KINDAR THE INVULNERABLE (1965)

The walled city of Utor in the middle of the Egyptian desert is ruled by a king who is constantly on guard against invasion from a band of nomads anxious to get access to a natural spring in the city that gives abundant water, something that is hard to come by in the desert. During a storm, the queen goes into painful labor and just as she gives birth, a lightning bolt strikes her through the window, killing her but leaving her infant son not only alive but, as foretold by legend, invulnerable to any injury except from the "Red Flower," a term that none of the seers understands. The king hopes he will grow up to be Utor's invincible protector, but just after his birth, he is kidnapped by a treacherous handmaiden and taken to Seymuth, leader of the nomads, who raises him over the years as his son and names him Kindar. Twenty years later, Seymuth decides the time is right for an invasion of Utor, led by the grown Kindar, who is revealed to be invulnerable when Seymuth has a squad of men shoot arrows at him which bounce off his muscular chest. During their first attack, they manage to capture Nefer, lover of the king's other son, Ciro. When Ciro comes to rescue her, the nomads force him into a duel to the death with Kindar. It's a pretty good battle, with whips and rocks, and when Kindar prevails, he spares Ciro's life and allows her to take Nefer with him back to Utor. Eventually, Kindar discovers the secret behind his parentage, learning that he is Ciro's brother. The king of Utor tests him by putting him in a device called The Bride of Horus, basically an iron maiden torture device, and when he emerges unscathed, he joins up with Ciro and the king to battle the nomads. Seymouth decides that the "red flower" of myth is fire, and in the final battle, he plans to use fire to fight Kindar.

This is an engaging sword-and-sandal flick, and a bit of an outlier in that, though made by an Italian company with mostly Italian actors, it is set and partly shot in Egypt. There is no wicked queen with designs on our hero, no volcanos, and no gods (we discover that these people worship Horus though we don't get a backstory for the legends surrounding Kindar). There are, however, shirtless muscled men, bosomy women, a big city, and a shift in who we see as good and bad. Italian-American Mark Forest, star of several peplum films, is a solid handsome hero, though he is supposed to be 20 but looks much closer to his actual age of 30—and on a gay note, we see some of his assets delightfully displayed in his tight red leggings. After this film, he retired from movies and became an opera singer. Howard Ross (pictured, credited as Red Ross) as Ciro is also decked out nicely. Mimmo Palmara (Seymuth) is almost as hunky as the hero. Rosalba Neri (Kira) and Dea Flowers (Nefer) look their parts even if they have little to do except get in trouble or get others out of trouble. The suspense element of the Red Flower is not handled well—basically, Kindar just darts in and out of the flames in the final battle. But overall, a solid entry in the peplum genre. It's lovely to see a handful of shots with a real pyramid in the background, though the bulk of the movie was shot in Spain. [YouTube]

SEVEN SEAS TO CALAIS (1963)

Plymouth, England, 1577. A man is attempting to smuggle a map of New World port cities where the Spanish have hidden gold reserves. He is killed in the streets but manages to give the map to passerby Malcolm Marsh (Keith Michell) and tells him with his dying breath to get the map to notorious explorer and privateer Francis Drake (Rod Taylor, pictured)—privateer here seems to mean a pirate who mostly attacks ships from the enemy of his country. Marsh manages to get to Drake who decides to take his men and sail around South America to grab the gold. Marsh becomes his chief assistant and falls in love with Arabella, a member of the Queen's court. Queen Elizabeth (Irene Worth) tells the Spanish ambassador that she opposes any of Drake's activities, but in secret is bankrolling his trip in exchange for some of the booty. While becalmed near the tip of South America, there are stirrings of a mutiny which Drake and Marsh put down. Eventually, they get hold of some gold and fraternize with the Incas while back in England, pining Arabella gets mixed up with Babington (Terence Hill, billed early in his career by his birth name, Mario Girotti) who is plotting with King Philip of Spain to assassinate the Queen and replace her with her imprisoned rival Mary of Scotland. When Drake returns, he tries to foil Babington's plot and is then tasked with fighting off the Spanish Armada—and as anyone who knows the phrase "Spanish Armada" will realize, the British are victorious.

This is probably total historical hogwash, but as an under-budgeted costume adventure film, sort of on a par with the Italian sword-and-sandal films of the era, it's satisfying enough. Rod Taylor carries the whole thing on his capable shoulders, making Drake a cocky, fun, and laid-back sort of fellow, with a goatee that makes him look quite saucy, in the tradition of swashbuckler actors like Errol Flynn; he would appear the same year in Hitchcock's The Birds. Keith Michell is similarly personable, and quite handsome, as his young buddy. Irene Worth plays the Queen like a slyboots character who wouldn't be out of place at Downton Abbey. Edy Vessel as Arabella and Terence Hill as Babington are fine. The sword fights are quite well done, feeling more real and less staged than similar scenes in older movies. The passage of time is not dealt with clearly, partly due to some oddly abrupt scene transitions. The first time this happened, early on, I attributed it to a choppy print, but it happened a few more times so I think it must have been deliberate. The director, Rudolph Maté (When Worlds Collide) was at the end of his career, and though his best work was as a cinematographer (Stella Dallas, Foreign Correspondent, Gilda), this does not display much visual flair. Some viewers dock this movie points for its obvious use of miniatures, but for me, that's part of the suspension of disbelief that we always engage in. No classic, but it sure is Saturday matinee fun. [TCM]

L'ECLISSE (1962)

I've recently been revisiting the Michelangelo Antonioni alienation films of the 60s and 70s. I saw them many years ago but realized I had not reviewed most of them for this blog, only LA NOTTE. As Susan Doll notes on the Turner Classic Movies website, the director "abandoned the clarity, logic, and directness of classical modes of filmmaking, preferring intentionally vague characters in tenuous narratives that remain open-ended and disorienting." The films can be a bit of a slog, but I don’t mind rewatching them for their stark settings and interesting visual style, and for the pretty people who act in them. This one wins in terms of smokin' hot leads: Monica Vitti (who was in many of his movies) and Alain Delon, but it is probably the slackest of the bunch in terms of narrative drive. We begin at dawn by watching the end of a long relationship between Vitti and a slightly older writer (Francisco Rabal) for whom she does translation work. They have spent all night in his apartment hashing out their problems—he looks all in, but as Viiti tends to do, she looks ravishing. She finally leaves and, though he follows her through an urban desert setting (the movie is set in a corner of Rome in which urban buildings and streets end next to stark empty plains), he leaves when she arrives at her apartment. Later in the day, Vitti visits her mother at the stock exchange where she is an active dabbler, and Vitti meets her mother's stockbroker, the young and handsome Alain Delon, who is quite the stock market hustler. That night, Vitti meets up with some friends who debate the issue of colonialism in Africa while Vitti puts on blackface and dances, making the others uncomfortable even though one of the women refers to African natives as "monkeys." The next day, Vitti and Delon meet, and as they get further involved, he takes her to his wealthy parents' house where she tells him, "Two people shouldn't know too much about each other if they want to fall in love." They spend a couple of days hanging out and having sex, though they don't actually seem to be having fun, or getting particularly close in other ways. They make plans to meet that evening, but in a seven-minute sequence at the end in which the camera prowls the streets, they appear to stand each other up.

I wrote in my notes that Monica Vitti had perfected a "resting alienation face" which she uses for much of this movie. She is beautiful and sexy even when suffering from existential angst. Delon is more lively and less preoccupied with worrisome thoughts, but he has his own angst—his relationship with his family seems dicey, his behavior at the stock exchange is not always on the level, and before Vitti, his romantic encounters seem to have been with high-class hookers. When the two are on screen together, I can forgive the narrative doldrums. Francisco Rabal (pictured with Vitti) is only in the film for a while in the beginning, but he makes a strong impression as a man who seems exhausted by life (or maybe he's just exhausted by Vitti). Rabal can’t compete with the two stars in terms of looks, but he is a handsome man. In my notes, I referred to him as an older man, but Rabal was only five years older than Vitti, so he just looks more mature, more beaten down by life, perhaps. The settings, all drawn from real life, are fascinating, sometimes more interesting than what's happening with the actors. Of Antonioni's films of this era, this, at two hours, is probably the hardest to sit through without taking a break. I don't typically take breaks while watching films at home, but I did fidget quite a bit now and then. Still, a worthwhile experience for 60s film buffs. [Criterion Channel]

MAN-PROOF (1938)

Myrna Loy, daughter of romance novelist Nana Bryant, is staying at her mother's house on Long Island, anxiously awaiting the return of playboy Walter Pidgeon from a trip to Palm Springs, assuming that he will propose to her. Instead, she gets a telegram that Pidgeon will be marrying heiress Rosalind Russell, and she has been invited to be a bridesmaid. (I should say right here that one of this movie's faults is that we get very little backstory or character development so it's never clear if Pidgeon was leading Loy on or if he really had made promises to her.) Reporter Franchot Tone, a good friend of Loy's mother, thinks that Loy is better off without Pidgeon; Loy goes into a funk anyway, but manages to get it together to attend the wedding. At the party that evening, Loy gets quite drunk and warns Pidgeon to stay away from her because she will continue to try and win him over. In order to help Loy get over Pidgeon, Bryant and Tone get her a job at his newspaper as an ad artist. Things are quiet for a while until Pidgeon and Russell get back from an extended honeymoon. Loy seems to be genuine about wanting to remain friends with Pidgeon; he agrees, and then asks her to go to the fights with him because Russell is sick and can't go. Of course, one thing leads to another and the next morning, Loy calls Russell and says that she and Pidgeon are in love and he'll be getting a divorce. (Pidgeon's feelings about this are unclear.) Eventually, Loy, Pidgeon and Russell have a confrontation during which Russell admits that Pidgeon doesn't really love her but likes her money and her understanding nature, and that Pidgeon is probably incapable of love. Eyes are opening all around, and guess who finally realize they belong together?

This is an odd duck of a romantic comedy in the sense that the tone is light throughout until suddenly in the last 15 minutes, things get rather heavy and all the energy is sapped from the proceedings. It's an interesting twist but the screenwriters weren't quite up to making it work. Loy is the only character who we feel we have gotten to know. Pidgeon's feelings are obscure all through the film, and Tone is a cipher—we figure he'll end up with Loy but only because Loy and Tone are top-billed, and that's the generic expectation. The characters don't come off as very round, and oddly it's Russell (pictured) that I felt the most sympathy for in the final tangle. The acting helps with the movie's appeal. Loy steals the show, and her drunk scene is one of the best ever in a Hollywood movie because it feels real and not exaggerated for comic effect. Russell is fine acting all noble and understanding. Tone and Pidgeon are not my favorite classic-era leading men. Pidgeon is pretty good, light on his feet and not as plodding as usual. Tone is boring and I honestly wasn't rooting for him to win out, partly because he has no personality. (You'll notice I barely mention him in the summary because he really doesn't have much to do.) Bryant underplays what might have been an annoying role. I enjoyed John Miljan as Tommy, Pigeon's best man and good friend to Loy; in a later era, he probably would have been the gay best friend. There are plot threads and themes and visuals that would be better presented by MGM in THE WOMEN and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. Watchable mostly for Loy. [TCM]

SUNDAYS AND CYBÈLE (1962)

Pierre (Hardy Kruger, pictured) was a French pilot in the Indochinese war and has traumatic flashbacks of strafing innocent civilians from his bomber, including a young girl who holds his gaze seconds before her death. Hospitalized for some time, he now lives with his former nurse (and possibly casual mistress) Madeleine (Nicole Courcel) and is still fairly fragile, suffering from bouts of amnesia. One day he witnesses a father dropping his daughter Francoise (Patricia Gozzi) off at a convent boarding school. She's sad but the father seems glad to be rid of her, and despite telling her he'll visit on Sundays, Pierre overhears him getting on a train with no intention of returning. On Sunday, Pierre goes to the school and, posing as her father, takes her for the day, exploring a nearby park. Like Pierre, Francoise seems to be dealing with some childhood trauma. At one point, she tells him that Francoise is not her real name, but she won't say what is. Over their Sundays together, they grow close, like real family. He's 30 and she's 12, and she says she wants to marry him when she's 18. The two are like two innocent children—it's implied that Pierre is seeking redemption from having killed children in the war. Eventually, Madeleine realizes what's going on. After seeing them interact in the park, she sees them as two damaged innocents having found solace with each other, but others see perversion rearing its ugly head, including Bernard, a doctor and rival for Madeleine's affections. At Christmas, as Pierre is trying to give her a special holiday, Francoise gives him a gift: her real name (Cybèle) written on a piece of paper and put in a small gift box. While trying to get a special gift for her (a rooster on a church steeple that she wants), everything falls apart.

I'm not sure how modern viewers, who have been trained (and generally rightfully so) to see ugly desires in an age-inappropriate relationship, would react to this tale. A review from 1962 indicates surprise that people would read pederastic tendencies into Pierre, but obviously we are meant to have that reaction, at least to some degree. Kruger plays Pierre with great sensitivity but with hints that he himself is uncomfortable with how emotionally powerful his bond with Cybèle becomes. A shot of him carrying Cybèle in his arms has been compared by some critics to the famous scene of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster lakeside with the little girl who he winds up drowning, and there is a scene in which Pierre becomes violent at a bumper car ride. Courcel is very good at registering her own mixed emotions, and Gozzi, who actually was 12 at the time of filming, is astonishing at expressing a wide array of feelings with regard to Pierre. Though she gets angry when she sees him react to others with violence, she is never actually scared of him; she seems to understand his fragility. Shot in black & white, and largely out of doors, it always seems like a gray and gloomy day, even when Pierre and Cybèle are at their happiest. Kruger is movie-star handsome, which makes it all the more impressive that he comes off as such a slight and tentative person. Ultimately, we are meant to believe that Pierre is not dangerous, and that his attentions are good for Cybèle, but we're also meant to see that their relationship could not have lasted in this world. An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, this seems to have faded from notoriety, though it is part of the Criterion Collection and is worth seeing. [TCM]

THE BIG TRAIL (1930)

In a town in Missouri, a group of pioneers have gathered on the way to "conquer the West," as the title card says, and head out along the Oregon Trail in a wagon train. Among the settlers: Ruth Cameron and her brother Dave, and the Swedish Gus and his domineering mother-in-law. The crusty Red Flack is leading the group with his suspicious sidekick Lopez, and he reluctantly hires Breck Coleman and his buddy Zeke (occasionally rather soused) as scouts. Breck is hunting the killer of a friend of his, Ben Griswell, a trapper whose entire load of pelts was stolen. The murder was made to look like the work of Indians but Breck, who lived among Indian tribes, suspects that Red is the killer. Along the way, Breck takes a liking to Ruth, but Ruth is enamored of fancy gambler Bill Thorpe, a man whose tales of family wealth and a big Louisiana plantation are not believed by Breck. Along the way, there is an Indian attack, a dangerous river crossing, a snowstorm, and a deadly dry spell. Red, Lopez and Bill all agree that it would be best to get rid of Breck, who obviously knows too much about their collective shady backgrounds, not to mention that Breck is making progress in his romantic pursuit of Ruth. As you can tell, the plot of this early talkie western is par for the course, but two things make it stand out in its genre: 1) Breck is the first starring role for John Wayne (young, handsome, and talented, pictured at right) who would wind up back in B-westerns for much of the decade until his next A-role in STAGECOACH; 2) it is one of the first Hollywood movies made in a widescreen format, Fox's Grandeur process. Only a couple of theaters in the country could show that format, so most people saw it in the standard square Academy ratio, but the widescreen print survives today, and it's very impressive. The black and white image presents gorgeous vistas and with wide shots that feature action in various layers of depth, it almost achieves a 3D effect at times. Wayne, caught before his heroic persona solidified, seems casual and comfortable and less serious than he became in the 40s. El Brendel, as Gus, is the comic relief, though his style of over-the-top ethnic humor hasn't aged well. The chief bad guys (Ian Keith as Bill, Tyrone Power Sr. as Red) are too obvious in their mustache-twirling villainy, and Marguerite Churchill as Ruth is fairly bland. Tully Marshall is Zeke and David Rollins is Dave. The amount of production work shows: there were apparently thousands of extras and animals and hundreds of wagons, and shooting was done over dozens of locations. Despite being over 90 years old, it still looks impressive and manages to hold interest over its two hour running time. [TCM]

REMORQUES (1941)

The crew of the Cyclone, a French rescue tugboat, is celebrating the wedding of one of their own when a messenger arrives with an SOS from the Mirva, a ship at sea foundering in a storm with a broken rudder. André, the captain, rounds up his crew, even the new groom—and even a man who is making out with another crew member's wife—leaving behind his own wife Yvonne (whom we learn has a possibly dangerous heart flutter) to worry about him. They head out in the howling storm and eventually manage to find the ship and toss them a tow rope, but there is trouble on board the Mirva. Marc, the unscrupulous and unliked captain, knows he'll have to pay a large sum for the rescue and is tempted to actually sabotage the operation by cutting the tow rope once they get within view of the shore, in which case the rescue fee wouldn't have to be paid. Some of his crew leave the ship on a raft, and Marc's unhappy wife Catherine joins them. Marc manages to pull off his sabotage plan, angering André and his men who have spent hours getting the Mirva back to shore. When the two confront each other, André punches Marc out and helps Catherine, who is leaving her husband for good, find a hotel in town. André is buffeted by emotional crises: when his bosses refuse to investigate the behavior of the Mirva's captain, André threatens to quit, and when his wife becomes more and more clingy (she has kept the seriousness of her heart condition a secret), he starts spending time with Catherine, leading to a torrid affair conducted in a dilapidated house on the beach. When Yvonne's illness becomes too obvious to ignore, and when a new rescue call comes through, André will have to make some decisions.

This film by French director Jean Grémillon seems pretty solidly like a work of poetic realism, a film that stresses the sorrows of working class life, but presents them in scenes of visual beauty. Most of this film looks great, with nighttime scenes shrouded in fog and daytime scenes shown in gleaming brightness. Of course, the lives of the principal characters seem mostly lived in a sort of existentialist fog, and we're aware that, despite the bonhomie of the opening wedding party, there will be no happy endings here. Jean Gabin, the masculine but sensitive king of French poetic realism, is absolutely perfect for this role, and the beautiful Michele Morgan couldn't be better as Catherine. Their relationship could have been developed a bit more, but their chemistry gets us through the doubts we may have about how these two wind up involved. Madeleine Renaud is appropriately fragile as Yvonne even if the character remains something of a cipher. Some OK special effects (lots of miniatures) are used in the storm sequence. At heart, this is a predictable soap opera romance worth seeing for its visuals and lead performances. The French title translates literally as a vehicle that pulls or tugs, but the American title, Stormy Waters, is more descriptive. Pictured are Gabin and Morgan. [DVD]

MEDEA (1969)

We begin in ancient Greece with a centaur teaching a young man named Jason about nature, myth, and the gods. Jason is under the centaur's care because his father, the king, has been deposed by Jason's uncle Creon. When he grows up, Jason challenges the king for the throne of Corinth, and the king sends him on a journey to Colchis to bring back the Golden Fleece, at which point Creon will give him his rightful throne—if you've seen The Wizard of Oz, (or, more to the point, know your Greek myths) you may suspect how this will turn out. Colchis is a land of barbarians where the princess Medea leads the priests and people, sun worshippers, in a human sacrifice ritual during which they kill a child and spread his blood among the crops as an aid for fertility. Unlike in the Ray Harryhausen fantasy JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, Jason’s Argonauts are a rag-tag group of men on a small dilapidated barge, but Medea falls for him and helps him take the fleece. She then kills her own brother and hacks up his body in order to flee with Jason back to Corinth. Creon then decides to not keep his promise to Jason, which Jason seems fine with. An outsider who never feels accepted, and who is suspected of being a sorceress by the people of Corinth, Medea lives with Jason and bears him two children over the next few years, but when Jason makes plans to marry Creon's daughter Glauce, Medea is unmoored and plots a terrible revenge.

As he did with Oedipus, director Pier Paolo Pasolini brings a Greek myth (via Euripides) to life with stunning stylistic touches, both visual and musical, but with less success at coherence or meaning. If you don't already know the story of Medea and Jason, this film will be confusing at best and possibly a slog at worst, though it's always interesting to look at. Shot outdoors in surreal looking settings and in actual ruins in Italy, the visuals give a strong mythical, otherworldly feel to the proceedings, as does the strange background score consisting of metallic clattering, animal noises, and Japanese sounding music. Like the 1962 version of Euripides’s ELECTRA by Michael Cacoyannis, this film feels more like a series of rituals being enacted rather than a fully inhabited performance by actors, and that adds to the out-of-time feel of the film. Laurent Terzieff (the centaur) seems like he's reciting his lines from cue cards, and Giuseppe Gentile (Jason, at left) is handsome but never feels fully engaged (in fact, this is his only movie—he was an Olympic track and field athlete—so I suspect that he may have been Pasolini's crush at the time). Massimo Girotti, a well known actor with a long career, doesn't have a lot to do as the King, but he manages some gravitas in his few scenes. 

But all is forgiven: legendary opera singer Maria Callas, as Medea (pictured above right), acts enough to make up for everyone else. And this is definitely a compliment; it's not that she's overacting, but that she's acting with her face and eyes and body to convey Medea's inner states with conviction but without exaggeration, partly because she doesn't really have much dialogue. It's ironic that her famous voice is dubbed by someone else here, but her physical performance is astounding. As interesting as much of this movie is, Pasolini is not a stickler for narrative detail so I'm not sure my summary is accurate. The ending ([Spoiler!]) in which Medea kills her children and Jason's princess plays out in two different contradictory ways, and I have no idea what to make of that. The post-dubbing is frequently sloppy, adding to the almost amateurish feel of the entire production, or if not amateurish, at least slap-dash. I was put in mind of the Rocky Horror lyric, "Lost in time and lost in space, and meaning"; the time and space enigmas were positive, the meaning, not so much. [Criterion Channel]

CHINA SEAS (1935)

Clark Gable is the captain of a steamship carrying both cargo and passengers and about to leave Hong Kong for Singapore. Also on board are two women from his past: the refined and recently widowed Rosalind Russell and the young and sexy Jean Harlow. Other passengers include the shady Wallace Beery whom Harlow eventually gets close to when she feels like Gable is going to toss her over (not literally) for Russell, the chronically drunken Robert Benchley, and Lewis Stone, the new third officer who lost a ship to pirates in the past and is considered disgraced—Gable puts up with him but calls him a "rocking chair sailor." There’s also Hattie McDaniel as Harlow's smart and sexy maid and Akim Tamiroff, a scoundrel seducing women for their jewels. During a destructive typhoon, some lives are lost and Stone is cited for dereliction of duty. Harlow finds out that Beery is in league with some pirates who are about to attempt a takeover in order to get some gold they think is in the cargo; she tells Gable but he doesn't believe her. Sure enough, when pirates do board, Beery is their secret contact. Harlow throws in her lot with Beery out of anger at Gable, but when the pirates uses a foot-breaking torture device on Stone and Gable, she has regrets. The first half of this romantic melodrama is a little slow going. Russell (civilized, a little mousy) is no competition for Harlow, who steals every scene she's in. Gable tries to work up some desire for Russell, but it never seems real. Beery, Benchley and Stone pretty much do what they always do in their roles: Beery blusters, Benchley provides comic relief, and Stone is the passive older man who ultimately does the right thing. Hattie McDaniel gets a couple of good lines. When Harlow asks if she looks like a lady, McDaniel replies, "I been with you too long to insult you like that." The reliable C. Aubrey Smith and Dudley Digges are among the familiar supporting faces. The typhoon scene looks genuinely dangerous. Fun, even if the wrap-up is a bit of a downer (to satisfy the Production Code). Gable and Harlow had proved box-office gold a couple of years earlier in RED DUST (in which they didn't have to worry about the morals of the Code), and they still had chemistry here. Pictured are Gable and Harlow. [TCM]

CAIRO STATION (1958)

This Egyptian film from director Youssef Chahine (who also plays Qinawi, the main character, pictured at left) feels at times like a version of a Hollywood film like Grand Hotel which follows the fates of a number of people who cross paths in a public place. Here, the place is a busy train station in Cairo, and though we do get glimpses into various people's lives, there actually is a central character, Qinawi, a poor lame beggar whom a newsstand owner hires out of pity to sell newspapers on the sidewalks, though mostly what he does is spy on buxom women. The opening scene is narrated by the owner, who gives Qinawi a dilapidated shack to live in. We see in the present timeline that its walls are papered with pin-up girls, and the narrator says sadly, "How could anyone foresee his end?" (With that kind of hint, we can.) We meet a gang of energetic young women who sell soft drinks, illegally it seems, on the trains when they make stops, and Qinawi (given the nickname Limpy by the girls) has a crush on one of them, Hanuma. Moodily, she alternates between being irritated with Qinawi's attentions and encouraging him, even though she is engaged to Abu Serih, a beefy train porter who is trying, against much pushback, to unionize the workers. She has no idea how obsessed he has become with her, and when it becomes clear that she has no intention of following through with her flirtations, he becomes dangerous and, inspired by a serial killer currently in the news, decides to kill her. What might be considered the second story line, though there's not much time devoted to it, is the political activity of Abu Serih and his relationships with the threatening porter bosses. A third plot, of even less importance or development, involves a young lame girl and her boyfriend, who is leaving for four years overseas. The film drags in places, but picks up nicely with a tense sequence near the end. I found this more interesting as a cultural artifact—I've only ever seen one other Egyptian film, STRUGGLE ON THE NILE, and that came to my attention because it features the international star Omar Sharif. Chahine makes a compelling, if not terribly sympathetic, lead, and Hind Rustum (often called the Marilyn Monroe of Egyptian cinema) is similarly compelling if not likable as Hanuma. Faird Shawqi is Abu Serih, perhaps the most complex of the characters, though also hard to really know. Often called a film of "lyrical realism," there is little humor here, and not really any characters to admire, even if some do occasionally perform a small good deed. The ending is sad but satisfying. [Criterion Channel]

THE SECRET SEVEN (1963)

In the 4th century BCE, with the fall of Athens to Sparta, democracy is swept away. The tyrant Rabirio rules from Sidone, though a band of rebels live in the mountains outside the city. Axel, one of the rebel leaders, is captured, but his brother Leslio buys five slave prisoners and says if they help him free Axel, Leslio will free them. They agree and the six men manage to free Axel from prison. Back in their home village, Leslio and Axel discover that the village was attacked by Rabirio's men and their mother is among the dead. The former slaves decide to stick around and, led by Leslio and Axel, become the title force, heading off to exact revenge against Rabirio. Leslio poses as an architect who has been hired by Rabirio, gets into the tyrant's good graces, then discovers that Rabirio's mistress is Lydia, an old flame of his. She, however, soon agrees to help Leslio. The seven plan to hit Rabirio where it will hurt by stealing the gold he has amassed. One of the slaves is something of a primitive inventor and when they discover the gold, they use a large catapult to shoot the gold chests out of a tower window into the sea where a raft is waiting to salvage it, then use it to catapult themselves out. They do wind up in a face-off with Ranirio's troops, but with the help of an arrow-firing Gatling Gun device (and a last minute approach by friendly Macedonians, I think), the seven are victorious. This is sold as a peplum film grounded in history rather than myth, but ultimately this is more an adventure movie than a muscleman movie, as actual muscles are in short supply. The lead, Tony Russel, was better known for adventure and spy movies; he’s fine though he's no Hercules or Maciste. Massimo Serato (Axel) was in more peplum films but usually in a supporting role. Both are effectively heroic here. Gerard Tichy, as Rabirio, is a bit less impressive, as is Helga Line as Lydia, though she went on to an impressively long career in Italian movies and TV. There are a couple of fairly improbable but spectacular free-for-all fights which are fun, as are the catapult and the arrow gun. Aka THE INVINCIBLE SEVEN. Pictured are five of the secret seven, celebrating a victory. [YouTube]

THE GREAT SINNER (1949)

Fedja (Gregory Peck), a writer, is apparently lying near death in a small disheveled apartment, pages of a manuscript called "Confessions of a Sinner" tossed about by the wind. A woman enters, gathers up the pages and sits next to him. We flashback to a younger Fedja on a train from Moscow to Paris where he watches the lovely Pauline Ostrovsky (Ava Gardner) playing solitaire the entire time. They chat briefly and when she says she's getting off at the spa town of Wiesbaden in Germany, Fedja does too, and meets up with her at a casino when he learns that she and her father the General (Walter Huston) are gambling addicts. Armand, the owner of the casino (Melvyn Douglas) keeps a close eye on the proceedings, as he wants to avoid any messy suicide attempts at the tables. As Fedja gets to know Pauline and her father (who host all-night gambling parties in their hotel room after the casino closes), he thinks he might get enough material to write a book about gambling, but thinking that he needs to participate as well, he joins them in their big-money escapades. He finds himself falling for Pauline, even though she tells him that Armand, whom she considers an enemy, will probably marry her. He also finds himself becoming a gambling addict, winning and losing large amounts at the tables. How he gets to the sad state of affairs which we saw at the beginning takes up the rest of the narrative.

I run hot and cold on Gregory Peck, and here I fall closer to cold—he's woodenly stoic and not terribly expressive, without an inner fire that would have made his character truly come alive, but he doesn't ruin the movie, partly due to the rest of the cast. Ava Gardner (pictured with Peck) is beautiful and acts Peck off the screen. Walter Huston does as well. Frank Morgan has a small role as an older man who is trying to quit gambling but always returns to the tables, and he's quite good, not employing his usual bluster. Melvyn Douglas is hampered by playing a character who really doesn't need to be around, but Ethel Barrymore (Pauline's mother) and Agnes Moorehead (a pawnbroker) both do quite well in small parts. Christopher Isherwood co-wrote the screenplay, based on Dostoevsky, which may account for the numerous notable lines of dialogue. In a scene in a pawn shop involving the redeeming of a religious medal, Peck notes that "Christ was forgotten in the pawn shop and the devil thrives in the casino." When Peck calls Gardner corrupt, she replies, "But in a charming way." Huston opines, "Love is a pastime for the middle class." I don't want to ruin a good scene, but watch for the reactions around the gambling table when news arrives that Pauline's grandmother is near death. A watchable melodrama of the kind that MGM cranked out frequently in the classic era. [TCM]