MOONRISE (1948)

Though he directed two final films after a decade off, this uncommonly dark story of murder & redemption, something of a backwoods CRIME & PUNISHMENT, was Frank Borzage’s real swansong. (He was only 54.) Reaching back to the romantic visual stylist of his late silent prime at FOX (where F. W. Murnau’s work had infected everyone), Borzage revives much of his old form with a miasma of romantic fatalism he rarely showed in even his best sound films. You don’t expect ravishing studio artifice out of Republic Pictures, yet here it is. From a brutal walk-to-the-gallows opening, straight into two rhymed scenes showing the effect it’s had on the dead man’s son, now grown into a haunted Dane Clark, still defined by a stained past. He’ll kill a man over it, then go thru a series of denials & admissions, nearly losing his two best friends thru more violence (a backwoods Negro dog-handler wonderfully played by Rex Ingram and Harry Morgan’s trusting simpleton), as well as the woman he’s long loved, Gail Russell with her strange corrupted beauty. Sheriff Allyn Joslyn follows behind, holding off arrest in hopes of a volunteered confession. (He’s a small-town Inspector Porfiry straight out of Dostoevsky, and not the film’s best conception.) Loaded with painterly flair and studied compositions that don’t worry about calling attention to themself, you have to wonder if Borzage knew this film would effectively be his last.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As Dane’s independent-minded/off-the-grid Grandmother, Ethel Barrymore gets the biggest billing for the smallest screen time in Hollywood history.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: With his compact frame, short fuse & low center-of-gravity stance, Dane Clark got about as close to the Jean Gabin romantic thugs of ‘30s French Poetic Realism as any Hollywood actor. At least, in this film.

THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017)

An enchanted fable from Guillermo del Toro, a scary fairy tale (or ‘scaly’ fairy tale) about a captive man-like sea creature held at a top-secret research facility who finds an unlikely soul-mate in mute female staff janitor Sally Hawkins. Made with wit, delicacy & phenomenal attention to period detail (late ‘50s/early ‘60s), del Toro defaults into typical overloading* with overwrought sets & fussy camera work; thematically, too, piling his plate with commie conspiracies, a gay angle, a dollop of racial prejudice (and what monster pic isn’t already a race allegory?), even absurd Double-Features (THE STORY OF RUTH/’60 and MARDI GRAS/’59?). But he mostly gets away with it, likely 'helped' by a very tight budget. (What the man does with 20 mill!) The cast, from Sally Hawkins’ sympathetic maintenance worker & Doug Jones’ ultra-lean amphibian-man to Michael Stuhlbarg’s conflicted scientist/spy & Michael Shannon’s sadistic keeper could hardly be bettered. And del Toro paces the drama & lays out action scenes with a master's touch. Perhaps he shies too much from traditional suspense, preferring to lay on emotion & some unexpectedly frank romance. But at its best, which is most of the time, this is a sui generis wonder.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A FOX SearchLight release, so lots of Betty Grable & Alice Faye from old FOX movies inserted as musical clips. (They own the rights.) Weird to hear Faye’s signature tune, ‘You’ll Never Know,’ sung & danced on a knock-off RKO/Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers Art Deco ‘Big White Set,’ the one originally used for Irving Berlin’s ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance.’

DOUBLE-BILL: *Del Toro without the excess can be found in THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE/’01.

THE EMPEROR'S CANDLSTICKS (1937)

Hoping to save a Patriot from execution, Polish Baron William Powell sneaks into Russia with a letter for the Tsar cleverly hidden in an ornate silver candlestick, one of a pair, unaware that its match, being brought to the secret police by Countess Luise Rainer, hides a letter denouncing him as a spy. Naturally, the candlesticks get mixed-up; there’s a candlestick robbery; an international candlestick treasure hunt; a candlestick auction; and finally a couple of candlestick-carrying spies falling in love. Pay no attention to the real countries mentioned, it’s the usual Ruritanian romantic nonsense popular at the time, with plotting & absurd coincidences even more idiotic than usual. Yet it might have worked if only someone had found (and held onto) a consistent tone, or had nimbler moves than director George Fitzmaurice. Rainer, coming off back-to-back Oscars® for THE GREAT ZIEGFELD/’36 and THE GOOD EARTH/’37, seems relieved to play something light & sentimental, though she still tends to moon more than necessary. Powell, hampered by a remarkably bad dye job (was M-G-M using black shoe polish that year?), is his usual impeccable self (watch him play a scene where Rainer finds him a bit too old for her), but can’t hold things together all on his own. And what a big cast on the sidelines: Robert Young, Maureen O’Sullivan, Frank Morgan, et al., plus enormous sets, balls & costumes . . . adding little. Chances are this one got rushed into production in an attempt to beat David O. Selznick’s Ruritanian remake THE PRISONER OF ZENDA/’37; story problems be damned. Hence, some alarmingly choppy edits where M-G-M would normally have done reshoots. For Rainer, a sign of things to come as her meteoric career came to a screeching halt only a year later. Thru at 28; she lived to see 104.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned above, this beat ZENDA’s September release by a couple of months but can’t hold a candle(stick) to Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll & Doug Fairbanks Jr.’s Gold Standard Ruritanian classic.

MARINE RAIDERS (1944)

Standard-issue WWII Marine Action programmer (well, slightly subpar programmer) has Pat O’Brien & Robert Ryan fighting in the Pacific (Guadalcanal); taking R&R in Australia; training recruits Stateside; then back to the Pacific as part of a major multi-force operation. Frank McHugh (as company cook) & Barton MacLane (as top Sargent) hang around for comic relief between military forays which give journeyman helmer Harold Schuster a chance to build a little apprehensive suspense before the iffy special effects kick in (along with uncomfortably real bits of actual war footage). The main interest comes during the break period, set in Australia, where Ryan falls hard for Aussie Air Force Auxiliary gal Ruth Hussey. Wounded just before a planned quickie marriage, his hospital stay gives O’Brien a chance to swoop in and ‘rescue’ his pal from wedlock, stealthily shipping him Stateside. But O’Brien isn’t protecting him, he’s saving him for himself, suffering from jealousy, the green-eyed monster. The messaging is subliminal, but clear enough: O’Brien, a man whose only family is the Marines, is bromantically possessive; and then some. You could do something with this situation . . . but not in 1944.*

DOUBLE-BILL: *Try John Huston’s messy, unfocused, fascinating REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE to see how far things had (and hadn’t) changed by 1967.

DARKEST HOUR (2017)

British director Joe Wright, who specializes in over-praised prestige items, stays true to form in this unconvincing Winston Churchill bio-pic covering the political backstory of events just covered ‘at the front’ in Christopher Nolan’s sharp-eyed & thrillingly detailed DUNKIRK/’17. The argument, simply put, is that Churchill, grudgingly installed as new Prime Minister, finds he’s so overwhelmed by the Nazi surge on the Continent, and the possible annihilation of British forces stuck across The Channel in France, that he briefly considers entering into peace talks with Hitler, brokered by Mussolini. But, bucked up by ‘the people’s’ gung-ho spirit after taking a one-stop ride on the Underground, becomes his indomitable self once more, and leads thru the power of speech. This may all be 100% accurate, though a reading of his highly readable, memorandum-filled memoir THE GATHERING STORM suggests otherwise, but it feels awfully contrived. Especially when Wright tosses in overhead God POV pull-back shots for empty uplift at key moments. (With demerit points for bad CGI.) Gary Oldman’s award-winning Winston is no more (and perhaps a bit less) ‘spot on’ than the many Churchills seen since Albert Finney (with Vanessa Redgrave as wife Clemmie) started the current waxworks parade in THE GATHERING STORM/’02. At times, Oldman might be actor Toby Jones; or rather, actor Toby Jones as Winston. Leaving Ben Mendelsohn’s King George as the film’s best perf.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned above, THE GATHERING STORM (book & HBO movie), with DUNKIRK as chaser.

MA VIE DE COURGETTE / MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI (2016)

Touching & original, this stop-motion animation from Claude Barras (a Swiss/French production) doesn’t fit into the usual categories. Technically looser, with a playful aspect to its movement & toy-like settings, it has a tough Euro-sensibility that’s not particularly for kids. Yet it’s not NOT for kids, if you catch our drift. Zucchini (Courgette to give him his French nickname*), 9-yr-old son of an abusive/alcoholic mother, only shut the attic door to keep her out, but it was an action that caused her accidental death. Now alone, he’s sent to a little home for troubled orphans where he must fit in and deal with his situation. Luckier than some, he makes a pair of special friends: a freckled boy he mostly fights with; and a girl whose troubles include a nasty aunt who’d like to adopt her for the inheritance. Zucchini also bonds with his case worker, a lonely man who’s lost touch with a grown son of his own. Small incidents resonate loudly here, nicely caught by simple production values whose charm & ingenuity helps reveal the basic humanity of the characters. Barely an hour, but with big laughs & big emotions any kid should respond to. Even with a PG-13 rating.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Our poster lists a starry English-language vocal cast, but the film plays far better with the French kids on the original French track. And note an equal lack of care in that added article in the English-language title: MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI. Hey, he’s not a vegetable, it’s a nickname.

ONE-EYED JACKS (1961)

Marlon Brando directs himself in this handsome, lackluster VistaVision Western, hoping to add a bit of grey to the old white hat/black hat tradition. A variant on the oft-filmed Pat Garrett/Billy the Kid story, it’s hard to think of any telling that doesn’t bring some level of nuance to the bank robber pals, their partial reform and falling out. But if the real Kid was a murdering punk, ‘screen’ Billy is always either a ‘bad’ good man or (more typically) a ‘good’ bad man. Brando goes with the latter, but the film is so enervated it’s hard to care. As mentor/father-figure (subtly named ‘Dad’ here), Karl Malden does stare-down improv work against Brando that seems to add hours to a 140 minute running time. (Original cut three times that length.) While love-interest/daughter Pina Pellicer (looking much like Brando ex Pier Angeli) might be learning English & acting on the job. At least, character actors Ben Johnson & Elisha Cook Jr build a little tension in the pic’s one decent scene (a bank robbery gone wrong), but we’re soon back to numbing cogitation and a truly farcical prison escape. (Pellicer sneaks in a pearl-handled ‘lady’s’ pistol in a tamale wrapper!*) Film scholars & Hollywood heavyweights (Scorsese; Spielberg) take this seriously, the tortured production history is loaded with what-ifs (both Kubrick & Peckinpah had fingers in the pie), yet the film hasn’t even the honest decency to be a bust. It's merely mediocre.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Like Brando, Buster Keaton worked out Father/Son issues on screen in his great STEAMBOAT BILL, JR./’28. There’s even a scene with Buster trying to help Dad break out of jail with saws & hammers hidden in a loaf of bread. But Dad refuses the gift, causing Buster to complain to the jailer that ‘Father is ashamed of my baking.’

THE FLORIDA PROJECT (2017)

Writer/director Sean Baker’s warm-blooded dissection of the operators & residents of a Florida ‘Welfare Motel’ in the Orlando tourist corridor is an uplifting downer. Willem Dafoe, patient, competent, even caring as manager of the garishly colored establishment (those hideous pastels are ‘real deal’ Florida, not commentary) may be too much the saint, but so well played you go with it. Baker helps him out by ignoring much of his soul crushing job duties to concentrate on how he deals with three sprites: wildly independent, unsupervised, adorable 6-yr-old holy-terrors. Left to their own devices by single parents struggling with problems of their own (low pay; lost jobs; weekly rent; mental instability; scams & turning the occasional ‘trick’), the film is at its best following these free-spirits thru their suburban playground of adventure & delight. Indulging in a childhood wanderlust blind to their skin-of-our-teeth existence; they’re pure ‘id,’ descendants of Huck & Tom, Penrod & Nancy Drew. Exhausting just to watch. But our engagement & emotional conflict turn to disappointment when Baker lurches into misapplied melodrama to end with a bang instead of an appropriate whimper. So desperate to ape Truffaut’s adolescent classic, THE 400 BLOWS/’59, he nearly scuttles his considerable achievement. (Tough language for our Family Friendly label, but a real eye-opener worth talking over.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: In addition to Truffaut, Baker seems strongly influenced by Belgian neo-realist filmmakers Luc & Jeanne-Pierre Dardenne. L’ENFANT/’05 is a good place to start.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/lenfant-2005.html

THE UNGUARDED MOMENT (1956)

Slightly ludicrous as drama (acting, dialogue, direction all risible), but fascinating as a compendium of Eisenhower Era social & sexual repression/ regression, and a must for anyone hunting up thesis material on ‘50s culture & generation gap fissures. Leaving swimsuits & M-G-M water tanks behind after 13 years, Esther Williams tries straight drama @ Universal as a small-town high school music teacher who only wants to help the mixed-up student stalking her. Ignoring a possibility that he’s also the local perv currently on a murder spree(!), she keeps a secret rendezvous that leads to her reputation being torn to a tatter. Lucky for her, George Nader, the cop on the case, goes from sarcastic to sympathetic, taking her side against John Saxon, in his first major role as the hormone-addled high school football star. Screwed up (and possibly being screwed . . . the film only hints) by psychotic, controlling, female-phobic dad Edward Andrews, these two manage to destroy Williams' rep & career. A lovely woman living alone in a well-appointed house, unmarried, too close to her students; she's an obvious threat to civic norms. Add in wild dancing at the soda shop, a school dance that turns into a guilt-trap; the big home game; secret dates & sneaking in late at night, the works. With a story originally developed by Rosalind Russell for herself, this is one weird witch-hunt nightmare of perverted American Values. Too bad cinematographer William Daniels is the only talent up to the challenge of finding depth in all the surface gloss. And no one is going to mistake director Harry Keller for Douglas Sirk.

DOUBLE-BILL: From the same year, a classier (even odder) look at sexual coming-of-age pressures in Robert Anderson’s TEA AND SYMPATHY, with Deborah Kerr, John Kerr & Leif Erickson (even this film’s Edward Andrews) under Vincente Minnelli. But when you watch these overripe ‘50s sex-problem dramas, and you will, please be kind.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: There’s quite a plot hole when the ‘mash’ letters go missing and no one believes they ever existed. Yet Williams showed one to a pet student, imagining he’d written it. Oops!