DEATH OF A SALESMAN (1951)

Willy Loman (Fredric March) is a middle-aged salesman whose career has stalled; he's too tired to stay on the road but the company won’t give him a desk job. His grown son Biff (Kevin McCarthy) showed great promise in his youth, but something happened in the past that shattered him. His younger son Happy (Cameron Mitchell) holds a job but has never been able to break away from the long shadow of Biff, who, in Willy's eyes, is still the golden boy of the past. The boys worry that Willy, who has taken to talking loudly to himself, is losing touch with reality. And his long-suffering wife Linda (Mildred Dunnock) becomes upset when she finds evidence that Willy may be planning to kill himself.

Everyone has probably read this classic American play by Arthur Miller, and fans of the theater have seen either a live production (it still gets revived on Broadway every few years) or the acclaimed TV-movie version from the 80s with Dustin Hoffman. This film is difficult to find, never having been released legally on home video; apparently Arthur Miller wasn’t happy with it because it follows the play too closely, essentially being a filming of the play on sets rather than a stage. Perhaps Miller wanted the movie opened up, and that might work, but as a re-creation of the play, this version is as good, if not better, than the Hoffman version. Hoffman, not yet 50 at the time, played Willy as an old, worn-out man who looks at least 60—it's a good performance but from the first moment, he seems at death's door already so his path of decline is very short. March, who was in his early 50s, plays the role as a man of his own age—he's beaten down but not out at the opening, so his somewhat slower decline is all the more heart-rending. McCarthy (pictured to the right of Mitchell and March) is excellent as Biff, and he and March work together well to establish a surface connection that is short-circuited just under the skin (if I may mix my metaphors). Their final confrontation is especially good. Dunnock is also fine, slightly understated, pulling off the "Attention must be paid" speech to great effect. I hope someday the Miller estate allows this fine film to get a bigger audience. Until then, it's on YouTube.

PHANTOM RAIDERS (1940)

In Panama, slick businessman Al Taurez (Joseph Schildkraut) runs a sailor's social organization and keeps a donation jar on his desk for an animal and bird refuge charity, but he's actually a con man pulling an insurance scam. He insures cargo on ships, then plants an explosive on the ship in the form of a radio.  When he or one of his underlings sets off a high-frequency signal from his office, the ship explodes, destroying the cargo so Taurez can get the insurance money, but also usually killing all on board. The insurance company asks playboy private eye Nick Carter (Walter Pidgeon) to investigate, and he does with the help of his bee-fancying sidekick Bartholomew (Donald Meek) and a young woman named Cora (Florence Rice) whose boyfriend (John Carroll) is the captain on a boat that just might be targeted by Taurez. 

Nick Carter is a pulp fiction detective who appeared in a series of books and magazine serials from 1886 through the 1990s, though his movie career has not been so stellar. Pidgeon played him in a rather uninspired fashion in three MGM films, this being the last, and Rice is practically a non-entity. However, as a B-movie thriller, this entry is worth seeing for its supporting cast. Meek, who usually plays passive, shy or, well, meek characters, is very good cast against type here as a fairly cool operator who pretends to be a bumbler but always comes through in the clutch. Schildkraut, who didn't normally sully himself in second-features, is excellent as the villain. Carroll makes for a solid if colorless good guy with not much to do until his ship is directly threatened at the finale. Nat Pendleton has a nice bit as one of Schildkraut's goons who is kept in the dark about the nefarious deeds, and Steffi Duna is fun as a Latin bombshell who spews out random English phrases now and then. Cecil Kellaway (pictured above behind Schildkraut) and Dwight Frye also appear. Not a bad way to spend 70 minutes on a Saturday morning.  [TCM]

LEGONG, DANCE OF THE VIRGINS (1935)

As I've probably said before, I live for the crazy off-the-wall surprises which don't crop up that often for me in the world of classic film. When they do happen, they're usually courtesy Turner Classic Movies, as this one was. Not only is it a movie I'd never heard of, it's a two-strip Technicolor silent film from 1935 shot in Bali. If you're a film buff like I am, you'll know that running across a Technicolor film (in good shape) from that era is pretty rare, but a silent film released six years after sound became the norm in theaters is even rarer. Finally, the fact that this is actually worth watching for reasons having nothing to do with the above rare qualities is the layer of bubbles on the surface of the glass of champagne. In the mold of a film like Murnau's TABU, this combines the ethos of ethnographic filmmaking with a fictional narrative. There is no pretense that the story being acted out is real—it’s scripted—but the backgrounds (Balinese natives going to market, engaging in ritual dancing, holding a funeral ceremony) are largely shot documentary-style. The actors are amateurs and some of the camerawork feels on-the-fly, but none of that matters as the hour-long film holds your attention all the way.

We're told in title cards that this story of Bali, "isle of perpetual summer," is one of simple joyful people. Poutou is a chaste maiden and one of the participants in Legong, the Dance of the Virgins, which is held during the Temple Feast. During one religious festival, Poutou falls in love with the handsome Nyong who plays in the temple orchestra and she gives him a flower, the public sign of romantic interest (sort of like getting pinned or exchanging rings, I guess). Nyong seems to like her just fine, but when he meets her sister Saplak, he becomes smitten with her. Their father awaits his visit to ask for Nyong's hand in marriage, but when he asks for Saplak instead, the father becomes upset, realizing that Poutou will be humiliated because she made her choosing ritual in public. During what was intended to be Poutou's last virgin dance, Nyong and Saplak run away together; Poutou collapses during her dance and later, when she sees the two lovebirds leave the village together, she throws herself into the river. The last scene is an elaborate cremation ceremony in which her ashes are taken out into the ocean so her spirit can return to the village.  

The print, put together from three different source prints, is in good shape. The red-green color scheme of the two-strip method means that reds, green, oranges, and browns predominate; there are no blues or purples to be seen. Still, given the exotic island setting, the colors seem right. Though the film is silent, there is background music and occasionally, during some of the rituals, there are ambient sounds and chanting as well. The title cards alone are quite lovely. The women are topless for much of the running time, but that quickly becomes commonplace and it rarely feels sexy. The oddest element of the film for me was that there was no judgment of Nyong and Saplak for running off together; clearly, the father is upset and, of course, Poutou comes to a sad end, but the two lovers aren't really blamed for the events, and as far as we know, they live happily ever after. Quite an interesting film. [TCM/DVD]

THE SHEIK (1921)

Arabs, we are told, dwell in happy ignorance of civilization which has passed them by. At a roundup of eligible young women, we see a wise and educated sheik, Ahmed Ben Hassan (Rudolph Valentino), allow his buddy to keep his girlfriend, then head off to the town of Biskra, gateway to the desert, to sell the rest of the women into marriage. The madcap Lady Diana and her brother Aubrey are in town and she wants adventure; Aubrey encourages her to settle down and marry though she calls marriage "captivity." When she is kept out of the casino at which Ahmed is holding the marriage market, she sneaks in disguised as a dancing girl. Ahmed is amused by her antics and he follows her as she heads off into desert with only an Arab guide. He kidnaps her and during a sandstorm plans to have his way with her, but is struck by her despair and instead just insists that she dress in Arab clothing and remain his captive. His "civilized" French friend Raoul visits and is critical of Ahmed keeping Diana; Ahmed replies, "When an Arab sees a woman he wants, he takes her." Ahmed and Diana become cordial and more so—she even writes, "Ahmed I love you" in the sand—and when Diana is captured by a bandit disguised as a holy man, Ahmed heads off to rescue her. He is successful but is injured, and as Diana helps nurse him back to health, she is told by Raoul that Ahmed was actually an orphan of English and Spanish descent, allowing her finally to express her feelings of love to him.

This is a rape/miscegenation melodrama in which both elements disappear and instead we get a story of a civilized woman falling for a lusty, primitive man. The story's plot and politics are old-fashioned and easily dismissed by today’s viewers, though we remain a little unsettled by Diana's growing identification with and attraction to her kidnapper (now called Stockholm Syndrome). The appeal of Valentino is difficult to see from this: his grins and grimaces make him seem today more like a comic relief character. He is attractive but I didn’t find him overwhelmingly sexy like audiences of the day did. Agnes Ayers, as Diana, is fine, and it’s interesting to see a relatively young Adolph Menjou as Raoul. A must-see only for its historical importance as Valentino’s breakout movie. [DVD]

ACT ONE (1960)

Theoretically, this is the story of how playwright Moss Hart, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author (with George S. Kaufman) of You Can't Take It with You and The Man Who Came to Dinner, got his start in the business, based on his autobiography. In 1929, young Hart still lives with his family and keeps trying to sell his dramatic plays, with no success, though he is told by an agent that his real talent is comedy. Hart takes a job as a director with an amateur theater group and works on a comic play about the film business. Big Broadway producer Sam Harris gets hold of the script and agrees to buy the rights if he'll let George Kaufman finish it with him. It takes a while for the two to gel—Hart is young and bouncy, Kaufman is older and acerbic—but eventually they get the knack of collaborating and after a few false starts, the finished play, Once in a Lifetime, is a hit. Though set during the early Depression years, the movie doesn’t much bother with getting period details right—it's in black & white, but it has a glossy 50s look to it. A young George Hamilton is ill-suited physically to play Hart, but he's appealing in the role. Jason Robards does not fare as well as Kaufman, as he's stuck mostly griping and bitching and generally being a pain in the ass. It's fun to see Burt Convy play the young Archie Leach—later to become Cary Grant—in a series of scenes which show Hart commiserating with other show biz hopefuls. The cast also includes Eli Wallach, Jack Klugman, Sam Levene, and George Segal. The score by Skitch Henderson is shrill and overblown. Occasionally interesting but generally drab and colorless.  [TCM] 

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (1971)

Michael Sarrazin is a student at a New York City university; his father (Arthur Hill) and grandmother (Ruth White) are rich, conservative and powerful—though White is stuck living in a mansion in a neighborhood which has gone downhill to the point where her property is vandalized almost nightly by hooligans. Sarrazin lives with his girlfriend Barbara Hershey (pictured with Sarrazin); she's been politically radicalized by him, but now as he approaches graduation, he's backed away from politics which pisses her off. In fact, he seems to have backed away from anything requiring committed thought or action, becoming a vaguely unhappy and passive guy whose ties to everything around him are vanishing. One rainy night, he accidentally hits and kills an old woman who stepped out in traffic without looking. He does the right thing and turns himself in, and even, against the counsel of his father's powerful lawyer (E.G. Marshall), goes to the victim's family to apologize, though he is turned away by her grief-stricken daughter (Rue McClanahan) who is confused by his gesture. He goes so far as to wear a suit to his hearing to make a good impression, but the judge, seeing in him a pattern of irresponsible behavior (over 20 unpaid parking tickets were found in his glove compartment), sentences him to a year in prison. His cellmate is a state senator in for embezzlement, and he makes friends with Gilbert Lewis, a gay black man, but when Lewis is stabbed to death in the shower, Sarrazin has to go to a hearing at which he rails against injustice (as with his car accident, he sees the stabbing as an unfortunate accident) and he gets in more trouble. When his guards let him go to the bathroom by himself, he sees an open window and escapes and makes his way to his father, grandmother, and girlfriend before deciding to escape to Mexico rather than go back and face the music.

Some critics see this as a leftist hippie anti-establishment movie, though the only hippie in sight is Sarrazin's freeloading but likable buddy (Robert Klein). Others look at it as a Kafkaesque nightmare, Sarrazin being punished by a faceless bureaucracy for no reason (though vehicular homicide is a pretty good reason for some punishment). I see this as a kind of Hamlet story: as he approaches adulthood and independence, he realizes he's in a world not of his own making—his family wants him to be something he's not—but he can't make up his mind about what he wants to be. Escaping to Mexico is just putting off the inevitable. Sarrazin is attractive and likable but by the end, I wanted to slap him and say, "Man up, asshole, and take a stand one way or another." I might not have felt that way with a different actor in the role. The other actors, including Peter White as a cousin, Sada Thompson as an aunt, David Doyle as the senator, and William Devane (channeling Jack Nicholson) as a shady pilot, are fine, and generally make the film worth seeing. [DVD]

VALENTINO (1977)

When I was in college, I loved Ken Russell movies. He was the first director in whose films I could find a discernible style: over-the-top acting, grotesque supporting characters, colorful costuming and art design, outrageous emotional outbursts; all the kinds of things that attracted the attention of this young man in the process of becoming a gay adult. Thirty-five years on, I find his work not having a lasting hold on me, though part of the problem is the fact that his movies from the 70s are difficult to find so I haven’t been able to re-view many them in the DVD era. But this one aired a while back on Turner Classic in a lovely widescreen print and it held up much better than I would have expected.

Rudolph Nureyev plays silent film idol Rudolph Valentino. The film is set in 1926 at the time of his funeral which was perhaps the first modern celebrity-death media circus. As the various women in his life visit the funeral parlor, the story of his rise to fame and fortune is told in flashbacks. He starts as a taxi dancer/gigolo (with rumors about his homosexuality whispered about), becomes part of a nightclub act, humiliates the actor Fatty Arbuckle, and is discovered for the movies by screenwriter June Mathis (Felicity Kendal), who seems to be the only person who cared unselfishly for Valentino. He becomes a huge star and marries the actress Rambova (Michelle Phillips) who becomes a controlling monster and a bad influence on Valentino's career. When his masculinity is questioned in the press (he's called a "powder puff"), he challenges a reporter to a boxing match; he wins the match, barely, but does grave injury to his ulcer and dies that night, alone, at the age of 31 (though in real life, he died of peritonitis after an appendectomy).

The film looks great and, like most of Russell's biographical works, treats a real life as just a light framework for Russell's wild imaginings—this was taken to an extreme in LISZTOMANIA, a film I adored at 19 and am afraid to watch now. There is never a pause in the parade of grotesque incidents so we don't really get to know the characters, but as plastic exaggerations employed largely as living set decoration, they suffice. It takes a while to get used to Nureyev's stylized acting, but I think he does an admirable job creating a suitably exotic character. Phillips is dreadful, but looks every inch a silent movie diva, and that's what was important to Russell. Leslie Caron is OK as Nazimova, another diva Valentino fell in with, Carol Kane and Leland Palmer are fine as other passing fancies, but Kendal fares the best performance-wise. Seymour Cassell does a nice job as Valentino's manager who, like Kendal, actually does seem to care for the person behind the legend. There are several interesting setpieces, but the one that remained seared into my mind for years (and still holds up) involves cross-cutting between Nureyev and Phillips arguing and copulating on a dining room table while his fan club members are outside chanting desperately to their idol. Not a great film, but one worth seeing, and one that deserves a DVD release. [TCM]  

ALIAS NICK BEAL (1949)

District attorney Foster says in passing that he would sell his soul to break the stranglehold that Hanson's protection racket has on the city. One night, he is told to go the China Coast Café for some information. Out of the fog comes the whistling figure of Nick Beal; he claims to have Hanson's accounting books which had supposedly been destroyed. Foster takes the books, even though he knows they must have been stolen, and Beal vanishes. After Hanson is sent to prison, Foster is talked into running for governor and Beal comes back into Foster's life, offering to smooth his way into office. Those around Foster, including his wife, aren't happy with Beal's influence (and it seems strange that Beal leaves the room when a minister starts quoting the Bible), but soon Beal is running the show and Foster's wife has become estranged. Sure enough, Beal is the Devil, and Foster wins the election, but when Foster shows signs of attempting to renounce his ill-gotten gains, can even the help of his minister save his eternal soul?

This fantasy melodrama is one-of-a-kind. For a while, we're not certain that Beal is a supernatural figure, but even when we know he is, the film mostly plays it straight, like a slightly off-kilter film noir. Foster (Thomas Mitchell) is a good man with good intentions, and at various times, he tries not to take Beal's help, but as long as he thinks he’s doing good for the people, he gives in. At one point, Beal (Ray Milland) sets up a prostitute (noir gal Audrey Totter) to entrap Foster, and she does indeed get wrapped up in Foster's life and campaign, but she can't bring herself to enlist fully in the Devil's work. The ending, which involves the traditional signed pact for Foster’s soul, is a bit of a fizzle, but it doesn't hurt the film, which is a marvel of noir shadows and nighttime scenes. Milland at first struck me as a bit one-note, but it's an effective note; he's always both calm but intense, even when things don’t seem to be going his way. Mitchell and Totter are both fine; the cast includes George Macready playing a bit against type as the minister, Fred Clark as a gangster, and Daryl Hickman as a wayward youth saved by the minister. Never released officially on home video, I saw this on YouTube in a good print, and I hope someday Universal will be moved to put it out on DVD.  [YouTube]

CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE (1947)

In 1518 Spain, aristocrat Tyrone Power aids an Aztec slave (Jay Silverheels) on the run from his cruel master (John Sutton) who also happens to be an Inquisitor. Out of spite, Sutton imprisons Power's family on trumped-up charges of heresy, and Power's young sister dies while being tortured. Vowing revenge, Power stabs Sutton, apparently killing him, and he and his family escape with some help from a sympathetic barmaid (Jean Peters), her jailer brother, and Lee J. Cobb, an alcoholic adventurer who planned on taking his mother with him to the New World but found that she, too, had been killed by the Inquisition. Power, Peters and Cobb join Cesar Romero (as Hernando Cortez) to head off to Cuba and then Mexico (for conquering and plundering, but since these are the good guys here, that's downplayed). When an arrest warrant for Power is presented by the Inquisition, a good padre (Thomas Gomez) finds out what happened and tears it up. But lo and behold, who shows up in Mexico but Sutton, still alive, and Silverheels, still hiding from his former master. Did I mention that Peters is pregnant by Powers? How will all the tensions resolve themselves?

This swashbuckler was made (in beautiful Technicolor) at the end of the traditional studio system era, and though it's gorgeous to look at, it doesn’t quite all come together. That may be because the film is based on a huge historical fiction bestseller that would have taken a film of Gone with the Wind's length to sort out. The first half is more successful as it focuses more narrowly on Power and his family and friends. Power, Cobb and Sutton are all good at bringing their characters to life. Romero is blustery and fun, and George Zucco has a small role as a friend of Power's family who refuses to help them against Sutton. Peters (pictured above with Power) is duskily attractive but doesn't have much to do. Though the Power vs. Sutton storyline is wrapped up, the end of the film is an ambiguous scene of Gomez praying that Romero will drive greed out of his heart as he is about to go a-conquering. [TCM]

TIMES SQUARE LADY (1935)

King Bradley runs a number of businesses in New York City, including a hockey team, a nightclub, and some boxers. When he dies, his daughter (Virginia Bruce) comes to the Big Apple from Iowa to take control, much to the consternation of some of his associates who want bigger pieces of the pie themselves. Robert Taylor, the owner of her Casa Nova nightclub, plays along with the bad guys for a while, helping to set up incidents designed to scare her back to the cornfields, but she is made of tougher stuff. The two, along with hayseed Oklahoma singer Pinky Tomlin, plot to sell the businesses off to legitimate owners. Of course there is potentially dangerous blowback from the cabal, including Taylor's ex-gal (Helen Twelevetrees), but with some help from tough guy Nat Pendleton, who leaves the baddies and joins up with the good guys, there's a happy ending for Taylor and Bruce. This pleasant but undistinguished film was Taylor's first leading role and he's fine; he's handsome and slick, and he has good chemistry with Bruce (the two were apparently dating at the time). Tomlin is essentially playing himself, a sort of Kay Kyser personality whose song, "The Object of My Affection," which he sings here, was a big hit. Bruce is one of those starlets who never broke out big but who usually makes a movie worth seeing, and that's true here. [TCM]

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD (1935)

John Jasper is a middle-aged choirmaster who has a passion for the young and lovely Eva Bud, who lives at Miss Twinkleton's School for Girls, but she has already been promised to Jasper's handsome nephew Edwin Drood. Meanwhile, Neville Landless and his sister Helena arrive, and Neville, who has a bit of a temper, falls for Eva. She, not really being in love with Edwin, falls for him. Neville and Edwin argue, with Neville pulling a knife—and the story of the fight gets exaggerated by the village gossips—but eventually Eva and Edwin realize they're not really in love and he frees her from her arranged obligation. On a wild and stormy Christmas Eve, Jasper has Neville and Edwin over for a reconciliation dinner, but the next morning, Edwin is missing and Neville falls under suspicion. But what’s with Jasper’s drug paraphernalia? Neville, who insists that he and Edwin were no longer enemies, vanishes and returns in disguise as an old man, discovering Jasper is a secret opium addict. Could Jasper be a killer as well as a dope fiend? This melodrama is based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens, and the mystery is given a satisfying if unsurprising ending; the movie as a whole, however, fails to thrill in the way that it promises to. The Gothic atmosphere is first-rate, and the film plays out more like a horror movie than a traditional Dickens adaptation, but the screenplay and acting are only adequate. Claude Rains, usually a reliably excellent actor, seems stymied by the merely serviceable script and weak direction. Douglass Montgomery is fine as Neville. David Manners (above, standing over Rains) and Heather Angel are lackluster as Edwin and Rosa, though there is some fun to be had with some of the supporting actors (Francis L. Sullivan as the Rev. Crisparkle, Zeffie Tilbury as the "Opium Woman," and Ethel Griffes as Miss Twinkleton). Maybe I felt let down by this one because the atmosphere builds it up to be something it isn't (creepy Gothic horror), but there just isn't much energy on display. [TCM]

SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (1947)

Heiress Joan Bennett is protected from the wiles of fortune hunting men by her older brother (Paul Cavanagh); after he dies, the family lawyer proposes to her—he’s a nice guy and has his own money but he's rather bland. Before she makes a decision, she goes on a vacation to Mexico where she meets dashing architect Michael Redgrave who seems to have plenty of money (he owns a modern architecture magazine); he calls her a 20th century Sleeping Beauty who needs someone to wake her up, and of course, she thinks he's that someone. They get married and after an inauspicious honeymoon during which Redgrave goes rushing mysteriously back to New York, she joins him at his mansion, which has an entire floor devoted to reproductions of "felicitous rooms," which all turn out to be murder scenes. There's one room that's locked; wonder what's in there? Meanwhile, the other inhabitants of the house take some getting used to:  Redgrave's unmarried sister (Anne Revere—think a somewhat more pleasant Mrs. Danvers from REBECCA), his secretary who was disfigured years ago in a fire (Barbara O'Neil—think Bertha from JANE EYRE), and his oddly mannered teenage son (Mark Dennis—think gayish). Yes, it appears that Redgrave has secrets, some financial (his magazine is hemorrhaging money), some psychological (both his mother and previous wife died in mysterious circumstances). Redgrave blames a life dominated by women for his problems; will Bennett be able to help him, or will she be his next victim?

Fritz Lang directed this psychological gothic melodrama with fine attention to visual detail—nice use of shadows, reflections, and odd camera angles—and indeed it gets by for about 20 minutes on its stylistic flair, but once you've figured out that it's Lang trying to outdo Hitchcock (the plot is REBECCA by way of SUSPICION with a big dose of SPELLBOUND), it gets very predictable. If Redgrave is supposed to be like Olivier in REBECCA, he's not; Olivier was intense, dashing and neurotic, but Redgrave is mostly just distractedly neurotic. Bennett is good, but is let down by Redgrave in their scenes together (both pictured above). Among the supporting players, Revere has the most potential, but her character winds up a bit of a red herring, and O'Neil doesn't get enough screen time or character development to be very interesting. Natalie Schafer (Mrs. Howell on Gilligan's Island) has a few good scenes as a comic relief gal pal. There's a bit of a cheat near the climax when one character's interior monologue leads us to believe that a murder has occurred that actually hasn't.  [TCM] 

SKY LINER (1949)

Eakins, a State Department man, is heading from New York to Los Angeles to give an important speech, but before he can get out of his office to board his plane, Amy, his secretary (who is also a dirty spy), calls her contact Smith to tell him that top secret papers have been delivered to him. Moments later, Smith kills him and steals the papers, then boards the plane under Eakins' name and sits with Amy. When the plane lands for a quick stop in Chicago, foreign agent Bokejian gets on, planning to buy the secret info from Smith, but Smith holds out for more money. Bokejian reluctantly gives it to him, but is understandably upset when the papers he paid so much for are blank. He kills Smith in the restroom and when the body is discovered, an FBI man on board takes control, hoping to solve the case before the plane lands.  

A couple of critics have called this a B-movie Grand Hotel in the air—storylines of several people who interact in a confined space—though with very little character development, that comparison is too generous (to be fair, the print I viewed was 12 minutes shorter than its length of record at IMDb, so I may have missed an entire reel). There are a few characters who are peripheral to the main action, including a young newlywed couple, two nervous old ladies, and a jewel thief who becomes important to the plot at its climax, which plays out far too quickly to be exciting. Richard Travis as the FBI man (pictured above, in the middle) is good, far better than he was in his Warner Bros. days (he was dismal as Bette Davis' suitor in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER). Pamela Blake, as the stewardess who helps save the day, doesn't have much to do; more interesting are Rochelle Hudson as Amy and Steve Pendleton as Smith—I was almost wishing they could get away with their swindle.  This low-budget indie film's production values are passable, though process shots of the plane flying through fog are terrible, resulting in what looks like a ghost plane in the sky.  [DVD]

A NIGHT IN PARADISE (1946)

In 560 B.C., the famed storyteller Aesop, aged and stooped, arrives in the land of Lydia days before the wedding of King Croesus to the lovely Princess Delarai. The king's counselor Leonides warns him that Queen Attosa, whom he was supposed to marry but didn't, and cheated out of a treasure of gold to boot, will use sorcery against him. Attosa has indeed called on the gods for help with her revenge, and she appears as a ghostly vision to pester Croesus. The king asks Aesop for help, but Aesop has his own problems: Attosa is haunting him, trying to get him in on her plans, and he finds himself falling in love with Delarai. It turns out that Aesop's appearance is a disguise—he says, "The world will only accept wisdom in the cloak of age and suffering"—and in reality he is a handsome youth. Without old-age makeup and under the name of Jason, he begins to secretly woo the princess. 

This is a later entry in Universal's series of exotic fantasies, most of which featured B-stars Jon Hall and Maria Montez. The two are missed here—instead we have Turhan Bey (pictured), who is OK but very low-key as Aesop, and Merle Oberon, a former A-list star who seems to have slipped a bit; she looks the part but doesn't put much effort into her acting, perhaps sensing that, with a mediocre script and a drab leading man, the film couldn't be saved. Thomas Gomez is one-note as the King, leaving Ray Collins (Leonides) and Gale Sondergaard (Attosa) to steal the show in their relatively small roles. The Technicolor sets look good (though the print shown on TCM was a bit on the dark and faded side), and there is some fun to be had with the thread of bawdy humor that runs through the film. Early on, when a slave is polishing a huge statue of Aphrodite and is caught in its cleavage, someone remarks, "That's as close to Paradise as he’ll ever get." Later, there are some puns on people being entwined and enmeshed, as in lovemaking. Look fast and you'll see supporting players Jerome Cowan, Ernest Truex, and John Litel, and supposedly the singer Julie London appears in the background as a palace maiden. Finally, there seems to be virtually no reason for the hero being Aesop—his colorless character could be any young fellow looking for romance and adventure.  [TCM]

CRIMINALS WITHIN (1943)

A research scientist working for the Army is shot dead while demonstrating his new explosive; his brother (Eric Linden), an Army officer, falls under a cloud of suspicion when a secret list of people working on the project turns up missing and Linden admits he was the last person to see it. Linden is jailed briefly but breaks out and sneaks around the base trying to clear his name with some help from an enterprising reporter (Ann Doran). They stumble on a spy ring involving the rec hall hostess (Constance Worth) who smuggles secrets (inside a false heel in her high heels shoes!) to a German cobbler. It begins to look like a soldier is helping the spies; could it be Linden's buddy (Ben Alexander), who helped him break out of jail? 

I'm usually in hog heaven with WWII grade-B spy thrillers, though certainly they're not to everyone's taste; this one, from Poverty Row studio PRC, has a particularly weak script full of loopholes and junky looking sets. Still, I found enough pleasures to make the hour-long film worth my time. Linden, a favorite juvenile of mine in the 1930s (AH WILDERNESS!, FLYING DEVILS), makes his final film appearance here. In his early 30s, he was aging well, and he does a fine job in the B-lead role; actually, he's by far the best actor in the movie, though the entire cast tries harder than the slapdash script probably deserves. Two other standouts are the black orderly (Dudley Dickerson) and his girlfriend (Bernice Pilot), who happens to be Doran's maid. They come off less offensively than many other servant figures of the Hollywood 40s. I especially like Dickerson's expletive, "Death and destruction!" which he uses like he's saying, "Holy cow!" This is technically a "war preparedness" film, as it was made in 1941, before the U.S. entered the war; some sources say it wasn't released until '43, but at least one source gives a release date of June 1941. [DVD]

LA CHAMADE (1968) 

aka HEARTBEAT

The young and beautiful Lucile (Catherine Deneuve) lives a life of leisure as the mistress of the rich, older Charles (Michel Piccoli). She has her admirers but none pose any threat to their domestic situation until Antoine (Roger Van Hool), a young and struggling writer, gets her attention during a croquet game when he sacrifices his play and allows her to cheat so she can win—she announces proudly that she likes winning. Antoine breaks things off with his mistress and Lucile begins a casual affair with him that grows more intense—to the point where she begins practicing how to break the news to Charles that she's leaving him—but she's not sure she can face leaving a life of relative luxury as a kept woman and move into Antoine's small apartment. Charles and Lucile go off to the Riveria and Antoine hears stories that she's begun drinking, so when she returns, he talks her into leaving Charles. He gets her a job at a magazine archives but unbeknownst to him, she quits and begins selling her jewels and gambles in order to get money. Will she be able to resist returning to a loveless but materially comfortable relationship with Charles? Deneuve is lovely and does as much as she can with an unsympathetic character, but this low-key movie never builds any fire or passion. A few scenes between Deneuve and Piccoli have some feeling, and Van Hool gives his character some depth, but this winds up being a love triangle without much at stake. I did like Antoine's cluttered apartment. [Netflix streaming]

ONE THIRD OF A NATION (1939)

Shopgirl Sylvia Sidney lives with her unemployed father, mother, and teenage brother in an old tenement building that is badly in need of repair. When a fire breaks out one day, her brother (Sidney Lumet) tries to climb out on the fire escape but it snaps and he falls to the ground. A rich man (Leif Erickson) who just happens to be driving past offers to take Lumet to the hospital and pays for his treatment; the boy's life is saved, but he will use crutches for the rest of his life. Erickson falls for Sidney, but things get uncomfortable when he discovers that the damaged building is one he owns. At a hearing, he is found not liable because, despite the sub-standard condition of the building, it was built long enough ago to be exempt from the current building code. However, Erickson vows to make a difference and sets in motion a plan to tear down the old buildings and, with help from the city, build new ones with parks and playgrounds nearby.  Erickson's sister, thinking he is only going on this crusade to impress Sidney, warns that she'll make trouble. Erickson decides to postpone his plans, but Lumet, by now deranged because he's become a neighborhood misfit, sets fire to the building, leading to tragedy, but also to Erickson's renewed effort to rebuild.

This is based on a Federal Theater "Living Newspaper" play, one of a series that told headline stories of the day and usually took a political stand on the issues. The film is stuck between romantic melodrama and propaganda, and though it never quite finds its footing, it's an interesting period piece. Erickson is a handsome and hearty leading man, but remains a stick figure without a real personality; Sidney (pictured above with Erickson) fares a bit better simply because her character is a bit more believable. The supporting cast helps carry the day. The 15-year-old Lumet (at right) is excellent as the bitter lad who winds up at the center of the narrative. He even manages to make a strange gimmick work: one night, while out on the street, he vows revenge against the building, then imagines the tenement talking back to him, telling him that it's always been bad news for its inhabitants and things will never change. Myron McCormick plays Sam, a leftist friend of Sidney's who is supposedly in love with her but who seems mostly to be a mouthpiece for the playwright. The tone is mostly serious, even grim at times; there are two startling scenes: dead bodies laid out on the sidewalk after the first fire, and a burning man leaping to his death from the roof in the second fire. Despite this, there are some tonal problems: an odd screwball scene when Sidney goes out to Erickson's mansion to have a showdown with him, a final reconciliation scene between Erickson and McCormick which doesn't ring true, and a rushed and completely unrealistic happy-ish ending that doesn’t work at all.  But it's well made for a low budget film, and worth seeing as an example of earnest social commentary of the era.  [Netflix streaming]

ADVENTURE IN SAHARA (1938)

This forgettable B-movie is on DVD only because cult figure Samuel Fuller wrote the screenplay (years before he would begin his directing career which would culminate—as far as I'm concerned—with 2 wonderful arty B-movies of the 60s, THE NAKED KISS and SHOCK CORRIDOR). Pilot Paul Kelly gets word that his brother, a French Foreign Legionnaire, has died; he immediately quits his job, even ignoring the pleas of his girlfriend (Lorna Gray), and flies out to the Sahara to join the Legion in order to get revenge on the sadistic captain (C. Henry Gordon) who was responsible for the brother's death. Sure enough, at Fort Agadez, smack in the middle of the desert and known as "The Last Outpost," Kelly finds Gordon is a strutting disciplinarian who is hated by his men. After Gordon drives several men to their deaths by exacting brutal punishments for seemingly minor offenses, Kelly gets the men to mutiny, and Gordon and the officers are sent out into the desert with few supplies and one bullet per man so they can finish themselves off. However, after a gang of Arabs attack the men, Gordon manages to survive and, dressed in Arab clothing, makes it to civilization to report the mutiny. Back at Agadez, the men are getting restless when needed food doesn't arrive—what does arrive is a huge battalion of men, led by Gordon, come to take back the fort.  What neither Gordon nor Kelly know is that over the next dune is a bunch of Arabs with guns, waiting to attack everyone.

At just under one hour, this winds up feeling more like a sketch of a movie with no character development and a rushed action climax. In a better movie, Kelly would be a more interesting character; his turning-out of Gordon and the men to certain death is nothing short of murder, though because Kelly is the hero and this was made during the Production Code era, we have to see that all the men die, not because of what Kelly did, but at the hands of the warring natives. There's a ridiculous subplot which involves Gray flying to the fort (and crashing into the sand) to find out what happened to Kelly. Kelly (pictured) is fine, though the usually reliably villainous Gordon seems a bit sluggish here. In smaller roles, you'll notice Dwight Frye as a snitch for Gordon, noir stalwart Marc Lawrence as one of the men loyal to Kelly, and Stanley Browne and Raphael Bennett as two of the poor saps who fall victim to Gordon's cruelty. [DVD]

THE MUDLARK (1950)

In 1875 London, a boy named Wheeler is a mudlark, someone who spends his days picking through trash along the Thames. One night he comes across a cameo of Queen Victoria and imagines it's the image of his late mother, whom he never knew. When he finds out it's the Queen and she's been in seclusion at Windsor Castle for fifteen years since the death of her husband, he heads out to meet her. At the Castle, Prime Minister Disraeli is trying to convince the Queen to make a public appearance as she might be able to calm the unrest of the people who think the Queen is out of touch and doesn't care about them. Also at the Castle, Lady Emily, a maid of honor, is in love with a guard but the Queen forbids them to marry. All three plotlines come together when Wheeler sneaks into the Castle, makes friends with John Brown, Scottish confidant of the Queen, and generally throws the entire household into an uproar. This low-key comedy-drama is based on a legend about a boy who snuck in to see the Queen. Irene Dunne is completely unrecognizable as Queen Victoria, though she's buried under so much makeup, she gives a rather lifeless, stilted performance. Much better is Alec Guinness as the sly Disraeli, and Finlay Currie as a full-blooded Brown.  11-year-old Anthony Ray (pictured) is fine as the boy. Best line: When the earthy Brown says that the Queen is stubborn as an old mule, Disraeli replies, "What power of expression there is in a limited vocabulary." [FMC]

MERRY WIVES OF RENO (1934)

On the occasion of their first anniversary, Donald Woods buys his wife (Margaret Lindsay) a new fur, and she buys him a new overcoat. They get a chuckle out of listening to their neighbors (Guy Kibbee and Ruth Donnelly) in the apartment next door argue, but Lindsay becomes upset when her husband can't go out for a special anniversary dinner because he's making a house call on a client, the slightly addled Hugh Herbert (pictured with a sheep; don't ask). As it turns out, Herbert's not home but his flirtatious wife (Glenda Farrell) is. She does her best to seduce Woods but is interrupted by someone at the door. Assuming it's her husband, she shoos Woods out the window to the fire escape, and he leaves his new coat behind. Actually, the visitor is Kibbee, with whom she's been having a fling for some time. Another interruption and Kibbee's out the window, his coat left on top of Woods'; this time, it really is Herbert who notices the two coats and doesn't quite believe they're his even though Farrell insists. When Woods gets home, Lindsay notices he's missing his overcoat and he tells her some cockamamie story about giving it to a beggar, but the next day at the beauty salon, Lindsay overhears Farrell telling a beautician about the coats and she decides to take a train to Reno for a divorce. On the same train is Donnelly, also getting a divorce. Ultimately all three couples wind up in Reno where a series of misadventures lead to divorce cancellations, then reinstatements, until Woods and Kibbee plot with bellboy Frank McHugh to turn the tables on the wives by swiping their furs and showing them how easy it is to come to false assumptions. Relatively happy endings await all.

This mildly bawdy B-comedy is not particularly distinguished but is worth notice for two reasons; 1) it was one of the last films released before the Production Code wiped out most racy humor, double-entendres, and unpunished immoral behavior in Hollywood films—and as far as I can tell, Herbert and Donnelly don't get punished for their affair; 2) it features several Warner Bros. supporting players in larger roles than they usually got in A-movies.  Lindsay and Woods, the nominal leads, are lackluster, but the rest of the sextet shine, as does McHugh and famous stutterer Roscoe Ates. Louise Beavers, usually consigned to maid parts (IMITATION OF LIFE, HOLIDAY INN), has only a couple of lines, but they're memorable: explaining to a lawyer why she wants a divorce, she says she's had 12 kids: "Some call that love but I call it madness!" A few film historians have compared this to the notorious long-lost pre-Code film CONVENTION CITY, with much of the same cast and similar shenanigans, so this may be as close as we can get to seeing that film.  [TCM]