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]