LAUGHING BOY (1934)

Awkward adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a romance between two Navajo Indians. It's not so much a problem of "political correctness" that makes the movie hard to watch, but a weak script and plain old bad acting. Ramon Novarro (as the title character) is excited to be attending his first Great Sing Dance. He's clearly meant to be a youthful innocent, but he's not dumb, as we see in the movie's best scene which involves him dealing with a couple of pushy tourists from Cleveland. He meets up with Slim Girl (Lupe Valez), a Navajo who was raised and schooled by whites and now uses the name Lily. She's a bit of a slut (mostly with white men--the Navajo men won't touch her), and she comes on strong with naive Novarro. He knows she has a bad reputation, but he says she's just "different" and decides rather quickly that they need to get married before they have sex. She has other ideas and seduces him with whisky to get him into the sack (in the great outdoors). The next morning, apparently mortified at his behavior, he has run off, so Velez goes back to her brutal white lover (William B. Davidson). Time passes and they meet again; this time they marry, but she proves no good at doing "women's work" and the two aren't very happy so back she goes to Davidson. Novarro goes after them with a bow and arrow, and tragedy ensues. Much of the supporting cast is made up of Native Americans, but the star-crossed couple is played by Mexican actors Novarro and Velez; they don't feel out of place, but they seem to be overacting while the rest of the largely non-professional cast are barely acting at all, and the clash of styles is occasionally excruciating. [TCM]

PRINCE VALIANT (1954)

I haven't seen many King Arthur movies; offhand I can only recall EXCALIBUR, LANCELOT OF THE LAKE, and MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL. This one, from early in the widescreen era, seems to have inspired at least a couple of moments of satire in the Python film. It suffers today from some slow stretches, but it is colorful with good sets and costumes and a couple of fine swashbuckling scenes (though it certainly is nowhere near Errol Flynn's ROBIN HOOD for total adventure enjoyment). It also might be one of the first comic book movies, based as it is on a long-running comic strip created by Hal Foster which began in 1937 and is still running in many Sunday papers today. A very youthful Robert Wagner plays Valiant, a Christian Viking prince who, as the film opens, is in exile at an isolated abbey in England with his family, including his father, the rightful king of Scandia, hiding from the pagan King Sligon. Loyal Viking warrior Boltar (Victor McLaglen) warns the family that a traitor may have let Sligon and his troops know where they are hiding, so Valiant heads to Camelot to become a knight in order to gain the experience needed to take his father back to Scandia to reclaim his throne. On his way, he has a run-in with the Black Knight, who is in the process of massing Viking troops on his side for some wickedness. After King Arthur (Brian Aherne) and the Knights of the Round Table agree to help Valiant, he is mentored by Sir Gawain (Sterling Hayden) and also catches the eye of Sir Brack (James Mason), Arthur's bastard brother, who may know more about the Black Knight than he's telling. The lovely Princess Aleta (Janet Leigh) falls for Valiant, and her sister (Debra Paget) falls for Gawain, but Gawain gets the signals crossed, which provides a little romantic tension before Valiant's father is kidnapped, the Black Knight is unmasked, battles are fought, and buckles are swashed. The climactic swordfight between Valiant and the Black Knight is well done. Wagner looks a little silly at first in his page boy hairdo, but it grows on you, and otherwise, he's good in a role that mostly just calls for youth and energy. Hayden is a little wooden in his line readings, but Mason and Leigh are fine. [FMC]

EAST OF THE RIVER (1940)

A bit of a rant first: In the last few days, I saw two recent movies that I despised: A SCANNER DARKLY and THE BROTHERS GRIMM. Both were decently-budgeted fantasy/sf films with talented people in front of and behind the camera, and lots of attention to style, but seemingly no attention to telling a good story. I can appreciate movies with elliptical narratives (2001, L'AVVENTURA), but SCANNER and GRIMM present themselves as fairly traditional narrative-driven films, and they utterly fail to tell their stories coherently or otherwise give audience members any reason to stick around once the stylistic shenanigans have gotten old, which for me was about 45 minutes in for both films. I got much more pleasure out of this minor Warners B-film with a hackneyed, time-worn plot but with strong performances, solid production values, and a satisfying narrative.

The plot is a variation on the good brother/bad brother theme which so many movies of the classic era used. The film focuses on Mrs. Lorenzo (Marjorie Rambeau), owner of an Italian restaurant called Mama Ravioli's, and her two sons. John Garfield, her blood son, does poorly in school and winds up in prison in California, though he tells his mom he's working on a ranch and he makes sure that he can keep funneling money to mama with some help from his hard-as-nails gal, Brenda Marshall. Blond-haired William Lundigan, whom Rambaeu adopted when he was a homeless lad, is a hard worker and graduates from college with honors. Garfield gets out of prison just in time to come home for Nick's graduation. He passes Marshall off as his finacee and at first, she gives everyone the cold shoulder, but soon Rambeau and Lundigan thaw her out and she winds up helping out in the kitchen. Garfield finds the two rats who set him up to take the fall back in California and he sets them up to be caught during a robbery. One kills a cop, is arrested, and sentenced to death; the other (Douglas Fowley) escapes and vows to get Garfield, who takes it on the lam to Mexico. In the meantime, Marshall starts hanging out with Lundigan and one thing leads to another until they're engaged and set a wedding date. When Garfield rather improbably hears about it, he comes back determined to expose Marshall's sordid past. For the good of the family, Marshall agrees, on the eve of the wedding, to leave, which breaks Lundigan's heart. It turns out that Rambeau had long ago figured out that Garfield was a common crook, and she has a great scene in which she denounces him to his face, saying she should have killed him when he was a child. This gets to Garfield, who is moved to find a way to square things, even if it means risking getting gunned down by Fowley. Garfield and Marshall are great; Lundigan, whom I like a great deal, doesn't really have much to do besides react rather passively to what happens around him. Rambeau wildly overdoes her Italian mama bit, as does George Tobias as her Italian co-worker, but I enjoyed her anyway, and her disowning scene with Garfield is riveting. Frank Faylen and Paul Guilfoyle have small supporting roles. Garfield kisses his mom on the mouth a few too many times for comfort, but the film doesn't have time to explore any psychological depths. I don't mean to make any great claims for this average B-melodrama, but by gosh, for what it was, I enjoyed it, and had lots more fun with it than with the bloated and self-important epics of '06 that I saw the same week. [TCM]

BLACKMAIL (1939)

An average crime melodrama from MGM, the middle portion of which comes off like a B-movie remake of I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG. Edward G. Robinson has a small but thriving business fighting oil-well fires; the opening segment showing him and his assistant (Guinn Williams) on the scene of a particularly dangerous fire is just about the best part of the movie. One day, out of the blue, a shadowy figure from Robinson's past (Gene Lockhart) shows up. He knows that years ago, Robinson, wrongly accused of embezzlement, escaped from a chain gang, and he tries to blackmail him to keep his secret. (And as if that's not enough villainy, we come to find out that Lockhart was responsible for the crime of which Robinson was accused.) After various maneuvers and double-crosses, Robinson is sent back to the chain gang and Lockhart winds up with Robinson's lucrative business. When Robinson finds out, he escapes yet again and has a final confrontation with Lockhart. Robinson, as always, is good, but Lockhart, in an unusual bad guy role as the slimy blackmailer, is the reason to watch the picture; it's fun to watch him shift personalities depending on how he thinks he can best get sympathy. Ruth Hussey has the relatively thankless role of Robinson's wife, and child actor Bobs Watson works up a few tears now and then as their son. The chain gang scenes in the middle bog the proceedings down a bit, but the opening and closing are exciting. [TCM]

OUR DAILY BREAD (1934)
THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS (1936)

Both of these movies are on a disc from Image called "Our Daily Bread and Other Films of the Great Depression." The first is a Depression-era propaganda film which makes a case for a kind of back-to-the-earth socialism as an answer to the woes of underemployed city folk. Supposedly, this was intended as a sequel to King Vidor's silent classic THE CROWD and it begins with the same young married couple, John and Mary Sims, from that film, though played here by different actors (Tom Keene and Karen Morley). In the big city, owing rent but holding no jobs, they hit up Morley's uncle for a loan which he, due to the stock market crash, is unable to give them, but he does offer them use of an old farm which he owns. Despite having no farming experience, they move out there (where there is plenty of farm equipment but no furniture) and are lucky enough to cross paths with a Swede (John Qualen) whose car breaks down in front their property. Keene hires him to work the land, then gets the idea to set up a co-op farm, putting up signs looking for people who will be willing to live on the land, help out with the farming, and share in the take. Some of the men who show up have experience with their hands, but they even accept a violinist and an undertaker into the group and for a while, things go well. When, unexpectedly, the land is put up for public auction, the farmers intimidate folks into not bidding, then bid $1.85, which by law has to be accepted, and buy the land for themselves--a trick which was actually used by farmers in the Plains. There is great joy when the crops begin to come up, but of course, other problems ensue, some personal (a wild city woman, Barbara Pepper, tempts Keene into an affair and almost gets him to leave the farm) and some natural (a drought). The climax of the film involves a desperate against-the-clock attempt to construct an irrigation system to save the crops. The sequence is a bit long, but it is edited well and does make an exciting finale. Many critics have noted that the acting is not up to par, perhaps because Vidor was working on his labor of love outside the studio system and couldn't afford big names, but overall the cast isn't bad. Keene is a bit wooden, but so, as I recall, was James Murray in THE CROWD. Morley is fine, as is Qualen; Addison Richards is rather stiff as the mysterious Louie, a strong but quiet type who acts as a one-man police force but who has a secret which makes for a compelling subplot.

The reason I rented this disc from Netflix is because it contains the half-hour Dust Bowl documentary THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS. Until recently, all I knew about the Dust Bowl era was what I gleaned from John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," but I just finished a great book about the Dust Bowl called "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan which piqued my interest in finding out more. As far as I know, the horrors of the Dust Bowl have never been used for a major fiction film. This explicit piece of propaganda was directed by Pare Lorentz and made for the U.S. Resettlement Administration, a New Deal agency whose aim was to help the farmers leave the Great Plains, which had been made increasingly desolate by years of drought and dust storms. Back in the teens, the government had actively encouraged settlement and farming in the Plains, which led to boom years during WWI followed by over-farming of the land, soil erosion, and the terrible dust storms which killed animals and people and drove thousands out of the Plains. This interesting film is billed on its title card as a "picturization" of history, which means that, strictly speaking, it's not a traditional documentary, as most of the footage does not actually document historical events; it's more an impressionistic look at the period, using film shot at the time, often specifically staged by the director, to stand in for history with dramatic narration read over the otherwise silent footage, and accompanied by a wonderful score by Virgil Thompson. Most of the film is composed of sweeping shots of the land or of people working the land, with occasional close-ups of weathered farmer faces. The narration does indicate the government is largely responsible for what happened, but it also posits the government as the farmers' saving grace (through its resettlement activities). The combination of well-edited montage sequences, swelling music, and an authoritative-sounding, if sometimes melodramatic narrator, add up to an fairly effective film, though ultimately, in this post-cinema-verite age, it feels a little amorphous. [DVD]

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (1970)

A beautifully made film, directed by Vittorio De Sica, that approaches the subject of the Holocaust almost obliquely through the experience of one Jewish family in a town in Italy in the late 30's. As anti-Semitism is becoming not just socially acceptable but creeping into the laws of the land, we see the aristocratic Finzi-Contini family try to ignore what's happening by maintaining their own world inside their large urban estate. When the local tennis club bans Jews, the beautiful Micol (Dominique Sanda) and her handsome but frail brother Alberto (Helmut Berger) invite a group of friends to play (and socialize) in their gardens. Most of the story is told from the point of view of one of those tennis players, Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), a middle-class university student who has been harboring a crush on the aloof Micol for years. When the school library is declared off-limits to Jewish students, the Finzi-Continis encourage Giorgio to use their private library, and he finds himself growing close to the siblings, especially Micol. Giorgio believes that Micol has romantic feelings for him, but a direct attempt at seduction fails when she tells him that she thinks of him more like a brother (though there is a strong element of "come here/go away" ambiguity in her manner with him). The situation for the Jews keeps getting worse, but the family, who once held some power and influence in the town, keeps thinking that they can ride out this temporary problem, though they do send a younger brother out of the country for schooling. Giorgio's father (Romolo Valli), a member of the ruling Fascist party, also holds to the fatal belief that things can't keep getting worse. The other major character is Malnate (Fabio Testi), a dark hunk of a guy who is not Jewish but is Giorgio's best friend, and who winds up sleeping with Micol, despite her earlier insistence that he is "too hairy" for her tastes. There is a nice irony here in that Testi resembles the stereotype of the dark Jew, and virtually all the major Jewish characters are actually blond and lithe, like the Aryan stereotype (and Testi winds up with a fate as uncertain as any of the Jewish characters when he is conscripted into the Army). Most everyone ignores all signs of the gathering darkness until it's too late. The sickly Alberto dies at home, and Giorgio manages to get out of the country, but most of the rest of the characters are snared in the inevitable roundup of Jews to the camps.

The film, photographed by Ennio Guarnieri, is beautiful to look at, and generally I like the movie quite a bit, but I do agree with the critics who feel that are some problems with the depth of characterization. Some blame the actors, but I think it's more in the writing. We see most of the events of the film through Giorgio's eyes, and he, like the Michael York character in CABARET, is more a passive observer than anything else. The one time he does act decisively, putting the moves on Micol, it's a mistake. Capolicchio, like Michael York, does a good job with a tricky role. Micol is a cold cipher; I never felt like I understood anything she did, but I think Sanda is fine in the part. The biggest problem with the film is Alberto, who is the ultimate passive character--for most of the film, he really does almost nothing. Perhaps he is meant to be a symbol for the passive populace (Jewish and otherwise) who did nothing to stop the terror that would engulf them all, but that would seem to be superfluous symbolism here. Some critics read an incestuous tension between Micol and Alberto, and I can see that, though I think their relationship is more about a general decadence, that of beautiful, powerful people unmoored, with nothing to do and no resources of strength to resist when the times grow dark, only an ability to live in the past; surely it's not an accident that both Micol and Alberto play "Sentimental Journey" on their phonograph. Despite its flaws, this is well worth seeing. There is very little violence in the film, but the brutality of the times is still conveyed effectively. [DVD]

BEYOND THE ROCKS (1922)

This long-lost film, which re-surfaced in 2003, co-stars two of the biggest silent movie stars, Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson. Unfortunately, it's no classic, though it's also not an embarrassment. Swanson is the youngest daughter of an old sea captain; her older sisters are pressuring her into making a good (financially good, that is) marriage to Robert Bolder, a self-made millionaire who is boring, unattractive, and many years too old for her. When Swanson's canoe tips over during an outing, the Earl of Bracondale (Valentino) saves her. There are sparks between the two, but nothing happens. Swanson gets married and while honeymooning in the Alps, has a climbing accident. Guess who just happens to be on the same mountain and comes to her rescue? Yep, Valentino, this time accompanied by his mother (Edythe Chapman) and a young woman Chapman hopes he will marry (Gertrude Astor). This time, the sparks are harder to deny. Valentino follows Swanson to Paris where Bolder is in the process of providing backing for an African expedition. Bolder is tempted to go along to Africa, but Valentino tells him it would be too dangerous. Swanson, torn between Bolder and Valentino, finally decides to break it off with Valentino, but letters that she sends to the two are switched by the jealous Astor, and when Bolder realizes that she loves Valentino but is still planning to stay in her marriage for his sake, he decides to go to Africa after all. Swanson and Valentino run after him and the triangle is resolved in the desert during an attack of marauding bandits. The material strikes me as about average for a romantic melodrama of the time, as does the acting. Neither of the stars do too much of the overacting (or what seems to us like overacting) that is common to early silent films, and Swanson is even a bit too low-key at times. She also seems too strong and earthy to be fully believable in the role of a passive pawn. The location scenes (certainly shot outdoors, but just as certainly not shot in the Alps or Africa) are effective. The score, written for the restoration, is terrible, way too modern-jazzy, but I did like the sound effects that crop up frequently. This is the first Valentino movie I've seen, and I don't know that I need to see any others, though it might be fun to see one of his Sheik movies for the heck of it. [TCM]

CHINA GIRL (1942)

Just as it's difficult for me to put into words why CASABLANCA, on the surface a fairly ordinary WWII thriller, is such a great movie, it's difficult to say why CHINA GIRL isn't. I enjoyed watching it, but for the most part, it leaves the memory quickly despite having a wonderful visual style and an exciting plot not that different from CASABLANCA's. Set mostly in the city of Mandalay in Burma during November 1941, just before the United States officially went to war, the movie begins in a Chinese village where invading Japanese forces have arrested newsreel photographer George Montgomery as a spy. He escapes with some help from fellow prisoner Victor McLaglen (which involves a brief but very grim sequence in a pit of dead bodies) and the two are then spirited to safety by McLaglen's girlfriend, Lynn Bari. At a hotel in Mandalay, Montgomery meets the lovely Gene Tierney, who is selling some valuables to raise money for her father's work with orphans. When he starts flirting with her, he doesn't realize that she's Chinese; when he finds out, he hesitates for a moment but then kisses her roughly, as though he has something to prove. This turns her off at first, and Montgomery turns his attentions to Bari, but Tierney soon comes around to his charms and also lets him know that Bari and McLaglen are spies for the Japanese. The rest of the film covers several plot strands that come together at the end: 1) will Montgomery be able to bribe a pilot friend to let him hop a ride on his plane to get exclusive footage of the embattled Burma Road?; 2) how much of a pain in the ass will McLaglen and Bari be?; and 3) will Montgomery put personal concerns behind him and take the moral high ground in helping Tierney's father? There is a great fisticuffs scene with Montgomery, stripped to the waist, getting knocked around by McLaglen, and a flag-waving, propagandistic finale in which we see Montgomery transformed into a real hero. Also in the cast are Robert Blake, at the tender age of 9 playing a character a lot like Short Round in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, Philip Ahn as Tierney's dignified father, and Sig Ruman as Jarubi, the antiques dealer who may or may not have sinister motives. Performances are solid all around. At times, McLaglen sounds disconcertingly like an evil Cary Grant; Bari almost steals the show as the femme fatale who wavers between good and bad; Montgomery, looking and sounding like fellow B-stalwart James Craig, is very good (and very good looking) but still short of coming off as an A-grade hero like Bogart, Cagney, or Flynn. The best thing about the movie is its look--good use of shadows and lights through blinds, slightly askew camera angles, atmospheric sets. Not a classic, perhaps, but a solid, light-on-its-feet romantic spy thrillers that I'm glad I saw. [FMC]

BEAU IDEAL (1931)

A rather drab desert melodrama that is technically a sequel to the silent BEAU GESTE (better known by classic movie buffs from the 1939 remake), carrying over a couple of major characters from the original story about a group of brothers and their adventures in the Foreign Legion. In this, one of the brothers (John, played by Ralph Forbes who played the same role in the silent film) is accused of insubordination and given 10 years of hard labor in the Legion's penal battalion. Back in England, Forbes' American childhood buddy (Lester Vail) finds out from Forbes' fiancee (Loretta Young) about his predicament. Though (or perhaps because) Vail also loves Young, he decides to join the Legion to find Forbes. He tries to provoke his commander into throwing him into the prisoner detail, but his heart isn't really into being subordinate. Nevertheless, during a long desert march gone wrong, Vail is accused (wrongly) of mutiny and ends up in the penal detail. He is put into a deep underground cell with a handful of other men, one of whom is Forbes, and they all wind up being left to starve when a native uprising leaves everyone above ground dead. Just as Forbes and Vail, the last two left alive, are about to expire, the arrival of an Arabian emir saves them. There is more plot surrounding the central narrative, mostly involving the tricky relationship between Vail and an Arabian princess (Leni Stengel), known as the Angel of Death, and the film ends with Vail leaving Stengel, whom Forbes refers to as a "half-caste dancing girl," to head back to England with Forbes. The movie is fairly well made and moves along at a decent pace. The plot does not unfold in chronological order, which gives the movie an effective and intense opening scene involving the dying Legionnaires in the pit. The main weakness is the acting, very much of the old-fashioned melodramatic declaiming style. Vail is OK, but not memorable, and Young has only a very small role. [DVD]

MY PAST (1931)

Pre-Code romantic melodrama without a lot to recommend it aside from a chance to see the husband/wife team of Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels together on the screen. She plays an actress who has been engaged in a long-term, on-and-off mistress relationship with middle-aged steel magnate Lewis Stone. While she's in town for a show, they meet up again and during a yacht party, she gets interested in Lyon, Stone's younger business partner. He's all work and no play, even at the party, but the next day, she goes skinny-dipping in the ocean, he jumps in after her, and a torrid affair begins. Lyon is married but eases Daniels' mind by telling her that they have an arrangement and are soon to be separated when she gets back from an overseas trip, but when the wife (Natalie Moorhead) shows up, it turns out that Lyon was exaggerating the separation news. An upset Daniels leaves Lyon and goes back to Stone, who wants to marry her. But wait! Moorhead realizes that there's no heat left in their relationship (and, by the way, she's met someone in Paris) so she suggests a divorce. Lyon, knowing that Stone is serious about Daniels, leaves for an extended European vacation. After some more melodrama involving Daniels almost dying (wasting away from malnutrition, I think), Stone gallantly steps out of the picture, literally delivering Daniels to Lyon and sailing off into the sunset. The principals are all fine, and Joan Blondell is even better in one of her usual brassy blonde supporting parts. There is a funny little moment when Daniels inscribes a copy of "The Maltese Falcon" for Lyon; that was the next movie for both Daniels and the director, Roy Del Ruth. The background music is frequently irritating, sounding like it was being played live just off-camera (which might have been the case). [TCM]

THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS (1956)

This fact-based drama about a World War II espionage operation is more interesting than compelling, and its quasi-documentary style will probably seem almost quaint in the post-James Bond era, but it's worth seeing. In the spring of 1943, the British are planning an invasion of Sicily; the Germans suspect as much and British Intelligence needs to come up with a plan to divert German forces away from the invasion site. Clifton Webb comes up with an ingenious idea: plant false plans on a dead body, indicating that the Allies plan to attack Greece, and have the corpse wash up where it would come to the attention of high-ranking Nazis. We watch Webb and his associates plan out every detail of the plot, called Operation Mincemeat. They find a young man in a hospital freshly dead of pneumonia, get his father's permission to use the body in the service of the war effort (though they can't tell him how his son is being used), and put the corpse in a dry ice container. Next they create an identity, naming him William Martin and planting personal effects on the body including a love letter written by Webb's secretary (Josephine Griffin) in addition to official letters indicating Greece as the invasion spot. The cat-and-mouse game begins when a submarine crew lets the container go in the sea off of Spain. The Germans' attention is indeed drawn by the discovery; after the body is buried and the British consulate asks for the belongings, the orders are returned, seemingly unopened, which could mean the Germans didn't take the bait, but scientific examination shows that the envelope was opened at the German consulate. However, the real suspense is just beginning: the Germans, suspecting something may be up, send a spy (Stephen Boyd) to England to dig up info about Martin, leading to some very tense scenes involving Gloria Grahame, Griffin's roommate, who has just lost a boyfriend in the war and winds up being instrumental to the fate of the plan. Webb is OK though he never feels very military, or even clever enough to mastermind the tricky plot. Most of the other actors (including Robert Flemyng, Cyril Cusack, and Michael Hordern) are very cut-and-dried in manner, appropriate to the "docudrama" feel of the film, but Boyd and Grahame are quite good at generating tension in the last 15 minutes. Apparently, most, if not all, of the last part of the film is fiction, but it really makes the movie work. [FMC]

SKY GIANT (1938)

This is an RKO B-movie version of the kind of aviation male-buddy movie that Warners and MGM did better, so instead of actors like James Cagney or Spencer Tracy, we have fading silent star Richard Dix and B stalwart Chester Morris. The flying footage, like the stars, is passable but not terribly exciting, and the plot is strictly routine. Harry Carey is a crusty old retired army colonel who starts a flight school for commercial pilots and runs it in strict military fashion. Dix, who had been a captain under Carey, is railroaded into working for him and, though there is some tension between the two, there is also respect. Morris is Carey's cocky son, a former diplomat, who comes to the school not knowing that his father is in charge. Of course, Dix and Morris become friendly antagonists, first in the air, and then in competing for the attentions of Joan Fontaine, the cousin of another pilot (Paul Guilfoyle). Fontaine settles on Morris, assuming he'll give up flying, but when he winds up joining Dix and Guilfoyle on a project to map Arctic flight routes, she breaks it off and accepts Dix, on the condition that he make this his last air job. They get a marriage license, but on the test flight, the men crash land over the Yukon. Guilfoyle winds up with two broken legs and wants Dix and Morris to leave him behind. When they refuse, Guilfoyle crawls out at night into the elements to sacrifice himself so Dix and Morris can make it more quickly to safety. In the end, they still have to sort out the romantic triangle, and though there is a traditional resolution, the last shot seems to suggest the uneasy threeway relationship may continue. Fontaine doesn't have a lot to do, but she's lovely (and quite young, only 21, in comparison to Morris's 37 and Dix's 45, though I have to say that neither man looks quite as old as he really was so the triangle isn't too creepy). The pilot school is identified as TWA's, an interesting bit of early product placement, perhaps. [TCM]

BETRAYAL FROM THE EAST (1945)

I don't like Lee Tracy. In fact, I avoid Lee Tracy movies. Part of it, I admit, is the kind of role that he specialized in, the snarky, wisecracking smartass who rubs everyone the wrong way. I think audiences were supposed to like Tracy's characters either because of or in spite of his personality, but I guess he succeeds too well because I can't stand him. I watched this movie because of my interest in WWII propaganda films and found Tracy to be a little toned down here, maybe because of his age (nearing 50). He doesn't hurt the movie, but his relatively low-key performance also doesn't help it much. The film begins with real-life journalist Drew Pearson assuring us that what we are going to see is based on truth (even though the credits call the book the film was based on a novel). The narrative is set in the weeks before America entered the war. There's a short sequence in which an American diplomat (Louis Jean Heydt) and a news bureau chief (Jason Robards Sr.) are both bumped off for knowing too much about a ring of Japanese spies operating along the West Coast, then the story focuses on Tracy, an aging, disgruntled carnival barker who is approached by an old acquaintance (Philip Ahn) to do some work in Panama. It turns out that Ahn, a member of a Japanese spy ring who believes that ex-soldier Tracy still has contacts in Panama, is trying to recruit Tracy to get hold of defense plans for the Panama Canal. A suspicious Tracy contacts Army Intelligence and he becomes a counterspy, who will pass along false information in order to capture the ring. Complicating matters is Nancy Kelly, an aspiring fashion designer who turns out to be an Army spy out to keep an eye on Tracy. When she is killed in a car accident before Tracy's eyes halfway though the movie, it doesn't take a genius to know that she's not really dead and will return soon enough, which she does, having cozied up to a big shot Nazi (Roland Varno) who is in league with Ahn's spies. Most of the good guys wind up sacrificing themselves for the cause, but the big shots in the spy ring also wind up dead. The most startling scene is the torture of Kelly in an overheated steam room. Other cast members include Regis Toomey as a solider who pretends to give Tracy the Canal plans, and Richard Loo (who later played Master Sun on the "Kung Fu" TV show) as the leader of the Japanese spies. The B-production values show through a bit too much at times, and according to sources I've read, the kind of sprawling West Coast spy ring posited in this film simply didn't exist, but that doesn't stop the film from being an acceptable wartime spy thriller. [TCM]

I COVER THE WATERFRONT (1933)

A solid pre-Code melodrama, and a 30's version of an "indie" film made by the small-scale Reliance Pictures. I'm not sure what Claudette Colbert is doing here, given that she was in the middle of becoming a big star at mainstream Paramount, but she's very good, mostly making up for the shortcomings of her leading man, Ben Lyon, who plays the "I" of the title, a reporter who is trying to prove that grizzled old fisherman Ernest Torrence is the brains behind a ring of men who are smuggling desperate Chinese immigrants into the U.S. We know that Torrence is indeed the chief bad guy, and we see him callously dump a tied-up Chinese man overboard when a Coast Guard ship heads over to investigate. When Lyon sees the lovely Colbert skinny-dipping, he thinks she's just another quickie novelty headline, but when he finds out she's Torrence's daughter, he decides to cultivate a friendship with her in order to dig up some incriminating dirt, but then he finds himself falling for her. There's a bizarre seduction scene set in a prison ship museum in which Lyon straps Colbert into an arcane torture device and kisses her. There's also a shark hunting scene that wouldn't seem out of place in JAWS, and another scene with smuggled immigrants tumbling out of a dead shark's belly that is startling. The climactic action plays out well, though the very end feels rushed. Lots of little racy pre-Code touches add pizzazz; in addition to Colbert's dip in the ocean, there's a nudie girl painting in the boat, and Colbert and Lyon talk openly about moving in together. Torrence is very good as the villain, who is nevertheless a caring father. Lyon is the only weak link, and he's not really bad, just out of his league opposite Colbert. [DVD]

NO OTHER WOMAN (1933)

I enjoyed this predictable soap opera for the chance to see two supporting players of the 30's whose careers petered out by the end of the decade: Eric Linden and Gwili Andre. The stars of this undistinguished, melodramatic twaddle are Charles Bickford and Irene Dunne. He is a hard-working but unambitious and uncouth steelworker who is happy bringing home just enough money to live on; she is his wife who runs a boarding house and has dreams of making it big, or more precisely, of her husband making it big. When a boarder (Eric Linden) who likes to mess around with chemistry comes up a new dye formula, Dunne sees its potential and talks Bickford into investing their life savings in a company designed to exploit the new discovery. The one surprise in the plot happens here: I was sure that Bickford would lose his shirt and resent Dunne and Linden, discover they're having an affair, and maybe even plot to kill them, but instead, the company becomes a wild success, and Linden and Dunne remain platonic friends. Bickford winds up buying out a competing company and building a huge industrial complex. In addition to taking on the nice manners of the upper classes, he also takes on their morality and has a torrid affair with big city sexpot Gwili Andre. Dunne catches him and Andre insists that he divorce Dunne to marry her. He tries to, but Dunne fights it, so he bribes a host of family friends and workers to testify that Dunne is an adulteress so he can get his divorce and get custody of their child. The climax is a nasty courtroom battle in which Dunne calls Bickford's bluff in a dramatic fashion.

Dunne is fine, but Bickford is colorless, even when he gets a potentially juicy drunk scene early in the film. Linden's character is ill-defined; I thought in the beginning that he was Bickford's kid brother, but he's not. Maybe he winds up gay, or a chemistry geek, or both. A character (Lelia Bennett) who helps out at Dunne's boarding house seems downright mentally handicapped, but there's no clear sign that this is an intended interpretation. The biggest problem in terms of plot is the lawyer, played by J. Carroll Naish; apparently, he was Andre's lover before Bickford came along, and perhaps after as well, though that is not make clear. He's the one who represents Bickford in court, but to no apparent larger purpose. The movie is not quite an hour long, and perhaps some of these plot points were left on the cutting room floor (perhaps by producer David O. Selznick back in his early RKO days). It's not a terrible movie, but it could have been better with sharper writing and someone like Joel McCrea in the male lead. [TCM]

THE FAN (1949)

Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan" is the basis for this amusing comedy of manners. I haven't seen or read the play, and predictably most critics don't like the liberties the movie takes with the original material, but on its own merits, I found this to be a pleasant enough diversion. The frame story, set in post-WWII London, has the ancient Mrs. Erlynne (Madeleine Carroll) claiming to be the owner of a fan being sold at an auction; she contacts her old friend Lord Darlington (George Sanders) so he can prove her identity, but his memory needs some prodding, so the rest of the film is a series of flashbacks to a time when Carroll, a middle-aged "adventuress," as she calls herself, is rebuilding her life (for reasons which remain hidden from us until much later in the film) and attempting to make a place for herself in London high society. She charms a trio of moneyed men (Sanders, John Sutton, and the young and handsome Richard Greene) and sets out to marry the boring but rich Lord Augustus (Hugh Dempster). Lord Windermere (Greene) helps her out socially and financially, and rumors of an affair between the two eventually reach Lady Windermere (Jeanne Crain) thanks to gossipy duchess Martita Hunt. It turns out that Greene has good reasons for helping her out, though the secret is a good one so I won't give it away here. Suffice to say that things climax in a semi-farcical drawing room scene of mistaken identity (and mistaken intentions), and though the movie is a comedy, there is a mood of sad resignation in the way matters ultimately play out. Widean one-liners abound--at least I assume that most of them are drawn from Wilde, even though famed wit Dorothy Parker had a hand in the screenplay. One of my favorites here has Dempster saying, "Sometimes I think I'm married to Mrs. Erlynne, she treats me with such damned indifference!" All the actors are fine, especially Sanders and Hunt, and the relatively lightweight Greene and Crain hold their own nicely. Richard Ney (the soldier son in Mrs. Miniver) and Terry Kilburn (Tiny Tim in the 1938 Christmas Carol) make brief appearances. Wilde purists may quibble (as Noel Coward purists rightfully complain about the bowdlerization of most of his works by Hollywood), but I thought the film was fun. [FMC]

OPEN CITY (1945)

This film by Roberto Rossellini is perhaps the earliest example of Neorealism in film, using a documentary style to tell a fictional story, often about ordinary citizens and sometimes using non-professional actors. Filmed on the streets of Rome not long after the liberation of the city from the Germans, the narrative follows a loosely-knit group of resistance fighters during the height of the war. The stage is set with images of starving people buying food on the black market and breaking into shops. The main character is engineer Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero), who is being chased down by Nazis; he leaves his apartment building and goes to his friend Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet), who lives next door to his finacee Pina (Anna Magnani), a war widow with one child and another on the way. She fetches the priest Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi), who agrees to help Manfredi smuggle money to other resistance fighters. Unfortunately, Manfredi also contacts his lover, Marina (Maria Michi), an aspiring actress (who is also, if I'm reading things correctly, a bisexual and a dope addict) who later, in a fit of anger, informs on Manfredi to icy blond Nazi Ingrid (Giovanna Galetti). On the day of his wedding, Francesco is rounded up by the Gestapo. He eventually escapes, but not before Pina is shot and killed running after him.

Manfredi is captured and tortured by the cruel (and somewhat femme) Major Bergmann (Harry Feist), and it turns out that Manfredi has a secret past: he was an escaped Communist prisoner who had been hiding in plain sight for years. Bergmann is especially anxious to make Manfredi talk because his theory is that the Italians are a slave race and therefore their will should be easy to break, but Manfredi, as most of the captured patriots, is not so easy to crack. A more interesting bad guy is Captain Hartmann (Joop van Hulzen), a self-hating Nazi who thinks that the Germans are sowing death and hatred, and holds out no hope for a bright future for anyone. As you can probably tell, it's not a spoiler to say that almost all the major resistance fighters meet unhappy ends, although the last shot of the film can be interpreted as a hopeful one: a group of children we have seen pulling off minor resistance vandalism throughout the film witness the death of the priest by firing squad, and they walk away, not in resignation but in what seems more like dogged determination to continue their efforts. The acting all around, by pros and amateurs, is solid, with Magnani and Fabrizi standouts. The "realistic" filming style adds immeasurably to the gritty atmosphere of the film, though that style is much more common now. The version I saw on cable clearly wasn't "restored," and there were large chunks of dialogue that went untranslated. This film cries out for a fully loaded Criterion edition. (Sundance)

CARDINAL RICHELIEU (1935)

I end my week of George Arliss films with this somewhat routine period picture that Arliss makes worth catching. I know little about the period or the personalities involved, but that didn't hamper my ability to follow a narrative that was certainly highly fictionalized. In 17th century France, King Louis XIII (Edward Arnold) is butting heads with the feudal lords of France over the consolidation of royal power. Arliss is Richelieu, chief minister of the King's Royal Council (apparently a forerunner to the modern post of Prime Minister), and he gets a good entrance scene: the Queen (Katharine Alexander), certain that Richelieu is far away, locks herself in the King's chamber and tries to convince him that the Cardinal is hungry for power and property and should be dismissed; Richelieu arrives and, despite being barred from the main entrance, uses a secret passageway into the chamber and spoils the Queen's plan. The rest of the film concerns various cat-and-mouse games between the Cardinal and the Queen, the Cardinal and the nobility, the Cardinal and the Pope (who is angry that Richelieu has drafted Protestant soldiers from Sweden to fight against German Catholics), and even the Cardinal and the King. One of the things I ended up liking about the movie is that I was never quite certain who the "good guy" was supposed to be. We are trained by the movies (not to mention by our history) to treat most royals with suspicion, and Arnold plays the king as pompous (though not stupid or evil), but Richelieu, with his army, his lavish personal palace, and the kickbacks he gets from some of the nobles, does not seem to be much more sympathetic. However, Arliss gives a grand performance, especially in a famous scene in which he melodramatically claims the sanctuary of the Church against attackers. There is a light romantic subplot that feels a little out of place involving a ward of the Cardinal's (Maureen O'Sullivan) and one of the angry Lords (Cesar Romero), but it does give Richelieu a more human touch. Douglass Dumbrille plays a chief conspirator, and John Carradine and Arthur Treacher have one-line bits as street agitators. Some fun intrigue between the Cardinal and the King ends the film nicely, but the main reason for seeking this out is to see Arliss. [FMC]

THE WORKING MAN (1933)

Another delightful George Arliss picture, like A SUCCESSFUL CALAMITY, in which he plays a sort of "foxy grandpa" type, a gruff-seeming older man who has charm and prankish energy beneath his facade, who usually winds up teaching some young whippersnappers a lesson. In this one, he's the founder of Reeves Shoes, the country's leading shoe company. He is particularly proud of staying ahead of his chief competitor, Hartland Shoes, run by an old friend of his who married the woman that they both loved. Arliss's company is in such good shape that his nephew (Hardie Albright) tries to talk Arliss into retiring and living out the rest of his days fishing in Maine. When Hartland dies and his company falls into the hands of his fast-living son and daughter (Theodore Newton and Bette Davis), who are on the verge of running the company into bankruptcy, Arliss decides to go undercover and try to save the company, out of a sense of loyalty to Hartland and his kids. He puts in a secret bid to buy the company, works his way in as a trustee, and (rather improbably) is also named a quasi-legal guardian to Newton and Davis. In the beginning they like Arliss because he seems easygoing and harmless, but he quickly lays down the laws, cutting out their hard partying and their unrestrained spending, and soon he has them working hard to turn the company around, despite the machinations of the crooked manager (Gordon Westcott). In fact, Davis decides to do some undercover work of her own and, under an assumed name, gets a job at Reeves Shoes in order to learn some skills she can bring back to Hartland. A romance develops between Davis and Albright, which is threatened when Arliss fires Westcott and he comes to Albright to get a job and recognizes Davis. Being a comedy, there are happy endings all around for all who deserve them, though the climax plays out in a hurry. Arliss is great fun in a role he could probably have done in his sleep. Davis is OK, though Albright as an uptight blond boy, and Newton as a mellow blond boy, are a little too low-energy. Westcott makes a fine and slimy villain, J. Farrell MacDonald has a nice scene or two as Arliss' fishing buddy, and Edward Van Sloan shows up as Arliss's assistant. Quite fun all around. [TCM]

THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD (1932)

A fine old-fashioned (and here I mean that in the best possible way) melodrama which gave Bette Davis her first substantial lead, with George Arliss, who would become her mentor. He plays a renowned concert pianist at the peak of his career who feels his life is ruined when he goes deaf; it's explained that deafness runs in his family, but it seems to come on all at once when an anarchist's bomb explodes right outside his window while he's playing the "Moonlight Sonata" for a European king (whom the anarchists are chasing--don't ask, it's just a creaky plot device). After months of feeling sorry for himself (and keeping most of his friends at a distance) because the joy of his piano has been taken away from him, he is finally persuaded to learn to read lips. He discovers that, with the help of a pair of binoculars, he can read the lips of passers-by outside his window who stroll through Central Park and he takes to "playing God" with them, secretly sending financial help to people who need it. Davis plays a much younger woman, a close friend of Arliss' who was infatuated with him and proposed to him before his deafness occurred. Though she still loves him and seems more than willing to go through with the planned marriage, she has fallen in love with Donald Cook, a man much closer to her own age. By coincidence (!!!), Davis and Cook discuss their situation in the park. Guess who eavesdrops? Guess who winds up stepping gracefully out of the picture so Davis can be happy? Arliss was 65, playing a 50-year-old, and the makeup to make him look younger than his years is obvious, but aside from that, he is quite fine in a part that calls for some over-the-top emoting from time to time. His best scene is when he rages against God for taking away his life's joy, the ability to hear music. Davis is good, although Ivan Simpson, who plays Arliss' stiff but faithful butler, steals most of his scenes; he is especially good when he saves Arliss from an attempted suicide. Cook is the first of a series of actors throughout the next several years who appear opposite Davis and who wind up wiped off the screen, or at best, come off as mannequins (see also George Brent, Richard Barthelmess, Franchot Tone, and Paul Henried). Louise Closser Hale is fine as Arliss' sister and secretary, as is Violet Heming as another admirer of Arliss'. Hedda Hopper and Ray Milland have small roles. Solid melodrama that is a little dated but nonetheless still worth seeing. [TCM]