WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD (1933)

This may well be the archetypal example of a pre-Code social melodrama (from Warner Brothers, the studio that specialized in these films), complete with compelling performances, a fast pace, and some government propaganda spooned out at the end. Frankie Darro is a typical middle-class high-school student--a forerunner of Andy Hardy--but it's the Depression, and his father comes home one day out of a job. Darro pitches in by selling his car, but soon he and his buddy Edwin Phillips, whose family is also in bad straits, come to see themselves as burdens and run away, catching a ride hobo-style on a train. Along the way, they meet up with a girl (Dorothy Coonan) dressed as a boy who is on her way to live with an aunt in Chicago. She takes the boys with her, and the aunt is happy to see them, but her apartment is raided just after they arrive (gambling? prostitution?) and the trio wind up on the road again. As they head east, they become part of a large group of "wild" youth in similar circumstances. They’re not bad kids, and they try using the power of numbers to eke out a commune-like living, but the authorities, treating them as squatters, drive them out of a little shantytown they set up in Cleveland. One kid loses his leg to an oncoming train, and Darro gets unwittingly involved in a crime before all three end up in a courtroom where the nice judge treats them fairly and tells everyone that everything will be fine under Roosevelt’s NRA plan.

This William Wellman film is, despite its phony feel-good ending, a fairly bleak look at a real social problem of the time. Yes, the kids are all a bit too good to be true—they all get along, they all have good hearts, etc.—but the feel of the movie is gritty, and the weights these kids carry seem truly felt. In addition to the harrowing leg accident, there is a rape attempt and a brutal fire-hosing of the kids by the police. Darro (at left, above, with Phillips) gives a remarkable performance, a little on the Mickey Rooney side at first, but gaining in dramatic force as the film progresses. Darro, who was 16 at the time, has been good in everything I've seen him in, and it's a shame his relatively small size hurt his career, sticking him in juvenile and jockey roles into adulthood. His performance alone makes the movie worth seeing, but Phillips (who only made one more film) creates a character just as memorable. Grant Mitchell is Darro's dad, and he and Darro have a very well-acted scene when the boy tells him he's sold his beloved car. You may recognize Sterling Holloway and Sidney Miller among the boys, and Ward Bond plays the rapist. Though not filmed on location, much of it does have an authentic feel. This is part of the Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 3 boxed set, composed entirely of Wellman pictures, though it does crop up on TCM frequently. One of the best pre-Code movies I've seen. [DVD]

PANDORA'S BOX (1929)

Louise Brooks is remembered today mostly for this much-admired silent film from Germany, and though it is a well-made film, it remains of interest largely due to Brooks' mesmerizing performance. She is Lulu, a vivacious young woman whom we first see kept in a fancy apartment by her lover, Schön (Fritz Kortner). An older man named Schigolch, a figure from her past, visits her just before Schön comes to tell her that he's getting married; her flippant reply is, "You'll have to kill me to get rid of me." Schön's son Alwa (Francis Lederer) hires her for a musical revue he's producing, and she makes a scene backstage, refusing to go on when Schön arrives with his fiancée. Schön tries to console Lola and ends up making out with her in her dressing room. His son and fiancée discover them, and Schön winds up marrying Lola. On their wedding night, realizing that he will always be jealous, he gives her a gun and tells her to kill herself, but in an ambiguously filmed scene, she kills him, apparently by accident. She goes on trial and is found guilty, but manages to escape the courtroom. Alwa has become obsessed with her and, with the help of an old friend, the Countess Geschwitz, the two run off together; he becomes a gambler, losing lots of money, and she is threatened with blackmail by an old acquaintance who recognizes her. In the end, with Lulu, Alwa, and Schigolch in desperate straits, she turns to prostitution and, on what seems to be Christmas Eve, she picks up a john who turns out to be Jack the Ripper.

The melodramatic plot, with its outrageous twists and turns, is based on two famous plays by Frank Wedekind (who also wrote the play on which the recent Broadway hit "Spring Awakening" was based), and the direction by Georg W. Pabst, keeps lots of details offscreen or deliberately vague. Lulu is clearly a woman who, in the first half, knows how to get what she wants, but most of what develops is about her is ambiguous: Was she a prostitute from the beginning, or just a gold-digger? What exactly is Schigolch's relationship to Lola? He seems to have been a mentor or manager for her when she was a dancer, but he might also be a pimp--later, she says he's her father, though that may be a lie. Did she kill Schön on purpose? Is the Countess Geschwitz one of Lulu's lovers? (Clearly the Countess, who dresses in stereotypically mannish clothes, is hot for Lulu, and the two have a remarkably intimate dancing scene.)

Oddly, Jack the Ripper (not named specifically in the movie, though the credits give his name as Jack), who is only in the film for the last 15 minutes, is one of the most interesting and charismatic characters in the film. Played by the handsome Gustav Diessl (at right), he is troubled, even tortured, by his obsession to kill, but for a moment, it seems as if he will make a real connection with Lola; on the stairs outside her apartment, he throws away his knife, and inside, he dangles mistletoe (which he got from the Salvation Army) over her head before kissing her. Unfortunately, the allure of a kitchen knife on a nearby table is too strong for him. It is interesting that both of the murders in the film are shot obliquely--so much of the movie's appeal is in its ambiguity. Lederer, Korner, and Diessl are all excellent, but Brooks wipes everyone else off the screen: she is erotic, playful, mysterious, full of life, drop-dead beautiful, and feels quite modern. Certainly her appearance in this film, with her bob cut and bangs, has become iconic, and must have influenced Liza Minnelli's look as a similar, though less rawly manipulative, figure of Weimer Germany in CABARET. One of the last great films of the silent era. [DVD]

I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI (1951)

Frank Lovejoy works at a Pittsburgh steel factory and is a card-carrying Communist who uses his clout to get his comrades hired there. It seems to be common knowledge that he is a Party member--his brothers despise him for it--but his high school-age son (Ron Hagerthy, pictured with Lovejoy) only hears rumors from other schoolboys, whom he then beats up. When Lovejoy admits to his son that it's true, the boy is properly horrified. The truth about Lovejoy's situation, as the title of the film makes clear, is that Lovejoy has worked as a "mole" for the FBI for nine years. He has tried to be stoic about the whole thing, but after his mother dies and his brother (Paul Pircini) tries to beat him up at her funeral, Lovejoy asks the FBI to be released and cleared publicly. They convince him to stay on to wrap up one last case involving a strike at his factory, a Russian bigwig, and some goons who have been shipped in from New York to "break some skulls" to give the official union a bad name. On top of all this, his son's teacher (Dorothy Hart) "comes out" to Lovejoy as a fellow Communist; they start dating until she soon finds evidence that he's an FBI spy. Rather than turn him, however, she confides in him that she is upset at the direction in which the Party is going (using blacks and Jews as fall guys). She tries to "defect," so to speak, and Lovejoy protects her, leading to a couple of exciting chase scenes, some murders, and a climax at a HUAC hearing where Lovejoy hopes to clear his name.

This movie is considered a film noir by many critics, but a noir style is evident only in the last half hour, mostly in the nighttime chase scenes, one of which, along a railroad track, is quite well done. Based on a series of articles written by a real FBI agent, the movie is more indebted to the documentary-style crime thrillers of the era, with some off-screen narration and attempts at real-looking location shots (in this case, newsreel footage of riots). Lovejoy gives a subtle but single-note performance; his face when he's anguished over what his son thinks of him is no different than his face when he's casually talking over the facts of his case with his FBI handlers. The supporting cast provides a bit more color, including Richard Webb and Phillip Carey as Feds, and James Millicam and Edward Norris as Commies, though at times I must admit I got all the tall white men in suits and hats confused. The finale is perhaps the only movie scene ever in which House Un-American Activities Committee congressmen are seen as the good guys. [TCM]

HOT SATURDAY (1932)

A pre-Code romantic melodrama which plays out like Reefer Madness, except about the dangers of gossip. There are four central characters: Nancy Carroll is an average small-town girl who works as a bank secretary and still lives with her parents; Cary Grant is a playboy known for carrying on a string of affairs; Edward Woods is a bank clerk with the hots for Carroll; and Randolph Scott is a geologist and friend of the Carroll family who comes to visit for a few days. One Saturday, Carroll's gang gets invited to Grant's place for a party; when Grant and Carroll vanish together for the afternoon, Woods gets jealous. That night, when the party has moved to a lakeside nightclub, Woods takes Carroll out for a motorboat ride which ends badly when he tries to "press his advantage," as they say. She leaves the boat on the other side of the lake and trudges to Grant's place. Woods drives around to pick her up but she refuses to go with him, instead having Grant's driver take her home at 2 in the morning. The next day, gossip spreads about her until half the town hears that she spent the night at Grant's, leading to her getting fired for her loose morals. In the meantime, the shy Scott starts wooing Carroll, eventually proposing to her, but next Saturday, at another "hot" party, he hears the gossip about her and when he sees her dancing with Grant, assumes the gossip is true.

The plot here is nothing special, except for the ending [SPOILER!] in which Carroll, rejected by Scott, runs off with Grant (theoretically to be married, though given his reputation, which we have seen to be true, we wonder...), not caring what her parents or friends or Scott think. Grant and Scott, both handsome and full of charisma, steal every scene they're in--this was the first time Grant had lead billing, though he would not become a bankable star for another few years. Scott is particularly appealing: hunky and youthful, he does a nice job playing a guy who is supposedly shy around women but doesn't come off as a yokel or a doofus (that part is taken by the chubby Grady Sutton who, though a doofus and a little on the femme side, still manages to get his share of make-out action). Carroll is OK, though it's difficult to see why the men make such a fuss about her; her friend Eva (Lilian Bond) and younger sister (Rose Coghlan) are both more attractive and have at least as much personality as she. No kissing or petting is shown, but there are a couple of racy moments: at Grant's party, a chanteuse runs her hands up and down her body while she sings "I’m Burning for You"; sample lyrics: "Call the fire engine/And the whole darn crew/Tell 'em all to hurry/'Cause I’m burning for you" and "When you say no, I'm a volcano." In one bizarre scene played for laughs, Carroll yanks her sister's underwear off of her. On the Universal Pre-Code Hollywood Collection. (Image above from carygrant.net) [DVD]

CONFIRM OR DENY (1941)

Don Ameche, an American correspondent in London during the Blitz, flirts in the dark (during a blackout) with Joan Bennett, a teletype operator for the government; though she says she's married, that doesn't deter him. When an air raid is called, they spend the night together, platonically but cutely, in a crowded subway station. Next morning, when he finds out that his Consolidated Press building was destroyed in the bombing, he sets up a temporary HQ in a hotel basement and gets the government to loan Bennett to his company. From here, there are two plotlines related to Ameche’s belief that Germany is on the verge of invading England: 1) he tries to lease radio wire in Penzance so he'll be among the first to get the news out; 2) he's also trying to sneak word of the possible invasion into his news reports in defiance of the military censor (John Loder). Other characters of interest include a young lad (Roddy McDowall) who stays behind at the old press building to watch for incoming messenger pigeons for news of the invasion, an older blind typist (Arthur Shields), the hotel manager (Eric Blore), and Ameche's boss in New York (Raymond Walburn). But the romance between Bennett (who isn't actually married) and Ameche carries the movie to its climax, with the two trapped in the hotel basement by rubble, with a ticking bomb in the room.

This unsung and largely unseen film, shot and released before America entered the war, is actually a very good wartime drama. The romance is intertwined nicely with the dramatic stories, which eventually lead to a dramatization of issues of journalistic ethics in wartime. Ameche is successful at sneaking his news past the censor, but a tragic occurrence changes his mind about doing so. Ameche's character is an interesting departure from the usual Hollywood idea of a reporter; for a change, he's not a cardboard obnoxious lout but a fleshed-out likable guy; even his early aggressive flirting doesn't come off as offensive, and his performance is solid. He and Bennett have good chemistry, McDowell is fine in what turns out to be a crucial role, and Eric Blore gets to stretch a bit beyond his usual crisp sarcastic fussbudget-type, though his role is fairly small. Though the film is a drama, a light touch abounds until the climax. Watch for this one; maybe soon Fox will give Don Ameche his own boxed set. [FMC]

HITLER (1962)

When I saw that top billing in this movie was given to Richard Basehart (Admiral Nelson on TV's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea") as Hitler followed by two German starlets playing the women in his life, I figured it was ludicrous over-the-top B-movie junk. Well, it is a B-movie (from Allied Artists, mostly known for sci-fi flicks), but surprisingly, it's not quite junk. Instead, it's a movie that's torn between wanting to be exploitation and wanting to be taken a little more seriously. A more appropriate title (and a more marketable one) might be The Private Life of Adolph Hitler, since the film focuses on his sex life--or lack thereof--and how it affected his personality and his drive for power, almost completely ignoring his political beliefs and his genocidal state machinery. The film begins in 1924 with Hitler writing "Mein Kampf" while in prison, and this short scene is all we get of his hateful philosophizing, except for a line later when he declares, "One is either a German or a Christian." The story then jumps ahead to show him falling in love with his niece Geli at his mountain retreat. Nothing physical transpires between them; apparently he is rendered impotent because Geli reminds him of his late mother, so he loves her but cannot make love to her. The appearance of incest bothers Hitler's followers (such as Goebbels and Strasser), but Hitler rants that their "petty-bourgeois morality" means nothing to him. Nevertheless, when Geli insults him by calling him "less than a man," Hitler has his thugs murder her and report her death as a suicide. He seeks help from a therapist, even though he considers psychiatry "Jew science." Soon he is attracted to Eva Braun, who looks like Geli, and hence, like his mother. It does seem as if, at some point, he is able to function sexually with Braun, although at the end, when they get married in the bunker and she calls herself "Frau Hitler," he screams that no one has the right to use that name except his mother. The Final Solution and the war itself are glossed over, though we do see low-budget recreations of events such as the Reichstag fire, the Night of the Long Knives (in which Ernst Rohm and his SA men are slaughtered), and the bungled assassination attempt. Some newsreel footage is used here and there but the movie can't overcome its cheap look. Still, Basehart is surprisingly good, mostly underplaying the role, and Cordula Trantow is excellent (and beautiful) as Geli. Martin Kosleck, who had been playing evil Nazis since the early 40's--is fine as Goebbles, and John Banner (later to find fame as Sgt. Schulz in Hogan's Heroes) is equally good as Strasser. [TCM]

JOAN OF ARC (1948)

In the 15th century, during the Hundred Years' War between England and France, Joan, a rural French teenager, is tormented by the voices of saints who tell her she should lead French armies into battle against the English. She cuts her hair, dresses like a boy, and makes her way to see the Dauphin, heir to the throne of France whose claim is cast in doubt when his own mother insists he is a bastard. As a prank, an impostor presents himself to Joan as the Dauphin, but she, apparently guided by her voices, finds the real Dauphin in the crowd. Despite having no military experience, Joan is allowed to lead the armies as a kind of figurehead; at the besieged town of Orleans, Joan is wounded but the army is successful. After more victories, Joan is present at the coronation of the Dauphin as King Charles VI, but he seems visibly upset by the kind of adoration Joan receives from the crowds. Joan wants to continue fighting to free Paris from the Burgundians, but feels betrayed when the King signs a treaty instead. She is captured by the English, and Charles refuses to ransom her. She is put on trial by an ecclesiastical court for heresy and ex-communicated, but refuses to accept the judgment, and is eventually burned at the stake.

I’ve never completely understood the appeal of the story of Joan of Arc. Though she is credited as a staunch nationalist, and she was obviously a victim of political chicanery, she was also pretty clearly a nutcase, and whenever I see a version of her story, I find it hard to be completely sympathetic to her. This film, the last one directed by Victor Fleming (GONE WITH THE WIND, WIZARD OF OZ), was a box-office flop, partly due to Bergman being on the outs with the American public because of her adulterous behavior. The movie, in Technicolor, looks ravishing, but its attempt at being a big epic adventure is hurt by very stagy sets, some ponderous dialogue, skimpy-looking battle scenes, and, of course, the fact that this is largely a personal story of religious faith (or delusion). Bergman (in her 30s playing 18) is actually quite good, and the large supporting cast is fun for a game of "spot the character actor": Ward Bond, J. Carroll Naish, Gene Lockhart, Shepperd Strudwick, Cecil Kellaway, and Robert Barrat among others. Unfortunately, at 145 minutes, the pace is too leisurely and the narrative too unfocused to be very compelling. [DVD]

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1935)

Years ago, I tried reading Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" without the benefit of a teacher or a classroom of students to give me the impetus to finish--I didn't finish it. I imagine that this relatively short Hollywood film doesn't really do the huge book justice; nevertheless, on its own terms, this is a well-done B-thriller with strong performances and good atmosphere courtesy director Josef von Sternberg. Peter Lorre is Raskolnikov, a student who graduates with honors; months later, he has a promising article on criminology published, though anonymously at the insistence of his editor, and lives in dirt poor conditions. The contents of the article are never made clear, but Roskolnikov believes that actions of superior people should be above the law, and he puts this theory into practice when he kills a nasty pawnbroker who is, in his eyes, the scum of the earth, for doing dirt not just to him but to lovely young Sonya (Marian Marsh), a whore with a heart of gold. There is a plotline involving his mother and sister, both of whom he believes are at the mercy of an obnoxious man (Gene Lockhart), but the focus here is on the cat-and-mouse game that develops between Roskolnikov and Inspector Porfiry (Edward Arnold). Lorre and Arnold play off each other very well, and Marsh is beautiful and almost believable in the stock role of the bad girl who is actually too good to be true. Mrs. Patrick Campbell, a legendary stage actress, has one of her very few film roles as the horrid pawnbroker, who does indeed seem to deserve a bad fate, if not perhaps death. Douglass Dumbrille has a small but important role as a figure from Roskolnikov's sister's past who shows up near the end. Discussions of the nature of mankind, religion, atheism, and crime, which most likely take up many pages in the novel, frequently seem on the verge of breaking out here, but never really happen. Still, a much better movie, in acting and in visual style, than I would have expected. [TCM]

IF YOU COULD ONLY COOK (1935)

Herbert Marshall, head honcho at an auto company, is about to marry a woman of good breeding who only wants him for his money. Frustrated with his board of directors who don’t like his new car designs, he leaves a meeting in a huff and winds up sitting on a park bench with Jean Arthur who is down on her luck. They look through the want-ads together and she, thinking he's also out of work, suggests the two of them pose as a married couple and apply for a butler/maid position. He agrees to meet her the next day to do so, leading to an amusing scene in with Marshall gets some career tips from his butler. They're hired by Leo Carrillo, a cultured gangster; he winds up loving Arthur's cooking and, when he suspects something’s up because Marshall sleeps on the balcony rather than with his "wife," he starts flirting with her. There are rather tortured plot complications involving Marshall stealing his own car designs out of the company’s safe, he and Arthur "breaking up" even though they've developed feelings for each other, and Carrillo's thugs showing up at Marshall's wedding to rub him out, though they actually wind up getting Marshall and Arthur together.

Though this film is part of Columbia’s Icons of Screwball Comedy DVD set, it's a weak example of the genre. It's amusing and moves quickly, but one of the keys to a truly successful screwball comedy is that you can use adjectives like "fizzy" and "sparkling" to describe them, and I can’t with this one. The main obstacle to fizziness is the lack of chemistry between Marshall and Arthur, almost all of it due to the drab, tired Marshall, who looks he should be on his third marriage, not his first. He's fine in his comedic scenes, but falls flat in portraying any romantic interest in Arthur. That said, Arthur and the supporting players, including Carillo, Lionel Stander, and Frieda Inescourt, make the film enjoyable enough. Good line: Marshall, to his butler, "Do you think I’m out of my mind?" Butler: "I’m hoping for the best, sir." [DVD]

TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL (1935)

Set in the futuristic 1940's after the building of a tunnel under the English Channel (which in reality took another 50 years to come to fruition), the film is the story of an engineer (Richard Dix) who is obsessed with building an undersea tunnel from England to America. This dream is viewed with skepticism by many, but others believe it would somehow contribute to a lasting world peace--though how is never explained. Dix gets a team of engineers and workers going on the project, but the funding remains a constant problem; some of his backers have their own agendas and don't care much about Dix's dreams or world peace. Dix's obsession causes family problems; his neglected wife (Madge Evans) takes a job as a tunnel nurse but gets infected with "tunnel sickness" and goes blind. Without telling him what's happened, she leaves him, letting him think it's because of his neglect, rather than have him feel guilty over her illness. Dix eventually comes to think that his best friend and co-leader of the project (Leslie Banks) is having an affair with her, causing a temporary rupture between the two. Years later, as the British workers are about to complete the tunnel by connecting up with the Americans, Dix's grown son (Jimmy Hanley) joins the workers just in time to get caught in a tunnel cave-in caused by an undersea volcano, a tragedy which threatens to bring the whole project to a halt.

There's a lot going on here: explosions, crowds, a love triangle, a murder (by poisoned cigarette, I think), videophones, and the cool special effect of a huge "Radium Drill" the men use under the sea floor, but still the movie manages to be more interesting than engrossing. The narrative is an uneasy mix of SF speculation, romance, and melodrama, all in the service of expressing a kind of Ayn Randian philosophy of monomaniacal obsession. A huge chunk of Dix's life winds up being devoted to this goal which he never gives up on, even though we're given only nebulous reasons as to why it's worth doing. Dix, often a stodgy, wooden actor, is good here, as is Banks, whom I'm more familiar with as a villain (THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME). Evans can't do much with the pining wife role, though Helen Vinson is her usual interesting self as the American heiress who falls in love with Dix and isn't above literally selling herself to a slimy financier in order to assure continued support for the tunnel. The effects are fine given the era, but the make-up winds up being a problem; none of the adults age a bit over the 15-20 year span of the narrative. Walter Huston and George Arliss have very small cameos as the American President and the British Prime Minster. [TCM]

THE VALLEY (OBSCURED BY CLOUDS) (1972)

Viviane is the upper-class wife of a French diplomat who is in New Guinea looking for some rare bird-of-paradise feathers to sell at Paris boutiques. She's obnoxious, self-centered, and used to getting her own way. At a trading post, she runs into Olivier, a relatively handsome thin blond hippie-type who is traveling with a group of other relatively good-looking hippie-types in search of an unexplored valley in the middle of the island (the most recent map of the area is simply blank with the words "obscured by clouds"), hoping to find a literal paradise; they believe that other explorers who have gone in but never returned have stayed by choice because it's such a wonderful place. She decides to go with them hoping to find more feathers. Her inhibitions soon begin dropping away, first when she sleeps with Olivier, and later when she is influenced by the attitudes of her companions, especially Gaetan, the leader, who is involved with the other two women in the group (there's also a young boy who might be Gaetan's son, though his character is almost completely ignored). More sexual escapades and drug experiences follow until the group meets up with a tribe who live near the valley. They are welcomed as guests at a huge festival at which some of the group "go native," applying face paint and realizing that the trappings of civilization as they knew it have fallen away. Viviane tells Olivier that they have found "the truth," but he tells her that the opposite has happened, that they remain merely tourists; as they try to tear down social restrictions, the tribe understands the importance of strict rules and taboos. Even the natives won't head over the hills to the valley, so our group continues, despite having little food or water. Eventually, in the final shot, they do reach the "heart of darkness," so to speak, or maybe "heart of lightness," depending on your viewpoint.

This little-seen film from director Barbet Schroeder has a reputation as a hippie-dippie psychedelic flick, largely because the soundtrack was by Pink Floyd, but this is anything but trippy. There are no light-show visual effects, and the music is limited to instrumental backgrounds at the beginning and ending (and a handful of Floyd songs which play over the radio in a couple of scenes); frankly I think the movie would have benefited from more use of Pink Floyd's ominous theme. If the movie is like anything, it's like Apocalypse Now (hence my "heart of darkness" reference), and like that movie, the cinematography and the settings are its main strengths--the film was shot on location, and though I know nothing about the circumstances of the filming, it feels like it was an arduous experience, so much so that I was occasionally taken out of the film by thinking about how they got certain shots. The most startling moment involves the natives beating to death some pigs who will be served as food at the festival. The killings are obviously real and for that reason, you stop thinking about the film and start thinking about the filming. The movie lags at times, partly due to thoroughly average acting and writing. It’s essentially a three-actor movie, with Bulle Ogier as Vivien, Michael Gothard as Olivier, and Jean-Pierre Kalfon as Gaetan, and only Kalfon really makes an impression. Best quote, even if it is a tad on the pretentious side: "Paradise is a place with many exits but no entrance," meaning I assume that you can be born into a paradise, but you can never really find one. [DVD]

HARMONY LANE (1935)

"Beautiful Dreamer" by Stephen Foster is perhaps my all-time favorite "old-time" song so I was pleased to run across this biopic of Foster, possibly the most famous American songwriter until Irving Berlin came along. Unfortunately, this is a Poverty-Row studio affair (from Mascot), so its entertainment value today is rather slight, but for film buffs it's interesting as a low-budget version of the kind of glossy musical biographies that MGM and Fox would produce in the 40's. Foster (Douglass Montgomery) grows up in Kentucky, seemingly more comfortable with the house slaves than with his own family. He's dragged away from an all-black church service to be given the bad news that his father wants to send him to Cincinnati to go into business with his brother. He's not happy about this--he wants to write songs--but when he tells his girlfriend Susan not to cry for him, he comes up with a little ditty that becomes "Oh, Susannah." In a three-minute montage, we see that song sweep the world and soon Foster gets chummy with minstrel king Edwin Christy (William Frawley) who pays him to write songs for his group. Foster sells Christy all the rights to "Swanee River" for $500, including the right to claim authorship, and this becomes a trend in Foster's life: he writes popular songs but doesn't have the business sense to become financially independent through music. He marries a girl named Jane who then suddenly decides she's not crazy about living with his family, hence the sale of "Swanee River" so they can move out on their own. Their marriage foundering, Foster begins seeing Susan again until Jane announces she's pregnant. And so it goes: Foster writes songs but can't make enough money to keep his wife happy, keeps pining for Susan, and starts drinking, leading to a sad, untimely death.

Montgomery isn't bad but his range in the film goes from addled-looking to sad to drunk, and back again. The character is not exactly unsympathetic, but we don't see anything beneath the surface to admire or identify with. Evelyn Venable is good as Susan, Joseph Cawthorn is amusing as a mentor of Foster's, but the best performance comes from William Frawley--I like him as Fred Mertz in "I Love Lucy" but I'd never thought much of his movie roles until this one. He steals every scene he's in, which given that he's usually with Montgomery, may not have been hard to do. (BTW, his character's group was the inspiration for the name of the 60's folk group, The New Christy Minstrels, who are still performing today.) What this movie is really lacking, oddly enough, is musical numbers. The tiny budget wouldn't allow for big production numbers, but considering Foster's output, it's rather sad that all we get are abbreviated and lackluster versions of a handful of songs (including "My Old Kentucky Home" and a decent "Beautiful Dreamer"). Fox did a Foster movie with Don Ameche a few years later (SWANEE RIVER), but it seems to have become a rarity. [DVD]

GREAT GOD GOLD (1935)

In 1929, just before the crash, reporter Regis Toomey is trying to interview hotshot stock speculator Sidney Blackmer who isn't being very cooperative; Toomey ends up putting words in his mouth, such as "Financial doom is just around the corner… the wolves are gathering for the kill… who's left holding the bag? John W. Public!" (Sound familiar, 21st century viewers?) Blackmer says he can use the fake quotes if he calls a coin toss correctly, and Toomey does. Days later, the crash hits. Soon, two men approach Blackmer, wanting to use him as a front to snatch businesses which are in trouble, putting them into receivership under the respected Blackmer, while the silent partners make money from the deals. (I understood almost none of this scheme, but what's important is that Blackmer, like the two men, is getting rich on the misfortunes of others.) The first business to get this treatment is the Excelsior Hotel; the owner commits suicide by jumping out a window, and his daughter (Martha Sleeper) vows to go after those responsible. She and Toomey work together, and soon she's got a job as Blackmer's secretary and finds evidence that Blackmer's scheme is crooked. What ultimately does Blackmer in, however, isn't so much love of money as love of woman; he has an affair with the wife of the nephew of one of his cohorts, leading to a climax involving a jealous husband with a gun.

This Poverty Row melodrama is notable for a couple of reasons. One is Blackmer's character; though he's the chief villain, he's also got some depth to him, and for much of the film, he is the most sympathetic character on screen (Toomey and Sleeper are too cardboard for much audience identification). He doesn't seem to be truly bad or even particularly greedy; many of his actions are determined by his coin-tossing ritual. Blackmer plays him in a carefully measured fashion, as a mild-mannered but confident man, and we can see the charms he has that even Toomey and Sleeper fall for. The other point of interest is the writing; though the financial plot is convoluted, the dialogue is strong and you can see the writers are reaching for some kind of political or philosophical ideas underneath the melodrama plot. It's not totally successful, but for sub-B film, it's different and worth a look. [DVD]

CAR OF DREAMS (1935)

Imagine the British making an Astaire/Rogers movie, except the leads are a respected character actor not known for singing or dancing and a German actress who never made another film in English. And all on a B-film budget. Actually, it turns out to be a charming little movie, even if the musical aspect of it feels a little half-baked. Grete Mosheim is a young woman who lives with her working-class family and indulges in wistful window-shopping for things well out of her price range. At a car dealership, she makes a big fuss over a white Rolls-Royce which she's told is not for sale as it's just been sold to John Mills, the wealthy son of a musical instrument manufacturer. But Mills, smitten with Mosheim, pretends to be a car salesman and tells her she's won the car in an advertising giveaway. When he finds out she can't drive, he offers to be her chauffeur. Things get more complicated when he learns she works at his dad's factory. Trying to woo Mosheim while keeping his identity a secret, he has his friend (Jack Hobbs) pose as him, but she starts to fall for the friend as romantic games ensue. As in an Astaire/Rogers movie, the two eventually overcome all the mix-ups to fall in love; in the last scene, they leave in their Rolls-Royce, which, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, takes off into the sky! Mills, though not known for romantic leads, can really do no wrong, and though he’s not a slick song-and-dance man, he's charming, and his first number, sung as he dances through the musical instrument factory, is fun. Mosheim is serviceable but can’t quite nail down the effortless whimsy needed for the role (if my paradoxical metaphor makes sense). Robertson Hare plays the older male foil, the Edward Everett Horton character. The title song, played frequently, sounds a lot like "Shuffle Off to Buffalo." A pleasant little surprise, and one that gives me even more respect for John Mills. [DVD]

ANDROCLES AND THE LION (1952)

In 2nd century Rome, the kindly tailor Androcles is trying to escape a round-up of Christians by Caesar Antoninus, but soldiers catch up with him when he stops to pull a thorn out of a lion's paw; the fierce lion becomes friendly and licks his face in gratitude (and Androcles nicknames him Tommy), but Androcles is captured and labeled a sorcerer for his seemingly unnatural power over the wild beast. He winds up in a group of Christian prisoners being led to sacrifice in the arena; the Roman captain in charge becomes friendly with the lovely young Lavinia and soon they are in love. The Christian Ferrovius, a strong and hot-tempered man, is sent out to be slaughtered by gladiators, but when he kills them all, Caesar is impressed enough to free all the Christians until he is reminded that the bloodthirsty crowds will be disappointed, so he sends Androcles out to be killed by the lions. Of course, the lion he has to face is Tommy and the two wind up dancing before the confused crowd. Ultimately, Androcles and the lion are freed, Ferrovius becomes a member of the guard, and Lavinia and her converted soldier are happy ever after.

This film, adapted from a play by George Bernard Shaw, is a bit odd, being more a piece of ideas about tolerance than an action film or character drama, and its stagy sets give it the look of a TV adaptation (and in fact it was done that way in 1967, with Noel Coward as Caesar). It's rather unusual in that it's one of the few films about Christians and lions that doesn't end in either gloomy tragedy or tragic piety, or both (see THE SIGN OF THE CROSS). The lion is mostly "played by" a real lion, though Alan Young (Androcles) and the lion don't share the same frame very often, and the dance in the arena, though charming, is clearly being done with a man in a lion suit (see picture above). The reasons for watching the film are the occasionally witty dialogue and the acting, especially by Maurice Evans as Caesar and Robert Newton as the strong man. Young, better known on TV as the owner of the talking horse Mr. Ed, has no real comic spark--I hate to say this, but someone like Danny Kaye (not one of my favorites) would have been more interesting. Jean Simmons is fine as Lavinia, and Victor Mature (the soldier) is his usual flat, wooden self. A nice gallery of supporting players includes Elsa Lanchester as Androcles' nasty wife, Reginald Gardiner as a foppish Roman who almost gets his ass whooped by Newton, Gene Lockhart as a lion keeper, and John Hoyt as the head of the Christian hunters. Enjoyable if not compelling, and a rare chance to see Evans, the well-regarded Shakespearean actor who did more work on the stage and TV than in movies. The Criterion print is, of course, beautiful. [DVD]

THE GOOSE AND THE GANDER (1935)

A routine romantic slamming-doors farce (with few actual slamming doors) which is just good enough that it makes you wish it were better. The set-up: Betty (who is married to stuffed-shirt Ralph) flirts with Bob at a beach resort; Georgianna (who is Ralph's ex-wife) overhears them planning a rendezvous that night at a nearby mountain cabin and sets in motion a convoluted plan to have the two get stuck overnight at her cabin instead, just to toy with them. Meanwhile, Lawrence and Connie are two high society crooks who steal some gems (including an emerald of Georgianna's), then steal Ralph's car to head off to the mountains. They all wind up at Georgianna's and are forced to adopt new identities: Betty claims to be Bob's wife and Lawrence claims to be Ralph (since he has Ralph's car), which makes Connie, Betty. Georgianna, having a high old time as the only one who knows what's really going on, has invited the real Ralph over for brunch the next morning to catch his wife in her lies. However, she starts to develop feelings for Bob; guess who winds up with whom?

One problem here is that under the Production Code, things can't get as racy as they should--had this been made in the early 30's, it would have been a bit more realistic in its (im)morality, but here, Betty and Bob can't actually spend the night in the same room, let alone in the same bed, so there are some torturous plot devices present to ensure that. The thieves also might have gotten away with their larceny, which they don't here. The acting is OK: Kay Francis (pictured above) and George Brent seem to be having a good time as Georgianna and Bob, and John Eldredge and Claire Dodd are fun as the crooks. Ralph Forbes doesn’t have much to do as Ralph, and Genevieve Tobin is lackluster as Betty (she should be more frivolous). William Austin gets in a good scene or two as Ralph's unlikable (and certainly gay) brother who all along suspects Betty of adultery, and Helen Lowell is dryly amusing as Georgianna's aunt who goes right along with all the charades. It's nice and short, and is recommended mostly for Kay Francis fans. [TCM]

SONS OF THE SEA [aka ATLANTIC FERRY] (1941)

A British historical film about steamships, co-written by Emeric Pressburger just before he went on to screen immortality in his partnership with Michael Powell. In Liverpool in 1837, the MacIver brothers (Michael Redgrave and Griffith Jones) launch a steamship despite the general belief that use of steamships in transatlantic trade is not feasible; the ship does in fact sink upon launch. Hot-tempered Jones wants to get out of the business but Redgrave gives up his interest in the company and goes to Nova Scotia to consult with Canadian ship magnate Samuel Cunard. He books passage on a ship belonging to their rival, Henry Oscar; it's overcrowded with emigrants and leaves without a full crew, and two months out, they run into a fierce storm and many of the passengers rebel. When the survivors are returned to England, Redgrave punches Oscar out, and almost punches his brother when he finds out that Jones has initiated a merger. Eventually, Redgrave does meet up with Cunard and they win a commission for an Atlantic mail contract. Jones's fiancée (Valerie Hobson) brings the brothers together, professionally at least, but soon she herself splits them apart again when she finds herself falling in love with Redgrave. The film climaxes with a transatlantic race between the steamship Britannia and Oscar's sailing ship the Queen Mary. The MacIvers and Cunard were real people, but the film apparently plays fast and loose with facts. Redgrave and Jones are both quite fine and the storm scenes (there is a second one during the final race) are pulled off nicely. [TCM]

PLATINUM BLONDE (1931)

A cocky reporter (Robert Williams) gets a scoop about a breach of promise scandal involving the son of a wealthy family. The matriarch (Louise Closser Hale) and the family lawyer (Reginald Owen) aren't happy, but when Williams gets hold of some letters of the son's which were being held for blackmail purposes and hands them over to the family, the socialite daughter (Jean Harlow) is grateful and soon she and the reporter are an item, much to the distress of fellow reporter Loretta Young who has the hots for Williams. Soon, despite predictions from his fellow reporters that Harlow will turn Williams into an emasculated "bird in a gilded cage," the two are married and, sure enough, he's miserable as a man who feels he’s kept by his wife and her family. When he finally snaps after being dubbed "Cinderella Man," he leaves Harlow and snuggles up with Young.

I find myself disagreeing with the generally positive critical opinions on this film, an early work by Frank Capra. Williams was a well-regarded stage actor and this was his first leading role, and sadly, his last as he died of peritonitis just days after this film opened. Most critics praise Williams, saying he has a "sleepy-eyed charm" and comes off like a slightly less macho Clark Gable. Well, he is sleepy-eyed, and his role here is similar to the one that Gable played a couple years later for Capra in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, but the comparison that came to me was of a cross between Will Rogers (his casual, stumbling delivery) and Dwight Frye (his looks, or lack thereof). He works well with Harlow, and the scenes in which they are falling in love (or lust, more appropriately) have some heat. But too often, his almost improvised-feeling style doesn't mesh with the rest of the actors. Many critics think Young and Harlow should have switched roles; I actually think Harlow is the best thing in the movie, working against her image (mostly developed later) of a hard-edged, low-class dame; for her part, Young is OK but can't do much with a part that, although it gets her top billing, isn't developed very well. Owen is fun as the stuffed-shirt lawyer, and Halliwell Hobbes has a couple of good moments as the butler. Claud Allister, who usually plays flaming femme idiots, is subdued here as a valet, and Donald Dillaway as Harlow's brother is handsome but has nothing to do. A few scenes are fun, but overall, with the drab lead and a slow pace, this is a Capra that I can't recommend. [TCM]

TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970)
THE LONGEST DAY (1962)

A friend loaned me these two war films over the Fourth of July weekend and they wound up making an interesting study in contrasts. Both are fairly straightforward big-budget recreations of famous WWII events, both use big chunks of dialogue in a foreign language (with subtitles), and the narratives of both seesaw back and forth between the opposing sides, but the ways in which they differ are worth examining.

TORA! TORA! TORA! looks at the invasion of Pearl Harbor from the viewpoints of the Japanese and the Americans. Strictly speaking, I don't suppose the Americans can be said to have had a "viewpoint" at the time since they were mostly unaware of the plans for the invasion until it was launched--and that word "mostly" is crucial. There is a conspiracy theory out there that says FDR knew about the plans and allowed them to go forth in order to goad America into entering the war, but this isn't seriously mentioned in the film, which implies that our un-preparedness for the Japanese invasion of the Hawaiian naval base on December 7, 1941 was due to a string of errors of judgment and communication. The Japanese were engaged in a war against the Chinese which America opposed and were suffering from American blockades, but according to this film, the decision to attack Pearl Harbor was not unanimously favored among Japanese officers; General Yamamoto was afraid that such a move would force them to take the side of Nazi Germany and he did not want that. Still, the pro-attack side wins out and an ultimatum is ordered to be sent to the White House by Japanese diplomats, though it's not received until after the attack. Coded Japanese messages are broken quickly by the Americans, but not taken seriously enough along the chain of command.

The first half of the film covers the days just before the attack, cutting back and forth between Japan, Hawaii, and Washington (with all Japanese dialogue presented in Japanese with English subtitles); the second half, after an intermission, is a recreation of the attack. The first thing I noticed about the film is that, unlike in most Hollywood war movies, there are no personal stories, no romances, no fictionalized characters to draw attention away from the unfolding of the "true" story. At first, this seemed like a pleasant novelty, a way to make the movie seem more like a documentary, and it was helpful that real historical figures like Admiral Halsey and General George C. Marshall were identified by subtitles. But as the first half dragged on without any character development, it wound up feeling mostly like a lot of exposition, like information being conveyed in a classroom. The acting was OK, but I think the actors (including Martin Balsam and Jason Robards) felt reined in by portraying real people as though they were chess figures being moved around by the forces of history. However, the last hour of the movie, given over to the actual attack, is quite well done, though because we don't get to know any characters very well, sorrow over individual human loss is at a minimum. The effects are excellent, especially given that there was no CGI involved, and many of the ground scenes really give off a "you are there" feeling.

THE LONGEST DAY is the story of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Like TORA!, it presents two different perspectives, the Allies and the Germans (and within the Allies viewpoint, the British and American storylines are kept mostly separate until near the end). It also relies on subtitles for the German speakers and to identify historical figures such as Eisenhower and Rommel. The actual recreation of the storming of the beaches (and the paratroopers activities the night before) is done very well. Unlike TORA!, this film has fictional characters whom we meet and learn a bit about, so we have some emotional investment in them as people. Unfortunately, this winds up being a bit of a liability as there just too many characters introduced. Many if not most of them only have one or two scenes, and the fact that a star-studded cast is used (over 20 "name" actors including Sean Connery, Roddy McDowell, Rod Steiger, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Robert Wagner, Richard Burton, and John Wayne) is a bit distracting. Instead of caring about them as characters, we're busy waiting for the next celebrity to pop up. There's also the overly-dramatic dialogue, reminiscent of movies of the 30s and 40s. For example, when Richard Burton enters a mess hall in a dazed state and is asked by someone if he knows the whereabouts of another pilot, Burton replies, "Yes… (long dramatic pause) … He's at the bottom of the Channel."

Still, once you get used to this, the action moves along nicely and the production values are quite good. John Wayne is basically playing John Wayne, at which he excels. Richard Beymer, the romantic lead in WEST SIDE STORY (pictured with Richard Burton), is almost laughably bad as a cocky young soldier, but he gets a good scene at the end when, lost and alone in the French countryside, he stumbles across Burton, who's alive and who has killed a German sniper but who has been seriously wounded in the leg. Burton gets what might be seen as the "punch line" of the movie when he says to Beymer, "He's dead, I'm crippled, you're lost. Do you suppose war is always like this?" Though the beach landing scenes are not nearly as impressive those in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN over 30 years later, they look real enough, and the tracking shots following the soldiers out of the boats through the water to the beach are effective. My favorite parts of the film follow the French Resistance members in the villages and the Allied paratroopers who parachute in the night before, with a particularly good scene showing the invasion of the village of Sainte-Mare-Eglise.

The other thing to consider is that this film was actually made first, in 1962, near the end of the classic Hollywood era. It was likely the first epic war film (in terms of money spent, actors and resources used, and length--almost three hours), coming as it did after a long series of war movies that focused on small groups of men in smaller, more intimate circumstances, and it set up the formula that TORA! TORA! TORA! used eight years later. I reviewed them in reverse order because that's how I watched them. Even though the later film had better effects and cinematography (and color), it’s the earlier black & white film I think I'd return to first, as it did a better job of engaging the emotions, and making the agonies and rewards of war more understandable. Still, both are worth seeing. [DVD]

MY LITTLE CHICKADEE (1940)

Someday I may be ready to write about a Mae West movie or a W. C Fields movie, but for some reason, these two stars are problematic figures for me. I like their movies, but despite their mass appeal in the 30's, I think they don’t translate well to today's viewers. Both performers had strongly etched personas (bad girl with a heart of gold & nasty crank with a heart of stone) and both could be quite funny, but their movies are erratically paced; his pay little attention to narrative and hers pay too much. Unfortunately, this film, the only one they made together, has most of their weaknesses and few of their strengths. The saucy West has been thrown out of town for being suspected of carrying on with a bandit; on the train out of town, she meets up with Fields, carrying a big bag of money, and marries him to get respectable. What Fields doesn't know is that the minister is a fake and they aren't really married, so West keeps avoiding him, especially in the bedroom, and continues to dally with other men. The plot gets sillier and more incoherent, but the movie is too heavily plotted to ignore it. Both West and Fields get some good moments, though rarely with each other. Margaret Hamilton steals her scenes doing a variation on her uptight Elmira Gulch character from OZ. Some of the better lines: Man: "I heard you buried your wife"; Fields: "I had to--she died"; Fields, apropos of nothing, "Did you ever kick a woman in the midriff?"; When a judge asks West if she's showing contempt for the court, she replies, "No, I’m doing my best to hide it." Not terrible but disappointing, given the one-time superstar pairing. [DVD]

ATHENA (1954)

One of MGM's minor musicals from a fallow period for the Hollywood musical, between SINGIN' IN THE RAIN ('52) and WEST SIDE STORY ('60). Adam Shaw (Edmund Purdom) is a young, blandly handsome lawyer who is running for Congress (despite having not a shred of charisma); his handlers want him to get married to be more palatable to the voters and to seem less youthful (one says, "Nothing ages a man like marriage"). Shaw has a rich but blah fiancée, but when he meets the eccentric but wholesome and charming Athena Mulvain (Jane Powell), we know she'll be the one, because in the movies, 1) wholesome always beats rich, and 2) opposites attract. The Mulvains (Ulysses, his wife Salome, and their seven granddaughters) run a health food company and are fanatics about vegetarianism and exercise, and Ulysses, despite being in his 70's, still does gymnastics and is training men (including Steve Reeves) for the Mr. Universe contest. Along with the Adam/Athena romance, we get supporting cast love between Shaw's army buddy Johnny, a Sinatra-ish singer (Vic Damone) and Minerva Mulvain (Debbie Reynolds). All ends well, of course, though the obstacles in the way of true love seem particularly far-fetched and forced. The songs and production number stagings are unmemorable, but the look is glossy and the supporting performances carry the picture: Purdom is a big, handsome block of wood, and Powell seems to be trying too hard to be bubbly and kooky; Reynolds and Damone are far better--and probably should have had the leads. Louis Calhern does a nice job as the nutty patriarch. Another plus is the presence of lots of muscle boys, often shirtless. A cute movie with miscast leads. [TCM]

SLATTERY’S HURRICANE (1949)

The Slattery of the title is played by Richard Widmark; he's a pilot who, during the war, single-handedly shot down a number of Japanese forces during a battle, saving many Americans, including his buddy John Russell. However, because his actions couldn't be officially verified, he was never recognized as a hero. Years later, Widmark is working in Miami as a private pilot for the shady boss of a candy company, flying him on drug smuggling trips, and he is carrying on an affair with the boss's secretary (Veronica Lake), who has become an addict. When Widmark runs into Russell, he starts an affair with Russell's wife (Linda Darnell) who was an old flame of Widmark's. Things start to fall apart when the smuggling candy-maker dies of a heart attack, Lake collapses and needs rehab, and Russell takes to drinking. In the middle of a hurricane which may be heading toward Miami, Russell, who works for the Weather Service, gets a call to fly into the eye to gather important information on the hurricane's path. Because Russell is drunk and could get court-martialed, Widmark knocks him out and takes his place, using his own un-stormworthy plane. Did I mention that the Navy suddenly decided it had the evidence it needed to belatedly award Widmark the Navy Cross?

This heavily plotted melodrama, co-written and later novelized by Herman Wouk, is more complex than the above summary shows, as the bulk of the story is told in flashback, with many of the details emerging slowly over the film’s running time; the movie begins with Widmark flying into the hurricane, and as his plane is battered about, he remembers the past events of his life. The scenes of the storm are impressive, and the acting is generally good. Widmark is fine as usual, Russell is as handsome and stoic as he needs to be, and Darnell, never a critic's darling, is solid, though Lake is rather lifeless, which makes the revelation that she's a hophead especially surprising. Gary Merrill appears in one of his first credited film roles. Despite being made during the Production Code years, the movie seems unusually lax in its moral messages: no bones are made of Widmark and Lake's relationship (I had assumed for the first part of the film that they were married), nor of Widmark and Darnell's; the drug addiction aspect of the plot, a fairly strict no-no under the Code, is somewhat veiled for a while (the viewer has to catch the word "pharmacopsychosis" on a diagnosis pad to figure out why Lake collapses) though we do see Widmark find a package of heroin on his dead boss. Most surprisingly, no one really "pays" for his or her bad behavior; in fact, the ending is rather too nicely wrapped up considering all the mess that's gone before. Not a bad way to spend 90 minutes for fans of melodrama. [FMC]

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1942)

Not the British Titanic movie from the 50's, but a B-movie comedy/mystery with a screwball tone from Columbia, harmless but hardly essential viewing. Mystery novelist Brian Aherne (left) and his wife Loretta Young move into a quaint little Greenwich Village basement apartment at 13 Gay Street, not realizing that they weren’t expected for another week, and that the apartment used to be a speakeasy in the bad old days. One night, at a restaurant, Aherne overhears a fat man say he's meeting someone in the basement of 13 Gay Street, and despite a case of nerves, the night seems to pass uneventfully for our couple, but the next morning, the fat man winds up naked and dead in their courtyard. Of course, this sets Aherne and Young on the case; it turns out that all the building's tenants were being blackmailed by the dead man. But could it be that the wrong fat man is dead, and the blackmailer is still around? Aherne comes off as a befuddled passive male--perhaps his role model was Cary Grant in BRINGING UP BABY, though he doesn’t have Grant's charisma--but he and Young work up some nice chemistry. The generally solid supporting cast includes Lee Patrick, Sidney Toler (as a cop not unlike Charlie Chan, who Toler was playing over at Fox), Jeff Donnell, and Gale Sondergaard doing her usual sinister lady with regal bearing. Available in the boxed set Icons of Screwball Comedy, Vol. 2. Not quite a screwball, but perfectly acceptable late-show viewing, and I love the cozy apartment set where most of the action takes place. [DVD]

VICTIM (1961)

Young Peter McEnery (at right) has been embezzling money from his employer in order to pay off a blackmailer who has photos of him in a compromising position with another man. He contacts a number of people for help, but is caught by the police and hangs himself in his jail cell. The other man in the photos is married lawyer Dirk Bogarde, one of the men who turned away McEnery's calls; he discovers there’s a blackmailing ring preying on gay men (in a country, England, and at a time, the early 60s, when homosexual acts were illegal) and is determined to bring those responsible to justice. None of the other men being threatened are willing to go to the police so despite the potential harm to his reputation and career, Bogarde's on his own.

This is reportedly the first movie to use the word "homosexual" in its dialogue, and it's certainly the first to make a sympathetic argument along the lines of "live and let live" for the treatment of gay people. For its time, it was really rather daring, not so much in terms of sexual content (no nudity, no sex talk, and the compromising photos, which we never see, are simply of Bogarde and McEnery talking together, with McEnery in tears) but in characterization. None of the men are played with stereotypical mannerisms (though one is a hairdresser), and Bogarde (at left) gets to play a three-dimensional character. We learn that Bogarde has had yearnings for other men all his life, including a past romance that led to the other man's suicide. His wife (Sylvia Syms) knows about all this and has stuck with him as he has fought his inclinations, though there is a hint that their relationship is no longer physical. The emotional climax of the film is when Bogarde forcefully tells Syms that, even though nothing happened between he and McEnery, he "wanted" the man.

I don’t mean to make this movie sound like it's all just pleading propaganda for the most basic of gay rights. Most of it plays out like a typical urban crime film of the era, with cops and thugs and violence and dark streets. There's even a red herring plotline concerning a blind man and his friend who we assume for a while are the blackmailers. The real crook is described by his assistant as "a cross between an avenging angel and a peeping Tom," though that interesting description is never expanded upon. Bogarde, who was gay but closeted for most of his career, is excellent as a man who has tamped down his feelings for years but who still seems full of passion under the surface. McEnery (who later was Hayley Mills' co-star in Disney’s THE MOON-SPINNERS) is very good in his short amount of screen time, as are Dennis Price and Charles Lloyd-Pack as blackmail victims. Syms doesn't have a lot to do, but holds her own with Bogarde in their climactic confrontation. [TCM]

FEDERAL MAN (1950)

A narcotics agent named Palmer gets a phone call in the middle of the night from an informant, but when he leaves his house, he is gunned down, and the informant is stabbed to death in an elevator in the Frazee building. Following a lead from the informant’s girlfriend, agent William Henry heads to Tijuana to discover a smuggling operation in which drugs are stashed in the cars of innocent drivers; when the drivers get back to the States, the dealers extract the dope with no one the wiser. Meanwhile, at the Frazee building, an elevator operator who thinks she can identify the killers is the victim of a hit-and-run accident. When the agents suspect that someone with an office in the building is involved, a hidden camera is placed in the elevator and Palmer’s wife (Pamela Blake) volunteers to help by posing as an elevator operator. Sure enough, businessman George Eldredge, who runs a car rental company, is the head of the drug ring. Cat-and-mouse games follow between the agents and the dope dealers.

This Poverty-Row indie is nothing special, but it moves along nicely, and if approached more as a 50’s TV crime show, is moderately entertaining. The agents, including Henry, Robert Shayne, and Lyle Talbot, are a colorless lot, but the bad guys, including Joe Turkel and Bill Edwards, keep things interesting. William Leicester (above) has a memorable moment as a cocky drug dealer who smarts off to Eldredge and pays for it. Also in the cast is Movita, who plays the dead informant’s girlfriend, a singer at a (rather desultory) Tijuana café—she was married for a short time in the 1960’s to Marlon Brando. [TCM]

PRIVATE DETECTIVE 62 (1933)

In a "Mission: Impossible"-style opening, diplomat William Powell is caught stealing secret papers from the French government; the State Department must disavow any knowledge of his actions, so he is deported (on a cattle boat). He takes a job with the desperate, drunken detective Arthur Hohl, who has specialized in low-rent divorce cases. They become "dog stealers," nabbing dogs off the street and returning them to their owners, as though found by chance, for a small reward, but soon Hohl agrees to front for gangster Gordon Westcott and business begins booming. Society woman Margaret Lindsay has been winning too much at Westcott's gambling den and he wants to dig up some dirt on her, so Powell tries to, without quite knowing why, but he falls in love with her. Westcott sets Lindsay up to force her to shoot him in self-defense, though he has the gun loaded with blanks, but Hohl then has Westcott killed for real (by a nervous coke addict). Powell steps in and solves the case, gets his career back on track, and, of course, rights things with Lindsay. This crime caper has some wild plot twists here and there, but is otherwise par for the course. Powell gives the proceedings a touch of class; Lindsay is fine. The references to cocaine use clearly mark this as a pre-Code effort: the word "snowbird" is used to refer to the killer, and Hohl tells his thugs to "lay off that snow." The always amusing Ruth Donnelly has a small role. [TCM]

THE YOUNGER GENERATION (1929)

I guess the generation gap wasn't invented in the 60's for us baby-boomers; this Frank Capra family melodrama (his first talkie, though technically, it's a hybrid with alternating sound and silent sequences) starts with the premise that the younger generation will always try to escape the ways of the older generation, though this film argues that's not always a good thing. At the center of the story is the Goldfish family: Pa, who operates a junk & trinkets cart on the Lower East Side, Ma, their daughter Birdie (who has a crush on the musically talented neighbor boy Eddie) and their son Morris, the one who will exemplify the film's thesis. The prologue, set when the kids are young, shows a resourceful Morris saving the family's meager possessions from a fire for which he was partly responsible. Several years later, Morris (Ricardo Cortez, at right) has established Goldfish & Son, an upscale antique store; his family lives with him in comfort on Fifth Avenue, but Ma (Rosa Rosanova) and Pa (Jean Hersholt) are not happy about Morris's assimilationist ways, especially when he changes his last name to Fish. Birdie (Lina Basquette) and Eddie (Rex Lease) are still an item; Eddie falls in with thieves and becomes a front man for a robbery. He agrees to give himself up, but he marries Birdie first. Morris kicks Birdie out; she has a child and manages to save some money so, when Eddie when is released, they buy a small music store. Ma and Pa don't know what's become of Birdie because Morris won't let them see any of her letters, but Pa soon finds out where she is and goes to find her. In the melodramatic final sequence, Morris, ashamed of his parents looks and ways, refers to them as his servants in front of some of his hoity-toity friends; the two leave the house in the pouring rain vowing not to return, and Pa becomes seriously ill. There is a family reconciliation at Pa's deathbed, but it's too little, too late, and in the last scene, Ma goes to live with Birdie and Eddie, and Morris is left, rich but alone, in his fancy apartment.

Despite the title, this isn't really about young/old generational problems (the young Eddie and Birdie always side with the older generation), but specifically about assimilation and loss of identity, social issues which are still with us. The film would have been more powerful if it had a larger canvas; the focus remains tightly on the five main characters and we rarely see anyone else of consequence. Therefore, both Morris's attempts to rise above his past (and his ethnic background) and Ma & Pa's attempts to escape the future that Morris wants for them remain two-dimensional stories. Though Morris has the most screen time, it is Eddie who winds up the more fleshed-out character; his hopes and failures are clearer and more keenly felt. Still, Cortez commands the screen here and does a good job with an unsympathetic role; he's not evil, just too single-minded in his pursuit of the American dream. Lease (pictured at left) went on to have a substantial career as a supporting player in B-westerns. The switches from silent to sound throughout the film aren't too jarring and the film remains quite watchable today. [TCM]

THE HOUSE ACROSS THE BAY (1940)

George Raft owns an upscale saloon with a private gambling room in the rear. Joan Bennett is a former chorus girl who has a whirlwind romance with Raft. Lloyd Nolan is Raft's lawyer who falls hard for Bennett. After Raft and Bennett get married, Raft becomes a bigwig in the quasi-legal underworld : he owns businesses, gets a stable of race horses, and even does a little gun-running. A gangster orders a hit on Raft for muscling in on his territory, and Raft barely dodges a bullet in a drive-by shooting. Bennett, afraid for her man's life, talks to Nolan and carries out a rather bizarre plan: she rats on him (anonymously) for income-tax evasion, hoping to get him sent to jail for a year, by which time the heat will be off. Nolan, however, double-crosses them both by handling his case so badly that Raft gets ten years instead of one. Bennett takes an apartment in a house across the bay from Alcatraz, becoming one of a group of gangster wives who live near their husbands, but she soon catches the eye of handsome airplane manufacturer Walter Pidgeon. Nolan tells Raft what Bennett's done, so Raft breaks out of Alcatraz, intending to kill Bennett.

Poor George Raft has a reputation as the man who could have been Bogart; not long after this movie came out, Raft began making a series of bad career choices by turning down the leads in HIGH SIERRA, THE MALTESE FALCON, and most notoriously, CASABLANCA, all films that helped make Humphrey Bogart a superstar. I don't think Raft had the talent or charisma that Bogart had, so it's surely not accurate to say that he could have been the kind of star Bogart was, but it's true that, after signing a Warner Bros. contract in 1939, then turning down the choice roles offered to him, his career went on a slow downward slide, and today he is probably best known for his coin-flipping tic in 1932's SCARFACE (he parodied his own image many years later in SOME LIKE IT HOT). Raft is fine here, not nearly as one-note as he often was, and he works well with Bennett. Pidgeon is wooden, leaving Nolan to give the best performance here, though weak writing leaves some big plotholes and hurts his character--unless I missed something, we never see that Nolan has a crush on Bennett, we're just told about it in retrospect. Gladys George plays a sympathetic Alcatraz wife, but her role is carefully set up only to have no payoff (maybe some of her scenes were cut?). An independent production from Walter Wanger, its relatively low budget shows at times, but there is the minor pleasure of seeing Raft give a strong performance. [TCM]

THUNDER ROCK (1942)

A unique and interesting film, though more engrossing intellectually than as a moviegoing experience. Michael Redgrave is a lighthouse keeper on Lake Michigan; his work record is perfect, he doesn't cash his paychecks, and he is resisting going on a month-long leave mandated by management. We discover that he has taken this solitary job as a way of escaping the world; a few years ago, he was a British journalist who was trying to warn an apathetic public and an appeasing government about the dark storms of fascism he saw gathering over Europe. His editor censored his pieces, so he turned to writing books and giving lectures, but the "it won't happen here" mood overwhelmed him and he took this job in America as a way of withdrawing from the horrors he predicted. The lighthouse is near the spot where a ship full of immigrants sank in 1849, with all hands lost. When Redgrave's old friend (James Mason) visits and asks what he does with his time, Redgrave says he found a passenger log for the ship and has been reconstructing their lives in his mind. When Mason leaves, we see the six "characters" interacting around him in storylines he's imagined. Eventually, however, the ship's captain (Finlay Currie) scolds the writer for his mild imaginings and, like Marley's Ghost does with Scrooge in "A Chistmas Carol," Currie takes Redgrave on a ghostly visit to the actual past lives of the immigrants: a working-class man with more children than he can support, a feminist who broke her engagement in order to lead women's rights marches (and who spent time in prison because of the accompanying riots), and the family of a Viennese doctor whose experiments with a new anesthesia have lost him his license. The link Currie points out: all of them went to America to escape their problems, just as Redgrave did. When Redgrave says that they all gave up too soon, they point out to him that he has given up too soon as well. The movie ends with Redgrave alone on the beach, apparently deciding to get back in the fray after all.

Many critics call this a ghost story fantasy, and I guess it does wind up being that, but it's really a WWII anti-isolationist propaganda film, seemingly aimed at American audiences since the British had, by 1942, been fighting Germany for three years and would not seem to need such a philosophical anti-fascist kick in the pants. (The fact that it wasn't released in the U.S. until 1944 would have made its lesson a moot point here as well.) The ghostly element is ambiguous since the characters don't start out as ghosts, but as figments of Redgrave's imagination. In fact, one could interpret almost the entire movie as taking place inside Redgrave's head. But much of the movie does have a moody look, if not exactly ghostly, and in looking backward to "A Christmas Carol" and forward to IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, it fits squarely into the genre of story about a person whose life in changed by what seems to be supernatural intervention. Based on a play, much of this feels setbound, though the film is opened up with the visits to the immigrants' homes, and there's a fast-paced montage flashback sequence which shows us Redgrave's backstory which climaxes with Redgrave sitting in a theater watching a newsreel warning about the fascists, then watching the reactions of the audience members who variously sleep or neck or stuff popcorn into their mouths until the Popeye cartoon comes on. Redgrave is excellent, and quite striking looking; Mason is good in a fairly small role; among the "ghosts," the standout is Barbara Mullen as the feminist. The content, tone, and look of this film are all quite different from other movies of the era, though in some ways, it does wind up feeling like a long Twilight Zone episode. Still, I would heartily recommend this film for buffs of WWII propaganda films or fantasies. And, once again, thank you, Turner Classic, for showing this, and thanks to Tivoplex (under "columns" at Box Office Prophets) for alerting me to it. [TCM]

FIVE STEPS TO DANGER (1957)

Sterling Hayden is driving through the desert minding his own business when his car breaks down. At the mechanic's, he meets Ruth Roman who offers to take him on as a driving companion to Santa Fe. When they stop for food, Helen, a woman who has been following them, takes Hayden aside and tells him that Roman has just recently been released from a sanitarium after having had a nervous breakdown. Her doctor (Werner Klemperer) wants Hayden to continue riding with Roman and get her safely to Santa Fe. But soon, when they're stopped by police, Hayden finds out that Roman is wanted for questioning in connection with a murder in California. The cop handcuffs the two together, but Hayden overpowers him and they escape. Roman then tells Hayden all: after the war, when she went back to her native Germany to find her long-lost brother, she was drawn into a plot to smuggle important missile secrets into the U.S. to give to a Prof. Kissel, now teaching at a university in New Mexico. Commies from East Berlin are after her, as are the police and, as it develops, so are the FBI and the CIA. When they get to Santa Fe, the dean of the university disavows any knowledge of Kissel’s presence, despite a newspaper clipping Roman has noting the scientist's recent hiring. As Roman begins to doubt her sanity, Klemperer shows up to take control. Who can we trust? Roman? Klemperer? The CIA? Kissel?

The title of this adequate thriller is, as far as I can tell, a reference not to anything in the film, but to Hitchcock's THE 39 STEPS which had a similar plot (innocent man caught up in spy chase while handcuffed to a woman). Hayden and Roman, pictured above, would never get prizes for their acting, but they're believable enough here, especially Hayden (a little bit tough like Robert Mitchum, a little bit laconic like Gary Cooper). In the last half, as plot twists come fast and furious, we are kept nicely off-balance, though if you stop to ask too many questions, plot loopholes galore will crop up, most of which are not wrapped up in the pat ending. [TCM]