THE VALIANT (1929)

William K. Howard, one of the most visually imaginative (now neglected) directors of the ‘30s, got off to a slow All-Talking Picture start with this Fox Movietone Feature from 1929. Like many Early Talkies, it takes some trouble to begin with a flashy mobile camera shot (very effectively roaming the streets of a bustling NYC set), before shutting down as if filming a stage play from a good seat in the orchestra. (And this was on B’way, barely, one performance in 1926; one more in 1928.) After murdering a bad guy who ‘deserved to die,’ our killer gives himself up to the police, but refuses to say why he did it or who he is. Meanwhile . . . out in the MidWest, a frail old mother sees his pic in the paper and wonders if this mystery man could be her long lost son. And while it’s easy to guess all the mother/son/sibling action, the script maintains absolute silence on the who, what, why of the murder. An unusually abstract tack, then or now. The other point of interest is recently renamed stage actor Muni Wisenfrend, now Paul Muni. Oscar nom’d for this debut, he’s strikingly more naturalistic, less elocutionarily careful than anyone else up there. Yards ahead of the curve; something of a reverse from later work when he’d become more self-consciously theatrical than his co-players, especially once he landed at streetwise home studio Warner Bros. Best for geeks of Early Talkie evolutionary trends.

DOUBLE-BILL: Howard would need another couple of steps before revealing his natural gifts in the new format. Next year’s SCOTLAND YARD manages to top-and–tail with imaginatively visualized scenes: a opening float down the river Thames; a climax rendered in a series of close-ups on inanimate details. His real technical breakthru came with TRANSATLANTIC/’31 which is really something to see.

ZU NEUEN UFERN / TO NEW SHORES (1937)

Before Douglas Sirk became Master of Hollywood melodrama, he was Detlef Sierck Master of Melodrama at UFA Germany. As per this typical example in the form, of particular interest for featuring glamorous Third Reich fave Zarah Leander (a sort of missing link between Clara Bow & Hedy Lamarr), already suffering beautifully in her studio debut . She’s Gloria Vane, popular, naughty 1860s English entertainer involved with titled debt-ridden Willy Birgel, and taking the fall on a forged check he’s altered to the tune of £600. Yikes! Sent to prison in Australia, she needs a proposal of marriage to get out and (wouldn’t you know it) her old lover is currently in Australia, but unwilling to destroy his social & military position for a convict (even one who's doing his jail time) when he's preparing to marry a wealthy young thing, the catch of the county. Meanwhile, a hearty local rancher is spouse hunting at the jail and . . . well, you get the idea. Will she be true to her dashing, but uncouth savior or run off for a never-can-be-reunion with old unreliable/Mister Unworthy. Sirk feels oddly jumpy in the very talky first half, but things eventually sort themselves out with the film paradoxically growing more effective even as it becomes progressively less credible. Though skimping on the romantic development between Leander & putative husband/nice guy farmer Viktor Staal keeps us from fully investing emotionally.

DOUBLE-BILL: Sirk’s follow-up with Leander, LA HABANERA/’37, even better. (see below)

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Philip Kerr’s THE LADY FROM ZAGREB, a late entry in his Bernie Gunther Berlin-based Nazi-Era detective series features an actress/femme fatale much like Zarah Leander.

MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972)

Adapting Miguel de Cervantes’ DON QUIXOTE to film, long an impossible dream, with Orson Welles in the ‘50s & ‘60s and Terry Gilliam over the last two decades merely a sample of filmmakers who’ve come to grief in the pursuit. So, no surprise to find that squarest of safe Hollywood hacks, Arthur Hiller, a director with a knack for bad shots (even when Giuseppe Rotunno is lighting cameraman), flailing on the cursed project. (Development started & stopped numerous times as various creative types briefly took charge.) Surprisingly, the motley cast does pretty well, with everyone but Peter O’Toole’s doing their own spirited vocals. (O’Toole relatively well-dubbed, Sophia Loren quite the belter, plus a chance to check out Ian Richardson's pipes.) The real problem, along with Hiller’s flatfooted megging (that big donnybrook!), lies in the original stage property with Dale Wasserman’s confusing literary pretensions (arrested by the Inquisition during performance, Cervantes performs his play before a ‘court’ of scurvy inmates), and boasting a score with but a single good tune. No, not that baritone perennial, but the quasi-title tune: ‘I Am I, Don Quixote.’ (There’s a reason lyricist/composer Mitch Leigh/Joe Darion never had another success.) Elsewise, for those who appreciate dialogue like, ‘I charge you with being an idealist, a bad poet . . . and an honest man,’ this may be just the tripe for you.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Closer to the mark: G.W. Pabst’s DON QUICHOTTE/’33 with legendary bass Feodor Chaliapin, a born Quixote who premiered Jules Massenet’s minor, but pleasing DQ opera, here getting a few songs by Jacques Ibert to replace Maurice Ravel’s rejected ones. OR: From the old USSR, DON KIKHOT/’57, with director Grogori Kozintsev’s switching from Shakespeare adaptations to Cervantes, and Nikolay Cherkasov, Eisenstein’s Nevsky & Ivan, tilting at the windmill in a remarkable scene. Kozintsev’s direction goes dead on interiors, but is thrillingly alive outside.

DESIRE (1936)

After three underperforming films, and a split with director/mentor Josef von Sternberg, Marlene Dietrich needed course correction. A top priority for Ernst Lubitsch in 1935 when he spent a year as Paramount head of production and spearheaded DESIRE’s initial development. And while Frank Borzage wound up doing the physical direction, the end product is echt Lubitsch. (Even taking a rare producer’s credit on a film he didn’t helm.) As a glam jewel thief fleeing Paris, Dietrich finds a perfect pocket for hiding a stolen pearl necklace when she bumps into vacationing car engineer (from Detroit!) Gary Cooper. And oh, what these two beauties do for each other, Cooper keeping her grounded without clipping her wings in a plot that plays out like a series of meet-cutes over three acts. Originally planned with John Gilbert in mind as past lover/current third wheel, the part presumably adjusted when Gilbert died and John Halliday took over as faux Uncle/partner-in-crime instead of romantic rival/partner-in-crime. The change lowers the stakes, especially for Dietrich (the first idea might have come closer to a gender-swapped TROUBLE IN PARADISE; instead, it’s something of a precursor to THE LADY EVE), but there’s too much charm, elegance and delight to worry about what might have been. Plus one of Frederick Hollander’s most enchanting songs for Marlene, ‘Awake in a Dream.’

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above: Lubitsch’s TROUBLE IN PARADISE/’32; Preston Sturges’s THE LADY EVE/’41. OR: Lubitsch’s underappreciated Dietrich follow up, ANGEL/’37.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: In spite of DESIRE, GARDEN OF ALLAH, KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR and ANGEL, Dietrich’s box-office clout remained depressed until she revived the brand getting down & dirty in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN/’39.

MOVIE MOVIE (1978)

Writer Larry Gelbart called his idea DOUBLE FEATURE, an affectionate pastiche/parody of ‘30s movie genres: Kid-to-Champ Boxing pic (think KID GALAHAD/’38); Girl-to-B’way-Star musical (think 42ND STREET/’33); bonus WWI-Daredevil-Flyboy trailer (DAWN PATROL/’30 meets CEILING ZERO/’36). With Stanley Donen as producer/director and actors (even sets) double-cast: boxing in b&w; musical in TechniColor. Good fun, though the boxing pic suffers, as do so many parodies, by delivering less drama and laughs than the real thing. Still, other than the pleasant, but derivative songs, pretty stylish doings. (Great line to his driver as the boxer is being taken home: ‘It’s the next slum.’) With George C. Scott going from cigar-chewing manager/trainer Eddie G. Robinson to brilliantined Warner Baxter’s worn out showman; Red Buttons doing double Frank McHugh sidemen; Trish Van Devere an excellent good girl, less so as B’way meanie (calling Madeline Kahn!); Eli Wallach as Barton MacLane². Plus Harry Hamlin debuting his fat, luscious lips as a John Garfield up-and-coming fighter (physically perfect, too bad they let him in on the joke). Even better, Barry Bostwick, a leggy, blue-eyed wonder doing eccentric dancing a la Hal Leroy (choreographed by Michael Kidd) in the Dick Powell male ingenue spot. Back-loaded with musical ‘numbos,’ the long finale really zings! Compare with Martin Scorsese trying one of these things in ‘Happy Endings,’ mercifully stricken from the originally cut of NEW YORK, NEW YORK/’77.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *While the film earned a mixed reception (not here!), NEW YORK, NEW YORK did have a mind-blowing trailer, capped with a classic Stanley Donen crane shot rising over Liza Minnelli on the title tune.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Look quick to catch Donen intro’ing Reinking at a nightclub and later as a cabbie. ALSO: Beware editions that have the boxing pic in color. (Or adjust color saturation to zero.)

THE STARS LOOK DOWN (1940)

With Alfred Hitchcock off to Hollywood*, Carol Reed became presumptive top Brit helmer. A position signified with a £100,000 budget on this downbeat prestige piece which hoped to repeat the success of King Vidor on THE CITADEL/’38, from A.J. Cronin’ second novel, with this adaptation of Cronin’s first. Both coal town stories, here the P.O.V. shifts from Robert Donat’s new doctor in town to Michael Redgrave’s miner’s son on university scholarship, his upward trajectory stopped when sex rears its lovely head in the form of conniving vixen Margaret Lockwood, latching on to Redgrave when first choice Emlyn Williams leaves her flat. Now back in his old mining town as a teacher, Redgrave is drawn into coal politics when mine owners, the union and the advisory council all give the go-ahead to reopen a shaft in spite of a weak retaining wall Redgrave and his dad have been warning about for years. Given his big opportunity, Reed handles everything they throw at him, with strong, realistic staging and few compromises in story, character or political alliances (eye-opening stuff with the union). What he can’t do is soften Cronin’s misogyny as another woman is used to push a husband against his best judgement/better angels. (Here, the wife; in CITADEL, the mistress; but each letting the guy off the hook.) Very impressive all the same.

DOUBLE-BILL: John Ford’s classic HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY/’41 makes for an obvious comparison (though what can compare with it?), but concentrates more on personal family issues rather than socio-economics. Instead, as mentioned, THE CITADEL, especially for its better first half, with Ralph Richardson wonderful as a doctor with anarchist tendencies.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Four leading players from Hitchcock’s LADY VANISHES/’38 in here: Redgrave, Lockwood, Cecil Parker & Linden Travers. Plus, Desmond Tester, the young brother Hitch blew up in SABOTAGE/’36.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: With Cronin hard to find, try the first chapters of George Orwell’s coal mining exposé THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER.

TOPSY-TURVY (1999)

Any doubts over Mike Leigh’s politically engaged left-leaning politics and improvisitory script development methods irreparably clashing with a bio-pic on librettist William Schwenck Gilbert & composer Arthur Sullivan, supremos of late-Victorian comic operetta, and how they came to write THE MIKADO, are joyously unwarranted in one of the best films ever made on the creative process. Everything turned out right on this one, from casting (special nods to Jim Broadbent’s Gilbert & Timothy Spall’s lead comedian), to sets & costumes (gorgeous attention to period detail, with fine captures of THE MIKADO premiere, tacitly acknowledging The Savoy Theatre's historic place as the world’s first electrically lit), and that rarest of assets, a factual theatrical story worth the telling. Gilbert, an eccentric terror (Broadbent merely sitting to read his script one of the great highlights) and Sullivan, nicest of musical geniuses, warring with his natural gift for light entertainment. Yet in the long view, it's undoubtedly Sullivan’s ability to give flesh & blood thru music to Gilbert’s puppet characters and tempered social satire that keep these wonderful pieces alive as great works of popular art. And Leigh structures it so brilliantly, not quite linear, with chinks in almost everyone’s armor (addiction and backstage feuds, fear of intimacy, physical decline & artistic stifling vanity), so that non-G&S enthusiasts can find a way in to the drama, laughs, triumphs & poignancy.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: An earlier attempt at a bio-pic, imaginatively entitled GILBERT AND SULLIVAN/’53 (not seen here), even with a perfectly cast Robert Morley as Schwenk, was a notorious commercial flop. While an official, slightly reconfigured, filmed version of THE MIKADO/’39, cast largely with company men & designs, is too reverent for its own good. (see below)

DOUBLE-BILL: One of the few films of note to bring off similar concerns on life/art/theater: Jean Renoir’s FRENCH CANCAN/’55, now out in a spectacular restoration.

TO EACH HIS OWN (1946)

Nearly all Hollywood Golden Age female stars played Unwed Mother sometime during their careers. (Loretta Young did it for real, going to Europe after an affair with Clark Gable on CALL OF THE WILD/’35, then returning with an ‘adopted’ girl.) This film, a superior example of the form, comes rather late in the cycle, but easily gets away with changing post-WWII mores by setting its instigating sin during WWI when glam flyboy John Lund (in an excellent debut he never quite lived up to), on a publicity swing, vamps hard-to-land local belle Olivia de Havilland only to find he’s suddenly gone serious on her . . . and vice versa. But since we all know the mortality rate for WWI flyers, and since the film is told as a WWII London-set flashback with de Havilland, now a tough-as-nails business mogul dashing off to meet the son she could never acknowledge (he’s a WWII flyboy much like Dad), the death is no big surprise. What does surprise is how intelligently it’s all laid out & played for us. By de Havilland, of course, Oscar’d for the role (note how smartly she plays middle-aged spinster, embittered rather than trembly white-haired & stooped), but also from Roland Culver as a titled, unlikely British suitor, along with a host of unsung Paramount contract players under unusually detailed, fluid period direction by the underrated Mitchell Leisen. Even the cute little boy who doesn’t know why ‘Aunt’ Olivia is so threatening, clinging and over-protective is better than you expect. Like the film as a whole.

DOUBLE-BILL: Mitchell Leisen also had John Lund in the far odder Unwed Mother film noir, NO MAN OF HER OWN/’50, from a Cornell Woolrich story, with pregnant Barbara Stanwyck taking advantage of a serendipitous train wreck to change her identify.

THE PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK (1935)

A stage hit in London & New York for matinee idol Johnston Forbes-Robertson (he filmed it in 1918), and you’ll see why. A fine piece of sentimental poetic realism (make that kitchen-sink poetic realism), its irresistible leading role, here Conrad Veidt, puts a mystery boarder at a lower middle-class rooming house in London, filled with interacting tenants, each on the verge of missing their chance at happiness. An unspoken crush between two lonely souls on the wrong side of thirty; a debt-plagued family whose lovely daughter (Anna Lee) is emotionally tied to a penniless artist upstairs, but bartered to a cut-throat businessman across the hall; a common scullery maid, a good girl with a dicey past, dreaming of a nice tenant while fending off unwanted advances by that same businessman. All these little dramas given a nudge in the ‘right’ direction by our elusive/other-worldly new resident. Neatly handled on a tight budget by German/Hollywood exile, director Berthold Viertel* and shot by another ex-UFA man, Curt Courant, just off THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH for Alfred Hitchcock whose wife, Alma Reville, shares script credit. Bumpy going here and there, and the concept has a fuzzy, metaphysical spin, but memorable just the same.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: *Donna Rifkind’s new bio on Berthold Viertel’s wife, THE SUN AND HER STARS: SALKA VIERTEL AND HITLER’S EXILES IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD, covers Berthold’s difficult career as well as the huge influence Salka had in Hollywood from best pal Greta Garbo on down as writer, literary salon keeper & warmhearted cook of German specialties.