THE D. I. (1957)

As star & director, Jack Webb brings his distinctive flat, staccato DRAGNET style to this by-the-book service meller about a tough-as-nails marine Drill Instructor (guess who) who can’t get thru to the major screw-up in his unit. Prepare to be unsurprised. Turns out, the kid (Don Dubbins) fucks up or plays sick in a desperate attempt to get out of the Corp when he really wants to succeed in what turns out to be the family business. Webb rides him for all he’s worth, but what finally does the trick is a one-shot dose of Psych 101 indirectly received from Mom! And, speaking of things Freudian, Webb’s 40-Yr-Old (Emotional) Virgin has gone a’wooing, only to find he’s got commitment phobias of his own. (There’s an unintentional suggestion for an interesting tangent storyline about the possibility that love & contentment will leave the Sarge tame & ineffective, but no one follows up.) For cinematic pizazz Webb throws on a few low-angle shots & transitions that have him walking straight into the camera. He even lets some of the real-life marines in the cast make with the comic relief. But the main feeling you get is that Webb never figured out that his tv shows worked by opposing his signature rat-a-tat-tat police tactics against the quotidian routine of the outside world. The contrast was particularly effective when DRAGNET returned to tv for a second run in the late ‘60s, plopping an increasingly anachronistic Webb in the middle of the culture wars. But here, on a military training base where everybody’s working to the same rhythm, things quickly turn monotonous.

DOUBLE-BILL: For a modern version of these tropes, you can catch Colin Farrell going thru all the basic training clichés before reaching manhood in Joel Schumacher’s TIGERLAND/’00.

CASEY'S SHADOW (1978)

Martin Ritt made too many good films to be written off as the styleless laissez-faire helmer he’s often taken for. Though he does show a bit more obvious adventurous spirit working in b&w (THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD/’65; HUD/’63) than on his color pics. But here, working from a decent, if formulaic triumph-of-the-underdog script, and without favored cinematographer James Wong Howe, he’s not so much a dull dog as a dutiful one. Walter Matthau, off his big surprise hit as a tippling, curmudgeonly Little League coach in THE BAD NEWS BEARS/’76, is back with a pack of tough/cute kids. Only this time the sport is quarter-horse racing and the trio of kids are his own. (By the look of things, there might well have been three separate moms and maybe a surrogate stud as Dad to help explain the lack of family resemblance.) Matthau’s pretty odd casting as a Louisiana Cajun horse trainer, anyway, though he makes it work in his own quirky manner. The story runs along pleasantly enough for a couple of acts, but things go off the rails in the third. Not only does the story turn darker than the tone of the film can handle, but the script can’t decide on which of three possible endings to use . . . so they use ‘em all!, one after the other. Try to ignore the propulsively dreadful down-home song-plugging score from Patrick Williams and instead concentrate on a really sharp supporting perf from Alexis Smith as a classy trader in horseflesh. Fifty-seven at the time, making her only a year younger than the rumpled Mr. Matthau, she’s the very definition of what’s meant by ‘one fine figure of a woman.’

DOUBLE-BILL: Matthau had a thing for the track, trying another horse-racing tale a couple of years on (with no more commercial success) with a fourth version of Damon Runyon’s LITTLE MISS MARKER/’78. He’s far better cast, with a truly great moment where he pours the cream off the top of a bottle of milk for his own use before letting the little girl he’s stuck with have some for her cereal. But, like all too many Runyon adaptations, the film feels bloated with the cutes.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Don't forget to count the hidden 'NINAs' in the Al Hirschfeld drawing above.  Click on the caricature to enlarge.

THE WHALE (2013)

Herman Melville’s MOBY DICK has proved an elusive beast on screen. So, a modest cable pic on the true story behind the famous novel sounds like a possibility. Turns out truth, in this instance, is definitely not stranger than fiction. The film is harmless, yet somehow infuriating. (As missed opportunity?) It does clear up Melville’s masterstroke; switching obsessives. It’s not the whale who holds a grudge against a whaling ship, but the captain of a whaler with a grudge against one particular white whale. And it’s this turnabout that turns incident into art. Even for what it is, this factoid seafaring adventure feels almost pointless, with paint-by-numbers characterizations and plug-in shots of our special guest star whale swimming underneath deep waters to no discernible purpose after the first attack takes out the ship. Martin Sheen is on hand as a survivor, now grown elderly, to tell the tale in flashback, no doubt boring the hell out of his interlocutors. You keep hoping they’ll rip up their notepads at the end and say, ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: It sounds unlikely (heck, it sounds the height of sheer folly), but the only worthwhile adaptations of the Melville classic are Orson Welles’ eccentric/effective theatrical piece MOBY DICK REHEARSED and the recent opera from Jack Heggie. Here’s a trailer from a 2014 production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M38aPclaRP8 and a promo/rehearsal clip of the Welles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l_nePrA958 (The opera is variously available; the Welles apparently not.)

O ESTRANHO CASO DE ANGÉLICA / THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA (2010)

Only the very young or the very, very old could get away with the anodyne banalities* dutifully acclaimed in the films of that late centenarian Film Fest habitué Manoel de Oliveira. Like his previous ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLONDE-HAIRED GIRL/’09, it’s another Luis Buñuel manque pic about implausible/impossible love. This one about a substitute photographer tapped at the last minute to take a few final snaps of a rich & beautiful young bride who has unexpectedly died. Imagine the man’s surprise when he looks thru his view-finder and sees the dead girl open her eyes and offer an inviting smile. Instant soulmates! The pleasant young man soon withdraws into personal reverie, staring out doors & windows, hoping to see . . . what?; and generally creeping out everyone he comes in contact with. De Oliveira tries to give all this a hushed plausibility, with fitful touches of grace & humor. But he holds onto his compositions until they go visually dead. And while some whimsical ghostly encounters & unshowy visualized metaphors lend a touch of low-tech, Georges Méliès charm to things, you wade thru a lot of dead space (as well as paceless non-pro acting) to earn a few drams of dramatic recompense, along with a wet dream liebestod.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The CinemaGuild DVD includes de Oliveira’s charming silent portrait of life along the Douros River (DOURO, FAINA FLUVIAL/’31), shown with its 1934 music track. Made in the tradition of late silent ‘City Portraits’ (Berlin’s PEOPLE ON SUNDAY/’30 is the best known), it’s a loose edit of various moments of work & play. Watch de Oliveira try for a bit of drama when a street accident causes an ox-driven cart to take off. His montage technique strains to recreate the action, but hasn’t the chops to pull it off. Still, the print looks lovely, and the sense of time & place strong.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Why not ‘Banal Anodynalities?’ Now, that’s got a ring to it!

HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON (1957)

John Huston made something of a companion piece to his own THE AFRICAN QUEEN/’51 with this mismatched near-romance wartime adventure. It’s always been in the shadow of the earlier pic (though it was a very big hit). Less original, perhaps, but equally exciting & delightful, with selfless perfs from Deborah Kerr & Robert Mitchum easily matching the star aura of Kate Hepburn & Humphrey Bogart in QUEEN. And without any of that film's showboating or cashing in on their own well-defined personalities. This time, the war is WWII, and Mitchum’s stranded marine encounters Kerr’s missionary nun on an otherwise deserted Pacific isle. Their plan to escape is quickly halted by a wave of Japanese military, landing on the little island and forcing a series of close-call incidents. Funny, touching, suspenseful, and consistently believable, since Huston keeps the scale of events reasonably limited, the heroics plausible and lets the two leads do the rest. It’s just about a perfect example of the form. Very underrated on the Huston C.V., and showing an easy command of the new WideScreen format with help from lenser Oswald Morris who steps back from his highly stylized work on Huston’s MOULIN ROUGE/’52 and MOBY DICK/’56 for ultra-smooth naturalism.

DOUBLE-BILL: Rather than AFRICAN QUEEN, try FATHER GOOSE/’54, something of a comic riff on this.

ALIBI FOR MURDER (1936)

Back in the ‘30s & ‘40s, Hollywood studios tried to maintain a few bread-and-butter Murder Mystery series. Cheap, modestly profitable, they kept contract talent usefully busy and helped train/show off newbies. Even little Columbia Pictures had Boston Blackie; Crime Doctor; and the Lone Wolf ratiocinating away. This toss-away programmer didn’t make the charmed circle, yet the one-off shows more promise than some that did. It starts out in dandy fashion as a gaggle of about-to-be suspects deplane (or rather de-zeppelin) off the just landed Hindenburg. Yep, that Hindenburg, a year before it blew. (What an ending that might have made!) Waiting to interview the latest celebs in town is radio newshound William Gargan (a forgotten leading man of the ‘30s on his way down to supporting roles). Gargan’s quite good here, smooth & solid, and the film zips along in spirited fashion under hack helmer D. Ross Lederman even when the plot doesn’t exactly add up. (World-renowned scientist is murdered for his latest discovery . . . or maybe not.) No help from the flat supporting players, not even from Dwight Frye of DRACULA/’31 fame. (Though the comic relief sidekick manages to grab some attention by being painfully unfunny.) Still, not a bad lesson in how these things got developed.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The Peter Lorre MR. MOTOs from 20th/Fox are the gold standard for these things.

TU SERAS MON FILS / YOU WILL BE MY SON (2011)

Gilles Legrand’s dynastic drama aims for the sweep of a sturdy 19th century novel, tidied up in the tradition of a Lillian Hellman ‘well-made’ play. On its own terms, it works pretty well, but ultimately lacks texture & verisimilitude, rural wine-country cinematography be damned, with characters who give up everything on their first appearance. At heart, a prodigal son tragedy, or rather, a prodigal surrogate son tragedy, it charts the imploding relationship of a gifted, but ruthless, if not despicable, grand seigneur widower wine baron, and the decent, underperforming son he baits to disappoint on cue. Enter the handsome, confident son of his longtime, long suffering estate manager. Back from a glamorous California gig to visit his ailing papa, he’s ready-made to fill the on-coming leadership void on the estate, displacing the real son. (Proving blood isn’t thicker than wine.) The plot and backstabbing don’t exactly sneak up on you, but do hold your interest in spite of relentlessly dour perfs and Legrand’s director’s chair gaffes; fittingly, if unintentionally, paralleling weaknesses of le vrai fils.

DOUBLE-BILL: Douglas Sirk’s great surrogate sibling rivalry pic, WRITTEN ON THE WIND/’56, is often called to mind though we’re closer to underrated land sagas of the period like Henry King’s winemaking THIS EARTH IS MINE/’59 or Delmer Daves’ tobacco farming PARRISH/’61.

BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967)

With this film, it was three times & out for Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer, the spy who came in with black frame glasses. Caine actually returned to the character decades later on a couple of forgettable cable pics, but the theatrical run died here; probably from the huge shift in tone from the first two relatively realistic films to this third OTT, hit-and-miss self-parody. Surprise, surprise, the goofball mess has aged better than its sobersided siblings. Not that it seems so at first. The film, a move to commercial cinema for BBC’s uninhibited helmer Ken Russell (infuriating & talented from the get-go) doesn’t nail its tone of lifted-eyebrow absurdity for quite some time. But hang on, it does, as Caine figures out who’s behind the computer-voiced villain ordering him to deliver a coffee thermos of virus infected eggs to Karl Malden in chilly Finland. Even then, you still can’t tell just whom anyone is working for? Crazed Texas anti-communist fascist Ed Begley? Lovely spy of unknown allegiance Françoise Dorléac? Sly Russkie General Oskar Homolka? Or is everyone just out for themselves? Truth be told, they’re all working for James Bond co-producer Harry Saltzman, prefiguring the loose, mocking style of ‘70s Roger Moore Bond pics on a more limited budget, and with the indispensable advantage of Michael Caine’s multi-task acting. Scorned on its release, the film now looks prescient in style & content, and still sharp thanks to Billy Williams’ lensing. It’s also more fun than the Mike Myers spoofs.

DOUBLE-BILL: Karl Malden returned to those newfangled computers the following year, trying to keep Maggie Smith & co-scripter Peter Ustinov from fleecing his company in HOT MILLIONS/’68.

THE BLACK ARROW (1948)

This version of the oft-filmed Robert Louis Stevenson War-of-the-Roses novel is from indie producer Edward Small, known for pinching modest budgets into lux-looking literary swashbucklers (THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO/’34; THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK/’39). But director Gordon Douglas, moving up from cheap programmers like the DICK TRACY series, is hemmed in by the backlot locations of Columbia Studios where Small had a production deal. Even with the sprawling novel whittled down to a sort of ROBIN HOOD knockoff, it’s undercharged, and a size or two too small. (Poor Edgar Buchanan fails³ in the familiar Alan Hale, Eugene Pallette and Patric Knowles ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/'38 spots.) Louis Hayward makes a bland hero as the young knight, home from war to find his Uncle (purring, slithery George Macready) running the castle after murdering Hayward’s noble father. (Shades of HAMLET.) Fortunately, there’s a network of support from secret forest dwelling fighters, including the vengeance-seeking Black Arrow bowman who helps lead him to the truth by including a message with every lethal shot. The film’s not bad, just blah. The one real kick comes late in the game when an unexpectedly fair-minded, funny, even sympathetic Duke of Gloucester (pre-Richard III days) comes on the scene. Too bad he can’t make damsel-in-distress Janet Blair worth fighting over.

DOUBLE-BILL: Producer Small took a more traditional approach to RICHARD III in TOWER OF LONDON/’62 with Vincent Price as villain King and Roger Corman as villain megger. Far less interesting than the balanced cameo seen here, but the film has its supporters.