ESCAPE IN THE FOG (1945)
I've been very much enjoying the little-known and rarely seen B-films from Columbia that TCM has been showing recently, but this one tried my patience. Perhaps because it had such a promising beginning, atmosphere to burn, and an interesting central plot device, its eventual downturn into tedious contrivance and too much talkiness bothered me more than it should have. It does begin quite well, with Nina Foch walking on what looks like a San Francisco bridge at midnight in billowing fog. She looks disoriented and a cop who approaches her suspects that she's thinking of jumping, but she assures him she's not. Still, she doesn't seem to be sure what she's doing until she sees a man getting out of a cab, attacked by two other men, one with a knife. She screams, the attackers run, and suddenly, she wakes up in her room at the Rustic Dell Inn. Two men burst in to see if she needs help, and one, William Wright, is the man she saw being attacked. Foch and Wright, both involved in war work and both on employer-ordered vacations, hit it off; when he's called to San Francisco, he asks her to come along. However, he gets orders from his boss (Otto Kruger) to take a top-secret packet to Hong Kong, so they have to cut their tentative courtship short. German spy Konstantin Shayne overhears enough of their conversation to set a trap for Wright. Sure enough, he winds up in a cab with Shayne and another thug, and sure enough, Foch winds up on the foggy bridge just in time to scream and stop Shayne from killing Wright. At this exciting point, we're barely halfway through the movie, but it's all downhill from here. Wright and Foch go looking for the packet, which got tossed off the bridge into either the Bay or onto a ship that may have passed under them, Shayne and his spies come after them, Kruger has to deny knowing Wright, and so on to fill out the last half hour. The locked room climax, with Wright and Foch tied up in a room filling with gas, does have a fairly ingenious solution, but getting there, the plot fills up with ridiculously contrived situations to get all the characters in the various places they need to be. Wright is a handsome and reasonably effective leading man, but he would remain a supporting player in B-movies until his untimely death 4 years later from cancer. Foch, later nominated for an Oscar, is at sea here, possibly because of the wishy-washy script. None of the supporting players register, though Shelly Winters has a very brief bit as a taxi driver. It's interesting that the dream premonition is never explained away. If this one airs again, catch the first half, then nap during the rest. [TCM]
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
I BURY THE LIVING (1958)
Richard Boone is a local businessman who is reluctantly about to take his turn as the manager of the local cemetery, a largely ceremonial post, he is assured, which will just take a few hours of his time a month. Theodore Bikel, the old Scottish caretaker (yes, you will immediately think of Groundskeeper Willie!), is about to be forced into retirement, though even with a pension, he doesn't want to leave. He shows Boone a wall map of the cemetery on which white pins designate a plot reserved for someone, and black pins designate a plot with a buried body. A newly married couple show up to buy their plots, but Boone accidentally sticks black pins in the map instead of white pins, and the next day, he hears that the couple were killed in a car accident. Struck by the eerie coincidence, he randomly sticks a black pin in a plot reserved for a Mr. Isham, and soon we see Isham die, apparently of a heart attack. A distraught Boone tells friends, police, and his fiancee (Peggy Maurer) about his weird power over life and death. They encourage him to continue experimenting with the pins in an attempt to show him that he's just imagining things, and a trio of prominent local men, including his own uncle, offer themselves as guinea pigs; when Boone uses black pins in their plots, all three indeed wind up dead. Cooped up alone in the cemetery office, a nearly suicidal Boone wonders what will happen if he takes out the black pins of the recently dead and replaces them with white pins. Sure enough when he does, we see the plots dug open, empty inside. The resolution is predictable, though the "how" aspect is not well explained.
As you can tell by five minutes in, this is Twilight Zone material, and would have worked better as a half-hour show instead of a 76-minute movie. Boone is fairly good, especially when he starts to go a bit nuts. Bikel, an Austrian who was only in his mid-30s, cannot pass for an old Scottish man; his accent is outrageously thick, as is his old-age makeup and his acting. He seemed so fake that I was sure that the character would wind up being someone disguising himself as an old Scottish caretaker, but I was wrong. The plot has intimations of the supernatural, and for a brief moment, you think that you'll get to see some of the undead stalking around the badly-done day-for-night graveyard, but no such luck. What the movie does have in spades is atmosphere; as other viewers have pointed out, this looks more like a film noir than a horror movie, and as in a Twilight Zone show, most of it occurs on just one or two sets. The wall map of the cemetery looks a little weird from the beginning, with the white pins looking practically phosphorescent in the dim lighting. As Boone starts to unravel, the map, seen from his point of view, appears larger and larger until it takes up the entire wall, dwarfing Boone (not a small man). There are other subjective shots of clocks and pins and gravestones that are nicely done. Still, I got restless several times during the middle of the film, so I can't give this a full recommendation. [TCM]
Richard Boone is a local businessman who is reluctantly about to take his turn as the manager of the local cemetery, a largely ceremonial post, he is assured, which will just take a few hours of his time a month. Theodore Bikel, the old Scottish caretaker (yes, you will immediately think of Groundskeeper Willie!), is about to be forced into retirement, though even with a pension, he doesn't want to leave. He shows Boone a wall map of the cemetery on which white pins designate a plot reserved for someone, and black pins designate a plot with a buried body. A newly married couple show up to buy their plots, but Boone accidentally sticks black pins in the map instead of white pins, and the next day, he hears that the couple were killed in a car accident. Struck by the eerie coincidence, he randomly sticks a black pin in a plot reserved for a Mr. Isham, and soon we see Isham die, apparently of a heart attack. A distraught Boone tells friends, police, and his fiancee (Peggy Maurer) about his weird power over life and death. They encourage him to continue experimenting with the pins in an attempt to show him that he's just imagining things, and a trio of prominent local men, including his own uncle, offer themselves as guinea pigs; when Boone uses black pins in their plots, all three indeed wind up dead. Cooped up alone in the cemetery office, a nearly suicidal Boone wonders what will happen if he takes out the black pins of the recently dead and replaces them with white pins. Sure enough when he does, we see the plots dug open, empty inside. The resolution is predictable, though the "how" aspect is not well explained.
As you can tell by five minutes in, this is Twilight Zone material, and would have worked better as a half-hour show instead of a 76-minute movie. Boone is fairly good, especially when he starts to go a bit nuts. Bikel, an Austrian who was only in his mid-30s, cannot pass for an old Scottish man; his accent is outrageously thick, as is his old-age makeup and his acting. He seemed so fake that I was sure that the character would wind up being someone disguising himself as an old Scottish caretaker, but I was wrong. The plot has intimations of the supernatural, and for a brief moment, you think that you'll get to see some of the undead stalking around the badly-done day-for-night graveyard, but no such luck. What the movie does have in spades is atmosphere; as other viewers have pointed out, this looks more like a film noir than a horror movie, and as in a Twilight Zone show, most of it occurs on just one or two sets. The wall map of the cemetery looks a little weird from the beginning, with the white pins looking practically phosphorescent in the dim lighting. As Boone starts to unravel, the map, seen from his point of view, appears larger and larger until it takes up the entire wall, dwarfing Boone (not a small man). There are other subjective shots of clocks and pins and gravestones that are nicely done. Still, I got restless several times during the middle of the film, so I can't give this a full recommendation. [TCM]
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
THE INTERNS (1962)
Even though doctor movies have been part of Hollywood's output since at least the onset of sound, this one, helped along by the popularity of TV dramas like "Ben Casey," probably started the fad for medical soap operas--both "The Doctors" and "General Hospital" started their TV runs the year after this film came out, and this film itself was spun off into a sequel in '64 and a one-season hour-long TV drama in 1970. The movie follows a group of handsome young male interns (and the nurses they chase) through their first year at New North Hospital; to be fair, there *is* one female intern (Haya Harareet), thrown in almost as an afterthought to provide a feminist viewpoint to antagonize a chauvinist pig doctor. James MacArthur (Dan-O on "Hawaii 5-0") is the quiet, sensitive type who is set up with a nurse (Stefanie Powers) whom all the docs assume is loose because she sports a hickey on her neck, but it turns out that the mark came from a child she was watching in the hospital nursery. She's really a nice girl, but conflict arises when she decides she wants to see the world and he wants to settle down. Nick Adams is a loudmouth joker who is tamed when he falls for a terminally ill patient from a poverty-stricken island in Indonesia. Cliff Robertson strikes up a relationship with a fashion model (Suzy Parker); when she asks him for help to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy (this was back when abortions were illegal), he steals the drugs from the nurses' station, an action which proves disastrous to his career. Michael Callan is a high-strung ball of fire who, despite having a long-time high society girlfriend, begins a flirtation with an older nurse as a way of getting an "in" to study with a doctor he admires.
Much of the narrative takes place between Christmas and New Year's, and a big holiday bash at a nurse's apartment is really the centerpiece of the film; its comic highlight is when a Russian nurse (Carroll Harrison) who is typically demure and inhibited comes alive with a few drinks in her and does a striptease, egged on by all. The main medical sideplot involves an older man dying slowly from a disease which will eventually paralyze him while his mind remains intact. His wife becomes a regular visitor among the interns and his situation is the trigger for a discussion of mercy killing; sure enough, he is eventually found dead of poisoning and the interns who were privy to his case are suspended from consideration for residencies until the case is solved. This causes tensions to run high and gives Callan a showy scene in which he has a public breakdown. Often, the movie has a beach party feel, despite the absence of bikinis or an ocean. The acting is all fine, with Callan and Adams standouts. Telly Savalas is the pig doc who almost causes Harareet to throw in the towel and leave the profession; Buddy Ebsen, John Banner (Sgt. Schultz on "Hogan's Heroes"), and Connie Gilchrist are featured, and in a very small role, you may recognize Mary Grace Canfield, who played Ralph the carpenter in "Green Acres." Watchable, if undeniably a dated period piece by now. [TCM]
Even though doctor movies have been part of Hollywood's output since at least the onset of sound, this one, helped along by the popularity of TV dramas like "Ben Casey," probably started the fad for medical soap operas--both "The Doctors" and "General Hospital" started their TV runs the year after this film came out, and this film itself was spun off into a sequel in '64 and a one-season hour-long TV drama in 1970. The movie follows a group of handsome young male interns (and the nurses they chase) through their first year at New North Hospital; to be fair, there *is* one female intern (Haya Harareet), thrown in almost as an afterthought to provide a feminist viewpoint to antagonize a chauvinist pig doctor. James MacArthur (Dan-O on "Hawaii 5-0") is the quiet, sensitive type who is set up with a nurse (Stefanie Powers) whom all the docs assume is loose because she sports a hickey on her neck, but it turns out that the mark came from a child she was watching in the hospital nursery. She's really a nice girl, but conflict arises when she decides she wants to see the world and he wants to settle down. Nick Adams is a loudmouth joker who is tamed when he falls for a terminally ill patient from a poverty-stricken island in Indonesia. Cliff Robertson strikes up a relationship with a fashion model (Suzy Parker); when she asks him for help to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy (this was back when abortions were illegal), he steals the drugs from the nurses' station, an action which proves disastrous to his career. Michael Callan is a high-strung ball of fire who, despite having a long-time high society girlfriend, begins a flirtation with an older nurse as a way of getting an "in" to study with a doctor he admires.
Much of the narrative takes place between Christmas and New Year's, and a big holiday bash at a nurse's apartment is really the centerpiece of the film; its comic highlight is when a Russian nurse (Carroll Harrison) who is typically demure and inhibited comes alive with a few drinks in her and does a striptease, egged on by all. The main medical sideplot involves an older man dying slowly from a disease which will eventually paralyze him while his mind remains intact. His wife becomes a regular visitor among the interns and his situation is the trigger for a discussion of mercy killing; sure enough, he is eventually found dead of poisoning and the interns who were privy to his case are suspended from consideration for residencies until the case is solved. This causes tensions to run high and gives Callan a showy scene in which he has a public breakdown. Often, the movie has a beach party feel, despite the absence of bikinis or an ocean. The acting is all fine, with Callan and Adams standouts. Telly Savalas is the pig doc who almost causes Harareet to throw in the towel and leave the profession; Buddy Ebsen, John Banner (Sgt. Schultz on "Hogan's Heroes"), and Connie Gilchrist are featured, and in a very small role, you may recognize Mary Grace Canfield, who played Ralph the carpenter in "Green Acres." Watchable, if undeniably a dated period piece by now. [TCM]
Sunday, August 19, 2007
THE MARINES FLY HIGH (1940)
This was made before America entered WWII, but while the studios were churning out lots of propagandistic military stories in anticipation of our involvement in the war. Even in 1940, this story of buddies who wind up rivals for the same girl must have seemed awfully cliched, and unfortunately, the B-aspects of the production don’t allow anything about this version to stand out. The leading men, both a bit past their prime, are Richard Dix and Chester Morris. An opening crawl tells us that the story is set in the past, when foreign countries often looked to American armed forces to help shore up law and order in the face of revolution and lawlessness. Dix is a Marine in an unnamed Central American country, part of a force trying to root out a shadowy revolutionary bandit, El Vengador, who, with his band of men, has just pulled off a raid on a cocoa plantation owned by Lucille Ball. Morris is a lieutenant who has just arrived in the country and is bunking with Dix. The two get along well until Ball comes between them. She has been dating Dix, so Morris' initial flirtation falls flat, but after an old flame of Dix's (Steffi Duna) arrives in the area, Ball decides to give Morris a whirl. The romance and adventure plotlines come together rather predictably, though the climactic battle, with a band of Marines trapped in a small town by the bandits, is quite exciting. I especially like the way that Dix, buzzing the area in a plane, gets messages back and forth to the men on the ground, with notes wrapped around wrenches that are delivered ingeniously. In the supporting cast are John Eldredge as Ball's foreman (and given his sinister looks from the get-go, it's not a spoiler to say that he's not what he seems), Dick Hogan and Horace McMahon as Marine buddies, and Kirby Grant (later Sky King on TV) as a lieutenant. Ball is, as usual in this stage of her career, a bit too low-key to be effective (see YOU CAN’T FOOL YOUR WIFE, a B-comedy made the same year); Morris and Hogan come off best, with Dix too old and sluggish to be believable as a man who is romantically entangled with two young women. [TCM]
This was made before America entered WWII, but while the studios were churning out lots of propagandistic military stories in anticipation of our involvement in the war. Even in 1940, this story of buddies who wind up rivals for the same girl must have seemed awfully cliched, and unfortunately, the B-aspects of the production don’t allow anything about this version to stand out. The leading men, both a bit past their prime, are Richard Dix and Chester Morris. An opening crawl tells us that the story is set in the past, when foreign countries often looked to American armed forces to help shore up law and order in the face of revolution and lawlessness. Dix is a Marine in an unnamed Central American country, part of a force trying to root out a shadowy revolutionary bandit, El Vengador, who, with his band of men, has just pulled off a raid on a cocoa plantation owned by Lucille Ball. Morris is a lieutenant who has just arrived in the country and is bunking with Dix. The two get along well until Ball comes between them. She has been dating Dix, so Morris' initial flirtation falls flat, but after an old flame of Dix's (Steffi Duna) arrives in the area, Ball decides to give Morris a whirl. The romance and adventure plotlines come together rather predictably, though the climactic battle, with a band of Marines trapped in a small town by the bandits, is quite exciting. I especially like the way that Dix, buzzing the area in a plane, gets messages back and forth to the men on the ground, with notes wrapped around wrenches that are delivered ingeniously. In the supporting cast are John Eldredge as Ball's foreman (and given his sinister looks from the get-go, it's not a spoiler to say that he's not what he seems), Dick Hogan and Horace McMahon as Marine buddies, and Kirby Grant (later Sky King on TV) as a lieutenant. Ball is, as usual in this stage of her career, a bit too low-key to be effective (see YOU CAN’T FOOL YOUR WIFE, a B-comedy made the same year); Morris and Hogan come off best, with Dix too old and sluggish to be believable as a man who is romantically entangled with two young women. [TCM]
Saturday, August 18, 2007
BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL (1964)
Steve McQueen was a dashing anti-hero leading man of the 60's who to this day epitomizes the essence of "cool." I've only seen a couple of his films (the "cool" GREAT ESCAPE and the much later, deliberately "uncool" ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE) so I decided to rent this one which was recently released as part of a boxed DVD set. The story is basically warmed-over Tennessee Williams, set in windy Texas grasslands instead of steamy New Orleans neighborhoods. Lee Remick is a woman with a young daughter taking a bus trip to Columbus, Texas. She's hoping to settle there and wait for her husband (McQueen) who has been in jail since before their daughter was born. She's befriended by a local cop (Don Murray) who helps her get a job and to rent a small house. Remick is surprised to discover that McQueen has been free on parole for some time and didn't send for her. The reason is another woman, not a mistress, but his foster mother, the nasty Miss Kate, who abused him when he was young and now insists that he go to night school instead of singing and playing guitar in a rockabilly "string band," which is what he wants to do, and what he thinks will lead to fame and success. Miss Kate, an invalid whom we only glimpse briefly near the end of the film, threatens to have him jailed in violation of his parole if he doesn't follow her wishes. McQueen is glad to see his family but is still trying to hash out his future and, as one can predict from early on, he makes mostly wrong choices (involving drinking, violence, and dealing with Miss Kate) leading to a sad (though not tragic) ending.
McQueen is good as a man who, thanks to an ultra-masculine exterior, seems strong, but who is actually a wounded neurotic with lots of demons swirling around inside him. Creepy harpsichord music plays in scenes which evoke memories of McQueen's past. I think Miss Kate's house looks a little like Mother Bates' home in PSYCHO, and that may be intentional--though McQueen's not a killer (and probably not a cross-dresser). Murray is very good as an example of the other side of the masculine stereotype: if McQueen is a rowdy and restless misfit, Murray is a quiet, sturdy, settled type (he was much more like McQueen in his debut film role in BUS STOP). I was rooting for Murray to sweep Remick off her feet, but this isn't that kind of movie. Things drag a bit in the middle, but the climactic action, triggered by the death of Miss Kate, is compelling, and a scene toward the end of McQueen running desperately after a speeding truck in a last stab at escape (from his past, from the law, from his obligations) is quite effective. The stark black and white cinematography sets the mood nicely. Remick was always an underrated actor and she's especially fine here. One thing that doesn't work is McQueen's singing; he is obviously lip-synching to someone else's voice, and he does a bad job of it. To make it worse, the director, Robert Mulligan, shoots his songs in close-up which just accentuates the artifice. This is not exactly the "cool" McQueen on display in this film, but he generally does a fine job and this is worth seeing. (IMDb says Glen Campbell plays a band member). The title song is catchy little number. [DVD]
Steve McQueen was a dashing anti-hero leading man of the 60's who to this day epitomizes the essence of "cool." I've only seen a couple of his films (the "cool" GREAT ESCAPE and the much later, deliberately "uncool" ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE) so I decided to rent this one which was recently released as part of a boxed DVD set. The story is basically warmed-over Tennessee Williams, set in windy Texas grasslands instead of steamy New Orleans neighborhoods. Lee Remick is a woman with a young daughter taking a bus trip to Columbus, Texas. She's hoping to settle there and wait for her husband (McQueen) who has been in jail since before their daughter was born. She's befriended by a local cop (Don Murray) who helps her get a job and to rent a small house. Remick is surprised to discover that McQueen has been free on parole for some time and didn't send for her. The reason is another woman, not a mistress, but his foster mother, the nasty Miss Kate, who abused him when he was young and now insists that he go to night school instead of singing and playing guitar in a rockabilly "string band," which is what he wants to do, and what he thinks will lead to fame and success. Miss Kate, an invalid whom we only glimpse briefly near the end of the film, threatens to have him jailed in violation of his parole if he doesn't follow her wishes. McQueen is glad to see his family but is still trying to hash out his future and, as one can predict from early on, he makes mostly wrong choices (involving drinking, violence, and dealing with Miss Kate) leading to a sad (though not tragic) ending.
McQueen is good as a man who, thanks to an ultra-masculine exterior, seems strong, but who is actually a wounded neurotic with lots of demons swirling around inside him. Creepy harpsichord music plays in scenes which evoke memories of McQueen's past. I think Miss Kate's house looks a little like Mother Bates' home in PSYCHO, and that may be intentional--though McQueen's not a killer (and probably not a cross-dresser). Murray is very good as an example of the other side of the masculine stereotype: if McQueen is a rowdy and restless misfit, Murray is a quiet, sturdy, settled type (he was much more like McQueen in his debut film role in BUS STOP). I was rooting for Murray to sweep Remick off her feet, but this isn't that kind of movie. Things drag a bit in the middle, but the climactic action, triggered by the death of Miss Kate, is compelling, and a scene toward the end of McQueen running desperately after a speeding truck in a last stab at escape (from his past, from the law, from his obligations) is quite effective. The stark black and white cinematography sets the mood nicely. Remick was always an underrated actor and she's especially fine here. One thing that doesn't work is McQueen's singing; he is obviously lip-synching to someone else's voice, and he does a bad job of it. To make it worse, the director, Robert Mulligan, shoots his songs in close-up which just accentuates the artifice. This is not exactly the "cool" McQueen on display in this film, but he generally does a fine job and this is worth seeing. (IMDb says Glen Campbell plays a band member). The title song is catchy little number. [DVD]
Thursday, August 16, 2007
DANGER FLIGHT (1939)
Pilot "Tailspin" Tommy Tompkins (John Trent) has founded a boy's club, the Scouts of the Air, with the intention of 1) keeping kids out of trouble, 2) getting kids interested in aviation, so that 3) they might become fliers when their country needs them (approximately two years hence, as it will turn out). Tommy befriends tough kid Whitey (Tommy Baker), an orphan whose older brother Mike (Dennis Moore) is a small-time thug and part of a fairly inept gang led by Dawson (Julius Tannen). When the gang tries but fails to hijack Brown's payroll delivery being made by car, Brown hires Tommy to fly the money out. However, in the middle of a bad storm, Tommy is asked instead to fly needed medical supplies to some dam workers. He does, using his only parachute to get the supplies to the ground, then crash lands. Just as searchers, including Tommy's buddy Skeeter (Milburn Stone), are ready to give up, Whitey and his fellow Scouts discover him and save the day. Whitey's heroic deed makes headlines and brother Mike plays on his ego to get him to help in a new scheme to get the ever-elusive payroll, involving a model airplane that can send out smoke signals. The ruse works, and Whitey and Tommy wind up prisoners in a basement until Tommy figures out how to rebuild a busted model plane and send his own message to the cops.
This is a pretty obscure little flick, one of four programmers made by bargain basement studio Monogram in 1939 featuring the comic strip character Tailspin Tommy, who had previously been the focus of two Universal serials. In look and feel, this is no worse, and maybe a smidge better, than any average adventure serial of the day, and the movie does feel like part of a serial, given that the story breaks down into two specific "chapters." The plane scenes, especially the storm, are handled acceptably. Baker and Moore are fine, and it's fun to see Tannen, whom many viewers will recognize as the "talking picture" demonstrator in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. Stone makes a good if underused sidekick, but the weak links are Trent, who is boring, and Marjorie Reynolds as his girl, who is both boring and bad. She is known mostly as the love interest in HOLIDAY INN, and she's absolutely wooden in both films. The Alpha DVD print is in very bad shape, especially during the first reel--the picture quality gets better, but the sound remains spotty. The film seems clearly aimed at the kiddie matinee crowd of the day, but given its limitations, it's fun enough for an hour's entertainment. [DVD]
Pilot "Tailspin" Tommy Tompkins (John Trent) has founded a boy's club, the Scouts of the Air, with the intention of 1) keeping kids out of trouble, 2) getting kids interested in aviation, so that 3) they might become fliers when their country needs them (approximately two years hence, as it will turn out). Tommy befriends tough kid Whitey (Tommy Baker), an orphan whose older brother Mike (Dennis Moore) is a small-time thug and part of a fairly inept gang led by Dawson (Julius Tannen). When the gang tries but fails to hijack Brown's payroll delivery being made by car, Brown hires Tommy to fly the money out. However, in the middle of a bad storm, Tommy is asked instead to fly needed medical supplies to some dam workers. He does, using his only parachute to get the supplies to the ground, then crash lands. Just as searchers, including Tommy's buddy Skeeter (Milburn Stone), are ready to give up, Whitey and his fellow Scouts discover him and save the day. Whitey's heroic deed makes headlines and brother Mike plays on his ego to get him to help in a new scheme to get the ever-elusive payroll, involving a model airplane that can send out smoke signals. The ruse works, and Whitey and Tommy wind up prisoners in a basement until Tommy figures out how to rebuild a busted model plane and send his own message to the cops.
This is a pretty obscure little flick, one of four programmers made by bargain basement studio Monogram in 1939 featuring the comic strip character Tailspin Tommy, who had previously been the focus of two Universal serials. In look and feel, this is no worse, and maybe a smidge better, than any average adventure serial of the day, and the movie does feel like part of a serial, given that the story breaks down into two specific "chapters." The plane scenes, especially the storm, are handled acceptably. Baker and Moore are fine, and it's fun to see Tannen, whom many viewers will recognize as the "talking picture" demonstrator in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. Stone makes a good if underused sidekick, but the weak links are Trent, who is boring, and Marjorie Reynolds as his girl, who is both boring and bad. She is known mostly as the love interest in HOLIDAY INN, and she's absolutely wooden in both films. The Alpha DVD print is in very bad shape, especially during the first reel--the picture quality gets better, but the sound remains spotty. The film seems clearly aimed at the kiddie matinee crowd of the day, but given its limitations, it's fun enough for an hour's entertainment. [DVD]
Thursday, August 09, 2007
ILLICIT (1931)
Interesting pre-Code film which is surprisingly casual in its portrayal of a premarital affair. Barbara Stanwyck and James Rennie maintain separate residences but spend their nights together--the opening scene has them post-coitally lolling about in their "night clothes." He wants to get married but she thinks that marriage will inevitably lead to the death of their relationship, that love can't stand the strain of enforced possessiveness and the expectation to have children. When they are caught "weekending" together at a hotel, his father (Claude Gillingwater) pressures them to marry. "She has theories, Dad," replies Rennie, but she does finally agree. A year later, the strains have begun showing when Rennie wants to party but Stanwyck wants to cuddle up at home. Naturally, two old flames show up: Ricardo Cortez, who tried to stop the marriage earlier by telling Stanwyck that she was just becoming a piece of property, and Natalie Moorhead, whom Rennie starts seeing when he tells Stanwyck he's working late. The married couple separate, then find that their spark of passion returns, but both Cortez and Moorhead keep trying to split them up. Of course, social convention wins in the end and they give their marriage another chance, with Stanwyck saying, "What have theories to do with love?" Stanwyck is a bit out of her element playing a rich girl, but she's fine; Rennie is lackluster but passable. Cortez, a favorite of mine who had a nice range, from romantic lead to dastardly villain, is quite good here in one of his typical roles as the handsome second fiddle who never winds up with the girl. Supporting comic relief standouts are Charles Butterworth as an older playboy friend of the couple's and Joan Blondell as his younger mistress. [TCM]
Interesting pre-Code film which is surprisingly casual in its portrayal of a premarital affair. Barbara Stanwyck and James Rennie maintain separate residences but spend their nights together--the opening scene has them post-coitally lolling about in their "night clothes." He wants to get married but she thinks that marriage will inevitably lead to the death of their relationship, that love can't stand the strain of enforced possessiveness and the expectation to have children. When they are caught "weekending" together at a hotel, his father (Claude Gillingwater) pressures them to marry. "She has theories, Dad," replies Rennie, but she does finally agree. A year later, the strains have begun showing when Rennie wants to party but Stanwyck wants to cuddle up at home. Naturally, two old flames show up: Ricardo Cortez, who tried to stop the marriage earlier by telling Stanwyck that she was just becoming a piece of property, and Natalie Moorhead, whom Rennie starts seeing when he tells Stanwyck he's working late. The married couple separate, then find that their spark of passion returns, but both Cortez and Moorhead keep trying to split them up. Of course, social convention wins in the end and they give their marriage another chance, with Stanwyck saying, "What have theories to do with love?" Stanwyck is a bit out of her element playing a rich girl, but she's fine; Rennie is lackluster but passable. Cortez, a favorite of mine who had a nice range, from romantic lead to dastardly villain, is quite good here in one of his typical roles as the handsome second fiddle who never winds up with the girl. Supporting comic relief standouts are Charles Butterworth as an older playboy friend of the couple's and Joan Blondell as his younger mistress. [TCM]
Monday, August 06, 2007
BEDAZZLED (1967)
This trippy 60's riff on the Faust story, directed by Stanley Donen, doesn't really hold together all that well, but it's worth seeing for the great comic chemistry between Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. They were part of a British comedy troupe that took Broadway by storm in a revue called "Beyond the Fringe" in the mid 60's and the two worked as a duo for many years. Based on the evidence of this film, they should have become a legendary comedy team, but though they did stage and TV work together through the 70's, they never took off as a movie team. Moore plays a kind of everyman figure, a cook in a burger diner who feels he has nothing to live for, especially because he’s too shy to get the love of his life, a waitress at the diner (Eleanor Bron), to notice him. He tries to hang himself but when he bungles the job, a tall man in a red cape (Cook) comes to his door, claiming to be the devil and offering him seven wishes in exchange for his soul. Each of the wishes is an attempt to win the love of Bron and is played out like a revue skit, throwing Moore, Cook, and Bron into a different situation each time, with Moore never happy with the outcome of the wish. The devil, whose name is George Spiggot, operates out of a dive of a nightclub, with the Seven Deadly Sins working (rather ineffectually) for him--none of the sins get much screen time, but Raquel Welch manages to make an impression as Lust, and Barry Humphries in his pre-Dame Edna days is a swishy Envy. The movie never quite lives up to its first 20 minutes, but Moore and Cook are always funny. A couple of sequences stand out, including one near the end where Moore and Bron are nuns of the Order of Beryl of Sussex who jump on trampolines, trying to get closer to God. Cook's shining moment is as a pop star singing (in a monotone) an anti-romantic song with lyrics like "You fill me with inertia" and "Just go away." Though Moore is good (and surprisingly attractive in a cuddly kind of way), Cook gets all the best moments. I like that the Devil's idea of being evil is to pull irritating pranks like tearing the last chapter out of Agatha Christie mysteries or having a pigeon shit on a man's head. I also like that the Devil's conjuring phrase to make the wishes happen is, "Julie Andrews!" The colorful style of the movie is a treat for the eyes. Even if it's not exactly a masterpiece, it's consistently amusing. [DVD]
This trippy 60's riff on the Faust story, directed by Stanley Donen, doesn't really hold together all that well, but it's worth seeing for the great comic chemistry between Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. They were part of a British comedy troupe that took Broadway by storm in a revue called "Beyond the Fringe" in the mid 60's and the two worked as a duo for many years. Based on the evidence of this film, they should have become a legendary comedy team, but though they did stage and TV work together through the 70's, they never took off as a movie team. Moore plays a kind of everyman figure, a cook in a burger diner who feels he has nothing to live for, especially because he’s too shy to get the love of his life, a waitress at the diner (Eleanor Bron), to notice him. He tries to hang himself but when he bungles the job, a tall man in a red cape (Cook) comes to his door, claiming to be the devil and offering him seven wishes in exchange for his soul. Each of the wishes is an attempt to win the love of Bron and is played out like a revue skit, throwing Moore, Cook, and Bron into a different situation each time, with Moore never happy with the outcome of the wish. The devil, whose name is George Spiggot, operates out of a dive of a nightclub, with the Seven Deadly Sins working (rather ineffectually) for him--none of the sins get much screen time, but Raquel Welch manages to make an impression as Lust, and Barry Humphries in his pre-Dame Edna days is a swishy Envy. The movie never quite lives up to its first 20 minutes, but Moore and Cook are always funny. A couple of sequences stand out, including one near the end where Moore and Bron are nuns of the Order of Beryl of Sussex who jump on trampolines, trying to get closer to God. Cook's shining moment is as a pop star singing (in a monotone) an anti-romantic song with lyrics like "You fill me with inertia" and "Just go away." Though Moore is good (and surprisingly attractive in a cuddly kind of way), Cook gets all the best moments. I like that the Devil's idea of being evil is to pull irritating pranks like tearing the last chapter out of Agatha Christie mysteries or having a pigeon shit on a man's head. I also like that the Devil's conjuring phrase to make the wishes happen is, "Julie Andrews!" The colorful style of the movie is a treat for the eyes. Even if it's not exactly a masterpiece, it's consistently amusing. [DVD]
Saturday, August 04, 2007
TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942)
Another anthology film, this one an American studio production. The connecting element between these stories, written by various screenwriters, is a tuxedo tailcoat which is passed from person to person. It's tailored specifically for Charles Boyer, an actor who is opening in a new show on Broadway. Boyer is told that the coat was cursed by a disgruntled employee; next, we see him in the coat, being shot and killed by a woman, but it turns out we're seeing the finale of his play, which is a great success. At a party that night, he tries to rekindle a relationship with the glamorous Rita Hayworth, who is now married to Thomas Mitchell, and Boyer indeed doesn't have much luck, winding up wounded (literally) but wiser. In the second story, the coat winds up in the possession of Roland Young, butler to playboy Cesar Romero, who, despite a nasty hangover, is due to marry Ginger Rogers that night. When she finds a love letter in his coat pocket, Romero's bachelor buddy (Henry Fonda) claims the coat is his, and Young's coat is Romero's. While this charade seems to save the day, it ends up being the catalyst for a new relationship between Fonda and Rogers. Next the butler pawns the coat and Elsa Lanchester buys it for her husband, Charles Laughton, a tavern pianist who is trying to get a symphony performed. He gets a famous conductor (Victor Francen) to hear him, and Francen immediately wants to perform the piece with Laughton conducing. During the strenuous performance, Laughton's coat begins ripping at the seams, leading to audience mirth and possibly a disaster for Laughton, but all is saved, thanks to quick thinking by Francen.
The coat then winds up in a Bowery mission house run by priest James Gleason, who gives it to down-and-out lawyer Edward G. Robinson to wear to a college reunion dinner. Robinson tries to pull off a demeanor of respectability and tricks everyone for a while until his bluff is called by former colleague George Sanders, who eggs him into telling everyone the sad truth of his downfall. He leaves in what he assumes is disgrace, but there is indeed salvation waiting for him the next morning. The next tale is a short comic bit which was cut from the initial release and therefore doesn't quite fit as snugly as it should, with W.C. Fields as a con man giving a speech at a temperance meeting, selling cocoanut milk as an alternative to alcohol, until the milk winds up spiked with booze, with amusing results. In the final incident, a crook (J. Carroll Naish) uses the coat to pull off a high society robbery; he escapes in a small plane, but later during the flight, the coat catches fire and he dumps it, with its pockets full of the money, overboard. It lands in a small sharecropper community in the South on Christmas morning (yes, this is the biggest stretch in a movie filled with them) and Paul Robeson finds it, thinking it must be a gift from the Lord. The people (including Ethel Waters and Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson) wind up splitting the money amongst themselves based on who has been praying for what--an interesting mix of socialism and religion--and the coat's final resting place is on a scarecrow in the fields.
Though the coat is the literal connection between the stories, what really runs through the movie is a strong feeling for irony, expressed, as in QUARTET, with lots of O. Henryish twist endings, not all of which feel quite right; for example, the outcome of Robinson's story, intended to be heartwarming, is too abrupt to be effective. All the stories are clever, though the weakest are the first (which is hurt by a lack of characterization and might have benefited from another 10 minutes or so of plot) and the last (which has a folktale feeling very different from the other stories, and also has almost nothing to do with Manhattan). Performances range widely from very good (Robinson, Rogers, Young, Francen, Gleason) to good (Boyer, Fields, Fonda, 'Rochester') to weak (Hayworth, Mitchell, and, in a rare non-stellar performance, Laughton, who seems to be lazily going through the paces in an underdeveloped role). Some, like Lanchester, Sanders, and Romero, don't get enough to do to register, though it's fun to see Margaret Dumont and Marcel Dalio (the croupier in CASABLANCA) in small roles in the restored Fields sequence. A DVD of this from Fox with commentary would be welcome. [VHS]
Another anthology film, this one an American studio production. The connecting element between these stories, written by various screenwriters, is a tuxedo tailcoat which is passed from person to person. It's tailored specifically for Charles Boyer, an actor who is opening in a new show on Broadway. Boyer is told that the coat was cursed by a disgruntled employee; next, we see him in the coat, being shot and killed by a woman, but it turns out we're seeing the finale of his play, which is a great success. At a party that night, he tries to rekindle a relationship with the glamorous Rita Hayworth, who is now married to Thomas Mitchell, and Boyer indeed doesn't have much luck, winding up wounded (literally) but wiser. In the second story, the coat winds up in the possession of Roland Young, butler to playboy Cesar Romero, who, despite a nasty hangover, is due to marry Ginger Rogers that night. When she finds a love letter in his coat pocket, Romero's bachelor buddy (Henry Fonda) claims the coat is his, and Young's coat is Romero's. While this charade seems to save the day, it ends up being the catalyst for a new relationship between Fonda and Rogers. Next the butler pawns the coat and Elsa Lanchester buys it for her husband, Charles Laughton, a tavern pianist who is trying to get a symphony performed. He gets a famous conductor (Victor Francen) to hear him, and Francen immediately wants to perform the piece with Laughton conducing. During the strenuous performance, Laughton's coat begins ripping at the seams, leading to audience mirth and possibly a disaster for Laughton, but all is saved, thanks to quick thinking by Francen.
The coat then winds up in a Bowery mission house run by priest James Gleason, who gives it to down-and-out lawyer Edward G. Robinson to wear to a college reunion dinner. Robinson tries to pull off a demeanor of respectability and tricks everyone for a while until his bluff is called by former colleague George Sanders, who eggs him into telling everyone the sad truth of his downfall. He leaves in what he assumes is disgrace, but there is indeed salvation waiting for him the next morning. The next tale is a short comic bit which was cut from the initial release and therefore doesn't quite fit as snugly as it should, with W.C. Fields as a con man giving a speech at a temperance meeting, selling cocoanut milk as an alternative to alcohol, until the milk winds up spiked with booze, with amusing results. In the final incident, a crook (J. Carroll Naish) uses the coat to pull off a high society robbery; he escapes in a small plane, but later during the flight, the coat catches fire and he dumps it, with its pockets full of the money, overboard. It lands in a small sharecropper community in the South on Christmas morning (yes, this is the biggest stretch in a movie filled with them) and Paul Robeson finds it, thinking it must be a gift from the Lord. The people (including Ethel Waters and Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson) wind up splitting the money amongst themselves based on who has been praying for what--an interesting mix of socialism and religion--and the coat's final resting place is on a scarecrow in the fields.
Though the coat is the literal connection between the stories, what really runs through the movie is a strong feeling for irony, expressed, as in QUARTET, with lots of O. Henryish twist endings, not all of which feel quite right; for example, the outcome of Robinson's story, intended to be heartwarming, is too abrupt to be effective. All the stories are clever, though the weakest are the first (which is hurt by a lack of characterization and might have benefited from another 10 minutes or so of plot) and the last (which has a folktale feeling very different from the other stories, and also has almost nothing to do with Manhattan). Performances range widely from very good (Robinson, Rogers, Young, Francen, Gleason) to good (Boyer, Fields, Fonda, 'Rochester') to weak (Hayworth, Mitchell, and, in a rare non-stellar performance, Laughton, who seems to be lazily going through the paces in an underdeveloped role). Some, like Lanchester, Sanders, and Romero, don't get enough to do to register, though it's fun to see Margaret Dumont and Marcel Dalio (the croupier in CASABLANCA) in small roles in the restored Fields sequence. A DVD of this from Fox with commentary would be welcome. [VHS]
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
QUARTET (1948)
An anthology film of four short stories by Somerset Maugham. In its day, this film was seen as something unusual and its success led to two more Maugham films and a handful of other "omnibus" movies, but without a unifying theme or other organizing principal, it plays out like four randomly chosen episodes of a TV show. I've read some Maugham and I don't think of him as an O. Henry-type author whose stories turn on an ironic twist ending, but most of these do just that. In "The Facts of Life," a father (Basil Radford) tells his men's club friends about his son's adventures in Monte Carlo. After being warned by his father against gambling, lending money, and hanging out with strange women, the boy (Jack Watling) proceeds to gamble, lend money, and go home with a strange woman (Mai Zetterling). But instead of it all being the cause of his ruin, things actually go oddly right for the boy, which totally mystifies the old man. The delightful Naunton Wayne, who is frequently coupled with Radford in British movies to good comic effect, has a small role as one of the friends. The second story, "The Alien Corn," stars Dirk Bogarde as a young upper-class man who turns 21 and tells his father that his only ambition is to be become a professional pianist. The father is not happy but is persuaded to give him enough money to study in Paris for two years. When he comes back, he will submit to a "test" from an experienced pianist (Francoise Rosay), and if she says he has what it takes, he'll be allowed to follow his dream. The outcome is not terribly surprising, but it plays out well. Honor Blackman, who entered movie immortality as Pussy Galore in GOLDFINGER, plays his girl friend.
"The Kite" is a silly little story with elements of Mary Poppins and Bartleby. George Cole is a young man, still living with his parents, who is obsessed with kites and is quite proud of one very special kite he made on his own. He falls in love with Susan Shaw, disturbing his family's equilibrium, especially his mother's (Hermione Baddley). The kites become a weapon in a minor war between Shaw and Baddley, with the father (Mervyn Johns, who was Bob Cratchit in the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol) more or less observing from the sidelines. After Shaw smashes Cole's kite, he leaves her and refuses to pay any financial support, so he goes to jail where it seems as if he'll be a Bartleby figure, simply refusing to do anything, but the story is given a somewhat unconvincing happy ending by its narrator (Bernard Lee), a prison social worker. In the last story, "The Colonel's Lady," Cecil Parker is a stuffy country gentleman (a bit like Radford was in the first story) whose rather passive wife (Nora Swinburne) gets a book of poetry published. She gives him a copy to read, but he isn't interested until he realizes that the book is getting quite a bit of attention as a passionate, sexy read about a woman's memories of her dead lover. This last story has a near-perfect mix of humor and seriousness and solid performances from all, including Ernest Thesiger and Felix Aylmer. Each story is fine on its own, but, as I noted above, the lack of a strong tie between the tales leaves one feeling at sea. Maugham himself introduces the film, rather awkwardly. Among anthology films, the American O. HENRY'S FULL HOUSE is a little more fun, and the earlier British DEAD OF NIGHT is a must-see. [TCM]
An anthology film of four short stories by Somerset Maugham. In its day, this film was seen as something unusual and its success led to two more Maugham films and a handful of other "omnibus" movies, but without a unifying theme or other organizing principal, it plays out like four randomly chosen episodes of a TV show. I've read some Maugham and I don't think of him as an O. Henry-type author whose stories turn on an ironic twist ending, but most of these do just that. In "The Facts of Life," a father (Basil Radford) tells his men's club friends about his son's adventures in Monte Carlo. After being warned by his father against gambling, lending money, and hanging out with strange women, the boy (Jack Watling) proceeds to gamble, lend money, and go home with a strange woman (Mai Zetterling). But instead of it all being the cause of his ruin, things actually go oddly right for the boy, which totally mystifies the old man. The delightful Naunton Wayne, who is frequently coupled with Radford in British movies to good comic effect, has a small role as one of the friends. The second story, "The Alien Corn," stars Dirk Bogarde as a young upper-class man who turns 21 and tells his father that his only ambition is to be become a professional pianist. The father is not happy but is persuaded to give him enough money to study in Paris for two years. When he comes back, he will submit to a "test" from an experienced pianist (Francoise Rosay), and if she says he has what it takes, he'll be allowed to follow his dream. The outcome is not terribly surprising, but it plays out well. Honor Blackman, who entered movie immortality as Pussy Galore in GOLDFINGER, plays his girl friend.
"The Kite" is a silly little story with elements of Mary Poppins and Bartleby. George Cole is a young man, still living with his parents, who is obsessed with kites and is quite proud of one very special kite he made on his own. He falls in love with Susan Shaw, disturbing his family's equilibrium, especially his mother's (Hermione Baddley). The kites become a weapon in a minor war between Shaw and Baddley, with the father (Mervyn Johns, who was Bob Cratchit in the Alastair Sim Christmas Carol) more or less observing from the sidelines. After Shaw smashes Cole's kite, he leaves her and refuses to pay any financial support, so he goes to jail where it seems as if he'll be a Bartleby figure, simply refusing to do anything, but the story is given a somewhat unconvincing happy ending by its narrator (Bernard Lee), a prison social worker. In the last story, "The Colonel's Lady," Cecil Parker is a stuffy country gentleman (a bit like Radford was in the first story) whose rather passive wife (Nora Swinburne) gets a book of poetry published. She gives him a copy to read, but he isn't interested until he realizes that the book is getting quite a bit of attention as a passionate, sexy read about a woman's memories of her dead lover. This last story has a near-perfect mix of humor and seriousness and solid performances from all, including Ernest Thesiger and Felix Aylmer. Each story is fine on its own, but, as I noted above, the lack of a strong tie between the tales leaves one feeling at sea. Maugham himself introduces the film, rather awkwardly. Among anthology films, the American O. HENRY'S FULL HOUSE is a little more fun, and the earlier British DEAD OF NIGHT is a must-see. [TCM]
Saturday, July 28, 2007
STINGAREE (1934)
This is the most interesting of the lost RKO films recently recovered by TCM. It plays out like a rough cut version of a Jeanette McDonald-Nelson Eddy operetta, more fun and with less singing. In Australia in 1874, the law and the gentry are in an uproar when they hear that the dashing highwayman Stingaree (Richard Dix) is in the country. He's the subject of ballads and legends, and the inspector (George Barraud, a Warner Baxter look-alike) has his men out in force to snare him. Mary Boland is a rich old lady who fancies herself an opera singer, though she's certainly not, and she's planning to hold a recital for visiting British composer Conway Tearle; Irene Dunne is her serving maid, a Cinderella-type orphan girl who actually has a wonderful voice, though Boland, knowing Dunne would show her up, will not allow her to be present for the recital. On a rainy night, with Barraud too drunk to be an effective policeman, Dix snatches Tearle, and, while passing himself off as the composer, meets and is charmed by Dunne and impressed by her voice. He snatches her away, though Tearle escapes, and on the night of Boland's party, Dix, risking capture, brings Dunne there to sing. Dix is shot and arrested, but Tearle is impressed with Dunne and when the furious Boland throws her out of the house, Tearle takes her to Europe to make her an opera star. Dunne goes, with encouragement from Dix, but can't get the romantic bandit out of her head, and years later, she returns in triumph to Australia, hoping to sing for Dix, who is back on the loose. The finale is romantic and exciting, and, as this is a pre-Code film, allows Dix and Dunne to escape both jail and repressive society to take off into the wild unknown together. I've not always been terribly impressed with Dix, but he fits the bill quite nicely here, and at times he sounds exactly like Robert Preston as Harold Hill in THE MUSIC MAN; Dunne and Boland are both perfect in their roles; Henry Stephenson is Boland's husband, Andy Devine is Dix's sidekick, and Una O'Connor is the nervous maid who calls Dix "Stinky-ree." Reginald Owen has a small but crucial role as an important official. The movie can't really be called a musical, though there are a few songs, the most fun one being "If I Were a Fisherman," sung badly by Boland. Quite fun. [TCM]
This is the most interesting of the lost RKO films recently recovered by TCM. It plays out like a rough cut version of a Jeanette McDonald-Nelson Eddy operetta, more fun and with less singing. In Australia in 1874, the law and the gentry are in an uproar when they hear that the dashing highwayman Stingaree (Richard Dix) is in the country. He's the subject of ballads and legends, and the inspector (George Barraud, a Warner Baxter look-alike) has his men out in force to snare him. Mary Boland is a rich old lady who fancies herself an opera singer, though she's certainly not, and she's planning to hold a recital for visiting British composer Conway Tearle; Irene Dunne is her serving maid, a Cinderella-type orphan girl who actually has a wonderful voice, though Boland, knowing Dunne would show her up, will not allow her to be present for the recital. On a rainy night, with Barraud too drunk to be an effective policeman, Dix snatches Tearle, and, while passing himself off as the composer, meets and is charmed by Dunne and impressed by her voice. He snatches her away, though Tearle escapes, and on the night of Boland's party, Dix, risking capture, brings Dunne there to sing. Dix is shot and arrested, but Tearle is impressed with Dunne and when the furious Boland throws her out of the house, Tearle takes her to Europe to make her an opera star. Dunne goes, with encouragement from Dix, but can't get the romantic bandit out of her head, and years later, she returns in triumph to Australia, hoping to sing for Dix, who is back on the loose. The finale is romantic and exciting, and, as this is a pre-Code film, allows Dix and Dunne to escape both jail and repressive society to take off into the wild unknown together. I've not always been terribly impressed with Dix, but he fits the bill quite nicely here, and at times he sounds exactly like Robert Preston as Harold Hill in THE MUSIC MAN; Dunne and Boland are both perfect in their roles; Henry Stephenson is Boland's husband, Andy Devine is Dix's sidekick, and Una O'Connor is the nervous maid who calls Dix "Stinky-ree." Reginald Owen has a small but crucial role as an important official. The movie can't really be called a musical, though there are a few songs, the most fun one being "If I Were a Fisherman," sung badly by Boland. Quite fun. [TCM]
Thursday, July 26, 2007
OBJECTIVE, BURMA (1945)
I'd avoided watching this WWII combat film because of its nearly 2-1/2 hour length, and though it would be a stronger movie if it were about 30 minutes leaner, it's still a must-see for fans of war films. It opens with a crawl which quotes General Stillwell about the humiliation of getting run out of Burma, the "back door" to China, and vowing like MacArthur to return. While Stillwell (Erville Alderson) prepares for this time, Errol Flynn and his paratroopers are dropped into a Burmese jungle in order to destroy a Japanese radar station. It should be a quick in-and-out operation, with the men heading to an abandoned airstrip afterwards to be picked up by American planes, and indeed the sabotage goes as planned, but just as the planes are about to land, the men on the ground discover that the Japanese have followed them and are closing in, so they send the planes away, split up into two groups, and plan to meet at a new pickup point a couple days later. However, all does not go well: one of the groups, led by Flynn's second in command, William Prince, gets tortured and mostly slaughtered, and the pickup points wind up serving as supply drop points as the pilots give the men orders to march further into enemy territory rather than toward camp. Though the men question these orders, Flynn keeps their spirits up as best he can. The climax is played out on a hill where the men wind up digging holes for themselves to hide from the Japanese while they keep an eye to the sky for rescue.
I like Flynn in his jaunty adventure mode (ROBIN HOOD, THE SEA HAWK), but I'm wary of him in his later more serious roles. This was perhaps the first film in which Flynn started to look older than his years, and I wasn't sure I'd like him here, but he's great as an inspiring leader to his men, easygoing but with the necessary gravitas, an officer who comes off as a regular Joe while still commanding respect. The action scenes are top notch, a sequence set at night is uncommonly well done for the era, and newsreel and stock footage are well integrated, especially in the parachuting scenes. Aside from bogging down a bit in the last hour, the film's only real flaw is that most of the supporting characters aren't differentiated enough for the audience to care much about. In addition to Prince, there's George Tobias as a "dumb lug" wisecracker, Warner Anderson as a colonel, and Henry Hull as an older war correspondent who's tagging along--and who gives a vicious speech about wiping the Japanese off the face of the earth after he sees some of the American soldiers who've been tortured and mutilated (we hear one man who is still alive but who begs to be killed, though we don't see him--today, we would see him in lengthy close-up, undoubtedly). The rest of the men don't get enough screen time to stand out, though I did recognize an unbilled Hugh Beaumont as one of the colonel's assistants. A superior WWII film. [DVD]
I'd avoided watching this WWII combat film because of its nearly 2-1/2 hour length, and though it would be a stronger movie if it were about 30 minutes leaner, it's still a must-see for fans of war films. It opens with a crawl which quotes General Stillwell about the humiliation of getting run out of Burma, the "back door" to China, and vowing like MacArthur to return. While Stillwell (Erville Alderson) prepares for this time, Errol Flynn and his paratroopers are dropped into a Burmese jungle in order to destroy a Japanese radar station. It should be a quick in-and-out operation, with the men heading to an abandoned airstrip afterwards to be picked up by American planes, and indeed the sabotage goes as planned, but just as the planes are about to land, the men on the ground discover that the Japanese have followed them and are closing in, so they send the planes away, split up into two groups, and plan to meet at a new pickup point a couple days later. However, all does not go well: one of the groups, led by Flynn's second in command, William Prince, gets tortured and mostly slaughtered, and the pickup points wind up serving as supply drop points as the pilots give the men orders to march further into enemy territory rather than toward camp. Though the men question these orders, Flynn keeps their spirits up as best he can. The climax is played out on a hill where the men wind up digging holes for themselves to hide from the Japanese while they keep an eye to the sky for rescue.
I like Flynn in his jaunty adventure mode (ROBIN HOOD, THE SEA HAWK), but I'm wary of him in his later more serious roles. This was perhaps the first film in which Flynn started to look older than his years, and I wasn't sure I'd like him here, but he's great as an inspiring leader to his men, easygoing but with the necessary gravitas, an officer who comes off as a regular Joe while still commanding respect. The action scenes are top notch, a sequence set at night is uncommonly well done for the era, and newsreel and stock footage are well integrated, especially in the parachuting scenes. Aside from bogging down a bit in the last hour, the film's only real flaw is that most of the supporting characters aren't differentiated enough for the audience to care much about. In addition to Prince, there's George Tobias as a "dumb lug" wisecracker, Warner Anderson as a colonel, and Henry Hull as an older war correspondent who's tagging along--and who gives a vicious speech about wiping the Japanese off the face of the earth after he sees some of the American soldiers who've been tortured and mutilated (we hear one man who is still alive but who begs to be killed, though we don't see him--today, we would see him in lengthy close-up, undoubtedly). The rest of the men don't get enough screen time to stand out, though I did recognize an unbilled Hugh Beaumont as one of the colonel's assistants. A superior WWII film. [DVD]
Sunday, July 22, 2007
DOUBLE HARNESS (1933)
Another one of the lost RKO films that Turner Classic has revived. I was quite disappointed in this one, though based on viewer comments at IMDb, I'm in the minority. The film pretends to be a comedy, and the plot falls squarely in the traditional screwball "comedy of reconciliation" genre, but it isn't really very funny. Ann Harding and Lucille Browne are the daughters of the rich Henry Stephenson; Harding's casual lover is William Powell, debauched heir to a shipping company who is in the midst of running the company into the ground due to his neglect. Browne has just gotten married, and Harding, who believes that marriage is the "business" of women, sets out to trap Powell, who is also carrying on with a married woman (Lillian Bond). She imagines she'll be a savior to Powell, whom she thinks can be goaded into becoming a great man (though he says he much prefers considering the lilies of the field). Harding sets herself and Powell up to be caught by her father in a compromising position, so Powell does indeed do "the right thing" and marries her, but on their honeymoon, he proposes divorce in six months. Powell is soon working hard at his business, but Bond comes back into his life, and when Browne lets slip in an angry moment that Harding set Powell up, Powell leaves her immediately. The finale takes place at a dinner party at which Powell, who is planning to travel abroad with Bond, is supposed to sign an important shipping contract with the Postmaster General. There is a slapstick fight in the kitchen between the butler (Reginald Owen) and the chef, but the party itself is just gloomy, and though Powell does come home at the end, his return strikes me as completely unmotivated, just to give the film a happy ending. The light tone of the first half is undone in the second half, when both Powell and Harding are constantly dispirited, and the otherwise fine actors can't make those much of those moods. There are some amusing lines now and then. When Harding gasps after seeing a picture of a tarted-up Bond in the newspaper, her sister asks what's wrong and Harding replies, "I was reading a new recipe for tomato surprise." I also enjoyed Powell's appraisal early on of Harding as "coolly virginal but exquisitely inviting." The whole thing should have had a faster pace, and the climactic party scene falls totally flat. One of the few times I've been disappointed in a William Powell performance. [TCM]
Another one of the lost RKO films that Turner Classic has revived. I was quite disappointed in this one, though based on viewer comments at IMDb, I'm in the minority. The film pretends to be a comedy, and the plot falls squarely in the traditional screwball "comedy of reconciliation" genre, but it isn't really very funny. Ann Harding and Lucille Browne are the daughters of the rich Henry Stephenson; Harding's casual lover is William Powell, debauched heir to a shipping company who is in the midst of running the company into the ground due to his neglect. Browne has just gotten married, and Harding, who believes that marriage is the "business" of women, sets out to trap Powell, who is also carrying on with a married woman (Lillian Bond). She imagines she'll be a savior to Powell, whom she thinks can be goaded into becoming a great man (though he says he much prefers considering the lilies of the field). Harding sets herself and Powell up to be caught by her father in a compromising position, so Powell does indeed do "the right thing" and marries her, but on their honeymoon, he proposes divorce in six months. Powell is soon working hard at his business, but Bond comes back into his life, and when Browne lets slip in an angry moment that Harding set Powell up, Powell leaves her immediately. The finale takes place at a dinner party at which Powell, who is planning to travel abroad with Bond, is supposed to sign an important shipping contract with the Postmaster General. There is a slapstick fight in the kitchen between the butler (Reginald Owen) and the chef, but the party itself is just gloomy, and though Powell does come home at the end, his return strikes me as completely unmotivated, just to give the film a happy ending. The light tone of the first half is undone in the second half, when both Powell and Harding are constantly dispirited, and the otherwise fine actors can't make those much of those moods. There are some amusing lines now and then. When Harding gasps after seeing a picture of a tarted-up Bond in the newspaper, her sister asks what's wrong and Harding replies, "I was reading a new recipe for tomato surprise." I also enjoyed Powell's appraisal early on of Harding as "coolly virginal but exquisitely inviting." The whole thing should have had a faster pace, and the climactic party scene falls totally flat. One of the few times I've been disappointed in a William Powell performance. [TCM]
Saturday, July 21, 2007
RAFTER ROMANCE (1933)
A cute romantic comedy which has become the focus of some pop culture press recently because it's one of a handful of films that had been missing from the RKO library for over 50 years until a hunt by Turner Classic Movies found them. It's pleasant but quite average for its era, and bound to be a disappointment to anyone expecting that all "rediscovered" lost movies are classic gems. In a Greenwich Village apartment house, struggling artist Norman Foster, who lives in the attic loft, is three months behind in rent to landlord George Sidney (doing some rather heavy-handed Jewish shtick). Young working girl Ginger Rogers is similarly in arrears, and although the two have never met, Sidney forces them into an arrangement whereby Rogers moves into Foster's attic room; the two will share it in 12-hour blocks. Since he works as a night watchman, he lives there from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and she occupies the space at night. They never meet but still manage to get on each other's nerves, mostly due to misunderstandings which escalate into a war of nasty pranks. In the meantime, of course, in the outside world, the two meet cute outside a deli without knowing each other's identity and begin a romance. Rogers works as a telemarketer (even back in 1933, such pains-in-the-ass existed; who knew?) for an ice box company and has to fight off the awkward attentions of boss Robert Benchley. Foster has his own battle against a constantly drunken rich patroness of the arts (Laura Hope Crews) who keeps hoping to seduce him by offering him lots of money for his paintings. Eventually, Foster accompanies Rogers on a company picnic, leading to the finale which sorts everything out into a happy ending for the couple (with Sidney claiming he meant such matchmaking all along). Rogers is a perfect fit for her role; Foster is a whiny, uncharismatic slouch but he's not bad enough to ruin the film. Benchley and Crews are both lots of fun, and Guinn Williams has a small role as a cab driver who begins feeling protective of Rogers. There's an odd little scene in which Sidney yells at his teenage son (Sidney Miller) for doodling swastikas on the wall. The boy responds that they are for good luck, but Sidney erases them anyway. By 1933, they would have been associated with the Nazis, though the Nazis would not yet be associated with mass murder; it's a strange moment that resonates weirdly for today's audience. Although this is a pre-Code film, there's not much explicitly racy behavior, but there are some suggestive shots of Rogers stripping and showering, and we see a very amusing sketch that Foster draws of Rogers' smiling face surrounded by a ring of thick sausages (reminding him of their first meeting at the deli). [TCM]
A cute romantic comedy which has become the focus of some pop culture press recently because it's one of a handful of films that had been missing from the RKO library for over 50 years until a hunt by Turner Classic Movies found them. It's pleasant but quite average for its era, and bound to be a disappointment to anyone expecting that all "rediscovered" lost movies are classic gems. In a Greenwich Village apartment house, struggling artist Norman Foster, who lives in the attic loft, is three months behind in rent to landlord George Sidney (doing some rather heavy-handed Jewish shtick). Young working girl Ginger Rogers is similarly in arrears, and although the two have never met, Sidney forces them into an arrangement whereby Rogers moves into Foster's attic room; the two will share it in 12-hour blocks. Since he works as a night watchman, he lives there from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and she occupies the space at night. They never meet but still manage to get on each other's nerves, mostly due to misunderstandings which escalate into a war of nasty pranks. In the meantime, of course, in the outside world, the two meet cute outside a deli without knowing each other's identity and begin a romance. Rogers works as a telemarketer (even back in 1933, such pains-in-the-ass existed; who knew?) for an ice box company and has to fight off the awkward attentions of boss Robert Benchley. Foster has his own battle against a constantly drunken rich patroness of the arts (Laura Hope Crews) who keeps hoping to seduce him by offering him lots of money for his paintings. Eventually, Foster accompanies Rogers on a company picnic, leading to the finale which sorts everything out into a happy ending for the couple (with Sidney claiming he meant such matchmaking all along). Rogers is a perfect fit for her role; Foster is a whiny, uncharismatic slouch but he's not bad enough to ruin the film. Benchley and Crews are both lots of fun, and Guinn Williams has a small role as a cab driver who begins feeling protective of Rogers. There's an odd little scene in which Sidney yells at his teenage son (Sidney Miller) for doodling swastikas on the wall. The boy responds that they are for good luck, but Sidney erases them anyway. By 1933, they would have been associated with the Nazis, though the Nazis would not yet be associated with mass murder; it's a strange moment that resonates weirdly for today's audience. Although this is a pre-Code film, there's not much explicitly racy behavior, but there are some suggestive shots of Rogers stripping and showering, and we see a very amusing sketch that Foster draws of Rogers' smiling face surrounded by a ring of thick sausages (reminding him of their first meeting at the deli). [TCM]
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
THE GARDEN OF ALLAH (1936)
This is a wildly luscious Technicolor treat for the eyes; whether it has much to engage the mind is debatable. Domini (Marlene Dietrich) has devoted her life to nursing her sick father and when he dies, she returns to the convent where she grew up; she is unhappy and restless, and seeks guidance from the Mother Superior (Lucile Watson), who suggests she take a pilgrimage of the soul through the Sahara desert. Meanwhile, in a Trappist monastery in Northern Africa, a visiting Legionnaire (Alan Marshal) compliments the famous liqueur that is made there, but that very evening, it's discovered that the monk who makes the drink (Charles Boyer) has fled, though no one knows why. In the Algerian town of Beni-Mora, local opportunist Batouch (Joseph Schildkraut) gloms onto Dietrich, showing her the sights and such, and while in a club they watch a sexy dancer baiting a nervous looking Boyer, who is clearly untutored in the ways of the flesh (or even the ways of nightclubbing). When a knife fight breaks out, Dietrich and Boyer escape the melee, begin hanging out together, and soon fall in love, though he keeps his monastery background a secret. A seer who reads fortunes in the sand (John Carradine) tells Dietrich that her trip into the desert will bring her great joy but also warns her against some dark fate. She and Boyer marry, use their desert journey as a honeymoon, and are sexily, ecstatically happy for a time. One night, Legionnaire Marshal, lost with his small patrol in the desert, finds their camp and recognizes Boyer, and everything unravels for the duo. Boyer confesses that he turned his back on both God and the monastery (since now the famous liqueur can no longer be produced as only Boyer knows the formula) and Dietrich, with the "Ave Maria" playing in the background, insists he do the right thing and go back, even though it means their separation; she tearfully assures him that they will eventually be together in "the other world--the real and lasting world."
While watching the movie, I had this dual-reality thing going on: the plot and dialogue are not especially strong (though the actors try hard), but because everything looked so damned ravishing, I kept imagining I was watching a different film; I was almost in a "waking dream" state watching a phantom movie that was better than the one that was really playing out. The narrative is a cross between a lusty romance and a spiritual quest, and the colorful and occasionally outlandish visuals do a nice job of catching that tension. All the locations, especially the convent and the church in which the marriage takes place, are gorgeous, as are all of Dietrich's costumes--the standout for me was her metallic silver gown (which might not be the best choice for the Sahara Desert). The beginning of the end of the couple's happiness, when Marshal, the bad news messenger, arrives, takes place during a gloriously artificial nighttime scene, played against a midnight blue sky filled with sparkling stars. Actually, the color scheme of the film is relatively subdued (reminding me a bit of how color was used in Michael Powell's BLACK NARCISSUS) with blues, beiges, and oranges standing out. Some of the exteriors were shot in a real desert in Arizona, and for the most part, the real desert and the studio desert meld together well.
The dialogue is all just too melodramatic and obvious, as when Dietrich keeps repeating like a mantra, "No one but God and I know what is in my heart." (She may only say this twice, but it seems like it's uttered every 15 minutes or so.) The actors do the best they can, though Boyer always looks a bit *too* stoic, like he might have started chuckling at the improbability of it all as soon as the director yelled, "Cut!" Dietrich, as always, is fabulous, with great coloring and lighting. Schildkraut plays Batouch as one of those not-quite-gay but not-quite-straight companions like Erik Rhodes in GAY DIVORCEE or Ramon Navarro in THE BARBARIAN (though that character does "come out" as a heterosexual). Henry Brandon (the title villain in DRUMS OF FU MANCHU) plays his brother; C. Aubrey Smith is a priest who watches over Dietrich (his bushy eyebrows are less dramatic in Technicolor); Basil Rathbone plays a dashing count (frequently seen on horseback)--it feels like the character was written to be a major supporting part, but Rathbone ends up with little to do. I like this movie despite myself, and will certainly watch it again for its visual splendors, and because it makes Dietrich, who always looks good on screen, look great. [TCM]
This is a wildly luscious Technicolor treat for the eyes; whether it has much to engage the mind is debatable. Domini (Marlene Dietrich) has devoted her life to nursing her sick father and when he dies, she returns to the convent where she grew up; she is unhappy and restless, and seeks guidance from the Mother Superior (Lucile Watson), who suggests she take a pilgrimage of the soul through the Sahara desert. Meanwhile, in a Trappist monastery in Northern Africa, a visiting Legionnaire (Alan Marshal) compliments the famous liqueur that is made there, but that very evening, it's discovered that the monk who makes the drink (Charles Boyer) has fled, though no one knows why. In the Algerian town of Beni-Mora, local opportunist Batouch (Joseph Schildkraut) gloms onto Dietrich, showing her the sights and such, and while in a club they watch a sexy dancer baiting a nervous looking Boyer, who is clearly untutored in the ways of the flesh (or even the ways of nightclubbing). When a knife fight breaks out, Dietrich and Boyer escape the melee, begin hanging out together, and soon fall in love, though he keeps his monastery background a secret. A seer who reads fortunes in the sand (John Carradine) tells Dietrich that her trip into the desert will bring her great joy but also warns her against some dark fate. She and Boyer marry, use their desert journey as a honeymoon, and are sexily, ecstatically happy for a time. One night, Legionnaire Marshal, lost with his small patrol in the desert, finds their camp and recognizes Boyer, and everything unravels for the duo. Boyer confesses that he turned his back on both God and the monastery (since now the famous liqueur can no longer be produced as only Boyer knows the formula) and Dietrich, with the "Ave Maria" playing in the background, insists he do the right thing and go back, even though it means their separation; she tearfully assures him that they will eventually be together in "the other world--the real and lasting world."
While watching the movie, I had this dual-reality thing going on: the plot and dialogue are not especially strong (though the actors try hard), but because everything looked so damned ravishing, I kept imagining I was watching a different film; I was almost in a "waking dream" state watching a phantom movie that was better than the one that was really playing out. The narrative is a cross between a lusty romance and a spiritual quest, and the colorful and occasionally outlandish visuals do a nice job of catching that tension. All the locations, especially the convent and the church in which the marriage takes place, are gorgeous, as are all of Dietrich's costumes--the standout for me was her metallic silver gown (which might not be the best choice for the Sahara Desert). The beginning of the end of the couple's happiness, when Marshal, the bad news messenger, arrives, takes place during a gloriously artificial nighttime scene, played against a midnight blue sky filled with sparkling stars. Actually, the color scheme of the film is relatively subdued (reminding me a bit of how color was used in Michael Powell's BLACK NARCISSUS) with blues, beiges, and oranges standing out. Some of the exteriors were shot in a real desert in Arizona, and for the most part, the real desert and the studio desert meld together well.
The dialogue is all just too melodramatic and obvious, as when Dietrich keeps repeating like a mantra, "No one but God and I know what is in my heart." (She may only say this twice, but it seems like it's uttered every 15 minutes or so.) The actors do the best they can, though Boyer always looks a bit *too* stoic, like he might have started chuckling at the improbability of it all as soon as the director yelled, "Cut!" Dietrich, as always, is fabulous, with great coloring and lighting. Schildkraut plays Batouch as one of those not-quite-gay but not-quite-straight companions like Erik Rhodes in GAY DIVORCEE or Ramon Navarro in THE BARBARIAN (though that character does "come out" as a heterosexual). Henry Brandon (the title villain in DRUMS OF FU MANCHU) plays his brother; C. Aubrey Smith is a priest who watches over Dietrich (his bushy eyebrows are less dramatic in Technicolor); Basil Rathbone plays a dashing count (frequently seen on horseback)--it feels like the character was written to be a major supporting part, but Rathbone ends up with little to do. I like this movie despite myself, and will certainly watch it again for its visual splendors, and because it makes Dietrich, who always looks good on screen, look great. [TCM]
Saturday, July 14, 2007
POT O' GOLD (1941)
Jimmy Stewart is the star of this cheap-looking, non-studio quasi-musical based on a radio show). Stewart plays a man who runs a failing music store, following in the footsteps of his late father, giving poor children music lessons in exchange for goods and letting teenagers listen to records. His rich uncle (Charles Winninger) wants him to quit and join the family health food business. As it happens, Winninger hates music and has a particular grudge against the boarding house building next to his office, which is populated almost entirely by struggling musicians (played by real bandleader Hoarce Heidt and his band, the Musical Knights), cared for by landlady Mary Gordon, whose daughter, Paulette Goddard, sings with the band. As Stewart goes wandering through the neighborhood one day, on his way to tell his uncle that he's giving up the store, he gets involved in an incident in which Winninger has called the cops on the musicians, meets cute with Goddard, and winds up throwing a tomato at his uncle. Goddard, Heidt, and the gang take Stewart (who can play a mean harmonica) in, not knowing who he is. He gets initiated into the group, via song of course, winds up in jail briefly (as does Winninger), and helps the gang get onto his uncle's national radio show. Goddard, in a fit of anger at Stewart, announces that they'll give away a thousand dollars to a random person. They manage to turn this into a popular gimmick, using a stack of phone books and a "wheel of fortune" to give the money away, bringing fame to the radio show and a happy ending to all.
This movie falls pretty solidly into the B-production category, and I'm not sure why Stewart, an established star by this time, and an Oscar winner for THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, got roped into it; perhaps the producer, James Roosevelt, son of FDR, made him an offer he couldn't refuse. The film has a certain scruffy charm, but Stewart isn't right in his role; it might have worked better as a vehicle for Kay Kyser or a B-lead like William Gargan. Some elements of the story (the failing family business, the wacky bonded "family" of musicians, and a courtroom scene with Stewart being arraigned for attacking Winninger with the tomato) remind me of other Stewart vehicles like IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, but this isn't crafted nearly as artfully as a Frank Capra film. Stewart seems uncomfortable throughout, and Goddard doesn't seem much happier. The neighborhood number is fun but too short; there are a lot of songs woven throughout the film, and Stewart actually does his own singing at least once--later, Stewart sings with a professional voice, and there's a cute reveal scene showing that he's lip-synching. Also with Dick Hogan as Goddard's cute little brother and Art Carney in a small role as a band member. I'm glad to have seen it once, but it's not a keeper. [TCM]
Jimmy Stewart is the star of this cheap-looking, non-studio quasi-musical based on a radio show). Stewart plays a man who runs a failing music store, following in the footsteps of his late father, giving poor children music lessons in exchange for goods and letting teenagers listen to records. His rich uncle (Charles Winninger) wants him to quit and join the family health food business. As it happens, Winninger hates music and has a particular grudge against the boarding house building next to his office, which is populated almost entirely by struggling musicians (played by real bandleader Hoarce Heidt and his band, the Musical Knights), cared for by landlady Mary Gordon, whose daughter, Paulette Goddard, sings with the band. As Stewart goes wandering through the neighborhood one day, on his way to tell his uncle that he's giving up the store, he gets involved in an incident in which Winninger has called the cops on the musicians, meets cute with Goddard, and winds up throwing a tomato at his uncle. Goddard, Heidt, and the gang take Stewart (who can play a mean harmonica) in, not knowing who he is. He gets initiated into the group, via song of course, winds up in jail briefly (as does Winninger), and helps the gang get onto his uncle's national radio show. Goddard, in a fit of anger at Stewart, announces that they'll give away a thousand dollars to a random person. They manage to turn this into a popular gimmick, using a stack of phone books and a "wheel of fortune" to give the money away, bringing fame to the radio show and a happy ending to all.
This movie falls pretty solidly into the B-production category, and I'm not sure why Stewart, an established star by this time, and an Oscar winner for THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, got roped into it; perhaps the producer, James Roosevelt, son of FDR, made him an offer he couldn't refuse. The film has a certain scruffy charm, but Stewart isn't right in his role; it might have worked better as a vehicle for Kay Kyser or a B-lead like William Gargan. Some elements of the story (the failing family business, the wacky bonded "family" of musicians, and a courtroom scene with Stewart being arraigned for attacking Winninger with the tomato) remind me of other Stewart vehicles like IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, but this isn't crafted nearly as artfully as a Frank Capra film. Stewart seems uncomfortable throughout, and Goddard doesn't seem much happier. The neighborhood number is fun but too short; there are a lot of songs woven throughout the film, and Stewart actually does his own singing at least once--later, Stewart sings with a professional voice, and there's a cute reveal scene showing that he's lip-synching. Also with Dick Hogan as Goddard's cute little brother and Art Carney in a small role as a band member. I'm glad to have seen it once, but it's not a keeper. [TCM]
Thursday, July 12, 2007
STAIRCASE (1969)
Eleven years after LOOK BACK IN ANGER, Richard Burton gave a very different kind of performance in this odd little look at an aging gay couple, produced during the early days of Hollywood's freedom from the repressive Production Code. Burton and Rex Harrison are two middle-aged men who have lived together as a couple and run a barber shop for almost thirty years. What we see is a few days in their lives; Burton, who has gone bald and keeps his head wrapped in bandages and such to hide it, frets about his bedridden and severely arthritic mother (Cathleen Nesbitt) who lives with them, and about Harrison's fidelity; for his part, Harrison, a former music hall entertainer who still fancies himself a looker in his tight clothes and moderately painted face, is worried about a summons to appear before a magistrate over a charge of cross dressing in public (he did a quick, off-the-cuff drag bit in a bar). The narrative is not packed with incident: they go on a day trip to a park, and one night Harrison brings home a trick (younger but very unattractive), but mostly we just watch the two bicker. There is no real resolution to the narrative, such as it is, except for the message that, like many long-married heterosexual couples, they'll go on as they always have, whether it's love or just being accustomed to their situation. The film feels like a cross between WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF and BOYS IN THE BAND, though it is not as funny, clever, or insightful as those films. The characters are full of self-loathing, or at least self-pity, and their bitchy, snippy, hurtful behavior may make today's audiences cringe, but it's instructive to know that homosexual behavior was still illegal in the U.K. until just two years before this film was made. Harrison almost sleepwalks through the role, relying on campy mannerisms at half-energy. Burton is much better, actually trying to inhabit a character. There are some funny moments: Burton, upset that sex organs are all messy and "tucked away," thinks they should be like antennae sprouting out of our heads; Harrison harps away at Burton's recurring behaviors, calling them "weeping stints" or "sulking stints," and I'm worrying that I may pick up one of his repeated lines, "God save us all and Oscar Wilde." It's watchable, mostly because of Burton, but it's not a film I'd recommend to everyone. [TCM]
Eleven years after LOOK BACK IN ANGER, Richard Burton gave a very different kind of performance in this odd little look at an aging gay couple, produced during the early days of Hollywood's freedom from the repressive Production Code. Burton and Rex Harrison are two middle-aged men who have lived together as a couple and run a barber shop for almost thirty years. What we see is a few days in their lives; Burton, who has gone bald and keeps his head wrapped in bandages and such to hide it, frets about his bedridden and severely arthritic mother (Cathleen Nesbitt) who lives with them, and about Harrison's fidelity; for his part, Harrison, a former music hall entertainer who still fancies himself a looker in his tight clothes and moderately painted face, is worried about a summons to appear before a magistrate over a charge of cross dressing in public (he did a quick, off-the-cuff drag bit in a bar). The narrative is not packed with incident: they go on a day trip to a park, and one night Harrison brings home a trick (younger but very unattractive), but mostly we just watch the two bicker. There is no real resolution to the narrative, such as it is, except for the message that, like many long-married heterosexual couples, they'll go on as they always have, whether it's love or just being accustomed to their situation. The film feels like a cross between WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF and BOYS IN THE BAND, though it is not as funny, clever, or insightful as those films. The characters are full of self-loathing, or at least self-pity, and their bitchy, snippy, hurtful behavior may make today's audiences cringe, but it's instructive to know that homosexual behavior was still illegal in the U.K. until just two years before this film was made. Harrison almost sleepwalks through the role, relying on campy mannerisms at half-energy. Burton is much better, actually trying to inhabit a character. There are some funny moments: Burton, upset that sex organs are all messy and "tucked away," thinks they should be like antennae sprouting out of our heads; Harrison harps away at Burton's recurring behaviors, calling them "weeping stints" or "sulking stints," and I'm worrying that I may pick up one of his repeated lines, "God save us all and Oscar Wilde." It's watchable, mostly because of Burton, but it's not a film I'd recommend to everyone. [TCM]
Monday, July 09, 2007
LOOK BACK IN ANGER (1958)
This early film in what I think of as the British "neorealist" movement of the 1950's, which examined the lives of young working-class people, is based on an influential play by John Osborne. Richard Burton is a college graduate, simmering with frustration over his circumstances: he lives in a cramped flat, spends his days selling candy from a moveable street stall, spends his nights blowing a hot trumpet at jazz clubs, and feels trapped by his working-class background. He takes a certain sadistic delight in bullying his young wife (Mary Ure); he has a much better relationship with his more even-tempered buddy (Gary Raymond) who co-manages the shop and lives with them. In quick succession, a number of things happen to rock the volatile Burton's world: an actress friend of Ure's (Claire Bloom) comes to stay with them for a couple of weeks, his mentor, an older woman he calls Ma (Edith Evans) has a stroke, and his wife discovers she's pregnant--a fact she hides from him for a time. In a relationship that starts out a little like that of Stanley and Blanche's in "A Streetcar Named Desire," Burton holds Bloom in total contempt and does nothing to hide his feelings, but when Ure leaves to stay with her parents, the two begin a passionate affair. Before the end, another subplot comes into play, involving Burton's resentment of "official" civil prejudice against an immigrant shopkeeper. Ultimately, Raymond heads off for greener pastures, Ure has a miscarriage and comes back to Burton, and Bloom bows out gracefully.
The first scene in this movie is of Burton playing with a jazz band (shades of the Sultans of Swing) and, though he is obviously dubbed by a professional trumpet player, his performance has such energy and passion (and the scene is shot so well) that the rest of the movie suffers a bit. Burton's character is a brutish lout who lashes out at everything and everyone (except his friend Raymond; in fact, his most sensitive scene is near the end when he says goodbye to Raymond), so the opening is the last time we really empathize with him, except perhaps when he visits the dying Edith Evans. The overall mood is one of overwhelming anger and frustration, though there is some humor from time to time; I chuckled at Burton's quip, "She was only a monkey's daughter, but my, how she handled her nuts!" Ure (married at the time to Osborne, and later to the actor Robert Shaw) is beautiful and handles herself well against the powerhouse that Burton was. Raymond, also quite good, was a darkly handsome young man who may be best known in the States for his role on the 60's war series, "The Rat Patrol." Bloom doesn’t come off quite as well, but I think that's because her character is woefully underdeveloped. A good film (though I can see that Burton's overpowering unpleasantness might turn some viewers off); compare with similar films of the British realist era such as SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING and ROOM AT THE TOP. [DVD]
This early film in what I think of as the British "neorealist" movement of the 1950's, which examined the lives of young working-class people, is based on an influential play by John Osborne. Richard Burton is a college graduate, simmering with frustration over his circumstances: he lives in a cramped flat, spends his days selling candy from a moveable street stall, spends his nights blowing a hot trumpet at jazz clubs, and feels trapped by his working-class background. He takes a certain sadistic delight in bullying his young wife (Mary Ure); he has a much better relationship with his more even-tempered buddy (Gary Raymond) who co-manages the shop and lives with them. In quick succession, a number of things happen to rock the volatile Burton's world: an actress friend of Ure's (Claire Bloom) comes to stay with them for a couple of weeks, his mentor, an older woman he calls Ma (Edith Evans) has a stroke, and his wife discovers she's pregnant--a fact she hides from him for a time. In a relationship that starts out a little like that of Stanley and Blanche's in "A Streetcar Named Desire," Burton holds Bloom in total contempt and does nothing to hide his feelings, but when Ure leaves to stay with her parents, the two begin a passionate affair. Before the end, another subplot comes into play, involving Burton's resentment of "official" civil prejudice against an immigrant shopkeeper. Ultimately, Raymond heads off for greener pastures, Ure has a miscarriage and comes back to Burton, and Bloom bows out gracefully.
The first scene in this movie is of Burton playing with a jazz band (shades of the Sultans of Swing) and, though he is obviously dubbed by a professional trumpet player, his performance has such energy and passion (and the scene is shot so well) that the rest of the movie suffers a bit. Burton's character is a brutish lout who lashes out at everything and everyone (except his friend Raymond; in fact, his most sensitive scene is near the end when he says goodbye to Raymond), so the opening is the last time we really empathize with him, except perhaps when he visits the dying Edith Evans. The overall mood is one of overwhelming anger and frustration, though there is some humor from time to time; I chuckled at Burton's quip, "She was only a monkey's daughter, but my, how she handled her nuts!" Ure (married at the time to Osborne, and later to the actor Robert Shaw) is beautiful and handles herself well against the powerhouse that Burton was. Raymond, also quite good, was a darkly handsome young man who may be best known in the States for his role on the 60's war series, "The Rat Patrol." Bloom doesn’t come off quite as well, but I think that's because her character is woefully underdeveloped. A good film (though I can see that Burton's overpowering unpleasantness might turn some viewers off); compare with similar films of the British realist era such as SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING and ROOM AT THE TOP. [DVD]
Saturday, July 07, 2007
36 HOURS TO KILL (1936)
A peppy little B-movie of the "crime, reporters, and romance" type, set on a train (and just a bit reminiscent of BY WHOSE HAND?) and filled with familiar character actors. Douglas Fowley is a bank robber, hiding out with his wife (Isabel Jewell) in a quiet suburb. Just as playing the friendly neighbor is getting to him, he discovers that he has a winning sweepstakes ticket and, incognito with his buddy Warren Hymer, hops a train to Kansas City to claim it. Also on the train: reporter Brian Donlevy, who is trying to get an interview with a scientist (who keeps insisting that he's not the person Donlevy thinks he is), and cute blonde Gloria Stuart, who hops on the train to avoid being served a subpoena. Naturally, Donlevy and Stuart hit it off, and just as naturally, neither one is quite whom they appear to be. When Jewell shows up at the Albuquerque stop, she thinks Fowley is sweet on Stuart and gets jealous. In Topeka, Fowley discovers that his compartment has been bugged by the law and he escapes, taking Stuart as a hostage and hiding out at a sanitarium run by a friend (Julius Tannen). Fowley has one last plan to claim the winning ticket, which climaxes in Donlevy’s return and some gunplay before a happy ending for Donlevy and Stuart. The film moves briskly and benefits from good performances, especially from Stuart and Fowley, and from some nice plot twists, a couple of which I didn't see coming. You'll recognize Charles Lane, Jonathan Hale, and Stepin Fetchit, who does his slacker/porter thing to a tee; it seems offensive at first, but here I could see the subversion that Fetchit's defenders have said is often a part of his performance. The film is based on a novel by W. R. Burnett, the author of Scarface and High Sierra, and it is occasionally referred to as 36 HOURS TO LIVE, though that title doesn’t seem as appropriate. This must have been out of circulation for a while, as it's difficult to find any critical comment on it, and the print that Fox Movie Channel aired is pristine. [FMC]
A peppy little B-movie of the "crime, reporters, and romance" type, set on a train (and just a bit reminiscent of BY WHOSE HAND?) and filled with familiar character actors. Douglas Fowley is a bank robber, hiding out with his wife (Isabel Jewell) in a quiet suburb. Just as playing the friendly neighbor is getting to him, he discovers that he has a winning sweepstakes ticket and, incognito with his buddy Warren Hymer, hops a train to Kansas City to claim it. Also on the train: reporter Brian Donlevy, who is trying to get an interview with a scientist (who keeps insisting that he's not the person Donlevy thinks he is), and cute blonde Gloria Stuart, who hops on the train to avoid being served a subpoena. Naturally, Donlevy and Stuart hit it off, and just as naturally, neither one is quite whom they appear to be. When Jewell shows up at the Albuquerque stop, she thinks Fowley is sweet on Stuart and gets jealous. In Topeka, Fowley discovers that his compartment has been bugged by the law and he escapes, taking Stuart as a hostage and hiding out at a sanitarium run by a friend (Julius Tannen). Fowley has one last plan to claim the winning ticket, which climaxes in Donlevy’s return and some gunplay before a happy ending for Donlevy and Stuart. The film moves briskly and benefits from good performances, especially from Stuart and Fowley, and from some nice plot twists, a couple of which I didn't see coming. You'll recognize Charles Lane, Jonathan Hale, and Stepin Fetchit, who does his slacker/porter thing to a tee; it seems offensive at first, but here I could see the subversion that Fetchit's defenders have said is often a part of his performance. The film is based on a novel by W. R. Burnett, the author of Scarface and High Sierra, and it is occasionally referred to as 36 HOURS TO LIVE, though that title doesn’t seem as appropriate. This must have been out of circulation for a while, as it's difficult to find any critical comment on it, and the print that Fox Movie Channel aired is pristine. [FMC]
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
CAVALCADE (1933)
THIS HAPPY BREED (1944)
These two movies are both based on plays by Noel Coward, both celebrate the British and their way of life, and both are structured in a very theatrical fashion, each as a parade of episodes spanning a number of years in the life of a family. CAVALCADE won the Best Picture Oscar, but has largely been forgotten, even dismissed by some critics as the worst movie to win the top prize. It is hardly that--BROADWAY MELODY is much harder to sit through, and for my money there are several later films that are less entertaining, such as LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA and CHARIOTS OF FIRE. It is, though, very much a product of its time. A concise plot summary is provided by a title card at the beginning: "This is the story of a home and a family--history as seen through the eyes of a wife and mother." An upper-class wife and mother (Diana Wynward), as it turns out, whom we first see toasting in the new century on New Year's Eve, 1899. She is nervous about her husband (Clive Brook) heading off to fight in the Boer War. Downstairs, the maid (Una O'Connor) is also upset about her husband, the butler (Herbert Mundin) doing the same thing. This theme of war worries remains a primary narrative thread, not a consistent pro or con view, but more an acknowledgment that war is a scourge of civilization that will never go away. The rest of the film consists of a series of short scenes that follow the fortunes of Wynward's family (and, when they overlap, the fortunes of O'Connor's as well) over the next 30 years. Both men return from war; Brook is knighted and Mundin buys a pub, taking O'Connor with him. The two women stay in touch for a while, as do the kids of the two families. By 1908, Mundin has let his regular customers get away with not paying, and turns to drink himself, coming to a tragic end. In 1912, Wynward's oldest son (John Warburton) goes off on his honeymoon which we discover at the end of the scene is on the Titanic. In 1914, her other son (Frank Lawton) goes off to WWI, but not before he falls in love with chorus girl Ursula Jeans who is O'Connor’s daughter. And so on, until the last scene, with an aged Wynward and Brook toasting in the year 1933. The stagy dialogue scenes are OK, though to today's viewers, they seem the epitome of the brittle British stiff-upper-lip stage melodramatics that have been so often parodied over the years. These sequences are interrupted by some fairly exciting montages, some created by renowned production designer William Cameron Menzies, mostly of the war and the Lost Generation era afterward. Wynward is a British Norma Shearer, or at least a version of Shearer's respectable wife persona of 1939's THE WOMEN; she's good, but sometimes a bit over-the-top in her suffering. The cast includes Bonita Granville (later to play Nancy Drew) and Margaret Lindsay. Almost every sequence has a musical number of one sort or another in the foreground or background, with the highlight coming late in the film when Jeans sings "20th Century Blues." [VHS]
Eleven years later, in the middle of WWII, David Lean directed an adaptation of Coward's THIS HAPPY BREED, basically a between-the-wars CAVALCADE which follows a middle-class family from the time they move into a suburban house in 1919 until they move out in 1939. The same structure is used, with a focus on Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons (Celia Johnson and Robert Newton) and their family and friends. A Christmas scene in 1925 sets up the primary relationships which are then tracked in a series of episodes that barrel through the 20's and 30's: one daughter (Kay Walsh) is in love with a neighboring sailor (John Mills) but also vaguely unhappy with her stifling middle-class life, and she runs away from home and takes up with a married man; another daughter (Eileen Erskine) falls for a political radical (Guy Verney) who softens into complacency over the years; the son (John Blythe), who falls under the influence of Verney early on, becomes a labor agitator and is in constant strife with his father until he too embraces middle-class values and gets married. We also get to know Mills' father (Stanley Holloway) who is an old friend and drinking buddy of Newton's, and a cranky spinster aunt who is constantly clashing with Johnson's cranky mother until she gets a vague form of religion. Despite having been made in the thick of WWII, war is not a theme here, though the march of time is marked by references to historical events (the death of King George) and pop culture (the Charleston, the rise of the talkies), and it winds up being lighter in tone than CAVALCADE, though the families still have occasional domestic tragedies. It's in color, and the acting is much less stagy than in the earlier film, but I still think CAVALCADE is a more entertaining film. The later breed may have been a bit happier, but the earlier breed was apparently more interesting. [TCM]
THIS HAPPY BREED (1944)
These two movies are both based on plays by Noel Coward, both celebrate the British and their way of life, and both are structured in a very theatrical fashion, each as a parade of episodes spanning a number of years in the life of a family. CAVALCADE won the Best Picture Oscar, but has largely been forgotten, even dismissed by some critics as the worst movie to win the top prize. It is hardly that--BROADWAY MELODY is much harder to sit through, and for my money there are several later films that are less entertaining, such as LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA and CHARIOTS OF FIRE. It is, though, very much a product of its time. A concise plot summary is provided by a title card at the beginning: "This is the story of a home and a family--history as seen through the eyes of a wife and mother." An upper-class wife and mother (Diana Wynward), as it turns out, whom we first see toasting in the new century on New Year's Eve, 1899. She is nervous about her husband (Clive Brook) heading off to fight in the Boer War. Downstairs, the maid (Una O'Connor) is also upset about her husband, the butler (Herbert Mundin) doing the same thing. This theme of war worries remains a primary narrative thread, not a consistent pro or con view, but more an acknowledgment that war is a scourge of civilization that will never go away. The rest of the film consists of a series of short scenes that follow the fortunes of Wynward's family (and, when they overlap, the fortunes of O'Connor's as well) over the next 30 years. Both men return from war; Brook is knighted and Mundin buys a pub, taking O'Connor with him. The two women stay in touch for a while, as do the kids of the two families. By 1908, Mundin has let his regular customers get away with not paying, and turns to drink himself, coming to a tragic end. In 1912, Wynward's oldest son (John Warburton) goes off on his honeymoon which we discover at the end of the scene is on the Titanic. In 1914, her other son (Frank Lawton) goes off to WWI, but not before he falls in love with chorus girl Ursula Jeans who is O'Connor’s daughter. And so on, until the last scene, with an aged Wynward and Brook toasting in the year 1933. The stagy dialogue scenes are OK, though to today's viewers, they seem the epitome of the brittle British stiff-upper-lip stage melodramatics that have been so often parodied over the years. These sequences are interrupted by some fairly exciting montages, some created by renowned production designer William Cameron Menzies, mostly of the war and the Lost Generation era afterward. Wynward is a British Norma Shearer, or at least a version of Shearer's respectable wife persona of 1939's THE WOMEN; she's good, but sometimes a bit over-the-top in her suffering. The cast includes Bonita Granville (later to play Nancy Drew) and Margaret Lindsay. Almost every sequence has a musical number of one sort or another in the foreground or background, with the highlight coming late in the film when Jeans sings "20th Century Blues." [VHS]
Eleven years later, in the middle of WWII, David Lean directed an adaptation of Coward's THIS HAPPY BREED, basically a between-the-wars CAVALCADE which follows a middle-class family from the time they move into a suburban house in 1919 until they move out in 1939. The same structure is used, with a focus on Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons (Celia Johnson and Robert Newton) and their family and friends. A Christmas scene in 1925 sets up the primary relationships which are then tracked in a series of episodes that barrel through the 20's and 30's: one daughter (Kay Walsh) is in love with a neighboring sailor (John Mills) but also vaguely unhappy with her stifling middle-class life, and she runs away from home and takes up with a married man; another daughter (Eileen Erskine) falls for a political radical (Guy Verney) who softens into complacency over the years; the son (John Blythe), who falls under the influence of Verney early on, becomes a labor agitator and is in constant strife with his father until he too embraces middle-class values and gets married. We also get to know Mills' father (Stanley Holloway) who is an old friend and drinking buddy of Newton's, and a cranky spinster aunt who is constantly clashing with Johnson's cranky mother until she gets a vague form of religion. Despite having been made in the thick of WWII, war is not a theme here, though the march of time is marked by references to historical events (the death of King George) and pop culture (the Charleston, the rise of the talkies), and it winds up being lighter in tone than CAVALCADE, though the families still have occasional domestic tragedies. It's in color, and the acting is much less stagy than in the earlier film, but I still think CAVALCADE is a more entertaining film. The later breed may have been a bit happier, but the earlier breed was apparently more interesting. [TCM]
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