HERR ARNES PENGAR / SIR ARNE'S TREASURE (1919)

Now a tangential figure from cinema’s distant past, fitfully remembered as the man who groomed Greta Garbo for stardom before losing both her and his career to Hollywood, Mauritz Stiller was (along with Victor Sjöström) the standard-bearer of early Swedish cinema. While most of his work is now lost, this superb, technically advanced historical drama helps make up for much that is missing. Taken from a novel by Nobel Laureate Selma Lagerlöf, the dark 16th century tale follows three Scottish mercenaries on the lam after a prison escape. The opening scenes have some of the most startling effects in the film, especially a tracking shot following a guard as he walks around a stone passage encircling the prisoners’ jail cell. An interior dolly set up, it looks for all the world like the first ever SteadiCam shot, taken about six decades before such things existed. In general, cinematographer Julius Jaenzon makes striking use of minimal camera movement and maximal location shooting on the frozen lakes & land of a bitter winter. One where an escaped prisoner will find the love of a young woman not enough to save him from a deserved fate as murderer and, of course, as treasure thief. (See title!) There’s a mystical thread to some of the action (did George R.R. Martin know the film or the novel?) that adds unusual undercurrents to the largely naturalistic tone & events. And while the film doesn’t consistently maintain narrative line, the big set pieces, moving from action to processional, are compelling and impressive.

DOUBLE-BILL: Of Stiller’s surviving films, it’s possible to see EROTIKON/’20 (a sex comedy that sounds naughty, but isn’t); THE SAGA OF GÖSTA BERLING/’24 (a fallen minister tale/with Garbo; Lars Hanson; and amazing nighttime cinematography, especially on the ice, from Julius Jaenzon); and the fine Hollywood feature he finally made, HOTEL IMPERIAL/’27 with a tamed Pola Negri in a war story about a hotel situated on a malleable front line. Remade in 1939 (not seen here); and then again in 1943 by Billy Wilder as the excellent FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO with Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff & Erich von Stroheim.

EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014)

WAR OF THE WORLDS meets GROUNDHOG DAY.* And that’s pretty much it for this Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt/dir. Doug Liman affair. Generally well-received as a Sci-Fi actioner in the modern style of slice-and-dice edit/story/logic, fanboys thought it would have caught on big-time if they’d swapped out that generic title for the Ad Copy: LIVE, DIE, REPEAT. Catchy, no? Non-enthusiasts can have dumb fun noticing how everyone in here seems to be playing (make that ‘seems to be played by’) someone else: Cruise: Dennis Quaid; Emily Blunt: Uma Thurman; Brendan Gleeson: Ernest Borgnine; Franz Drameh . . . Franz Drameh, who he? Oh, the one who's playing Cuba Gooding.

DOUBLE-BILL: *That’s WAR OF THE WORLDS 1953, not the Cruise/Spielberg 2005 model.

CAMILLE (1936)

Though rightly celebrated for Greta Garbo’s beauty, command & delicate emotional navigation as The Lady of the Camellias in the old theatrical warhorse about a Parisian courtesan, CAMILLE also serves as a rite-of-passage for George Cukor into front-rank Hollywood directors. The best of his earlier work (WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD; BILL OF DIVORCEMENT /’32; LITTLE WOMEN/’33; DINNER AT EIGHT/’34, DAVID COPPERFIELD/’35) had David O. Selznick fingerprints on them as producer or studio exec, but here a distinctive period voice emerges. (Then an equally distinctive contemporary voice in HOLIDAY/’38, his next film.) According to Cukor, the script was largely Zoe Akins’ doing, and what a swift-moving unsentimental thing she makes of it. Opened up from the stage version without gaining bloat or losing character texture. There’s a fabulous nearly sadistic scene at the piano for Garbo and rich, older lover William Daniels. Terrifying. While as her young lover, Robert Taylor’s high gloss had yet to harden. And plenty of tasty support in all other directions; Laura Hope Crews triumphantly vulgar, and Lionel Barrymore almost trimming his sails as Taylor’s father. (This must be the only version of the story that skips over a ruined reputation wrecking a sister’s upcoming marriage to force renunciation.) Even the end goes briskly. The only thing that does let the side down a bit is Herbert Stothart’s typically subpar music score. Bits of Chopin & nips of Verdi’s TRAVIATA are fine, but then his own love theme comes up, starting as a near quote of Eddie Cantor’s big hit ‘Makin’ Whoopee’ . . . . in half-time. Sheesh.

DOUBLE-BILL: On the same DVD, a 1921 silent version of CAMILLE with the decidedly unnaturalistic stylings of Alla Nazimova, a great actress of a very different stripe. Staying close to the play, this modernized version grows on you after an OTT First Act; and features a winning perf from Rudolph Valentino, in his breakout year, in the Robert Taylor young lover role.

LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)

Moving well beyond their (sometimes wonderful) sketch comedy, Monty Python corralled their stream-of-comic-consciousness style into this hilarious (and thoughtful!) parallel Christ parable. Graham Chapman gets both laughs and earnest empathy as Brian (’E’s not the Messiah. ‘E’s a very naughty boy!’), born in that manger down the block from the tax man. Directed by Pythoner Terry Jones with more care than you expect on story and period detail; even at its silliest, it’s somehow more believable than your average Biblical Sword & Sandal outing. Plenty of belly laughs, too, without feeling gagged up, building to constant, helpless hilarity once ‘R’-challenged Pontius Pilate (Michael Palin) makes a lisping entrance, then right on until we reach endgame with a sing-a-long crucifixion finale. Plus, good dumb fun spotting all the multiple role playing. John Cleese keeps walking out as one character then coming immediately back as someone else. Look for Sony’s ‘Immaculate’ Edition, a significant improvement on Criterion’s soft/grainy image & muffled soundtrack.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Lots of religious controversy back when this first came out. Perhaps inevitable, yet an odd reaction as the film goes out of its way to be anti-blasphemous. Maybe the real problem was the surprising amount of fleshly display. A full-frontal Messiah, even a fake one, too much for today’s Pharisees.

HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (1953)

A natural for epics, religious or otherwise, CinemaScope first tried on light romantic comedy with a typically 20th/Fox Three-Girls-On-The-Hunt story. (No studio was more loyal to the formula, and CinemaScope’s 2.66:1 frame-ratio turned out to be very useful for triptych compositions. Note poster!) Scripter Nunnally Johnson pilfered a handful of plays for the premise (using themselves as bait, Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe & Betty Grable share a swanky Manhattan apartment to trap millionaires, but don't necessarily get what they think they want) and director Jean Negulesco, steering clear of close-ups, avoids depth-of-field shots & keeps them all in lateral motion to deal with the technical vagaries of the sharp, but primitive, early CinemaScope lenses. Not without charm or amusement (Bacall wears clothes like a dream, check out that longish tweed wool skirt; while William Powell’s wise old suitor is his impeccable self), the main reason to watch is Ms. Monroe. Without much in the way of fresh material, Monroe has unusual confidence & bloom. Sure, the part is nicely within her range, none of her acclaimed/dreadful Method Acting on display. Perhaps it’s because, for once, she’s not playing the ‘dumb’ blonde, or even the ‘not-so-dumb’ blonde. That’s Grable’s role. (And frankly, she’s a bit out of her league next to her dazzling pals.) Instead, Marilyn’s terribly vain. Blind as a bat, she refuses to wear glasses. It's nearly her only joke, but it's enough.  As if a Fairy Godmother had taken the dumb-bunny curse off Marilyn, allowing her to be nearly as good a comedian as her reevaluated rep now claims.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A six-minute concert suite (with Alfred Newman conducting his own Gershwin-esque ‘Street Scene’) shows off the new Stereophonic soundtrack process. But it’s really there to bump up a suspiciously short running time.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Negulesco’s next two assignments THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN/’54 and WOMAN’S WORLD/’54 made for a three-in-a-row trio of Three-Girls-On-The-Hunt pics.

THE MATCH KING (1932)

Fascinating fact-inspired fiction (click to enlarge newspaper -with SPOILERS - below) stars Warren William in top Pre-Code form as a ruthless capitalist cad who ‘saves’ his Swedish hometown match factory by raising an unsecured bank loan, then continues rolling over bigger & bigger loans until he’s cornered the world market. 200 matches/a penny a box: worth billions. But if he ever stops growing, it will all catch up to him: Personally from the women he’s used for spying & sexual blackmail to gain state monopolies; Financially since he needs the next loan to cover the last. He can’t go on forever, but what might take him down? Corporate honesty? Unlikely. An eccentric inventor with a reusable match? Suppressible. An affair with an actress that turns into the real thing? Possibly. The economics, vague & simplistic, are enough to get the ideas across; the personal cost believable; and the film seems to turn the corner from Early Talkies to Talkie Maturity halfway along. (Did directing duties pass from Howard Bretherton to William Keighley at some middle point?) Lili Damita (later Mrs Errol Flynn) probably has her best role as William’s romantic Achilles Heel (she’s certainly gorgeous enough), but all the supporting roles are memorably taken with an exceptional turn from Harold Huber as a counterfeiter with fake Italian bonds to sell. Marvelous stuff; suicide by PONZI!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Maxwell, the newspaper tycoon who compounded one fraud on top of the last to keep his empire going, has much in common with William’s character. And the same might be said of MR. ARKADIN/’55, Orson Welles’ thrilling & maddening film about a secretive tycoon investigating himself which seems to anticipate Maxwell’s end thirty years before the fact.

COCO (2017)

When they're ‘in the zone,’ PIXAR plays a different game then other animators. And COCO’s ‘in the zone’ most of the time. (A loss of narrative focus toward the middle, has them overcompensate with, admittedly, spectacular visuals.) Three years ago, Guillermo del Toro went down a similar path in THE BOOK OF LIFE/’14, which makes COCO’s superiority all the more striking. Story originality, imagination, a big thumping heart, even in Mexican art research. (And sly gags right from the start, like adding a Mariachi kick to ‘Wish Upon A Star’ for the opening Disney logo; or in letting Benjamin Bratt lean into his Ricardo Montalban voice.) Co-directors Adrian Molina (his debut) and Lee Unkrich (who soloed on TOY STORY 3), they also worked on the script, find a great way to guide us thru the Day of the Dead tradition, emphasizing generational connection (and conflict) in a symbiotic spiritual relationship between the living and the dead. In this case, gently elaborated and emotionally lifted by 12-yr-old Miguel, a boy who can’t suppress an inherited gift for music in a house where music has long been taboo. Determined to follow his bliss and compete in a local talent contest, as well as show a bit of teen rebellion, he ends up stuck, possibly for good, in the Land of the Dead with past (make that ‘passed’) ancestors. More than enough framework to hang a film on, especially with its rich ethnic look. Beautifully voiced by a pitch-perfect cast (in both character and song), the film boasts an awesome third act twist, sorting itself out in wonderfully satisfying manner.

DOUBLE-BILL/CONTEST: With Miguel stuck in the Land of the Dead, his physical body starts dissolving into a skeletal ghost figure. No doubt, an intentional echo of PINOCCHIO’s nightmare-inducing donkey metamorphoses on Pleasure Island. But there’s another, harder to spot, ‘borrowing’ at the film’s climax as ‘50s style tv cameras ‘accidentally’ expose our villain by showing his true nature on live studio monitors. Name the likely film source to win a MAKSQUIBS DVD Write-Up of Your Choice.

EVER IN MY HEART (1933)

Brutally misconceived, disastrously ill-timed, this Barbara Stanwyck romancer, meant as a pivot from her ‘bad girl’ roles @ Warners, fails spectacularly. As an eligible beauty from the best family in town, Stanwyck unexpectedly throws over bland intended Ralph Bellamy when she falls hard for creepy Otto Kruger, the best pal he’s brought back from school in Germany. It’s 1909, and Kruger goes all out to be the good adopted American. But even becoming a citizen doesn’t help once WWI breaks out. Reviled and all but unemployable, he returns to his German roots, taking up arms for the old country. Now, after divorce, and rekindled romance with Bellamy, Babs joins up and is sent overseas where she inevitably winds up meeting Kruger, now spying for the enemy. Will it be love . . . or liebestod! Yikes! Archie Mayo directs, but who approved this wobbly disaster? And why the largely sympathetic tone toward Kruger’s character & motives in a film released half a year after the Nazis took power in 1933? Where’d they show this thing? German-American Bund Rallies?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For an empathetic look at some post-WWI Germans, there’s Frank Borzage’s THREE COMRADES/’38, with the only film credit ever given to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In a rare exception to the Hollywood norm of incompetence in the kitchen, family cook Ruth Donnelly kneads a mean ball of bread dough. And check out her one-handed throwing technique! Showoff.

DUST BE MY DESTINY (1939)

Three directors-to-be hide in the credits of this standard-issue hard-luck/ working-class Warners meller: scripter Robert Rossen; dialogue-director Irving Rapper; Byron Haskin on F/X. Any one a more interesting choice than journeyman helmer Lewis Seiler proves. Still, he’s competent, and what could anyone have done with this near parody of the chip-on-his-shoulder characters being worked up for new star John Garfield, here reunited with peppy Priscilla Lane from his breakthru debut in FOUR DAUGHTERS/’38. Fresh out of jail after a miscarriage of justice (the real robber just confessed); Garfield’s soon in trouble for hopping freight trains & resisting arrest. Sent to Reformatory, he meets-cute with Lane whose nasty step-dad runs the joint. Catching the canoodling lovebirds, Pop takes a swing at Garfield! Garfield swings back! Then the old man’s bum-ticker gives out! Geez Louise! Now, Garfield’s running from a murder rap! On the lam with Lane (sounds like a song cue, no?), even good luck turns bad: like a freebie wedding that comes with an identifying publicity photo; a diner gig that sets them up with an address the cops can raid; a heroic deed that makes you Front Page News. Yikes! That chip on the shoulder is now a boulder. And the last act turns positively ridiculous with a big courtroom sequence that defies all logic*. (Though Rossen’s left-leaning speeches for defense attorney Moroni Olsen are something to behold.) Alan Hale, looking rather handsome for a change, has a nice turn as a sympathetic newspaper editor, and Frank McHugh gets his laughs as a theatrical wedding organizer. But the film is entirely skippable.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Priscilla Lane probably had her best role (away from her sister act) later this year as the nice girl James Cagney is all wrong for in THE ROARING TWENTIES; *while Garfield gets a better day in court (a doomsday in court) in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE/’46.