THE WICKED LADY (1945)

Rich Griffith Jones is set to marry his ward, the young Patrica Roc, but her visiting friend Margaret Lockwood (at left) sets her sights on Jones as soon as she sees him and soon enough, Jones marries Lockwood (and poor Roc, who manages the house, has to take part in the ritual of preparing the wedding bed). However, a placid life is not to be hers: on her wedding night, she has her breath taken away when she dances with the dashing Michael Rennie and soon she is bored with her life of leisure. When she discovers a secret passage in the house, she remarks that it will come in handy if she takes a lover, but first she winds up using it for a secret life of crime; inspired by stories of a daring highwayman, she disguises herself and robs back some jewelry she lost gambling. She gets such a thrill, she decides to keep it up. One night she meets the real highwayman (James Mason) and they become lovers. A string of melodramatic events follows, including an arrest, a trial, the slow poisoning of a household servant who knows too much about Lockwood's double life, and a hanging followed by a resurrection.

This period-piece adventure is great fun and Lockwood (who looks a bit like a more vivacious Olivia de Havilland) is very good as the sexy amoral anti-heroine; Roc, as the good girl, and Jones as the good guy, don't have a chance with the audience, and neither does anyone else, really, except Mason as the man who is almost her match. There are some fun supporting characters, including Felix Aylmer as a slightly addled Bible-quoting servant and Martita Hunt as a cousin. There are also great sets and smart dialogue. This British film was a big hit in its day but has been difficult to run across so I was happy that TCM has aired it. Don't get this confused with an 80's remake. [TCM]

THE ROGUES' TAVERN (1936)

Imagine a Poverty-Row studio plunking Nick and Nora Charles down in an Agatha Christie mystery with a "Hound of the Baskervilles" twist. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you'll like this modest comedy-thriller. On a stormy night, Wallace Ford and Barbara Pepper, two detectives, are supposed to meet a justice of the peace at an inn called the Red Rock Tavern, out in the middle of nowhere, to get married. When they arrive, they find a motley group of people sitting in the lobby waiting for a guy named Wentworth, who supposedly wrote to all of them to set up the meeting. Soon, one of their number is found dead, his throat apparently ripped out by a mad dog. Wentworth arrives and claims he was sent a letter just like the rest of them. Suddenly, the doors are all locked from the outside and the windows barred, and the mad dog seems to be hunting them all down one by one. The negative points: as with most movies of the low, low budget variety, there is virtually no background music; some line flubs are left in; the writing is not top-notch, with lots of plot loopholes, the biggest being that we get very little backstory on any characters, especially the central detective duo. The pluses: the solution is tricky and satisfying, and the camerawork is inventive, with lots of interesting tracking shots. Ford and Pepper are OK; the cast includes Joan Woodbury as an exotically accented fortune teller, and Clara Kimball Young and John Elliott as the managers of the inn. I could have done without some of the forced humor, mostly foisted off on Ford and Pepper. It was distributed by a short-lived company called Puritan Pictures. The Alpha DVD is not in the best shape, but a better print is unlikely to turn up. [DVD]

THE OFFICE WIFE (1930)

This pre-Code marital drama begins with a rather startling sight: the middle-aged Blanche Friderici in full Gertrude Stein drag, complete with hat, tie, vest, tweed jacket, pants, cigar, and hard facial expression. She's talking over a book proposal with publisher Lewis Stone and says she wants to write like Hemingway, though the topic of the planned book is what Stone calls the "office wife," the secretary who runs the business life of the executive and can be more of a "wife" than the at-home one (Friderici has total contempt for wives, calling them "fools"). She says the secretary usually reduces the wife to a mere "maker of beds and pancakes" and that the husband is usually unaware of the "bondage" he's in. Stone's secretary (Dale Fuller) runs a tight ship, but when he tells her that he's getting married, she faints dead away and resigns. The young and hard-working Dorothy Mackaill is promoted to replace Fuller and even though she's got a perfectly nice, if somewhat cocky, boyfriend (Walter Merrill) she still finds herself, almost against her will, primping and flirting for the boss. Soon she's become the "office wife" that Friderici's writing about, working constantly with Stone: at night, at poolside parties, and on business trips, and always too busy to see Merrill. Though there's no hanky-panky, she finds herself falling in love with Stone and, in a quandary, decides to pursue Merrill again. Her sister and roomie (Joan Blondell) tells her she should stick to her own kind, though Blondell also thinks that both men are "bad choices," the one wanting her for her work skills, and the other wanting her to have kids and do laundry, and she suggests that Mackaill will wind up lonely either way. Ultimately, it's Stone's wife's decision to get a divorce that pushes Stone and Mackaill together at the end, with a nice final shot the two on a beach at night.

TCM showed this during their "Screened Out" festival of gay and lesbian images in film, and though Friderici is only in the film for a few minutes, she does cut a memorable figure. She appears once in the beginning and once halfway through, as though her character was intended to be an "outsider" observer, commenting on the actions of those crazy heterosexuals, but the idea isn't developed very well. There is some clever use of doubled sequences, echoing each other thematically: Mackaill has two beach scenes, one with Merrill and the closing one with Stone, and there are two amusing fainting scenes. This was Blondell's first feature film and though her part is small, she steals the show. Stone is fine, and Merrill, who has limited screen time, does an acceptable job as the slick working-class boyfriend who we just know isn't right for our heroine. Mackaill is only so-so, especially in the presence of Blondell who could have done the part much better. Mackaill's idea of showing any emotion seems to be looking off longingly into the distance. Aside from the weak lead performance, the other problem is that no one seems to really be in love. Though we're rooting for Stone and Mackaill, their potential coupling at the end feels like a convenient arrangement rather than a love match. [TCM]

THE SMALL BACK ROOM (1949)

While watching this movie, I had a minor epiphany: I think some people are movie buffs and some are film buffs. Movie buffs are people who love movies of all kinds, mostly for sheer entertainment. Film buffs are people who love certain kinds of movies, or who love to think about and study movies. This is a film buff movie which would be perfect for showing to a film class--it has lots going on stylistically, not to mention a plot that has some elements in common with the recent THE HURT LOCKER--but not one I'm sure the average 21st century movie fan would enjoy. In England during WWII, David Farrar (in black at left) is a member of a weapons research group which seems to operate on the fringe of the official military. While the men (called "the back room boys" for their cramped quarters) are helping to evaluate a new kind of gun, they are also attempting to figure out what's going on with a new German booby-trap bomb which falls to earth in one piece, but later explodes when touched, killing mostly civilians and children. Farrar is in danger of becoming an alcoholic wreck, mostly due to his inability to come to terms with his war wound, a blown-off foot which has been replaced with an artificial one, and that is messing up his relationship with his live-in lover (Kathleen Byron) who is also a secretary where he works. His work and love lives go careening off the tracks until he thinks he can find redemption by cracking the secret of the German bomb, even though another "back room boy" has already been killed trying.

This Michael Powell film is beautifully photographed in a mix of styles: a lot of film noir angles and lighting, mostly naturalistic shooting in outdoor scenes, and a strange and not completely successful nightmare sequence right out of Hitchcock's SPELLBOUND. The bomb plot and the romance plot play out like two separate strands for most of the film's running time, though even when the narrative bogs down a bit, there is always something interesting going on visually. Farrar, the hunk who drives the nuns crazy in BLACK NARCISSUS, and Byron (who was one of those nuns) are excellent, and there is good support from a young Cyril Cusack (as a stuttering researcher), Leslie Banks, Jack Hawkins, and Michael Gough. Overall, the film feels very modern with its slow, deliberate pace, attention to everyday details, and the prizing of character before action. [DVD]

I WAS FRAMED (1942)

A crazy little B-movie which moves like gangbusters for the first half, then stops dead in its tracks for the last half. Michael Ames is a muckraking reporter who is out to get a crooked politician, but his goons get Ames first, knocking him unconscious, putting him behind a car wheel, soaking him in alcohol to make it seem like he was drunk, and sending the car out into traffic. Three people are killed and Ames is arrested. His cell mate in the county jail (John Harmon) includes him in a breakout plan, but when the guards detain Harmon, Ames escapes on his own, earning Harmon's undying hatred. Ames and his pregnant wife (Julie Bishop) make a run for it, ending up in a small town where a kindly old doctor delivers her baby and gets Ames a job as a reporter for the local paper. Suddenly, it's five years later, and the narrative stops dead in its tracks so their "cute" little daughter (Patty Hale) can sing a clever but irritating song about nursery rhymes at her birthday party. Harmon, now a hobo, passes through their town, recognizes Ames, and tries to blackmail him through his wife, but the movie never recovers from the "cute" interplay between the kid and the doc, and the kid and the butler (Sam McDaniel). The first half feels like a different movie from the second; besides the speedy pace, the first half is full of interesting shots with an almost expressionistic use of shadows. All that vanishes in the pedestrian second half. Throughout, the acting is weak. Ames (who later took the name Tod Andrews) and Bishop are deadly dull, and the only standouts are McDaniel (brother of Hattie McDaniel) and Harmon. It's almost worth seeing for the speedy first half-hour and for Harmon's intense but unshowy performance. During the final hostage-situation shootout, Harmon actually says, "I'm comin' out, coppers, so put those rods away!" [TCM]

THE IMPATIENT YEARS (1944)

A bland romantic comedy which fits in the screwball "comedy of remarriage" genre but lacks the wit and verve we associate with screwballs. The film, set on the home front during WWII, begins in a divorce court then flashes back to a whirlwind romance between Jean Arthur and solider Lee Bowman. Over four days, the two meet and marry and spend their wedding night together before he is called back to duty. Eighteen months later, Bowman returns home to Arthur, whom he realizes he barely knows, a baby daughter he has never seen, his father-in-law (Charles Coburn), and a rather prim boarder (Phil Brown) who has been chastely helping Arthur with her household and mothering duties. Bowman feels like a stranger and Brown, who doesn't want to get booted out, makes things worse on purpose. After Bowman and Arthur have a fight, they head for divorce court, where the movie began. Coburn talks the judge (Edgar Buchanan) into forcing the two to give their marriage one more chance, so Buchanan sends them back to relive their first weekend together, from their meeting in a waffle shop to buying flowers to their first kiss, all the way up to their marriage by a justice of the peace. The two do thaw a bit, and there is an amusing scene in their adjoining hotel rooms with Charley Grapewin as a nosy bellhop. There is no suspense about how things will end up, so your enjoyment of this film will depend on your enjoyment of the actors. I found little chemistry between Bowman and Arthur, and though I usually like Arthur, I think she's at fault here, seeming to be running at half-speed for most of the movie. This may have been an attempt by Columbia Pictures to reproduce the box-office appeal of THE MORE THE MERRIER, a much better wartime romance with Arthur, Coburn, and Joel McCrea, but it doesn't come close. Brown is a bit awkward in the part of the asexual spoiler; Eddie Bracken could have done more with the role. Grapewin is good, and other fine support comes from Jane Darwell, Grant Mitchell, and Harry Davenport. I would recommend it mostly for fans of the underrated Lee Bowman (pictured above). [TCM]

BLACKOUT (1950)

Maxwell Reed is a man who was blinded in an accident over a year ago and is about to undergo an operation that will restore his sight. He heads out one night to attend a party but gets dropped off at the wrong address, enters an empty house, finds a dead body, and is knocked out by someone, though he manages to keep hold of a ring he found on the floor. After the operation, he tracks his way back to the house to play detective, meets Dinah Sheridan and her father, and discovers that the ring belonged to her brother, a pilot who was recently killed in a plane crash. She, being his twin and feeling an almost psychic connection, doesn't believe he is dead, so she is more than willing to join Reed in his investigation. They enlist the help of the brother's buddy (Patric Doonan), but when Reed meets the brother's navigator, he recognizes the man's voice from the night of the murder and Reed suspects that the brother may indeed still be alive and involved in a smuggling ring.

This is definitely a minor British B-film, with so-so acting and a plot with some loopholes, but Reed and the photography (a vaguely noir style) make it worth seeing. Reed, who was married for a time to Joan Collins, is nice looking and mostly adequate to the undemanding role, though the romance element never quite feels right. The title comes from a plot twist near the end reminiscent of the climax of WAIT UNTIL DARK; when the power goes out, Reed's recent blindness gives him a leg up on the bad guys. That is literally the only surprising element of the otherwise predictable film. I got a chuckle out of an exchange that occurs when Reed returns to the house after his sight has been restored; recognizing by feel a small statue of a lion, he stands there fondling it and when caught by Sheridan, says, "I was admiring the lion." She replies, "I'd have thought you were polishing the lion." Either phrase would make a wonderful euphemism for something impolite. [DVD]

THE WEDDING NIGHT (1935)

Gary Cooper is a famous author who has ruined his talent through drinking and wasteful living--think F. Scott Fitzgerald. When his latest book is rejected by his publisher, he and his wife (Helen Vinson) go off to stay on an old family farm in Connecticut, with Cooper hoping the lack of distraction with allow inspiration to strike. As soon as he arrives, he is approached by a Polish immigrant (Sig Ruman) and his lovely daughter (Anna Sten) about buying a neglected part of his land, which they intend for use by Sten and her husband-to-be (Ralph Bellamy). Cooper sells them the land, then quickly returns to his non-productive drinking ways. Vinson--think Eva Gabor on Green Acres--tires quickly of farm life and heads back to New York as winter sets in; one night, a drunken Cooper flirts with Sten, telling her she's too good for the rough, uncultured Bellamy. She rebuffs him but the next day they've become friends. With Sten as his muse, Cooper starts writing again, good stuff, we're told; he lets Sten read it and soon they're in love. Her father senses what's going on and forbids her visiting Cooper, but one night she's stuck there during a snowstorm and, though nothing more than a kiss happens, Ruman forces her to marry Bellamy within the week, just as Vinson arrives for a surprise visit. On Sten's wedding night, the forces of love, jealousy, and culture clash bring about a tragic ending.

This is a predictable melodrama, but worth watching, with several actors playing a bit against type, especially Cooper; he was no longer the male ingénue of MOROCCO or DESIGN FOR LIVING, and he hadn't yet been stereotyped as the strong, silent hero of adventure films or Westerns. He's relatively silent but plays a weak man who can't make things come out right for himself or his loved ones. Sten is better here than she was in NANA; in fact, she's very good but she's just not a Garbo type, and this was her last starring role in a Hollywood A-movie. Vinson's character is neither bitchy nor unsympathetic, just someone like Cooper and Sten who is subject to forces she can't quite control. The biggest surprise is Bellamy in a role far removed from the usual passive loser-boyfriend he played in many comedies of the 30's; here, he's almost playing a Lon Chaney Jr. type, a big, dumb, rough-edged, unlikable lug, and he's good in the part. The film's tone is also unusual for the time: though it becomes a tragic melodrama, it begins as almost a comedy, and comic touches remain here and there until the end. [DVD]

NANA (1934)

Anna Sten is Nana, a scrubmaid in 19th century Paris; when her mother dies, she vows not to be poor or weak, and one year later, she's a successful streetwalker. After she makes a public scene dealing with a drunken sailor, theatrical impresario Richard Bennett hires her to appear in one of his shows. She's a sensation, and army colonel Lionel Atwill, though attracted to her, calls her a "gilded fly, hatched from the gutter." Though kept by Bennett, she begins an affair with Atwill's younger brother, Phillips Holmes. Atwill, trying to break them up, tells Bennett about her affair; he tosses her out of his life and his show. Holmes goes off to war and Sten moves in with her hooker friends from the old days. Thinking it's for the best, they throw away her letter to him, and his to her, so she'll forget about him. Atwill gets her a job in the theatre and becomes her lover and keeper. When Holmes finally returns to Paris, a confrontation between the three turns tragic.

This so-so romantic melodrama, based on a novel by Emile Zola, has become something of a film buff curiosity as it marked the Hollywod debut of the Russian-born Sten. Samuel Goldywn tried to build her up into a Dietrich/Garbo type, but her career never took off. She’s not bad, but she lacks the mystique of Garbo and the sex appeal of Dietrich, though there are many shots in the film in which she looks just like Dietrich. Atwill and Holmes are only OK in their roles, though Bennett (the father of actresses Joan and Constance) is good, as is Mae Clarke as Satin, one of Nana's friends. Also with Reginald Owen and Jessie Ralph. Directed by Dorothy Arzener and lushly photographed by the great Gregg Toland. [TCM]

THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY (1960)

A Hammer B-melodrama, much like TERROR OF THE TONGS; this was made the year before and has a similar plot trajectory. On the plus side, it moves at a faster pace, has a clearer plotline, and has more graphic gore, possibly serving as one of the inspirations for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; on the minus side, it's in black & white (a minus only compared to the colorful look of TONGS) and the individual characters are generally less interesting, though the villain here (George Pastell, pictured) is nastier (and more fun) than Christopher Lee was as the Tong leader. In colonial India, a Kali cult, the members of which not only strangle their victims but also disembowel and gouge out eyes, is terrorizing the populace and making life difficult for the British East India Company. Guy Rolfe, a British official, is upset by a lack of support from his superiors in trying to deal with the kidnappings, robberies, and murders, so he quits and goes looking for his former servant, who went in search of his long-lost brother, assumed to have been kidnapped years ago and impressed into service as a cult member. A scene of torture or graphic violence pops up every few minutes, not nearly as gory as they would be today, but still often startling. One of the most effective shock scenes involves a man leaping into a noose to hang himself. There's also a nice scene in which Rolfe is staked to the ground while a cobra comes slithering along the ground; if only there was a mongoose nearby to save our hero! Pastell, with his bald head, glowering eyes, and almost manscaped chest, makes for a particularly impressive bad guy, especially in the opening sequence when he’s whipping his followers into a frenzy by snapping a strangling towel between his hands and leading a chant of "Kali!! Kali!!" Allan Cuthbertson is a useless British twit who keeps pissing our hero off, and David Spenser is the brainwashed brother who’s given his full induction into the cult, including a triangle-shaped scar on the inner arm that, lucky for the good guys, is a dead giveaway of membership in the Kali fan club. This B-movie version of a Gunga Din/Temple of Doom adventure is worth seeing, and available as part of the Hammer Icons of Adventure DVD set. [DVD]

BRIEF MOMENT (1933)

Another Gene Raymond movie, this time a run-of-the-mill romantic melodrama which combines two hackneyed plotlines: 1) wealthy family disapproves of the common girl their son wants to marry; 2) wife tries to reform dissolute playboy husband. Raymond, who's never had to work a day in his life, takes nightclub singer Carole Lombard home to meet the family; they disapprove because they think she's a gold digger. The two marry anyway and Lombard leaves her gig, to the dismay of club owner Arthur Hohl, who is in love with her. The couple lives on the generous allowance that Raymond's father gives them, but Lombard soon thinks it's high time for Raymond to do some honest work. He gets a job as a lowly clerk in the family business, but his best friend talks him into taking afternoons off to go to the horse races, and soon he's quit his job and is back to his playboy ways. When Lombard finds out, she is furious and moves out, going back to work at Hohl's club. Of course, true love and hard work win out in the end. I'm not really a Lombard fan, though she is fine here, and Raymond is even better, and their scenes together are the best in the movie. The supporting cast is strong: in addition to Hohl, playing a rare nice-guy role, there is Donald Cook as Raymond’s brother, and Monroe Owsley as Raymond’s no-good best friend. [TCM]

ANN CARVER’S PROFESSION (1933)

Fay Wray is working as a cook at a diner to pay her way through law school; she falls for handsome, popular football star Gene Raymond, who is studying to be an architect but who also likes moonlighting as a crooner. They marry and for a time she's happy being a housewife, but after she gives a judge some legal advice at a party (advice about how women on a jury can be manipulated), she's offered a job as a clerk at his office. When a lawyer falls sick, she winds up getting a big break defending a rich young man in a breach of promise case, and suddenly she's the toast of the town while his career comes to a standstill. He starts singing at a nightclub to make more money, which embarrasses her to no end. One night, she and her friends go to the club; he sees Raymond kiss a singer (Claire Dodd) who's been flirting with him, gets pissed off, and leaves in a huff, throwing change at Raymond as he begins singing. They split up and he takes up with Dodd; one drunken night, Dodd passes out and her scarf catches around a couch, strangling her to death. Raymond is charged with murder, and guess who agrees to defend him in court?

Though this film takes some fun detours from the norm (like the nasty nightclub scene), it's basically a tedious "wounded male pride" melodrama: Poor Gene Raymond! His wife is making more money than he is! That’s just unnatural. To his character's credit, he doesn’t actually ask his wife to quit her job, but it is her career that is blamed for his problems. And of course, even though she gets him cleared of the murder charge, for the happy ending to be complete she also has to quit the law and let him be the breadwinner. Grrrr! But as these films go, this is eminently watchable, mostly due to the mellow Raymond and the sizzling Dodd (pictured above with Raymond), who is always a welcome presence in 30's films, though sadly she was always in support, rarely leads. Wray is a disappointment; her acting is way too broad from the first moments of the film. There is solid support from familiar faces Jessie Ralph, Frank Albertson and Robert Barrat. Worth seeing if you can overcome your revulsion for the dated "put the woman back in the kitchen" plotline. One other major dated element has to do with race: Wray is able to get the young man off on the breach of promise case because the woman involved was a black woman passing as white (!) [TCM]

THE LOST ZEPPELIN (1929)

Another deep freeze movie today. As a rule, I don't review movies which for one reason or another I don't see all the way through. I admit to a tendency to nod off for five minutes or so during the middle of a movie, especially in the comfort of my own home, but if that happens, I can just back the disc up and see what I missed. This movie, on an Alpha DVD from Netflix, froze up at it approached the climax, with about 12 minutes left to play, and I could not get past that spot no matter what I did. Still, I think I suffered through enough of it to give it a fair review here. Adventurer Conway Tearle is leading a dirigible expedition to the South Pole, and he's not a bit suspicious when his wife (Virginia Valli) invites his best friend (Ricardo Cortez), who's also going on the trip, to accompany them to a banquet the night before they leave. Turns out Valli is in love with Cortez, and Tearle sees them kissing (while "Liebestraum" plays in the background), which rather puts a damper on Tearle's last night with his wife, seeing as she asks him to give her a divorce when he returns from the Pole. The dirigible, named Explorer, makes it through a bad storm, passes over the Pole where it's seen by the men at a polar base, disappears from radio contact, and crashes. The men decide to split up in small groups, hoping to run into search parties. Help does come, but the only survivors are, yes, Tearle and Cortez. There's only room for one on the rescue plane: who will go and will be left behind hoping for a second place's arrival?

This is the kind of film that gives early talkies a bad name. The plot moves excruciatingly slowly, and the camera doesn't move much at all. Everyone delivers dialogue in a slow and stilted manner, as though they were on stage performing an adult play for small children. It's theoretically an action/adventure film reminiscent of the "mountain movies" that the Germans were producing at the time (and it's a lot like S.O.S. ICEBERG, a German/American production of a few years later), but as it was made by Tiffany-Stahl, a small independent B-movie studio, the budget wasn't there for the kind of effects or location shooting that would have made this film interesting. Tearle and Valli are deadly dull; Cortez, whom I normally like, is not much better, so I blame the director (and the new sound technology) for the bad performances. Some of the effects and South Pole sets aren't bad, with the crashed zeppelin (see picture) looking the best, but overall this is just too dated to be of much interest (except historical) to viewers today. [DVD]

SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC (1948)

This weekend, with a deep freeze still upon us, seemed a good time to view this run-of-the-mill biopic about the explorer Robert Scott who eventually made his way to the South Pole, but didn’t return. The film begins as he's trying to raise money for a second expedition after an earlier one in 1904 in which his ship got stuck in ice. Scott (John Mills, pictured) can’t get enough funding through traditional means, so he goes to the public for support. He doesn't get as much as he needs, but is able to hire some good men and manages to cut some corners so that by 1910, he's off to the Pole. Despite the crew's optimism, there are setbacks, partly due to limited resources, partly due to uncertain leadership. At one point, they have to shoot all the ponies, and when the small group of five finally do reach the pole, they are dispirited to find the Norwegian flag already planted there by the rival explorer Amundsen. Because we know from the beginning that Scott and his men will die on the ice--they die one by one on the way back from the Pole--the film feels gloomy, not at all like a tribute to a spirited adventurer, and there isn't much suspense, but the acting is good all around, especially Mills in the title role, but also from Kenneth More and James Robertson Justice. The filming of the expedition, done mostly in studio with some second-unit footage as background (including some nice penguin footage), is solid, despite the occasional obvious artifice. It helps that the film is in color, but the print used on the Trinity DVD is in bad shape, with lots of rough splices and a few blurry patches. [DVD]

THE MATING SEASON (1951)

John Lund, a mid-level executive at an Ohio factory, falls in love with a socialite, Gene Tierney, who has fallen on hard times. Despite their class differences, they're committed to making their marriage work. Enter Lund's mother, Thelma Ritter, a tough middle-aged woman who has just lost her Manhattan diner to bank foreclosure. She decides to pay a surprise visit to her son with the idea of moving in with him for a time, but when she finds out he's getting married, she realizes the two should be left alone during what she calls their "mating season" so she doesn't tell him she's in town and instead watches the wedding from a distance. Later, when she does pay them a visit, it's just before a cocktail party they're throwing and Tierney mistakes her for the hired maid. Ritter stays and helps make the party a success. Lund wants her to live with them, but she doesn't want Tierney to have the pressure of a live-in mother-in-law, so she decides to stay "in disguise" as a live-in maid. She and Tierney get along quite well in this fashion until Tierney's own mother (Miriam Hopkins) shows up to stay indefinitely. She's a monsterish pain in the ass, still clinging to her upper-class mannerisms, and sitcom troubles start piling up until it looks like Lund and Tierney are heading for a quick breakup; of course, wise Ritter manages to save the day. This is almost a screwball comedy, in as much as it's almost a comedy of re-marriage, or really a comedy of reconciliation. It's light and fluffy, with a plot that is just a tad bit too convoluted, with a subplot involving Lund's hard-drinking boss (James Lorimer) whom Tierney dumps at the beginning of the film. There's also a funny but uncomfortable moment when the eavesdropping Hopkins thinks that Lund is having an affair with Ritter, not realizing she's his mother. Ritter was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar and she is, as always, very good, carrying the movie all the way. Tierney has a nice light comedic touch and Hopkins provides good bitchy fun. [TCM]

BABBITT (1934)

George Babbitt (Guy Kibbee) is a thoroughly average middle-class real estate developer in Zenith, which is, as road signs tell us, the fastest growing town in America. We see his daily routine: some mild exercise in the morning, a quick breakfast with the wife (Aline MacMahon) and college-age son (Glen Boles), some sloppy dictation to his secretary (Mary Treen) who always manages to spruce up his words nicely, dinner with friends--the henpecked Paul and his ferociously unlikable wife Zilla--and attendance at a meeting of the local businessmen's club, the Zebras (where we see Babbitt become the butt of a very elaborate prank as prelude to being made ceremonial head of the group). Babbitt loves his unexamined life until a string of events occur which throw him off kilter. First, Paul (Minor Watson), having had enough of his wife's nagging, shoots her during an argument; though she survives, Paul is sentenced to several years in jail, and because Babbitt refuses to abandon his friend, the Zebras give him the boot. Then Babbitt gets involved, despite warnings from his wife and son, in a shady scheme with two big shots to buy up dirt-cheap property based on a tip that a new airport will be built in the area. Finally, he begins an affair with a cheap dame (Claire Dodd); when he lets it slip to her in a weak moment about the real estate deal, she tries to blackmail him. Rather improbably, everything works out fine for Babbitt, mostly thanks to his wife and son who pull off their own scheme to neutralize the shady doings.

I have never read the original novel by Sinclair Lewis, but my understanding is that the character was intended to be a stinging satire on complacent, conforming businessmen--Babbit's very name became a negative label for such a person (Rosalind Russell uses the word with venom twice in AUNTIE MAME). But this adaptation treats the leading character with affection; even though it does seem to cast mild judgment against him, it ends by letting him regain his former standing in town, with his wife (who never knows that the potential blackmailer was her husband's mistress) and son, and even with the Zebras, and we are given to understand that he will have learned nothing much from his experiences. Still, the movie is well worth seeing; Kibbee is surprisingly good in a rare lead role and MacMahon (pictured above with Kibbee) is fine as always. The large supporting cast includes Hattie McDaniel as a singing maid, Minna Gombell as Zilla, the wife from Hell, and Alan Hale and Berton Churchill as Zebras. Minor Watson, who had mostly unmemorable supporting roles in over 100 movies, is a standout here as a guy beaten down by life. For some reason, this Warner Brothers film doesn't crop up too often on Turner Classic--I'd been waiting ten years to see it--so catch it when you can. [TCM]

MY YEAR IN CLASSIC MOVIES

Another year, another list of the 10 classic movies I saw for the first time this year which were great, enjoyable, or interesting, with the dates of the month in which I reviewed them here:

FOLLOW ME QUIETLY (1949; rev. 11/09): Creepy police thriller with William Lundigan tracking down a serial killer called The Judge; short and low-budget but with atmosphere to beat the band.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER (1953; rev. 4/09): Intelligent, well-acted adaptation of a Grahame Green novel about an unhappy British policeman in colonial Africa who finds his world coming apart.

THE KILLERS (1964; rev. 11/09): Remake of a classic 1946 film noir; this one is less atmospheric but more brutal and violent, and acted very well by John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson, and Lee Marvin.

MURDER IN THE RED BARN (1935; rev. 1/09): Old fashioned, over-the-top melodrama with thunder and dark houses and twirling mustaches.

LA RONDE (1950; rev. 9/09): Frothy, sexy, episodic French concoction about a group of people involved in a circular chain of love affairs.

SEARCH FOR BEAUTY (1934; rev. 5/09): Fun, risque pre-Code comedy about a couple of scammers setting up a health spa and getting their comeuppance at the hands of two Olympic athletes; notable for its flashes of near-nudity (both male and female).

SHACK OUT ON 101 (1955; rev. 8/09): Dirty commie spies who use a grungy seaside diner as a place to pass secrets are hunted down by a college professor--or is he one of them? Lee Marvin gives a great B-film performance as the chief bad guy.

TENSION (1949; rev. 12/09): A wonderful low-key noir thriller with all the right elements: an urban setting, nighttime action, a conflicted hero, a femme fatale, moral gray areas, betrayal, and cops. Richard Basehart is good as the hero but Audrey Totter is fabulous as the bad gal.

TWO THOUSAND WOMEN (1944; rev. 3/09): A wartime thriller with a different setting, an old hotel in France being used by the Germans as an interment camp for women; not terribly exciting but engrossing, with a great Hitchcock moment during a concert scene near the climax.

UNCLE SILAS (1947; rev. 10/09): Grand Gothic melodrama of a young girl and her guardian, an uncle who seems at first pleasant if eccentric but soon reveals himself to be a villain who will do anything to get his hands on her inheritance; one of the best film adaptations of a Gothic novel.

I also enjoyed other noir/crime films such as THE BIG HEAT (this was a good Lee Marvin year for me) and THE PHENIX CITY STORY; Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s wonderfully surreal short THE MYSTERY OF THE LEAPING FISH; the antic British comedy THE WRONG BOX; the near-screwball THE YOUNG IN HEART; the bizarre anti-war musical OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR; the fun B-mystery THE CIRCUS QUEEN MURDER; and the 60's-influenced re-telling of the life of St. Francis BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON.

Sometimes it seems like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for DVD sets, but this year, I loved the pre-Code sets from Warners (the 3rd Forbidden Hollywood) and Universal (which contains SEARCH FOR BEAUTY), the Douglas Fairbanks "Modern Musketeer" box, and boxed sets of Hammer films, Joan Crawford films, and B-screwball films. Boxed sets have become the savior of many little movies that ordinarily would never get released on DVD, except they happen to belong to a genre (film noir sets are especially common) or fit a theme (studios, stars).

PIER 5, HAVANA (1959)

This B-film, which tries to conjure up good feelings by referencing Casablanca and The Third Man, is worth watching as a novelty on two fronts: 1) it's one of the last American films shot at least partly on location in Cuba; 2) it's got a pro-Castro plotline. Just after the Cuban revolution, when Castro's forces drove Batista from power, American Cameron Mitchell, who runs a Miami airstrip, goes to Cuba to find his old buddy Hank who's gone missing. Because Hank had become a heavy drinker, no one seems terribly concerned about his disappearance. Even Hank's estranged wife, Allison Hayes, an old flame of Mitchell's, seems to have forgotten all about Hank and is now being romanced by plantation owner Eduardo Noriega. Mitchell works with the local cops but also strikes out on his own, crossing paths with some brutal thugs who work for Otto Waldis, Hank's former boss. Hank's decomposing body is found—it's assumed he got drunk and took a fatal fall in pouring rain—but guess who stumbles into Hayes' apartment? Hank (Logan Field), on the run from the same thugs who are after Mitchell. It turns out that Waldis is smuggling bomb fuses (in boxes marked "chocolate") to pro-Batista forces preparing to bomb Havana. Yes, the folks backing Castro are the good guys here, but who can they trust, and will they be able to stop the bombing?

This is a decent hard-boiled thriller which is helped immensely by the location shooting. Mitchell is par for the course as the rough-around-the-edges hero, but Hayes (one of those women—like Julie Newmar—who is always described as "statuesque") is fun to watch, even if she's not much of an actor; she looks good standing around and glaring at people. Waldis looks like a disgruntled Edmund Gwenn (Santa in Miracle on 34th Street). Field, as the missing buddy, gets a good scene or two in near the end, and Michael Granger is fine as the cop. At 67 minutes, it doesn't wear out its welcome. [TCM]

GIVE ME YOUR HEART (1936)

Kay Francis and Patric Knowles are in love, but he’s married to Frieda Inescort, an invalid (though as far as I could see, her only problem is a mild limp) who can’t have children. Francis goes to Italy to get advice from her father, who promptly drops dead. When she returns to England, Roland Young, a family friend, figures out that she is pregnant by Knowles, and it is arranged for Francis to have the child and give it to Knowles and his wife to raise as their own. Afterward, Francis goes to America to start a new life and marries George Brent, whom she meets on the ship over. A couple years later, when a friend of hers has a baby, Francis falls into a funk over her "lost" child but eventually, Young arranges a meeting in which Francis gets to see what a good life her child has and what a good mother Inescort is. This is a routine soap opera, notable only because, in the Production Code era, it allows Knowles and Francis to engage in extramarital sex and both have relatively happy outcomes. In fact, in the end, everyone behaves in a most civilized fashion, even Inescort, who in another film might be a demonized figure. The other interesting point is the setting-up of Young and Helen Flint, as a doctor, as a supporting, asexual, comic relief couple analogous to Edward Everett Horton and Helen Broderick in an Astaire/Rogers film. Also with Henry Stephenson as Knowles’ titled father and Halliwell Hobbes as Francis’ father. [TCM]

WILL YOU MERRY ME? (2008)

My annual search for a halfway-decent made-for-TV Christmas movie almost came a cropper this year. Hallmark and Lifetime and ABC Family were full of them this month, but virtually all sounded exactly the same: a couple fall in love at Christmas. I found an interesting variation on DVD in a small indie movie called NOELLE, which I have reviewed elsewhere, but as it wasn't made for TV, it just wouldn't suffice here. There was great promise in a Lifetime movie called 12 MEN OF CHRISTMAS with the ultra-fabulous Kristin Chenoweth and the always-welcome Josh Hopkins (Swingtown, Cougar Town--the fact that this wasn't called Christmastown should have been a warning) but their combined talents could not save this dreadful romantic comedy which had almost nothing to do the holidays. In a small Montana town, city girl Chenoweth gets the hunky men of the local mountain rescue service to pose almost-nude for a fund-raising calendar, and eventually falls for rugged loner Hopkins. Don and I noticed that every time the plot seemed headed for any dramatic tension at all, it veered quickly away. The two actors tried, but the script was dreadful and the direction practically non-existent.

This Christmas Eve morning as I was about to give up, Lifetime gave me a little stocking-stuffer gift, WILL YOU MERRY ME?, a cute culture-clash comedy which actually premiered last year. Rebecca, a Jewish girl from L.A., and Henry, a Protestent boy from Wisconsin, meet cute in New York City while apartment hunting, move in together, and fall in love. On their 6-month "anniversary," he proposes to her, almost on a whim, and she says yes. This means heading off to his small town to spend the holidays with his folks, and having her folks fly in for a day before they go skiing in Aspen to meet the future in-laws. Of course, the culture clash is represented by the tired old Christmas vs. Hanukkah plotline, but it's treated very lightly here. His mom loves Christmas and stuffs the house with decorations and knick-knacks, while his dad turns the home's exterior into one of those ostentatious flashing suburban nightmares. As a nod to her folks, they put a fiddler on the roof (literally) next to Santa, and make half of their Christmas tree into a "Hanukkah Bush." Of course, her parents wind up stranded for a couple of days and they all have to celebrate Christmas Eve and the first night of Hanukkah together, not to mention that Henry has agreed to appear in a Christmas Eve pageant with his childhood sweetheart. Meanwhile, a second clash has emerged: Rebecca and Henry really don't know much about each other; as they realize that, they begin to have second thoughts about getting married. Can the parents band together to save their kids' relationship? Of course they can!

The plot traffics in all kinds of cliches but the movie manages to overcome most of them due to some clever dialogue and decent acting by some old pros (Cynthia Stevenson as Henry's mom, and the wonderful Wendie Malick, above right, as Rebecca's mom). The romantic pair, Tommy Lioutas and Vikki Krinsky (pictured at the top), are Canadian TV actors I'd never heard of, but they generate good chemistry and are mostly believable. There are some bizarre plot twists (a reindeer gets hit by a car, someone falls out of a window) and an amusing but very minor running gag involves Henry's (unseen) brother whom everyone has accepted as gay except the parents. I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would, maybe because it's Christmas Eve morning. It's no timeless gem, but it's harmless and elicits some nice chuckles. (And if you've followed my December thread over the years, yes, Lioutas, at left, is blandly handsome.)