THE EMPEROR JONES (1933)

Brutus Jones (Paul Robeson, pictured) is given a sendoff by the congregation of his Baptist church on the occasion of him getting a job as a cross-country train porter. His girlfriend is worried that he'll slide into bad ways, and fairly quickly, he does, led by his pal Jeff into gambling and consorting with loose women. When Brutus is upgraded to working on the car which contains the president, he overhears a sensitive conversation and blackmails a businessman. He also takes Jeff's mistress Undine from him, but later drops her for another, leading to the two women engaging in a brawl on a dance floor. In a different brawl, over the use of crooked dice in a craps game, Brutus accidentally kills Jeff and is sentenced to hard labor on a chain gang. When he refuses an order to beat an unconscious prisoner, he smacks a guard on the back of the head with a shovel and manages to escape. In short order, he leaves the country and works on a steamer ship, and when he hears reports of an all-Black island in the Caribbean, he jumps ship to investigate. The island has a dictatorial king, but when Brutus is bought by Smithers (Dudley Digges), a white trader who does a lucrative business on the island, he gets Smithers on his side, makes the islanders believe that he is invulnerable to anything but a silver bullet, and deposes the ruler to become the Emperor Jones. He raises taxes, sends the money offshore, and plans to leave soon as a rich man. But what if the people get fed up before he can make his escape?

Eugene O'Neill’s play probably works better symbolically than as realism, and this movie strives to combine the two styles with mixed results. The melodramatic first half-hour seems to be just getting backstory out the way to get to the fireworks on the island. Even here, however, a sense of real danger and tragic consequences is never fully developed. The play is largely a one-man show and Robeson, who played the role on stage, is up to the task of carrying the film. Though there are other characters here, he only really gets help from Dudley Digges who strikes the right note as a man who realizes quickly that he'll do better as a sniveling assistant to Jones rather than as his "owner." The last section, with Jones on the run through the jungle from his abused people, is well-paced and atmospheric, and Robeson is excellent as a haunted man falling apart. Fredi Washington, best known as the daughter who passes for white in the 1934 Imitation of Life, is fine as Undine, but no one else really gets to make an acting mark here. The film was an independent production, and looks and feels like one, so the chief draw here is seeing Robeson do O'Neill, and that’s enough to make it worth a viewing. [TCM]

SON OF DRACULA (1974)

When Count Dracula is killed by a stake through his heart, his vampire bride is pregnant with his child, half-human and half-vampire. One hundred years later, Count Downe, the son, is ready to be installed as the King of the Netherworld, reigning over other creatures of the night (werewolves, monsters, witches, mummies). But he's reluctant to take on his inheritance because 1) he wants to devote his life to making music, and 2) he falls in love with Amber, assistant to Van Helsing, the famous vampire hunter. As the time nears for Downe's coronation at a museum of the occult, overseen by the wizard Merlin, Downe convinces Van Helsing to help him become human. But his path to this goal is blocked by the evil Baron Frankenstein who wants the Netherworld crown for his own. This summary sounds like it could be a decent old-fashioned horror film or a crazy parody of horror films. Unfortunately, this is neither. Despite having Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, Hammer director Freddie Francis, and some respectable British actors (Dennis Price, Freddie Jones) attached, this comes off as an amateurish home movie made by the stars on a drunken weekend. 

Who’s to blame? It's easy to point the finger at Nilsson (pictured), who was on a hot streak on the pop charts led by “Without You” and “Coconut.” Starr, who also plays Merlin, produced the film and got his friend Nilsson to star. On record, Nilsson had the persona of an antic anarchist, but he almost never performed in public so doesn't have a 'live' persona and he can't carry this movie. His problem is his complete lack of affect—he comes off like he's always rehearsing. He isn't funny or scary or able to give a line reading in character. Of course, he doesn't have much of a character to play, the fault of the script by Jennifer Jayne (one of the lead women in THE CRAWLING EYE). The main ideas may be sound, but they don't come together at all. Among the plotholes: Why did the denizens of the Netherworld not have a ruler for a century? Why do they need one now? Since Downe doesn't want the crown, why wouldn’t Frankenstein just help him achieve his goal and become the ruler? What is a radioactive transfusion machine? Freddie Francis was an old hand at helming Hammer horror films but rumor has it that he quit halfway through, which couldn't have helped. However, there is one reason to watch this mess: Harry Nilsson’s music, which is used throughout. I loved Nilsson in the early to mid 70s and bought all his albums even through the 80s when they became as messy as this movie. Nilsson was a studio artist and this movie is your only chance to see him perform as he lip syncs to songs like "Jump Into the Fire" and the lovely ballad "Remember (Christmas”)." Other songs like "Without You," "Down," and "The Moonbeam Song" are played behind scenes, and a new song, "Daybreak," is quite fun. You also get to see drummer Keith Moon, sax player Bobby Keys, and guitarist Peter Frampton in the background as his stage band. But really, unless you love Nilsson, there’s no reason to see this depressing, cheap-looking film; your primary emotion is likely to be embarrassment for all involved. [YouTube]

ACCORDING TO MRS. HOYLE (1951)

Mrs. Hoyle (Spring Byington), a much loved teacher, has just retired and looks forward to a quiet life in the room she has rented for years at a run-down hotel, where her neighbors follow her example of giving to the poor. However, Morganti (Anthony Caruso), a reformed gangster, has just bought the building and has plans to boot out all the long-term renters and refurbish the place. Seeing Mrs. Hoyle as a kindly old soul, Morganti lets her stay, and she talks him into letting a young chorus girl named Angela Brown stay as well. Eddie, an associate of Morganti's, realizes that Hoyle is his mother; his father took him years ago when the two split up. He doesn't tell her but he starts to fall for Angela. Soon, under Mrs. Hoyle's influence, all of Morganti's thug buddies start to reform, even following her example of giving to charity, except for Rogan who ropes a reluctant Eddie into helping him pull off a payroll robbery on the night of the grand reopening of the hotel. After some gunplay, Rogan hides the money in Mrs. Hoyle's fur coat which is hanging in her closet (she is down at the reopening). When the cops close in on the two, Rogan is shot and killed, and Eddie is seriously wounded and falls into a coma. When a police search reveals the money in Mrs. Hoyle's coat, she is arrested and painted by the prosecutors as a kind of Ma Barker figure. Her protestations of innocence are hurt by the fact that the cops also find stolen jewels in her jewel box and she can't explain how they got there.

This is a fairly bland crime drama with some interesting plot points. First of all, Morganti, the former crime boss, actually does reform, something that lots of crooks claim to want to do in movies but rarely follow through on. Second, Mrs. Hoyle actually does wind up on trial—I assumed that, as in other movies like this, things would get straightened out before the sweet and obviously innocent old lady has to face a judge. I like Byington and she's the main reason to watch, but some of the relatively unknown B-actors in support are also fine: Caruso, Brett King as Eddie (who does a nice job teetering between the lure of the straight life and loyalty to Rogan who saved his life in the past), Robert Karnes as Rogan, and Harry Lauter as Mrs. Hoyle's attorney. As for title, it comes from a once-common phrase that referred to Edward Hoyle who, in the 1700s, was one of the first people to publish books on the rules of card games. "According to Hoyle" means you’re doing something exactly by the rules or established standards. Pictured are Byington and Lauter. [TCM]

THE BEST HOUSE IN LONDON (1969)

In Victorian London, the issue of prostitution is a hot topic. Merchants are complaining that the sheer number of  "princesses of the pavement" strolling the streets are hurting their business. Josephine (Joanna Pettet) leads street demonstrations by the League of Social Purity, a group of "fallen women" who want to become upstanding citizens through education and job opportunities. But the government has a different solution: open a secret but official brothel that would house these women. Sir Francis Leybourne sells an old girls' school building to the government for that use. Francis goes to India, leaving his son Walter (David Hemmings) in charge of brothelizing the place, along with the buxom Babette (Dany Robin) who has been sleeping with both father and son. Meanwhile, we discover that Francis's niece is Josephine, who has joined up with reporter Ben Oakes (also Hemmings) to publicize her organization. Ben is illegitimate (Josephine reacts to the news by saying, "I’ve never met a bastard socially"), but we find out that he is actually half-brother to Walter—they have matching batwing birthmarks on their wrists. Soon, the Social Purity girls are secretly getting jobs as the government whorehouse. As though there weren't enough plotlines, a Chinese embassy worker enters the picture. He's upset that Indian opium plantations are smuggling opium into China, and Josephine wants to use money from the plantations, which belong to Sir Francis, to support her cause. Oh, yeah, I forgot the airship, being built by eccentric Count Pandolfo, which after being a minor background detail, suddenly becomes important at the climax.

This is a smutty British sex farce with very little sex, though lots of sex talk and some nude bosoms and butts on occasion. It was rated X on its initial release, for its overall feel more than for any visuals. Packed with incident, it rarely slows down, though character development is pretty much nil. The biggest problem with it is its neanderthal sexual politics. One of the running jokes is that the Social Purity women can hardly wait to get back to being fallen women. Another has to do with a teenage virgin who is theoretically sold into prostitution  but winds up working on the building of the airship. "You promised my mum I'd be ruined," she says petulantly. The subject of rape is treated cavalierly. It never happens on screen, and when Ben is trying to work up some sympathy for fallen women who had been raped, they all insist that it's never happened to them. All of this gives the movie a grimy feel, but oddly enough, I stuck with it. The production values are strong, with lots of deep red and purples in the sets. You can feel the actors trying hard, none more so than Hemmings who does make Ben and Walter full separate characters, with the help of differing make-up. Pettet (pictured with Hemmings) is very good in a thankless role, and George Sanders seems to be having fun in what amounts to a glorified cameo (and he even gets a nude scene, sort of). I'm not sure I can recommend this to others, and the humor was way too uncomfortable in today's context, but I'm not sorry to have seen it. [TCM]

ATLAS (1961)

In ancient Greece, Proximedes (Frank Woolf) is known as a tyrant—we know the definition of the word as any leader who seizes power in a non-democratic way, but here it seems to be his official title. He and his men have been trying to take over the walled city of Thenis, ruled by King Telektos, for months and the battle has come to a standstill. Proximedes agrees to a two-man combat to the death to settle the war. Whichever group's champion loses will give up the fight. The tyrant, his philosopher Garnis, and his lover Candia (Barboura Morris) head to the Olympics and talk a wrestler named Atlas (Michael Forest, at left) into being their man. He agrees to fight but says if he wins, he won't kill his opponent, Indros. Atlas wins and indeed spares Indros. Telektos lets Proximedes' men into the city, and the first thing they do is show up at a royal banquet and turn it into a bit of an orgy. The next thing some of them do is, following Proximedes' orders, put on disguises and start a fake revolt, giving Proximedes a reason to attack, slaughtering most of the town's army and executing Telektos. Candia, who has fallen in love with Atlas, tries to leave with him for Egypt; they are caught by soldiers but freed by real rebels, led by Proximedes' former champion Indros, and they join forces to expel the tyrant.

This is an outlier for producer and director Roger Corman. He was known for horror, sci-fi, and teen angst, but for this sword-and-sandal peplum movie, he kept his usual strategy of low budgets and quick production times. It's not a bad movie, exactly, but it can’t really stand up to the better films in the genre. For starters, Atlas is not the Atlas of mythology, just a moderately buff guy with that name. And he isn't even especially buff; he's lithe and a little hairy but he's no one’s idea of the average peplum muscleman. Ultimately this is less a traditional Italian muscle movie and more a drama of political intrigue, sort of. The plot is a little easier to follow than some of the Italian hero films (this was apparently actually filmed in Greece) and the character development, especially of Atlas, is a bit stronger, but the adventure thrills are mostly missing. Using only 50 extras, the crowd and battle scenes are shot mostly in claustrophobic close-up (with occasional repetition of footage) that is not especially effective. In the lead, Forest underacts; as the antagonist, Woolf overacts, not exactly chewing scenery but still feeling like he's trying really hard to be evil. Barboura Morris is out of place with her modern look and her perky demeanor, but honestly she gives the movie a needed jolt from time to time, and it's almost worth watching just for her. The swords and shields that the armies and rebels use look like props from a community theater storage room, and the extras sometimes seem fairly inept—I think you have to be very poorly directed to be an extra and seem inept. Still, there are mild thrills and pleasures to be had now and then. [TCM]

BLACK ANGEL (1946)

We open at night with a nice zoom shot through the window of a skyscraper apartment belonging to Mavis Marlowe. Her estranged husband, Martin Blair (Dan Duryea, at right), wants to see her to give her the gift of a ruby brooch, perhaps in an attempt to patch things up, but the doorman has instructions not to let him up. As Marty leaves, he sees someone who looks a lot like Peter Lorre ushered up to Mavis' place. Marty goes to a bar to drown his sorrows, drunkenly playing piano, and eventually his buddy Joe (Wallace Ford) takes him to his apartment to sleep it off. Later in the night, her current love Kirk Bennett visits Mavis. He finds her door unlocked, a record (written by Marty) playing on repeat, and her dead body on the floor, the ruby brooch next to her. The next morning, the brooch is missing and when the cops find out that Mavis had been blackmailing the married Bennett over their affair, they arrest him for murder. When he is found guilty and sentenced to death, his desperate wife Catherine (June Vincent) winds up asking Marty for help in clearing her husband. Clues lead them to a club owner named Marko (hey, it's Peter Lorre!). Recognizing Marko as possibly the last man to see Mavis alive, Marty and Catherine go undercover and auditions as a singer/pianist team, getting a job at Marko's place. Catherine cozies up to Marko and discovers that he, too, was being blackmailed by Mavis. Does he also have the missing brooch, which might peg him as the killer? Will the burgeoning romantic feelings between Marty and Catherine affect their search? 

This nifty noir takes a couple of left turns at this point that I can't reveal, but they lead to a true film noir climax. Dan Duryea is probably best remembered for his bad guy roles (The Little Foxes, Scarlet Street) and it's nice to see him playing a fairly sympathetic part here. He has good chemistry with June Vincent in what might be her best movie role, though she went on to a long career in TV character parts. Lorre underplays his part to good effect. John Phillips has the thankless role of Kirk Bennett, Broderick Crawford is the cop who arrests Bennett, and Wallace Ford has little to do as Marty's buddy. Some reviewers aren't sure that this is really noir, but in my eyes, it ends up being practically a textbook version of a film noir, though it may not come clear until near the end. Roy William Neill, director of most of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, does some nice stylistic things here and there, including an interesting flashback sequence near the end. Recommended. [TCM]

SO SWEET... SO PERVERSE (1969)

Jean and Danielle are unhappily married (he has affairs and she feels oppressed by what we nowadays might call his toxic masculinity). In the apartment above theirs, young Nicole has moved in, and the couple can hear Nicole get beaten regularly by her lover Klaus. At some point, he tries to intervene but when he notices that the apartment has a cabinet with whips and knives, he leaves. Eventually, however, the disgruntled Jean and the possibly abused Nicole have an affair, the details of which Danielle can hear from below. Then Nicole tells Jean that Klaus has been paid to kill him. But by whom? And what part does Nicole play in all this? That’s about all I can say without giving away the game in this sexy thriller made in the Diabolique mode. (I don't think saying that is really a spoiler, since to my mind, relating the film to Diabolique only suggests that not everyone, or every murder plot, is what they seem to be.) This is another film directed by Umberto Lenzi and starring Carroll Baker, and though it's perhaps related to the giallo genre, it's not a good fit—not enough sex and blood, for starters. It might be better called a Eurothriller or Eurosleaze, as it looks and feels like any number of other European psychological suspense movies which often include at least a bit of sexy sleaze. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), the sex here is tame; even the sparse hints of S&M and sapphic lust go nowhere. Baker, ever ready to go the distance as a potential damsel in distress in these films, is fine as Nicole, and Jean-Louis Trintignant is equally good as Jean—he has the perfect face and affect for the hero (or antihero) of a Eurothriller. Erica Blank (Danielle) and Horst Frank (Klaus) aren't able to do much with their roles. The final two plot twists are good, if improbably moral. Directorial style is fairly plain but there is nice location shooting. Giallo night, no; thriller night, sure. Pictured are Trintignant and Baker. [Blu-ray]

THE CAT CREEPS (1946)

The publisher of the Morning Chronicle gets a letter from a Cora Williams saying that the suicide of bootlegger Eric Goran many years ago was actually a murder, and she has evidence: $200,000 that she ran across in her house on an island that was owned by Goran. She sends a thousand dollar bill as proof. Years ago, politician Walter Elliott was suspected of having a hand in Goran's death, but was never indicted. Now, the publisher assigns reporter Terry Nichols to head out to talk to Cora, accompanied by his sidekick, photographer Pidge Laurie. Terry tells Elliott what he plans, and soon Elliott, his lawyer Tom McGalvey with his secretary Connie, detective Ken Grady (known as the Irish Charlie Chan), and Elliott's daughter Gay wind up on the island with Terry and Pidge. They find a creaky old house, a black cat roaming the premises, and Cora unconscious in her bed, muttering about money in "the little house." We see Cora, alone in her room as a man's shadow passes over her, and soon she is found dead. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a exotic woman named Kyra appears, dressed in black, claiming to be Goran's daughter and also claiming that Cora's spirit has settled into the black cat. As they all search for the money and try to figure out the meaning of "the little house," a couple more people die before the villain is unmasked.

Despite its title, this B-film (not directly related to the 1930 The Cat Creeps or the work it was based on, The Cat and the Canary) is not really horror, despite the occasional evocation of 'old dark house' atmosphere, but a mystery. At not quite an hour, it's a fairly painless watch with a handful of good moments and some fine cinematography. The story is so-so, and the acting is strictly second-string. The hero, Terry, is played by Frederick Brady who is colorless and passive, though I admit it is a bit of a novelty to have a hero who tends to fade into the background. Noah Beery Jr. is a little better as Pidge, the comic relief sidekick. You’ll recognize Paul Kelly (Grady) and Douglass Dumbrille (McGalvey), neither a standout, but the movie is given a nice jolt of energy when Iris Lancaster (credited as Iris Clive) enters as the otherworldly Kyra. This was the next-to-last movie she made, and it's too bad because she seemed to have promise. The cat doesn't have quite as much to do as you would think based on the title. A nice, mild, run-of-the-mill 40s B-mystery. Pictured are Brady and Beery. [Criterion Channel]

BUNKER BEAN (1936)

Bunker Bean (Owen Davis Jr., pictured) is a lowly office boy at Kent Aircraft. Bunker is proud that Mr. Kent thinks he is his best employee—mostly because Bean is always at his beck and call—but Rose, the secretary, tells him he has an inferiority complex. When Mr. Kent, dictating a letter, says "Action is the soul of progress," the timid Bean is inspired to ask for a raise; Kent ignores him but asks him to spend the weekend at the Kent mansion to do some extra work. At home, he types up a manuscript on reincarnation for Dr. Mayerhouser, who tells him that knowledge of his past lives might help him change his personality for the better. Bean goes to fortune teller Countess Casandra who tells him he was Napoleon in a past life. This goes to Bean's head, to the point where, at Kent's house, he overdresses for dinner and later, spanks Kent's daughter Mary (Louise Latimer) for dating a cad. Kent is shocked, but Mary's grandmother (Jessie Ralph) is pleased to see someone try to show up her obnoxious relatives. Bean goes back to Cassandra and, with the help of her confederate, Prof. Balthazer, they talk him into thinking that he is the reincarnation of Pharaoh Ram Tah, and even giving him Ram Tah's mummy which Bean keeps in his closet and consults with (it's actually a stage prop full of sawdust). When a relative of Bean's dies and leaves him the patent for a gyrostabilizer, he tries to sell it to Kent who only offers $100 for it. Feeling empowered by Ram Tah, Bean then takes the patent to Mr. Jones, Kent's main business rival and soon it looks like Bean will benefit from the warring offerings, but Jones and Kent join forces and try to cheat Bean out of the patent so they both can use it. At the peak of his self-confidence, Bean discovers that the mummy is fake. Can he stand up to Kent and Jones on his own? Maybe with some help from Mary who, recovered from her spanking, has taken an interest in him.

Though fairly obscure now, this romantic comedy was based on a novel from 1913 which became a play and was filmed twice in the silent era. This is thoroughly a second-rate effort, but it's clever and amusing and has a strong central performance from Owen Davis Jr. who mostly took supporting roles and had a brief career as a television producer before his death in a boating accident in 1949. He doesn’t come off as a forceful actor, but that may be because he's playing a mostly passive character. Still, he manages to work up some mild charm, as does Louise Latimer who, like Davis, had a short acting career in B-movies. Jessie Ralph, as usual, is great fun in another dowager role, and Lucille Ball has a small part as Kent's secretary. Hedda Hopper is Bean's mother and Sybil Harris is Countess Cassandra. Mildly enjoyable fluff with mildly talented actors in a mildly amusing story.  [TCM]

STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET (1960)

Architect Kirk Douglas is dropping his son off at school when he sees the lovely Kim Novak (pictured) also dropping off her son. He is struck by her beauty and is quite taken with her, and is thrilled to run into her later at the grocery store. Though both married, sparks soon fly between them, neighbors just a few houses apart. Douglas' latest job is building a home for bestselling but self-doubting author (Ernie Kovacs), who is afraid that his new manuscript, different from his earlier work, will be a bomb. Frustrated doing what he considers unchallenging work, and stuck in a domestic rut at home, Douglas wants to get creative with Kovacs' home. Kovacs isn't sure he wants his home to be too avant-garde, and the two butt heads with some frequency, but they become friendly. Novak, meanwhile, is frustrated with her impotent husband and when Douglas asks her to accompany him to his work site, she does. Soon the two have embarked on an affair. It has its ups and downs (Douglas accuses Novak of being a tramp when she gets into a tussle with a man from her past), but both feel guilty, largely because of their children. Meanwhile, other concerns arise: a slimy neighbor (Walter Matthau) figures out what's going on and has designs of his own on Douglas' wife; Douglas entertains a job offer to fly off and live in Hawaii for a couple of years while he helps build a city. 

This soapy melodrama is about par for the course. I'm not really a Kirk Douglas fan; I find that he tries too hard and I can often see him "acting" in a way that takes me out of the film. He's not as bad here but I can imagine other actors who would have been better fits, like Rod Taylor or Burt Lancaster. Perhaps thanks to the cinematography, Kim Novak is stunningly beautiful here, even more so than in her other movies of the era, and she does a good job as the mightily conflicted wife and mistress. Matthau and Kovacs, normally known as comic actors, are OK. Kovacs doesn't try to be funny but he has a light, cocky manner; Matthau is less successful in overcoming his persona, and like Douglas, other players might have been better fits: Don Murray, George Peppard, Ralph Meeker. (I don't normally indulge in second-guessing actors like this.) In underwritten parts are Barbara Rush as Douglas's wife and John Bryant as Novak's husband. Classic-era actors Ken Smith and Virginia Bruce are welcome sights, and Nancy Kovack and Sue Ann Langdon are fine as Kovacs' hotsy-totsy lovers. Helen Gallagher, well loved as matriarch Maeve on the 70s soap opera Ryan's Hope, has a small role as Matthau's wife. Other viewers have pointed out that this feels like a second-string version of a Douglas Sirk melodrama of the era—this film, directed by Richard Quine, looks fine but lacks the visual gloss and narrative depth that Sirk would have added. [DVD]

DAVID GOLDER (1931)

Some say wealthy businessman David Golder is a great man, some say he's a scoundrel. We learn that Golder was a penniless Polish Jew who made his fortune in New York and has relocated to Paris with his wife and daughter. We first see him at home, preparing to have dinner and rebuffing his former business partner Marcus who needs money. Golder is involved in a deal between the Soviet government and the Tubingen oil company, and if it goes through, Marcus will be left flat broke. Golder accuses Marcus of betrayal in the past and refuses to help. Marcus leaves and appears to have a heart attack in the street and at the same, Golder also has a heart attack in his home. Marcus shoots himself and dies but Golder survives and, on doctor's advice, he takes his wife Gloria and teenage daughter Joyce to Biarritz for rest. The wife and daughter go through money like water, especially Joyce for whom David would do anything—getting a new car is like child's play for her. The doctor suggests David retire, which does not sit well with Gloria. In an intense scene, the two argue; David tries to strangle her with her jewelry and Gloria tells him that Joyce is not his daughter. Meanwhile, Joyce is having a fling with Alec, a prince, though she may have to marry the older Fishel for financial security. Joyce is still the apple of David's eye and when she complains about her situation, Golder agrees to do one more deal, traveling to Russia to finalize the deal for oil with Tubingin, even though he is told he is not healthy enough. Tragedy ensues.

The director of this French film, Julien Duvivier, best known for PÉPÉ LE MOKO, uses the early sound movie camera as though he's been shooting in sound for years. This is no early talkie shot in static, theatrical scenes. His camera is constantly prowling the sets, following characters back and forth across the screen, and occasionally using the equivalent of a split screen (just a very wide shot with darkness in the middle) to show parallel actions and how they affect the characters. The plot, based on a novel by Irene Nemirovsky (who would die in the Holocaust and return to public consciousness many years later with the discovery of her novel Suite Francaise), is serviceable but predictable; actors like Lionel Barrymore and George Arliss would play similar characters in Hollywood films of the era. Harry Baur embodies the title character, bringing him to life, even if we don’t get much depth to him. The other actors are fine if not standouts. Jackie Monnier has the toughest job: making Joyce not terribly likable but still making us somewhat sympathetic to her. The most remarkable scene in the film is of the two young lovers Joyce and Alec (Jean Bradin) lying on the ground, burbling river rapids in the background. Though back to back, not facing each other, they both express sensuality on their faces in a graphic way, as though they were pleasuring each other. It’s a shocking scene for the time (pictured above), and even to some degree for now, as it relies strictly on faces to tell us about sexual desire. A most interesting find, available as part of a Criterion Eclipse boxed set, Julien Duvivier in The Thirties. [DVD]

F.P. 1 DOESN'T ANSWER (1932)

This begins like a crime thriller: At a fancy party, Major Ellissen sneaks away to make a phone call to a press photographer he calls Sunshine, directing him to the Lennartz shipyard for a big story about a break-in. The Lennartz daughter, Claire, overhears him and, being curious, plays up to him. It turns out that Ellissen is pulling a publicity stunt by hiding some dusty old plans belonging to his friend Capt. Droste and reporting them stolen. When they are found, Ellissen achieves his goal of getting the plans rediscovered to get the attention of the Lennartz brothers so they'll fast track the project in the plans: the building of a gigantic man-made island which would float in the middle of the ocean (F.P. 1 = Floating Platform 1) and serve as a refueling station and rest stop for airplanes, complete with restaurants and a hotel. As F.P 1 is being built, Ellissen and Claire become a couple, but he leaves for an extended test flight around the globe, and Claire is soon canoodling with Droste. When the platform is built, Ellissen returns, worn out from adventuring and realizing that he has lost Claire. He vows never to fly again, but when the mainland loses contact with the platform, Claire suspects that nefarious plans of some shipping magnates have come to fruition and she talks Ellisen into taking her out to F.P. 1. Sure enough, major sabotage has occurred; the platform has lost power and is in danger of sinking.

This is often included in lists of early science-fiction films, though that element has been eclipsed somewhat by the invention of refueling ships and aircraft carriers, so for 21st century viewers, this is mostly an industrial spy story crossed with a romantic triangle. After its thriller-type opening, it settles into a fairly slow-moving melodrama. I had trouble caring about the lovers because none of the three (Conrad Veidt as Ellissen, Jill Esmond as Claire, Leslie Fenton as Droste) seemed terribly invested in their romantic feelings. I also had trouble sticking with it to the end, though the climax is decent enough. Three separate versions of the film—in English, German and French—were made. This is the English version, and I have heard that the German version is better. Good line: "Progress sacrifices the old order of things; progress always has its enemies." Pictured in a tinted shot is Veidt. [Amazon Prime]

THE MAN IN GREY (1943)

In wartime London, a man and woman chat at an auction of the Rohan family estate. It turns out that she is Clarissa Rohan (Phyllis Calvert), a direct descendent of the family, and he is RAF pilot Peter Rokeby (Stewart Granger) who has a less direct Rohan connection. After looking through several small pieces, they agree to meet again on the second day of the auction. Meanwhile, we flashback to the 1800's to see Hesther Shaw (Margaret Lockwood) arrive at Miss Patchett's school for girls. She is poor and standoffish but the perky, popular Clarissa Richmond (Calvert) befriends her. A fortune teller tells Clarissa that she will marry a man in grey but that she should be wary of female friends; the teller glances at Hesther's palm then nervously refuses to tell her fortune. Hesther runs away to elope with an ensign, and when Miss Pratchett bans anyone from ever speaking of her, Clarissa leaves as well. She soon makes a good impression in high society, and when the mother of brooding bachelor Lord Rohan (James Mason) decides he should settle down, she sets him up with Clarissa, mostly because she want a legitimate heir (the implication being that Rohan may have any number of bastards around town). Years later, Clarissa has a son she rarely sees and she and her husband largely lead separate lives. She runs into Hesther who is in a traveling acting troupe with the handsome Swinton Rokeby (Granger) as her leading man. Feeling sorry about Hesther's reduced circumstances, Clarissa offers her a job as a governess, but she should have remembered the fortune teller's advice from years ago. When Rokeby gets involved, a romantic quadrangle develops which goes sour with betrayal, revenge, and eventually murder.

This is sometimes pinpointed as the movie that started a vogue in British cinema for period romantic melodramas. It's a mixed bag that should work better than it does. Calvert is quite good, Lockwood a little less so, mainly because her character remains more a means to a narrative end rather than a fleshed-out person. I'm not usually a fan of Granger, but he's pretty good here, and more handsome than he was as he aged. Mason is a little disappointing, giving a one-note performance as the sinister Rohan who is not as active in the plot as you might expect. Despite him being the title character, it's Granger who is more memorable. Leslie Arliss, son of the actor George Arliss, directs in an unflashy way. The movie's biggest misstep is the casting of a young white boy (Antony Scott) in full blackface as a servant boy who pops up at several points in the story. Scott tries his best, but the makeup is so phony and egregious, a modern viewer is taken out of the story. Every so often, you think this is going to go full gothic but disappointingly, it never does. The film does return briefly to the wartime frame story, but only so it doesn’t feel like it's leaving us hanging. Pictured are Mason and Lockwood. [TCM]

ELVIRA MADIGAN (1967)

This Swedish film by Bo Widerberg cut a swath through pop culture in its day, back when foreign language films were considered standard moviegoing experiences. For a few years in the 60s and 70s, the work of directors like Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Kurosawa and Wertmuller were welcomed not just by critics, but audiences. Often bordering on avant-garde, they may not have been blockbusters, but they got played in cities big and small, and were topics of learned and/or hip conversation. Every so often, an international film broke through with a bigger audience because of controversy (BLOW-UP), or because it had a star like Brigitte Bardot in it, or because of some sexual element. In the case of the French A MAN AND A WOMAN, the theme music became popular. That’s also the case with this film; a movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C minor, used throughout the film, became popularly known as the Elvira Madigan concerto. Another thing that helped this movie find a large audience is that it is not avant-garde or cutting edge—it's a beautifully filmed old-fashioned romantic melodrama, basically a Romeo and Juliet story which focuses almost exclusively on the two lovers—we learn very little about their backgrounds, families, or friends. 

In Denmark in 1889, Elvira Madigan (based on a real person of that name), a circus tightrope walker, falls in love with Army officer Sixten Sparre. To be together, she impulsively leaves her circus and he goes AWOL. The film follows them as they live a life that might be described as "on the run" from their previous existences, but it's a fairly slow run. They stay at country inns and spend hours lying in sun-dappled fields, until someone recognizes her or until they need to sell their belongings to pay for room and board. Kristoffer, a former comrade of Sixten's, recognizes him and we learn that Sixten has a family back in the "real world," and that his wife has tried to kill herself (though we're never sure if this is a fact or just something made up by Kristoffer to shame Sixten). We're told in the beginning how this turns out (a murder-suicide carried out at a picnic in the woods) so the finale is no surprise. The surprise, for me, was how little I actually cared about the fate of the lovers. I liked the film—if only for the sheer beauty of the color cinematography and the attractiveness of the actors, Pia Degermark as Elvira, Thommy Bergren as Sixten—but with so little narrative context, I couldn't work up much concern for the two leads. There doesn't seem to be any coherent philosophy expressed here except a rather blinkered romanticism, though Elvira expresses an anti-war sentiment when she tells Sixten, who has not actually been in battle, that "war is not parades, it's the smell of burning flesh." The look of the film has been unfairly compared to lush and hazy shampoo or perfume on TV, but I think the style works well (and I suspect that the ads borrowed the style from this movie and others). It's largely the reason I’d recommend this. [Criterion Channel]

HE WHO MUST DIE (1957)

In 1921 Greece, we see Father Fotis lead a group of villagers as they leave their small town, after it is destroyed by marauding Turkish troops, to find a new place to live. In another village a few miles away, the townspeople live in peace with the occupying Turks led by the Agha, a somewhat intimidating but not unfriendly man who enjoys good food for consumption and young boys as companions. Patriarcheas, the town's mayor and chief landowner, has talked the Agha into letting the town put on the Passion Play that they do every seven years—this would be the first play since the end of WWI. Father Grigoris calls a town meeting at the church to assign roles in the play. Katerina (Melina Mercouri) is a young widow who makes ends meet as a prostitute (and also gives massages to the Agha). The townswomen don't take well to her, but Grigoris insists on giving her the role of Mary Magdalene. Michelis, the handsome son of the mayor, and Yannakos, the nosy postman, are assigned the roles of apostles. The beefy butcher Panagiotaros, a frequent customer of Katerina's, is Judas. Finally, Manolios, the handsome blond shepherd (Pierre Vaneck) is cast as Jesus, a somewhat inexplicable choice as the shepherd is illiterate and can barely get through a sentence without stammering. Just after the roles are assigned, the refugees from the burnt-out village arrive seeking food and shelter. The townspeople at first are sympathetic, but the mayor seizes on the death of a pale woman to claim that the refugees are carrying cholera (though she actually died of starvation) and to send them away. Fotis leads the ragged group of villagers up into the dry and dusty hills overlooking the town where they make a primitive camp but are still barely staying alive. 

When Yannakos is told that he can make some money by taking them food and supplies in exchange for their jewelry and wedding rings, he does, only to feel compassion for them, and he decides to give them the food for free. Similarly, Katerina leads a sheep up in the hills so the people can have milk. The other apostle players wind up helping the refugees, but when Manolios reports to the mayor and Father Grigoris that the people do not have cholera, they order him not to tell the other townspeople—the priest tells Manolios that he has the "cholera of heresy, the cholera of rebellion." It's made clear that the mayor and the priest fear anarchy if they accept the refugees. We can see where this is going: the Passion Play actors are acting in a truly Christian manner that goes against the hypocrisy of the town leaders (and the Judas character, jealous of the attention that Katarina pays to Manolios, will soon embody his role more concretely). Will Biblical history repeat itself?

I'd never heard of this French-language film but I'm certainly glad I ran across it when doing an IMDb search on the actor Maurice Ronet (who plays Michelis). This 60-some year old movie, with its themes of Christian hypocrisy (today's evangelicals) and brutal treatment of refugees (today's Republicans), is sadly still relevant. The director Jules Dassin created a unique Easter treat for classic film fans (though the seriousness of the film may make the word 'treat' not quite right). Filmed in the village of Kritsa on Crete with actual townspeople as both groups of villagers, this is not only thought-provoking but also entertaining, with very good performances from everyone, especially Vaneck as the Christ figure, Gert Frobe (Goldfinger) as the mayor, and Ronet as Michelis. The symbolism can be a bit heavy at times, making the narrative predictable (although the ending manages the trick of being a bit unpredictable as well as both ambiguous and satisfying) but watching all the parts and people slipping into place kept me fully engaged. Mercouri is good but a bit too intense at times; her eyes make her look alternately aroused or angry, sometimes both. Other actors of note include Jean Servais as Father Fotis and Carl Mohner as an assistant to the Agha. The IMDb summary says the plot concerns Greek villagers rebelling against their Turkish occupiers, but this doesn't happen until the last few minutes, and then only because the Agha, who has tried to remain neutral, is forced into backing Father Grigoris. The ultimate message is delivered by Michelis who says if Christ returned, he would be crucified again, and the priests would be driving in the nails. (The film is based on the Nikos Kazantzakis novel Christ Recrucified.) I'm so glad I saw this in time for Holy Week viewing this year. I can see this becoming part of my Easter film-watching canon. As far as the commentary, like most on Kino Lorber discs, it's awful; don't bother. I listened to one hour of it and the commentator spends all his time talking about the director and his friends, and says next to nothing about the movie we're watching. Pictured at top are Ronet, Mercouri, and Vaneck; at right is Roger Hanin as the Judas figure. [Blu-ray]

DAY OF TRIUMPH (1954)

According to Wikipedia, this is the first sound film to focus on the life of Jesus—the last one made in Hollywood had been DeMille's silent 1927 movie KING OF KINGS. Though no masterpiece, its approach to the story of the crucifixion is closer to that found in the 1961 KING OF KINGS: we largely see the story through the eyes of Judas and in a strongly political context. Zadok is the leader of the Zealots, a Jewish group wanting to break free from Rome's shackles. Judas suggests to Zadok that Jesus, an itinerant preacher thought by some to be the messiah whose way John the Baptist foretold, could be a strong ally for their cause. We see Jesus gather his apostles, perform miracles (including the resurrection of Lazarus), and accept the attentions of the repentant courtesan Mary Magdalene. Zadok isn't sure that the mix of spirituality and politics will work, but he remains interested in this man's followers. After Jesus enters Jerusalem on an ass (as foretold), the rest of the story plays out familiarly: Judas sells Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver, Caiaphas arrests Jesus for sedition, Herod refuses to hear his case, and Pontias Pilate is stuck with determining his fate.

This is clearly a B-movie, and today it comes off looking like something that was made for cable TV. The physical production isn’t bad, with the crucifixion scene being especially effective, but the acting is rather bland. Robert Wilson is about the right age for Jesus (he was about 35) but he looks much older, and he's colorless and uninspiring. It could be that the filmmakers were afraid of being considered irreverent if they gave the character too much personality. Lee J. Cobb is top-billed as Zadok and he's OK if also rather colorless. Joanne Dru, a pretty big name at the time, is given only two short scenes as Mary Magdalene, and this is the first time I remember seeing the character portrayed as wealthy. By default, that leaves James Griffith (Judas) as the acting bright spot. IMDb shows him as having over 200 roles, some uncredited, in movies and TV, and his thin build and arched eyebrows do look familiar. His melodramatic turn at the end when he regrets his actions is a bit much but he is otherwise fine. Overall, the whole thing feels like it was made to shown in church basements for fundraisers, though it did get a decent theatrical release and garnered solid reviews. I'm not sure it holds up today, but it’s not exactly painful to sit through. Seek this out if you're tired of the same old Easter movie canon. [YouTube]

A QUIET PLACE TO KILL (1970)

Helen (Carroll Baker) is a race car driver who is badly injured in a crash. She is invited to rest and recuperate with her ex-husband Maurice (Jean Sorel) at his seaside villa. Being out of commission and in debt thanks to the crash, she accepts his offer, but when she arrives, she is surprised to find that Maurice has a second wife, Constance (Anna Proclemer). Helen is even more surprised to learn that Constance is the one who invited her, and also made sure that Helen's outstanding debts have been paid. But there is a catch: Constance wants Helen to help her kill Maurice, mostly, it seems, because he's a serial philanderer (both women agree he's very good in bed) and she suspects he's about to leave her. In the past, Helen did try half-heartedly to kill Maurice, which we see in flashback, so she's got a leg up on Constance. The three go for an outing on a boat and the plan is for Helen to kill Maurice with a spear gun, but things go awry, partly because Helen slept with Maurice the night before. When the time comes, she hesitates and Constance tries to get ahold of the spear gun. In a three-way struggle, Constance winds up dead and Maurice and Helen tie her body up with weights and throw her in the lake, then tell the police that she fell in during a windy squall. However, two things complicate their plan: a friend was filming them from up in the hills, and Constance's daughter Susan arrives from boarding school and becomes immediately suspicious of things. Twists and tricks follow.

This is usually considered an early entry in the giallo genre (a murder mystery with lots of sex and blood), though it's got less sex and blood than most giallo fans would expect. But it is a nifty psychological thriller which is well acted, nicely shot in vivid color largely on location, and has fun twists, some predictable, some a little less so. Carroll Baker was a Hollywood starlet of the 50s and early 60s (BABY DOLL, THE CARPETBAGGERS, HARLOW) who went to Europe in search of better work. The rest of her career was mostly in B-films and television, but she made four of these giallo-ish thrillers in Italy with director Umberto Lenzi in quick succession and they have become cult favorites. (The other three are available as a Blu-ray boxed set and I'll be covering others eventually.) She is not the most demonstrative actor, but her somewhat distancing tone works here. Jean Sorel (pictured with Baker) is very nice-guy handsome, and even as he plays a not-so-nice guy, we're kept in his corner at least sometimes. He is boyishly good looking with hints of decadence creeping in. Anna Proclemer (Constance) and Marina Coffa (Susan) and fine. All the main actors do good jobs at keeping us on our toes about motives and character backgrounds, which is part of what makes this movie work so well. The color-solarized opening is quite trippy but is not indicative of the movie's overall visual style which focuses on the natural outdoor backgrounds and the interiors with their attention to money and possessions. Quite good. Originally released in Italy as PARANOIA. [Blu-ray; also on Amazon Prime]

THEY WANTED TO MARRY (1937)

Jim (Gordon Jones) is an ace candid camera photographer for the Daily Mail who uses a pet carrier pigeon named Emily to deliver his photos to the paper. He has been missing for a couple of days (barhopping, we assume), and as punishment, his editor assigns him to get some candid shots of the notoriously camera-shy millionaire William Hunter, whose daughter Helen is getting married at the family mansion. His buddy Roger, who has been after Jim to take a position at his ad agency, has an invitation to the wedding but will be out of town so he lets Jim use the invite (and his fancy apartment) while he's gone. Jim crashes the wedding and snaps some pics, and when he sneaks into an upstairs bedroom to send his pigeon off with his film, he has a meet-cute moment with Helen's sister Sheila (Betty Furness)—he thinks she's in a state of undress when she enters the room and he closes his eyes out of propriety. But Sheila is much less uptight than the rest of her family and she winds up skipping out on the rest of the party, going with Jim to Roger's apartment, which he passes off as his own. When the two are caught trying to use Roger's identity to get room service, they're thrown in jail. Dad pays her bail, but upset that one of Jim's wedding photos of him has been published, he orders Sheila to stay away from Jim. Sheila has other plans: she becomes Jim's assistant. There are more shenanigans, more candid photos of Hunter, more jail time, and, of course, a miscommunication kink that strains Jim and Sheila's romantic relationship before the requisite happy ending. This B-romantic comedy, verging on screwball, is pleasant, and its one hour length is just right. Gordon Jones, who was in one hundred movies between 1930 and 1963, is one of my favorite B-actors (THE GREEN HORNET, NIGHT SPOT) and I quite enjoyed his performance here. His easy charm helped make a role that might have turned obnoxious remain appealing. He and Betty Furness (best known as a spokesperson for Westinghouse on 1950s TV and later as a consumer affairs advocate) work well together. Perennial stuffy butler E.E. Clive is amusing, though the actor he supposedly replaced, Eric Blore, would have been more fun. Henry Kolker is Sheila's father, and Franklin Pangborn has a small standout part as the hotel manager whose toupee keeps flipping up during various scuffles. Pictured are Jones and Furness. [TCM]

THE GOLDEN SALAMANDER (1950)

Archeologist David Redfern (Trevor Howard) is driving on a Tunisian mountain pass through a blinding storm when he is forced off the road by a landslide. As he begins to walk to town, he sees a truck, hit by the slide, and sees two men scooping up guns from the truck. Redfern manages to grab a gun without being seen. At the Café des Amis, he gets a room and meets the lackadaisical piano player Agno (Wilfrid Hyde-White) and a French woman named Anna (Anouk Aimee) who came to town with her brother Max while on the run from Nazis a few years earlier. Redfern is in town to catalog and oversee the shipment of valuable artifacts in the possession of the wealthy Serafis (Walter Rilla), but it's not long before he sees the two men from the landslide, the older Rankl (Herbert Lom) and the younger Max (Jacques Sernas, pictured to the left of Howard), and realizes they are engaged in illegal gunrunning. Redfern becomes good friends with Anna and Max, and when Anna expresses concern over Max’s relationship with the shady Rankl, Redfern offers to write a letter of introduction for Max, an aspiring artist, to use in Paris to extricate himself from the gunrunners. As Redfern continues his work for Serafis, he falls in love with Anna, and soon comes to see that the gunrunning outfit reaches farther and wider than he suspected. One of the artifacts has an effect on Redfern: a golden salamander with the engraving, "Not by ignoring evil does one overcome it, but by going to meet it." Soon, seeing that Anna and Max may be at the mercy of the bad guys, Redfern has to decide whether he will follow the wisdom of the salamander.

The rule persists: for the past ten years, if a movie on the home video market is called a film noir, it almost certainly is not. This, part of a set called British Noir, is no exception. But it is a solid thriller combining adventure, danger, romance and morality in a way that suggests a cross between Casablanca and a Graham Greene novel. Redfern is not a particularly heroic lead, but the film is in part about his moral journey. Actually, many of the characters spend at least some time in morally gray areas before they make the decision of how to act. The romance between Howard and Aimee, who are twenty years apart in age, is a little far-fetched. One of Howard's strengths is playing a fairly colorless everyman character, which he does here; one can see his attraction to her, but hers to him must be taken on faith (honestly, I kept waiting for her to either leave or betray him but it never happens). But both actors do well in their parts. Lom is always a welcome presence—as soon as you see his face in a movie of this era, you can feel the slimy sweat that will probably break out on him soon. Sernas is handsome, Rilla is commanding, Peter Copely has a nice moment or two as the chief native assistant to Redfern. But maybe the best role here is that of Agno, who we want to like but who is happiest working the middle. Hyde-White very much looks like singer and composer Hoagy Carmichael, whose most famous film role is as the laconic piano player in To Have and Have Not. Hyde-White seems almost to be channeling him and his importance to the plot grows. Ultimately, this may work better as a character study, as the suspense and tension are largely saved for the final scenes which include a boar hunt (a boar is actually shot dead on camera). Not a classic, perhaps, but quite watchable and interesting in its twists and turns. [DVD]

ALIAS FRENCH GERTIE (1930)

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]

THE GROUNDSTAR CONSPIRACY (1972)

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]

THE GIRL FROM MISSOURI (1934)

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.

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]

THE GIRL IN THE KREMLIN (1957)

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.

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]

PICK A STAR (1937)

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.

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]

KNIFE IN THE WATER (1962)

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?

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]

THE NIGHT HAS EYES (1942)

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]

THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)

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.

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 Palmer two more times in FUNERAL IN BERLIN and BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN) 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]

SHOCKPROOF (1949)

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.

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]