HER HUSBAND'S AFFAIRS (1947)

Protean writer Ben Hecht didn’t have input on all the films that made Golden Age Hollywood golden; it just sometimes seems that way.  But did he also invent the Lucille Ball of I LOVE LUCY fame?  Maybe so to judge by this neat little domestic comedy, co-written with Charles Lederer.  Far better, if less known than MONKEY BUSINESS/’52, which they’d write in a similar vein for Howard Hawks, it’s also far less asinine.  (Though don’t try convincing Hawks acolytes.)  It’s simply directed by S. Sylvan Simon, getting everything across without going stupid for easy laughs.  Franchot Tone, working very well with Ball (especially crawling over her in what’s almost a shared double-bed*), is Edward Everett Horton’s ad man (hats; shave-less shaving cream; hair growth tonic; embalming fluid that turns flesh to glass; an odd line up!).  Scattered, inspired and needing his wife’s helping hand Tone knows they’re a great team, but resents the assistance and then watching her get the Lion’s Share of credit.  Pretty funny stuff most of the way, with excellent payoffs and a real swing to its pacey delivery.  Fun seeing Ball’s character getting her laughs thru overbearing competence rather than overbearing incompetence.  But already very recognizable as LUCY.  Next year, when MY FAVORITE HUSBAND took her to radio, she’d add that quality and see the rest of the I LOVE LUCY elements fall into place.  Give Hecht credit for an assist.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Lucy’s even closer to her iconic self in MISS GRANT TAKES RICHMOND/’49.  OR: see another aspect of Ball in her next release, SORROWFUL JONES/’49.  Over at Paramount, she and Bob Hope make Damon Runyon characters for the ages in a film not quite up to them.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/sorrowful-jones-1949.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Our poster gets this wrong (see above), and entirely misses a daringly shared single headboard.

PIG (2021)

Oft-maligned Nicolas Cage nabbed good reviews on this quirky character piece; as did feature debuting writer/director Michael Sarnoski.*  Working at an eccentrically measured pace to chart the hermit-like existence of off-the-grid society dropout Cage, living in a shack that might serve for the sty where his companionate truffle-hunting pig waits to join him on his daily forest forage.  Elsewise, Cage interacting only with a young man trading baskets of food & supplies for the pricey fungi when his quotidian routine is brutally interrupted by a pig-napping and a thrashing.  Who could possibly be responsible?  Who would bother?  Cage has his suspicions.  But once he and his ‘buyer’ set off for the big city (Portland, OR) to get to the bottom of his missing pig, everything turns both conventional & sentimental, with pat ‘explanations’ from past actions and ripening payoffs.  What had seemed dramatically fresh now looking slow & obvious, every concrete answer a dramatic diminution.  Personal loss, business trouble, professional jealousy, father/son issues, a mental breakdown that swamps a genius of the kitchen and leaves behind bare subsistence in a hermitage of his own making.  With Cage restricted to vamping on a one-stringed instrument while he waits for resolution.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Naturally, Hollywood plans to bump Sarnoski up to a big-ticket franchise: A QUIET PLACE Part III.  Maybe his mordant nature will let someone rip a fart loud enough for the noise-activated monsters to make Part IV unnecessary.

IMPASSE (1968)

With its meaningless title, tv lineage, C- rating & pre-breakout Burt Reynolds, you don’t expect much from this B-pic adventure about mismatched fortune hunters meeting in the Philippines to loot a forgotten cache of WWII gold near Corregidor.  Yet it’s not bad at all.  (Reynolds has far worse on his sorry-ass C.V.)  Efficiently staged in & around Manila by Richard Benedict (who he?), there’s mean Lyle Bettger as a racist army vet; Rodolfo Acosta as the quick-to-fight alcoholic Native America; Vic Diaz as chubby cuckold with glam wife; and local salvage operator Burt leading the hunt and screwing the wife.  Plenty for scripter John Higgins to work with.  (He’s the class act here . . . but only if you go back to the ‘40s.)  Plus cheeky Anne Francis as a tennis champ on hand to play doubles with Burt and find her long lost dad, the man who knows where the loot is.  No doubt, low expectations help this one a lot; and where else can you see Burt putting his act together under his own head of hair, before the Good Ol’ Boy accent took over, looking fit rather than buffed & groomed?  Watch him in a big extended brawl that starts at a cock fight with the crowd switching gears to bet on him rather than the roosters before heading to the street, and with Burt still doing all his own stunt work.  Ouch!  The guy was a natural as long as he didn’t know it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Someone got away with a very ‘blue’ joke for 1968 when the Reynolds/Francis relationship suddenly heats up as they wait for an elevator.  The doors open & the operator boy looks at Burt, asking, ‘Going down?’  Yikes!  Elevators were all self-operating by then, but how else to get the line in?

IL TETTO / THE ROOF (1956)

The films that ‘top’ and ‘tail’ the Vittorio De Sica/Cesare Zavattini Neo-Realism cycle don’t get the attention they deserve.*  And while not reaching the heights of SHOESHINE’46, BICYCLE THIEVES/’48 or UMBERTO D./’52 . . . well, what does?  This one comes as Italy entered its economic post-war miracle days, the IL BOOM bubble, seen here in an explosion of building and a housing shortage.  A situation that traps attractive newlyweds Gabriella Pallotta & Giorgio Listuzzia (like most here, non-pros making debuts), forcing them to room with in-laws, ten people in a two & a half room flat.  But desperate times demand . . . desperate housing choices, and a loophole in the building code allows a residence that goes up complete overnight on some available site to get the official okay IF there’s a legit roof on the structure.  Pooling everything on this impossible shot, and borrowing enough to put them in debt for decades, the wife (a surprisingly spunky stubborn little thing - and the one cast member to go on to a decent acting career) and her bricklaying husband take the plunge.  De Sica finding all sorts of obstacles and workarounds: a particularly nasty speculator; a few vacancies dreadful enough to motivate anyone; a family feud mended by need for another pair of expert hands; and a delightful kid from the next door lean-to who knows a few ins-and-outs to at least give them a fighting chance.  Plenty of spirit, plenty of suspense, plenty of arguments, but with D Sica knowing exactly how far he can push without overloading the drama and making this look like a set up.  A fine wrap up to an era of Italian filmmaking.  And, of course, with many great things yet to come in different keys by this remarkable man.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *That Neo-Realism precursor: THE CHILDREN ARE WATCHING US/’44.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/children-are-watching-us-1943.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Both these stories working a step or two up the financial ladder from the others which may have something to do with their relative obscurity.  IL TETTO also ends with real (earned) optimism.

WILD IN THE STREETS (1968)

This late ‘sixties ‘youth culture’ provocation could have been a social/political time capsule of a volatile era, but AIP shlockmeisters Samuel Z. Arkoff & James H. Nicholson knew concept alone would sell the thing and hired t.v. hacks on the cheap to write & direct.  Too bad, the concept is a pip: Kids get The Vote & elect Twenty-somethings to take over the government.  Yikes! . . . or Yippee!  It’s Revenge of the Frosted Flakes Crowd.  Alas, jokey subversion as far as we get: forced retirement at 30; buses to Camp Concentration @ 35; tabs of LSD to sedate.  A level of pandering unimagined even by Alice Cooper in 1972's ‘School’s Out For EVER!’  (The songs in here going nowhere with the exception of ‘Shape of Things to Come,’ not a bad anthem.) A surprisingly decent cast of adults chew up the scenery (Shelley Winters, like fingernails on a chalkboard as Mom; Hal Holbrook’s means-to-an-end  Senator; old-school conservative Ed Begley), but can’t touch the dry comic edge Paul (ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE) Frees gets out of the overblown narration.  And the ‘youngsters?’  Mostly looking ready for that 35 & up Concentration Camp Bus.  Especially Richard Pryor (how’d he get in here?) and decidedly unfresh Christopher Jones, a tintype James Dean who’d soon self-destruct in David Lean’s RYAN’S DAUGHTER/’70, never to be heard of again.

SCEWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: You only have to imagine ‘60s Jean-Luc Godard taking this on to see the possibilities.  Try his lesser known LA CHINOISE/’67.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/la-chinoise-1967.html      On the other hand, Michelangelo Antonioni did try something along these lines, ZABRISKIE POINT/’70.  A famous disaster with another male lead never heard from again.

IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY (1947)

Unusual for a film this influential/copied to remain freshly felt and powerfully effective.  But this post-war ‘kitchen sink’ drama (about half the film actually in the kitchen) builds character & suspense out of well-observed working-class rowhouse detail, like a period piece made at the time so it doesn't feel dated.  It’s where dissatisfied second-wife Googie Withers gets the shock of her life when one-time flame John McCallum, just escaped from prison, shows up hiding in the old air raid shelter asking for help.  Sunday means the whole family (dull, older husband, grown step-daughters, young son) will all be out and about which gives them a chance to get away with . . . with what?  A change of clothes?  Rekindled romance?  A getaway future?  Certainly not happiness, life just too bleak.  Everything clicks here, the nearly realistic settings, the bitter relationships and past passion between former lovers.  With three or four more on-going interrelated little dramas playing out concurrently in neighborhood pubs, shops and street corners.  Quite a busy Sunday, plenty for nosy police detective Jack Warner to check on.  A breakthru for director Robert Hamer, whose next was the darkly comic KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS/’49, here pacing two-hours of plot into a tidy hour & a half yet not seeming to skimp.  (The films not only showing Hamer’s remarkable range, but also cinematographer Douglas Slocombe's.)  Sympathetic to every lying soul in the piece, and even to the only two people who don’t constantly lie: Withers’ nice dull husband, and the Music Shop wife whose unfaithful husband is making a play for one of the unhappy step-daughters.  Plus, a little bit of Yiddish from East End Jews!  Just three words, one repeated (shiksha); one mispronounced (schlemiel).  The film an unexpected treat from little Ealing Studios, better known for their British Everyman Comedies.  Here, an Everywoman Tragedy.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: During the character build-ups, Hamer gets in and out of a couple of flashbacks without the soft focus or wavy line transitions commonly used at the time.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Co-scripter Angus MacPhail, a past & future Hitchcock collaborator, brought even more realistic middle-class tone to Hitch’s habitually underrated THE WRONG MAN/’56.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-wrong-man-1956.html

BACKLASH (1956)

Decent chamber Western, if not as good as it might be.  Scripted by vet specialist Borden Chase and directed by fast-rising John Sturges in an early go at the form, it opens mean & lean, like a Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott Western, well grounded in bleak terrain.  (That famous series also starting this year.)  Here, it’s Richard Widmark at some ruined desert structure bumping into Donna Reed.  Strangers, she immediately sends him into harms way, bait to uncover a sniper.  A fine opening; if only the rest of the film continued in this tough/enigmatic vein.  Instead, a revenge tale, with Reed assuming Widmark’s out to find a missing fortune in gold when he’s really hunting for a ‘Sixth Man,’ a killer within that gold hunting group who murdered five partners, including Widmark’s own father, a man he never knew.  Chase’s script holds back on its few character & story surprises, and while you won’t be surprised by the guessable twists, you may be by some pretty sloppy camera angles Sturges should have fixed to better cover punches, slaps & action that seems to miss by a mile.  Sturges really could phone it in at times.  Maybe he was hoping for a script that would stay as brutally concise & bleak as that opening.  Or maybe he was just looking ahead to his next, a big budget/big star Western with Burt Lancaster & Kirk Douglas, GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL/’57.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: In spite of O.K. CORRAL and MAGNIFICENT SEVEN/’60, Sturges’ best Western is a modern one, BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK/’55.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/bad-day-at-black-rock-1955.html

KOMA / COMA (2019)

Russian Sci-Fi horror, a directing debut for visual effects guy Nikita Argunov, has a thousand-and-one imaginative ideas.   About nine-hundred and eighty-three more than it needs.  We wake to a dystopian dream world built from the collective memories of ‘brain-dead’ coma victims who disintegrate if they die back in the real world.  But in this alternate landscape without gravity-bound physical laws or boundaries, death comes in the form of ectoplasmic zombie-like creatures.  Stay away from them, create something new, and perhaps there’s a life to be lived in this Brave New World . . . or something like that.  It’s not exactly written up for us.  There’s a decent cool factor in the look of the thing for a while, but the characters don’t make much of a mark and the guerilla-like military tactics by our motley group of survivors are all flash, bash & crash, without a sense of cause & effect to build rooting interest in the stakes.  Anyway, if they’re all ‘brain-dead,’ how can they have these memories to build on?  Or is mankind’s collective memory really just sitting in the slush pile of rejected projects over at Christopher Nolan’s office.  ZOMBIE INCEPTION, anyone?  The real threat comes in a final shot that suggests a possible sequel.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Our leading-man/coma victim is an architect who can conjure up walls, buildings & bridges simply by thinking about the structure.  No Frank Gehry, he comes up with spindly facades fit for a tween’s gargantuan dollhouse.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Not a fan of INCEPTION /’10?  Try Japanese anime PAPRIKA/’06, uneven but worth a look.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/paprika-2006.html

ANNA LUCASTA (1958)

Back in the mid-‘40s, some reader at the American Negro Theatre likely had the clever idea of turning a mediocre play by Philip Yordan (future top Hollywood scripter) from an All-White to an All-Black affair.  A sort of What-If take on Eugene O’Neill’s ANNA CHRISTIE, here the tart doesn’t return home to Waterfront Dad, but to a big noisy, mettlesome family setting her up to marry a Butter-and-Egg man.  Erotic meets exotic circa 1946; the play an outstanding two-year run success.  Snapped up by Hollywood for a 1949 film, the film went back to Yordan’s original All-White dramatic persona (Paulette Goddard, John Ireland - not seen here).  Nine years later, along with some loosening in the old Hollywood Production Code, it returns to the Big Screen with a starry All-Black cast (Eartha Kitt, Rex Ingram, Sammy Davis Jr.).  And while it couldn’t recreate that 1946 B’way buzz, it’s quite an entertaining show, now with added echoes of Tennessee Williams & Lillian Hellman in the bustling family mix.  The houseful of supporting actors so much silly fun, they quite overshadow the romance, marriage, redemption, renunciation angle that sees Kitt deciding whether she can be a quiet little wren to spouse-worthy Henry Scott or take that redeemable round-the-world coupon on offer from heavily pomaded Sailor-Man Davis.  (Davis knows he’s overdoing the Brylcreme, watch him wipe his hands off on a tablecloth after combing that mop.)  Fun!

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Hard to imagine this with the earlier All-White cast in ‘49, but have a go.  Other than its famous title, the play now seems completely forgotten.  You’ll see why, but still a shame.