DIPLOMATIC COURIER (1952)

Trying for some of that THIRD MAN mojo, this international intrigue number makes some nifty moves in its first half as Tyrone Power’s State Department courier misses his ‘drop’ and has to beat those pesky Russians to retrieve a Top Secret file he was sent to bring in from the cold. With Henry Hathaway and favorite cinematographer Lucien Ballard making like 3rd MAN’s Carol Reed & Robert Krasker, the film delivers dark, inner-Euro-city atmosphere, momentum and some especially juicy spy vs spy/cat & mouse misdirection on a train before Casey Robinson’s unwieldy script implodes with multiple reversals of fortune & character. With a good girl who might be bad, and a bad girl who might be good, Patricia Neal gets stiffed in another of her largely disappointing major studio assignments while Hildegard Knef scores a solid career move forward. Both of them better off than third-billed military officer Stephen McNally with even less to do than lower-billed assistant Karl Malden. Nice support from rising Lee Marvin & Charles Bronson, but not even a bit of zither music at a restaurant saves this one from eventually feeling like it’s running in place.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, THE THIRD MAN/’49.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Fun seeing Hathaway try for a bit of Continental degeneracy with a drag act.

SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932)

The most sheerly enjoyable of the Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich series*, the film (shot ‘31/released ‘32) also deserves credit for putting paid to Early Talkie technique, particularly in its opening sequence, an astonishment of design, pace, studio artifice and sharp characterization. After the silent-to-sound transition, it’s back to Moving Pictures with a Capital ‘M.’ The story, slight but serviceable, opens as a motley group of First-Class ticket-buyers in Peking board the Shanghai Express amid a rising political revolution. Sure enough, half-Chinese mystery passenger Warner Oland takes them all hostage, stopping the train and watching old & new relationships come to the boil. Top of the list is a past one between Clive Brook's doctor and Dietrich’s notorious Shanghai Lily. An item five years ago, their renewed passion soon put to the test when Dietrich is forced to sacrifice honor for safety, and discovers that faith (religious or otherwise) has its limits. Heavenly nonsense, fast, funny and intensely glamorous , with off-the-charts wow factor in gorgeous physical presentation and Jules Furthman’s spare badinage. And in Brook, one of the few performers with insouciance to match La Dietrich whose looks here are in perfect harmony between her softer early look and the more severe abstraction to come. There’s a modest falloff in the last reel once we hit Shanghai (the studio may have noticed since they suddenly start up a wan background score), but until then this is just about perfect.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The films in brief: Brutish BLUE ANGEL; Romantic MOROCCO; Self-regarding DISHONORED; Dashing SHANGHAI EXPRESS; Ludicrous BLONDE VENUS; Baroque SCARLET EMPRESS; Masochistic DEVIL IS A WOMAN. 1930 - 1935, all essential. OR: Frank Capra, who seconded Sternberg’s modern pacing in AMERICAN MADNESS and followed it with something of his own SHANGHAI in THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN, both ‘32.

HERCULES (1997)

Major fun. Less celebrated than some in the Disney Animation Renaissance that began with THE LITTLE MERMAID/’89, it now plays better than most. Frequent partners John Clements & John Musker get visual style & gags (rarely stooping to hip/contemporary references) from mythological sources & ancient pottery, but lard the main story of how young Herc finds his true heroic self in stopping Hades & his unleashed Titans from taking over the world with generous lifts from PINOCCHIO, SLEEPING BEAUTY and SUPERMAN. Something of a magpie narrative, but a solid structure and strong personalities help it play well. And quite the grand villain in James Woods’ Flaming Hades. Plus an exceptional song score from Alan Menken (David Zippel’s lyrics less consistent) with the usual ballads & comic numbers (Danny DeVito’s mentor going full Jimmy Durante), divinely held together by an All-Girl Greek ‘Gospel’ Chorus. Animation heads get a rare chance to distinguish between FIVE and FOUR fingered characters in a single film and can spot a rare Left-Handed deal clincher if they look sharp.

DOUBLE-BILL: Pairs nicely with LILO & STITCH/'02, which is also less pushy & formulaic than other animation of the period, possibly last in the great ‘hand-drawn’ Disney Renaissance line-up.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Naturally, the Gods & Goddesses up in the heavens have a tough time competing with Golden Age Disney animation as seen in the Beethoven Pastorale Symphony section of FANTASIA/’40. (Goblins out of that film's NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN also referenced.)

TOMORROW WE LIVE / (aka AT DAWN WE DIE

From WWII Britain, a neatly made French Resistance thriller (with General De Gaulle's imprimatur!) that claims to based on a True Story. And it is! Just not French. It’s Czech; specifically, the assassination in Prague of Bohemia/Moravia’s Nazi Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich and the brutal consequences/retaliation by the Nazis. Some grab, no? Particularly since that story was about to hit American screens via Fritz Lang/Bertold Brecht’s HANGMEN ALSO DIE! * Be that as it may, what we have here is more than decent melodrama, assuming you can deal with veddy, veddy Brits playing Frenchies (John Clements, Godfrey Tearle) trying to get info across to England before the Nazis figure out their plan. Clements also needs to figure out whose side two women are on, patriotic café owner Judy Kelly and Mayor’s daughter Greta Gynt. Is one a Nazi collaborator or merely playing at it while secretly helping the underground? Choppy direction from George King proves but a modest obstacle, and the tight budget likely helps the film's claustrophobic quotient, along with Otto Heller’s exceptionally well shadowed cinematography. A combination of ‘Quota-Quickie’ gumption and wartime can-do spirit pulls it thru.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, HANGMEN ALSO DIE!/’43. OR: For more French Resistance budget surprises, MADAME PIMPERNEL (AKA: PARIS UNDERGROUND)/’45 with Constance Bennett.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Adding to the confusion, the original British title, TOMORROW WE LIVE, had just been used by low-budget specialist Edgar G. Ulmer in 1942; and before that by pro-Fascist Brit Oswald Morris for a collection of essays by various ultra-right authors.

HALLS OF ANGER (1970)

The gimmick is reverse desegregation, with 200 white kids bussed into an all-black high school of 3000 along with a resentful black teacher who thought he’d put the ghetto behind him, only to be dragged back into the inner-city vortex to hold the lid down as Vice Principal. Made fast and cheap, largely with tv talent, this could have worked as rabble-rousing exploitation (something American International Pictures might book in Drive-Ins) or as funky black-centric comedy, but as serious, issue-oriented fare, this just doesn’t cut it. (Younger viewers should note that the film looked just as obvious & dated when it came out as it does now.) Fun for early peeks at dewy young Jeff Bridges and doughy not-so-young Rob Reiner as two of the new students, alas none of the black kids bring enough personality to stand out from the crowd. You can see how things might have worked in a little scene where our frustrated lead Calvin Lockhart uses a trashy bestseller to add a sexy angle to his remedial reading group; and there’s a discomforting bit of needless violence that makes its mark when a pretty blonde girl is attacked in the bathroom for being a bit too popular. Other than that, it’s earnest, standard-issue social-problem tv fare. (It longs for the days when THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE/'55 seemed relevant/progressive.) And so dreary to look at. No doubt, everybody wanted to get out fast as possible. Even the sets could barely take time to get properly dressed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: At one point, one of the students mentions how you can’t expect every black kid to become another Bill Cosby or O.J. Simpson. Yikes!

SWEEPINGS (1933)

Something of a missed opportunity here. A family department store saga (Edna Ferber might have called it EMPORIUM!), about a far-sighted fellow who hits Chicago shortly after Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, and sees opportunity where others see ashes & devastation. That’d be Lionel Barrymore, effectively aging from mid-30s to mid-70s; wearing out a wife with four births; hiring a sharp Jew to run his burgeoning dry goods business (Gregory Ratoff, very good), but crucially failing to pass along any retailing DNA to his pampered brood: not first-born hedonist William Gargan; not underachieving/inhibited gay son George Meeker*; not society struck Gloria Stuart; not even favored baby boy Eric Linden, a careless ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’ charmer with a character arc that hints at a hidden better nature. If only there were time to delve into things, these 80 minutes are nothing but outline and undernourished drama. Montage specialist Slavko Vorapich stitches over missing segments with spiffy transitions, but a couple of behind-the-scenes shop talk tutorials would have done a better job and allowed director John Cromwell to show how Barrymore’s short-sighted scions all fail in turn. There’s a mini-series in here . . . or did MR. SELFRIDGE permanently spoil that idea?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Meeker’s character, the only sibling not shown with date, spouse or love interest, gives up an executive position to stay on as Window Dresser, Hollywood code for gay in Pre or Post Code days.

DOUBLE-BILL: 1933’s best department store film was racy Pre-Code dramedy EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE. (see below)

BIG WEDNESDAY (1978)

John Milius’s deep-dish surfing pic travels the ‘60s (and beyond) as Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt & Gary Busey compare chiseled chests and life’s disappointments as they ride, ride, ride out their golden youth and stare at what lies ahead. It’s one of those cult films, often out of circulation (because of song rights?), that gains cachet from being unavailable. Not that it’s bad, just less than meets the eye. But oh!, what an eyeful! Especially in buff buds of beachy, blonde, California beefcake. The story may cover more than a decade, but apparently, muscle definition is forever. As the years pass, the three go their semi-separate ways, but manage to circle back for major ocean swells, culminating after Vincent touches bottom; Katt returns from ‘Nam with a little mustache; and man-child Busey turns semi-pro wave hunter, for the mightiest Pacific cresting of their lives. The story stays empty enough so you can fill in your own meanings, and is cleverly organized by seasons on the shore, with pit-stops for fightin’, screwin’, drinkin’, Vietnamin’ and endless self-mythologizin’. What a sentimental lot they all turn out to be.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: These lives weren’t only unfulfilled on screen: Milius with only four features in front of him; Busey, possibly the most talented, long more punchline than actor; Katt fading into inconsequential tv; Vincent’s personal demons derailing his career.

DOUBLE-BILL: Milius’s film was buried by another 1978 film on manly virtues and a threesome unhinged by the ‘60s & Vietnam, Michael Cimino's THE DEER HUNTER. And while WEDNESDAY may not be all it’s cracked up to be, compared to the Cimino . . .

HALF A SIXPENCE (1967)

This over-stuffed adaptation of a West End/B’way hit, taken from H.G. Wells’ KIPPS (his anti-social mobility fable filmed in 1941 by Carol Reed at 82", here a whopping 143"!*) was yet another nail in the coffin of Hollywood Musicals, RoadShow Family division, made after windfall profits for MARY POPPINS, MY FAIR LADY and SOUND OF MUSIC. To his credit, old studio pro George Sidney, a vet from the Arthur Freed M-G-M unit, pulls the elements together without long gone studio apparatus to back him up. What he can’t do much about are the second-drawer elements. (From ‘Knees Up’ numbos to ballads, not an imaginative musical interval in the whole score.) Instead, we're beaten into submission at interminable lengths, the energy level alone exhausting. While our story (young orphan boy inherits a fortune and goes high hat before losing it all and returning to his better nature and loyal waïf) resolves ten minutes into act two, then has to spin its wheels for thirty extra minutes. The selling point should be Tommy Steele, who made his stage rep with it, but he’s one of those high wattage theatrical types who don’t ‘take’ to the screen. You can still watch it, thanks to Sidney’s professionalism (watch him attempt modern day relevance with a few New Wave stylistic touches) and even more for the impossibly posh cinematography of Geoffrey Unsworth who followed with 2001/’68. Talk about range! On the other hand, no follow up for our director. Only 50 years old and already more than three decades in the biz, Sidney saw the writing on the wall and never worked again.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The studio quickly saw this one as a complete loss and quickly put out our ludicrous ‘Sock It To Me!’ poster hoping to attract a younger, hipper crowd.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Theatrical notes: On B’way, the posh/snob who steals Kipps’ fortune was played by John Cleese. And no luck at the Tony Awards as 1965 was all FIDDLER ON THE ROOF with both Steele and third-billed Cyril Ritchard losing to FIDDLER’s Zero Mostel. Steele for this role and Ritchard for an entirely different show, THE ROAR OF THE GREASEPAINT - THE SMELL OF THE CROWD.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *Carol Reed not only did better by KIPPS, he also showed how it was still possible to succeed in this form, deservedly so, triumphing critically & commercially with OLIVER!/’68.

THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER (1951)

In the late ‘40s/early ‘50s, director George Cukor, with married writers Garson Kanin & Ruth Gordon, made a series of films that took joy in watching everyday little people playing out Life’s Human Comedy. Modest pleasures all, often with documentary-style NYC establishing shots unusual for the period. And here’s a particularly tasty example of the form. Surprise! It’s not Kanin/Gordon, but from producer/co-writer Charles Brackett right after his break with longtime collaborator Billy Wilder. (SUNSET BOULEVARD proving too dark for Brackett’s taste.) And it’s a little marvel, thanks mostly to a typically treasurable turn from character-actor star Thelma Ritter as the titular marriage broker, a professional busybody specializing in Lonely Hearts types. And what a crew of hard-to-match singles she shuffles out of her Flat Iron office building, and at Saturday get-togethers at her apartment. (Anyone who can bring Zero Mostel and Nancy Kulp into mutual romantic orbit is some kind of genius.) Two outliers form the plot as Ritter misdirects cool Jeanne Crain toward Scott Brady’s wolfish X-Ray technician, while Crain upends her own ideas to give Ritter just the romantic push she doesn’t know she’s been waiting for. ‘Push’ being the one thing this delightful film so scrupulously avoids in either sentimentalizing or condescending to its imperfect souls. A real find; a delight.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: You can imagine this becoming a musical a decade later with Cukor’s earlier discovery Judy Holliday in the Ritter role. In fact, it just about happened in Vincente Minnelli/Comden & Green’s BELLS ARE RINGING/’60.