tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32097622024-03-18T18:52:35.094-04:00Michael's Moviepalace: Viewing Classic MoviesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.comBlogger3062125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-54303207918769708412024-03-18T08:27:00.001-04:002024-03-18T08:27:20.227-04:00ALIAS FRENCH GERTIE (1930)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLRMn_d0RTXMHn2d-nStMsxzjyfzikystV5CQRokieRKJcUui-FtrU1R55Dp-0pmFzyPQ2MMKnv1QUwmBWp5jEGdbFhoF8s6YELrsQ2zrnv0PX_F4HbdiTyzMG8KVHi5EmIhlzbVrUQDBPeRF06iTjfXcZZI2kAaar5IFoYNFDkaFLncjkWWrrQ/s769/alias%20french01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="641" data-original-width="769" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLRMn_d0RTXMHn2d-nStMsxzjyfzikystV5CQRokieRKJcUui-FtrU1R55Dp-0pmFzyPQ2MMKnv1QUwmBWp5jEGdbFhoF8s6YELrsQ2zrnv0PX_F4HbdiTyzMG8KVHi5EmIhlzbVrUQDBPeRF06iTjfXcZZI2kAaar5IFoYNFDkaFLncjkWWrrQ/w200-h167/alias%20french01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Marie (Bebe Daniels) is the maid to a wealthy family, but she's actually Gertie, a known criminal who, one night, plans to steal some jewels from the family's safe. Beating her to it, however, is safecracker Jimmy (Ben Lyon). They recognize each other from their reputations, and he agrees to split the booty with her, but cops arrive and Jimmie gallantly takes the rap, going to jail for a year. When he gets out, Gertie is waiting for him and he assumes they will continue their larcenous ways. But when he suggests that she steal from the widow Barton, a neighbor of Gertie's, Gertie balks as she has grown to like the old lady. Detective Kelcey (Robert Emmett O'Connor) likes the two of them and, realizing how easy it would be for them to fall back into old habits, keeps a close eye on them. Eventually, Jimmy goes into legit business with a stockbroker named Matson and gives him his life savings, but it turns out that Matson is a crook and makes off with all of Jimmy's money. When Jimmy wants to go back to their old ways, Gertie resists. Officer Kelcey may hold the key to their future in his hands. A minor pre-Code melodrama with a light tone and a thin veneer of romantic comedy, this is nothing special, though what appeal it does have is due to the two leads who got married not long after this film's release. They make a nice couple (pictured at left), and in real life, their marriage lasted forty years until Daniel's death in 1971. In the 1950s, they had a popular radio show in England which led to a couple of movies and a TV show in which they played themselves (like, I assume, Ozzie and Harriet). The ending, though fairly predictable, does have a surprise which I won’t spoil. [TCM]Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-81165342585723381422024-03-14T09:36:00.004-04:002024-03-14T09:36:41.418-04:00THE GROUNDSTAR CONSPIRACY (1972)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiILcMovx0iUupe5Wzn6sL0LIkVY5eL2r4ap-h3VaWVgaggmVi-Iybx2bddy5-ySeYybmbcbFd2rLP-0JIyCf3amHz5OPCGdIofFEd1Tm0Qjac4hT8JAgBGJjPXG5z0RRRtcCfIFXVgld2Tw783kSJavHLjAJ9vafnM5qr5dsZZW94RAn-hnA6GkQ/s867/groundstar02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="527" data-original-width="867" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiILcMovx0iUupe5Wzn6sL0LIkVY5eL2r4ap-h3VaWVgaggmVi-Iybx2bddy5-ySeYybmbcbFd2rLP-0JIyCf3amHz5OPCGdIofFEd1Tm0Qjac4hT8JAgBGJjPXG5z0RRRtcCfIFXVgld2Tw783kSJavHLjAJ9vafnM5qr5dsZZW94RAn-hnA6GkQ/w200-h122/groundstar02.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>There is an explosion at the Groundstar space agency and a badly injured man named John David Welles (Michael Sarrazin) runs from the facility with a computer tape he has apparently stolen. He ends up at the nearby apartment of Nicole Devon (Christine Belford) who doesn't know him but calls an ambulance. Tuxan (George Peppard, at right), head of Groundstar security, has him sent to a military hospital where he is given plastic surgery to restore his damaged face. Though Tuxan interrogates him mercilessly, he claims to have no memory of what happened, or even who he is, but he does occasionally have dreams of a young Greek woman named Anika. Tuxan arranges for John to escape, assuming he'll head for Nicole’s which he does. Tuxan has had her phones tapped (and spy cameras installed even in the bedroom), hoping to get some information about a plot to steal Groundstar secrets which they assume he is in on. Nicole takes him in out of sympathy, and he seems to truly not know anything about the plot, but soon a third party shows interest in John. Gunplay, kidnapping and torture soon ensue, along with a couple of tricky plot twists that I won't divulge. Though the movie has a sci-fi-ish vibe, it’s really a spy adventure whose twists unfold throughout the story. It does a decent job of keeping us in the dark about many points: Does John really have amnesia? If he's not John, who is he? What's his tie to Greece? Despite his seemingly sinister behavior, is Tuxan actually a good guy? When it becomes clear that there are others looking for Groundstar secrets—a government PR guy (Cliff Potts), a senator (James Olson), other government workers—what's their motivation? And is Nicole being manipulated or is she a manipulator? All questions are answered, though issues of morality remain murky. Sarrazin is good as the average man on the run, like a Hitchcock hero who is the victim of a case of mistaken identity (but is he?) and Peppard is appropriately nasty as the chief who doesn't care what he does to get information. At one point, he admits his own phone is tapped and says, "If I had my way, every room in the country would be bugged." The ending is satisfying and I liked the movie, but everyone except Sarrazin seems to be working at half-speed. It reminded me a lot some mid-60s thrillers with mild sci-fi elements (THE POWER, THE SATAN BUG), middling production values and actors on automatic. That sounds kind of harsh, but I'd recommended this anyway. [DVD]Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-42011876256427566142024-03-11T08:55:00.000-04:002024-03-11T08:55:01.647-04:00THE GIRL FROM MISSOURI (1934)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxbbLomHEwtPu4xi6WnSA95epjJgNEuLQsvWhjbuqCOjcSzy0tCwY4ra3vSAnYE0xtpXf7i3QH50UVWmOt0MgAK7_eniT5M4MSKVS78lWgpiZKrAVdhoV0CUxagvbGfZAifd_XF0cNd8FYTxJRNQcuS-iDBEi6c_BwEyhZC64YrHJNRyvbVDGYtw/s853/girl%20from%20ms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="695" data-original-width="853" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxbbLomHEwtPu4xi6WnSA95epjJgNEuLQsvWhjbuqCOjcSzy0tCwY4ra3vSAnYE0xtpXf7i3QH50UVWmOt0MgAK7_eniT5M4MSKVS78lWgpiZKrAVdhoV0CUxagvbGfZAifd_XF0cNd8FYTxJRNQcuS-iDBEi6c_BwEyhZC64YrHJNRyvbVDGYtw/w200-h163/girl%20from%20ms.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Eadie (Jean Harlow) works at a cheap dance hall with her abusive stepfather as her boss. She and her friend Kitty take off one day for New York City where Eadie becomes something of a virtuous gold digger, vowing to remain a "good girl," but planning on marrying for money. The two become chorus girls and one night when they are hired to entertain at a party at the mansion of Frank Cousins, Eadie sets her sights on Frank. We learn that he needs money and he begs fellow businessman Thomas Paige (Lionel Barrymore) to loan him some, but Paige (whom Eadie initially mistakes for a butler) refuses. Fatalistically, Cousins gives Eadie a pair of expensive cufflinks and says he'll marry her. But instead he shoots himself at his desk. (The next day, when she tells Kitty what happened, Kitty asks, "Did someone ask you to sniff a little white powder?") Eadie is under suspicion for stealing the cufflinks, but Paige helps her out and soon, she has followed him down to Palm Beach, hoping to snag him. Kitty is not so much looking for a lasting relationship as a man in uniform—she flirts with butlers, doormen and bellboys—and says, "I’m just an old-fashioned home girl like Mae West!" When Eadie meets Tom Paige Jr. (Franchot Tone), she becomes a pawn in a father-son power game. Tom assumes that her high ideals are just for show and locks her in a bedroom with him; they kiss and she admits that he could make her "cheap and common," but begs him not, and he lets her go. The rest of the film is a screwball-style battle between Eadie and Tom in which a blackmail attempt rears its ugly head, but is defeated by what appears to be true love.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jean Harlow, along with Mae West, was a pre-Code screen queen, and this was the first of her films to be released after the Production Code began to be enforced in mid-1934. West's career took a strong downward turn, as her persona couldn't really be sanitized or contained, but Harlow stayed in the saddle, perhaps because of her wider acting range, and because MGM was in control of her career in a way that I don’t think Paramount ever was with West. This film feels a bit schizophrenic and even though Eadie gets to keep her honor and land a husband, it doesn't feel like the right ending—I'm not convinced that the two are truly romantically compatible and will stay together. Nothing against the actors, with Harlow and Tone (pictured above) in fine form as they work up some legit chemistry. But the transactional nature of their relationship (she stays a virgin and he rewards her with marriage) never fully disappears. Patsy Kelly is delightful as the brassy sidekick—I almost think this could have worked even if Harlow and Kelly had switched roles. Barrymore is, as always, Barrymore, but he can't make his character likable. Lewis Stone (who is pretty much always Lewis Stone) plays Cousins in what amounts to a glorified cameo, and in some ways, the movie never recovers from his suicide scene. It doesn't feel as frothy as I think it wants to. See this one for Harlow and Kelly. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-84129911854111210462024-03-06T07:56:00.000-05:002024-03-06T07:56:05.827-05:00THE GIRL IN THE KREMLIN (1957)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3yPmQ-s3g-Ojrvps6UbF0w55oDeHesdJupKc_rdLz9-_3xj1gB_WIQAQT8uXOTMRx7yLeI1o5L17cMv09R5YuBhG-l_DHV3phOxzRTbr5anwsC9mgasL56E8JqAPTYmO9s5nnEgJu2U065SptfXvlCljqbHa1J-i5p3TBdEE8VWig-ngzXpeh4w/s937/girl%20in%20the%20kremlin01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="649" data-original-width="937" height="139" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3yPmQ-s3g-Ojrvps6UbF0w55oDeHesdJupKc_rdLz9-_3xj1gB_WIQAQT8uXOTMRx7yLeI1o5L17cMv09R5YuBhG-l_DHV3phOxzRTbr5anwsC9mgasL56E8JqAPTYmO9s5nnEgJu2U065SptfXvlCljqbHa1J-i5p3TBdEE8VWig-ngzXpeh4w/w200-h139/girl%20in%20the%20kremlin01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Did Russian dictator Joseph Stalin die in 1953? In the world of this movie, the answer is no. Instead, someone else is buried while Stalin, during his own funeral, undergoes plastic surgery and leaves for parts unknown with his nurse Greta. But first we see a scene in which he pulls a young and lovely girl out of a lineup and has her hair shorn in front of him (and much to the actress' credit, it's done for real). The tension in the scene makes this feel like a punishment, but many viewers believe it’s a sexual fetish. Maybe it's a bit of both? In Berlin, after Greta disappears, her twin sister Lili (both played by Zsa Zsa Gabor) hires American detective Steve Anderson (Lex Barker) to find her. The two, with Steve’s one-armed buddy Mischa (Jeffrey Stone), are on the chase, and have to put up with killers and kidnappers, and most fortuitously, Stalin's son Jacob (William Schallert) who hates his father. Eventually, they trace Stalin to a Greek mountain village where he might be in hiding in an abandoned monastery. Fisticuffs ensue, most notably between Lili and Greta; in other words, between Zsa Zsa and Zsa Zsa.</div><div><br /></div><div>The home video presentation of this indulges in one my most hated strategies: calling something film noir when it's not. What it is is a crime melodrama with virtually no noir tropes present. The startling opening leads you to expect more startling moments, but in some ways, the movie never recovers from that scene, with only one more "bald lady" moment in store, again done just for shock value (by which time, it's gotten stale). Like Barker and Gabor (pictured) in the leads, the movie couldn't be more B if it tried, and it does, with cheap sets and an occasionally confusing narrative. When you get used to Barker and Gabor, they're OK. Schallert is better as Stalin's son. Maurice Manson, as Stalin and his later identity is disappointing. Natalia Daryll has her moment in the sun as the girl with the shaved head and looks genuinely afraid of the shaving. After reading the back of the Blu-ray box (and seeing the cover headline "Is Stalin Alive?") I was hoping for a camp classic. That was not to be, but as I get older, I realize that if I stick with a movie to the end, it must have something to recommend it. Here, it’s Zsa Zsa, who is, somewhat surprisingly, better than you might expect. [Blu-ray]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-51312991075780648522024-03-04T08:32:00.005-05:002024-03-04T08:32:52.776-05:00PICK A STAR (1937)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcousCbKDpzixK-9b4Wrw3xDMy0GQB_Sgl3KlssfQg4_7hIzkJKznZa8O4m2gGKRmLh_jcuAAzy-yWrYYtqoahuuYKJZ3OMmw4ZvXeoEGTUefsvQQclpwGBEcB16e_dvKIFytXXCK8sOBQskio1al8ESIVSaopE3k-8rqTdj18YrwhQxFpwxtriw/s907/pick%20a%20star.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="631" data-original-width="907" height="139" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcousCbKDpzixK-9b4Wrw3xDMy0GQB_Sgl3KlssfQg4_7hIzkJKznZa8O4m2gGKRmLh_jcuAAzy-yWrYYtqoahuuYKJZ3OMmw4ZvXeoEGTUefsvQQclpwGBEcB16e_dvKIFytXXCK8sOBQskio1al8ESIVSaopE3k-8rqTdj18YrwhQxFpwxtriw/w200-h139/pick%20a%20star.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>In Waterloo, Kansas, Joe (Jack Haley) is the local manager of a Hollywood beauty contest, with the prize being a trip to Hollywood and a role in a picture for Excel Studios. Cecilia (Rosina Lawrence) wins, but the organizer absconds with all the funds that were raised, and as Joe feels responsible, he decides to sell his garage, move to Hollywood, and send for her to try her luck. Joe winds up working as a busboy at the Colonial Club, but back in Kansas, a plane has to make an emergency landing, and one of the passengers is movie star Rinaldo Lopez (Mischa Auer). Two other passengers decide not to finish the flight and they give Cecila their tickets. She and her roommate Nellie (Patsy Kelly), accompanied by Lopez, head on to Hollywood. Lopez takes them to the Colonial Club where they run into Joe, who tries to pretend that he's part of the entertainment. His ruse fails, and when Joe tries to go after the girls to explain, he is glancingly hit the car of a studio head honcho who gives him a menial job at Excel. Rinaldo begins romancing Cecilia but jealous Joe will have none of it, and eventually, he gets her a legitimate audition.</div><div><br /></div><div>We're obviously in B-romantic comedy territory here, so if your tolerance for sloppy plotting and enthusiastic but second-level actors is high, you might enjoy this. Haley is a likable enough comic lead and Lawrence, with whom I was not familiar, is his equal. But in the movie's credits, it's Patsy Kelly who gets first billing, and indeed, though technically she has a supporting role, she's got almost as much screen time as Haley or Lawrence, and she steals many of her scenes. The one unique aspect of this comedy is that some of it takes place on the studio sets, so we see Laurel and Hardy working on a couple of comedy bits. More amusing is Lydia Roberti as a temperamental star named Dagmar. It's not a musical, but there are a couple of songs, and in the final audition scene, we see Cecilia's number played out in her imagination as a Busby Berkeley production number (pictured at left). Unless you're a fan of Haley or Kelly, or a Laurel & Hardy completist, you can probably skip this one. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-71452348365105549312024-02-28T08:41:00.000-05:002024-02-28T08:41:22.051-05:00KNIFE IN THE WATER (1962)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdSfcRrIOxHO6Q8azF019sj6MkaKbSBSOHZkoQScvWWsu0XbyNSnxklhpbXaV1NDWM7Mm2oi8CrmPe1Ow-ZO9z_L0wbNsizxXpfR_Lfls8qO1HgKLzWng2SorDSx9XEYa-5OQNUavvltjUaCjeEpUk6LiFqfCIZW9BbytTLN-CEf6Z40nQIvDszQ/s805/knife%20in%20water02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="805" data-original-width="805" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdSfcRrIOxHO6Q8azF019sj6MkaKbSBSOHZkoQScvWWsu0XbyNSnxklhpbXaV1NDWM7Mm2oi8CrmPe1Ow-ZO9z_L0wbNsizxXpfR_Lfls8qO1HgKLzWng2SorDSx9XEYa-5OQNUavvltjUaCjeEpUk6LiFqfCIZW9BbytTLN-CEf6Z40nQIvDszQ/w200-h200/knife%20in%20water02.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>A married couple are driving on their way to a marina for a weekend on their small yacht when a young hitchhiker steps in front of their car. The husband berates the young man but lets him ride anyway. At the marina, the husband invites the hitchhiker along, provided he helps get the boat ready for sailing. The hitchhiker somewhat reluctantly joins them, but as he helps out, the husband toys with him, playing little games of one-up masculinity with taunts flying back and forth that create a tense mood which the wife tries to ignore, although she does seem intrigued by the handsome young hitchhiker. Listening to a boxing match on the radio makes their competition more literal: a race to see who can blow up a mattress first, a game of pick-up-sticks. Eventually, the two men play the knife game, in which one person spreads the fingers of their hand on a surface while the other person jabs a knife (in this case, the hitchhiker's switchblade) quickly between the fingers, trying not to hit flesh. The knife becomes important both symbolically (one of the most obvious phallic symbols in 60s movies, next to the nuclear bomb that Slim Pickens rides in Dr. Strangelove) and literally. Finally, in the middle of the night, the men wind up fighting on deck and the boy, who says he can't swim, falls in the water and vanishes. Is he dead? Somehow in hiding? And what will the couple do now?</div><div><br /></div><div>This was Roman Polanski's first film and still one of his best—I'm not a big fan except for Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby. It holds up surprisingly well; this could easily be passed off as the recent work of an indie director. The black and white cinematography is crisp, the small setting only feels claustrophobic when Polanski wants it to, and the acting is fine. This was the first film for Jolanta Umecka (the wife) and Zygmunt Malanowicz (the boy, pictured) and they are both excellent. Leon Niemczyk as the husband is a bit less effective, perhaps because his role as the older man whose masculine reputation is in danger is mostly on the surface, whereas the personalities of the wife and the hitchhiker both remain a bit ambiguous, with more interesting character shadings present, even if they don't come to full fruition. This is a movie in which violence is always a possibility, even if it rarely occurs, and I can see a viewer being a bit disappointed in the ending, which, while not ambiguous in terms of plot, does leave the situation of the husband and his wife wide open (though the wife seems to be on the boy's side, she also compares him to the husband, saying he is "half his age and twice as dumb"). But for me, that's one more reason why this film still works so well. [Criterion Channel]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-16048643605406850082024-02-26T09:20:00.003-05:002024-02-26T09:20:52.138-05:00THE NIGHT HAS EYES (1942)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpAtjoqTXzPSZepDuupfO3Fagb3eEwuvK5b5Br0dvk269FlTG-zd_2tLVqCBavSRQcX78ecqaPtkDJClFdCs88O64D4faNC-D_dmRoIAMEAsKXq9-xtZuqOMS5EmHW2O_fY6y4AzSetZKpCGYdfKmKmPad17DSEIQ6SwZS4pvKRTvRXSXFB941tg/s743/night%20has%20eyes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="611" data-original-width="743" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpAtjoqTXzPSZepDuupfO3Fagb3eEwuvK5b5Br0dvk269FlTG-zd_2tLVqCBavSRQcX78ecqaPtkDJClFdCs88O64D4faNC-D_dmRoIAMEAsKXq9-xtZuqOMS5EmHW2O_fY6y4AzSetZKpCGYdfKmKmPad17DSEIQ6SwZS4pvKRTvRXSXFB941tg/w200-h164/night%20has%20eyes.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Doris (sociable and flirty) and Marian (a bit schoolmarmish), two teachers at a girls' school, go on holiday to the Yorkshire moors hoping to find a clue to the whereabouts of Evelyn, a teacher who vanished while hiking. On the train, Doris fakes a fainting spell to get the attention of Barry, a handsome doctor, but he has eyes for the reticent Marian. He offers to drop them off at their destination, a spot near where the missing teacher was last seen, but they insist on trekking through the misty, gloomy moors on their own. Doris steps into a small bog, Marian helps her out, and the two struggle on through a storm to a small house where pianist Stephen Deremid lives in gloomy isolation after suffering shellshock in the Spanish Civil War. He reluctantly lets them stay but asks that they lock themselves in their room, where Marian says she feels the missing teacher's presence. Next morning, floodwaters prevent them from leaving and a series of Gothic elements build in the narrative: a secret room, physical evidence that Evelyn had been in the house, Stephen having uncontrollable fits during the full moon, etc. There's also a kindly housekeeper and an eccentric handyman who has a pet capuchin monkey. It all builds to a satisfying climax (don't forget about the bogs!). As should be obvious, this is basically an "old dark house" thriller with elements of mystery, romance and horror—could Stephen be a werewolf? There’s even a skeleton in a chair as is in the later Psycho. The young James Mason (Stephen) has the brooding antihero persona down pat—he's definitely a Rochester (from Jane Eyre) figure. Joyce Howard (Marian) and Tucker McGuire (Doris) are fine as the lead women, though I was sorry when Doris left for an extended period in the middle. Also fine are Mary Clare as the housekeeper, Wilfrid Lawson as the handyman, and John Fernald as the doctor, who I wish had more to do. The ending, not quite a trick one, is satisfying. Pictured are Mason and Howard. [DVD]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-79495456581392453842024-02-23T12:29:00.005-05:002024-02-23T12:29:50.275-05:00THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxUZuRkrgaazYq6f5938f2f0JXEqAnhWpHdQgnOmEbie87_jdKPBvjvj_41w0hyphenhyphen9n2g9uKmK0O3a6t4eMiCrU2qN1eRvdYrZ6n-Rf3fnO6Awb55hQQ4ySazAy09PpKcTLqoWlQLMViwUXN6t8I4h3JXG8yEvxDmcDUFyWHy2tpSbi42Ko4etJzQ/s838/ipcress01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="838" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxUZuRkrgaazYq6f5938f2f0JXEqAnhWpHdQgnOmEbie87_jdKPBvjvj_41w0hyphenhyphen9n2g9uKmK0O3a6t4eMiCrU2qN1eRvdYrZ6n-Rf3fnO6Awb55hQQ4ySazAy09PpKcTLqoWlQLMViwUXN6t8I4h3JXG8yEvxDmcDUFyWHy2tpSbi42Ko4etJzQ/w200-h143/ipcress01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>On a train, we see Radcliffe, a well-regarded British scientist, kidnapped and his security man killed. British intelligence is concerned about a recent "brain drain" in which several top scientists have vanished or left their jobs, and Radcliffe seems to be the latest. He also may have had some top secret information with him when he was taken. Ross, head of military intelligence, pulls cocky agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine, pictured) off of routine surveillance duty to work under Major Dalby (Nigel Green). The pressure is on as Dalby's unit might be shut down if they can't crack this case. There's a suspect known as Bluejay who deals in state secrets, and during a raid on a warehouse where Radcliffe has been kept, Palmer finds an audio tape with scratchy, unintelligible noises marked “IPCRESS.” Eventually, Bluejay agrees to hand Radcliffe over for a cash ransom, but Radcliffe is obviously damaged in some way, and when he starts to give a lecture, we hear the noises from the tape and he collapses. It's not quite a spoiler to note that IPCRESS stands for "Induction of Psychoneurosis by Conditioned Reflex under Stress," and soon Palmer himself is caught and, in a psychedelically-shot scene not too different looking from the 2001 Stargate sequence, tortured using the IPCRESS system. Like Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, Palmer is made to react subconsciously to a signal when he will be triggered to become an assassin.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a solid entry in the 1960s spy genre, not as serious as LeCarre’s THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and not as silly as some of the James Bond movies could get. The overall tone is light and Palmer is witty but not a clown. Caine is perfect in the role (he played two more times in FUNERAL IN BERLIN and <a href="https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2012/12/billion-dollar-brain-1967-harry-palmer.html" target="_blank">BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN</a>) as is Nigel Green as Dalby (who knows more than he tells). Gordon Jackson as a fellow agent of Palmer's is also quite good. Sue Lloyd is the underused love interest, and Guy Doleman nicely underplays the role of Ross, Palmer's old boss, who pops up again near the end. Director Sidney Furie uses lots of off-kilter and disorienting camera angles—some viewers find this distracting, but I thought it gave a nice flavor to what would otherwise have been fairly bland visual set-ups. For example, there is a fisticuffs scene shot through the glass in a phone booth, obscuring much of the action. There is some dry humor that enlivens the proceedings; when the stiff, business-like Ross sends Palmer to Dalby, he says in a deadpan fashion that Dalby "doesn’t have my sense of humor." There is apparently a recent TV series based on this book, which I haven’t seen, but I can recommend this version to spy movie fans. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-33989713192380179162024-02-18T08:46:00.000-05:002024-02-18T08:46:13.977-05:00SHOCKPROOF (1949)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJCWCl7TrFjqoOr02tMsD4a4dQDvY-N7QPq545nQrqncTUANhsuYnPO2zxUQXkIh8tlrmXEtmu7b1f0e-rUXAW72k-ZGioGR7p866CQoF_kNMy2bFk-PT5x_kjm6lEJwv2HidpaUHXdcH4grySCOm_FYHMxPuHW03cshXVdEiSYu9KvhuJd_P99g/s902/shockproof01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="705" data-original-width="902" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJCWCl7TrFjqoOr02tMsD4a4dQDvY-N7QPq545nQrqncTUANhsuYnPO2zxUQXkIh8tlrmXEtmu7b1f0e-rUXAW72k-ZGioGR7p866CQoF_kNMy2bFk-PT5x_kjm6lEJwv2HidpaUHXdcH4grySCOm_FYHMxPuHW03cshXVdEiSYu9KvhuJd_P99g/w200-h156/shockproof01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Jenny Marsh (Patricia Knight, pictured) has just been released from prison on parole for murder, having killed someone to protect her no-good thug boyfriend Harry (John Baragrey). Her parole officer is Griff Marat (Cornel Wilde), an upstanding straight arrow who lives with his blind mother and kid brother, and lets Jenny know that she'll have to toe the line under his supervision or risk getting sent back to prison. At first, the two don't get along. Griff has a pleasant demeanor but lets her know he means business, and that any associating with Harry would be a violation of her parole rules. The somewhat hardened Jenny wants to stay out of prison but she's also determined to get back together with Harry. First chance she gets, she contacts Harry and right away, she's caught in a raid at a bookie joint. Griff, who finds himself softening, keeps her out of jail and arranges for her to become his mother's live-in caretaker. Harry, who is still meeting her on the sly, tells Jenny to get Griff to marry her, which is against the rules for Jenny to do while she's on parole, and they'll have Griff in their power. Jenny does, but she also legitimately falls for Griff, and when Harry threatens to give Griff the love letters she has written to him, the two struggle with a gun and she winds up shooting him. From here on, the movie becomes a lovers-on-the-run story as Griff finds work at an oil well and the two live anonymously until the pressures of such a life build to the breaking point.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a decent film noir, if never quite as hard-boiled as some noir fans might like. It’s a bit notorious for its weak cop-out ending but that doesn't ruin the film. I've never been very interested in the work of Cornel Wilde; his facial features don't fit together very pleasingly and his acting is so-so. Here, he plays a lightweight average guy who, in honored noir fashion, gets into a situation over his head because of a woman, but he plays everything on the surface, leaving us with very little sense of psychological turmoil underneath. John Baragrey is fine as the baddie, but the real reason to watch this is Patricia Knight, who was Wilde’s wife in real life. She's beautiful with a wholesomely sexy look that you just know is hiding true femme-fatale-hood. She gets to be both blond and brunette in the course of the film, and she looks good both ways. Her performance is so good, you wonder why her career didn't last—this is the third of only five movies she made before she left the business. Douglas Sirk, later known for his glossy color melodramas of the 50s, directs in a straightforward way. The original script, by Samuel Fuller, had a more violent and downbeat ending, and would have rung more true to the story, but the studio wanted a happy ending, no matter how unlikely. The word is that Sirk refused to shoot the last scene, so someone else did it. This is not a masterpiece but for most of its run time, it's a perfectly respectable noir melodrama. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-49890773070403248632024-02-13T08:33:00.002-05:002024-02-13T08:33:56.006-05:00QUICK BEFORE IT MELTS (1965)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAc1qrrZJUYCTwwH-0K0xC6Frj7WIq-4g5isJXjv56fo5mQDeqrBEXsh_oekZasXsUW3IvBf78XGDzzxTaaC9xngYd3FEnvz9F08Fb92wrw5BHwpjR4ohNZZMUp3BXXzabv0Ax4sAPkIgrC8I32Jw87_mt14ViuWuzelHaoD8UxwAlz4fyHA7a1A/s833/quick%20melts02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="505" data-original-width="833" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAc1qrrZJUYCTwwH-0K0xC6Frj7WIq-4g5isJXjv56fo5mQDeqrBEXsh_oekZasXsUW3IvBf78XGDzzxTaaC9xngYd3FEnvz9F08Fb92wrw5BHwpjR4ohNZZMUp3BXXzabv0Ax4sAPkIgrC8I32Jw87_mt14ViuWuzelHaoD8UxwAlz4fyHA7a1A/w200-h121/quick%20melts02.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Oliver (Robert Morse) is a reporter for Sage Magazine, whose slogan is The Magazine that Thinks for You. He's dating Sharon, the boss’s daughter. When his boss sends him to Antarctica to embed himself with the workers at a research station, he tries to get Sharon to sleep with him, but she steadfastly refuses to have sex before marriage. His companion on the trip is photographer Pete (George Maharis) who is a gregarious playboy whom we first see being tossed out of a car by an angry woman fed up with his behavior. Despite their different personalities, they bond quickly when they meet before heading to New Zealand, both promising to forget about women for the duration, which is just as well as the admiral in charge of the South Pole operations (James Gregory) hates women. But the plan falls apart when Oliver falls for a half-Maori woman named Tiare (Anjanette Comer) and Pete falls for Diana Grenville-Wells (Janine Grey), the first woman with a hyphen in her name that he's ever met. At the South Pole, they soon acclimate to their surroundings: -50 degrees temperatures, a penguin who delivers messages round the camp, a seal who needs to have its temperature taken. They meet Mickey (Michael Constantine), a friendly Russian scientist, and our boys agree that getting him to defect could be the story that would make them well known. Meanwhile, starved for female attention, Oliver and Pete talk the admiral into bringing in a planeload of women as a publicity stunt, and of course, they make sure that Tiare and Diana are on that plane. Complications, some of a slapstick sort, ensue.</div><div><br /></div><div>Though this is based on a novel, the whole thing feels like the creators just dumped a bunch of comedic and/or satiric situations together in a blender and hoped for the best. At times it's entertaining, mostly due to the actors, but the narrative is loose and baggy, and I just couldn't bring myself to care much about the characters and their outcomes. Maharis is top-billed and he's handsome and, depending how you feel about playboy types, charming, but Morse is more central to the story—this was a couple of years before HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS would make him (briefly) a leading man, so Maharis has slightly more cachet, thus first billing, and also seems more comfortable on screen. They work surprisingly well together and are fun to watch. The other performances that work well come from James Gregory (Inspector Luger on Barney Miller) as the hard-assed military man, Bernard Fox as a friendlier military man, Michael Constantine as the Russian, and Yvonne (Batgirl) Craig as Sharon. Comer, who went on to a long if undistinguished career, doesn’t really make much of an impression as the exotic Tiare. Norman Fell plays a rival reporter and the craggy-faced Howard St. John is amusing as Morse's boss. There is some second-unit location shooting involved here, but the actors almost certainly never left the studio, which is OK. There's an absurd but amusing bar fight scene, and of course, the penguin (who the men call Milton Fox because, well, that's his name!) steals all his scenes. Best line: when the boss calls his daughter and Morse answers, the boss asks what he’s doing there. Morse replies, "Trying to seduce your daughter," to which the boss wishes him luck. Mildly funny, but not recommended to folks who aren't already fans of 1960s sex farces. Pictured are Morse and Maharis. [DVD]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-45826771072569688212024-02-08T07:39:00.001-05:002024-02-08T07:39:56.797-05:00BROKEN LULLABY (1932)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8M9zb9tbe0uhyphenhyphen0p8VOdB9uid_sOi72tE4RJumac_3jzOmfsSggvG5izIi74jxYCW-xymwEV9WIgiCMOKocGqiqyG2lI0_CS5WSUXextPkSNajIRTQGx71CUYhXMH_Vpq9u6UrjebmGaKEg8B75T7iGSU1v3StKHWM_GCEs6JBhG_P7H2jLqRVeA/s728/broken%20lullaby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="597" data-original-width="728" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8M9zb9tbe0uhyphenhyphen0p8VOdB9uid_sOi72tE4RJumac_3jzOmfsSggvG5izIi74jxYCW-xymwEV9WIgiCMOKocGqiqyG2lI0_CS5WSUXextPkSNajIRTQGx71CUYhXMH_Vpq9u6UrjebmGaKEg8B75T7iGSU1v3StKHWM_GCEs6JBhG_P7H2jLqRVeA/w200-h164/broken%20lullaby.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>At a church ceremony in Paris on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the WWI armistice, the crowd is told that it's time to forget the past and look toward tomorrow. But afterward, French soldier Paul Renard (Phillips Holmes, pictured at left) confesses to a priest that he is still struggling to get past a traumatic memory of having killed a German soldier in the trenches. The boy dies with a book about Beethoven on his person and Paul finds letters inside giving his name, Walter, and the address of his parents. The priest tells Paul he has not sinned and should not feel guilty, but Paul decides to go to Germany and meet Walter's family, not quite knowing what his goal is. In Germany, there is still much anti-French sentiment and when Paul visits Walter's father, Dr. Holderin (Lionel Barrymore), and introduces himself as a Frenchman, the doctor angrily orders him out of the house. But Elsa (Nancy Carroll), the doctor's nurse and former fiancée of Walter's, says that she saw Paul putting flowers on Walter's grave and the family believes that Paul and Walter were friends in Paris, so they accept his presence, letting him stay in the house and soon treating him as if he was an adopted son. Paul's guilt, however, is not assuaged, even as he and Elsa begin to fall in love. Will Paul eventually confess and risk losing this new family?</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a rare drama from Ernst Lubitsch, who is better known for his sophisticated comedies. I associate him so much with frothy romance that it's difficult to recognize this as a Lubitsch work, but there is interesting camerawork throughout. The anti-war sentiments are not subtle, and some of the performances get a bit overwrought, especially by Holmes and Carroll—Holmes almost always looks distraught and ready to cry—but Barrymore actually underplays and Louise Carter as Walter's mother is fine. The opening, showing Walter's death, is effective, and the final sequence is powerful, in part because Lubitsch sort of lets the camera do the acting. Despite their occasional overacting, Holmes and Carroll work together well. With Zasu Pitts and Emma Dunn in small roles. IMDb says Marjorie Main is in it, but I didn't see her. Recommended if for no other reason than to see a thematic anomaly in Lubitsch’s career. [Criterion Channel]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-54072435052493944932024-02-05T09:16:00.000-05:002024-02-05T09:16:12.421-05:00COVER UP (1949)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfmoWCfmCcJRWVYWmal4rGa4QEJj4tcyBu0AS-5zlTdjYhuU5yu5jmPrYJ-fqHrgM0rHsmGr9Nk34W0lWHRuwVwYK-Xu6uH1-vWFpQGHarWLKWe67gbnC0rY24OumKFxlml1Sz0eqgxiF7SLR_m4HTLgWj54uN-fOZXcewRPDZLLVsV-Pe6QCQYQ/s736/cover%20up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="736" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfmoWCfmCcJRWVYWmal4rGa4QEJj4tcyBu0AS-5zlTdjYhuU5yu5jmPrYJ-fqHrgM0rHsmGr9Nk34W0lWHRuwVwYK-Xu6uH1-vWFpQGHarWLKWe67gbnC0rY24OumKFxlml1Sz0eqgxiF7SLR_m4HTLgWj54uN-fOZXcewRPDZLLVsV-Pe6QCQYQ/w200-h171/cover%20up.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>On a bus to a small town, insurance investigator Sam (Dennis O'Keefe, pictured) chats up town native Anita (Barbara Britton). Sam is investigating the suicide of Roger Phillips, which Sam thinks looks more like murder—no gun found, no burn marks on the body. Sheriff Best (William Bendeix), though amiable on the surface, isn't much help, though when Sam threatens to get a court order to exhume the body, Best comes up with a couple of bullets which were fired from a Luger, a gun that the sheriff happens to own. Anita takes Sam to her folks' home for dinner and it comes out that her banker father Stu owns a Luger, or used to, as he claims he gave to Dr. Garrow who is currently out of town. Sam, while sparking with Anita, comes to realize that Phillips was not a well-liked man. Complicating things further, Phillips' niece Margaret had, the night of the murder, eloped with a man that Phillips didn’t like, and Margaret stands to inherit more money if Sam can prove that the suicide was actually murder (thanks to that pesky double indemnity clause). Then Anita discovers her father's Luger is actually hidden in the house. Finally, Sam plants a fake story in the local paper saying that a chemist is coming to town to test the carpet the body was found on, hoping to draw out the killer. This is a bit of an oddity in the noir canon, if it even belongs there. It's set at Christmas, leading TCM to describe it as It's a Wonderful Life brushed with noir dust, though the holiday trappings are fairly subtle. But aside from the small town and the dark streets, there's little here that is truly reminiscent of Wonderful Life or of film noir. It's a fairly straightforward mystery that is fun to watch, both for the story and the performances, but the ending, though satisfying, winds up being a bit anti-climactic which takes some of the edge off the proceedings. Bendix gets top billing despite being a supporting character (an important one but still supporting) and he's fine. O'Keefe and Britton work well together, and Virginia Christine and Russell Arms make a mark as the eloping couple. The director, Alfred E. Green, was a prolific journeyman filmmaker even if he never really got around to making a classic. This will certainly not be on my list of mandatory December viewing, but as a crime film with romantic elements, it’s worth a viewing. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-73703793157608198752024-02-02T08:19:00.001-05:002024-02-02T08:19:29.784-05:00THE OUTRAGE (1964)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRIbSX2kSpI6-YVASQWHMsK9XiGNj8M9Thwf8rAD5XN4ojQKQpZ4tAHMQLlQfFI1NggAXcS9Km-Y78XTOnlASPL2FIiqBzKTMTDmAfq97tAVxeUab74F9-lwS9BVZNxcArMI8Y_U9a1fVjUBr_Jn2NGkXtOnNCUZSEOndf-tFWlYwMRiw_umYxmg/s911/outrage01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="571" data-original-width="911" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRIbSX2kSpI6-YVASQWHMsK9XiGNj8M9Thwf8rAD5XN4ojQKQpZ4tAHMQLlQfFI1NggAXcS9Km-Y78XTOnlASPL2FIiqBzKTMTDmAfq97tAVxeUab74F9-lwS9BVZNxcArMI8Y_U9a1fVjUBr_Jn2NGkXtOnNCUZSEOndf-tFWlYwMRiw_umYxmg/w200-h126/outrage01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>During a nighttime storm, three people are standing at a train station somewhere in Old West: a disillusioned preacher (William Shatner), an old prospector (Howard Da Silva), and a traveling lightning rod salesman (Edward G. Robinson) who used to sell a healing herbal elixir until three people died from using it. They talk about what happened earlier in the day when a Mexican outlaw (Paul Newman, pictured at left) had been tried and executed for murder in a nearby town, and three witnesses told three conflicting stories about what happened. What doesn't seem to be in question is that a man with money (Laurence Harvey) and his wife (Claire Bloom) were on the road in a horse and buggy when Newman stopped them in the road and offered to sell Harvey a valuable Aztec knife. The two go off together in a wooded area and when Harvey doesn't return, Bloom goes looking for him. She finds her husband tied and gagged against a tree. She gets hold of the knife and threatens Newman, who responds by pulling a gun and raping her. Eventually, Harvey winds up dead, a knife in his chest. At the trial, Newman and Bloom tell different stories of how Harvey wound up dead. Then an old Indian shaman tells a third version from the dead husband's point of view. Finally at the train station, Da Silva has yet another account which he didn't tell at the trial because he stole the Aztec knife. Each version says something different about people's personalities and motives. Do we accept Da Silva's version? Or is there some truth in all of the accounts?</div><div><br /></div><div>It's been many years since I saw Akira Kurosawa's RASHOMON, the Japanese classic that this Hollywood remake is based on. The title Rashomon itself has become pop culture shorthand for a story told in different ways by different people, in which the truth is either hidden or remains ambiguous. Here, the unsolved question is, who killed Harvey, and why? Did Newman stab Harvey in a fair fight? Did Bloom do it in anger because he felt she was to blame for being raped and perhaps didn't fight back hard enough? Did Harvey kill himself because his wife was planning on leaving with Newman? Or was Harvey's death an accident? All the accounts can be seen as being slanted to make one or another person look good or bad, and at the end, we're left in uncertainty, which is both delicious and frustrating. The movie, directed by Martin Ritt, is beautifully shot in black & white by the masterful James Wong Howe on limited sets: the train station, the wooded area of the attacks, and a town square where the trial takes place. The acting is a mixed bag. Newman certainly looks the part of the scroungy outlaw, with a little bit of the Newman charm seeping through now and then, but his Mexican accent is ridiculously overdone (it may have felt like realism in 1964, but now it feels borderline offensive). I'm not a fan of Laurence Harvey—I find him wooden and unappealing—and this movie does nothing to change my mind. The rest are fine, especially Bloom who goes through a range of emotions, and Edward G. Robinson who provides a good audience for the tales told. William Shatner's acting abilities are sometimes denigrated, but he fits quite well the role of the preacher whose faith has been shaken. This may be the first use of the charming phrase, "Don’t get your bowels in an uproar" in mass media. Not essential viewing perhaps, but worth your time. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-67480179001426217072024-01-30T09:12:00.000-05:002024-01-30T09:12:08.964-05:00TARZAN'S THREE CHALLENGES (1963)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRCUNn8iRoZR5oGRDuT3eQk8PA7j2UuCRjjrsKAEEIQ4mDyuU6SZ0QYP533GftWDJeOnmZoEbY04a1k_EhhPSyfeaT6Bb0Hih9nC-_XVwVduuoauGcgLGoRy0q3VY35snU_IiFv-ECG0-3ju5cHWI8WHxuD8PGljaD5iAFtZzuDWhTvy7TKHrGGg/s864/tarzans%20three02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="864" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRCUNn8iRoZR5oGRDuT3eQk8PA7j2UuCRjjrsKAEEIQ4mDyuU6SZ0QYP533GftWDJeOnmZoEbY04a1k_EhhPSyfeaT6Bb0Hih9nC-_XVwVduuoauGcgLGoRy0q3VY35snU_IiFv-ECG0-3ju5cHWI8WHxuD8PGljaD5iAFtZzuDWhTvy7TKHrGGg/w200-h151/tarzans%20three02.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Tarzan (Jock Mahoney) parachutes out of a plane over a field in an Asian country. He's there in response to a call for help from Tarim, the leader of his people who is on his deathbed and is preparing the way for his successor, the pre-teen Prince Kashi—the country is not named, and although the film was shot in Thailand, the rules of succession seem more Tibetan. Tarim fears that his ruthless brother Khan (Woody Strode) will harm Kashi and install his own son as the heir. On his way to the leader's monastery, Tarzan's entourage is attacked on the river with loss of life, though Tarzan escapes. Accompanied by his guide Hani (who, unbeknownst to Tarzan is actually a spy for Khan), Tarzan arrives at the monastery where he must undergo three challenges testing skill, strength and wisdom to prove himself worthy of the mission. One is an archery test, one is a Zen word problem to solve. The most grueling challenge is when Tarzan is tied between two posts and the ropes are attached to two buffalos who pull in opposite directions (pictued at right). He endures and is accepted by Tarim. Accompanied by Hani, a monk, and a nursemaid, Tarzan sets out to bring Kashi to the monastery, a trip that Kahn's men are trying to sabotage. But Tarzan is up to the task, and when he brings Kashi back, after the death of Tarim, there are more challenges to face, including a climactic one-on-one fight with Khan on netting stretched over barrels of boiling oil that will have to be a fight to the death.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mahoney only played Tarzan twice (the first time being in <a href="https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2022/07/tarzan-goes-to-india-1962.html" target="_blank">TARZAN GOES TO INDIA</a>) but he looms fairly large in Tarzan trivia. He played a villain in the earlier <a href="https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2013/02/tarzan-magnificent-1960-banton-gang-pa.html" target="_blank">TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT</a>, he was the oldest actor to be cast as a new Tarzan (he was 44 in INDIA), and he became deathly ill during the making of this movie, getting dysentery from swimming in a polluted river, even after his co-star Woody Strode warned him not to. Many viewers report how ill and weak he looks in the latter scenes of this film which was mostly shot in chronological order—it supposedly took him over a year to fully recuperate—but he was always more lithe than muscular, and I didn't think he looked much different by the end than he did at the beginning, though maybe I couldn't see beyond the oil and sweat that he's frequently covered in. I think it's a little ironic that the one of the best Tarzan torture scenes in the whole canon is here where he's not being worked over by bad guys, but by good guys. The stretching scene, the oil barrel fight, and an earlier scene of a major jungle fire are three of the best action sequences in any Tarzan movie, so for those alone, I'd rate this fairly high in Tarzan movie rankings. As I noted in my review of INDIA, Mahoney is a literate and laid-back Tarzan and part of me is sorry Mahoney didn't continue in the role (though if you squint, I think you can see a bit of Mahoney in Ron Ely's TV Tarzan), but then again, because he didn't return, we got the hottest Tarzan of all, Mike Henry. But that's another review. Woody Strode deserves mention for embodying one of the most threatening bad guys in the Tarzan films, and he also plays, briefly, a second role as the dying brother. Ricky Der (Kashi), who couldn't have been more than 9 or 10, is notable for his ability to look profoundly serious all the time. More pluses: almost no comic relief, almost no cute animal antics (though Kashi does bond with a baby elephant that they call Hungry). Definitely among the 4-star Tarzan movies. Best line: "Pride is the evil shadow of greatness." [DVD]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-84108268440128203372024-01-26T08:18:00.005-05:002024-01-26T08:18:50.937-05:00ANY WEDNESDAY (1966)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgivBPK7bu-0aSQZ9PdxfgRrRKEQXOnKU0uf9XLURpllHGZ7WiskXmWNnG0CcuqCtnSMKNVyYd9X8mJl0y1LATi1z_nyGytE4gF-Ov6ek4re3Lm-G7Nwp29kXl_KYmIA3S0pi1rpF8Q6bOGOiWpNm4QalCz8prXEXpk_hvOat_W8jZz3qG7WPINqQ/s932/any%20weds03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="932" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgivBPK7bu-0aSQZ9PdxfgRrRKEQXOnKU0uf9XLURpllHGZ7WiskXmWNnG0CcuqCtnSMKNVyYd9X8mJl0y1LATi1z_nyGytE4gF-Ov6ek4re3Lm-G7Nwp29kXl_KYmIA3S0pi1rpF8Q6bOGOiWpNm4QalCz8prXEXpk_hvOat_W8jZz3qG7WPINqQ/w200-h143/any%20weds03.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Businessman Jason Robards lives in New Jersey and works in Manhattan, but every Wednesday, he stays overnight to enjoy some extramarital pleasures, and fakes a long-distance phone call to his wife who thinks he's out of town on a business trip. One Wednesday night, at a cocktail party, he ropes lovely young Jane Fonda into helping him by calling his wife and posing as a long-distance operator, so his check-in call will seem as if it's coming from Chicago. They flirt but she resists becoming his mistress, and when he offers to send her flowers, she says she hates watching flowers die and wishes someone would send her balloons instead. When Fonda winds up in the hospital with hepatitis, Robards sends her balloons, and she finally relents. Two years later, the two are still meeting every Wednesday at her apartment, which Robards has had his company buy as an overnight executive suite, which only Robards uses. But this Wednesday, Dean Jones, the owner of a company that Robards has bought, has been sent by Robards' secretary to use the suite. Arriving that afternoon, Jones is surprised to find Fonda there and assumes that she is a prostitute present for his use. As the two argue, Robards' wife (Rosemary Murphy) arrives, also sent by the unwitting secretary. Assuming Jones and Fonda to be a couple, Murphy insists they join her and Robards for dinner. Complications ensue.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a fairly entertaining sex farce, from an era filled with such films, and it's largely Jane Fonda's delightfully light performance that makes it work so well. She pulls off a kind of naughty innocence that is central in keeping the audience on her side. The underrated Dean Jones (who got stuck playing fairly flat characters in Disney movies) goes for a kind of sexy Jimmy Stewart thing and it mostly works. Robards is the weak link; he's a little too crusty to be effective, and he doesn't make the character very sympathetic. Rosemary Murphy is much better as the wife who rolls quite well with the punches. Based on a stage play, there's only one other character of note, the secretary, played by Ann Prentiss, the look-alike (and act-alike) sister of Paula Prentiss. Jack Fletcher has a brief scene (that some today might find offensive) as a shriekingly gay interior designer. Though the film is largely stagebound, the director (Robert Ellis Miller) occasionally uses split-screen to good effect, even comically splitting the split screens. Fun line, from Murphy about the possibility of an affair with her gardener: "No woman has had any luck with gardeners since Lady Chatterley." This is fun, but at 110 minutes, it feels about 20 minutes too long. Pictured are Fonda, Jones and Robards. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-27060430240298495952024-01-23T07:58:00.002-05:002024-01-23T07:58:25.361-05:00HUNT THE MAN DOWN (1950)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7_ymiVKjU4FXkZ3-tQu1QJsZjPDVsxTPDslq7d3Glz1HIRaMJL3sIkBlgZDC4IXK6yb4EnZ4HfQKjMwtbz0y-QIyXC4J_4wCkrh_LWd-MGEk-MnRXoPWutgNkKOCn6GOwB8WRfXHHiUdzdCcCX2qCRKBoz9wYgdfAHtnWb7OaRk0ES_zLYoBOOg/s741/hunt%20man%20down01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="668" data-original-width="741" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7_ymiVKjU4FXkZ3-tQu1QJsZjPDVsxTPDslq7d3Glz1HIRaMJL3sIkBlgZDC4IXK6yb4EnZ4HfQKjMwtbz0y-QIyXC4J_4wCkrh_LWd-MGEk-MnRXoPWutgNkKOCn6GOwB8WRfXHHiUdzdCcCX2qCRKBoz9wYgdfAHtnWb7OaRk0ES_zLYoBOOg/w200-h180/hunt%20man%20down01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>After the bar Happy's Place closes for the night, two employees, Bill and Sally, are cleaning up and counting money. She seems sweet on him but he is reluctant to open up too much to her. A thief known as the Paper Bag Bandit sneaks in to steal the day's earnings and Bill manages to shoot him dead. He's declared a hero in the newspapers until his past comes to light: he's actually Richard Kincaid (James Anderson), a fugitive who vanished twelve years ago when he was found guilty of murder, a crime he swears he didn't commit. He is held and appointed a public defender, Paul Bennett (Gig Young), and we see his story in flashback: Richard meets a friendly group of folks out on the town who invite him back to a house for further merrymaking where they all have a few too many. Joan, one of the women, is alone and dances with Richard, but her jealous husband Dan arrives at the house and pulls a gun on Kincaid. Richard disarms him but says he'd kill him if he could. The next morning, Dan is dead and Richard is arrested. Largely on the somewhat uncertain testimony of the partyers, Richard is about to be found guilty when he takes off. Paul thinks he has a fighting chance of helping Richard and enlists the help of his father, a retired cop, to track down the other partygoers to get them to testify at a new trial. As Paul and his father dig further, secrets turn up and lives are threatened before a final courtroom climax.</div><div><br /></div><div>This noir film is perhaps best enjoyed as a kind of character study. Most of the partyers are now, twelve years later, living shabbier lives than they might have expected and there is some genuine pathos in seeing these people in reduced circumstances: the football hero was blinded in the war and works as a bookbinder, one is an associate at a small marionette theater, one is a drunken bum, and one has had a nervous breakdown. Only one couple has moved up in the world, to a mansion with a pool, but they don't seem particularly happy. When Eddie Muller introduced this on TCM's Noir Alley, he noted that the sheer number of supporting characters and backstories would make this ideal for a current-day streaming miniseries. While I understand his point, I would not encourage such an idea, as these series are always at least 2 hours too long. Here, at just 70 minutes, the characters remain mostly surface sketches, but there's little wasted time or energy. Top billed Gig Young is a bit colorless as the lawyer, and among the actors playing the witnesses and suspects, only Cleo Moore stands out. But James Anderson (pictured) is quite good as the hapless Richard, who in giving a low-key performance, manages to outshine Gig Young. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-19472431899536294552024-01-21T12:32:00.004-05:002024-01-21T12:32:45.739-05:00CLEOPATRA (1912)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB3A2FS8RiGVoWnazGPtGYGSgngsDX32dpU7kYSXiIQzc5Jk5CnI9iLWJfPVxo5RSgB-fpXdWoBS-VXumKDCg00bfejRnA4Q_FYpd8gShHZgdb1Wn0nBt-ECc7C6mrH_fwcJSBVvJ9tANZr5859Giv1Le0BPSi3nN9NjatQ_ar_y7OA4g1bhu62g/s505/cleopatra01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="505" data-original-width="401" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB3A2FS8RiGVoWnazGPtGYGSgngsDX32dpU7kYSXiIQzc5Jk5CnI9iLWJfPVxo5RSgB-fpXdWoBS-VXumKDCg00bfejRnA4Q_FYpd8gShHZgdb1Wn0nBt-ECc7C6mrH_fwcJSBVvJ9tANZr5859Giv1Le0BPSi3nN9NjatQ_ar_y7OA4g1bhu62g/w159-h200/cleopatra01.jpg" width="159" /></a></div>This is one of the first feature-length movies made in the United States, and probably the oldest complete movie I've ever seen. The film is shot like a series of tableaux with very little action and long intertitles to explain what's happening. It winds up being of more interest historically than for its narrative or style, and as always, I cannot vouch for its biographical accuracy. As the film opens, a slave fisherman named Pharon has been tossing flowers at Queen Cleopatra to win her love. But Iras, the queen's attendant, also loves him. Cleopatra eventually takes him as a lover, but for ten days only, after which time he must kill himself. He accepts, but when the time comes to take his poison, Iras gives him an antidote and says that Cleopatra has spared his life but he must leave Egypt. Meanwhile, the Roman general Marc Antony has requested that Cleopatra meet him at Tarsus to answer to conspiracy charges against Rome (the military matters here are not always well spelled out). When they meet, sparks fly—an aide to Antony says that Antony's army is not as powerful as Cleopatra's eyes. Antony stays with Cleopatra ignoring Rome's battles with Octavius—an intertitle says that Antony "lingers in the land of the lotus, forgetting every tie to the past"—but when Flavia, Antony's wife is reported dead, he goes back to Rome. As we all know, passions continue to be inflamed and by the end, Antony, who has gone back to Cleopatra, is killed, and Cleopatra uses a poisonous snake to kill herself. This will seem stagy and primitive to anyone who is not already a silent movie fan, but for me, its 90 minute running time went by quickly. Modern eyes will not find either Antony (Charles Sindelar) or Cleopatra (Helen Gardner) especially appealing, in looks or acting (lots of emotions are registered by the tossing of heads and the wringing of hands), but once you adjust to the era's standards, you do get wrapped up in the story. Gardner was a major silent film star and also the first woman to establish her own production company. This restoration, funded in part by TCM, has a problematic modern score. Some of it has the feel of hip-hop trance music by Phillip Glass, but when vocals are featured, having no apparent connection to the action, it becomes irritating. [TCM]Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-51246129451324399632024-01-17T09:07:00.000-05:002024-01-17T09:07:06.939-05:00THE BLACK DOLL (1938)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5NfZXvXSA_rbQYip8E0wjr-DSiPBIhDul1CY9aN6WDb0ImREOH5Gij7heVpePwCrg01tf8CYXii6tI0u82wDuQT19yQnBhXLCjl9eWDVzDvmkMF0aNhf4brGH8eNDQLssazww67JGm6vpH9gea89eaCKvNGtTQNj2rcKExNoc_TwhAJk1gpYnBQ/s720/black%20doll02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="720" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5NfZXvXSA_rbQYip8E0wjr-DSiPBIhDul1CY9aN6WDb0ImREOH5Gij7heVpePwCrg01tf8CYXii6tI0u82wDuQT19yQnBhXLCjl9eWDVzDvmkMF0aNhf4brGH8eNDQLssazww67JGm6vpH9gea89eaCKvNGtTQNj2rcKExNoc_TwhAJk1gpYnBQ/w200-h161/black%20doll02.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Rex Leland (William Lundigan), wastrel playboy stepson of the wealthy Nelson Rood (C. Henry Gordon), begs his stepfather to pay off yet another gambling debt. Nelson agrees, but warns Rex that he's now cut off. Rex's mom Laura is on his side, but Rex has already forged a check from his stepfather that Nelson will soon find out about. Meanwhile, Nelson's daughter Marion (Nan Grey) is seeing detective Nick Halstead (Donald Woods) on the sly—for some reason, he's camping on the Rood property—and when Nelson catches them smooching, he orders Nick to leave. Then a scary looking black doll with a small knife plunged into its chest shows up on Nelson's desk. He summons his old business partners Walling and Mallison; years ago, the three were involved in the death of another partner named Barrows just before they got rich off a Mexican mine. The black doll disappeared with Barrows and Nelson knows that its reappearance means trouble. That night, Nelson is stabbed to death with a knife and practically everyone in the house has a motive: Walling and Mallinson, Marion, and even the servants who have been badly treated by Nelson. Or, as some wonder, could Barrows still be alive and has he returned to get revenge? Nick is on the case, helping the bumbling local sheriff track down clues, and after a second death, Nick discovers a couple of family secrets that may point in a specific direction. </div><div><br /></div><div>This B-mystery is an entry in the short-lived <a href="https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-westland-case-1937.html" target="_blank">Crime Club movie series</a> from Universal in the 1930s. Like others I've seen, this is light and well-paced and decently acted, with one glaring exception, that being the grating comic relief of Edgar Kennedy as the sheriff. He's OK in small doses but he has way too much screen time here and his delivery never varies. But Kennedy doesn't appear until about halfway through, letting the other actors show off for a while. Donald Woods makes an appealing detective and he and Nan Grey (both pictured) have a nice chemistry. C. Henry Gordon, one of my favorite B-movie villains, is well cast as Nelson as is a young William Lundigan (in one of the eleven movies he made in 1938) as the dissolute Rex. This almost has the feel of an "old dark house"movie, though the visual atmosphere is never as creepy as it should be. [YouTube]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-70596311662034781922024-01-15T09:24:00.003-05:002024-01-15T09:24:52.556-05:00STREET OF CHANCE (1930)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRKUyKBz1syqD5IOQylV1_pFDl5qiSeYVYktAxfy5Vg3Xw58aLP08NBNmyF7p9sK9a50vl8c_MDD0XVo6v9YvXju9-imfFHG6maPFCuReiKkYlwLlaYad0vovB3l5dAv7muss-dhuEf7gC6Gc_alkIg4dM6jzsdfKVsKsoKUGRjqltlshZlf202Q/s677/street%20chance.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="430" data-original-width="677" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRKUyKBz1syqD5IOQylV1_pFDl5qiSeYVYktAxfy5Vg3Xw58aLP08NBNmyF7p9sK9a50vl8c_MDD0XVo6v9YvXju9-imfFHG6maPFCuReiKkYlwLlaYad0vovB3l5dAv7muss-dhuEf7gC6Gc_alkIg4dM6jzsdfKVsKsoKUGRjqltlshZlf202Q/w200-h127/street%20chance.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>John Marsden (Willian Powell), a wealthy bond broker, is secretly Natural Davis, a big-time gambler. We first see him betting with his friend Dorgan on whether the next cab they see will have an odd or even license plate number. He has a reputation of never cheating, and never tolerating those who do. At a high-stakes game, he exposes Al Mastick as a cheater, and though Mastick offers to pay everyone back, Marsden sets his men on Mastick, who is found dead the next day. Marsden's wife Alma (Kay Francis) is preparing to leave him because of his gambling, but he promises to quit. However, his kid brother Babe has just arrived in town with his new wife for a visit. Marsden had sent Babe a large cash wedding gift to be invested, but Babe, not knowing of Marsden's activities as Natural Davis, wants to bet it all and win a huge chunk of money. In an attempt to scare Babe away from the gambling life, Marsden winds up masterminding a night-long poker game engineered to make Babe lose. But when his cheating is discovered, Dorgan decides to treat him as a welcher, just as Marsden treated Mastick. There is not a happy ending. This is a chance to see Powell play more of a scoundrel than in the movies he became known for later (THE THIN MAN, MY MAN GODFREY, LIFE WITH FATHER). In many of his pre-Code films, he played a charming and slick lead who was also often morally ambiguous, if not downright bad, but his looks and charm kept audiences feeling empathetic for him. I like the way the blogger at Frank's Movie Log refers to Powell’s "mix of urbane charm and streetwise edge," and that's exactly what he has here. Even though he orders a hit on a gambler, we still have positive feelings for Powell, both for his chemistry with Francis (though his best movie with Francis is probably <a href="https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2003/12/jewel-robbery-1932-because-this-feels.html" target="_blank">JEWEL ROBBERY</a>) and for the fact that the cheating that causes his downfall is in the service of good. Francis doesn't have a lot to do but looks good not doing it. Regis Toomey (Babe), normally a favorite supporting actor of mine, is a bit lightweight here. Jean Arthur, before her leading lady days, also has little to do as Toomey's wife. Definitely watchable but a bit of a trifle. Pictured are Francis and Powell. [Criterion Channel]Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-14322516950296935042024-01-09T09:57:00.005-05:002024-01-09T09:57:51.850-05:00THE ART OF LOVE (1965)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZY8ZaP3VI4X0lORpy1ro6nU_o9pogFAyjsVP55Y6qDEomJvOgrBThrYU7Ogs05b-jAdRGmiYM3Hg9SNZULxuztC2o5lrqk8fv6jQLvNnlglXwTBJO2TbsYcms7iYOr-cmuSP4cX50Cw0tBdiYwt2hWwb6MG4CEHTmvHj6MCkG-YrbR20AG1vKA/s941/art%20of%20love02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="941" height="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZY8ZaP3VI4X0lORpy1ro6nU_o9pogFAyjsVP55Y6qDEomJvOgrBThrYU7Ogs05b-jAdRGmiYM3Hg9SNZULxuztC2o5lrqk8fv6jQLvNnlglXwTBJO2TbsYcms7iYOr-cmuSP4cX50Cw0tBdiYwt2hWwb6MG4CEHTmvHj6MCkG-YrbR20AG1vKA/w200-h106/art%20of%20love02.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Paul (Dick Van Dyke) is a struggling American artist living in Paris with his friend Casey (James Garner), a struggling American writer. Zorgus, an art dealer, tells Paul somewhat facetiously that if Paul killed himself, his paintings would start selling. Paul wants to give up and go back to the States to his rich fiancée Laurie (Angie Dickinson) but Casey suggests that Paul fake a suicide, then sit back while the money rolls in. One night on a bridge over the Seine, Paul sees the lovely young Nikki (Elke Sommer) jump into the river and he plunges in to save her. Meanwhile, Casey, who saw Paul jump, thinks he actually committed suicide and when his 'death' hits the front pages, starts a brisk business with Zorgus selling Paul's work which indeed sells like wildfire. Complications ensue: Laurie arrives for a surprise visit with Paul, not knowing he is 'dead'; Paul and Nikki strike romantic sparks; Casey starts to fall for Laurie. When Paul surfaces, Casey talks him into staying in hiding and producing more paintings, which he does, but soon the police are considering the idea that Casey killed Paul (especially when someone sees Casey saw a mannequin in parts and throw it in a fire, and mistakes the dummy for a real person). Because this is a comedy, we assume things will turn out OK, but when Casey is found guilty and Paul decides not to come forward, it's a close call, with Casey winding up on the gallows (complete with a cackling, knitting hag out of Tale of Two Cities sitting in the front row) before Paul tries to save him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite a promising cast and a script by Carl Reiner, this farcical comedy never really gels. One big problem is Dick Van Dyke who, as one IMDb reviewer put it, comes off like Rob Petrie in Paris. As funny and charming as Van Dyke could be (his 60s sit-com, Mary Poppins, Bye Bye Birdie), he was basically a one-note comic actor and he fails to stretch enough here. Garner tries and comes off a little better, but they are both at sea in the hands of director Norman Jewison who can't quite handle the mix of romantic comedy, slapstick, and seriousness (Garner's character comes uncomfortably close to getting hung). Dickinson, though lovely, is underused here which leaves Sommer as the actor who comes off the best. Ethel Merman has a little bit of fun as a Parisian madam who helps the boys with their schemes. Jewison has too heavy a hand to make this as fizzy as it needs to be (and that knitting hag bit is hammered at way too many times). Jewison has been quoted as saying that the plotpoints about art and suicide doomed to movie as a mass appeal product, but I disagree. That dark comic plot is the most interesting about the movie, but the acting and directing don't support it. Not unwatchable, but not nearly as much fun as it should have been. Pictured are Garner and Van Dyke. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-82321984063351729162024-01-05T07:42:00.000-05:002024-01-05T07:42:12.737-05:00RIDE A CROOKED TRAIL (1958)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTZTUGMOJ3KghN9MyS8QzpYg2U1OUzM8zU2Uwo305eSAUNelpTW3pBbNkXPA_siwbFf0577REXdg_xi-y8juEETTvr7xC2-3xQycVFmb9EpWrd8kp6877GnzH5M-sMv7h-r7MX6y351keXzhEL1mLs1SeIw4h4jQzqCMuSpHqS5yQnrB7qs6GrJg/s871/ride%20crooked01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="871" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTZTUGMOJ3KghN9MyS8QzpYg2U1OUzM8zU2Uwo305eSAUNelpTW3pBbNkXPA_siwbFf0577REXdg_xi-y8juEETTvr7xC2-3xQycVFmb9EpWrd8kp6877GnzH5M-sMv7h-r7MX6y351keXzhEL1mLs1SeIw4h4jQzqCMuSpHqS5yQnrB7qs6GrJg/w200-h136/ride%20crooked01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>On the run from the law after a bank robbery, Joe Maybe (Audie Murphy) sees lawman Jim Noonan fall to his death. Joe takes the man's horse and belongings, including his sheriff's badge (a star with a missing point). Moseying into the town of Webb City, he is challenged by crusty Judge Kyle (Walter Matthau) who is looking for Joe, but when he recognizes the badge, he assumes that Joe is Noonan, and talks him into staying around as the town's marshal. The next day, a saucy lass named Tessa (Gia Scala) arrives by riverboat and recognizes Maybe, whose last name she calls out. She recovers quickly by saying she called him "Baby," and the two pose as a married couple. Actually, she's in town to case the place for a bank robbery planned by her lover and old rival of Joe's, Sam Teeler (Henry Silva). During a celebration for the arrival of the railroad to Webb City, Teeler and his gang ride in, primed for robbery. Maybe is caught between two desires: getting in on the robbery or going straight and taking his lawman duties seriously. Tessa is also conflicted between the two men, especially because a young orphan boy has taken to Tessa and Joe and hopes to be adopted by them.</div><div><br /></div><div>I like Audie Murphy quite a bit (<a href="https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-red-badge-of-courage-1951.html" target="_blank">RED BADGE OF COURAGE</a>, <a href="https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-quiet-american-1958.html" target="_blank">THE QUIET AMERICAN</a>), but this is the first western of his I've seen (and westerns were pretty much his specialty). It took a while to get used to him in Old West duds, and he lacks the gravitas that more traditional Western lead actors had—honestly, his persona here would have been a better fit in one of those B-westerns that were cranked out with assembly-line speed in the 30s and early 40s, maybe even as a singing cowboy. But I got used to him eventually, even though he was never really convincing as an outlaw, which dissipates the impact of his eventual redemption. Gia Scala is fine as his eventual romantic interest, though Silva makes for a somewhat weak bad guy. Eddie Little, as the orphan boy, gets a very nice moment near the end when he shows off his ability to wield a gun. This leaves Matthau (pictured above with Murphy) who is problematic here. Not quite 40 in real life, he is made to seem closer to 60 and he chews the scenery like mad, using an exaggerated drawl and often adopting a W.C. Fields accent, particularly noticeable when he actually says, "Never give the other guy an even break" (a rewording of the title of a Fields movie). It took me almost half the movie to get used to him, and I still think a subtler performance was called for here. But it seems likely that the filmmakers were going for a fairly light tone, as opposed to other westerns of the 50s which often emphasized darker psychological details, and Matthau does keep things light. At one point, we get a rather prosaic explanation of Joe's last name, devoid of the ambiguity that would have added depth to Joe's character. Not exactly a classic but enjoyable. [DVD]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-89901183932335745402024-01-04T08:31:00.004-05:002024-01-04T08:31:44.236-05:00THE VIRTUOUS SIN (1930)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjcLci09UIVSa33GDHeu85Std-jKKofy8O6Jva7qjWjY0ir8o1D06SrHryopYoEWY7f7t07neWc9BzQks8TDRSz_BwyfKB3emR8uKsDwBVe4c29KliwnYjhwynGF-DHquHO1saAYs-pgJGVH61Yo2-P6Y2DVBWM7QpMyTtvqXljl8Ra5N3jOIDw/s806/virtuous%20sin03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="692" data-original-width="806" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjcLci09UIVSa33GDHeu85Std-jKKofy8O6Jva7qjWjY0ir8o1D06SrHryopYoEWY7f7t07neWc9BzQks8TDRSz_BwyfKB3emR8uKsDwBVe4c29KliwnYjhwynGF-DHquHO1saAYs-pgJGVH61Yo2-P6Y2DVBWM7QpMyTtvqXljl8Ra5N3jOIDw/w200-h172/virtuous%20sin03.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>St. Petersburg in January, 1914, a few months before the outbreak of WWI. The lovely, wealthy Marya (Kay Francis) is back in town and attracting attention. She meets up with old friend Victor (Kenneth MacKenna), a scientist doing research on TB. Though obsessed with his work, he proposes to Marya, saying that even though he knows that she is not in love with him, their passionless relationship could work as a kind of experiment. She agrees, but a few months later, when war is declared, Victor is called up as a reserve soldier despite his insistence that he is worth more at home doing research. Marya goes to ask General Platoff (Walter Huston) to give him an exemption, but she is lost among the dozens of women asking for similar requests for husbands and sons. When Victor is insubordinate to Platoff, he is imprisoned and sentenced to die. Marya, desperate to free him, poses as a prostitute at a notorious club—she is told, "All the officers go there; the prima donnas can't sing, the chorus girls can't dance"—where she flirts with the general, gets into his good graces (and then some), and starts to soften him up to the point where he begins granting exemptions for the wives and mothers who approach him. But when Marya asks for mercy for Victor, things get melodramatic for all concerned: Platoff resents being manipulated and Victor berates her for unfaithfulness even though their relationship had been platonic. Is there a happy ending in store for anyone?</div><div><br /></div><div>[Spoilers follow] The original New York Times review of this film calls it a comedy, and there are some light moments here and there, but it mostly plays out like a romantic melodrama. Granted, the ending is indeed more or less happy for all three: Marya falls in love with the general, he with her, and Victor allows himself to be saved, then steps aside to let Marya be with Platoff. So in the classical sense, this has the ending of a comedy, but there aren't a lot of laughs along the way, except involving the madam of the club/brothel (Jobyna Howland). George Cukor, the co-director, referred to this as one of his worst movies, and indeed its pace may feel a bit off to modern viewers—at 80 minutes, I was ready for it to be over at 65 or before. The movie is probably of most interest for pre-Code fans for its fairly blatant depiction of the brothel and for Marya's extramarital activities. The central trio are fine, especially Kay Francis. I was unfamiliar with MacKenna who does a fine job playing a somewhat irritating character—a year after this movie was made, he married Francis though they only stayed together for a couple of years. Pictured are Francis and MacKenna. [Criterion streaming]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-49250839866798520052024-01-02T08:05:00.000-05:002024-01-02T08:05:03.220-05:00AN AMERICAN DREAM (1966)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizrcmtVoTS-xaAwlZciLCxhmEVqliDX7x7KmCojf7f2g6VCFxeDxgRYziKtAalRmMA5Ubcq5Mln70cm6UYkXlbbk-CUvI71Z1V4Qtx_GXwvHUdzvN9SuqKf8Fo-inHEScy5LkLIoj1G6rAXg_LEJrDAKO_s0eFqK2L22tPB-jmDjFnKYBIhHiKbA/s894/american%20dream03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="894" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizrcmtVoTS-xaAwlZciLCxhmEVqliDX7x7KmCojf7f2g6VCFxeDxgRYziKtAalRmMA5Ubcq5Mln70cm6UYkXlbbk-CUvI71Z1V4Qtx_GXwvHUdzvN9SuqKf8Fo-inHEScy5LkLIoj1G6rAXg_LEJrDAKO_s0eFqK2L22tPB-jmDjFnKYBIhHiKbA/w200-h160/american%20dream03.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>War hero Stuart Whitman is now a popular TV commentator who answers phone calls on the air; his current crusade is exposing links between the Mafia and the police department. During his current show, he gets a taunting call from his drunken wife (Eleanor Parker, pictured) as she dallies with another man in her bed. They're separated and she's just back from Europe but won't give Whitman a divorce. On the phone, she babbles almost incoherently, calling him a "boy crusader" and wondering how he became a war hero when he's "such a whimpering baby, baby, baby." After the show, he heads to her place where they have an argument right out Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. On her balcony, they come to blows. He tries to strangle her, but she winds up falling off the balcony where she hits the street and is then hit by several cars, causing a pile-up. Whitman tells the police that her fall was an accident, then he says she was trying to kill herself because she had cancer. As it happens, one of the cars in the pile-up is occupied by one of the Mafia dons that Whitman has been attacking, and accompanying him is Whitmans' ex-mistress (Janet Leigh), whom Whitman knocked up and abandoned a few years ago. The two start to get close again which doesn't make the Mafia guy happy. The cops, also unhappy, are out to get Whitman because of his accusations of corruption. Meanwhile, Parker's rich father is willing to use his power to subvert the suicide verdict because otherwise, the monsignor can't give Parker a Catholic burial. In the midst of all this, it's getting difficult for Whitman's agent to get him top dollar with a new contract. It seems that Whitman's American dream might be turning into a nightmare.</div><div><br /></div><div>This bizarre melodrama is best appreciated as camp. It's hard to pin down what's wrong with it, although Whitman's wooden performance is a good starting place—his character is charmless and uninteresting. The direction, by Robert Gist, is lackluster, and there is no coherent visual style to the movie, though Parker's apartment is pretty fabulous. This will sound like a contradiction, but Parker's performance is the best and worst thing in the movie. In her short fifteen minutes at the beginning, she starts at level 11 (out of 10) and goes up from there. At first, I found her grating and artificial, but her drunken hysteria set a kind of anti-Zen trance mood, during which I couldn't keep my eyes off of her. She is terrible and wonderful and riveting at the same time, and is ultimately the main reason to watch the movie. Much as I like Janet Leigh, she can't compete, especially given her under-written character. Barry Sullivan, as the main cop, is fine, as is Murray Hamilton as Whitman's agent, and Lloyd Nolan in what is basically a cameo as Parker's father. George Takei appears briefly as a cop. Without giving away the context, I'll quote the last line of the movie, which is classic: "What did you expect from a whore?" Gist, the director, has a very small role in MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET as the guy placing reindeer figures in the shop window when Kris Kringle stops to chat, and was the director's assistant in THE BAND WAGON. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-76478008256769871212023-12-30T17:18:00.000-05:002023-12-30T17:18:03.463-05:00MIRACLE ON MAIN STREET (1939) / I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES (1948)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkw4pSePM-izLZ8F7hnBpR7mFJcvDYfV2oRv_ewLKGSCX2o9bPn0n0bOU-C2oqa2xH7MH99FD_WsViMBcjJIr56N2TpCNd7L1-vG6DOrSG5QbWhOUm3tL3Am_IDSUffX_bD9rhGphsK89nyCUKKQfN916Tnakp8XPZibxUGb6O0pT_yMUPzURNVA/s848/miracle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="631" data-original-width="848" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkw4pSePM-izLZ8F7hnBpR7mFJcvDYfV2oRv_ewLKGSCX2o9bPn0n0bOU-C2oqa2xH7MH99FD_WsViMBcjJIr56N2TpCNd7L1-vG6DOrSG5QbWhOUm3tL3Am_IDSUffX_bD9rhGphsK89nyCUKKQfN916Tnakp8XPZibxUGb6O0pT_yMUPzURNVA/w200-h149/miracle.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>During the last week of each year, I usually try to review a classic-era Christmas movie but I think after 22 years of blogging, I've run out of them. But TCM showed these two rarely-shown films during December. They're not traditional holiday films with Santa and magic and angels; actually, one is a film noir and the other is noir-adjacent, but they were both interesting discoveries.. MIRACLE is a low-key melodrama which starts by introducing two couples. Wealthy suburbanite Walter Abel marries Jean Brooks on Christmas Eve. We leave them behind to follow Margo, a cooch dancer at a carnival attraction called the Streets of Cairo, and her husband (Lyle Talbot), who runs the show. When Talbot gets busted for selling a cop liquor, he punches out the cop and goes on the run. Margo is stuck with trying to pay rent for their apartment. Her kindly landlady (Jane Darwell), lets her slide a bit, but lets her know she'll need to find a legit job. At church on Christmas Eve, Margo finds an abandoned baby in the church creche and takes it home, uncertain of her future. Some time passes. Margo is barely getting by with some sewing jobs, and goes out to Pepito's restaurant go ask for a job as a dancer. She doesn't get it, but she meets Abel, drinking alone because his wife has left him. Sparks start to fly and soon he gets her a job designing clothes and wants her to move in with him. With Talbot still on the loose, she can’t entertain the idea of divorcing him. Eventually, Talbot does return and wants Margo to ask Abel for $500 to flee to South America. Complications ensue. This is practically an archetypal B-picture: cheap sets, second-class actors, a script with plotholes. But it’s classed up with some interesting visual flare (an early shot at the carnival travels from the outside through the interior and backstage in one shot). Margo is fine and Abel gives an understated performance which is miles away from his hyper role as the agent in HOLIDAY INN. Two Christmases bookend the narrative (and the ending is a bit rushed) though the holiday is still a fairly minor part of the story. Jane Darwell is fine as the landlady, and Wynne Gibson and Veda Ann Borg provide comic relief as two other dancing girls. Pictured are Abel and Margo.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOijS93LEjc4ZPkSLrUyzQRi9fSgkCAqe2_TMVNC_s5dh_lXMKV_SG22J5Mxhc86vF4MqgTXH9Dw8maLwN2tNExEZSYV_f-9FpEy7LlErxpRtibT1Jln1yx1zB1BzEyUaOcQWZo3vhZX8_UEjx3dM4uqD9wJqGt9I4OdLGYrc2_vnUCi7ZwF6aAw/s802/i%20wouldnt%20be.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="802" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOijS93LEjc4ZPkSLrUyzQRi9fSgkCAqe2_TMVNC_s5dh_lXMKV_SG22J5Mxhc86vF4MqgTXH9Dw8maLwN2tNExEZSYV_f-9FpEy7LlErxpRtibT1Jln1yx1zB1BzEyUaOcQWZo3vhZX8_UEjx3dM4uqD9wJqGt9I4OdLGYrc2_vnUCi7ZwF6aAw/w200-h166/i%20wouldnt%20be.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES takes place in more solidly noir territory. Don Castle (pictured at left) and Elyse Knox are married dancers just getting by. One night, a frustrated Castle throws a tap shoe of his out the window to silence a yowling cat. The next morning, an old miserly neighbor is found dead outside, with Castle's shoe print in the mud next to him. Castle, not knowing about the murder, finds a wallet stuffed with cash and he and Knox decide to spend some of it. Unfortunately, the cash is all old bills that can easily be traced to the old man, and Castle is picked up for murder. Regis Toomey is a cop assigned to the case who has a bit of a crush on Knox—she calls him Santa Claus for all the little gifts he's brought her at the dance club. Castle is found guilty and has an execution date set. Desperate to clear Castle, Knox impulsively tells Toomey that she'll marry him if he can find evidence that will get Castle released. That's all I can say without spoilers. Christmas is a fairly small part of this movie, but if airing it on TCM's Noir Alley in December helps get it attention, that's fine with me. Don Castle was a busy B-lead in the 40s (<a href="https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2023/11/lighthouse-1947.html" target="_blank">LIGHTHOUSE</a>, <a href="https://moviepalace.blogspot.com/2019/11/madonna-of-desert-1948.html" target="_blank">MADONNA OF THE DESERT</a>) and he's very good here, even if he has little to do in the last half. Knox (leading lady of THE MUMMY'S TOMB) does a good job with what is mostly a one-note role as a desperate wife. Toomey, a very busy character actor, is surprisingly good as the cop who we come to realize is a little too obsessed with Knox for his own good. It's short and moves quickly and is based on a story by Cornell Woolrich who wrote the story Rear Window was based on. It's too late to watch these for this holiday, but if TCM runs them again next year, you should give them both a shot. [TCM]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3209762.post-72245236389214862942023-12-29T09:25:00.005-05:002023-12-29T09:25:56.360-05:00MUCH ADO ABOUT CHRISTMAS (2021)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8xetf2YrHIILXRfcPVlrZRZx3B4Ksq0981m0mrBBARYr0Apj8IgTJou7kNn6i7bMwIuEJqg0gssf9XJZ7vzoLwMc8slZat6KZM5Yj0ExUJQ4NuLUP1bbWL6DmWEaihDmL9UFXxpAn9W91az13VN-0let8cHkzxPKE1K5YVnBbBdSfIbLR6g_KnQ/s870/much%20ado%20christmas01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="870" height="116" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8xetf2YrHIILXRfcPVlrZRZx3B4Ksq0981m0mrBBARYr0Apj8IgTJou7kNn6i7bMwIuEJqg0gssf9XJZ7vzoLwMc8slZat6KZM5Yj0ExUJQ4NuLUP1bbWL6DmWEaihDmL9UFXxpAn9W91az13VN-0let8cHkzxPKE1K5YVnBbBdSfIbLR6g_KnQ/w200-h116/much%20ado%20christmas01.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>In London (which looks a lot like Bucharest where this was filmed), Haley Lloyd is the daughter of wealthy businesswoman Leona Lloyd, but she likes to stay out of the spotlight by running a charity organization called the Hope Chest which sells used and donated items. Meanwhile, Don, the head of the start-up ad agency Blue Skies, and his two best buddies/assistants, Claude and Ben, have snuck into a Lloyd Company event and managed to schedule an appointment to pitch a campaign for a perfume to Leona. This is a make-or-break deal for them and they're certain they've got a winner, but the obnoxious but handsome and more polished Niles is angling for the campaign, too. Haley is volunteering at the event and meets Claude (more shaggy/cute than handsome). She is charmed by him and, as she's manning a hot chocolate stand, she doesn't tell him her real identity, calling herself Haley Logan; she's tired of guys coming onto her because she comes from money and wants to see how things go with a guy who doesn't know her family baggage. Well, things go very well—he particularly likes how honest she is—until he snaps a cute candid shot of her sitting in the snow and adds it to an ad for the perfume campaign. When Leona sees it, she blows up thinking he was deliberately using her daughter to get the account; for his part, Claude feels used, and thinks of Haley as dishonest. Leona turns Blue Skies down, Claude breaks up with Haley, and the ad agency may not survive the debacle. But it’s Christmas, a time for miracles, especially in made-to-TV movies!</div><div><br /></div><div>The publicity for this Great American Family movie promotes its connection to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing to give this fairly average Christmas romance some cultural cachet. As in the play, there are mistaken assumptions causing problems. The names of the protagonists, Claude and Haley, are based on Claudio and Hero. A more direct tie to the play is the comic relief secondary romance between Ben (Benedict) and Haley's friend Beatrice (Beatrice). But you don't need to know Shakespeare to get what's going on here, which is just another variation on the crossed signals Christmas romance. Susie Abromeit as Haley is fine at first, but her alternating of smiles and grimaces got weary after a while; conversely, I didn't care for floppy-haired Torrance Coombs (Claude) at first, but he grew on me. Even better are James Rottger as Ben and Sakura Sykes as Beatrice. I would like to have seen their stories fleshed out more; it's implied that they had a past romance that fell apart, but it's not delved into. The Bucharest exteriors are gorgeous—it's nice to see a non-Canadian setting for a change. The Christmas trappings were also among the best I've seen in a holiday TV-move. The ad agency is called Blue Skies in the dialogue, but their in-office signage just says Blue Sky. Aside from the visual style, this was mostly just about average. [GAF]</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577274295584935366noreply@blogger.com0