MEET ME TONIGHT (1952)
aka TONIGHT AT 8:30

An adaptation of three short plays by Noel Coward (at right), each presented with the opening of red stage curtains, even though they are not performed on a stage--though they might as well be, as all three are rather stagy in presentation and acting. The first, "Red Peppers," is about a second-rate, husband-and-wife music hall duo, a spat they have one evening between shows, and the surprising outcome onstage when a drunken conductor, upset with their insults, tries to sabotage their act. This sets the tone for the rest of the film: witty dialogue, generally well handled, but given shrill, sometimes obnoxiously so, delivery. Ted Ray and Kay Walsh are OK as the husband and wife; I give them points for being bad (deliberately, I assume) while performing their musty old stage act. It's a fine line to walk, being good actors while trying to pull off a bad act, and it's something that Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor didn't even try to do in the flashback scenes early in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (they're way too good for the audience to think that they were "bad").

The second play, "Fumed Oak," is about a horrible little suburban family in which the wife, daughter, and wife's mother spend all their time whining and fussing until one evening, the husband (Stanley Holloway) unleashes his pent-up anger and frustration against them. It's the funniest one of the three, due to Holloway's fine low-simmer performance, though it feels a little uncomfortable these days as much of the bile seems to be aimed at the women just for being women. The last, "Ways and Means," concerns a broke couple who are about to be kicked out of a French villa at which they've been staying, and the plan they hastily concoct with their wealthy hostess's chauffeur, whom they discover is also a burglar. I enjoyed the acting in this one the most: the chemistry between the husband and wife (Nigel Patrick and Valerie Hobson), the low-key playing of Jack Warner as the burglar, and the silly frippery of Jesse Royce Landis as the hostess, though as the longest of the three, it feels a little dragged out with a couple of characters who seem to exist just to pad out the running time. The print shown on TCM was in Technicolor but a bit washed out and very heavy on the reds. All in all, worth seeing if only as a novelty. [TCM]

A NOTORIOUS AFFAIR (1930)

Rather drab pre-Code romantic melodrama which is spiced up by a fabulous supporting performance from Kay Francis. The first scene of the film focuses on Francis, playing a renowned horsewoman who is also constantly on the prowl for men, especially working class men--we first see her making out with a stableboy who briefly becomes her butler before getting sent back to the stables. At a high society party being held to celebrate the engagement of Billie Dove to the titled Philip Strange, Dove arrives with rather high-strung, struggling violinist Basil Rathbone in tow and announces that the two have just been married. Her friends disapprove (except for Francis) and her father is pissed: "When you were a child," he says, "it was stray cats you brought home." "But," she replies, "I'm older now." The two make a go of things for a while until Francis takes a hand in boosting Rathbone's career; soon, he's a famous musician and in the middle of an affair with Francis, but he’s also in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Dove is pursued by an old friend (Kenneth Thomson), a doctor who is tending to Rathbone. Francis soon grows tired of Rathbone and starts tossing flowers at the chauffeur, which aggravates Rathbone's condition so much that he has a crippling attack on stage one night, and finds his playing arm is paralyzed.

The question we’re supposed to ask is, which woman will wind up helping the poor violinist recover? But what I wanted to know was, who will be the next target of Francis' raw sexual insatiability? Sadly, it's only the first question that gets answered, and in a predictable way. Dove was a star of silent films, but retired from the screen at the age of 29 just a couple of years after this film. She's OK here, but Francis is so much more interesting (both the actress and her character) that she wipes Dove off the screen. Rathbone is meant to be passive and "artistic," but he's so unappealing that I couldn't see what either woman saw in him, and his Italianish accent is ludicrous, reminding me of Erik Rhodes' deliberately comic accent in THE GAY DIVORCEE. There is a nice Christmas scene with snow and carolers. This is a must for Kay Francis fans, but others may not get as much enjoyment out of it. [TCM]

LA RONDE (1950)

This is a frothy, charming, spicy little confection about love and sex with virtually no overarching narrative and, as far as I can tell, no real lesson or moral to impart, aside from the observation that love is a game of deception, pleasure and pain. The film, set in Vienna, begins with our narrator (Anton Walbrook, at right) strolling out of the fog and through the streets, telling us he is the personification of our desire to know everything; he sees life "in the round." As he walks he sings a song about everyone taking their turn on love’s carousel, and winds up at an actual carousel where he begins to narrate the short story cycle that makes up the rest of the film.

A young prostitute picks up Franz, a soldier and gives him a free ride, so to speak, down by the river. The next night, Franz makes out with Marie, a housemaid, on a park bench and almost loses his sword (swords are everywhere here in turn-of-the-century Vienna and, yes, they are metaphors). Marie has a tryst with Alfred, a son of the family she works for, and Alfred is soon renting an apartment so he can meet Emma, a married woman. We see Emma and her husband Charles have a bedroom discussion about extramarital affairs, and soon Charles takes his mistress Anna to a fancy restaurant where they have a private room for dinner and sex—in that order. He sets her up in an apartment (I think the same one where Alfred has his rendezvous) which she uses to meet with Robert, a writer, who is seeing an actress starring in one of his plays, who is sleeping with a count (who is scandalized at her suggestion that they have sex in the morning, though not scandalized enough not to go through with it), who goes out and gets drunk and spends the night with, surprise, the prostitute from the first episode.

The film espouses a fairly cynical view of love, and given the emphasis on extramarital affairs, I was expecting some unhappiness or even tragedy eventually, but aside from some hurt feelings, things remain light throughout. Based on a play, the movie highlights its artifice constantly, usually through the character of Walbrook: in his first stroll (shot in one long take), we see him walk past studio lights on the street set; later, he uses a clapboard as a transition between stories; when a character has a spell of impotency, he brings the carousel to a grinding halt; as a particularly randy pair of lovers begin to go at it, Walbrook actually censors the film, cutting and splicing in front of us. Despite the artifice (or maybe because of it), the film is a feast for the eyes and is shot beautifully, with lots of long takes filled with fluid movement through elaborately appointed sets. For some reason, the actors in the first half make the strongest impression, including a young Simone Signoret as the prostitute, Daniel Gelin (pictured) as Alfred, Simon Simon (of CAT PEOPLE) as the maid, and Danielle Darrieux as Emma. The song that Walbrook sings is quite lovely and memorable. A treat all around, and available from Criterion in a gorgeous restored print. [TCM]

BREWSTER'S MILLIONS (1945)

Dennis O'Keefe comes home from the war to find out that a rich uncle has left him a lot of money, with an odd stipulation: he gets a million dollars right away but has to spend it all in two months’ time and have no assets left. If he does that, he gets another seven million. The whole point is supposedly to make O'Keefe understand the value of money by making him sick of spending it. He can only give 5% to charity. And, oh yeah, he can't tell anyone what’s going on. And, oh yeah, he can't get married during that time. Naturally, his fiancée (Helen Walker) isn’t happy because they were supposed to get married right away. And his family and friends are worried when O'Keefe sets up a company and starts to spend money wastefully. Unfortunately, his crazy business decisions start making him more money so he has to start spending even more wastefully.

This old chestnut seems to have a clever plot device, but it's one of those you can’t think too much about because the loopholes become too obvious: Why can't he tell anyone? Why can't he get married? Hell, why doesn't he just admit failure, especially when the business starts making money, and keep the million? Happily, the film plays out at a breakneck speed and O'Keefe makes a very likable hero. The supporting cast of this independent B-movie is fairly lackluster, except for Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson as O'Keefe’s valet. There's Gail Patrick as a socialite who makes Walker jealous, June Havoc as a chorus girl, and Mischa Auer as a Broadway producer in whose show O'Keefe puts money; other familiar faces include John Litel, Neil Hamilton, and Joe Sawyer. This was remade in the 80's with Richard Pryor and John Candy, but I don't think I could sit through another go-round of this silly plot. [TCM]

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII (1931)

I suspect this is a film more known of than seen these days; it was the first British movie to be a substantial hit in America, and it won Charles Laughton an Oscar, but it plays out in a jerky, tableaux-like style and it's a fairly low-budget affair compared to the kind of "pomp and circumstance" production values we're used to for historical films about royalty. But Laughton's wonderful performance almost single-handedly makes it worth seeing. The film mostly stays true to its title which allows it to skimp on scenes of big crowds and affairs of state; most of the action takes place offstage, as it were, at the palace. The film might be better called "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" (like the pompous but fondly-remembered 70's instrumental album by Rick Wakeman) as the choppy narrative focuses on the relationships between Henry and his wives. The first wife is left out altogether (a title card says she was "too respectable" to be of interest), and the action starts on the day that his second wife, Anne Boleyn, is to be executed for adultery, though the fact that she did not bear Henry a male heir was a strike against her, too. We're caught up to speed by overhearing court gossip, and introduced to Katharine Howard (Binnie Barnes), a scheming lady-in-waiting who aspires to work her way to be Queen. Merle Oberon, in one of her first credited roles as Anne, gets to look sad and lovely for a minute or two, and then is gone. As soon as the execution bells are rung, Henry marries Jane Seymour (Wendy Barrie) who does have a son, but dies in childbirth. The fourth wife, the German Anne of Cleaves (Elsa Lanchester) is fluttery but smart, and though Henry takes a liking to her, she refuses to sleep with him, apparently because she's having an affair with the man Henry sent to bring her to England (John Loder); they wind up playing cards on their wedding night and their marriage is annulled, though they remain friendly.

Katharine Howard finally gets her wish, after carrying on an affair with Henry (a high comic point is a scene in which Henry tries to sneak away to her chambers while his royal guardsmen keep snapping to attention and shouting "King's Guard" when he passes by); she becomes wife #5 and he's happy for a time until he discovers she's having an affair with one of his men-at-arms (Robert Donat), and it's off with her head. In old age, he marries his children's maid (Everley Gregg) who becomes a nag trying to keep Henry healthy. Laughton seems a natural for the part: rotund yet spry, strutting around every inch a king yet carrying on like an overgrown child. A scene of Henry talking about refinement and manners as he eats like a pig, tosses bones on the floor, and belches is certainly a highlight of Laughton's early career. A modern audience would probably expect an epic and would be disappointed, but as a light character study, this remains worth seeing. [TCM]

THE GOOD EARTH (1937)

This is a classic movie I've avoided seeing for years for two reasons: 1) its reputation as a glossy piece of big-studio "yellowface" (a movie about Asians cast with mostly Caucasian actors); 2) it stars Paul Muni, an actor considered one of the greats whom I've never liked. Though the movie's not terrible, I should have followed my instincts. Muni is the farmer Wang who marries the passive house slave O-Lan (Luise Rainer). Much-needed rains arrive on their wedding night, which is seen as a good omen. O-Lan gives birth to their first child during a storm (a well-done sequence), and soon they have three children, five fields, and are considered prosperous until a terrible famine hits. Rather than sell their lands, they head to the city where they live by begging until, during the turmoil of a revolution, O-Lan winds up with a bag of jewels. The family return home rich, Wang takes a second wife (his uncle says, "Why not? You have two oxen!"), who becomes a bad influence, even having an affair with Wang's second son. The climax occurs during a huge locust attack, which Wang manages to defeat with the help of his college-educated eldest son (Keye Luke). Production-wise, the film is top-notch, but I find Muni and Rainer to be weak, with Muni overplaying and Rainer underplaying, though her character is the backbone of the story. Charley Grapewin channels Walter Brennan as Wang's father, and Walter Connelley is a shade too much to take as an obnoxious uncle. Luke, one of the few Asian actors in a major role, is fine, as is Tilly Losch as the naughty second wife. [TCM]

DE SADE (1969)

Crazy weird bad movie which gets off to an interesting beginning with some postmodern narrative trickery, but soon becomes boring as hell. Kier Dullea is the Marquis De Sade, whom we first meet as a decrepit old man returning to his uncle’s seemingly abandoned mansion. However, once we're inside, his uncle (John Huston) and a troupe of actors, all of whom may or may not be figments of Sade's imagination, use a large ballroom to stage a number of scenes enacting incidents from Sade's past, which then become flashback memories. The very young Sade witnesses Huston fooling around with a servant girl in a stable and is whipped; his uncle tells him that an individual’s deeds don't matter as long as a face of virtue is shown to the world. Later Sade is forced into a marriage contract with the plain and frigid Renee (Anna Massey), but is actually in love with her sister Anne (Senta Berger). These two things seem to be the seeds of the violent sexual behaviors that obsess Sade for the rest of his life and get him into trouble with his powerful relatives and the law. Eventually, he does have an interlude with Anna (who, if I read it right, is also bedded by Huston at least once), but they are parted when she contracts the plague and dies. We last see Sade as a dying man attended by nuns, trying to discover a "special moment of reality."

The convoluted and theatrical narrative structure is probably easier to parse now than it was for mainstream audiences in 1969, though I think some last-minute cutting (not to mention occasional random orgy scenes in slow-motion with purple tinting) muddied the already murky waters, especially toward the end of the film. I figure Huston is a vision of death, like Jessica Lange was for Roy Scheider in ALL THAT JAZZ, so virtually the entire movie plays out as Sade lies on his deathbed. The controversial nature of Sade's life and philosophy is completely neutered here, with the most transgressive act pictured being some mild whipping of women's bare butts. Anyone with no previous knowledge of Sade would wonder why the hell he was considered such a threat to society that he had to be locked up in prisons and asylums for much of his life. Dullea is out-and-out terrible in the lead role--the handsome blandness and mild demeanor which made him perfect as astronaut Dave in 2001 make him absolutely wrong to play a raving sadist. His old age make-up, however, is very good. Massey is fine in a small role, and Huston's grandstanding is fun in the beginning but begins to wear after a while. Screenwriter Richard Matheson insists his material was badly handled, and indeed as I've noted, the story structure is the most interesting thing about the movie. MGM Home Entertainment has marketed this DVD as a cult film, but its following must consist solely of people who haven't actually seen it yet. [DVD]

NUMBER SEVENTEEN (1932)

This rather mild comic thriller is available in several DVD editions because it's in the public domain and is an early Alfred Hitchcock sound film, but I suspect that only die-hard classic-movie fans will really have any interest in it. In a long, tense, and spooky opening sequence, a man (John Stuart) chasing his hat down a London street on a windy night discovers a light in an empty "for sale" house—the Number Seventeen address of the title—and decides to investigate; he finds a dead body on the second floor and a hobo (Leon M. Lion) skittering around the place claiming he had nothing to do with it. Then a young woman (Anne Casson) comes crashing through a skylight; she says she lives next door and was looking for her father, who disappeared from an upstairs locked room. A telegram had just been delivered for him about something that was going to happen that night at #17. Suddenly, there are two men and a deaf woman at the door claiming they were to meet the landlord to look over the house. They all head upstairs and the dead body is gone. Things become clear soon enough: the three visitors are jewel thieves who are to meet a man with a stolen necklace at the house, then get out of the country via an underground train which stops just under the house. It turns out, of course, that no one is quite what he or she seems, and events lead to a bus/train chase involving all the characters.

This feels the most like Hitchcock in the occasionally interesting use of camera movement and the rather awkward use of special effects; the miniature models used in the final chase sequence are painfully obvious, and yet somehow they don't really detract from the fun. Most of the fisticuffs scenes are in sped-up motion and the editing is awfully choppy (above and beyond any damage that's due to the age of the print). The film is based on a play and feels like it, with the first two-thirds all set inside the house, and the acting is generally adequate. I didn't mind Lion's constant comic relief, but he won't be to all tastes. No one else really shines except Anne Grey who manages to make a good impression as the deaf woman. My favorite line: when they find a pair of handcuffs near the dead body, Lion claims not to know what they are; Stuart asks him, "Ever seen handcuffs?" to which Lion replies, "No sir, I avoid 'em—I was brought up Baptist." [TCM]

UNION DEPOT (1931)

A fast-on-its-feet pre-Code melodrama, with the aura of an underclass version of GRAND HOTEL; here, the place where nothing and everything happens is the big city train depot of the title, introduced by a stylish crane shot down a city street and into the depot. We see a bustling cross-section of humanity, among them immigrants, sailors, bums, prostitutes, divorcees, and business travelers, and we eventually settle on one specific man, a hobo (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). When drunken traveler Frank McHugh leaves some luggage in the men’s room, Fairbanks lucks out, puts on the clean clothes, and discovers a fair chunk of money in the pockets. He treats his buddy (Guy Kibbee) to a nice dinner, then runs into Joan Blondell, who gives off a hooker vibe, so he takes her to a hotel room, plies her with food and drink, then discovers, to his momentary anger, that she’s a not a bad girl, but a chorus girl recovering from a broken ankle who needs cash for a ticket to Salt Lake City to rejoin her troupe. He agrees to help her, but a couple of complications arise. For one, she’s running away from a very creepy doctor who has been paying her to read porn out loud to him. For another, Fairbanks ends up in possession of a violin case full of money which turns out to belong to a counterfeiter (Alan Hale) whom the police are tracking. The police get involved and Fairbanks and Kibbee have to work at getting the mess straightened out. There’s an exciting trainyard chase and a relatively happy ending, even though it means that Fairbanks winds up in Kibbee’s company rather than Blondell’s. The film moves along quickly and has quirky characters and good acting. The intersecting plotlines give the illusion of a “Grand Hotel” narrative, but really they all come down to Fairbanks and Blondell. Fairbanks looks like Ralph Finnes and never quite seems gritty enough to be a hobo, despite the facial smudges the makeup department has given him. Blondell gets to stray a bit from her usual hard-bitten persona here and does a nice job. David Landau, who usually plays a thug, is a cop, albeit a vaguely thuggish one. Blink and you’ll miss Margaret Dumont, Charles Lane, and George Chandler. Scruffy fun. [TCM]

HEROES FOR SALE (1933)

During WWI, officer Gordon Westcott freaks out as he's leading his men on a near-suicidal mission. Soldier Richard Barthelmess takes charge and snags an important prisoner, but is shot on the battlefield and assumed dead; Westcott takes the prisoner back to much acclaim and is too befuddled to tell the truth about what happened. However, Barthelmess, captured by the Germans, survives, though he becomes a morphine addict due to pain from his injuries. Back in the States, the two men see each other and, despite the hero's welcome that Westcott got, Barthelmess claims no hard feelings. The rest of the movie covers Barthelmess' post-war travails: Westcott gets him a job at his family's bank, but because of his addiction, he messes up at work and winds up committed to the State Narcotic Farm. He's released six months later, his mom dies, and he spends time at a "poor man's club" where he falls in with kind-hearted owner Aline MacMahon and eccentric communist Robert Barrat, and begins romancing Loretta Young. When he gets a job as a laundry deliveryman, his ambitious ways help him move up in the company, and soon he teams up with Barrat to market a new washing machine which works wonders and makes him and Barrat (who is now a fully committed capitalist) rich but leads to workers losing their jobs. There is labor-related mob violence, a death, prison time, and near the end, we see Barthelmess riding the rails and meeting up with Westcott, whose bank has closed down.

This movie, as most critics point out, seems like it covers practically every American social issue from WWI through the Depression. Though Barrat, the only card-carrying Communist in the movie, is made to seem ridiculous, the film does embrace a Socialist ethos. After the opening war scenes, it rarely feels "real," with Barthelmess coming off as a kind of Everyman figure caught up in a Depression-era fable. Taking that into account, this is still a solidly entertaining pre-Code film with interesting camerawork (lots of fluid panning shots) under the direction of William Wellman, and good performances by Young, MacMahon, Westcott, and Barrat (though I did tire of his constant tongue-clucking sound). Barthelmess is a bit wooden as usual but OK, and the supporting cast includes Grant Mitchell, Charley Grapewin, and Ward Bond. [TCM]

THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS (1950)

This is the third film about St. Francis that I have seen in the past few years, after FRANCIS OF ASSISI and BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON; it's the least dramatic (which is not necessarily a bad thing); it reminded me of Pasolini's GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW in its earthy, low-key approach, using mostly non-professional actors--in this case actual monks. The film is not a biographical narrative but an episodic string of vignettes involving Francis and his small band of friars. In Francis' life, the film begins where BROTHER SUN ends, with the friars returning home from Rome with the Pope's blessing, and ends with Francis (Brother Nazario Gerardi) deciding that the group needs to split up with each friar spreading the word of God on his own. Among the vignettes: the friars out in the soaking rain, denied entrance to their own shack by a squatter, yet still filled with the joy of life; Brother Ginepro frequently arriving back half-naked because he's given his tunic to the poor; the friars getting quite excited by a visit from Sister Clare; a poignant meeting between Francis and a leper; Francis asking a flock of birds to stop chirping while he prays. The longest episode has Ginepro, the simplest of the bunch, mistaken for an assassin by the forces of the warlord Nicolaio (Aldo Fabrizi) who has occupied a local village. Nicolaio orders him killed, but Ginepro's passivity and humility baffle him, and he winds up not only letting the friar go, but taking his men and leaving the village. The scene is violent--Ginepro gets roundly roughed up by the warriors--but also humorous, with Nicolaio stuck in a huge suit of armor that he can't see out of. The vignettes are separated by title cards accompanied by a churchy organ chord. Directed by Roberto Rossellini, a few years after his acclaimed neo-realist masterpiece OPEN CITY; the style of this is realistically gritty in some aspects (the mud, the dirt, the unadorned countryside, the primitive housing), but it really feels more like myth or magical realism, even though the only real "magic" is when the birds stop singing. Federico Fellini co-wrote the screenplay. [Ovation]

SHACK OUT ON 101 (1955)

I DVR'd this film I'd never heard of and almost erased it without watching it, but I'm glad I didn't because it turned out to be a great little character-driven anti-Commie B-film (not quite a noir, but close). The entire film takes place at a grungy little seaside diner owned by Keenan Wynn. The help staff consists of pretty, young waitress Terry Moore and craggy, rough-and-tumble cook Lee Marvin (the character's nickname is Slob). Marvin takes a lot of crap for being stupid, but we soon discover he's smarter than he looks: he's collecting atomic secrets from the nearby research university and selling them to an unseen big boss. There are a handful of frequent visitors to the diner: Wynn's war buddy Whit Bissell, who has a shell-shock problem; a fisherman who is a member of Marvin's ring; two easy-going poultry salesmen who aren't quite what they seem; and a physics professor from the university (Frank Lovejoy) who has the hots for Moore (and who also isn't quite what he seems). I don't want to ruin the twists and turns in the enjoyable plot except to say that there are guns and fisticuffs and snappy dialogue, and a satisfying ending.

The film feels very much like a play with everything happening on one set, the diner, with a handful of scenes outside on and near the beach, and though the direction is nothing special, the writing and performances are top-notch. The young Marvin (pictured above) is the best of the batch; occasionally he seems in danger of going comically over the top, but he never quite does; his character can switch on a dime between brooding violence and comic self-deprecation. It's a more interesting and nuanced performance than most of his later roles. Wynn is in love with Terry (though he knows he doesn't have a chance), but his homosocial bonds with both Marvin (with whom he engages in some amusing competitive shirtless weight-lifting) and Bissell are unusually strong. Lovejoy gets a good love scene with Moore--he quizzes her on her upcoming civil servant exam between kisses--though for most of the movie, he doesn't get a chance to do much except keep us wondering which side he's on. A surprisingly good unheralded B-flick. [TCM]

OUR BETTERS (1933)

An early George Cukor film, based on a Somerset Maugham comedy of manners; it aims for Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde territory and misses, but is fitfully amusing. The plot is best laid out as a list of characters. Constance Bennett is Pearl, a rich American hardware store heiress who lives in England and, as the film opens, has just married Lord George; she discovers that his family is essentially broke and he intends to continue dallying with his mistress (so much so that we rarely see him again). Pearl becomes a social butterfly who attracts the paparazzi and despite her sham marriage, she enjoys being the novelty American amongst the titled folks. She soon has a rich lover, Arthur (Minor Watson), who keeps calling her "Girlie" despite her stated dislike for the nickname. Her visiting sister Bessie has a perfectly nice American boyfriend named Fleming, but she toys with accepting a marriage proposal from Lord Harry. The middle-aged Duchess Minnie (Violet Kemble Cooper) is Pearl's best buddy (in rather the same sense that the women in THE WOMEN are best buddies) and is carrying on with Pepe, a handsome gigolo (Gilbert Roland) who we know cheats on her. The only character for whom frivolous affairs does not seem to be the norm is Princess Flora. One weekend during a house party at Pearl's at which all the characters are present, things get tangled up rather nastily when it is discovered that Pearl and Pepe have been carrying on right under Minnie's nose. Minnie makes a big stink, which triggers other tensions that threaten to ruin the weekend--Pearl doesn't care so much about the revelation of her affairs as that Minnie's leaving her house party early will stain her sterling reputation as a hostess. A happy ending, of sorts, is had when Ernest (Tyrell Davis), a highly sought after dance teacher, shows up in the last few minutes and teaches Minnie to tango, which seems to take her mind completely off of her other problems, never mind that Ernest is one of the most flamingly effeminate characters in Hollywood's early sound era.

Though this does play out as a comedy, there aren't a lot of laughs to be had, despite the presence of several one-liners which strive for the level of Wilde or Coward but fail. Two line deliveries stood out for me: When Minnie finds out that Pearl's father got his start selling bananas on the sidewalks of New York, she haughtily declares the banana to be "a most unpleasant vegetable." At the end, when Minnie and Pearl literally kiss and make up, Ernest shrieks, "What an exquisite spectacle! Two ladies of title, kissing one another!" I also liked Pepe's observation that "if one felt about things at night as one does the next morning, life would be an awful lot easier." The actors are generally good, though Bennett wore on me a bit with what grew to be a rather one-note performance. Charles Starrett is handsome as Fleming but he doesn't have much to do. Grant Mitchell, as an American who thinks mistakenly that he's doing a good job passing himself off as English, is a bit low energy, and the Yanks vs. Brits humor is fairly oblique. Cooper and Roland are both excellent, and though some modern viewers may be offended by Tyrell Davis' over-the-top flamboyance, complete with eye shadow and huge bee-stung lips, his brief scene does make for a memorable climax. A fun movie as long as you're not expecting one of Cukor's classics. [TCM]

PARIS UNDERGROUND (1945)

By the early 1940's, after hitting a career peak in TOPPER (1938), Constance Bennett was reduced to starring in B-movies. This one, the first film in which she had starred in three years, was also produced by her, and she graciously gives top billing to British music hall star Gracie Fields. The two work together quite well, and the story, which starts as a typical Hollywood version of what European resistance fighters were doing and morphs into a female bonding narrative, is OK. The main problem is that the film cannot overcome its obviously cheap production values. Bennett is a well-to-do Parisian who is totally unprepared for the invasion of the Germans; her husband (George Rigaud) thinks she's being too flippant and her friend (Fields) is in a panic to leave the city. Eventually, the two women get on the road and even find a backroads route to get around the teeming hordes of other escapees, but soon get turned back by advance German troops. While stopped at an inn (for tea!), they befriend an injured British soldier and wind up taking him back with them to Paris, and with Rigaud's help, they smuggle him out of occupied France. Bennett and Fields decide to continue their work with the Underground (there's a nice smuggling scene which involves a fake funeral held right under the Nazis' noses), but after a while, the Gestapo, angry that so many downed Allied fliers are escaping, plant a soldier in order to find the smugglers. The last part of the film works up some excitement as Fields is caught between a rock and a hard place and needs to find the resolve to kill in order to survive. There’s a well-done chase scene involving Bennett and Rigaud (who I kept thinking was going to be exposed as a Nazi), and a sentimental finale that works surprisingly well. Two familiar faces show up in supporting roles: Eily Malyon as Bennett's landlord and Kurt Kreuger as a Gestapo agent. Not a bad movie, but one in which the need for a better budget is palpable. The British title, MADAME PIMPERNEL, is quite misleading. [DVD]

SPACE MASTER X-7 (1958)

I haven’t really thought this through yet, but based on recent viewings, I’m thinking that the late 50’s was a bad time for science fiction cinema. The glory days of the trailblazing films of the mid-50’s, like GODZILLA, THEM, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, and the early Ray Harryhausen movies had been largely replaced by the sub-B likes of TEENAGE MONSTER, THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN, and THE COSMIC MAN. This one isn’t so much SF as a cheapie police movie with Dragnet-like narration. After rocketship Space Master X-7 returns from Mars, scientist Paul Frees is examining some of the specimens when his ex-wife (Lyn Thomas) arrives, making trouble over a child custody case. She leaves in a huff, then later hears on the radio that Frees was found dead that night. Our hero, Bill Williams, discovers that a Martian fungus which Frees had named “Bloodrust” killed him and is being carried by Thomas, who, assuming the police are looking for her in connection with Frees’ death, is on the run. That’s it: a Typhoid Mary melodrama dressed up as science-fiction. The most interesting aspect is seeing Paul Frees, famous for his cartoon voices (particularly Boris Badenov on Rocky & Bullwinkle). The potentially scary fungus looks like a wet, pulsating tarp. The domestic drama between Frees and Thomas works up some tension, but goes nowhere. Folks on IMDb who saw this in their childhood found it scary, but now its only value is as a novelty item. [FMC]

MOON PILOT (1962)

When a chimpanzee returns from moon orbit safe and sound, the Air Force decides to send up a human astronaut only days later (!) with no planning (!) and no training (!). During a celebratory dinner, the general (Brian Keith) asks for a volunteer (!) and no one steps forward (?!) until the chimp pokes Tom Tryon in the ass and his reaction is taken for volunteering. The chimp winds up going nutty and is confined to a hospital room, but the mission is still on. Tryon is allowed to take a quick trip home to see his mom and is sworn to secrecy, but a beatnik girl decked out in purple (Dany Savel, pictured with Tryon) hooks up with him on an airplane and seems to know all about his mission. Despite the fact that a federal security agent (Edmond O'Brien) has been assigned to follow Tryon, the girl keeps popping up out of nowhere. It turns out that she’s an alien who has a formula which can be painted on the space capsule that will keep dangerous radiation from making Tryon go crazy like the chimp did. A wild goose chase follows with O'Brien certain that Savel is a spy.

I watched this lukewarm Disney comedy because it was on TCM as part of their tribute to the 40th anniversary of the moon landing; despite its title and premise, however, only a couple minutes of the film actually occur in space, and the moon is only barely glimpsed. It’s notable for containing one of the few starring roles by Tryon, an actor who was being groomed as another Rock Hudson, but who retired at the end of the decade and became a successful writer of good horror novels (The Other, Harvest Home). The movie follows the formula of the vanilla family comedies of the era: romance but no sex or sex appeal, a lot of screaming by clueless characters (in this case, mostly from Keith, who actually does a nice job screaming, almost like he was doing an audition for the George C. Scott role in DR. STRANGELOVE), dumb authority figures, slapstick chases. Tryon is handsome in a weirdly angular way (and gets a quick shirtless scene), but bland, and Savel is totally wooden and not particularly attractive. From today's standpoint, the way the moon orbit mission is put together (suddenly, with volunteers) is ludicrously unbelievable, and most likely was even back then. There is some mild fun made of government (a buffonish Congressman is chided for not reading his copy of "Simple Science for Senators"), and the best scene involves a police line-up of beatnik girls spouting poetry, banging on bongos, and generally acting like they're high. Disney juvenile Tommy Kirk is billed as a "guest star," but only has two small, totally forgettable scenes. Nancy Kulp (Miss Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies) has an equally small part. [TCM]

12 TO THE MOON (1960)

The International Space Order sends twelve people on a moon landing mission on a rocketship called the Lunar Eagle. The passengers are a multicultural lot, including a Frenchman, a Turk, a Russian, and two women, one from Japan and one from Sweden. And a lazy little cocker spaniel, cats, monkeys, and birds. Of course, the leader is an all-American, blond, GI-Joe type (Ken Clark). Mostly, they get along, though there is some predictable tension between the older German and the young Polish-born Israeli. While exploring the surface of the moon, the British guy is caught in quicksand and dies; the Turkish guy and the Swedish woman (who as far as I could tell, shot each other exactly one ambiguous glance before takeoff) head off to a moon cave for some canoodling and wind up more or less kidnapped by aliens--whom we never see. The aliens do, however, manage to communicate with the spaceship through some strange Chinese-looking pictographs which, of course, the Japanese woman can translate (!). When our survivors head back to Earth, they find that North America is being flash-frozen by the aliens, and the German and Israeli sacrifice themselves to fly an atomic bomb down a volcano to reverse the effects of the big freeze.

This forgotten flick was part of TCM's moon movie marathon in July. The problem with these B-movies from the 50's and 60's about space exploration is that, now that we know how space missions really work, these fanciful flicks are too easy to make fun of, and the low budgets don’t help. This one is about as laughable as any, but it feels a notch above some of the others, if not in production than in script and intent. For its time, the sheer sweep of nationalities seems almost utopian, and for the most part offensive stereotypes are avoided. The sets and effects are terrible, of course, but they provide the most fun for the viewer. The space helmets have "invisible" face shields (clear plastic must have been too much for the budget), the moon sets are shoddy, and when they first land on the moon, we can clearly see a stagehand creeping about in the darkness--I tried to give the director the benefit of the doubt and assumed briefly that the figure was an alien, but no, it’s just a glaring mistake. Clark is handsome and hunky and does an acceptable job as the central figure, though somewhat surprisingly he doesn't really have much to do except look like he knows what’s going on. There’s a brief scene of Clark heading to his ultrasound shower on the ship, dressed only in a towel, and his chest practically made the whole movie worth watching (for me). The lovely Norwegian starlet Anna-Lisa is, well, lovely as the Swedish astronaut—I don’t remember her having a single line of dialogue. Silent film star Francis X. Bushman has a small role as the elderly spokesman for the space agency. The navigator (Cory Devlin) bears a remarkable resemblance to current-day astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has become this generation's Carl Sagan. Also in the cast: Robert Montgomery Jr. (Elizabeth Montgomery's brother) and Tom Conway (George Sanders' brother). The write-ups on IMDb for this movie are overwhelmingly negative, but B-movie buffs will enjoy it. [TCM]

INSIDE DAISY CLOVER (1965)

In 1936, a 16-year-old tomboyish (and mentally unbalanced) urchin named Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood), tired of a drab life on the Angel Beach boardwalk with her aging, senile mother, sends out a homemade audition film to film studios, hoping to break into the movies. Studio boss Ray Swan (Christopher Plummer) signs her up and gets the star-making machinery going, pushing her as a kind of teenage Shirley Temple. Her first movie is a hit, but handsome movie star Wade Lewis (Robert Redford) sweeps her off her feet, marries her, then leaves her on their wedding night--he's apparently a bisexual playboy who had a similar affair with Swan's wife, leading her to attempt suicide. Then Daisy's mom dies and, while finishing up some lip-syncing for her new movie, Daisy has a breakdown. She, too, tries suicide, but eventually finds the inner strength to forge her own life, which would seem to be outside of the studio system.

The film is based on a novel by Gavin Lambert, and the title character may have been inspired by Judy Garland, but only barely. Garland was a show-biz pro from a young age and her downfall was initiated by the drugs her studio gave her to keep up a hectic schedule (though she also had entanglements with bisexual men). Daisy Clover's problem seems to be deep-seated mental illness--or at least, that’s what Wood’s unintentionally comical over-the-top performance would indicate. Wood is flat-out terrible, though her failure isn’t all her fault; the character goes from 15 to 17, and the miscast Wood, who was 27, never looks anything like a teenager--and no attempt is made to give the film a real 30’s look. Her best scene is her breakdown in the recording booth. Redford is handsome and shows some flair in one of his first starring roles, though he mostly vanishes halfway through. Roddy McDowell is wasted in the small and unimportant role of Plummer's secretary. The only standouts in the cast are Ruth Gordon as Daisy’s nutty mom and Katharine Bard who gets a couple of juicy scenes as Plummer's wife. There is one interesting musical number, "The Circus Is a Wacky World," which we see being filmed for one of Daisy's movies from behind the scenes; the song’s lyrics explicitly (and perhaps ham-handedly) draw a parallel between the artifice of the circus and the artifice of Hollywood. Otherwise, this isn't worth your time. Some critics speak of the ambiguity surrounding the Redford character's sexuality, but it's not a mystery: Plummer quite plainly states that Redford is compelled to have sex with many partners, both men and women. [DVD]

ONE CROWDED NIGHT (1940)

An alternate title for this almost interesting B-melodrama, possibly inspired by THE PETRIFIED FOREST, could be "Everybody Comes to Autotopia." The narrative covers one 12-hour period, from roughly noon to midnight, at a gas station/diner/motel (called Autotopia) in the middle of the desert. The place is run by an older married couple, their daughters Ann Revere (who has a little son) and the teenaged Gale Storm (pictured), and hired hand Billie Seward. Truck driver William Haade stops in to flirt with Seward, and gas station attendant Dick Hogan is sweet on Storm. We find out later that Revere’s husband is in prison in Duluth on armed robbery charges, though he is awaiting a parole decision. It seems that the usual high point of their day is when the bus makes its scheduled fueling stop and a passel of passengers come rolling in for burgers. Today, they get a few more adventures than usual. First, a female passenger faints and is given a room; it turns out she’s pregnant and on her way to San Diego to see her sailor husband. Then a down-on-his-luck elixir salesman (J. M. Kerrigan) gets a flat tire and asks for a room while his car is being fixed. Then Revere’s husband (Paul Guilfoyle) shows up, fresh from a jailbreak, trying to get the goods on the crooks who framed him. Then two cops show up to stay the night with an AWOL sailor (Charles Lang) who by bizarre coincidence is the pregnant woman's husband. Finally, two gangsters take a room, and guess what? They're the guys Guilfoyle is trying to track down. All these plot lines plus a few more criss-cross before getting resolved. Given the film's title and short length, you would think this would all move along quickly, but the pace is sluggish until the last 15 minutes. It generally holds your attention, though the top-billed actors, Seward and Haade, are non-entities (although Haade has over 100 roles listed on IMDb, mostly in B-westerns and often uncredited). My favorite line: Kerrigan pouring his (alcoholic) elixir into a glass of soda pop, watching it bubble over, and saying smugly to Gale Storm, "Knowledge is power." [TCM]

JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN (1969)

This crazy sci-fi film is really two movies in one. Set in a future where space exploration has advanced to the point where men have landed on Mars, the first 40 minutes is an unthrilling political spy thriller in which Eurosec, a European NASA, discovers a previously unknown planet directly opposite ours on, duh, the far side of the sun. In order to get disinterested countries interested, they allow a Russian spy to get hold of secret info, and the Americans agree to help. The last hour of the movie becomes a more traditional sci-fi adventure, albeit one suited more for a Twilight Zone episode: American astronaut Roy Thinnes and British scientist Ian Hendry rocket off to explore this world (and, while in hibernation, experience a B-movie version of the trippy 2001: A Space Odyssey "stargate" sequence) and find out that it's an exact mirror image of Earth, with the same people and the same countries, but with backwards writing. [This is not exactly a spoiler, as the movie's original title was Doppleganger]

On balance, this is a dull movie, though there a few reasons for watching. First, it's a live action film produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, creators of the cult classic puppet TV show and movie Thunderbirds. Most of the exterior and action scenes are done with miniatures--fairly obvious but still fun to watch, especially the rocket launches and crashes and explosions (and a very effective scene of an astronaut, on fire, thrown out of his ship). Second, the plot is, to a point, interesting, though as soon as you give any thought at all to the premise, it all falls apart (i.e., why don't they talk backwards as well?); as one critic has pointed out, it's really more in the realm of fantasy than science. The political intrigues in the beginning have some promise, but play out slowly and confusingly and have little bearing on the rest of the movie. Finally, most of the acting is solid, given that the actors are basically playing Thunderbird-like puppet characters; Herbert Lom as the spy, Patrick Wymark as the head of the project, and Hendry are good, and the very handsome Thinnes (pictured) is more than competent as the stolid hero, making a very convincing astronaut-type, both on the ground and in space. Unfortunately, the only two women in the film give poor performances, though in their defense, their characters are total pieces of cardboard; Lynn Loring (married to Thinnes in real life at the time) is Thinnes' disagreeable wife who believes that his apparent sterility is a sign of his crippled manhood, and Loni von Friedl is his potential mistress who is, however, a complete zero. Thinnes, who still acts occasionally, is best known for the cult TV series The Invaders and had a recurring role on The X-Files. Though too long and clunky, I did wind up with a certain affection for this film, the kind you might have for an ugly 3-legged puppy. [DVD--the print is colorful and spotless, though there no extras at all]