Visit the ''movie palace'' with me to see what I think of some of the great old movies.

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REMBRANDT (1936)

I know nothing about the famed Dutch painter Rembrandt, played here by Charles Laughton, but a quick perusal of an encyclopedia entry tells me that this film is more fiction than fact. Nonetheless, this is a well-acted and nicely shot film, directed by Alexander Korda, who also directed Laughton in THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII. The episodic film begins with Rembrandt, well known and respected, at the peak of his career and in the midst of working on a portrait of his wife, who is ailing (and whom we never see). As he delivers a long, adoring ode to his wife to his friends in a tavern, he is summoned to her deathbed. At the funeral meal, he continues the painting as though she's still posing. What follows is a series of narrative snapshots from the rest of his life. His long-awaited, gigantic, and expensive painting of the Civic Guard of Amsterdam ("Night Watch") is reviled by the Guard members for making them look undignified. His loyal housekeeper (Gertrude Lawrence) becomes his lover, but they cannot marry until his young son comes of age because of a clause in the will of his wife that would leave him bankrupt if he did. He has a beggar (Roger Livesey) pose for a portrait of the biblical Saul. Afraid he's going to lose his house to creditors, he goes back to live in his provincial hometown but feels like a misfit. On his return to Amsterdam, he is struck by the sight of a kitchen maid (Elsa Lanchester), paints her, and ultimately takes her as a lover, igniting Lawrence's wrath. Lanchester figures out a way for him to get around his creditors, who try to claim any new work of his for themselves, by setting up her own gallery of his work which he has given freely to her. By the end of the film, he is aged and alone except for a benefactor who gives him money for food (which he promptly spends on art supplies). The penultimate scene, with Laughton proclaiming, "All is vanity" to a table of carousing youths who have included him in their drinking, is Laughton at his best. The look of the film is painterly, with lots of bright light and vivid textures, apparently meant to conjure up Rembrandt's own technique with light. My favorite moment is Laughton, in a reverie, talking not entirely happily, about the burden of living "in a beautiful, blinding, swirling mist." The movie is also worth seeing for Gertrude Lawrence, the actress played by Julie Andrews in STAR! and parodied by Ann Sheridan in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, giving a rare screen performance. [DVD]
posted by Michael at 12:55 PM

 
THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS (1938)

Mild romantic comedy which for me is more irritating than funny for two reasons: its fake feminist plot trappings and the performance of Robert Montgomery. He's a struggling shipbuilder married to a successful theatrical agent (Virginia Bruce). He snags a dream job that involves moving from New York City to New Bedford, and he assumes that his wife will give up her job and move with him. She, however, actually likes her job and wants to keep it, which leads to strife and separation. Her boss (Warren William) tries to help her and a battle of lawyers follows with some standard-issue trickery ensuing between the two sides. The sticking point winds up being a suggestion that she pay him alimony since she's making more money. When an ailing but beloved uncle (Harry Davenport) comes to visit, Montgomery agrees to spend the night to make the uncle think everything's fine, but Bruce's lawyer (Alan Dinehart) uses the occasion to snare him in a legal trap (sort of the opposite of the "Gay Divorcee" trap, using his presence at her place to imply that he's living with her and therefore not eligible to get alimony). I was disposed to like the film because Bruce is so appealing and her character clearly likes her career, but then things get resolved by biology: she finds out she's pregnant and decides to follow Montgomery away from the city to be a wife and mother. The moral of this tale can be encapsulated in one line of dialogue at the end: "Nature--that monkey wrench in the machinery of women's independence." Binnie Barnes and Lee Bowman do fine as friends who try to swoop in on Montgomery and Bruce. Montgomery is at his most doltish and irritating, but I do like Virginia Bruce, so I guess I'm glad to have seen this. [TCM]
posted by Michael at 8:40 PM

 
THE WHISTLER (1944)

Nifty little B-thriller, the first in an 8-film series based on a popular radio show. Despite the title, this was not a superhero or detective series, but a suspense anthology (think Twilight Zone atmosphere but without the fantasy elements) which told crime stories with ironic twists. The title character was the narrator (think Rod Serling never showing his face) who would also sometimes comment on the action; once in a while we'd see him from a distance, strolling along and whistling mournfully. In this one, Richard Dix (who starred in most of the films, always playing different characters) is a man who, depressed over the apparent death of his wife at sea in a Japanese attack, hires someone to kill him. The middleman (George Lloyd) farms the job out to seasoned hitman J. Carroll Naish who begins staking out his prey. When Dix gets a telegram telling him that his wife is alive in a Japanese prison camp and is being shipped home soon, he's ecstatic and sets out to cancel the hit. Unfortunately, Lloyd was a cop killer who was himself killed by cops just after setting up Dix's hit. Dix thinks Lloyd's girl (Joan Woodbury) can help him stop the hitman, but she thinks that Dix set Lloyd up, so she's not much help, and in fact endangers his life by involving him in a log mountain road chase with police. When Dix drops out of sight to escape Naish, the newspapers say that he has amnesia and Dix's loyal secretary (the always wonderful Gloria Stuart) tries to find him. The hour-long film moves along nicely, though the climax, as in many B-films, is rushed and choppy and the production values are about average for a second-feature. [TCM]
posted by Michael at 8:31 PM

 
WHITE CARGO (1942)

If you're only going to watch one "tropical melodrama" in your life, it should probably be THE LETTER, but if you decide to watch a second one, make it this one. I have a weakness for this kind of movie in which Americans, stuck in the Equatorial climes working at a rubber plantation (as in this film) or searching for riches or cruising on a ship, come to some kind of grief, usually involving romance or guns or both. This one, based on a 20's play, is a lot of fun; it's not quite campy, like the the Jon Hall/Maria Montez jungle films, because its humor is usually deliberate and the acting is restrained. Set in 1910 Africa, the film begins with Walter Pidgeon, the local magistrate, waiting to welcome the new plantation manager, young and energetic Richard Carlson, who is replacing Bramwell Fletcher, a burned out alcoholic. The cynical, tightly wound Pidgeon predicts that Carlson will soon wind up just like Fletcher, destroyed by "damp rot." (There is a running gag involving Pidgeon's violent reaction to Fletcher constantly saying "Blasted hot today," and later Carlson irritates him in the same way saying, "When I get acclimated...") Carlson is warned about the notorious exotic half-breed Tondelayo (Hedy Lamarr), but when she comes slinking into his shack, he goes slack-jawed with lust. Eventually, Carlson marries Lamarr (there appear to be virtually no other women in the area), but she soon gets restless and starts flirting with Pidgeon. When nothing comes of that, she sets about slowly poisoning Carlson. Some reviewers claim that there is a love triangle among the three leads, but I didn't see much evidence that Pidgeon actually wanted Lamarr, though he may be jealous that Carlson has a wife in their godforsaken corner of the world, and it seems clear that Lamarr has no real affection for either of the men, above and beyond any money and trinkets she can get. The film is rather stagy, with most of the action taking place in just a few interior rooms, but it all does feel effectively hot and grungy, especially with all the sweating flesh (mostly Carlson's). The role of Tondelayo is usually cited as the one that Lamarr is best known for, and she certainly looks striking with her dusky makeup (she's supposed to be half-Arabian, raised by African natives); it also helps that she is always shot in shadow or with a shadow across her face, making her look mysterious. Her acting talents, such as they were, don't get much of a workout. The youthful and sexy Carlson is fine, as is Frank Morgan as a well-meaning but frequently drunken doctor, Henry O'Neill as the local Reverend, and Reginald Owen as a skipper. Pidgeon is the weak link as far as I'm concerned; he is wooden and unappealing, and substitutes volume of voice for expression of emotion. But the movie is still great fun, though not for a second to be taken seriously. [TCM]
posted by Michael at 7:53 PM

 
GIRL ON THE RUN (1958)

My partner and I have been having a lot of fun watching reruns of the 50's detective series "77 Sunset Strip" on the American Life cable network. The show follows the adventures of two private eyes, Stu Bailey (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) and Jeff Spencer (Roger Smith, quite the hottie, one year after he played Mame's nephew in AUNTIE MAME) who operate out of an L.A. office next to a nightclub called Dino's, which practically serves as their waiting room. The two are swinging bachelors who are always finding some innocent girl or femme fatale to flirt with. The show is probably better remembered these days for the character of Kookie (Edward Byrnes), the flip, hip young guy who was always combing his hair while he parked cars at Dino's, called everyone "Dad," and often helped out on cases. This film was apparently the 90-minute pilot for the show; according to online episode guides, it was aired as the first episode in October '58 and as far as I can tell, never received a theatrical release, but despite the presence of Zimbalist and Byrnes, it bears only a tangential relationship to the series that followed. Zimbalist gets involved in the case of a young singer (Erin O'Brien) who has fled Seattle after seeing the murder of a star witness in a major criminal case. She winds up in L.A. under an assumed name and Zimbalist tracks her down for a man (Shepperd Strudwick) who claims to be her boyfriend. He's not, however; he's the DA on the Seattle case who has a nasty secret or two of his own. Byrnes plays, not Kookie, but Kenneth Smiley, a cold-blooded killer who nevertheless has an amusing scene in which he remains behind in a theater long enough to finish watching a Daffy Duck cartoon. Also in the cast is Barton MacLane (one of the cops who made trouble for Bogart in THE MALTESE FALCON). It's a little slow getting started, and I missed Roger Smith, who never shows up, but there are some good fisticuffs and chases, and the show does set up the Zimbalist character as a scholar of Sanskrit, a plot detail that crops up during the run of the show a couple of times. It's also nice to see Byrnes get a chance to stretch a little beyond his insolent hipster persona. [TV]
posted by Michael at 7:40 PM

 
TASK FORCE (1949)

Though made after WWII, this is the kind of movie that Hollywood pumped out in the years before America was officially engaged in the war: a quick history of a particular branch of the military or of a military breakthrough. Here, Gary Cooper serves as the focus for a story about the development of the aircraft carrier as a practical addition to the forces of the United States Navy. The film begins with Cooper retiring and then flashes back to 25 years earlier when pilots were just learning to land on the first carrier of its kind, the Langley. Some Navy brass and Congressmen are against developing a carrier fleet, and Commander Walter Brennan enlists Cooper to go to Washington to do some sweet talking; instead he gets into a spat with a powerful lawmaker (Stanley Ridges) when he speculates that Japan might have sinister intentions and a carrier fleet would be a perfect defense. We follow Cooper over the years as he gets demoted to a desk job, put back into a flying job, suffers through a crash, marries Jane Wyatt (widow of a fellow Navy pilot), and continues promoting aircraft carriers (and continues to antagonize Ridges). Of course, Cooper's predictions about a sea war with Japan come true and his career comes to its peak when he winds up on the Enterprise, the last carrier left in action. The bulk of the film is in black & white, with the last reel (about 20 minutes worth) in color, for no apparent reason. Cooper was entering what I think of as his "old man" phase and he's not particularly convincing as a young man. There's a decent supporting cast which includes Wayne Morris, Bruce Bennett, and John Ridgely as fellow pilots, and singer Julie London as Morris's gal. It's predictable (you just know that some tangential character is gonna die at Pearl Harbor so that "this time, it's personal") and a fair amount of newsreel footage is worked in toward the end. Not a bad movie, but at two hours, not one I'd care to sit through again. [TCM]
posted by Michael at 2:54 PM