since Clément parses everything out like a parent cutting up meat for a child. It needn’t be so. See Jean Renoir’s thrilling, if untidy version of NANA/’26, where Zola continues this very tale with Gervaise’s daughter. But Renoir, like Zola, is struggling to make art, Clément is merely trading in art. There’s a difference.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: First try Jean Renoir's LA BETE HUMAINE/'38 which is a 'straighter' adaptation than his daring NANA.

2010 (1984)

While it’s fun to watch the anachronistic Cold War backstory play patty-cake Armageddon, and a pleasure to revisit some of the staggeringly effective designs from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 original, it’s hard to imagine any Sci-Fi film, even one of the late STAR WARS pics, more completely misrepresenting everything that made 2001 such a milestone.  This ham-fisted sequel is closer in spirit, mood & plot to THE BLACK HOLE/’79 or FANTASTIC VOYAGE/’66 than to Kubrick’s seminal masterpiece, and the braggadocio bantering dialogue is merely the worst of the film's many shortcomings.  Produced, directed, written & lensed by Peter Hyams; if only the talent equaled the chutzpah.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  2001/'68.  (Of course.  But turn off the lights and find the biggest screen you can find.)

SPOILER ALERT:  Did Arthur C. Clarke really want HAL 9000 to be resurrected and then die for our sins.  Kind of 'bassackwards,' ain't it?

SHUSSHO IWAI / THE WOLVES (1971)

This stunningly well-made Yakuza pic should have opened Stateside doors for Japanese helmer, Hideo Gosha, but its violence turned off the art house crowd while its over-lapping storylines & multiple Points-of-View were inscrutable to action mavens. Forty years on, it’s not a problem. In mid-1920s Japan, a new Emperor means early prison releases for almost 400 hard-core gangsters, including Tatsuya Nakadai in a typically powerful perf. (Look quick to see the eternally dour Nakadai briefly smile. Dimples! Who knew?) Gosha handles the introductory segments like an Asian Sergio Leone, and the comparison holds as the sweeping narrative works itself out among two rival gangs; a forced wedding between the warring crime families; a couple of murderous, free-lancing Geishas; and the futile efforts of a few honorable ex-Yakuzas to stave off the inevitable bloody catharsis. Gosha may or may not have had Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns in mind, but the wildly colorful carnival atmosphere of the climax is surely an intentional homage to Minnelli’s SOME CAME RUNNING/’58, a film Gosha matches in general cinematographic gorgeousness. Don’t fret the odd Miles Davis-inspired ‘cool’ jazz soundtrack or occasionally losing track of the story, you’ll pick it up soon enough and the film is worth the effort.

THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE (1941)

James Hogan’s play was filmed three times (‘33. ‘41 & ‘48), and this second outing was best, a small-scaled charmer that’s much more than the sum of its parts. The rare pairing of James Cagney & Olivia de Havilland is magical, especially for Cagney who often got stuck with second-tier co-stars. He’s a self-taught dentist with an Irish chip on his shoulder and she’s a nurse with progressive ideas. Cagney really wants to step out with gorgeous Rita Hayworth (in her breakout year), but loses out (as always) to his overly-ambitious friend, Jack Carson. The exceptionally well-made script from Julius & Philip Epstein finds warmth & believable eccentricity in its 1890s NYC landscape & characters, even if helmer Raoul Walsh is stymied by Warners oddly drab, sub-par production. (Lenser James Wong Howe spends a lot energy hiding backdrops & tired cycloramas.) But Walsh gets the sentiment & comedy right, never going overboard, and he certainly gets something special from longtime supporting players like George Tobias & Alan Hale. The finale pulls all the story strands together like a great comic opera: toothsome revenge, a heartfelt/well-earned declaration of love & affection, an off-stage donnybrook, even a sing-along. It really sends you out with a glow.

CONTEST: Raoul Walsh remade this 1941 b&w beauty as a far less effective TechniColor musical in ‘48. And, oddly, another Hollywood director remade his 1941 b&w beauty as a far less effective TechniColor musical, also in ‘48! Weird. Name the other famous director and his two films to win our prize, a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of the NetFlix DVD of your choice.

DER UNTERTAN / THE KAISER’S LACKEY [aka MAN OF STRAW] (1951)

Heinrich Mann’s satirical novel from 1914 about German nationalism as seen in the politics & business practices of a small city in the 1890s is appalling, prescient & hilarious, something of a Teutonic BABBITT. Wolfgang Staudte, who made films in East & West Germany, made this for DEFA in the East, where its anti-bourgeois attitudes were no doubt appreciated, and he brought a lot of cinematic style to his task (though the effort often shows). Working from a clever script by his brother, Staudte deftly charts a businessman’s Bildungsroman as he blunders his way toward the German upper-middle-class, briefly touching on his difficult childhood & schooldays, the girl he wronged on the way up, a spell in the peacetime military (with a scar to prove it), and his inevitable homecoming where he reorganizes the family business for profit & social standing on the backs of his oppressed workers. Staudte overplays his themes with a final flourish of WWII devastation, but most of the film is dead-on. The FRF-DVD looks over-processed, but it’s watchable.

DOUBLE-BILL: Try this alongside THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP/’43 or THE WHITE RIBBON/’09 for a mini-tour of the German soul.

NEVER TOO LATE (1965)

Paul Ford was a crafty character comedian who usually played supporting roles. He broke thru in film at the ripe age of 55, stealing TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON/’56 from Marlon Brando, then proceeded to steal every scene in every movie he ever appeared in. He only played two leading roles; first, in THE MATCHMAKER/’‘58, and then in this adaptation of his smash B’way farce. (Over 1000 perfs and a Tony nom.) The show is something of a relic, what used to be called a ‘commuter’ comedy, fit for the tired businessman. It’s the sort of forced sex farce that gives ‘smart’ B’way comedies a bad rep and, unless the name of George Axelrod is involved, something to steer clear of. But tv writer Sumner Arthur Long came up with a foolproof concept – retirement-aged man finds his fiftyish wife is unexpectedly expecting! – and the film manages to get enough of Ford’s immaculate timing and grumpy hilarity across so that it all seems a good deal funnier than it really is. Most of the other players hit their marks pretty hard, though Jim Hutton makes a noble attempt at channeling the young James Stewart. (Watch for his 5 yr-old kid Tim in a fantasy montage.) Lenser Philip Lathrop shows the bright happy suburbs that MAD MEN and REVOLUTIONARY ROAD think never existed (but they did, they did) and megger Bud Yorkin, who generally keeps out of the way, pulls off a neat trick on one of those telephone scenes where both parties are on screen at once. It's usually done as a split screen, but here he tries a stage solution with one set placed slightly behind and partially to the side of the other. It’s damned effective, even stylish.

KOROSHI NO RAKUIN / BRANDED TO KILL (1967)

This Japanese noir shows helmer Seijun Suzuki at his most extreme. Storyline & character are all but bypassed to focus on a persistently threatening mood; WideScreen compositions that touch abstraction; a combo platter of nihilism/fatalism; the smell of freshly boiled rice; . . . and an inconvenient butterfly. His studio was apoplectic, the film tanked and, after 42 pics, Nikkatsu Studio fired Suzuki. He didn’t make another film for a decade. It begins in a relatively normal manner as Nikkatsu regular Joe Shishido violently goes thru his paces as Hitman #3. But we enter ‘Existentialville’ when Joe blows a big job (oh, that butterfly!) and finds himself being hunted by Hitman #1. Suzuki throws a couple of nude femme fatales in the mix and spends too much time detailing a wary detente between the two assassins. But the detente between Suzuki & Nikkatsu Studio has obviously broken down, abstract kinetic cinema has just about taken over. And not all for the better. This remains essential viewing, but hardly the best place to start your personal Seijun Suzuki tour. Try YOUTH OF THE BEAST/’63 and then follow your own path into his addictive films.

THE INFORMANT! (2009)

Helmer Steven Soderbergh outsmarts himself in this fact-inspired tale about a whistle-blowing food biz exec. On the one hand, the basic ingredients -- international price-fixing, FBI investigation, blundering insider amateur spy -- are loaded with dramatic & comic possibilities; on the other hand, he distances himself & us from this quintessential 1990s tale of capitalistic greed by kidding the whole sordid affair with the look, sounds & feel of a groovy 1970s pic from a studio hack like Jack Smight. It’s even got the Smothers Brothers! The disconnect in tone is fatal. (At least, Marvin Hamlisch’s score is ‘in’ on the joke.) Matt Damon put on thirty pounds (and took off about four inches?) to play the company man who gets squeezed between good business practices & bad business ethics. While at the same time hiding more secrets, lies & cash than a femme fatale in a film noir. The rest of the cast plays it straight, so if you squint you can imagine how this might have fared with Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine working under Billy Wilder & a script by Ben Hecht; or even in the unintentional parody mode of Jack Webb’s DRAGNET. (Just the facts, Mr. Damon, please!, just the facts!)

THE AMAZING DR. CLITTERHOUSE (1938)

Comic-tinged thriller about a society doctor (Edw. G Robinson) who sidelines as a jewel burglar. He’s not out for riches, but for medical research. Soon, he's hanging around with a most attractive ‘fence’ (Claire Trevor) and taking charge of Humphrey Bogart’s motley gang of thieves. (He monitors their vital signs right in the middle of their robberies.) Will he be able to make a clean break once his ‘research’ is done or will he wind up ‘studying’ homicide . . . and liking it? Warner Bros was an unlikely studio for the light touch needed to make this story work, but thanks to Continental helmer Anatole Litvak (who avoids their normal rat-a-tat pace) and co-scripter John Huston (who doesn’t over-milk the comedy), there’s enough wit & sophistication to pull this off. And how it glistens under Tony Gaudio’s rapt lens.

CONTEST: LADYKILLERS/’55 stole a nice gag from here, and Joseph Heller might well have found a mirror-image draft of his CATCH 22 clause in a bit of Shavian wordplay in this script. Find both to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of the NetFlix DVD of your choice.